Those who ask philosophy to construe, or to deduce _a priori_ a single blade of grass, or a single act of a man, must not be grieved if their request sounds absurd and meets with no answer. The sphere of philosophy is the Universal. We may say, if we like, that it is retrospective. It is the spectator of all time and all existence: it is its duty to view things _sub specie aeternitatis_. To comprehend the universe of thought in all its formations and all its features, to reduce the solid structures, which mind has created, to fluidity and transparency in the pure medium of thought, to set free the fossilised intelligence which the great magician who wields the destinies of the world has hidden under the mask of Nature, of the Mind of man, of the works of Art, of the institutions of the State and the orders of Society, and of religious forms and creeds:--such is the complicated problem of philosophy. Its special work is to comprehend the world, not try to make it better. If it were the purpose of philosophy to reform and improve the existing state of things, it comes a little too late for such a task. 'As the thought of the world,' says Hegel, 'it makes its first appearance at a time, when the actual fact has consummated its process of formation, and is now fully matured. This is the doctrine set forth by the notion of philosophy; but it is also the teaching of history. It is only when the actual world has reached its full fruition that the ideal rises to confront the reality, and builds up, in the shape of an intellectual realm, that same world grasped in its substantial being. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, some one shape of life has meanwhile grown old: and grey in grey, though it brings it into knowledge, cannot make it young again. The owl of Minerva does not start upon its flight, until the evening twilight has begun to fall[4].' [Footnote 1: _Vermischte Schriften_, vol. ii. p. 87.] [Footnote 2: _De Augm. Scient._ iii. 5.] [Footnote 3: The passages occur in some notes (written down by F. in reference to the charge of Atheism) published in his _Werke,_ v. pp. 342, 348.] [Footnote 4: _Philosophie des Rechts_, p. 20 (_Werke,_ viii).] CHAPTER IV. HEGEL AND THEOLOGY.