ideas; and thus come to be lifted into a world of spiritual reality, above the temporary influences of the physical world.
But imply nevertheless a self-existent material apart from themselves.—This then is idealism, and thus far it includes two points: (1) that certain things, viz., ideas may have real existence which do not appeal to the physical senses of touch, sound, etc.; and (2) that they may not have passive reality merely, but may have active power; and that ideas in the highest sense are the self-realising power of what should be. But this is not yet absolute Idealism. It assumes another self-existent world apart from idea, viz.,a formless substance which the creative Idea has to transform into concrete reality, and which it can do with only partial success. Plato’s critics asked how it could be done; how could two such antithetical realities enter into relation with each other? Aristotle and Plotinus criticised and modified Plato’s system, but without making any essential improvement.
Transition to Absolute Idealism.—This question of the nature of Idea and of the origin and meaning of energy and change, was for long passed over in modern philosophy—force and motion being assumed to be self-existent facts, requiring no explanation; or were referred simply to the creative power, without further inquiry. The subject was taken up more directly in the German philosophy of the nineteenth century, and the school of Hegel advanced to absolute idealism. We cannot form any logical conception of the world if we must assume two absolutely independent realities. They could not come into any relation to each other. There is not room in one world for two absolutes. We must think, therefore, that the supreme Idea contains the whole potentiality of the world within itself, without depending on any material, or any limiting obstruction foreign to itself. It must contain both the form of the world and the realising energy which is the real
