ABSTRACT
Hegel is indeed given credit for a great advance. In finding the principle of all nature and history in the idea of End, he represents what is profoundest and best in modern philosophy. To the Fichtean doctrine of knowledge and conduct Schelling and Hegel had added a philosophy of Nature, as partly obscuring but also partly revealing in herself the characters of mind. Returning to Kant, just as his best English interpreters took their departure in their theory of knowledge from the hint that he gave of a new criterion of objective reality, so in their theory of conduct they took their departure from the hint he gave of a new criterion of personality. Outside the Neo-Kantian school Lotze may be said to have been the dominating influence among thinkers with a leaning to idealism of some kind, but who hesitated to accept it in Hegelian form.
