Hegel himself believed that he had permanently effected that reconciliation of the orthodox creed with the cognition of Ultimate Reality at which his dialectic aimed. In all such attempts at reconciliation three great questions are chiefly concerned: (1) the Being of God; (2) the nature of man; (3) the actual and the ideally satisfactory relations between the two. But, as might have been expected, a period of wild, irregular, and confused contention met the attempt to establish this claim. In this conflict of more or less noisy and popular as well as of thoughtful and scholastic philosophy, Hegelians of various degrees of fidelity, anti-Hegelians of various degrees of hostility, and ultra-Hegelians of various degrees of eccentricity, all took a valiant and conspicuous part. We cannot follow its history; but we can learn its lesson. Polemical philosophy, as distinguished from quiet, reflective, and critical but constructive philosophy involves a most uneconomical use of mental force. Yet out of this period of conflict, and in a measure as its result, there came a period of improved relations between science and philosophy and between philosophy and theology, which was the dawn, toward the close of the nineteenth century, of that better illumined day into the middle of which we hope that we are proceeding.
Before leaving this idealistic movement in Germany, and elsewhere as influenced largely by German philosophy, one other name deserves mention. This name is that of Lotze, who combined elements from many previous thinkers with those derived from his own studies and thoughts,--the conceptions of mechanism as applied to physical existences and to psychical life, with the search for some monistic Principle that shall satisfy the æsthetical and ethical, as well as the scientific demands of the human mind. This variety of interests and of culture led to the result of his making important contributions to psychology, logic, metaphysics, and æsthetics. If we find his system of thinking--as I think we must--lacking in certain important elements of consistency and obscured in places by doubts as to his real meaning, this does not prevent us from assigning to Lotze a position which, for versatility of interests, genial quality of reflection and criticism, suggestiveness of thought and charm of style, is second to no other in the history of nineteenth century philosophical development.