This, it need hardly be added, is the conception of philosophy which is implicitly the basis of Hegel's use. Let us hear Schelling. 'A philosophy which in its principle is not already religion is no true philosophy[2].'
Or again, as to the place of Ethics: 'Morality is Godlike disposition, an uplifting above the influence of the concrete into the realm of the utterly universal. Philosophy is a like elevation, and for that reason intimately one with morality, not through subordination, but through essential and inner likeness[3].' But, again, it has more than once been felt that philosophy is kindred with Art. It has been said--not as a compliment--that philosophy is only a form of gratifying the aesthetic instincts. Schopenhauer has suggested--as a novelty--that the true way to philosophy was not by science, but through Art. And Schelling before him had--while asserting the inner identity of the two--even gone so far as to assert[4] that 'Art is the sole, true and eternal organon as well as the ostensible evidence of philosophy.'
Philosophy, therefore, is one of a triad in which the human spirit has tried to raise itself above its limitations and to become god-like. And philosophy is the climax; Art the lowest; Religion in the mean. But this does not mean that Religion supersedes Art, and that Philosophy supersedes religion; or, if we retain the term 'supersede,' we must add that the superseded is not left behind and passed aside: it is rather an integral constituent of what takes its place. Philosophy is true and adequate only as it has given expression to all that religion had or aimed at. So, too, Religion is not the destruction of Art: though here the attitude may often seem to be more obviously negative. A religion which has no place for art is, again, no true religion. And thus again, Philosophy becomes a reconciler of Art and Religion: of the visible ideal and the invisible God. Art, on the other hand, is a foretaste and a prophecy of religion and philosophy.
But Art, Religion, and Philosophy, again, rest upon, grow out of, and are the fulfilment of an ethical society-a state of human life where an ordered commonwealth in outward visibility is animated and sustained by the spirit of freedom and self-realisation. And that public objective existence of social humanity in its turn reposes on the will and intelligence of human beings, of souls which in various relations of discipline and interaction with their environment have become free-agents, and have risen to be more than portions of the physical world, sympathetic with its changes, and become awake to themselves and their surroundings. Such is the mental or spiritual life as it rises to full sense of its power, recognises its kindred with the general life, carries out that kindred in its social organisation, and at length through the strength social union gives floats boldly in the empyrean of spiritual life, in art, religion, and philosophy.