2)emocraci? and TReltgton.
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though being a great Frenchman by birth was atthe same time the spiritual son of Kant .
The idea of the Kingdom of God was the pointfrom which Hegel started for his world encirclingjourney, as he avowed in a famous letter toHolderlin. For Hegel, man can be " man " inthe spiritual sense of this word only as the memberof the social organisations which in their varietyand abundance co-operate for progress. Thedivine spirit unfolds itself in the history of man-kind, the nations being its chief agents.
To each nation, to each age there has beenentrusted a commission that is all their own. 1 Amessage is to be delivered. The noblest men ofeach age have fought under this banner, with asense that it was God 's work and they were Hischosen workers. Hegel , in this respect essentiallyChristian, embraces in his world view the wholeof mankind—all that is human in space and time.For him there is no difference between sacred andprofane history, all history being sacred, allhistory striving towards the one goal which liesbeyond history.
Great possibilities lie at the bottom of theseconceptions if they become life convictions pre-sented in terms of modern times. This MissM. P. Follett tries to do in her remarkable book,The New State. Lord Haldane states in thepreface he has written to this book that Hegel himself would have expressed similar views if hehad lived in Boston as our contemporary.
1 John Kelman, Honour towards God. Edinburgh , 1903(with nearly Hegelian words).