Fichte, SchelUng, and Hegel developed the doctrine of Singu-
larism in Germany, but important expositions in EngUsh
have been given by Green, E. Caird, Bradley, Bosanquet,
and Royce. The history of the origin of this Idealism goes
back as far as Plato, but its proximate beginning may be
traced at least from Kant. It is unnecessary for our purpose
to do more than merely refer to the epoch-making work of
Kant in his critical examination of Knowledge. Suffice
it to say that he estabhshed the importance of the function
of the Reason in relation to experience, showing how the
manifold of sense is unified by the forms of thought. The
consistency of his system was impaired, however, by certain
dualistic elements. His successors carried his work to a
further stage, and Hegel made Reason, not merely inter-
pretative, but constitutive, of Reality. The Rational is the
Real, as the Real is the Rational. For Hegel, the law of
our thinking is the law of nature. ' Things ' so-called are
thought-determinations. The movement of Reason is
the movement of the World. This movement, or dia-
lectical evolution, proceeds by the three stages of thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis, and its concrete nature is to
distinguish differences in order to reunite them in a higher
unity. It is these moments of thought that make the
universe, and make it what it is.
