As life is the
whole law and incessant effort of the visible universe, and death only
the other or invisible side of the same, so the _utile_, so truth, so
health are the continuous-immutable laws of the moral universe, and
vice and disease, with all their perturbations, are but transient,
even if ever so prevalent expressions.
To politics throughout, Hegel applies the like catholic standard and
faith. Not any one party, or any one form of government, is absolutely
and exclusively true. Truth consists in the just relations of objects
to each other. A majority or democracy may rule as outrageously and do
as great harm as an oligarchy or despotism--though far less likely to
do so. But the great evil is either a violation of the relations just
referr'd to, or of the moral law. The specious, the unjust, the cruel,
and what is called the unnatural, though not only permitted but in a
certain sense, (like shade to light,) inevitable in the divine scheme,
are by the whole constitution of that scheme, partial, inconsistent,
temporary, and though having ever so great an ostensible majority, are
certainly destin'd to failures, after causing great suffering.
Theology, Hegel translates into science.[16] All apparent
contradictions in the statement of the Deific nature by different
ages, nations, churches, points of view, are but fractional and
imperfect expressions of one essential unity, from which they all
proceed--crude endeavors or distorted parts, to be regarded both as
distinct and united.
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