Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was the last of the great German Idealist philosophers. He perfected the dialectical method, which, in his philosophy, is not only a way of thinking but also the process by which reality evolves. The harmonious integration of the parts of reality into the whole is achieved in three stages: the thesis provokes an antithesis; out of the latter emerges a synthesis, representing a higher and more comprehensive level than the first two stages. Having developed by preserving some aspects of an existing circumstance and reacting against others, this higher synthesis becomes a new thesis which produces another antithesis, and the process begins anew. The human mind operates in the same manner: logical thinking progresses to pure thought in a series of binary splits, each of which is synthesized into new theses. Hegel maintained that knowledge of God, or the Absolute, can be achieved by...