Religion and philosophy follow art in the unfolding of Spirit in history. Art, religion and philosophy are not mutually exclusive, however, but infact use and evolve out of one another. Philosophy exists as the final stage of man's thinking, independent of both art and religion yet able to use them both of subjects of thought. It is an essential quality of Apirit, the absolute, that is becomes actualized. Since man exists as the highest form of being in the world, man is capable of understanding and actualizing the absolute.
Art is one method, or phase, which man participates in the actualization of Spirit in the world.
Man surveys the whole world and plumbs its debths, gradually becoming aware of the absolute itself. Thus man and his cognitive and practical activities are not simply a manifestation of the absolute, but the highest phase of the absolute, that phase in which the absolute becomes self-conscious and 'returns to itself' out of the brute objectivity of nature. Art is not only a phase in whch man becomes aware of the world around him, but exists as a way in which the Spirit actualizes itself. True Reality is the Spirit. But contained within the Spirit there potential and material aspects.