We, who were different from them, merely stood at the stage of thinking in the category of limited understanding. Further, Hegel held nature to be the self-alienation, or the form of otherness, of Idea. As was pointed out in the Theory of the Original Image, this view regards nature as the expression of God, and is a view that can lead to pantheism, placing no distinction between nature and God. Thus, it has the tendency to turn easily into materialism. In Hegel's dialectic, nature was merely an intermediate step in the process leading to the appearance of humankind.
Nature is like the scaffolding of a building tinder construction.
Once the building is completed, the scaffolding, which was made as a means to construct the building, is taken away. Likewise, once humankind came into being, nature became meaningless in itself. He also said that the human being is manipulated by reason in history. Consequently, the human being actually is a being to be manipulated like a puppet by the Absolute Spirit. From the perspective of Unification Thought, however, God is not unilaterally moving history.