G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), the influential German philosopher, believed that human history was advancing spiritually and morally according to God's purpose. At the beginning of Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel writes: "What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of Reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God,...