Idealism for Hegel meant that the finite world is a reflection of mind, which alone is truly real. He held that limited being (that which comes to be and passes away) presupposes infinite unlimited being, within which the finite is a dependent element. In this view, truth becomes the relationship of harmony or coherence between thoughts, rather than a correspondence between thoughts and external realities. 

As one proceeds from the confusing world of sense experience to the more complex and coherent categories of science, the Absolute Idea, of which all other abstract ideas are merely a part, is approached. Hegel also held that this increasing clarity is evident in the fact that later philosophy presupposes and advances from earlier philosophy, ultimately approaching that to which all things are related and which is nevertheless self-contained—i.e., the Absolute Idea.

Royce proposed that human minds are fragments of the Absolute yet somehow remain separate selves and persons. He held that individual selves (as parts of the Absolute) are able, through the fundamental virtue of loyalty, to seek their ever increasing and ever widening meaning and identify with it, thus approaching the Absolute.

Hegel’s idealism formed the basis of the Absolute Idealism of many philosophers (including F.H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet), who made Absolute Idealism a dominant philosophy of the 19th century.