One word more about giving instruction as to what the world ought to
be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it.
As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there
cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed. The teaching
of the concept, which is also history's inescapable lesson, is that it is
only when actuality is mature that the ideal first appears over against
the real and that the ideal apprehends this same real world in its substance
and builds it up for itself into the shape of an intellectual realm. When
philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old.
By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
Preface
to the Philosophy of Right
1831
Hegel