this to recognise immediately in the same its transition into a higher sphere. The conception of the Division, therefore, is an external reflexion, an anticipation of what the Idea's own necessity produces, and shows this inaccuracy—that it sets up the various parts or sciences beside each other as if they were stable and substantial in their mutual contradistinction, like species or sorts.'

To a reader who has advanced this length, the above passages will be readily intelligible without comment; and they will serve to strengthen any conception already formed of Hegelian penetrativeness, comprehensiveness, and systematic wholeness. proceed now to make a few extracts from

THE PRE-NOTION

We

which precedes the Logic; using specially for this purpose, §§ 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 35, 36, and 37 (First Edition).

Logic is the science of the pure Idea,—that is, of the Idea in the abstract element of Thought.

'It may, without doubt, be said that Logic is the science of Thought, its forms and its laws; but Thought is at strictest the pure identity of cognition with itself, and constitutes, therefore, only the universal determinatum, determinateness, or the element in which the Idea is as logical. Thought is truly the Idea, but not as thought formal; on the contrary, as the Totality of its own forms which it itself gives to itself. Logic is the hardest science, in so far as it has to do, not with perceptions-not even with abstract ones, as in Geometry or other sensuous forms, but with pure abstractions, and demands, on the part of its student, a power of retiring into pure thoughts, of holding such fast,

and of moving in them. On the other side, again, it may be regarded as the easiest science, inasmuch as its import is nothing but one's proper thought and its current notions, and these are, at the same time, the simplest. The utility of Logic concerns its relation to the particular subject or individual so far as he would give himself a certain training and formation for other objects. The training of Logic consists in this-that in it we are exercised in thinking, for this science is the thinking of thinking. So far, however, as the element of Logic is the absolute form of the True, and even more than this-the pure True itself,—it is something quite other than what is merely useful.

'In form, Logic has three sides: (a) that of understanding, or the abstract side [the dianoëtic]; (B) the negative-rational or the dialectic side; and (7) the positive rational or the speculative side [say the noëtic].

These three sides do not make three parts of Logic, but are moments of every logical Real,—that is, of every Notion, or of every True in general. They may be set under the first or dianoëtic moment, and thereby held asunder from each other; but, so held, they are not considered in their truth.

(a) Thought as Understanding holds fast the fixed individual and its difference from others; and such limitated abstract has the value to it of what is independent and self-subsistent.

(B) The dialectic moment is the self-sublation of such individuals, and their transition into their opposites.

'(1) Dialectic, isolated by understanding and taken by itself, constitutes, especially when manifesting itself in scientific notions, Scepticism, which views mere

negation as the dialectic result. (2) Dialectic is usually regarded as an external art which arbitrarily produces confusion in accepted notions and a mere show of contradiction, the decisions of the understanding and the accepted notions being still supposed the True, while the show itself is to be considered but a nullity. Dialectic, however, is rather to be regarded as the true and proper nature of the decernments of the understanding, of things, and of the Finite in general. Reflexion is properly a going out over and beyond the isolated individual, and a referring, whereby the individual is placed in relation, but for the rest remains still in its isolated validity. Dialectic, on the contrary, is that immanent going-out which exhibits the onesidedness and limitation of the decernments of the understanding as that which it is, the negation, namely, of this and these. Dialectic constitutes, therefore, the motive soul of progress, and is the principle by which alone there comes immanent connexion and necessity into the matter of science, just as it is in it that the true, and not the external, elevation over the Finite lies.

'(7) The positive-rational or speculative side recognises the unity of the distinctions even in their antithesis, the positive element which is retained and preserved in their resolution and transition.

(1)Dialectic has a positive result, because it has a determinate import or matter; or because its result is really not the empty, abstract nothing, but the negation of certain distinctions which are retained and preserved in the result-because it is a result, and not a simple nothing. (2) This rational act is, therefore, though abstract and of thought, still at the same time a concrete, because it is not simple formal unity, but unity

of distinguished distinctions. Philosophy, therefore, has nothing whatever to do with mere abstractions and formal thoughts, but only with concrete notions.

'As regards matter, the Determinations of Thought are considered in Logic in and for themselves. In this way they present themselves as the concrete pure thoughts, that is, as the Notions, with the force and import of that which constitutes the absolute ground and foundation of all that is. Logic, therefore, is

essentially Speculative Philosophy.

Under the speculative moment, Form and Matter are not sundered and severed, and held apart, as under the two preceding. The forms of the Idea are its distinctions [say its native inflexions or intonations], and it were impossible to say where it should get any other or truer Maiter than these its own forms themselves. The forms of the mere Logic of Understanding are, on the contrary, not only not something true per se, but they cannot be even only Forms of the True. Rather, since, as merely formal or formell, they are affected with the essential antithesis to the Matter, they are nothing more than Forms of the Finite, of the Untrue. Because, however, Logic, as pure speculative Philosophy, is the Idea in the element or form of Thought, or the absolute still shut in to its eternity, it is the subjective or first science, and there fails it still the side of the completed objectivity of the Idea. It not only remains, however, as the absolute ground of the Real, but, in manifesting itself this, it demonstrates itself as the real, universal, and objective science. In the first universality of its notions, it appears per se, and as a subjective special activity, without and apart from which the entire wealth of the sensuous, as of the more concrete intellectual, world is still supposed to

live its own life. But when this wealth is taken up in the Philosophy of the real part of the science, and has there manifested itself as returning into the pure Idea, and possessing in it its ultimate ground and truth,—then the logical universality takes stand no longer as a separate entity counter said wealth of the Real, but rather as comprehending this wealth, and as veritable universality. It acquires thus the force of speculative Theology.

'Logic, with the value of speculative philosophy, takes up the place of what was called Metaphysic, and treated separately. The nature of Logic and the stand-point of scientific cognition now receive their more particular preliminary elucidation in the nature of this Metaphysic, and of the Critical Philosophy which ended it.-Metaphysic, besides, is a thing of the past only in reference to the history of Philosophy; in itself, as lately manifested especially, it is the mere Understanding's view of the objects of Reason.

In order to place oneself on the stand-point of science, it is requisite to renounce the presuppositions which are involved in the subjective and finite modes of philosophical cognition, viz.: (1) that of the fixed validity of limited and opposed distinctions of understanding generally; (2) that of a given substrate, conceived as already finished and ready there before us, which is to be taken as standard decisive of whether any of those distinctions are commensurate with it or not; (3) that of cognition as a mere referring of such ready-formed and fixed predicates to some given substrate; (4) that of the antithesis of a cognising subject and a cognised object, which latter is not to be identified with the former; and of this antithesis each side, as in the preceding, is to be equally taken per se as a something fixed and true.