Introduction

The need to begin with the subject itself, without preliminary observations, is felt nowhere more strongly than in the Science of Logic. In every other science, the Subject dealt with, and the Method of the Science, are distinguished from one another; and further the subject is not absolutely original, but depends upon other concepts, and is connected in all directions with other material. It is therefore granted to these other sciences to regard both their Principles (with the connexions of these) and also their Method, as starting from assumptions—to begin with applying forms of Definition and so on, which are presupposed as known and accepted, and to make use of familiar forms of reasoning for the establishment of their general concepts and fundamental determinations.

Logic on the other hand cannot take for granted any of these forms of reflection or rules and laws of thought, for these are a part of the very fabric of Logic, and must be demonstrated within the boundaries of the science itself. But not only the scheme of philosophic method, but also the very concept of philosophy in general belongs to the content of Logic and in fact constitutes its final result; what Logic is, cannot be set out beforehand—on the contrary this knowledge of what Logic is can only be reached as the end and consummation of the whole treatment of the subject. Moreover the subject of Logic (Thinking, or more precisely Conceptual Thinking) is really treated of within the boundaries of the science itself; the Concept of this Thinking is engendered in the course of development of the Science, and therefore cannot precede it. Therefore what is set forth in a preliminary way in this Introduction does not aim at establishing the concept of Logic at all, or at justifying beforehand its substance and method scientifically, but—by help of some reasoned and historical explanations and reflections—at bringing more clearly before the mind the point of view from which this science is to be regarded.

When Logic is taken as the science of Thinking in general, it is understood that this Thinking constitutes the bare form of cognition, that Logic abstracts from all content, and that the (so-called) other constituent of a cognition,—that is, its Matter,—must come from a different source; that thus Logic—as something of which this Matter is wholly and entirely independent—can provide only the formal conditions of true knowledge, and cannot, in and by itself, contain real truth, nor even be the path to real truth, because just that which is the essence of truth,—that is, its content—lies outside Logic.

But in the first place it is most inept to say that Logic abstracts from all Content, that it teaches only the rules of Thinking without going into what is thought or being able to consider its nature. For since Thinking and the Rules of Thinking are the subject of Logic, Logic has directly in them its own peculiar content;—has in them that second constituent of cognition—its Matter—about the structure of which it concerns itself.

But secondly, the ideas upon which the concept of Logic has hitherto rested have partly died out already, and, for the rest, it is time that they should disappear altogether, and that this science should be taken from a higher point of view, and should receive an entirely different structure.

The hitherto accepted concept of Logic rests upon the assumed separation of the Content of knowledge and the Form of knowledge (or Truth and Certainty)—a separation that is assumed once for all in ordinary consciousness. First, it is assumed that the material of knowledge is present in and for itself in the shape of a finished world apart from Thinking, that Thinking is in itself empty, and comes to that world from outside as Form to Matter, fills itself therewith, and only thus gets a content, and thereby becomes real knowing.

Next, these two constituents—for it is supposed that they have the reciprocal relation of constituents, and Cognition is constructed out of them in a mechanical or at best a chemical fashion—these constituents are placed in an order of merit in which the object is regarded as something in itself finished and complete, something which, as far as its reality is concerned, could entirely dispense with thought, while on the other hand, Thought is something incomplete which has to seek completion by means of some material, and indeed has to adapt itself to its material as if it were a form in itself pliable and undetermined. Truth is supposed to be the agreement of Thought with its object, and in order to bring about this agreement (for the agreement is not there by itself) thinking must accommodate and adapt itself to its object.

Thirdly, when the difference of Matter and Form, of Object and Thought, is not left thus nebulous and undetermined, but is taken more definitely, each is regarded as a sphere separated from the other. Thus Thought in its reception and formation of material is supposed not to go beyond itself—its reception of material and accommodation thereto is still regarded as a modification of self by which Thought is not transformed into its Other; moreover, self-conscious determination is held to belong to Thought alone; thus Thought in its relation to the Object of Thought does not go out of itself to the Object, while the Object, as a thing-in-itself, simply remains a something beyond Thought.

These views concerning the relation to one another of Subject and Object express the determinations which constitute the nature of our ordinary consciousness just as it appears; but these prejudices, translated into the sphere of Reason—as if the same relationship held there or had any truth by itself—are errors, the refutation of which throughout all departments of the spiritual and physical world is Philosophy itself; or rather, since these errors bar the way, they must be renounced at the very threshold of Philosophy.

The older Metaphysic had in this respect a loftier conception of Thought than that which has become current in more modern times. For the older Metaphysic laid down as fundamental that that which by thinking is known of and in things, that alone is what is really true in them; that what is really true is not things in their immediacy, but only things when they have been taken up into the Form of Thought, as conceptions. Thus this older Metaphysic stands for the view that thinking and the determinations of thinking are not something foreign to the objects of thought, but are rather of the very essence of those objects; in other words that Things and the Thinking of them are in harmony in and for themselves,—indeed language itself expresses an affinity between them,—that thought in its immanent determinations, and the true nature of things, are one and the same content.

But reflective Understanding assumed possession of Philosophy. We must learn precisely what is meant by this expression, which indeed is frequently used as a catch-word; by it is to be understood generally the abstracting and separating intelligence which clings tenaciously to the separations which it has made. Directed against Reason, this intelligence behaves as crude Common Sense and maintains the view that Truth rests upon sense-reality, that thoughts are only thoughts, meaning that it is sense-perception that first endows them with substance and reality, that Reason—in as far as it is merely Reason—can spin nothing but idle fancies. In this renunciation of Reason by itself, the concept of Truth is lost; it is restricted to the cognition of merely subjective Truth, of mere appearance, of something to which the nature of the thing itself does not correspond; knowing falls back into opinion.

But this turn which Cognition takes, and which has the air of being a loss and a retrogression, has something deeper behind it—something upon which the uplifting of Reason to the loftier spirit of the newer Philosophy chiefly depends. That is, the ground of this now everywhere prevalent idea is to be sought in a perception of the necessary conflict with each other of the determinations of Understanding. The reflection already mentioned is this, that the immediate concrete must be transcended, and must undergo determination and abstraction. But reflection must, just as much, transcend these its own separative determinations, and forthwith relate them to each other. Then at the standpoint of this relating, the conflict emerges. This relating activity of reflection belongs in itself to Reason; that transcending of these determinations which attains to a perception of their conflict, is the great negative step towards the true concept of Reason. But this perception, being merely partial, falls into the error of fancying that it is Reason which is in contradiction with itself, and does not recognize that the contradiction is just the lifting of Reason above the limitations of Understanding, and the dissolution of these. Instead of starting from this point to make the final step upwards, knowledge, recognizing the unsatisfactory nature of the determinations of Understanding, flies straight back to sensible existence, thinking to find therein stability and unity. But on the other hand, since this knowledge knows itself to be knowledge only of appearances, its insufficiency is confessed, yet at the same time it is supposed that things, though not rightly known in themselves, still are rightly known within the sphere of appearances; as though only the kinds of objects were different, and the one kind, namely Things in themselves, did not fall within knowledge, and the other kind, namely Appearances, did so fall. It is as though accurate perception were attributed to a man, with the proviso that he yet could not perceive Truth but only untruth. Absurd as this would be, a true knowledge which did not know the object of knowledge as it is in itself, would be equally absurd.

The criticism of the Forms of Common Understanding has had the result (mentioned above) that these Forms have no applicability to things in themselves. This can have no other meaning than that the Forms are in themselves something untrue. But if they are allowed to remain as valid for subjective Reason and for experience, then criticism has made no change in them, but leaves them in the same attitude towards the Subject of knowledge, as they formerly had towards the Object of knowledge. But if they do not suffice for the Thing in itself, then still less should common understanding, to which they are supposed to belong, put up with them and be content with them. If they cannot be determinations of the Thing in itself, they can still less be determinations of Understanding, to which we must allow at the very least the dignity of a Thing in itself. The determinations of Finite and Infinite are similarly in conflict—whether they are applied to the world, to time and space, or are determinations within the mind; just as black and white produce grey whether they are mixed on a canvas or on the palette; so if our World-representation is dissolved by having the determinations of Finite and Infinite transferred to it, still more must the Mind itself, which contains them both, be something self-contradictory and self-dissolving. It is not the constitution of the Matter or Object to which they are applied or in which they occur, that can make the difference, for the Object contains the contradiction only through these determinations and in accordance with them.

Thus this Criticism has only separated the forms of objective Thinking from the Thing, and left them, as it found them, in the Subject of Thought. For in doing so, it has not regarded these Forms in and for themselves, according to their characteristic content, but has simply taken them up as a corollary from subjective Logic; so that it was not a question of the deduction of them in themselves, nor of a deduction of them as subjective-logical Forms, and still less a question of the dialectical consideration of them.

Transcendental Idealism, carried more consistently to its logical conclusion, has recognized the emptiness of that spectre of the Thing-in-itself which the critical philosophy left over—an abstract shadow, detached from all content—and had it in view to demolish it altogether. Also this philosophy made a beginning of letting Reason produce its own determinations out of itself. But the subjective attitude of this attempt did not admit of its being carried to completion. Henceforth this attitude—and with it that beginning, and the development of pure philosophy—was given up.

But that which has commonly been understood by Logic is considered without any reference to metaphysical import. In its present condition, this Science has indeed no Content of such a kind that it can be regarded by ordinary consciousness as reality and truth. But Logic is not on this account a mere formal science, destitute of significant truth. In any case, the province of truth is not to be looked for in that subject-matter which is lacking in Logic, and to the want of which the inadequacy of the Science is commonly attributed: the emptiness and worthlessness of the logical forms reside solely in the way in which they have been considered and treated. Whilst as fixed determinations they fall apart and cannot be held together in organic unity, they are mere dead forms, and have not dwelling in them the spirit which is their living concrete unity. Thus they are destitute of solid content and substantial filling. The content which we miss in the logical forms, is nothing other than a solid foundation and concreting of those abstract forms, and it is customary to seek this substantial essence for them, from outside. But it is just logical Reason which is that substantial or real, which holds together in itself all abstract determinations, and is their solid absolutely concrete unity. Thus we do not need to seek far afield for what is usually regarded as a filling or content; it is not the fault of the subject-matter of Logic if it is supposed to be without content or filling, but of the way in which Logic is conceived.

This reflection leads us nearer to the problem of the point of view from which Logic is to be regarded; how it is distinguished from the mode of treatment which this science has hitherto received, and to what extent it is the only true point of view upon which Logic is in the future to be permanently based.

In the Phenomenology of Spirit (Bamberg and Würzburg, 1807) I have set forth the movement of consciousness, from the first crude opposition between itself and the Object, up to absolute knowledge. This process goes through all the forms of the relation of thought to its object, and reaches the Concept of Science as its result. Thus this concept (apart from the fact that it arises within the boundaries of Logic) needs here no justification, having already received its justification in that place; the concept is incapable of any other justification than just this production by consciousness; for to consciousness, all its forms are resolved into this concept, as into the truth. A reasoned deduction or elucidation of the concept of science can at best render this service, that by it the concept is presented to the mind, and a historical knowledge of it is produced; but a definition of science, or—more precisely—of logic, has its evidence solely in the inevitableness (already referred to) of its origin. The definition with which any science makes an absolute beginning can contain nothing other than the precise and correct expression of that which is presented to one’s mind as the accepted and recognized subject-matter and purpose of the science. That exactly this or that is thus presented is a historical asseveration, in respect of which one may indeed appeal to certain facts as commonly accepted; or rather the request can be made that certain facts may be granted as accepted. And still we find that one man here and another there will bring forward, here a case and there an instance, according to which something more and other is to be understood by various expressions, into the definition of which therefore a narrower or more general determination is to be admitted, and in accordance with which the science is to be arranged. It further depends upon argument what should be admitted or excluded, and within what limit and scope; and there stand open to argument the most manifold and varied opinions, among which only arbitrary choice can make a fixed and final decision. In this mode of procedure, of beginning a science with its definition, nothing is said of the need that the inevitableness of the subject-matter, and therefore of the Science itself, should be demonstrated.

The concept of pure Science, and the Deduction of it, are assumed in the present treatise so far as this, that the Phenomenology of Spirit is nothing other than the Deduction of this concept. Absolute Knowledge is the Truth of all modes of Consciousness, because according to the process of knowledge, it is only when absolute knowledge has been reached that the separation of the Object of Knowledge from Subjective Certainty is completely resolved, and Truth equated to this Certainty, and this Certainty equated to Truth.

So pure Science presupposes deliverance from the opposition of Consciousness. Pure Science includes Thought in so far as it is just as much the Thing in itself as it is Thought, or the Thing in itself in so far as it is just as much pure Thought as it is the Thing in itself Truth, as Science, is pure Self-Consciousness unfolding itself, and it has the form of Self in that what exists in and for itself is the known concept, while the Concept as such is that which exists in and for itself.

This objective thinking is then the content of the pure science. Hence Logic is so little merely formal, so little destitute of the matter necessary for real and true knowledge, that on the contrary its Content is the only Absolutely True, or (if we wish still to employ the word matter) is the true genuine matter—a Matter, however, to which Form is not external, since this Matter is in fact Pure Thought, and thus Absolute Form itself. Logic is consequently to be understood as the System of Pure Reason, as the Realm of Pure Thought. This realm is the Truth as it is, without husk in and for itself. One may therefore express it thus: that this content shows forth God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of Nature and of a Finite Spirit.

Anaxagoras is praised as the man who first gave voice to the idea that we ought to lay down, as the World-principle, Nous, that is Thought, and Thought as the World-essence. He thus laid the foundation of an intellectualist view of the Universe, and of this view Logic must be the pure form. In it we are not concerned with thinking about something lying outside thought, as the basis of thought, nor with Forms which serve merely as signs of Truth; on the contrary, the necessary Forms and characteristic determinations of thought are the Content and the Supreme Truth itself.

In order that we may at least envisage this we must put aside the opinion that Truth is something tangible. Such tangibility has for example been imported even into the Platonic Ideas, which are in the thought of God, as though they were things existing, but existing in a world or region outside the world of Reality, a world other than that of those Ideas, and only having real Substantiality in virtue of this otherness. The Platonic Idea is nothing other than the Universal, or more precisely the Concept of an Object of Thought; it is only in its concept that anything has actuality; in so far as it is other than its concept, it ceases to be actual and is a non-entity; the aspect of tangibility and of sensuous externality to self belongs to that non-identical aspect.—From the other side, however, one can refer to the characteristic ideas of ordinary Logic; for it is assumed that, for instance, Definitions comprise not determinations which belong only to the cognizing Subject, but determinations which belong to the Object, and constitute its most essential and inmost nature. Again, when from given determinations we conclude to others, it is assumed that what is concluded is not something external to the Object and foreign to it, but that it belongs to the object,—that Being corresponds to Thought.—Speaking generally, it lies at the very basis of our use of the Forms of Concept, Judgment, Inference, Definition, Division, and so on, that they are Forms not merely of self-conscious Thinking but also of the objective understanding.—To think is an expression which attributes specially to Consciousness the determination which it contains. But in as far as it is allowed that Understanding, and Reason, are of the World of Objects, that Spirit and Nature have General Laws in accordance with which their life and their mutations are governed, in so far is it admitted that the determinations of Thought also have objective validity and existence.

The Critical Philosophy has indeed turned Metaphysics into Logic, but—as already mentioned—like the later idealism it shied at the Object, and gave to logical determinations an essentially subjective signification; thus both the Critical Philosophy and the later idealism remained saddled with the Object which they shunned, and for Kant a “Thing-in-itself,” for Fichte an abiding “Resistance-principle,” was left over as an unconquerable Other. But that freedom from the opposition of consciousness which Logic must be able to assume, lifts these thought-determinations above such a timid and incomplete point of view, and requires that those determinations should be considered not with any such limitation and reference, but as they are in and for themselves, as Logic, as Pure Reason.

Kant considers that Logic—that is, the aggregate of Definitions and Propositions which are called Logic in the ordinary sense—is fortunate in that it has fallen to its lot to attain so early to completion, before the other sciences; for Logic has not taken any step backwards since Aristotle,—but also it has taken no step forwards—the latter because to all appearance it was already finished and complete.—If Logic has undergone no change since Aristotle—and in fact when one looks at modern compendiums of Logic the changes consist to a large extent merely in omissions—what is rather to be inferred from this is, that Logic is all the more in need of a thorough overhaul; for when Spirit has worked on for two thousand years, it must have reached a better reflective consciousness of its own thought and its own unadulterated essence. A comparison of the forms to which Spirit has risen in the worlds of Practice and Religion, and of Science in every department of knowledge Positive and Speculative,—a comparison of these with the form which Logic—that is, Spirit’s knowledge of its own pure essence—has attained, shows such a glaring discrepancy that it cannot fail to strike the most superficial observer that the latter is inadequate to the lofty development of the former, and unworthy of it.

As a matter of fact the need of a transformation of Logic has long been felt. It may be said that, both in Form and in Content, as exhibited in text-books, Logic has become contemptible. It is still trailed along rather with a feeling that one cannot do without Logic altogether, and from a surviving adherence to the tradition of its importance, than from any conviction that that familiar content, and occupation with those empty forms, can be valuable and useful.

The additions—psychological, educational, even physiological—which Logic received during a certain period were, later, almost universally recognized as disfigurements. In themselves, a great part of these psychological, educational, and physiological observations, laws, and rules, must appear very trivial and futile, whether they occur in Logic or anywhere else. Besides, such rules as for instance that one should think out and test what one reads in books or hears by word of mouth, that when one does not see well, one should use spectacles to help one’s eyes—rules which in text-books on so-called Applied Logic are put forward with great seriousness and formality to help us to attain to truth—these must appear to all the world to be superfluous—except indeed to the writer or teacher who is at his wits’ end to know how to piece out the inadequate lifeless content of his Logic.

As to this content, we have given above the reason why it is so empty and lifeless. Its determinations are assumed to stand immovably rigid and are brought into a merely external relation with one another. Because in the operations of judgment and syllogism it is chiefly their quantitative element that is referred to and built upon, everything rests on an external difference, on mere comparison, and becomes a wholly analytic procedure, a matter of merely mechanical calculation. The deduction of the so-called rules and laws (especially of Syllogism) is not much better than a manipulation of rods of unequal length in order to sort and arrange them according to size—like the child’s game of trying to fit into their right places the various pieces of a picture-puzzle. Not without reason, therefore, has this Thinking been identified with Reckoning, and Reckoning with this Thinking. In Arithmetic the numbers are taken as non-significant, as something that, except for equality or inequality—that is, except for quite external relations—has no significance,—that contains no Thought, either in itself or in its relations. When it is worked out in a mechanical way that three-fourths multiplied by two-thirds make a half, this operation involves about as much or as little thought as the calculation whether in any Figure of Syllogism this or that Mood is admissible.

In order that these dead bones of Logic may be re-vivified by Mind, and endowed with content and coherence, its Method must be that by means of which alone Logic is capable of becoming a Pure Science. In the present condition of Logic, hardly a suspicion of scientific Method is to be recognized. It has very nearly the structure of merely Empirical Science. For attaining their purpose, empirical sciences have hit upon a characteristic Method of defining and classifying their material as best they can. Pure Mathematics again has its own Method, which suits its abstract objects and the quantitative determinations with which alone it is concerned. I have in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit said what is essential concerning this Method and especially concerning the subordinate nature of such Science as can find a place in Mathematics; but it will also be more closely considered within the bounds of Logic itself. Spinoza, Wolf, and others, have allowed themselves to be misled into applying this method in Philosophy, and identifying the external process of concept-less quantity with the conceptual process, which is self-contradictory. Hitherto Philosophy had not discovered its own method; it regarded with an envious eye the systematic structure of Mathematics and, as already remarked, borrowed this, or sought help in the method of Sciences which are only a medley of given material and empirical maxims and ideas—or took refuge in a crude rejection of all Method. But the exposition of that which alone is capable of being the true Method of philosophic Science belongs to Logic itself; since method is the consciousness of the form taken by the inner spontaneous movement of the content of Logic. In the Phenomenology of Spirit I have set out an example of this Method as applied to a more concrete object, namely to Consciousness. We have here modes of consciousness each of which in realizing itself abolishes itself, has its own negation as its result,—and thus passes over into a higher mode. The one and only thing for securing scientific progress (and for quite simple insight into which, it is essential to strive)—is knowledge of the logical precept that Negation is just as much Affirmation as Negation, or that what is self-contradictory resolves itself not into nullity, into abstract Nothingness, but essentially only into the negation of its particular content, that such negation is not an all-embracing Negation, but is the negation of a definite somewhat which abolishes itself, and thus is a definite negation; and that thus the result contains in essence that from which it results—which is indeed a tautology, for otherwise it would be something immediate and not a result. Since what results, the negation, is a definite negation, it has a content. It is a new concept, but a higher, richer concept than that which preceded; for it has been enriched by the negation or opposite of that preceding concept, and thus contains it, but contains also more than it, and is the unity of it and its opposite.—On these lines the system of Concepts has broadly to be constructed, and to go on to completion in a resistless course, free from all foreign elements, admitting nothing from outside.

I could not of course imagine that the Method which in this System of Logic I have followed—or rather which this System follows of itself—is not capable of much improvement, of much elaboration in detail, but at the same time I know that it is the only true Method. This is already evident from the fact that the Method is no-ways different from its object and content;—for it is the content in itself, the Dialectic which it has in itself, that moves it on. It is clear that no expositions can be regarded as scientific which do not follow the course of this Method, and which are not conformable to its simple rhythm, for that is the course of the thing itself.

In accordance with this Method I would observe that the divisions and headings of the Books, Sections, and Chapters which are given in the work, as well as to some extent the explanations connected with them, were made for the purposes of a preliminary survey, and that in fact they have only a historical value. They do not belong to the content and body of the Science, but are compiled by external reflexion, which has already run through the whole of the scheme, and hence knows and indicates in advance the sequence of its phases, before these introduce themselves in the subject itself.

In the other Sciences too, such preliminary Definitions and Divisions are in themselves no other than such external specifications; but even within each science they are not raised above this status. Even in Logic, for example, we may be told that “Logic has two principal parts, (1) the Doctrine of Elements and (2) Methodology”;—then under the first head we forthwith find, perhaps, the superscription: Laws of Thought;—and then: Chapter I—Concepts. First Section: Of the Clearness of Concepts—and so on.—These Determinations and Divisions, made without any deduction or justification, furnish the systematic framework and the whole bond of connexion of such sciences. Such a Logic regards it as its business to say that Concepts and Truths must be derived from Principles; but in what this Logic calls Method, derivation is the last thing that is thought of. The procedure consists, it may be, in grouping together what is similar, in putting what is simpler before what is compound, and other external considerations. But as for any inner necessary connexion, this goes no further than the list of Sections, and the transition consists merely in saying Chapter //;—or We now come to Judgment, and the like.

The headings and divisions which occur in this system too are designed in themselves to have no other significance than that of a Table of Contents. But in addition to this the necessity of connexion and the immanent origination of distinctions must show themselves in the discussion of the subject-matter, for they are part of the self-development of the concept.

That by means of which the Concept forges ahead is the above-mentioned Negative which it carries within itself; it is this that constitutes the genuine dialectical procedure. Dialectic—which has been regarded as an isolated part of Logic, and which as regards its purpose and standpoint has, one may aver, been entirely misunderstood—is thus put in quite a different position.—The Platonic Dialectic too, even in the Parmenides (and still more directly in other places), is sometimes intended merely to dispose of and to refute through themselves limited assertions, and sometimes again has nullity for its result. Dialectic is generally regarded as an external and negative procedure, that does not pertain to the subject-matter, that is based on a mere idle subjective craving to disturb and unsettle what is fixed and true, or that at best leads to nothing except the futility of the dialectically treated matter.

Kant set Dialectic higher, and this part of his work is among the greatest of his merits,—for he freed Dialectic from the semblance of arbitrariness attributed to it in ordinary thought, and set it forth as a necessary procedure of Reason. Since Dialectic was regarded merely as the art of producing deceptions and bringing about illusions, it was straightway assumed that it played a cheating game, and that its whole power depended solely on concealment of the fraud; that its results were reached surreptitiously, and were a mere subjective illusion. When Kant’s dialectical expositions in the Antinomies of Pure Reason are looked at closely (as they will be more at large in the course of this work) it will be seen that they are not indeed deserving of any great praise; but the general idea upon which he builds and which he has vindicated, is the Objectivity of Appearance and the Necessity of Contradiction which belong to the very nature of thought-determinations; primarily indeed in so far as these determinations are applied by Reason to Things in themselves’, but further, just what these determinations are in Reason and in respect of that which is self-existent,—just this it is which is their own nature. This result, grasped on its positive side, is nothing other than the inherent Negativity of these thought-determinations, their self-moving soul, the principle of all physical and spiritual life. But if people stop short at the abstract-negative aspect of the Dialectic, they reach only the familiar result that Reason is incapable of cognition of the Infinite;—a strange result, for—since the Infinite is the Reasonable—it amounts to saying that Reason is incapable of cognizing that which is Reasonable.

It is in this Dialectic (as here understood) and in the comprehension of the Unity of Opposites, or of the Positive in the Negative, that Speculative knowledge consists. This is the most important aspect of the Dialectic, but for thought that is as yet unpractised and unfree, it is the most difficult. If thought is still in the process of cutting itself loose from concrete sense-presentation and from syllogizing (Räsonnieren), it must first practise abstract thinking, and learn to hold fast concepts in their definiteness and to recognize by means of them. An exposition of Logic with this in view must, in its Method, follow the division above mentioned, and with regard to the more detailed content must hold to the determinations of the particular concepts without embarking upon the Dialectic. As far as external structure is concerned, this Logic would be similar to the usual presentation of the science, but as regards content would be distinct from it, and still would serve for practice in abstract thinking, though not in speculative thinking (a purpose which could not be in any degree fulfilled by the Logic which has become popular by means of psychological and anthropological trappings). It would present to the mind the picture of a methodically ordered whole, although the soul of the structure,’ the Method itself (which lives in Dialectic), would not be apparent in it.

As regards education and the relation of the individual to Logic, I observe in conclusion that this Science, like grammar, has two different aspects or values. It is one thing to him who approaches Logic and the Sciences in general for the first time, and another thing to him who comes back from the Sciences to Logic. He who begins to learn grammar, finds in its Forms and Laws dry abstractions, contingent rules, briefly an isolated multitude of determinations which only indicate the worth and significance of their face-value. At first, knowledge recognizes in them nothing whatever but barely themselves. On the other hand, if anyone has mastered a language, and has also a comparative knowledge of other languages, he and he only is capable of discerning the spirit and the culture of a people in the grammar of their language. Those same dry Rules and Forms have now for him a full and living value. Through grammar he can recognize the expression of mind in general—that is. Logic. Thus he who approaches Logic finds in the science at first an isolated system of abstractions that is self-contained and does not reach out to other knowledges and sciences. On the contrary, contrasted with the wealth of our world-presentations and the apparently real content of the other sciences, and compared with the promise of absolute Science to unfold the essential character of this wealth, the inner nature of Spirit and of the world, and to unveil the Truth, this science—in its abstract form, in the colourless cold simplicity of its purely formal determinations—looks, rather, as if the last thing to be expected from it were the fulfilment of such a promise, and as if it would stand empty in face of that wealth. On a first acquaintance, the significance of Logic is limited to itself; its content is regarded as only an isolated occupation with thought-determinations, alongside of which other scientific activities have their own material and their own intrinsic worth, upon which Logic may perhaps have some formal influence which it seems to exercise spontaneously, and for which logical structure and logical study can certainly be dispensed with, at need. The other Sciences have mostly rejected the regular Method, of a connected series of Definitions, Axioms, Theorems and their Proofs, and so forth; while so-called Natural Logic plays its part automatically in such series, and works of its own motion, without any special knowledge having Thought itself for its object. Above all the matter and content of these sciences keeps entirely independent of Logic, and altogether makes its appeal more to our senses, feeling, impressions, and practical interests.

Thus then Logic must certainly be learnt, at first, as something of which one has indeed perception and understanding, but which seems at the beginning to lack scope, profundity, and wider significance. It is only through a profounder acquaintance with other sciences that Logic discovers itself to subjective thought as not a mere abstract Universal, but as a Universal which comprises in itself the full wealth of Particulars just as a proverb, in the mouth of a youth who understands it quite accurately, yet fails of the significance and scope which it has in the mind of a man of years and experience, for whom it expresses the full force of its content. Thus the value of Logic only receives due appreciation when it is seen to result from knowledge of the particular sciences; so regarded, it presents itself to the mind as Universal Truth, not as a particular department of knowledge alongside of other departments and other realities, but as the very essence of all these other Contents.

Now though when one begins to study it, Logic is not present to the mind in all this recognized power, yet none the less the mind of the student conceives from it a power which will lead him into all truth. The System of Logic is the realm of shades, a world of simple essentialities freed from all concretion of sense. To study this Science, to dwell and labour in this shadow-realm, is a perfect training and discipline of consciousness. In this realm the mind carries on a business which is far removed from the intuitions and aims of sense, from emotions, from ideas which are a mere matter of opinion. Regarded on its negative side, the work consists in holding at bay the accidentals of syllogizing thought and the arbitrary preference and acceptance from among opposing arguments.

But above all. Thought wins thus self-reliance and independence. It becomes at home in the region of the abstract and in progression by means of concepts which have no substratum of sensation, it develops an unconscious power of taking up into the forms of Reason the multiplicity of all other knowledge and science, comprehending and holding fast what is essential therein, stripping off externalities and in this way extracting what is logical,—or, which is the same thing, filling with the content of all truth the abstract outline of Logic acquired by study, and giving it the value of a Universal, which no longer appears as a Particular side by side with other Particulars, but reaches out beyond all this, and is the essential nature thereof,—that is, the Absolute Truth.

In what has been said of the concept of this Science, and the direction which its justification must take, it is implied that a general classification can at this point be only provisional, and hence can be indicated only so far as the author already knows the Science and is thus in a position to present here, historically and in a preliminary fashion, the principal forms in which the concept will manifest itself in the course of its development. A provisional attempt can, however, be made to render generally intelligible what is required for such a classification, although in doing so one must employ a method that will only receive its full elucidation and justification within the precincts of the Science itself. First, then, it is to be remembered that we here presuppose that the classification must harmonize with the concept, or rather must be immanent in it. The concept is not indeterminate; it is determinate in itself; and the classification is the developed expression of this its determinateness. It is the fundamental and significant classification of the concept; not of anything taken from without, but the fundamental classification, that is, the determination of the concept by itself. The quality of being right-angled, acute-angled, or equilateral, the determinations according to which triangles are classified, are not contained in the determinateness of the triangle itself; that is, they are not contained in what we are accustomed to call the concept of the triangle, any more than the commonly admitted concept of Animal in general, or of Mammal, Bird, and so forth contains the determinations by which animals are classified into mammals, birds, and so on, and these classes are subdivided into further genera. Such determinations are obtained otherwise, that is, from empirical contemplation; they come to these so-called concepts from without; but in the philosophical treatment of classification, it must be shown that the classification has its origin in the concept itself.

But in the Introduction the concept of Logic itself is stated to be the result of a Science which lies outside Logic, and thus this concept too is here presupposed. Logic was there found to determine itself as the science of pure thought, having pure knowledge as its principle, which is not abstract, but a concrete living unity; for in it the opposition in consciousness between a subjective entity existing for itself, and another similar objective entity, is known to be overcome, and existence is known as pure concept in itself, and the pure concept known as true existence. These are then the two Moments which are contained in Logic. But they are now known as existing inseparably, and not as in consciousness each existing for itself; it is only because they are known as distinct and yet not merely self-existent that their unity is not abstract, dead, and immobile, but concrete.

This unity constitutes an element of the logical principle, so that the development of the distinction which is immediately latent within it takes place only within this element. We have said that the classification is the fundamental classification of the concept, the positing of the determination immanent in it and thus of its distinction; hence this positing is not to be understood as resolving that concrete unity back into its determinations regarded as self-existent entities, which here would be mere retrogression to the former position, namely the opposition of consciousness. This opposition, on the contrary, has vanished, and that unity remains the element, beyond which the distinctions which occur in the classification and the development generally, do not pass. And thus determinations (such as the subjective and the objective, thought and being, concept and reality, whatever the respect in which they were determined)—determinations which, at an earlier point on the road to truth, were self-existing, are now, in their unity (which constitutes their truth), degraded to the rank of forms. In their distinction they therefore remain, in themselves, the whole concept, and this is placed under its own determinations in the classification.

Thus the whole concept is to be considered, first as existent concept, secondly merely as concept; in the former case it is merely the concept in itself, the concept of reality or being; in the latter, it is the concept as such existing for itself (as it is found, to give a concrete example, in thinking man, and even in the sentient animal and in organic individuality in general, though there it is not conscious, still less known: concept in itself it is only in inorganic nature).—Logic is accordingly to be divided into the Logic of the Concept as Being, and of the Concept as Concept; or, to employ terms more habitual though least definite and therefore most ambiguous, into Objective and Subjective Logic.

The basic element, then, is the unity of the concept in itself, and the inseparable nature of its determinations; these, therefore, in so far as they are distinct, and the concept is posited in their distinctness, must at least be somehow related. There results a sphere of mediation—the concept as a system of determinations of reflection that is, of Being in transition to the being-in-self of the concept; thus the concept is not yet posited as such for itself; immediate being, as something external, still cleaves to it. This is the Doctrine of Essence, which is intermediate between the Doctrine of Being and that of the Notion. In the general classification of this logical work it has been placed under Objective Logic, since, though Essence already is the Inward, the character of Subject has been expressly reserved for the Notion.

In recent times Kant has opposed to what is commonly called Logic yet another, namely Transcendental Logic. What has here been called Objective Logic would partly correspond to what is Transcendental Logic with him. He distinguishes it from what he calls General Logic because (α) it considers concepts which refer a priori to objects and thus does not abstract from the entire content of objective cognition,—in other words it contains the rules of pure thinking about an object; and (β) because it further considers the origin of our cognition, so far as this cannot be ascribed to the objects.—It is on the second of these two aspects that the philosophic interest of Kant is exclusively directed. His chief aim is to claim the Categories for Self-consciousness, for the Subjective Ego. By virtue of this determination, his point of view remains within the boundaries of consciousness and its opposition, and there is a surplus, beyond the data of sensation and intuition, which is not posited and determined by thinking self-consciousness and is foreign and external to thought, namely the thing-in-itself; though it is easy to perceive that such an abstraction as the thing-in-itself is itself only a product of thought, namely, of purely abstracting thought. Other disciples of Kant have expressed themselves concerning the determination of the object through the ego in this sense, that the objectifying of the ego is to be considered as an original and necessary activity of consciousness, so that this original activity does not yet contain the idea of the ego itself; this latter being the consciousness, or even the objectifying, of such consciousness. On such a view, this objectifying activity, freed from the opposition of consciousness, is just that which can, generally, be called Thought as such. But this activity should no longer be called consciousness: consciousness comprehends within it that opposition of ego and object which does not exist in this original activity. The name of consciousness gives a greater appearance of subjectivity to it than the expression “thought,” which, however, is here to be taken in the absolute sense as Thought infinite and untainted by the finitude of consciousness: briefly, as Thought as such.

Kant’s philosophy then directing its interest on the so-called transcendental element of the determinations of thought, the treatment of these received no attention: it was not considered what they are in themselves apart from the abstract relation to the ego common to all, or what are their reciprocal determinations and relations. Hence this philosophy has in no way contributed to knowledge of their natures. The only interesting matter bearing upon the point occurs in the Critique of Ideas. But for the real progress of philosophy it was necessary that the interest of thought should be directed upon the formal side, the ego, consciousness as such, that is, the abstract relation of subjective knowledge to an object; and that the cognition of infinite form, that is, of the concept, should be introduced in this manner. But in order that this cognition may be reached, that finite determination, in which the form still is ego, or consciousness, has still to be cast off. The form, thus developed into purity by thought, will then have in itself the capacity of self-determination, that is, of giving itself content, and that a necessary content, in the shape of a system of determinations of thought. Objective Logic then takes the place of the former metaphysic considered as the scientific reconstruction of the world, which was to be built of thoughts alone. If we refer to the last stage in the evolution of this science, we find, first and immediately, that it is Ontology whose place is taken by Objective Logic—that part of this metaphysic which is to investigate the nature of Ens in general;—Ens comprehending both Being and Essence, a distinction for which the German language has fortunately preserved different terms.—Secondly, Objective Logic also comprises the rest of metaphysics, in so far as the latter attempted to comprehend with the pure forms of thought certain substrata primarily taken from sensuous representation, such as Soul, World, God; and the determinations of thought constituted what was essential in the method of contemplation. Logic, however, considers these forms detached from such substrata, which are the subjects of sensuous representation; it considers their nature and value in themselves. The old metaphysic neglected this, and thus earned the just reproach of having used these forms uncritically, without a preliminary investigation as to whether and how far they were capable of being determinations of the thing-in-itself, to use the Kantian expression, or, to put it better, determinations of the Rational.—Objective Logic thus is their true critique, a critique which considers the forms of thought not under the abstract form of apriority as opposed to the a posteriori, but considers each according to its particular content.

Subjective Logic is the Logic of the Notion,—of Essence which has transcended its relation to any mere being, real or apparent, and in its determination is no longer external, but is the free, independent, and self-determining Subjective, or rather the Subject itself.—Since the subjective involves the misconception of the contingent and arbitrary, and, more generally, of determinations belonging to the form of consciousness, no special weight is to be attached to the distinction between the Subjective and the Objective, which will develop itself more clearly within the body of the Logic.

Thus Logic is divided broadly into Objective and Subjective Logic; more definitely, it has three parts, namely—

1. The Logic of Being,

2. The Logic of Essence, and

3. The Logic of the Notion.