Chapter VIII

The foregoing statement of the nature of Absolute Knowledge and of the relation of the Phenomenology to the Logic will enable us without much difficulty to determine more specifically the nature of the content of Logic itself. It is the content which we must determine first of all, because, though the method is the life and soul of the Logic, the content is its substance and is logically prior to it.

We see, to begin with, what is meant when Logic is regarded as the content of Reason. Reason is the last general stage in the evolution of the experience of mind. It is here that mind begins to realise its highest life and purpose, which is to be at home with itself in its object. It is because of this, indeed, that reason has been considered both by common thought and by philosophy to be the highest type of mind, that the supreme goal of the world’s life is a “rational soul,” a mind which with an objective environment is still within itself. Now wherever such a complete harmony is found in experience, there we have the life of Reason manifested in the history of consciousness. But if it is realised anywhere, surely it is obtained when mind has for its object the very notions by which it grasps (begreifen, Begriff) the meaning of an object at all. If in such forms of experience as the Moral Life, Law, Institutions, or, again, Religion or Scientific Inquiry, mind finds itself bound up in indissoluble union with its object, takes its object to its heart and gives it its own, then indeed must it be in the highest sense at home with itself when it has to deal solely and alone with the means by which that union can even be effected. In Logic, however, this is precisely the object considered.

The fundamental conceptions by which any and all experience, i.e., relation between mind and object, can be constituted are the only subject-matter of the science. Such a science, therefore, is clearly a part of the life of Reason, and indeed the highest form of that life attainable by mind. This aspect of the nature of Logic, however, must be guarded from misunderstanding. In the first place, Logic is but one expression of Reason among the vast variety of its forms which are revealed in experience.

In ordinary thought reason means, perhaps, primarily the purely formal activity of the mind, the activity found especially in ratiocination; reason is identified with reasoning. It is true that a further analysis corrects this limited interpretation of reason; for common opinion would also allow that a mind with “sound instincts” but without the capacity for consecutive thought was “endowed with” reason, was a “reasonable mind.” Still its main conception is that reason means reflexion; the larger conception is regarded sometimes as different in kind from the other, or at least as not connected with it. Now for Hegel Reason has not this limited signification; he does not restrict Reason to the sphere of mere “Logic,” to reflective activity only. It covers a much wider area of experience; is present, in fact, wherever mind is to any extent conscious of itself in its object. Hegel thus considers as forms of Reason spheres of experience which common thought does not, at least explicitly, identify with reason, e.g., the Family, the State, Religious Life. In such cases, if any explanation were offered at all, common thought would probably regard these forms of experience as due to “impulses,” “instincts,” or “feelings.” And yet, in spite of the apparent difference, Hegel’s view is essentially at one with common thought; for if it were asked why such types of experience were not found, say, among brutes, the answer would doubtless be that they were due to that which distinguished man from brute, namely, reason. Reason would thus be acknowledged to be, as Hegel claims, the determining reality in all these modes of experience. It is, then, only as one form (the highest form) of the life of Reason, and not as its sole expression, that Hegel regards Logic as the construction of Reason.

Again, we must not look upon Reason as a “function” of mind, Logic being one of its products. This indeed is the common view, but not at all Hegel’s. And the difference is plain. A “function” is a determining component of what has an independent value, or, again, is more or less isolated activity of what can exist without it. In both cases the relation between the function and that which has the function is regarded as external. How far ordinary opinion would really admit this implication of its view is not easy to determine. For Hegel, however, Reason is mind itself, the realisation of its essential nature. Mind does not have Reason; it is Reason. No doubt Reason is not all that mind is, for mind appears also, e.g., as sense-consciousness, and Reason is not sense. But on Hegel’s view (1) sense is likewise a mode, a realisation, and not a function of mind, and (2) in the form of Reason mind is most completely realised. In short, Hegel’s position is directly opposed to any mechanical interpretation of mind, either as an agent with certain “faculties,” or as an instrument with certain “functions,” the agent or instrument being something apart from, or over and above, what it does. The very meaning of mind is to manifest what it is, and to be what it manifests.

From this we see that Logic is not, properly speaking, the “product” of Reason. This conception is open to precisely the same objections as that just mentioned. Rather Logic is Reason made completely explicit; they are the same concrete fact looked at now as merely existing activity, now as systematically complete activity. The relation of Reason to Logic is perhaps adequately described as that of dunams to energeia; they are continuous with one another, form a single whole.

The recognition of this essential identity of mind with Reason, and of Logic with both, is of supreme importance for the comprehension and appreciation of Hegel’s system. It is one of the fundamental points in his whole theory, and is in itself a philosophical position of the greatest value. Few, if any, have seen so clearly as Hegel the living unity of spiritual facts with spiritual activity, of thought with the objective result of its activity, of science with the mind which manifests itself in science.

To him ideas no less than emotions take to themselves hands and feet and move about the world. And thus the Logic is not the mere excrescence or by-product of the activity of mind, but the kingdom of truth, where the Spirit at work in experience reveals, and in revealing exhausts, the substance and meaning of its inmost life.

The general determination of the content of Logic as that of Reason does not, however, carry us very far towards the understanding of it. It follows from what has just been stated that Logic is further, as Hegel puts it, “the crown of the life of mind.” For the goal of experience is for mind to be in its activity completely self-conscious, at one with itself in its object. Now if in Reason mind has attained that stage in which its experience is essentially a harmony of content, then certainly in Logic that harmony is most complete and absolute. For there mind has for object the very ground conceptions in virtue of which experience is even possible at all. These notions are the pulse-beats of its entire activity; they constitute its essential nature, and express the vital energy of its own being. To know them, therefore, is to make its own self its object.

The conceptions do not “belong to” mind; they are mind, they are the foci of its activity, determinate realisations of its self. For they are universals and they are unities. Now the principle of universality in experience is just the self, mind, which is present throughout all aspects and forms of experience, and present, therefore, throughout each form by itself. The fact that a single self does extend its presence over every area of experience is the very ground of the fact of universality in experience, the condition of its possibility. But for the fact that it is one and the same self which pervades the flux and multiplicity of experience, there would be nothing but a ceaseless procession of disconnected phenomena, not the experience of a mind; there would, indeed, not even be a succession, a process, there would be neither details nor phenomena, for all these only have significance by reference to something permanent, something general, something to which they can appear as phenomena. The self, then, is the principle of universality in experience, for it is, par excellence, the universal, the all-containing ground of an experience in any sense whatever. Now the conceptions which form the content of Logic being universals, are precisely the expressions for the appearance of a single self in experience. A given conception is just the self as it is present in and throughout some one area of experience. They could not be universals unless the self were continuously present in experience; and their universality simply means that they are definite realisations of the self. In short, the conceptions as universals are specifications of that which in experience is the fundamental universal – the self for which experience exists at all.

Again, and in the same way, the self is the ground of unity in experience; for the elements which make up experience are determined as parts of a single experience. A single experience means the experience of a single self; the self being one, the experience is one. Not that we can separate in reality the unity of the self from the unity in experience; they are an indissoluble reality. The unity of the self is only logically prior to, and distinguishable from, the unity of experience. A single self is the condition of a single experience; and there is no other kind of experience except that of a single self. Now, the notions are unities, for they are the very means by which diversity is not mere diversity but is brought under a common, i.e., unifying, principle, possesses a single quality or character. A notion is the ground of order; it is the identical content in different phenomena. They must, therefore, be determinations of that principle which is the unity of all experience, and the basis of all unity in it, namely, the single self which constitutes it. The notions are specific unities, because they are forms of this ultimate single unity; and, again, because they are unities, the self must be found realised in them.

Thus, then, we see how it is that in Logic we have the most complete form of the self-consciousness of mind, “the crown of the life of mind.” In the content of Logic mind is knowing its essential self, its constitutive and ultimate moments. And it is knowing these not as something alien to itself, but as what actually possesses its own distinctive nature – universality and unity. As Hegel puts it, in Logic mind “knows itself in the form of its self”; these notions are its specific realisations, i.e., its specified self, and they are in the form of self, i.e., are universals, unities, identities. Further than this mind cannot possibly be developed, and with the Logic, therefore, its experience as a process of and towards self-consciousness must close.

And here we discover, from another point of view, why Logic should be called ultimate science, absolute knowledge, and so on. That it is knowledge is of course obvious after what has already been said. It is clearly both possible and necessary to deal with notions per se, have them as a specific object of knowledge; for it is one thing to use a notion to explain facts of experience, it is quite another to examine the meaning of that notion itself. And the one kind of knowledge is just as valuable, qua knowledge, as the other. Knowing what a notion is, and knowing what it does or can explain, are both important forms of knowledge.

That, again, knowledge of the notions is “absolute” knowledge is evident when we observe that the object which the mind knows is relative to nothing but the mind itself. In all other knowledge notions are present; for only by notions (universals) is there knowledge at all. But in Logic we have only notions before us. The object is not in any sense independent of the mind, which knows it; mind does not refer to what lies beyond the circuit of its own inner life. But if knowledge deals solely with the self which knows, it is entirely self-constituted, self-determined, and self-contained. To be completely self-sufficient, however, is precisely what is meant by being absolute. And such knowledge is likewise ultimate or final, for the reason that it deals simply with what is ultimate in experience, the inner content of the self.

This characterisation of Logic as ultimate and absolute knowledge is no mere serious bombast on Hegel’s part. It is rather a bare statement of fact, regarding the nature of the Logic as a science. The statement, indeed, might be true of any other “Logic.” For surely the last object we can possibly know is just knowledge itself; the last kind of knowledge is the knowledge of what knowledge in general means. But this is precisely what any Logic which is in earnest with itself tries to furnish.

Every Logic, therefore, gives absolute knowledge in Hegel’s sense; for in all such cases the mind is unrestricted, independent both in its object-matter and in its procedure – and that means the knowledge furnished is absolute. If we would keep clearly in mind that “absolute” does not necessarily characterise the range of truth attained by the Logic, but refers to the kind of knowledge contained in it; that the term is due not to any claim on Hegel’s part to have once for all exhausted the whole range of truth, but simply to the peculiar nature of the relation between the subject knowing and the content known in the Logic, we shall see that Hegel’s conception of Logic as absolute knowledge is both intelligible and accurate. The objections to, and even contempt for, it can only have arisen through ignorance of its precise significance. It is mere confusion to identify absolute knowledge with omniscience; the latter refers to the extent of knowledge only, the former to a specific kind of knowledge.

So that, even if omniscience were a form of or involved absolute knowledge, absolute knowledge does not necessarily involve omniscience.

But in the next place, how is the diversity of the content of the Logic to be obtained? This has already in part been indicated. The content of Logic is the inner self of mind. But it does not follow because one mind is present throughout experience that there is only one form of experience.

The Ego does not exhibit itself as the continuous reappearance of a single naked identity. The mind reveals itself in many ways, lest one pure notion should corrupt its life. But, again, the plurality of content in the experience of mind does not involve that the self is merely the point of reference for the various forms of experience, that to which they all “belong,” but which itself remains apart from them. The Ego dominates the reality of each; it is not a formal unity, regulating experience from without, it is the active unity constituting every moment of it. It does not direct the course of experience, it identifies itself with its life; for indeed the life of experience is in one view precisely the life of the Ego itself.

But if, then, the unity of the self does not preclude diversity of content, and if the Ego is identified with the content of experience, then we see at once how the diversity of the content of Logic is derived. In Logic mind is most completely self-conscious. But its self embraces the whole of reality, the totality of experience; for it constitutes every form and phase of it. Since the experience of the self is manifold, the universal principles by which it makes experience possible must be likewise manifold.

The content of the Logic, therefore, is rich with all the variety which reality as a whole contains. The fact that in the Logic the Ego is conscious solely of itself, and in one form only (that of the notion), does not render meaningless or eliminate the diversity of the world. On the contrary, mind could not be conscious of its self in Logic unless it exhibited the infinite diversity which make up the fulness of its life. The self which is the universal in experience appears in a plurality of universal forms; they determine the definite modes of its experience. But these universals are simply the notions which make up the Logic. Logic, therefore, necessarily contains diversity because the self has manifold universal ways of realising itself. Connected with this diversity in its content is another important aspect of its nature which calls for attention. It is a fundamental peculiarity of the notions in the Logic that they are at once conceptions pure and simple, and unities of diverse elements. Experience is essentially a unity of subject and object; subject and object are its ultimate elements, experience itself is the concrete indissoluble unity of these elements.

Now a notion is the ground of the unity of subject and object in any given form of experience. Notions are simply the ultimate conditions of the possibility of this unity, and so of experience. Without them subject and object are for ever divided by the whole diameter of being. In concrete experience, however, we must distinguish subject from object; we can separate the one from the other. For while it is true that any experience is impossible without them, it is also true that the subject is not aware of all objects at the same time; the subject can take up all the attitudes found in experience, but not all at once. Hence we must not confound the general unity of subject and object with the particular unity of these elements; the former is always and absolutely necessary for experience; in the case of the latter we can separate subject from object. But with the notions such a separation is impossible in any sense. In the notions the distinction between subject and object collapses in the unity which is the basis of their connexion. And the reason is obvious. For the separation, logical or real, between subject and object cannot hold good of that which is their unity; the conditions of the possibility of actual experience cannot contain the separation of the elements which compose that experience itself. To put it otherwise: experience is the single concrete reality, the unity in experience is the ground of distinction of elements within it; the forms of this unity, therefore, cannot be affected by the distinction to which the unity itself gives rise.

Hence, then, we see how it is that in the notions of Logic the opposition which characterises the modes of actual experience disappears, and we have content which can be described as neither objective nor subjective, but both at once. In Logic we deal simply with the ultimate principles of unity in all experience, which can contain no opposition in themselves because they are the very means of removing all opposition whatsoever.

Thus because we take the principles as principles, the universals (conceptions) as universals, Logic deals with “pure” notions (reine Begriffe); and because their content shows no opposition, is undifferentiated, they are self-contained, “simple” (eingache Begriffe).

But, on the other hand, we must not lose sight of the significance they possess in virtue of their being unities. The fact that they are notions pure and simple does not lift them out of the reach of experience. If this were so they would not be unities constitutive of it, and we should be again inside the opposition which they themselves overcome. But if they are unities of the ultimate diverse elements (subject and object), then they have precisely the nature of experience as such when contrasted with its elements. Starting as we must from experience itself, the subject as such or the object as such has only real significance by reference to the other; by itself it is “abstract.” But experience is the unity of both, it is the whole reality; in contrast with them it is “concrete.” The notions are also the unity of both; they therefore are essentially “concrete,” not abstract. To be an ultimate unity is, in fact, to be concrete. And now we see at once what is meant by the “concreteness” of the notions, and by “reality” as attributed to the content of the Logic. When a notion is described as the “unity of thought and being,” we must carefully note that “thought” and “being” are here regarded as the abstract elements of experience. “Thought” in ordinary philosophical parlance is considered the sphere of the subject, of subjectivity, “being” as that of the object, of objectivity; both being taken per se. They, therefore, are essentially synonymous with subject and object as employed above. A notion is the identity of “thought” as one abstract element, with “being” as the other. A notion, therefore, is not a thought as the subjective element in experience, any more than it is a “being” “outside” thought. It is the principle by which this opposition is ultimately constituted into a unity. For related they must be, otherwise they could not even be thought of as opposed; an opposition presupposes a ground. But they are not merely related, they are united in experience. The proof of this and the nature of this unity were furnished in the Phenomenology. But that which unites them cannot be itself either per se; and it can only be both at once.

Thus for Hegel, while a “thought” may be “abstract,” a notion is always “concrete." And, again, the notions have “reality.” They do not lie outside experience, they are immanent in it, are constitutive of it. But if so they have at least as much title to be regarded as “real” as any other element of experience. They have, indeed, more claim to be so considered, for they form the ground-plan of experience itself, they are the essential content of concrete experience. And only in this sense are the notions real. The term “reality” is admittedly ambiguous, and hence the difficulty of understanding what is meant by notions being real. “Notions,” it is said, “cannot be seen and handled, they are not visible to sense, as, e.g., rocks and trees are, the reality of which no one doubts. Or, again, they are not forces which, though not seen, at least act; notions are merely the devitalised shades of living individuality.” It is true that the notions are not “perceived,” and also true, as Hegel himself admits, that they are devoid of all sensuous content; but this does not necessarily destroy their “reality.” “Reality” can have three general meanings: (1) sense reality, (2) ideal reality, e.g., when we speak of a Law of Nature, or a Natural Law, or, again, the Constitution of a State, as real, (3) individual reality, e.g., a given human being. Now a notion is confessedly not real in the first sense; and it is obviously not real in the last. It is impossible for a universal to exist as the dust of sense, and equally impossible for us to mistake the beckonings of a spirit from the vasty deeps for the warm embraces of a living person. But it must be admitted that notions are real in the second sense. Even if we regard them merely as “principles” in the ordinary signification of the term, i.e., as ideally constructed determining forms, they would be considered real; for every principle which determines experience is taken to be a “real principle.” But it is not merely to be decided by appealing to current terminology; for since experience is a living reality, an active process, the conditions by which experience itself is carried out must surely possess the vitality of experience itself. By themselves, no doubt, they are not experience, not a substitute for it; as a matter of fact we never find them by themselves.

But since these notions constitute the essential meaning of experience, and since the process of experience (as presented in the Phenomenology) is, we saw, “at bottom a logical process,” experience in itself exists in and through these conceptions. Shall we then say that the organism is real but not its pulse-beat, that the music is real but not the plan of its harmony? And finally, the ultimate reality, as was shown, is Subject, is a Self. But the self is a universal, and reveals itself in universal modes; and when it knows these modes as universal (i.e., in the form of its self), it appears as Logic. Can we then maintain that the self is ultimate reality, and not also the very forms which constitute its life? That they are the content of the Ultimate Subject means that they are not pale passive shadows of a living reality, but the active determining laws of its procedure. By them the mind realises itself through experience.

The notions are the conditions of its actuality (Wirklichkeit). We cannot create the world of sense out of the ultimate conditions of there being a world at all, nor can we by any arrangement of notions pure and simple furnish individual beings. But the notions have their own unique reality, the reality of that which orders sense and determines the process of individuality.

We may still maintain with truth that the notions are abstracted from experience, and therefore are not reality. But we must distinguish abstraction which is ultimately false from abstraction which is still ultimate truth. Where we have one element of experience cut loose from the concrete life of experience (e.g., where subject is taken per se apart from object), there, says Hegel, we have false abstraction; we restrict the content considered to one aspect, and cut it out of its actual connexion with the whole, which alone is true, for the “truth is the whole." But where the content dealt with is considered as determining and determined by the whole, as explicitly involving the system of experience to which it belongs, that content though abstract is a true abstract, for it is concrete as experience itself. Thus the notions because not taken as subjective nor as objective, but as constitutive of experience as a whole, are ultimate truths of experience, and not mere abstractions. If we say they are still cut off from, e.g., sense, we have to observe (1) that abstraction in some form is the only condition of knowledge at all. We cannot talk about the universe in general or as a whole, we must deal with it in its various constituents, in detail. This is the very condition of human reflexion. Even to consider the universe as a whole is itself an abstraction, for thereby we explicitly eliminate the part as such. (2) If, again, we insist that abstraction in any sense cannot be reality, then it is clear that by reality here will be meant individuality, and that in this sense there is nothing real but experience as a whole, in its completeness.

There is no doubt truth in this view, but if this is the only reality to be spoken of, then reality entirely eludes the grasp of any knowledge at all. We never can by any act or process of knowledge lay hold on such a reality; for we may know the universe step by step, and part by part, or we may deal with the whole as such (in Philosophy), where we have before us solely its general fundamental content, not the completed individuality which alone is the Absolute. These are the only two kinds of knowledge, and neither, therefore, gives us the fulness of the life of the one Absolute. Either, therefore, we must proclaim knowledge to be a mere by-play in the system of the universe, or else allow that, because the universe is real in its parts as well as in the whole – real in the echo as well as in the thunderbolt – knowledge which takes it point by point does give us reality. But to allow this is to grant that reality has more than one meaning. (3) We must emphasise the distinction between the abstraction which eliminates all reality from the abstraction which is simply a form or sphere of its content. The Logic deals with abstractions only in the latter sense.

We have, perhaps, said sufficient in explanation of the reality attributed by Hegel to the notions – one of the most difficult and most vulnerable points in the system, and also one of the chief objectives of attack by its opponents. We shall recur to it again in our final chapter.

Meantime we see that the reality possessed by the notions opens up in another way the possibility of diversity in the content of Logic, already mentioned. The notions are the determining principles of all modes of experience; their reality, therefore, is as diverse as the modes which they determine. Because the notions are synthetic unities in experience, they are concrete, real; because they are present throughout all experience, they are diverse.

From the foregoing it is not difficult to settle the disputed question regarding the “reference to experience” implied throughout the Logic.

The ordinary view put forward, partly as interpretation of its content and procedure, partly as objection to its ostensible pretensions and purpose, is that the Logic is constructed by a necessary but covert and implicit reference to the facts of actual experience, that it claims to move in a purer medium than ordinary facts, but it is only possible by a continual recurrence to this world it seems to ignore. So far as there is any truth in this view, it is too general to be of any value either as interpretation or as criticism. For if it means that at every step Logic is really inside experience, and deals with its content, then, indeed, this is self-evident; Hegel himself professes explicitly to be dealing with nothing else. But if it means, as it ostensibly does, that at each step the writer of the Logic “in his own mind” appeals to the detailed facts of experience in order to find out how to proceed, that he looks to actual experience to give him the cue to discover the notions, then unquestionably this is a complete misconception of the Logic. For the very nature of the notions makes it necessary that when dealing with them we should already and thereby be dealing with experience. Experience does not lie outside them, they lie inside experience, they are its essence. It is truer to say, then, that experience implies the Logic, than that the Logic implies experience. In Logic we do not need to appeal to experience, because we are already in it. The Logic, therefore, is constructed by reference solely to the determinateness of each notion itself. This is all, indeed, that is required to make construction possible, and only by so doing can we obtain that peculiar necessity characteristic of Logic as a science. Such a construction will not be “in the air” if we simply grant at the outset that the notions are not mere thoughts, but the essence of experience – a position which was established in the Phenomenology.

Only one question regarding the content of the Logic remains to be considered – what is that mind whose essential content is expressed in the Logic? The Phenomenology established that the ultimate ground of experience was mind, was subject, not substance. The subject here meant is Ultimate Subject, the Absolute as Subject. Now in Religion, we saw, the point of view of the Absolute is adopted by the individual (finite) mind; it identifies itself with the Absolute, regards the Absolute as mind which reveals itself to finite minds. But absolute knowledge simply carries one step further this confession of oneness and identification. It is the self-consciousness of the Subject as such, not as for us, but as it is in itself. Such knowledge, therefore, is not a knowledge by us about the Absolute; nor again is it simply a “possession” of the Absolute. It is actually Absolute Mind conscious of its own self as it essentially is. The Logic can be nothing short of this, if it is to realise the two ends of the Phenomenology – the attainment of the ideal of knowledge (the identity of truth with certainty, of mind with object), and the exposition of the highest Reality for mind, the Reality found in Religion. And the two aims are one because that Reality is mind, and the ideal of knowledge is pure self-knowledge. But if Religion is a valid experience, then Logic can attain this result, for it simply makes explicit the implications of the religious consciousness. Logic, then, is the self-consciousness of the Absolute Subject. Absolute Knowledge would not be absolute unless it were the actual expression of Absolute Reality, and this again could not be Absolute Subject unless it knew itself in the form of self, in Absolute Knowledge. Hence it comes about that to attain the ideal of knowledge, to furnish truly objective knowledge, and to know the Absolute as it knows itself, all mean precisely the same thing. No doubt the Logic is the thought and work of the individual (finite) thinker, of Hegel personally, and of those who undertake the same task. But since, when the highest truth is attained, the mind is one with its object, all limitation of knowledge to finite consciousness is explicitly removed, there seems, according to Hegel’s view, no meaning in the assertion that knowledge still belongs solely to the finite minds by whom it is constructed. That truth is known to finite minds does not make the truth itself finite. For if so, at least the truth that it is finite cannot itself be finite in that sense, for this truth implies that we know what is not finite; i.e., we do actually admit that knowledge of finitude need not be finite knowledge. And, indeed, it is difficult to understand how the truth, e.g., that “God is” can mean anything different to God from what it does to us. The fact, therefore, that Hegel constructed the Logic does not lessen its claim to be the actual self-consciousness of Absolute Mind, provided we accept this with the reservations already stated. So far as the part played by the individual mind in such knowledge is concerned, his function, says Hegel, is merely to “look on” (zusehen). But now, if the above is an accurate statement of what the Logic deals with, it is clear that Hegel’s Logic is not Logic as understood by his predecessors and contemporaries. Formerly Logic was concerned with “thoughts” only, while to Metaphysic was allotted the discussion of the nature of “being”; and this distinction of provinces Hegel himself, as we saw, held in the earlier stages of his development. But if the content of Logic is to be at once thought and being, subject and object, it is clear that the distinction of these spheres of interest in philosophy falls away and Logic is at the same time a Metaphysic. And such an identification Hegel explicitly makes. It covers the area of Logic in the old sense, and also the various branches of former Metaphysic – Ontology, Cosmology, Pneumatology (Psychology), and Theology. The content of these philosophical disciplines forms, in fact, the greater part of Hegel’s Logic, namely, the first and second parts entitled “Objective Logic.” The content of Logic as hitherto understood is dealt with in the course of the “Subjective Logic," which forms the third and last part of the Logic. It is not, therefore, the objects dealt with by these several philosophical sciences which distinguishes Hegel’s Logic from preceding systems, but the way their object-matter is conceived. Formerly the “world,” “soul,” “God” were treated as substances given and ready to hand, which had certain commonly accepted “attributes,” “forces,” etc.

which had to be connected and explained. Hegel, however, considers the notions employed simply as notions, does not take any substrata of fact for granted, but examines the meaning and connexion of the very conceptions, “substance,” “attribute,” “force,” etc., without limitation to any specific subject-matter such as “world” or “soul.” When, therefore, the notions are thus taken in their nakedness as notions, it is clear that the discussion of them holds more clearly of Logic in the old sense than of Metaphysic in the old sense, for Logic is traditionally regarded as concerned with notions. And, indeed, if “Metaphysic” is regarded as dealing with ultimate reality, and ultimate reality is reason, is notion, the identification of Metaphysic with Logic is a simple and natural change of terminology. Hegel, too, had already the authority of Kant for the change; he regards Kant’s Transcendental Logic as corresponding, at least in part, to his own “Objective Logic," and considers his Logic to be in the direct line of succession from Kant and his followers. Thus, then, whereas in preceding philosophy, and also in Hegel’s earlier thought, Logic either preceded or was subordinate to Metaphysic, now Metaphysic is absorbed into Logic and identified with it.

But Logic is more than Metaphysic in the ordinary sense of that term. In virtue of its intimate relation to religion, out of which, indeed, it may be said to originate, the Logic may be regarded as the philosophical exposition of the object of the religious consciousness. But if so, the Logic can be considered as at once Theology and Revelation; and Hegel states almost in so many words that it is both. The Logic, he declares, contains “die Darstellung Gottes wie er in seinem ewigen Wesen vor der Erschaffung der Natur und eines endlichen Geistes ist." Such an exposition is what a genuine theology at least attempts to furnish. And, again, throughout the Logic, he continually indicates the theological reference of the science by his recognition of the notions as determinations, as “predicates” of the Absolute. This will be found from beginning to end of the Logic. That the Logic may be accurately described as Revelation seems equally evident from Hegel’s own words. In general, indeed, this can be readily admitted when we consider what is really meant by Logic being the self-exposition of the Absolute Subject. Revelation means simply the making evident or outward of the inner life and truth of Absolute Spirit; and this is what the Logic actually professes to do. Hegel’s own statements on the point, however, are unambiguous. “The true form of mind,” he says, “is just to be what is revealed or manifest” (das Offenbare); this is its very notion. But mind in Logic is manifest to itself in the form of self. Hegel, indeed, goes further than this general identification of Logic with the idea of Revelation; he declares especially that “Revealed Religion” is itself “Speculative Knowledge.” “God,” he says, “is only attainable in pure speculative knowledge; He is found solely in that knowledge, and is that knowledge itself. For He is Spirit (der Geist); and this speculative knowledge is the knowledge given in and possessed by Revealed Religion. The former knows Him as thought (or in His pure essentiality), and knows that this thought has both being and existence. This existence, again, it knows as the negativity of its self, consequently as self, as a particular and as a universal self. But this is simply what Revealed Religion knows." All this makes sufficiently clear that Logic is Revelation in the essential meaning of that term. But it is evident also that “revelation” is not here used in the restricted and ordinary sense of the word. Hegel’s interpretation no doubt contains, and has deliberately in view, the current acceptation of the term; but it contains more and goes deeper. This alone, indeed, would justify what otherwise seems rather like philosophical quixotism.

This intimate connexion of Hegel’s Logic with Theology again confirms what was said above regarding the influence of Religion as a supreme determining factor in Hegel’s development. We pointed this out at the start of his career; and here in his final system we find not merely Religion one of the highest modes of experience, but the very highest is, in a sense, a Revelation. This is no mere accident in Hegel’s philosophy.

It stamps an original insight of Hegel’s mind with the character of a logical necessity.

Such, then, is the general content of Hegel’s final Logic, as this originated out of the position attained in, and established by, the Phenomenology of Mind. If we gather the foregoing into a single sentence we shall see at a glance how the conception of the Logic as the organism of truth came into existence. Given that Reality is simply the totality of experience, that the truth of experience is its essence, and that its essence is Reason; given, again, that Reason is mind’s essential nature, that knowing itself in the form of self is true self-knowledge, and that self-knowledge consists in knowing its constitutive Notions; and given, finally, that the one Absolute Mind, which is Reality, is in nature and substance the same as individual mind – given these general positions, and the Logic as the systematic exposition of the ultimate experiencecontent of Absolute Subject takes shape and form before us. The soul of this organism lies in the Method by which its members are fitly joined together. The origin and nature of this we must now proceed shortly to state.