Hegel's  LOGIC

BEING PART ONE OF THE
Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830)

Translated by William Wallace

TABLE OF CONTENTS


I. INTRODUCTION	

II. PRELIMINARY NOTION	

III. FIRST ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY	

IV. SECOND ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY	
	I. EMPIRICISM	
	II. THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY	

V. THIRD ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY:	
IMMEDIATE OR INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE
	
VI. LOGIC FURTHER DEFINED AND DIVIDED	

VII. FIRST SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC:
THE DOCTRINE OF BEING	

VIII. SECOND SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC:
THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE	

IX. THIRD SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC:
THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION



I. INTRODUCTION
§1
Philosophy misses an advantage enjoyed by the other sciences. It cannot 
like them rest the existence of its objects on the natural admissions of 
consciousness, nor can it assume that its method of cognition, either for 
starting or for continuing, is one already accepted. The objects of 
philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In 
both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only 
is the Truth. Both in like manner go on to treat of the finite worlds of 
Nature and the human Mind, with their relation to each other and to their 
truth in God. Some acquaintance with its objects, therefore, philosophy 
may and even must presume, that and a certain interest in them to boot, 
were it for no other reason than this: that in point of time the mind makes 
general images of objects, long before it makes notions of them, and that it 
is only through these mental images, and by recourse to them, that the 
thinking mind rises to know and comprehend thinkingly.
But with the rise of this thinking study of things, it soon becomes evident 
that thought will be satisfied with nothing short of showing the necessity of 
its facts, of demonstrating the existence of its objects, as well as their 
nature and qualities. Our original acquaintance with them is thus 
discovered to be inadequate. We can assume nothing and assert nothing 
dogmatically; nor can we accept the assertions and assumptions of others. 
And yet we must make a beginning: and a beginning, as primary and 
underived, makes an assumption, or rather is an assumption. It seems as if 
it were impossible to make a beginning at all.
§2
This thinking study of things may serve, in a general way, as a description 
of philosophy. But the description is too wide. If it be correct to say, that 
thought makes the distinction between man and the lower animals, then 
everything human is human, for the sole and simple reason that it is due to 
the operation of thought. Philosophy, on the other hand, is a peculiar mode 
of thinking - a mode in which thinking becomes knowledge, and 
knowledge through notions. However great therefore may be the identity 
and essential unity of the two modes of thought, the philosophic mode gets 
to be different from the more general thought which acts in all that is 
human, in all that gives humanity its distinctive character. And this 
difference connects itself with the fact that the strictly human and thought-
induced phenomena of consciousness do not originally appear in the form 
of a thought, but as a feeling, a perception, or mental image - all of which 
aspects must be distinguished from the form of thought proper.
According to an old preconceived idea, which has passed into a trivial 
proposition, it is thought which marks the man off from the animals. Yet 
trivial as this old belief may seem, it must, strangely enough, be recalled to 
mind in presence of certain preconceived ideas of the present day. These 
ideas would put feeling and thought so far apart as to make them opposites, 
and would represent them as so antagonistic, that feeling, particularly 
religious feeling, is supposed to be contaminated, perverted, and even 
annihilated by thought. They also emphatically hold that religion and piety 
grow out of, and rest upon something else, and not on thought. But those 
who make this separation forget meanwhile that only man has the capacity 
for religion, and that animals no more have religion than they have law and 
morality.
Those who insist on this separation of religion from thinking usually have 
before their minds the sort of thought that may be styled after-thought. 
They mean 'reflective' thinking, which has to deal with thoughts as 
thoughts, and brings them into consciousness. Slackness to perceive and 
keep in view this distinction which philosophy definitely draws in respect 
of thinking is the source of the crudest objections and reproaches against 
philosophy. Man - and that just because it is his nature to think - is the only 
being that possesses law, religion, and morality. In these spheres of human 
life, therefore, thinking, under the guise of feeling, faith, or generalised 
image, has not been inactive: its action and its productions are there present 
and therein contained. But it is one thing to have such feelings and 
generalised images that have been moulded and permeated by thought, and 
another thing to have thoughts about them. The thoughts, to which after-
thought upon those modes of consciousness gives rise, are what is 
comprised under reflection, general reasoning, and the like, as well as 
under philosophy itself.
The neglect of this distinction between thought in general and the reflective 
thought of philosophy has also led to another and more frequent 
misunderstanding. Reflection of this kind has been often maintained to be 
the condition, or even the only way, of attaining a consciousness and 
certitude of the Eternal and True. The (now somewhat antiquated) 
metaphysical proofs of God's existence, for example, have been treated, as 
if a knowledge of them and a conviction of their truth were the only and 
essential means of producing a belief and conviction that there is a God. 
Such a doctrine would find its parallel, if we said that eating was 
impossible before we had acquired a knowledge of the chemical, botanical, 
and zoological characters of our food; and that we must delay digestion till 
we had finished the study of anatomy and physiology. Were it so, these 
sciences in their field, like philosophy in its, would gain greatly in point of 
utility; in fact, their utility would rise to the height of absolute and 
universal indispensableness. Or rather, instead of being indispensable, they 
would not exist at all.
§3
The Content, of whatever kind it be, with which our consciousness is taken 
up, is what constitutes the qualitative character of our feelings, perceptions, 
fancies, and ideas; of our aims and duties; and of our thoughts and notions. 
From this point of view, feeling, perception, etc., are the forms assumed by 
these contents. The contents remain one and the same, whether they are 
felt, seen, represented, or willed, and whether they are merely felt, or felt 
with an admixture of thoughts, or merely and simply thought. In any one of 
these forms, or in the admixture of several, the contents confront 
consciousness, or are its object. But when they are thus objects of 
consciousness, the modes of the several forms ally themselves with the 
contents; and each form of them appears in consequence to give rise to a 
special object. Thus what is the same at bottom may look like a different 
sort of fact.
The several modes of feeling, perception, desire, and will, so far as we are 
aware of them, are in general called ideas (mental representations): and it 
may be roughly said that philosophy puts thoughts, categories, or, in more 
precise language, adequate notions, in the place of the generalised images 
we ordinarily call ideas. Mental impressions such as these may be regarded 
as the metaphors of thoughts and notions. But to have these figurate 
conceptions does not imply that we appreciate their intellectual 
significance, the thoughts and rational notions to which they correspond. 
Conversely, it is one thing to have thoughts and intelligent notions, and 
another to know what impressions, perceptions, and feelings correspond to 
them.
This difference will to some extent explain what people call the 
unintelligibility of philosophy. Their difficulty lies partly in an incapacity - 
which in itself is nothing but want of habit -  for abstract thinking; i.e. in an 
inability to get hold of pure thoughts and move about in them. In our 
ordinary state of mind, the thoughts are clothed upon and made one with 
the sensuous or spiritual material of the hour; and in reflection, meditation, 
and general reasoning, we introduce a blend of thoughts into feelings, 
percepts, and mental images. (Thus, in propositions where the subject-
matter is due to the senses -  e.g. 'This leaf is green' - we have such 
categories introduced, as being and individuality.) But it is a very different 
thing to make the thoughts pure and simple our object.
But their complaint that philosophy is unintelligible is as much due to 
another reason; and that is an impatient wish to have before them as a 
mental picture that which is in the mind as a thought or notion. When 
people are asked to apprehend some notion, they often complain that they 
do not know what they have to think. But the fact is that in a notion there is 
nothing further to be thought than the notion itself. What the phrase reveals 
is a hankering after an image with which we are already familiar. The 
mind, denied the use of its familiar ideas, feels the ground where it once 
stood firm and at home taken away from beneath it, and, when transported 
into the region of pure thought, cannot tell where in the world it is.
One consequence of this weakness is that authors, preachers, and orators 
are found most intelligible, when they speak of things which their readers 
or hearers already know by rote -  things which the latter are conversant 
with, and which require no explanation.
§4
The philosopher then has to reckon with popular modes of thought, and 
with the objects of religion. In dealing with the ordinary modes of mind, he 
will first of all, as we saw, have to prove and almost to awaken the need for 
his peculiar method of knowledge. In dealing with the objects of religion, 
and with truth as a whole, he will have to show that philosophy is capable 
of apprehending them from its own resources; and should a difference from 
religious conceptions come to light, he will have to justify the points in 
which it diverges.
§5
To give the reader a preliminary explanation of the distinction thus made, 
and to let him see at the same moment that the real import of our 
consciousness is retained, and even for the first time put in its proper light, 
when translated into the form of thought and the notion of reason, it may be 
well to recall another of these old unreasoned beliefs. And that is the 
conviction that to get at the truth of any object or event, even of feelings, 
perceptions, opinions, and mental ideas, we must think it over. Now in any 
case to think things over is at least to transform feelings, ordinary ideas, 
etc. into thoughts.
Nature has given every one a faculty of thought. But thought is all that 
philosophy claims as the form proper to her business: and thus the 
inadequate view which ignores the distinction stated in §3 leads to a new 
delusion, the reverse of the complaint previously mentioned about the 
unintelligibility of philosophy. In other words, this science must often 
submit to the slight of hearing even people who have never taken any 
trouble with it talking as if they thoroughly understood all about it. With no 
preparation beyond an ordinary education they do not hesitate, especially 
under the influence of religious sentiment, to philosophise and to criticise 
philosophy. Everybody allows that to know any other science you must 
have first studied it, and that you can only claim to express a judgement 
upon it in virtue of such knowledge. Everybody allows that to make a shoe 
you must have learned and practised the craft of the shoemaker, though 
every man has a model in his own foot, and possesses in his hands the 
natural endowments for the operations required. For philosophy alone, it 
seems to be imagined, such study, care, and application are not in the least 
requisite.
This comfortable view of what is required for a philosopher has recently 
received corroboration through the theory of immediate or intuitive 
knowledge.
§6
So much for the form of philosophical knowledge. It is no less desirable, on 
the other hand, that philosophy should understand that its content is no 
other than actuality, that core of truth which, originally produced and 
producing itself within the precincts of the mental life, has become the 
world, the inward and outward world, of consciousness. At first we become 
aware of these contents in what we call Experience. But even Experience, 
as it surveys the wide range of inward and outward existence, has sense 
enough to distinguish the mere appearance, which is transient and 
meaningless, from what in itself really deserves the name of actuality. As it 
is only in form that philosophy is distinguished from other modes of 
attaining an acquaintance with this same sum of being, it must necessarily 
be in harmony with actuality and experience. In fact, this harmony may be 
viewed as at least an extrinsic means of testing the truth of a philosophy. 
Similarly it may be held the highest and final aim of philosophic science to 
bring about, through the ascertainment of this harmony, a reconciliation of 
the self-conscious reason with the reason which is in the world -  in other 
words, with actuality.

In the Preface to my Philosophy of Law, p. xix, are found the propositions:
  What is reasonable is actual
and
  What is actual is reasonable.

These simple statements have given rise to expressions of surprise and 
hostility, even in quarters where it would be reckoned an insult to presume 
absence of philosophy, and still more of religion. Religion at least need not 
be brought in evidence; its doctrines of the divine governments of the 
world affirm these propositions too decidedly. For their philosophic sense, 
we must presuppose intelligence enough to know, not only that God is 
actual, that He is the supreme actuality, that He alone is truly actual; but 
also, as regards the logical bearings of the question, that existence is in part 
mere appearance, and only in part actuality. In common life, any freak of 
fancy, any error, evil and everything of the nature of evil, as well as every 
degenerate and transitory existence whatever, gets in a casual way the 
name of actuality. But even our ordinary feelings are enough to forbid a 
casual (fortuitous) existence getting the emphatic name of an actual; for by 
fortuitous we mean an existence which has no greater value than that of 
something possible, which may as well not be as be. As for the term 
Actuality, these critics would have done well to consider the sense in which 
I employ it. In g detailed Logic I had treated among other things of 
actuality, and accurately distinguished it not only from the fortuitous, 
which, after all, has existence, but even from the cognate categories of 
existence and the other modifications of being.
The actuality of the rational stands opposed by the popular fancy that Ideas 
and ideals are nothing but chimeras, and philosophy a mere system of such 
phantasms. It is also opposed by the very different fancy that Ideas and 
ideals are something far too excellent to have actuality, or something too 
impotent to procure it for themselves. This divorce between idea and 
reality is especially dear to the analytic understanding which looks upon its 
own abstractions, dreams though they are, as something true and real, and 
prides itself on the imperative 'ought', which it takes especial pleasure in 
prescribing even on the field of politics. As if the world had waited on it to 
learn how it ought to be, and was not! For, if it were as it ought to be, what 
would come of the precocious wisdom of that 'ought'? When understanding 
turns this 'ought' against trivial external and transitory objects, against 
social regulations or conditions, which very likely possess a great relative 
importance for a certain time and special circles, it may often be right. In 
such a case the intelligent observer may meet much that fails to satisfy the 
general requirements of right; for who is not acute enough to see a great 
deal in his own surroundings which is really far from being as it ought to 
be? But such acuteness is mistaken in the conceit that, when it examines 
these objects and pronounces what they ought to be, it is dealing with 
questions of philosophic science. The object of philosophy is the Idea: and 
the Idea is not so impotent as merely to have a right or an obligation to 
exist without actually existing. The object of philosophy is an actuality of 
which those objects, social regulations and conditions, are only the 
superficial outside.
§7
Thus reflection - thinking things over - in a general way involves the 
principle (which also means the beginning) of philosophy. And when the 
reflective spirit arose again in its independence in modern times, after the 
epoch of the Lutheran Reformation, it did not, as in its beginnings among 
the Greeks, stand merely aloof, in a world of its own, but at once turned its 
energies also upon the apparently illimitable material of the phenomenal 
world. In this way the name philosophy came to be applied to all those 
branches of knowledge, which are engaged in ascertaining the standard and 
Universal in the ocean of empirical individualities, as well as in 
ascertaining the Necessary element, or Laws, to be found in the apparent 
disorder of the endless masses of the fortuitous. It thus appears that modern 
philosophy derives its materials from our own personal observations and 
perceptions of the external and internal world, from nature as well as from 
the mind and heart of man, when both stand in the immediate presence of 
the observer.
This principle of Experience carries with it the unspeakably important 
condition that, in order to accept and believe any fact, we must be in 
contact with it; or, in more exact terms, that we must find the fact united 
and combined with the certainty of our own selves. We must be in touch 
with our subject-matter, whether it be by means of our external senses, or, 
else, by our profounder mind and our intimate self-consciousness. This 
principle is the same as that which has in the present day been termed faith, 
immediate knowledge, the revelation in the outward world, and, above all, 
in our own heart.
Those sciences, which thus got the name of philosophy, we call empirical 
sciences, for the reason that they take their departure from experience. Still 
the essential results which they aim at and provide are laws, general 
propositions, a theory - the thoughts of what is found existing. On this 
ground the Newtonian physics was called Natural Philosophy. Hugo 
Grotius, again, by putting together and comparing the behaviour of states 
towards each other as recorded in history, succeeded, with the help of the 
ordinary methods of general reasoning, in laying down certain general 
principles, and establishing a theory which may be termed the Philosophy 
of International Law. In England this is still the usual signification of the 
term philosophy. Newton continues to be celebrated as the greatest of 
philosophers: and the name goes down as far as the price-lists of 
instrument-makers. All instruments, such as the thermometer and 
barometer, which do not come under the special head of magnetic or 
electric apparatus, are styled philosophical instruments. Surely thought, and 
not a mere combination of wood, iron, etc., ought to be called the 
instrument of philosophy ! The recent science of Political Economy in 
particular, which in Germany is known as Rational Economy of the State, 
or intelligent national economy, has in England especially appropriated the 
name of philosophy.
§8
In its own field this empirical knowledge may at first give satisfaction; but 
in two ways it is seen to come short. In the first place there is another circle 
of objects which it does not embrace. These are Freedom, Spirit, and God. 
They belong to a different sphere, not because it can be said that they have 
nothing to do with experience; for though they are certainly not experiences 
of the senses, it is quite an identical proposition to say that whatever is in 
consciousness is experienced. The real ground for assigning them to 
another field of cognition is that in their scope and content these objects 
evidently show themselves as infinite.
There is an old phrase often wrongly attributed to Aristotle, and supposed 
to express the general tenor of his philosophy. Nihil est in intellectu quod 
non fuerit in sensu: there is nothing in thought which has not been in sense 
and experience. If speculative philosophy refused to admit this maxim, it 
can only have done so from a misunderstanding. It will, however, on the 
converse side no less assert: Nihil est in sensu quod! non fuerit in intellectu. 
And this may be taken in two senses. In the general sense it means that 
nous or spirit (the more profound idea of nous in modern thought) is the 
cause of the world. In its special meaning (see § 2) it asserts that the 
sentiment of right, morals, and religion is a sentiment (and in that way an 
experience) of such scope and such character that it can spring from and 
rest upon thought alone.
§9
But in the second place in point of form the subjective reason desires a 
further satisfaction than empirical knowledge gives; and this form is, in the 
widest sense of the term, Necessity (§ 1). The method of empirical science 
exhibits two defects. The first is that the Universal or general principle 
contained in it, the genus, or kind, etc., is, on its own account, 
indeterminate and vague, and therefore not on its own account connected 
with the Particulars or the details. Either is external and accidental to the 
other; and it is the same with the particular facts which are brought into 
union: each is external and accidental to the others. The second defect is 
that the beginnings are in every case data and postulates, neither accounted 
for nor deduced. In both these points the form of necessity fails to get its 
due. Hence reflection, whenever it sets itself to remedy these defects, 
becomes speculative thinking, the thinking proper to philosophy. As a 
species of reflection, therefore, which, though it has a certain community 
of nature with the reflection already mentioned, is nevertheless different 
from it, philosophic thought thus possesses, in addition to the common 
forms, some forms of its own, of which the Notion may be taken as the 
type.
The relation of speculative science to the other sciences may be stated in 
the following terms. It does not in the least neglect the empirical facts 
contained in the several sciences, but recognises and adopts them: it 
appreciates and applies towards its own structure the universal element in 
these sciences, their laws and classifications: but besides all this, into the 
categories of science it introduces, and gives currency to, other categories. 
The difference, looked at in this way, is only a change of categories. 
Speculative Logic contains all previous Logic and Metaphysics: it preserves 
the same forms of thought, the same laws and objects - while at the same 
time remodelling and expanding them with wider categories.
From notion in the speculative sense we should distinguish what is 
ordinarily called a notion. The phrase, that no notion can ever comprehend 
the Infinite, a phrase which has been repeated over and over again till it has 
grown axiomatic, is based upon this narrow estimate of what is meant by 
notions.
§10
This thought, which is proposed as the instrument of philosophic 
knowledge, itself calls for further explanation. We must understand in what 
way it possesses necessity or cogency: and when it claims to be equal to the 
task of apprehending the absolute objects (God, Spirit, Freedom), that 
claim must be substantiated. Such an explanation, however, is itself a 
lesson in philosophy, and properly falls within the scope of the science 
itself. A preliminary attempt to make matters plain would only be 
unphilosophical, and consist of a tissue of assumptions, assertions, and 
inferential pros and cons, i.e. of dogmatism without cogency, as against 
which there would be an equal right of counter-dogmatism.
A main line of argument in the Critical Philosophy bids us pause before 
proceeding to inquire into God or into the true being of things, and tells us 
first of all to examine the faculty of cognition and see whether it is equal to 
such an effort. We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the 
instrument, before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; 
for if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain. 
The plausibility of this suggestion has won for it general assent and 
admiration; the result of which has been to withdraw cognition from an 
interest in its objects and absorption in the study of them, and to direct it 
back upon itself; and so turn it to a question of form. Unless we wish to be 
deceived by words, it is easy to see what this amounts to. In the case of 
other instruments, we can try and criticise them in other ways than by 
setting about the special work for which they are destined. But the 
examination of knowledge can only be carried out by an act of knowledge. 
To examine this so-called instrument is the same thing as to know it. But to 
seek to know before we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of 
Scholasticus, not to venture into the water until he had learned to swim.
Reinhold saw the confusion with which this style of commencement is 
chargeable, and tried to get out of the difficulty by starting with a 
hypothetical and problematical stage of philosophising. In this way he 
supposed that it would be possible, nobody can tell how, to get along, until 
we found ourselves, further on, arrived at the primary truth of truths. His 
method, when closely looked into, will be seen to be identical with a very 
common practice. It starts from a substratum of experiential fact, or from a 
provisional assumption which has been brought into a definition; and then 
proceeds to analyse this starting-point. We can detect in Reinhold's 
argument a perception of the truth, that the usual course which proceeds by 
assumptions and anticipations is no better than a hypothetical and 
problematical mode of procedure. But his perceiving this does not alter the 
character of this method; it only makes clear its imperfections.
§11
The special conditions which call for the existence of philosophy may be 
thus described. The mind or spirit, when it is sentient or perceptive, finds 
its object in something sensuous; when it imagines, in a picture or image; 
when it wills, in an aim or end. But in contrast to, or it may be only in 
distinction from, these forms of its existence and of its objects, the mind 
has also to gratify the cravings of its highest and most inward life. That 
innermost self is thought. Thus the mind renders thought its object. In the 
best meaning of the phrase, it comes to itself; for thought is its principle, 
and its very unadulterated self. But while thus occupied, thought entangles 
itself in contradictions, i.e. loses itself in the hard and-fast non-identity of 
its thoughts, and so, instead of reaching itself, is caught and held in its 
counterpart. This result, to which honest but narrow thinking leads the 
mere understanding, is resisted by the loftier craving of which we have 
spoken. That craving expresses the perseverance of thought, which 
continues true to itself, even in this conscious loss of its native rest and 
independence, 'that it may overcome' and work out in itself the solution of 
its own contradictions.
To see that thought in its very nature is dialectical, and that, as 
understanding, it must fall into contradiction - the negative of itself - will 
form one of the main lessons of logic. When thought grows hopeless of 
ever achieving, by its own means, the solution of the contradiction which it 
has by its own action brought upon itself, it turns back to those solutions of 
the question with which the mind had learned to pacify itself in some of its 
other modes and forms. Unfortunately, however, the retreat of thought has 
led it, as Plato noticed even in his time, to a very uncalled-for hatred of 
reason (misology); and it then takes up against its own endeavours that 
hostile attitude of which an example is seen in the doctrine that 'immediate' 
knowledge, as it is called, is the exclusive form in which we become 
cognisant of truth.
§12
The rise of philosophy is due to these cravings of thought. Its point of 
departure is Experience; including under that name both our immediate 
consciousness and the inductions from it. Awakened, as it were, by this 
stimulus, thought is vitally characterised by raising itself above the natural 
state of mind, above the senses and inferences from the senses into its own 
unadulterated element, and by assuming, accordingly, at first a stand-aloof 
and negative attitude towards the point from which it started. Through this 
state of antagonism to the phenomena of sense its first satisfaction is found 
in itself, in the Idea of the universal essence of these phenomena: an Idea 
(the Absolute, or God) which may be more or less abstract. Meanwhile, on 
the other hand, the sciences, based on experience, exert upon the mind a 
stimulus to overcome the form in which their varied contents are presented, 
and to elevate these contents to the rank of necessary truth. For the facts of 
science have the aspect of a vast conglomerate, one thing coming side by 
side with another, as if they were merely given and presented - as in short 
devoid of all essential or necessary connection In consequence of this 
stimulus thought is dragged out of its unrealised universality and its fancied 
or merely possible satisfaction, and impelled onwards to a development 
from itself. On one hand this development only means that thought 
incorporates the contents of science, in all their speciality of detail as 
submitted. On the other it makes these contents imitate the action of the 
original creative thought, and present the aspect of a free evolution 
determined by the logic of the fact alone.
On the relation between 'immediacy' and 'mediation' in consciousness we 
shall speak later, expressly and with more detail. Here it may be sufficient 
to premise that, though the two 'moments' or factors present themselves as 
distinct, still neither of them can be absent, nor can one exist apart from the 
other. Thus the knowledge of God, as of every supersensible reality, is in its 
true character an exaltation above sensations or perceptions: it 
consequently involves a negative attitude to the initial data of sense, and to 
that extent implies mediation. For to mediate is to take something as a 
beginning and to go onward to a second thing; so that the existence of this 
second thing depends on our having reached it from something else 
contradistinguished from it. In spite of this, the knowledge of God is no 
mere sequel, dependent on the empirical phase of consciousness: in fact, its 
independence is essentially secured through this negation and exaltation. 
No doubt, if we attach an unfair prominence to the fact of mediation, and 
represent it as implying a state of conditionedness, it may be said - not that 
the remark would mean much - that philosophy is the child of experience, 
and owes its rise to a posteriori fact. (As a matter of fact, thinking is 
always the negation of what we have immediately before us.) With as much 
truth however we may be said to owe eating to the means of nourishment, 
so long as we can have no eating without them. If we take this view, eating 
is certainly represented as ungrateful: it devours that to which it owes itself. 
Thinking, upon this view of its action, is equally ungrateful.
But there is also an a priori aspect of thought, where by a mediation, not 
made by anything external but by a reflection into self, we have that 
immediacy which is universality, the self complacency of thought which is 
so much at home with itself that it feels an innate indifference to descend 
to particulars, and in that way to the development of its own nature. It is 
thus also with religion, which whether it be rude or elaborate, whether it be 
invested with scientific precision of detail or confined to the simple faith of 
the heart, possesses, throughout, the same intensive nature of contentment 
and felicity. But if thought never gets further than the universality of the 
Ideas, as was perforce the case in the first philosophies (when the Eleatics 
never got beyond Being, or Heraclitus beyond Becoming), it is justly open 
to the charge of formalism. Even in a more advanced phase of philosophy, 
we may often find a doctrine which has mastered merely certain abstract 
propositions or formulae, such as, 'In the absolute all is one',
 'Subject and object are identical' - and only repeating the same thing when 
it comes to particulars. Bearing in mind this first period of thought, the 
period of mere generality, we may safely say that experience is the real 
author of growth and advance in philosophy. For, firstly, the empirical 
sciences do not stop short at the mere observation of the individual features 
of a phenomenon. By the aid of thought, they are able to meet philosophy 
with materials prepared for it, in the shape of general uniformities, i.e. 
laws, and classifications of the phenomena. When this is done, the 
particular facts which they contain are ready to be received into 
philosophy. This, secondly, implies a certain compulsion on thought itself 
to proceed to these concrete specific truths. The reception into philosophy 
of these scientific materials, now that thought has removed their 
immediacy and made them cease to be mere data, forms at the same time a 
development of thought out of itself. Philosophy, then, owes its 
development to the empirical sciences. In return it gives their contents what 
is so vital to them, the freedom of thought - gives them, in short, an a priori 
character. These contents are now warranted necessary, and no longer 
depend on the evidence of facts merely, that they were so found and so 
experienced. The fact as experienced thus becomes an illustration and a 
copy of the original and completely self-supporting activity of thought.
§13
Stated in exact terms, such is the origin and development of philosophy. 
But the History of Philosophy gives us the same process from a historical 
and external point of view. The stages in the evolution of the Idea there 
seem to follow each other by accident, and to present merely a number of 
different and unconnected principles, which the several systems of 
philosophy carry out in their own way. But it is not so. For these thousands 
of years the same Architect has directed the work: and that Architect is the 
one living Mind whose nature is to think, to bring to selfconsciousness 
what it is, and, with its being thus set as object before it, to be at the same 
time raised above it, and so to reach a higher stage of its own being. The 
different systems which the history of philosophy presents are therefore not 
irreconcilable with unity.
We may either say, that it is one philosophy at different degrees of 
maturity: or that the particular principle, which is the groundwork of each 
system, is but a branch of one and the same universe of thought. In 
philosophy the latest birth of time is the result of all the systems that have 
preceded it, and must include their principles; and so, if, on other grounds, 
it deserve the title of philosophy, will be the fullest, most comprehensive, 
and most adequate system of all.
The spectacle of so many and so various systems of philosophy suggests the 
necessity of defining more exactly the relation of Universal to Particular. 
When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated with the 
particular, as if it were on the same level, it sinks into a particular itself. 
Even common sense in everyday matters is above the absurdity of setting a 
universal beside the particulars. Would any one, who wished for fruit, 
reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on the ground that they were cherries, 
pears, or grapes, and not fruit? But when philosophy is in question, the 
excuse of many is that philosophies are so different, and none of them is 
the philosophy - that each is only a philosophy. Such a plea is assumed to 
justify any amount of contempt for philosophy. And yet cherries too are 
fruit. Often, too, a system, of which the principle is the universal, is put on 
a level with another of which the principle is a particular, and with theories 
which deny the existence of philosophy altogether. Such systems are said to 
be only different views of philosophy. With equal justice, light and 
darkness might be styled different kinds of light.
§14
The same evolution of thought which is exhibited in the history of 
philosophy is presented in the System of Philosophy itself. Here, instead of 
surveying the process, as we do in history, from the outside, we see the 
movement of thought clearly defined in its native medium. The thought, 
which is genuine and self-supporting, must be intrinsically concrete; it must 
be an Idea; and when it is viewed in the whole of its universality, it is the 
Idea, or the Absolute. The science of this Idea must form a system. For the 
truth is concrete; that is, while it gives a bond and principle of unity, it also 
possesses an internal source of development. Truth, then, is only possible 
as a universe or totality of thought; and the freedom of the whole, as well 
as the necessity of the several sub-divisions, which it implies, are only 
possible when these are discriminated and defined.
Unless it is a system, a philosophy is not a scientific production. 
Unsystematic philosophising can only be expected to give expression to 
personal peculiarities of mind, and has no principle for the regulation of its 
contents. Apart from their interdependence and organic union, the truths of 
philosophy are valueless, and must then be treated as baseless hypotheses, 
or personal convictions. Yet many philosophical treatises confine 
themselves to such an exposition of the opinions and sentiments of the 
author.
The term system is often misunderstood. It does not denote a philosophy, 
the principle of which is narrow and to be distinguished from others. On 
the contrary, a genuine philosophy makes it a principle to include every 
particular principle.
§15
Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded 
and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical 
Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, 
because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special 
medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this 
way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, 
but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these 
peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation.
§16
In the form of an Encyclopaedia, the science has no room for a detailed 
exposition of particulars, and must be limited to setting forth the 
commencement of the special sciences and the notions of cardinal 
importance in them.
How much of the particular parts is requisite to constitute a particular 
branch of knowledge is so far indeterminate, that the part, if it is to be 
something true, must be not an isolated member merely, but itself an 
organic whole. The entire field of philosophy therefore really forms a 
single science; but it may also be viewed as a total, composed of several 
particular sciences.
The encyclopaedia of philosophy must not be confounded with ordinary 
encyclopaedias. An ordinary encyclopaedia does not pretend to be more 
than an aggregation of sciences, regulated by no principle, and merely as 
experience offers them. Sometimes it even includes what merely bear the 
name of sciences, while they are nothing more than a collection of bits of 
information. In an aggregate like this, the several branches of knowledge 
owe their place in the encyclopaedia to extrinsic reasons, and their unity is 
therefore artificial: they are arranged, but we cannot say they form a 
system. For the same reason, especially as the materials to be combined 
also depend upon no one rule or principle, the arrangement is at best an 
experiment, and will always exhibit inequalities.
An encyclopaedia of philosophy excludes three kinds of partial science. I. 
It excludes mere aggregates of bits of information. Philology in its prima 
facie aspect belongs to this class. II. It rejects the quasi-sciences, which are 
founded on an act of arbitrary will alone, such as Heraldry. Sciences of this 
class are positive from beginning to end. III. In another class of sciences, 
also styled positive, but which have a rational basis and a rational 
beginning, philosophy claims that constituent as its own. The positive 
features remain the property of the sciences themselves.
The positive element in the last class of sciences is of different sorts. (i) 
Their commencement, though rational at bottom, yields to the influence of 
fortuitousness, when they have to bring their universal truth into contact 
with actual facts and the single phenomena of experience. In this region of 
chance and change, the adequate notion of science must yield its place to 
reasons or grounds of explanation. Thus, e.g. in the science of 
jurisprudence, or in the system of direct and indirect taxation, it is 
necessary to have certain points precisely and definitively settled which lie 
beyond the competence of the absolute lines laid down by the pure notion. 
A certain latitude of settlement accordingly is left; and each point may be 
determined in one way on one principle, in another way on another, and 
admits of no definitive certainty. Similarly the Idea of Nature, when 
parcelled out in detail, is dissipated into contingencies. Natural history, 
geography, and medicine stumble upon descriptions of existence, upon 
kinds and distinctions, which are not determined by reason, but by sport 
and adventitious incidents. Even history comes under the same category. 
The Idea is its essence and inner nature; but, as it appears, everything is 
under contingency and in the field of voluntary action. (ii) These sciences 
are positive also in failing to recognise the finite nature of what they 
predicate, and to point out how these categories and their whole sphere 
pass into a higher. They assume their statements to possess an authority 
beyond appeal. Here the fault lies in the finitude of the form, as in the 
previous instance it lay in the matter. (iii) In close sequel to this, sciences 
are positive in consequence of the inadequate grounds on which their 
conclusions rest: based as these are on detached and casual inference, upon 
feeling, faith, and authority, and, generally speaking, upon the deliverances 
of inward and outward perception. Under this head we must also class the 
philosophy which proposes to build upon 'anthropology', facts of 
consciousness, inward sense, or outward experience. It may happen, 
however, that empirical is an epithet applicable only to the form of 
scientific exposition, while intuitive sagacity has arranged what are mere 
phenomena, according to the essential sequence of the notion. In such a 
case the contrasts between the varied and numerous phenomena brought 
together serve to eliminate the external and accidental circumstances of 
their conditions, and the universal thus comes clearly into view. Guided by 
such an intuition, experimental physics will present the rational science of 
Nature - as history will present the science of human affairs and actions - in 
an external picture, which mirrors the philosophic notion.
§17
It may seem as if philosophy, in order to start on its course, had, like the 
rest of the sciences, to begin with a subjective presupposition. The sciences 
postulate their respective objects, such as space, number, or whatever it be; 
and it might be supposed that philosophy had also to postulate the existence 
of thought. But the two cases are not exactly parallel. It is by the free act of 
thought that it occupies a point of view, in which it is for its own self, and 
thus gives itself an object of its own production. Nor is this all. The very 
point of view, which originally is taken on its own evidence only, must in 
the course of the science be converted to a result - the ultimate result in 
which philosophy returns into itself and reaches the point with which it 
began. In this manner philosophy exhibits the appearance of a circle which 
closes with itself, and has no beginning in the same way as the other 
sciences have. To speak of a beginning of philosophy has a meaning only in 
relation to a person who proposes to commence the study, and not in 
relation to the science as science. The same thing may be thus expressed. 
The notion of science - the notion therefore with which we start - which, 
for the very reason that it is initial, implies a separation between the 
thought which is our object, and the subject philosophising which is, as it 
were, external to the former, must be grasped and comprehended by the 
science itself. This is in short, the one single aim, action, and goal of 
philosophy - to arrive at the notion of its notion, and thus secure its return 
and its satisfaction.
§18
As the whole science, and only the whole, can exhibit what the Idea or 
system of reason is, it is impossible to give in a preliminary way a general 
impression of a philosophy. Nor can a division of philosophy into its parts 
be intelligible, except in connection with the system. A preliminary 
division, like the limited conception from which it comes, can only be an 
anticipation. Here however it is premised that the Idea turns out to be the 
thought which is completely identical with itself, and not identical simply 
in the abstract, but also in its action of setting itself over against itself, so as 
to gain a being of its own, and yet of being in full possession of itself while 
it is in this other. Thus philosophy is subdivided into three parts:
I. Logic: the science of the Idea in and for itself.
II. The Philosophy of Nature: the science of the Idea in its otherness.
III. The Philosophy of Mind: the science of the Idea come back to itself out 
of that otherness.
As observed in §15, the differences between the several philosophical 
sciences are only aspects or specialisations of the one Idea or system of 
reason, which and which alone is alike exhibited in these different media. 
In Nature nothing else would have to be discerned, except the Idea; but the 
Idea has here divested itself of its proper being. In Mind, again, the Idea 
has asserted a being of its own, and is on the way to become absolute. 
Every such form in which the Idea is expressed is at the same time a 
passing or fleeting stage; and hence each of these subdivisions has not only 
to know its contents as an object which has being for the time, but also in 
the same act to expound how these contents pass into their higher circle. To 
represent the relation between them as a division, therefore, leads to 
misconception; for it co-ordinates the several parts or sciences one beside 
another, as if they had no innate development, but were, like so many 
species, really and radically distinct.