II. PRELIMINARY NOTION

§19n 
(1) The first question is: What is the object of our science? The simplest 
and most intelligible answer to this question is that Truth is the object of 
Logic. Truth is a noble word, and the thing is nobler still. So long as man is 
sound at heart and in spirit, the search for truth must awake all the 
enthusiasm of his nature. But immediately there steps in the objection - are 
we able to know truth ? There seems to be a disproportion between finite 
beings like ourselves and the truth which is absolute. and doubts suggest 
themselves whether there is any bridge between the finite and the infinite. 
God is truth: how shall we know Him ? Such an undertaking appears to 
stand in contradiction with the graces of lowliness and humility. Others 
who ask whether we can know the truth have a different purpose. They 
want to justify themselves in living on contented with their petty, finite 
aims. And humility of this stamp is a poor thing. But the time is past when 
people asked: How shall I, a poor worm of the dust, be able to know the 
truth ? And in its stead we find vanity and conceit: people claim, without 
any trouble on their part, to breathe the very atmosphere of truth. The 
young have been flattered into the belief that they possess a natural 
birthright of moral and religious truth. And in the same strain, those of 
riper years are declared to be sunk, petrified ossified in falsehood. Youth, 
say these teachers, sees the bright light of dawn: but the older generation 
lies in the slough and mire of the common day. They admit that the special 
sciences are something that certainly ought to be cultivated, but merely as 
the means to satisfy the needs of outer life. In all this it is not humility 
which holds back from the knowledge and study of the truth, but a 
conviction that we are already in full possession of it. And no doubt the 
young carry with them the hopes of their elder compeers; on them rests the 
advance of the world and science. But these hopes are set upon the young, 
only on the condition that, instead of remaining as they are, they undertake 
the stern labour of mind.
This modesty in truth-seeking has still another phase: and that is the genteel 
indifference to truth, as we see it in Pilate's conversation with Christ. Pilate 
asked 'What is truth ?' with the air of a man who had settled accounts with 
everything long ago, and concluded that nothing particularly matters - he 
meant much the same as Solomon when he says: 'All is vanity'. When it 
comes to this, nothing is left but self-conceit.
The knowledge of the truth meets an additional obstacle in timidity. A 
slothful mind finds it natural to say: 'Don't let it be supposed that we mean 
to be in earnest with our philosophy. We shall be glad inter alia to study 
Logic: but Logic must be sure to leave us as we were before.' People have a 
feeling that, if thinking passes the ordinary range of our ideas and 
impressions, it cannot but be on the evil road. They seem to be trusting 
themselves to a sea on which they will be tossed to and fro by the waves of 
thought, till at length they again reach the sandbank of this temporal scene, 
as utterly poor as when they left it. What comes of such a view, we see in 
the world. It is possible within these limits to gain varied information and 
many accomplishments, to become a master of official routine, and to be 
trained for special purposes. But it is quite another thing to educate the 
spirit for the higher life and to devote our energies to its service. In our own 
day it may be hoped a longing for something better has sprung up among 
the young, so that they will not be contented with the mere straw of outer 
knowledge.
(2) It is universally agreed that thought is the object of Logic. But of 
thought our estimate may be very mean, or it may be very high. On one 
hand, people say: ' It is only a thought.' In their view thought is subjective, 
arbitrary and accidental - distinguished from the thing itself, from the true 
and the real. On the other hand, a very high estimate may be formed of 
thought; when thought alone is held adequate to attain the highest of all 
things, the nature of God, of which the senses can tell us nothing. God is a 
spirit, it is said, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. But the 
merely felt and sensible, we admit, is not the spiritual; its heart of hearts is 
in thought; and only spirit can know spirit. And though it is true that spirit 
can demean itself as feeling and sense - as is the case in religion, the mere 
feeling, as a mode of consciousness, is one thing, and its contents another. 
Feeling, as feeling, is the general form of the sensuous nature which we 
have in common with the brutes. This form, viz. feeling, may possibly seize 
and appropriate the full organic truth: but the form has no real congruity 
with its contents. The form of feeling is the lowest in which spiritual truth 
can be expressed. The world of spiritual existences, God himself, exists in 
proper truth, only in thought and as thought. If this be so, therefore, 
thought, far from being a mere thought, is the highest and, in strict 
accuracy, the sole mode of apprehending the eternal and absolute.
As of thought, so also of the science of thought, a very high or a very low 
opinion may be formed. Any man, it is supposed, can think without Logic, 
as he can digest without studying physiology. If he have studied Logic, he 
thinks afterwards as he did before, perhaps more methodically, but with 
little alteration. If this were all, and if Logic did no more than make men 
acquainted with the action of thought as the faculty of comparison and 
classification, it would produce nothing which had not been done quite as 
well before. And in point of fact Logic hitherto had no other idea of its duty 
than this. Yet to be well informed about thought, even as a mere activity of 
the subject-mind, is honourable and interesting for man. It is in knowing 
what he is and what he does that man is distinguished from the brutes. But 
we may take the higher estimate of thought - as what alone can get really in 
touch with the supreme and true. In that case, Logic as the science of 
thought occupies a high ground. If the science of Logic then considers 
thought in its action and its productions (and thought being no resultless 
energy produces thoughts and the particular thought required), the theme of 
Logic is in general the supersensible world, and to deal with that theme is 
to dwell for a while in that world. Mathematics is concerned with the 
abstractions of time and space. But these are still the object of sense, 
although the sensible is abstract and idealised. Thought bids adieu even to 
this last and abstract sensible: it asserts its own native independence, 
renounces the field of the external and internal sense, and puts away the 
interests and inclinations of the individual. When Logic takes this ground, 
it is a higher science than we are in the habit of supposing.
(3) The necessity of understanding Logic in a deeper sense than as the 
science of the mere form of thought is enforced by the interests of religion 
and politics, of law and morality. In earlier days men meant no harm by 
thinking: they thought away freely and fearlessly. They thought about God, 
about Nature, and the State; and they felt sure that a knowledge of the truth 
was obtainable through thought only, and not through the senses or any 
random ideas or opinions. But while they so thought, the principal 
ordinances of life began to be seriously affected by their conclusions. 
Thought deprived existing institutions of their force. Constitutions fell a 
victim to thought: religion was assailed by thought: firm religious beliefs 
which had been always looked upon as revelations were undermined, and 
in many minds the old faith was upset. The Greek philosophers, for 
example, became antagonists of the old religion, and destroyed its beliefs. 
Philosophers were accordingly banished or put to death, as revolutionists 
who had subverted religion and the state, two things which were 
inseparable. Thought, in short, made itself a power in the real world, and 
exercised enormous influence. The matter ended by drawing attention to 
the influence of thought, and its claims were submitted to a more rigorous 
scrutiny, by which the world professed to find that thought arrogated too 
much and was unable to perform what it had undertaken It had not - people 
said - learned the real being of God, of Nature and Mind. It had not ]earned 
what the truth was. What it had done was to overthrow religion and the 
state It became urgent therefore to justify thought, with reference to the 
results it had produced: and it is this examination into the nature of thought 
and this justification which in recent times has constituted one of the main 
problems of philosophy. 
§21n 
To reflect is a lesson which even the child has to learn. One of his first 
lessons is to join adjectives with substantives. This obliges him to attend 
and distinguish: he has to remember a rule and apply it to the particular 
case. This rule is nothing but a universal: and the child must see that the 
particular adapts itself to this universal. In life, again, we have ends to 
attain. And with regard to these we ponder which is the best way to secure 
them. The end here represents the universal or governing principle and we 
have means and instruments whose action we regulate in conformity to the 
end. In the same way reflection is active in questions of conduct. To reflect 
here means to recollect the right, the duty - the universal which serves as a 
fixed rule to guide our behaviour in the given case. Our particular act must 
imply and recognise the universal law. We find the same thing exhibited in 
our study of natural phenomena. For instance, we observe thunder and 
lightning. The phenomenon is a familiar one, and we often perceive it. But 
man is not content with a bare acquaintance, or with the fact as it appears 
to the senses; he would like to get behind the surface, to know what it is, 
and to comprehend it. This leads him to reflect: he seeks to find out the 
cause as something distinct from the mere phenomenon: he tries to know 
the inside in its distinction from the outside. Hence the phenomenon 
becomes double, it splits into inside and outside, into force and its 
manifestation, into cause and effect. Once more we find the inside or the 
force identified with the universal and permanent: not this or that flash of 
lightning, this or that plant - but that which continues the same in them all. 
The sensible appearance is individual and evanescent: the permanent in it is 
discovered by reflection.
Nature shows us a countless number of individual forms and phenomena. 
Into this variety we feel a need of introducing unity: we compare, 
consequently, and try to find the universal of each single case. Individuals 
are born and perish: the species abides and recurs in them all: and its 
existence is only visible to reflection. Under the same head fall such laws 
as those regulating the motion of the heavenly bodies. To-day we see the 
stars here, and tomorrow there; and our mind finds something incongruous 
in this chaos - something in which it can put no faith, because it believes in 
order and in a simple, constant, and universal law. Inspired by this belief, 
the mind has directed its reflection towards the phenomena, and learnt their 
laws. In other words, it has established the movement of the heavenly 
bodies to be in accordance with a universal law from which every change 
of position may be known and predicted. The case is the same with the 
influences which make themselves felt in the infinite complexity of human 
conduct. There, too, man has the belief in the sway of a general principle. 
From all these examples it may be gathered how reflection is always 
seeking for something fixed and permanent, definite in itself and governing 
the particulars. This universal which cannot be apprehended by the senses 
counts as the true and essential. Thus, duties and rights are all-important in 
the matter of conduct; and an action is true when it conforms to those 
universal formulae.
In thus characterising the universal, we become aware of its antithesis to 
something else. This something else is the merely immediate, outward and 
individual, as opposed to the mediate, inward, and universal. The universal 
does not exist externally to the outward eye as a universal. The kind as kind 
cannot be perceived: the laws of the celestial motions are not written on the 
sky. The universal is neither seen nor heard, its existence is only for the 
mind. Religion leads us to a universal, which embraces all else within 
itself, to an Absolute by which all else is brought into being: and this 
Absolute is an object not of the senses but of the mind and of thought. 
§24n 
(1) To speak of thought or objective thought as the heart and soul of the 
world, may seem to be ascribing consciousness to the things of nature. We 
feel a certain repugnance against making thought the inward function of 
things, especially as we speak of thought as marking the divergence of man 
from nature. It would be necessary, therefore, if we use the term thought at 
all, to speak of nature as the system of unconscious thought, or, to use 
Schelling's expression, a petrified intelligence. And in order to prevent 
misconception, 'thought-form' or 'thought-type' should be substituted for the 
ambiguous term thought. From what has been said the principles of logic 
are to be sought in a system of thought-types or fundamental categories, in 
which the opposition between subjective and objective, in its usual sense 
vanishes. The signification thus attached to thought and its characteristic 
forms may be illustrated by the ancient saying that 'nous governs the world', 
or by our own phrase that 'Reason is in the world'; which means that 
Reason is the soul of the world it inhabits, its immanent principle, its most 
proper and inward nature, its universal. Another illustration is offered by 
the circumstance that in speaking of some definite animal we say it is (an) 
animal. Now, the animal, qua animal, cannot be shown; nothing can be 
pointed out excepting some special animal. Animal, qua animal, does not 
exist: it is merely the universal nature of the individual animals, while each 
existing animal is a more concretely defined and particularised thing. But 
to be an animal - the law of kind which is the universal in this case - is the 
property of the particular animal, and constitutes its definite essence. Take 
away from the dog its animality, and it becomes impossible to say what it 
is. All things have a permanent inward nature, as well as an outward 
existence. They live and die, arise and pass away; but their essential and 
universal part is the kind; and this means much more than something 
common to them all.
If thought is the constitutive substance of external things, it is also the 
universal substance of what is spiritual. In all human perception thought is 
present; so too thought is the universal in all the acts of conception and 
recollection; in short, in every mental activity, in willing, wishing, and the 
like. All these faculties are only further specialisations of thought. When it 
is presented in this light, thought has a different part to play from what it 
has if we speak of a faculty of thought, one among a crowd of other 
faculties, such as perception, conception, and will, with which it stands on 
the same level. When it is seen to be the true universal of all that nature 
and mind contain, it extends its scope far beyond all these, and becomes the 
basis of everything. From this view of thought, in its objective meaning as 
nous, we may next pass to consider the subjective sense of the term. We 
say first, Man is a being that thinks; but we also say at the same time, Man 
is a being that perceives and wills. Man is a thinker, and is universal; but he 
is a thinker only because he feels his own universality. The animal too is by 
implication universal, but the universal is not consciously felt by it to be 
universal: it feels only the individual. The animal sees a singular object, for 
instance, its food, or a man. For the animal all this never goes beyond an 
individual thing. Similarly, sensation has to do with nothing but singulars, 
such as this pain or this sweet taste. Nature does not bring its nous into 
consciousness: it is man who first makes himself double so as to be a 
universal for a universal. This first happens when man knows that he is 'I'. 
By the term 'I' I mean myself, a single and altogether determinate person. 
And yet I really utter nothing peculiar to myself, for every one else is an 'I' 
or 'Ego', and when I call myself 'I', though I indubitably mean the single 
person myself, I express a thorough universal. 'I', therefore, is mere being-
for-self, in which everything peculiar or marked is renounced and buried 
out of sight; it is as it were the ultimate and unanalysable point of 
consciousness. We may say 'I' and thought are the same, or, more 
definitely, 'I' is thought as a thinker. What I have in my consciousness is for 
me. 'I' is the vacuum or receptacle for anything and everything: for which 
everything is and which stores up everything in itself. Every man is a whole 
world of conceptions, that lie buried in the night of the 'Ego'. It follows that 
the 'Ego' is the universal in which we leave aside all that is particular, and 
in which at the same time all the particulars have a latent existence. In 
other words, it is not a mere universality and nothing more, but the 
universality which includes in it everything. Commonly we use the word 'I' 
without attaching much importance to it, nor is it an object of study except 
to philosophical analysis. In the 'Ego', we have thought before us in its utter 
purity. While the brute cannot say 'I', man can, because it is his nature to 
think. Now in the 'Ego' there are a variety of contents, derived both from 
within and from without, and according to the nature of these contents our 
state may be described as perception, or conception, or reminiscence. But 
in all of them the 'I' is found: or in them all thought is present. Man, 
therefore, is always thinking, even in his perceptions: if he observes 
anything, he always observes it as a universal, fixes on a single point which 
he places in relief, thus withdrawing his attention from other points, and 
takes it as abstract and universal, even if the universality be only in form.
In the case of our ordinary conceptions, two things may happen. Either the 
contents are moulded by thought, but not the form; or, the form belongs to 
thought and not the contents. In using such terms, for instance, as anger, 
rose, hope, I am speaking of things which I have learnt in the way of 
sensation, but I express these contents in a universal mode, that is, in the 
form of thought. I have left out much that is particular and given the 
contents in their generality: but still the contents remain sense-derived. On 
the other hand, when I represent God, the content is undeniably a product 
of pure thought, but the form still retains the sensuous limitations which it 
has as I find it immediately present in myself. In these generalised images 
the content is not merely and simply sensible, as it is in a visual inspection; 
but either the content is sensuous and the form appertains to thought, or 
vice versa. In the first case the material is given to us, and our thought 
supplies the form: in the second case the content which has its source in 
thought is by means of the form turned into a something given, which 
accordingly reaches the mind from without.
(2) Logic is the study of thought pure and simple, or of the pure thought-
forms. In the ordinary sense of the term, by thought we generally represent 
to ourselves something more than simple and unmixed thought; we mean 
some thought, the material of which is from experience. Whereas in logic a 
thought is understood to include nothing else but what depends on thinking 
and what thinking has brought into existence. It is in these circumstances 
that thoughts are pure thoughts. The mind is then in its own home-element 
and therefore free; for freedom means that the other thing with which you 
deal is a second self - so that you never leave your own ground but give the 
law to yourself. In the impulses or appetites the beginning is from 
something else, from something which we feel to be external. In this case 
then we speak of dependence. For freedom it is necessary that we should 
feel no presence of something else which is not ourselves. The natural man, 
whose motions follow the rule only of his appetites, is not his own master. 
Be he as self-willed as he may, the constituents of his will and opinion are 
not his own, and his freedom is merely formal. But when we think, we 
renounce our selfish and particular being, sink ourselves in the thing, allow 
thought to follow its own course, and if we add anything of our own, we 
think ill.
If in pursuance of the foregoing remarks we consider Logic to be the 
system of the pure types of thought, we find that the other philosophical 
sciences, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Mind, take the 
place, as it were, of an Applied Logic, and that Logic is the soul which 
animates them both. Their problem in that case is only to recognise the 
logical forms under the shapes they assume in Nature and Mind - shapes 
which are only a particular mode of expression for the forms of pure 
thought. If for instance we take the syllogism (not as it was understood in 
the old formal logic, but as its real value), we shall find it gives expression 
to the law that the particular is the middle term which fuses together the 
extremes of the universal and the singular. The syllogistic form is a 
universal form of all things. Everything that exists is a particular, which 
couples together the universal and the singular. But Nature is weak and 
fails to exhibit the logical forms in their purity. Such a feeble 
exemplification of the syllogism may be seen in the magnet. In the middle 
or point of indifference of a magnet, its two poles, however they may be 
distinguished, are brought into one. Physics also teaches us to see the 
universal or essence in Nature: and the only difference between it and the 
Philosophy of Nature is that the latter brings before our mind the adequate 
forms of the notion in the physical world.
It will now be understood that Logic is the all-animating spirit of all the 
sciences, and its categories the spiritual hierarchy. They are the heart and 
centre of things: and yet at the same time they are always on our lips, and, 
apparently at least, perfectly familiar objects. But things thus familiar are 
usually the greatest strangers. Being, for example, is a category of pure 
thought: but to make 'is' an object of investigation never occurs to us. 
Common fancy puts the Absolute far away in a world beyond. The 
Absolute is rather directly before us, so present that so long as we think, we 
must, though without express consciousness of it, always carry it with us 
and always use it. Language is the main depository of these types of 
thought; and one use of the grammatical instruction which children receive 
is unconsciously to turn their attention to distinctions of thought.
Logic is usually said to be concerned with forms only and to derive the 
material for them from elsewhere. But this 'only', which assumes that the 
logical thoughts are nothing in comparison with the rest of the contents, is 
not the word to use about forms which are the absolutely real ground of 
everything. Everything else rather is an 'only' compared with these 
thoughts. To make such abstract forms a problem presupposes in the 
inquirer a higher level of culture than ordinary; and to study them in 
themselves and for their own sake signifies in addition that these thought-
types must be deduced out of thought itself, and their truth or reality 
examined by the light of their own laws. We do not assume them as data 
from without, and then define them or exhibit their value and authority by 
comparing them with the shape they take in our minds. If we thus acted, we 
should proceed from observation and experience, and should, for instance, 
say we habitually employ the term 'force' in such a case, and such a 
meaning. A definition like that would be called correct, if it agreed with the 
conception of its object present in our ordinary state of mind. The defect of 
this empirical method is that a notion is not defined as it is in and for itself, 
but in terms of something assumed, which is then used as a criterion and 
standard of correctness. No such test need be applied: we have merely to let 
the thought-forms follow the impulse of their own organic life.
To ask if a category is true or not, must sound strange to the ordinary mind: 
for a category apparently becomes true only when it is applied to a given 
object, and apart from this application it would seem meaningless to 
inquire into the truth. But this is the very question on which every thing 
turns. We must however in the first place understand clearly what we mean 
by Truth. In common life truth means the agreement of an object with our 
conception of it. We thus presuppose an object to which our conception 
must conform. In the philosophical sense of the word, on the other hand, 
truth may be described, in general abstract terms, as the agreement of a 
thought-content with itself. This meaning is quite different from the one 
given above. At the same time the deeper and philosophical meaning of 
truth can be partially traced even in the ordinary usage of language. Thus 
we speak of a true friend; by which we mean a friend whose manner of 
conduct accords with the notion of friendship. In the same way we speak of 
a true work of Art. Untrue in this sense means the same as bad, or self-
discordant. In this sense a bad state is an untrue state; and evil and untruth 
may be said to consist in the contradiction subsisting between the function 
or notion and the existence of the object. Of such a bad object we may 
form a correct representation, but the import of such representation is 
inherently false. Of these correctnesses, which are at the same time 
untruths, we may have many in our heads. God alone is the thorough 
harmony of notion and reality. All finite things involve an untruth: they 
have a notion and an existence, but their existence does not meet the 
requirements of the notion. For this reason they must perish, and then the 
incompatibility between their notion and their existence becomes manifest. 
It is in the kind that the individual animal has its notion; and the kind 
liberates itself from this individuality by death.
The study of truth, or, as it is here explained to mean, consistency, 
constitutes the proper problem of logic. In our everyday mind we are never 
troubled with questions about the truth of the forms of thought. We may 
also express the problem of logic by saying that it examines the forms of 
thought touching their capability to hold truth. And the question comes to 
this: What are the forms of the infinite, and what are the forms of the finite 
? Usually no suspicion attaches to the finite forms of thought; they are 
allowed to pass unquestioned. But it is from conforming to finite categories 
in thought and action that all deception originates.
(3) Truth may be ascertained by several methods, each of which however is 
no more than a form. Experience is the first of these methods. But the 
method is only a form: it has no intrinsic value of its own. For in 
experience everything depends upon the mind we bring to bear upon 
actuality. A great mind is great in its experience; and in the motley play of 
phenomena at once perceives the point of real significance. The idea is 
present, in actual shape, not something, as it were, over the hill and far 
away. The genius of a Goethe, for example, looking into nature or history, 
has great experiences, catches sight of the living principle, and gives 
expression to it. A second method of apprehending the truth is Reflection, 
which defines it by intellectual relations of condition and conditioned. But 
in these two modes the absolute truth has not yet found its appropriate 
form. The most perfect method of knowledge proceeds in the pure form of 
thought: and here the attitude of man is one of entire freedom.
That the form of thought is the perfect form, and that it presents the truth as 
it intrinsically and actually is, is the general dogma of all philosophy. To 
give a proof of the dogma there is, in the first instance, nothing to do but 
show that these other forms of knowledge are finite. The grand Scepticism 
of antiquity accomplished this task when it exhibited the contradictions 
contained in every one of these forms. That Scepticism indeed went 
further: but when it ventured to assail the forms of reason, it began by 
insinuating under them something finite upon which it might fasten. All the 
forms of finite thought will make their appearance in the course of logical 
development, the order in which they present themselves being determined 
by necessary laws. Here in the introduction they could only be 
unscientifically assumed as something given. In the theory of logic itself 
these forms will be exhibited, not only on their negative, but also on their 
positive side.
When we compare the different forms of ascertaining truth with one 
another, the first of them, immediate knowledge, may perhaps seem the 
finest, noblest, and most appropriate. It includes everything which the 
moralists term innocence as well as religious feeling, simple trust, love, 
fidelity, and natural faith. The two other forms, first reflective, and 
secondly philosophical cognition, must leave that unsought natural 
harmony behind. And so far as they have this in common, the methods 
which claim to apprehend the truth by thought may naturally be regarded as 
part and parcel of the pride which leads man to trust to his own powers for 
a knowledge of the truth. Such a position involves a thorough-going 
disruption, and, viewed in that light, might be regarded as the source of all 
evil and wickedness - the original transgression. Apparently therefore the 
only way of being reconciled and restored to peace is to surrender all 
claims to think or know.
This lapse from natural unity has not escaped notice, and nations from the 
earliest times have asked the meaning of the wonderful division of the 
spirit against itself. No such inward disunion is found in nature: natural 
things do nothing wicked.