not only modes of thinking things; they are the modes of being of the things themselves. They are not empty frames, which receive their contents from without; they are substantial forms, as the Middle Ages used to say; they give themselves their own content; they are creative acts of divine and human reason. They are both the forms which mould my thought and the stages of eternal creation.1

Hence it is of essential importance to metaphysics that we make a more thorough study of the categories, their nature and, above all, their connection. Kant had already observed that the categories are not separate from and indifferent to each other, ranged alongside of each other in our intelligence like drawers in a piece of furniture, but intimately connected with each other. They are, in short, nothing but transformations of one and the same fundamental category, the idea of being. Hence it will not suffice to discuss them at random; we must consider them in their connection, surprise them, as it were, in the very act of their mutual production. Kant saw the importance of such an a priori deduction of the categories, and attempted it, but his deduction is, in reality, a merely empirical enumeration (incomplete at that) of pure concepts. We must return to Kant's notion, but we must substitute for his table of categories a real deduction, a true genealogical table.

This is the most exalted and withal the most arduous task of metaphysics. In order to succeed in it, we must eradicate our prejudices, all our sensible ideas, and trust to reason alone; we must let it unfold its own contents, and do nothing ourselves but follow it in its development (nach-denken), or record its oracles, as it were, at the very time of their production. To leave thought to itself, to abandon it to its spontaneous self-activity (Selbstbewegung

1 Logic, vol. I., Introduction; Encyclopedie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Introduction.

des Begriffs) that is the true philosophical method, the immanent or dialectical method.

The science which does all this is logic, i. e., in the sense of Hegel, the genealogy of pure concepts. But since, in the panlogistic hypothesis, the Xoyos, the object of logic, is both the principle which thinks the things in us, and the objective cause which produces them, or the thing-in-itself; the genealogy of its concepts is at the same time the genealogy of the things, the explanation of the universe, or metaphysics. Hegel's speculative logic is both what the school calls logic (Denklehre) and what it calls metaphysics or ontology (Seinslehre). It is called speculative, in order to distinguish it from the former and to include the latter. It is metaphysical, for it speaks of mechanical, chemical, and organic processes, and likewise embraces ethics, since it treats of the good. In this it is consistent with its panlogistic premises: if reason not only conceives, but produces being, if it is the creator of things, if it is everything; the science of reason (Xoyun) must be the universal science, which includes all the particular sciences.

It is an inconsistency 1 in Hegel, as we have shown elsewhere,2 to have his Logic followed by a Philosophy of Nature and a Philosophy of Mind. Logic treats of reason in abstracto, the philosophy of nature and of mind reveals it to us as it realizes itself in the universe and in history.

I. Logic, or Genealogy of Pure Concepts

1. Quality, Quantity, Measure3

The common root of the categories or pure concepts is the notion of being, the emptiest and at the same time the

1 The philosophy of nature and the philosophy of mind are already implicitly contained, the former in the first and second, the latter in the third, part of the logic.

2 Introduction historique à la philosophie hégélienne, Paris and Strasburg, 1866, p. 16.

8 Logic, vol. I.; Encyclopedia, §§ 84 ff.

most comprehensive, the most abstract and the most real, the most elementary and the most exalted notion. It is the identical substance, and the material of all our notions, the fundamental theme which runs through them all. Indeed, quality is a mode of being, quantity, a mode of being, proportion, phenomenon, action, modes of being. All our concepts express modes of being, and hence are merely transformations of the idea of being.

But how shall we explain these transformations? How does being, which is everything, become anything else? In virtue of what principle or inner force is it modified? The contradiction which it contains is this principle or force. Being is the most universal notion, and for that very reason, also the poorest and emptiest. To be white, to be black, to be extended, to be good, is to be something: being without any determination is non-being. Hence, being pure and simple is equal to non-being. It is both itself and its opposite. If it were only itself, it would remain immovable and barren; if it were only nothing, it would be equal to zero, and, in this case, perfectly powerless and fruitless. Because it is both it becomes something, a different thing, everything. The contradiction contained in being is resolved in the notion of becoming, or development. Becoming is both being and non-being (that which will be). The two contraries which engender it, being and nothing, are contained and reconciled in it. A new contradiction results, which is resolved by a new synthesis, and so on, until we reach the absolute idea.

This, then, is the moving principle in the Hegelian logic: a contradiction is reconciled in a unity, reappears in a new form, only to disappear and reappear again, until it is resolved in the final unity. By repudiating the principle of contradiction of Aristotle and Leibniz, according to which a thing cannot both be and not be, it takes sides with the Sophists, without, however, falling into their scepticism.

The contradiction does not, according to Hegel, exist in thought alone, but also in the things themselves; existence itself is contradictory. When, with the realistic and dualistic systems, we separate thought from its object and concede to each an independent existence, the antinomies of thought necessarily become a source of discouragement and scepticism. However, when we regard nature as the selfdevelopment of thought, and thought as nature becoming conscious of itself, when we recognize that the world, being thought objectified, contains nothing but thought; the contradiction in which the philosopher is involved ceases to be an obstacle to the understanding of things, and appears to him as their very essence reflecting itself in the antinomies of his thought.

Now that we know the moving principle and the unchanging form of the Hegelian dialectics, we need not follow out the unvarying and monotonous mechanism of its deductions. It will be sufficient to emphasize the most salient points of his metaphysics as set forth in the Logic.

The contradiction found in the idea of being is resolved in the notion of becoming. Being becomes, i. e., determines itself, limits itself, defines itself. But determinate or finite being continues ad infinitum; the finite is infinite; nothing compels thought to assign limits to it. Here we have a new contradiction, which is resolved in the notion of individuality (being-for-self, Fürsichsein). The individual is the unity of the finite and the infinite. To consider these two terms as excluding each other is to forget that the infinite, excluded by the finite, would be limited by the finite, or would be finite itself. If the infinite begins where the finite ends, and if the finite begins where the infinite ends, so that the infinite is beyond the finite, or the finite on this side of the infinite, it would not really be the infinite. The infinite is the essence of the finite, and the finite is the manifestation of the infinite, the infinite existing. Infinity determines

itself, limits itself, sets boundaries to itself; in a word, it becomes the finite by the very fact that it gives itself existence. Existence is possible only under certain conditions, in certain modes, or within certain limits. Existence is self-limitation. Existence is finite being. Finite being, the individual, the atom, is infinity existing in a certain manner, limited infinity: quality becomes quantity.

Quantity is extensive quantity (number) or intensive quantity (degree). Number, which is quantity broken up, so to speak, and degree, which is concentrated quantity, are reconciled in the notion of measure and proportion. Measure is being becoming essence (Wesen).

2. Essence and Appearance. Substantiality and Causality. Reciprocity 2

Essence is being, unfolded or expanded so that its aspects reflect each other. Hence the categories which follow come in pairs: essence and appearance, force and expression, matter and form, substance and accident, cause and effect, ground and consequence, action and reaction. This reflection-into-itself (Reflexion in ihm selbst), or if we prefer, this reflex, is the phenomenon. Essence and phenomenon (appearance) are inseparable; indeed, the phenomenon is the very essence of essence; or, in other terms, it is as essential to essence to appear (paíveolai), to life to manifest itself, to the principle to produce its consequences, as it is essential to the phenomenon to imply an essence. Phenomenon without essence is mere show, or mere appearance.

The essential is opposed by the accidental or contingent, which in turn becomes essential in the sense that the idea of the essential needs it in order to be produced. No category, we see, is independent of its neighbors. Although excluding each other, the categories need and mutually engender each other.

1 Cf. § 50.

2 Logic, vol. II.; Encycl., §§ 112 ff.