"In the Introduction alluded to, he remarks that it is foolish to say that Logic prescinds from all content, that it teaches only the rules of thinking, without paying any heed to what is thought. . . . For since thinking and the rules of thinking must be its subject, it has at once in these its particular content.' * But, with Hegel's permission, no one has ever denied that the rules of thinking are the subject of Logic, and therefore no one has ever asserted that Logic has not its own proper content. The equivocation here is between Logic and pure being. Logic has certainly a content, and this content is formed of pure being, ideas, and the ideal principles which it teaches how to handle. But we assert that this being, these ideas, and these principles remain indeterminate, and, in this sense, they are devoid of content, because they do not contain the ultimate determinations, much less reality. Hegel, therefore, makes a puerile criticism upon the logicians who preceded him, a criticism due solely to his own misunderstanding. Even if his criticism were just, it would not follow that the form of thought, of itself, produced the matter. But let us listen to a somewhat more serious argument. It is supposed,' he says, 'that the matter of cognition exists outside of thought as a distinct, full-fledged world; that thought, in itself empty, adds itself externally, as form, to this matter, fills itself therewith, and only then obtains a content and so becomes a real cognition. According to this assumption, these two elements . . . stand to each other in this order. The object is something in itself finished and complete, which, as far as its reality is concerned, can entirely dispense with thought, whereas thought is something imperfect, requiring to complete itself by means of a material, and must even, as a soft, undetermined form, adapt itself to its matter. Truth is the agreement of thought with its object, and in order to bring about this agreement (which

* "Vors Erste aber ist es ungeschickt zu sagen, dass die Logik von allem Inhalt abstrahire, dass sie nur die Regeln des Denkens lehre, ohne auf das Gedachte sich einzulassen. . . . Denn da das Denken und die Regeln des Denkens ihr Gegenstand seyn sollen, so hat sie ja daran ihren eigenthümlichen Inhalt" (Einleitung, p. 27, edit. 1833).

does not exist essentially), thought must adapt and suit itself to its object.'

*

"These words contain a criticism, in part just, of the absolute anoetic system; but they contain, besides, many inaccuracies, and not the least force to injure the true system proposed by us. This will be clear from the following considerations :

"(1) First of all, the argument is based upon an abuse of the word object. We have observed that reality has not the nature of object, and that objectivity belongs exclusively to intelligible being, and hence to the idea; so that the real, which is not object, becomes object through that act of being, which is seen in the idea whose term it is. Hence we do not admit that truth 'consists in the agreement of thought with its object,' for the simple reason that there is no thought without an object, and that thought can never do otherwise than agree with its object, since between thought and object there is an essential synthesis.

"(2) Much less is it true that, in our system, in order to bring about an agreement between thought and its object, thought must accommodate itself to its object, because this happens always, and must happen always, if we mean by object what the word signifies, viz., that which stands opposite to the act of thinking, that which is present to the understanding.

“(3) The truth, therefore, as held by us, by Aristotle, and by the ancients generally, is not what Hegel supposes it to be, or what he founds his vain censure of the old logic upon. Man always possesses the truth, when, with

* "Es wird erstens vorausgestzt, dass der Stoff des Erkennens, als eine fertige Welt ausserhalb des Denkens, an und für sich vorhanden, dass das Denken für sich leer sey, als eine Form äusserlich, zu jener Materie hinzutrete, sich damit erfülle, erst daran einen Inhalt gewinne, und dadurch ein reales Erkennen werde. Alsdann stehen diese beiden Bestandtheile . . . in dieser Rangordnung gegen einander, dass das Object ein für sich Vollendetes, Fertiges sey, das des Denkens zu seiner Wirklichkeit vollkommen entbehren könne, dahingegen das Denken etwas Mangelhaftes sey, das sich erst an einem Stoffe zu vervollständigen, und zwar als eine weiche unbestimmte Form sich seiner Materie angemessen zu machen habe. Wahrheit ist die Uebereinstimmung des Denkens mit dem Gegenstande, und es soll, um diese Uebereinstimmung hervorzubringen-denn sie ist nicht an und für sich vorhanden-das Denken nach dem Gegenstande sich fügen und bequemen " (Einleitung, p. 28).

his inner judgment, he affirms what is true, not only thinking the object, but recognizing what he naturally thinks. Hence there is a true affirmation and a true negation, and these relate to the form as much as to the matter of thought, so that the question regarding the form and matter of thought and their relation to each other has nothing to do with the question whether man does or does not possess the truth. It was modern philosophers, and especially Germans, that confounded these two utterly distinct questions.

"(4) It is, therefore, false to say that we must unite the matter to the form of thought, in order to possess the truth, or, as Hegel puts it, in order that thought may become a real cognition. By the addition of matter to form, the quantity of human knowledge is certainly increased, but its quality is not thereby changed so that, from being false, it becomes true. Knowledge may be more or less great, more or less materiated; but this has nothing whatever to do with its truth. The question, therefore, regarding the truth of knowledge does not depend upon the matter of knowledge, but upon pronouncing true judgment with respect both to the form and the matter of knowledge.

"(5) To call the form united to the matter real cognition is an abuse of terms. Every human cognition is real, even that which is merely formal; for, although the object of cognition may be a pure idea, still the act of thought which terminates in it is real, as much as the intelligent subject that performs it.

"In all the passage quoted from Hegel, therefore, there is only this much of truth, that the absolute anoetics are wrong in considering the matter of thought, the reality, as a world that stands by itself, utterly apart from, and independent of, thought. . . . But this error was not well observed by Hegel, who, in observing it, fell into the opposite one. In fact, although we may prove that the real world cannot exist without a mind, the consequence drawn from this fact by Hegel does not follow, viz., that there is an absolute interdependence between external reality and the human mind. This interdependence cer

tainly exists, if we speak of the world in so far as it is actually known by man; but man, when he thinks the world, thinks it as existing absolutely, and therefore as independent of the thought of him who thinks it. At the same time, through a higher reflection, he sees that this world cannot exist really without being thought by some mind, for the reason that the act of being upon which it depends is eternal, essentially intelligible, and therefore from all eternity the object of an intelligence.*

"Let us now give a sample of the other way in which Hegel tries to inculcate his system.

Indeed, at the

"He sets out with a sensistic prejudice. bottom of all those philosophies, which seem so speculative, there always lurks sensism, or even materialism, as we shall see. 'We have,' he says, '. . . already alluded to the ancient belief, according to which the real in objects ... does not present itself immediately in consciousness, . . . but must be reflected upon, in order to give the real nature of the object.'† 'By reflection something is changed in the way in which the content originally is in feeling, intuition, and perception. It is, therefore, only by means of a change that the true nature of the object comes into consciousness.' 'Inasmuch as the real nature of things becomes apparent only in reflection, and this reflection is my activity, it follows that this nature is the product of my spirit as a thinking subject, of me according to my simple universality, as the absolutely self-present Ego-or of my freedom.' §

* See an excellent article, entitled Mr. Spencer on the Independence of Matter, by Prof. T. H. Green, in the Contemporary Review for March, 1878.

† "Es ist . der alte Glaube angeführt werden, dass was das Wahrhafte an Gegenständen . . . sich nicht unmittelbar im Bewusstsein einfinde . . sondern dass man erst darüber nachdenken müsse, um zur wahrhaften Beschaffenheit des Gegenstandes zu gelangen" (Encyclopædie, § 21).

"Durch das Nachdenken wird an der Art wie der Inhalt zunächst in der Empfindung, Anschauung, Vorstellung ist, etwas verändert; es ist somit nur vermittelst einer Veränderung, dass die wahre Natur des Gegenstandes zum Bewusstsein kommt" (Ibid., § 22).

§ "Indem im Nachdenken ebensosehr die wahrhafte Natur zum Vorschein kommt als diess Denken meine Thatigkeit ist, so ist jene ebensosehr das Erzeugniss meines Geistes und zwar als denkenden Subjekts, Meiner nach meiner einfachen Allgemeinheit, als des schlechthin bei sich seyenden Ichs oder meiner Freiheit" (Ibid., § 23).

"This is the way in which Hegel pretends to demonstrate that the matter and reality of things issue from the forms of things or from ideas. We believe every man who understands what an important matter and what a paradox are involved in this thesis, will demand, before accepting it, a demonstration a little less flimsy, and, I would almost say, a little less slippery than this. If we analyze it, we shall see that it is vitiated in a hundred places.

"(1) It has for its foundation sensism, a sensism received as a prejudice, accepted as true without even the semblance of proof. Indeed, Hegel lays it down as something beyond question, that the object is given in sensation and in perception; that is, in sense-perception, as is shown by the context. Such, indeed, is the prejudice of sensism. If it be admitted that sense gives us the object, then feeling is transformed into thinking; for this is the essential difference between feeling and thinking, that the former has not an object, but only a term, whereas the latter has an object sensation is a modification, a mode of being of the sentient subject; the idea is an object entirely different from the thinking subject, never a modification, never a mode of its being.

"(2) Hence Hegel wrongly gives the name of reflection to what is only intellective perception, whereby real being is apprehended as the term of initial or ideal being. This perception, which presents real things to thought, is an immediate operation, for the simple reason that sense has no prior object, and merely adds an element to the object of perception. Reflection, on the contrary, is mediate, because it supposes the object as already given, and does not itself construct that object. From this error Hegel falls into another, which is even an absurdity. It is this Nothing immediate can be true, and all truth is mediated.

"(3) Hence, in the same way, it is altogether false, with a vulgar and sensistic falseness, to say that reflection produces a modification in the object previously given in sensation. It is doubly false: First, because, since, as we said above, the object is not given in sensation (the