470 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



principle of the world. In describing the categories of 

 thought, Hegel thus meant to describe also the forms 

 and stages of the world-process. The detailed account 

 of this, which was significantly called the dialectical pro- 

 cess, must necessarily follow the order of the abstract 

 notions with which the human mind operates and in 

 which it is, as it were, forced to move onward from one 

 idea to another. The Logic or the evolution of the 

 Logos exhibits therefore at the same time the deeper 

 meaning of the formal categories of the ordinary logic, 

 and brings into a scheme, intelligible to the human 

 mind, the life and movement of the underlying spirit 

 and essence of things. The different philosophies which 

 preceded Hegel had already suggested the formula or 

 rhythm which seems to govern the various stages of 

 human thought. Thus Kant had already pointed out 

 how affirmation and negation become united in limita- 

 tion ; how the notion of unity and its opposite, the 

 notion of plurality, are united in the notion of the all. 

 Fichte had employed the rhythm of thesis, antithesis, 

 and synthesis ; Schelling had conceived the idea of an 

 identity which splits up into opposites and comes 

 together again in the position of indifference. Follow- 

 ing these suggestions and partial applications of what 

 he considered the general process of thinking and being, 

 Hegel conceived that every content, be it the high- 

 est idea or only a lower stage of its manifestation, 

 finds its first definition by its contrary or opposite, 

 by something which it is not, and from which it is 

 differentiated ; that a second and fuller definition con- 

 sists in finding what is common to the two opposites, 



