AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 231 



the one absolutely complete system of Thought. For, as 

 we have seen, thought is the truth of the world, and the 

 world but the concrete form of thought. Hence, while 

 pedants play with words and trifle with thought in the 

 name of that logic which is said to deal solely with the 

 forms of thought, and to have nothing to do with the 

 truth of things, people who deal with things as the 

 embodiment of truth clearly recognize the existence of 

 a "logic of events," and shape their lives in accordance 

 with the inexorable order of reason, which they designate 

 under that name. 



Now the true "logic of events" is just the absolute 

 system of thought constituting the vitality of the total 

 world. And this system, explicitly stated, would exhibit 

 the true logic wherein the universal and necessary rela- 

 tions of thought as such are traced out. It is upon 

 precisely this task, indeed, that the greatest thinkers of 

 the world have exerted their best powers. Aristotle's 

 work in this direction, it is well known, was done with 

 such thoroughness as to remain unrivaled for two thou- 

 sand years. 



And yet he emphasized the formal aspect so far as to 

 afford somewhat plausible excuse for the development 

 of this phase in a spirit wholly foreign to his own, and 

 with an excess of pedantic trifling that brought, as it 

 could not fail to bring, contempt upon the very name of 

 logic. 



It was Kant who gave irresistible impulse toward the 

 restoration of vitality to this science, and Hegel who 

 organized it on a wholly new basis, so that, under his 

 hand, it appears as the outlines of the genuine, vital 

 system of thought as such both in its subjective and in 



