470 INTELLECTUAL SYMBOLISM. 
there should be three changes; for that from a non-characteristic into a non-characteristic 
is not a change.” 
20. On this view of the possible relations that can constitute the groundwork of pro- 
positions, the whole philosophy of Hegel appears to rest. He teaches “that everywhere 
the idea or notion appears first of all in its immediateness or intrinsic reality, that it then 
passes judgment upon itself, or becomes resolved into its opposite, and ultimately coalesces 
from out these antagonisms. From this very method results the whole structure or sub- 
division of the system. The Absolute, the being-thinking or Jdee, has to pass through 
three momenta, and in the first place, to present itself as bare idea in and for itself. 
Secondly, in its differentiation or objective state, externality; and thirdly, as the idea 
that has returned from its externality into itself. In the first state, it is the purely logi- 
cal Idee, the thinking process taken in the stricter sense as such in and for itself; in the 
second, it is the Jdee in its externality, or departure from itself into a temporospatial 
disjunctivity, 2. e. nature ; and in the third, it is the mind or intelligence. Accordingly 
the whole of philosophy, or the thinking process, which has comprehended itself in this 
its active state, has three cardinal divisions, the Logic, which with Hegel, as is readily 
seen, implies also Metaphysics; the Philosophy of Nature, and Philosophy of Mind... . 
21. “ Within each of these three cardinal divisions, the same rhythmical movement 
repeats itself, and produces a like threefold division. The Logic has to deal (a) with the 
first immediateness, or with being; (0) this divides itself into the antagonism of essence 
and existence, and these finally coalesce together to form the idea (Begrif), with which we 
have already become acquainted, both in its real as well as ideal import, as the living 
circulation of momenta including itself within itself’”* 
22. These expositions of some of the most profound thoughts of Greek and German 
philosophy are well worthy of attention, and notwithstanding the obscurity with which 
they are clothed by foreign idiomatic forms of thinking and expression, it is easy to dis- 
cern, in the general idea of which they are special and profitable applications, the grand, 
fundamental idea of all philosophy,—the idea of relativity, as the basis of analysis and 
synthesis, This idea, in its broadest generality, may be thus stated with mathematical 
vigor. 
23. Given a and 6, there can be four, and only four relations of antecedent and conse- 
quent, viz., aa, ab, ba, bb. 
Of these four possible relations, only three can concern either of the given terms, e. g., 
a is involved only in the three relations, aa, ab, ba, and b only in ab, ba, bb. 
24, The fundamental relations involved in Philosophy are, as we have already seen, the 
* Chalybiius, pp. 843-5. 
