(of
the world as well as of science) is opposition, _contradiction_. Without
this there would be no movement and no life. Thus all reality is full of
contradiction, and yet rational. The contradiction is not that which is
entirely alogical, but it is a spur to further thinking. It must not
be annulled, but "sublated" _(aufgehoben), _i.e._, at once negated and
conserved. This is effected by thinking the contradictory concepts together
in a third higher, more comprehensive, and richer concept, whose moments
they then form. As sublated moments they contradict each other no longer;
the opposition or contradiction is overcome. But the synthesis is still
not a final one; the play begins anew; again an opposition makes its
appearance, which in turn seeks to be overcome, etc. Each separate concept
is one-sided, defective, represents only a part of the truth, needs to be
supplemented by its contrary, and, by its union with this, its complement,
yields a higher concept, which comes nearer to the whole truth, but still
does not quite reach it. Even the last and richest concept--the absolute
Idea--is by itself alone not the full truth; the result implies the whole
development through which it has been attained. It is only at the end
of such a dialectic of concepts that philosophy reaches complete
correspondence with the living reality, which it has to comprehend; and the
speculative progress of thought is no capricious sporting with concepts
on the part of the thinking subject, but the adequate expression of
the movement of the matter itself. Since the world and its ground is
development, it can only be known through a development of concepts. The
law which this follows, in little as in great, is the advance from position
to opposition, and thence to combination. The most comprehensive example
of this triad--Idea, Nature, Spirit--gives the division of the system; the
second--Subjective, Objective, Absolute Spirit--determines the articulation
of the third part.

%2. The System.%

Hegel began with a _Phenomenology_ by way of introduction, in which (not
to start, like the school of Schelling, with absolute knowledge "as though
shot from a pistol") he describes the genesis of philosophical cognition
with an attractive mingling of psychological and philosophico-historical
points of view. He makes spirit--the universal world-spirit as well as
the individual consciousness, which repeats in brief the stages in the
development of humanit