scrutinized as to their adequacy and
concreteness. When not challenged, the point of view of common sense,
for instance, seems concrete and natural. The reaction of common sense
to the world is direct and practical, it has few questions to ask, and
philosophic speculations appear to it abstract and barren. But, upon
analysis, it is the common sense view that stands revealed as abstract
and barren. For an abstract object is one that does not fully correspond
to the rich and manifold reality; it is incomplete and one-sided.

Precisely such an object is the world of common sense. Its concreteness
is ignorance. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt
of by common sense. Its work-a-day world is not even a faint reflex of
the vast and complex universe. It sees but the immediate, the obvious,
the superficial. So instead of being concrete, it is, in truth, the very
opposite. Nor is empirical science with its predilection for "facts"
better off. Every science able to cope with a mere fragmentary aspect of
the world and from a partial point of view, is forced to ignore much of
the concrete content of even its own realm. Likewise, art and religion,
though in their views more synthetic and therefore more concrete, are
one-sided; they seek to satisfy special needs. Philosophy
alone--Hegelian philosophy--is concrete. Its aim is to interpret the
world in its entirety and complexity, its ideal is to harmonize the
demands of common sense, the interests of science, the appeal of art,
and the longing of religion into one coherent whole. This view of
philosophy, because it deals with the universe in its fulness and
variety, alone can make claim to real concreteness. Nor are the other
views false. They form for Hegel the necessary rungs on the ladder which
leads up to his own philosophic vision. Thus the Hegelian vision is
itself an organic process, including all other interpretations of life
and of the world as its necessary phases. In the immanent unfolding of
the Hegelian view is epitomized the onward march and the organic unity
of the World-Spirit itself.

The technical formulation of this view is contained in his _Logic_.
This book may indeed be said to be Hegel's master-stroke. Nothing less
is attempted in it than the proof that the very process of reasoning
manifests the same principle of evolution through a union of opposites.
Hegel was well aware, as much as recent exponents of anti-intellectualism,
that through