his fundamental propositions stand isolated from one another, not to
be resolved into a primitive unity. With him, too, the whole stands
yet on the plane of subjectivity. He speaks, indeed, of the universal
Ego as distinct from the empirical self-consciousness; but the
universal does not rise with him to concrete spirit. Nevertheless the
_Wissenschaftslehre_ contains the only real advance in the treatment
of the categories from the time of Kant to that of Hegel.[9] This, of
course, does not imply that there were not certain elements in
Schelling, particularly in the _Transcendental Idealism_, that are of
value in the transition to the later system; but on the whole it is
only in Hegel that the whole matter of the Kantian categories has been
assimilated and carried to a higher stage. The Hegelian philosophy, in
brief, is a system of the categories; and, as it is not intended here
to expound that philosophy, it is impossible to give more than a few
general and quite external observations as to the Hegelian mode of
viewing these elements of thought. With Kant, as has been seen, the
categories were still subjective, not as being forms of the individual
subject, but as having over against them the world of _noumena_ to
which they were inapplicable. Self-consciousness, which was, even with
Kant, the _nodus_ or kernel whence the categories sprang, was nothing
but a logical centre,--the reality was concealed. There was thus a
dualism, to overcome which is the first step in the Hegelian system.
The principle, if there is to be one, must be universally applicable,
all-comprehensive. Self-consciousness is precisely the principle
wanted; it is a unity, an identity, containing in itself a
multiplicity. The universal in absolute self-consciousness is just
pure thinking, which in systematic evolution is the categories; the
particular is the natural or multiform, the external as such; the
concrete of both is spirit, or self-consciousness come to itself. The
same law that obtains among the categories is found adequate to an
explanation of the external thing which had so sadly troubled Kant.
The categories themselves are moments of the universal of thought,
type forms, or definite aspects which thought assumes; determinations,
_Bestimmungen_, as Hegel most frequently calls them. They evolve by
the same law that was found to be the essence of ultimate
reality--i.e. of s