It is beyond our design to present an expanded view of the entire philosophy of Hegel. But as he has given to the world a _new_ logic, it may be needful to glance at its general features as a help to the comprehension of his philosophy of religion. The fundamental law of his logic is the _identity of contraries or contradictions_. All thought is a synthesis of contraries or opposites. This antithesis not only exists in all ideas, but constitutes them. In every idea we form, there must be _two_ things opposed and distinguished, in order to afford a clear conception. Light can not be conceived but as the opposite of darkness; good can not be thought except in opposition to evil. All life, all reality is thus, essentially, the union of two elements, which, together, are mutually opposed to, and yet imply each other. The identity of Being and Nothing is one of the consequences of this law. 1. _The Absolute is the Being_ (das Absolute ist das Seyn), and "the Being" is here, according to Hegel, bare, naked, abstract, undistinguished, indeterminate, unconscious idea. 2. _The Absolute is the Nothing_ (das Absolute ist das Nichts). "Pure being is pure abstraction, and consequently the absolute-negative, which in like manner, directly taken, is _nothing_." Being and Nothing are the positive and negative poles of the Idea, that is, the Absolute. They both alike exist, they are both pure abstractions, both absolutely unconditioned, without attributes, and without consciousness. Hence follows the conclusion-- 3. _Being and Nothing are identical_ (das Seyn und das Nichts ist dasselbe), Being is non-Being. Non-Being _is_ Being--the Anders-seyn--which becomes _as_ Being to the Seyn. Nothing is, in some sense, an actual thing. _Being_ and _Nothing_ are thus the two elements which enter into the one Absolute Idea as contradictories, and both together combine to form a complete notion of bare production, or the _becoming_ of something out of nothing,--the unfolding of real existence in its lowest form, that is, of _nature_. The "_Philosophy of Nature_" exhibits a series of necessary movements which carry the idea forward in the ascending scale of sensible existence. The laws of mechanics, chemistry, and physiology are resolved into a series of oppositions. But the law which governs this development requires the self-reconciliation of these opposites. The idea, therefore, which in nature was unconscious and ignorant of itself, returns upon itself, and becomes conscious of itself, that is, becomes _mind_. The science of the regression or self-reflection of the idea, is the "_Philosophy of Mind_."