I might have republished that memoir, and made in it certain corrections, great and small, and especially I might have enriched it with very numerous developments. But partial corrections and copious additions, while they would have injured the arrangement of the first work, would not have allowed me to attain to that more secure and fuller exposition of logical doctrine which, after four years' study and reflection, it now seems to be in my power to offer. I have therefore resolved to rewrite the work from the beginning on a larger scale, with a new arrangement and new diction regarding its predecessor as a sketch, which in a literary sense stands by itself, and only making use of a page, or group of pages, here and there, as suited the natural order of exposition. Owing to this connection between the present volume with the above-mentioned academic memoir, it will be seen in what sense it may be called, and is called, a "second edition." It is a second edition of my thought rather than of my book. B. C. NAPLES, _November_ 1908. PREFACE TO THIRD ITALIAN EDITION OF THE _LOGIC_ On reprinting the present volume, after an interval of seven years, I have reread it with attention to its literary form, but have made no substantial changes or additions to it; because the further development of that part which deals with the logic of Historiography has been collected in a special volume, forming as it were an appendix. This is now the fourth volume of the _Philosophy of the Spirit._ It seemed to many, upon the first publication of this volume, that it chiefly consisted of a very keen attack upon Science. Few, above all, discovered what it was: _a vindication of the seriousness of logical thought,_ not only in respect to empiricism and abstract thought, but also to intuitionist, mystical and pragmatistic doctrines, and to all the others then very vigorous, which, including justly combated positivism, distorted every form of logicity.