This declaration may save us from the accusation of having given an empirical exposition of the non-empirical _Concept of the concept,_ and so committing an error for which logicians are justly reproved (for they have often believed themselves to possess the right of treating of Logic without logic; perhaps for the same reason that custodians of sacred places are wont, through over-familiarity, to fail in respect towards them). But it lays us open to censure very much more severe; which, if it ultimately prove to be inoffensive, is certainly very noisy and loquacious. The pretended characters of the concepts (it is said) are, by your own confession, nothing but its relations with the other forms of the spirit; and the one character proper to it is that of universality-concreteness, that is, of being itself, since the "concrete-universal" is synonymous with the concept, and _vice versa._ So it turns out that in spite of all your efforts, your concept of the concept becomes dissipated in a tautology. Give us a demonstration of what you affirm, or a definition which is not tautologous; then we shall be able to form some sort of an idea of your pure concept. Otherwise you may talk about it for ever, but for us it will always be like "Phœnician Araby" of Metastasian memory: "you say _that it is; where it is,_ no one knows." [Sidenote: _Prejudice relating to the nature of demonstration._] Beneath such dissatisfaction and the claim it implies, we find first of all a prejudice of scholastic origin concerning what is called _demonstration._ That is to say, it is imagined that demonstration is like an irresistible contrivance, which grasps the learner by the neck and drags him willy-nilly, whither he does not and the teacher does will to go, leaving him open-mouthed before the truth, which stands external to him, and before which he must, _obtorto collo,_ bow himself. But such coercive demonstrations do not exist for any form of knowledge--indeed, for any form of spiritual life--nor is there a truth outside our spirit. Not that truth presupposes _faith,_ as is often said, so that rationality is subordinated to some unknown form of irrationality; but _truth is faith,_ trust in oneself, certainty of oneself, free development of one's inner powers. The light is in us; those sequences of sounds, which are the so-called demonstration, serve only as aids in discarding the veils and directing the gaze; but in themselves they have no power to open the eyes of those who obstinately wish to keep them closed. Faced with this sort of reluctance and rebellion, the pedagogues of the good old days had recourse, as we know, not to demonstrations, but to the stool of penitence and to the stick; so fully were they persuaded that the demonstration of truth requires good dispositions, _i.e._ requires those who are disposed to fall back upon themselves and to look into themselves. How can the beauty of the song of Farinata be demonstrated to one who denies it,