It is usually added that understanding must not go too far. Which is so far correct, that understanding is not an ultimate, but on the contrary finite, and so constituted that when carried to extremes it veers round to its opposite. It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions: but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract 'either--or,' and keeps to the concrete. 81.] (ß) In the Dialectical stage these finite characterisations or formulae supersede themselves, and pass into their opposites. (1) But when the Dialectical principle is employed by the understanding separately and independently,--especially as seen in its application to philosophical theories, Dialectic becomes Scepticism; in which the result that ensues from its action is presented as a mere negation. (2) It is customary to treat Dialectic as an adventitious art, which for very wantonness introduces confusion and a mere semblance of contradiction into definite notions. And in that light, the semblance is the nonentity, while the true reality is supposed to belong to the original dicta of understanding. Often, indeed, Dialectic is nothing more than a subjective see-saw of arguments _pro_ and _con,_ where the absence of sterling thought is disguised by the subtlety which gives birth to such arguments. But in its true and proper character. Dialectic is the very nature and essence of everything predicated by mere understanding,--the law of things and of the finite as a whole. Dialectic is different from 'Reflection.' In the first instance, Reflection is that movement out beyond the isolated predicate of a thing which gives it some reference, and brings out its relativity, while still in other respects leaving it its isolated validity. But by Dialectic is meant the in-dwelling tendency outwards by which the one-sidedness and limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen in its true light, and shown to be the negation of them. For anything to be finite is just to suppress itself and put itself aside. Thus understood the Dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent connexion and necessity to the body of science; and, in a word, is seen to constitute the real and true, as opposed to the external, exaltation above the finite.