Hegel, in other words, anticipated somewhat the actual outcome of the scientific movement. However significant fact may be, however true it may be that an apart faculty of thought is an absurdity, however certain it may be that there are no real types or methods of thought at all excepting those of the object-matter itself as it comes to be understood, yet to man this objective significance cannot be real till he has made it _out_ in the details of scientific processes, and _made_ it applied science in invention. Hegel’s standpoint was, therefore, of necessity obscure. When the significant character of fact was not yet opened up in detail, a method which worked upon the basis that the only possible thought is the reflection of the significance of fact, had no chance of fair interpretation.. And thus it was (and largely is) that when Hegel speaks of objective thought and its relations, he is understood as having the ordinary conception of thought (that is, of thought as a purely separate and subjective faculty), and yet as trying to prove that this apart faculty has some mysterious power of evolving truth. The question which now confronts us, therefore, as to the present place of logic is just this: Has the application of scientific thought to the world of fact gone far enough so that we can speak, without seeming strained, of the rationality of fact? When we speak of the rationality, of the intrinsic meaning of fact, can these terms be understood in their direct and obvious sense, and not in any remote, or _merely_ metaphysical sense? Has the theoretical consideration of nature in its detailed study, has practical invention, as the manifestation of the rationality of fact, gone far enough so that this significance has become, or could become with some effort, as real and objective a material of study as are molecules and vibrations?