eternal Being of Mind, which moths cannot corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. The conquests made by Thought when constituted into Thought form the very Being of Mind. Such knowledge is thus not learning merely, or a knowledge of what is dead, buried and corrupt: the history of Philosophy has not to do with what is gone, but with the living present. c. _Further comparison between the History of Philosophy and Philosophy itself._ We may appropriate to ourselves the whole of the riches apportioned out in time: it must be shown from the succession in philosophies how that succession is the systematization of the science of Philosophy itself. But a distinction is to be noted here: that which first commences is implicit, immediate, abstract, general—it is what has not yet advanced; the more concrete and richer comes later, and the first is poorer in determinations. This may appear contrary to one’s first impressions, but philosophic ideas are often enough directly opposed to ordinary ideas, and what is generally supposed, is not found to be the case. It may be thought that what comes first must be the concrete. The child, for instance, as still in the original totality of his nature, is thought to be more concrete than the man, hence we imagine the latter to be more limited, no longer forming a totality, but living an abstract life. Certainly the man acts in accordance with definite ends, not bringing his whole soul and mind into a subject, but splitting his life into a number of abstract unities. The child and the youth, on the contrary, act straight from the fulness of the heart. Feeling and sense-perception come first, thought last, and thus feeling appears to us to be more concrete than thought, or the activity of abstraction and of the universal. In reality, it is just the other way. The sensuous consciousness is certainly the more concrete, and if poorer in thought, at least richer in content. We must thus distinguish the naturally concrete from the concrete of thought, which on its side, again, is wanting in sensuous matter. The child is also the most abstract and the poorest in thought: as to what pertains to nature, the man is abstract, but in thought he is more concrete than the child. Man’s ends and objects are undoubtedly abstract in general affairs, such as in maintaining his family or performing his business duties, but he contributes to a great objective organic whole, whose progress he advances and directs. In the acts of a child, on the other hand, only a childish and, indeed, momentary “I,” and in those of the youth the subjective constitution or the random aim, form the principle of action. It is in this way that science is more concrete than sense-perception.