In these ways the operations of Scepticism are undoubtedly directed against the finite. But however much force these moments of its negative dialectic may have against the properly-speaking dogmatic knowledge of the understanding, its attacks against the true infinite of the speculative Idea are most feeble and unsatisfactory. For this last is in its nature nothing finite or determinate, it has not the one-sided character which pertains to the proposition, for it has the absolute negative in itself; in itself it is round, it contains this determinate and its opposite in their ideality in itself. In so far as this Idea, as the unity of these opposites, is itself again outwardly a determinate, it stands exposed to the power of the negative; indeed its nature and reality is just to move continually on, so that as determinate it again places itself in unity with the determinates opposed to it, and thus organizes itself into a whole whose starting-point again coincides with the final result. This identity is quite different from that of the understanding; the object as concrete in itself, is, at the same time, opposed to itself; but the dialectic solution of this finite and other is likewise already contained in the speculative, without Scepticism having first had to demonstrate this; for the rational, as comprehended, does, as regards the determinate, just what Scepticism tries to do. However, if Scepticism attempts to deal with this properly speculative element, it can in no way lay hold of it, nor make any progress except by doing violence to the speculative itself; thus the method of its procedure against the rational is this, that it makes the latter into a determinate, and always first of all introduces into it a finite thought-determination or idea of relationship to which it adheres, but which is not really in the infinite at all; and then it argues against the same. That is to say it comprehends it falsely and then proceeds to contradict it. Or it first of all gives the infinite the itch in order to be able to scratch it. The Scepticism of modern times, with which for crudity of comprehension and false teaching the old cannot compare, is specially noteworthy in this respect. Even now what is speculative is transformed into something crude; it is possible to remain faithful to the letter, and yet to pervert the whole matter, because the identity of the determinate has been carried over to the speculative. What here appears to be most natural and impartial is to have an investigation made of what the principle of a speculative philosophy is; its essential nature seems to be expressed thereby, and nothing is apparently added or imputed to it, nor does any change appear to be effected in it. Now, here, according to the conception of the non-speculative sciences, it is placed in this dilemma: the principle is either an unproved hypothesis or demands a proof which in turn implies the principle. The