To read Hegel often reminds us of the process we have to go through in trying to answer a riddle. The terms of the problem to be solved are all given to us: the features of the object are, it may be, fully described: and yet somehow we cannot at once tell what it is all about, or add up the sum of which we have the several items. We are waiting to learn the subject of the proposition, of which all these statements may be regarded as the predicates. Something, we feel, has undoubtedly been said: but we are at a loss to see what it has been said about. Our mind wanders round from one familiar object to another, and tries them in succession to see whether any one satisfies the several points in the statement and includes them all. We grope here and there for something we are acquainted with, in which the bits of the description may cohere, and get a unity which they cannot give themselves. When once we have hit upon the right object, our troubles are at an end: and the empty medium is now peopled with a creature of our imagination. We have reached a fixed point in the range of our conception, around which the given features may cluster. All this trouble caused by the Hegelian theory of what philosophy involves--viz. really beginning at the beginning, is saved by a device well known to the several branches of Science. It is the way with them to assume that the student has a rough general image of the objects which they examine; and under the guidance, or with the help of this generalised image, they go on to explain and describe its outlines more completely. They start with an approximate conception, such as anybody may be supposed to have; and this they seek to render more definite. The geologist, for example, could scarcely teach geology', unless he could pre-suppose or produce some acquaintance on the part of his pupils with what Hume would have called an 'impression' or an 'idea' of the rocks and formations of which he has to treat. The geometer gives a short, and, as it were, popular explanation of the sense in which angles, circles, triangles, &c. are to be understood : and then by the aid of these provisional definitions we come to a more scientific notion of the same terms. The third book of Euclid, for example, brings before us a clearer notion of what a circle is, than the nominal explanation in the list of definitions. By means of these temporary aids, or, as we may call them, leading-strings for the intellect, the progress of the ordinary scientific student is made tolerably easy. But v in philosophy, as it is found in Hegel, there is quite another way of working. The helps in question are absent: and until it be seen that they are not even needed, the Hegelian theory will remain a sealed mystery. For that which the first glance seemed to show as an enigma, is only the plain and unambiguous statement of thought. Instead of casting around for images and accustomed names, we have only to accept