The apprehension of a thing from one side or aspect,--the apprehension of one thing apart from its connexions,--the retention of a term or formula apart from its context,--is what Hegel terms 'abstract.' Ordinary terms are essentially abstract. They spring from the analysis of something which would, in the first stage of the process, in strictness be described not as concrete, but as chaos:--as the indefinite or 'manifold' of sensation. But the first conceptions, which spring from this group when it is analysed, are abstract: they are each severed from the continuity of their reality. To interpret our feeling, our experience as felt, we must break it up. But the first face that presents itself is apt to impress us unduly, and seems more real, because nearer feeling: on the other it is more unreal, because less adequate as a total expression of the felt unity. In the same sense we call Political Economy an abstract science, because it looks upon man as a money-making and money-distributing creature, and keeps out of sight his other qualities. Our notions in this way are more abstract or more concrete, according as our grasp of thought extends to less or more of the relations which are necessarily pre-supposed by them. On the other hand, when a term of thought owns and emphasises its solidarity with others, when it is not circumscribed to a single relation, but becomes a focus in which a variety of relations converge, when it is placed in its right post in the organism of thought, its limits and qualifications as it were recognised and its degree ascertained,--then that thought is rendered 'concrete.' A concrete notion is a notion in its totality, looking before and after, connected indissolubly with others: a unity of elements, a meeting-point of opposites. An abstract notion is one withdrawn from everything that naturally goes along with it, and enters into its constitution. All this is no disparagement of abstraction. To abstract is a necessary stage in the process of knowledge. But it is equally necessary to insist on the danger of clinging, as to an ultimate truth, to the pseudo-simplicity of abstraction, which forgets altogether what it is in certain situations desirable for a time to overlook.