The Logic of Hegel is the Science of Thought as an organic system of its characteristic forms, which in their entirety constitute the Idea. These forms or types of thought, the moulds in which the Idea confines itself in its evolution, are not unlike what have been otherwise called the Categories. (Of course the foreign word 'Categories' does not commend itself to Hegel).[5] They are the modifications or definite forms, the articulated and distinct shapes, in which the process of Thought ever and anon culminates in the course of its movement. The Infinite and Absolute at these points conditions itself, and as so conditioned or differentiated is apprehended and stamped with a name. They specify the unspecified, and give utterance to the ineffable. They are the names by which reason grasps the totality of things,--the names by which the truth (or God) reveals itself, however inadequately. From one point of view they constitute a series, each evolved from the other, a more completely detailed term or utterance of thought resulting by innate contradiction from a less detailed. From another point of view the total remains perpetually the same; and the change seems only on the surface. The one aspect of the movement conceals the Absolute: the other puts the Relative into the background. What then are the Categories? We may answer: They are the ways in which expression is given to the unifying influence of thought: and we have to consider them as points or stations in the progress of this unification, and in the light of this influence. These Categories are the typical structures marking the definite grades in the growth of thought,--the moulds or forms which thought assumes and places itself in,--those instants when the process of thought takes a determinate form, and admits of being grasped. The growth of thought, like other growths, is often imperceptible and impalpable. And then, unexpectedly, a condensation takes place, a form is precipitated out of the transparent medium. A new concept, a new grasp of reality, emerges from the solution of elements: and a name is created to realise the new shade of the Idea. These thought-terms are the world of Platonic forms, if we consider his 'form of Good' as corresponding to the 'Idea' of Hegel. For if we look carefully into this mystic word 'Good' which plays so brilliant a part in ancient philosophy, we shall see that it only expresses in a more concrete and less analytic form, as ancient thought often does, the same thing as so many moderns love to speak of as Relativity, and which is also implied in Aristotle's conception of an End. To see things _sub specie boni_--which Plato describes as the supreme quality of the truth-seeker who is to guide men into uprightness, or into conformity with the true nature of things,--is to see them elevated above their partial self-subsistence into the harmony and totality of that which is always and unvaryingly its real self.