[Footnote 2: _Die Natur_ (1780): 'Sie lebt in lauter Kindern: und die Mutter, wo ist sie?.... Sie ist ganz und doch immer unvollendet.... Sie verbirgt sich in tausend Namen und Termen, und ist immer dieselbe.'] [Footnote 3: _Logic (Encyclop.)_ §§ 85, 87, 112, 194, &c.] [Footnote 4: Metaphysic is, in Kant's usage, ambiguous. It means (_a_) a supposed science of the supersensible or unconditioned reality; (_b_) a study of the conditions or presuppositions--the Kantian _a priori_--of some aspect of Experience, e. g. a Metaphysic of Moral rules.] [Footnote 5: His usual term is _Denkbestimmungen,_ the several expressions or specific forms of the unification which thought is. The term Categories has been identified by Kant with his list of _Stammbegriffe._ and by Mill with his classes of nameable things,--with some critical remarks on Aristotle's use of the word. That use--to denote the elements of predicable reality, what Grote called _ens_--is probably not so 'rhapsodical' as Kant, with his new-born zeal for the contrast of sensibility and intellect, was inclined to suppose. A real history of the Category-theory would be almost a history of philosophy. Perhaps the name might be more sparingly used.] [Footnote 6: Generalisation is only one small aspect of thought, with specialisation as its, at least as important, pendant. To read certain logics, one might think the all-comprehensive virtue of truths were to be general,--not to be true.] [Footnote 7: ὅν and μὴ ὅν: τὸ γιγνόμενον: τὸ ἐξ οὗ: τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα: τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι: τὸ τί ἐστι: θάτερον: ἕν: τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν: τὸ καθ' ὅλου: τὸ καθ' ἔκαστον: τόδε τί.] CHAPTER XXVIII. THE THREE PARTS OF LOGIC. Logic, as it is understood in these pages, is the critical history of the terms of thought by which reality, the sum of experience, the world, is described or expressed. It is the philosophical criticism of the concepts, or elements of conception, by which we define or develop the Totality, the Absolute. It describes the constitution of the intellectual realm, by and in which we give body, coherence, unity, and system to reality. It is the self-developing organisation of the thoughts by which we think things, and by which things are what they are. It is the ripe fruit of the experience of the ages of humanity, and it therefore bears in itself a principle of growth. But if it be a fruit, it is a fruit which can watch its own growth, which reflects upon its own life. Its three parts show the main stages of its development, beginning with the least adequate and most abstract or general description of reality.