THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES IN OUTLINE is the third in time of the four works which Hegel published. It was preceded by the _Phenomenology of Spirit,_ in 1807, and the _Science of Logic_ (in two volumes), in 1812-16, and was followed by the _Outlines of the Philosophy of Law_ in 1820. The only other works which came directly from his hand are a few essays, addresses, and reviews. The earliest of these appeared in the _Critical Journal of Philosophy,_ issued by his friend Schelling and himself, in 1802--when Hegel was one and thirty, which, as Bacon thought, 'is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass'; and the latest were his contributions to the _Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik,_ in the year of his death (1831). This _Encyclopaedia_ is the only complete, matured, and authentic statement of Hegel's philosophical system. But, as the title-page bears, it is only an outline; and its primary aim is to supply a manual for the guidance of his students. In its mode of exposition the free flight of speculation is subordinated to the needs of the professorial class-room. Pegasus is put in harness. Paragraphs concise in form and saturated with meaning postulate and presuppose the presiding spirit of the lecturer to fuse them into continuity and raise them to higher lucidity. Yet in two directions the works of Hegel furnish a supplement to the defects of the _Encyclopaedia._ One of these aids to comprehension is the _Phenomenology of Spirit,_ published in his thirty-seventh year. It may be going too far to say with David Strauss that it is the Alpha and Omega of Hegel, and his later writings only extracts from it.[1] Yet here the Pegasus of mind soars free through untrodden fields of air, and tastes the joys of first love and the pride of fresh discovery in the quest for truth. The fire of young enthusiasm has not yet been forced to hide itself and smoulder away in apparent calm. The mood is Olympian--far above the turmoil and bitterness of lower earth, free from the bursts of temper which emerge later, when the thinker has to mingle in the fray and endure the shafts of controversy. But the _Phenomenology,_ if not less than the _Encyclopaedia_ it contains the diamond purity of Hegelianism, is a key which needs consummate patience and skill to use with advantage. If it commands a larger view, it demands a stronger wing of him who would join its voyage through the atmosphere of thought up to its purest empyrean. It may be the royal road to the Idea, but only a kingly soul can retrace its course.