refuted, by those who succeed them. Once they reigned supreme, now they
are subordinated to a power or idea greater or more comprehensive than
their own. The thoughts of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle have certainly
sunk deep into the mind of the world, and have exercised an influence which
will never pass away; but can we say that they have the same meaning in
modern and ancient philosophy? Some of them, as for example the words
'Being,' 'essence,' 'matter,' 'form,' either have become obsolete, or are
used in new senses, whereas 'individual,' 'cause,' 'motive,' have acquired
an exaggerated importance. Is the manner in which the logical
determinations of thought, or 'categories' as they may be termed, have been
handed down to us, really different from that in which other words have
come down to us? Have they not been equally subject to accident, and are
they not often used by Hegel himself in senses which would have been quite
unintelligible to their original inventors--as for example, when he speaks
of the 'ground' of Leibnitz ('Everything has a sufficient ground') as
identical with his own doctrine of the 'notion' (Wallace's Hegel), or the
'Being and Not-being' of Heracleitus as the same with his own 'Becoming'?

As the historical order of thought has been adapted to the logical, so we
have reason for suspecting that the Hegelian logic has been in some degree
adapted to the order of thought in history. There is unfortunately no
criterion to which either of them can be subjected, and not much forcing
was required to bring either into near relations with the other. We may
fairly doubt whether the division of the first and second parts of logic in
the Hegelian system has not really arisen from a desire to make them accord
with the first and second stages of the early Greek philosophy. Is there
any reason why the conception of measure in the first part, which is formed
by the union of quality and quantity, should not have been equally placed
in the second division of mediate or reflected ideas? The more we analyze
them the less exact does the coincidence of philosophy and the history of