In these circumstances nothing can sound higher and nobler than the Theory of Logic. It presents the Truth unveiled in its proper form and absolute nature. If the philosopher may call this absolute totality of thought ever staying the same in its eternal development,--this adequacy of thought to its own requirements--by the name of God, then we may say with Hegel that Logic exhibits God as He is in His eternal Being before the creation of Nature and a finite Mind.[11] But the logical Idea is only a phantom Deity--the bare possibility of a God or of absolute reality in all the development of its details.
The first acquaintance with the abstract theory is likely to dash cold water on the enthusiasm thus awakened, and may sober our views of the magic efficacy of Logic. 'The student on his first approach to the Science,' says Hegel, 'sees in Logic at first only one system of abstractions apart and limited to itself, not extending so as to include other facts and sciences. On the contrary, when it is contrasted with the variety abounding in our generalised picture of the world, and with the tangible realities embraced in the other sciences,--when it is compared with the promise of the Absolute Science to lay bare the essence of that variety, the inner nature of the mind and the world, or, in one word, the Truth,--this science of Logic in its abstract outline, in the colourless cold simplicity of its mere terms of thought, seems as if it would perform anything sooner than this promise, and in the face of that variety seems very empty indeed. A first introduction to the study of Logic leads us to suppose that its significance is restricted to itself. Its doctrines are not believed to be more than one separate branch of study engaged with the terms or dimensions of thought, besides which the other scientific occupations have a proper material and body of their own. Upon these occupations, it is assumed, Logic may exert a formal influence, but it is the influence of a natural and spontaneous logic for which the scientific form and its study may be in case of need dispensed with. The other sciences have upon the whole rejected the regulation-method, which made them a series of definitions, axioms, and theorems, with the demonstration of these theorems. What is called Natural Logic rules in the sciences with full sway, and gets along without any special investigation in the direction of thought itself. The entire materials and facts of these sciences have detached themselves completely from Logic. Besides they are more attractive for sense, feeling, or imagination, and for practical interests of every description.