PROLEGOMENA
TO THE STUDY OF
HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY
AND
ESPECIALLY OF HIS LOGIC
BY
WILLIAM WALLACE
M.A., LL.D.
FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE
AND WHYTE'S PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1894
IN REMEMBRANCE OF
B. JOWETT
LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK
AND
MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE
OXFORD
PREFACE
The present volume of Prolegomena completes the second edition of myLOGIC OF HEGEL which originally appeared in 1874. The translation,which was issued as a separate volume in the autumn of 1892, had beensubjected to revision throughout: such faults as I could detect hadbeen amended, and many changes made in the form of expression with thehope of rendering the interpretation clearer and more adequate. But,with a subject so abstruse and complicated as Hegel's Logic, and astyle so abrupt and condensed as that adopted in his Encyclopaedia,a satisfactory translation can hardly fall within the range ofpossibilities. Only the enthusiasm of youth could have thrown itselfupon such an enterprise; and later years have but to do what they mayto fulfil the obligations of a task whose difficulties have come toseem nearly insuperable. The translation volume was introduced by asketch of the growth of the Encyclopaedia through the three editionspublished in its author's lifetime: and an appendix of notes suppliedsome literary and historical elucidations of the text, with quotationsbearing on the philosophical development between Kant and Hegel.
The Prolegomena, which have grown to more than twice their originalextent, are two-thirds of them new matter. The lapse of twenty yearscould not but involve a change in the writer's attitude, at least indetails, towards both facts and problems. The general purpose of thework, however, still remains the same, to supply an introduction to thestudy of Hegel, especially his Logic, and to philosophy in general.But, in the work of altering and inserting, I can hardly imagine thatI have succeeded in adjusting the additions to the older work withthat artful juncture which would simulate the continuity of organicgrowth. To perform that feat would require a master who surveyed froman imperial outlook the whole system of Hegelianism in its historyand meaning; and I at least do not profess such a mastery. Probablytherefore a critical review will discern inequalities in the ground,and even discrepancies in the statement, of the several chapters. Toremove these strains of inconsistency would in any case have been awork of time and trouble: and, after all, mere differences in depthor breadth of view may have their uses. The writer cannot alwayscompel the reader to understand him, as he himself has not alwaysthe same faculty to penetrate and comprehend the problems he dealswith. In these arduous paths of research it may well happen that theclearest and truest perceptions are not always those which communicatethemselves with fullest persuasion and gift of insight. Schopenhauerhas somewhere compared the structure of his philosophical work to thehundred-gated Thebes: so many, he says, are the points of access itoffers for t