Note 4 — Chapter XXX

When it is said that: 'It is strange that so profound a thinker as Hegel should not have seen that the conception of definite objects, such as a dog and cat, is prior no less in nature than in knowledge to the conception of abstract relations, such as is and is not,' it is difficult to say what the writer meant. Had he ever heard of geometry? Both in nature and in knowledge (i. e. in the natural process from sense to thought) chairs and tables are prior to lines and surface. The mathematical point and line are abstractions, i. e. thoughts, and no image of sensuous reality. It is also true that the ordinary conception of the sun's movements was 'prior no less in nature than in knowledge' to the theory of the earth's rotation. And no doubt Hegel, sedate though his boyhood was, had made the acquaintance of dog and cat in his pre-logical days: as of balls and windows before he was turned upon Euclid. See Mansel's Letters, Lectures, &c., p. 209.