used these writings only to indicate how Hegel distinguished himself from those prior thinkers of whose inadequacy he had convinced himself at this date.
The third section of his ethical and political works consists of one volume, the Phenomenology. This was published in 1807 and marks Hegel’s breach with Schelling. It is thus the first treatise which presents the special standpoint of Hegel’s own thought. The Phenomenology occupies a peculiar position: it is both a part of philosophy, and an introduction to it. It is an analysis of the various attitudes of thought to the world and a review of the various phenomenal appearances of mind. It exposes the way in which each typical form of mind organizes itself, the relations which it maintains to its object, and the kind of object which it apprehends. It begins with the simplest attitude to the world, and passes stage by stage to the highest and most adequate. At each step it has a twofold task: it explains the nature of the point of view in question, and it does so in such a way that its inadequacies become plain and force us to pass to a more satisfactory standpoint.
At a certain point of this process Hegel reaches the ethical consciousness, explains its structure and function, and discusses its adequacy and validity. This examination, of course, is important for our purpose, and I have made free use of it. But there are two qualifications to be kept in mind in this reference. The first of these is that the Phenomenology is an analysis of actual phases of consciousness, or to put it otherwise, it deals with types of facts; and consequently the correspondence is not absolute between it and the analysis of the Philosophy of Right which considers the arrangement of the principles of the ethical world, not in their definite embodiment as phenomenal attitudes of mind, but in their interrelation as categories of the world. There is, of course, a very considerable agreement, for, as we shall see, these categories
