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100
FOUR AND TWENTY MINDS

deed, since it has as the field of its labors just one concept. A single concept would not in any case suffice for the building of a system—and this particular concept is meaningless.

For Hegel himself, after saying that the concept must be universal, proceeds, even when he claims to be writing philosophy, to deal with concepts which are not in the least universal. In the Logic, for instance, he speaks of quality, measure, force, and matter—of concepts, that is, which evidently are not universal concepts, since according to Hegel himself they do not concern all reality or any characteristic of all reality. Even philosophers, then, must have recourse to the "general" concepts that obtain in the experimental sciences.

And Croce himself, when he draws up a list of opposites, is compelled to cite the "good" and the "evil," the "true" and the "false," the "beautiful" and the "ugly," which are certainly not universal concepts, since not all things are beautiful, nor are all affirmations false, nor all actions good. Philosophers then, even when they have had the privilege of reading Hegel, use either words which are devoid of sense, or concepts as general as those of the poor everyday scientist.

But the philosophic concept, as we have seen, is to be distinguished from the pseudo-concepts of science not only by its universality, but also by its concreteness. It is concrete: that is to