P. [149], § 81. Plato, the inventor of Dialectic. Sometimes on the authority of Aristotle, as reported by Diog. Laert. ix. 25, Zeno of Elea gets this title; but Hegel refers to such statements as Diog. Laer,', ii. 34 τρίτον δὲ Πλάτων προσέθηκε τὸν διαλεκτικὸν λόγον, καὶ ἐτελεσιουργῆσε φιλοσοφίαν.
Protagoras. But it is rather in the dialogue Meno, pp. 81-97, that Plato exhibits this view of knowledge. Cf. Phaedo,72 E, and Phaedrus, 245.
Parmenides; especially see Plat. Parmen. pp. 142, 166; cf. Hegel, Werke, xi v. 204.
With Aristotle dialectic is set in contrast to apodictic, and treated as (in the modern sense) a quasi-inductive process (Ar. Top. Lib. viii.): with the Stoics, dialectic is the name of the half-rhetorical logic which they, rather than Aristotle, handed on to the schoolmen of the Middle Ages.
P. [150], § 81. The physical elements are fire, air, earth, and water. Earthquakes, storms, &c., are examples of the 'meteorological process.' Cf. Encyclop. §§ 281-289.
P. 152, § 82. Dialectic; cf: Werke, v. 326 seqq.
P. 154, § 82. Mysticism; cf. Mill's Logic, bk. v, ch. 3, § 4: 'Mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective creations of the mind's own faculties, to mere ideas of the intellect; and believing that by watching and contemplating these ideas of its own making, it can read in them what takes place in the world without.' Mill thus takes it as equivalent to an ontological mythology—probably a rare use of the term.
CHAPTER VII.
P. [156], § 85. The Absolute. The term, in something like its modern usage, is at least as old as Nicolaus Cusanus. God, according to him, is the absoluta omnium quidditas (Apol.406), the esse absolutum, or ipsum esse in existentibus (De ludo Globi, ii. 161 a), the unum absolutum, the vis absoluta, or possibilitas absoluta, or valor absolutus: absoluta vita, absoluta ratio: absoluta essendi forma. On this term and its companion infinities he rings perpetual changes. But its distinct employment to denote the 'metaphysical God' is much more modern. In Kant, e.g. the 'Unconditioned' (Das Unbedingte) is the metaphysical, corresponding to the religious, conception of deity; and the same is the case with Fichte, who however often makes use of the adjective 'absolute.' It is with Schelling that the term is naturalised in philosophy: it already appears in his works of 1793 and 1795: and from him apparently it finds its way into Fichte's Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre of 1801 (Werke, ii. 13) 'The absolute is neither knowing nor being; nor is it identity, nor is it indifference of the two; but it is throughout merely and solely the absolute.'
The term comes into English philosophical language through Coleridge and later borrowers from the German. See Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysic, Prop. xx, and Mill's Examination of Hamilton, chap. iv.