The purpose of the Encyclopedia is descriptive: to describe how Geist (Spirit or Mind) develops itself and not to apply the dialectical method to all areas of human knowledge, but Spirit is in process of growing, like a seed growing into a mature tree: it passes through stages. The first stage of Spirit's development is described in the Logic. Thus the Logic presents the categories of thought as they are in themselves; they are the minimal conditions for thinking anything at all, the conceptions that run in the background of all our thinking.