To the question "what is truth?" Hegel replies (with Socrates and Aristotle and most other systematic thinkers of the West) that it is a ratio. He holds that it is not simple but composed, and that, in the pursuit of knowledge, it comes not among the first things, but among the last. More precisely: truth for Hegel is neither a subjective idea in itself nor an objective thing in itself, neither a universal abstractly conceived nor a particular empirically apprehended, but an adequate linking-together in reason (ratio) of thought and thing, universal and particular.