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Title: The Logic of Hegel
Author: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Language: English
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THE LOGIC OF HEGEL
_TRANSLATED FROM_
_THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE
PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES_
WILLIAM WALLACE, M.A, LL.D.
FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE
AND WHYTE'S PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1892
NOTE
The present volume contains a translation, which has been revised
throughout and compared with the original, of the Logic as given in the
first part of Hegel's _Encyclopaedia,_ preceded by a bibliographical
account of the three editions and extracts from the prefaces of that
work, and followed by notes and illustrations of a philological rather
than a philosophical character on the text. This introductory chapter
and these notes were not included in the previous edition.
The volume containing my Prolegomena is under revision and will be
issued shortly.
W. W.
CONTENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE ON THE THREE EDITIONS AND THREE PREFACES OF THE
ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES
_THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC._
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER II.
PRELIMINARY NOTION
CHAPTER III.
FIRST ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY
CHAPTER IV.
SECOND ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY:
I. _Empiricism_
II. _The Critical Philosophy_
CHAPTER V.
THIRD ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY:--
_Immediate or Intuitive Knowledge_
CHAPTER VI.
LOGIC FURTHER DEFINED AND DIVIDED
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC:--_The Doctrine of Being_
CHAPTER VIII.
SECOND SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC:--_The Doctrine of Essence_
CHAPTER IX.
THIRD SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC:--_The Doctrine of the Notion_
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
ON CHAPTER
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
ON THE THREE EDITIONS AND THREE PREFACES OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA
THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES IN OUTLINE is the third
in time of the four works which Hegel published. It was preceded by
the _Phenomenology of Spirit,_ in 1807, and the _Science of Logic_ (in
two volumes), in 1812-16, and was followed by the _Outlines of the
Philosophy of Law_ in 1820. The only other works which came directly
from his hand are a few essays, addresses, and reviews. The earliest
of these appeared in the _Critical Journal of Philosophy,_ issued by
his friend Schelling and himself, in 1802--when Hegel was one and
thirty, which, as Bacon thought, 'is a great deal of sand in the
hour-glass'; and the latest were his contributions to the _Jahrbücher
für wissenschaftliche Kritik,_ in the year of his death (1831).
This _Encyclopaedia_ is the only complete, matured, and authentic
statement of Hegel's philosophical system. But, as the title-page
bears, it is only an outline; and its primary aim is to supply a manual
for the guidance of his students. In its mode of exposition the free
flight of speculation is subordinated to the needs of the professorial
class-room. Pegasus is put in harness. Paragraphs concise in form and
saturated with meaning postulate and presuppose the presiding spirit
of the lecturer to fuse them into continuity and raise them to higher
lucidity. Yet in two directions the works of Hegel furnish a supplement
to the defects of the _Encyclopaedia._
One of these aids to comprehension is the _Phenomenology of Spirit,_
published in his thirty-seventh year. It may be going too far to say
with David Strauss that it is the Alpha and Omega of Hegel, and his
later writings only extracts from it.[1] Yet here the Pegasus of mind
soars free through untrodden fields of air, and tastes the joys of
first love and the pride of fresh discovery in the quest for truth. The
fire of young enthusiasm has not yet been forced to hide itself and
smoulder away in apparent calm. The mood is Olympian--far above the
turmoil and bitterness of lower earth, free from the bursts of temper
which emerge later, when the thinker has to mingle in the fray and
endure the shafts of controversy. But the _Phenomenology,_ if not less
than the _Encyclopaedia_ it contains the diamond purity of Hegelianism,
is a key which needs consummate patience and skill to use with
advantage. If it commands a larger view, it demands a stronger wing of
him who would join its voyage through the atmosphere of thought up to
its purest empyrean. It may be the royal road to the Idea, but only a
kingly soul can retrace its course.
The other commentary on the _Encyclopaedia_ is supplied partly by
Hegel's other published writings, and partly by the volumes (IX-XV in
the Collected works) in which his editors have given his Lectures on
the Philosophy of History, on Aesthetic, on the Philosophy of Religion,
and on the History of Philosophy. All of these lectures, as well as
the _Philosophy of Law,_ published by himself, deal however only with
the third part of the philosophic system. That system (p. 28) includes
(i) Logic, (ii) Philosophy of Nature, and (iii) Philosophy of Spirit.
It is this third part--or rather it is the last two divisions therein
(embracing the great general interests of humanity, such as law and
morals, religion and art, as well as the development of philosophy
itself) which form the topics of Hegel s most expanded teaching. It
is in this region that he has most appealed to the liberal culture of
the century, and influenced (directly or by reaction) the progress of
that philosophical history and historical philosophy of which our own
generation is reaping the fast-accumulating fruit. If one may foist
such a category into systematic philosophy, we may say that the study
of the 'Objective' and 'Absolute Spirit' is the most _interesting_ part
of Hegel.
Of the second part of the system there is less to be said. For nearly
half a century the study of nature has passed almost completely out
of the hands of the philosophers into the care of the specialists of
science. There are signs indeed everywhere--and among others Helmholtz
has lately reminded us--that the higher order of scientific students
are ever and anon driven by the very logic of their subject into the
precincts or the borders of philosophy. But the name of a Philosophy
of Nature still recalls a time of hasty enthusiasms and over-grasping
ambition of thought which, in its eagerness to understand the mystery
of the universe jumped to conclusions on insufficient grounds, trusted
to bold but fantastic analogies, and lavished an unwise contempt on the
plodding industry of the mere hodman of facts and experiments. Calmer
retrospection will perhaps modify this verdict, and sift the various
contributions (towards a philosophical unity of the sciences) which
are now indiscriminately damned by the title of _Naturphilosophie._
For the present purpose it need only be said that, for the second
part of the Hegelian system, we are restricted for explanations
to the notes collected by the editors of Vol. VII. part i. of the
Collected works--notes derived from the annotations which Hegel himself
supplied in the eight or more courses of lectures which he gave on the
Philosophy of Nature between 1804 and 1830.
Quite other is the case with the Logic--the first division of the
_Encyclopaedia._ There we have the collateral authority of the
'Science of Logic,' the larger Logic which appeared whilst Hegel was
schoolmaster at Nürnberg. The idea of a new Logic formed the natural
sequel to the publication of the _Phenomenology_ in 1807. In that
year Hegel was glad to accept, as a stop-gap and pot-boiler, the post
of editor of the Bamberg Journal. But his interests lay in other
directions, and the circumstances of the time and country helped to
determine their special form. 'In Bavaria,' he says in a letter[2],
'it looks as if organisation were the current business.' A very mania
of reform, says another, prevailed. Hegel's friend and fellow-Swabian,
Niethammer, held an important position in the Bavarian education
office, and wished to employ the philosopher in the work of carrying
out his plans of re-organising the higher education of the Protestant
subjects of the crown. He asked if Hegel would write a logic for school
use, and if he cared to become rector of a grammar school. Hegel, who
was already at work on his larger Logic, was only half-attracted by
the suggestion. 'The traditional Logic,' he replied[3], 'is a subject
on which there are text-books enough, but at the same time it is one
which can by no means remain as it is: it is a thing nobody can make
anything of: 'tis dragged along like an old heirloom, only because
a substitute--of which the want is universally felt--is not yet in
existence. The whole of its rules, still current, might be written
on two pages: every additional detail beyond these two is perfectly
fruitless scholastic subtlety;--or if this logic is to get a thicker
body, its expansion must come from psychological paltrinesses,' Still
less did he like the prospect of instructing in theology, as then
rationalised. 'To write a logic and to be theological instructor is as
bad as to be white-washer and chimney-sweep at once.' 'Shall he, who
for many long years built his eyry on the wild rock beside the eagle
and learned to breathe the free air of the mountains, now learn to feed
on the carcases of dead thoughts or the still-born thoughts of the
moderns, and vegetate in the leaden air of mere babble[4]?'
At Nürnberg he found the post of rector of the 'gymnasium' by no
means a sinecure. The school had to be made amid much lack of funds
and general bankruptcy of apparatus:--all because of an all-powerful
and unalterable destiny which is called the course of business.' One
of his tasks was 'by graduated exercises to introduce his pupils to
speculative thought,'--and that in the space of four hours weekly[5].
Of its practicability--and especially with himself as instrument--he
had grave doubts. In theory, he held that an intelligent study of
the ancient classics was the best introduction to philosophy; and
practically he preferred starting his pupils with the principles
of law, morality and religion, and reserving the logic and higher
philosophy for the highest class. Meanwhile he continued to work on
his great Logic, the first volume of which appeared in two parts, 1812,
1813, and the second in 1816.
This is the work which is the real foundation of the Hegelian
philosophy. Its aim is the systematic reorganisation of the
commonwealth of thought. It gives not a criticism, like Kant; not
a principle, like Fichte; not a bird's eye view of the fields of
nature and history, like Schelling; it attempts the hard work of
re-constructing, step by step, into totality the fragments of the
organism of intelligence. It is scholasticism, if scholasticism means
an absolute and all-embracing system; but it is a protest against
the old school-system and those who tried to rehabilitate it through
their comprehensions of the Kantian theory. Apropos of the logic of
his contemporary Fries (whom he did not love), published in 1811, he
remarks: 'His paragraphs are mindless, quite shallow, bald, trivial;
the explanatory notes are the dirty linen of the professorial chair,
utterly slack and unconnected.'[6] Of himself he thus speaks: 'I am
a schoolmaster who has to teach philosophy,--who, possibly for that
reason, believes that philosophy like geometry is teachable, and
must no less than geometry have a regular structure. But again, a
knowledge of the facts in geometry and philosophy is one thing, and the
mathematical or philosophical talent which procreates and discovers is
another: my province is to discover that scientific form, or to aid
in the formation of it[7].' So he writes to an old college friend;
and in a letter to the rationalist theologian Paulus, in 1814[8], he
professes: 'You know that I have had too much to do not merely with
ancient literature, but even with mathematics, latterly with the higher
analysis, differential calculus, chemistry, to let myself be taken in
by the humbug of Naturphilosophie, philosophising without knowledge of
fact and by mere force of imagination, and treating mere fancies, even
imbecile fancies, as Ideas.'
In the autumn of 1816 Hegel became professor of philosophy at
Heidelberg. In the following year appeared the first edition of his
_Encyclopaedia_: two others appeared in his lifetime (in 1827 and
1830). The first edition is a thin octavo volume of pp. xvi. 288,
published (like the others) at Heidelberg. The Logic in it occupies
pp. 1-126 (of which 12 pp. are Einleitung and 18 pp. Vorbegriff); the
Philosophy of Nature, pp. 127-204; and the Philosophy of Mind (Spirit),
pp. 205-288.
In the Preface the book is described (p. iv) as setting forth 'a new
treatment of philosophy on a method which will, as I hope, yet be
recognised as the only genuine method identical with the content.'
Contrasting his own procedure with a mannerism of the day which
used an assumed set of formulas to produce in the facts a show of
symmetry even more arbitrary and mechanical than the arrangements
imposed _ab extra_ in the sciences, he goes on: 'This wilfulness we
saw also take possession of the contents of philosophy and ride out
on an intellectual knight-errantry--for a while imposing on honest
true-hearted workers, though elsewhere it was only counted grotesque,
and grotesque even to the pitch of madness. But oftener and more
properly its teachings--far from seeming imposing or mad--were found
out to be familiar trivialities, and its form seen to be a mere trick
of wit, easily acquired, methodical and premeditated, with its quaint
combinations and strained eccentricities,--the mien of earnestness only
covering self-deception and fraud upon the public. On the other side,
again, we saw shallowness and unintelligence assume the character of
a scepticism wise in its own eyes and of a criticism modest in its
claims for reason, enhancing their vanity and conceit in proportion
as their ideas grew more vacuous. For a space of time these two
intellectual tendencies have befooled German earnestness, have tired
out its profound craving for philosophy, and have been succeeded by
an indifference and even a contempt for philosophic science, till at
length a self-styled modesty has the audacity to let its voice be heard
in controversies touching the deepest philosophical problems, and to
deny philosophy its right to that cognition by reason, the form of
which was what formerly was called _demonstration._'
'The first of these phenomena may be in part explained as the youthful
exuberance of the new age which has risen in the realm of science no
less than in the world of politics. If this exuberance greeted with
rapture the dawn of the intellectual renascence, and without profounder
labour at once set about enjoying the Idea and revelling for a while in
the hopes and prospects which it offered, one can more readily forgive
its excesses; because it is sound at heart, and the surface vapours
which it had suffused around its solid worth must spontaneously clear
off. But the other spectacle is more repulsive; because it betrays
exhaustion and impotence, and tries to conceal them under a hectoring
conceit which acts the censor over the philosophical intellects of all
the centuries, mistaking them, but most of all mistaking itself.
'So much the more gratifying is another spectacle yet-to be noted; the
interest in philosophy and the earnest love of higher knowledge which
in the presence of both tendencies has kept itself single-hearted and
without affectation. Occasionally this interest may have taken too
much to the language of intuition and feeling; yet its appearance
proves the existence of that inward and deeper-reaching impulse of
reasonable intelligence which alone gives man his dignity,--proves it
above all, because that standpoint can only be gained as a _result_
of philosophical consciousness; so that what it seems to disdain is
at least admitted and recognised as a condition. To this interest
in ascertaining the truth I dedicate this attempt to supply an
introduction and a contribution towards its satisfaction.'
The second edition appeared in 1827. Since the autumn of 1818 Hegel
had been professor at Berlin: and the manuscript was sent thence (from
August 1826 onwards) to Heidelberg, where Daub, his friend--himself
a master in philosophical theology--attended to the revision of the
proofs. 'To the Introduction,' writes Hegel[9], 'I have given perhaps
too great an amplitude: but it, above all, would have cost me time and
trouble to bring within narrower compass. Tied down and distracted
by lectures, and sometimes here in Berlin by other things too, I
have--without a general survey--allowed myself so large a swing that
the work has grown upon me, and there was a danger of its turning into
a book. I have gone through it several times. The treatment of the
attitudes (of thought) which I have distinguished in it was to meet an
interest of the day. The rest I have sought to make more definite, and
so far as may be clearer; but the main fault is not mended--to do which
would require me to limit the detail more, and on the other hand make
the whole more surveyable, so that the contents should better answer
the title of an Encyclopaedia.' Again, in Dec. 1826, he writes[10]: 'In
the Naturphilosophie I have made essential changes, but could not help
here and there going too far into a detail which is hardly in keeping
with the tone of the whole. The second half of the Geistesphilosophie
I shall have to modify entirely.' In May 1827, Hegel offers his
explanation of delay in the preface, which, like the concluding
paragraphs, touches largely on contemporary theology. By August of that
year the book was finished, and Hegel off to Paris for a holiday.
In the second edition, which substantially fixed the form of the
_Encyclopaedia_, the pages amount to xlii, 534--nearly twice as many
as the first, which, however, as Professor Caird remarks, 'has a
compactness, a brief energy and conclusiveness of expression, which
he never surpassed.' The Logic now occupies pp. 1214, Philosophy of
Nature 215-354, and Philosophy of Spirit from 355-534. The second part
therefore has gained least; and in the third part the chief single
expansions occur towards the close and deal with the relations of
philosophy, art, and religion in the State; viz. § 563 (which in the
third edition is transposed to § 552), and § 573 (where two pages are
enlarged to 18). In the first part, or the Logic, the main increase
and alteration falls within the introductory chapters, where 96 pages
take the place of 30. The Vorbegriff (preliminary notion) of the first
edition had contained the distinction of the three logical 'moments'
(see p. 142), with a few remarks on the methods, first, of metaphysic,
and then (after a brief section on empiricism), of the 'Critical
Philosophy through which philosophy has reached its close.' Instead
of this the second edition deals at length, under this head, with the
three 'attitudes (or positions) of thought to objectivity;' where,
besides a more lengthy criticism of the Critical philosophy, there is a
discussion of the doctrines of Jacobi and other Intuitivists.
The Preface, like much else in this second edition, is an assertion
of the right and the duty of philosophy to treat independently of
the things of God, and an emphatic declaration that the result of
scientific investigation of the truth is, not the subversion of
the faith, but 'the restoration of that sum of absolute doctrine
which thought at first would have put behind and beneath itself--a
restoration of it however in the most characteristic and the freest
element of the mind.' Any opposition that may be raised against
philosophy on religious grounds proceeds, according to Hegel, from a
religion which has abandoned its true basis and entrenched itself in
formulae and categories that pervert its real nature. 'Yet,' he adds
(p. vii), 'especially where religious subjects are under discussion,
philosophy is expressly set aside, as if in that way all mischief were
banished and security against error and illusion attained;' ... 'as if
philosophy--the mischief thus kept at a distance--were anything but
the investigation of Truth, but with a full sense of the nature and
value of the intellectual links which give unity and form to all fact
whatever.' 'Lessing,' he continues (p. xvi), 'said in his time that
people treat Spinoza like a dead dog[11]. It cannot be said that in
recent times Spinozism and speculative philosophy in general have been
better treated.'
The time was one of feverish unrest and unwholesome irritability. Ever
since the so-called Carlsbad decrees of 1819 all the agencies of the
higher literature and education had been subjected to an inquisitorial
supervision which everywhere surmised political insubordination and
religious heresy. A petty provincialism pervaded what was then still
the small Residenz-Stadt Berlin; and the King, Frederick William
III, cherished to the full that paternal conception of his position
which has not been unusual in the royal house of Prussia. Champions
of orthodoxy warned him that Hegelianism was unchristian, if not even
anti-christian. Franz von Baader, the Bavarian religious philosopher
(who had spent some months at Berlin during the winter of 1823-4,
studying the religious and philosophical teaching of the universities
in connexion with the revolutionary doctrines which he saw fermenting
throughout Europe), addressed the king in a communication which
described the prevalent Protestant theology as infidel in its very
source, and as tending directly to annihilate the foundations of
the faith. Hegel himself had to remind the censor of heresy that
'all speculative philosophy on religion maybe carried to atheism:
all depends on who carries it; the peculiar piety of our times and
the malevolence of demagogues will not let us want carriers[12].'
His own theology was suspected both by the Rationalists and by the
Evangelicals. He writes to his wife (in 1827) that he had looked at
the university buildings in Louvain and Liège with the feeling that
they might one day afford him a resting-place 'when the parsons in
Berlin make the Kupfergraben completely intolerable for him[13].' 'The
Roman Curia,' he adds, 'would be a more honourable opponent than the
miserable cabals of a miserable boiling of parsons in Berlin.' Hence
the tone in which the preface proceeds (p. xviii).
'Religion is the kind and mode of consciousness in which the Truth
appeals to all men, to men of every degree of education; but the
scientific ascertainment of the Truth is a special kind of this
consciousness, involving a labour which not all but only a few
undertake. The substance of the two is the same; but as Homer says of
some stars that they have two names, the one in the language of the
gods, the other in the language of ephemeral men--so for that substance
there are two languages,--the one of feeling, of pictorial thought,
and of the limited intellect that makes its home in finite categories
and inadequate abstractions, the other the language of the concrete
notion. If we propose then to talk of and to criticise philosophy from
the religious point of view, there is more requisite than to possess
a familiarity with the language of the ephemeral consciousness. The
foundation of scientific cognition is the substantiality at its core,
the indwelling idea with its stirring intellectual life; just as the
essentials of religion are a heart fully disciplined, a mind awake to
self-collectedness, a wrought and refined substantiality. In modern
times religion has more and more contracted the intelligent expansion
of its contents and withdrawn into the intensiveness of piety, or even
of feeling,--a feeling which betrays its own scantiness and emptiness.
So long however as it still has a creed, a doctrine, a system of dogma,
it has what philosophy can occupy itself with and where it can find for
itself a point of union with religion. This however is not to be taken
in the wrong separatist sense (so dominant in our modern religiosity)
representing the two as mutually exclusive, or as at bottom so capable
of separation that their union is only imposed from without. Rather,
even in what has gone before, it is implied that religion may well
exist without philosophy, but philosophy not without religion--which
it rather includes. True religion--intellectual and spiritual
religion--must have body and substance, for spirit and intellect are
above all consciousness, and consciousness implies an _objective_ body
and substance.
'The contracted religiosity which narrows itself to a point in the
heart must make that heart's softening and contrition the essential
factor of its new birth; but it must at the same time recollect that it
has to do with the heart of a spirit, that the spirit is the appointed
authority over the heart, and that it can only have such authority so
far as it is itself born again. This new birth of the spirit out of
natural ignorance and natural error takes place through instruction and
through that faith in objective truth and substance which is due to the
witness of the spirit. This new birth of the spirit is besides _ipso
facto_ a new birth of the heart out of that vanity of the one-sided
intellect (on which it sets so much) and its discoveries that finite is
different from infinite, that philosophy must either be polytheism, or,
in acuter minds, pantheism, &c. It is, in short, a new birth out of the
wretched discoveries on the strength of which pious humility holds its
head so high against philosophy and theological science. If religiosity
persists in clinging to its unexpanded and therefore unintelligent
intensity, then it can be sensible only of the contrast which divides
this narrow and narrowing form from the intelligent expansion of
doctrine as such, religious not less than philosophical.'
After an appreciative quotation from Franz von Baader, and noting his
reference to the theosophy of Böhme, as a work of the past from which
the present generation might learn the speculative interpretation of
Christian doctrines, he reverts to the position that the only mode in
which thought will admit a reconciliation with religious doctrines, is
when these doctrines have learned to 'assume their worthiest phase--the
phase of the notion, of necessity, which binds, and thus also makes
free everything, fact no less than thought.' But it is not from Böhme
or his kindred that we are likely to get the example of a philosophy
equal to the highest theme--to the comprehension of divine things. 'If
old things are to be revived--an old phase, that is; for the burden
of the theme is ever young--the phase of the Idea such as Plato and,
still better, as Aristotle conceived it, is far more deserving of being
recalled,--and for the further reason that the disclosure of it, by
assimilating it into our system of ideas, is, _ipso facto,_ not merely
an interpretation of it, but a progress of the science itself. But
to interpret such forms of the Idea by no means lies so much on the
surface as to get hold of Gnostic and Cabbalistic phantasmagorias; and
to develope Plato and Aristotle is by no means the sinecure that it is
to note or to hint at echoes of the Idea in the medievalists.'
The third edition of the _Encyclopaedia,_ which appeared in 1830,
consists of pp. lviii, 600--a slight additional increase. The increase
is in the Logic, eight pages; in the Philosophy of Nature, twenty-three
pages; and in the Philosophy of Spirit, thirty-four pages. The concrete
topics, in short, gain most.
The preface begins by alluding to several criticisms on his
philosophy,--'which for the most part have shown little vocation for
the business'--and to his discussion of them in the _Jahrbücher_ of
1829 (_Vermischte Schriften,_ ii. 149). There is also a paragraph
devoted to the quarrel originated by the attack in Hengstenberg's
Evangelical Journal on the rationalism of certain professors at Halle
(notably Gesenius and Wegscheider),--(an attack based on the evidence
of students' note-books), and by the protest of students and professors
against the insinuations. 'It seemed a little while ago,' says Hegel
(p. xli), 'as if there was an initiation, in a scientific spirit
and on a wider range, of a more serious inquiry, from the region of
theology and even of religiosity, touching God, divine things, and
reason. But the very beginning of the movement checked these hopes;
the issue turned on personalities, and neither the pretensions of the
accusing pietists nor the pretensions of the free reason they accused,
rose to the real subject, still less to a sense that the subject
could only be discussed on philosophic soil. This personal attack, on
the basis of very special externalities of religion, displayed the
monstrous assumption of seeking to decide by arbitrary decree as to
the Christianity of individuals, and to stamp them accordingly with
the seal of temporal and eternal reprobation. Dante, in virtue of the
enthusiasm of divine poesy, has dared to handle the keys of Peter, and
to condemn by name to the perdition of hell many--already deceased
however--of his contemporaries, even Popes and Emperors. A modern
philosophy has been made the subject of the infamous charge that in
it human individuals usurp the rank of God; but such a fictitious
charge--reached by a false logic--pales before the actual assumption
of behaving like judges of the world, prejudging the Christianity of
individuals, and announcing their utter reprobation. The Shibboleth
of this absolute authority is the name of the Lord Christ, and the
assertion that the Lord dwells in the hearts of these judges.' But the
assertion is ill supported by the fruits they exhibit,--the monstrous
insolence with which they reprobate and condemn.
But the evangelicals are not alone to blame for the bald and
undeveloped nature of their religious life; the same want of free and
living growth in religion characterises their opponents. 'By their
formal, abstract, nerveless reasoning, the rationalists have emptied
religion of all power and substance, no less than the pietists by the
reduction of all faith to the Shibboleth of Lord! Lord! One is no
whit better than the other: and when they meet in conflict there is
no material on which they could come into contact, no common ground,
and no possibility of carrying on an inquiry which would lead to
knowledge and truth. "Liberal" theology on its side has not got beyond
the formalism of appeals to liberty of conscience, liberty of thought,
liberty of teaching, to reason itself and to science. Such liberty no
doubt describes the _infinite right_ of the spirit, and the second
special condition of truth, supplementary to the first, faith. But
the rationalists steer clear of the material point: they do not tell
us the reasonable principles and laws involved in a free and genuine
conscience, nor the import and teaching of free faith and free thought;
they do not get beyond a bare negative formalism and the liberty to
embody their liberty at their fancy and pleasure--whereby in the end
it matters not how it is embodied. There is a further reason for
their failure to reach a solid doctrine. The Christian community must
be, and ought always to be, unified by the tie of a doctrinal idea,
a confession of faith; but the generalities and abstractions of the
stale, not living, waters of rationalism forbid the specificality of
an inherently definite and fully developed body of Christian doctrine.
Their opponents, again, proud of the name Lord! Lord! frankly and
openly disdain carrying out the faith into the fulness of spirit,
reality, and truth.'
In ordinary moods of mind there is a long way from logic to religion.
But almost every page of what Hegel has called Logic is witness to
the belief in their ultimate identity. It was no new principle of
later years for him. He had written in post-student days to his
friend Schelling: 'Reason and freedom remain our watch-word, and our
point of union the invisible church[14].' His parting token of faith
with another youthful comrade, the poet Hölderlin, had been 'God's
kingdom[15].'
But after 1827 this religious appropriation of philosophy becomes
more apparent, and in 1829 Hegel seemed deliberately to accept the
position of a Christian philosopher which Göschel had marked out for
him. 'A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect,' he
remarks[16], 'are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and
faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith
does not illuminate may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in
knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the
latter an alien to faith.'
This is not the place--in a philological chapter--to discuss the issues
involved in the announcement that the truth awaits us ready to hand[17]
'in all genuine consciousness, in all religions and philosophies.'
Yet one remark may be offered against hasty interpretations of a
'speculative' identity. If there is a double edge to the proposition
that the actual is the reasonable, there is no less caution necessary
in approaching and studying from both sides the far-reaching import
of that equation to which Joannes Scotus Erigena gave expression ten
centuries ago: '_Non alia est philosophia, i.e. sapientiae studium,
et alia religio. Quid est aliud de philosophia tractare nisi verae
religionis regulas exponere?_'
[1] _Christian Märklin,_ cap. 3.
[2] Hegel's _Briefe,_ i. 141.
[3] _Ibid._ i. 172.
[4] Hegel's _Briefe,_ i. 138.
[5] _Ibid._ i. 339.
[6] Hegel's _Briefe,_ i. 328.
[7] _Ibid._ i. 273.
[8] _Ibid._ i. 373.
[9] Hegel's _Briefe,_ ii. 204.
[10] _Ibid._ ii. 230.
[11] Jacobi's _Werke,_ iv. A, p. 63.
[12] Hegel's _Briefe,_ ii. 54.
[13] _Ibid._ ii. 276.
[14] Hegel's _Briefe,_ i. 13.
[15] Hölderlin's _Leben_ (Litzmann), p. 183.
[16] _Verm. Sehr._ ii. 144.
[17] Hegel's _Briefe,_ ii. 80.
* * * * *
_The following Errata in the Edition of the Logic as given in the
Collected Works (Vol. VI.) are corrected in the translation. The
references in brackets are to the_ German text.
Page 95, line 1. Und Objektivität has dropped out after der
Subjektivität. [VI. 98, l. 10 from bottom.]
P. 97, l. 2. The 2nd ed. reads (die Gedanken) nicht in Solchem, instead
of nicht als in Solchem (3rd ed.). [VI. p. 100, l. 3 from bottom.]
P. 169, l. 13 from bottom. Instead of the reading of the _Werke_ and of
the 3rd ed. read as in ed. II. Also ist dieser Gegenstand nichts. [VI.
p. 178, l. 11.]
P. 177, l. 3 from bottom. Verstandes; Gegenstandes is a mistake for
Verstandes; Gegensatzes, as in edd. II and III. [VI. p. 188, l. 2.]
P. 231, l. 19. weiten should be weitern. [VI. p. 251, l. 3 from bottom.]
P. 316, l. 15. Dinglichkeit is a misprint for Dingheit, as in Hegel's
own editions. [VI. p. 347, l. 1.]
P. 352, l. 14 from bottom, for seine Realität read seiner Realität.
[VI. p. 385, l. 8.]
THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC
(_THE FIRST PART OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES IN
OUTLINE_)
BY G. W. F. HEGEL
THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
1.] PHILOSOPHY misses an advantage enjoyed by the other sciences. It
cannot like them rest the existence of its objects on the natural
admissions of consciousness, nor can it assume that its method of
cognition, either for starting or for continuing, is one already
accepted. The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the
same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme
sense in which God and God only is the Truth. Both in like manner go on
to treat of the finite worlds of Nature and the human Mind, with their
relation to each other and to their truth in God. Some _acquaintance_
with its objects, therefore, philosophy may and even must presume, that
and a certain interest in them to boot, were it for no other reason
than this: that in point of time the mind makes general _images_ of
objects, long before it makes _notions_ of them, and that it is only
through these mental images, and by recourse to them, that the thinking
mind rises to know and comprehend _thinkingly._
But with the rise of this thinking study of things, it soon becomes
evident that thought will be satisfied with nothing short of showing
the _necessity_ of its facts, of demonstrating the existence of
its objects, as well as their nature and qualities. Our original
acquaintance with them is thus discovered to be inadequate. We can
assume nothing, and assert nothing dogmatically; nor can we accept the
assertions and assumptions of others. And yet we must make a beginning:
and a beginning, as primary and underived, makes an assumption, or
rather is an assumption. It seems as if it were impossible to make a
beginning at all.
2.] This _thinking study of things_ may serve, in a general way, as
a description of philosophy. But the description is too wide. If it
be correct to say, that thought makes the distinction between man and
the lower animals, then everything human is human, for the sole and
simple reason that it is due to the operation of thought. Philosophy,
on the other hand, is a peculiar mode of thinking--a mode in which
thinking becomes knowledge, and knowledge through notions. However
great therefore may be the identity and essential unity of the two
modes of thought, the philosophic mode gets to be different from the
more general thought which acts in all that is human, in all that gives
humanity its distinctive character. And this difference connects itself
with the fact that the strictly human and thought-induced phenomena of
consciousness do not originally appear in the form of a thought, but as
a feeling, a perception, or mental image--all of which aspects must be
distinguished from the form of thought proper.
According to an old preconceived idea, which has passed into a trivial
proposition, it is thought which marks the man off from the animals.
Yet trivial as this old belief may seem, it must, strangely enough,
be recalled to mind in presence of certain preconceived ideas of the
present day. These ideas would put feeling and thought so far apart as
to make them opposites, and would represent them as so antagonistic,
that feeling, particularly religious feeling, is supposed to be
contaminated, perverted, and even annihilated by thought. They also
emphatically hold that religion and piety grow out of, and rest upon
something else, and not on thought. But those who make this separation
forget meanwhile that only man has the capacity for religion, and that
animals no more have religion than they have law and morality.
Those who insist on this separation of religion from thinking usually
have before their minds the sort of thought that may be styled
_after-thought._ They mean 'reflective' thinking, which has to deal
with thoughts as thoughts, and brings them into consciousness.
Slackness to perceive and keep in view this distinction which
philosophy definitely draws in respect of thinking is the source of
the crudest objections and reproaches against philosophy. Man,--and
that just because it is his nature to think,--is the only being that
possesses law, religion, and morality. In these spheres of human life,
therefore, thinking, under the guise of feeling, faith, or generalised
image, has not been inactive: its action and its productions are
there present and therein contained. But it is one thing to have such
feelings and generalised images that have been moulded and permeated by
thought, and another thing to have thoughts about them. The thoughts,
to which after-thought upon those modes of consciousness gives rise,
are what is comprised under reflection, general reasoning, and the
like, as well as under philosophy itself.
The neglect of this distinction between thought in general and the
reflective thought of philosophy has also led to another and more
frequent misunderstanding. Reflection of this kind has been often
maintained to be the condition, or even the only way, of attaining a
consciousness and certitude of the Eternal and True. The (now somewhat
antiquated) metaphysical proofs of God's existence, for example, have
been treated, as if a knowledge of them and a conviction of their truth
were the only and essential means of producing a belief and conviction
that there is a God. Such a doctrine would find its parallel, if we
said that eating was impossible before we had acquired a knowledge
of the chemical, botanical, and zoological characters of our food;
and that we must delay digestion till we had finished the study of
anatomy and physiology. Were it so, these sciences in their field,
like philosophy in its, would gain greatly in point of utility; in
fact, their utility would rise to the height of absolute and universal
indispensableness. Or rather, instead of being indispensable, they
would not exist at all.
3.] The _Content,_ of whatever kind it be, with which our consciousness
is taken up, is what constitutes the qualitative character of our
feelings, perceptions, fancies, and ideas; of our aims and duties;
and of our thoughts and notions. From this point of view, feeling,
perception, &c. are the _forms_ assumed by these contents. The contents
remain one and the same, whether they are felt, seen, represented, or
willed, and whether they are merely felt, or felt with an admixture of
thoughts, or merely and simply thought. In any one of these forms, or
in the admixture of several, the contents confront consciousness, or
are its _object._ But when they are thus objects of consciousness, the
modes of the several forms ally themselves with the contents; and each
form of them appears in consequence to give rise to a special object.
Thus what is the same at bottom, may look like a different sort of
fact.
The several modes of feeling, perception, desire, and will, so far
as we are _aware_ of them, are in general called ideas (mental
representations): and it may be roughly said, that philosophy puts
thoughts, categories, or, in more precise language, adequate _notions,_
in the place of the generalised images we ordinarily call ideas. Mental
impressions such as these may be regarded as the metaphors of thoughts
and notions. But to have these figurate conceptions does not imply
that we appreciate their intellectual significance, the thoughts and
rational notions to which they correspond. Conversely, it is one thing
to have thoughts and intelligent notions, and another to know what
impressions, perceptions, and feelings correspond to them.
This difference will to some extent explain what people call the
unintelligibility of philosophy. Their difficulty lies partly in an
incapacity--which in itself is nothing but want of habit--for abstract
thinking; _i.e._ in an inability to get hold of pure thoughts and move
about in them. In our ordinary state of mind, the thoughts are clothed
upon and made one with the sensuous or spiritual material of the hour;
and in reflection, meditation, and general reasoning, we introduce a
blend of thoughts into feelings, percepts, and mental images. (Thus,
in propositions where the subject-matter is due to the senses--_e.g._
'This leaf is green'--we have such categories introduced, as being and
individuality.) But it is a very different thing to make the thoughts
pure and simple our object.
But their complaint that philosophy is unintelligible is as much due to
another reason; and that is an impatient wish to have before them as a
mental picture that which is in the mind as a thought or notion. When
people are asked to apprehend some notion, they often complain that
they do not know what they have to think. But the fact is that in a
notion there is nothing further to be thought than the notion itself.
What the phrase reveals, is a hankering after an image with which we
are already familiar. The mind, denied the use of its familiar ideas,
feels the ground where it once stood firm and at home taken away from
beneath it, and, when transported into the region of pure thought,
cannot tell where in the world it is.
One consequence of this weakness is that authors, preachers, and
orators are found most intelligible, when they speak of things which
their readers or hearers already know by rote,--things which the latter
are conversant with, and which require no explanation.
4.] The philosopher then has to reckon with popular modes of thought,
and with the objects of religion. In dealing with the ordinary modes
of mind, he will first of all, as we saw, have to prove and almost
to awaken the need for his peculiar method of knowledge. In dealing
with the objects of religion, and with truth as a whole, he will have
to show that philosophy is capable of apprehending them from its own
resources; and should a difference from religious conceptions come to
light, he will have to justify the points in which it diverges.
5.] To give the reader a preliminary explanation of the distinction
thus made, and to let him see at the same moment that the real import
of our consciousness is retained, and even for the first time put
in its proper light, when translated into the form of thought and
the notion of reason, it may be well to recall another of these old
unreasoned beliefs. And that is the conviction that to get at the truth
of any object or event, even of feelings, perceptions, opinions, and
mental ideas, we must think it over. Now in any case to think things
over is at least to transform feelings, ordinary ideas, &c. into
thoughts.
Nature has given every one a faculty of thought. But thought is all
that philosophy claims as the form proper to her business: and thus
the inadequate view which ignores the distinction stated in § 3, leads
to a new delusion, the reverse of the complaint previously mentioned
about the unintelligibility of philosophy. In other words, this science
must often submit to the slight of hearing even people who have never
taken any trouble with it talking as if they thoroughly understood all
about it. With no preparation beyond an ordinary education they do
not hesitate, especially under the influence of religious sentiment,
to philosophise and to criticise philosophy. Everybody allows that
to know any other science you must have first studied it, and that
you can only claim to express a judgment upon it in virtue of such
knowledge. Everybody allows that to make a shoe you must have learned
and practised the craft of the shoemaker, though every man has a model
in his own foot, and possesses in his hands the natural endowments for
the operations required. For philosophy alone, it seems to be imagined,
such study, care, and application are not in the least requisite.
This comfortable view of what is required for a philosopher has
recently received corroboration through the theory of immediate or
intuitive knowledge.
6.] So much for the form of philosophical knowledge. It is no less
desirable, on the other hand, that philosophy should understand that
its content is no other than _actuality,_ that core of truth which,
originally produced and producing itself within the precincts of the
mental life, has become the _world,_ the inward and outward world, of
consciousness. At first we become aware of these contents in what we
call Experience. But even Experience, as it surveys the wide range
of inward and outward existence, has sense enough to distinguish
the mere appearance, which is transient and meaningless, from what
in itself really deserves the name of actuality. As it is only in
form that philosophy is distinguished from other modes of attaining
an acquaintance with this same sum of being, it must necessarily be
in harmony with actuality and experience. In fact, this harmony may
be viewed as at least an extrinsic means of testing the truth of a
philosophy. Similarly it may be held the highest and final aim of
philosophic science to bring about, through the ascertainment of this
harmony, a reconciliation of the self-conscious reason with the reason
which _is_ in the world,--in other words, with actuality.
In the preface to my Philosophy of Law, p. xix, are found the
propositions:
What is reasonable is actual;
and, What is actual is reasonable.
These simple statements have given rise to expressions of surprise and
hostility, even in quarters where it would be reckoned an insult to
presume absence of philosophy, and still more of religion. Religion
at least need not be brought in evidence; its doctrines of the divine
government of the world affirm these propositions too decidedly. For
their philosophic sense, we must pre-suppose intelligence enough to
know, not only that God is actual, that He is the supreme actuality,
that He alone is truly actual; but also, as regards the logical
bearings of the question, that existence is in part mere appearance,
and only in part actuality. In common life, any freak of fancy, any
error, evil and everything of the nature of evil, as well as every
degenerate and transitory existence whatever, gets in a casual way
the name of actuality. But even our ordinary feelings are enough to
forbid a casual (fortuitous) existence getting the emphatic name of an
actual; for by fortuitous we mean an existence which has no greater
value than that of something possible, which may as well not be as
be. As for the term Actuality, these critics would have done well to
consider the sense in which I employ it. In a detailed Logic I had
treated amongst other things of actuality, and accurately distinguished
it not only from the fortuitous, which, after all, has existence,
but even from the cognate categories of existence and the other
modifications of being.
The actuality of the rational stands opposed by the popular fancy
that Ideas and ideals are nothing but chimeras, and philosophy a mere
system of such phantasms. It is also opposed by the very different
fancy that Ideas and ideals are something far too excellent to have
actuality, or something too impotent to procure it for themselves. This
divorce between idea and reality is especially dear to the analytic
understanding which looks upon its own abstractions, dreams though they
are, as something true and real, and prides itself on the imperative
'ought,' which it takes especial pleasure in prescribing even on the
field of politics. As if the world had waited on it to learn how it
ought to be, and was not! For, if it were as it ought to be, what would
come of the precocious wisdom of that 'ought'? When understanding
turns this 'ought' against trivial external and transitory objects,
against social regulations or conditions, which very likely possess a
great relative importance for a certain time and special circles, it
may often be right. In such a case the intelligent observer may meet
much that fails to satisfy the general requirements of right; for
who is not acute enough to see a great deal in his own surroundings
which is really far from being as it ought to be? But such acuteness
is mistaken in the conceit that, when it examines these objects and
pronounces what they ought to be, it is dealing with questions of
philosophic science. The object of philosophy is the Idea: and the Idea
is not so impotent as merely to have a right or an obligation to exist
without actually existing. The object of philosophy is an actuality of
which those objects, social regulations and conditions, are only the
superficial outside.
7.] Thus reflection--thinking things over--in a general way involves
the principle (which also means the beginning) of philosophy. And when
the reflective spirit arose again in its independence in modern times,
after the epoch of the Lutheran Reformation, it did not, as in its
beginnings among the Greeks, stand merely aloof, in a world of its own,
but at once turned its energies also upon the apparently illimitable
material of the phenomenal world. In this way the name philosophy came
to be applied to all those branches of knowledge, which are engaged
in ascertaining the standard and Universal in the ocean of empirical
individualities, as well as in ascertaining the Necessary element, or
Laws, to be found in the apparent disorder of the endless masses of
the fortuitous. It thus appears that modern philosophy derives its
materials from our own personal observations and perceptions of the
external and internal world, from nature as well as from the mind and
heart of man, when both stand in the immediate presence of the observer.
This principle of Experience carries with it the unspeakably important
condition that, in order to accept and believe any fact, we must be
in contact with it; or, in more exact terms, that we must find the
fact united and combined with the certainty of our own selves. We must
be in touch with our subject-matter, whether it be by means of our
external senses, or, else, by our profounder mind and our intimate
self-consciousness.--This principle is the same as that which has in
the present day been termed faith, immediate knowledge, the revelation
in the outward world, and, above all, in our own heart.
Those sciences, which thus got the name of philosophy, we call
_empirical_ sciences, for the reason that they take their departure
from experience. Still the essential results which they aim at and
provide, are laws, general propositions, a theory--the thoughts of what
is found existing. On this ground the Newtonian physics was called
Natural Philosophy. Hugo Grotius, again, by putting together and
comparing the behaviour of states towards each other as recorded in
history, succeeded, with the help of the ordinary methods of general
reasoning, in laying down certain general principles, and establishing
a theory which may be termed the Philosophy of International Law. In
England this is still the usual signification of the term philosophy.
Newton continues to be celebrated as the greatest of philosophers: and
the name goes down as far as the price-lists of instrument-makers.
All instruments, such as the thermometer and barometer, which do not
come under the special head of magnetic or electric apparatus, are
styled philosophical instruments[1]. Surely thought, and not a mere
combination of wood, iron, &c. ought to be called the instrument of
philosophy! The recent science of Political Economy in particular,
which in Germany is known as Rational Economy of the State, or
intelligent national economy, has in England especially appropriated
the name of philosophy.[2]
8.] In its own field this empirical knowledge may at first give
satisfaction; but in two ways it is seen to come short. In the first
place there is another circle of objects which it does not embrace.
These are Freedom, Spirit, and God. They belong to a different
sphere, not because it can be said that they have nothing to do with
experience; for though they are certainly not experiences of the
senses, it is quite an identical proposition to say that whatever is
in consciousness is experienced. The real ground for assigning them to
another field of cognition is that in their scope and _content_ these
objects evidently show themselves as infinite.
There is an old phrase often wrongly attributed to Aristotle, and
supposed to express the general tenor of his philosophy. '_Nihil
est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu_': there is nothing in
thought which has not been in sense and experience. If speculative
philosophy refused to admit this maxim, it can only have done so from
a misunderstanding. It will, however, on the converse side no less
assert: '_Nihil est in sensu quod non fuerit in intellectu._' And this
may be taken in two senses. In the general sense it means that νοῦς or
spirit (the more profound idea of νοῦς in modern thought) is the cause
of the world. In its special meaning (see § 2) it asserts that the
sentiment of right, morals, and religion is a sentiment (and in that
way an experience) of such scope and such character that it can spring
from and rest upon thought alone.
9.] But in the second place in point of _form_ the subjective reason
desires a further satisfaction than empirical knowledge gives; and
this form, is, in the widest sense of the term, Necessity (§ 1). The
method of empirical science exhibits two defects. The first is that the
Universal or general principle contained in it, the genus, or kind, &c,
is, on its own account, indeterminate and vague, and therefore not on
its own account connected with the Particulars or the details. Either
is external and accidental to the other; and it is the same with the
particular facts which are brought into union: each is external and
accidental to the others. The second defect is that the beginnings are
in every case data and postulates, neither accounted for nor deduced.
In both these points the form of necessity fails to get its due. Hence
reflection, whenever it sets itself to remedy these defects, becomes
speculative thinking, the thinking proper to philosophy. As a species
of reflection, therefore, which, though it has a certain community
of nature with the reflection already mentioned, is nevertheless
different from it, philosophic thought thus possesses, in addition to
the common forms, some forms of its own, of which the Notion may be
taken as the type.
The relation of speculative science to the other sciences may be
stated in the following terms. It does not in the least neglect the
empirical facts contained in the several sciences, but recognises and
adopts them: it appreciates and applies towards its own structure the
universal element in these sciences, their laws and classifications:
but besides all this, into the categories of science it introduces, and
gives currency to, other categories. The difference, looked at in this
way, is only a change of categories. Speculative Logic contains all
previous Logic and Metaphysics: it preserves the same forms of thought,
the same laws and objects,--while at the same time remodelling and
expanding them with wider categories.
From _notion_ in the speculative sense we should distinguish what
is ordinarily called a notion. The phrase, that no notion can ever
comprehend the Infinite, a phrase which has been repeated over and over
again till it has grown axiomatic, is based upon this narrow estimate
of what is meant by notions.
10.] This thought, which is proposed as the instrument of philosophic
knowledge, itself calls for further explanation. We must understand in
what way it possesses necessity or cogency: and when it claims to be
equal to the task of apprehending the absolute objects (God, Spirit,
Freedom), that claim must be substantiated. Such an explanation,
however, is itself a lesson in philosophy, and properly falls within
the scope of the science itself. A preliminary attempt to make matters
plain would only be unphilosophical, and consist of a tissue of
assumptions, assertions, and inferential pros and cons, _e.g._ of
dogmatism without cogency, as against which there would be an equal
right of counter-dogmatism.
A main line of argument in the Critical Philosophy bids us pause before
proceeding to inquire into God or into the true being of things, and
tells us first of all to examine the faculty of cognition and see
whether it is equal to such an effort. We ought, says Kant, to become
acquainted with the instrument, before we undertake the work for which
it is to be employed; for if the instrument be insufficient, all our
trouble will be spent in vain. The plausibility of this suggestion has
won for it general assent and admiration; the result of which has been
to withdraw cognition from an interest in its objects and absorption in
the study of them, and to direct it back upon itself; and so turn it to
a question of form. Unless we wish to be deceived bywords, it is easy
to see what this amounts to. In the case of other instruments, we can
try and criticise them in other ways than by setting about the special
work for which they are destined. But the examination of knowledge can
only be carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called
instrument is the same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before
we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of Scholasticus, not to
venture into the water until he had learned to swim.
Reinhold saw the confusion with which this style of commencement is
chargeable, and tried to get out of the difficulty by starting with a
hypothetical and problematical stage of philosophising. In this way he
supposed that it would be possible, nobody can tell how, to get along,
until we found ourselves, further on, arrived at the primary truth
of truths. His method, when closely looked into, will be seen to be
identical with a very common practice. It starts from a substratum
of experiential fact, or from a provisional assumption which has
been brought into a definition; and then proceeds to analyse this
starting-point. We can detect in Reinhold's argument a perception of
the truth, that the usual course which proceeds by assumptions and
anticipations is no better than a hypothetical and problematical mode
of procedure. But his perceiving this does not alter the character of
this method; it only makes clear its imperfections.
11.] The special conditions which call for the existence of philosophy
maybe thus described. The mind or spirit, when it is sentient or
perceptive, finds its object in something sensuous; when it imagines,
in a picture or image; when it wills, in an aim or end. But in contrast
to, or it may be only in distinction from, these forms of its existence
and of its objects, the mind has also to gratify the cravings of
its highest and most inward life. That innermost self is thought.
Thus the mind renders thought its object. In the best meaning of the
phrase, it comes to itself; for thought is its principle, and its
very unadulterated self. But while thus occupied, thought entangles
itself in contradictions, _e.g._ loses itself in the hard-and-fast
non-identity of its thoughts, and so, instead of reaching itself,
is caught and held in its counterpart. This result, to which honest
but narrow thinking leads the mere understanding, is resisted by the
loftier craving of which we have spoken. That craving expresses the
perseverance of thought, which continues true to itself, even in this
conscious loss of its native rest and independence, 'that it may
overcome' and work out in itself the solution of its own contradictions.
To see that thought in its very nature is dialectical, and that, as
understanding, it must fall into contradiction,--the negative of
itself, will form one of the main lessons of logic. When thought
grows hopeless of ever achieving, by its own means, the solution of
the contradiction which it has by its own action brought upon itself,
it turns back to those solutions of the question with which the mind
had learned to pacify itself in some of its other modes and forms.
Unfortunately, however, the retreat of thought has led it, as Plato
noticed even in his time, to a very uncalled-for hatred of reason
(misology); and it then takes up against its own endeavours that
hostile attitude of which an example is seen in the doctrine that
'immediate' knowledge, as it is called, is the exclusive form in which
we become cognisant of truth.
12.] The rise of philosophy is due to these cravings of thought. Its
point of departure is Experience; including under that name both our
immediate consciousness and the inductions from it. Awakened, as it
were, by this stimulus, thought is vitally characterised by raising
itself above the natural state of mind, above the senses and inferences
from the senses into its own unadulterated element, and by assuming,
accordingly, at first a stand-aloof and negative attitude towards
the point from which it started. Through this state of antagonism to
the phenomena of sense its first satisfaction is found in itself, in
the Idea of the universal essence of these phenomena: an Idea (the
Absolute, or God) which may be more or less abstract. Meanwhile, on
the other hand, the sciences, based on experience, exert upon the
mind a stimulus to overcome the form in which their varied contents
are presented, and to elevate these contents to the rank of necessary
truth. For the facts of science have the aspect of a vast conglomerate,
one thing coming side by side with another, as if they were merely
given and presented,--as in short devoid of all essential or necessary
connexion. In consequence of this stimulus thought is dragged out
of its unrealised universality and its fancied or merely possible
satisfaction, and impelled onwards to a development from itself. On
one hand this development only means that thought incorporates the
contents of science, in all their speciality of detail as submitted. On
the other it makes these contents imitate the action of the original
creative thought, and present the aspect of a free evolution determined
by the logic of the fact alone.
On the relation between 'immediacy' and 'mediation' in consciousness
we shall speak later, expressly and with more detail. Here it may be
sufficient to premise that, though the two 'moments' or factors present
themselves as distinct, still neither of them can be absent, nor can
one exist apart from the other. Thus the knowledge of God, as of every
supersensible reality, is in its true character an exaltation above
sensations or perceptions: it consequently involves a negative attitude
to the initial data of sense, and to that extent implies mediation.
For to mediate is to take something as a beginning and to go onward to
a second thing; so that the existence of this second thing depends on
our having reached it from something else contradistinguished from it.
In spite of this, the knowledge of God is no mere sequel, dependent
on the empirical phase of consciousness: in fact, its independence is
essentially secured through this negation and exaltation.--No doubt, if
we attach an unfair prominence to the fact of mediation, and represent
it as implying a state of conditionedness, it may be said--not that the
remark would mean much--that philosophy is the child of experience, and
owes its rise to _a posteriori_ fact. (As a matter of fact, thinking
is always the negation of what we have immediately before us.) With
as much truth however we may be said to owe eating to the means of
nourishment, so long as we can have no eating without them. If we take
this view, eating is certainly represented as ungrateful: it devours
that to which it owes itself. Thinking, upon this view of its action,
is equally ungrateful.
But there is also an _a priori_ aspect of thought, where by a
mediation, not made by anything external but by a reflection into self,
we have that immediacy which is universality, the self-complacency
of thought which is so much at home with itself that it feels an
innate indifference to descend to particulars, and in that way to the
development of its own nature. It is thus also with religion, which,
whether it be rude or elaborate, whether it be invested with scientific
precision of detail or confined to the simple faith of the heart,
possesses, throughout, the same intensive nature of contentment and
felicity. But if thought never gets further than the universality of
the Ideas, as was perforce the case in the first philosophies (when
the Eleatics never got beyond Being, or Heraclitus beyond Becoming),
it is justly open to the charge of formalism. Even in a more advanced
phase of philosophy, we may often find a doctrine which has mastered
merely certain abstract propositions or formulae, such as, 'In the
absolute all is one,' 'Subject and object are identical,'--and only
repeating the same thing when it comes to particulars. Bearing in
mind this first period of thought, the period of mere generality, we
may safely say that experience is the real author of _growth_ and
_advance_ in philosophy. For, firstly, the empirical sciences do not
stop short at the mere observation of the individual features of a
phenomenon. By the aid of thought, they are able to meet philosophy
with materials prepared for it, in the shape of general uniformities,
_i.e._ laws, and classifications of the phenomena. When this is done,
the particular facts which they contain are ready to be received into
philosophy. This, secondly, implies a certain compulsion on thought
itself to proceed to these concrete specific truths. The reception into
philosophy of these scientific materials, now that thought has removed
their immediacy and made them cease to be mere data, forms at the same
time a development of thought out of itself. Philosophy, then, owes
its development to the empirical sciences. In return it gives their
contents what is so vital to them, the freedom of thought,--gives them,
in short, an _a priori_ character. These contents are now warranted
necessary, and no longer depend on the evidence of facts merely, that
they were so found and so experienced. The fact as experienced thus
becomes an illustration and a copy of the original and completely
self-supporting activity of thought.
13.] Stated in exact terms, such is the origin and development of
philosophy. But the History of Philosophy gives us the same process
from an historical and external point of view. The stages in the
evolution of the Idea there seem to follow each other by accident, and
to present merely a number of different and unconnected principles,
which the several systems of philosophy carry out in their own way.
But it is not so. For these thousands of years the same Architect has
directed the work: and that Architect is the one living Mind whose
nature is to think, to bring to self-consciousness what it is, and,
with its being thus set as object before it, to be at the same time
raised above it, and so to reach a higher stage of its own being.
The different systems which the history of philosophy presents are
therefore not irreconcilable with unity. We may either say, that it
is one philosophy at different degrees of maturity: or that the
particular principle, which is the groundwork of each system, is
but a branch of one and the same universe of thought. In philosophy
the latest birth of time is the result of all the systems that have
preceded it, and must include their principles; and so, if, on other
grounds, it deserve the title of philosophy, will be the fullest, most
comprehensive, and most adequate system of all.
The spectacle of so many and so various systems of philosophy suggests
the necessity of defining more exactly the relation of Universal to
Particular. When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated
with the particular, as if it were on the same level, it sinks into a
particular itself. Even common sense in every-day matters is above the
absurdity of setting a universal _beside_ the particulars. Would any
one, who wished for fruit, reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on the
ground that they were cherries, pears, or grapes, and not fruit? But
when philosophy is in question, the excuse of many is that philosophies
are so different, and none of them is _the_ philosophy,--that each is
only _a_ philosophy. Such a plea is assumed to justify any amount of
contempt for philosophy. And yet cherries too are fruit. Often, too, a
system, of which the principle is the universal, is put on a level with
another of which the principle is a particular, and with theories which
deny the existence of philosophy altogether. Such systems are said to
be only different views of philosophy. With equal justice, light and
darkness might be styled different kinds of light.
14.] The same evolution of thought which is exhibited in the history
of philosophy is presented in the System of Philosophy itself. Here,
instead of surveying the process, as we do in history, from the
outside, we see the movement of thought clearly defined in its native
medium. The thought, which is genuine and self-supporting, must be
intrinsically concrete; it must be an Idea; and when it is viewed in
the whole of its universality, it is the Idea, or the Absolute. The
science of this Idea must form a system. For the truth is concrete;
that is, whilst it gives a bond and principle of unity, it also
possesses an internal source of development. Truth, then, is only
possible as a universe or totality of thought; and the freedom of the
whole, as well as the necessity of the several sub-divisions, which it
implies, are only possible when these are discriminated and defined.
Unless it is a system, a philosophy is not a scientific production.
Unsystematic philosophising can only be expected to give expression to
personal peculiarities of mind, and has no principle for the regulation
of its contents. Apart from their interdependence and organic union,
the truths of philosophy are valueless, and must then be treated as
baseless hypotheses, or personal convictions. Yet many philosophical
treatises confine themselves to such an exposition of the opinions and
sentiments of the author.
The term _system_ is often misunderstood. It does not denote a
philosophy, the principle of which is narrow and to be distinguished
from others. On the contrary, a genuine philosophy makes it a principle
to include every particular principle.
15.] Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle
rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the
philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium.
The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the
limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle.
The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The
Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole
Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is
a necessary member of the organisation.
16.] In the form of an Encyclopaedia, the science has no room for a
detailed exposition of particulars, and must be limited to setting
forth the commencement of the special sciences and the notions of
cardinal importance in them.
How much of the particular parts is requisite to constitute a
particular branch of knowledge is so far indeterminate, that the part,
if it is to be something true, must be not an isolated member merely,
but itself an organic whole. The entire field of philosophy therefore
really forms a single science; but it may also be viewed as a total,
composed of several particular sciences.
The encyclopaedia of philosophy must not be confounded with ordinary
encyclopaedias. An ordinary encyclopaedia does not pretend to be more
than an aggregation of sciences, regulated by no principle, and merely
as experience offers them. Sometimes it even includes what merely bear
the name of sciences, while they are nothing more than a collection of
bits of information. In an aggregate like this, the several branches of
knowledge owe their place in the encyclopaedia to extrinsic reasons,
and their unity is therefore artificial: they are _arranged,_ but we
cannot say they form a _system._ For the same reason, especially as the
materials to be combined also depend upon no one rule or principle,
the arrangement is at best an experiment, and will always exhibit
inequalities.
An encyclopaedia of philosophy excludes three kinds of partial science.
I. It excludes mere aggregates of bits of information. Philology in
its _prima facie_ aspect belongs to this class. II. It rejects the
quasi-sciences, which are founded on an act of arbitrary will alone,
such as Heraldry. Sciences of this class are positive from beginning to
end. III. In another class of sciences, also styled positive, but which
have a rational basis and a rational beginning, philosophy claims that
constituent as its own. The positive features remain the property of
the sciences themselves.
The positive element in the last class of sciences is of different
sorts. (I) Their commencement, though rational at bottom, yields to the
influence of fortuitousness, when they have to bring their universal
truth into contact with actual facts and the single phenomena of
experience. In this region of chance and change, the adequate notion
of science must yield its place to reasons or grounds of explanation.
Thus, _e.g._ in the science of jurisprudence, or in the system of
direct and indirect taxation, it is necessary to have certain points
precisely and definitively settled which lie beyond the competence of
the absolute lines laid down by the pure notion. A certain latitude
of settlement accordingly is left: and each point may be determined
in one way on one principle, in another way on another, and admits of
no definitive certainty. Similarly the Idea of Nature, when parcelled
out in detail, is dissipated into contingencies. Natural history,
geography, and medicine stumble upon descriptions of existence, upon
kinds and distinctions, which are not determined by reason, but by
sport and adventitious incidents. Even history comes under the same
category. The Idea is its essence and inner nature; but, as it appears,
everything is under contingency and in the field of voluntary action.
(II) These sciences are positive also in failing to recognise the
finite nature of what they predicate, and to point out how these
categories and their whole sphere pass into a higher. They assume their
statements to possess an authority beyond appeal. Here the fault lies
in the finitude of the form, as in the previous instance it lay in
the matter. (III) In close sequel to this, sciences are positive in
consequence of the inadequate grounds on which their conclusions rest:
based as these are on detached and casual inference, upon feeling,
faith, and authority, and, generally speaking, upon the deliverances
of inward and outward perception. Under this head we must also class
the philosophy which proposes to build upon anthropology,' facts of
consciousness, inward sense, or outward experience. It may happen,
however, that empirical is an epithet applicable only to the form of
scientific exposition; whilst intuitive sagacity has arranged what are
mere phenomena, according to the essential sequence of the notion. In
such a case the contrasts between the varied and numerous phenomena
brought together serve to eliminate the external and accidental
circumstances of their conditions, and the universal thus comes clearly
into view. Guided by such an intuition, experimental physics will
present the rational science of Nature,--as history will present the
science of human affairs and actions--in an external picture, which
mirrors the philosophic notion.
17.] It may seem as if philosophy, in order to start on its course,
had, like the rest of the sciences, to begin with a subjective
presupposition. The sciences postulate their respective objects, such
as space, number, or whatever it be; and it might be supposed that
philosophy had also to postulate the existence of thought. But the
two cases are not exactly parallel. It is by the free act of thought
that it occupies a point of view, in which it is for its own self, and
thus gives itself an object of its own production. Nor is this all.
The very point of view, which originally is taken on its own evidence
only, must in the course of the science be converted to a result,--the
ultimate result in which philosophy returns into itself and reaches
the point with which it began. In this manner philosophy exhibits the
appearance of a circle which closes with itself, and has no beginning
in the same way as the other sciences have. To speak of a beginning of
philosophy has a meaning only in relation to a person who proposes to
commence the study, and not in relation to the science as science. The
same thing may be thus expressed. The notion of science--the notion
therefore with which we start--which, for the very reason that it is
initial, implies a separation between the thought which is our object,
and the subject philosophising which is, as it were, external to the
former, must be grasped and comprehended by the science itself. This
is in short the one single aim, action, and goal of philosophy--to
arrive at the notion of its notion, and thus secure its return and its
satisfaction.
18.] As the whole science, and only the whole, can exhibit what the
Idea or system of reason is, it is impossible to give in a preliminary
way a general impression of a philosophy. Nor can a division of
philosophy into its parts be intelligible, except in connexion with the
system. A preliminary division, like the limited conception from which
it comes, can only be an anticipation. Here however it is premised that
the Idea turns out to be the thought which is completely identical
with itself, and not identical simply in the abstract, but also in its
action of setting itself over against itself, so as to gain a being of
its own, and yet of being in full possession of itself while it is in
this other. Thus philosophy is subdivided into three parts:
I. Logic, the science of the Idea in and for itself.
II. The Philosophy of Nature: the science of the Idea in its otherness.
III. The Philosophy of Mind: the science of the Idea come back to
itself out of that otherness.
As observed in § 15, the differences between the several philosophical
sciences are only aspects or specialisations of the one Idea or system
of reason, which and which alone is alike exhibited in these different
media. In Nature nothing else would have to be discerned, except the
Idea: but the Idea has here divested itself of its proper being. In
Mind, again, the Idea has asserted a being of its own, and is on the
way to become absolute. Every such form in which the Idea is expressed,
is at the same time a passing or fleeting stage: and hence each of
these subdivisions has not only to know its contents as an object which
has being for the time, but also in the same act to expound how these
contents pass into their higher circle. To represent the relation
between them as a division, therefore, leads to misconception; for it
co-ordinates the several parts or sciences one beside another, as if
they had no innate development, but were, like so many species, really
and radically distinct.
[1] The journal, too, edited by Thomson is called 'Annals of
Philosophy; or, Magazine of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Mechanics, Natural
History, Agriculture, and Arts.' We can easily guess from the title
what sort of subjects are here to be understood under the term
'philosophy.' Among the advertisements of books just published, I
lately found the following notice in an English newspaper: 'The Art of
Preserving the Hair, on Philosophical Principles, neatly printed in
post 8vo, price seven shillings.' By philosophical principles for the
preservation of the hair are probably meant chemical or physiological
principles.
[2] In connexion with the general principles of Political Economy,
the term 'philosophical' is frequently heard from the lips of English
statesmen, even in their public speeches. In the House of Commons, on
the 2nd Feb. 1825, Brougham, speaking oh the address in reply to the
speech from the throne, talked of 'the statesman-like and philosophical
principles of Free-trade,--for philosophical they undoubtedly are--upon
the acceptance of which his majesty this day congratulated the House.'
Nor is this language confined to members of the Opposition. At the
shipowners' yearly dinner in the same month, under the chairmanship
of the Premier Lord Liverpool, supported by Canning the Secretary of
State, and Sir C. Long the Paymaster-General of the Army, Canning
in reply to the toast which had been proposed said: 'A period has
just begun, in which ministers have it in their power to apply to
the administration of this country the sound maxims of a profound
philosophy.' Differences there may be between English and German
philosophy: still, considering that elsewhere the name of philosophy
is used only as a nickname and insult, or as something odious, it is
a matter of rejoicing to see it still honoured in the mouth of the
English Government.
CHAPTER II.
PRELIMINARY NOTION.
19.] LOGIC IS THE SCIENCE OF THE PURE IDEA; pure, that is, because the
Idea is in the abstract medium of Thought.
This definition, and the others which occur in these introductory
outlines, are derived from a survey of the whole system, to which
accordingly they are subsequent. The same remark applies to all
prefatory notions whatever about philosophy.
Logic might have been defined as the science of thought, and of its
laws and characteristic forms. But thought, as thought, constitutes
only the general medium, or qualifying circumstance, which renders
the Idea distinctively logical. If we identify the Idea with thought,
thought must not be taken in the sense of a method or form, but in the
sense of the self-developing totality of its laws and peculiar terms.
These laws are the work of thought itself, and not a fact which it
finds and must submit to.
From different points of view, Logic is either the hardest or the
easiest of the sciences, Logic is hard, because it has to deal not with
perceptions, nor, like geometry, with abstract representations of the
senses, but with pure abstractions; and because it demands a force and
facility of withdrawing into pure thought, of keeping firm hold on it,
and of moving in such an element. Logic is easy, because its facts are
nothing but our own thought and its familiar forms or terms: and these
are the acme of simplicity, the abc of everything else. They are also
what we are best acquainted with: such as, 'Is' and 'Is not': quality
and magnitude: being potential and being actual: one, many, and so on.
But such an acquaintance only adds to the difficulties of the study;
for while, on the one hand, we naturally think it is not worth our
trouble to occupy ourselves any longer with things so familiar, on the
other hand, the problem is to become acquainted with them in a new way,
quite opposite to that in which we know them already.
The utility of Logic is a matter which concerns its bearings upon the
student, and the training it may give for other purposes. This logical
training consists in the exercise in thinking which the student has
to go through (this science is the thinking of thinking): and in the
fact that he stores his head with thoughts, in their native unalloyed
character. It is true that Logic, being the absolute form of truth, and
another name for the very truth itself, is something more than merely
useful. Yet if what is noblest, most liberal and most independent is
also most useful, Logic has some claim to the latter character. Its
utility must then be estimated at another rate than exercise in thought
for the sake of the exercise.
(1) The first question is: What is the object of our science? The
simplest and most intelligible answer to this question is that Truth
is the object of Logic. Truth is a noble word, and the thing is nobler
still. So long as man is sound at heart and in spirit, the search for
truth must awake all the enthusiasm of his nature. But immediately
there steps in the objection--Are _we_ able to know truth? There
seems to be a disproportion between finite beings like ourselves and
the truth which is absolute: and doubts suggest themselves whether
there is any bridge between the finite and the infinite. God is
truth: how shall we know Him? Such an undertaking appears to stand in
contradiction with the graces of lowliness and humility.--Others who
ask whether we can know the truth have a different purpose. They want
to justify themselves in living on contented with their petty, finite
aims. And humility of this stamp is a poor thing.
But the time is past when people asked: How shall I, a poor worm of the
dust, be able to know the truth? And in its stead we find vanity and
conceit: people claim, without any trouble on their part, to breathe
the very atmosphere of truth. The young have been flattered into the
belief that they possess a natural birthright of moral and religious
truth. And in the same strain, those of riper years are declared to
be sunk, petrified, ossified in falsehood. Youth, say these teachers,
sees the bright light of dawn: but the older generation lies in the
slough and mire of the common day. They admit that the special sciences
are something that certainly ought to be cultivated, but merely as
the means to satisfy the needs of outer life. In all this it is not
humility which holds back from the knowledge and study of the truth,
but a conviction that we are already in full possession of it. And no
doubt the young carry with them the hopes of their elder compeers; on
them rests the advance of the world and science. But these hopes are
set upon the young, only on the condition that, instead of remaining as
they are, they undertake the stern labour of mind.
This modesty in truth-seeking has still another phase: and that is the
genteel indifference to truth, as we see it in Pilate's conversation
with Christ. Pilate asked 'What is truth?' with the air of a man who
had settled accounts with everything long ago, and concluded that
nothing particularly matters:--he meant much the same as Solomon when
he says: 'All is vanity.' When it comes to this, nothing is left but
self-conceit.
The knowledge of the truth meets an additional obstacle in timidity.
A slothful mind finds it natural to say: 'Don't let it be supposed
that we mean to be in earnest with our philosophy. We shall be glad
_inter alia_ to study Logic: but Logic must be sure to leave us as
we were before.' People have a feeling that, if thinking passes the
ordinary range of our ideas and impressions, it cannot but be on the
evil road. They seem to be trusting themselves to a sea on which they
will be tossed to and fro by the waves of thought, till at length they
again reach the sandbank of this temporal scene, as utterly poor as
when they left it. What coines of such a view, we see in the world. It
is possible within these limits to gain varied information and many
accomplishments, to become a master of official routine, and to be
trained for special purposes. But it is quite another thing to educate
the spirit for the higher life and to devote our energies to its
service. In our own day it may be hoped a longing for something better
has sprung up among the young, so that they will not be contented with
the mere straw of outer knowledge.
(2) It is universally agreed that thought is the object of Logic. But
of thought our estimate may be very mean, or it may be very high. On
one hand, people say: 'It is _only_ a thought.' In their view thought
is subjective, arbitrary and accidental--distinguished from the thing
itself, from the true and the real. On the other hand, a very high
estimate may be formed of thought; when thought alone is held adequate
to attain the highest of all things, the nature of God, of which the
senses can tell us nothing. God is a spirit, it is said, and must be
worshipped in spirit and in truth. But the merely felt and sensible,
we admit, is not the spiritual; its heart of hearts is in thought;
and only spirit can know spirit. And though it is true that spirit
can demean itself as feeling and sense--as is the case in religion,
the mere feeling, as a mode of consciousness, is one thing, and its
contents another. Feeling, as feeling, is the general form of the
sensuous nature which we have in common with the brutes. This form,
viz. feeling, may possibly seize and appropriate the full organic
truth: but the form has no real congruity with its contents. The form
of feeling is the lowest in which spiritual truth can be expressed.
The world of spiritual existences, God himself, exists in proper
truth, only in thought and as thought. If this be so, there fore,
thought, far from being a mere thought, is the highest and, in strict
accuracy, the sole mode of apprehending the eternal and absolute.
As of thought, so also of the science of thought, a very high or a
very low opinion may be formed. Any man, it is supposed, can think
without Logic, as he can digest without studying physiology. If he
have studied Logic, he thinks afterwards as he did before, perhaps
more methodically, but with little alteration. If this were all, and
if Logic did no more than make men acquainted with the action of
thought as the faculty of comparison and classification, it would
produce nothing which had not been done quite as well before. And in
point of fact Logic hitherto had no other idea of its duty than this.
Yet to be well-informed about thought, even as a mere activity of the
subject-mind, is honourable and interesting for man. It is in knowing
what he is and what he does, that man is distinguished from the brutes.
But we may take the higher estimate of thought--as what alone can get
really in touch with the supreme and true. In that case, Logic as the
science of thought occupies a high ground. If the science of Logic
then considers thought in its action and its productions (and thought
being no resultless energy produces thoughts and the particular thought
required), the theme of Logic is in general the supersensible world,
and to deal with that theme is to dwell for a while in that world.
Mathematics is concerned with the abstractions of time and space. But
these are still the object of sense, although the sensible is abstract
and idealised. Thought bids adieu even to this last and abstract
sensible: it asserts its own native independence, renounces the field
of the external and internal sense, and puts away the interests and
inclinations of the individual. When Logic takes this ground, it is a
higher science than we are in the habit of supposing.
(3) The necessity of understanding Logic in a deeper sense than as
the science of the mere form of thought is enforced by the interests
of religion and politics, of law and morality. In earlier days men
meant no harm by thinking: they thought away freely and fearlessly.
They thought about God, about Nature, and the State; and they felt
sure that a knowledge of the truth was obtainable through thought
only, and not through the senses or any random ideas or opinions.
But while they so thought, the principal ordinances of life began
to be seriously affected by their conclusions. Thought deprived
existing institutions of their force. Constitutions fell a victim to
thought: religion was assailed by thought: firm religious beliefs
which had been always looked upon as revelations were undermined, and
in many minds the old faith was upset. The Greek philosophers, for
example, became antagonists of the old religion, and destroyed its
beliefs. Philosophers were accordingly banished or put to death, as
revolutionists who had subverted religion and the state, two things
which were inseparable. Thought, in short, made itself a power in the
real world, and exercised enormous influence. The matter ended by
drawing attention to the influence of thought, and its claims were
submitted to a more rigorous scrutiny, by which the world professed to
find that thought arrogated too much and was unable to perform what
it had undertaken. It had not--people said--learned the real being of
God, of Nature and Mind. It had not learned what the truth was. What
it had done, was to overthrow religion and the state. It became urgent
therefore to justify thought, with reference to the results it had
produced: and it is this examination into the nature of thought and
this justification which in recent times has constituted one of the
main problems of philosophy.
20.] If we take our _prima facie_ impression of thought, we find on
examination first (a) that, in its usual subjective acceptation,
thought is one out of many activities or faculties of the mind,
co-ordinate with such others as sensation, perception, imagination,
desire, volition, and the like. The product of this activity, the form
or character peculiar to thought, is the UNIVERSAL, or, in general,
the abstract. Thought, regarded as an _activity,_ may be accordingly
described as the _active_ universal, and, since the deed, its product,
is the universal once more, may be called a self-actualising universal.
Thought conceived as a _subject_ (agent) is a thinker, and the subject
existing as a thinker is simply denoted by the term 'I.'
The propositions giving an account of thought in this and the following
sections are not offered as assertions or opinions of mine on the
matter. But in these preliminary chapters any deduction or proof would
be impossible, and the statements may be taken as matters in evidence.
In other words, every man, when he thinks and considers his thoughts,
will discover by the experience of his consciousness that they possess
the character of universality as well as the other aspects of thought
to be afterwards enumerated. We assume of course that his powers of
attention and abstraction have undergone a previous training, enabling
him to observe correctly the evidence of his consciousness and his
conceptions.
This introductory exposition has already alluded to the distinction
between Sense, Conception, and Thought. As the distinction is of
capital importance for understanding the nature and kinds of knowledge,
it will help to explain matters if we here call attention to it. For
the explanation of _Sense,_ the readiest method certainly is, to refer
to its external source--the organs of sense. But to name the organ
does not help much to explain what is apprehended by it. The real
distinction between sense and thought lies in this--that the essential
feature of the sensible is individuality, and as the individual (which,
reduced to its simplest terms, is the atom) is also a member of a
group, sensible existence presents a number of mutually exclusive
units,--of units, to speak in more definite and abstract formulae,
which exist side by side with, and after, one another. _Conception_ or
picture-thinking works with materials from the same sensuous source.
But these materials when _conceived_ are expressly characterised as in
me and therefore mine: and secondly, as universal, or simple, because
only referred to self. Nor is sense the only source of materialised
conception. There are conceptions constituted by materials emanating
from self-conscious thought, such as those of law, morality, religion,
and even of thought itself, and it requires some effort to detect
wherein lies the difference between such conceptions and thoughts
having the same import. For it is a thought of which such conception is
the vehicle, and there is no want of the form of universality, without
which no content could be in me, or be a conception at all. Yet here
also the peculiarity of conception is, generally speaking, to be sought
in the individualism or isolation of its contents. True it is that, for
example, law and legal provisions do not exist in a sensible space,
mutually excluding one another. Nor as regards time, though they appear
to some extent in succession, are their contents themselves conceived
as affected by time, or as transient and changeable in it. The fault
in conception lies deeper. These ideas, though implicitly possessing
the organic unity of mind, stand isolated here and there on the broad
ground of conception, with its inward and abstract generality. Thus
cut adrift, each is simple, unrelated: Right, Duty, God. Conception in
these circumstances either rests satisfied with declaring that Right
is Right, God is God: or in a higher grade of culture, it proceeds to
enunciate the attributes; as, for instance, God is the Creator of the
world, omniscient, almighty, &c. In this way several isolated, simple
predicates are strung together: but in spite of the link supplied
by their subject, the predicates never get beyond mere contiguity.
In this point Conception coincides with Understanding: the only
distinction being that the latter introduces relations of universal
and particular, of cause and effect, &c., and in this way supplies a
necessary connexion to the isolated ideas of conception; which last has
left them side by side in its vague mental spaces, connected only by a
bare 'and.'
The difference between conception and thought is of special importance:
because philosophy may be said to do nothing but transform conceptions
into thoughts,--though it works the further transformation of a mere
thought into a notion.
Sensible existence has been characterised by the attributes of
individuality and mutual exclusion of the members. It is well to
remember that these very attributes of sense are thoughts and general
terms. It will be shown in the Logic that thought (and the universal)
is not a mere opposite of sense: it lets nothing escape it, but,
outflanking its other, is at once that other and itself. Now language
is the work of thought: and hence all that is expressed in language
must be universal. What I only mean or suppose is mine: it belongs
to me,--this particular individual. But language expresses nothing
but universality; and so I cannot say what I merely _mean._ And the
unutterable,--feeling or sensation,--far from being the highest truth,
is the most unimportant and untrue. If I say 'The individual,' 'This
individual,' 'here,' 'now,' all these are universal terms. Everything
and anything is an individual, a 'this,' and if it be sensible, is
here and now. Similarly when I say, 'I,' I _mean_ my single self to
the exclusion of all others: but what I _say,_ viz. 'I,' is just
every 'I,' which in like manner excludes all others from itself. In
an awkward expression which Kant used, he said that I _accompany_
all my conceptions,--sensations, too, desires, actions, &c. 'I' is
in essence and act the universal: and such partnership is a form,
though an external form, of universality. All other men have it in
common with me to be 'I': just as it is common to all my sensations
and conceptions to be mine. But 'I,' in the abstract, as such, is the
mere act of self-concentration or self-relation, in which we make
abstraction from all conception and feeling, from every state of mind
and every peculiarity of nature, talent, and experience. To this
extent, 'I' is the existence of a wholly _abstract_ universality, a
principle of abstract freedom. Hence thought, viewed as a subject, is
what is expressed by the word 'I': and since I am at the same time in
all my sensations, conceptions, and states of consciousness, thought
is everywhere present, and is a category that runs through all these
modifications.
Our first impression when we use the term thought is of a subjective
activity--one amongst many similar faculties, such as memory,
imagination and will. Were thought merely an activity of the
subject-mind and treated under that aspect by logic, logic would
resemble the other sciences in possessing a well-marked object. It
might in that case seem arbitrary to devote a special science to
thought, whilst will, imagination and the rest were denied the same
privilege. The selection of one faculty however might even in this view
be very well grounded on a certain authority acknowledged to belong to
thought, and on its claim to be regarded as the true nature of man, in
which consists his distinction from the brutes. Nor is it unimportant
to study thought even as a subjective energy. A detailed analysis
of its nature would exhibit rules and laws, a knowledge of which is
derived from experience. A treatment of the laws of thought, from this
point of view, used once to form the body of logical science. Of that
science Aristotle was the founder. He succeeded in assigning to thought
what properly belongs to it. Our thought is extremely concrete: but
in its composite contents we must distinguish the part that properly
belongs to thought, or to the abstract mode of its action. A subtle
spiritual bond, consisting in the agency of thought, is what gives
unity to all these contents, and it was this bond, the form as form,
that Aristotle noted and described. Up to the present day, the logic
of Aristotle continues to be the received system. It has indeed been
spun out to greater length, especially by the labours of the medieval
Schoolmen who, without making any material additions, merely refined
in details. The moderns also have left their mark upon this logic,
partly by omitting many points of logical doctrine due to Aristotle and
the Schoolmen, and partly by foisting in a quantity of psychological
matter. The purport of the science is to become acquainted with the
procedure of finite thought: and, if it is adapted to its pre-supposed
object, the science is entitled to be styled correct. The study of this
formal logic undoubtedly has its uses. It sharpens the wits, as the
phrase goes, and teaches us to collect our thoughts and to abstract
--whereas in common consciousness we have to deal with sensuous
conceptions which cross and perplex one another. Abstraction moreover
implies the concentration of the mind on a single point, and thus
induces the habit of attending to our inward selves. An acquaintance
with the forms of finite thought may be made a means of training the
mind for the empirical sciences, since their method is regulated by
these forms: and in this sense logic has been designated Instrumental.
It is true, we may be still more liberal, and say: Logic is to be
studied not for its utility, but for its own sake; the super-excellent
is not to be sought for the sake of mere utility. In one sense this is
quite correct: but it may be replied that the super-excellent is also
the most useful: because it is the all-sustaining principle which,
having a subsistence of its own, may therefore serve as the vehicle of
special ends which it furthers and secures. And thus, special ends,
though they have no right to be set first, are still fostered by the
presence of the highest good. Religion, for instance, has an absolute
value of its own; yet at the same time other ends flourish and succeed
in its train. As Christ says: 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and
all these things shall be added unto you.' Particular ends can be
attained only in the attainment of what absolutely is and exists in its
own right.
21.] (b) Thought was described as active. We now, in the second place,
consider this action in its bearings upon objects, or as reflection
upon something. In this case the universal or product of its operation
contains the value of the thing--is the essential, inward, and true.
In § 5 the old belief was quoted that the reality in object,
circumstance, or event, the intrinsic worth or essence, the thing on
which everything depends, is not a self-evident datum of consciousness,
or coincident with the first appearance and impression of the object;
that, on the contrary, Reflection is required in order to discover the
real constitution of the object--and that by such reflection it will be
ascertained.
To reflect is a lesson which even the child has to learn. One of his
first lessons is to join adjectives with substantives. This obliges
him to attend and distinguish: he has to remember a rule and apply it
to the particular case. This rule is nothing but a universal: and the
child must see that the particular adapts itself to this universal.
In life, again, we have ends to attain. And with regard to these we
ponder which is the best way to secure them. The end here represents
the universal or governing principle: and we have means and instruments
whose action we regulate in conformity to the end. In the same way
reflection is active in questions of conduct. To reflect here means to
recollect the right, the duty,--the universal which serves as a fixed
rule' to guide our behaviour in the given case. Our particular act
must imply and recognise the universal law.--We find the same thing
exhibited in our study of natural phenomena. For instance, we observe
thunder and lightning. The phenomenon is a familiar one, and we often
perceive it. But man is not content with a bare acquaintance, or with
the fact as it appears to the senses; he would like to get behind the
surface, to know what it is, and to comprehend it. This leads him to
reflect: he seeks to find out the cause as something distinct from
the mere phenomenon: he tries to know the inside in its distinction
from the outside. Hence the phenomenon becomes double, it splits into
inside and outside, into force and its manifestation, into cause and
effect. Once more we find the inside or the force identified with the
universal and permanent: not this or that flash of lightning, this
or that plant--but that which continues the same in them all. The
sensible appearance is individual and evanescent: the permanent in
it is discovered by. reflection. Nature shows us a countless number
of individual forms and phenomena. Into this variety we feel a need
of introducing unity: we compare, consequently, and try to find the
universal of each single case. Individuals are born and perish: the
species abides and recurs in them all: and its existence is only
visible to reflection. Under the same head fall such laws as those
regulating the motion of the heavenly bodies. To-day we see the stars
here, and to-morrow there: and our mind finds something incongruous, in
this chaos--something in which it can put no faith, because it believes
in order and in a simple, constant, and universal law. Inspired by this
belief, the mind has directed its reflection towards the phenomena,
and learnt their laws. In other words, it has established the movement
of the heavenly bodies to be in accordance with a universal law from
which every change of position may be known and predicted. The case is
the same with the influences which make themselves felt in the infinite
complexity of human conduct. There, too, man has the belief in the sway
of a general principle.--From all these examples it may be gathered
how reflection is always seeking for something fixed and permanent,
definite in itself and governing the particulars. This universal which
cannot be apprehended by the senses counts as the true and essential.
Thus, duties and rights are all-important in the matter of conduct: and
an action is true when it conforms to those universal formulae.
In thus characterising the universal, we become aware of its antithesis
to something else. This something else is the merely immediate,
outward and individual, as opposed to the mediate, inward and
universal. The universal does not exist externally to the outward eye
as a universal. The kind as kind cannot be perceived: the laws of the
celestial motions are not written on the sky. The universal is neither
seen nor heard, its existence is only for the mind. Religion leads us
to a universal, which embraces all else within itself, to an Absolute
by which all else is brought into being: and this Absolute is an object
not of the senses but of the mind and of thought.
22.] (c) By the act of reflection something is _altered_ in the way in
which the fact was originally presented in sensation, perception, or
conception. Thus, as it appears, an alteration of the object must be
interposed before its true nature can be discovered.
What reflection elicits, is a product of our thought. Solon, for
instance, produced out of his head the laws he gave to the Athenians.
This is half of the truth: but we must not on that account forget
that the universal (in Solon's case, the laws) is the very reverse of
merely subjective, or fail to note that it is the essential, true,
and objective being of things. To discover the truth in things,
mere attention is not enough; we must call in the action of our own
faculties to transform what is immediately before us. Now, at first
sight, this seems an inversion of the natural order, calculated to
thwart the very purpose on which knowledge is bent. But the method is
not so irrational as it seems. It has been the conviction of every age
that the only way of reaching the permanent substratum was to transmute
the given phenomenon by means of reflection. In modern times a doubt
has for the first time been raised on this point in connexion with the
difference alleged to exist between the products of our thought and the
things in their own nature. This real nature of things, it is said,
is very different from what we make out of them. The divorce between
thought and thing is mainly the work of the Critical Philosophy,
and runs counter to the conviction of all previous ages, that their
agreement was a matter of course. The antithesis between them is
the hinge on which modern philosophy turns. Meanwhile the natural
belief of men gives the lie to it. In common life we reflect, without
particularly reminding ourselves that this is the process of arriving
at the truth, and we think without hesitation, and in the firm belief
that thought coincides with thing. And this belief is of the greatest
importance. It marks the diseased state of the age when we see it adopt
the despairing creed that our knowledge is only subjective, and that
beyond this subjective we cannot go. Whereas, rightly understood, truth
is objective, and ought so to regulate the conviction of every one,
that the conviction of the individual is stamped as wrong when it does
not agree with this rule. Modern views, on the contrary, put great
value on the mere fact of conviction, and hold that to be convinced is
good for its own sake, whatever be the burden of our conviction,--there
being no standard by which we can measure its truth.
We said above that, according to the old belief, it was the
characteristic right of the mind to know the truth. If this be so, it
also implies that everything we know both of outward and inward nature,
in one word, the objective world, is in its own self the same as it is
in thought, and that to think is to bring out the truth of our object,
be it what it may. The business of philosophy is only to bring into
explicit consciousness what the world in all ages has believed about
thought. Philosophy therefore advances nothing new; and our present
discussion has led us to a conclusion which agrees with the natural
belief of mankind.
23.] (d) The real nature of the object is brought to light in
reflection; but it is no less true that this exertion of thought is
_my_ act. If this be so, the real nature is a _product_ of _my_ mind,
in its character of thinking subject--generated by me in my simple
universality, self-collected and removed from extraneous influences,
--in one word, in my Freedom.
Think for yourself, is a phrase which people often use as if it had
some special significance. The fact is, no man can think for another,
any more than he can eat or drink for him: and the expression is a
pleonasm. To think is in fact _ipso facto_ to be free, for thought as
the action of the universal is an abstract relating of self to self,
where, being at home with ourselves, and as regards our subjectivity,
utterly blank, our consciousness is, in the matter of its contents,
only in the fact and its characteristics. If this be admitted, and
if we apply the term humility or modesty to an attitude where our
subjectivity is not allowed to interfere by act or quality, it is
easy to appreciate the question touching the humility or modesty and
pride of philosophy. For in point of contents, thought is only true in
proportion as it sinks itself in the facts; and in point of form it
is no private or particular state or act of the subject, but rather
that attitude of consciousness where the abstract self, freed from
all the special limitations to which its ordinary states or qualities
are liable, restricts itself to that universal action in which it is
identical with all individuals. In these circumstances philosophy may
be acquitted of the charge of pride. And when Aristotle summons the
mind to rise to the dignity of that attitude, the dignity he seeks is
won by letting slip all our individual opinions and prejudices, and
submitting to the sway of the fact.
24.] With these explanations and qualifications, thoughts may be termed
Objective Thoughts,--among which are also to be included the forms
which are more especially discussed in the common logic, where they are
usually treated as forms of conscious thought only. _Logic therefore
coincides with Metaphysics, the science of things set and held in
thoughts,_--thoughts accredited able to express the essential reality
of things.
An exposition of the relation in which such forms as notion, judgment,
and syllogism stand to others, such as causality, is a matter for the
science itself. But this much is evident beforehand. If thought tries
to form a notion of things, this notion (as well as its proximate
phases, the judgment and syllogism) cannot be composed of articles and
relations which are alien and irrelevant to the things. Reflection, it
was said above, conducts to the universal of things: which universal
is itself one of the constituent factors of a notion. To say that
Reason or Understanding is in the world, is equivalent in its import
to the phrase 'Objective Thought.' The latter phrase however has the
inconvenience that thought is usually confined to express what belongs
to the mind or consciousness only, while objective is a term applied,
at least primarily, only to the non-mental.
(1) To speak of thought or objective thought as the heart [and soul
of the world, may seem to be ascribing consciousness to the things of
nature. We feel a certain repugnance against making thought the inward
function of things, especially as we speak of thought as marking the
divergence of man from nature. It would be necessary, therefore, if
we use the term thought at all, to speak of nature as the system of
unconscious thought, or, to use Schelling's expression, a petrified
intelligence. And in order to prevent misconception, thought-form or
thought-type should be substituted for the ambiguous term thought.
From what has been said the principles of logic are to be sought
in a system of thought-types or fundamental categories, in which
the opposition between subjective and objective, in its usual
sense, vanishes. The signification thus attached to thought and its
characteristic forms may be illustrated by the ancient saying that
'νοῧς governs the world,' or by our own phrase that 'Reason is in the
world: which means that Reason is the soul of the world it inhabits,
its immanent principle, its most proper and inward nature, its
universal. Another illustration is offered by the circumstance that
in speaking of some definite animal we say it is (an) animal. Now,
the animal, _quâ_ animal, cannot be shown; nothing can be pointed out
excepting some special animal. Animal, _quâ_ animal, does not exist: it
is merely the universal nature of the individual animals, whilst each
existing animal is a more concretely, defined and particularised thing.
But to be an animal,--the law of kind which is the universal in this
case,--is the property of the particular animal, and constitutes its
definite essence. Take away from the dog its animality, and it becomes
impossible to say what it is. All things have a permanent inward
nature, as well as an outward existence. They live and die, arise and
pass away; but their essential and universal part is the kind; and this
means much more than something _common_ to them all.
If thought is the constitutive substance of external things, it is also
the universal substance of what is spiritual. In all human perception
thought is present; so too thought is the universal in all the acts of
conception and recollection; in short, in every mental activity, in
willing, wishing and the like. All these faculties are only further,
specialisations of thought. When it is presented in this light, thought
has a different part to play from what it has if we speak of a faculty
of thought, one among a crowd of other faculties, such as perception,
conception and will, with which it stands on the same level. When it
is seen, to be the true universal of all that nature and mind contain,
it extends its scope far beyond all these, and becomes the basis of
everything. From this view of thought, in its objective meaning as
[greek: nous], we may next pass to consider the subjective sense of the
term. We say first, Man is a being that thinks; but we also say at the
same time, Man is a being that perceives and wills. Man is a thinker,
and is universal: but he is a thinker only because he feels his own
universality. The animal too is by implication universal, but the
universal is not consciously felt by it to be universal: it feels only
the individual. The animal sees a singular object, for instance, its
food, or a man. For the animal all this never goes beyond an individual
thing. Similarly, sensation has to do with nothing but singulars, such
as _this_ pain or _this_ sweet taste. Nature does not bring its "νοῦς"
into consciousness: it is man who first makes himself double so as
to be a universal for a universal. This first happens when man knows
that he is 'I.' By the term 'I' I mean myself, a single and altogether
determinate person. And yet I really utter nothing peculiar to myself,
for every one else is an 'I' or 'Ego,' and when I call myself 'I,'
though I indubitably mean the single person myself, I express a
thorough universal. 'I,' therefore, is mere being-for-self, in which
everything peculiar or marked is renounced and buried out of sight;
it is as it were the ultimate and unanalysable point of consciousness
We may say 'I' I and thought are the same, or, more definitely, 'I'
is thought as a thinker. What I have in my consciousness, is for me.
'I' is the vacuum or receptacle for anything and everything: for which
everything is and which stores up everything in itself. Every man is a
whole world of conceptions, that lie buried in the night of the 'Ego.'
It follows that the 'Ego' is the universal in which we leave aside all
that is particular, and in which at the same time all the particulars
have a latent existence. In other words, it is not a mere universality
and nothing more, but the universality which includes in it everything.
Commonly we use the word 'I' without attaching much importance to it,
nor is it an object of study except to philosophical analysis. In the
'Ego,' we have thought before us in its utter purity. While the brute
cannot say 'I,' man can, because it is his nature to think. Now in the
'Ego' there are a variety of contents, derived both from within and
from, without, and according to the nature of these contents our state
may be described as perception, or conception, or reminiscence. But
in all of them the 'I' is found: or in them all thought is present.
Man, therefore, is always thinking, even in his perceptions: if he
observes anything, he always observes it as a universal, fixes on a
single point which he places in relief, thus withdrawing his attention
from other points, and takes it as abstract and universal, even if the
universality be only in form.
In the case of our ordinary conceptions, two things may happen. Either
the contents are moulded by thought, but not the form: or, the form
belongs to thought and not the contents. In using such terms, for
instance, as anger, rose, hope, I am speaking of things which I have
learnt in the way of sensation, but I express these contents in a
universal mode, that is, in the form of thought. I have left out much
that is particular and given the contents in their generality: but
still the contents remain sense-derived. On the other hand, when I
represent God, the content is undeniably a product of pure thought,
but the form still retains the sensuous limitations which it has as
I find it immediately present in myself. In these generalised images
the content is not merely and simply sensible, as it is in a visual
inspection; but either the content is sensuous and the form appertains
to thought, or _vice versâ._ In the first case the material is given to
us, and our thought supplies the form: in the second case the content
which has its source in thought is by means of the form turned into a
something given, which accordingly reaches the mind from without.
(2) Logic is the study of thought pure and simple, or of the pure
thought-forms. In the ordinary sense of the term, by thought we
generally represent to ourselves something more than simple and
unmixed thought; we mean some thought, the material of which is from
experience. Whereas in logic a thought is understood to include nothing
else but what depends on thinking and what thinking has brought into
existence. It is in these circumstances that thoughts are _pure_
thoughts. The mind is then in its own home-element and therefore free:
for freedom means that the other thing with which you deal is a second
self--so that you never leave your own ground but give the law to
yourself. In the impulses or appetites the beginning is from something
else, from something which we feel to be external. In this case then
we speak of dependence. For freedom it is necessary that we should
feel no presence of something else which is not ourselves. The natural
man, whose motions follow the rule only of his appetites, is not his
own master. Be he as self-willed as he may, the constituents of his
will and opinion are not his own, and his freedom is merely formal.
But when we _think,_ we renounce our selfish and particular being,
sink ourselves in the thing, allow thought to follow its own course,
and,--if we add anything of our own, we think ill.
If in pursuance of the foregoing remarks we consider-, Logic to be
the system of the pure types of thought, we find that the other
philosophical sciences, the Philosophy of I Nature and the Philosophy
of Mind, take the place, as it were, of an Applied Logic, and that
Logic is the soul which animates them both. Their problem in that
case is only to recognise the logical forms under the shapes they
assume in Nature and Mind,--shapes which are only a particular mode
of expression for the forms of pure thought. If for instance we take
the syllogism (not as it was understood in the old formal logic, but
at its real value), we shall find it gives expression to the law that
the particular is the middle term which fuses together the extremes of
the universal and the singular. The syllogistic form is a universal
form of all things. Everything that exists is a particular, which
couples together the universal and the singular. But Nature is weak
and fails to exhibit the logical forms in their purity. Such a feeble
exemplification of the syllogism may be seen in the magnet. In the
middle or point of indifference of a magnet, its two poles, however
they may be distinguished, are brought into one. Physics also teaches
us to see the universal or essence in Nature: and the only difference
between it and the Philosophy of Nature is that the latter brings
before our mind the adequate forms of the notion in the physical world.
It will now be understood that Logic is the all-animating spirit of
all the sciences, and its categories the spiritual hierarchy. They
are the heart and centre of things: and yet at the same time they
are always on our lips, and, apparently at least, perfectly familiar
objects. But things thus familiar are usually the greatest strangers.
Being, for example, is a category of pure thought: but to make 'Is'
an object of investigation never occurs to us. Common fancy puts the
Absolute far away in a world beyond. The Absolute is rather directly
before us, so present that so long as we think, we must, though without
express consciousness of it, always carry it with us and always use it.
Language is the main depository of these types of thought; and one use
of the grammatical instruction which children receive is unconsciously
to turn their attention to distinctions of thought.
Logic is usually said to be concerned with forms _only_ and to derive
the material for them from elsewhere. But this 'only,' which assumes
that the logical thoughts are nothing in comparison with the rest
of the contents, is not the word to use about forms which are the
absolutely-real ground of everything. Everything else rather is an
'only' compared with these thoughts. To make such abstract forms a
problem pre-supposes in the inquirer a higher level of culture than
ordinary; and to study them in themselves and for their own sake
signifies in addition that these thought-types must be deduced out of
thought itself, and their truth or reality examined by the light of
their own laws. We do not assume them as data from without, and then
define them or exhibit their value and authority by comparing them with
the shape they take in our minds. If we thus acted, we should proceed
from observation and experience, and should, for instance, say we
habitually employ the term 'force' in such a case, and such a meaning.
A definition like that would be called correct, if it agreed with the
conception of its object present in our ordinary state of mind. The
defect of this empirical method is that a notion is not defined as it
is in and for itself, but in terms of something assumed, which is then
used as a criterion and standard of correctness. No such test need be
applied: we have merely to let the thought-forms follow the impulse of
their own organic life.
To ask if a category is true or not, must sound strange to the ordinary
mind: for a category apparently becomes true only when it is applied
to a given object, and apart from this application it would seem
meaningless to inquire into its truth. But this is the very question on
which everything turns. We must however in the first place understand
clearly what we mean by Truth. In common life truth means the agreement
of an object with our conception of it. We thus pre-suppose an object
to which our conception must conform. In the philosophical sense of the
word, on the other hand, truth may be described, in general abstract
terms, as the agreement of a thought-content with itself. This meaning
is quite different from the one given above. At the same time the
deeper and philosophical meaning of truth can be partially traced even
in the ordinary usage of language. Thus we speak of a true friend; by
which we mean a friend whose manner of conduct accords with the notion
of friendship. In the same way we speak of a true work of Art. Untrue
in this sense means the same as bad, or self-discordant. In this sense
a bad state is an untrue state; and evil and untruth may be said to
consist in the contradiction subsisting between the function or notion
and the existence of the object. Of such a bad object we may form
a correct representation, but the import of such representation is
inherently false. Of these correctnesses; which are at the same time
untruths, we may have many in our heads.--God alone is the thorough
harmony of notion and reality. All finite things involve an untruth:
they have a notion and an existence, but their existence does not meet
the requirements of the notion. For this reason they must perish, and
then the incompatibility between their notion and their existence
becomes manifest. It is in the kind that the individual animal has its
notion: and the kind liberates itself from this individuality by death.
The study of truth, or, as it is here explained to mean, consistency,
constitutes the proper problem of logic. In our every-day mind we
are never troubled with questions about the truth of the forms of
thought.--We may also express the problem of logic by saying that it
examines the forms of thought touching their capability to hold truth.
And the question comes to this: What are the forms of the infinite, and
what are the forms of the finite? Usually no suspicion attaches to the
finite forms of thought; they are allowed to pass unquestioned. But it
is from conforming to finite categories in thought and action that all
deception originates.
(3) Truth may be ascertained by several methods, each of which however
is no more than a form. Experience is the first of these methods. But
the method is only a form: it has no intrinsic value of its own. For
in experience everything depends upon the mind we bring to bear upon
actuality. A great mind is great in its experience; and in the motley
play of phenomena at once perceives the point of real significance. The
idea is present, in actual shape, not something, as it were, over the
hill and far away. The genius of a Goethe, for example, looking into
nature or history, has great experiences, catches sight of the living
principle, and gives expression to it. A second method of apprehending
the truth is Reflection, which defines it by intellectual relations of
condition and conditioned. But in these two modes the absolute truth
has not yet found its appropriate form. The most perfect method of
knowledge proceeds in the pure form of thought: and here the attitude
of man is one of entire freedom.
That the form of thought is the perfect form, and that it presents
the truth as it intrinsically and actually is, is the general dogma
of all philosophy. To give a proof of the dogma there is, in the
first instance, nothing to do but show that these other forms of
knowledge are finite. The grand Scepticism of antiquity accomplished
this task when it exhibited the contradictions contained in every
one of these forms. That Scepticism indeed went further: but when
it ventured to assail the forms of reason, it began by insinuating
under them something finite upon which it might fasten. All the
forms of finite thought will make their appearance in the course of
logical development, the order in which they present themselves being
determined by necessary laws. Here in the introduction they could only
be unscientifically assumed as something given. In the theory of logic
itself these forms will be exhibited, not only on their negative, but
also on their positive side.
When we compare the different forms of ascertaining truth with one
another, the first of them, immediate knowledge, may perhaps seem the
finest, noblest and most appropriate. It includes everything which
the moralists term innocence as well as religious feeling, simple
trust, love, fidelity, and natural faith. The two other forms, first
reflective, and secondly philosophical cognition, must leave that
unsought natural harmony behind. And so far as they have this in
common, the methods which claim to apprehend the truth by thought
may naturally be regarded as part and parcel of the pride which leads
man to trust to his own powers for a knowledge of the truth. Such a
position involves a thorough-going disruption, and, viewed in that
light, might be regarded as the source of all evil and wickedness--the
original transgression. Apparently therefore they only way of being
reconciled and restored to peace is to surrender all claims to think or
know.
This lapse from natural unity has not escaped notice, and nations from
the earliest times have asked the meaning of the wonderful division of
the spirit against itself. No such inward disunion is found in nature:
natural things do nothing wicked.
The Mosaic legend of the Fall of Man has preserved an ancient picture
representing the origin and consequences of this disunion. The
incidents of the legend form the basis of an essential article of the
creed, the doctrine of original sin in man and his consequent need of
succour. It may be well at the commencement of logic to examine the
story which treats of the origin and the bearings of the very knowledge
which logic has to discuss. For, though philosophy must not allow
herself to be overawed by religion, or accept the position of existence
on sufferance, she cannot afford to neglect these popular conceptions.
The tales and allegories of religion, which have enjoyed for thousands
of years the veneration of nations, are not to be set aside as
antiquated even now.
Upon a closer inspection of the story of the Fall we find, as was
already said, that it exemplifies the universal bearings of knowledge
upon the spiritual life. In its instinctive and natural stage,
spiritual life wears the garb of innocence and confiding simplicity:
but the very essence of spirit implies the absorption of this immediate
condition in something higher. The spiritual is distinguished from the
natural, and more especially from the animal, life, in the circumstance
that it does not continue a mere stream of tendency, but sunders itself
to self-realisation. But this position of severed life has in its turn
to be suppressed, and the spirit has by its own act to win its way
to concord again. The final concord then is spiritual; that is, the
principle of restoration is found in thought, and thought only. The
hand that inflicts the wound is also the hand which heals it.
We are told in our story that Adam and Eve, the first human beings,
the types of humanity, were placed in a garden, where grew a tree of
life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God, it is said,
had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of this latter tree: of the
tree of life for the present nothing further is said. These words
evidently assume that man is not intended to seek knowledge, and ought
to remain in the state of innocence. Other meditative races, it may
be remarked, have held the same belief that the primitive state of
mankind was one of innocence and harmony. Now all this is to a certain
extent correct. The disunion that appears throughout humanity is not
a condition to rest in. But it is a mistake to regard the natural and
immediate harmony as the right state. The mind is not mere instinct:
on the contrary, it essentially involves the tendency to reasoning
and meditation. Childlike innocence no doubt has in it something
fascinating and attractive: but only because it reminds us of what the
spirit must win for itself. The harmoniousness of childhood is a gift
from the hand of nature: the second harmony must spring from the labour
and culture of the spirit. And so the words of Christ, 'Except ye
_become_ as little children,' &c., are very far from telling us that we
must always remain children.
Again, we find in the narrative of Moses that the occasion which led
man to leave his natural unity is attributed to solicitation from
without. The serpent was the tempter. But the truth is, that the step
into opposition, the awakening of consciousness, follows from the
very nature of man: and the same history repeats itself in every son
of Adam. The serpent represents likeness to God as consisting in the
knowledge of good and evil: and it is just this knowledge in which man
participates when he breaks with the unity of his instinctive being
and eats of the forbidden fruit. The first reflection of awakened
consciousness in men told them that they were naked. This is a naïve
and profound trait. For the sense of shame bears evidence to the
separation of man from his natural and sensuous life. The beasts never
get so far as this separation, and they feel no shame. And it is in
the human feeling of shame that we are to seek the spiritual and moral
origin of dress, compared with which the merely physical need is a
secondary matter.
Next comes the Curse, as it is called, which God pronounced upon
man. The prominent point in that curse turns chiefly on the contrast
between man and nature. Man must work in the sweat of his brow: and
woman bring forth in sorrow. As to work, if it is the result of the
disunion, it is also the victory over it. The beasts have nothing more
to do but to pick up the materials required to satisfy their wants: man
on the contrary can only satisfy his wants by himself producing and
transforming the necessary means. Thus even in these outside things man
is dealing with himself.
The story does not close with the expulsion from Paradise. We are
further told, God said, 'Behold Adam is become as one of us, to
know good and evil.' Knowledge is now spoken of as divine, and not,
as before, as something wrong and forbidden. Such words contain a
confutation of the idle talk that philosophy pertains only to the
finitude of the mind. Philosophy is knowledge, and it is through
knowledge that man first realises his original vocation, to be the
image of God. When the record adds that God drove men out of the Garden
of Eden to prevent their eating of the tree of life, it only means
that on his natural side certainly man is finite and mortal, but in
knowledge infinite.
We all know the theological dogma that man's nature is evil, tainted
with what is called Original Sin. Now while we accept the dogma, we
must give up the setting of incident which represents original sin as
consequent upon an accidental act of the first man. For the very notion
of spirit is enough to show that man is evil by nature, and it is an
error to imagine that he could ever be otherwise. To such extent as man
is and acts like a creature of nature, his whole behaviour is what it
ought not to be. For the spirit it is a duty to be free, and to realise
itself by its own act. Nature is for man only the starting-point which
he has to transform. The theological doctrine of original sin is a
profound truth; but modern enlightenment prefers to believe that man is
naturally good, and that he acts right so long as he continues true to
nature.
The hour when man leaves the path of mere natural being marks the
difference between him, a self-conscious agent, and the natural world.
But this schism, though it forms a necessary element in the very notion
of spirit, is not the final goal of man. It is to this state of inward
breach that the whole finite action of thought and will belongs.
In that finite sphere man pursues ends of his own and draws from
himself the material of his conduct. While he pursues these aims to
the uttermost, while his knowledge and his will seek himself, his own
narrow self apart from the universal, he is evil; and his evil is to be
subjective.
We seem at first to have a double evil here: but both are really the
same. Man in so far as he is spirit is not the creature of nature: and
when he behaves as such, and follows the cravings of appetite, he wills
to be so. The natural wickedness of man is therefore unlike the natural
life of animals. A mere natural life may be more exactly defined by
saying that the natural man as such is an individual: for nature in
every part is in the bonds of individualism. Thus when man wills to be
a creature of nature, he wills in the Same degree to be an individual
simply. Yet against such impulsive and appetitive action, due to
the individualism of nature, there also steps in the law or general
principle. This law may either be an external force, or have the form
of divine authority. So long as he continues in his natural state, man
is in bondage to the law.--It is true that among the instincts and
affections of man, there are social or benevolent inclinations, love,
sympathy, and others, reaching beyond his selfish isolation. But so
long as these tendencies are instinctive, their virtual universality
of scope and purport is vitiated by the subjective form which always
allows free play to self-seeking and random action.
25.] The term 'Objective Thoughts' indicates the _truth_--the truth
which is to be the absolute _object_ of philosophy, and not merely the
goal at which it aims. But the very expression cannot fail to suggest
an opposition, to characterise and appreciate which is the main motive
of the philosophical attitude of the present time, and which forms the
real problem of the question about truth and our means of ascertaining
it. If the thought-forms are vitiated by a fixed antithesis, _i.
e._ if they are only of a finite character, they are unsuitable for
the self-centred universe of truth, and truth can find no adequate
receptacle in thought. Such thought, which--- can produce only limited
and partial categories and I proceed by their means; is what in the
stricter sense of the word is termed Understanding. The finitude,
further, of these categories lies in two points. Firstly, they are only
subjective, and the antithesis of an objective permanently clings to
them. Secondly, they are always of restricted content, and so persist
in antithesis to one another and still more to the Absolute. In order
more fully to explain the position and import here attributed to logic,
the attitudes in which thought is supposed to stand to objectivity will
next be examined by way of further introduction.
In my Phenomenology of the Spirit, which on that account was at its
publication described as the first part of the System of Philosophy,
the method adopted was to begin with the first and simplest phase of
mind, immediate consciousness, and to show how that stage gradually
of necessity worked onward to the philosophical point of view, the
necessity of that view being proved by the process. But in these
circumstances it was impossible to restrict the quest to the mere form
of consciousness. For the stage of philosophical knowledge is the
richest in material and organisation, and therefore, as it came before
us in the shape of a result, it pre-supposed the existence of the
concrete formations of consciousness, such as individual and social
morality, art and religion. In the development of consciousness, which
at first sight appears limited to the point of form merely, there is
thus at the same time included the development of the matter or of the
objects discussed in the special branches of philosophy. But the latter
process must, so to speak, go on behind consciousness, since those
facts are the essential nucleus which is raised into consciousness.
The exposition accordingly is rendered more intricate, because so much
that properly belongs to the concrete branches is prematurely dragged
into the introduction. The survey which follows in the present work has
even more the inconvenience of being only historical and inferential in
its method. But it tries especially to show how the questions men have
proposed, outside the school, on the nature of Knowledge, Faith and the
like,--questions which they imagine to have no connexion with abstract
thoughts,--are really reducible to the simple categories, which first
get cleared up in Logic.
CHAPTER III.
FIRST ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
28.] The first of these attitudes of thought is seen in the method
which has no doubts and no sense of the contradiction in thought, or of
the hostility of thought against itself. It entertains an unquestioning
belief that reflection is the means of ascertaining the truth, and of
bringing the objects before the mind as they really are. And in this
belief it advances straight upon its objects, takes the materials
furnished by sense and perception, and reproduces them from itself as
facts of thought; and then, believing this result to be the truth, the
method is content. Philosophy in its earliest stages, all the sciences,
and even the daily action and movement of consciousness, live in this
faith.
27.] This method of thought has never become aware, of the antithesis
of subjective and objective: and to that extent there is nothing to
prevent its statements from possessing a genuinely philosophical and
speculative character, though it is just as possible that they may
never get beyond finite categories, or the stage where the antithesis
is still unresolved. In the present introduction the main question
for us is to observe this attitude of thought in its extreme form;
and we shall accordingly first of all examine its second and inferior
aspect as a philosophic system. One of the clearest instances of it,
and one lying nearest to ourselves, may be found in the Metaphysic of
the Past as it subsisted among us previous to the philosophy of Kant.
It is however only in reference to the history of philosophy that this
Metaphysic can be said to belong to the past: the thing is always and
at all places to be found, as the view which the abstract understanding
takes of the objects of reason. And it is in this point that the real
and immediate good lies of a closer examination of its main scope and
its _modus operandi._
28.] This metaphysical system took the laws and forms of thought to be
the fundamental laws and forms of things. It assumed that to think a
thing was the means of finding its very self and nature: and to that
extent it occupied higher ground than the Critical. Philosophy which
succeeded it. But in the first instance (i) _these terms of thought
were cut off from their connexion,_ their solidarity; each was believed
valid by itself and capable of serving as a predicate of the truth. It
was the general assumption of this metaphysic that a knowledge of the
Absolute was gained by assigning predicates to it. It neither inquired
what the terms of the understanding specially meant or what they were
worth, nor did it test the method which characterises the Absolute by
the assignment of predicates.
As an example of such predicates may be taken; Existence, in the
proposition, 'God has existence:' Finitude or Infinity, as in the
question, 'Is the world-finite or infinite?': Simple and Complex,
in the proposition, 'The soul is simple,'--or again, 'The thing is
a unity, a whole,' &c. Nobody asked whether such predicates had any
intrinsic and independent truth, or if the propositional form could be
a form of truth.
The Metaphysic of the past assumed, as unsophisticated belief always
does that thought apprehends the very self of things, and that things,
to become what they truly are, require to be thought. For Nature and
the human soul are a very Proteus in their perpetual transformations;
and it soon occurs to the observer that the first crude impression of
things is not their essential being.--This is a point of view the very
reverse of the result arrived at by the Critical Philosophy; a result,
of which it may be said, that it bade man go and feed on mere husks and
chaff.
We must look more closely into the procedure of that old metaphysic.
In the first place it never went beyond the province of the analytic
understanding. Without preliminary inquiry it adopted the abstract
categories of thought and let them rank as predicates of truth. But in
using the term thought we must not forget the difference between finite
or discursive thinking and the thinking which is infinite and rational.
The categories, as they meet us _prima facie_ and in isolation, are
finite forms. But truth is always infinite, and cannot be expressed
or presented to consciousness in finite terms. The phrase _infinite
thought_ may excite surprise, if we adhere to the modern conception
that thought is always limited. But it is, speaking rightly, the very
essence of thought to be infinite. The nominal explanation of calling
a thing finite is that it has an end, that it exists up to a certain
point only, where it comes into contact with, and is limited by, its
other. The finite therefore subsists in reference to its other, which
is its negation and presents itself as its limit. Now thought is always
in its own sphere; its relations are with itself, and it is its own
object. In having a thought for object, I am at home with myself.
The thinking power, the 'I,' is therefore infinite, because, when it
thinks, it is in relation to an object which is itself. Generally
speaking, an object means a something else, a negative confronting me.
But in the case where thought thinks itself, it has an object which
is at the same time no object: in other words, its objectivity is
suppressed and transformed into an idea. Thought, as thought, therefore
in its unmixed nature involves no limits; it is finite only when it
keeps to limited categories, which it believes to be ultimate. Infinite
or speculative thought, on the contrary, while it no less defines,
does in the very act of limiting and defining make that defect vanish.
And so infinity is not, as most frequently happens, to be conceived as
an abstract away and away for ever and ever, but in the simple manner
previously indicated.
The thinking of the old metaphysical system was finite. Its whole mode
of action was regulated by categories, the limits of which it believed
to be permanently fixed and not subject to any further negation. Thus,
one of its questions was: Has God existence? The question supposes that
existence is an altogether positive term, a sort of _ne plus ultra._
We shall see however at a later point that existence is by no means a
merely positive term, but one which is toe low for the Absolute Idea,
and unworthy of God. A second question in these metaphysical systems
was: Is the world finite or infinite? The very terms of the question
assume that the finite is a permanent contradictory to the infinite:
and one can easily see that, when they are so opposed, the infinite,
which of course ought to be the whole, only appears as a single aspect
and suffers restriction from the finite. But a restricted infinity is
itself only a finite. In the same way it was asked whether the soul was
simple or composite. Simpleness was, in other words, taken to be an
ultimate characteristic, giving expression to a whole truth. Far from
being so, simpleness is the expression of a half-truth, as one-sided
and abstract as existence:--a term of thought, which, as we shall
hereafter see, is itself untrue and hence unable to hold truth. If the
soul be viewed as merely and abstractly simple, it is characterised in
an inadequate and finite way.
It was therefore the main question of the pre-Kantian metaphysic to
discover whether predicates of the kind mentioned were to be ascribed
to its objects. Now these predicates are after all only limited
formulae of the understanding which, instead of expressing the truth,
merely impose a limit. More than this, it should be noted that the
chief feature of the method lay in 'assigning' or 'attributing'
predicates to the object that was to be cognised, for example, to
God. But attribution is no more than an external reflection about the
object: the predicates by which the object is to be determined are
supplied from the resources of picture-thought, and are applied in
a mechanical way. Whereas, if we are to have genuine cognition, the
object must characterise its own self and not derive its predicates
from without. Even supposing we follow the method of predicating, the
mind cannot help feeling that predicates of this sort fail to exhaust
the object. From the same point of view the Orientals are quite correct
in calling God the many-named or the myriad-named One. One after
another of these finite categories leaves the soul unsatisfied, and
the Oriental sage is compelled unceasingly to seek for more and more
of such predicates. In finite things it is no doubt the case that they
have to be characterised through finite predicates: and with these
things the understanding finds proper scope for its special action.
Itself finite, it knows only the nature of the finite. Thus, when
I call some action a theft, I have characterised the action in its
essential facts: and such a knowledge is sufficient for the judge.
Similarly, finite things stand to each other as cause and effect,
force and exercise, and when they are apprehended in these categories,
they are known in their finitude. But the objects of reason cannot be
defined by these finite predicates. To try to do so was the defect of
the old metaphysic.
29.] Predicates of this kind, taken individually, have but a limited
range of meaning, and no one can fail to perceive how inadequate they
are, and how far they fall below the fulness of detail which our
imaginative thought gives, in the case, for example, of God, Mind, or
Nature. Besides, though the fact of their being all predicates of one
subject supplies them with a certain connexion, their several meanings
keep them apart: and consequently each is brought in as a stranger in
relation to the others.
The first of these defects the Orientals sought to remedy, when, for
example, they defined God by attributing to Him many names; but still
they felt that the number of names would have had to be infinite.
30.] (2) In the second place, _the metaphysical systems adopted a
wrong criterion._ Their objects were no doubt totalities which in
their own proper selves belong to reason,--that is, to the organised
and systematically-developed universe, of thought. But these
totalities--God, the Soul, the World,--were taken by the metaphysician
as subjects made and ready, to form the basis for an application of
the categories of the understanding. They were assumed from popular
conception. Accordingly popular conception was the only canon for
settling whether or not the predicates were suitable and sufficient.
31.] The common conceptions of God, the Soul, the World, may be
supposed to afford thought a firm and fast footing. They do not really
do so. Besides having, a particular and subjective character clinging
to them, and thus leaving room for great variety of interpretation,
they themselves first of all require a firm and fast definition by
thought. This may be seen in any of these propositions where the
predicate, or in philosophy the category, is needed to indicate what
the subject, or the conception we start with, is.
In such a sentence as 'God is eternal,' we begin with the conception of
God, not knowing as yet what he is: to tell us that, is the business of
the predicate. In the principles of logic, accordingly, where the terms
formulating the subject-matter are those of thought only, it is not
merely superfluous to make these categories predicates to propositions
in which God, or, still vaguer, the Absolute, is the subject, but it
would also have the disadvantage of suggesting another canon than
the nature of thought. Besides, the propositional form (and for
proposition, it would be more correct to substitute judgment) is not
suited to express the concrete--and the true is always concrete--or
the speculative. Every judgment is by its form one-sided and, to that
extent, false.
This metaphysic was not free or objective thinking. Instead of letting
the object freely and spontaneously expound its own characteristics,
metaphysic pre-supposed it ready-made. If any one wishes to know what
free thought means, he must go to Greek philosophy: for Scholasticism,
like these metaphysical systems, accepted its facts, and accepted them
as a dogma from the authority of the Church. We moderns, too, by our
whole up-bringing, have been initiated into ideas which it is extremely
difficult to overstep, on account of their far-reaching significance.
But the ancient philosophers were in a different position. They were
men who lived wholly in the perceptions of the senses, and who,
after their rejection of mythology and its fancies, pre-supposed
nothing but the heaven above and the earth around. In these material,
non-metaphysical surroundings, thought is free and enjoys its own
privacy,--cleared of everything material, and thoroughly at home. This
feeling that we are all our own is characteristic of free thought--of
that voyage into the open, where nothing is below us or above us, and
we stand in solitude with ourselves alone.
32.] (3) In the third place, _this system of metaphysic turned into
Dogmatism._ When our thought never ranges beyond narrow and rigid
terms, we are forced to assume that of two opposite assertions, such as
were the above propositions, the one must be true and the other false.
Dogmatism may be most simply described as the contrary of Scepticism.
The ancient Sceptics gave the name of Dogmatism to every philosophy
whatever holding a system of definite doctrine. In this large sense
Scepticism may apply the name even to philosophy which is properly
Speculative. But in the narrower sense, Dogmatism consists in the
tenacity which draws a hard and fast line between certain terms
and others opposite to them. We may see this clearly in the strict
'Either--or': for instance, The world is either finite or infinite;
but one of these two it must be. The contrary of this rigidity is the
characteristic of all Speculative truth. There no such inadequate
formulae are allowed, nor can they possibly exhaust it. These formulae
Speculative truth holds in union as a totality, whereas, Dogmatism
invests them in their isolation with a title to fixity and truth.
It often happens in philosophy that the half-truth takes its place
beside the whole truth and assumes on its own account the position
of something permanent. But the fact is that the half-truth, instead
of being a fixed or self-subsistent principle, is a mere element
absolved and included in the whole. The metaphysic of understanding is
dogmatic, because it maintains half-truths in their isolation: whereas
the idealism of speculative philosophy carries out the principle of
totality and shows that it can reach beyond the inadequate formularies
of abstract thought. Thus idealism would say:--The soul is neither
finite only, nor infinite only; it is really the one just as much as
the other, and in that way neither the one nor the other. In other
words; such formularies in their isolation are inadmissible, and only
come into account as formative elements in a larger notion. Such
idealism we see even in the ordinary phases of consciousness. Thus we
say of sensible things, that they are changeable: that is, they _are,_
but it is equally true that they are _not._ We show more obstinacy
in dealing with the categories of the understanding. These are terms
which we believe to be somewhat firmer--or even absolutely firm and
fast. We look upon them as separated from each other by an infinite
chasm, so that opposite categories can never get at each other. The
battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the
understanding has reduced everything.
33.] The _first_ part of this metaphysic in its systematic form is
Ontology, or the doctrine of the abstract characteristics of Being.
The multitude of these characteristics, and the limits set to their
applicability, are not founded upon any principle. They have in
consequence to be enumerated as experience and circumstances direct,
and the import ascribed to them is founded only upon common sensualised
conceptions, upon assertions that particular words are used in a
particular sense, and even perhaps upon etymology. If experience
pronounces the list to be complete, and if the usage of language, by
its agreement, shows the analysis to be correct, the metaphysician is
satisfied; and the intrinsic and independent truth and necessity of
such characteristics is never made a matter of investigation at all.
To ask if being, existence, finitude, simplicity, complexity, &c. are
notions intrinsically and independently true, must surprise those who
believe that a question about truth can only concern propositions (as
to whether a notion is or is not with truth to be attributed, as the
phrase is, to a subject), and that falsehood lies in the contradiction
existing between the subject in our ideas, and the notion to be
predicated of it. Now as the notion is concrete, it and every character
of it in general is essentially a self-contained unity of distinct
characteristics. If truth then were nothing more than the absence
of contradiction, it would be first of all necessary in the case of
every-notion to examine whether it, taken individually, did not contain
this sort of intrinsic contradiction.
34.] The _second_ branch of the metaphysical system was Rational
Psychology or Pneumatology. It dealt with the metaphysical nature of
the Soul,--that is, of the Mind regarded as a thing. It expected to
find immortality in a sphere dominated by the laws of composition,
time, qualitative change, and quantitative increase or decrease.
The name 'rational,' given to this species of psychology, served
to contrast it with empirical modes of observing the phenomena of
the soul. Rational psychology viewed the soul in its metaphysical
nature, and through the categories supplied by abstract thought. The
rationalists endeavoured to ascertain the inner nature of the soul as
it is in itself and as it is for thought.--In philosophy at present we
hear little of the soul: the favourite term now is mind (spirit). The
two are distinct, soul being as it were the middle term between body
and spirit, or the bond between the two. The mind, as soul, is immersed
in corporeity, and the soul is the animating principle of the body.
The pre-Kantian metaphysic, we say, viewed the soul as a thing. 'Thing'
is a very ambiguous word. By a thing, we mean, firstly, an immediate
existence, something we represent in sensuous form: and in this meaning
the term has been applied to the soul. Hence the question regarding the
seat of the soul. Of course, if the soul have a seat, it is in space
and sensuously envisaged. So, too, if the soul be viewed as a thing,
we can ask whether the soul is simple or composite. The question is
important as bearing on the immortality of the soul, which is supposed
to depend on the absence of composition. But the fact is, that in
abstract simplicity we have a category, which as little corresponds to
the nature of the soul, as that of compositeness.
One word on the relation of rational to empirical psychology. The
former, because it sets itself to apply thought to cognise mind and
even to demonstrate the result of such thinking, is the higher; whereas
empirical psychology starts from perception, and only recounts and
describes what perception supplies. But if we propose to think the
mind, we must not be quite so shy of its special phenomena. Mind is
essentially active in the same sense as the Schoolmen said that God
is 'absolute actuosity.' But if the mind is active it must as it were
utter itself. It is wrong therefore to take the mind for a processless
_ens,_ as did the old metaphysic which divided the processless inward
life of the mind from its outward life. The mind, of all things, must
be looked at in its concrete actuality, in its energy; and in such a
way that its manifestations are seen to be determined by its inward
force.
35.] The _third_ branch of metaphysics was Cosmology. The topics
it embraced were the world, its contingency, necessity, eternity,
limitation in time and space: the laws (only formal) of its changes:
the freedom of man and the origin of evil.
To these topics it applied what were believed to be thorough-going
contrasts: such as contingency and necessity; external and internal
necessity; efficient and final cause, or causality in general and
design; essence or substance and phenomenon; form and matter; freedom
and necessity; happiness and pain; good and evil.
The object of Cosmology comprised not merely Nature, but Mind too, in
its external complication in its phenomenon--in fact, existence in
general, or the sum of finite things. This object however it viewed not
as a concrete whole, but only under certain abstract points of view.
Thus the questions Cosmology attempted to solve were such as these: Is
accident or necessity dominant in the world? Is the world eternal or
created? It was therefore a chief concern of this study to lay down
what were called general Cosmological laws: for instance, that Nature
does not act by fits and starts. And by fits and starts (_saltus_) they
meant a qualitative difference or qualitative alteration showing itself
without any antecedent determining mean: whereas, on the contrary, a
gradual change (of quantity) is obviously not without intermediation.
In regard to Mind as it makes itself felt in the world, the questions
which Cosmology chiefly discussed turned upon the freedom of man and
the origin of evil. Nobody can deny that these are questions of the
highest importance. But to give them a satisfactory answer, it is above
all things necessary not to claim finality for the abstract formulae
of understanding, or to suppose that each of the two terms in an
antithesis has an independent-subsistence or can be treated in its
isolation as a complete and self-centred truth. This however is the
general position taken by the metaphysicians before Kant, and appears
in their cosmological discussions, which for that reason were incapable
of compassing their purpose, to understand the phenomena of the world.
Observe how they proceed with the distinction between freedom and
necessity, in their application of these categories to Nature and
Mind. Nature they regard as subject in its workings to necessity;
Mind they hold to be free. No doubt there is a real foundation for
this distinction in the very core of the Mind itself: but freedom and
necessity, when thus abstractly opposed, are terms applicable only in
the finite world to which, as such, they belong. A freedom involving no
necessity, and mere necessity without freedom, are abstract and in this
way untrue formulae of [thought. Freedom is no blank indeterminateness:
essentially concrete, and unvaryingly self-determinate, it is so far at
the same time necessary. Necessity, again, in the ordinary acceptation
of the term in popular philosophy, means determination from without
only,--as in finite mechanics, where a body moves only when it is
struck by another body, and moves in the direction communicated to it
by the impact.--This however is a merely external necessity, not the
real inward necessity which is identical with freedom.
The case is similar with the contrast of Good and Evil,--the favourite
contrast of the introspective modern world. If we regard Evil as
possessing a fixity of its own, apart and distinct from Good, we are
to a certain extent right: there is an opposition between them: nor
do those who maintain the apparent and relative character of the
opposition mean that Evil and Good in the Absolute are one, or, in
accordance with the modern phrase, that a thing first becomes evil
from our way of looking at it. The error arises when we take Evil as a
permanent positive, instead of--what it really is--a negative which,
though it would fain assert itself, has no real persistence, and is, in
fact, only the absolute sham-existence of negativity in itself.
36.] The _fourth_ branch of metaphysics is Natural or Rational
Theology. The notion of God, or God as a possible being, the proofs of
his existence, and his properties, formed the study of this branch.
(a) When understanding thus discusses the Deity, its main purpose is
to find what predicates correspond or not to the fact we have in our
imagination as God. And in so doing it assumes the contrast between
positive and negative to be absolute; and hence, in the long run,
nothing is left for the notion as understanding takes it, but the empty
abstraction of indeterminate Being, of mere reality or positivity, the
lifeless product of modern 'Deism.'
(b) The method of demonstration employed in finite knowledge must
always lead to an inversion of the true order. For it requires the
statement of some objective ground for God's being, which thus acquires
the appearance of being derived from something else. This mode of
proof, guided as it is by the canon of mere analytical identity,
is embarrassed by the difficulty of passing from the finite to the
infinite. Either the finitude of the existing world, which is left as
much a fact as it was before, clings to the notion of Deity, and God
has to be defined as the immediate substance of that world,--which is
Pantheism: or He remains an object set over against the subject, and in
this way, finite,--which is Dualism.
(c) The attributes of God which ought to be various and precise, had,
properly speaking, sunk and disappeared in the abstract notion of pure
reality, of indeterminate Being. Yet in our material thought, the
finite world continues, meanwhile, to have a real being, with God as a
sort of antithesis: and thus arises the further picture of different
relations of God to the world. These, formulated as properties, must,
on the one hand, as relations to finite circumstances, themselves
possess a finite character (giving us such properties as just,
gracious, mighty, wise, &c.); on the other hand they must be infinite.
Now on this level of thought the only means, and a hazy one, of
reconciling these opposing requirements was quantitative exaltation
of the properties, forcing them into indeterminateness,--into the
_sensus eminentior._ But it was an expedient which really destroyed the
property and left a mere name.
The object of the old metaphysical theology was to see how far
unassisted reason could go in the knowledge of God. Certainly a
reason-derived knowledge of God is the highest problem of philosophy.
The earliest teachings of religion are figurate conceptions of God.
These conceptions, as the Creed arranges them, are imparted to us in
youth. They are the doctrines of our religion, and in so far as the
individual rests his faith on these doctrines and feels them to be
the truth, he has all he needs as a Christian. Such is faith: and the
science of this faith is Theology. But until Theology is something more
than a bare enumeration and compilation of these doctrines _ab extra,_
it has no right to the title of science. Even the method so much in
vogue at present--the purely historical mode of treatment--which for
example reports what has been said by this or the other Father of the
Church--does not invest theology with a scientific character. To get
that, we must go on to comprehend the facts by thought,--which is the
business of philosophy. Genuine theology is thus at the same time a
real philosophy of religion, as it was, we may add, in the Middle Ages.
And now let us examine this rational theology more narrowly. It was
a science which approached God not by reason but by understanding,
and, in its mode of thought, employed the terms without any sense of
their mutual limitations and connexions. The notion of God formed the
subject of discussion; and yet the criterion of our knowledge was
derived from such an extraneous source as the materialised conception
of God. Now thought must be free in its movements. It is no doubt to
be remembered, that the result of independent thought harmonises with
the import of the Christian religion:--for the Christian religion is
a revelation of reason. But such a harmony surpassed the efforts of
rational theology. It proposed to define the figurate conception of God
in terms of thought; but it resulted in a notion of God which was what
we may call the abstract of positivity or reality, to the exclusion
of all negation. God was accordingly defined to be the most real of
all beings. Any one can see however that this most real of beings, in
which negation forms no part, is the very opposite of what it ought
to be and of what understanding supposes it to be. Instead of being
rich and full above all measure, it is so narrowly conceived that it
is, on the contrary, extremely poor and altogether empty. It is with
reason that the heart craves a concrete body of truth; but without
definite feature, that is, without negation, contained in the notion,
there can only be an abstraction. When the notion of God is apprehended
only as that of the abstract or most real being, God is, as it were,
relegated to another world beyond: and to speak of a knowledge of him
would be meaningless. Where there is no definite quality, knowledge is
impossible. Mere light is mere darkness.
The second problem of rational theology was to prove the existence
of God. Now, in this matter, the main point to be noted is
that demonstration, as the understanding employs it, means the
dependence of one truth on another. In such proofs we have a
pre-supposition--something firm and fast, from which something else
follows; we exhibit the dependence of some truth from an assumed
starting-point. Hence, if this mode of demonstration is applied to the
existence of God, it can only mean that the being of God is to depend
on other terms, which will then constitute the ground of his being.
It is at once evident that this will lead I to some mistake: for God
must be simply and solely the I ground of everything, and in so far
not dependent upon anything else. And a perception of this danger has
in modern times led some to say that God's existence is not capable
of proof, but must be immediately or intuitively apprehended. Reason,
however, and even sound common sense give demonstration a meaning quite
different from that of the understanding. The demonstration of reason
no doubt starts from something which is not God. But, as it advances,
it does not leave the starting-point a mere unexplained fact, which is
what it was. On the contrary it exhibits that point as derivative and
called into being, and then God is seen to be primary, truly immediate
and self-subsisting, with the means of derivation wrapt up and absorbed
in himself. Those who say: 'Consider Nature, and Nature will-lead you
to God; you will find an absolute final cause: 'do not mean that God
is something derivative: they mean that it is we who proceed to God
himself from another; and in this way God, though the consequence, is
also the absolute' ground of the initial step. The relation of the two
things is reversed; and what came as a consequence, being shown to be
an antecedent, the original antecedent is reduced to a consequence.
This is always the way, moreover, whenever reason demonstrates.
If in the light of the present discussion we cast one glance more on
the metaphysical method as a whole, we find its main characteristic
was to make abstract identity its principle and to try to apprehend
the objects of reason by the abstract and finite categories of the
understanding. But this infinite of the understanding, this pure
essence, is still finite: it has excluded all the variety of particular
things, which thus limit and deny it. Instead of winning a concrete,
this metaphysic stuck fast on an abstract, identity. Its good point was
the perception that thought alone constitutes the essence of all that
is. It derived its materials from earlier philosophers, particularly
the Schoolmen. In speculative philosophy the understanding undoubtedly
forms a stage, but not a stage at which we should keep for ever
standing. Plato is no metaphysician of this imperfect type, still less
Aristotle, although the contrary is generally believed.
CHAPTER IV.
SECOND ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
I. _Empiricism._
37.] Under these circumstances a double want began to be felt. Partly
it was the need of a concrete subject-matter, as a counterpoise to the
abstract theories of the understanding, which is unable to advance
unaided from its generalities to specialisation and determination.
Partly, too, it was the demand for something fixed and secure, so as
to exclude the possibility of proving anything and everything in the
sphere, and according to the method, of the finite formulae of thought.
Such was the genesis of Empirical philosophy, which abandons the search
for truth in thought itself, and goes to fetch it from Experience, the
outward and the inward present.
The rise of Empiricism is due to the need thus stated of concrete
contents, and a firm footing--needs which the abstract metaphysic of
the understanding failed to satisfy. Now by concreteness of contents
it is meant that we must know the objects of consciousness as
intrinsically determinate and as the unity of distinct characteristics.
But, as we have already seen, this is by no means the case with the
metaphysic of understanding, if it conform to its principle. With the
mere understanding, thinking is limited to the form of an abstract
universal, and can never advance to the particularisation of this
universal. Thus we find the metaphysicians engaged in an attempt to
elicit by the instrumentality of thought, what was the essence or
fundamental attribute of the Soul The Soul, they said, is simple.
The simplicity thus ascribed to the Soul meant a mere and utter
simplicity, from which difference is excluded: difference, or in other
words composition, being made the fundamental attribute of body, or
of matter in general. Clearly, in simplicity of this narrow type we
have a very shallow category, quite incapable of embracing the wealth
of the soul or of the mind. When it thus appeared that abstract
metaphysical thinking was inadequate, it was felt that resource must be
had to empirical psychology. The same happened in the case of Rational
Physics. The current phrases there were, for instance, that space is
infinite, that Nature makes no leap, &c. Evidently this phraseology was
wholly unsatisfactory in presence of the plenitude and life of nature.
38.] To some extent this source from which Empiricism draws is common
to it with metaphysic. It is in our materialised conceptions, _i.e._
in facts which emanate, in the first instance, from experience,
that metaphysic also finds the guarantee for the correctness of its
definitions (including both its initial assumptions and its more
detailed body of doctrine). But, on the other hand, it must be noted
that the single sensation is not the same thing as experience, and
that the Empirical School elevates the facts included under sensation,
feeling, and perception into the form of general ideas, propositions or
laws. This, however, it does with the reservation that these general
principles (such as force), are to have no further import or validity
of their own beyond that taken from the sense-impression, and that
no connexion shall be deemed legitimate except what can be shown to
exist in phenomena. And on the subjective side Empirical cognition has
its stable footing in the fact that in a sensation consciousness is
directly present and certain of itself.
In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever is true must
be in the actual world and present to sensation. This principle
contradicts that 'ought to be' on the strength of which 'reflection'
is vain enough to treat the actual present with scorn and to point to
a scene beyond--a scene which is assumed to have place and being only
in the understanding of those who talk of it. No less than Empiricism,
philosophy (§ 7) recognises only what is, and has nothing to do with
what merely ought to be and what is thus confessed not to exist. On the
subjective side, too, it is right to notice the valuable principle of
freedom involved in Empiricism. For the main lesson of Empiricism is
that man must see for himself and feel that he is present in every fact
of knowledge which he has to accept.
When it is carried out to its legitimate consequences,
Empiricism--being in its facts limited to the finite sphere--denies the
super-sensible in general, or at least any knowledge of it which would
define its nature; it leaves thought no powers except abstraction and
formal universality and identity. But there is a fundamental delusion
in all scientific empiricism. It employs the metaphysical categories of
matter, force, those of one, many, generality, infinity, &c.; following
the clue given by these categories it proceeds to draw conclusions, and
in so doing pre-supposes and applies the syllogistic form. And all the
while it is unaware that it contains metaphysics--in wielding which, it
makes use of those categories and their combinations in a style utterly
thoughtless and uncritical.
* * * * *
From Empiricism came the cry: 'Stop roaming in empty abstractions, keep
your eyes open, lay hold on man and nature as they are here before
you, enjoy the present moment.' Nobody can deny that there is a good
deal of truth in these words. The every-day world, what is here and
now, was a good exchange for the futile other-world--for the mirages
and the chimeras of the abstract understanding. And thus was acquired
an infinite principle,--that solid footing so much missed in the old
metaphysic. Finite principles are the most that the understanding
can pick out--and these being essentially unstable and tottering,
the structure they supported must collapse with a crash. Always the
instinct of reason was to find an infinite principle. As yet, the
time had not come for finding it in thought. Hence, this instinct
seized upon the present, the Here, the This,--where doubtless there is
implicit infinite form, but not in the genuine existence of that form.
The external world is the truth, if it could but know it: for the truth
is actual and must exist. The infinite principle, the self-centred
truth, therefore, is in the world for reason to discover: though it
exists in an individual and sensible shape, and not in its truth.
Besides, this school makes sense-perception the form in which fact
is to be apprehended: and in this consists the defect of Empiricism.
Sense-perception as such is always individual, always transient: not
indeed that the process of knowledge stops short at sensation: on the
contrary, it proceeds to find out the universal and permanent element
in the individual apprehended by sense. This is the process leading
from simple perception to experience.
In order to form experiences, Empiricism makes especial use of the
form of Analysis. In the impression of sense we have a concrete of
many elements, the several attributes of which we are expected to
peel off one by one, like the coats of an onion. In thus dismembering
the thing, it is understood that we disintegrate and take to pieces
these attributes which have coalesced, and add nothing but our own
act of disintegration. Yet analysis is the process from the immediacy
of sensation to thought: those attributes, which the object analysed
contains in union, acquire the form of universality by being separated.
Empiricism therefore labours under a delusion, if it supposes that,
while analysing the objects, it leaves them as they were: it really
transforms the concrete into an abstract. And as a consequence of this
change the living thing is killed: life can exist only in the concrete
and one. Not that we can do without this division, if it be our
intention to comprehend. Mind itself is an inherent division. The error
lies in forgetting that this is only one-half of the process, and that
the main point is the re-union of what has been parted. And it is where
analysis never gets beyond the stage of partition that the words of the
poet are true:
_'Encheiresin Naturae_ nennt's die Chemie,
Spottet ihrer Selbst, und weiss nicht, wie:
Hat die Teile in Ihrer Hand
Fehlt leider nur das geistige Band.'
Analysis starts from the concrete; and the possession of this material
gives it a considerable advantage over the abstract thinking of the
old metaphysics. It establishes the differences in things: and this is
very important: but these very differences are nothing after all but
abstract attributes, _e.g._ thoughts. These thoughts, it is assumed,
contain the real essence of the objects; and thus once more we see the
axiom of bygone metaphysics reappear, that the truth of things lies in
thought.
Let us next compare the empirical theory with that of metaphysics in
the matter of their respective contents. We find the latter, as already
stated, taking for its theme the universal objects of the reason, viz.
God, the Soul, and the World: and these themes, accepted from popular
conception, it was the problem of philosophy to reduce into the form
of thoughts. Another specimen of the same method was the Scholastic
philosophy, the theme pre-supposed by which was formed by the dogmas
of the Christian Church: and it aimed at fixing their meaning and
giving them a systematic arrangement through thought.--The facts on
which Empiricism is based are of entirely different kind. They are
the sensible facts of nature and the facts of the finite mind. In
other words, Empiricism deals with a finite material--and the old
metaphysicians had an infinite,--though, let us add, they made this
infinite content finite by the finite form of the understanding. The
same finitude of form reappears in Empiricism--but here the facts are
finite also. To this exigent, then, both modes of philosophising have
the same method; both proceed from data or assumptions, which they
accept as ultimate. Generally speaking, Empiricism finds the truth in
the outward world; and even if it allow a super-sensible world, it
holds knowledge of that world to be impossible, and would restrict us
to the province of sense-perception. This doctrine when systematically
carried out produces what has been latterly termed Materialism.
Materialism of this stamp looks upon matter, _quâ_ matter, as the
genuine objective world. But with matter we are at once introduced
to an abstraction, which as such cannot be perceived: and it may be
maintained that there is no matter, because, as it exists, it is always
something definite and concrete. Yet the abstraction we term matter is
supposed to lie at the basis of the whole world of sense, and expresses
the sense-world in its simplest terms as out-and-out individualisation,
and hence a congeries of points in mutual exclusion. So long then as
this sensible sphere is and continues to be for Empiricism a mere
datum, we have a doctrine of bondage: for we become free, when we
are confronted by no absolutely alien world, but depend upon a fact
which we ourselves are. Consistently with the empirical point of view,
besides, reason and unreason can only be subjective: in other words,
we must take what is given just as it is, and we have no right to ask
whether and to what extent it is rational in its own nature.
39.] Touching this principle it has been justly observed that in
what we call Experience, as distinct from mere single perception of
single facts, there are two elements. The one is the matter, infinite
in its multiplicity, and as it stands a mere set of singulars: the
other is the form, the characteristics of universality and necessity.
Mere experience no doubt offers many, perhaps innumerable cases of
similar perceptions: but, after all, no multitude, however great,
can be the same thing as universality. Similarly, mere experience
affords perceptions of changes succeeding each other and of objects in
juxtaposition; but it presents no necessary connexion. If perception,
therefore, is to maintain its claim to be the sole basis of what
men hold for truth, universality and necessity appear something
illegitimate: they become an accident of our minds, a mere custom, the
content of which might be otherwise constituted than it is.
It is an important corollary of this theory, that on this empirical
mode of treatment legal and ethical principles and laws, as well as the
truths of religion, are exhibited as the work of chance, and stripped
of their objective character and inner truth.
The scepticism of Hume, to which this conclusion was chiefly due,
should be clearly marked off from Greek scepticism. Hume assumes the
truth of the empirical element, feeling and sensation, and proceeds to
challenge universal principles and laws, because they have no warranty
from sense-perception. So far was ancient scepticism from making
feeling and sensation the canon of truth, that it turned against the
deliverances of sense first of all. (On Modern Scepticism as compared
with Ancient, see Schelling and Hegel's Critical Journal of Philosophy:
1802, vol. I. i.)
II. _The Critical Philosophy._
40.] In common with Empiricism the Critical Philosophy assumes that
experience affords the one sole foundation for cognitions; which
however it does not allow to rank as truths, but only as knowledge of
phenomena.
The Critical theory starts originally from the distinction of elements
presented in the analysis of experience, viz. the matter of sense, and
its universal relations. Taking into account Hume's criticism on this
distinction as given in the preceding section, viz. that sensation
does not explicitly apprehend more than an individual or more than a
mere event, it insists at the same time on the _fact_ that universality
and necessity are seen to perform a function equally essential in
constituting what is called experience. This element, not being derived
from the empirical facts as such, must belong to the spontaneity of
thought; in other words, it is _a priori._ The Categories or Notions
of the Understanding constitute the _objectivity_ of experiential
cognitions. In every case they involve a connective reference, and
hence through their means are formed synthetic judgments _a priori,_
that is, primary and underivative connexions of opposites.
Even Hume's scepticism does not deny that the characteristics of
universality and necessity are found in cognition. And even in Kant
this fact remains a presupposition after all; it may be said, to use
the ordinary phraseology of the sciences, that Kant did no more than
offer another _explanation_ of the fact.
41.] The Critical Philosophy proceeds to test the value of the
categories employed in metaphysic, as well as in other sciences
and in ordinary conception. This scrutiny however is not directed
to the content of these categories, nor does it inquire into the
exact relation they bear to one another: but simply considers them
as affected by the contrast between subjective and objective. The
contrast, as we are to understand it here, bears upon the distinction
(see preceding §) of the two elements in experience. The name of
objectivity is here given to the element of universality and necessity,
_i.e._ to the categories themselves, or what is called the _a priori_
constituent. The Critical Philosophy however widened the contrast in
such away, that the subjectivity comes to embrace the _ensemble_ of
experience, including both of the aforesaid elements; and nothing
remains on the other side but the 'thing-in-itself.'
The special forms of the _a priori_ element, in other words, of
thought, which in spite of its objectivity is looked upon as a purely
subjective act, present themselves as follows in a systematic order
which, it may be remarked, is solely based upon psychological and
historical grounds.
* * * * *
(1) A very important step was undoubtedly made, when the terms of the
old metaphysic were subjected to scrutiny. The plain thinker pursued
his unsuspecting way in those categories which had offered themselves
naturally. It never occurred to him to ask to what extent these
categories had a value and authority of their own. If, as has been
said, it is characteristic of free thought to allow no assumptions to
pass unquestioned, the old metaphysicians were not free thinkers. They
accepted their categories as they were, without further trouble, as an
_a priori_ datum, not yet tested by reflection. The Critical philosophy
reversed this. Kant undertook to examine how far the forms of thought
were capable of leading to the knowledge of truth. In particular he
demanded a criticism of the faculty of cognition as preliminary to
its exercise. That is a fair demand, if it mean that even the forms
of thought must be made an object of investigation. Unfortunately
there soon creeps in the misconception of already knowing before _you_
know,--the error of refusing to enter the water until you have learnt
to swim. True, indeed, the forms of thought should be subjected to a
scrutiny before they are used: yet what is this scrutiny but _ipso
facto_ a cognition? So that what we want is to combine in our process
of inquiry the action of the forms of thought with a criticism of
them. The forms of thought must be studied in their essential nature
and complete development: they are at once the object of research and
the action of that object. Hence they examine themselves: in their own
action they must determine their limits, and point out their defects.
This is that action of thought, which will hereafter be specially
considered under the name of Dialectic, and regarding which we need
only at the outset observe that, instead of being brought to bear upon
the categories from without, it is immanent in their own action.
We may therefore state the first point in Kant's philosophy as follows:
Thought must itself investigate its own capacity of knowledge. People
in the present day have got over Kant and his philosophy: everybody
wants to get further. But there are two ways of going further--a
back-, ward and a forward. The light of criticism soon shows that many
of our modern essays in philosophy are mere repetitions of the old
metaphysical method, an endless and uncritical thinking in a groove
determined by the natural bent of each man's mind.
(2) Kant's examination of the categories suffers from the grave defect
of viewing them, not absolutely and for their own sake, but in order to
see whether they are _subjective_ or _objective._ In the language of
common life we mean by objective what exists outside of us and reaches
us from without by means of sensation. What Kant did, was to deny that
the categories, such as cause and effect, were, in this sense of the
word, objective, or given in sensation, and to maintain on the contrary
that they belonged to our own thought itself, to the spontaneity of
thought. To that extent therefore, they were subjective. And yet in
spite of this, Kant gives the name objective to what is thought, to the
universal and necessary, while he describes as subjective whatever is
merely felt. This arrangement apparently reverses the first-mentioned
use of the word, and has caused Kant to be charged with confusing
language. But the charge is unfair if we more narrowly consider the
facts of the case. The vulgar believe that the objects of perception
which confront them, such as an individual animal, or a single star,
are independent and permanent existences, compared with which, thoughts
are unsubstantial and dependent on something else. In fact however
the perceptions of sense are the properly dependent and secondary
feature, while the thoughts are really independent and primary. This
being so, Kant gave the title objective to the intellectual factor, to
the universal and necessary: and he was quite justified in so doing.
Our sensations on the other hand are subjective; for sensations lack
stability in their own nature, and are no less fleeting and evanescent
than thought is permanent and self-subsisting. At the present day, the
special line of distinction established by Kant between the subjective
and objective is adopted by the phraseology of the educated world. Thus
the criticism of a work of art ought, it is said, to be not subjective,
but objective; in other words, instead of springing from the particular
and accidental feeling or temper of the moment, it should keep its eye
on those general points of view which the laws of art establish. In
the same acceptation we can distinguish in any scientific pursuit the
objective and the subjective interest of the investigation.
But after all, objectivity of thought, in Kant's sense, is again to
a certain extent subjective. Thoughts, according to Kant, although
universal and necessary categories, are _only our_ thoughts--separated
by an impassable gulf from the thing, as it exists apart from our
knowledge. But the true, objectivity of thinking means that the
thoughts, far from being merely ours, must at the same time be the real
essence of the things, and of whatever is an object to us.
Objective and subjective are convenient expressions in current use,
the employment of which may easily lead to confusion. Up to this
point, the discussion has shown three meanings of objectivity. First,
it means what has external existence, in distinction from which the
subjective is what is only supposed, dreamed, &c. Secondly, it has
the meaning, attached to it by Kant, of the universal and necessary,
as distinguished from the particular, subjective and occasional
element which belongs to our sensations. Thirdly, as has been just
explained, it means the thought-apprehended essence of the existing
thing, in contradistinction from what is merely _our_ thought, and what
consequently is still separated from the thing itself, as it exists in
independent essence.
42.] (a) The Theoretical Faculty.--Cognition _quâ_ cognition.
The specific ground of the categories is declared by the Critical
system to lie in the primary identity of the 'I' in thought,--what
Kant calls the 'transcendental unity of self-consciousness.'
The impressions from feeling and perception are, if we look to
their contents, a multiplicity or miscellany of elements: and the
multiplicity is equally conspicuous in their form. For sense is marked
by a mutual exclusion of members; and that under two aspects, namely
space and time, which, being the forms, that is to say, the universal
type of perception, are themselves _a priori._ This congeries,
afforded by sensation and perception, must however be reduced to an
identity or primary synthesis. To accomplish this the 'I' brings it in
relation to itself and unites it there in _one_ consciousness which
Kant calls 'pure apperception.' The specific modes in which the Ego
refers to itself the multiplicity of sense are the pure concepts of the
understanding, the Categories.
Kant, it is well known, did not put himself to much trouble in
discovering the categories. 'I,' the unity of self-consciousness,
being quite abstract and completely indeterminate, the question
arises, how are we to get at the specialised forms of the 'I,' the
categories? Fortunately, the common logic offers to our hand an
empirical classification of the kinds of _judgment._ Now, to judge
is the same as to _think_ of a determinate object. Hence the various
modes of judgment, as enumerated to our hand, provide us with the
several categories of thought. To the philosophy of Fichte belongs
the great merit of having called attention to the need of exhibiting
the _necessity_ of these categories and giving a genuine _deduction_
of them. Fichte ought to have produced at least one effect on the
method of logic. One might have expected that the general laws of
thought, the usual stock-in-trade of logicians, or the classification
of notions, judgments, and syllogisms, would be no longer taken merely
from observation and so only empirically treated, but be deduced from
thought itself. If thought is to be capable of proving anything at all,
if logic must insist upon the necessity of proofs, and if it proposes
to teach the theory of demonstration, its first care should be to give
a reason for its own subject-matter, and to see that it is necessary.
(i) Kant therefore holds that the categories have their source in the
'Ego,' and that the 'Ego' consequently supplies the characteristics
of universality and necessity. If we observe what we have before us
primarily, we may describe it as a congeries or diversity: and in the
categories we find the simple points or units, to which this congeries
is made to converge. The world of sense is a scene of mutual exclusion:
its being is outside itself. That is the fundamental feature of the
sensible. 'Now' has no meaning except in reference to a before and a
hereafter. Red, in the same way, only subsists by being opposed to
yellow and blue. Now this other thing is outside the sensible; which
latter is, only in so far as it is not the other, and only in so far
as that other is. But thought, or the 'Ego,' occupies a position the
very reverse of the sensible, with its mutual exclusions, and its
being outside itself. The 'I' is the primary identity--at one with
itself and all at home in itself. The word 'I' expresses the mere act
of bringing-to-bear-upon-self: and whatever is placed in this unit or
focus, is affected _by_ it and transformed into it. The 'I' is as it
were the crucible and the fire which consumes the loose plurality of
sense and reduces it to unity. This is the process which Kant calls
pure apperception in distinction from the common apperception, to
which the plurality it receives is a plurality still; whereas pure
apperception is rather an act by which the 'I' makes the materials
'mine.'
This view has at least the merit of giving a correct expression to the
nature of all consciousness. The tendency of all man's endeavours is to
understand the world, to appropriate and subdue it to himself: and to
this end the positive reality of the world must be as it were crushed
and pounded, in other words, idealised. At the same time we must note
that it is not the mere act of _our_ personal self-consciousness, which
introduces an absolute unity into the variety of sense. Rather, this
identity is itself the absolute. The absolute is, as it were, so kind
as to leave individual things to their own enjoyment, and it again
drives them back to the absolute unity.
(2) Expressions like 'transcendental unity of self-consciousness' have
an ugly look about them, and suggest a monster in the background:
but their meaning is not so abstruse as it looks. Kant's meaning of
transcendental may be gathered by the way he distinguishes it from
transcendent. The _transcendent_ may be said to be what steps out
beyond the categories of the understanding: a sense in which the term
is first employed in mathematics. Thus in geometry you are told to
conceive the circumference of a circle as formed of an infinite number
of infinitely small straight lines. In other words, characteristics
which the understanding holds to be totally different, the straight
line and the curve, are expressly invested with identity. Another
transcendent of the same kind is the self-consciousness which is
identical with itself and infinite in itself, as distinguished from
the ordinary consciousness which derives its form and tone from finite
materials. That unity of self-consciousness, however, Kant called
_transcendental_ only; and he meant thereby that the unity was only in
our minds and did not attach to the objects apart from our knowledge of
them.
(3) To regard the categories as subjective only, _i.e._ as a part
of ourselves, must seem very odd to the natural mind; and no doubt
there is something queer about it. It is quite true however that the
categories are not contained in the sensation as it is given us. When,
for instance, we look at a piece of sugar, we find it is hard, white,
sweet, &c. All these properties we say are united in one object. Now
it is this unity that is not found in the sensation. The same thing
happens if we conceive two events to stand in the relation of cause
and effect. The senses only inform us of the two several occurrences
which follow each other in time. But that the one is cause, the other
effect,--in other words, the causal nexus between the two,--is not
perceived by sense; it is only evident to thought. Still, though the
categories, such as unity, or cause and effect, are strictly the
property of thought, it by no means follows that they must be ours
merely and not also characteristics of the objects. Kant however
confines them to the subject-mind, and his philosophy may be styled
subjective idealism: for he holds that both the form and the matter of
knowledge are supplied by the Ego--or knowing subject--the form by our
intellectual, the matter by our sentient ego.
So far as regards the content of this subjective idealism, not a word
need be wasted. It might perhaps at first sight be imagined, that
objects would lose their reality when their unity was transferred to
the subject. But neither we nor the objects would have anything to gain
by the mere fact that they possessed being. The main point is not,
that they are, but what they are, and whether or not their content
is true. It does no good to the things to say merely that they have
being. What has being, will also cease to be when time creeps over it.
It might also be alleged that subjective idealism tended to promote
self-conceit. But surely if a man's world be the sum of his sensible
perceptions, he has no reason to be vain of such a world. Laying aside
therefore as unimportant this distinction between subjective and
objective, we are chiefly interested in knowing what a thing is: _i.e._
its content, which is no more objective than it is subjective. If mere
existence be enough to make objectivity, even a crime is objective: but
it is an existence which is nullity at the core, as is definitely made
apparent when the day of punishment comes.
43.] The Categories may be viewed in two aspects. On the one hand it
is by their instrumentality that the mere perception of sense rises to
objectivity and experience. On the other hand these notions are unities
in our consciousness merely: they are consequently conditioned by the
material given to them, and having nothing of their own they can be
applied to use only within the range of experience. But the other
constituent of experience, the impressions of feeling and perception,
is not one whit less subjective than the categories.
To assert that the categories taken by themselves are empty can
scarcely be right, seeing that they have a content, at all events, in
the special stamp and significance which they possess. Of course the
content of the categories is not perceptible to the senses, nor is it
in time and space: but that is rather a merit than a defect. A glimpse
of this meaning of _content_ may be observed to affect our ordinary
thinking. _A_ book or a speech for example is said to have a great
deal in it, to be full of content, in proportion to the greater number
of thoughts and general results to be found in it: whilst, on the
contrary, we should never say that any book, _e.g._ novel, had much in
it, because it included a great number of single incidents, situations,
and the like. Even the popular voice thus recognises that something
more than the facts of sense is needed to make a work pregnant with
matter. And what is this additional desideratum but thoughts, or in the
first instance the categories? And yet it is not altogether wrong, it
should be added, to call the categories of themselves empty, if it be
meant that they and the logical Idea, of which they are the members, do
not constitute the whole of philosophy, but necessarily lead onwards in
due progress to the real departments of Nature and Mind. Only let the
progress not be misunderstood. The logical Ideal does not thereby come
into possession of a content originally foreign to it: but by its own
native action is specialised and developed to Nature and Mind.
44.] It follows that the categories are no fit terms to express
the Absolute--the Absolute not being given in perception;--and
Understanding, or knowledge by means of the categories, is consequently
incapable of knowing the Things-in-themselves.
The Thing-in-itself (and under 'thing' is embraced even Mind and God)
expresses the object when we leave out of sight all that consciousness
makes of it, all its emotional aspects, and all specific thoughts
of it. It is easy to see what is left,--utter abstraction, total
emptiness, only described still as an 'other-world'--the negative of
every image, feeling, and definite thought. Nor does it require much
penetration to see that this _caput mortuum_ is still only a product
of thought, such as accrues when thought is carried on to abstraction
unalloyed: that it is the work of the empty 'Ego,' which makes an
object out of this empty self-identity of its own. The _negative_
characteristic which this abstract identity receives as an _object,_ is
also enumerated among the categories of Kant, and is no less familiar
than the empty identity aforesaid. Hence one can only read with
surprise the perpetual remark that we do not know the Thing-in-itself.
On the contrary there is nothing we can know so easily.
45.] It is Reason, the faculty of the Unconditioned, which discovers
the conditioned nature of the knowledge comprised in experience. What
is thus called the object of Reason, the Infinite or Unconditioned,
is nothing but self-sameness, or the primary identity of the 'Ego'
in thought (mentioned in § 42). Reason itself is the name given to
the abstract 'Ego' or thought, which makes this pure identity its aim
or object (cf. note to the preceding §). Now this identity, having
no definite attribute at all, can receive no illumination from the
truths of experience, for the reason that these refer always to
definite facts. Such is the sort of Unconditioned that is supposed to
be the absolute truth of Reason,--what is termed the _Idea;_ whilst
the cognitions of experience are reduced to the level of untruth and
declared to be appearances.
Kant was the first definitely to signalise the distinction between
Reason and Understanding. The object of the former, as he applied the
term, was the infinite and unconditioned, of the latter the finite
and conditioned. Kant did valuable service when he enforced the finite
character of the cognitions of the understanding founded merely upon
experience, and stamped their contents with the name of appearance.
But his mistake was to stop at the purely negative point of view, and
to limit the unconditionality of Reason to an abstract self-sameness
without any shade of distinction. It degrades Reason to a finite and
conditioned thing, to identify it with a mere stepping beyond the
finite and conditioned range of understanding. The real infinite,
far from being a mere transcendence of the finite, always involves
the absorption of the finite into its own fuller nature. In the same
way Kant restored the Idea to its proper dignity: vindicating it for
Reason, as a thing distinct from abstract analytic determinations or
from the merely sensible conceptions which usually appropriate to
themselves the name of ideas. But as respects the Idea also, he never
got beyond its negative aspect, as what ought to be but is not.
The view that the objects of immediate consciousness, which constitute
the body of experience, are mere appearances (phenomena), was another
important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common Sense, that mixture
of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it has
knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when
it becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the
interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to
them and to their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The
things immediately known are mere appearances--in other words, the
ground of their being is not in themselves but in something else.
But then comes the important step of defining what this something
else is. According to Kant, the things that we know about are _to us_
appearances only, and we can never know their essential nature, which
belongs to another world we cannot approach. Plain minds have not
unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with its
reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world,
created by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is
rather as follows. The things of which we have direct consciousness
are mere phenomena, not for us only, but in their own nature; and the
true and proper case of these things, finite as they are, is to have
their existence founded not in themselves but in the universal divine
Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist as Kant's;
but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical
philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute idealism,
however, though it is far in advance of vulgar realism, is by no means
merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root of all religion;
for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum total of
existence, to be created and governed by God.
46.] But it is not enough simply to indicate the existence of the
object of Reason. Curiosity impels us to seek for knowledge of this
identity, this empty thing-in-itself. Now _knowledge_ means such
an acquaintance with the object as apprehends its distinct and
special subject-matter. But such subject-matter involves a complex
inter-connexion in the object itself, and supplies a ground of
connexion with many other objects. In the present case, to express the
nature of the features of the Infinite or Thing-in-itself, Reason would
have nothing except the categories: and in any endeavour so to employ
them Reason becomes over-soaring or 'transcendent.'
Here begins the second stage of the Criticism of Reason--which, as
an independent piece of work, is more valuable than the first. The
first part, as has been explained above, teaches that the categories
originate in the unity of self-consciousness; that any knowledge which
is gained by their means has nothing objective in it, and that the
very objectivity claimed for them is only subjective. So far as this
goes, the Kantian Criticism presents that 'common' type of idealism
known as Subjective Idealism. It asks no questions about the meaning
or scope of the categories, but simply considers the abstract form of
subjectivity and objectivity, and that even in such a partial way, that
the former aspect, that of subjectivity, is retained as a final and
purely affirmative term of thought. In the second part, however, when
Kant examines the _application,_ as it is called, which Reason makes
of the categories in order to know its objects, the content of the
categories, at least in some points of view, comes in for discussion:
or, at any rate, an opportunity presented itself for a discussion of
the question. It is worth while to see what decision Kant arrives at on
the subject of metaphysic, as this application of the categories to the
unconditioned is called. His method of procedure we shall here briefly
state and criticise.
47.] (a) The first of the unconditioned entities which Kant examines
is the Soul (see above, § 34). 'In my consciousness,' he says, 'I
always find that I (1) am the determining subject: (2) am singular, or
abstractly simple: (3) am identical, or one and the same, in all the
variety of what I am conscious of: (4) distinguish myself as thinking
from all the things outside me.'
Now the method of the old metaphysic, as Kant correctly states it,
consisted in substituting for these statements of experience the
corresponding categories or metaphysical terms. Thus arise these four
new propositions: _(a)_ the Soul is a substance: _(b)_ it is a simple
substance: _(c)_ it is numerically identical at the various periods of
existence: _(d)_ it stands in relation to space.
Kant discusses this translation, and draws attention to the Paralogism
or mistake of confounding one kind of truth with another. He points out
that empirical attributes have here been replaced by categories: and
shows that we are not entitled to argue from the former to the latter,
or to put the latter in place of the former.
This criticism obviously but repeats the observation of Hume
(§ 39) that the categories as a whole,--ideas of universality
and necessity,--are entirely absent from sensation; and that the
empirical fact both in form and contents differs from its intellectual
formulation.
If the purely empirical fact were held to constitute the credentials
of the thought, then no doubt it would be indispensable to be able
precisely to identify the 'idea' in the 'impression.'
And in order to make out, in his criticism of the metaphysical
psychology, that the soul cannot be described as substantial, simple,
self-same, and as maintaining its independence in intercourse with
the material world, Kant argues from the single ground, that the
several attributes of the soul, which consciousness lets us feel in
_experience,_ are not exactly the same attributes as result from the
action of _thought_ thereon. But we have seen above, that according
to Kant all knowledge, even experience, consists in thinking our
impressions--in other words, in transforming into intellectual
categories the attributes primarily belonging to sensation.
Unquestionably one good result of the Kantian criticism was that
it emancipated mental philosophy from the 'soul-thing,' from the
categories, and, consequently, from questions about the simplicity,
complexity, materiality, &c. of the soul. But even for the common sense
of ordinary men, the true point of view, from which the inadmissibility
of these forms best appears, will be, not that they are thoughts, but
that thoughts of such a stamp neither can nor do contain truth.
If thought and phenomenon do not perfectly correspond to one another,
we are free at least to choose which of the two shall be held the
defaulter. The Kantian idealism, where it touches on the world of
Reason, throws the blame on the thoughts; saying that the thoughts are
defective, as not being exactly fitted to the sensations and to a mode
of mind wholly restricted within the range of sensation, in which as
such there are no traces of the presence of these thoughts. But as to
the actual content of the thought, no question is raised.
Paralogisms are a species of unsound syllogism, the especial vice of
which consists in employing one and the same word in the two premisses
with a different meaning. According to Kant the method adopted by the
rational psychology of the old metaphysicians, when they assumed that
the qualities of the phenomenal soul, as given in experience, formed
part of its own real essence, was based upon such a Paralogism. Nor
can it be denied that predicates like simplicity, permanence, &c, are
inapplicable to the soul. But their unfitness is not due to the ground
assigned by Kant, that Reason, by applying them, would exceed its
appointed bounds. The true ground is that this style of abstract terms
is not good enough for the soul, which is very; much more than a mere
simple or unchangeable sort of thing. And thus, for example, while the
soul may be admitted to be simple self-sameness, it is at the same time
active and institutes distinctions in its own nature. But whatever
is merely or abstractly simple is as such also a mere dead thing. By
his polemic against the metaphysic of the past Kant discarded those
predicates from the soul or mind. He did well; but when he came to
state his reasons, his failure is apparent.
48.] (ß) The second unconditioned object is the World (§ 35). In the
attempt which reason makes to comprehend the unconditioned nature of
the World, it falls into what are called Antinomies. In other words
it maintains two opposite propositions about the same object, and in
such a way that each of them has to be maintained with equal necessity.
From this it follows that the body of cosmical fact, the specific
statements descriptive of which run into contradiction, cannot be a
self-subsistent reality, but only an appearance. The explanation
offered by Kant alleges that the contradiction does not affect the
object in its own proper essence, but attaches only to the Reason which
seeks to comprehend it.
In this way the suggestion was broached that the contradiction is
occasioned by the subject-matter itself, or by the intrinsic quality
of the categories. And to offer the idea that the contradiction
introduced into the world of Reason by the categories of Understanding
is inevitable and essential, was to make one of the most important
steps in the progress of Modern Philosophy. But the more important the
issue thus raised the more trivial was the solution. Its only motive
was an excess of tenderness for the things of the world. The blemish
of contradiction, it seems, could not be allowed to mar the essence of
the world: but there could be no objection to attach it to the thinking
Reason, to the essence of mind. Probably nobody will feel disposed to
deny that the phenomenal world presents contradictions to the observing
mind; meaning by 'phenomenal' the world as it presents itself to the
senses and understanding, to the subjective mind. But if a comparison
is instituted between the essence of the world and the essence of the
mind, it does seem strange to hear how calmly and confidently the
modest dogma has been advanced by one, and repeated by others, that
thought or Reason, and not the World, is the seat of contradiction.
It is no escape to turn round and explain that Reason falls into
contradiction only by applying the categories. For this application
of the categories is maintained to be necessary, and Reason is not
supposed to be equipped with any other forms but the categories for
the purpose of cognition. But cognition is determining and determinate
thinking: so that, if Reason be mere empty indeterminate thinking, it
thinks nothing. And if in the end Reason be reduced to mere identity
without diversity (see next §), it will in the end also win a happy
release from contradiction at the slight sacrifice of all its facts and
contents.
It may also be noted that his failure to make a more thorough study
of Antinomy was one of the reasons why Kant enumerated only _four_
Antinomies. These four attracted his notice, because, as may be seen
in his discussion of the so-called Paralogisms of Reason, he assumed
the list of the categories as a basis of his argument. Employing
what has subsequently become a favourite fashion, he simply put the
object under a rubric otherwise ready to hand, instead of deducing
its characteristics from its notion. Further deficiencies in the
treatment of the Antinomies I have pointed out, as occasion offered,
in my 'Science of Logic' Here it will be sufficient to say that
the Antinomies are not confined to the four special objects taken
from Cosmology: they appear in all objects of every kind, in all
conceptions, notions and Ideas. To be aware of this and to know objects
in this property of theirs, makes a vital part in a philosophical
theory. For the property thus indicated is what we shall afterwards
describe as the Dialectical influence in logic.
* * * * *
The principles of the metaphysical philosophy gave rise to the belief
that, when cognition lapsed into contradictions, it was a mere
accidental aberration, due to some subjective mistake in argument
and inference. According to Kant, however, thought has a natural
tendency to issue in contradictions or antinomies, whenever it seeks
to apprehend the infinite. We have in the latter part of the above
paragraph referred to the philosophical importance of the antinomies of
reason, and shown how the recognition of their existence helped largely
to get rid of the rigid dogmatism of the metaphysic of understanding,
and to direct attention to the Dialectical movement of thought. But
here too Kant, as we must add, never got beyond the negative result
that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, and never penetrated to the
discovery of what the antinomies really and positively mean. That true
and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: that every actual
thing involves a coexistence of opposed, elements. Consequently to
know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to
being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations.
The old. metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the
objects of which it sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to work by
applying categories abstractly and to the exclusion of their opposites.
Kant, on the other hand, tried to prove that the statements, issuing
through this method, could be met by other statements of contrary
import with equal warrant and equal necessity. In the enumeration of
these antinomies he narrowed his ground to the cosmology of the old
metaphysical system, and in his discussion made out four antinomies, a
number which rests upon the list of the categories. The first antinomy
is on the question: Whether we are or are not to think the world
limited in space and time. In the second antinomy we have a discussion
of the dilemma: Matter must be conceived either as endlessly divisible,
or as consisting of atoms. The third antinomy bears upon the antithesis
of freedom and necessity, to such extent as it is embraced in the
question, Whether everything in the world must be supposed subject to
the condition of causality, or if we can also assume free beings, in
other words, absolute initial points of action, in the world. Finally,
the fourth antinomy is the dilemma: Either the world as a whole has a
cause or it is uncaused.
The method which Kant follows in discussing these antinomies is as
follows. He puts the two propositions implied in the dilemma over
against each other as thesis and antithesis, and seeks to prove both:
that is to say he tries to exhibit them as inevitably issuing from
reflection on the question. He particularly protests against the charge
of being a special pleader and of grounding his reasoning on illusions.
Speaking honestly, however, the arguments which Kant offers for his
thesis and antithesis are mere shams of demonstration. The thing to
be proved is invariably implied in the assumption he starts from, and
the speciousness of his proofs is only due to his prolix and apagogic
mode of procedure. Yet it was, and still is, a great achievement for
the Critical philosophy, when it exhibited these antinomies: for
in this way it gave some expression (at first certainly subjective
and unexplained) to the actual unity of those categories which are
kept persistently separate by the understanding. The first of the
cosmological antinomies, for example, implies a recognition of the
doctrine that space and time present a discrete as well as a continuous
aspect: whereas the old metaphysic, laying exclusive emphasis on the
continuity, had been led to treat the world as unlimited in space
and time. It is quite correct to say that we can go beyond every
_definite_ space and beyond every _definite_ time: but it is no less
correct that space and time are real and actual only when they are
defined or specialised into 'here' and 'now,'--a specialisation which
is involved in the very notion of them. The same observations apply to
the rest of the antinomies. Take, for example, the antinomy of freedom
and necessity. The main gist of itis that freedom and necessity as
understood by abstract thinkers are not independently real, as these
thinkers suppose, but merely ideal factors (moments) of the true
freedom and the true necessity, and that to abstract and isolate either
conception is to make it false.
49.] (y) The third object of the Reason is God (§36): He also must
be known and defined in terms of thought. But in comparison with
an unalloyed identity, every defining term as such seems to the
understanding to be only a limit and a negation: every reality
accordingly must be taken as limitless, _i.e._ undefined. Accordingly
God, when He is defined to be the sum of all realities, the most real
of beings, turns into a _mere abstract._ And the only term under which
that most real of real, things can be defined is that of Being--itself
the height of abstraction. These are the two elements, abstract
identity, on one hand, which is spoken of in this place as the notion;
and Being on the other,--which Reason seeks to unify. And their union
is the _Ideal_ of Reason.
50.] To carry out this unification two ways or two forms are
admissible. Either we may begin with Being and proceed to the
_abstraction_ of Thought: or the movement may begin with the
abstraction and end in Being.
We shall, in the first place, start from Being. But Being, in its
natural aspect, presents itself to view as a Being of infinite variety,
a World in all its plenitude. And this world may be regarded in two
ways: first, as a collection of innumerable unconnected facts; and
second, as a collection of innumerable facts in mutual relation,
giving evidence of design. The first aspect is emphasised in the
Cosmological proof: the latter in the proofs of Natural Theology.
Suppose now that this fulness of being passes under the agency of
thought. Then it is stripped of its isolation and unconnectedness, and
viewed as a universal and absolutely necessary being which determines
itself and acts by general purposes or laws. And this necessary and
self-determined being, different from the being at the commencement, is
God.
The main force of Kant's criticism on this process attacks it for being
a syllogising, _i.e._ a transition. Perceptions, and that aggregate
of perceptions we call the world, exhibit as they stand no traces of
that universality which they afterwards receive from the purifying act
of thought. The empirical conception of the world therefore gives no
warrant for the idea of universality. And so any attempt on the part
of thought to ascend from the empirical conception of the world to
God is checked by the argument of Hume (as in the paralogisms, § 47),
according to which we have no right to think sensations, that is, to
elicit universality and necessity from them.
Man is essentially a thinker: and therefore sound Common Sense, as well
as Philosophy, will not yield up their right of rising to God from
and out of the empirical view of the world. The only basis on which
this rise is possible is the thinking study of the world, not the bare
sensuous, animal, attuition of it. Thought and thought alone has eyes
for the essence, substance, universal power, and ultimate design of the
world. And what men call the proofs of God's existence are, rightly
understood, ways of describing and analysing the native course of the
mind, the course of _thought_ thinking the _data_ of the senses. The
rise of thought beyond the world of sense, its passage from the finite
to the infinite, the leap into the super-sensible which it takes when
it snaps asunder the chain of sense, all this transition is thought and
nothing but thought. Say there is no such passage, and you say there is
to be no thinking. And in sooth, animals make no such transition. They
never get further than sensation and the perception of the senses, and
in consequence they have no religion.
Both on general grounds, and in the particular case, there are two
remarks to be made upon the criticism of this exaltation in thought.
The first remark deals with the question of form. When the exaltation
is exhibited in a syllogistic process, in the shape of what we call
_proofs_ of the being of God, these reasonings cannot but start from
some sort of theory of the world, which makes it an aggregate either
of contingent facts or of final causes and relations involving design.
The merely syllogistic thinker may deem this starting-point a solid
basis and suppose that it remains throughout in the same empirical
light, left at last as it was at the first. In this case, the bearing
of the beginning upon the conclusion to which it leads has a purely
affirmative aspect, as if we were only reasoning from one thing which
_is_ and continues to _be,_ to another thing which in like manner
is. But the great error is to restrict our notions of the nature
of thought to its form in understanding alone. To think think the
phenomenal world rather, means to re-cast its form, and transmute it
into a universal. And thus the action-of-thought, has also, _negative_
effect upon its basis: and the matter of sensation, when it receives
the stamp of universality, at once loses its first and phenomenal
shape. By the removal and negation of the shell, the kernel within the
sense; v percept is brought to the light (§§ 13 and 23). And it is
because they do not, with sufficient prominence, express the negative
features implied in the exaltation of the mind from the world to God,
that the metaphysical proofs of the being of a God are defective
interpretations and descriptions of the process. If the world is only a
sum of incidents, it follows that it is also deciduous and phenomenal,
in _esse_ and _posse_ null. That upward spring of the mind signifies,
that the being which the world has is only a semblance, no real being,
no absolute truth; it signifies that, beyond and above that appearance,
truth abides in God, so that true being is another name for God. The
process of exaltation might thus appear to be transition and to involve
a means, but it is not a whit less true, that every trace of transition
and means is absorbed; since the world, which might have seemed to be
the means of reaching God, is explained to be a nullity. Unless the
being of the world is nullified, the _point d'appui_ for the exaltation
is lost. In this way the apparent means vanishes, and the process
of derivation is cancelled in the very act by which it proceeds. It
is the affirmative aspect of this relation, as supposed to subsist
between two things, either of which _is_ as much as the other, which
Jacobi mainly has in his eye when he attacks the demonstrations of the
understanding. Justly censuring them for seeking conditions (_i.e._
the world) for the unconditioned, he remarks that the Infinite or
God must on such a method be presented as dependent and derivative.
But that elevation, as it takes place in the mind, serves to correct
this semblance: in fact, it has no other meaning than to correct that
semblance. Jacobi, however, failed to recognise the genuine nature of
essential thought--by which it cancels the mediation in the very act of
mediating; and consequently, his objection, though it tells against the
merely 'reflective' understanding, is false when applied to thought as
a whole, and in particular to reasonable thought.
To explain what we mean by the neglect of the negative factor in
thought, we may refer by way of illustration to the charges of
Pantheism and Atheism brought against the doctrines of Spinoza. The
absolute Substance of Spinoza certainly falls short of absolute spirit,
and it is a right and proper requirement that God should be defined
as absolute spirit. But when the definition in Spinoza is said to
identify the world with God, and to confound God with nature and the
finite world, it is implied that the finite world possesses a genuine
actuality and affirmative reality. If this assumption be admitted, of
course a union of God with the world renders God completely finite,
and degrades Him to the bare finite and adventitious congeries of
existence. But there are two objections to be noted. In the first place
Spinoza does not define God as the unity of God with the world, but as
the union of thought with extension, that is, with the material world.
And secondly, even if we accept this awkward popular statement as to
this unity, it would still be true that the system of Spinoza was not
Atheism but Acosmism, defining the world to be an appearance lacking in
true reality. A philosophy, which affirms that God and God-alone is,
should not be stigmatised as atheistic, when even those nations which
worship the ape, the cow, or images of stone and brass, are credited
with some religion. But as things stand the imagination of ordinary men
feels a vehement reluctance to surrender its dearest conviction, that
this aggregate of finitude, which it calls a world, has actual reality;
and to hold that there is no world is a way of thinking they are fain
to believe impossible, or at least much less possible than to entertain
the idea that there is no God. Human nature, not much to its credit, is
more ready to believe that a system denies God, than that it denies the
world. A denial of God seems so much more intelligible than a denial of
the world.
The second remark bears on the criticism of the material propositions
to which that elevation in thought in the first instance leads. If
these propositions have for their predicate such terms as substance of
the world, its necessary essence, cause which regulates and directs it
according to design, they are certainly inadequate to express what is
or ought to be understood by God. Yet apart from the trick of adopting
a preliminary popular conception of God, and criticising a result by
this assumed standard, it is certain that these characteristics have
great value, and are necessary factors in the idea of God. But if we
wish in this way to bring before thought the genuine idea of God,
and give its true value and expression to the central truth, we must
be careful not to start from a subordinate level of facts. To speak
of the 'merely contingent' things of the world is a very inadequate
description of the premisses. The organic structures, and the evidence
they afford of mutual adaptation, belong to a higher province, the
province of animated nature. But even without taking into consideration
the possible blemish which the study of animated nature and of the
other teleological aspects of existing things may contract from the
pettiness of the final causes, and from puerile instances of them and
their bearings, merely animated nature is, at the best, incapable of
supplying the material for a truthful expression to the idea of God.
God is more than life: He is Spirit. And therefore if the thought of
the Absolute takes a starting-point for its rise, and desires to take
the nearest, the most true and adequate starting-point will be found in
the nature of spirit alone.
51.] The other way of unification by which to realise the Ideal of
Reason is to set out from the _abstractum_ of Thought and seek to
characterise it: for which purpose Being is the only available term.
This is the method of the Ontological proof. The opposition, here
presented from a merely subjective point of view, lies between Thought
and Being; whereas in the first way of junction, being is common to the
two sides of the antithesis, and the contrast lies only between its
individualisation and universality. Understanding meets this second way
with what is implicitly the same objection, as it made to the first.
It denied that the empirical involves the universal: so it denies that
the universal involves the specialisation, which specialisation in this
instance is being. In other words it says: Being cannot be deduced from
the notion by any analysis.
The uniformly favourable reception and acceptance which attended
Kant's criticism of the Ontological proof was undoubtedly due to the
illustration which he made use of. To explain the difference between
thought and being, he took the instance of a hundred sovereigns,
which, for anything it matters to the notion, are the same hundred
whether they are real or only possible, though the difference of the
two cases is very perceptible in their effect on a man's purse. Nothing
can be more obvious than that anything we only think or conceive is not
on that account actual: that mental representation, and even notional
comprehension, always falls short of being. Still it may not unfairly
be styled a barbarism in language, when the name of notion is given
to things like a hundred sovereigns. And, putting that mistake aside,
those who perpetually urge against the philosophic Idea the difference
between Being and Thought, might have admitted that philosophers
were not wholly ignorant of the fact. Can there be any proposition
more trite than this? But after all, it is well to remember, when we
speak of God, that we have an object of another kind than any hundred
sovereigns, and unlike any one particular notion, representation, or
however else it may be styled. It is in fact this and this alone which
marks everything finite:--its being in time and space is discrepant
from its notion. God, on the contrary, expressly has to be what can
only be 'thought as existing'; His notion involves being. It is this
unity of the notion and being that constitutes the notion of God.
If this were all, we should have only a formal expression of the divine
nature which would not really go beyond a statement of the nature of
the notion itself. And that the notion, in its most abstract terms,
involves being is plain. For the notion, whatever other determination
it may receive, is at least reference back on itself, which results
by abolishing the intermediation, and thus is immediate. And what is
that reference to self, but being? Certainly it would be strange if the
notion, the very inmost of mind, if even the 'Ego,' or above all, the
concrete totality we call God, were not rich enough to include so poor
a category as being, the very poorest and most abstract of all. For,
if we look at the thought it holds, nothing can be more insignificant
than being. And yet there may be something still more insignificant
than being,--that which at first sight is perhaps supposed to _be,_ an
external and sensible existence, like that of the paper lying before
me. However, in this matter, nobody proposes to speak of the sensible
existence of a limited and perishable thing. Besides, the petty
stricture of the _Kritik_ that 'thought and being are different' can at
most molest the path of the human mind from the thought of God to the
certainty that He _is_: it cannot take it away. It is this process of
transition, depending on the absolute inseparability of the _thought_
of God from His being, for which its proper authority has been
re-vindicated in the theory of faith or immediate knowledge,--whereof
hereafter.
52.] In this way thought, at its highest pitch, has to go outside for
any determinateness: and although it is continually termed Reason, is
out-and-out abstract thinking. And the result of all is that Reason
supplies nothing beyond the formal unity required to simplify and
systematise experiences; it is a _canon,_ not an _organon_ of truth,
and can furnish only a _criticism_ of knowledge, not a _doctrine_ of
the infinite. In its final analysis this criticism is summed up in the
assertion that in strictness thought is only the indeterminate unity
and the action of this indeterminate unity.
Kant undoubtedly held reason to be the faculty of the
unconditioned; but if reason be reduced to abstract identity
only, it by implication renounces its unconditionality and is
in reality no better than empty understanding. For reason is
unconditioned, only in so far as its character and quality are not
due to an extraneous and foreign content, only in so far as it
is self-characterising, and thus, in point of content, is its own
master. Kant, however, expressly explains that the action of reason
consists solely in applying the categories to systematise the
matter given by perception, _e._ to place it in an outside order,
under the guidance of the principle of non-contradiction.
53.] (b) The Practical Reason is understood by Kant to mean a
_thinking_ Will, _i.e._ a Will that determines itself on universal
principles. Its office is to give objective, imperative laws of
freedom,--laws, that is, which state what ought to happen. The warrant
for thus assuming thought to be an activity which makes itself felt
objectively, that is, to be really a Reason, is the alleged possibility
of proving practical freedom by experience, that is, of showing it in
the phenomenon of self-consciousness. This experience in consciousness
is at once met by all that the Necessitarian produces from contrary
experience, particularly by the sceptical induction (employed amongst
others by Hume) from the endless diversity of what men regard as right
and duty,--_i.e._ from the diversity apparent in those professedly
objective laws of freedom.
54.] What, then, is to serve as the law which the Practical
Reason embraces and obeys, and as the criterion in its act of
self-determination? There is no rule at hand but the same abstract
identity of understanding as before: There must be no contradiction in
the act of self-determination. Hence the Practical Reason never shakes
off the formalism which is represented as the climax of the Theoretical
Reason.
But this Practical Reason does not confine the universal principle of
the Good to its own inward regulation: it first becomes _practical,_
in the true sense of the word, when it insists on the Good being
manifested in the world with an outward objectivity, and requires that
the thought shall be objective throughout, and not merely subjective.
We shall speak of this postulate of the Practical Reason afterwards.
The free self-determination which Kant denied to the speculative,
he has expressly vindicated for the practical reason. To many minds
this particular aspect of the Kantian philosophy made it welcome;
and that for good reasons. To estimate rightly what we owe to
Kant in the matter, we ought to set before our minds the form of
practical philosophy and in particular of 'moral philosophy,' which
prevailed in his time. It may be generally described as a system
of Eudaemonism, which, when asked what man's chief end ought to
be, replied Happiness. And by happiness Eudaemonism understood the
satisfaction of the private appetites, wishes and wants of the
man: thus raising the contingent and particular into a principle
for the will and its actualisation. To this Eudaemonism, which was
destitute of stability and consistency, and which left the 'door
and gate' wide open for every whim and caprice, Kant opposed the
practical reason, and thus emphasised the need for a principle
of will which should be universal and lay the same obligation
on all. The theoretical reason, as has been made evident in the
preceding paragraphs, is identified by Kant with the negative
faculty of the infinite; and as it has no positive content of its
own, it is restricted to the function of detecting the finitude of
experiential knowledge. To the practical reason, on the contrary,
he has expressly allowed a positive infinity, by ascribing to the
will the power of modifying itself in universal modes, _i.e._ by
thought. Such a power the will undoubtedly has: and it is well
to remember that man is free only in so far as he possesses it
and avails himself of it in his conduct. But a recognition of the
existence of this power is not enough and does not avail to tell
us what are the contents of the will or practical reason. Hence to
say, that a man must make the Good the content of his will, raises
the question, what that content is, and what are the means of
ascertaining what good is. Nor does one get over the difficulty by
the principle that the will must be consistent with itself, or by
the precept to do duty for the sake of duty.
55.] (c) The Reflective Power of Judgment is invested by Kant
with the function of an Intuitive Understanding. That is to say,
whereas the particulars had hitherto appeared, so far as the universal
or abstract identity was concerned, adventitious and incapable of
being deduced from it, the _Intuitive_ Understanding apprehends the
particulars as moulded and formed by the universal itself. Experience
presents such universalised particulars in the products of Art and of
_organic_ nature.
The capital feature in Kant's Criticism of the Judgment is, that in
it he gave a representation and a name, if not even an intellectual
expression, to the Idea. Such a representation, as an Intuitive
Understanding, or an inner adaptation, suggests a universal which
is at the same time apprehended as essentially a concrete unity, It
is in these aperçus alone that the Kantian philosophy rises to the
speculative height. Schiller, and others, have found in the idea of
artistic beauty, where thought and sensuous conception have grown
together into one, a way of escape from the abstract and separatist
understanding. Others have found the same relief in the perception
and consciousness of life and of living things, whether that life
be natural or intellectual.--The work of Art, as well as the living
individual, is, it must be owned, of limited content. But in the
postulated harmony of nature (or necessity) and free purpose,--in the
final purpose of the world conceived as realised, Kant has put before
us the Idea, comprehensive even in its content. Yet what may be called
the laziness of thought, when dealing with this supreme Idea, finds a
too easy mode of evasion in the 'ought to be': instead of the actual
realisation of the ultimate end, it clings hard to the disjunction
of the notion from reality. Yet if thought will not _think_ the ideal
realised, the senses and the intuition can at any rate _see_ it in the
present reality of living organisms and of the beautiful in Art. And
consequently Kant's remarks on these objects were well adapted to lead
the mind on to grasp and think the concrete Idea.
56.] We are thus led to conceive a different relation between the
universal of understanding and the particular of perception, than that
on which the theory of the Theoretical and Practical Reason is founded.
But while this is so, it is not supplemented by a recognition that the
former is the genuine relation and the very truth. Instead of that,
the unity (of universal with particular) is accepted only as it exists
in finite phenomena, and is adduced only as a fact of experience.
Such experience, at first only personal, may come from two sources.
It may spring from Genius, the faculty which produces 'aesthetic
ideas'; meaning by aesthetic ideas, the picture-thoughts of the free
imagination which subserve an idea and suggest thoughts, although their
content is not expressed in a notional form, and even admits of no
such expression. It may also be due to Taste, the feeling of congruity
between the free play of intuition or imagination and the uniformity of
understanding.
57.] The principle by which the Reflective faculty of Judgment
regulates and arranges the products of animated nature is described
as the End or final cause,--the notion in action, the universal at
once determining and determinate in itself. At the same time Kant is
careful to discard the conception of external or finite adaptation, in
which the End is only an adventitious form for the means and material
in which it is realised. In the living organism, on the contrary, the
final cause is a moulding principle and an energy immanent in the
matter, and every member is in its turn a means as well as an end.
58.] Such an Idea evidently radically transforms the relation which the
understanding institutes between means and ends, between subjectivity
and objectivity. And yet in the face of this unification, the End or
design is subsequently explained to be a cause which exists and acts
subjectively, _i.e._ as our idea only: and teleology is accordingly
explained to be only a principle of criticism, purely personal to _our_
understanding.
After the Critical philosophy had settled that Reason can know
phenomena only, there would still have been an option for animated
nature between two equally subjective modes of thought. Even according
to Kant's own exposition, there would have been an obligation to admit,
in the case of natural productions, a knowledge not confined to the
categories of quality, cause and effect, composition, constituents,
and so on. The principle of inward adaptation or design, had it been
kept to and carried out in scientific application, would have led to a
different and a higher method of observing nature.
59.] If we adopt this principle, the Idea, when all limitations were
removed from it, would appear as follows. The universality moulded by
Reason, and described as the absolute and final end or the Good, would
be realised in the world, and realised moreover by means of a third
thing, the power which proposes this End as well as realises it,--that
is, God. Thus in Him, who is the absolute truth, those oppositions of
universal and individual, subjective and objective, are solved and
explained to be neither self-subsistent nor true.
80.] But Good,--which is thus put forward as the final cause of the
world,--has been already described as only _our_ good, the moral law
of _our_ Practical Reason. This being so, the unity in question
goes no further than make the state of the world and the course of
its events harmonise with our moral standards.[1] Besides, even with
this limitation, the final cause, or Good, is a vague abstraction,
and the same vagueness attaches to what is to be Duty. But, further,
this harmony is met by the revival and re-assertion of the antithesis,
which it by its own principle had nullified. The harmony is then
described as merely subjective, something which merely ought to be,
and which at the same time is not real,--a mere article of faith,
possessing a subjective certainty, but without truth, or that
objectivity which is proper to the Idea. This contradiction may seem
to be disguised by adjourning the realisation of the Idea to a future,
to a _time_ when the Idea will also be. But a sensuous condition like
time is the reverse of a reconciliation of the discrepancy; and an
infinite progression--which is the corresponding image adopted by the
understanding--on the very face of it only repeats and re-enacts the
contradiction.
A general remark may still be offered on the result to which the
Critical philosophy led as to the nature of knowledge; a result
which has grown one of the current 'idols' or axiomatic beliefs of
the day. In every dualistic system, and especially in that of Kant,
the fundamental defect makes itself visible in the inconsistency of
unifying at one moment, what a moment before had been explained to
be independent and therefore incapable of unification. And then, at
the very moment after unification has been alleged to be the truth,
we suddenly come upon the doctrine that the two elements, which, in
their true status of unification, had been refused all independent
subsistence, are only true and actual in their state of separation.
Philosophising of this kind wants the little penetration needed to
discover, that this shuffling only evidences how unsatisfactory each
one of the two terms is. And it fails simply because it is incapable
of bringing two thoughts together. (And in point of form there are
never more than two.) It argues an utter want of consistency to say,
on the one hand, that the understanding only knows phenomena, and, on
the other, assert the absolute character of this knowledge, by such
statements as 'Cognition can go no further'; 'Here is the _natural_ and
absolute limit of human knowledge.' But 'natural' is the wrong word
here. The things of nature are limited and are natural things only to
such extent as they are not aware of their universal limit, or to such
extent as their mode or quality is a limit from our point of view,
and not from their own. No one knows, or even feels, that anything
is a limit or defect, until he is at the same time above and beyond
it. Living beings, for example, possess the privilege of pain which
is denied to the inanimate: even with living beings, a single mode or
quality passes into the feeling of a negative. For living beings as
such possess within them a universal vitality, which overpasses and
includes the single mode; and thus, as they maintain themselves in
the negative of themselves, they feel the contradiction to _exist_
within them. But the contradiction is within them, only in so far as
one and the same subject includes both the universality of their sense
of life, and the individual mode which is in negation with it. This
illustration will show how a limit or imperfection in knowledge comes
to be termed a limit or imperfection, only when it is compared with the
actually-present Idea of the universal, of a total and perfect. A very
little consideration might show, that to call a thing finite or limited
proves by implication the very presence of the infinite and unlimited,
and that our knowledge of a limit can only be when the unlimited is _on
this side_ in consciousness.
The result however of Kant's view of cognition suggests a second
remark. The philosophy of Kant could have no influence on the method of
the sciences. It leaves the categories and method of ordinary knowledge
quite unmolested. Occasionally, it may be, in the first sections of a
scientific work of that period, we find propositions borrowed from the
Kantian philosophy: but the course of the treatise renders it apparent
that these propositions were superfluous decoration, and that the few
first pages might have been omitted without producing the least change
in the empirical contents.[2]
We may next institute a comparison of Kant with the metaphysics of the
empirical school. Natural plain Empiricism, though it unquestionably
insists most upon sensuous perception, still allows a super-sensible
world or spiritual reality, whatever may be its structure and
constitution, and whether derived from intellect, or from imagination,
&c. So far as form goes, the facts of this super-sensible world rest on
the authority of mind, in the same way as the other facts, embraced
in empirical knowledge, rest on the authority of external perception.
But when Empiricism becomes reflective and logically consistent, it
turns its arms against this dualism in the ultimate and highest species
of fact; it denies the independence of the thinking principle and of
a spiritual world which developes itself in thought. Materialism or
Naturalism, therefore, is the consistent and thorough-going system
of Empiricism. In direct opposition to such an Empiricism, Kant
asserts the principle of thought and freedom, and attaches himself
to the first-mentioned form of empirical doctrine, the general
principles of which he never departed from. There is a dualism in
his philosophy also. On one side stands the world of sensation, and
of the understanding which reflects upon it. This world, it is true,
he alleges to be a world of appearances. But that is only a title
or formal description; for the source, the facts, and the modes of
observation continue quite the same as in Empiricism. On the other side
and independent stands a self-apprehending thought, the principle of
freedom, which Kant has in common with ordinary and bygone metaphysic,
but emptied of all that it held, and without his being able to infuse
into it anything new. For, in the Critical doctrine, thought, or, as it
is there called, Reason, is divested of every specific form, and thus
bereft of all authority. The main effect of the Kantian philosophy has
been to revive the consciousness of Reason, or the absolute inwardness
of thought. Its abstractness indeed prevented that inwardness from
developing into anything, or from originating any special forms,
whether cognitive principles or moral laws; but nevertheless it
absolutely refused to accept or indulge anything possessing the
character of an externality. Henceforth the principle of the
independence of Reason, or of its absolute self-subsistence, is made
a general principle of philosophy, as well as a foregone conclusion of
the time.
(1) The Critical philosophy has one great negative merit. It has
brought home the conviction that the categories of understanding are
finite in their range, and that any cognitive process confined within
their pale falls short of the truth. But Kant had only a sight of
half the truth. He explained the finite nature of the categories to
mean that they were subjective only, valid only for our thought, from
which the thing-in-itself was divided by an impassable gulf. In fact,
however, it is not because they are subjective, that the categories are
finite: they are finite by their very nature, and it is on their own
selves that it is requisite to exhibit their finitude. Kant however
holds that what we think is false, because it is we who think it. A
further deficiency in the system is that it gives only an historical
description of thought, and a mere enumeration of the factors of
consciousness. The enumeration is in the main correct: but not a word
touches upon the necessity of what is thus empirically colligated. The
observations, made on the various stages of consciousness, culminate
in the summary statement, that the content of all we are acquainted
with is only an appearance. And as it is true at least that all finite
thinking is concerned with appearances, so far the conclusion is
justified. This stage of 'appearance' however--the phenomenal world--is
not the terminus of thought: there is another and a higher region. But
that region was to the Kantian philosophy an inaccessible 'other world.'
(2) After all it was only formally, that the Kantian system established
the principle that thought is spontaneous and self-determining. Into
details of the manner and the extent of this self-determination of
thought, Kant never went. It was Fichte who first noticed the omission;
and who, after he had called attention to the want of a deduction for
the categories, endeavoured really to supply something of the kind.
With Fichte, the 'Ego' is the starting-point in the philosophical
development: and the outcome of its action is supposed to be visible
in the categories. But in Fichte the 'Ego' is not really presented
as a free, spontaneous energy; it is supposed to receive its first
excitation by a shock or impulse from without. Against this shock
the 'Ego' will, it is assumed, react, and only through this reaction
does it first become conscious of itself. Meanwhile, the nature of
the impulse remains a stranger beyond our pale: and the 'Ego,' with
something else always confronting it, is weighted with a condition.
Fichte, in consequence, never advanced beyond Kant's conclusion, that
the finite only is knowable, while the infinite transcends the range
of thought. What Kant calls the thing-by-itself, Fichte calls the
impulse from without--that abstraction of something else than 'I,' not
otherwise describable or definable than as the negative or non-Ego in
general. The 'I' is thus looked at as standing in essential relation
with the not-I, through which its act of self-determination is first
awakened. And in this manner the 'I' is but the continuous act of
self-liberation from this impulse, never gaining a real freedom,
because with the surcease of the impulse the 'I,' whose being is
its action, would also cease to be. Nor is the content produced by
the action of the 'I' at all different from the ordinary content of
experience, except by the supplementary remark, that this content is
mere appearance.
[1] Even Hermann's 'Handbook of Prosody' begins with paragraphs of
Kantian philosophy. In § 8 it is argued that a law of rhythm must be
(1) objective, (a) formal, and (3) determined _à priori._ With these
requirements and with the principles of Causality and Reciprocity which
follow later, it were well to compare the treatment of the various
measures, upon which those formal principles do not exercise the
slightest influence.
[2] In Kant's own words (Criticism of the Power of Judgment, p. 427):
'Final Cause is merely a notion of our practical reason. It cannot
be deduced from any data of experience as a theoretical criterion of
nature, nor can it be applied to know nature. No employment of this
notion is possible except solely for the practical reason, by moral
laws. The final purpose of the Creation is that constitution of the
world which harmonises with that to which alone we can give definite
expression on universal principles, viz. the final purpose of our pure
practical reason, and with that in so far as it means to be practical.'
CHAPTER V.
THIRD ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
_Immediate or Intuitive Knowledge._
61.] If we are to believe the Critical philosophy, thought is
subjective, and its ultimate and invincible mode is _abstract
universality_ or formal identity. Thought is thus set in opposition
to Truth, which is no abstraction, but concrete universality. In this
highest mode of thought, which is entitled Reason, the Categories
are left out of account.--The extreme theory on the opposite side
holds thought to be an act of the _particular_ only, and on that
ground declares it incapable of apprehending the Truth. This is the
Intuitional theory.
62.] According to this theory, thinking, a private and particular
operation, has its whole scope and product in the Categories. But,
these Categories, as arrested by the understanding, are limited
vehicles of thought, forms of the conditioned, of the dependent
and derivative. A thought limited to these modes has no sense of
the Infinite and the True, and cannot bridge over the gulf that
separates it from them. (This stricture refers to the proofs of God's
existence.) These inadequate modes or categories are also spoken of as
_notions_: and to get a notion of an object therefore can only mean,
in this language, to grasp it under the form of being conditioned and
derivative. Consequently, if the object in question be the True, the
Infinite, the Unconditioned, we change it by our notions into a finite
and conditioned; whereby, instead of apprehending the truth by thought,
we have perverted it into untruth.
Such is the one simple line of argument advanced for the thesis that
the knowledge of God and of truth must be immediate, or intuitive. At
an earlier period all sort of anthropomorphic conceptions, as they
are termed, were banished from God, as being finite and therefore
unworthy of the infinite; and in this way God had been reduced to
a tolerably blank being. But in those days the thought-forms were
in general not supposed to come under the head of anthropomorphism.
Thought was believed rather to strip finitude from the conceptions of
the Absolute,--in agreement with the above-mentioned conviction of all
ages, that reflection is the only road to truth. But now, at length,
even the thought-forms are pronounced anthropomorphic, and thought
itself is described as a mere faculty of finitisation.
Jacobi has stated this charge most distinctly in the seventh supplement
to his Letters on Spinoza,--borrowing his line of argument from the
works of Spinoza himself, and applying it as a weapon against knowledge
in general. In his attack knowledge is taken to mean knowledge of
the finite only, a process of thought from one condition in a series
to another, each of which is at once conditioning and conditioned.
According to such a view, to explain and to get the notion of
anything, is the same as to show it to be derived from something else.
Whatever such knowledge embraces, consequently, is partial, dependent
and finite, while the infinite or true, _i.e._ God, lies outside
of the mechanical inter-connexion to which knowledge is said to be
confined.--It is important to observe that, while Kant makes the finite
nature of the Categories consist mainly in the formal circumstance
that they are subjective, Jacobi discusses the Categories in their
own proper character, and pronounces them to be in their very import
finite. What Jacobi chiefly had before his eyes, when he thus described
science, was the brilliant successes of the physical or 'exact'
sciences in ascertaining natural forces and laws. It is certainly not
on the finite ground occupied by these sciences that we can expect to
meet the in-dwelling presence of the infinite. Lalande was right when
he said he had swept the whole heaven with his glass, and seen no God.
(See note to § 60.) In the field of physical science, the universal,
which is the final result of analysis, is only the indeterminate
aggregate,--of the external finite,--in one word, Matter: and Jacobi
well perceived that there was no other issue obtainable in the way of a
mere advance from one explanatory clause or law to another.
63.] All the while the doctrine that truth exists for the mind was so
strongly maintained by Jacobi, that Reason alone is declared to be that
by which man lives. This Reason is the knowledge of God. But, seeing
that derivative knowledge is restricted to the compass of finite facts,
Reason is knowledge underivative, or Faith.
Knowledge, Faith, Thought, Intuition are the categories that we meet
with on this line of reflection. These terms, as presumably familiar to
every one, are only too frequently subjected to an arbitrary use, under
no better guidance than the conceptions and distinctions of psychology,
without any investigation into their nature and notion, which is the
main question after all. Thus, we often find knowledge contrasted with
faith, and faith at the same time explained to be an underivative
or intuitive knowledge:--so that it must be at least some sort of
knowledge. And, besides, it is unquestionably a fact of experience,
firstly, that what we believe is in our consciousness,---which implies
that we _know about it;_ and secondly, that this belief is a certainty
in our consciousness,--which implies that we _know it._ Again, and
especially, we find thought opposed to immediate knowledge and faith,
and, in particular, to intuition. But if this intuition be qualified
as intellectual, we must really mean intuition which thinks, unless,
in a question about the nature of God, we are willing to interpret
intellect to mean images and representations of imagination. The word
faith or belief, in the dialect of this system, comes to be employed
even with reference to common objects that are present to the senses.
We believe, says Jacobi, that we have a body,--we believe in the
existence of the things of sense. But if we are speaking of faith in
the True and Eternal, and saying that God is given and revealed to us
in immediate knowledge OF intuition, we are concerned not with the
things of sense, but with objects special to our thinking mind, with
truths of inherently universal significance. And when the individual
'I,' or in other words personality, is under discussion--not the 'I' of
experience, or a single private person--above all, when the personality
of God is before us, we are speaking of personality unalloyed,--of a
personality in its own nature universal. Such personality is a thought,
and falls within the province of thought only. More than this. Pure and
simple intuition is completely the same as pure and simple thought.
Intuition and belief, in the first instance, denote the definite
conceptions we attach to these words in our ordinary employment of
them: and to this extent they differ from thought in certain points
which nearly every one can understand. But here they are taken in a
higher sense, and must be interpreted to mean a belief in God, or an
intellectual intuition of God; in short, we must put aside all that
especially distinguishes thought on the one side from belief and
intuition on the other. How belief and intuition, when transferred to
these higher regions, differ from thought, it is impossible for any one
to say. And yet, such are the barren distinctions of words, with which
men fancy that they assert an important truth: even while the formulae
they maintain are identical with those which they impugn.
The term _Faith_ brings with it the special advantage of suggesting
the faith of the Christian religion; it seems to include Christian
faith, or perhaps even to coincide with it; and thus the Philosophy of
Faith has a thoroughly orthodox and Christian look, on the strength of
which it takes the liberty of uttering its arbitrary dicta with greater
pretension and authority. But we must not let ourselves be deceived by
the semblance surreptitiously secured by a merely verbal similarity.
The two things are radically distinct. Firstly, the Christian faith
comprises in it an authority of the Church: but the faith of Jacobi's
philosophy has no other authority than that of a personal revelation.
And, secondly, the Christian faith is a copious body of objective
truth, a system of knowledge and doctrine: while the scope of the
philosophic faith is so utterly indefinite, that, while it has room for
the faith of the Christian, it equally admits a belief in the divinity
of the Dalai-lama, the ox, or the monkey,--thus, so far as it goes,
narrowing Deity down to its simplest terms, a 'Supreme Being.' Faith
itself, taken in this professedly philosophical sense, is nothing but
the sapless abstract of immediate knowledge,--a purely formal category
applicable to very different facts; and it ought never to be confused
or identified with the spiritual fulness of Christian faith, whether we
look at that faith in the heart of the believer and the in-dwelling of
the Holy Spirit, or in the system of theological doctrine.
With what is here called faith or immediate knowledge must also be
identified inspiration, the heart's revelations, the truths implanted
in man by nature, and also in particular, healthy reason or Common
Sense, as it is called. All these forms agree in adopting as their
leading principle the immediacy, or self-evident way, in which a fact
or body of truths is presented in consciousness.
84.] This immediate knowledge consists in knowing that the Infinite,
the Eternal, the God which is in our idea, really _is_: or, it asserts
that in our consciousness there is immediately and inseparably bound up
with this idea the certainty of its actual being.
To seek to controvert these maxims of immediate knowledge is the last
thing philosophers would think of. They may rather find occasion for
self-gratulation when these ancient doctrines, expressing as they
do the general tenor of philosophic teaching, have, even in this
unphilosophical fashion, become to some extent universal convictions
of the age. The true marvel rather is that any one could suppose that
these principles were opposed to philosophy,--the maxims, viz., that
whatever is held to be true is immanent in the mind, and that there
is truth for the mind (§ 63). From a formal point of view, there is a
peculiar interest in the maxim that the being of God is immediately and
inseparably bound up with the thought of God, that objectivity is bound
up with the subjectivity which the thought originally presents. Not
content with that, the philosophy of immediate knowledge goes so far in
its one-sided view, as to affirm that the attribute of existence, even
in perception, is quite as inseparably connected with the conception
we have of our own bodies and of external things, as it is with the
thought of God. Now it is the endeavour of philosophy to _prove_ such
a unity, to show that it lies in the very nature of thought and
subjectivity, to be inseparable from being and objectivity. In these
circumstances therefore, philosophy, whatever estimate may be formed of
the character of these proofs, must in any case be glad to see it shown
and maintained that its maxims are facts of consciousness, and thus
in harmony with experience. The difference between philosophy and the
asseverations of immediate knowledge rather centres in the exclusive
attitude which immediate knowledge adopts, when it sets itself up
against philosophy.
And yet it was as a self-evident or immediate truth that the 'Cogito,
ergo sum,' of Descartes, the maxim on which may be said to hinge the
whole interest of Modern Philosophy, was first stated by its author.
The man who calls this a syllogism, must know little more about a
syllogism than that the word 'Ergo' occurs in it. Where shall we look
for the middle term? And a middle term is a much more essential point
of a syllogism than the word 'Ergo.' If we try to justify the name, by
calling the combination of ideas in Descartes an 'immediate' syllogism,
this superfluous variety of syllogism is a mere name for an utterly
unmediated synthesis of distinct terms of thought. That being so, the
synthesis of being with our ideas, as stated in the maxim of immediate
knowledge, has no more and no less claim to the title of syllogism than
the axiom of Descartes has. From Hotho's 'Dissertation on the Cartesian
Philosophy' (published 1826), I borrow the quotation in which Descartes
himself distinctly declares that the maxim 'Cogito, ergo sum,' is no
syllogism. The passages are Respons. ad II Object.: De Methodo IV:
Ep. I. 118. From the first passage I quote the words more immediately
to the point. Descartes says: 'That we are thinking beings is "_prima
quaedam notio quae ex nullo syllogismo concluditur_"' (a certain
primary notion, which is deduced from no syllogism); and goes on:
_'neque cum quis dicit; Ego cogito, ergo sum sive existo, existentiam
ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit.'_ (Nor, when one says, I think,
therefore I am or exist, does he deduce existence from thought by means
of a syllogism.) Descartes knew what it implied in a syllogism, and
so he adds that, in order to make the maxim admit of a deduction by
syllogism, we should have to add the major premiss: _'Illud omne quod
cogitat, est sive existit.'_ (Everything which thinks, is or exists.)
Of course, he remarks, this major premiss itself has to be deduced from
the original statement.
The language of Descartes on the maxim that the 'I' which _thinks_ must
also at the same time _be,_ his saying that this connexion is given and
implied in the simple perception of consciousness,--that this connexion
is the absolute first, the principle, the most certain and evident of
all things, so that no scepticism can be conceived so monstrous as not
to admit it:--all this language is so vivid and distinct, that the
modern statements of Jacobi and others on this immediate connexion can
only pass for needless repetitions.
65.] The theory of which we are speaking is not satisfied when it has
shown that mediate knowledge taken separately is an adequate vehicle
of truth. Its distinctive doctrine is that immediate knowledge alone,
to the total exclusion of mediation, can possess a content which is
true. This exclusiveness is enough to show that the theory is a relapse
into the metaphysical understanding, with its pass-words 'Either--or.'
And thus it is really a relapse into the habit of external mediation,
the gist of which consists in clinging to those narrow and one-sided
categories of the finite, which it falsely imagined itself to have left
for ever behind. This point, however, we shall not at present discuss
in detail. An exclusively immediate knowledge is asserted as a fact
only, and in the present Introduction we can only study it from this
external point of view. The real significance of such knowledge will
be explained, when we come to the logical question of the opposition
between mediate and immediate. But it is characteristic of the view
before us to decline to examine the nature of the fact, that is, the
notion of it; for such an examination would itself be a step towards
mediation and even towards knowledge. The genuine discussion on logical
ground, therefore, must be deferred till we come to the proper province
of Logic itself.
The whole of the second part of Logic, the Doctrine of Essential Being,
is a discussion of the intrinsic and self-affirming unity of immediacy
and mediation.
66.] Beyond this point then we need not go: immediate knowledge is
to be accepted as a _fact._ Under these circumstances examination is
directed to the field of experience, to a psychological phenomenon. If
that be so, we need only note, as the commonest of experiences, that
truths, which we well know to be results of complicated and highly
mediated trains of thought, present themselves immediately and without
effort to the mind of any man who is familiar with the subject. The
mathematician, like every one who has mastered a particular science,
meets any problem with ready-made solutions which pre-suppose most
complicated analyses: and every educated man has a number of general
views and maxims which he can muster without trouble, but which
can only have sprung from frequent reflection and long experience.
The facility we attain in any sort of knowledge, art, or technical
expertness, consists in having the particular knowledge or kind of
action present to our mind in any case that occurs, even we may say,
immediate in our very limbs, in an out-going activity. In all these
instances, immediacy of knowledge is so far from excluding mediation,
that the two things are linked together,--immediate knowledge being
actually the product and result of mediated knowledge.
It is no less obvious that immediate _existence_ is bound up with
its mediation. The seed and the parents are immediate and initial
existences in respect of the off-spring which they generate. But the
seed and the parents, though they exist and are therefore immediate,
are yet in their turn generated: and the child, without prejudice to
the mediation of its existence, is immediate, because it _is._ The fact
that I am in Berlin, my immediate presence here, is mediated by my
having made the journey hither.
67.] One thing may be observed with reference to the immediate
knowledge of God, of legal and ethical principles (including under
the head of immediate knowledge, what is otherwise termed Instinct,
Implanted or Innate Ideas, Common Sense, Natural Reason, or whatever
form, in short, we give to the original spontaneity). It is a matter
of general experience that education or development is required to
bring out into consciousness what is therein contained. It was so even
with the Platonic reminiscence; and the Christian rite of baptism,
although a sacrament, involves the additional obligation of a Christian
up-bringing. In short, religion and morals, however much they may be
faith or immediate knowledge, are still on every side conditioned by
the mediating process which is termed development, education, training.
The adherents, no less than the assailants, of the doctrine of Innate
Ideas have been guilty throughout of the like exclusiveness and
narrowness as is here noted. They have drawn a hard and fast line
between the essential and immediate union (as it may be described) of
certain universal principles with the soul, and another union which has
to be brought about in an external fashion, and through the channel of
_given_ objects and conceptions, There is one objection, borrowed from
experience, which was raised against the doctrine of Innate ideas. All
men, it was said, must have these ideas; they must have, for example,
the maxim of contradiction, present in the mind,--they must be aware
of it; for this maxim and others like it were included in the class
of Innate ideas. The objection may be set down to misconception; for
the principles in question, though innate, need not on that account
have the form of ideas or conceptions of something we are aware of.
Still, the objection completely meets and overthrows the crude theory
of immediate knowledge, which expressly maintains its formulae in so
far as they are in consciousness.--Another point calls for notice. We
may suppose it admitted by the intuitive school, that the special case
of religious faith involves supplementing by a Christian or religious
education and development. In that case it is acting capriciously when
it seeks to ignore this admission when speaking about faith, or it
betrays a want of reflection not to know, that, if the necessity of
education be once admitted, mediation is pronounced indispensable.
The reminiscence of ideas spoken of by Plato is equivalent to
saying that ideas implicitly exist in man, instead of being, as
the Sophists assert, a foreign importation into his mind. But to
conceive knowledge as reminiscence does not interfere with, or
set aside as useless, the development of what is implicitly in
man;--which development is another word for mediation. The same
holds good of the innate ideas that we find in Descartes and the
Scotch philosophers. These ideas are only potential in the first
instance, and should be looked at as being a sort of mere capacity
in man.
88.] In the case of these experiences the appeal turns upon something
that shows itself bound up with immediate consciousness. Even if
this combination be in the first instance taken as an external and
empirical connexion, still, even for empirical observation, the fact
of its being constant shows it to be essential and inseparable. But,
again, if this immediate consciousness, as exhibited in experience,
be taken separately, so far as it is a consciousness of God and
the divine nature, the state of mind which it implies is generally
described as an exaltation above the finite, above the senses, and
above the instinctive desires and affections of the natural heart:
which exaltation passes over into, and terminates in, faith in God and
a divine order. It is apparent, therefore, that, though faith may be an
immediate knowledge and certainty, it equally implies the interposition
of this process as its antecedent and condition.
It has been already observed, that the so-called proofs of the being
of God, which start from finite being, give an expression to this
exaltation. In that light they are no inventions of an over-subtle
reflection, but the necessary and native channel in which the movement
of mind runs: though it may be that, in their ordinary form, these
proofs have not their correct and adequate expression.
69.] It is the passage (§ 64) from the subjective Idea to being which
forms the main concern of the doctrine of immediate knowledge. A
primary and self-evident inter-connexion is declared to exist between
our Idea and being. Yet precisely this central point of transition,
utterly irrespective of any connexions which show in experience,
clearly involves a mediation. And the mediation is of no imperfect or
unreal kind, where the mediation takes place with and through something
external, but one comprehending both antecedent and conclusion.
70.] For, what this theory asserts is that truth lies neither in the
Idea as a merely subjective thought, nor in mere being on its own
account;--that mere being _per se,_ a being that is not of the Idea,
is the sensible finite being of the world. Now all this only affirms,
without demonstration, that the Idea has truth only by means of being,
and being has truth only by means of the Idea. The maxim of immediate
knowledge rejects an indefinite empty immediacy (and such is abstract
being, or pure unity taken by itself), and affirms in its stead the
unity of the Idea with being. And it acts rightly in so doing. But it
is stupid not to see that the unity of distinct terms or modes is not
merely a purely immediate unity, _i.e._ unity empty and indeterminate,
but that--with equal emphasis--the one term is shown to have truth only
as mediated through the other;--or, if the phrase be preferred, that
either term is only mediated with truth through the other. That the
quality of mediation is involved in the very immediacy of intuition
is thus exhibited as a fact, against which understanding, conformably
to the fundamental maxim of immediate knowledge that the evidence of
consciousness is infallible, can have nothing to object. It is only
ordinary abstract understanding which takes the terms of mediation and
immediacy, each by itself absolutely, to represent an inflexible line
of distinction, and thus draws upon its own head the hopeless task of
reconciling them. The difficulty, as we have shown, has no existence in
the fact, and it vanishes in the speculative notion.
71.] The one-sidedness of the intuitional school has certain
characteristics attending upon it, which we shall proceed to point out
in their main features, now that we have discussed the fundamental
principle. The _first_ of these corollaries is as follows. Since the
criterion of truth is found, not in the nature of the content, but in
the mere fact of consciousness, every alleged truth has no other basis
than subjective certitude and the assertion that we discover a certain
fact in our consciousness. What I discover in my consciousness is thus
exaggerated into a fact of the consciousness of all, and even passed
off for the very nature of consciousness.
Among the so-called proofs of the existence of God, there used to stand
the _consensus gentium,_ to which appeal is made as early as Cicero.
The _consensus gentium_ is a weighty authority, and the transition is
easy and natural, from the circumstance that a certain fact is found
in the consciousness of every one, to the conclusion that it is a
necessary element in the very nature of consciousness. In this category
of general agreement there was latent the deep-rooted perception, which
does not escape even the least cultivated mind, that the consciousness
of the individual is at the same time particular and accidental. Yet
unless we examine the nature of this consciousness itself, stripping
it of its particular and accidental elements and, by the toilsome
operation of reflection, disclosing the universal in its entirety and
purity, it is only a _unanimous_ agreement upon a given point that can
authorize a decent presumption that that point is part of the very
nature of consciousness. Of course, if thought insists on seeing the
necessity of what is presented as a fact of general occurrence, the
_consensus gentium_ is certainly not sufficient. Yet even granting the
universality of the fact to be a satisfactory proof, it has been found
impossible to establish the belief in God on such an argument, because
experience shows that there are individuals and nations without any
such faith.[1] But there can be nothing shorter and more convenient
than to have the bare assertion to make, that we discover a fact in
our consciousness, and are certain that it is true: and to declare
that this certainty, instead of proceeding from our particular mental
constitution only, belongs to the very nature of the mind.
72.] A _second_ corollary which results from holding immediacy of
consciousness to be the criterion of truth is that all superstition
or idolatry is allowed to be truth, and that an apology is prepared
for any contents of the will, however wrong and immoral. It is because
he believes in them, and not from the reasoning and syllogism of
what is termed mediate knowledge, that the Hindoo finds God in the
cow, the monkey, the Brahmin, or the Lama. But the natural desires
and affections spontaneously carry and deposit their interests in
consciousness, where also immoral aims make themselves naturally at
home: the good or bad character would thus express the _definite being_
of the will, which would be known, and that most immediately, in the
interests and aims.
73.] _Thirdly_ and lastly, the immediate consciousness of God goes no
further than to tell us _that_ He is: to tell us _what_ He is, would be
an act of cognition, involving mediation. So that God as an object of
religion is expressly narrowed down to the indeterminate supersensible,
God in general: and the significance of religion is reduced to a
minimum.
If it were really needful to win back and secure the bare belief that
there is a God, or even to create it, we might well wonder at the
poverty of the age which can see a gain in the merest pittance of
religious consciousness, and which in its church has sunk so low as to
worship at the altar that stood in Athens long ago, dedicated to the
'Unknown God.'
74.] We have still briefly to indicate the general nature of the
form of immediacy. For it is the essential one-sidedness of the
category, which makes whatever comes under it one sided and, for
that reason, finite. And, first, it makes the universal no better
than an abstraction external to the particulars, and God a being
without determinate quality. But God can only be called a spirit
when He is known to be at once the beginning and end, as well as
the mean, in the process of mediation. Without this unification of
elements He is neither concrete, nor living, nor a spirit. Thus the
knowledge of God as a spirit necessarily implies mediation. The form
of immediacy, secondly, invests the particular with the character of
independent or self-centred being. But such predicates contradict the
very essence of the particular,--which is to be referred to something
else outside. They thus invest the finite with the character of an
absolute. But, besides, the form of immediacy is altogether abstract:
it has no preference for one set of contents more than another,
but is equally susceptible of all: it may as well sanction what is
idolatrous and immoral as the reverse. Only when we discern that the
content,--the particular, is not self-subsistent, but derivative from
something else, are its finitude and untruth shown in their proper
light. Such discernment, where the content we discern carries with
it the ground of its dependent nature, is a knowledge which involves
mediation. The only content which can be held to be the truth is one
not mediated with something else, not limited by other things: or,
otherwise expressed, it is one mediated by itself, where mediation and
immediate reference-to-self coincide. The understanding that fancies
it has got clear of finite knowledge, the identity of the analytical
metaphysicians and the old 'rationalists,' abruptly takes again as
principle and criterion of truth that immediacy which, as an abstract
reference-to-self, is the same as abstract identity. Abstract thought
(the scientific form used by 'reflective' metaphysic) and abstract
intuition (the form used by immediate knowledge) are one and the same.
The stereotyped opposition between the form of immediacy and that
of mediation gives to the former a halfness and inadequacy, that
affects every content which is brought under it. Immediacy means,
upon the whole, an abstract reference-to-self, that is, an abstract
identity or abstract universality. Accordingly the essential and
real universal, when taken merely in its immediacy, is a mere
abstract universal; and from this point of view God is conceived
as a being altogether without determinate quality. To call God
spirit is in that case only a phrase: for the consciousness and
self-consciousness, which spirit implies, are impossible without a
distinguishing of it from itself and from something else, _i.e._
without mediation.
75.] It was impossible for us to criticise this, the third attitude,
which thought has been made to take towards objective truth, in any
other mode than what is naturally indicated and admitted in the
doctrine itself. The theory asserts that immediate knowledge is a
fact. It has been shown to be untrue in fact to say that there is an
immediate knowledge, a knowledge without mediation either by means of
something else or in itself. It has also been explained to be false
in fact to say that thought advances through finite and conditioned
categories only, which are always mediated by a something else, and to
forget that in the very act of mediation the mediation itself vanishes.
And to show that, in point of fact, there is a knowledge which advances
neither by unmixed immediacy nor by unmixed mediation, we can point to
the example of Logic and the whole of philosophy.
76.] If we view the maxims of immediate knowledge in connexion with the
uncritical metaphysic of the past from which we started, we shall learn
from the comparison the reactionary nature of the school of Jacobi. His
doctrine is a return to the modern starting-point of this metaphysic
in the Cartesian philosophy. Both Jacobi and Descartes maintain the
following three points:
(1) The simple inseparability of the thought and being of the
thinker. '_Cogito, ergo sum_' is the same doctrine as that the being,
reality, and existence of the 'Ego' is immediately revealed to me
in consciousness. (Descartes, in fact, is careful to state that by
thought he means consciousness in general. Princip. Phil. I. 9.) This
inseparability is the absolutely first and most certain knowledge, not
mediated or demonstrated.
(2) The inseparability of existence from the conception of God: the
former is necessarily implied in the latter, or the conception never
can be without the attribute of existence, which is thus necessary and
eternal.[2]
(3) The immediate consciousness of the existence of external things.
By this nothing more is meant than sense-consciousness. To have such
a thing is the slightest of all cognitions: and the only thing worth
knowing about it is that such immediate knowledge of the being of
things external is error and delusion, that the sensible world as such
is altogether void of truth; that the being of these external things is
accidental and passes away as a show; and that their very nature is to
have only an existence which is separable from their essence and notion.
77.] There is however a distinction between the two points of view:
(1) The Cartesian philosophy, from these unproved postulates, which
it assumes to be unprovable, proceeds to wider and wider details of
knowledge, and thus gave rise to the sciences of modern times. The
modern theory (of Jacobi), on the contrary, (§ 62) has come to what is
intrinsically a most important conclusion that cognition, proceeding
as it must by finite mediations, can know only the finite, and never
embody the truth; and would fain have the consciousness of God go no
further than the aforesaid very abstract belief that God _is_.[3]
(2) The modern doctrine on the one hand makes no change in the
Cartesian method of the usual scientific knowledge, and conducts on
the same plan the experimental and finite sciences that have sprung
from it. But, on the other hand, when it comes to the science which
has infinity for its scope, it throws aside that method, and thus,
as it knows no other, it rejects all methods. It abandons itself to
wild vagaries of imagination and assertion, to a moral priggishness
and sentimental arrogance, or to a reckless dogmatising and lust
of argument, which is loudest against philosophy and philosophic
doctrines. Philosophy of course tolerates no mere assertions or
conceits, and checks the free play of argumentative see-saw.
78.] We must then reject the opposition between an independent
immediacy in the contents or facts of consciousness and an equally
independent mediation, supposed incompatible with the former. The
incompatibility is a mere assumption, an arbitrary assertion. All other
assumptions and postulates must in like manner be left behind at the
entrance to philosophy, whether they are derived from the intellect or
the imagination. For philosophy is the science, in which every such
proposition must first be scrutinised and its meaning and oppositions
be ascertained.
Scepticism, made a negative science and systematically applied to all
forms of knowledge, might seem a suitable introduction, as pointing out
the nullity of such assumptions. But a sceptical introduction would
be not only an ungrateful but also a useless course; and that because
Dialectic, as we shall soon make appear, is itself an essential element
of affirmative science. Scepticism, besides, could only get hold of
the finite forms as they were suggested by experience, taking them
as given, instead of deducing them scientifically. To require such
a scepticism accomplished is the same as to insist on science being
preceded by universal doubt, or a total absence of presupposition.
Strictly speaking, in the resolve that _wills pure thought,_ this
requirement is accomplished by freedom which, abstracting from
everything, grasps its pure abstraction, the simplicity of thought.
[1] In order to judge of the greater or less extent lo which Experience
shows cases of Atheism or of the belief in God, it is all-important
to know if the mere general conception of deity suffices, or if a
more definite knowledge of God is required. The Christian world would
certainly refuse the title of God to the idols of the Hindoos and the
Chinese, to the fetiches of the Africans, and even to the gods of
Greece themselves. If so, a believer in these idols would not be a
believer in God. If it were contended, on the other hand, that such
a belief in idols implies some sort of belief in God, as the species
implies the genus, then idolatry would argue not faith in an idol
merely, but faith in God. The Athenians took an opposite view. The
poets and philosophers who explained Zeus to be a cloud, and maintained
that there was only one God, were treated as atheists at Athens.
The danger in these questions lies in looking at what the mind may make
out of an object, and not what that object actually and explicitly
is. If we fail to note this distinction, the commonest perceptions of
men's senses will be religion: for every such perception, and indeed
every act of mind, implicitly contains the principle which, when it
is purified and developed, rises to religion. But to be capable of
religion is one thing, to have it another. And religion yet implicit is
only a capacity or a possibility.
Thus in modern times, travellers have found tribes (as Captains Ross
and Parry found the Esquimaux) which, as they tell us, have not even
that small modicum of religion possessed by African sorcerers, the
_goëtes_ of Herodotus. On the other hand, an Englishman, who spent the
first months of the last Jubilee at Rome, says, in his account of the
modern Romans, that the common people are bigots, whilst those who can
read and write are atheists to a man.
The charge of Atheism is seldom heard in modern times: principally
because the facts and the requirements of religion are reduced to a
minimum. (See § 73.)
[2] Descartes, Princip. Phil. I. 15: _Magis hoc (ens summe perfectum
existere) credet, si attendat, nullius alterius rei ideam apud
se inveniri, in qua eodem modo necessariam existentiam contineri
animadveriat;--intelliget illam ideam exhibere veram et immutabilem
naturam, quaeque non potest non existere, cum necessaria existentia in
ea contineatur._ (The reader will be more disposed to _believe_ that
there exists a being supremely perfect, if he notes that in the case
of nothing else is there found in him an idea, in which he notices
necessary existence to be contained in the same way. He will see that
that idea exhibits a true and unchangeable nature,--a nature which
_cannot but exist,_ since necessary existence is _contained in it._) A
remark which immediately follows, and which sounds like mediation or
demonstration, does not really prejudice the original principle.
In Spinoza we come upon the same statement that the essence or
abstract conception of God implies existence. The first of Spinoza's
definitions, that of the _Causa Sui_ (or Self-Cause), explains it to
be _cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id cujus natura non
potest concipi nisi existens_ (that of which the essence involves
existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived except as
existing). The inseparability of the notion from being is the main
point and fundamental hypothesis in his system. But what notion is
thus inseparable from being? Not the notion of finite things, for they
are so constituted as to have a contingent and a created existence.
Spinoza's 11th proposition, which follows with a proof that God exists
necessarily, and his 20th, showing that God's existence and his essence
are one and the same, are really superfluous, and the proof is more
in form than in reality. To say, that God is Substance, the only
Substance, and that, as Substance is _Causa Sui,_ God therefore exists
necessarily, is merely stating that God is that of which the notion and
the being are inseparable.
[3] Anselm on the contrary says: _Negligentiae mihi videtur, si
post-quam confirmati sumus in fide, non studemus, quod credimus,
intelligere._ (Methinks it is _carelessness,_ if, after we have been
confirmed in the faith, we do not _exert ourselves to see the meaning
of what we believe._) [Tractat. Cur Deus Homo?] These words of Anselm,
in connexion with the concrete truths of Christian doctrine, offer a
far harder problem for investigation, than is contemplated by this
modern faith.
CHAPTER VI.
LOGIC FURTHER DEFINED AND DIVIDED.
79.] In point of form Logical doctrine has three sides: (α) the
Abstract side, or that of understanding: (_ß_) the Dialectical, or that
of negative reason: (y) the Speculative, or that of positive reason.
These three sides do not make three _parts_ of logic, but are stages
or 'moments' in every logical entity, that is, of every notion and
truth whatever. They may all be put under the first stage, that of
understanding, and so kept isolated from each other; but this would
give an inadequate conception of them.--The statement of the dividing
lines and the characteristic aspects of logic is at this point no more
than historical and anticipatory.
80.] (α) Thought, as _Understanding,_ sticks to fixity of characters
and their distinctness from one another: every such limited abstract it
treats as having a subsistence and being of its own.
In our ordinary usage of the term thought and even notion, we often
have before our eyes nothing more than the operation of Understanding.
And no doubt thought is primarily an exercise of Understanding:--only
it goes further, and the notion is not a function of Understanding
merely. The action of Understanding may be in general described as
investing its subject-matter with the form of universality. But this
universal is an abstract universal: that is to say, its opposition to
the particular is so rigorously maintained, that it is at the same
time also reduced to the character of a particular again. In this
separating and abstracting attitude towards its objects, Understanding
is the reverse of immediate perception and sensation, which, as such,
keep completely to their native sphere of action in the concrete.
It is by referring to this opposition of Understanding to sensation or
feeling that we must explain the frequent attacks made upon thought
for being hard and narrow, and for leading, if consistently developed,
to ruinous and pernicious results. The answer to these charges, in so
far as they are warranted by their facts, is, that they do not touch
thinking in general, certainly not the thinking of Reason, but only the
exercise of Understanding. It must be added however, that the merit and
rights of the mere Understanding should unhesitatingly be admitted. And
that merit lies in the fact, that apart from Understanding there is no
fixity or accuracy in the region either of theory or of practice.
Thus, in theory, knowledge begins by apprehending existing objects in
their specific differences. In the study of nature, for example, we
distinguish matters, forces, genera and the like, and stereotype each
in its isolation. Thought is here acting in its analytic capacity,
where its canon is identity, a simple reference of each attribute to
itself. It is under the guidance of the same identity that the process
in knowledge is effected from one scientific truth to another. Thus,
for example, in mathematics magnitude is the feature which, to the
neglect of any other, determines our advance. Hence in geometry we
compare one figure with another, so as to bring out their identity.
Similarly in other fields of knowledge, such as jurisprudence, the
advance is primarily regulated by identity. In it we argue from one
specific law or precedent to another: and what is this but to proceed
on the principle of identity?
But Understanding is as indispensable in practice as it is in theory.
Character is an essential in conduct, and a man of character is an
understanding man, who in that capacity has definite ends in view and
undeviatingly pursues them. The man who will do something great must
learn, as Goethe says, to limit himself. The man who, on the contrary,
would do everything, really would do nothing, and fails. There is a
host of interesting things in the world: Spanish poetry, chemistry,
politics, and music are all very interesting, and if any one takes
an interest in them we need not find fault. But for a person in a
given situation to accomplish anything, he must stick to one definite
point, and not dissipate his' forces in many directions. In every
calling, too, the great thing is to pursue it with understanding. Thus
the judge must stick to the law, and give his verdict in accordance
with, it, undeterred by one motive or another, allowing no excuses;
and looking neither left nor right. Understanding, too, is always an
element in thorough training. The trained-intellect is not satisfied
with cloudy and indefinite impressions, but grasps the objects in their
fixed character: whereas the uncultivated man wavers unsettled, and it
often costs a deal of trouble to come to an understanding with him on
the matter under discussion, and to bring him to fix his eye on the
definite point in question.
It has been already explained that the Logical principle in general,
far from being merely a subjective action in our minds, is rather the
very universal, which as such is also objective. This doctrine is
illustrated in the case of understanding, the first form of logical
truths. Understanding in this larger sense corresponds to what we call
the goodness of God, so far as that means that finite things are and
subsist. In nature, for example, we recognise the goodness of God in
the fact that the various classes or species of animals and plants are
provided with whatever they need for their preservation and welfare.
Nor is man excepted, who, both as an individual and as a nation,
possesses partly in the given circumstances of climate, of quality
and products of soil, and partly in his natural parts or talents, all
that is required for his maintenance and development. Under this shape
Understanding is visible in every department of the objective world;
and no object in that world can ever be wholly perfect which does
not give full satisfaction to the canons of understanding. A state,
for example, is imperfect, so long as it has not reached a clear
differentiation of orders and callings, and so long as those functions
of politics and government, which are different in principle, have not
evolved for themselves special organs, in the same way as we see, for
example, the developed animal organism provided with separate organs
for the functions of sensation, motion, digestion, &c.
The previous course of the discussion may serve to show, that
understanding is indispensable even in those spheres and regions of
action which the popular fancy would deem furthest from it, and that in
proportion as understanding, is absent from them, imperfection is the
result. This particularly holds good of Art, Religion, and Philosophy.
In Art, for example, understanding is visible where the forms of
beauty, which differ in principle, are kept distinct and exhibited in
their purity. The same thing holds good also of single works of art.
It is part of the beauty and perfection of a dramatic poem that the
characters of the several persons should be closely and faithfully
maintained, and that the different aims and interests involved should
be plainly and decidedly exhibited. Or again, take the province of
Religion. The superiority of Greek over Northern mythology (apart from
other differences of subject-matter and conception) mainly consists in
this: that in the former the individual gods are fashioned into forms
of sculpture-like distinctness of outline, while in the latter the
figures fade away vaguely and hazily into one another. Lastly comes
Philosophy. That Philosophy never can get on without the understanding
hardly calls for special remark after what has been said. Its foremost
requirement is that every thought shall be grasped in its full
precision, and nothing allowed to remain vague and indefinite.
It is usually added that understanding must not go too far. Which is
so far correct, that understanding is not an ultimate, but on the
contrary finite, and so constituted that when carried to extremes it
veers round to its opposite. It is the fashion of youth to dash about
in abstractions: but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear
of the abstract 'either--or,' and keeps to the concrete.
81.] (ß) In the Dialectical stage these finite characterisations or
formulae supersede themselves, and pass into their opposites.
(1) But when the Dialectical principle is employed by the understanding
separately and independently,--especially as seen in its application
to philosophical theories, Dialectic becomes Scepticism; in which the
result that ensues from its action is presented as a mere negation.
(2) It is customary to treat Dialectic as an adventitious art, which
for very wantonness introduces confusion and a mere semblance of
contradiction into definite notions. And in that light, the semblance
is the nonentity, while the true reality is supposed to belong to the
original dicta of understanding. Often, indeed, Dialectic is nothing
more than a subjective see-saw of arguments _pro_ and _con,_ where
the absence of sterling thought is disguised by the subtlety which
gives birth to such arguments. But in its true and proper character.
Dialectic is the very nature and essence of everything predicated by
mere understanding,--the law of things and of the finite as a whole.
Dialectic is different from 'Reflection.' In the first instance,
Reflection is that movement out beyond the isolated predicate of a
thing which gives it some reference, and brings out its relativity,
while still in other respects leaving it its isolated validity. But
by Dialectic is meant the in-dwelling tendency outwards by which the
one-sidedness and limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen
in its true light, and shown to be the negation of them. For anything
to be finite is just to suppress itself and put itself aside. Thus
understood the Dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of
scientific progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent connexion
and necessity to the body of science; and, in a word, is seen to
constitute the real and true, as opposed to the external, exaltation
above the finite.
(1) It is of the highest importance to ascertain and understand rightly
the nature of Dialectic. Wherever there is movement, wherever there is
life, wherever anything is carried into effect in the actual world,
there Dialectic is at work. It is also the soul of all knowledge
which is truly scientific. In the popular way of looking at things,
the refusal to be bound by the abstract deliverances of understanding
appears as fairness, which, according to the proverb Live and let
live, demands that each should have its turn; we admit the one, but
we admit the other also. But when we look more closely, we find that
the limitations of the finite do not merely come from without; that
its own nature is the cause of its abrogation, and that by its own
act it passes into its counterpart. We say, for instance, that man is
mortal, and seem to think that the ground of his death is in external
circumstances only; so that if this way of looking were correct, man
would have two special properties, vitality and--also--mortality. But
the true view of the matter is that life, as life, involves the germ
of death, and that the finite, being radically self-contradictory,
involves its own self-suppression.
Nor, again, is Dialectic to be confounded with mere Sophistry. The
essence of Sophistry lies in giving authority to a partial and abstract
principle, in its isolation, as may suit the interest and particular
situation of the individual at the time. For example, a regard to my
existence, and my having the means of existence, is a vital motive
of conduct, but if I exclusively emphasise this consideration or
motive of my welfare, and draw the conclusion that I may steal or
betray my country, we have a case of Sophistry. Similarly, it is a
vital principle in conduct that I should be subjectively free, that
is to say, that I should have an insight into what I am doing, and
a conviction that it is right. But if my pleading insists on this
principle alone I fall into Sophistry, such as would overthrow all the
principles of morality. From this sort of party-pleading Dialectic is
wholly different; its purpose is to study things in their own being and
movement and thus to demonstrate the finitude of the partial categories
of understanding.
Dialectic, it may be added, is no novelty in philosophy. Among the
ancients Plato is termed the inventor of Dialectic; and his right to
the name rests on the fact, that the Platonic philosophy first gave
the free scientific, and thus at the same time the objective, form to
Dialectic. Socrates, as we should expect from the general character
of his philosophising, has the dialectical element in a predominantly
subjective shape, that of Irony. He used to turn his Dialectic,
first against ordinary consciousness, and then especially against
the Sophists. In his conversations he used to simulate the wish for
some clearer knowledge about the subject under discussion, and after
putting all sorts of questions with that intent, he drew on those with
whom he conversed to the opposite of what their first impressions
had pronounced correct. If, for instance, the Sophists claimed to
be teachers, Socrates by a series of questions forced the Sophist
Protagoras to confess that all learning is only recollection. In his
more strictly scientific dialogues Plato employs the dialectical method
to show the finitude of all hard and fast terms of understanding.
Thus in the Parmenides he deduces the many from the one, and shows
nevertheless that the many cannot but define itself as the one. In
this grand style did Plato treat Dialectic. In modern times it was,
more than any other, Kant who resuscitated the name of Dialectic, and
restored it to its post of honour. He did it, as we have seen (§ 48),
by working out the Antinomies of the reason. The problem of these
Antinomies is no mere subjective piece of work oscillating between
one set of grounds and another; it really serves to show that every
abstract proposition of understanding, taken precisely as it is given,
naturally veers round into its opposite.
However reluctant Understanding may be to admit the action of
Dialectic, we must not suppose that the recognition if its existence
is peculiarly confined to the philosopher. It would be truer to say
that Dialectic gives expression to a law which is felt in all other
grades of consciousness, and in general experience. Everything that
surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of Dialectic. We are aware
that everything finite, instead of being stable and ultimate, is rather
changeable and transient; and this is exactly what we mean by that
Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, as implicitly other than
what it is, is forced beyond its own immediate or natural being to
turn suddenly into its opposite. We have before this (§ 80) identified
Understanding with what is implied in the popular idea of the goodness
of God; we may now remark of Dialectic, in the same objective
signification, that its principle answers to the idea of his power.
All things, we say,--that is, the finite world as such,--are doomed;
and in saying so, we have a vision of Dialectic as the universal and
irresistible power before which nothing can stay, however secure and
stable it may deem itself. The category of power does not, it is true,
exhaust the depth of the divine nature or the notion of God; but it
certainly forms a vital element in all religious consciousness.
Apart from this general objectivity of Dialectic, we find traces of its
presence in each of the particular provinces and phases of the natural
and the spiritual world. Take as an illustration the motion of the
heavenly bodies. At this moment the planet stands in this spot, but
implicitly it is the possibility of being in another spot; and that
possibility of being otherwise the planet brings into existence by
moving. Similarly the 'physical' elements prove to be Dialectical. The
process of meteorological action is the exhibition of their Dialectic.
It is the same dynamic that lies at the root of every other natural
process, and, as it were, forces nature out of itself. To illustrate
the presence of Dialectic in the spiritual world, especially in the
provinces of law and morality, we have only to recollect how general
experience shows us the extreme of one state or action suddenly
shifting into its opposite: a Dialectic which is recognised in many
ways in common proverbs. Thus _summum jus summa injuria:_ which means,
that to drive an abstract right to its extremity is to do a wrong.
In political life, as every one knows, extreme anarchy and extreme
despotism naturally lead to one another. The perception of Dialectic
in the province of individual Ethics is seen in the well-known adages,
Pride comes before a fall: Too much wit outwits itself. Even feeling,
bodily as well as mental, has its Dialectic. Every one knows how
the extremes of pain and pleasure pass into each other: the heart
overflowing with joy seeks relief in tears, and the deepest melancholy
will at times betray its presence by a smile.
(2) Scepticism should not be looked upon merely as a doctrine of doubt.
It would be more correct to say that the Sceptic has no doubt of his
point, which is the nothingness of all finite existence. He who only
doubts still clings to the hope that his doubt may be resolved, and
that one or other of the definite views, between which he wavers,
will turn out solid and true. Scepticism properly so called is a
very different thing: it is complete hopelessness about all which
understanding counts stable, and the feeling to which it gives birth
is one of unbroken calmness and inward repose. Such at least is the
noble Scepticism of antiquity, especially as exhibited in the writings
of Sextus Empiricus, when in the later times of Rome it had been
systematised as a complement to the dogmatic systems of Stoic and
Epicurean. Of far other stamp, and to be strictly distinguished from
it, is the modern Scepticism already mentioned § (39), which partly
preceded the Critical Philosophy, and partly sprung out of it. That
later Scepticism consisted solely in denying the truth and certitude
of the super-sensible, and in pointing to the facts of sense and of
immediate sensations as what we have to keep to.
Even to this day Scepticism is often spoken of as the irresistible
enemy of all positive knowledge, and hence of philosophy, in so far
as philosophy is concerned with positive knowledge. But in these
statements there is a misconception. It is only the finite thought
of abstract understanding which has to fear Scepticism, because
unable to withstand it: philosophy includes the sceptical principle
as a subordinate function of its own, in the shape of Dialectic. In
contradistinction to mere Scepticism, however, philosophy does not
remain content with the purely negative result of Dialectic. The
sceptic mistakes the true value of his result, when he supposes it to
be no more than a negation pure and simple. For the negative, which
emerges as the result of dialectic, is, because a result, at the same
time the positive: it contains what it results from, absorbed into
itself, and made part of its own nature. Thus conceived, however, the
dialectical stage has the features characterising the third grade of
logical truth, the speculative form, or form of positive reason.
82.] (y) The Speculative stage, or stage of Positive Reason,
apprehends the unity of terms (propositions) in their opposition,--the
affirmative, which is involved in their disintegration and in their
transition.
(1) The result of Dialectic is positive, because it has a definite
content, or because its result is not empty and abstract nothing, but
the negation of certain specific propositions which are contained in
the result,--for the very reason that it is a resultant and not an
immediate nothing. (2) It follows from this that the 'reasonable'
result, though it be only a thought and abstract, is still a concrete,
being not a plain formal unity, but a unity of distinct propositions.
Bare abstractions or formal thoughts are therefore no business of
philosophy, which has to deal only with concrete thoughts. (3) The
logic of mere Understanding is involved in Speculative logic, and
can at will be elicited from it, by the simple process of omitting
the dialectical and 'reasonable' element. When that is done, it
becomes what the common logic is, a descriptive collection of sundry
thought-forms and rules which, finite though they are, are taken to be
something infinite.
If we consider only what it contains, and not how it contains it,
the true reason-world, so far from being the exclusive property of
philosophy, is the right of every human being on whatever grade of
culture or mental growth he may stand; which would justify man's
ancient title of rational being. The general mode by which experience
first makes us aware of the reasonable order of things is by accepted
and unreasoned belief; and the character of the rational, as already
noted (§ 45), is to be unconditioned, and thus to be self-contained,
self-determining. In this sense man above all things becomes aware of
the reasonable order, when he knows of God, and knows Him to be the
completely self-determined. Similarly, the consciousness a citizen has
of his country and its laws is a perception of the reason-world, so
long as he looks up to them as unconditioned and likewise universal
powers, to which he must subject his individual will. And in the same
sense, the knowledge and will of the child is rational, when he knows
his parents' will, and wills it.
Now, to turn these rational (of course positively-rational) realities
into speculative principles, the only thing needed is that they be
_thought._ The expression 'Speculation' in common life is often used
with a very vague and at the same time secondary sense, as when we
speak of a matrimonial or a commercial speculation. By this we only
mean two things: first, that what is immediately at hand has to be
passed and left behind; and secondly, that the subject-matter of such
speculations, though in the first place only subjective, must not
remain so, but be realised or translated into objectivity.
What was some time ago remarked respecting the Idea, may be applied
to this common usage of the term 'speculation': and we may add that
people who rank themselves amongst the educated expressly speak of
speculation even as if it were something purely subjective. A certain
theory of some conditions and circumstances of nature or mind may be,
say these people, very fine and correct as a matter of speculation,
but it contradicts experience and nothing of the sort is admissible in
reality. To this the answer is, that the speculative is in its true
signification, neither preliminarily nor even definitively, something
merely subjective: that, on the contrary, it expressly rises above
such oppositions as that between subjective and objective, which the
understanding cannot get over, and absorbing them in itself, evinces
its own concrete and all-embracing nature. A one-sided proposition
therefore can never even give expression to a speculative truth. If
we say, for example, that the absolute is the unity of subjective and
objective, we are undoubtedly in the right, but so far one-sided, as we
enunciate the unity only and lay the accent upon it, forgetting that in
reality the subjective and objective are not merely identical but also
distinct.
Speculative truth, it may also be noted, means very much the same as
what, in special connexion with religious experience and doctrines,
used to be called Mysticism. The term Mysticism is at present used,
as a rule, to designate what is mysterious and incomprehensible: and
in proportion as their general culture and way of thinking vary, the
epithet is applied by one class to denote the real and the true, by
another to name everything connected with superstition and deception.
On which we first of all remark that there is mystery in the mystical,
only however for the understanding which is ruled by the principle
of abstract identity; whereas the mystical, as synonymous with the
speculative, is the concrete unity of those propositions, which
understanding only accepts in their separation and opposition. And if
those who recognise Mysticism as the highest truth are content to leave
it in its original utter mystery, their conduct only proves that for
them too, as well as for their antagonists, thinking means abstract
identification, and that in their opinion, therefore, truth can only be
won by renouncing thought, or as it is frequently expressed, by leading
the reason captive. But, as we have seen, the abstract thinking of
understanding is so far from being either ultimate or stable, that it
shows a perpetual tendency to work its own dissolution and swing round
into its opposite. Reasonableness, on the contrary, just, consists in
embracing within itself these opposites as unsubstantial elements. Thus
the reason-world may be equally styled mystical,--not however because
thought cannot both reach and comprehend it, but merely because it lies
beyond the compass of understanding.
83.] Logic is subdivided into three parts:--
I. The Doctrine of Being:
II. The Doctrine of Essence:
III. The Doctrine of Notion and Idea.
That is, into the Theory of Thought:
I. In its immediacy: the notion implicit and in germ.
II. In its reflection and mediation: the being-for-self and show of the
notion.
III. In its return into itself, and its developed abiding by itself:
the notion in and for itself.
The division of Logic now given, as well as the whole of the previous
discussion on the nature of thought, is anticipatory: and the
justification, or proof of it, can only result from the detailed
treatment of thought itself. For in philosophy, to prove means to
show how the subject by and from itself makes itself what it is. The
relation in which these three leading grades of thought, or of the
logical Idea, stand to each other must be conceived as follows. Truth
comes only with the notion: or, more precisely, the notion is the
truth of being and essence, both of which, when separately maintained
in their isolation, cannot but be untrue, the former because it is
exclusively immediate, and the latter because it is exclusively
mediate. Why then, it may be asked, begin with the false and not at
once with the true? To which we answer that truth, to deserve the name,
must authenticate its own truth: which authentication, here within the
sphere of logic, is given, when the notion demonstrates itself to be
what is mediated by and with itself, and thus at the same time to be
truly immediate. This relation between the three stages of the logical
Idea appears in a real and concrete shape thus: God, who is the truth,
is known by us in His truth, that is, as absolute spirit, only in so
far as we at the same time recognise that the world which He created,
nature and the finite spirit, are, in their difference from God,
untrue.
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.
THE DOCTRINE OF BEING.
84.] Being is the notion implicit only: its special forms have the
predicate 'is'; when they are distinguished they are each of them an
'other': and the shape which dialectic takes in them, _i.e._ their
further specialisation, is a passing over into another. This further
determination, or specialisation, is at once a forth-putting and in
that way a disengaging of the notion implicit in being; and at the
same time the withdrawing of being inwards, its sinking deeper into
itself. Thus the explication of the notion in the sphere of being does
two things: it brings out the totality of being, and it abolishes the
immediacy of being, or the form of being as such.
85.] Being itself and the special sub-categories of it which
follow, as well as those of logic in general, may be looked upon as
definitions of the Absolute, or metaphysical definitions of God: at
least the first and third category in every triad may,--the first,
where the thought-form of the triad is formulated in its simplicity,
and the third, being the return from differentiation to a simple
self-reference. For a metaphysical definition of God is the expression
of His nature in thoughts as such: and logic embraces all thoughts so
long as they continue in the thought-form. The second sub-category in
each triad, where the grade of thought is in its differentiation,
gives, on the other hand, a definition of the finite. The objection to
the form of definition is that it implies a something in the mind's eye
on which these predicates may fasten. Thus even the Absolute (though
it purports to express God in the style and character of thought) in
comparison with its predicate (which really and distinctly expresses
in thought what the subject does not), is as yet only an inchoate
pretended thought--the indeterminate subject of predicates yet to
come. The thought, which is here the matter of sole importance, is
contained only in the predicate: and hence the propositional form, like
the said subject, viz. the Absolute, is a mere superfluity (cf. § 31,
and below, on the Judgment).
Each of the three spheres of the logical idea proves to be a systematic
whole of thought-terms, and a phase of the Absolute. This is the case
with Being, containing the three grades of quality, quantity, and
measure. Quality is, in the first place, the character identical with
being: so identical, that a thing ceases to be what it is, if it loses
its quality. Quantity, on the contrary, is the character external
to being, and does not affect the being at all. Thus _e.g._ a house
remains what it is, whether it be greater or smaller; and red remains
red, whether it be brighter or darker. Measure, the third grade of
being, which is the unity of the first two, is a qualitative quantity.
All things have their measure: _i.e._ the quantitative terms of their
existence, their being so or so great, does not matter within certain
limits; but when these limits are exceeded by an additional more or
less, the things cease to be what they were. From measure follows the
advance to the second sub-division of the idea, Essence.
The three forms of being here mentioned, just because they are the
first, are also the poorest, _i.e._ the most abstract. Immediate
(sensible) consciousness, in so far as it simultaneously includes
an intellectual element, is especially restricted to the abstract
categories of quality and quantity. The sensuous consciousness is in
ordinary estimation the most concrete and thus also the richest; but
that is only true as regards materials, whereas, in reference to the
thought it contains, it is really the poorest and most abstract.
A.--QUALITY.
(a) Being.
86.] Pure Being makes the beginning: because it is on one hand pure
thought, and on the other immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate;
and the first beginning cannot be mediated by anything, or be further
determined.
All doubts and admonitions, which might be brought against beginning
the science with abstract empty being, will disappear, if we only
perceive what a beginning naturally implies. It is possible to define
being as 'I = I,' as 'Absolute Indifference' or Identity, and so on.
Where it is felt necessary to begin either with what is absolutely
certain, _i.e._ the certainty of oneself, or with a definition or
intuition of the absolute truth, these and other forms of the kind
may be looked on as if they must be the first. But each of these
forms contains a mediation, and hence cannot be the real first: for
all mediation implies advance made from a first on to a second, and
proceeding from something different. If I = I, or even the intellectual
intuition, are really taken to mean no more than the first, they are in
this mere immediacy identical with being: while conversely, pure being,
if abstract no longer, but including in it mediation, is pure thought
or intuition.
If we enunciate Being as a predicate of the Absolute, we get the first
definition of the latter. The Absolute is Being. This is (in thought)
the absolutely initial definition, the most abstract and stinted.
It is the definition given by the Eleatics, but at the same time is
also the well-known definition of God as the sum of all realities. It
means, in short, that we are to set aside that limitation which is in
every reality, so that God shall be only the real in all reality, the
superlatively real. Or, if we reject reality, as implying a reflection,
we get a more immediate or unreflected statement of the same thing,
when Jacobi says that the God of Spinoza is the _principium_ of being
in all existence.
(1) When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought in its
merest indeterminateness: for we cannot determine unless there is
both one and another; and in the beginning there is yet no other. The
indeterminate, as we here have it, is the blank we begin with, not a
featurelessness reached by abstraction, not the elimination of all
character, but the original featurelessness which precedes all definite
character and is the very first of all. And this we call Being. It is
not to be felt, or perceived by sense, or pictured in imagination:
it is only and merely thought, and as such it forms the beginning.
Essence also is indeterminate, but in another sense: it has traversed
the process of mediation and contains implicit the determination it has
absorbed.
(2) In the history of philosophy the different stages of the logical
Idea assume the shape of successive systems, each based on a particular
definition of the Absolute. As the logical Idea is seen to unfold
itself in a process from the abstract to the concrete, so in the
history of philosophy the earliest systems are the most abstract, and
thus at the same time the poorest. The relation too of the earlier
to the later; systems of philosophy is much like the relation of the
corresponding stages of the logical Idea: in other words, the earlier
are preserved in the later; but subordinated and submerged. This is
the true meaning of a much misunderstood phenomenon in the history of
philosophy--the refutation of one system by another, of an earlier by
a later. Most commonly the refutation is taken in a purely negative
sense to mean that the system refuted has ceased to count for anything,
has been set aside and done for. Were it so, the history of philosophy
would be of all studies most saddening, displaying, as it does,
the refutation of every system which time has brought forth. Now,
although it may be admitted that every philosophy has been refuted,
it must be in an equal degree maintained, that no philosophy has been
refuted, nay, or can be refuted. And that in two ways. For first,
every philosophy that deserves the name always embodies the Idea: and
secondly, every system represents one particular factor or particular
stage in the evolution of the Idea. The refutation of a philosophy,
therefore, only means that its barriers are crossed, and its special
principle reduced to a factor in the completer principle that follows.
Thus the history of philosophy, in its true meaning, deals not with a
past, but with an eternal and veritable present: and, in its results,
resembles not a museum of the aberrations of the human intellect,
but a Pantheon of Godlike figures. These figures of Gods are the
various stages of the Idea, as they come forward one after another in
dialectical development. To the historian of philosophy it belongs to
point out more precisely, how far the gradual evolution of his theme
coincides with, or swerves from, the dialectical unfolding of the pure
logical Idea. It is sufficient to mention here, that logic begins
where the proper history of philosophy begins. Philosophy began in the
Eleatic school, especially with Parmenides. Parmenides, who conceives
the absolute as Being, says that 'Being alone is and Nothing is not.'
Such was the true starting-point of philosophy, which is always
knowledge by thought: and here for the first time we find pure thought
seized and made an object to itself.
Men indeed thought from the beginning: (for thus only were they
distinguished from the animals). But thousands of years had to elapse
before they came to apprehend thought in its purity, and to see in it
the truly objective. The Eleatics are celebrated as daring thinkers.
But this nominal admiration is often accompanied by the remark that
they went too far, when they made Being alone true, and denied the
truth of every other object of consciousness. We must go further than
mere Being, it is true: and yet it is absurd to speak of the other
contents of our consciousness as somewhat as it were outside and beside
Being, or to say that there are other things, as well as Being. The
true state of the case is rather as follows. Being, as Being, is
nothing fixed or ultimate: it yields to dialectic and sinks into its
opposite, which, also taken immediately, is Nothing. After all, the
point is, that Being is the first pure Thought; whatever else you may
begin with (the I = I, the absolute indifference, or God Himself),
you begin with a figure of materialised conception, not a product of
thought; and that, so far as its thought content is concerned, such
beginning is merely Being.
87.] But this mere Being, as it is mere abstraction, is therefore the
absolutely negative: which, in a similarly immediate aspect, is just
Nothing.
(1) Hence was derived the second definition of the Absolute; the
Absolute is the Nought. In fact this definition is implied in saying
that the thing-in-itself is the indeterminate, utterly without form
and so without content,--or in saying that God is only the supreme
Being and nothing more; for this is really declaring Him to be the same
negativity as above. The Nothing which the Buddhists make the universal
principle, as well as the final aim and goal of everything, is the same
abstraction.
(2) If the opposition in thought is stated in this immediacy as Being
and Nothing, the shock of its nullity is too great not to stimulate
the attempt to fix Being and secure it against the transition into
Nothing. With this intent, reflection has recourse to the plan of
discovering some fixed predicate for Being, to mark it off from
Nothing. Thus we find Being identified with what persists amid all
change, with _matter,_ susceptible of innumerable determinations,--or
even, unreflectingly, with a single existence, any chance object of
the senses or of the mind. But every additional and more concrete
characterisation causes Being to lose that integrity and simplicity it
has in the beginning. Only in, and by virtue of, this mere generality
is it Nothing, something inexpressible, whereof the distinction from
Nothing is a mere intention or _meaning._
All that is wanted is to realise that these beginnings are nothing but
these empty abstractions, one as empty as the other. The instinct that
induces us to attach a settled import to Being, or to both, is the very
necessity which leads to the onward movement of Being and Nothing,
and gives them a true or concrete significance. This advance is the
logical deduction and the movement of thought exhibited in the sequel.
The reflection which finds a profounder connotation for Being and
Nothing is nothing but logical thought, through which such connotation
is evolved, not, however, in an accidental, but a necessary way. Every
signification, therefore, in which they afterwards appear, is only a
more precise specification and truer definition of the Absolute. And
when that is done, the mere abstract Being and Nothing are replaced
by a concrete in which both these elements form an organic part.--The
supreme form of Nought as a separate principle would be Freedom: but
Freedom is negativity in that stage, when it sinks self-absorbed to
supreme intensity, and is itself an affirmation, and even absolute
affirmation.
The distinction between Being and Nought is, in the first place,
only implicit, and not yet actually made: they only _ought_ to be
distinguished. A distinction of course implies two things, and that one
of them possesses an attribute which is not found in the other. Being
however is an absolute absence of attributes, and so is Nought. Hence
the distinction between the two is only meant to be; it is a quite
nominal distinction, which is at the same time no distinction. In all
other cases of difference there is some common point which comprehends
both things. Suppose _e.g._ we speak of two different species: the
genus forms a common ground for both. But in the case of mere Being and
Nothing, distinction is without a bottom to stand upon: hence there can
be no distinction, both determinations being the same bottomlessness.
If it be replied that Being and Nothing are both of them thoughts, so
that thought may be reckoned common ground, the objector forgets that
Being is not a particular or definite thought, and hence, being quite
indeterminate, is a thought not to be distinguished from Nothing.--It
is natural too for us to represent Being as absolute riches, and
Nothing as absolute poverty. But if when we view the whole world we
can only say that everything _is,_ and nothing more, we are neglecting
all speciality and, instead of absolute plenitude, we have absolute
emptiness. The same stricture is applicable to those who define God
to be mere Being; a definition not a whit better than that of the
Buddhists, who make God to be Nought, and who from that principle draw
the further conclusion that self-annihilation is the means by which man
becomes God.
88.] Nothing, if it be thus immediate and equal to itself, is also
conversely the same as Being is. The truth of Being and of Nothing is
accordingly the unity of the two: and this unity is Becoming.
(1) The proposition that Being and Nothing is the same seems so
paradoxical to the imagination or understanding, that it is perhaps
taken for a joke. And indeed it is one of the hardest things thought
expects itself to do: for Being and Nothing exhibit the fundamental
contrast in all its immediacy,--that is, without the one term being
invested with any attribute which would involve its connexion with
the other. This attribute however, as the above paragraph points out,
is implicit in them--the attribute which is just the same in both. So
far the deduction of their unity is completely analytical: indeed the
whole progress of philosophising in every case, if it be a methodical,
that is to say a necessary, progress, merely renders explicit what
is implicit in a notion.--It is as correct however to say that Being
and Nothing are altogether different, as to assert their unity. The
one is _not_ what the other is. But since the distinction has not at
this point assumed definite shape (Being and Nothing are still the
immediate), it is, in the way that they have it, something unutterable,
which we merely _mean._
(2) No great expenditure of wit is needed to make fun of the maxim that
Being and Nothing are the same, or rather to adduce absurdities which,
it is erroneously asserted, are the consequences and illustrations of
that maxim.
If Being and Nought are identical, say these objectors, it follows that
it makes no difference whether my home, my property, the air I breathe,
this city, the sun, the law, mind, God, are or are not. Now in some of
these cases, the objectors foist in private aims, the utility a thing
has for me, and then ask, whether it be all the same to me if the
thing exist and if it do not. For that matter indeed, the teaching of
philosophy is precisely what frees man from the endless crowd of finite
aims and intentions, by making him so insensible to them, that their
existence or non-existence is to him a matter of indifference. But it
is never to be forgotten that, once mention something substantial, and
you thereby create a connexion with other existences and other purposes
which are _ex hypothesi_ worth having: and on such hypothesis it comes
to depend whether the Being and not-Being of a determinate subject are
the same or not. A substantial distinction is in these cases secretly
substituted for the empty distinction of Being and Nought. In others
of the cases referred to, it is virtually absolute existences and
vital ideas and aims, which are placed under the mere category of
Being or not-Being. But there is more to be said of these concrete
objects, than that they merely are or are not. Barren abstractions,
like Being and Nothing--the initial categories which, for that reason,
are the scantiest anywhere to be found--are utterly inadequate to
the nature of these objects. Substantial truth is something far
above these abstractions and their oppositions.--And always when a
concrete existence is disguised under the name of Being and not-Being,
empty-headedness makes its usual mistake of speaking about, and having
in the mind an image of, something else than what is in question: and
in this place the question is about abstract Being and Nothing.
(3) It may perhaps be said that nobody can form a notion of the
unity of Being and Nought. As for that, the notion of the unity is
stated in the sections preceding, and that is all: apprehend that,
and you have comprehended this unity. What the objector really means
by comprehension--by a notion--is more than his language properly
implies: he wants a richer and more complex state of mind, a pictorial
conception which will propound the notion as a concrete case and one
more familiar to the ordinary operations of thought. And so long as
incomprehensibility means only the want of habituation for the effort
needed to grasp an abstract thought, free from all sensuous admixture,
and to seize a speculative truth, the reply to the criticism is, that
philosophical knowledge is undoubtedly distinct in kind from the
mode of knowledge best known in common life, as well as from that
which reigns in the other sciences. But if to have no notion merely
means that we cannot represent in imagination the oneness of Being
and Nought, the statement is far from being true; for every one has
countless ways of envisaging this unity. To say that we have no such
conception can only mean, that in none of these images do we recognise
the notion in question, and that we are not aware that they exemplify
it. The readiest example of it is Becoming.; Every one has a mental
idea of Becoming, and will even allow that it is _one_ idea: he will
further allow that, when it is analysed, it involves the attribute
of Being, and also what is the very reverse of Being, viz. Nothing:
and that these two attributes lie undivided in the one idea: so that
Becoming is the unity of Being and Nothing.--Another tolerably plain
example is a Beginning. In its beginning, the thing is not yet, but
it is more than merely nothing, for its Being is already in the
beginning. Beginning is itself a case of Becoming; only the former term
is employed with an eye to the further advance.--If we were to adapt
logic to the more usual method of the sciences, we might start with the
representation of a Beginning as abstractly thought, or with Beginning
as such, and then analyse this representation, and perhaps people
would more readily admit, as a result of this analysis, that Being and
Nothing present themselves as undivided in unity.
(4) It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are
the same,' or 'The unity of Being and Nothing'--like all other
such unities, that of subject and object, and others--give rise to
reasonable objection. They misrepresent the facts, by giving an
exclusive prominence to the unity, and leaving the difference which
undoubtedly exists in it (because it is Being and Nothing, for example,
the unity of which is declared) without any express mention or notice.
It accordingly seems as if the diversity had been unduly put out of
court and neglected. The fact is, no speculative principle can be
correctly expressed by any such propositional form, for the unity has
to be conceived _in_ the diversity, which is all the while present and
explicit. 'To become' is the true expression for the resultant of 'To
be' and 'Not to be'; it is the unity of the two; but not only is it
the unity, it is also inherent unrest,--the unity, which is no mere
reference-to-self and therefore without movement, but which, through
the diversity of Being and Nothing that is in it, is at war within
itself.--Determinate being, on the other hand, is this unity, or
Becoming in this form of unity: hence all that 'is there and so,' is
one-sided and finite. The opposition between the two factors seems to
have vanished; it is only implied in the unity, it is not explicitly
put in it.
(5) The maxim of Becoming, that Being is the passage into Nought,
and Nought the passage into Being, is controverted by the maxim of
Pantheism, the doctrine of the eternity of matter, that from nothing
comes nothing, and that something can only come out of something. The
ancients saw plainly that the maxim, 'From nothing comes nothing,
from something something,' really abolishes Becoming: for what it
comes from and what it becomes are one and the same. Thus explained,
the proposition is the maxim of abstract identity as upheld by the
understanding. It cannot but seem strange, therefore, to hear such
maxims as, 'Out of nothing comes nothing: Out of something comes
something,' calmly taught in these days, without the teacher being in
the least aware that they are the basis of Pantheism, and even without
his knowing that the ancients have exhausted all that is to be said
about them.
Becoming is the first concrete thought, and therefore the first
notion: whereas Being and Nought are empty abstractions. The notion
of Being, therefore, of which we sometimes speak, must mean Becoming;
not the mere point of Being, which is empty Nothing, any more than
Nothing, which is empty Being. In Being then we have Nothing, and in
Nothing Being: but this Being which does not lose itself in Nothing
is Becoming. Nor must we omit the distinction, while we emphasise the
unity of Becoming: without that distinction we should once more return
to abstract Being. Becoming is only the explicit statement of what
Being is in its truth.
We often hear it maintained that thought is opposed to being. Now in
the face of such a statement, our first question ought to be, what is
meant by being. If we understand being as it is defined by reflection,
all that we can say of it is that it is what is wholly identical and
affirmative. And if we then look at thought, it cannot escape us that
thought also is at least what is absolutely identical with itself. Both
I therefore, being as well as thought, have the same attribute.
This identity of being and thought is not however to be I taken in
a concrete sense, as if we could say that a stone, so far as it has
being, is the same as a thinking man. A concrete thing is always very
different from the abstract category as such. And in the case of being,
we are speaking of nothing concrete: for being is the utterly abstract.
So far then the question regarding the _being_ of God--a being which is
in itself concrete above all measure--is of slight importance.
As the first concrete thought-term, Becoming is the first adequate
vehicle of truth. In the history of philosophy, this stage of the
logical Idea finds its analogue in the system of Heraclitus. When
Heraclitus says 'All is flowing' (πάντα ῥεῖ), he enunciates Becoming
as the fundamental feature of all existence, whereas the Eleatics,
as already remarked, saw the only truth in Being, rigid processless
Being. Glancing at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then goes
on to say: Being no more is than not-Being (οὐδὲν μᾶλλon τὸ όν τοῦ μὴ
ὅντos ἐστί): a statement expressing the negativity of abstract Being,
and its identity with not-Being, as made explicit in Becoming: both
abstractions being alike untenable. This maybe looked at as an instance
of the real refutation of one system by another. To refute a Philosophy
is to exhibit the dialectical movement in its principle, and thus
reduce it to a constituent member of a higher concrete form of the?
Idea. Even Becoming however, taken at its best on its own ground, is an
extremely poor term: it needs to grow in depth and weight of meaning.
Such deepened force we find _e.g._ in Life. Life is a Becoming; but
that is not enough to exhaust the notion of life. A still higher form
is found in Mind. Here too is Becoming, but richer and more intensive
than mere logical Becoming. The elements, whose unity constitutes
mind, are not the bare abstracts of Being and of Nought, but the system
of the logical Idea and of Nature.
(b) _Being Determinate._
89.] In Becoming the Being which is one with Nothing, and the Nothing
which is one with Being, are only vanishing factors; they are and
they are not. Thus by its inherent contradiction Becoming collapses
into the unity in which the two elements are absorbed. This result is
accordingly Being Determinate (Being there and so).
In this first example we must call to mind, once for all, what was
stated in § 82 and in the note there: the only way to secure any growth
and progress in knowledge is to hold results fast in their truth. There
is absolutely nothing whatever in which we cannot and must not point
to contradictions or opposite attributes; and the abstraction made by
understanding therefore means a forcible insistence on a single aspect,
and a real effort to obscure and remove all consciousness of the other
attribute which is involved. Whenever such contradiction, then, is
discovered in any object or notion, the usual inference is, _Hence_
this object is _nothing._ Thus Zeno, who first showed the contradiction
native to motion, concluded that there is no motion: and the ancients,
who recognised origin and decease, the two species of Becoming, as
untrue categories, made use of the expression that the One or Absolute
neither arises nor perishes. Such a style of dialectic looks only at
the negative aspect of its result, and fails to notice, what is at the
same time really present, the definite result, in the present case a
pure nothing, but a Nothing which includes Being, and, in like manner,
a Being which includes Nothing. Hence Being Determinate is (1) the
unity of Being and Nothing, in which we get rid of the immediacy in
these determinations, and their contradiction vanishes in their mutual
connexion,--the unity in which they are only constituent elements. And
(2) since the result is the abolition of the contradiction, it comes
in the shape of a simple unity with itself: that is to say, it also
is Being, but Being with negation or determinateness: it is Becoming
expressly put in the form of one of its elements, viz. Being.
Even our ordinary conception of Becoming implies that somewhat
comes out of it, and that Becoming therefore has a result. But this
conception gives rise to the question, how Becoming does not remain
mere Becoming, but has a result The answer to this question follows
from what Becoming has already shown itself to be. Becoming always
contains Being and Nothing in such a way, that these two are always
changing into each other, and reciprocally cancelling each other.
Thus Becoming stands before us in utter restlessness--unable however
to maintain itself in this abstract restlessness: for since Being and
Nothing vanish in Becoming (and that is the very notion of Becoming),
the latter must vanish also. Becoming is as it were a fire, which
dies out in itself, when it consumes its material. The result of this
process however is not an empty Nothing but Being identical with the
negation,--what we call Being Determinate (being then and there): the
primary import of which evidently is that it _has become._
90.] (α) Determinate Being is Being with a character or mode--which
simply _is_; and such un-mediated character is Quality. And as
reflected into itself in this its character or mode, Determinate Being
is a somewhat, an existent.--The categories, which issue by a closer
analysis of Determinate Being, need only be mentioned briefly.
Quality may be described as the determinate mode immediate and
identical with Being--as distinguished from Quantity (to come
afterwards), which, although a mode of Being, is no longer immediately
identical with Being, but a mode indifferent and external to it. A
Something is what it is in virtue of its quality, and losing its
quality it ceases to be what it is. Quality, moreover, is completely a
category only of the finite, and for that reason too it has its proper
place in Nature, not in the world of Mind. Thus, for example, in Nature
what are styled the elementary bodies, oxygen, nitrogen, &c, should
be regarded as existing qualities. But in the sphere of mind, Quality
appears in a subordinate way only, and not as if its qualitativeness
could exhaust any specific aspect of mind. If, for example, we consider
the subjective mind, which forms the object of psychology, we may
describe what is called (moral and mental) character, as in logical
language identical with Quality. This however does not mean that
character is a mode of being which pervades the soul and is immediately
identical with it, as is the case in the natural world with the
elementary bodies before mentioned. Yet a more distinct manifestation
of Quality as such, in mind even, is found in the case of besotted or
morbid conditions, especially in states of passion and when the passion
rises to derangement. The state of mind of a deranged person, being one
mass of jealousy, fear, &c, may suitably be described as Quality.
91.] Quality, as determinateness which _is,_ as contrasted with the
Negation which is involved in it but distinguished from it, is
Reality. Negation is no longer an abstract nothing, but, as
a determinate being and somewhat, is only a form on such being--it
is as Otherness. Since this otherness, though a determination of
Quality itself, is in the first instance distinct from it, Quality is
Being-for-another--an expansion of the mere point of Determinate
Being, or of Somewhat. The Being as such of Quality, contrasted with
this reference to somewhat else, is Being-by-self.
The foundation of all determinateness is negation (as Spinoza says,
_Omnis determinatio est negatio_). The unreflecting observer supposes
that determinate things are merely positive, and pins them down under
the form of being. Mere being however is not the end of the matter:--it
is, as we have already seen, utter emptiness and instability besides.
Still, when abstract being is contused in this way with being modified
and determinate, it implies some perception of the fact that, though
in determinate being there is involved an element of negation, this
element is at first wrapped up, as it were, and only comes to the
front and receives its due in Being-for-self.--If we go on to consider
determinate Being as a determinateness which _is,_ we get in this way
what is called Reality. We speak, for example, of the reality of a
plan or a purpose, meaning thereby that they are no longer inner and
subjective, but have passed into being-there-and-then. In the same
sense the body may be called the reality of the soul, and the law the
reality of freedom, and the world altogether the reality of the divine
idea. The word 'reality' is however used in another acceptation to mean
that something behaves conformably to its essential characteristic or
notion. For example, we use the expression: This is a real occupation:
This is a real man. Here the term does not merely mean outward and
immediate existence: but rather that some existence agrees with its
notion. In which sense, be it added, reality is not distinct from the
ideality which we shall in the first instance become acquainted with in
the shape of Being-for-self.
92.] (ß) Being, if kept distinct and apart from its determinate
mode, as it is in Being-by-self (Being implicit), would be only the
vacant abstraction of Being. In Being (determinate there and then),
the determinateness is one with Being; yet at the same time, when
explicitly made a negation, it is a Limit, a Barrier. Hence the
otherness is not something indifferent and outside it, but a function
proper to it. Somewhat is by its quality,--firstly finite,--secondly
alterable; so that finitude and variability appertain to its being.
In Being-there-and-then, the negation is still directly one with the
Being, and this negation is what we call a Limit (Boundary). A thing
is what it is, only in and by reason of its limit. We cannot therefore
regard the limit as only paternal to being which is then and there. It
rather goes through and through the whole of such existence. The view
of limit, as merely an external characteristic of being-there-and-then,
arises from a confusion of quantitative with qualitative limit. Here
we are speaking primarily of the qualitative limit. If, for example,
we observe a piece of ground, three acres large, that circumstance is
its quantitative limit. But, in addition, the ground is, it may be, a
meadow, not a wood or a pond. This is its qualitative limit.--Man,
if he wishes to be actual, must be-there-and-then, and to this end he
must set a limit to himself. People who are too fastidious towards the
finite never reach actuality, but linger lost in abstraction, and their
light dies away.
If we take a closer look at what a limit implies, we see it involving a
contradiction in itself, and thus evincing its dialectical nature. On
the one side the limit makes the reality of a thing; on the other it
is its negation. But, again, the limit, as the negation of something,
is not an abstract nothing but a nothing which _is,--_what we call an
'other.' Given something, and up starts an other to us: we know that
there is not something only, but an other as well. Nor, again, is the
other of such a nature that we can think something apart from it; a
something is implicitly the other of itself, and the somewhat sees
its limit become objective to it in the other. If we now ask for the
difference between something and another, it turns out that they are
the same: which sameness is expressed in Latin by calling the pair
_aliud--aliud._ The other, as opposed to the something, is itself a
something, and hence we say some other, or something else; and so on
the other hand the first something when opposed to the other, also
defined as something, is itself an other. When we say 'something
else' our first impression is that something taken separately is only
something, and that the quality of being another attaches to it only
from outside considerations. Thus we suppose that the moon, being
something else than the sun, might very well exist without the sun.
But really the moon, as a something, has its other implicit in it:
Plato says: God made the world out of the nature of the 'one' and the
'other' (τοῦ ἑτέρου): having brought these together, he formed from
them a third, which is of the nature of the 'one' and the 'other.'
In these words we have in general terms a statement of the nature
of the finite, which, as something, does not meet the nature of the
other as if it had no affinity to it, but, being implicitly the other
of itself, thus undergoes alteration. Alteration thus exhibits the
inherent contradiction which originally attaches to determinate being,
and which forces it out of its own bounds. To materialised conception
existence stands in the character of something solely positive, and
quietly abiding within its own limits: though we also know, it is
true, that everything finite (such as existence) is subject to change.
Such changeableness in existence is to the superficial eye a mere
possibility, the realisation of which is not a consequence of its own
nature. But the fact is, mutability lies in the notion of existence,
and change is only the manifestation of what it implicitly is. The
living die, simply because as living they bear in themselves the germ
of death.
93.] Something becomes an other: this other is itself somewhat:
therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on _ad infinitum._
94.] This Infinity is the wrong or negative infinity: it is only a
negation of a finite: but the finite rises again the same as ever, and
is never got rid of and absorbed. In other words, this infinite only
expresses the _ought-to-be_ elimination of the finite. The progression
to infinity never gets further than a statement of the contradiction
involved in the finite, viz. that it is somewhat as well as somewhat
else. It sets up with endless iteration the alternation between these
two terms, each of which calls up the other.
If we let somewhat and another, the elements of determinate Being,
fall asunder, the result is that some becomes other, and this other
is itself a somewhat, which then as such changes likewise, and so
on _ad infinitum._ This result seems to superficial reflection
something very grand, the grandest possible. Besuch a progression to
infinity is not the real infinite. That consists in being at home
with itself in its other, or, if enunciated as a process, in coming
to itself in its other. Much depends on rightly apprehending the
notion of infinity, and not stopping short at the wrong infinity of
endless progression. When time and space, for example, are spoken of
as infinite, it is in the first place the infinite progression on
which our thoughts fasten. We say, Now, This time, and then we keep
continually going forwards and backwards beyond this limit. The case
is the same with space, the infinity of which has formed the theme of
barren declamation to astronomers with a talent for edification. In the
attempt to contemplate such an infinite, our thought, we are commonly
informed, must sink exhausted. It is true indeed that we must abandon
the unending contemplation, not however because the occupation is too
sublime, but because it is too tedious. It is tedious to expatiate in
the contemplation of this infinite progression, because the same thing
is constantly recurring. We lay down a limit: then we pass it: next we
have a limit once more, and so on for ever. All this is but superficial
alternation, which never leaves the region of the finite behind. To
suppose that by stepping out and away into that infinity we release
ourselves from the finite, is in truth but to seek the release which
comes by flight. But the man who flees is not yet free: in fleeing he
is still conditioned by that from which he flees. If it be also said,
that the infinite is unattainable, the statement is true, but only
because to the idea of infinity has been attached the circumstance
of being simply and solely negative. With such empty and other world
stuff philosophy has nothing to do. What philosophy has to do with is
always--something concrete and in the highest sense present.
No doubt philosophy has also sometimes been set the task of finding
an answer to the question, how the infinite comes to the resolution
of issuing out of itself. This question, founded, as it is, upon the
assumption of a rigid opposition between finite and infinite, may be
answered by saying that the opposition is false, and that in point
of fact the infinite eternally proceeds out of itself, and yet does
not proceed out of itself. If we further say that the infinite is the
not-finite, we have in point of fact virtually expressed the truth:
for as the finite itself is the first negative, the not-finite is the
negative of that negation, the negation which is identical with itself
and thus at the same time a true affirmation.
The infinity of reflection here discussed is only an _attempt_ to
reach the true Infinity, a wretched neither-one-thing-nor-another.
Generally speaking, it is the point of view which has in recent times
been emphasised in Germany. The finite, this theory tells us, _ought_
to be absorbed; the infinite _ought_ not to be a negative merely, but
also a positive. That 'ought to be' betrays the incapacity of actually
making good a claim which is at the same time recognised to be right.
This stage was never passed by the systems of Kant and Fichte, so far
as ethics are concerned. The utmost to which this way brings us is only
the postulate of a never-ending approximation to the law of Reason:
which postulate has been made an argument for the immortality of the
soul.
95.] (γ) What we now in point of fact have before us, is that somewhat
comes to be an other, and that the other generally comes to be an
other. Thus essentially relative to another, somewhat is virtually an
other against it: and since what is passed into is quite the same as
what passes over, since both have one and the same attribute, viz.
to be an other, it follows that something in its passage into other
only joins with itself. To be thus self-related in the passage, and
in the other, is the genuine Infinity. Or, under a negative aspect:
what is altered is the other, it becomes the other of the other. Thus
Being, but as negation of the negation, is restored again: it is now
Being-for-self.
Dualism, in putting an insuperable opposition between finite and
infinite, fails to note the simple circumstance that the infinite is
thereby only one of two, and is reduced to a particular, to which the
finite forms the other particular. Such an infinite, which is only a
particular, is co-terminous with the finite which makes for it a limit
and a barrier: it is not what it ought to be, that is, the infinite,
but is only finite. In such circumstances, where the finite is on this
side, and the infinite on that,--this world as the finite and the other
world as the infinite,--an equal dignity of permanence and independence
is ascribed to finite and to infinite. The being of the finite is made
an absolute being, and by this dualism gets independence and stability.
Touched, so to speak, by the infinite, it would be annihilated. But
it must not be touched by the infinite. There must be an abyss, an
impassable gulf between the two, with the infinite abiding on yonder
side and the finite steadfast on this. Those who attribute to the
finite this inflexible persistence in comparison with the infinite
are not, as they imagine, far above metaphysic: they are still on the
level of the most ordinary metaphysic of understanding. For the same
thing occurs here as in the infinite progression. At one time it is
admitted that the finite has no independent actuality, no absolute
being, no root and development of its own, but is only a transient.
But next moment this is straightway forgotten; the finite, made a mere
counterpart to the infinite, wholly separated from it, and rescued from
annihilation, is conceived to be persistent in its independence. While
thought thus imagines itself elevated to the infinite, it meets with
the opposite fate: it comes to an infinite which is only a finite, and
the finite, which it had left behind, has always to be retained and
made into an absolute.
After this examination (with which it were well to compare Plato's
Philebus), tending to show the nullity of the distinction made by
understanding between the finite and the infinite, we are liable
to glide into the statement that the infinite and the finite are
therefore one, and that the genuine infinity, the truth, must be
defined and enunciated as the unity of the finite and infinite. Such
a statement would be to some extent correct; but is just as open to
perversion and falsehood as the unity of Being and Nothing already
noticed. Besides it may very fairly be charged with reducing the
infinite to finitude and making a finite infinite. For, so far as
the expression goes, the finite seems left in its place,--it is not
expressly stated to be absorbed. Or, if we reflect that the finite,
when identified with the infinite, certainly cannot remain what it
was out of such unity, and will at least suffer some change in its
characteristics--as an alkali, when combined with an acid, loses some
of its properties, we must see that, the same fate awaits the infinite,
which, as the negative, will on its part likewise have its edge, as
it were, taken off on the other. And this does really happen with the
abstract one-sided infinite of understanding. The genuine infinite
however is not merely in the position of the one-sided acid, and so
does not lose itself. The negation of negation is not a neutralisation:
the infinite is the affirmative, and it is only the finite which is
absorbed.
In Being-for-self enters the category of Ideality.
Being-there-and-then, as in the first instance apprehended in its being
or affirmation, has reality (§ 91): and thus even finitude in the first
instance is in the category of reality. But the truth of the finite is
rather its ideality. Similarly, the infinite of understanding, which
is co-ordinated with the finite, is itself only one of two finites,
no whole truth, but a non-substantial element. This ideality of the
finite is the chief maxim of philosophy; and for that reason every
genuine philosophy is idealism. But everything depends upon not taking
for the infinite what, in the very terms of its characterisation, is.
at the same time made a particular and finite.--For this reason we
have bestowed a greater amount of attention on this distinction. The
fundamental notion of philosophy, the genuine infinite, depends upon
it. The distinction is cleared up by the simple, and for that reason
seemingly insignificant, but incontrovertible reflections, contained in
the first paragraph of this section.
(c) _Being-for-self._
96.] (α) Being-for self, as reference to itself, is immediacy, and
as reference of the negative to itself, is a self-subsistent, the
One. This unit, being without distinction in itself, thus
excludes the other from itself.
To be for self--to be one--is completed Quality, and as such, contains
abstract Being and Being modified as non-substantial elements. As
simple Being, the One is simple self-reference; as Being modified it
is determinate: but the determinateness is not in this case a finite
determinateness--a somewhat in distinction from an other--but infinite,
because it contains distinction absorbed and annulled in itself.
The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the 'I.' We know
ourselves as existents, distinguished in the first place from other
existents, and with certain relations thereto. But we also come to
know this expansion of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it
were, to a point in the simple form of being-for-self. When we say 'I,'
we express the reference-to-self which is infinite, and at the same
time negative. Man, it may be said, is distinguished from the animal
world, and in that way from nature altogether, by knowing himself as
'I': which amounts to saying that natural things never attain a free
Being-for-self, but as limited to Being-there-and-then, are always and
only Being for an other.--Again, Being-for-self may be described as
ideality, just as Being-there-and-then was described as reality. It is
said, that besides reality there is _also_ an ideality. Thus the two
categories are made equal and parallel. Properly speaking, ideality is
not somewhat outside of and beside reality: the notion of ideality
just lies in its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when
reality is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, it is at once seen
to be ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper estimation,
when you allow that reality is not all in all, but that an ideality
must be recognised outside of it. Such an ideality, external to or it
may be even beyond reality, would be no better than an empty name.
Ideality only has a meaning when it is the ideality of something: but
this something is not a mere indefinite this or that, but existence
characterised as reality, which, if retained in isolation, possesses
no truth. The distinction between Nature and Mind is not improperly
conceived, when the former is traced back to reality, and the latter
to ideality as a fundamental category. Nature however is far from
being so fixed and complete, as to subsist even without Mind: in Mind
it first, as it were, attains its goal and its truth. And similarly,
Mind on its part is not merely a world beyond Nature and nothing more:
it is really, and with full proof, seen to be mind, only when it
involves Nature as absorbed in itself.--_Apropos_ of this, we should
note the double meaning of the German word _aufheben_ (to put by, or
set aside). We mean by it (1) to clear away, or annul: thus, we say, a
law or a regulation is set aside: (2) to keep, or preserve: in which
sense we use it when we say: something is well put by. This double
usage of language, which gives to the same word a positive and negative
meaning, is not an accident, and gives no ground for reproaching
language as a cause of confusion. We should rather recognise in it the
speculative spirit of our language rising above the mere 'Either--or'
of understanding.
97.] (β) The relation of the negative to itself is a negative relation,
and so a distinguishing of the One from itself, the repulsion of
the One; that is, it makes Many Ones. So far as regards the
immediacy of the self-existents, these Many _are:_ and the repulsion of
every One of them becomes to that extent their repulsion against each
other as existing units,--in other words, their reciprocal exclusion.
Whenever we speak of the One, the Many usually come into our mind at
the same time. Whence, then, we are forced to ask, do the Many come?
This question is unanswerable by the consciousness which pictures the
Many as a primary datum, and-treats the One as only one among the Many.
But the philosophic notion teaches, contrariwise, that the One forms
the pre-supposition of the Many: and in the thought of the One is
implied that it explicitly make itself Many. The self-existing unit is
not, like Being, void of all connective reference: it is a reference,
as well as Being-there-and-then was, not however a reference connecting
somewhat with an other, but, as unity of the some and the other, it is
a connexion with itself, and this connexion be it noted is a negative
connexion. Hereby the One manifests an utter incompatibility with
itself, a self-repulsion: and what it makes itself explicitly be, is
the Many. We may denote this side in the process of Being-for-self
by the figurative term Repulsion. Repulsion is a term originally
employed in the study of matter, to mean that matter, as a Many, in
each of these many Ones, behaves as exclusive to all the others. It
would be wrong however to view the process of repulsion, as if the
One were the repellent and the Many the repelled. The One, as already
remarked, just is self-exclusion and explicit putting itself as the
Many. Each of the Many however is itself a One, and in virtue of its so
behaving, this all-round repulsion is by one stroke converted into its
opposite,--Attraction.
98.] (γ) But the Many are one the same as another: each is One, or
even one of the Many; they are consequently one and the same. Or when
we study all that Repulsion involves, we see that as a negative
attitude of many Ones to one another, it is just as essentially a
connective reference of them to each other; and as those to which the
One is related in its act of repulsion are ones, it is in them thrown
into relation with itself. The repulsion therefore has an equal right
to be called Attraction; and the exclusive One, or Being-for-self,
suppresses itself. The qualitative character, which in the One or unit
has reached the extreme point of its characterisation, has thus passed
over into determinateness (quality) suppressed, _i.e._ into Being as
Quantity.
The philosophy of the Atomists is the doctrine in which the Absolute
is formulated as Being-for-self, as One, and many ones. And it is
the repulsion, which shows itself in the notion of the One, which
is assumed as the fundamental force in these atoms. But instead of
attraction, it is Accident, that is, mere unintelligence, which
is expected to bring them together. So long as the One is fixed
as one, it is certainly impossible to regard its congression with
others as anything but external and mechanical. The Void, which is
assumed as the complementary principle to the atoms, is repulsion
and nothing else, presented under the image of the nothing existing
between the atoms.--Modern Atomism--and physics is still in principle
atomistic--has surrendered the atoms so far as to pin its faith
on molecules or particles. In so doing, science has come closer
to sensuous conception, at the cost of losing the precision of
thought.--To put an attractive by the side of a repulsive force, as
the moderns have done, certainly gives completeness to the contrast:
and the discovery of this natural force, as it is called, has been a
source of much pride. But the mutual implication of the two, which
makes what is true and concrete in them, would have to be wrested from
the obscurity and confusion in which they were left even in Kant's
Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science.--In modern times the
importance of the atomic theory is even more evident in political than
in physical science. According to it, the will of individuals as such
is the creative principle of the State: the attracting force is the
special wants and inclinations of individuals; and the Universal, or
the State itself, is the external nexus of a compact.
(1) The Atomic philosophy forms a vital stage in the historical
evolution of the Idea. The principle of that system may be described
as Being-for-self in the shape of the Many. At present, students of
nature who are anxious to avoid metaphysics turn a favourable ear to
Atomism. But it is not possible to escape metaphysics and cease to
trace nature back to terms of thought, by throwing ourselves into the
arms of Atomism. The atom, in fact, is itself a thought; and hence the
theory which holds matter to consist of atoms is a metaphysical theory.
Newton gave physics an express warning to beware of metaphysics, it is
true; but, to his honour be it said, he did not by any means obey his
own warning. The only mere physicists are the animals: they alone do
not think: while man is a thinking being and a born metaphysician. The
real question is not whether we shall apply metaphysics, but whether
our metaphysics are of the right kind: in other words, whether we are
not, instead of the concrete logical Idea, adopting one-sided forms of
thought, rigidly fixed by understanding, and making these the basis of
our theoretical as well as our practical work. It is on this ground
that one objects to the Atomic philosophy. The old Atomists viewed the
world as a many, as their successors often do to this day. On chance
they laid the task of collecting the atoms which float about in the
void. But, after all, the nexus binding the many with one another is
by no means a mere accident: as we have already remarked, the nexus is
founded on their very nature. To Kant we owe the completed theory of
matter as the unity of repulsion and attraction. The theory is correct,
so far as it recognises attraction to be the other of the two elements
involved in the notion of Being-for-self: and to be an element no less
essential than repulsion to constitute matter. Still this dynamical
construction of matter, as it is termed, has the fault of taking for
granted, instead of deducing, attraction and repulsion. Had they been
deduced, we should then have seen the How and the Why of a unity which
is merely asserted. Kant indeed was careful to inculcate that Matter
must not be taken to be in existence _per se,_ and then as it were
incidentally to be provided with the two forces mentioned, but must
be regarded as consisting solely in their unity. German physicists
for some time accepted this pure dynamic. But in spite of this, the
majority of these physicists i n modern times have found it more
convenient to return to the Atomic point of view, and in spite of the
warnings of Kästner, one of their number, have begun to regard Matter
as consisting of infinitesimally small particles, termed 'atoms'--which
atoms have then to be brought into relation with one another by the
play of forces attaching to them,--attractive, repulsive, or whatever
they may be. This too is metaphysics; and metaphysics which, for its
utter unintelligence, there would be sufficient reason to guard against.
(2) The transition from Quality to Quantity, indicated in the paragraph
before us, is not found in our ordinary way of thinking, which deems
each of these categories to exist independently beside the other. We
are in the habit of saying that things are not merely qualitatively,
but also quantitatively defined; but whence these categories originate,
and how they are related to each other, are questions not further
examined. The fact is, quantity just means quality superseded and
absorbed: and it is by the dialectic of quality here examined that this
supersession is effected. First of all, we had Being: as the truth of
Being, came Becoming: which formed the passage to Being Determinate:
and the truth of that we found to be Alteration. And in its result
Alteration showed itself to be Being-for-self, exempt from implication
of another and from passage into another;--which Being-for-self,
finally, in the two sides of its process, Repulsion and Attraction,
was clearly seen to annul itself, and thereby to annul quality in the
totality of its stages. Still this superseded and absorbed quality is
neither an abstract nothing, nor an equally abstract and featureless
being: it is only being as indifferent to determinateness or character.
This aspect of being is also what appears as quantity in our ordinary
conceptions. We observe things, first of all, with an eye to their
quality--which we take to be the character identical with the being
of the thing. If we proceed to consider their quantity, we get the
conception of an indifferent and external character or mode, of such a
kind that a thing remains what it is, though its quantity is altered,
and the thing becomes greater or less.
B.--QUANTITY.
(α) _Pure Quantity._
99.] Quantity is pure being, where the mode or character is
no longer taken as one with the being itself, but explicitly put as
superseded or indifferent.
(i) The expression Magnitude especially marks _determinate_
Quantity, and is for that reason not a suitable name for Quantity
in general. (2) Mathematics usually define magnitude as what can be
increased or diminished. This definition has the defect of containing
the thing to be defined over again: but it may serve to show that the
category of magnitude is explicitly understood to be changeable and
indifferent, so that, in spite of its being altered by an increased
extension or intension, the thing, a house, for example, does not cease
to be a house, and red to be red. (3) The Absolute is pure Quantity.
This point of view is upon the whole the same as when the Absolute is
defined to be Matter, in which, though form undoubtedly is present, the
form is a characteristic of no importance one way or another. Quantity
too constitutes the main characteristic of the Absolute, when the
Absolute is regarded as absolute indifference, and only admitting of
quantitative distinction.--Otherwise pure space, time, &c. may be taken
as examples of Quantity, if we allow ourselves to regard the real as
whatever fills up space and time, it matters not with what.
The mathematical definition of magnitude as what may be increased
or diminished, appears at first sight to be more plausible and
perspicuous than the exposition of the notion in the present
section. When closely examined, however, it involves, under cover
of pre-suppositions and images, the same elements as appear in the
notion of quantity reached by the method of logical development. In
other words, when we say that the notion of magnitude lies in the
possibility of being increased or diminished, we state that magnitude
(or more correctly, quantity), as distinguished from quality, is a
characteristic of such kind that the characterised thing is not in the
least affected by any change in it. What then, it may be asked, is
the fault which we have to find with this definition? It is that to
increase and to diminish is the same thing as to characterise magnitude
otherwise. If this aspect then were an adequate account of it, quantity
would be described merely as whatever can be altered. But quality is
no less than quantity open to alteration; and the distinction here
given between quantity and quality is expressed by saying increase
_or_ diminution: the meaning being that, towards whatever side the
determination of magnitude be altered, the thing still remains what it
is.
One remark more. Throughout philosophy we do not seek merely for
correct, still less for plausible definitions, whose correctness
appeals directly to the popular imagination; we seek approved or
verified definitions, the content of which is not assumed merely as
given, but is seen and known to warrant itself, because warranted
by the free self-evolution of thought. To apply this to the present
case. However correct and self-evident the definition of quantity
usual in Mathematics may be, it will still fail to satisfy the wish to
see how far this particular thought is founded in universal thought,
and in that way necessary. This difficulty, however, is not the only
one. If quantity is not reached through the action of thought, but
taken uncritically from our generalised image of it, we are liable
to exaggerate the range of its validity, or even to raise it to the
height of an absolute category. And that such a danger is real, we see
when the title of exact science is restricted to those sciences the
objects of which can be submitted to mathematical calculation. Here we
have another trace of the bad metaphysics (mentioned in § 98, note)
which replace the concrete idea by partial and inadequate categories of
understanding. Our knowledge would be in a very awkward predicament if
such objects as freedom, law, morality, or even God Himself, because
they cannot be measured and calculated, or expressed in a mathematical
formula, were to be reckoned beyond the reach of exact knowledge, and
we had to put up with a vague generalised image of them, leaving their
details or particulars to the pleasure of each individual, to make
out of them what he will. The pernicious consequences, to which such
a theory gives rise in practice, are at once evident. And this mere
mathematical view, which identifies with the Idea one of its special
stages, viz. quantity, is no other than the principle of Materialism.
Witness the history of the scientific modes of thought, especially in
France since the middle of last century. Matter, in the abstract, is
just what, though of course there is form in it, has that form only as
an indifferent and external attribute.
The present explanation would be utterly misconceived if it were
supposed to disparage mathematics. By calling the quantitative
characteristic merely external and indifferent, we provide no excuse
for indolence and superficiality, nor do we assert that quantitative
characteristics may be left to mind themselves, or at least require no
very careful handling. Quantity, of course, is a stage of the Idea: and
as such it must have its due, first as a logical category, and then
in the world of objects, natural as well as spiritual. Still even so,
there soon emerges the different importance attaching to the category
of quantity according as its objects belong to the natural or to the
spiritual world. For in Nature, where the form of the Idea is to be
other than, and at the same time outside, itself, greater importance is
for that very reason attached to quantity than in the spiritual world,
the world of free inwardness. No doubt we regard even spiritual facts
under a quantitative point of view; but it is at once apparent that in
speaking of God as a Trinity, the number three has by no means the same
prominence, as when we consider the three dimensions of space or the
three sides of a triangle;--the fundamental feature of which last is
just to be a surface bounded by three lines. Even inside the realm of
Nature we find the same distinction of greater or less importance of
quantitative features. In the inorganic world, Quantity plays, so to
say, a more prominent part than in the organic. Even in organic nature
when we distinguish mechanical functions from what are called chemical,
and in the narrower sense, physical, there is the same difference.
Mechanics is of all branches of science, confessedly, that in which the
aid of mathematics can be least dispensed with,--where indeed we cannot
take one step without them. On that account mechanics is regarded next
to mathematics as the science _par excellence_; which leads us to
repeat the remark about the coincidence of the materialist with the
exclusively mathematical point of view. After all that has been said,
we cannot but hold it, in the interest of exact and thorough knowledge,
one of the most hurtful prejudices, to seek all distinction and
determinateness of objects merely in quantitative considerations. Mind
to be sure is more than Nature and the animal is more than the plant:
but we know very little of these objects and the distinction between
them, if a more and less is enough for us, and if we do not proceed to
comprehend them in their peculiar, that is their qualitative character.
100.] Quantity, as we saw, has two sources: the exclusive unit, and
the identification or equalisation of these units. When we look
therefore at its immediate relation to self, or at the characteristic
of self-sameness made explicit by attraction, quantity is Continuous
magnitude; but when we look at the other characteristic, the One
implied in it, it is Discrete magnitude. Still continuous quantity has
also a certain discreteness, being but a continuity of the Many: and
discrete quantity is no less continuous, its continuity being the One
or Unit, that is, the self-same point of the many Ones.
(1) Continuous and Discrete magnitude, therefore, must not be supposed
two species of magnitude, as if the characteristic of the one did not
attach to the other. The only distinction between them is that the
same whole (of quantity) is at one time explicitly put under the one,
at another under the other of its characteristics. (2) The Antinomy of
space, of time, or of matter, which discusses the question of their
being divisible for ever, or of consisting of indivisible units, just
means that we maintain quantity as at one time Discrete, at
another Continuous. If we explicitly invest time, space, or matter with
the attribute of Continuous quantity alone, they are divisible _ad
infinitum._ When, on the contrary, they are invested with the attribute
of Discrete quantity, they are potentially divided already, and consist
of indivisible units. The one view is as inadequate as the other.
Quantity, as the proximate result of Being-for-self, involves the
two sides in the process of the latter, attraction and repulsion, as
constitutive elements of its own idea. It is consequently Continuous
as well as Discrete. Each of these two elements involves the other
also, and hence there is no such thing as a merely Continuous or a
merely Discrete quantity. We may speak of the two as two particular and
opposite species of magnitude; but that is merely the result of our
abstracting reflection, which in viewing definite magnitudes waives now
the one, now the other, of the elements contained in inseparable unity
in the notion of quantity. Thus, it may be said, the space occupied by
this room is a continuous magnitude, and the hundred men, assembled
in it, form a discrete magnitude. And yet the space is continuous and
discrete at the same time; hence we speak of points of space, or we
divide space, a certain length, into so many feet, inches, &c, which
can be done only on the hypothesis that space is also potentially
discrete. Similarly, on the other hand, the discrete magnitude, made
up of a hundred men, is also continuous: and the circumstance on which
this continuity depends, is the common element, the species man, which
pervades all the individuals and unites them with each other.
(b) _Quantum (How Much)._
101.] Quantity, essentially invested with the exclusionist character
which it involves, is Quantum (or How Much): _i.e._ limited
quantity.
Quantum is, as it were, the determinate Being of quantity: whereas mere
quantity corresponds to abstract Being, and the Degree, which is next
to be considered, corresponds to Being-for-self. As for the details
of the advance from mere quantity to quantum, it is founded on this:
that whilst in mere quantity the distinction, as a distinction of
continuity and discreteness, is at first only implicit, in a quantum
the distinction is actually made, so that quantity in general now
appears as distinguished or limited. But in this way the quantum breaks
up at the same time into an indefinite multitude of Quanta or definite
magnitudes. Each of these definite magnitudes, as distinguished from
the others, forms a unity, while on the other hand, viewed _per se,_ it
is a many. And, when that is done, the quantum is described as Number.
102.] In Number the quantum reaches its development and perfect
mode. Like the One, the medium in which it exists, Number involves two
qualitative factors or functions; Annumeration or Sum, which depends on
the factor discreteness, and Unity, which depends on continuity.
In arithmetic the several kinds of operation are usually presented as
accidental modes of dealing with numbers. If necessity and meaning
is to be found in these operations, it must be by a principle: and
that must come from the characteristic elements in the notion of
number itself. (This principle must here be briefly exhibited.) These
characteristic elements are Annumeration on the one hand, and Unity on
the other, which together constitute number. But Unity, when applied
to empirical numbers, is only the equality of these numbers: hence the
principle of arithmetical operations must be to put numbers in the
ratio of Unity and Sum (or amount), and to elicit the equality of these
two modes.
The Ones or the numbers themselves are indifferent towards each other,
and hence the unity into which they are translated by the arithmetical
operation takes the aspect of an external colligation. All reckoning is
therefore making up the tale: and the difference between the species of
it lies only in the qualitative constitution of the numbers of which we
make up the tale. The principle for this constitution is given by the
way we fix Unity and Annumeration.
Numeration comes first: what we may call, making number; a colligation
of as many units as we please. But to get a _species_ of calculation,
it is necessary that what we count up should be numbers already, and no
longer a mere unit.
First, and as they naturally come to hand, Numbers are quite vaguely
numbers in general, and so, on the whole, unequal. The colligation, or
telling the tale of these, is Addition.
The second point of view under which we regard numbers is as equal,
so that they make one unity, and of such there is an annumeration or
sum before us. To tell the tale of these is Multiplication. It makes
no matter in the process, how the functions of Sum and Unity are
distributed between the two numbers, or factors of the product; either
may be Sum and either may be Unity.
The third and final point of view is the equality of Sum (amount) and
Unity. To number together numbers when so characterised is Involution;
and in the first instance raising them to the square power. To
raise the number to ä higher power means in point of form to go on
multiplying a number with itself an indefinite amount of times.--Since
this third type of calculation exhibits the complete equality of the
sole existing distinction in number, viz. the distinction between Sum
or amount and Unity, there can be no more than these three modes of
calculation. Corresponding to the integration we have the dissolution
of numbers according to the same features. Hence besides the three
species mentioned, which may to that extent be called positive, there
are three negative species of arithmetical operation.
Number, in general, is the quantum in its complete specialisation.
Hence we may employ it not only to determine what we call discrete, but
what are called continuous magnitudes as well. For that reason even
geometry must call in the aid of number, when it is required to specify
definite figurations of space and their ratios.
(c) _Degree._
103.] The limit (in a quantum) is identical with the whole of the
quantum itself. As _in itself_ multiple, the limit is Extensive
magnitude; as in itself _simple_ determinateness (qualitative
simplicity), it is Intensive magnitude or Degree.
The distinction between Continuous and Discrete magnitude differs
from that between Extensive and Intensive in the circumstance that
the former apply to quantity in general, while the latter apply to
the limit or determinateness of it as such. Intensive and Extensive
magnitude are not, any more than the other, two species, of which the
one involves a character not possessed by the other: what is Extensive
magnitude is just as much Intensive, and _vice versâ._
Intensive magnitude or Degree is in its notion distinct from Extensive
magnitude or the Quantum. It is therefore inadmissible to refuse,
as many do, to recognise this distinction, and without scruple to
identify the two forms of magnitude. They are so identified in
physics, when difference of specific gravity is explained by saying,
that a body, with a specific gravity twice that of another, contains
within the same space twice as many material parts (or atoms) as the
other. So with heat and light, if the various degrees of temperature
and brilliancy were to be explained by the greater or less number of
particles (or molecules) of heat and light. No doubt the physicists,
who employ such a mode of explanation, usually excuse themselves, when
they are remonstrated with on its untenableness, by saying that the
expression is without prejudice to the confessedly unknowable essence
of such phenomena, and employed merely for greater convenience. This
greater convenience is meant to point to the easier application of the
calculus: but it is hard to see why Intensive magnitudes, having, as
they do, a definite numerical expression of their own, should not be
as convenient for calculation as Extensive magnitudes. If convenience
be all that is desired, surely it would be more convenient to banish
calculation and thought altogether. A further point against the apology
offered by the physicists is, that, to engage in explanations of this
kind, is to overstep the sphere of perception and experience, and
resort to the realm of metaphysics and of what at other times would be
called idle or even pernicious speculation. It is certainly a fact of
experience that, if one of two purses filled with shillings is twice
as heavy as the other, the reason must be, that the one contains, say
two hundred, and the other only one hundred shillings. These pieces
of money we can see and feel with our senses: atoms, molecules, and
the like, are on the contrary beyond the range of sensuous perception;
and thought alone can decide whether they are admissible, and have
a meaning. But (as already noticed in § 98, note) it is abstract
understanding which stereotypes the factor of multeity (involved in the
notion of Being-for-self) in the shape of atoms, and adopts it as an
ultimate principle. It is the same abstract understanding which, in
the present instance, at equal variance with unprejudiced perception
and with real concrete thought, regards Extensive magnitude as the
sole form of quantity, and, where Intensive magnitudes occur, does not
recognise them in their own character, but makes a violent attempt by a
wholly untenable hypothesis to reduce them to Extensive magnitudes.
Among the charges made against modern philosophy, one is heard more
than another. Modern philosophy, it is said, reduces everything to
identity. Hence its nickname, the Philosophy of Identity. But the
present discussion may teach that it is philosophy, and philosophy
alone, which insists on distinguishing what is logically as well as
in experience different; while the professed devotees of experience
are the people who erect abstract identity into the chief principle
of knowledge. It is their philosophy which might more appropriately
be termed one of identity. Besides it is quite correct that there are
no merely Extensive and merely Intensive magnitudes, just as little
as there are merely continuous and merely discrete magnitudes. The
two characteristics of quantity are not opposed as independent kinds.
Every Intensive magnitude is also Extensive, and _vice versâ._ Thus a
certain degree of temperature is an Intensive magnitude, which has a
perfectly simple sensation corresponding to it as such. If we look at a
thermometer, we find this degree of temperature has a certain expansion
of the column of mercury corresponding to it; which Extensive magnitude
changes simultaneously with the temperature or Intensive magnitude. The
case is similar in the world of mind: a more intensive character has a
wider range with its effects than a less intensive.
104.] In Degree the notion of quantum is explicitly put. It is
magnitude as indifferent on its own account and simple: but in such
a way that the character (or modal being) which makes it a quantum
lies quite outside it in other magnitudes. In this contradiction,
where the _independent_ indifferent limit is absolute _externality,_
the Infinite Quantitative Progression is made explicit--an immediacy
which immediately veers round into its counterpart, into mediation (the
passing beyond and over the quantum just laid down), and _vice versâ._
Number is a thought, but thought in its complete self-externalisation.
Because it is a thought, it does not belong to perception: but it is a
thought which is characterised by the externality of perception.--Not
only therefore _may_ the quantum be increased or diminished without
end: the very notion of quantum is thus to push out and out beyond
itself. The infinite quantitative progression is only the meaningless
repetition of one and the same contradiction, which attaches to the
quantum, both generally and, when explicitly invested with its special
character, as degree. Touching the futility of enunciating this
contradiction in the form of infinite progression, Zeno, as quoted by
Aristotle, rightly says, 'It is the same to say a thing once, and to
say it for ever.'
(1) If we follow the usual definition of the mathematicians, given in
§ 99, and say that magnitude is what can be increased or diminished,
there may be nothing to urge against the correctness of the perception
on which it is founded; but the question remains, how we come to
assume such a capacity of increase or diminution. If we simply appeal
for an answer to experience, we try an unsatisfactory course; because
apart from the fact that we should merely have a material image of
magnitude, and not the thought of it, magnitude would come out as a
bare possibility (of increasing or diminishing) and we should have no
key to the necessity for its exhibiting this behaviour. In the way of
our logical evolution, on the contrary, quantity is obviously a grade
the process of self-determining thought; and it has been shown that it
lies in the very notion of quantity to shoot out beyond itself. In that
way, the increase or diminution (of which we have heard) is not merely
possible, but necessary.
(2) The quantitative infinite progression is what the reflective
understanding usually relies upon when it is engaged with the
general question of Infinity. The same thing however holds good of
this progression, as was already remarked on the occasion of the
qualitatively, infinite progression. As was then said, it is not the
expression of a true, but of a wrong infinity; it never gets further
than a bare 'ought,' and thus really remains within the limits
of finitude. The quantitative form of this infinite progression,
which Spinoza rightly calls a mere imaginary infinity (_infinitum
imaginationis,_) is an image often employed by poets, such as Haller
and Klopstock, to depict the infinity, not of Nature merely, but even
of God Himself. Thus we find Haller, in a famous description of God's
infinity, saying:
Ich häufe ungeheure Zahlen,
Gebirge Millionen auf,
Ich sesse Zeit auf Zeit
Und Welt auf Welt zu Hauf,
Und wenn ich von der grausen Höh'
Mit Schwindel wieder nach Dir seh:
Ist alle Macht der Zahl,
Vermehrt zu Tausendmal,
Noch nicht ein Theil von Dir.
[I heap up monstrous numbers, mountains of millions; I pile time upon
time, and world on the top of world; and when from the awful height I
cast a dizzy look towards Thee, all the power of number, multiplied a
thousand times, is not yet one part of Thee.]
Here then we meet, in the first place, that continual extrusion of
quantity, and especially of number, beyond itself, which Kant describes
as 'eery.' The only really 'eery' thing about it is the wearisomeness
of ever fixing, and anon unfixing a limit, without advancing a single
step. The same poet however well adds to that description of false
infinity the closing line:
Ich zieh sie ab, und Du liegst ganz vor mir.
[These I remove, and Thou liest all before me.]
Which means, that the true infinite is more than a mere world beyond
the finite, and that we, in order to become conscious of it, must
renounce that _progressus in infinitum._
(3) Pythagoras, as is well known, philosophised in numbers, and
conceived number as the fundamental principle of things. To the
ordinary mind this view must at first glance seem an utter paradox,
perhaps a mere craze. What, then, are we to think of it? To answer
this question, we must, in the first place, remember that the problem
of philosophy consists in tracing back things to thoughts, and, of
course, to definite thoughts. Now, number is undoubtedly a thought: it
is the thought nearest the sensible, or, more precisely expressed, it
is the thought of the sensible itself, if we take the sensible to mean
what is many, and in reciprocal exclusion. The attempt to apprehend
the universe as number is therefore the first step to metaphysics. In
the history of philosophy, Pythagoras, as we know, stands between the
Ionian philosophers and the Eleatics. While the former, as Aristotle
says, never get beyond viewing the essence of things as material (ὕλη),
and the latter, especially Parmenides, advanced as far as pure thought,
in the shape of Being, the principle of the Pythagorean philosophy
forms, as it were, the bridge from the sensible to the super-sensible.
We may gather from this, what is to be said of those who suppose that
Pythagoras undoubtedly went too far, when he conceived the essence
of things as mere number. It is true, they admit, that we can number
things; but, they contend, things are far more than mere numbers. But
in what respect are they more? The ordinary sensuous consciousness,
from its own point of view, would not hesitate to answer the question
by handing us over to sensuous perception, and remarking, that things
are not merely numerable, but also visible, odorous, palpable, &c. In
the phrase of modern times, the fault of Pythagoras would be described
as an excess of idealism. As may be gathered from what has been said
on the historical position of the Pythagorean school, the real state
of the case is quite the reverse. Let it be conceded that things are
more than numbers; but the meaning of that admission must be that the
bare thought of number is still insufficient to enunciate the definite
notion or essence of things. Instead, then, of saying that Pythagoras
went too far with his philosophy of number, it would be nearer the
truth to say that he did not go far enough; and in fact the Eleatics
were the first to take the further step to pure thought.
Besides, even if there are not things, there are states of things, and
phenomena of nature altogether, the character of which mainly rests on
definite numbers and proportions. This is especially the case with the
difference of tones and their harmonic concord, which, according to a
well-known tradition, first suggested to Pythagoras to conceive the
essence of things as number. Though it is unquestionably important to
science to trace back these phenomena to the definite numbers on which
they are based, it is wholly inadmissible to view the characterisation
by thought as a whole, as merely numerical. We may certainly feel
ourselves prompted to associate the most general characteristics of
thought with the first numbers: saying, 1 is the simple and immediate;
2 is difference and mediation; and 3 the unity of both of these. Such
associations however are purely external: there is nothing in the mere
numbers to make them express these definite thoughts. With every step
in this method, the more arbitrary grows the association of definite
numbers with definite thoughts. Thus, we may view 4 as the unity of
1 and 3, and of the thoughts associated with them, but 4 is just as
much the double of 2; similarly 9 is not merely the square of 3, but
also the sum of 8 and I, of 7 and 2, and so on. To attach, as do some
secret societies of modern times, importance to all sorts of numbers
and figures, is to some extent an innocent amusement, but it is also a
sign of deficiency of intellectual resource. These numbers, it is said,
conceal a profound meaning, and suggest a deal to think about. But the
point in philosophy is, not what you may think, but what you do think:
and the genuine air of thought is to be sought in thought itself, and
not in arbitrarily selected symbols.
105.] That the Quantum in its independent character is external to
itself, is what constitutes its quality. In that externality it
is itself and referred connectively to itself. There is a union in
it of externality, _i.e._ the quantitative, and of independency
(Being-for-self),--the qualitative. The Quantum when explicitly put
thus in its own self, is the Quantitative Ratio, a mode of being
which, while, in its Exponent, it is an immediate quantum, is also
mediation, viz. the reference of some one quantum to another, forming
the two sides of the ratio. But the two quanta are not reckoned at
their immediate value: their value is only in this relation.
The quantitative infinite progression appears at first as a continual
extrusion of number beyond itself. On looking closer, it is, however,
apparent that in this progression quantity returns to itself: for
the meaning of this progression, so far as thought goes, is the fact
that number is determined by number. And this gives the quantitative
ratio. Take, for example, the ratio 2:4. Here we have two magnitudes
(not counted in their several immediate values) in which we are only
concerned with their mutual relations. This relation of the two terms
(the exponent of the ratio) is itself a magnitude, distinguished from
the related magnitudes by this, that a change in it is followed by a
change of the ratio, whereas the ratio is unaffected by the change of
both its sides, and remains the same so long as the exponent is not
changed. Consequently, in place of 2:4, we can put 3:6 without changing
the ratio; as the exponent 2 remains the same in both cases.
106.] The two sides of the ratio are still immediate quanta: and the
qualitative and quantitative characteristics still external to one
another. But in their truth, seeing that the quantitative itself in its
externality is relation to self, or seeing that the independence and
the indifference of the character are combined, it is Measure.
Thus quantity by means of the dialectical movement so far studied
through its several stages, turns out to be a return to quality. The
first notion of quantity presented to us was that of quality abrogated
and absorbed. That is to say, quantity seemed an external character not
identical with Being, to which it is quite immaterial. This notion, as
we have seen, underlies the mathematical definition of magnitude as
what can be increased or diminished. At first sight this definition
may create the impression that quantity is merely whatever can be
altered:--increase and diminution alike implying determination of
magnitude otherwise--and may tend to confuse it with determinate Being,
the second stage of quality, which in its notion is similarly conceived
as alterable. We can, however, complete the definition by adding, that
in quantity we have an alterable, which in spite of alterations still
remains the same. The notion of quantity, it thus turns out, implies an
inherent contradiction. This, contradiction is what forms the dialectic
of quantity. The result of the dialectic however is not a mere return
to quality, as if that were the true and quantity the false notion, but
an advance to the unity and truth of both, to qualitative quantity, or
Measure.
It may be well therefore at this point to observe that whenever in
our study of the objective world we are engaged in quantitative
determinations, it is in all cases Measure which we have in view, as
the goal of our operations. This is hinted at even in language, when
the ascertainment of quantitative features and relations is called
measuring. We measure, _e.g._ the length of different chords that have
been put into a state of vibration, with an eye to the qualitative
difference of the tones caused by their vibration, corresponding to
this difference of length. Similarly, in chemistry, we try to ascertain
the quantity of the matters brought into combination, in order to find
out the measures or proportions conditioning such combinations, that
is to say, those quantities which give rise to definite qualities.
In statistics, too, the numbers with which the study is engaged are
important only from the qualitative results conditioned by them. Mere
collection of numerical facts, prosecuted without regard to the ends
here noted, is justly called an exercise of idle curiosity, of neither
theoretical nor practical interest.
107.] Measure is the qualitative quantum, in the first place as
immediate,--a quantum, to which a determinate being or a quality is
attached.
Measure, where quality and quantity are in one, is thus the completion
of Being. Being, as we first apprehend it, is something utterly
abstract and characterless: but it is the very essence of Being to
characterise itself, and its complete characterisation is reached
in Measure. Measure, like the other stages of Being, may serve as a
definition of the Absolute: God, it has been said, is the Measure of
all things. It is this idea which forms the ground-note of many of the
ancient Hebrew hymns, in which the glorification of God tends in the
main to show that He has appointed to everything its bound: to the
sea and the solid land, to the rivers and mountains; and also to the
various kinds of plants and animals. To the religious sense of the
Greeks the divinity of measure, especially in respect of social ethics,
was represented by Nemesis. That conception implies a general theory
that all human things, riches, honour, and power, as well as joy and
pain, have their definite measure, the transgression of which brings
ruin and destruction. In the world of objects, too, we have measure. We
see, in the first place, existences in Nature, of which measure forms
the essential structure. This is the case, for example, with the solar
system, which may be described as the realm of free measures. As we
next proceed to the study of inorganic nature, measure retires, as it
were, into the background; at least we often find the quantitative and
qualitative characteristics showing indifference to each other. Thus
the quality of a rock or a river is not tied to a definite magnitude.
But even these objects when closely inspected are found not to be quite
measureless: the water of a river, and the single constituents of a
rock, when chemically analysed, are seen to be qualities conditioned
by quantitative ratios between the matters they contain. In organic
nature, however, measure again rises full into immediate perception.
The various kinds of plants and animals, in the whole as well as in
their parts, have a certain measure: though it is worth noticing that
the more imperfect forms, those which are least removed from inorganic
nature, are partly distinguished from the higher forms by the greater
indefiniteness of their measure. Thus among fossils, we find some
ammonites discernible only by the microscope, and others as large as a
cart-wheel. The same vagueness of measure appears in several plants,
which stand on a low level of organic development,--for instance, ferns.
108.] In so far as in Measure quality and quantity are only in
_immediate_ unity, to that extent their difference presents itself in
a manner equally immediate. Two cases are then possible. Either the
specific quantum or measure is a bare quantum, and the definite being
(there-and-then) is capable of an increase or a diminution, without
Measure (which to that extent is a Rule) being thereby set completely
aside. Or the alteration of the quantum is also an alteration of the
quality.
The identity between quantity and quality, which is found in Measure,
is at first only implicit, and not yet explicitly realised. In other
words, these two categories, which unite in Measure, each claim an
independent authority. On the one hand, the quantitative features of
existence may be altered, without affecting its quality. On the other
hand, this increase and diminution, immaterial though it be, has
its limit, by exceeding which the quality suffers change. Thus the
temperature of water is, in the first place, a point of no consequence
in respect of its liquidity: still with the increase or diminution
of the temperature of the liquid water, there comes a point where
this state of cohesion suffers a qualitative change, and the water
is converted into steam or ice. A quantitative change takes place,
apparently without any further significance: but there is something
lurking behind, and a seemingly innocent change of quantity acts as a
kind of snare, to catch hold of the quality. The antinomy of Measure
which this implies was exemplified under more than one garb among the
Greeks. It was asked, for example, whether a single grain makes a heap
of wheat, or whether it makes a bald-tail to tear out a single hair
from the horse's tail. At first, no doubt, looking at the nature of
quantity as an indifferent and external character of Being, we are
disposed to answer these questions in the negative. And yet, as we
must admit, this indifferent increase and diminution has its limit:
a point is finally reached, where a single additional grain makes a
heap of wheat; and the bald-tail is produced, if we continue plucking
out single hairs. These examples find a parallel in the story of the
peasant who, as his ass trudged cheerfully along, went on adding ounce
after ounce to its load, till at length it sunk under the unendurable
burden. It would be a mistake to treat these examples as pedantic
futility; they really turn on thoughts, an acquaintance with which is
of great importance in practical life, especially in ethics. Thus in
the matter of expenditure, there is a certain latitude within which
a more or less does not matter; but when the Measure, imposed by the
individual circumstances of the special case, is exceeded on the one
side or the other, the qualitative nature of Measure (as in the above
examples of the different temperature of water) makes itself felt,
and a course, which a moment before was held good economy, turns into
avarice or prodigality. The same principle may be applied in politics,
when the constitution of a state has to be looked at as independent of,
no less than as dependent on, the extent of its territory, the number
of its inhabitants, and other quantitative points of the same kind. If
we look _e.g._ at a state with a territory of ten thousand square miles
and a population of four millions, we should, without hesitation, admit
that a few square miles of land or a few thousand inhabitants more or
less could exercise no essential influence on the character of its
constitution. But, on the other hand, we must not forget, that by the
continual increase or diminishing of a state, we finally get to a point
where, apart from all other circumstances, this quantitative alteration
alone necessarily draws with it an alteration in the quality of the
constitution. The constitution of a little Swiss canton does not suit
a great kingdom; and, similarly, the constitution of the Roman republic
was unsuitable when transferred to the small imperial towns of Germany.
109.] In this second case, when a measure through its quantitative
nature has gone in excess of its qualitative character, we meet, what
is at first an absence of measure, the Measureless. But seeing
that the second quantitative ratio, which in comparison with the first
is measureless, is none the less qualitative, the measureless is also a
measure. These two transitions, from quality to quantum, and from the
latter back again to quality, may be represented under the image of an
infinite progression--as the self-abrogation and restoration of measure
in the measureless.
Quantity, as we have seen, is not only capable of alteration, _i.e._
of increase or diminution: it is naturally and necessarily a tendency
to exceed itself. This tendency is maintained even in measure. But if
the quantity present in measure exceeds a certain limit, the quality
corresponding to it is also put in abeyance. This however is not a
negation of quality altogether, but only of this definite quality, the
place of which is at once occupied by another. This process of measure,
which appears alternately as a mere change in quantity, and then as a
sudden revulsion of quantity into quality, may be envisaged under the
figure of a nodal (knotted) line. Such lines we find in Nature under
a variety of forms. We have already referred to the qualitatively
different states of aggregation water exhibits under increase or
diminution of temperature. The same phenomenon is presented by the
different degrees in the oxidation of metals. Even the difference of
musical notes may be regarded as an example of what takes place in
the process of measure,--the revulsion from what is at first merely
quantitative into qualitative alteration.
110.] What really takes place here is that the immediacy, which still
attaches to measure as such, is set aside. In measure, at first,
quality and quantity itself are immediate, and measure is only their
'relative' identity. But measure shows itself absorbed and superseded
in the measureless: yet the measureless, although it be the negation
of measure, is itself a unity of quantity and quality. Thus in the
measureless the measure is still seen to meet only with itself.
111.] Instead of the more abstract factors, Being and Nothing, some
and other, &c., the Infinite, which is affirmation as a negation
of negation, now finds its factors in quality and quantity. These
(α) have in the first place passed over, quality into quantity, (§
98), and quantity into quality (§ 105), and thus are both shown up
as negations, (ß) But in their unity, that is, in measure, they are
originally distinct, and the one is only through the instrumentality of
the other. And (γ) after the immediacy of this unity has turned out to
be self-annulling, the unity is explicitly put as what it implicitly
is, simple relation-to-self, which contains in it being and all its
forms absorbed.--Being or immediacy, which by the negation of itself
is a mediation with self and a reference to self,--which consequently
is also a mediation which cancels itself into reference-to-self, or
immediacy,--is Essence.
The process of measure, instead of being only the wrong infinite of
an endless progression, in the shape of an ever-recurrent recoil
from quality to quantity, and from quantity to quality, is also
the true infinity of coincidence with self in another. In measure,
quality and quantity originally confront each other, like some and
other. But quality is implicitly quantity, and conversely quantity
is implicitly quality. In the process of measure, therefore, these
two pass into each other: each of them becomes what it already was
implicitly: and thus we get Being thrown into abeyance and absorbed,
with its several characteristics negatived. Such Being is Essence.
Measure is implicitly Essence; and its process consists in realising
what it is implicitly.--The ordinary consciousness conceives things
as being, and studies them in quality, quantity, and measure. These
immediate characteristics however soon show themselves to be not fixed
but transient; and Essence is the result of their dialectic. In the
sphere of Essence one category does not pass into another, but refers
to another merely. In Being, the form of reference is purely due to
our reflection on what takes place: but it is the special and proper
characteristic of Essence. In the sphere of Being, when somewhat
becomes another, the somewhat has vanished. Not so in Essence: here
there is no real other, but only diversity, reference of the one
to _its_ other. The transition of Essence is therefore at the same
time no transition: for in the passage of different into different,
the different does not vanish: the different terms remain in their
relation. When we speak of Being and Nought, Being is independent, so
is Nought. The case is otherwise with the Positive and the Negative.
No doubt these possess the characteristic of Being and Nought. But
the positive by itself has no sense; it is wholly in reference to the
negative. And it is the same with the negative. In the sphere of Being
the reference of one term to another is only implicit; in Essence on
the contrary it is explicit And this in general is the distinction
between the forms of Being and Essence: in Being everything is
immediate, in Essence everything is relative.
CHAPTER VIII.
SECOND SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.
THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE.
112.] The terms in Essence are always mere pairs of correlatives, and
not yet absolutely reflected in themselves: hence in essence the actual
unity of the notion is not realised, but only postulated by reflection.
Essence,--which is Being coming into mediation with itself through the
negativity of itself--is self-relatedness, only in so far as it is
relation to an Other,--this Other however coming to view at first not
as something which _is,_ but as postulated and hypothetised.--Being has
not vanished: but, firstly, Essence, as simple self-relation, is Being,
and secondly as regards its one-sided characteristic of immediacy,
Being is deposed to a mere negative, to a seeming or reflected
light--Essence accordingly is Being thus reflecting light into itself.
The Absolute is the Essence. This is the same definition as the
previous one that the Absolute is Being, in so far as Being likewise
is simple self-relation. But it is at the same time higher, because
Essence is Being that has gone into itself: that is to say, the
simple self-relation (in Being) is expressly put as negation of
the negative, as immanent self-mediation.--Unfortunately when the
Absolute is defined to be the Essence, the negativity which this
implies is often taken only to mean the withdrawal of all determinate
predicates. This negative action of withdrawal or abstraction thus
falls outside of the Essence--which is thus left as a mere result apart
from its premisses,--the _caput mortuum_ of abstraction. But as this
negativity, instead of being external to Being, is its own dialectic,
the truth of the latter, viz. Essence, will be Being as retired within
itself,--immanent Being. That reflection, or light thrown into itself,
constitutes the distinction between Essence and immediate Being, and is
the peculiar characteristic of Essence itself.
* * * * *
Any mention of Essence implies that we distinguish it from Being:
the latter is immediate, and, compared with the Essence, we look upon
it as mere seeming. But this seeming is not an utter nonentity and
nothing at all, but Being superseded and put by. The point of view
given by the Essence is in general the standpoint of 'Reflection.'
This word 'reflection' is originally applied, when a ray of light in
a straight line impinging upon the surface of a mirror is thrown back
from it. In this phenomenon we have two things,--first an immediate
fact which is, and secondly the deputed, derivated, or transmitted
phase of the same.--Something of this sort takes place when we reflect,
or think upon an object; for here we want to know the object, not in
its immediacy, but as derivative or mediated. The problem or aim of
philosophy is often represented as the ascertainment of the essence of
things: a phrase which only means that things instead of being left
in their immediacy, must be shown to be mediated by, or based upon,
something else. The immediate Being of things is thus conceived under
the image of a rind or curtain behind which the Essence lies hidden.
Everything, it is said, has an Essence; that is, things really are not
what they immediately show themselves. There is therefore something
more to be done than merely rove from one quality to another, and
merely to advance from qualitative to quantitative, and _vice versâ:_
there is a permanent in things, and that permanent is in the first
instance their Essence. With respect to other meanings and uses of the
category of Essence, we may note that in the German auxiliary verb
_'sein'_ the past tense is expressed by the term for Essence (_Wesen_):
we designate past being as _gewesen._ This anomaly of language implies
to some extent a correct perception of the relation between Being and
Essence. Essence we may certainly regard as past Being, remembering
however meanwhile that the past is not utterly denied, but only laid
aside and thus at the same time preserved. Thus, to say, Caesar _was_
in Gaul, only denies the immediacy of the event, but not his sojourn
in Gaul altogether. That sojourn is just what forms the import of
the proposition, in which however it is represented as over and
gone.--'_Wesen_' in ordinary life frequently means only a collection
or aggregate: Zeitungswesen (the Press), Postwesen (the Post-Office),
Steuerwesen (the Revenue). All that these terms mean is that the things
in question are not to be taken single, in their immediacy, but as a
complex, and then, perhaps, in addition, in their various bearings.
This usage of the term is not very different in its implication from
our own.
People also speak of _finite_ Essences, such as man. But the very term
Essence implies that we have made a step beyond finitude: and the title
as applied to man is so far inexact. It is often added that there is
a supreme Essence (Being): by which is meant God. On this two remarks
may be made. In the first place the phrase 'there is' suggests a
finite only: as when we say, there are so many planets, or, there are
plants of such a constitution and plants of such an other. In these
cases we are speaking of something which has other things beyond and
beside it. But God, the absolutely infinite, is not something outside
and beside whom there are other essences. All else outside f God, if
separated from Him, possesses no essentiality: in its I isolation it
becomes a mere show or seeming, without stay or essence of its own.
But, secondly, it is a poor way of talking to call God the _highest_
or supreme Essence. The category of quantity which the phrase employs
has its proper place within the compass of the finite. When we call
one mountain the highest on the earth, we have a vision of other
high mountains beside it. So too when we call any one the richest or
most learned in his country. But God, far from being _a_ Being, even
the highest, is _the_ Being. This definition, however, though such
a representation of God is an important and necessary stage in the
growth of the religious consciousness, does not by any means exhaust
the depth of the ordinary Christian idea of God. If we consider God as
the Essence only, and nothing more, we know Him only as the universal
and irresistible Power; in other words, as the Lord. Now the fear of
the Lord is, doubtless, the beginning,--but _only_ the beginning, of
wisdom. To look at God in this light, as the Lord, and the Lord alone,
is especially characteristic of Judaism and also of Mohammedanism.
The defect of these religions lies in their scant recognition of the
finite, which, be it as natural things or as finite phases of mind,
it is characteristic of the heathen and (as they also for that reason
are) polytheistic religions to maintain intact. Another not uncommon
assertion is that God, as the supreme Being, cannot be known. Such is
the view taken by modern 'enlightenment' and abstract understanding,
which is content to say, _Il y a un être suprême_: and there lets
the matter rest. To speak thus, and treat God merely as the supreme
other-world Being, implies that we look upon the world before us in
its immediacy as something permanent and positive, and forget that
true Being is just the superseding of all that is immediate. If God
be the abstract super-sensible Being, outside whom therefore lies all
difference and all specific character, He is only a bare name, a mere
_caput mortuum_ of abstracting understanding. The true knowledge of God
begins when we know that things, as they immediately are, have no truth.
In reference also to other subjects besides God the category of Essence
is often liable to an abstract use, by which, in the study of anything,
its Essence is held to be something unaffected by, and subsisting in
independence of, its definite phenomenal embodiment. Thus we say, for
example, of people, that the great thing is not what they do or how
they behave, but what they are. This is correct, if it means that a
man's conduct should be looked at, not in its immediacy, but only as
it is explained by his inner self, and as a revelation of that inner
self. Still it should be remembered that the only means by which the
Essence and the inner self can be verified, is their appearance in
outward reality; whereas the appeal which men make to the essential
life, as distinct from the material facts of conduct, is generally
prompted by a desire to assert their own subjectivity and to elude an
absolute and objective judgment.
113.] Self-relation in Essence is the form of Identity or of
reflection-into-self, which has here taken the place of the immediacy
of Being. They are both the same abstraction,--self-relation.
The unintelligence of sense, to take everything limited and finite for
Being, passes into the obstinacy of understanding, which views the
finite as self-identical, not inherently self-contradictory.
114.] This identity, as it has descended from Being, appears in the
first place only charged with the characteristics of Being, and
referred to Being as to something external. This external Being, if
taken in separation from the true Being (of Essence), is called the
Unessential. But that turns out a mistake. Because Essence is
Being-in-self, it is essential only to the extent that it has in itself
its negative, _e._ reference to another, or mediation. Consequently,
it has the unessential as its own proper seeming (reflection) in
itself. But in seeming or mediation there is distinction involved:
and since what is distinguished (as distinguished from the identity
out of which it arises, and in which it is not, or lies as seeming,)
receives itself the form of identity, the semblance is still in the
mode of Being, or of self-related immediacy. The sphere of Essence
thus turns out to be a still imperfect combination of immediacy and
mediation. In it every term is expressly invested with the character
of self-relatedness, while yet at the same time one is forced beyond
it. It has Being,--reflected being, a being in which another shows,
and which shows in another. And so it is also the sphere in which the
contradiction, still implicit in the sphere of Being, is made explicit.
As the one notion is the common principle underlying all logic, there
appear in the development of Essence the same attributes or terms as
in the development of Being, but in a reflex form. Instead of Being
and Nought we have now the forms of Positive and Negative; the former
at first as Identity corresponding to pure and uncontrasted Being, the
latter developed (showing in itself) as Difference. So also, we have
Becoming represented by the Ground of determinate Being: which itself,
when reflected upon the Ground, is Existence.
The theory of Essence is the most difficult branch of Logic. It
includes the categories of metaphysic and of the sciences in general.
These are products of reflective understanding, which, while it assumes
the differences to possess a footing of their own, and at the same
time also expressly affirms their relativity, still combines the two
statements, side by side, or one after the other, by an 'Also,' without
bringing these thoughts into one, or unifying them into the notion.
A.--ESSENCE AS GROUND OF EXISTENCE.
(a) _The pure principles or categories of Reflection._
(α) Identity.
115.] The Essence lights up _in itself_ or is mere reflection: and
therefore is only self-relation, not as immediate but as reflected. And
that reflex relation is self-Identity.
This Identity becomes an Identity in form only, or of the
understanding, if it be held hard and fast, quite aloof from
difference. Or, rather, abstraction is the imposition of this Identity
of form, the transformation of something inherently concrete into this
form of elementary simplicity. And this may be done in two ways. Either
we may neglect a part of the multiple features which are found in the
concrete thing (by what is called analysis) and select only one of
them; or, neglecting their variety, we may concentrate the multiple
characters into one.
If we associate Identity with the Absolute, making the Absolute the
subject of a proposition, we get: The Absolute is what is identical
with itself. However true this proposition may be, it is doubtful
whether it be meant in its truth: and therefore it is at least
imperfect in the expression. For it is left undecided, whether it means
the abstract Identity of understanding,--abstract, that is, because
contrasted with the other characteristics of Essence, or the Identity
which is inherently concrete. In the latter case, as will be seen,
true Identity is first discoverable in the Ground, and, with a higher
truth, in the Notion.--Even the word Absolute is often used to mean no
more than 'abstract.' Absolute space and absolute time, for example, is
another way of saying abstract space and abstract time.
When the principles of Essence are taken as essential principles of
thought they become predicates of a pre-supposed subject, which,
because they are essential, is 'Everything,' The propositions thus
arising have been stated as universal Laws of Thought. Thus the first
of them, the maxim of Identity, reads: Everything is identical with
itself, A=A: and, negatively, A cannot at the same time be A and not
A.--This maxim, instead of being a true law of thought, is nothing
but the law of abstract understanding. The propositional form itself
contradicts it: for a proposition always promises a distinction
between subject and predicate; while the present one does not fulfil
what its form requires. But the Law is particularly set aside by
the following so-called Laws of Thought, which make laws out of its
opposite.--It is asserted that the maxim of Identity, though it
cannot be proved, regulates the procedure of every consciousness,
and that experience shows it to be accepted as soon as its terms
are apprehended. To this alleged experience of the logic-books may
be opposed the universal experience that no mind thinks or forms
conceptions or speaks, in accordance with this law, and that no
existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. Utterances after the
fashion of this pretended law (A planet is--a planet; Magnetism
is--magnetism; Mind is--mind) are, as they deserve to be, reputed
silly. That is certainly matter of general experience. The logic which
seriously propounds such laws and the scholastic world in which alone
they are valid have long been discredited with practical common sense
as well as with the philosophy of reason.
* * * * * *
Identity is, in the first place, the repetition of what we had earlier
as Being, but as _become,_ through supersession of its character of
immediateness. It is therefore Being as Ideality.--It is important
to come to a proper understanding on the true meaning of Identity:
and, for that purpose, we must especially guard against taking it
as abstract Identity, to the exclusion of all Difference. That is
the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what alone
deserves the name of philosophy. Identity in its truth, as an Ideality
of what immediately is, is a high category for our religious modes
of mind as well as all other forms of thought and mental activity.
The true knowledge of God, it may be said, begins when we know Him as
identity,--as absolute identity. To know so much is to see that all
the power and glory of the world sinks into nothing in God's presence,
and subsists only as the reflection of His power and His glory. In
the same way, Identity, as self-consciousness, is what distinguishes
man from nature, particularly from the brutes which never reach the
point of comprehending themselves as 'I,' that is, pure self-contained
unity. So again, in connexion with thought, the main thing is not to
confuse the true Identity, which contains Being and its characteristics
ideally transfigured in it, with an abstract Identity, identity of bare
form. All the charges of narrowness, hardness, meaninglessness, which
are so often directed against thought from the quarter of feeling and
immediate perception, rest on the perverse assumption that thought
acts only as a faculty of abstract Identification. The Formal Logic
itself confirms this assumption by laying down the supreme law of
thought (so-called) which has been discussed above. If thinking were no
more than an abstract Identity, we could not but own it to be a most
futile and tedious business. No doubt the notion, and the idea too, are
identical with themselves: but identical only in so far as they at the
same time involve distinction.
(β) _Difference._
116.] Essence is mere Identity and reflection in itself only as it is
self-relating negativity, and in that way self-repulsion. It contains
therefore essentially the characteristic of Difference.
Other-being is here no longer qualitative, taking the shape of the
character or limit. It is now in Essence, in self-relating essence, and
therefore the negation is at the same time a relation,--is, in short,
Distinction, Relativity, Mediation.
To ask, 'How Identity comes to Difference,' assumes that Identity as
mere abstract Identity is something of itself, and Difference also
something else equally independent. This supposition renders an answer
to the question impossible. If Identity is viewed as diverse from
Difference, all that we have in this way is but Difference; and hence
we cannot demonstrate the advance to difference, because the person
who asks for the How of the progress thereby implies that for him
the starting-point is non-existent. The question then when put to
the test has obviously no meaning, and its proposer may be met with
the question what he means by Identity; whereupon we should soon see
that he attaches no idea to it at all, and that Identity is for him
an empty name. As we have seen, besides, Identity is undoubtedly a
negative,--not however an abstract empty Nought, but the negation of
Being and its characteristics. Being so, Identity is at the same time
self-relation, and, what is more, negative self-relation; in other
words, it draws a distinction between it and itself.
117.] Difference is, first of all, (1) immediate difference, _e.g._
Diversity or Variety. In Diversity the different things are each
individually what they are, and unaffected by the relation in which
they stand to each other. This relation is therefore external to them.
In consequence of the various things being thus indifferent to the
difference between them, it falls outside them into a third thing, the
agent of Comparison. This external difference, as an identity of the
objects related, is Likeness; as a non-identity of them, is Unlikeness.
The gap which understanding allows to divide these characteristics, is
so great, that although comparison has one and the same substratum for
likeness and unlikeness, which are explained to be different aspects
and points of view in it, still likeness by itself is the first of the
elements alone, viz. identity, and unlikeness by itself is difference.
Diversity has, like Identity, been transformed into a maxim:
'Everything is various or different': or,'There are no two things
completely like each other.' Here Everything is put under a predicate,
which is the reverse of the identity attributed to it in the first
maxim; and therefore under a law contradicting the first. However there
is an explanation. As the diversity is supposed due only to external
comparison, anything taken _per se_ is expected and understood always
to be identical with itself, so that the second law need not interfere
with the first. But, in that case, variety does not belong to the
something or everything in question: it constitutes no intrinsic
characteristic of the subject: and the second maxim on this showing
does not admit of being stated at all. If, on the other hand, the
something _itself_ is as the maxim says diverse, it must be in virtue
of its own proper character: but in this case the specific difference,
and not variety as such, is what is intended. And this is the meaning
of the maxim of Leibnitz.
When understanding sets itself to study Identity, it has already passed
beyond it, and is looking at Difference in the shape of bare Variety.
If we follow the so-called law of Identity, and say,--The sea is the
sea, The air is the air, The moon is the moon, these objects pass for
having no bearing on one another. What we have before us therefore is
not Identity, but Difference. We do not stop at this point however, or
regard things merely as different. We compare them one with another,
and thus discover the features of likeness and unlikeness. The work of
the finite sciences lies to a great extent in the application of these
categories, and the phrase 'scientific treatment' generally means no
more than the method which has for its aim comparison of the objects
under examination. This method has undoubtedly led to some important
results;--we may particularly mention the great advance of modern times
in the provinces of comparative anatomy and comparative linguistic.
But it is going too far to suppose that the comparative method can be
employed with equal success in all branches of knowledge. Nor--and this
must be emphasised--can mere comparison ever ultimately satisfy the
requirements of science. Its results are indeed indispensable, but they
are still labours only preliminary to truly intelligent cognition.
If it be the office of comparison to reduce existing differences to
Identity, the science, which most perfectly fulfils that end, is
mathematics. The reason of that is, that quantitative difference is
only the difference which is quite external. Thus, in geometry, a
triangle and a quadrangle, figures qualitatively different, have this
qualitative difference discounted by abstraction, and are equalised to
one another in magnitude. It follows from what has been formerly said
about the mere Identity of understanding that, as has also been pointed
out (§ 99, note), neither philosophy nor the empirical sciences need
envy this superiority of Mathematics.
The story is told that, when Leibnitz propounded the maxim of Variety,
the cavaliers and ladies of the court, as they walked round the garden,
made efforts to discover two leaves indistinguishable from each other,
in order to confute the law stated by the philosopher. Their device was
unquestionably a convenient method of dealing with metaphysics,--one
which has not ceased to be fashionable. All the same, as regards the
principle of Leibnitz, difference must be understood to mean not an
external and indifferent diversity merely, but difference essential.
Hence the very nature of things implies that they must be different.
118.] Likeness is an Identity only of those things which are not
the same, not identical with each other: and Unlikeness is a
relation of things unlike. The two therefore do not fall on different
aspects or points of view in the thing, without any mutual affinity:
but one throws light into the other. Variety thus comes to be reflexive
difference, or difference (distinction) implicit and essential,
determinate or specific difference.
* * * * * *
While things merely various show themselves unaffected by each other,
likeness and unlikeness on the contrary are a pair of characteristics
which are in completely reciprocal relation. The one of them cannot
be thought without the other. This advance from simple variety to
opposition appears in our common acts of thought, when we allow that
comparison has a meaning only upon the hypothesis of an existing
difference, and that on the other hand we can distinguish only on the
hypothesis of existing similarity.
Hence, if the problem be the discovery of a difference, we attribute
no great cleverness to the man who only distinguishes those objects,
of which the difference is palpable, _e.g._ a pen and a camel:
and similarly, it implies no very advanced faculty of comparison,
when the objects compared, _e.g._ a beech and an oak, a temple and
a church, are near akin. In the case of difference, in short, we
like to sec identity, and in the case of identity we like to see
difference. Within the range of the empirical sciences however, the
one of these two categories is often allowed to put the other out of
sight and mind. Thus the scientific problem at one time is to reduce
existing differences to identity; on another occasion, with equal
one-sidedness, to discover new differences. We see this especially in
physical science. There the problem consists, in the first place, in
the continual search for new 'elements,' new forces, new genera, and
species. Or, in another direction, it seeks to show that all bodies
hitherto believed to be simple are compound: and modern physicists and
chemists smile at the ancients, who were satisfied with four elements,
and these not simple. Secondly, and on the other hand, mere identity
is made the chief question. Thus electricity and chemical affinity
are regarded as the same, and even the organic processes of digestion
and assimilation are looked upon as a mere chemical operation. Modern
philosophy has often been nicknamed the Philosophy of Identity. But, as
was already remarked (§ 103, note), it is precisely philosophy, and in
particular speculative logic, which lays bare the nothingness of the
abstract, undifferentiated identity, known to understanding; though it
also undoubtedly urges its disciples not to rest at mere diversity, but
to ascertain the inner unity of all existence.
119.] Difference implicit is essential difference, the Positive
and the Negative: and that is this way. The Positive is the
identical self-relation in such a way as not to be the Negative, and
the Negative is the different by itself so as not to be the Positive.
Thus either has an existence of its own in proportion as it is not the
other. The one is made visible in the other, and is only in so far as
that other is. Essential difference is therefore Opposition; according
to which the different is not confronted by _any_ other but by _its_
other. That is, either of these two (Positive and Negative) is stamped
with a characteristic of its own only in its relation to the other: the
one is only reflected into itself as it is reflected into the other.
And so with the other. Either in this way is the other's _own_ other.
Difference implicit or essential gives the maxim, Everything is
essentially distinct; or, as it has also been expressed, Of two
opposite predicates the one only can be assigned to anything, and
there is no third possible. This maxim of Contrast or Opposition
most expressly controverts the maxim of Identity: the one says a
thing should be only self-relation, the other says that it must be
an opposite, a relation to its other. The native unintelligence of
abstraction betrays itself by setting in juxtaposition two contrary
maxims, like these, as laws, without even so much as comparing
them.--The Maxim of Excluded Middle is the maxim of the definite
understanding, which would fain avoid contradiction, but in so doing
falls into it. A must be either + A or - A, it says. It virtually
declares in these words a third A which is neither + nor--, and which
at the same time is yet invested with + and - characters. If + W mean
6 miles to the West, and - W mean 6 miles to the East, and if the +
and - cancel each other, the 6 miles of way or space remain what they
were with and without the contrast. Even the mere _plus_ and _minus_ of
number or abstract direction have, if we like, zero, for their third:
but it need not be denied that the empty contrast, which understanding
institutes between _plus_ and _minus,_ is not without its value in such
abstractions as number, direction, &c.
In the doctrine of contradictory concepts, the one notion is, say,
blue (for in this doctrine even the sensuous generalised image of a
colour is called a notion) and the other not-blue. This other then
would not be an affirmative, say, yellow, but would merely be kept at
the abstract negative.--That the Negative in its own nature is quite as
much Positive (see next §), is implied in saying that what is opposite
to another is _its_ other. The inanity of the opposition between what
are called contradictory notions is fully exhibited in what we may call
the grandiose formula of a general law, that Everything has the one and
not the other of _all_ predicates which are in such opposition. In this
way, mind is either white or not-white, yellow or not-yellow, &c, _ad
infinitum._
It was forgotten that Identity and Opposition are themselves opposed,
and the maxim of Opposition was taken even for that of Identity,
in the shape of the principle of Contradiction. A notion, which
possesses neither or both of two mutually contradictory marks, _e.g._
a quadrangular circle, is held to be logically false. Now though a
multangular circle and a rectilineal arc no less contradict this
maxim, geometers never hesitate to treat the circle as a polygon with
rectilineal sides. But anything like a circle (that is to say its mere
character or nominal definition) is still no notion. In the notion
of a circle, centre and circumference are equally essential: both
marks belong to it: and yet centre and circumference are opposite and
contradictory to each other.
The conception of Polarity, which is so dominant in physics, contains
by implication the more correct definition of Opposition. But physics
for its theory of the laws of thought adheres to the ordinary logic; it
might therefore well be horrified in case it should ever work out the
conception of Polarity, and get at the thoughts which are implied in it.
(1) With the positive we return to identity, but in its higher truth
as identical self-relation, and at the same time with the note that it
is not the negative. The negative _per se_ is the same as difference
itself. The identical as such is primarily the yet uncharacterised:
the positive on the other hand is what is self-identical, but with the
mark of antithesis to an other. And the negative is difference as such,
characterised as not identity. This is the difference of difference
within its own self.
Positive and negative are supposed to express an absolute difference.
The two however are at bottom the same: the name of either might be
transferred to the other. Thus, for example, debts and assets are not
two particular, self-subsisting species of property. What is negative
to the debtor, is positive to the creditor. A way to the east is also
a way to the west. Positive and negative are therefore intrinsically
conditioned by one another, and are only in relation to each other. The
north pole of the magnet cannot be without the south pole, and _vice
versâ._ If we cut a magnet in two, we have not a north pole in one
piece, and a south pole in the other. Similarly, in electricity, the
positive and the negative are not two diverse and independent fluids.
In opposition, the different is not confronted by any other, but by
_its_ other. Usually we regard different things as unaffected by each
other. Thus we say: I am a human being, and around me are air, water,
animals, and all sorts of things. Everything is thus put outside of
every other. But the aim of philosophy is to banish indifference, and
to ascertain the necessity of things. By that means the other is seen
to stand over against _its_ other. Thus, for example, inorganic nature
is not to be considered merely something else than organic nature, but
the necessary antithesis of it. Both are in essential relation to one
another; and the one of the two is, only in so far as it excludes the
other from it, and thus relates itself thereto. Nature in like manner
is not without mind, nor mind without nature. An important step has
been taken, when we cease in thinking to use phrases like: Of course
something else is also possible. While we so speak, we are still
tainted with contingency: and all true thinking, we have already said,
is a thinking of necessity.
In modern physical science the opposition, first observed to exist
in magnetism as polarity, has come to be regarded as a universal law
pervading the whole of nature. This would be a real scientific advance,
if care were at the same time taken not to let mere variety revert
without explanation, as a valid category, side by side with opposition.
Thus at one time the colours are regarded as in polar opposition to one
another, and called complementary colours: at another time they are
looked at in their indifferent and merely quantitative difference of
red, yellow, green, &c.
(2) Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the
maxim of abstract understanding) we should rather say: Everything is
opposite. Neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in the world of
mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'Either--or'
as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with
difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will then
lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and
what they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature, the acid is
implicitly at the same time the base: in other words, its only being
consists in its relation to its other. Hence also the acid is not
something that persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort
to realise what it potentially is. Contradiction is the very moving
principle of the world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction
is unthinkable. The only thing correct in that statement is that
contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself. But
contradiction, when cancelled, does not leave abstract identity; for
that is itself only one side of the contrariety. The proximate result
of opposition (when realised as contradiction) is the Ground, which
contains identity as well as difference superseded and deposed to
elements in the completer notion.
120.] Contrariety then has two forms. The Positive is the aforesaid
various (different) which is understood to be independent, and yet
at the same not to be unaffected by its relation to its other. The
Negative is to be, no less independently, negative self-relating,
self-subsistent, and yet at the same time as Negative must on every
point have this its self-relation, _i.e._ its Positive, only in the
other. Both Positive and Negative are therefore explicit contradiction;
both are potentially the same. Both are so actually also; since either
is the abrogation of the other and of itself. Thus they fall to the
Ground.--Or as is plain, the essential difference, as a difference, is
only the difference of it from itself, and thus contains the identical:
so that to essential and actual difference there belongs itself as
well as identity. As self-relating difference it is likewise virtually
enunciated as the self-identical. And the opposite is in general that
which includes the one and its other, itself and its opposite. The
immanence of essence thus defined is the Ground.
(γ) _The Ground._
121.] The Ground is the unity of identity and difference, the
truth of what difference and identity have turned out to be,--the
reflection-into-self, which is equally a reflection-into-an-other, and
_vice versâ._ It is essence put explicitly as a totality.
The maxim of the Ground runs thus: Everything has its Sufficient
Ground: that is, the true essentiality of any thing is not the
predication of it as identical with itself, or as different (various),
or merely positive, or merely negative, but as having its Being in
an other, which, being its self-same, is its essence. And to this
extent the essence is not abstract reflection into self, but into an
other. The Ground is the essence in its own inwardness; the essence is
intrinsically a ground; and it is a ground only when it is a ground of
somewhat, of an other.
We must be careful, when we say that the ground is the unity of
identity and difference, not to understand by this unity an abstract
identity. Otherwise we only change the name, while we still think the
identity (of understanding) already seen to be false. To avoid this
misconception we may say that the ground, besides being the unity,
is also the difference of identity and difference. In that case in
the ground, which promised at first to supersede contradiction, a new
contradiction seems to arise. It is however a contradiction which, so
far from persisting quietly in itself, is rather the expulsion of it
from itself. The ground is a ground only to the extent that it affords
ground: but the result which thus issued from the ground is only
itself. In this lies its formalism. The ground and what is grounded are
one and the same content: the difference between the two is the mere
difference of form which separates simple self-relation, on the one
hand, from mediation or derivativeness on the other. Inquiry into the
grounds of things goes with the point of view which, as already noted
(note to § 112), is adopted by Reflection. We wish, as it were, to see
the matter double, first in its immediacy, and secondly in its ground,
where it is no longer immediate. This is the plain meaning of the law
of sufficient ground, as it is called; it asserts that things should
essentially be viewed as mediated. The manner in which Formal Logic
establishes this law of thought, sets a bad example to other sciences.
Formal Logic asks these sciences not to accept their subject-matter as
it is immediately given; and yet herself lays down a law of thought
without deducing it,--in other words, without exhibiting its mediation.
With the same justice as the logician maintains our faculty of thought
to be so constituted that we must ask for the ground of everything,
might the physicist, when asked why a man who falls into water is
drowned, reply that man happens to be so organised that he cannot live
under water; or the jurist, when asked why a criminal is punished,
reply that civil society happens to be so constituted that crimes
cannot be left unpunished.
Yet even if logic be excused the duty of giving a ground for the law
of the sufficient ground, it might at least explain what is to be
understood by a ground. The common explanation, which describes the
ground as what has a consequence, seems at the first glance more lucid
and intelligible than the preceding definition in logical terms. If you
ask however what the consequence is, you are told that it is what has
a ground; and it becomes obvious that the explanation is intelligible
only because it assumes what in our case has been reached as the
termination of an antecedent movement of thought. And this is the
true business of logic: to show that those thoughts, which as usually
employed merely float before consciousness neither understood nor
demonstrated, are really grades in the self-determination of thought.
It is by this means that they are understood and demonstrated.
In common life, and it is the same in the finite sciences, this
reflective form is often employed as a key to the secret of the real
condition of the objects under investigation. So long as we deal with
what may be termed the household needs of knowledge, nothing can be
urged against this method of study. But it can never afford definitive
satisfaction, either in theory or practice. And the reason why it
fails is that the ground is yet without a definite content of its own;
I so that to regard anything as resting upon a ground merely gives
the formal difference of mediation in place of immediacy. We see an
electrical phenomenon, for example, and we ask for its ground (or
reason): we are told that electricity is the ground of this phenomenon.
What is this but the same content as we had immediately before us, only
translated into the form of inwardness?
The ground however is not merely simple self-identity, but also
different: hence various grounds may be alleged for the same sum
of fact. This variety of grounds, again, following the logic of
difference, culminates in opposition of grounds _pro_ and _contra._
In any action, such as a theft, there is a sum of fact in which
several aspects may be distinguished. The theft has violated the
rights of property: it has given the means of satisfying his wants to
the needy thief: possibly too the man, from whom the theft was made,
misused his property. The violation of property is unquestionably
the decisive point of view before which the others must give way:
but the bare law of the ground cannot settle that question. Usually
indeed the law is interpreted to speak of a sufficient ground, not
of any ground whatever: and it might be supposed therefore, in the
action referred to, that, although other points of view besides the
violation of property might be held as grounds, yet they would not be
sufficient grounds. But here comes a dilemma. If we use the phrase
'sufficient ground,' the epithet is either otiose, or of such a kind
as to carry us past the mere category of ground. The predicate is
otiose and tautological, if it only states the capability of giving a
ground or reason: for the ground is a ground, only in so far as it has
this capability. If a soldier runs away from battle to save his life,
his conduct is certainly a violation of duty: but it cannot be held
that the ground which led him so to act was insufficient, otherwise
he would have remained at his post. Besides, there is this also to
be said. On one hand any ground suffices: on the other no ground
suffices as mere ground; because, as already said, it is yet void of
a content objectively and intrinsically determined, and is therefore
not self-acting and productive. A content thus objectively and
intrinsically determined, and hence self-acting, will hereafter come
before us as the notion: and it is the notion which Leibnitz had in his
eye when he spoke of sufficient ground, and urged the study of things
under its point of view. His remarks were originally directed against
that merely mechanical method of conceiving things so much in vogue
even now; a method which he justly pronounces insufficient. We may
see an instance of this mechanical theory of investigation, when the
organic process of the circulation of the blood is traced back merely
to the contraction of the heart; or when certain theories of criminal
law explain the purpose of punishment to lie in deterring people from
crime, in rendering the criminal harmless, or in other extraneous
grounds of the same kind. It is unfair to Leibnitz to suppose that he
was content with anything so poor as this formal law of the ground. The
method of investigation which he inaugurated is the very reverse of a
formalism which acquiesces in mere grounds, where a full and concrete
knowledge is sought. Considerations to this effect led Leibnitz to
contrast _causae efficientes_ and _causae finales,_ and to insist in
the place of final causes as the conception to which the efficient were
to lead up. If we adopt this distinction, light, heat, and moisture
would be the _causae efficientes,_ not the _causa finalis_ of the
growth of plants: the _causa finalis_ is the notion of the plant itself.
To get no further than mere grounds, especially on questions of law and
morality, is the position and principle of the Sophists. Sophistry,
as we ordinarily conceive it, is a method of investigation which aims
at distorting what is just and true, and exhibiting things in a false
light. Such however is not the proper or primary tendency of Sophistry:
the standpoint of which is no other than that of 'Raisonnement.' The
Sophists came on the scene at a time when the Greeks had begun to grow
dissatisfied with mere authority and tradition and felt the need of
intellectual justification for what they were to accept as obligatory.
That desideratum the Sophists supplied by teaching their countrymen
to seek for the various points of view under which things may be
considered: which points of view are the same as grounds. But the
ground, as we have seen, has no essential and objective principles of
its own, and it is as easy to discover grounds for what is wrong and
immoral as for what is moral and right. Upon the observer therefore it
depends to decide what points are to have most weight. The decision in
such circumstances is prompted by his individual views and sentiments.
Thus the objective foundation of what ought to have been of absolute
and essential obligation, accepted by all, was undermined: and
Sophistry by this destructive action deservedly brought upon itself
the bad name previously mentioned. Socrates, as we all know, met the
Sophists at every point, not by a bare re-assertion of authority and
tradition against their argumentations, but by showing dialectically
how untenable the mere grounds were, and by vindicating the obligation
of justice and goodness,--by reinstating the universal or notion of the
will. In the present day such a method of argumentation is not quite
out of fashion. Nor is that the case only in the discussion of secular
matters. It occurs even in sermons, such as those where every possible
ground of gratitude to God is propounded. To such pleading Socrates
and Plato would not have scrupled to apply the name of Sophistry.
For Sophistry has nothing to do with what is taught:--that may very
possibly be true. Sophistry lies in the formal circumstance of teaching
it by grounds which are as available for attack as for defence. In a
time so rich in reflection and so devoted to _raisonnement_ as our
own, he must be a poor creature who cannot advance a good ground for
everything, even for what is worst and most depraved. Everything in the
world that has become corrupt has had good ground for its corruption.
An appeal to grounds at first makes the hearer think of beating a
retreat: but when experience has taught him the real state of these
matters, he closes his ears against them, and refuses to be imposed
upon any more.
122.] As it first comes, the chief feature of Essence is show in itself
and intermediation in itself. But when it has completed the circle
of intermediation, its unity with itself is explicitly put as the
self-annulling of difference, and therefore of intermediation. Once
more then we come back to immediacy or Being,--but Being in so far as
it is intermediated by annulling the intermediation. And that Being is
Existence.
The ground is not yet determined by objective principles of its
own, nor is it an end or final cause: hence it is not active, nor
productive. An Existence only _proceeds from_ the ground. The
determinate ground is therefore a formal matter: that is to say, any
point will do, so long as it is expressly put as self-relation, as
affirmation, in correlation with the immediate existence depending on
it. If it be a ground at all, it is a good ground: for the term 'good'
is employed abstractly as equivalent to affirmative; and any point (or
feature) is good which can in any way be enunciated as confessedly
affirmative. So it happens that a ground can be found and adduced for
everything: and a good ground (for example, a good motive for action)
may effect something or may not, it may have a consequence or it may
not. It becomes a motive (strictly so called) and effects something,
_e.g._ through its reception into a will; there and there only it
becomes active and is made a cause.
(b) _Existence._
123.] Existence is the immediate unity of reflection-into-self and
reflection-into-another. It follows from this that existence is the
indefinite multitude of existents as reflected-into-themselves, which
at the same time equally throw light upon one another,--which, in
short, are co-relative, and form a world of reciprocal dependence and
of infinite interconnexion between grounds and consequents. The grounds
are themselves existences: and the existents in like manner are in many
directions grounds as well as consequents.
The phrase 'Existence' (derived from _existere_) suggests the fact of
having proceeded from something. Existence is Being which has proceeded
from the ground, and been reinstated by annulling its intermediation.
The Essence, as Being set aside and absorbed, originally came
before us as shining or showing in self, and the categories of this
reflection are identity, difference and ground. The last is the unity
of identity and difference; and because it unifies them it has at the
same time to distinguish itself from itself. But that which is in
this way distinguished from the ground is as little mere difference,
as the ground itself is abstract sameness. The ground works its
own suspension: and when suspended, the result of its negation is
existence. Having issued from the ground, existence contains the ground
in it 'the ground does not remain, as it were, behind existence, but by
its very nature supersedes itself and translates itself into existence.
This is exemplified even in our ordinary mode of thinking, when we
look upon the ground of a thing, not as something abstractly inward,
but as itself also an existent. For example, the lightning-flash
which has set a house on fire would be considered the ground of the
conflagration: or the manners of a nation and the condition of its
life would be regarded as the ground of its constitution. Such indeed
is the ordinary aspect in which the existent world originally appears
to reflection,--an indefinite crowd of things existent, which being
simultaneously reflected on themselves and on one another are related
reciprocally as ground and consequence. In this motley play of the
world, if we may so call the sum of existents, there is nowhere a
firm footing to be found: everything bears an aspect of relativity,
conditioned by and conditioning something else. The reflective
understanding makes it its business to elicit and trace these
connexions running out in every direction; but the question touching an
ultimate design is so far left unanswered, and therefore the craving of
the reason after knowledge passes with the further development of the
logical Idea beyond this position of mere relativity.
124.] The reflection-on-another of the existent is however inseparable
from the reflection-on-self: the ground is their unity, from which
existence has issued. The existent therefore includes relativity, and
has on its own part its multiple interconnexions with other existents:
it is reflected on itself as its ground. The existent is, when so
described, a Thing.
The 'thing-by-itself' (or thing in the abstract), so famous in the
philosophy of Kant, shows itself here in its genesis. It is seen to be
the abstract reflection-on-self, which is clung to, to the exclusion of
reflection-on-other-things and of all predication of difference. The
thing-by-itself therefore is the empty substratum for these predicates
of relation.
If to know means to comprehend an object in its concrete character,
then the thing-by-itself, which is nothing but the quite abstract
and indeterminate thing in general, must certainly be as unknowable
as it is alleged to be. With as much reason however as we speak
of the thing-by-itself, we might speak of quality-by-itself or
quantity-by-itself, and of any other category. The expression would
then serve to signify that these categories are taken in their abstract
immediacy, apart from their development and inward character. It is
no better than a whim of the understanding, therefore, if we attach
the qualificatory 'in or by-itself' to the _thing_ only. But this
'in or by-itself' is also applied to the facts of the mental as well
as the natural world: as we speak of electricity or of a plant in
itself, so we speak of man or the state in itself. By this 'in-itself'
in these objects we are meant to understand what they strictly and
properly are. This usage is liable to the same criticism as the
phrase 'thing-in-itself.' For if we stick to the mere 'in-itself' of
an object, we apprehend it not in its truth, but in the inadequate
form of mere abstraction. Thus the man, by or in himself, is the
child. And what the child has to do is to rise out of this abstract
and undeveloped 'in-himself,' and become 'for himself what he is at
first only 'in-himself,' a free and reasonable being. Similarly, the
state-in-itself is the yet immature and patriarchal state, where the
various political functions, latent in the notion of the state, have
not received the full logical constitution which the logic of political
principles demands. In the same sense, the germ may be called the
plant-in-itself. These examples may show the mistake of supposing
that the 'thing-in-itself' or the 'in-itself' of things is something
inaccessible to our cognition. All things are originally in-themselves,
but that is not the end of the matter. As the germ, being the
plant-in-itself, means self-development, so the thing in general passes
beyond its in-itself, (the abstract reflection on self,) to manifest
itself further as a reflection on other things. It is in this sense
that it has properties.
(c) _The Thing._
125.] (α) The Thing is the totality--the development in explicit
unity--of the categories of the ground and of existence. On the side
of one of its factors, viz. reflection-on-other-things, it has in it
the differences, in virtue of which it is a characterised and concrete
thing. These characteristics are different from one another; they have
their reflection-into-self not on their own part, but on the part of
the thing. They are Properties of the thing: and their relation to the
thing is expressed by the word 'have.'
As a term of relation, 'to have' takes the place of 'to be.' True,
somewhat has qualities on its part too: but this transference of
'Having' into the sphere of Being is inexact, because the character as
quality is directly one with the somewhat, and the somewhat ceases to
be when it loses its quality. But the thing is reflection-into-self:
for it is an identity which is also distinct from the difference,
_i.e._ from its attributes.--In many languages 'have' is employed
to denote past time. And with reason: for the past is absorbed or
suspended being, and the mind is its reflection-into-self; in the mind
only it continues to subsist,--the mind however distinguishing from
itself this being in it which has been absorbed or suspended.
* * * * *
In the Thing all the characteristics of reflection recur as existent.
Thus the thing, in its initial aspect, as the thing-by-itself, is the
self-same or identical. But identity, it was proved, is not found
without difference: so the properties, which the thing has, are the
existent difference in the form of diversity. In the case of diversity
or variety each diverse member exhibited an indifference to every
other, and they had no other relation to each other, save what was
given by a comparison external to them. But now in the thing we have a
bond which keeps the various properties in union. Property, besides,
should not be confused with quality. No doubt, we also say, a thing
has qualities. But the phraseology is a misplaced one: 'having' hints
at an independence, foreign to the 'Somewhat,' which is still directly
identical with its quality. Somewhat is what it is only by its
quality: whereas, though the thing indeed exists only as it has its
properties, it is not confined to this or that definite property, and
can therefore lose it, without ceasing to be what it is.
126.] (ß) Even in the ground, however, the reflection-on-something-else
is directly convertible with reflection-on-self. And hence the
properties are not merely different from each other; they are also
self-identical, independent, and relieved from their attachment to the
thing. Still, as they are the characters of the thing distinguished
from one another (as reflected-into-self), they are not themselves
things, if things be concrete; but only existences reflected
into themselves as abstract characters. They are what are called
Matters.
Nor is the name 'things' given to Matters, such as magnetic and
electric matters. They are qualities proper, a reflected Being,--one
with their Being,--they are the character that has reached immediacy,
existence: they are 'entities.'
To elevate the properties, which the Thing has, to the independent
position of matters, or materials of which it consists, is a proceeding
based upon the notion of a Thing: and for that reason is also found
in experience. Thought and experience however alike protest against
concluding from the fact that certain properties of a thing, such
as colour, or smell, may be represented as particular colouring or
odorific matters, that we are then at the end of the inquiry, and
that nothing more is needed to penetrate to the true secret of things
than a disintegration of them into their component materials. This
disintegration into independent matters is properly restricted to
inorganic nature only. The chemist is in the right therefore when,
for example, he analyses common salt or gypsum into its elements, and
finds that the former consists of muriatic acid and soda, the latter of
sulphuric acid and calcium. So too the geologist does well to regard
granite as a compound of quartz, felspar, and mica. These matters,
again, of which the thing consists, are themselves partly things,
which in that way may be once more reduced to more abstract matters.
Sulphuric acid, for example, is a compound of sulphur and oxygen. Such
matters or bodies can as a matter of fact be exhibited as subsisting by
themselves: but frequently we find other properties of things, entirely
wanting this self-subsistence, also regarded as particular matters.
Thus we hear caloric, and electrical or magnetic matters spoken of.
Such matters are at the best figments of understanding. And we see
here the usual procedure of the abstract reflection of understanding.
Capriciously adopting single categories, whose value entirely depends
on their place in the gradual evolution of the logical idea, it employs
them in the pretended interests of explanation, but in the face of
plain, unprejudiced perception and experience, so as to trace back to
them every object investigated. Nor is this all. The theory, which
makes things consist of independent matters, is frequently applied in a
region where it has neither meaning nor force. For within the limits of
nature even, wherever there is organic life, this category is obviously
inadequate. An animal may be said to consist of bones, muscles, nerves,
&c.: but evidently we are here using the term 'consist' in a very
different sense from its use when we spoke of the piece of granite as
consisting of the above-mentioned elements. The elements of granite are
utterly indifferent to their combination: they could subsist as well
without it. The different parts and members of an organic body on the
contrary subsist only in their union: they cease to exist as such, when
they are separated from each other.
127.] Thus Matter is the mere abstract or indeterminate
reflection-into-something-else, or reflection-into-self at the same
time as determinate; it is consequently Thinghood which then and there
is,--the subsistence of the thing. By this means the thing has on the
part of the matters its reflection-into-self (the reverse of § 125);
it subsists not on its own part, but consists of the matters, and is
only a superficial association between them, an external combination of
them.
128.] (γ) Matter, being the immediate unity of existence with itself,
is also indifferent towards specific character. Hence the numerous
diverse matters coalesce into the one Matter, or into existence
under the reflective characteristic of identity. In contrast to this
one Matter these distinct properties and their external relation which
they have to one another in the thing, constitute the _Form_,--the
reflective category of difference, but a difference which exists and is
a totality.
This one featureless Matter is also the same as the Thing-by-itself
was: only the latter is intrinsically quite abstract, while the former
essentially implies relation to something else, and in the first place
to the Form.
* * * * *
The various matters of which the thing consists are potentially the
same as one another. Thus we get one Matter in general to which the
difference is expressly attached externally and as a bare form. This
theory which holds things all round to have one and the same matter at
bottom, and merely to differ externally in respect of form, is much in
vogue with the reflective understanding. Matter in that case counts for
naturally indeterminate, but susceptible of any determination; while at
the same time it is perfectly permanent, and continues the same amid
all change and alteration. And in finite things at least this disregard
of matter for any determinate form is certainly exhibited. For example,
it matters not to a block of marble, whether it receive the form of
this or that statue or even the form of a pillar. Be it noted however
that a block of marble can disregard form only relatively, that is, in
reference to the sculptor: it is by no means purely formless. And so
the mineralogist considers the relatively formless marble as a special
formation of rock, differing from other equally special formations,
such as sandstone or porphyry. Therefore we say it is an abstraction
of the understanding which isolates matter into a certain natural
formlessness. For properly speaking the thought of matter includes the
principle of form throughout, and no formless matter therefore appears
anywhere even in experience as existing. Still the conception of
matter as original and pre-existent, and as naturally formless, is a
very ancient one; it meets us even among the Greeks, at first in the
mythical shape of Chaos, which is supposed to represent the unformed
substratum of the existing world. Such a conception must of necessity
tend to make God not the Creator of the world, but a mere world-moulder
or demiurge. A deeper insight into nature reveals God as creating the
world out of nothing. And that teaches two things. On the one hand it
enunciates that matter, as such, has no independent subsistence, and on
the other that the form does not supervene upon matter from without,
but as a totality involves the principle of matter in itself. This free
and infinite form will hereafter come before us as the notion.
129.] Thus the Thing suffers a disruption into Matter and Form. Each
of these is the totality of thinghood and subsists for itself. But
Matter, which is meant to be the positive and indeterminate existence,
contains, as an existence, reflection-on-another, every whit as
much as it contains self-enclosed being. Accordingly as uniting
these characteristics, it is itself the totality of Form. But Form,
being a complete whole of characteristics, _ipso facto_ involves
reflection-into-self; in other words, as self-relating Form it has the
very function attributed to Matter. Both are at bottom the same. Invest
them with this unity, and you have the relation of Matter and Form,
which are also no less distinct.
130.] The Thing, being this totality, is a contradiction. On the side
of its negative unity it is Form in which Matter is determined and
deposed to the rank of properties (§ 125). At the same time it consists
of Matters, which in the reflection-of-the-thing-into-itself are as
much independent as they are at the same time negatived. Thus the thing
is the essential existence, in such a way as to be an existence that
suspends or absorbs itself in itself. In other words, the thing is an
Appearance or Phenomenon.
The negation of the several matters, which is insisted on in the
thing no less than their independent existence, occurs in Physics as
_porosity._ Each of the several matters (colouring matter, odorific
matter, and if we believe some people, even sound-matter,--not
excluding caloric, electric matter, &c:) is also negated: and in this
negation of theirs, or as interpenetrating their pores, we find the
numerous other independent matters, which, being similarly porous,
make room in turn for the existence of the rest. Pores are not
empirical facts; they are figments of the understanding, which uses
them to represent the element of negation in independent matters.
The further working-out of the contradictions is concealed by the
nebulous imbroglio in which all matters are independent and all no less
negated in each other.--If the faculties or activities are similarly
hypostatised in the mind, their living unity similarly turns to the
imbroglio of an action of the one on the others.
These pores (meaning thereby not the pores in an organic body, such as
the pores of wood or of the skin, but those in the so-called 'matters,'
such as colouring matter, caloric, or metals, crystals, &c.) cannot be
verified by observation. In the same way matter itself,--furthermore
form which is separated from matter,--whether that be the thing as
consisting of matters, or the view that the thing itself subsists and
only has proper ties,--is all a product of the reflective understanding
which, while it observes and professes to record only what it observes,
is rather creating a metaphysic, bristling with contradictions of which
it is unconscious.
B.--APPEARANCE.
131.] The Essence must appear or shine forth. Its shining or reflection
in it is the suspension and translation of it to immediacy, which,
whilst as reflection-on-self it is matter or subsistence, is also form,
reflection-on-something-else, a subsistence which sets itself aside. To
show or shine is the characteristic by which essence is distinguished
from being,--by which it is essence; and it is this show which, when
it is developed, shows itself, and is Appearance. Essence accordingly
is not something beyond or behind appearance, but just because it
is the essence which exists--the existence is Appearance
(Forth-shining).
* * * * *
Existence stated explicitly in its contradiction is Appearance. But
appearance (forth-shining) is not to be confused with a mere show
(shining). Show is the proximate truth of Being or immediacy. The
immediate, instead of being, as we suppose, something independent,
resting on its own self, is a mere show, and as such it is packed or
summed up under the simplicity of the immanent essence. The essence
is, in the first place, the sum total of the showing itself, shining
in itself (inwardly); but, far from abiding in this inwardness, it
comes as a ground forward into existence; and this existence being
grounded not in itself, but on something else, is just appearance.
In our imagination we ordinarily combine with the term appearance
or phenomenon the conception of an indefinite congeries of things
existing, the being of which is purely relative, and which consequently
do not rest on a foundation of their own, but are esteemed only as
passing stages. But in this conception it is no less implied that
essence does not linger behind or beyond appearance. Rather it is, we
may say, the Infinite kindness which lets its own show freely issue
into immediacy, and graciously allows it the joy of existence. The
appearance which is thus created does not stand on its own feet, and
has its being not in itself but in something else. God who is the
essence, when He lends existence to the passing stages of His own show
in Himself, may be described as the goodness that creates a world: but
He is also the power above it, and the righteousness, which manifests
the merely phenomenal character of the content of this existing world,
whenever it tries to exist in independence.
Appearance is in every way a very important grade of the logical idea.
It may be said to be the distinction of philosophy from ordinary
consciousness that it sees the merely phenomenal character of what the
latter supposes to have a self-subsistent being. The significance of
appearance however must be properly grasped, or mistakes will arise.
To say that anything is a _mere_ appearance may be misinterpreted to
mean that, as compared with what is merely phenomenal, there is greater
truth in the immediate, in that which _is._ Now in strict fact, the
case is precisely the reverse. Appearance is higher than mere Being,--a
richer category because it holds in combination the two elements of
reflection-into-self and reflection-into-another: whereas Being (or
immediacy) still mere relationlessness and apparently rests upon itself
alone. Still, to say that anything is _only_ an appearance suggests a
real flaw, which consists in this, that Appearance is still divided
against itself and without intrinsic stability. Beyond and above mere
appearance comes in the first place Actuality, the third grade of
Essence, of which we shall afterwards speak.
In the history of Modern Philosophy, Kant has the merit of first
rehabilitating this distinction between the common and the philosophic
modes of thought. He stopped half-way however, when he attached to
Appearance a subjective meaning only, and put the abstract essence
immovable outside it as the thing-in-itself beyond the reach of our
cognition. For it is the very nature of the world of immediate objects
to be appearance only. Knowing it to be so, we know at the same time
the essence, which, far from staying behind or beyond the appearance,
rather manifests its own essentiality by deposing the world to a mere
appearance. One can hardly quarrel with the plain man who, in his
desire for totality, cannot acquiesce in the doctrine of subjective
idealism, that we are solely concerned with phenomena. The plain man,
however, in his desire to save the objectivity of knowledge, may very
naturally return to abstract immediacy, and maintain that immediacy
to be true and actual. In a little work published under the title,
_A Report, clear as day, to the larger Public touching the proper
nature of the Latest Philosophy: an Attempt to force the reader to
understand,'_ Fichte examined the opposition between subjective
idealism and immediate consciousness in a popular form, under the shape
of a dialogue between the author and the reader, and tried hard to
prove that the subjective idealist's point of view was right. In this
dialogue the reader complains to the author that he has completely
failed to place himself in the idealist's position, and is inconsolable
at the thought that things around him are no real things but mere
appearances. The affliction of the reader can scarcely be blamed when
he is expected to consider himself hemmed in by an impervious circle
of purely subjective conceptions. Apart from this subjective view of
Appearance, however, we have all reason to rejoice that the things
which environ us are appearances and not steadfast and independent
existences; since in that case we should soon perish of hunger, both
bodily and mental.
(a) _The World of Appearance._
132.] The Apparent or Phenomenal exists in such a way, that its
subsistence is _ipso facto_ thrown into abeyance or suspended and
is only one stage in the form itself. The form embraces in it the
matter or subsistence as one of its characteristics. In this way
the phenomenal has its ground in this (form) as its essence, its
reflection-into-self in contrast with its immediacy, but, in so doing,
has it only in another aspect of the form. This ground of its is no
less phenomenal than itself, and the phenomenon accordingly goes on to
an endless mediation of subsistence by means of form, and thus equally
by non-subsistence. This endless inter-mediation is at the same time
a unity of self-relation; and existence is developed into a totality,
into a world of phenomena,--of reflected finitude.
(b) _Content and Form._
133.] Outside one another as the phenomena in this phenomenal
world are, they form a totality, and are wholly contained in their
self-relatedness. In this way the self-relation of the phenomenon is
completely specified, it has the Form in itself: and because it
is in this identity, has it as essential subsistence. So it comes about
that the form is Content: and in its mature phase is the Law
of the Phenomenon. When the form, on the contrary, is not reflected
into self, it is equivalent to the negative of the phenomenon, to
the non-independent and changeable: and that sort of form is the
indifferent or External Form.
The essential point to keep in mind about the opposition of Form and
Content is that the content is not formless, but has the form in its
own self, quite as much as the form is external to it. There is thus
a doubling of form. At one time it is reflected into itself; and then
is identical with the content. At another time it is not reflected
into itself, and then is the external existence, which does not at
all affect the content. We are here in presence, implicitly, of the
absolute correlation of content and form: viz. their reciprocal
revulsion, so that content is nothing but the revulsion of form into
content, and form nothing but the revulsion of content into form. This
mutual revulsion is one of the most important laws of thought. But it
is not explicitly brought out before the Relations of Substance and
Causality.
Form and content are a pair of terms frequently employed by the
reflective understanding, especially with a habit of looking on the
content as the essential and independent, the form on the contrary as
the unessential and dependent. Against this it is to be noted that both
are in fact equally essential; and that, while a formless _content_ can
be as little found as a formless _matter,_ the two (content and matter)
are distinguished by this circumstance, that matter, though implicitly
not without form, still in its existence manifests a disregard of form,
whereas the content, as such, is what it is only because the matured
form is included in it. Still the form comes before us sometimes as
an existence indifferent and external to content, and does so for
the reason that the whole range of Appearance still suffers from
externality. In a book, for instance, it certainly has no bearing upon
the content, whether it be written or printed, bound in paper or in
leather. That however does not in the least imply that apart from such
an indifferent and external form, the content of the book is itself
formless. There are undoubtedly books enough which even in reference
to their content may well be styled formless: but want of form in this
case is the same as bad form, and means the defect of the right form,
not the absence of all form whatever. So far is this right form from
being unaffected by the content that it is rather the content itself. A
work of art that wants the right form is for that very reason no right
or true work of art: and it is a bad way of excusing an artist, to say
that the content of his works is good and even excellent, though they
want the right form. Real works of art are those where content and form
exhibit a thorough identity. The content of the Iliad, it may be said,
is the Trojan war, and especially the wrath of Achilles. In that we
have everything, and yet very little after all; for the Iliad is made
an Iliad by the poetic form, in which that content is moulded. The
content of Romeo and Juliet may similarly be said to be the ruin of two
lovers through the discord between their families: but something more
is needed to make Shakespeare's immortal tragedy.
In reference to the relation of form and content in the field of
science, we should recollect the difference between philosophy and
the rest of the sciences. The latter are finite, because their mode
of thought, as a merely formal act, derives its content from without.
Their content therefore is not known as moulded from within through
the thoughts which lie at the ground of it, and form and content do
not thoroughly interpenetrate each other. This partition disappears in
philosophy, and thus justifies its title of infinite knowledge. Yet
even philosophic thought is often held to be a merely formal act; and
that logic, which confessedly deals only with thoughts _quâ_ thoughts,
is merely formal, is especially a foregone conclusion. And if content
means no more than what is palpable and obvious to the senses, all
philosophy and logic in particular must be at once acknowledged to
be void of content, that is to say, of content perceptible to the
senses. Even ordinary forms of thought however, and the common usage of
language, do not in the least restrict the appellation of content to
what is perceived by the senses, or to what has a being in place and
time. A book without content is, as every one knows, not a book with
empty leaves, but one of which the content is as good as none. We shall
find as the last result on closer analysis, that by what is called
content an educated mind means nothing but the presence and power of
thought. But this is to admit that thoughts are not empty forms without
affinity to their content, and that in other spheres as well as in art
the truth and the sterling value of the content essentially depend on
the content showing itself identical with the form.
134.] But immediate existence is a character of the subsistence itself
as well as of the form: it is consequently external to the character of
the content; but in an equal degree this externality, which the content
has through the factor of its subsistence, is essential to it. When
thus explicitly stated, the phenomenon is relativity or correlation:
where one and the same thing, viz. the content or the developed
form, is seen as the externality and antithesis of independent
existences, and as their reduction to a relation of identity, in which
identification alone the two things distinguished are what they are.
(c) _Relation or Correlation._
135.] (α) The immediate relation is that of the Whole and the
Parts. The content is the whole, and consists of the parts (the
form), its counterpart. The parts are diverse one from another. It is
they that possess independent being. But they are parts, only when they
are identified by being related to one another; or, in so far as they
make up the whole, when taken together. But this 'Together' is the
counterpart and negation of the part.
Essential correlation is the specific and completely universal
phase in which things appear. Everything that exists stands in
correlation, and this correlation is the veritable nature of every
existence. The existent thing in this way has no being of its own, but
only in something else: in this other however it is self-relation; and
correlation is the unity of the self-relation and relation-to-others.
The relation of the whole and the parts is untrue to this extent, that
the notion and the reality of the relation are not in harmony. The
notion of the whole is to contain parts: but if the whole is taken
and made what its notion implies, _i.e._ if it is divided, it at once
ceases to be a whole. Things there are, no doubt, which correspond
to this relation: but for that very reason they are low and untrue
existences. We must remember however what 'untrue' signifies. When
it occurs in a philosophical discussion, the term 'untrue' does not
signify that the thing to which it is applied is non-existent. A bad
state or a sickly body may exist all the same; but these things are
untrue, because their notion and their reality are out of harmony.
The relation of whole and parts, being the immediate relation, comes
easy to reflective understanding; and for that reason it often
satisfies when the question really turns on profounder ties. The limbs
and organs, for instance, of an organic body are not merely parts of
it: it is only in their unity that they are what they are, and they
are unquestionably affected by that unity, as they also in turn affect
it. These limbs and organs become mere parts, only when they pass under
the hands of the anatomist, whose occupation, be it remembered, is not
with the living body but with the corpse. Not that such analysis is
illegitimate: we only mean that the external and mechanical relation of
whole and parts is not sufficient for us, if we want to study organic
life in its truth. And if this be so in organic life, it is the case
to a much greater extent when we apply this relation to the mind and
the formations of the spiritual world. Psychologists may not expressly
speak of parts of the soul or mind, but the mode in which this
subject is treated by the analytic understanding is largely founded
on the analogy of this finite relation. At least that is so, when the
different forms of mental activity are enumerated and described merely
in their isolation one after another, as so-called special powers and
faculties.
136.] (β) The one-and-same of this correlation (the self-relation
found in it) is thus immediately a negative self-relation. The
correlation is in short the mediating process whereby one and the
same is first unaffected towards difference, and secondly is the
negative self-relation, which repels itself as reflection-into-self to
difference, and invests itself (as reflection-into-something-else) with
existence, whilst it conversely leads back this reflection-into-other
to self-relation and indifference. This gives the correlation of
Force and its Expression.
The relationship of whole and part is the immediate and therefore
unintelligent (mechanical) relation,--a revulsion of self-identity
into mere variety. Thus we pass from the whole to the parts, and from
the parts to the whole: in the one we forget its opposition to the
other, while each on its own account, at one time the whole, at another
the parts, is taken to be an independent existence. In other words,
when the parts are declared to subsist in the whole, and the whole
to consist of the parts, we have either member of the relation at
different times taken to be permanently subsistent, while the other is
non-essential. In its superficial form the mechanical nexus consists in
the parts being independent of each other and of the whole.
This relation may be adopted for the progression _ad infinitum,_
in the case of the divisibility of matter: and then it becomes an
unintelligent alternation with the two sides. A thing at one time is
taken as a whole: then we go on to specify the parts: this specifying
is forgotten, and what was a part is regarded as a whole: then the
specifying of the part comes up again, and so on for ever. But if this
infinity be taken as the negative which it is, it is the _negative_
self-relating element in the correlation,--Force, the self-identical
whole, or immanency; which yet supersedes this immanency and gives
itself expression;--and conversely the expression which vanishes and
returns into Force.
Force, notwithstanding this infinity, is also finite: for the content,
or the one and the same of the Force and its out-putting, is this
identity at first only for the observer: the two sides of the relation
are not yet, each on its own account, the concrete identity of that
one and same, not yet the totality. For one another they are therefore
different, and the relationship is a finite one. Force consequently
requires solicitation from without: it works blindly: and on account of
this defectiveness of form, the content is also limited and accidental.
It is not yet genuinely identical with the form: not yet is it _as_ a
notion and an end; that is to say, it is not intrinsically and actually
determinate. This difference is most vital, but not easy to apprehend:
it will assume a clearer formulation when we reach Design. If it be
overlooked, it leads to the confusion of conceiving God as Force, a
confusion from which Herder's God especially suffers.
It is often said that the nature of Force itself is unknown and only
its manifestation apprehended. But, in the first place, it may be
replied, every article in the import of Force is the same as what
is specified in the Exertion: and the explanation of a phenomenon
by a Force is to that extent a mere tautology. What is supposed to
remain unknown, therefore, is really nothing but the empty form of
reflection-into-self, by which alone the Force is distinguished from
the Exertion,--and that form too is something familiar. It is a form
that does not make the slightest addition to the content and to the
law, which have to be discovered from the phenomenon alone. Another
assurance always given is that to speak of forces implies no theory as
to their nature: and that being so, it is impossible to see why the
form of Force has been introduced into the sciences at all. In the
second place the nature of Force is undoubtedly unknown: we are still
without any necessity binding and connecting its content together in
itself, as we are without necessity in the content, in so far as it is
expressly limited and hence has its character by means of another thing
outside it.
(1) Compared with the immediate relation of whole and parts, the
relation between force and its putting-forth may be considered
infinite. In it that identity of the two sides is realised, which in
the former relation only existed for the observer. The whole, though
we can see that it consists of parts, ceases to be a whole when it
is divided: whereas force is only shown to be force when it exerts
itself, and in its exercise only comes back to itself. The exercise is
only force once more. Yet, on further examination even this relation
will appear finite, and finite in virtue of this mediation: just
as, conversely, the relation of whole and parts is obviously finite
in virtue of its immediacy. The first and simplest evidence for the
finitude of the mediated relation of force and its exercise is, that
each and every force is conditioned and requires something else than
itself for its subsistence. For instance, a special vehicle of magnetic
force, as is well known, is iron, the other properties of which, such
as its colour, specific weight, or relation to acids, are independent
of this connexion with magnetism. The same thing is seen in all other
forces, which from one end to the other are found to be conditioned
and mediated by something else than themselves. Another proof of
the finite nature of force is that it requires solicitation before
it can put itself forth. That through which the force is solicited,
is itself another exertion of force, which cannot put itself forth
without similar solicitation. This brings us either to a repetition of
the infinite progression, or to a reciprocity of soliciting and being
solicited. In either case we have no absolute beginning of motion.
Force is not as yet, like the final cause, inherently self-determining:
the content is given to it as determined, and force, when it exerts
itself, is, according to the phrase, blind in its working. That phrase
implies the distinction between abstract force-manifestation and
teleological action.
(2) The oft-repeated statement, that the exercise of the force and
not the force itself admits of being known, must be rejected as
groundless. It is the very essence of force to manifest itself, and
thus in the totality of manifestation, conceived as a law, we at the
same time discover the force itself. And yet this assertion that force
in its own self is unknowable betrays a well-grounded presentiment
that this relation is finite. The several manifestations of a force at
first meet us in indefinite multiplicity, and in their isolation seem
accidental: but, reducing this multiplicity to its inner unity, which
we term force, we see that the apparently contingent is necessary, by
recognising the law that rules it. But the different forces themselves
are a multiplicity again, and in their mere juxtaposition seem to be
contingent. Hence in empirical physics, we speak of the forces of
gravity, magnetism, electricity, &c, and in empirical psychology of
the forces of memory, imagination, will, and all the other faculties.
All this multiplicity again excites a craving to know these different
forces as a single whole, nor would this craving be appeased even if
the several forces were traced back to one common primary force. Such
a primary force would be really no more than an empty abstraction,
with as little content as the abstract thing-in-itself. And besides
this, the correlation of force and manifestation is essentially a
mediated correlation (of reciprocal dependence), and it must therefore
contradict the notion of force to view it as primary or resting on
itself.
Such being the case with the nature of force, though we may consent to
let the world be called a manifestation of divine forces, we should
object to have God Himself viewed as a mere force. For force is after
all a subordinate and finite category. At the so-called renascence of
the sciences, when steps were taken to trace the single phenomena of
nature back to underlying forces, the Church branded the enterprise
as impious. The argument of the Church was as follows. If it be the
forces of gravitation, of vegetation, &c. which occasion the movements
of the heavenly bodies, the growth of plants, &c., there is nothing
left for divine providence, and God sinks to the level of a leisurely
on-looker, surveying this play of forces. The students of nature, it is
true, and Newton more than others, when they employed the reflective
category of force to explain natural phenomena, have expressly pleaded
that the honour of God, as the Creator and Governor of the world, would
not thereby be impaired. Still the logical issue of this explanation
by means of forces is that the inferential understanding proceeds to
fix each of these forces, and to maintain them in their finitude as
ultimate. And contrasted with this deinfinitised world of independent
forces and matters, the only terms in which it is possible still to
describe God will present Him in the abstract infinity of an unknowable
supreme Being in some other world far away. This is precisely the
position of materialism, and of modern 'free-thinking,' whose theology
ignores what God is and restricts itself to the mere fact _that_ He
is. In this dispute therefore the Church and the religious mind have
to a certain extent the right on their side. The finite forms of
understanding certainly fail to fulfil the conditions for a knowledge
either of Nature or of the formations in the world of Mind as they
truly are. Yet on the other side it is impossible to overlook the
formal right which, in the first place, entitles the empirical sciences
to vindicate the right of thought to know the existent world in all
the speciality of its content, and to seek something further than the
bare statement of mere abstract faith that God creates and governs the
world. When our religious consciousness, resting upon the authority of
the Church, teaches us that God created the world by His almighty will,
that He guides the stars in their courses, and vouchsafes to all His
creatures their existence and their well-being, the question Why? is
still left to answer. Now it is the answer to this question which forms
the common task of empirical science and of philosophy. When religion
refuses to recognise this problem, or the right to put it, and appeals
to the unsearchableness of the decrees of God, it is taking up the same
agnostic ground as is taken by the mere Enlightenment of understanding.
Such an appeal is no better than an arbitrary dogmatism, which
contravenes the express command of Christianity, to know God in spirit
and in truth, and is prompted by a humility which is not Christian, but
born of ostentatious bigotry.
137.] Force is a whole, which is in its own self negative
self-relation; and as such a whole it continually pushes
itself off from itself and puts itself forth. But since this
reflection-into-another (corresponding to the distinction between the
Parts of the Whole) is equally a reflection-into-self, this out-putting
is the way and means by which Force that returns back into itself is
as a Force. The very act of out-putting accordingly sets in abeyance
the diversity of the two sides which is found in this correlation,
and expressly states the identity which virtually constitutes their
content. The truth of Force and utterance therefore is that relation,
in which the two sides are distinguished only as Outward and Inward.
138.] (γ) The Inward (Interior) is the ground, when it
stands as the mere form of the one side of the Appearance and
the Correlation,--the empty form of reflection-into-self. As a
counterpart to it stands the Outward (Exterior),--Existence,
also as the form of the other side of the correlation, with the
empty characteristic of reflection-into-something-else. But Inward
and Outward are identified: and their identity is identity brought
to fulness in the content, that unity of reflection-into-self and
reflection-into-other which was forced to appear in the movement of
force. Both are the same one totality, and this unity makes them the
content.
139.] In the first place then, Exterior is the same content as
Interior. What is inwardly is also found outwardly, and _vice versâ._
The appearance shows nothing that is not in the essence, and in the
essence there is nothing but what is manifested.
140.] In the second place, Inward and Outward, as formal terms,
are also reciprocally opposed, and that thoroughly. The one is the
abstraction of identity with self; the other, of mere multiplicity
or reality. But as stages of the one form, they are essentially
identical: so that whatever is at first explicitly put only in the one
abstraction, is also as plainly and at one step only in the other.
Therefore what is only internal is also only external: and what is only
external, is so far only at first internal.
It is the customary mistake of reflection to take the essence to be
merely the interior. If it be so taken, even this way of looking at
it is purely external, and that sort of essence is the empty external
abstraction.
Ins Innere der Natur
Dringt sein erschaffner Geist,
Zu glücklich wenn er nur
Die äußere Schaale weist.[1]
It ought rather to have been said that, if the essence of nature is
ever described as the inner part, the person who so describes it
only knows its outer shell. In Being as a whole, or even in mere
sense-perception, the notion is at first only an inward, and for that
very reason is something external to Being, a subjective thinking
and being, devoid of truth.--In Nature as well as in Mind, so long
as the notion, design, or law are at first the inner capacity, mere
possibilities, they are first only an external, inorganic nature,
the knowledge of a third person, alien force, and the like. As a man
is outwardly, that is to say in his actions (not of course in his
merely bodily outwardness), so is he inwardly: and if his virtue,
morality, &c. are only inwardly his,--that is if they exist only in his
intentions and sentiments, and his outward acts are not identical with
them, the one half of him is as hollow and empty as the other.
The relation of Outward and Inward unites the two relations that
precede, and at the same time sets in abeyance mere relativity and
phenomenality in general. Yet so long as understanding keeps the Inward
and Outward fixed in their separation, they are empty forms, the one
as null as the other. Not only in the study of nature, but also of the
spiritual world, much depends on a just appreciation of the relation
of inward and outward, and especially on avoiding the misconception
that the former only is the essential point on which everything turns,
while the latter is unessential and trivial. We find this mistake made
when, as is often done, the difference between nature and mind is
traced back to the abstract difference between inner and outer. As for
nature, it certainly is in the gross external, not merely to the mind,
but even on its own part. But to call it external 'in the gross' is
not to imply an abstract externality--for there is no such thing. It
means rather that the Idea which forms the common content of nature and
mind, is found in nature as outward only, and for that very reason only
inward. The abstract understanding, with its 'Either--or,' may struggle
against this conception of nature. It is none the less obviously found
in our other modes of consciousness, particularly in religion. It is
the lesson of religion that nature, no less than the spiritual world,
is a revelation of God: but with this distinction, that while nature
never gets so far as to be conscious of its divine essence, that
consciousness is the express problem of the mind, which in the matter
of that problem is as yet finite. Those who look upon the essence of
nature as mere inwardness, and therefore inaccessible to us, take up
the same line as that ancient creed which regarded God as envious and
jealous; a creed which both Plato and Aristotle pronounced against long
ago. All that God is, He imparts and reveals; and He does so, at first,
in and through nature.
Any object indeed is faulty and imperfect when it is only inward, and
thus at the same time only outward, or, (which is the same thing,) when
it is only an outward and thus only an inward. For instance, a child,
taken in the gross as human being, is no doubt a rational creature;
but the reason of the child as child is at first a mere inward, in the
shape of his natural ability or vocation, &c. This mere inward, at the
same time, has for the child the form of a more outward, in the shape
of the will of his parents, the attainments of his teachers, and the
whole world of reason that environs him. The education and instruction
of a child aim at making him actually and for himself what he is at
first potentially and therefore for others, viz. for his grown-up
friends. The reason, which at first exists in the child only as an
inner possibility, is actualised through education: and conversely, the
child by these means becomes conscious that the goodness, religion, and
science which he had at first looked upon as an outward authority, are
his own and inward nature. As with the child so it is in this matter
with the adult, when, in opposition to his true destiny, his intellect
and will remain in the bondage of the natural man. Thus, the criminal
sees the punishment to which he has to submit as an act of violence
from without: whereas in fact the penalty is only the manifestation of
his own criminal will.
From what has now been said, we may learn what to think of a man who,
when blamed for his shortcomings, it may be, his discreditable acts,
appeals to the (professedly) excellent intentions and sentiments of
the inner self he distinguishes therefrom. There certainly may be
individual cases, where the malice of outward circumstances frustrates
well-meant designs, and disturbs the execution of the best-laid plans.
But in general even here the essential unity between inward and outward
is maintained. We are thus justified in saying that a man is what he
does; and the lying vanity which consoles itself with the feeling of
inward excellence, may be confronted with the words of the gospel: 'By
their fruits ye shall know them.' That grand saying applies primarily
in a moral and religious aspect, but it also holds good in reference
to performances in art and science. The keen eye of a teacher who
perceives in his pupil decided evidences of talent, may lead him to
state his opinion that a Raphael or a Mozart lies hidden in the boy:
and the result will show how far such an opinion was well-founded.
But if a daub of a painter, or a poetaster, soothe themselves by the
conceit that their head is full of high ideals, their consolation is
a poor one; and if they insist on being judged not by their actual
works but by their projects, we may safely reject their pretensions
as unfounded and unmeaning. The converse case however also occurs. In
passing judgment on men who have accomplished something great and good,
we often make use of the false distinction between inward and outward.
All that they have accomplished, we say, is outward merely; inwardly
they were acting from some very different motive, such as a desire to
gratify their vanity or other unworthy passion. This is the spirit of
envy. Incapable of any great action of its own, envy tries hard to
depreciate greatness and to bring it down to its own level. Let us,
rather, recall the fine expression of Goethe, that there is no remedy
but Love against great superiorities of others. We may seek to rob
men's great actions of their grandeur, by the insinuation of hypocrisy;
but, though it is possible that men in an instance now and then may
dissemble and disguise a good deal, they cannot conceal the whole of
their inner self, which infallibly betrays itself in the _decursus
vitae._ Even here it is true that a man is nothing but the series of
his actions.
What is called the 'pragmatic' writing of history has in modern times
frequently sinned in its treatment of great historical characters, and
defaced and tarnished the true conception of them by this fallacious
separation of the outward from the inward. Not content with telling
the unvarnished tale of the great acts which have been wrought by
the heroes of the world's history, and with acknowledging that their
inward being corresponds with the import of their acts, the pragmatic
historian fancies himself justified and even obliged to trace the
supposed secret motives that lie behind the open facts of the record.
The historian, in that case, is supposed to write with more depth in
proportion as he succeeds in tearing away the aureole from all that
has been heretofore held grand and glorious, and in depressing it, so
far as its origin and proper significance are concerned, to the level
of vulgar mediocrity. To make these pragmatical researches in history
easier, it is usual to recommend the study of psychology, which is
supposed to make us acquainted with the real motives of human actions.
The psychology in question however is only that petty knowledge of
men, which looks away from the essential and permanent in human
nature to fasten its glance on the casual and private features shown
in isolated instincts and passions. A pragmatical psychology ought
at least to leave the historian, who investigates the motives at the
ground of great actions, a choice between the 'substantial' interests
of patriotism, justice, religious truth and the like, on the one hand,
and the subjective and 'formal' interests of vanity, ambition, avarice
and the like, on the other. The latter however are the motives which
must be viewed by the pragmatist as really efficient, otherwise the
assumption of a contrast between the inward (the disposition of the
agent) and the outward (the import of the action) would fall to the
ground. But inward and outward have in truth the same content; and the
right doctrine is the very reverse of this pedantic judicially. If the
heroes of history had been actuated by subjective and formal interests
alone, they would never have accomplished what they have. And if we
have due regard to the unity between the inner and the outer, we must
own that great men willed what they did, and did what they willed.
141.] The empty abstractions, by means of which the one identical
content perforce continues in the two correlatives, suspend themselves
in the immediate transition, the one in the other. The content is
itself nothing but their identity (§ 138): and these abstractions are
the seeming of essence, put as seeming. By the manifestation of force
the inward is put into existence: but this putting is the mediation by
empty abstractions. In its own self the intermediating process vanishes
to the immediacy, in which the inward and the outward are absolutely
identical and their difference is distinctly no more than assumed and
imposed. This identity is Actuality.
C.--ACTUALITY.
142.] Actuality is the unity, become immediate, of essence with
existence, or of inward with outward. The utterance of the actual
is the actual itself: so that in this utterance it remains just as
essential, and only is essential, in so far as it is in immediate
external existence.
We have ere this met Being and Existence as forms of the immediate.
Being is, in general, unreflected immediacy and transition into
another. Existence is immediate unity of being and reflection; hence
appearance: it comes from the ground, and falls to the ground. In
actuality this unity is explicitly put, and the two sides of the
relation identified. Hence the actual is exempted from transition, and
its externality is its energising. In that energising it is reflected
into itself: its existence is only the manifestation of itself, not of
an other.
Actuality and thought (or Idea) are often absurdly opposed. How
commonly we hear people saying that, though no objection can be urged
against the truth and correctness of a certain thought, there is
nothing of the kind to be seen in actuality, or it cannot be actually
carried out! People who use such language only prove that they have
not properly apprehended the nature either of thought or of actuality.
Thought in such a case is, on one hand, the synonym for a subjective
conception, plan, intention or the like, just as actuality, on the
other, is made synonymous with external and sensible existence. This
is all very well in common life, where great laxity is allowed in the
categories and the names given to them: and it may of course happen
that _e.g._ the plan, or so-called idea, say of a certain method of
taxation, is good and advisable in the abstract, but that nothing of
the sort is found in so-called actuality, or could possibly be carried
out under the given conditions. But when the abstract understanding
gets hold of these categories and exaggerates the distinction they
imply into a hard and fast line of contrast, when it tells us that in
this actual world we must knock ideas out of our heads, it is necessary
energetically to protest against these doctrines, alike in the name of
science and of sound reason. For on the one hand Ideas are not confined
to our heads merely, nor is the Idea, upon the whole, so feeble as to
leave the question of its actualisation or non-actualisation dependent
in our will. The Idea is rather the absolutely active as well I as
actual. And on the other hand actuality is not so bad and irrational,
as purblind or wrong-headed and muddle-brained would-be reformers
imagine. So far is actuality, as distinguished from mere appearance,
and primarily presenting a unity of inward and outward, from being in
contrariety with reason, that it is rather thoroughly reasonable, and
everything which is not reasonable must on that very ground cease to
be held actual. The same view may be traced in the usages of educated
speech, which declines to give the name of real poet or real statesman
to a poet or a statesman who can do nothing really meritorious or
reasonable.
In that vulgar conception of actuality which mistakes for it what is
palpable and directly obvious to the senses, we must seek the ground
of a wide-spread prejudice about the relation of the philosophy of
Aristotle to that of Plato. Popular opinion makes the difference to be
as follows. While Plato recognises the idea and only the idea as the
truth, Aristotle, rejecting the idea, keeps to what is actual, and is
on that account to be considered the founder and chief of empiricism.
On this it may be remarked: that although actuality certainly is
the principle of the Aristotelian philosophy, it is not the vulgar
actuality of what is immediately at hand, but the idea as actuality.
Where then lies the controversy of Aristotle against Plato? It lies in
this. Aristotle calls the Platonic idea a mere δίναμις, and establishes
in opposition to Plato that the idea, which both equally recognise to
be the only truth, is essentially to be viewed as an ἐνέργεια, in other
words, as the inward which is quite to the fore, or as the unity of
inner and outer, or as actuality, in the emphatic sense here given to
the word.
143.] Such a concrete category as Actuality includes the
characteristics aforesaid and their difference, and is therefore also
the development of them, in such a way that, as it has them, they are
at the same time plainly understood to be a show, to be assumed or
imposed (§ 141).
(α) Viewed as an identity in general, Actuality is first of all
Possibility--the reflection-into-self which, as in contrast with
the concrete unity of the actual, is taken and made an abstract and
unessential essentiality. Possibility is what is essential to reality,
but in such a way that it is at the same time only a possibility.
It was probably the import of Possibility which induced Kant to regard
it along with necessity and actuality as Modalities, 'since these
categories do not in the least increase the notion as object, but only
express its relation to the faculty of knowledge.' For Possibility is
really the bare abstraction of reflection-into-self,--what was formerly
called the Inward, only that it is now taken to mean the external
inward, lifted out of reality and with the being of a mere supposition,
and is thus, sure enough, supposed only as a bare modality, an
abstraction which comes short, and, in more concrete terms, belongs
only to subjective thought. It is otherwise with Actuality and
Necessity. They are anything but a mere sort and mode for something
else: in fact the very reverse of that. If they are supposed, it is as
the concrete, not merely supposititious, but intrinsically complete.
As Possibility is, in the first instance, the mere form of
identity-with-self (as compared with the concrete which is actual),
the rule for it merely is that a thing must not be self-contradictory.
Thus everything is possible; for an act of abstraction can give any
content this form of identity. Everything however is as impossible as
it is possible. In every content,--which is and must be concrete,--the
speciality of its nature may be viewed as a specialised contrariety
and in that way as a contradiction. Nothing therefore can be more
meaningless than to speak of such possibility and impossibility. In
philosophy, in particular, there should never be a word said of showing
that 'It is possible,' or 'There is still another possibility,' or, to
adopt another phraseology, 'It is conceivable.' The same consideration
should warn the writer of history against employing a category which
has now been explained to be on its own merits untrue: but the subtlety
of the empty understanding finds its chief pleasure in the fantastic
ingenuity of suggesting possibilities and lots of possibilities.
Our picture-thought is at first disposed to see in possibility the
richer and more comprehensive, in actuality the poorer and narrower
category. Everything, it is said, is possible, but everything which
is possible is not on that account actual. In real truth, however, if
we deal with them as thoughts, actuality is the more comprehensive,
because it is the concrete thought which includes possibility as an
abstract element. And that superiority is to some extent expressed
in our ordinary mode of thought when we speak of the possible, in
distinction from the actual, as _only_ possible. Possibility is often
said to consist in a thing's being thinkable. 'Think,' however, in this
use of the word, only means to conceive any content under the form of
an abstract identity. Now every content can be brought under this form,
since nothing is required except to separate it from the relations in
which it stands. Hence any content, however absurd and nonsensical, can
be viewed as possible. It is possible that the moon might fall upon
the earth to-night; for the moon is a body separate from the earth,
and may as well fall down upon it as a stone thrown into the air does.
It is possible that the Sultan may become Pope; for, being a man, he
may be converted to the Christian faith, may become a Catholic priest,
and so on. In language like this about possibilities, it is chiefly
the law of the sufficient ground or reason which is manipulated in the
style already explained. Everything, it is said, is possible, for which
you can state some ground. The less education a man has, or, in other
words, the less he knows of the specific connexions of the objects
to which he directs his observations, the greater is his tendency to
launch out into all sorts of empty possibilities. An instance of this
habit in the political sphere is seen in the pot-house politician.
In practical life too it is no uncommon thing to see ill-will and
indolence slink behind the category of possibility, in order to escape
definite obligations. To such conduct the same remarks apply as were
made in connexion with the law of sufficient ground. Reasonable and
practical men refuse to be imposed upon by the possible, for the simple
ground that it is possible only. They stick to the actual (not meaning
by that word merely whatever immediately is now and here). Many of
the proverbs of common life express the same contempt for what is
abstractly possible. 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.'
After all there is as good reason for taking everything to be
impossible, as to be possible: for every content (a content is always
concrete) includes not only diverse but even opposite characteristics.
Nothing is so impossible, for instance, as this, that I am: for 'I' is
at the same time simple self-relation and, as undoubtedly, relation
to something else. The same may be seen in every other fact in the
natural or spiritual world. Matter, it may be said, is impossible:
for it is the unity of attraction and repulsion. The same is true of
life, law, freedom, and above all, of God Himself, as the true, _e.g._
the triune God,--a notion of God, which the abstract 'Enlightenment'
of Understanding, in conformity with its canons, rejected on the
allegation that it was contradictory in thought. Generally speaking,
it is the empty understanding which haunts these empty forms: and
the business of philosophy in the matter is to show how null and
meaningless they are. Whether a thing is possible or impossible,
depends altogether on the subject-matter: that is, on the sum total of
the elements in actuality, which, as it opens itself out, discloses
itself to be necessity.
144.] (ß) But the Actual in its distinction from possibility (which
is reflection-into-self) is itself only the outward concrete, the
unessential immediate. In other words, to such extent as the actual
is primarily (§ 142) the simple merely immediate unity of Inward
and Outward, it is obviously made an unessential outward, and thus
at the same time (§ 140) it is merely inward, the abstraction of
reflection-into-self. Hence it is itself characterised as a merely
possible. When thus valued at the rate of a mere possibility, the
actual is a Contingent or Accidental, and, conversely,
possibility is mere Accident itself or Chance.
146.] Possibility and Contingency are the two factors of
Actuality,--Inward and Outward, put as mere forms which constitute the
externality of the actual. They have their reflection-into-self on the
body of actual fact, or content, with its intrinsic definiteness which
gives the essential ground of their characterisation. The finitude of
the contingent and the possible lies, therefore, as we now see, in the
distinction of the form-determination from the content: and, therefore,
it depends on the content alone whether anything is contingent and
possible.
As possibility is the mere _inside_ of actuality, it is for that
reason a mere _outside_ actuality, in other words, Contingency. The
contingent, roughly speaking, is what has the ground of its being
not in itself but in somewhat else. Such is the aspect under which
actuality first comes before consciousness, and which is often mistaken
for actuality itself. But the contingent is only one side of the
actual,--the side, namely, of reflection on somewhat else. It is the
actual, in the signification of something merely possible. Accordingly
we consider the contingent to be what may or may not be, what may be
in one way or in another, whose being or not-being, and whose being
on this wise or otherwise, depends not upon itself but on something
else. To overcome this contingency is, roughly speaking, the problem
of science on the one hand; as in the range of practice, on the other,
the end of action is to rise above the contingency of the will, or
above caprice. It has however often happened, most of all in modern
times, that contingency has been unwarrantably elevated, and had a
value attached to it, both in nature and the world of mind, to which
it has no just claim. Frequently Nature--to take it first,--has been
chiefly admired for the richness and variety of its structures. Apart,
however, from what disclosure it contains of the Idea, this richness
gratifies none of the higher interests of reason, and in its vast
variety of structures, organic and inorganic, affords us only the
spectacle of a contingency losing itself in vagueness. At any rate,
the chequered scene presented by the several varieties of animals and
plants, conditioned as it is by outward circumstances,--the complex
changes in the figuration and grouping of clouds, and the like, ought
not to be ranked higher than the equally casual fancies of the mind
which surrenders itself to its own caprices. The wonderment with which
such phenomena are welcomed is a most abstract frame of mind, from
which one should advance to a closer insight into the inner harmony and
uniformity of nature.
Of contingency in respect of the Will it is especially important to
form a proper estimate. The Freedom of the Will is an expression that
often means mere free-choice, or the will in the form of contingency.
Freedom of choice, or the capacity of determining ourselves towards one
thing or another, is undoubtedly a vital element in the will (which in
its very notion is free); but instead of being freedom itself, it is
only in the first instance a freedom in form. The genuinely free will,
which includes free choice as suspended, is conscious to itself that
its content is intrinsically firm and fast, and knows it at the same
time to be thoroughly its own. A will, on the contrary, which remains
standing on the grade of option, even supposing it does decide in
favour of what is in import right and true, is always haunted by the
conceit that it might, if it had so pleased, have decided in favour of
the reverse course. When more narrowly examined, free choice is seen
to be a contradiction, to this extent that its form and content stand
in antithesis. The matter of choice is given, and known as a content
dependent not on the will itself,'but on outward circumstances. In
reference to such a given content, freedom lies only in the form of
choosing, which, as it is only a freedom in form, may consequently be
regarded as freedom only in supposition. On an ultimate analysis it
will be seen that the same outwardness of circumstances, on which is
founded the content that the will finds to its hand, can alone account
for the will giving its decision for the one and not the other of the
two alternatives.
Although contingency, as it has thus been shown, is only one aspect in
the whole of actuality, and therefore not to be mistaken for actuality
itself, it has no less than the rest of the forms of the idea its due
office in the world of objects. This is, in the first place, seen in
Nature. On the surface of Nature, so to speak, Chance ranges unchecked,
and that contingency must simply be recognised, without the pretension
sometimes erroneously ascribed to philosophy, of seeking to find in it
a could-only-be-so-and-not-otherwise. Nor is contingency less visible
in the world of Mind. The will, as we have already remarked, includes
contingency under the shape of option or free-choice, but only as a
vanishing and abrogated element. In respect of Mind and its works,
just as in the case of Nature, we must guard against being so far
misled by a well-meant endeavour after rational knowledge, as to try
to exhibit the necessity of phenomena which are marked by a decided
contingency, or, as the phrase is, to construe them _a priori._ Thus
in language (although it be, as it were, the body of thought) Chance
still unquestionably plays a decided part; and the same is true of the
creations of law, of art, &c. The problem of science, and especially of
philosophy, undoubtedly consists in eliciting the necessity concealed
under the semblance of contingency. That however is far from meaning
that the contingent belongs to our subjective conception alone, and
must therefore be simply set aside, if we wish to get at the truth.
All scientific researches which pursue this tendency exclusively,
lay themselves fairly open to the charge of mere jugglery and an
over-strained precisianism.
146.] When more closely examined, what the aforesaid outward side
of actuality implies is this. Contingency, which is actuality
in its immediacy, is the self-identical, essentially only as a
supposition which is no sooner made than it is revoked and leaves
an existent externality. In this way, the external contingency is
something pre-supposed, the immediate existence of which is at the
same time a possibility, and has the vocation to be suspended, to
be the possibility of something else. Now this possibility is the
Condition.
The Contingent, as the immediate actuality, is at the same time
the possibility of somewhat else,--no longer however that abstract
possibility which we had at first, but the possibility which _is._ And
a possibility existent is a Condition. By the Condition of a thing
we mean first, an existence, in short an immediate, and secondly
the vocation of this immediate to be suspended and subserve the
actualising of something else.--Immediate actuality is in general
as such never what it ought to be; it is a finite actuality with an
inherent flaw, and its vocation is to be consumed. But the other
aspect of actuality is its essentiality. This is primarily the inside,
which as a mere possibility is no less destined to be suspended.
Possibility thus suspended is the issuing of a new actuality, of which
the first immediate actuality was the pre-supposition. Here we see
the alternation which is involved in the notion of a Condition. The
Conditions of a thing seem at first sight to involve no bias anyway.
Really however an immediate actuality of this kind includes in it
the germ of something else altogether. At first this something else
is only a possibility: but the form of possibility is soon suspended
and translated into actuality. This new actuality thus issuing is the
very inside of the immediate actuality which it uses up. Thus there
comes into being quite an other shape of things, and yet itis not an
other: for the first actuality is only put as what it in essence was.
The conditions which are sacrificed, which fall to the ground and are
spent, only unite with themselves in the other actuality. Such in
general is the nature of the process of actuality. The actual is no
mere case of immediate Being, but, as essential Being, a suspension of
its own immediacy, and thereby mediating itself with itself.
147.] (γ) When this externality (of actuality) is thus developed into
a circle of the two categories of possibility and immediate actuality,
showing the intermediation of the one by the other, it is what is
called Real Possibility. Being such a circle, further, it
is the totality, and thus the content, the actual fact or affair in
its all-round definiteness. Whilst in like manner, if we look at the
distinction between the two characteristics in this unity, it realises
the concrete totality of the form, the immediate self-translation
of inner into outer, and of outer into inner. This self-movement of
the form is Activity, carrying into effect the fact or affair as a
_real_ ground which is self-suspended to actuality, and carrying into
effect the contingent actuality, the conditions; _i.e._ it is their
reflection-in-self, and their self-suspension to an other actuality,
the actuality of the actual fact. If all the conditions are at hand,
the fact (event) _must_ be actual; and the fact itself is one of the
conditions: for being in the first place only inner, it is at first
itself only pre-supposed. Developed actuality, as the coincident
alternation of inner and outer, the alternation of their opposite
motions combined into a single motion, is Necessity.
Necessity has been defined, and rightly so, as the union of possibility
and actuality. This mode of expression, however, gives a superficial
and therefore unintelligible description of the very difficult notion
of necessity. It is difficult because it is the notion itself, only
that its stages or factors are still as actualities, which are yet at
the same time to be viewed as forms only, collapsing and transient. In
the two following paragraphs therefore an exposition of the factors
which constitute necessity must be given at greater length.
* * * * *
When anything is said to be necessary, the first question we ask is,
Why? Anything necessary accordingly comes before us as something due to
a supposition, the result of certain antecedents. If we go no further
than mere derivation from antecedents however, we have not gained a
complete notion of what necessity means. What is merely derivative,
is what it is, not through itself, but through something else; and in
this way it too is merely contingent. What is necessary, on the other
hand, we would have be what it is through itself; and thus, although
derivative, it must still contain the antecedent whence it is derived
as a vanishing element in itself. Hence we say of what is necessary,
'It is.' We thus hold it to be simple self-relation, in which all
dependence on something else is removed.
Necessity is often said to be blind. If that means that in the process
of necessity the End or final cause is not explicitly and overtly
present, the statement is correct. The process of necessity begins
with the existence of scattered circumstances which appear to have no
inter-connexion and no concern one with another. These circumstances
are an immediate actuality which collapses, and out of this negation
a new actuality proceeds. Here we have a content which in point of
form is doubled, once as content of the final realised fact, and once
as content of the scattered circumstances which appear as if they
were positive, and make themselves at first felt in that character.
The latter content is in itself nought and is accordingly inverted
into its negative, thus becoming content of the realised fact. The
immediate circumstances fall to the ground as conditions, but are at
the same time retained as content of the ultimate reality. From such
circumstances and conditions there has, as we say, proceeded quite
another thing, and it is for that reason that we call this process of
necessity blind. If on the contrary we consider teleological action, we
have in the end of action a content which is already fore-known. This
activity therefore is not blind but seeing. To say that the world is
ruled by Providence implies that design, as what has been absolutely
pre-determined, is the active principle, so that the issue corresponds
to what has been fore-known and fore-willed.
The theory however which regards the world as determined through
necessity and the belief in a divine providence are by no means
mutually excluding points of view. The intellectual principle
underlying the idea of divine providence will hereafter be shown to be
the notion. But the notion is the truth of necessity, which it contains
in suspension in itself; just as, conversely, necessity is the notion
implicit. Necessity is blind only so long as it is not understood.
There is nothing therefore more mistaken than the charge of blind
fatalism made against the Philosophy of History, when it takes for its
problem to understand the necessity of every event. The philosophy of
history rightly understood takes the rank of a Théodicée; and those,
who fancy they honour Divine Providence by excluding necessity from
it, are really degrading it by this exclusiveness to a blind and
irrational caprice. In the simple language of the religious mind which
speaks of God's eternal and immutable decrees, there is implied an
express recognition that necessity forms part of the essence of God. In
his difference from God, man, with his own private opinion and will,
follows the call of caprice and arbitrary humour, and thus often finds
his acts turn out something quite different from what he had meant and
willed. But God knows what He wills, is determined in His eternal will
neither by accident from within nor from without, and what He wills He
also accomplishes, irresistibly.
Necessity gives a point of view which has important bearings upon our
sentiments and behaviour. When we look upon events as necessary, our
situation seems at first sight to lack freedom completely. In the
creed of the ancients, as we know, necessity figured as Destiny. The
modern point of view, on the contrary, is that of Consolation. And
Consolation means that, if we renounce our aims and interests, we do so
only in prospect of receiving compensation. Destiny, on the contrary,
leaves no room for Consolation. But a close examination of the ancient
feeling about destiny, will not by any means reveal a sense of bondage
to its power. Rather the reverse. This will clearly appear, if we
remember, that the sense of bondage springs from inability to surmount
the antithesis, and from looking at what _is,_ and what happens, as
contradictory to what _ought_ to be and happen. In the ancient mind the
feeling was more of the following kind: Because such a thing is, it
is, and as it is, so ought it to be. Here there is no contrast to be
seen, and therefore no sense of bondage, no pain, and no sorrow. True,
indeed, as already remarked, this attitude towards destiny is void of
consolation. But then, on the other hand, it is a frame of mind which
does not need consolation, so long as personal subjectivity has not
acquired its infinite significance. It is this point on which special
stress should be laid in comparing the ancient sentiment with that of
the modern and Christian world.
By Subjectivity, however, we may understand, in the first place, only
the natural and finite subjectivity, with its contingent and arbitrary
content of private interests and inclinations,--all, in short, that
we call person as distinguished from thing: taking 'thing' in the
emphatic sense of the word (in which we use the (correct) expression
that it is a question of _things_ and not of _persons)._ In this sense
of sub-activity we cannot help admiring the tranquil resignation of
the ancients to destiny, and feeling that it is a much higher and
worthier mood than that of the moderns, who obstinately pursue their
subjective aims, and when they find themselves constrained to resign
the hope of reaching them, console themselves with the prospect of a
reward in some other shape. But the term subjectivity is not to be
confined merely to the bad and finite kind of it which is contrasted
with the thing (fact). In its truth subjectivity is immanent in the
fact, and as a subjectivity thus infinite is the very truth of the
fact. Thus regarded, the doctrine of consolation receives a newer and
a higher significance. It is in this sense that the Christian religion
is to be regarded as the religion of consolation, and even of absolute
consolation. Christianity, we know, teaches that God wishes all men
to be saved. That teaching declares that subjectivity has an infinite
value. And that consoling power of Christianity just lies in the fact
that God Himself is in it known as the absolute subjectivity, so that,
inasmuch as subjectivity involves the element of particularity, _our_
particular personality too is recognised not merely as something to be
solely and simply nullified, but as at the same time something to be
preserved. The gods of the ancient world were also, it is true, looked
upon as personal; but the personality of a Zeus and an Apollo is not
a real personality: it is only a figure in the mind. In other words,
these gods are mere personifications, which, being such, do not know
themselves, and are only known. An evidence of this defect and this
powerlessness of the old gods is found even in the religious beliefs
of antiquity. In the ancient creeds not only men, but even gods,
were represented as subject to destiny (πεπρωμένον or εἱμαρμένη), a
destiny which we must conceive as necessity not unveiled, and thus as
something wholly impersonal, selfless, and blind. On the other hand,
the Christian God is God not known merely, but also self-knowing; He is
a personality not merely figured in our minds, but rather absolutely
actual.
We must refer to the Philosophy of Religion for a further discussion of
the points here touched. But we may note in passing how important it
is for any man to meet everything that befalls him with the spirit of
the old proverb which describes each man as the architect of his own
fortune. That means that it is only himself after all of which a man
has the usufruct. The other way would be to lay the blame of whatever
we experience upon other men, upon unfavourable circumstances, and the
like. And this is a fresh example of the language of unfreedom, and at
the same time the spring of discontent. If man saw, on the contrary,
that whatever happens to him is only the outcome of himself, and that
he only bears his own guilt, he would stand free, and in everything
that came upon him would have the consciousness that he suffered no
wrong. A man who lives in dispeace with himself and his lot, commits
much that is perverse and amiss, for no other reason than because of
the false opinion that he is wronged by others. No doubt too there is a
great deal of chance in what befalls us. But the chance has its root in
the 'natural' man. So long however as a man is otherwise conscious that
he is free, his harmony of soul and peace of mind will not be destroyed
by the disagreeables that befall him. It is their view of necessity,
therefore, which is at the root of the content and discontent of men,
and which in that way determines their destiny itself.
148.] Among the three elements in the process of necessity--the
Condition, the Fact, and the Activity--
a. The Condition is (α) what is pre-supposed or ante-stated, _e.g._
it is not only supposed or stated, and so only a correlative to the
fact, but also prior, and so independent, a contingent and external
circumstance which exists without respect to the fact. While thus
contingent, however, this pre-supposed or ante-stated term, in respect
withal of the fact, which is the totality, is a complete circle of
conditions, (ß) The conditions are passive, are used as materials for
the fact, into the content of which they thus enter. They are likewise
intrinsically conformable to this content, and already contain its
whole characteristic.
b. The Fact is also (α) something pre-supposed or ante-stated, _i.e._
it is at first, and as supposed, only inner and possible, and also,
being prior, an independent content by itself, (ß) By using up the
conditions, it receives its external existence, the realisation of
the articles of its content, which reciprocally correspond to the
conditions, so that whilst it presents itself out of these as the fact,
it also proceeds from them.
c. The Activity similarly has (α) an independent existence of its own
(as a man, a character), and at the same time it is possible only
where the conditions are and the fact, (ß) It is the movement which
translates the conditions into fact, and the latter into the former as
the side of existence, or rather the movement which educes the fact
from the conditions in which it is potentially present, and which gives
existence to the fact by abolishing the existence possessed by the
conditions.
In so far as these three elements stand to each other in the shape
of independent existences, this process has the aspect of an outward
necessity. Outward necessity has a limited content for its fact. For
the fact is this whole, in phase of singleness. But since in its form
this whole is external to itself, it is self-externalised even in its
own self and in its content, and this externality, attaching to the
fact, is a limit of its content.
149.] Necessity, then, is potentially the one essence, self-same but
now full of content, in the reflected light of which its distinctions
take the form of independent realities. This self-sameness is at the
same time, as absolute form, the activity which reduces into dependency
and mediates into immediacy.--Whatever is necessary is through an
other, which is broken up into the mediating ground (the Fact and
the Activity) and an immediate actuality or accidental circumstance,
which is at the same time a Condition. The necessary, being through
an other, is not in and for itself: hypothetical, it is a mere result
of assumption. But this intermediation is just as immediately however
the abrogation of itself. The ground and contingent condition is
translated into immediacy, by which that dependency is now lifted up
into actuality, and the fact has closed with itself. In this return
to itself the necessary simply and positively _is,_ as unconditioned
actuality. The necessary is so, mediated through a circle of
circumstances: it is so, because the circumstances are so, and at the
same time it is so, unmediated: it is so, because it is.
(a) _Relationship of Substantiality._
150.] The necessary is in itself an absolute correlation of elements,
_i.e._ the process developed (in the preceding paragraphs), in which
the correlation also suspends itself to absolute identity.
In its immediate form it is the relationship of Substance and Accident.
The absolute self-identity of this relationship is Substance as such,
which as necessity gives the negative to this form of inwardness, and
thus invests itself with actuality, but which also gives the negative
to this outward thing. In this negativity, the actual, as immediate,
is only an accidental which through this bare possibility passes over
into another actuality. This transition is the identity of substance,
regarded as form-activity (§§ 148, 149).
151.] Substance is accordingly the totality of the Accidents,
revealing itself in them as their absolute negativity, (that is to
say, as absolute power,) and at the same time as the wealth of all
content. This content however is nothing but that very revelation,
since the character (being reflected in itself to make content) is
only a passing stage of the form which passes away in the power of
substance. Substantiality is the absolute form-activity and the power
of necessity: all content is but a vanishing element which merely
belongs to this process, where there is an absolute revulsion of form
and content into one another.
* * * * *
In the history of philosophy we meet with Substance as the principle
of Spinoza's system. On the import and value of that much-praised and
no less decried philosophy there has been great misunderstanding and
a deal of talking since the days of Spinoza. The atheism and, as a
further charge, the pantheism of the system has formed the commonest
ground of accusation. These cries arise because of Spinoza's conception
of God as substance, and substance only. What we are to think of this
charge follows, in the first instance, from the place which substance
takes in the system of the logical idea. Though an essential stage in
the evolution of the idea, substance is not the same with absolute
Idea, but the idea under the still limited form of necessity. It is
true that God is necessity, or, as we may also put it, that He is the
absolute Thing: He is however no less the absolute Person. That He is
the absolute Person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza
never reached: and on that side it falls short of the true notion of
God which forms the content of religious consciousness in Christianity.
Spinoza was by descent a Jew; and it is upon the whole the Oriental way
of seeing things, according to which the nature of the finite world
seems frail and transient, that has found its intellectual expression
in his system. This Oriental view of the unity of substance certainly
gives the basis for all real further development. Still it is not the
final idea. It is marked by the absence of the principle of the Western
World, the principle of individuality, which first appeared under a
philosophic shape, contemporaneously with Spinoza, in the Monadology of
Leibnitz.
From this point we glance back to the alleged atheism of Spinoza. The
charge will be seen to be unfounded if we remember that his system,
instead of denying God, rather recognises that He alone really is.
Nor can it be maintained that the God of Spinoza, although he is
described as alone true, is not the true God, and therefore as good as
no God. If that were a just charge, it would only prove that all other
systems, where speculation has not gone beyond a subordinate stage
of the idea,--that the Jews and Mohammedans who know God only as the
Lord,--and that even the many Christians for whom God is merely the
most high, unknowable, and transcendent being, are as much atheists as
Spinoza. The so-called atheism of Spinoza is merely an exaggeration of
the fact that he defrauds the principle of difference or finitude of
its due. Hence his system, as it holds that there is properly speaking
no world, at any rate that the world has no positive being, should
rather be styled Acosmism, These considerations will also show what is
to be said of the charge of Pantheism. If Pantheism means, as it often
does, the doctrine which takes finite things in their finitude and in
the complex of them to be God, we must acquit the system of Spinoza of
the crime of Pantheism. For in that system, finite things and the world
as a whole are denied all truth. On the other hand, the philosophy
which is Acosmism is for that reason certainly pantheistic.
The shortcoming thus acknowledged to attach to the content turns out
at the same time to be a shortcoming in respect of form. Spinoza puts
substance at the head of his system, and defines it to be the unity
of thought and extension, without demonstrating how he gets to this
distinction, or how he traces it back to the unity of substance. The
further treatment of the subject proceeds in what is called the
mathematical method. Definitions and axioms are first laid down: after
them comes a series of theorems, which are proved by an analytical
reduction of them to these unproved postulates. Although the system
of Spinoza, and that even by those who altogether reject its contents
and results, is praised for the strict sequence of its method, such
unqualified praise of the form is as little justified as an unqualified
rejection of the content. The defect of the content is that the form
is not known as immanent in it, and therefore only approaches it as an
outer and subjective form. As intuitively accepted by Spinoza without a
previous mediation by dialectic, Substance, as the universal negative
power, is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs all definite
content as radically null, and produces from itself nothing that has a
positive subsistence of its own.
152.] At the stage, where substance, as absolute power, is the
self-relating power (itself a merely inner possibility) which thus
determines itself to accidentality,--from which power the externality
it thereby creates is distinguished--necessity is a correlation
strictly so called, just as in the first form of necessity, it is
substance. This is the correlation of Causality.
(b) _Relationship of Causality._
153.] Substance is Cause, in so far as substance reflects into
self as against its passage into accidentality and so stands as the
_primary_ fact, but again no less suspends this reflection-into-self
(its bare possibility), lays itself down as the negative of itself, and
thus produces an Effect, an actuality, which, though so far only
assumed as a sequence, is through the process that effectuates it at
the same time necessary.
As primary fact, the cause is qualified as having absolute independence
and a subsistence maintained in face of the effect: but in the
necessity, whose identity constitutes that primariness itself, it
is wholly passed into the effect. So far again as we can speak of a
definite content, there is no content in the effect that is not in
the cause. That identity in fact is the absolute content itself: but
it is no less also the form-characteristic. The primariness of the
cause is suspended in the effect in which the cause makes itself a
dependent being. The cause however does not for that reason vanish and
leave the effect to be alone actual. For this dependency is in like
manner directly suspended, and is rather the reflection of the cause
in itself, its primariness: in short, it is in the effect that the
cause first becomes actual and a cause. The cause consequently is in
its full truth _causa sui._--Jacobi, sticking to the partial conception
of mediation (in his Letters on Spinoza, second edit. p. 416), has
treated the _causa sui_ (and the _effectus sui_ is the same), which is
the absolute truth of the cause, as a mere formalism. He has also made
the remark that God ought to be defined not as the ground of things,
but essentially as cause. A more thorough consideration of the nature
of cause would have shown that Jacobi did not by this means gain what
he intended. Even in the finite cause and its conception we can see
this identity between cause and effect in point of content. The rain
(the cause) and the wet (the effect) are the self-same existing water.
In point of form the cause (rain) is dissipated or lost in the effect
(wet): but in that case the result can no longer be described as
effect; for without the cause it is nothing, and we should have only
the unrelated wet left.
In the common acceptation of the causal relation the cause is finite,
to such extent as its content is so (as is also the case with finite
substance), and so far as cause and effect are conceived as two several
independent existences; which they are, however, only when we leave
the causal relation out of sight. In the finite sphere we never get
over the difference of the form-characteristics in their relation: and
hence we turn the matter round and define the cause also as something
dependent or as an effect. This again has another cause, and thus there
grows up a progress from effects to causes _ad infinitum._ There is a
descending progress too: the effect, looked at in its identity with the
cause, is itself defined as a cause, and at the same time as another
cause, which again has other effects, and so on for ever.
The way understanding bristles up against the idea of substance is
equalled by its readiness to use the relation of cause and effect.
Whenever it is proposed to view any sum of fact as necessary, it
is especially the relation of causality to which the reflective
understanding makes a point of tracing it back. Now, although this
relation does undoubtedly belong to necessity, it forms only one aspect
in the process of that category. That process equally requires the
suspension of the mediation involved in causality and the exhibition
of it as simple self-relation. If we stick to causality as such, we
have it not in its truth. Such a causality is merely finite, and its
finitude lies in retaining the distinction between cause and effect
unassimilated. But these two terms, if they are distinct, are also
identical. Even in ordinary consciousness that identity may be found.
We say that a cause is a cause, only when it has an effect, and _vice
versâ._ Both cause and effect are thus one and the same content: and
the distinction between them is primarily only that the one lays down,
and the other is laid down. This formal difference however again
suspends itself, because the cause is not only a cause of something
else, but also a cause of itself; while the effect is not only an
effect of something else, but also an effect of itself. The finitude
of things consists accordingly in this. While cause and effect are in
their notion identical, the two forms present themselves severed so
that, though the cause is also an effect, and the effect also a cause,
the cause is not an effect in the same connexion as it is a cause, nor
the effect a cause in the same connexion as it is an effect. This
again gives the infinite progress, in the shape of an endless series
of causes, which shows itself at the same time as an endless series of
effects.
154.] The effect is different from the cause. The former as such has
a being dependent on the latter. But such a dependence is likewise
reflection-into-self and immediacy: and the action of the cause, as it
constitutes the effect, is at the same time the pre-constitution of
the effect, so long as effect is kept separate from cause. There is
thus already in existence another substance on which the effect takes
place. As immediate, this substance is not a self-related negativity
and _active,_ but _passive._ Yet it is a substance, and it is therefore
active also: it therefore suspends the immediacy it was originally put
forward with, and the effect which was put into it: it reacts, _e.g._
suspends the activity of the first substance. But this first substance
also in the same way sets aside its own immediacy, or the effect which
is put into it; it thus suspends the activity of the other substance
and reacts. In this manner causality passes into the relation of
Action and Reaction, or Reciprocity.
In Reciprocity, although causality is not yet invested with its true
characteristic, the rectilinear movement out from causes to effects,
and from effects to causes, is bent round and back into itself, and
thus the progress _ad infinitum_ of causes and effects is, as a
progress, really and truly suspended. This bend, which transforms, the
infinite progression into a self-contained relationship, is here as
always the plain reflection that in the above meaningless repetition
there is only one and the same thing, viz. one cause and another, and
their connexion with one another. Reciprocity--which is the development
of this relation-itself however only distinguishes turn and turn
about (--not causes, but) factors of causation, in each of which--just
because they are inseparable (on the principle of the identity that the
cause is cause in the effect, and _vice versâ_)--the other factor is
also equally supposed.
(c) _Reciprocity or Action and Reaction._
155.] The characteristics which in Reciprocal Action are retained as
distinct are (α) potentially the same. The one side is a cause, is
primary, active, passive, &c, just as the other is. Similarly the
pre-supposition of another side and the action upon it, the immediate
primariness and the dependence produced by the alternation, are one and
the same on both sides. The cause assumed to be first is on account
of its immediacy passive, a dependent being, and an effect. The
distinction of the causes spoken of as two is accordingly void: and
properly speaking there is only one cause, which, while it suspends
itself (as substance) in its effect, also rises in this operation only
to independent existence as a cause.
156.] But this unity of the double cause is also (β) actual. All this
alternation is properly the cause in act of constituting itself and in
such constitution lies its being. The nullity of the distinctions is
not only potential, or a reflection of ours (§ 155). Reciprocal action
just means that each characteristic we impose is also to be suspended
and inverted into its opposite, and that in this way the essential
nullity of the 'moments' is explicitly stated. An effect is introduced
into the primariness; in other words, the primariness is abolished: the
action of a cause becomes reaction, and so on.
Reciprocal action realises the causal relation in its complete
development. It is this relation, therefore, in which reflection
usually takes shelter when the conviction grows that things can no
longer be studied satisfactorily from a causal point of view, on
account of the infinite progress already spoken of. Thus in historical
research the question may be raised in a first form, whether the
character and manners of a nation are the cause of its constitution and
its laws, or if they are not rather the effect. Then, as the second
step, the character and manners on one side and the constitution and
laws on the other are conceived on the principle of reciprocity: and
in that case the cause in the same connexion as it is a cause will at
the same time be an effect, and _vice versâ._ The same thing is done
in the study of Nature, and especially of living organisms. There
the several organs and functions are similarly seen to stand to each
other in the relation of reciprocity. Reciprocity is undoubtedly the
proximate truth of the relation of cause and effect, and stands, so
to say, on the threshold of the notion; but on that very ground,
supposing that our aim is a thoroughly comprehensive idea, we should
not rest content with applying this relation. If we get no further than
studying a given content under the point of view of reciprocity, we are
taking up an attitude which leaves matters utterly incomprehensible.
We are left with a mere dry fact; and the call for mediation, which
is the chief motive in applying the relation of causality, is still
unanswered. And it we look more narrowly into the dissatisfaction
felt in applying the relation of reciprocity, we shall see that it
consists in the circumstance, that this relation, instead of being
treated as an equivalent for the notion, ought, first of all, to be
known and understood in its own nature. And to understand the relation
of action and reaction we must not let the two sides rest in their
state of mere given facts, but recognise them, as has been shown in
the two paragraphs preceding, for factors of a third and higher, which
is the notion and nothing else. To make, for example, the manners of
the Spartans the cause of their constitution and their constitution
conversely the cause of their manners, may no doubt be in a way
correct. But, as we have comprehended neither the manners nor the
constitution of the nation, the result of such reflections can never
be final or satisfactory. The satisfactory point will be reached only
when these two, as well as all other, special aspects of Spartan life
and Spartan history are seen to be founded in this notion.
157.] This pure self-reciprocation is therefore Necessity unveiled
or realised. The link of necessity _quâ_ necessity is identity, as
still inward and concealed, because it is the identity of what are
esteemed actual things, although their very self-subsistence is bound
to be necessity. The circulation of substance through causality
and reciprocity therefore only expressly makes out or states that
self-subsistence is the infinite negative self-relation--a relation
_negative,_ in general, for in it the act of distinguishing and
intermediating becomes a primariness of actual things independent
one against the other,--and _infinite self-relation,_ because their
independence only lies in their identity.
158.] This truth of necessity, therefore, is _Freedom:_ and the
truth of substance is the Notion,--an independence which, though
self-repulsive into distinct independent elements, yet in that
repulsion is self-identical, and in the movement of reciprocity still
at home and conversant only with itself.
* * * * *
Necessity is often called hard, and rightly so, if we keep only to
necessity as such, _i.e._ to its immediate shape. Here we have,
first of all, some state or, generally speaking, fact, possessing an
independent subsistence: and necessity primarily implies that there
falls upon such a fact something else by which it is brought low.
This is what is hard and sad in necessity immediate or abstract. The
identity of the two things, which necessity presents as bound to each
other and thus bereft of their independence, is at first only inward,
and therefore has no existence for those under the yoke of necessity.
Freedom too from this point of view is only abstract, and is preserved
only by renouncing all that we immediately are and have. But, as we
have seen already, the process of necessity is so directed that it
overcomes the rigid externality which it first had and reveals its
inward nature. It then appears that the members, linked to one another,
are not really foreign to each other, but only elements of one whole,
each of them, in its connexion with the other, being, as it were, at
home, and combining with itself. In this way necessity is transfigured
into freedom,--not the freedom that consists in abstract negation,
but freedom concrete and positive. From which we may learn what a
mistake it is to regard freedom and necessity as mutually exclusive.
Necessity indeed _quâ_ necessity is far from being freedom: yet
freedom pre-supposes necessity, and contains it as an unsubstantial
element in itself. A good man is aware that the tenor of his conduct
is essentially obligatory and necessary. But this consciousness is
so far from making any abatement from his freedom, that without it
real and reasonable freedom could not be distinguished from arbitrary
choice,--a freedom which has no reality and is merely potential. A
criminal, when punished, may look upon his punishment as a restriction
of his freedom. Really the punishment is not foreign constraint to
which he is subjected, but the manifestation of his own act: and if he
recognises this, he comports himself as a free man. In short, man is
most independent when he knows himself to be determined by the absolute
idea throughout. It was this phase of mind and conduct which Spinoza
called _Amor intellectualis Dei._
159.] Thus the Notion is the truth of Being and Essence, inasmuch as
the shining or show of self-reflection is itself at the same time
independent immediacy, and this being of a different actuality is
immediately only a shining or show on itself.
The Notion has exhibited itself as the truth of Being and Essence, as
the ground to which the regress of both leads. Conversely it has been
developed out of being as its ground. The former aspect of the advance
may be regarded as a concentration of being into its depth, thereby
disclosing its inner nature: the latter aspect as an issuing of the
more perfect from the less perfect. When such development is viewed on
the latter side only, it does prejudice to the method of philosophy.
The special meaning which these superficial thoughts of more imperfect
and more perfect have in this place is to indicate the distinction of
being, as an immediate unity with itself, from the notion, as free
mediation with itself. Since being has shown that it is an element in
the notion, the latter has thus exhibited itself as the truth of being.
As this its reflection in itself and as an absorption of the mediation,
the notion is the pre-supposition of the immediate--a pre-supposition
which is identical with the return to self; and in this identity lie
freedom and the notion. If the partial element therefore be called the
imperfect, then the notion, or the perfect, is certainly a development
from the imperfect; since its very nature is thus to suspend its
pre-supposition. At the same time it is the notion alone which, in the
act of supposing itself, makes its pre-supposition; as has been made
apparent in causality in general and especially in reciprocal action.
Thus in reference to Being and Essence the Notion is defined as Essence
reverted to the simple immediacy of Being,--the shining or show of
Essence thereby having actuality, and its actuality being at the same
time a free shining or show in itself. In this manner the notion has
being as its simple self-relation, or as the immediacy of its immanent
unity. Being is so poor a category that it is the least thing which can
be shown to be found in the notion.
The passage from necessity to freedom, or from actuality into the
notion, is the very hardest, because it proposes that independent
actuality shall be thought as having all its substantiality in the
passing over and identity with the other independent actuality. The
notion, too, is extremely hard, because it is itself just this very
identity. But the actual substance as such, the cause, which in its
exclusiveness resists all invasion, is _ipso facto_ subjected to
necessity or the destiny of passing into dependency: and it is this
subjection rather where the chief hardness lies. To think necessity, on
the contrary, rather tends to melt that hardness. For thinking means
that, in the other, one meets with one's self.--It means a liberation,
which is not the flight of abstraction, but consists in that which is
actual having itself not as something else, but as its own being and
creation, in the other actuality with which it is bound up by the force
of necessity. As existing in an individual form, this liberation is
called I: as developed to its totality, it is free Spirit; as feeling,
it is Love; and as enjoyment, it is Blessedness.--The great vision
of substance in Spinoza is only a potential liberation from finite
exclusiveness and egoism: but the notion itself realises for its own
both the power of necessity and actual freedom.
* * * * *
When, as now, the notion is called the truth of Being and Essence,
we must expect to be asked, why we do not begin with the notion? The
answer is that, where knowledge by thought is our aim, we cannot begin
with the truth, because the truth, when it forms the beginning, must
rest on mere assertion. The truth when it is thought must as such
verify itself to thought. If the notion were put at the head of Logic,
and defined, quite correctly in point of content, as the unity of
Being and Essence, the following question would come up: What are we
to think under the terms 'Being' and 'Essence,' and how do they come
to be embraced in the unity of the Notion? But if we answered these
questions, then our beginning with the notion would be merely nominal.
The real start would be made with Being, as we have here done: with
this difference, that the characteristics of Being as well as those
of Essence would have to be accepted uncritically from figurate
conception, whereas we have observed Being and Essence in their own
dialectical development and learnt how they lose themselves in the
unity of the notion.
[1] Compare Goethe's indignant outcry--'To Natural Science,' vol. i.
pt. 3:
Das hör' ich sechzig Jahre wiederholen,
Und fluche drauf, aber verstohlen,--
Natur hat weder Kern noch Schaale,
Alles ist sie mit einem Male.
CHAPTER IX.
THIRD SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION.
160.] The Notion is the principle of freedom, the power of
substance self-realised. It is a systematic whole, in which each of its
constituent functions is the very total which the notion is, and is put
as indissolubly one with it. Thus in its self-identity it has original
and complete determinateness.
The position taken up by the notion is that of absolute idealism.
Philosophy is a knowledge through notions because it sees that what
on other grades of consciousness is taken to have Being, and to be
naturally or immediately independent, is but a constituent stage in the
Idea. In the logic of understanding, the notion is generally reckoned
a mere form of thought, and treated as a general conception. It is to
this inferior view of the notion that the assertion refers, so often
urged on behalf of the heart and sentiment, that notions as such are
something dead, empty, and abstract. The case is really quite the
reverse. The notion is, on the contrary, the principle of all life, and
thus possesses at the same time a character of thorough concreteness.
That it is so follows from the whole logical movement up to this point,
and need not be here proved. The contrast between form and content,
which is thus used to criticise the notion when it is alleged to be
merely formal, has, like all the other contrasts upheld by reflection,
been already left behind and overcome dialectically or through itself.
The notion, in short, is what contains all the earlier categories of
thought merged in it. It certainly is a form, but an infinite and
creative form, which includes, but at the same time releases from
itself, the fulness of all content. And so too the notion may, if it
be wished, be styled abstract, if the name concrete is restricted to
the concrete facts of sense or of immediate perception. For the notion
is not palpable to the touch, and when we are engaged with it, hearing
and seeing must quite fail us. And yet, as it was before remarked, the
notion is a true concrete; for the reason that it involves Being and
Essence, and the total wealth of these two spheres with them, merged in
the unity of thought.
If, as was said at an earlier point, the different stages of the
logical idea are to be treated as a series of definitions of the
Absolute, the definition which now results for us is that the Absolute
is the Notion. That necessitates a higher estimate of the notion,
however, than is found in formal conceptualist Logic, where the notion
is a mere form of our subjective thought, with no original content of
its own. But if Speculative Logic thus attaches a meaning to the term
notion so very different from that usually given, it may be asked why
the same word should be employed in two contrary acceptations, and an
occasion thus given for confusion and misconception. The answer is
that, great as the interval is between the speculative notion and the
notion of Formal Logic, a closer examination shows that the deeper
meaning is not so foreign to the general usages of language as it
seems at first sight. We speak of the deduction of a content from the
notion, _e.g._ of the specific provisions of the law of property from
the notion of property; and so again we speak of tracing back these
material details to the notion. We thus recognise that the notion is no
mere form without a content of its own: for if it were, there would be
in the one case nothing to deduce from such a form, and in the other
case to trace a given body of fact back to the empty form of the notion
would only rob the fact of its specific character, without making it
understood.
161.] The onward movement of the notion is no longer either
a transition into, or a reflection on something else, but
Development. For in the notion, the elements distinguished are
without more ado at the same time declared to be identical with one
another and with the whole, and the specific character of each is a
free being of the whole notion.
* * * * *
Transition into something else is the dialectical process within the
range of Being: reflection (bringing something else into light), in
the range of Essence. The movement of the Notion is _development_: by
which that only is explicit which is already implicitly present. In
the world of nature it is organic life that corresponds to the grade
of the notion. Thus _e.g._ the plant is developed from its germ. The
germ virtually involves the whole plant, but does so only ideally or in
thought: and it would therefore be a mistake to regard the development
of the root, stem, leaves, and other different parts of the plant, as
meaning that they were _realiter_ present, but in a very minute form,
in the germ. That is the so-called 'box-within-box' hypothesis; a
theory which commits the mistake of supposing an actual existence of
what is at first found only as a postulate of the completed thought.
The truth of the hypothesis on the other hand lies in its perceiving
that in the process of development the notion keeps to itself and
only gives rise to alteration of form, without making any addition in
point of content. It is this nature of the notion--this manifestation
of itself in its process as a development of its own self,--which is
chiefly in view with those who speak of innate ideas, or who, like
Plato, describe all learning merely as reminiscence. Of course that
again does not mean that everything which is embodied in a mind, after
that mind has been formed by instruction, had been present in that mind
beforehand, in its definitely expanded shape.
The movement of the notion is as it were to be looked upon merely as
play: the other which it sets up is in reality not an other. Or, as
it is expressed in the teaching of Christianity: not merely has God
created a world which confronts Him as an other; He has also from all
eternity begotten a Son in whom He, a Spirit, is at home with Himself.
162.] The doctrine of the notion is divided into three parts. (1) The
first is the doctrine of the Subjective or Formal Notion.
(2) The second is the doctrine of the notion invested with the
character of immediacy, or of Objectivity. (3) The third is the
doctrine of the Idea, the subject-object, the unity of notion
and objectivity, the absolute truth.
The Common Logic covers only the matters which come before us here
as a portion of the third part of the whole system, together with
the so-called Laws of Thought, which we have already met; and in the
Applied Logic it adds a little about cognition. This is combined with
psychological, metaphysical, and all sorts of empirical materials,
which were introduced because, when all was done, those forms of
thought could not be made to do all that was required of them. But
with these additions the science lost its unity of aim. Then there was
a further circumstance against the Common Logic. Those forms, which
at least do belong to the proper domain of Logic, are supposed to be
categories of conscious thought only, of thought too in the character
of understanding, not of reason.
The preceding logical categories, those viz. of Being and Essence, are,
it is true, no mere logical modes or entities: they are proved to be
notions in their transition or their dialectical element, and in their
return into themselves and totality. But they are only in a modified
form notions (cp. §§ 84 and 112), notions rudimentary, or, what is
the same thing, notions for us. The antithetical term into which each
category passes, or in which it shines, so producing correlation, is
not characterised as a particular. The third, in which they return
to unity, is not characterised as a subject or an individual: nor is
there any explicit statement that the category: is identical in its
antithesis,--in other words, its freedom is not expressly stated: and
all this because the category is not universality.--What generally
passes current under the name of a notion is a mode of understanding,
or, even, a mere general representation, and therefore, in short, a
finite mode of thought (cp. § 62).
The Logic of the Notion is usually treated as a science of form only,
and understood to deal with the form of notion, judgment, and syllogism
as form, without in the least touching the question whether anything
is true. The answer to that question is supposed to depend on the
content only. If the logical forms of the notion were really dead and
inert receptacles of conceptions and thoughts, careless of what they
contained, knowledge about them would be an idle curiosity which the
truth might dispense with. On the contrary they really are, as forms
of the notion, the vital spirit of the actual world. That only is
true of the actual which is true in virtue of these forms, through
them and in them. As yet, however, the truth of these forms has never
been considered or examined on their own account any more than their
necessary interconnexion.
A.--THE SUBJECTIVE NOTION.
(a) _The Notion as Notion._
163.] The Notion as Notion contains the three following 'moments' or
functional parts. (1) The first is _Universality_--meaning that it
is in free equality with itself in its specific character. (2) The
second is Particularity--that is, the specific character, in
which the universal continues serenely equal to itself. (3) The third
is Individuality--meaning the reflection-into-self of the
specific characters of universality and particularity;--which negative
self-unity has complete and original determinateness, without any loss
to its self-identity or universality.
Individual and actual are the same thing: only the former has issued
from the notion, and is thus, as a universal, stated expressly as a
negative identity with itself. The actual, because it is at first no
more than a potential or immediate unity of essence and existence,
_may_ possibly have effect: but the individuality of the notion is
the very source of effectiveness, effective moreover no longer as the
cause is, with a show of effecting something else, but effective of
itself.--Individuality, however, is not to be understood to mean the
immediate or natural individual, as when we speak of individual things
or individual men: for that special phase of individuality does not
appear till we come to the judgment. Every function and 'moment' of
the notion is itself the whole notion (§ 160); but the individual or
subject is the notion expressly put as a totality.
(1) The notion is generally associated in our minds with abstract
generality, and on that account it is often described as a general
conception. We speak, accordingly, of the notions of colour, plant,
animal, &c. They are supposed to be arrived at by neglecting the
particular features which distinguish the different colours, plants,
and animals from each other, and by retaining those common to them all.
This is the aspect of the notion which is familiar to understanding;
and feeling is in the right when it stigmatises such hollow and empty
notions as mere phantoms and shadows. But the universal of the notion
is not a mere sum of features common to several things, confronted
by a particular which enjoys an existence of its own. It is, on the
contrary, self-particularising or self-specifying, and with undimmed
clearness finds itself at home in its antithesis. For the sake both of
cognition and of our practical conduct, it is of the utmost importance
that the real universal should not be confused with what is merely held
in common. All those charges which the devotees of feeling make against
thought, and especially against philosophic thought, and the reiterated
statement that it is dangerous to carry thought to what they call too
great lengths, originate in the confusion of these two things.
The universal in its true and comprehensive meaning is a thought
which, as we know, cost thousands of years to make it enter into the
consciousness of men. The thought did not gain its full recognition
till the days of Christianity. The Greeks, in other respects so
advanced, knew neither God nor even man in their true universality.
The gods of the Greeks were only particular powers of the mind; and
the universal God, the God of all nations, was to the Athenians still
a God concealed. They believed in the same way that an absolute gulf
separated themselves from the barbarians. Man as man was not then
recognised to be of infinite worth and to have infinite rights.
The question has been asked, why slavery has vanished from modern
Europe. One special circumstance after another has been adduced in
explanation of this phenomenon. But the real ground why there are
no more slaves in Christian Europe is only to be found in the very
principle of Christianity itself, the religion of absolute freedom.
Only in Christendom is man respected as man, in his infinitude and
universality. What the slave is without, is the recognition that he is
a person: and the principle of personality is universality. The master
looks upon his slave not as a person, but as a selfless thing. The
slave is not himself reckoned an 'I';--his 'I' is his master.
The distinction referred to above between what is merely in common, and
what is truly universal, is strikingly expressed by Rousseau in his
famous 'Contrat Social,' when he says that the laws of a state must
spring from the universal will (_volonté générale,_) but need not on
that account be the will of all (_volonté de tous._) Rousseau would
have made a sounder contribution towards a theory of the state, if he
had always keep this distinction in sight. The general will is the
notion of the will: and the laws are the special clauses of this will
and based upon the notion of it.
(2) We add a remark upon the account of the origin and formation of
notions which is usually given in the Logic of Understanding. It is
not _we_ who frame the notions. The notion is not something which
is originated at all. No doubt the notion is not mere Being, or the
immediate: it involves mediation, but the mediation lies in itself. In
other words, the notion is what is mediated through itself and with
itself. It is a mistake to imagine that the objects which form the
content of our mental ideas come first and that our subjective agency
then supervenes, and by the aforesaid operation of abstraction, and
by colligating the points possessed in common by the objects, frames
notions of them. Rather the notion is the genuine first; and things
are what they are through the action of the notion, immanent in them,
and revealing itself in them. In religious language we express this
by saying that God created the world out of nothing. In other words,
the world and finite things have issued from the fulness of the divine
thoughts and the divine decrees. Thus religion recognises thought and
(more exactly) the notion to be the infinite form, or the free creative
activity, which can realise itself without the help of a matter that
exists outside it.
164.] The notion is concrete out and out: because the negative
unity with itself, as characterisation pure and entire, which is
individuality, is just what constitutes its self-relation, its
universality. The functions or 'moments' of the notion are to this
extent indissoluble. The categories of 'reflection' are expected to be
severally apprehended and separately accepted as current, apart from
their opposites. But in the notion, where their identity is expressly
assumed, each of its functions can be immediately apprehended only from
and with the rest.
Universality, particularity, and individuality are, taken in the
abstract, the same as identity, difference, and ground. But the
universal is the self-identical, with the express qualification,
that it simultaneously contains the particular and the individual.
Again, the particular is the different or the specific character, but
with the qualification that it is in itself universal and is as an
individual. Similarly the individual must be understood to be a subject
or substratum, which involves the genus and species in itself and
possesses a substantial existence. Such is the explicit or realised
inseparability of the functions of the notion in their difference (§
160)--what may be called the clearness of the notion, in which each
distinction causes no dimness or interruption, but is quite as much
transparent.
No complaint is oftener made against the notion than that it is
_abstract._ Of course it is abstract, if abstract means that the medium
in which the notion exists is thought in general and not the sensible
thing in its empirical concreteness. It is abstract also, because the
notion falls short of the idea. To this extent the subjective notion
is still formal. This however does not mean that it ought to have
or receive another content than its own. It is itself the absolute
form, and so is all specific character, but as that character is in
its truth. Although it be abstract therefore, it is the concrete,
concrete altogether, the subject as such. The absolutely concrete is
the mind (see end of § 159)--the notion when it _exists_ as notion
distinguishing itself from its objectivity, which notwithstanding the
distinction still continues to be its own. Everything else which is
concrete, however rich it be, is not so intensely identical with itself
and therefore not so concrete on its own part,--least of all what is
commonly supposed to be concrete, but is only a congeries held together
by external influence.--What are called notions, and in fact specific
notions, such as man, house, animal, &c, are simply denotations
and abstract representations. These abstractions retain out of all
the functions of the notion only that of universality; they leave
particularity and individuality out of account and have no development
in these directions. By so doing they just miss the notion.
165.] It is the element of Individuality which first explicitly
differentiates the elements of the notion. Individuality is the
negative reflection of the notion into itself, and it is in that way at
first the free differentiating of it as the first negation, by which
the specific character of the notion is realised, but under the form
of particularity. That is to say, the different elements are in the
first place only qualified as the several elements of the notion, and,
secondly, their identity is no less explicitly stated, the one being
said to be the other. This realised particularity of the notion is the
Judgment.
The ordinary classification of notions, as _clear, distinct_ and
_adequate,_ is no part of the notion; it belongs to psychology.
Notions, in fact, are here synonymous with mental representations;
a _clear_ notion is an abstract simple representation: a _distinct_
notion is one where, in addition to the simplicity, there is one 'mark'
or character emphasised as a sign for subjective cognition. There is
no more striking mark of the formalism and decay of Logic than the
favourite category of the 'mark.' The _adequate_ notion comes nearer
the notion proper, or even the Idea: but after all it expresses only
the formal circumstance that a notion or representation agrees with its
object, that is, with an external thing.--The division into what are
called _subordinate_ and _co-ordinate_ notions implies a mechanical
distinction of universal from particular which allows only a mere
correlation of them in external comparison. Again, an enumeration
of such kinds as _contrary_ and _contradictory, affirmative_ and
_negative_ notions, &c, is only a chance-directed gleaning of logical
forms which properly belong to the sphere of Being or Essence, (where
they have been already examined,) and which have nothing to do with
the specific notional character as such. The true distinctions in the
notion, universal, particular, and individual, may be said also to
constitute species of it, but only when they are kept severed from
each other by external reflection. The immanent differentiating and
specifying of the notion come to sight in the judgment: for to judge is
to specify the notion.
(b) _The Judgment._
166.] The Judgment is the notion in its particularity, as a
connexion which is also a distinguishing of its functions, which are
put as independent and yet as identical with themselves, not with one
another.
One's first impression about the Judgment is the independence of the
two extremes, the subject and the predicate. The former we take to be
a thing or term _per se,_ and the predicate a general term outside
the said subject and somewhere in our heads. The next point is for us
to bring the latter into combination with the former, and in this way
frame a Judgment. The copula 'is' however enunciates the predicate _of_
the subject, and so that external subjective subsumption is again put
in abeyance, and the Judgment taken as a determination of the object
itself.--The etymological meaning of the Judgment (_Urtheil_) in
German goes deeper, as it were declaring the unity of the notion to be
primary, and its distinction to be the original partition. And that is
what the Judgment really is.
In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition:
'The individual is the universal.' These are the terms under which
the subject and the predicate first confront each other, when the
functions of the notion are taken in their immediate character or
first abstraction. [Propositions such as, 'The particular is the
universal,' and 'The individual is the particular,' belong to the
further specialisation of the judgment.] It shows a strange want
of observation in the logic-books, that in none of them is the fact
stated, that in _every_ judgment there is such a statement made, as,
The individual is the universal, or still more definitely, The subject
is the predicate: (_e.g._ God is absolute spirit). No doubt there is
also a distinction between terms like individual and universal, subject
and predicate: but it is none the less the universal fact, that every
judgment states them to be identical.
The copula 'is' springs from the nature of the notion, to be
self-identical even in parting with its own. The individual and
universal are _its_ constituents, and therefore characters which
cannot be isolated. The earlier categories (of reflection) in their
correlations also refer to one another: but their interconnexion is
only 'having' and not 'being,' _i.e._ it is not the identity which is
realised as identity or universality. In the judgment, therefore, for
the first time there is seen the genuine particularity of the notion:
for it is the speciality or distinguishing of the latter, without
thereby losing universality.
* * * * *
Judgments are generally looked upon as combinations of notions, and,
be it added, of heterogeneous notions. This theory of judgment is
correct, so far as it implies that it is the notion which forms the
presupposition of the judgment, and which in the judgment comes up
under the form of difference. But on the other hand, it is false to
speak of notions differing in kind. The notion, although concrete,
is still as a notion essentially one, and the functions which it
contains are not different kinds of it. It is equally false to speak
of a combination of the two sides in the judgment, if we understand
the term 'combination' to imply the independent existence of the
combining members apart from the combination. The same external view
of their nature is more forcibly apparent when judgments are described
as produced by the ascription of a predicate to the subject. Language
like this looks upon the subject as self-subsistent outside, and the
predicate as found somewhere in our head. Such a conception of the
relation between subject and predicate however is at once contradicted
by the copula 'is.' By saying 'This rose is red,' or 'This picture
is beautiful,' we declare, that it is not we who from outside attach
beauty to the picture or redness to the rose, but that these are the
characteristics proper to these objects. An additional fault in the
way in which Formal Logic conceives the judgment is, that it makes
the judgment look as if it were something merely contingent, and
does not offer any proof for the advance from notion on to judgment.
For the notion does not, as understanding supposes, stand still in
its own immobility. It is rather an infinite form, of boundless
activity, as it were the _punctum saliens_ of all vitality, and
thereby self-differentiating. This disruption of the notion into the
difference of its constituent functions',--a disruption imposed by the
native act of the notion, is the judgment. A judgment therefore means
the particularising of the notion. No doubt the notion is implicitly
the particular. But in the notion as notion the particular is not yet
explicit, and still remains in transparent unity with the universal.
Thus, for example, as we remarked before (§ 160, note), the germ of a
plant contains its particular, such as root, branches, leaves, &c.:
but these details are at first present only potentially, and are not
realised till the germ uncloses. This unclosing is, as it were, the
judgment of the plant. The illustration may also serve to show how
neither the notion nor the judgment are merely found in our head, or
merely framed by us. The notion is the very heart of things, and makes
them what they are. To form a notion of an object means therefore to
become aware of its notion: and when we proceed to a criticism or
judgment of the object, we are not performing a subjective act, and
merely ascribing this or that predicate to the object. We are, on the
contrary, observing the object in the specific character imposed by its
notion.
167.] The Judgment is usually taken in a subjective sense as an
operation and a form, occurring merely in self-conscious thought. This
distinction, however, has no existence on purely logical principles,
by which the judgment is taken in the quite universal signification
that all things are a judgment. That is to say, they are individuals,
which are a universality or inner nature in themselves,--a universal
which is individualised. Their universality and individuality are
distinguished, but the one is at the same time identical with the other.
The interpretation of the judgment, according to which it is assumed
to be merely subjective, as if _we_ ascribed a predicate to a subject,
is contradicted by the decidedly objective expression of the judgment.
The rose _is_ red; Gold _is_ a metal. It is not by us that something
is first ascribed to them.--A judgment is however distinguished from a
proposition. The latter contains a statement about the subject, which
does not stand to it in any universal relationship, but expresses some
single action, or some state, or the like. Thus, 'Caesar was born at
Rome in such and such a year, waged war in Gaul for ten years, crossed
the Rubicon, &c.,' are propositions, but not judgments. Again it is
absurd to say that such statements as, 'I slept well last night,' or
'Present arms!' may be turned into the form of a judgment. 'A carriage
is passing by'--would be a judgment, and a subjective one at best, only
if it were doubtful, whether the passing object was a carriage, or
whether it and not rather the point of observation was in motion:--in
short, only if it were desired to specify a conception which was still
short of appropriate specification.
168.] The judgment is an expression of finitude. Things from its point
of view are said to be finite, because they are a judgment, because
their definite being and their universal nature, (their body and their
soul,) though united indeed (otherwise the things would be nothing),
are still elements in the constitution which are already different and
also in any case separable.
169.] The abstract terms of the judgment, 'The individual is the
universal,' present the subject (as negatively self-relating) as what
is immediately _concrete,_ while the predicate is what is _abstract,_
indeterminate, in short, the universal. But the two elements are
connected together by an 'is': and thus the predicate (in its
universality) must also contain the speciality of the subject, must,
in short, have particularity: and so is realised the identity between
subject and predicate; which, being thus unaffected by this difference
in form, is the content.
It is the predicate which first gives the subject, which till then was
on its own account a bare mental representation or an empty name, its
specific character and content. In judgments like 'God is the most
real of all things,' or 'The Absolute is the self-identical,' God and
the Absolute are mere names; what they _are_ we only learn in the
predicate. What the subject may be in other respects, as a concrete
thing, is no concern of _this_ judgment. (Cp. § 31.)
To define the subject as that of which something is said, and the
predicate as what is said about it, is mere trifling. It gives no
information about the distinction between the two. In point of
thought, the subject is primarily the individual, and the predicate
the universal. As the judgment receives further development, the
subject ceases to be merely the immediate individual, and the predicate
merely the abstract universal: the former acquires the additional
significations of particular and universal,--the latter the additional
significations of particular and individual. Thus while the same names
are given to the two terms of the judgment, their meaning passes
through a series of changes.
170.] We now go closer into the speciality of subject and predicate.
The subject as negative self-relation (§§ 163, 166) is the stable
substratum in which the predicate has its subsistence and where it
is ideally present. The predicate, as the phrase is, _inheres_ in
the subject. Further, as the subject is in general and immediately
concrete, the specific connotation of the predicate is only one of the
numerous characters of the subject. Thus the subject is ampler and
wider than the predicate.
Conversely, the predicate as universal is self-subsistent, and
indifferent whether this subject is or not. The predicate outflanks
the subject, subsuming it under itself: and hence on its side is wider
than the subject. The specific content of the predicate (§ 169) alone
constitutes the identity of the two.
171.] At first, subject, predicate, and the specific content or the
identity are, even in their relation, still put in the judgment
as different and divergent. By implication, however, that is, in
their notion, they are identical. For the subject is a concrete
totality,--which means not any indefinite multiplicity, but
individuality alone, the particular and the universal in an identity:
and the predicate too is the very same unity (§ 170).--The copula
again, even while stating the identity of subject and predicate,
does so at first only by an abstract 'is.' Conformably to such an
identity the subject has to be _put_ also in the characteristic of the
predicate. By this means the latter also receives the characteristic of
the former: so that the copula receives its full complement and full
force. Such is the continuous specification by which the judgment,
through a copula charged with content, comes to be a syllogism. As it
is primarily exhibited in the judgment, this gradual specification
consists in giving to an originally abstract, sensuous universality the
specific character of allness, of species, of genus, and finally of the
developed universality of the notion.
After we are made aware of this continuous specification of the
judgment, we can see a meaning and an interconnexion in what are
usually stated as the kinds of judgment. Not only does the ordinary
enumeration seem purely casual, but it is also superficial, and even
bewildering in its statement of their distinctions. The distinction
between positive, categorical and assertory judgments, is either a pure
invention of fancy, or is left undetermined. On the right theory, the
different judgments follow necessarily from one another, and present
the continuous specification of the notion; for the judgment itself is
nothing but the notion specified.
When we look at the two preceding spheres of Being and Essence, we see
that the specified notions as judgments are reproductions of these
spheres, but put in the simplicity of relation peculiar to the notion.
* * * * *
The various kinds of judgment are no empirical aggregate. They are
a systematic whole based on a principle; and it was one of Kant's
great merits to have first emphasised the necessity of showing
this. His proposed division, according to the headings in his table
of categories, into judgments of quality, quantity, relation and
modality, can not be called satisfactory, partly from the merely formal
application of this categorical rubric, partly on account of their
content. Still it rests upon a true perception of the fact that the
different species of judgment derive their features from the universal
forms of the logical idea itself. If we follow this clue, it will
supply us with three chief kinds of judgment parallel to the stages
of Being, Essence, and Notion. The second of these kinds, as required
by the character of Essence, which is the stage of differentiation,
must be doubled. We find the inner ground for this systematisation of
judgments in the circumstance that when the Notion, which is the unity
of Being and Essence in a comprehensive thought, unfolds, as it does in
the judgment, it must reproduce these two stages in a transformation
proper to the notion. The notion itself meanwhile is seen to mould and
form the genuine grade of judgment.
Far from occupying the same level, and being of equal value, the
different species of judgment form a series of steps, the difference
of which rests upon the logical significance of the predicate. That
judgments differ in value is evident even in our ordinary ways of
thinking. We should not hesitate to ascribe a very slight faculty of
judgment to a person who habitually framed only such judgments as,
'This wall is green,' 'This stove is hot.' On the other hand we should
credit with a genuine capacity of judgment the person whose criticisms
dealt with such questions as whether a certain work of art was
beautiful, whether a certain action was good, and so on. In judgments
of the first-mentioned kind the content forms only an abstract quality,
the presence of which can be sufficiently detected by immediate
perception. To pronounce a work of art to be beautiful, or an action to
be good, requires on the contrary a comparison of the objects with what
they ought to be, _i.e._ with their notion.
(α) Qualitative Judgment.
172.] The immediate judgment is the judgment of definite Being. The
subject is invested with a universality as its predicate, which is
an immediate, and therefore a sensible quality. It may be (1) a
Positive judgment: The individual is a particular. But the
individual is not a particular: or in more precise language, such
a single quality is not congruous with the concrete nature of the
subject. This is (2) a Negative judgment.
It is one of the fundamental assumptions of dogmatic Logic that
Qualitative judgments such as, 'The rose is red,' or 'is not red,' can
contain _truth. Correct_ they may be, _i.e._ in the limited circle
of perception, of finite conception and thought: that depends on the
content, which likewise is finite, and, on its own merits, untrue.
Truth, however, as opposed to correctness, depends solely on the form,
viz. on the notion as it is put and the reality corresponding to it.
But truth of that stamp is not found in the Qualitative judgment.
In common life the terms _truth_ and _correctness_ are often treated
as synonymous: we speak of the truth of a content, when we are only
thinking of its correctness. Correctness, generally speaking, concerns
only the formal coincidence between our conception and its content,
whatever the constitution of this content may be. Truth, on the
contrary, lies in the coincidence of the object with itself, that is,
with its notion. That a person is sick, or that some one has committed
a theft, may certainly be correct. But the content is untrue. A sick
body is not in harmony with the notion of body, and there is a want
of congruity between theft and the notion of human conduct. These
instances may show that an immediate judgment, in which an abstract
quality is predicated of an immediately individual thing, however
correct it may be, cannot contain truth. The subject and predicate of
it do not stand to each other in the relation of reality and notion.
We may add that the untruth of the immediate judgment lies in the
incongruity between its form and content. To say 'This rose is red,'
involves (in virtue of the copula 'is') the coincidence of subject and
predicate. The rose however is a concrete thing, and so is not red
only: it has also an odour, a specific form, and many other features
not implied in the predicate red. The predicate on its part is an
abstract universal, and does not apply to the rose alone. There are
other flowers and other objects which are red too. The subject and
predicate in the immediate judgment touch, as it were, only in a single
point, but do not cover each other. The case is different with the
notional judgment. In pronouncing an action to be good, we frame a
notional judgment. Here, as we at once perceive, there is a closer and
a more intimate relation than in the immediate judgment. The predicate
in the latter is some abstract quality which may or may not be applied
to the subject. In the judgment of the notion the predicate is, as it
were, the soul of the subject, by which the subject, as the body of
this soul, is characterised through and through.
173.] This negation of a particular quality, which is the first
negation, still leaves the connexion of the subject with the predicate
subsisting. The predicate is in that manner a sort of relative
universal, of which a special phase only has been negatived. [To say,
that the rose is not red, implies that it is still coloured--in the
first place with another colour; which however would be only one more
positive judgment.] The individual however is not a universal. Hence
(3) the judgment suffers disruption into one of two forms. It is either
(a) the Identical judgment, an empty identical relation stating
that the individual is the individual; or it is (b) what is called the
Infinite judgment, in which we are presented with the total
incompatibility of subject and predicate.
Examples of the latter are: 'The mind is no elephant:' 'A lion is
no table;' propositions which are correct but absurd, exactly like
the identical propositions: 'A lion is a lion;' 'Mind is mind.'
Propositions like these are undoubtedly the truth of the immediate, or,
as it is called, Qualitative judgment. But they are not judgments at
all, and can only occur in a subjective thought where even an untrue
abstraction may hold its ground.--In their objective aspect, these
latter judgments express the nature of what is, or of sensible things,
which, as they declare, suffer disruption into an empty identity on the
one hand, and on the other a fully-charged relation--only that this
relation is the qualitative antagonism of the things related, their
total incongruity.
* * * * *
The negatively-infinite judgment, in which the subject has no relation
whatever to the predicate, gets its place in the Formal Logic solely as
a nonsensical curiosity. But the infinite judgment is not really a mere
casual form adopted by subjective thought. It exhibits the proximate
result of the dialectical process in the immediate judgments preceding
(the positive and simply-negative), and distinctly displays their
finitude and untruth. Crime may be quoted as an objective instance of
the negatively-infinite judgment. The person committing a crime, such
as a theft, does not, as in a suit about civil rights, merely deny
the particular right of another person to some one definite thing.
He denies the right of that person in general, and therefore he is
not merely forced to restore what he has stolen, but is punished in
addition, because he has violated law as law, _i.e._ law in general.
The civil-law suit on the contrary is an instance of the negative
judgment pure and simple where merely the particular law is violated,
whilst law in general is so far acknowledged. Such a dispute is
precisely paralleled by a negative judgment, like, 'This flower is not
red:' by which we merely deny the particular colour of the flower, but
not its colour in general, which may be blue, yellow, or any other.
Similarly death, as a negatively-infinite judgment, is distinguished
from disease as simply-negative. In disease, merely this or that
function of life is checked or negatived: in death, as we ordinarily
say, body and soul part, _i.e._ subject and predicate utterly diverge.
(ß) _Judgment of Reflection._
174.] The individual put as individual (_i.e._ as reflected-into-self)
into the judgment, has a predicate, in comparison with which the
subject, as self-relating, continues to be still _an other_ thing.--In
existence the subject ceases to be immediately qualitative, it is in
correlation, and inter-connexion with an other thing,--with an external
world. In this way the universality of the predicate comes to signify
this relativity--(_e.g._) useful, or dangerous; weight or acidity; or
again, instinct; are examples of such relative predicates.
The Judgment of Reflection is distinguished from the Qualitative
judgment by the circumstance that its predicate is not an immediate
or abstract quality, but of such a kind as to exhibit the subject
as in relation to something else. When we say, _e.g._ 'This rose is
red.' we regard the subject in its immediate individuality, and
without reference to anything else. If, on the other hand, we frame
the judgment, 'This plant is medicinal,' we regard the subject, plant,
as standing in connexion with something else (the sickness which it
cures), by means of its predicate (its medicinality). The case is the
same with judgments like: This body is elastic: This instrument is
useful: This punishment has a deterrent influence. In every one of
these instances the predicate is some category of reflection. They all
exhibit an advance beyond the immediate individuality of the subject,
but none of them goes so far as to indicate the adequate notion of it.
It is in this mode of judgment that ordinary _raisonnement_ luxuriates.
The greater the concreteness of the object in question, the more points
of view does it offer to reflection; by which however its proper nature
or notion is not exhausted.
175.] (1) Firstly then the subject, the individual as individual (in
the Singular judgment), is a universal. But (2) secondly, in
this relation it is elevated above its singularity. This enlargement is
external, due to subjective reflection, and at first is an indefinite
number of particulars. (This is seen in the Particular judgment,
which is obviously negative as well as positive: the individual is
divided in itself: partly it is self-related, partly related to
something else.) (3) Thirdly, Some are the universal: particularity is
thus enlarged to universality: or universality is modified through the
individuality of the subject, and appears as allness Community,
the ordinary universality of reflection.
* * * * *
The subject, receiving, as in the Singular judgment, a universal
predicate, is carried out beyond its mere individual self. To say,
'This plant is wholesome,' implies not only that this single plant is
wholesome, but that some or several are so. We have thus the particular
judgment (some plants are wholesome, some men are inventive, &c). By
means of particularity the immediate individual comes to lose its
independence, and enters into an inter-connexion with something else.
Man, as _this_ man, is not this single man alone: he stands beside
other men and becomes one in the crowd, just by this means however he
belongs to his universal, and is consequently raised.--The particular
judgment is as much negative as positive. If only some bodies are
elastic, it is evident that the rest are not elastic.
On this fact again depends the advance to the third form of the
Reflective judgment, viz. the judgment of allness (all men are mortal,
all metals conduct electricity). It is as 'all' that the universal
is in the first instance generally encountered by reflection. The
individuals form for reflection the foundation, and it is only our
subjective action which collects and describes them as 'all.' So far
the universal has the aspect of an external fastening, that holds
together a number of independent individuals, which have not the least
affinity towards it. This semblance of indifference is however unreal:
for the universal is the ground and foundation, the root, and substance
of the individual. If _e.g._ we take Caius, Titus, Sempronius, and
the other inhabitants of a town or country, the fact that all of them
are men is not merely something which they have in common, but their
universal or kind, without which these individuals would not be at all.
The case is very different with that superficial generality falsely
so called, which really means only what attaches, or is common, to
all the individuals. It has been remarked, for example, that men,
in contradistinction from the lower animals, possess in common the
appendage of ear-lobes. It is evident, however, that the absence of
these ear-lobes in one man or another would not affect the rest of
his being, character, or capacities: whereas it would be nonsense
to suppose that Caius, without being a man, would still be brave,
learned, &c. The individual man is what he is in particular, only in so
far as he is before all things a man as man and in general. And that
generality is not something external to, or something in addition to
other abstract qualities, or to mere features discovered by reflection.
It is what permeates and includes in it everything particular.
176.] The subject being thus likewise characterised as a universal,
there is an express identification of subject and predicate, by which
at the same time the speciality of the judgment form is deprived of
all importance. This unity of the content (the content being the
universality which is identical with the negative reflection-in-self of
the subject) makes the connexion in judgment a necessary one.
The advance from the reflective judgment of allness to the judgment
of necessity is found in our usual modes of thought, when we say that
whatever appertains to all, appertains to the species, and is therefore
necessary. To say all plants, or all men, is the same thing as to say
_the_ plant, or _the_ man.
(γ) _Judgment of Necessity._
177.] The Judgment of Necessity, _i.e._ of the identity of the content
in its difference (1), contains, in the predicate, partly the substance
or nature of the subject, the concrete universal, the _genus_; partly,
seeing that this universal also contains the specific character as
negative, the predicate represents the exclusive essential character,
the _species._ This is the Categorical judgment.
(2) Conformably to their substantiality, the two terms receive the
aspect of independent actuality. Their identity is then inward only;
and thus the actuality of the one is at the same time not its own, but
the being of the other. This is the Hypothetical judgment.
(3) If, in this self-surrender and self-alienation of the notion,
its inner identity is at the same time explicitly put, the universal
is the genus which is self-identical in its mutually-exclusive
individualities. This judgment, which has this universal for both its
terms, the one time as a universal, the other time as the circle of
its self-excluding particularisation in which the 'either--or' as much
as the 'as well as' stands for the genus, is the Disjunctive
judgment. Universality, at first as a genus, and now also as the
circuit of its species, is thus described and expressly put as a
totality.
* * * * *
The Categorical judgment (such as 'Gold is a metal,' 'The rose is a
plant') is the un-mediated judgment of necessity, and finds within the
sphere of Essence its parallel in the relation of substance. All things
are a Categorical judgment. In other words, they have their substantial
nature, forming their fixed and unchangeable substratum. It is only
when things are studied from the point of view of their kind, and as
with necessity determined by the kind, that the judgment first begins
to be real. It betrays a defective logical training to place upon the
same level judgments like 'gold is dear,' and judgments like 'gold
is a metal.' That 'gold is dear' is a matter of external connexion
between it and our wants or inclinations, the costs of obtaining it,
and other circumstances. Gold remains the same as it was, though that
external reference is altered or removed. Metalleity, on the contrary,
constitutes the substantial nature of gold, apart from which it, and
all else that is in it, or can be predicated of it, would be unable to
subsist. The same is the case if we say, 'Caius is a man.' We express
by that, that whatever else he may be, has worth and meaning, only when
it corresponds to his substantial nature or manhood.
But even the Categorical judgment is to a certain extent defective. It
fails to give due place to the function or element of particularity.
Thus 'gold is a metal,' it is true; but so are silver, copper, iron:
and metalleity as such has no leanings to any of its particular
species. In these circumstances we must advance from the Categorical to
the Hypothetical judgment, which may be expressed in the formula: If
_A_ is, _B_ is. The present case exhibits the same advance as formerly
took place from the relation of substance to the relation of cause. In
the Hypothetical judgment the specific character of the content shows
itself mediated and dependent on something else: and this is exactly
the relation of cause and effect. And if we were to give a general
interpretation to the Hypothetical judgment, we should say that it
expressly realises the universal in its particularising. This brings
us to the third form of the Judgment of Necessity, the Disjunctive
judgment. _A_ is either _B_ or _C_ or _D._ A work of poetic art is
either epic or lyric or dramatic. Colour is either yellow or blue or
red. The two terms in the Disjunctive judgment are identical. The genus
is the sum total of the species, and the sum total of the species
is the genus. This unity of the universal and the particular is the
notion: and it is the notion which, as we now see, forms the content of
the judgment.
(δ) _Judgment of the Notion._
178.] The Judgment of the Notion has for its content the notion, the
totality in simple form, the universal with its complete speciality.
The subject is, (1) in the first place, an individual, which has
for its predicate the reflection of the particular existence on its
universal; or the judgment states the agreement or disagreement of
these two aspects. That is, the predicate is such a term as good, true,
correct. This is the Assertory judgment.
Judgments, such as whether an object, action, &c. is good, bad, true,
beautiful, &c, are those to which even ordinary language first applies
the name of judgment. We should never ascribe judgment to a person who
framed positive or negative judgments like, This rose is red, This
picture is red, green, dusty, &c.
The Assertory judgment, although rejected by society as out of place
when it claims authority on its own showing, has however been made the
single and all-essential form of doctrine, even in philosophy, through
the influence of the principle of immediate knowledge and faith. In the
so-called philosophic works which maintain this principle, we may read
hundreds and hundreds of assertions about reason, knowledge, thought,
&c. which, now that external authority counts for little, seek to
accredit themselves by an endless restatement of the same thesis.
179.] On the part of its at first un-mediated subject, the Assertory
judgment does not contain the relation of particular with universal
which is expressed in the predicate. This judgment is consequently
a mere subjective particularity, and is confronted by a contrary
assertion with equal right, or rather want of right. It is therefore
at once turned into (2) a Problematical judgment. But when we
explicitly attach the objective particularity to the subject and make
its speciality the constitutive feature of its existence, the subject
(3) then expresses the connexion of that objective particularity with
its constitution, _i.e._ with its genus; and thus expresses what
forms the content of the predicate (see § 178). [This (_the immediate
individuality_) house (_the genus,_) being so and so constituted
(_particularity,_) is good or bad.] This is the Apodictic
judgment. All things are a genus (_i.e._ have a meaning and purpose) in
an _individual_ actuality of a _particular_ constitution. And they are
finite, because the particular in them may and also may not conform to
the universal.
180.] In this manner subject and predicate are each the whole judgment.
The immediate constitution of the subject is at first exhibited as
the intermediating ground, where the individuality of the actual
thing meets with its universality, and in this way as the ground of
the judgment. What has been really made explicit is the oneness of
subject and predicate, as the notion itself, filling up the empty 'is'
of the copula. While its constituent elements are at the same time
distinguished as subject and predicate, the notion is put as their
unity, as the connexion which serves to intermediate them: in short, as
the Syllogism.
(c) _The Syllogism._
181.] The Syllogism brings the notion and the judgment into one.
It is notion,--being the simple identity into which the distinctions of
form in the judgment have retired. It is judgment,--because it is at
the same time set in reality, that is, put in the distinction of its
terms. The Syllogism is the reasonable, and everything reasonable.
Even the ordinary theories represent the Syllogism to be the form of
reasonableness, but only a subjective form; and no inter-connexion
whatever is shown to exist between it and any other reasonable content,
such as a reasonable principle, a reasonable action, idea, &c. The name
of reason is much and often heard, and appealed to: but no one thinks
of explaining its specific character, or saying what it is,--least of
all that it has any connexion with Syllogism. But formal Syllogism
really presents what is reasonable in such a reasonless way that it
has nothing to do with any reasonable matter. But as the matter in
question can only be rational in virtue of the same quality by which
thought is reason, it can be made so by the form only: and that
form is Syllogism. And what is a Syllogism but an explicit putting,
_i.e._ realising of the notion, at first in form only, as stated
above? Accordingly the Syllogism is the essential ground of whatever
is true: and at the present stage the definition of the Absolute is
that it is the Syllogism, or stating the principle in a proposition:
Everything is a Syllogism. Everything is a notion, the existence of
which is the differentiation of its members or functions, so that the
universal nature of the Notion gives itself external reality by means
of particularity, and thereby, and as a negative reflection-into-self,
makes itself an individual. Or, conversely: the actual thing is an
individual, which by means of particularity rises to universality and
makes itself identical with itself.--The actual is one: but it is also
the divergence from each other of the constituent elements of the
notion; and the Syllogism represents the orbit of intermediation of its
elements, by which it realises its unity.
The Syllogism, like the notion and the judgment, is usually described
as a form merely of our subjective thinking. The Syllogism, it is said,
is the process of proving the judgment. And certainly the judgment does
in every case refer us to the Syllogism. The step from the one to the
other however is not brought about by our subjective action, but by the
judgment itself which puts itself as Syllogism, and in the conclusion
returns to the unity of the notion. The precise point by which we
pass to the Syllogism is found in the Apodictic judgment. In it we
have an individual which by means of its qualities connects itself
with its universal or notion. Here we see the particular becoming the
mediating mean between the individual and the universal. This gives
the fundamental form of the Syllogism, the gradual specification of
which, formally considered, consists in the fact that universal and
individual also occupy this place of mean. This again paves the way for
the passage from subjectivity to objectivity.
182.] In the 'immediate' Syllogism the several aspects of the notion
confront one another abstractly, and stand in an external relation
only. We have first the two extremes, which are Individuality and
Universality; and then the notion, as the mean for locking the two
together, is in like manner only abstract Particularity. In this way
the extremes are put as independent and without affinity either towards
one another or towards their mean. Such a Syllogism contains reason,
but in utter notionlessness,--the formal Syllogism of Understanding. In
it the subject is coupled with an _other_ character; or the universal
by this mediation subsumes a subject external to it. In the rational
Syllogism, on the contrary, the subject is by means of the mediation
coupled with itself. In this manner it first comes to be a subject: or,
in the subject we have the first germ of the rational Syllogism.
In the following examination, the Syllogism of Understanding, according
to the interpretation usually put upon it, is expressed in its
subjective shape; the shape which it has when _we_ are said to make
such Syllogisms. And it really is only a subjective syllogising. Such
Syllogism however has also an objective meaning; it expresses only the
finitude of things, but does so in the specific mode which the form
has here reached. In the case of finite things their subjectivity,
being only thinghood, is separable from their properties or their
particularity, but also separable from their universality: not only
when the universality is the bare quality of the thing and its external
inter-connexion with other things, but also when it is its genus and
notion.
* * * * *
On the above-mentioned theory of syllogism, as the rational form _par
excellence,_ reason has been defined as the faculty of syllogising,
whilst understanding is defined as the faculty of forming notions. We
might object to the conception on which this depends, and according to
which the mind is merely a sum of forces or faculties existing side
by side. But apart from that objection, we may observe in regard to
the parallelism of understanding with the notion, as well as of reason
with syllogism, that the notion is as little a mere category of the
understanding as the syllogism is without qualification definable
as rational. For, in the first place, what the Formal Logic usually
examines in its theory of syllogism, is really nothing but the mere
syllogism of understanding, which has no claim to the honour of being
made a form of rationality, still less to be held as the embodiment of
all reason. The notion, in the second place, so far from being a form
of understanding, owes its degradation to such a place entirely to
the influence of that abstract mode of thought. And it is not unusual
to draw such a distinction between a notion of understanding and a
notion of reason. The distinction however does not mean that notions
are of two kinds. It means that our own action often stops short at
the mere negative and abstract form of the notion, when we might also
have proceeded to apprehend the notion in its true nature, as at once
positive and concrete. It is _e.g._ the mere understanding, which
thinks liberty to be the abstract contrary of necessity, whereas the
adequate rational notion of liberty requires the element of necessity
to be merged in it. Similarly the definition of God, given by what is
called Deism, is merely the mode in which the understanding thinks God:
whereas Christianity, to which He is known as the Trinity, contains the
rational notion of God.
(α) _Qualitative Syllogism._
183.] The first syllogism is a syllogism of definite being,--a
Qualitative Syllogism, as stated in the last paragraph. Its form (1) is
I--P--U: _i.e._ a subject as Individual is coupled (concluded) with a
Universal character by means of a (Particular) quality.
Of course the subject (_terminus minor_) has other characteristics
besides individuality, just as the other extreme (the predicate of the
conclusion, or _terminus major_) has other characteristics than mere
universality. But here the interest turns only on the characteristics
through which these terms make a syllogism.
The syllogism of existence is a syllogism of understanding merely, at
least in so far as it leaves the individual, the particular, and the
universal to confront each other quite abstractly. In this syllogism
the notion is at the very height of self-estrangement. We have in it
an immediately individual thing as subject: next some one particular
aspect or property attaching to this subject is selected, and by means
of this property the individual turns out to be a universal. Thus we
may say, This rose is red: Red is a colour: Therefore, this rose
is a coloured object. It is this aspect of the syllogism which the
common logics mainly treat of. There was a time when the syllogism was
regarded as an absolute rule for all cognition, and when a scientific
statement was not held to be valid until it had been shown to follow
from a process of syllogism. At present, on the contrary, the different
forms of the syllogism are met nowhere save in the manuals of Logic;
and an acquaintance with them is considered a piece of mere pedantry,
of no further use either in practical life or in science. It would
indeed be both useless and pedantic to parade the whole machinery of
the formal syllogism on every occasion. And yet the several forms of
syllogism make themselves constantly felt in our cognition. If any one,
when awaking on a winter morning, hears the creaking of the carriages
on the street, and is thus led to conclude that it has frozen hard in
the night, he has gone through a syllogistic operation:--an operation
which is every day repeated under the greatest variety of conditions.
The interest, therefore, ought at least not to be less in becoming
expressly conscious of this daily action of our thinking selves, than
confessedly belongs to the study of the functions of organic life, such
as the processes of digestion, assimilation, respiration, or even the
processes and structures of the nature around us. We do not, however,
for a moment deny that a study of Logic is no more necessary to teach
us how to draw correct conclusions, than a previous study of anatomy
and physiology is required in order to digest or breathe.
Aristotle was the first to observe and describe the different forms,
or, as they are called, figures of syllogism, in their subjective
meaning: and he performed his work so exactly and surely, that no
essential addition has ever been required. But while sensible of the
value of what he has thus done, we must not forget that the forms of
the syllogism of understanding, and of finite thought altogether,
are not what Aristotle has made use of in his properly philosophical
investigations. (See § 189.)
184.] This syllogism is completely contingent (α) in the matter of its
terms. The Middle Term, being an abstract particularity, is nothing
but any quality whatever of the subject: but the subject, being
immediate and thus empirically concrete, has several others, and could
therefore be coupled with exactly as many other universalities as it
possesses single qualities. Similarly a single particularity may have
various characters in itself, so that the same _medius terminus_ would
serve to connect the subject with several different universals.
It is more a caprice of fashion, than a sense of its incorrectness,
which has led to the disuse of ceremonious syllogising. This and the
following section indicate the uselessness of such syllogising for the
ends of truth.
The point of view indicated in the paragraph shows how this style of
syllogism can 'demonstrate' (as the phrase goes) the most diverse
conclusions. All that is requisite is to find a _medius terminus_ from
which the transition can be made to the proposition sought. Another
_medius terminus_ would enable us to demonstrate something else, and
even the contrary of the last. And the more concrete an object is, the
more aspects it has, which may become such middle terms. To determine
which of these aspects is more essential than another, again, requires
a further syllogism of this kind, which fixing on the single quality
can with equal ease discover in it some aspect or consideration by
which it can make good its claims to be considered necessary and
important.
Little as we usually think on the Syllogism of Understanding in the
daily business of life, it never ceases to play its part there. In
a civil suit, for instance, it is the duty of the advocate to give
due force to the legal titles which make in favour of his client. In
logical language, such a legal title is nothing but a middle term.
Diplomatic transactions afford another illustration of the same, when,
for instance, different powers lay claim to one and the same territory.
In such a case the laws of inheritance, the geographical position of
the country, the descent and the language of its inhabitants, or any
other ground, may be emphasised as a _medius terminus._
185.] (ß) This syllogism, if it is contingent in point of its terms,
is no less contingent in virtue of the form of relation which is
found in it. In the syllogism, according to its notion, truth lies in
connecting two distinct things by a Middle Term in which they are one.
But connexions of the extremes with the Middle Term (the so-called
_premisses,_ the major and the minor premiss) are in the case of this
syllogism much more decidedly _immediate_ connexions. In other words,
they have not a proper Middle Term.
This contradiction in the syllogism exhibits a new case of the infinite
progression. Each of the premisses evidently calls for a fresh
syllogism to demonstrate it: and as the new syllogism has two immediate
premisses, like its predecessor, the demand for proof is doubled at
every step, and repeated without end.
186.] On account of its importance for experience, there has been
here noted a defect in the syllogism, to which in this form absolute
correctness had been ascribed. This defect however must lose itself in
the further specification of the syllogism. For we are now within the
sphere of the notion; and here therefore, as well as in the judgment,
the opposite character is not merely present potentially, but is
explicit. To work out the gradual specification of the syllogism,
therefore, there need only be admitted and accepted what is at each
step realised by the syllogism itself.
Through the immediate syllogism I--P--U, the Individual is mediated
(through a Particular) with the Universal, and in this conclusion put
as a universal. It follows that the individual subject, becoming itself
a universal, serves to unite the two extremes, and to form their ground
of intermediation. This gives the second figure of the syllogism, (2)
U--I--P. It expresses the truth of the first; it shows in other words
that the intermediation has taken place in the individual, and is thus
something contingent.
187.] The universal, which in the first conclusion was specified
through individuality, passes over into the second figure and there
now occupies the place that belonged to the immediate subject. In the
second figure it is concluded with the particular. By this conclusion
therefore the universal is explicitly put as particular--and is now
made to mediate between the two extremes, the places of which are
occupied by the two others (the particular and the individual). This is
the third figure of the syllogism: (3) P--U--I.
What are called the Figures of the syllogism (being three in
number, for the fourth is a superfluous and even absurd addition of
the Moderns to the three known to Aristotle) are in the usual mode of
treatment put side by side, without the slightest thought of showing
their necessity, and still less of pointing out their import and value.
No wonder then that the figures have been in later times treated as an
empty piece of formalism. They have however a very real significance,
derived from the necessity for every function or characteristic
element of the notion to become the whole itself, and to stand as
mediating ground.--But to find out what 'moods' of the propositions
(such as whether they may be universals, or negatives) are needed
to enable us to draw a correct conclusion in the different figures,
is a mechanical inquiry, which its purely mechanical nature and its
intrinsic meaninglessness have very properly consigned to oblivion.
And Aristotle would have been the last person to give any countenance
to those who wish to attach importance to such inquiries or to the
syllogism of understanding in general. It is true that he described
these, as well as numerous other forms of mind and nature, and that
he examined and expounded their specialities. But in his metaphysical
theories, as well as his theories of nature and mind, he was very
far from taking as basis, or criterion, the syllogistic forms of the
'understanding.' Indeed it might be maintained that not one of these
theories would ever have come into existence, or been allowed to exist,
if it had been compelled to submit to the laws of understanding. With
all the descriptiveness and analytic faculty which Aristotle after his
fashion is substantially strong in, his ruling principle is always the
speculative notion; and that syllogistic of 'understanding' to which he
first gave such a definite expression is never allowed to intrude in
the higher domain of philosophy.
* * * * *
In their objective sense, the three figures of the syllogism declare
that everything rational is manifested as a triple syllogism; that
is to say, each one of the members takes in turn the place of the
extremes, as well as of the mean which reconciles them. Such, for
example, is the case with the three branches of philosophy; the Logical
Idea, Nature, and Mind. As we first see them, Nature is the middle
term which links the others together. Nature, the totality immediately
before us, unfolds itself into the two extremes of the Logical Idea
and Mind. But Mind is Mind only when it is mediated through nature.
Then, in the second place, Mind, which we know as the principle of
individuality, or as the actualising principle, is the mean; and Nature
and the Logical Idea are the extremes. It is Mind which cognises the
Logical Idea in Nature and which thus raises Nature to its essence.
In the third place again the Logical Idea itself becomes the mean: it
is the absolute substance both of mind and of nature, the universal
and all-pervading principle. These are the members of the Absolute
Syllogism.
188.] In the round by which each constituent function assumes
successively the place of mean and of the two extremes, their specific
difference from each other has been superseded. In this form, where
there is no distinction between its constituent elements, the syllogism
at first has for its connective link equality, or the external identity
of understanding. This is the Quantitative or Mathematical Syllogism:
if two things are equal to a third, they are equal to one another.
* * * * *
Everybody knows that this Quantitative syllogism appears as a
mathematical axiom, which like other axioms is said to be a principle
that does not admit of proof, and which indeed being self-evident does
not require such proof. These mathematical axioms however are really
nothing but logical propositions, which, so far as they enunciate
definite and particular thoughts, are deducible from the universal and
self-characterising thought. To deduce them, is to give their proof.
That is true of the Quantitative syllogism, to which mathematics
gives the rank of an axiom. It is really the proximate result of
the qualitative or immediate syllogism. Finally, the Quantitative
syllogism is the syllogism in utter formlessness. The difference
between the terms which is required by the notion is suspended.
Extraneous circumstances alone can decide what propositions are to be
premisses here: and therefore in applying this syllogism we make a
pre-supposition of what has been elsewhere proved and established.
189.] Two results follow as to the form. In the first place, each
constituent element has taken the place and performed the function of
the mean and therefore of the whole, thus implicitly losing its partial
and abstract character (§ 182 and § 184); secondly, the mediation has
been completed (§ 185), though the completion too is only implicit,
that is, only as a circle of mediations which in turn pre-suppose each
other. In the first figure I--P--U the two premisses I is P and P is
U are yet without a mediation. The former premiss is mediated in the
third, the latter in the second figure. But each of these two figures,
again, for the mediation of its premisses pre-supposes the two others.
In consequence of this, the mediating unity of the notion must be put
no longer as an abstract particularity, but as a developed unity of the
individual and universal--and in the first place a reflected unity of
these elements. That is to say, the individuality gets at the same time
the character of universality. A mean of this kind gives the Syllogism
of Reflection.
(β) _Syllogism of Reflection._
190.] If the mean, in the first place, be not only an abstract
particular character of the subject, but at the same time all the
individual concrete subjects which possess that character, but possess
it only along with others, (1) we have the Syllogism of Allness.
The major premiss, however, which has for its subject the particular
character, the _terminus medius,_ as allness, pre-supposes the very
conclusion which ought rather to have pre-supposed it. It rests
therefore (2) on an Induction, in which the mean is given by the
complete list of individuals as such,--a, b, c, d, &c. On account of
the disparity, however, between universality and an immediate and
empirical individuality, the list can never be complete. Induction
therefore rests upon (3) Analogy. The middle term of Analogy
is an individual, which however is understood as equivalent to its
essential universality, its genus, or essential character.--The first
syllogism for its intermediation turns us over to the second, and the
second turns us over to the third. But the third no less demands an
intrinsically determinate Universality, or an individuality as type of
the genus, after the round of the forms of external connexion between
individuality and universality has been run through in the figures of
the Reflective Syllogism.
By the Syllogism of Allness the defect in the first form of the
Syllogism of Understanding, noted in § 184, is remedied, but only to
give rise to a new defect. This defect is that the major premiss itself
pre-supposes what really ought to be the conclusion, and pre-supposes
it as what is thus an 'immediate' proposition. All men are mortal,
therefore Caius is mortal: All metals conduct electricity, therefore
_e.g._ copper does so. In order to enunciate these major premisses,
which when they say 'all' mean the 'immediate' individuals and are
properly intended to be empirical propositions, it is requisite that
the propositions about the individual man Caius, or the individual
metal copper, should previously have been ascertained to be correct.
Everybody feels not merely the pedantry, but the unmeaning formalism of
such syllogisms as: All men are mortal, Caius is a man, therefore Caius
is mortal.
The syllogism of Allness hands us over to the syllogism of Induction,
in which the individuals form the coupling mean. 'All metals conduct
electricity,' is an empirical proposition derived from experiments
made with each of the individual metals. We thus get the syllogism of
Induction I in the following shape P--I--U. I . . .
Gold is a metal: silver is a metal: so is copper, lead, &c. This is
the major premiss. Then comes the minor premiss: All these bodies
conduct electricity; and hence results the conclusion, that all metals
conduct electricity. The point which brings about a combination here
is individuality in the shape of allness. But this syllogism once
more hands us over to another syllogism. Its mean is constituted by
the complete list of the individuals. That pre-supposes that over
a certain region observation and experience are completed. But the
things in question here are individuals; and so again we are landed
in the progression _ad infinitum_ (i, i, i, &c.). In other words, in
no Induction can we ever exhaust the individuals. The 'all metals,'
'all plants,' of our statements, mean only all the metals, all the
plants, which we have hitherto become acquainted with. Every Induction
is consequently imperfect. One and the other observation, many it may
be, have been made: but all the cases, all the individuals, have not
been observed. By this defect of Induction we are led on to Analogy.
In the syllogism of Analogy we conclude from the fact that some things
of a certain kind possess a certain quality, that the same quality is
possessed by other things of the same kind. It would be a syllogism of
Analogy, for example, if we said: In all planets hitherto discovered
this has been found to be the law of motion, consequently a newly
discovered planet will probably move according to the same law. In the
experiential sciences Analogy deservedly occupies a high place, and
has led to results of the highest importance. Analogy is the instinct
of reason, creating an anticipation that this or that characteristic,
which experience has discovered, has its root in the inner nature or
kind of an object, and arguing on the faith of that anticipation.
Analogy it should be added may be superficial or it may be thorough.
It would certainly be a very bad analogy to argue that since the man
Caius is a scholar, and Titus also is a man, Titus will probably be a
scholar too: and it would be bad because a man's learning is not an
unconditional consequence of his manhood. Superficial analogies of
this kind however are very frequently met with. It is often argued,
for example: The earth is a celestial body, so is the moon, and it
is therefore in all probability inhabited as well as the earth. The
analogy is not one whit better than that previously mentioned. That
the earth is inhabited does not depend on its being a celestial body,
but in other conditions, such as the presence of an atmosphere, and of
water in connexion with the atmosphere, &c.: and these are precisely
the conditions which the moon, so far as we know, does not possess.
What has in modern times been called the Philosophy of Nature consists
principally in a frivolous play with empty and external analogies,
which, however, claim to be considered profound results. The natural
consequence has been to discredit the philosophical study of nature.
(γ) _Syllogism of Necessity._
191.] The Syllogism of Necessity, if we look to its purely abstract
characteristics or terms, has for its mean the Universal in the same
way as the Syllogism of Reflection has the Individual, the latter
being in the second, and the former in the third figure (§ 187).
The Universal is expressly put as in its very nature intrinsically
determinate. In the first place (1) the Particular, meaning by the
particular the specific genus or species, is the term for mediating
the extremes--as is done in the Categorical syllogism. (2) The
same office is performed by the Individual, taking the individual as
immediate being, so that it is as much mediating as mediated:--as
happens in the Hypothetical syllogism. (3) We have also the
mediating Universal explicitly put as a totality of its particular
members, and as a single particular, or exclusive individuality:--which
happens in the Disjunctive syllogism. It is one and the same
universal which is in these terms of the Disjunctive syllogism; they
are only different forms for expressing it.
192.] The syllogism has been taken conformably to the distinctions
which it contains; and the general result of the course of their
evolution has been to show that these differences work out their own
abolition and destroy the notion's outwardness to its own self. And,
as we see, in the first place, (1) each of the dynamic elements has
proved itself the systematic whole of these elements, in short a whole
syllogism,--they are consequently implicitly identical. In the second
place, (2) the negation of their distinctions and of the mediation of
one through another constitutes independency; so that it is one and
the same universal which is in these forms, and which is in this way
also explicitly put as their identity. In this ideality of its dynamic
elements, the syllogistic process may be described as essentially
involving the negation of the characters through which its course runs,
as being a mediative process through the suspension of mediation,--as
coupling the subject not with another, but with a suspended other, in
one word, with itself.
* * * * *
In the common logic, the doctrine of syllogism is supposed to conclude
the first part, or what is called the 'elementary' theory. It is
followed by the second part, the doctrine of Method, which proposes
to show how a body of scientific knowledge is created by applying to
existing objects the forms of thought discussed in the elementary part.
Whence these objects originate, and what the thought of objectivity
generally speaking implies, are questions to which the Logic of
Understanding vouchsafes no further answer. It believes thought to
be a mere subjective and formal activity, and the objective fact,
which confronts thought, to have a separate and permanent being. But
this dualism is a half-truth: and there is a want of intelligence in
the procedure which at once accepts, without inquiring into their
origin, the categories of subjectivity and objectivity. Both of them,
subjectivity as well as objectivity, are certainly thoughts--even
specific thoughts: which must show themselves founded on the universal
and self-determining thought. This has here been done--at least for
subjectivity. We have recognised it, or the notion subjective (which
includes the notion proper, the judgment, and the syllogism) as the
dialectical result of the first two main stages of the Logical Idea,
Being and Essence. To say that the notion is subjective and subjective
only, is so far quite correct: for the notion certainly is subjectivity
itself. Not less subjective than the notion are also the judgment and
syllogism: and these forms, together with the so-called Laws of Thought
(the Laws of Identity, Difference, and Sufficient Ground), make up the
contents of what is called the 'Elements' in the common logic. But we
may go a step further. This subjectivity, with its functions of notion,
judgment, and syllogism, is not like a set of empty compartments which
has to get filled from without by separately-existing objects. It would
be truer to say that it is subjectivity itself which, as dialectical,
breaks through its own barriers and opens out into objectivity by means
of the syllogism.
193.] This 'realisation' of the notion,--a realisation in which the
universal is this one totality withdrawn back into itself (of which
the different members are no less the whole, and) which has given
itself a character of 'immediate' unity by merging the mediation:--this
realisation of the notion is the Object.
I his transition from the Subject, the notion in general, and
especially the syllogism, to the Object, may, at the first glance,
appear strange, particularly if we look only at the Syllogism
of Understanding, and suppose syllogising to be only an act of
consciousness. But that strangeness imposes on us no obligation to seek
to make the transition plausible to the image-loving conception. The
only question which can be considered is, whether our usual conception
of what is called an 'object' approximately corresponds to the object
as here described. By 'object' is commonly understood not an abstract
being, or an existing thing merely, or any sort of actuality, but
something independent, concrete, and self-complete, this completeness
being the totality of the notion. That the object (_Objekt_) is also
an object to us (_Gegenstand_) and is external to something else,
will be more precisely seen, when it puts itself in contrast with
the subjective. At present, as that into which the notion has passed
from its mediation, it is only immediate object and nothing more,
just as the notion is not describable as subjective, previous to the
subsequent contrast with objectivity.
Further, the Object in general is the one total, in itself still
unspecified, the Objective World as a whole, God, the Absolute Object.
The object, however, has also difference attaching to it: it falls
into pieces, indefinite in their multiplicity (making an objective
world); and each of these individualised parts is also an object, an
intrinsically concrete, complete, and independent existence.
Objectivity has been compared with being, existence, and actuality;
and so too the transition to existence and actuality (not to being,
for _it_ is the primary and quite abstract immediate) maybe compared
with the transition to objectivity. The ground from which existence
proceeds, and the reflective correlation which is merged in actuality,
are nothing but the as yet imperfectly realised notion. They are only
abstract aspects of it,--the ground being its merely essence-bred
unity, and the correlation only the connexion of real sides which are
supposed to have only self-reflected being. The notion is the unity of
the two; and the object is not a merely essence-like, but inherently
universal unity, not only containing real distinctions, but containing
them as totalities in itself.
It is evident that in all these transitions there is a further purpose
than merely to show the indissoluble connexion between the notion or
thought and being. It has been more than once remarked that being is
nothing more than simple self-relation, and this meagre category is
certainly implied in the notion, or even in thought. But the meaning
of these transitions is not to accept characteristics or categories,
as only implied;--a fault which mars even the Ontological argument for
God's existence, when it is stated that being is one among realities.
What such a transition does, is to take the notion, as it ought to be
primarily characterised _per se_ as a notion, with which this remote
abstraction of being, or eve of objectivity, has as yet nothing to do,
and looking at its specific character as a notional character alone, to
see when and whether it passes over into a form which is different from
the character as it belongs to the notion and appears in it.
If the Object, the product of this transition, be brought into relation
with the notion, which, so far as its special form is concerned, has
vanished in it, we may give a correct expression to the result, by
saying that notion or, if it be preferred, subjectivity and object are
_implicitly_ the same. But it is equally correct to say that they are
different. In short, the two modes of expression are equally correct
and incorrect. The true state of the case can be presented in no
expressions of this kind. The 'implicit' is an abstraction, still more
partial and inadequate than the notion itself, of which the inadequacy
is upon the whole suspended, by suspending itself to the object with
its opposite inadequacy. Hence that implicitness also must, by its
negation, give itself the character of explicitness. As in every case,
speculative identity is not the above-mentioned triviality of an
_implicit_ identity of subject and object. This has been said often
enough. Yet it could not be too often repeated, if the intention were
really to put an end to the stale and purely malicious misconception in
regard to this identity:--of which however there can be no reasonable
expectation.
Looking at that unity in a quite general way, and raising no objection
to the one-sided form of its implicitness, we find it as the well-known
pre-supposition of the ontological proof for the existence of God.
There, it appears as supreme perfection. Anselm, in whom the notable
suggestion of this proof first occurs, no doubt originally restricted
himself to the question whether a certain content was in our thinking
only. His words are briefly these: '_Certe id quo majus cogitari
nequit, non potest esse in intellectu solo. Si enim vel in solo
intellectu est, potest cogitari esse_ et in re: _quod majus est.
Si ergo id quo majus cogitari non potest, est in solo intellectu; id
ipsum quo majus cogitari non potest, est quo majus cogitari potest.
Sed certe hoc esse non potest._' (Certainly that, than which nothing
greater can be thought, cannot be in the intellect alone. For even
if it is in the intellect alone, it can also be thought to exist in
fact: and that is greater. If then that, than which nothing greater
can be thought, is in the intellect alone; then the very thing, which
is greater than anything which can be thought, can be exceeded in
thought. But certainly this is impossible.) The same unity received
a more objective expression in Descartes, Spinoza and others: while
the theory of immediate certitude or faith presents it, on the
contrary, in somewhat the same subjective aspect as Anselm. These
Intuitionalists hold that _in our consciousness_ the attribute of being
is indissolubly associated with the conception of God. The theory of
faith brings even the conception of external finite things under the
same inseparable nexus between the consciousness and the being of
them, on the ground that _perception_ presents them conjoined with the
attribute of existence: and in so saying, it is no doubt correct. It
would be utterly absurd, however, to suppose that the association in
consciousness between existence and our conception of finite things
is of the same description as the association between existence and
the conception of God. To do so would be to forget that finite things
are changeable and transient, _i.e._ that existence is associated
with them for a season, but that the association is neither eternal
nor inseparable. Speaking in the phraseology of the categories before
us, we may say that, to call a thing finite, means that its objective
existence is not in harmony with the thought of it, with its universal
calling, its kind and its end. Anselm, consequently, neglecting any
such conjunction as occurs in finite things, has with good reason
pronounced that only to be the Perfect which exists not merely in a
subjective, but also in an objective mode. It does no good to put
on airs against the Ontological proof, as it is called, and against
Anselm thus denning the Perfect. The argument is one latent in every
unsophisticated mind, and it recurs in every philosophy, even against
its wish and without its knowledge--as may be seen in the theory of
immediate belief.
The real fault in the argumentation of Anselm is one which is
chargeable on Descartes and Spinoza, as well as on the theory of
immediate knowledge. It is this. This unity which is enunciated as the
supreme perfection or, it may be, subjectively, as the true knowledge,
is pre-supposed, _i.e._ it is assumed only as potential. This identity,
abstract as it thus appears, between the two categories may be at
once met and opposed by their diversity; and this was the very answer
given to Anselm long ago. In short, the conception and existence of
the finite is set in antagonism to the infinite; for, as previously
remarked, the finite possesses objectivity of such a kind as is at
once incongruous with and different from the end or aim, its essence
and notion. Or, the finite is such a conception and in such a way
subjective, that it does not involve existence. This objection and this
antithesis are got over, only by showing the finite to be untrue and
these categories in their separation to be inadequate and null. Their
identity is thus seen to be one into which they spontaneously pass
over, and in which they are reconciled.
B.--THE OBJECT.
194.] The Object is immediate being, because insensible to difference,
which in it has suspended itself. It is, further, a totality in itself,
whilst at the same time (as this identity is only the _implicit_
identity of its dynamic elements) it is equally indifferent to its
immediate unity. It thus breaks up into distinct parts, each of which
is itself the totality. Hence the object is the absolute contradiction
between a complete independence of the multiplicity, and the equally
complete non-independence of the different pieces.
The definition, which states that the Absolute is the Object, is most
definitely implied in the Leibnizian Monad. The Monads are each an
object, but an object implicitly 'representative,' indeed the total
representation of the world. In the simple unity of the Monad, all
difference is merely ideal, not independent or real. Nothing from
without comes into the monad: It is the whole notion in itself, only
distinguished by its own greater or less development. None the less,
this simple totality parts into the absolute multeity of differences,
each becoming an independent monad. In the monad of monads, and the
Pre-established Harmony of their inward developments, these substances
are in like manner again reduced to 'ideality' and unsubstantiality.
The philosophy of Leibnitz, therefore, represents contradiction in its
complete development.
* * * * *
As Fichte in modern times has especially and with justice insisted,
the theory which regards the Absolute or God as the Object and there
stops, expresses the point of view taken by superstition and slavish
fear. No doubt God is the Object, and, indeed, the Object out and
out, confronted with which our particular or subjective opinions and
desires have no truth and no validity. As absolute object however, God
does not therefore take up the position of a dark and hostile power
over against subjectivity. He rather involves it as a vital element in
Himself. Such also is the meaning of the Christian doctrine, according
to which God has willed that all men should be saved and all attain
blessedness. The salvation and the blessedness of men are attained when
they come to feel themselves at one with God, so that God, on the other
hand, ceases to be for them mere object, and, in that way, an object
of fear and terror, as was especially the case with the religious
consciousness of the Romans. But God in the Christian religion is
also known as Love, because in His Son, who is one with Him, He has
revealed Himself to men as a man amongst men, and thereby redeemed
them. All which is only another way of saying that the antithesis of
subjective and objective is implicitly overcome, and that it is our
affair to participate in this redemption by laying aside our immediate
subjectivity (putting off the old Adam), and learning to know God as
our true and essential self.
Just as religion and religious worship consist in overcoming the
antithesis of subjectivity and objectivity, so science too and
philosophy have no other task than to overcome this antithesis by the
medium of thought. The aim of knowledge is to divest the objective
world that stands opposed to us of its strangeness, and, as the phrase
is, to find ourselves at home in it: which means no more than to trace
the objective world back to the notion,--to our innermost self. We
may learn from the present discussion the mistake of regarding the
antithesis of subjectivity and objectivity as an abstract and permanent
one. The two are wholly dialectical. The notion is at first only
subjective: but without the assistance of any foreign material or stuff
it proceeds, in obedience to its own action, to objectify itself. So,
too, the object is not rigid and processless. Its process is to show
itself as what is at the same time subjective, and thus form the step
onwards to the idea. Any one who, from want of familiarity with the
categories of subjectivity and objectivity, seeks to retain them in
their abstraction, will find that the isolated categories slip through
his fingers before he is aware, and that he says the exact contrary of
what he wanted to say.
(2) Objectivity contains the three forms of Mechanism, Chemism,
and Teleology. The object of mechanical type is the immediate and
undifferentiated object. No doubt it contains difference, but the
different pieces stand, as it were, without affinity to each other,
and their connexion is only extraneous. In chemism, on the contrary,
the object exhibits an essential tendency to differentiation, in such
a way that the objects are what they are only by their relation to
each other: this tendency to difference constitutes their quality.
The third type of objectivity, the teleological relation, is the
unity of mechanism and chemism. Design, like the mechanical object,
is a self-contained totality, enriched however by the principle of
differentiation which came to the fore in chemism, and thus referring
itself to the object that stands over against it. Finally, it is the
realisation of design which forms the transition to the Idea.
(a) _Mechanism._
196.] The object (1) in its immediacy is the notion only potentially;
the notion as subjective is primarily outside it; and all its
specific character is imposed from without. As a unity of differents,
therefore, it is a composite, an aggregate; and its capacity of
acting on anything else continues to be an external relation. This is
Formal Mechanism.--Notwithstanding, and in this connexion and
non-independence, the objects remain independent and offer resistance,
external to each other.
Pressure and impact are examples of mechanical relations. Our knowledge
is said to be mechanical or by rote, when the words have no meaning
for us, but continue external to sense, conception, thought; and
when, being similarly external to each other, they form a meaningless
sequence. Conduct, piety, &c. are in the same way mechanical, when a
man's behaviour is settled for him by ceremonial laws, by a spiritual
adviser, &c.; in short, when his own mind and will are not in his
actions, which in this way are extraneous to himself.
* * * * *
Mechanism, the first form of objectivity, is also the category which
primarily offers itself to reflection, as it examines the objective
world. It is also the category beyond which reflection seldom goes.
It is, however, a shallow and superficial mode of observation, one
that cannot carry us through in connexion with Nature and still less
in connexion with the world of Mind. In Nature it is only the veriest
abstract relations of matter in its inert masses which obey the law of
mechanism. On the contrary the phenomena and operations of the province
to which the term 'physical' in its narrower sense is applied, such as
the phenomena of light, heat, magnetism, and electricity, cannot be
explained by any mere mechanical processes, such as pressure, impact,
displacement of parts, and the like. Still less satisfactory is it
to transfer these categories and apply them in the field of organic
nature; at least if it be our aim to understand the specific features
of that field, such as the growth and nourishment of plants, or, it
may be, even animal sensation. It is at any rate a very deep-seated,
and perhaps the main, defect of modern researches into nature, that,
even where other and higher categories than those of mere mechanism
are in operation, they still stick obstinately to the mechanical laws;
although they thus conflict with the testimony of unbiassed perception,
and foreclose the gate to an-adequate knowledge of nature. But even
in considering the formations in the world of Mind, the mechanical
theory has been repeatedly invested with an authority which it has no
right to. Take as an instance the remark that man consists of soul and
body. In this language, the two things stand each self-subsistent, and
associated only from without. Similarly we find the soul regarded as a
mere group of forces and faculties, subsisting independently side by
side.
Thus decidedly must we reject the mechanical mode of inquiry when it
comes forward and arrogates to itself the place of rational cognition
in general, and seeks to get mechanism accepted as an absolute
category. But we must not on that account forget expressly to vindicate
for mechanism the right and import of a general logical category. It
would be, therefore, a mistake to restrict it to the special physical
department from which it derives its name. There is no harm done, for
example, in directing attention to mechanical actions, such as that
of gravity, the lever, &c, even in departments, notably in physics
and in physiology, beyond the range of mechanics proper. It must
however be remembered, that within these spheres the laws of mechanism
cease to be final or decisive, and sink, as it were, to a subservient
position. To which may be added, that, in Nature, when the higher
or organic functions are in any way checked or disturbed in their
normal efficiency, the otherwise subordinate category of mechanism
is immediately seen to take the upper hand. Thus a sufferer from
indigestion feels pressure on the stomach, after partaking of certain
food in slight quantity; whereas those whose digestive organs are sound
remain free from the sensation, although they have eaten as much. The
same phenomenon occurs in the general feeling of heaviness in the
limbs, experienced in bodily indisposition. Even in the world of Mind,
mechanism has its place; though there, too, it is a subordinate one. We
are right in speaking of mechanical memory, and all sorts of mechanical
operations, such as reading, writing, playing on musical instruments,
&c. In memory, indeed, the mechanical quality of the action is
essential: a circumstance, the neglect of which has not unfrequently
caused great harm in the training of the young, from the misapplied
zeal of modern educationalists for the freedom of intelligence. It
would betray bad psychology, however, to have recourse to mechanism for
an explanation of the nature of memory, and to apply mechanical laws
straight off to the soul. The mechanical feature in memory lies merely
in the fact that certain signs, tones, &c. are apprehended in their
purely external association, and then reproduced in this association,
without attention being expressly directed to their meaning and inward
association. To become acquainted with these conditions of mechanical
memory requires no further study of mechanics, nor would that study
tend at all to advance the special inquiry of psychology.
196.] The want of stability in itself which allows the object to suffer
violence, is possessed by it (see preceding §) only in so far as it
has a certain stability. Now as the object is implicitly invested
with the character of notion, the one of these characteristics is not
merged into its other; but the object, through the negation of itself
(its lack of independence), closes with itself, and not till it so
closes, is it independent. Thus at the same time in distinction from
the outwardness, and negativing that outwardness in its independence,
does this independence form a negative unity with self,--Centrality
(subjectivity). So conceived, the object itself has direction and
reference towards the external. But this external object is similarly
central in itself, and being so, is no less only referred towards the
other centre; so that it no less has its centrality in the other. This
is (2) Mechanism with Affinity (with bias, or 'difference'), and
may be illustrated by gravitation, appetite, social instinct, &c.
197.] This relationship, when fully carried out, forms a syllogism. In
that syllogism the immanent negativity, as the central individuality
of an object, (abstract centre,) relates itself to non-independent
objects, as the other extreme, by a mean which unites the centrality
with the non-independence of the objects, (relative centre.) This is
(3) Absolute Mechanism.
198.] The syllogism thus indicated (I--P--U) is a triad of syllogisms.
The wrong individuality of non-independent objects, in which formal
Mechanism is at home, is, by reason of that non-independence, no
less universality, though it be only external. Hence these objects
also form the mean between the absolute and the relative centre
(the form of syllogism being U--I--P): for it is by this want of
independence that those two are kept asunder and made extremes, as
well as related to one another. Similarly absolute centrality, as the
permanently-underlying universal substance (illustrated by the gravity
which continues identical), which as pure negativity equally includes
individuality in it, is what mediates between the relative centre and
the non-independent objects (the form of syllogism being P--U--I). It
does so no less essentially as a disintegrating force, in its character
of immanent individuality, than in virtue of universality, acting as an
identical bond of union and tranquil self-containedness.
Like the solar system, so for example in the practical sphere the state
is a system of three syllogisms. (1) The Individual or person, through
his particularity or physical or mental needs (which when carried
out to their full development give _civil_ society), is coupled with
the universal, _i.e._ with society, law, right, government. (2) The
will or action of the individuals is the intermediating force which
procures for these needs satisfaction in society, in law, &c, and
which gives to society, law, &c. their fulfilment and actualisation.
(3) But the universal, that is to say the state, government, and law,
is the permanent underlying mean in which the individuals and their
satisfaction have and receive their fulfilled reality, inter-mediation,
and persistence. Each of the functions of the notion, as it is brought
by intermediation to coalesce with the other extreme, is brought
into union with itself and produces itself: which production is
self-preservation.--It is only by the nature of this triple coupling,
by this triad of syllogisms with the name _termini,_ that a whole is
thoroughly understood in its organisation.
199.] The immediacy of existence, which the objects have in Absolute
Mechanism, is implicitly negatived by the fact that their independence
is derived from, and due to, their connexions with each other, and
therefore to their own want of stability. Thus the object must be
explicitly stated as in its existence having an Affinity (or a
bias) towards its other,--as not-indifferent.
(b) _Chemism_.
200.] The not-indifferent (biassed) object has an immanent mode which
constitutes its nature, and in which it has existence. But as it is
invested with the character of total notion, it is the contradiction
between this totality and the special mode of its existence.
Consequently it is the constant endeavour to cancel this contradiction
and to make its definite being equal to the notion.
* * * * *
Chemism is a category of objectivity which, as a rule, is not
particularly emphasised, and is generally put under the head of
mechanism. The common name of mechanical relationship is applied to
both, in contra-distinction to the teleological. There is a reason for
this in the common feature which belongs to mechanism and chemism. In
them the notion exists, but only implicit and latent, and they are thus
both marked off from teleology where the notion has real independent
existence. This is true: and yet chemism and mechanism are very
decidedly distinct. The object, in the form of mechanism, is primarily
only an indifferent reference to self, while the chemical object is
seen to be completely in reference to something else. No doubt even
in mechanism, as it develops itself, there spring up references to
something else: but the nexus of mechanical objects with one another is
at first only an external nexus, so that the objects in connexion with
one another still retain the semblance of independence. In nature, for
example; the several celestial bodies, which form our solar system,
compose a kinetic system, and thereby show that they are related to
one another. Motion, however, as the unity of time and space, is a
connexion which is purely abstract and external. And it seems therefore
as if these celestial bodies, which are thus externally connected with
each other, would continue to be what they are, even apart from this
reciprocal relation. The case is quite different with chemism. Objects
chemically biassed are what they are expressly by that bias alone.
Hence they are the absolute impulse towards integration by and in one
another.
201.] The product of the chemical process consequently is the Neutral
object, latent in the two extremes, each on the alert. The notion
or concrete universal, by means of the bias of the objects (the
particularity), coalesces with the individuality (in the shape of the
product), and in that only with itself. In this process too the other
syllogisms are equally involved. The place of mean is taken both by
individuality as activity, and by the concrete universal, the essence
of the strained extremes; which essence reaches definite being in the
product.
202.] Chemism, as it is a reflectional nexus of objectivity, has
pre-supposed, not merely the bias or non-indifferent nature of the
objects, but also their immediate independence. The process of chemism
consists in passing to and fro from one form to another; which forms
continue to be as external as before.--In the neutral product the
specific properties, which the extremes bore towards each other, are
merged. But although the product is conformable to the notion, the
inspiring principle of active differentiation does not exist in it; for
it has sunk back to immediacy. The neutral body is therefore capable
of disintegration. But the discerning principle, which breaks up the
neutral body into biassed and strained extremes, and which gives to
the indifferent object in general its affinity and animation towards
another;--that principle, and the process as a separation with tension,
falls outside of that first process.
* * * * *
The chemical process does not rise above a conditioned and finite
process. The notion as notion is only the heart and core of the
process, and does not in this stage come to an existence of its own.
In the neutral product the process is extinct, and the existing cause
falls outside it.
203.] Each of these two processes, the reduction of the biassed
(not-indifferent) to the neutral, and the differentiation of the
indifferent or neutral, goes its own way without hindrance from the
other. But that want of inner connexion shows that they are finite,
by their passage into products in which they are merged and lost.
Conversely the process exhibits the nonentity of the pre-supposed
immediacy of the not-indifferent objects.--By this negation of
immediacy and of externalism in which the notion as object was sunk,
it is liberated and invested with independent being in face of that
externalism and immediacy. In these circumstances it is the End (Final
Cause).
* * * * *
The passage from chemism to the teleological relation is implied in the
mutual cancelling of both of the forms of the chemical process. The
result thus attained is the liberation of the notion, which in chemism
and mechanism was present only in the germ, and not yet evolved. The
notion in the shape of the aim or end thus comes into independent
existence.
(c) _Teleology._
204.] In the End the notion has entered on free existence
and has a being of its own, by means of the negation of immediate
objectivity. It is characterised as subjective, seeing that this
negation is, in the first place, abstract, and hence at first the
relation between it and objectivity still one of contrast. This
character of subjectivity, however, compared with the totality of the
notion, is one-sided, and that, be it added, for the End itself, in
which all specific characters have been put as subordinated and merged.
For it therefore even the object, which it pre-supposes, has only
hypothetical (ideal) reality,--essentially no-reality. The End in short
is a contradiction of its self-identity against the negation stated in
it, _i.e._ its antithesis to objectivity, and being so, contains the
eliminative or destructive activity which negates the antithesis and
renders it identical with itself. This is the realisation of the End:
in which, while it turns itself into the other of its subjectivity and
objectifies itself, thus cancelling the distinction between the two, it
has only closed with itself, and retained itself.
The notion of Design or End, while on one hand called redundant, is on
another justly described as the rational notion, and contrasted with
the abstract universal of understanding. The latter only _subsumes_
the particular, and so connects it with itself: but has it not in its
own nature.--The distinction between the End or _final cause,_ and the
mere _efficient cause_ (which is the cause ordinarily so called), is of
supreme importance. Causes, properly so called, belong to the sphere of
necessity, blind, and not yet laid bare. The cause therefore appears
as passing into its correlative, and losing its primordiality there by
sinking into dependency. It is only by implication, or for us, that
the cause is in the effect made for the first time a cause, and that
it there returns into itself. The End, on the other hand, is expressly
stated as containing the specific character in its own self,--the
effect, namely, which in the purely causal relation is never free from
otherness. The End therefore in its efficiency does not pass over, but
retains itself, _i.e._ it carries into effect itself only, and is at
the end what it was in the beginning or primordial state. Until it thus
retains itself, it is not genuinely primordial.--The End then requires
to be speculatively apprehended as the notion, which itself in the
proper unity and ideality of its characteristics contains the judgment
or negation,--the antithesis of subjective and objective,--and which to
an equal extent suspends that antithesis.
By End however we must not at once, nor must we ever merely, think
of the form which it has in consciousness as a mode of mere mental
representation. By means of the notion of Inner Design Kant has
resuscitated the Idea in general and particularly the idea of life.
Aristotle's definition of life virtually implies inner design, and is
thus far in advance of the notion of design in modern Teleology, which
had in view finite and outward design only.
Animal wants and appetites are some of the readiest instances of
the End. They are the _felt_ contradiction, which exists _within_
the living subject, and pass into the activity of negating this
negation which mere subjectivity still is. The satisfaction of the
want or appetite restores the peace between subject and object. The
objective thing which, so long as the contradiction exists, _i.e._
so long as the want is felt, stands on the other side, loses this
quasi-independence, by its union with the subject. Those who talk of
the permanence and immutability of the finite, as well subjective as
objective, may see the reverse illustrated in the operations of every
appetite. Appetite is, so to speak, the conviction that the subjective
is only a half-truth, no more adequate than the objective. But appetite
in the second place carries out its conviction. It brings about the
supersession of these finites: it cancels the antithesis between the
objective which would be and stay an objective only, and the subjective
which in like manner would be and stay a subjective only.
As regards the action of the End, attention may be called to the fact,
that in the syllogism, which represents that action, and shows the end
closing with itself by the means of realisation, the radical feature is
the negation of the _termini._ That negation is the one just mentioned
both of the immediate subjectivity appearing in the End as such, and
of the immediate objectivity as seen in the means and the objects
pre-supposed. This is the same negation, as is in operation when the
mind leaves the contingent things of the world as well as its own
subjectivity and rises to God. It is the 'moment' or factor which (as
noticed in the Introduction and § 192) was overlooked and neglected in
the analytic form of syllogisms, under which the so-called proofs of
the Being of a God presented this elevation.
205.] In its primary and immediate aspect the Teleological relation
is _external_ design, and the notion confronts a pre-supposed object.
The End is consequently finite, and that partly in its content,
partly in the circumstance that it has an external condition in the
object, which has to be found existing, and which is taken as material
for its realisation. Its self-determining is to that extent in form
only. The un-mediatedness of the End has the further result that
its particularity or content--which as form-characteristic is the
subjectivity of the End--is reflected into self, and so different from
the totality of the form, subjectivity in general, the notion. This
variety constitutes the finitude of Design within its own nature. The
content of the End. in this way, is quite as limited, contingent, and
given, as the object is particular and found ready to hand.
* * * * *
Generally speaking, the final cause is taken to mean nothing more
than external design. In accordance with this view of it, things are
supposed not to carry their vocation in themselves, but merely to be
means employed and spent in realising a purpose which lies outside
of them. That may be said to be the point of view taken by Utility,
which once played a great part even in the sciences, but of late has
fallen into merited disrepute, now that people have begun to see that
it failed to give a genuine insight into the nature of things. It is
true that finite things as finite ought in justice to be viewed as
non-ultimate, and as pointing beyond themselves. This negativity of
finite things however is their own dialectic, and in order to ascertain
it we must pay attention to their positive content.
Teleological observations on things often proceed from a well-meant
wish to display the wisdom of God as it is especially revealed in
nature. Now in thus trying to discover final causes for which the
things serve as means, we must remember that we are stopping short
at the finite, and are liable to fall into trifling reflections: as,
for instance, if we not merely studied the vine in respect of its
well-known use for man, but proceeded to consider the cork-tree in
connexion with the corks which are cut from its bark to put into the
wine-bottles. Whole books used to be written in this spirit. It is easy
to see that they promoted the genuine interest neither of religion nor
of science. External design stands immediately in front of the idea:
but what thus stands on the threshold often for that reason is least
adequate.
206.] The teleological relation is a syllogism in which the subjective
end coalesces with the objectivity external to it, through a middle
term which is the unity of both. This unity is on one hand the
_purposive_ action, on the other the _Means, i.e._ objectivity made
directly subservient to purpose.
* * * * *
The development from End to Idea ensues by three stages, first,
Subjective End; second, End in process of accomplishment; and third,
End accomplished. First of all we have the Subjective End; and that,
as the notion in independent being, is itself the totality of the
elementary functions of the notion. The first of these functions
is that of self-identical universality, as it were the neutral
first water, in which everything is involved, but nothing as yet
discriminated. The second of these elements is the particularising
of this universal, by which it acquires a specific content. As this
specific content again is realised by the agency of the universal, the
latter returns by its means back to itself, and coalesces with itself.
Hence too when we set some end before us, we say that we 'conclude' to
do something: a phrase which implies that we were, so to speak, open
and accessible to this or that determination. Similarly we also at a
further step speak of a man 'resolving' to do something, meaning that
the agent steps forward out of his self-regarding inwardness and enters
into dealings with the environing objectivity. This supplies the step
from the merely Subjective End to the purposive action which tends
outwards.
207.] (1) The first syllogism of the final cause represents the
Subjective End. The universal notion is brought to unite with
individuality by means of particularity, so that the individual
as self-determination acts as judge. That is to say, it not only
particularises or makes into a determinate content the still
indeterminate universal, but also explicitly puts an antithesis of
subjectivity and objectivity, and at the same time is in its own self
a return to itself; for it stamps the subjectivity of the notion,
pre-supposed as against objectivity, with the mark of defect, in
comparison with the complete and rounded totality, and thereby at the
same time turns outwards.
208.] (2) This action which is directed outwards is the individuality,
which in the Subjective End is identical with the particularity
under which, along with the content, is also comprised the external
objectivity. It throws itself in the first place immediately upon the
object, which it appropriates to itself as a Means. The notion is this
immediate power; for the notion is the self-identical negativity, in
which the being of the object is characterised as wholly and merely
ideal.--The whole Means then is this inward power of the notion, in the
shape of an agency, with which the object as Means is 'immediately'
united and in obedience to which it stands.
In finite teleology the Means is thus broken up into two elements
external to each other, (a) the action and (b) the object which serves
as Means. The relation of the final cause as power to this object, and
the subjugation of the object to it, is immediate (it forms the first
premiss in the syllogism) to this extent, that in the teleological
notion as the self-existent ideality the object is put as potentially
null. This relation, as represented in the first premiss, itself
becomes the Means, which at the same time involves the syllogism, that
through this relation--in which the action of the End is contained and
dominant--the End is coupled with objectivity.
* * * * *
The execution of the End is the mediated mode of realising the End; but
the immediate realisation is not less needful. The End lays hold of the
object immediately, because it is the power over the object, because
in the End particularity, and in particularity objectivity also, is
involved.--A living being has a body; the soul takes possession of it
and without intermediary has objectified itself in it. The human soul
has much to do, before it makes its corporeal nature into a means. Man
must, as it were, take possession of his body, so that it may be the
instrument of his soul.
209.] (3) Purposive action, with its Means, is still directed outwards,
because the End is also _not_ identical with the object, and must
consequently first be mediated with it. The Means in its capacity of
object stands, in this second premiss, in direct relation to the other
extreme of the syllogism, namely, the material or objectivity which is
pre-supposed. This relation is the sphere of chemism and mechanism,
which have now become the servants of the Final Cause, where lies their
truth and free notion. Thus the Subjective End, which is the power
ruling these processes, in which the objective things wear themselves
out on one another, contrives to keep itself free from them, and to
preserve itself in them. Doing so, it appears as the Cunning of reason.
* * * * *
Reason is as cunning as it is powerful. Cunning may be said to lie
in the inter-mediative action which, while it permits the objects to
follow their own bent and act upon one another till they waste away,
and does not itself directly interfere in the process, is nevertheless
only working out its own aims. With this explanation, Divine Providence
may be said to stand to the world and its process in the capacity of
absolute cunning. God lets men do as they please with their particular
passions and interests; but the result is the accomplishment of--not
their plans, but His, and these differ decidedly from the ends
primarily sought by those whom He employs.
210.] The realised End is thus the overt unity of subjective and
objective. It is however essentially characteristic of this unity, that
the subjective and objective are neutralised and cancelled only in the
point of their one-sidedness, while the objective is subdued and made
conformable to the End, as the free notion, and thereby to the power
above it. The End maintains itself against and in the objective
for it is no mere one-sided subjective or particular, it is also the
concrete universal, the implicit identity of both. This universal, as
simply reflected in itself, is the content which remains unchanged
through all the three _termini_ of the syllogism and their movement.
211.] In finite design, however, even the executed End has the same
radical rift or flaw as had the Means and the initial End. We have
got therefore only a form extraneously impressed on a pre-existing
material: and this form, by reason of the limited content of the End,
is also a contingent characteristic. The End achieved consequently is
only an object, which again becomes a Means or material for other Ends,
and so on for ever.
212.] But what virtually happens in the realising of the End is that
the one-sided subjectivity and the show of objective independence
confronting it are both cancelled. In laying hold of the means, the
notion constitutes itself the very implicit essence of the object. In
the mechanical and chemical processes the independence of the object
has been already dissipated implicitly, and in the course of their
movement under the dominion of the End, the show of that independence,
the negative which confronts the notion, is got rid of. But in the fact
that the End achieved is characterised only as a Means and a material,
this object, viz. the teleological, is there and then put as implicitly
null, and only 'ideal.' This being so, the antithesis between form
and content has also vanished. While the End by the removal and
absorption of all form-characteristics coalesces with itself, the form
as self-identical is thereby put as the content, so that the notion,
which is the action of form, has only itself for content. Through this
process, therefore, there is made explicitly manifest what was the
notion of design: viz. the implicit unity of subjective and objective
is now realised. And this is the Idea.
* * * * *
This finitude of the End consists in the circumstance, that, in the
process of realising it, the material, which is employed as a means,
is only externally subsumed under it and made conformable to it. But,
as a matter of fact, the object is the notion implicitly: and thus
when the notion, in the shape of End, is realised in the object, we
have but the manifestation of the inner nature of the object itself.
Objectivity is thus, as it were, only a covering under which the notion
lies concealed. Within the range of the finite we can never see or
experience that the End has been really secured. The consummation of
the infinite End, therefore, consists merely in removing the illusion
which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. The Good, the absolutely Good,
is eternally accomplishing itself in the world: and the result is that
it needs not wait upon us, but is already by implication, as well as in
full actuality, accomplished. This is the illusion under which we live.
It alone supplies at the same time the actualising force on which the
interest in the world reposes. In the course of its process the Idea
creates that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it; and its
action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created.
Only out of this error does the truth arise. In this fact lies the
reconciliation with error and with finitude. Error or other-being, when
superseded, is still a necessary dynamic element of truth: for truth
can only be where it makes itself its own result.
C.--THE IDEA.
213.] The Idea is truth in itself and for itself,--the absolute
unity of the notion and objectivity. Its 'ideal' content is nothing
but the notion in its detailed terms: its 'real' content is only the
exhibition which the notion gives itself in the form of external
existence, whilst yet, by enclosing this shape in its ideality, it
keeps it in its power, and so keeps itself in it.
The definition, which declares the Absolute to be the Idea, is itself
absolute. All former definitions come back to this. The Idea is
the Truth: for Truth is the correspondence of objectivity with the
notion:--not of course the correspondence of external things with my
conceptions,--for these are only _correct_ conceptions held by _me,_
the individual person. In the idea we have nothing to do with the
individual, nor with figurate conceptions, nor with external things.
And yet, again, everything actual, in so far as it is true, is the
Idea, and has its truth by and in virtue of the Idea alone. Every
individual being is some one aspect of the Idea: for which, therefore,
yet other actualities are needed, which in their turn appear to have
a self-subsistence of their own. It is only in them altogether and
in their relation that the notion is realised. The individual by
itself does not correspond to its notion. It is this limitation of its
existence which constitutes the finitude and the ruin of the individual.
The Idea itself is not to be taken as an idea of something or other,
any more than the notion is to be taken as merely a specific notion.
The Absolute is the universal and one idea, which, by an act of
'judgment,' particularises itself to the system of specific ideas;
which after all are constrained by their nature to come back to the one
idea where their truth lies. As issued out of this 'judgment' the Idea
is _in the first place_ only the one universal _substance:_ but its
developed and genuine actuality is to be as a _subject_ and in that way
as mind.
Because it has no _existence_ for starting-point and _point d'appui,_
the Idea is frequently treated as a mere logical form. Such a view must
be abandoned to those theories, which ascribe so-called reality and
genuine actuality to the existent thing and all the other categories
which have not yet penetrated as far as the Idea. It is no less false
to imagine the Idea to be mere abstraction. It is abstract certainly,
in so far as everything untrue is consumed in it: but in its own self
it is essentially concrete, because it is the free notion giving
character to itself, and that character, reality. It would be an
abstract form, only if the notion, which is its principle, were taken
as an abstract unity, and not as the negative return of it into self
and as the subjectivity which it really is.
* * * * *
Truth is at first taken to mean that I _know_ how something _is._ This
is truth, however, only in reference to consciousness; it is formal
truth, bare correctness. Truth in the deeper sense consists in the
identity between objectivity and the notion. It is in this deeper sense
of truth that we speak of a true state, or of a true work of art. These
objects are true, if they are as they ought to be, _i.e._ if their
reality corresponds to their notion. When thus viewed, to be untrue
means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an untrue man, a man
who does not behave as his notion or his vocation requires. Nothing
however can subsist, if it be _wholly_ devoid of identity between the
notion and reality. Even bad and untrue things have being, in so far
as their reality still, somehow, conforms to their notion. Whatever
is thoroughly bad or contrary to the notion, is for that very reason
on the way to ruin. It is by the notion alone that the things in the
world have their subsistence; or, as it is expressed in the language of
religious conception, things are what they are, only in virtue of the
divine and thereby creative thought which dwells within them.
When we hear the Idea spoken of, we need not imagine something far
away beyond this mortal sphere. The idea is rather what is completely
present: and it is found, however confused and degenerated, in
every consciousness. We conceive the world to ourselves as a great
totality which is created by God, and so created that in it God has
manifested Himself to us. We regard the world also as ruled by Divine
Providence: implying that the scattered and divided parts of the world
are continually brought back, and made conformable, to the unity from
which they have issued. The purpose of philosophy has always been the
intellectual ascertainment of the Idea; and everything deserving the
name of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness
of an absolute unity where the understanding sees and accepts only
separation.--It is too late now to ask for proof that the Idea is
the truth. The proof of that is contained in the whole deduction and
development of thought up to this point. The idea is the result of
this course of dialectic. Not that it is to be supposed that the idea
is mediate only, _i.e._ mediated through something else than itself.
It is rather its own result, and being so, is no less immediate than
mediate. The stages hitherto considered, viz. those of Being and
Essence, as well as those of Notion and of Objectivity, are not, when
so distinguished, something permanent, resting upon themselves. They
have proved to be dialectical; and their only truth is that they are
dynamic elements of the idea.
214.] The Idea may be described in many ways. It may be called reason
(and this is the proper philosophical signification of reason);
subject-object; the unity of the ideal and the real, of the finite and
the infinite, of soul and body; the possibility which has its actuality
in its own self; that of which the nature can be thought only as
existent, &c. All these descriptions apply, because the Idea contains
all the relations of understanding, but contains them in their infinite
self-return and self-identity.
It is easy work for the understanding to show that everything said
of the Idea is self-contradictory. But that can quite as well be
retaliated, or rather in the Idea the retaliation is actually made. And
this work, which is the work of reason, is certainly not so easy as
that of the understanding. Understanding may demonstrate that the Idea
is self-contradictory: because the subjective is subjective only and is
always confronted by the objective,--because being is different from
notion and therefore cannot be picked out of it,--because the finite
is finite only, the exact antithesis of the infinite, and therefore
not identical with it; and so on with every term of the description.
The reverse of all this however is the doctrine of Logic. Logic shows
that the subjective which is to be subjective only, the finite which
would be finite only, the infinite which would be infinite only, and so
on, have no truth, but contradict themselves, and pass over into their
opposites. Hence this transition, and the unity in which the extremes
are merged and become factors, each with a merely reflected existence,
reveals itself as their truth.
The understanding, which addresses itself to deal with the Idea,
commits a double misunderstanding. It takes _first_ the extremes of
the Idea (be they expressed as they will, so long as they are in their
unity), not as they are understood when stamped with this concrete
unity, but as if they remained abstractions outside of it. It no less
mistakes the relation between them, ever when it has been expressly
stated. Thus, for example it overlooks even the nature of the copula
in the judgment, which affirms that the individual, or subject, is
after all not individual, but universal. But, in the _second_ place,
the understanding believes _its_ 'reflection,'--that the self-identical
Idea contains its own negative, or contains contradiction,--to be an
external reflection which does not lie within the Idea itself. But the
reflection is really no peculiar cleverness of the understanding. The
Idea itself is the dialectic which for ever divides and distinguishes
the self-identical from the differentiated, the subjective from the
objective, the finite from the infinite, soul from body. Only on
these terms is it an eternal creation, eternal vitality, and eternal
spirit. But while it thus passes or rather translates itself into the
abstract understanding, it for ever remains reason. The Idea is the
dialectic which again makes this mass of understanding and diversity
understand its finite nature and the pseudo-independence in its
productions, and which brings the diversity back to unity. Since this
double movement is not separate or distinct in time, nor indeed in any
other way--otherwise it would be only a repetition of the abstract
understanding--the Idea is the eternal vision of itself in the other,
--notion which in its objectivity _has_ carried out _itself,_--object
which is inward design, essential subjectivity.
The different modes of apprehending the Idea as unity of ideal and
real, of finite and infinite, of identity and difference, &c. are more
or less formal. They designate some one stage of the _specific_ notion.
Only the notion itself, however, is free and the genuine universal:
in the Idea, therefore, the specific character of the notion is
only the notion itself,--an objectivity, viz. into which it, being
the universal, continues itself, and in which it has only its own
character, the total character. The Idea is the infinite judgment, of
which the terms are severally the independent totality; and in which,
as each grows to the fulness of its own nature, it has thereby at the
same time passed into the other. None of the other specific notions
exhibits this totality complete on both its sides as the notion itself
and objectivity.
215.] The Idea is essentially a process, because its identity is the
absolute and free identity of the notion, only in so far as it is
absolute negativity and for that reason dialectical. It is the round of
movement, in which the notion, in the capacity of universality which
is individuality, gives itself the character of objectivity and of the
antithesis thereto; and this externality which has the notion for its
substance, finds its way back to subjectivity through its immanent
dialectic.
As the idea is (a) a process, it follows that such an expression for
the Absolute as _unity_ of thought and being, of finite and infinite,
&c. is false; for unity expresses an abstract and merely quiescent
identity. As the Idea is (b) subjectivity, it follows that the
expression is equally false on another account. That unity of which
it speaks expresses a merely virtual or underlying presence of the
genuine unity. The infinite would thus seem to be merely _neutralised_
by the finite, the subjective by the objective, thought by being. But
in the negative unity of the Idea, the infinite overlaps and includes
the finite, thought overlaps being, subjectivity overlaps objectivity.
The unity of the Idea is thought, infinity, and subjectivity, and
is in consequence to be essentially distinguished from the Idea as
_substance,_ just as this overlapping subjectivity, thought, or
infinity is to be distinguished from the one-sided subjectivity,
one-sided thought, one-sided infinity to which it descends in judging
and defining.
* * * * *
The idea as a process runs through three stages in its development.
The first form of the idea is Life: that is, the idea in the form of
immediacy. The second form is that of mediation or differentiation;
and this is the idea in the form of Knowledge, which appears under
the double aspect of the Theoretical and Practical idea. The process
of knowledge eventuates in the restoration of the unity enriched by
difference. This gives the third form of the idea, the Absolute Idea:
which last stage of the logical idea evinces itself to be at the same
time the true first, and to have a being due to itself alone.
(a) _Life._
216.] The _immediate_ idea is Life. As _soul,_ the notion is
realised in a body of whose externality the soul is the immediate
self-relating universality. But the soul is also its particularisation,
so that the body expresses no other distinctions than follow from the
characterisations of its notion. And finally it is the Individuality
of the body as infinite negativity,--the dialectic of that bodily
objectivity, with its parts lying out of one another, conveying
them away from the semblance of independent subsistence back into
subjectivity, so that all the members are reciprocally momentary
means as well as momentary ends. Thus as life is the initial
particularisation, so it results in the negative self-asserting unity:
in the dialectic of its corporeity it only coalesces with itself.
In this way life is essentially something alive, and in point of
its immediacy this individual living thing. It is characteristic of
finitude in this sphere that, by reason of the immediacy of the idea,
body and soul are separable. This constitutes the mortality of the
living being. It is only, however, when the living being is dead, that
these two sides of the idea are different _ingredients._
* * * * *
The single members of the body are what they are only by and in
relation to their unity. A hand _e.g._ when hewn off from the body is,
as Aristotle has observed, a hand in name only, not in fact. From the
point of view of understanding, life is usually spoken of as a mystery,
and in general as incomprehensible. By giving it such a name, however,
the Understanding only confesses its own finitude and nullity. So far
is life from being incomprehensible, that in it the very notion is
presented to us, or rather the immediate idea existing as a notion. And
having said this, we have indicated the defect of life. Its notion and
reality do not thoroughly correspond to each other. The notion of life
is the soul, and this notion has the body for its reality. The soul is,
as it were, infused into its corporeity; and in that way it is at first
sentient only, and not yet freely self-conscious. The process of life
consists in getting the better of the immediacy with which it is still
beset: and this process, which is itself threefold, results in the idea
under the form of judgment, _i.e._ the idea as Cognition.
217.] A living being is a syllogism, of which the very elements are in
themselves systems and syllogisms (§§ 198, 201, 207). They are however
active syllogisms or processes; and in the subjective unity of the
vital agent make only one process. Thus the living being is the process
of its coalescence with itself, which runs on through three processes.
218.] (1) The first is the process of the living being inside itself.
In that process it makes a split on its own self, and reduces its
corporeity to its object or its inorganic nature. This corporeity, as
an aggregate of correlations, enters in its very nature into difference
and opposition of its elements, which mutually become each other's
prey, and assimilate one another, and are retained by producing
themselves. Yet this action of the several members (organs), is only
the living subject's one act to which their productions revert; so that
in these productions nothing is produced except the subject: in other
words, the subject only reproduces itself.
* * * * *
The process of the vital subject within its own limits has in Nature
the threefold form of Sensibility, Irritability, and Reproduction. As
Sensibility, the living being is immediately simple self-relation--it
is the soul omnipresent in its body, the outsideness of each member of
which to others has for it no truth. As Irritability, the living being
appears split up in itself; and as Reproduction, it is perpetually
restoring itself from the inner distinction of its members and organs.
A vital agent only exists as this continually self-renewing process
within its own limits.
219.] (2) But the judgment of the notion proceeds, as free, to
discharge the objective or bodily nature as an independent totality
from itself; and the negative relation of the living thing to itself
makes, as immediate individuality, the pre-supposition of an inorganic
nature confronting it. As this negative of the animate is no less a
function in the notion of the animate itself, it exists consequently
in the latter (which is at the same time a concrete universal) in the
shape of a defect or want. The dialectic by which the object, being
implicitly null, is merged, is the action of the self-assured living
thing, which in this process against an inorganic nature thus retains,
develops, and objectifies itself.
* * * * *
The living being stands face to face with an inorganic nature, to which
it comports itself as a master and which it assimilates to itself.
The result of the assimilation is not, as in the chemical process, a
neutral product in which the independence of the two confronting sides
is merged; but the living being shows itself as large enough to embrace
its other which cannot withstand its power. The inorganic nature
which is subdued by the vital agent suffers this fate, because it is
_virtually_ the same as what life is _actually._ Thus in the other the
living being only coalesces with itself. But when the soul has fled
from the body, the elementary powers of objectivity begin their play.
These powers are, as it were, continually on the spring, ready to begin
their process in the organic body; and life is the constant battle
against them.
220.] (3) The living individual, which in its first process comports
itself as intrinsically subject and notion, through its second
assimilates its external objectivity and thus puts the character of
reality into itself. It is now therefore implicitly a Kind, with
essential universality of nature. The particularising of this Kind is
the relation of the living subject to another subject of its Kind: and
the judgment is the tie of Kind over these individuals thus appointed
for each other. This is the Affinity of the Sexes.
221.] The process of Kind brings it to a being of its own. Life being
no more than the idea immediate, the product of this process breaks
up into two sides. On the one hand, the living individual, which was
at first pre-supposed as immediate, is now seen to be mediated and
generated. On the other, however, the living individuality, which, on
account of its first immediacy, stands in a negative attitude towards
universality, sinks in the superior power of the latter.
* * * * *
The living being dies, because it is a contradiction. Implicitly it is
the universal or Kind, and yet immediately it exists as an individual
only. Death shows the Kind to be the power that rules the immediate
individual. For the animal the process of Kind is the highest point of
its vitality. But the animal never gets so far in its Kind as to have
a being of its own; it succumbs to the power of Kind. In the process
of Kind the immediate living being mediates itself with itself, and
thus rises above its immediacy, only however to sink back into it
again. Life thus runs away, in the first instance, only into the false
infinity of the progress _ad infinitum._ The real result, however,
of the process of life, in the point of its notion, is to merge and
overcome that immediacy with which the idea, in the shape of life, is
still beset.
222.] In this manner however the idea of life has thrown off not some
one particular and immediate 'This,' but this first immediacy as a
whole. It thus comes to itself, to its truth: it enters upon existence
as a free Kind self-subsistent. The death of merely immediate and
individual vitality is the 'procession' of spirit.
(b) _Cognition in general._
223.] The idea exists free for itself, in so far as it has universality
for the medium of its existence,--as objectivity itself has
notional being,--as the idea is its own object. Its subjectivity,
thus universalised, is _pure_ self-contained distinguishing of the
idea,--intuition which keeps itself in this identical universality.
But, as _specific_ distinguishing, it is the further judgment of
repelling itself as a totality from itself, and thus, in the first
place, pre-supposing itself as an external universe. There are two
judgments, which though implicitly identical are not yet explicitly put
as identical.
224.] The relation of these two ideas, which implicitly and as life are
identical, is thus one of correlation: and it is that correlativity
which constitutes the characteristic of finitude in this sphere. It
is the relationship of reflection, seeing that the distinguishing of
the idea in its own self is only the first judgment--presupposing the
other and not yet supposing itself to constitute it. And thus for the
subjective idea the objective is the immediate world found ready to
hand, or the idea as life is in the phenomenon of individual existence.
At the same time, in so far as this judgment is pure distinguishing
within its own limits (§ 223), the idea realises in one both itself and
its other. Consequently it is the certitude of the virtual identity
between itself and the objective world.--Reason comes to the world
with an absolute faith in its ability to make the identity actual, and
to raise its certitude to truth; and with the instinct of realising
explicitly the nullity of that contrast which it sees to be implicitly
null.
225.] This process is in general terms Cognition. In Cognition
in a single act the contrast is virtually superseded, as regards both
the one-sidedness of subjectivity and the one-sidedness of objectivity.
At first, however, the supersession of the contrast is but implicit.
The process as such is in consequence immediately infected with the
finitude of this sphere, and splits into the twofold movement of the
instinct of reason, presented as two different movements. On the one
hand it supersedes the one-sidedness of the Idea's subjectivity by
receiving the existing world into itself, into subjective conception
and thought; and with this objectivity, which is thus taken to be
real and true, for its content it fills up the abstract certitude of
itself. On the other hand, it supersedes the one-sidedness of the
objective world, which is now, on the contrary, estimated as only a
mere semblance, a collection of contingencies and shapes at bottom
visionary. It modifies and informs that world by the inward nature of
the subjective, which is here taken to be the genuine objective. The
former is the instinct of science after Truth, Cognition properly so
called:--the Theoretical action of the idea. The latter is the instinct
of the Good to fulfil the same--the Practical activity of the idea or
Volition.
(α) _Cognition proper._
226.] The universal finitude of Cognition, which lies in the
one judgment, the pre-supposition of the contrast (§ 224),--a
pre-supposition in contradiction of which its own act lodges protest,
specialises itself more precisely on the face of its own idea. The
result of that specialisation is, that its two elements receive the
aspect of being diverse from each other, and, as they are at least
complete, they take up the relation of 'reflection,' not of 'notion,'
to one another. The assimilation of the matter, therefore, as a datum,
presents itself in the light of a reception of it into categories which
at the same time remain external to it, and which meet each other in
the same style of diversity. Reason is active here, but it is reason in
the shape of understanding. The truth which such Cognition can reach
will therefore be only finite: the infinite truth (of the notion) is
isolated and made transcendent, an inaccessible goal in a world of its
own. Still in its external action cognition stands under the guidance
of the notion, and notional principles form the secret clue to its
movement.
* * * * *
The finitude of Cognition lies in the pre-supposition of a world
already in existence, and in the consequent view of the knowing subject
as a _tabula rasa._ The conception is one attributed to Aristotle;
but no man is further than Aristotle from such an outside theory of
Cognition. Such a style of Cognition does not recognise in itself the
activity of the notion--an activity which it is implicitly, but not
consciously. In its own estimation its procedure is passive. Really
that procedure is active.
227.] Finite Cognition, when it pre-supposes what is distinguished
from it to be something already existing and confronting it,--to be
the various facts of external nature or of consciousness--has, in the
first place, (1) Formal identity or the abstraction of universality for
the form of its action. Its activity therefore consists in analysing
the given concrete object, isolating its differences, and giving them
the form of abstract universality. Or it leaves the concrete thing as
a ground, and by setting aside the unessential-looking particulars,
brings into relief a concrete universal, the Genus, or Force and Law.
This is the Analytical Method.
* * * * *
People generally speak of the analytical and synthetical methods,
as if it depended solely on our choice which we pursued. This is
far from the case. It depends on the form of the objects of our
investigation, which of the two methods, that are derivable from the
notion of finite cognition, ought to be applied. In the first place,
cognition is analytical. Analytical cognition deals with an object
which is presented in detachment, and the aim of its action is to
trace back to a universal the individual object before it. Thought
in such circumstances means no more than an act of abstraction or of
formal identity. That is the sense in which thought is understood by
Locke and all empiricists. Cognition, it is often said, can never do
more than separate the given concrete objects into their abstract
elements, and then consider these elements in their isolation. It is,
however, at once apparent that this turns things upside down, and that
cognition, if its purpose be to take things as they are, thereby falls
into contradiction with itself. Thus the chemist _e.g._ places a piece
of flesh in his retort, tortures it in many ways, and then informs us
that it consists of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, &c. True: but these
abstract matters have ceased to be flesh. The same defect occurs in
the reasoning of an empirical psychologist when he analyses an action
into the various aspects which it presents, and then sticks to these
aspects in their separation. The object which is subjected to analysis
is treated as a sort of onion from which one coat is peeled off after
another.
228.] This universality is (2) also a specific universality. In this
case the line of activity follows the three 'moments' of the notion,
which (as it has not its infinity in finite cognition) is the specific
or definite notion of understanding. The reception of the object into
the forms of this notion is the Synthetic Method.
* * * * *
The movement of the Synthetic method is the reverse of the Analytical
method. The latter starts from the individual, and proceeds to the
universal; in the former the starting-point is given by the universal
(as a definition), from which we proceed by particularising (in
division) to the individual (the theorem). The Synthetic method thus
presents itself as the development of the 'moments' of the notion on
the object.
229.] (α) When the object has been in the first instance brought by
cognition into the form of the specific notion in general, so that
in this way its genus and its universal character or speciality are
explicitly stated, we have the Definition. The materials and the
proof of Definition are procured by means of the Analytical method (§
227). The specific character however is expected to be a 'mark' only:
that is to say it is to be in behoof only of the purely subjective
cognition which is external to the object.
* * * * *
Definition involves the three organic elements of the
notion: the universal or proximate genus _genus proximum,_
the particular or specific character of the genus (_qualitas
specified,_) and the individual, or object defined.--The first
question that definition suggests, is where it comes from.
The general answer to this question is to say, that definitions
originate by way of analysis. This will explain how it
happens that people quarrel about the correctness of proposed
definitions; for here everything depends on what
perceptions we started from, and what points of view we
had before our eyes in so doing. The richer the object to
be defined is, that is, the more numerous are the aspects
which it offers to our notice, the more various are the definitions
we may frame of it. Thus there are quite a host of
definitions of life, of the state, &c. Geometry, on the contrary,
dealing with a theme so abstract as space, has an easy
task in giving definitions. Again, in respect of the matter or
contents of the objects defined, there is no constraining
necessity present. We are expected to admit that space
exists, that there are plants, animals, &c, nor is it the business
of geometry, botany, &c. to demonstrate that the objects
in question necessarily are. This very circumstance makes
the synthetical method of cognition as little suitable for
philosophy as the analytical: for philosophy has above all
things to leave no doubt of the necessity of its objects. And
yet several attempts have been made to introduce the synthetical
method into philosophy. Thus Spinoza, in particular,
begins with definitions. He says, for instance, that
substance is the _causa sui._ His definitions are unquestionably
a storehouse of the most speculative truth, but it takes the
shape of dogmatic assertions. The same thing is also true
of Schelling.
230.] (ß) The statement of the second element of the notion, _i.e._ of
the specific character of the universal as particularising, is given by
Division in accordance with some external consideration.
* * * * *
Division we are told ought to be complete. That requires a principle
or ground of division so constituted, that the division based upon it
embraces the whole extent of the region designated by the definition
in general. But, in division, there is the further requirement that
the principle of it must be borrowed from the nature of the object in
question. If this condition be satisfied, the division is natural and
not merely artificial, that is to say, arbitrary. Thus, in zoology,
the ground of division adopted in the classification of the mammalia
is mainly afforded by their teeth and claws. That is so far sensible,
as the mammals themselves distinguish themselves from one another by
these parts of their bodies; back to which therefore the general type
of their various classes is to be traced. In every case the genuine
division must be controlled by the notion. To that extent a division,
in the first instance, has three members: but as particularity
exhibits itself as double, the division may go to the extent even
of four members. In the sphere of mind trichotomy is predominant, a
circumstance which Kant has the credit of bringing into notice.
231.] (γ) In the concrete individuality, where the mere unanalysed
quality of the definition is regarded as a correlation of elements,
the object is a synthetical nexus of distinct characteristics. It is
a Theorem. Being different, these characteristics possess but
a mediated identity. To supply the materials, which form the middle
terms, is the office of Construction: and the process of mediation
itself, from which cognition derives the necessity of that nexus, is
the Demonstration.
As the difference between the analytical and synthetical methods is
commonly stated, it seems entirely optional which of the two we employ.
If we assume, to start with, the concrete thing which the synthetic
method presents as a result, we can analyse from it as consequences
the abstract propositions which formed the pre-suppositions and the
material for the proof. Thus, algebraical definitions of curved lines
are theorems in the method of geometry. Similarly even the Pythagorean
theorem, if made the definition of a right-angled triangle, might yield
to analysis those propositions which geometry had already demonstrated
on its behoof. The optionalness of either method is due to both alike
starting from an external pre-supposition. So far as the nature of
the notion is concerned, analysis is prior; since it has to raise the
given material with its empirical concreteness into the form of general
abstractions, which may then be set in the front of the synthetical
method as definitions.
That these methods, however indispensable and brilliantly successful
in their own province, are unserviceable for philosophical cognition,
is self-evident. They have pre-suppositions; and their style of
cognition is that of understanding, proceeding under the canon of
formal identity. In Spinoza, who was especially addicted to the use of
the geometrical method, we are at once struck by its characteristic
formalism. Yet his ideas were speculative in spirit; whereas the system
of Wolf, who carried the method out to the height of pedantry, was
even in subject-matter a metaphysic of the understanding. The abuses
which these methods with their formalism once led to in philosophy
and science have in modern times been followed by the abuses of what
is called 'Construction.' Kant brought into vogue the phrase that
mathematics 'construes' its notions. All that was meant by the phrase
was that mathematics has not to do with notions, but with abstract
qualities of sense-perceptions. The name 'Construction (_construing_)
of notions' has since been given to a sketch or statement of sensible
attributes which were picked up from perception, quite guiltless
of any influence of the notion, and to the additional formalism of
classifying scientific and philosophical objects in a tabular form
on some pre-supposed rubric, but in other respects at the fancy and
discretion of the observer. In the background of all this, certainly,
there is a dim consciousness of the Idea, of the unity of the notion
and objectivity,--a consciousness, too, that the idea is concrete. But
that play of what is styled 'construing' is far from presenting this
unity adequately--a unity which is none other than the notion properly
so called: and the sensuous concreteness of perception is as little the
concreteness of reason and the idea.
Another point calls for notice. Geometry works with the sensuous but
abstract perception of space; and in space it experiences no difficulty
in isolating and defining certain simple analytic modes. To geometry
alone therefore belongs in its perfection the synthetical method of
finite cognition. In its course, however (and this is the remarkable
point), it finally stumbles upon what are termed irrational and
incommensurable quantities; and in their case any attempt at further
specification drives it beyond the principle of the understanding.
This is only one of many instances in terminology, where the title
rational is perversely applied to the province of understanding,
while we stigmatise as irrational that which shows a beginning and a
trace of rationality. Other sciences, removed as they are from the
simplicity of space or number, often and necessarily reach a point
where understanding permits no further advance: but they get over the
difficulty without trouble. They make a break in the strict sequence
of their procedure, and assume whatever they require, though it be
the reverse of what preceded, from some external quarter,--opinion,
perception, conception or any other source. Its inobservancy as to
the nature of its methods and their relativity to the subject-matter
prevents this finite cognition from seeing that, when it proceeds by
definitions and divisions, &c., it is really led on by the necessity
of the laws of the notion. For the same reason it cannot see when it
has reached its limit; nor, if it have transgressed that limit, does it
perceive that it is in a sphere where the categories of understanding,
which it still continues rudely to apply, have lost all authority.
232.] The necessity, which finite cognition produces in the
Demonstration, is, in the first place, an external necessity, intended
for the subjective intelligence alone. But in necessity as such,
cognition itself has left behind its presupposition and starting-point,
which consisted in accepting its content as given or found.
Necessity _quâ_ necessity is implicitly the self-relating notion. The
subjective idea has thus implicitly reached an original and objective
determinateness,--a something not-given, and for that reason immanent
in the subject. It has passed over into the idea of Will.
* * * * *
The necessity which cognition reaches by means of the demonstration is
the reverse of what formed its starting-point. In its starting-point
cognition had a given and a contingent content; but now, at the close
of its movement, it knows its content to be necessary. This necessity
is reached by means of subjective agency. Similarly, subjectivity
at starting was quite abstract, a bare _tabula rasa._ It now shows
itself as a modifying and determining principle. In this way we pass
from the idea of cognition to that of will. The passage, as will be
apparent on a closer examination, means that the universal, to be
truly apprehended, must be apprehended as subjectivity, as a notion
self-moving, active, and form-imposing.
(ß) _Volition._
233.] The subjective idea as original and objective determinateness,
and as a simple uniform content, is the Good. Its impulse
towards self-realisation is in its behaviour the reverse of the idea of
truth, and rather directed towards moulding the world it finds before
it into a shape conformable to its purposed End.--This Volition has,
on the one hand, the certitude of the nothingness of the pre-supposed
object; but, on the other, as finite, it at the same time pre-supposes
the purposed End of the Good to be a mere subjective idea, and the
object to be independent.
234.] This action of the Will is finite: and its finitude lies in
the contradiction that in the inconsistent terms applied to the
objective world the End of the Good is just as much not executed
as executed,--the end in question put as unessential as much as
essential,--as actual and at the same, time as merely possible. This
contradiction presents itself to imagination as an endless progress in
the actualising of the Good; which is therefore set up and fixed as
a mere 'ought,' or goal of perfection. In point of form however this
contradiction vanishes when the action supersedes the subjectivity of
the purpose, and along with it the objectivity, with the contrast which
makes both finite; abolishing subjectivity as a whole and not merely
the one-sidedness of this form of it. (For another new subjectivity of
the kind, that is, a new generation of the contrast, is not distinct
from that which is supposed to be past and gone.) This return into
itself is at the same time the content's own 'recollection' that it
is the Good and the implicit identity of the two sides,--it is a
'recollection' of the pre-supposition of the theoretical attitude
of mind (§ 224) that the objective world is its own truth and
substantiality.
* * * * *
While Intelligence merely proposes to take the world as it is, Will
takes steps to make the world what it ought to be. Will looks upon
the immediate and given present not as solid being, but as mere
semblance without reality. It is here that we meet those contradictions
which are so bewildering from the standpoint of abstract morality.
This position in its 'practical' bearings is the one taken by the
philosophy of Kant, and even by that of Fichte. The Good, say these
writers, has to be realised: we have to work in order to produce it:
and Will is only the Good actualising itself. If the world then were
as it ought to be, the action of Will would be at an end. The Will
itself therefore requires that its End should not be realised. In
these words, a correct expression is given to the _finitude_ of Will.
But finitude was not meant to be the ultimate point: and it is the
process of Will itself which abolishes finitude and the contradiction
it involves. The reconciliation is achieved, when Will in its result
returns to the pre-supposition made by cognition. In other words, it
consists in the unity of the theoretical and practical idea. Will
knows the end to be its own, and Intelligence apprehends the world as
the notion actual. This is the right attitude of rational cognition.
Nullity and transitoriness constitute only the superficial features
and not the real essence of the world. That essence is the notion in
_posse_ and in _esse:_ and thus the world is itself the idea. All
unsatisfied endeavour ceases, when we recognise that the final purpose
of the world is accomplished no less than ever accomplishing itself.
Generally speaking, this is the man's way of looking; while the young
imagine that the world is utterly sunk in wickedness, and that the
first thing needful is a thorough transformation. The religious mind,
on the contrary, views the world as ruled by Divine Providence, and
therefore correspondent with what it ought to be. But this harmony
between the 'is' and the 'ought to be' is not torpid and rigidly
stationary. Good, the final end of the world, has being, only while it
constantly produces itself. And the world of spirit and the world of
nature continue to have this distinction, that the latter moves only in
a recurring cycle, while the former certainly also makes progress.
235.] Thus the truth of the Good is laid down as the unity of the
theoretical and practical idea in the doctrine that the Good is
radically and really achieved, that the objective world is in itself
and for itself the Idea, just as it at the same time eternally lays
itself down as End, and by action brings about its actuality. This life
which has returned to itself from the bias and finitude of cognition,
and which by the activity of the notion has become identical with it,
is the Speculative or Absolute Idea.
(c) _The Absolute Idea._
236.] The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, is
the notion of the Idea,--a notion whose object (_Gegenstand_) is the
Idea as such, and for which the objective (_Objekt_) is Idea,--an
Object which embraces all characteristics in its unity. This unity
is consequently I the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks
itself,--and here at least as a thinking or Logical Idea.
* * * * *
The Absolute Idea is, in the first place, the unity of the theoretical
and practical idea, and thus at the same time the unity of the idea
of life with the idea of cognition. In cognition we had the idea in a
biassed, one-sided shape. The process of cognition has issued in the
overthrow of this bias and the restoration of that unity, which as
unity, and in its immediacy, is in the first instance the Idea of Life.
The defect of life lies in its being only the idea implicit or natural:
whereas cognition is in an equally one-sided way the merely conscious
idea, or the idea for itself. The unity and truth of these two is the
Absolute Idea, which is both in itself and for itself. Hitherto _we_
have had the idea in development through its various grades as _our_
object, but now the idea comes to be its _own object._ This is the
νόησις νοήσεως which Aristotle long ago termed the supreme form of the
idea.
237.] Seeing that there is in it no transition, or presupposition,
and in general no specific character other than what is fluid and
transparent, the Absolute Idea is for itself the pure form of the
notion, which contemplates its content as its own self. It is its own
content, in so far as it ideally distinguishes itself from itself,
and the one of the two things distinguished is a self-identity in
which however is contained the totality of the form as the system of
terms describing its content. This content is the system of Logic. All
that is at this stage left as form for the idea is the Method of this
content,--the specific consciousness of the value and currency of the
'moments' in its development.
* * * * *
To speak of the absolute idea may suggest the conception that we are
at length reaching the right thing and the sum of the whole matter.
It is certainly possible to indulge in a vast amount of senseless
declamation about the idea absolute. But its true content is only the
whole system of which we have been hitherto studying the development.
It may also be said in this strain that the absolute idea is the
universal, but the universal not merely as an abstract form to which
the particular content is a stranger, but as the absolute form, into
which all the categories, the whole fullness of the content it has
given being to, have retired. The absolute idea may in this respect be
compared to the old man who utters the same creed as the child, but
for whom it is pregnant with the significance of a lifetime. Even if
the child understands the truths of religion, he cannot but imagine
them to be something outside of which lies the whole of life and the
whole of the world. The same may be said to be the case with human life
as a whole and the occurrences with which it is fraught. All work is
directed only to the aim or end; and when it is attained, people are
surprised to find nothing else but just the very thing which they had
wished for. The interest lies in the whole movement. When a man traces
up the steps of his life, the end may appear to him very restricted:
but in it the whole _decursus vitae_ is comprehended. So, too, the
content of the absolute idea is the whole breadth of ground which has
passed under our view up to this point. Last of all comes the discovery
that the whole evolution is what constitutes the content and the
interest. It is indeed the prerogative of the philosopher to see that
everything, which, taken apart, is narrow and restricted, receives
its value by its connexion with the whole, and by forming an organic
element of the idea. Thus it is that we have had the content already,
and what we have now is the knowledge that the content is the living
development of the idea. This simple retrospect is contained in the
_form_ of the idea. Each of the stages hitherto reviewed is an image
of the absolute, but at first in a limited mode, and thus it is forced
onwards to the whole, the evolution of which is what we termed Method.
238.] The several steps or stages of the Speculative Method are,
first of all, (a) the Beginning, which is Being or Immediacy:
self-subsistent, for the simple reason that it is the beginning. But
looked at from the speculative idea, Being is its self-specialising
act, which as the absolute negativity or movement of the notion makes
a judgment and puts itself as its own negative. Being, which to the
beginning as beginning seems mere abstract affirmation, is thus rather
negation, dependency, derivation, and pre-supposition. But it is the
notion, of which Being is the negation: and the notion is completely
self-identical in its otherness, and is the certainty of itself. Being
therefore is the notion implicit, before it has been explicitly put as
a notion. This Being therefore, as the still unspecified notion,--a
notion that is only implicitly or 'immediately' specified--is equally
describable as the Universal.
When it means immediate being, the beginning is taken from sensation
and perception--the initial stage in the analytical method of finite
cognition. When it means universality, it is the beginning of the
synthetic method. But since the Logical Idea is as much a universal as
it is in being--since it is pre-supposed by the notion as much as it
itself immediately _is,_ its beginning is a synthetical as well as an
analytical beginning.
* * * * *
Philosophical method is analytical as well as synthetical, not indeed
in the sense of a bare juxtaposition or mere alternating employment
of these two methods of finite cognition, but rather in such a way
that it holds them merged in itself. In every one of its movements
therefore it displays an attitude at once analytical and synthetical.
Philosophical thought proceeds analytically, in so far as it only
accepts its object, the Idea, and while allowing it its own way, is
only, as it were, an on-looker at its movement and development. To this
extent philosophising is wholly passive. Philosophic thought however is
equally synthetic, and evinces itself to be the action of the notion
itself. To that end, however, there is required an effort to keep back
the incessant impertinence of our own fancies and private opinions.
239.] (b) The Advance renders explicit the _judgment_ implicit in
the Idea. The immediate universal, as the notion implicit, is the
dialectical force which on its own part deposes its immediacy and
universality to the level of a mere stage or 'moment.' Thus is put
the negative of the beginning, its specific character: it supposes a
correlative, a relation of different terms,--the stage of Reflection.
Seeing that the immanent dialectic only states explicitly what was
involved in the immediate notion, this advance is Analytical; but
seeing that in this notion this distinction was not yet stated,--it is
equally Synthetical.
* * * * *
In the advance of the idea, the beginning exhibits itself as what
it is implicitly. It is seen to be mediated and derivative, and
neither to have proper being nor proper immediacy. It is only for
the consciousness which is itself immediate, that Nature forms the
commencement or immediacy, and that Spirit appears as what is mediated
by Nature. The truth is that Nature is the creation of Spirit, and it
is Spirit itself which gives itself a pre-supposition in Nature.
240.] The abstract form of the advance is, in Being, an other and
transition into an other; in Essence showing or reflection in the
opposite; in Notion, the distinction of individual from universality,
which continues itself as such into, and is as an identity with, what
is distinguished from it.
241.] In the second sphere the primarily implicit notion has come as
far as shining, and thus is already the idea in germ. The development
of this sphere becomes a regress into the first, just as the
development of the first is a transition into the second.
It is only by means of this double movement, that the difference first
gets its due, when each of the two members distinguished, observed
on its own part, completes itself to the totality, and in this way
works out its unity with the other. It is only by both merging their
one-sidedness on their own part, that their unity is kept from becoming
one-sided.
242.] The second sphere developes the relation of the differents to
what it primarily is,--to the contradiction in its own nature. That
contradiction which is seen in the infinite progress is resolved
(c) into the end or terminus, where the differenced is explicitly
stated as what it is in notion. The end is the negative of the first,
and as the identity with that, is the negativity of itself. It is
consequently the unity in which both of these Firsts, the immediate
and the real First, are made constituent stages in thought, merged,
and at the same time preserved in the unity. The notion, which from
its implicitness thus comes by means of its differentiation and the
merging of that differentiation to close with itself, is the realised
notion,--the notion which contains the relativity or dependence of its
special features in its own independence. It is the idea which, as
absolutely first (in the method), regards this terminus as merely the
disappearance of the show or semblance, which made the beginning appear
immediate, and made itself seem a result. It is the knowledge that the
idea is the one systematic whole.
243.] It thus appears that the method is not an extraneous form,
but the soul and notion of the content, from which it is only
distinguished, so far as the dynamic elements of the notion even on
their own part come in their own specific character to appear as the
totality of the notion. This specific character, or the content, leads
itself with the form back to the idea; and thus the idea is presented
as a systematic totality which is only one idea, of which the several
elements are each implicitly the idea, whilst they equally by the
dialectic of the notion produce the simple independence of the idea.
The science in this manner concludes by apprehending the notion of
itself, as of the pure idea for which the idea is.
244.] The Idea which is independent or for itself, when viewed on the
point of this its unity with itself, is Perception or Intuition, and
the percipient Idea is Nature. But as intuition the idea is, through
an external 'reflection,' invested with the one-sided characteristic
of immediacy, or of negation. Enjoying however an absolute liberty,
the Idea does not merely pass over into life, or as finite cognition
allow life to show in it: in its own absolute truth it resolves to let
the 'moment' of its particularity, or of the first characterisation
and other-being, the immediate idea, as its reflected image, go forth
freely as Nature.
* * * * *
We have now returned to the notion of the Idea with which we began.
This return to the beginning is also an advance. We began with Being,
abstract Being: where we now are we also have the Idea as Being: but
this Idea which has Being is Nature.
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER I.
Page 5, § 2. After-thought = Nachdenken, _e.g._ thought which retraces
and reproduces an original, but submerged, thought (cf. Hegel's
_Werke_, vi. p. xv): to be distinguished from Reflexion (cf.
_Werke_, i. 174).
P. 7, § 3. On the blending of universal (thought) and individual
(sensation) in what is called perception (Wahrnehmen) see _Encycl._ §§
420, 421.
P. 8, § 3. Cf. Fichte, _Werke_, ii. 454: 'Hence for the common sort of
hearers and readers the uncommon intelligibility of certain sermons and
lectures and writings, not one word of which is intelligible to the
man who thinks for himself,--because there is really no intelligence
in them. The old woman who frequents the church--for whom by the way I
cherish all possible respect--finds a sermon very intelligible and very
edifying which contains lots of texts and verses of hymns she knows
by rote and can repeat. In the same way readers, who fancy themselves
far superior to her, find a work very instructive and clear which
tells them what they already know, and proofs very stringent which
demonstrate what they already believe. The pleasure the reader takes in
the writer is a concealed pleasure in himself. What a great man! (he
says to himself); it is as if I heard or read myself.
P. 10, § 6. Cf. Hegel, _Werke>_ viii. 17: 'In this conviction (that
what is reasonable is actual, and what is actual is reasonable) stands
every plain man, as well as the philosopher; and from it philosophy
starts in the study both of the spiritual and of the natural
universe----The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal
and the transient to recognise the substance which is immanent and the
eternal which is present. For the work of reason (which is synonymous
with the Idea), when in its actuality it simultaneously enters external
existence, emerges with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and
phases, and envelopes its kernel with the motley rind with which
consciousness is earliest at home,--a rind which the notion must
penetrate before it can find the inward pulse and feel it still beating
even in the outward phases. But the infinite variety of circumstance
which is formed in this externality by the light of the essence shining
in it,--all this infinite material, with its regulations,--is not
the object of philosophy.... To comprehend _what is,_ is the task of
philosophy: for _what is_ is reason. As regards the individual, each,
whatever happens, is a son of his time. So too philosophy is its
time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as foolish to fancy that a
philosophy can overleap its present world as that an individual can
overleap his time. If his theory really goes beyond actualities, if it
constructs an ideal, a world as it ought to be, then such existence
as it has is only in his intentions--a yielding element in which
anything you please may be fancy-formed.' Cf. Schelling, _Werke,_ iv.
390: 'There are very many things, actions, &c. of which we may judge,
after vulgar semblance, that they are unreasonable. All the same we
presuppose and assume that everything which is or which happens is
reasonable, and that reason is, in one word, the prime matter and the
real of all being.'
P. 11, § 6. Actuality (Wirklichkeit) in _Werke,_ iv. 178 _seqq._
P. 12, § 7. Cf. Fichte, _Werke,_ ii. 333: 'Man has nothing at all
but experience; and everything he comes to be comes to only through
experience, through life itself. All his thinking, be it loose or
scientific, common or transcendental, starts from experience and has
experience ultimately in view. Nothing has unconditional value and
significance but life; all other thinking, conception, knowledge has
value only in so far as in some way or other it refers to the fact of
life, starts from it, and has in view a subsequent return to it.'
P. 13, § 7 (note). Thomas Thomson (1773-1852), Professor of Chemistry
at Glasgow, distinguished in the early history of chemistry and allied
sciences. The _Annals of Philosophy_ appeared from 1813 to 1826.--_The
art of preserving the hair_ was published (anonymous) at London in 1825.
P. 14, § 7 (note). The speech from the throne was read on Feb. 3rd,
1825.
The shipowners' dinner was on Feb. 12. The _Times_ of Feb. 14 gives as
Canning's the words 'the just and wise maxims of sound not spurious
philosophy.'
P. 17, § 10. 'Scholasticus' is the guileless 'freshman,' hero of
certain Facetiae (attributed to the Pythagorean philosopher Hierocles)
which used occasionally to form part of the early Greek reading of
schoolboys.
K. L. Reinhold (1754-1823) presents in his intellectual history a
picture of the development of ideas in his age. At the beginning
his _Attempt of a new theory of the human representative faculty_
(1789) is typical of the tendency to give a subjective psychological
interpretation of Kant's theory of knowledge But the period of
Reinhold's teaching here referred to is that of _Contributions to an
easier survey of the condition of philosophy at the beginning of the
nineteenth century_ (Beiträge, 1801): the tendency which Hegel, who
reviewed him in the _Critical Journal of Philosophy_ (_Werke,_ i. 267
_seqq._), calls 'philosophising before philosophy.'--A similar spirit
is operative in Krug's proposal (in his _Fundamental Philosophy,_ 1803)
to start with what he called 'philosophical problematics.'
P. 19, § 11. Plato, _Phaedo,_ p. 89, where Socrates protests against
the tendency to confound the defect of a particular piece of reasoning
with the incompetence of human reason altogether.
P. 22, § 13. The dictum that the historical succession of philosophical
systems is identical with their logical sequence should not be
taken too literally and mechanically. Its essential point is simply
the theorem that history is not a casual series of unconnected
events--the deeds of particular persons, but is an evolution under
laws and uniformities:--it is this theorem applied to philosophies.
But difficulties may easily arise in the application of the general
principle: _e.g._ it will be seen (by comparison of § 86 and §
104) that though Pythagoras precedes Parmenides, and number is a
stepping-stone to pure thought still pure Being comes at an earlier
stage than Quantity.
P. 23, § 13. There is a silent reference to what Reinhold professed
to make the subject of his teaching at Jena--'philosophy without
surnames' (ohne Beinamen),--_i.e._ not a 'critical' philosophy;--or
to the 'Philosophy which may not bear any man's name of Beck. As Hegel
says, _Werke,_ xvi. 138, 'The solicitude and apprehension against being
one-sided is only too often part of the weakness which is capable only
of many-sided illogical superficiality.'
P. 27, § 16. By 'anthropology' is meant not the anthropology of modern
writers, who use the name to denote mainly the history of human culture
in its more rudimentary stages, and as exhibited chiefly in material
products, but the study of those aspects of psychology which are most
closely allied with physiological conditions.
With the power of the intuition of genius to give almost all that
logical synthesis can produce, cf. _Werke,_ I. 331: 'In this way
a grand and pure intuition is able, in the purely architectonic
features of its picture, though the inter-connection of necessity and
the mastery of form does not come forward into visibility, to give
expression to the genuine ethical organism--like a building which
silently exhibits the spirit of its author in the several features of
its mass, without the image of that spirit being set forth anywhere
in one united shape. In such a delineation, made by help of notions,
it is only a want of technical skill which prevents reason from
raising the principle it embraces and pervades into the "ideal" form
and becoming aware of it as the Idea. If the intuition only remains
true to itself and does not let analytic intellect disconcert it, it
will probably--just because it cannot dispense with notions for its
expression--behave awkwardly in dealing with them, assume distorted
shapes in its passage through consciousness, and be (to the speculative
eye) both incoherent and contradictory: but the arrangement of the
parts and of the self-modifying characters betray the inward spirit of
reason, however invisible. And so far as this appearance of that spirit
is regarded as a product and a result, it will as product completely
harmonise with the Idea.' Probably Goethe is before Hegel's mind.
P. 28, § 17. The triplicity in unity of thought--its forthgoing
'procession,' (cf. p. 362 _seqq._) and its return, which is yet an
abiding in itself (Bei:sich:sein) was first explicitly schematised
by Proclus, the consummator of Neo-Platonism. In his _Institutio
Theologica_ he lays it down that the essential character of all
spiritual reality (aσώματον) is to be πρὸς ἑαυτὸ ἐπιστρεπτικόν, _e.g._
to return upon itself, or to be a unity in and with difference,--to
be an original and spontaneous principle of movement (c. 15): or, as
in C 31: πὰν τὸ πρoῒὸν ἀπό τινος κατ' οὐσίαν ἐπιστρέφεται πρὸς ἐκεῖνο
ἀφ' οὗ πρόεισιν. Its movement, therefore, is circular κυκλικὴν ἔχει
τὴν ἐνέργειαν (c. 33): for everything must at the same time remain
altogether in the cause, and proceed from it, and revert to it (c. 35).
Such an essence is self-subsistent (αὐθυπόςτατον),--is at once agent
(πάραγον) and patient (παραγόμενον). This 'mysticism' (of a trinity
which is also unity of motion which is also rest), with its πρόοδoς,
ἐπιστroφή, and μονή, is taken up, in his own way, by Scotus Erigena
(De Divisione Naturae) as _processio_ (or _divisio_), _reditus,_
and _adunatio._ From God 'proceed'--by an _eternal_ creation--the
creatures, who however are not outside the divine nature; and to God
all things created _eternally_ return.
CHAPTER II.
P. 31, § 19. Truth:--as early as _Werke,_ i. 82, _i.e._ 1801, Hegel had
come--perhaps influenced by the example of Jacobi--to the conclusion
that 'Truth is a word which, in philosophical discourse, deserves to be
used only of the certainty of the Eternal and non-empirical Actual.'
(And so Spinoza, ii. 310.)
P. 32. 'The young have been flattered'--_e.g._ by Fichte, _Werke,_ i.
435: 'Hence this science too promises itself few proselytes amongst men
already formed: if it can hope for any at all, it hopes for them rather
from the young world, whose inborn force has not yet been ruined in the
laxity of the age.'
P. 38, § 20. What Kant actually said (_Kritik der reinen Vernunft:
Elementarlehre,_ § 16), was 'The _I think_ must be able to accompany
all my conceptions' (Vorstellungen). Here, as often elsewhere. Hegel
seems to quote from memory,--with some shortcoming from absolute
accuracy.
From this point Fichte's idealism takes its spring, _e.g. Werke,_ ii.
505: 'The ground of all certainty,--of all consciousness of fact in
life, and of all demonstrative knowledge in science, is this: _In_ and
_with_ the single thing we affirm (setzen) (and whatever we affirm is
necessarily something single) we also affirm the absolute totality as
such.... Only in so far as we have so affirmed anything, is it certain
for us,--from the single unit we have comprehended under it away to
every single thing in the infinity we shall comprehend under it,--from
the one individual who has comprehended it, to all individuals who
will comprehend it.... Without this absolute "positing" of the absolute
totality in the individual, we cannot (to employ a phrase of Jacobi's)
come to bed and board.'
'Obviously therefore you enunciate not the judgment of a single
observation, but you embrace and "posit" the sheer infinitude and
totality of all possible observations:--an infinity which is not at
all compounded out of finites, but out of which, conversely, the
finites themselves issue, and of which finite things are the mere
always-uncompleted analysis. This--how shall I call it, procedure,
positing, or whatever you prefer--this "manifestation" of the absolute
totality, I call intellectual vision (Anschauung). I regard it--just
because I cannot in any way get beyond intelligence--as immanent in
intelligence, and name it so far egoity (Ichheit),--not objectivity
and not subjectivity, but the absolute identity of the two:--an
egoity, however, which it was to be hoped would not be taken to mean
individuality. There lies in it, what you' (he is addressing Reinhold,
who here follows Bardili)' call a repetibility _ad infinitum._ For me,
therefore, the essence of the finite is composed of an immediate vision
of the absolutely timeless infinite (with an absolute identity of
subjectivity and objectivity), and of a separation of the two latter,
and an analysis (continued _ad infinitum_) of the infinite. In that
analysis consists the temporal life: and the starting-point of this
temporal life is the separation into subject and object, which through
the intellectual vision (intuition) are still both held together.'
P. 44, § 22, _the mere fact of conviction._ Cf. _Rechtsphilosophie,_
§ 140 (_Werke,_ viii. 191): 'Finally the mere conviction which holds
something to be right is given out as what decides the morality of
an action. The good we will to do not yet having any content, the
principle of conviction adds the information that the subsumption of an
action under the category of good is purely a personal matter. If this
be so, the very pretence of an ethical objectivity is utterly lost. A
doctrine like this is closely allied with the self-styled philosophy
which denies that the true is cognoscible: because for the Will,
truth--_i.e._ the rationality of the Will--lies in the moral laws.
Giving out, as such a system does, that the cognition of the true is an
empty vanity, far transcending the range of science (which recognises
only appearance), it must, in the matter of conduct, also find its
principle in the apparent; whereby moral distinctions are reduced to
the peculiar theory of life held by the individual and to his private
conviction. At first no doubt the degradation into which philosophy has
thus sunk seems an affair of supreme indifference, a mere incident in
the futilities of the scholastic world: but the view necessarily makes
itself a home in ethics, which is an essential part of philosophy; and
it is then in the actual world that the world learns the true meaning
of such theories.
'As the view spreads that subjective conviction, and it alone, decides
the morality of an action, it follows that the charge of hypocrisy,
once so frequent, is now rarely heard. You can only qualify wickedness
as hypocrisy on the assumption that certain actions are inherently
and actually misdeeds, vices, and crimes, and that the defaulter
necessarily is aware of them as such, because he is aware of and
recognises the principles and outward acts of piety and honesty, even
in the pretence to which he misapplies them. In other words, it was
generally assumed as regards immorality that it is a duty to know the
good, and to be aware of its distinction from the bad. In any case it
was an absolute injunction which forbade the commission of vicious and
criminal acts, and which insisted on such actions being imputed to the
agent, so far as he was a man, not a beast. But if the good heart,
the good intention, the subjective conviction, are set forth as the
true sources of moral worth, then there is no longer any hypocrisy, or
immorality at all: for whatever one does, he can always justify it by
the reflection on it of good aims and motives; and by the influence of
that conviction it is good. There is no longer anything _inherently_
vicious or criminal: instead of the frank and free, hardened and
unperturbed sinner, comes the person whose mind is completely justified
by intention and conviction. My good intention in my act, and my
conviction of its goodness, make it good. We speak of judging and
estimating an _act._ But on this principle it is only the aim and
conviction of the agent--his faith--by which he ought to be judged.
And that not in the sense in which Christ requires faith in objective
truth, so that for one who has a bad faith, _e.g._ a conviction bad
in its content, the judgment to be pronounced must be bad, _e.g._
conformable to this bad content. But faith here means only fidelity to
conviction. Has the man (we ask) in acting kept true to his conviction?
It is formal subjective conviction on which alone the obligation of
duty is made to depend.
'A principle like this, where conviction is expressly made something
subjective, cannot but suggest the thought of possible error, with the
further implied presupposition of an absolutely-existing law. But the
law is no agent: it is only the actual human being who acts; and in the
aforesaid principle the only question in estimating human actions is
how far he has received the law into his conviction. If, therefore, it
is not the actions which are to be estimated and generally measured by
that law, it is impossible to see what the law is for, and what end it
can serve. Such a law is degraded to a mere outside letter, in fact an
empty word; which is only made a law, _i.e._ invested with obligatory
force, by my conviction.
'Such a law may claim its authority from God or the State: it may even
have the authority of tens of centuries during which it served as
the bond that gave men, with all their deed and destiny, subsistence
and coherence. And these are authorities in which are condensed the
convictions of countless individuals. And for me to set against that
the authority of my single conviction--for as my subjective conviction
its sole validity is authority--that self-conceit, monstrous as it at
first seems, is, in virtue of the principle that subjective conviction
is to be the rule, pronounced to be no self-conceit at all.
'Even if reason and conscience--which shallow science and bad sophistry
can never altogether expel--admit, with a noble illogicality, that
error is possible, still by describing crime and wickedness as
only an error we minimise the fault. For to err is human:--Who has
not been mistaken on one point or another, whether he had fresh or
pickled cabbage for dinner, and about innumerable things more or less
important? But the difference of more or less importance disappears if
everything turns on the subjectivity of conviction and on persistency
in it. But the said noble illogicality which admits error to be
possible, when it comes round to say that a wrong conviction is only an
error, really only falls into a further illogicality--the illogicality
of dishonesty. One time conviction is made the basis of morality and
of man's supreme value, and is thus pronounced the supreme and holy.
Another time all we have to do with is an error: my conviction is
something trivial and casual, strictly speaking something outside,
that may turn out this way or that. And, really, my being convinced
_is_ something supremely trivial? if I cannot _know_ truth, it is
indifferent how I think; and all that is left to my thinking is that
empty good,--a mere abstraction of generalisation.
'It follows further that, on this principle of justification by
conviction, logic requires me, in dealing with the way others act
against my action, to admit that, so far as they in their belief and
conviction hold my actions to be crimes, they are quite in the right.
On such logic not merely do I gain nothing, I am even deposed from the
post of liberty and honour into a situation of slavery and dishonour.
Justice--which in the abstract is mine as well as theirs--I feel only
as a foreign subjective conviction, and in the execution of justice I
fancy myself to be only treated by an external force.'
P. 44, § 23. Selbstdenken--to think and not merely to read or listen is
the recurrent cry of Fichte (_e.g. Werke,_ ii. 329). According to the
editors of _Werke,_ xv. 582, the reference here is to Schleiermacher
and to his Monologues. Really it is to the Romantic principle in
general, especially F. Schlegel.
P. 45, § 23. 'Fichte' _Werke,_ ii, 404: 'Philosophy
(Wissenschaftslehre), besides (for the reason above noted that it has
no auxiliary, no vehicle of the intuition at all, except the intuition
itself), elevates the human mind higher than any geometry can It gives
the mind not only attentiveness, dexterity, stability, but at the same
time absolute independence, forcing it to be alone with itself, and
to live and manage by itself. Compared with it, every other mental
operation is infinitely easy; and to one who has been exercised in
it nothing comes hard. Besides as it prosecutes all objects of human
lore to the centre it accustoms the eye to hit the proper point at
first glance' in everything presented to it, and to prosecute it
undeviatingly For such a practical philosopher therefore there can be
nothing dark, complicated, and confused, if only he is acquainted with
the object of discussion. It comes always easiest to him to construct
everything afresh and _ab initio,_ because he carries within him plans
for every scientific edifice. He finds his way easily, therefore, in
any complicated structure. Add to this the security and confidence of
glance which he has acquired in philosophy--the guide which conducts in
all _raisonnement_ and the imperturbability with which his eye meets
every divergence from the accustomed path and every paradox. It would
be quite different with all human concerns, if men could only resolve
to believe their eyes. At present they inquire at their neighbours and
at antiquity what they really see, and by this distrust in themselves
errors are eternalised. Against this distrust the possessor of
philosophy is for ever protected. In a word, by philosophy the mind
of man comes to itself, and from henceforth rests on itself without
foreign aid, and is completely master of itself, as the dancer of his
feet, or the boxer of his hands.'
P. 45, § 23. Aristotle, _Metaph._ i. 2, 19 (cf. _Eth._ x. 7). See also
_Werke,_ xiv. 280 _seqq._
P. 46, § 24. Schelling's expression, 'petrified intelligence.' The
reference is to some verses of Schelling in _Werke,_ iv. 546 (first
published in _Zeitschrift für speculative Physik,_ 1800). We have no
reason to stand in awe of the world, he says, which is a tame and quiet
beast--
Sterft zwar ein Riesengeist darinnen,
Ist aber versteinert mit allen Sinnen;
In todten und lebendigen Dingen
Thut nach Bewustseyn mächtig ringen.
In human shape he at length awakes from the iron sleep, from the long
dream: but as man he feels himself a stranger and exile; he would
fain return to great Nature; he fears what surrounds him and imagines
spectres, not knowing he might say of Nature to himself--
Ich bin der Gott, den sie im Busen hegt,
Der Geist, der sich in allem bewegt:
Vom frühsten Ringen dunkler Kräfte
Bis zum Erguss der ersten Lebenssäfte,
. . . . . . .
herauf zu des Gedankens Jugendkraft
Wodurch Natur verjüngt sich wieder schafft,
Ist eine kraft, ein Wechselspiel und Weben,
Ein Trieb und Drang nach immer höherm Leben.
Cf. Oken, _Naturphilosophie,_§ 2913: 'A natural body is a thought of
the primal act, turned rigid and crystallised,--a word of God.'
Phrases of like import are not infrequent in Schelling's works (about
1800-1), _e.g. Werke,_1. Abth. iii. 341: 'The dead and unconscious
products of nature are only unsuccessful attempts to "reflect" itself;
so-called dead nature is in all cases an immature intelligence'
(unreife Intelligenz), or iv. 77, 'Nature itself is an intelligence,
as it were, turned to rigidity (erstarrte) with all its sensations and
perceptions'; and ii. 226 (_Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur,_
1797), 'Hence nature is only intelligence turned into the rigidity of
being; its qualities are sensations extinguished to being; bodies are
its perceptions, so to speak, killed.'
A close approach to the phrase quoted is found in the words of another
of the 'Romantic' philosophers: 'Nature is a petrified magic-city'
(versteinerte Zauberstadt). (Novalis, _Schriften,_ ii. 149.)
P. 48, § 24. Cf. Fichte to Jacobi: (Jacobi's _Briefwechsel,_ ii. 208)
'My absolute Ego is obviously not the individual: that explanation
comes from injured snobs and peevish philosophers, seeking to
impute to me the disgraceful doctrine of practical egoism. But the
_individual must be deduced from the absolute ego._ To that task my
philosophy will proceed in the "Natural Law." A finite being--it may
be deductively shown--can only think itself as a sense-being in a
sphere of sense-beings,--on one part of which (that which has no power
of origination) it has causality, while with the other part (to which
it attributes a subjectivity like its own) it stands in reciprocal
relations. In such circumstances it is called an individual, and the
conditions of individuality are called rights. As surely as it affirms
its individuality, so surely does it affirm such a sphere the two
conceptions indeed are convertible. So long as we look upon ourselves
as individuals--and we always so regard ourselves in life, though not
in philosophy and abstract imagination--we stand on what I call the
"practical" point of view in our reflections (while to the standpoint
of the absolute ego I give the name "speculative"). From the former
point of view there exists for us a world independent of us,--a world
we can only modify; whilst the pure ego (which even on this altitude
does not altogether disappear from us,) is put outside us and called
God. How else could we get the properties we ascribe to God and deny to
ourselves, did we not after all find them within us, and only refuse
them to ourselves in a certain respect, i.e., as individuals? When this
"practical" point of view predominates in our reflections, realism
is supreme: when speculation itself deduces and recognises that
standpoint, there results a complete reconciliation between philosophy
and common sense as premised in my system.
'For what good, then, is the speculative standpoint and the whole of
philosophy therewith, if it be not for life? Had humanity not tasted
of this forbidden fruit, it might dispense with all philosophy. But in
humanity there is a wish implanted to behold that region lying beyond
the individual; and to behold it not merely in a reflected light but
face to face. The first who raised a question about God's existence
broke through the barriers, he shook humanity in its main foundation
pillars, and threw it out of joint into an intestine strife which is
not yet settled, and which can only be settled by advancing boldly
to that supreme point from which the speculative and the practical
appear to be at one. We began to philosophise from pride of heart, and
thus lost our innocence: we beheld our nakedness, and ever since we
philosophise from the need of our redemption.'
P. 50. Physics and Philosophy of Nature: cf. _Werke,_ vii. i, p. 18:
'The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material, prepared for it by
physics out of experience, at the point to which physics has brought
it, and again transforms it, without basing it ultimately on the
authority of experience. Physics therefore must work into the hands of
philosophy, so that the latter may translate into a true comprehension
(Begriff) the abstract universal transmitted to it, showing how it
issues from that comprehension as an intrinsically necessary whole. The
philosophic way of putting the facts is no mere whim once in a way,
by way of change, to walk on the head, after walking a long while on
the legs, or once in a way to see our every-day face besmeared with
paint. No; it is because the method of physics does not satisfy the
comprehension, that we have to go on further.'
P. 51, § 24. The distinction of ordinary and speculative Logic
is partly like that made by Fichte (i. 68) between Logic and
Wissenschaftslehre. 'The former,' says Fichte, 'is conditioned and
determined by the latter.' Logic deals only with form; epistomology
with import as well.
P. 54, § 24. The Mosaic legend of the Fall; cf. similar interpretations
in Kant: _Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft_,
1ster Stück; and Schelling, _Werke,_ i. (1. Abth.) 34.
CHAPTER III.
P. 61, § 28. Fichte--to emphasise the experiential truth of his
system--says (_Werke,_ ii. 331): 'There was a philosophy which
professed to be able to expand by mere _inference_ the range thus
indicated for philosophy. According to it, thinking was--not, as we
have described it, the analysis of what was given and the recombining
of it in other forms, but at the same time--a production and creation
of something quite new. In this system the philosopher found himself
in the exclusive possession of certain pieces of knowledge which the
vulgar understanding had to do without. In it the philosopher could
reason out for himself a God and an immortality and talk himself into
the conclusion that he was wise and good.'
Wolfs definition of philosophy is 'the Science of the possible in so
far as it can be'; and the possible = the non-contradictory.
P. 64, § 29. The oriental sage corresponds (cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ xii.
229) to the writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite (_De Mystica
Theologia,_ and _De Divitus Nominibus._)--The same problem as to the
relation of the Infinite (God) to the Finite (world) is discussed in
Jewish speculation (by Saadia, Mamuni, _&c._) as the question of the
divine names,--a dogma founded on the thirteen names (or attributes)
applied to God in Exodus xxxiv. 6. (Cf. D. Kaufmann, _Geschichte der
Attributenlehre._) The same spirit has led to the list of ninety-nine
'excellent names' of Allah in Islam, a list which tradition derives
from Mohammed.
P. 65, § 31. Cf. _Werke,_ ii. 47 _seqq.:_ 'The nature of the judgment
or proposition--involving as it does a distinction of subject and
predicate--is destroyed by the "speculative" proposition. This conflict
of the propositional form with the unity of comprehension which
destroys it is like the antagonism in rhythm between metre and accent.
The rhythm results from the floating "mean" and unification of the two.
Hence even in the "philosophical" proposition the identity of subject
and predicate is not meant to annihilate their difference (expressed by
the propositional form): their unity is meant to issue as a _harmony._
The propositional form lets appear the definite shade or accent
pointing to a distinction in its fulfilment: whereas in the predicate
giving expression to the substance, and the subject itself falling
into the universal, we have the unity in which that accent is heard no
more. Thus in the proposition "God is Being" the predicate is Being; it
represents the substance in which the subject is dissolved away. Being
is here meant not to be predicate but essence: and in that way God
seems to cease to be what he is--by his place in the proposition--viz.
the permanent subject. The mind--far from getting further forward in
the passage from subject to predicate--feels itself rather checked,
through the loss of the subject, and thrown back, from a sense of its
loss, to the thought of the subject. Or,--since the predicate itself
is enunciated as a subject (as Being or as Essence) which exhausts the
nature of the subject, it again comes face to face with the subject
even in the predicate.--Thought thus loses its solid objective ground
which it had on the subject: yet at the same time in the predicate it
is thrown back upon it, and instead of getting to rest in itself it
returns upon the subject of the content.--To this unusual check and
arrest are in the main due the complaints as to the unintelligibility
of philosophical works,--supposing the individual to possess any other
conditions of education needed for understanding them.'
P. 66, § 32. On the relation of dogmatism and scepticism see the
introduction to Kant's _Criticism of Pure Reason,_ and compare Caird's
_Critical Philosophy of I. Kant,_ vol. i. chap. i.
P. 67, § 33. The subdivision of 'theoretical' philosophy or metaphysics
into the four branches, Ontology, Cosmology, Psychology (rational and
empirical), and Natural Theology, is more or less common to the whole
Wolfian School. Wolf's special addition to the preceding scholastic
systems is found in the conception of a general Cosmology. Metaphysics
precedes physics, and the departments of practical philosophy. In
front of all stands logic or rational philosophy. Empirical psychology
belongs properly to physics, but reasons of practical convenience put
it elsewhere.
P. 69, § 34. The question of the 'Seat of the Soul' is well known in
the writings of Lotze (_e.g. Metaphysic,_ § 291).
Absolute actuosity. The _Notio Dei_ according to Thomas Aquinas, as
well as the dogmatics of post-Reformation times, is _actus purus_
(or _actus purissimus_). For God _nihil potentialitatis habet._ Cf.
_Werke, xii._228: 'Aristotle especially has conceived God under the
abstract category of activity. Pure activity is knowledge (Wissen)--in
the scholastic age, _actus purus_--: but in order to be put as
activity, it must be put in its "moments." For knowledge we require
another thing which is known: and which, when knowledge knows it, is
thereby appropriated. It is implied in this that God--the eternal and
self-subsistent--eternally begets himself as his Son,--distinguishes
himself from himself. But what he thus distinguishes from himself,
has not the shape of an otherness: but what is distinguished is
_ipso facto_ identical with what it is parted from. God is spirit:
no darkness, no colouring or mixture enters this pure light. The
relationship of father and son is taken from organic life and used
metaphorically--the natural relation is only pictorial and hence does
not quite correspond to what is to be expressed. We say, God eternally
begets his Son, God distinguishes himself from himself: and thus we
begin from God, saying he does this, and in the other he creates is
utterly with himself (the form of Love): but we must be well aware
that God is this _whole action itself_ God is the beginning; he does
this: but equally is he only the end, the totality: and as such
totality he is spirit. God as merely the Father is not yet the true
(it is the Jewish religion where he is thus without the Son): He is
rather beginning and end: He is his presupposition, makes himself a
presupposition (this is only another form of distinguishing): He is the
eternal process.'
Nicolaus Cusanus speaks of God (_De docta Ignorantia,_ ii. I) as
_infinita actualitas quae est actu omnis essendi possibilitas._ The
term 'actuosity' seems doubtful.
P. 73, § 36. _Sensus eminentior._ Theology distinguishes three modes in
which the human intelligence can attain a knowledge of God. By the _via
causalitatis_ it argues that God is; by the _via negationis,_ what he
is not; by the _via eminentiae,_ it gets a glimpse of the relation in
which he stands to us. It regards God _i.e._ as the cause of the finite
universe; but as God is infinite, all that is predicated of him must be
taken as merely approximative (_sensu eminentiori_) and there is left
a vast remainder which can only be filled up with negations [Durandus
de S. Porciano on the Sentent, i. 3. I]. The _sensus eminentior_ is
the subject of Spinoza's strictures, Ep. 6 (56 in Opp. ii. 202): while
Leibniz adopts it in the preface to _Théodicée,_ 'Les perfections de
Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les possède sans bornes: il est
un océan, dont nous n'avons reçu que les gouttes; il y a en nous
quelque puissance, quelque connaissance, quelque bonté; mais elles sont
toutes entières en Dieu.'
The _via causalitatis_ infers _e.g.,_ from the existence of morality
and intelligence here, a Being whose will finds expression therein: the
_via eminentiae_ infers that that will is good, and that intelligence
wise in the highest measure, and the _via negationis_ sets aside in the
conception of God all the limitations and conditions to which human
intelligence and will are subject.
CHAPTER IV.
P. 80, § 38. The verses (forming part of the advice which
Mephistopheles, personating Faust, gives to the recently-arrived
pupil) stand in the original in a different order: beginning "Dann hat
er die Theile in seiner Hand," &c. The meaning of these and the two
preceding lines is somewhat as follows, in versification even laxer
than Goethe's:--
If you want to describe life and gather its meaning,
To drive out its spirit most be your beginning,
Then though fast in your hand lie the parts one by one
The spirit that linked them, alas! is gone.
And 'Nature's Laboratory' is only a name
That the chemist bestows on't to hide his own shame.
One may compare _Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre,_ iii. 3, where it is
remarked, in reference to some anatomical exercises: 'You will learn
ere long that building-up is more instructive than tearing-down,
combining more than separating, animating the dead more than killing
again what was killed already.... Combining means more than separating:
reconstructing more than onlooking.' The first part of _Faust_ appeared
1808: the _Wanderjahre,_ 1828-9.
P. 82, § 39. The article on the 'Relation of scepticism to philosophy,
an exposition of its various modifications, and comparison of the
latest with the ancient'--in form a review of G. E. Schulze's
_Criticism of Theoretical Philosophy_'--was republished in vol. xvi. of
Hegel's _Werke_ (vol. i. of the _Vermischte Schriften_).
P. 87, § 42. In an earlier review of Kant's work (_Werke,_ i. 83) on
Glauben und Wissen (an article in Sendling and Hegel's _Journal_)
Hegel attaches more weight to a factor in the critical theory of
knowledge, here neglected. Kant, he says, has--within the limits
allowed by his psychological terms of thought--'put (in an excellent
way) the _à priori_ of sensibility into the original identity and
multiplicity, and that as transcendental imagination in the "higher
power" of an immersion of unity in multiplicity: whilst Understanding
(Verstand) he makes to consist in the elevation to universality of this
_à priori_ synthetic unity of sensibility,--whereby this identity is
invested with a comparative antithesis to the sensibility: and Reason
(Vernunft) is presented as a still higher power over the preceding
comparative antithesis, without however this universality and infinity
being allowed to go beyond the stereotyped formal pure infinity.
This genuinely rational construction by which, though the bad name
"faculties" is left, there is in truth presented a single identity
of them all, is transformed by Jacobi into a series of faculties,
_resting_ one upon another.'
P. 87, § 42. Fichte: cf. _Werke,_ i. 420: 'I have said before, and
say it here again, that my system is no other than the Kantian. That
means: it contains the same view of facts, but in its method is quite
independent of the Kantian exposition.' 'Kant, up to now, is a closed
book.'--i. 442. There are two ways of critical idealism. 'Either' (as
Fichte) 'it actually deduces from the fundamental laws of intelligence,
that system of necessary modes of action, and with it, at the same
time, the objective conceptions thus arising, and thus lets the whole
compass of our conceptions gradually arise under the eyes of the reader
or hearer; or' (like Kant and his unprogressive disciples) 'it gets
hold of these laws from anywhere and anyhow, as they are immediately
applied to objects, therefore on their lowest grade (--on this grade
they are called _categories),_ and then asseverates that it is by
these that objects are determined and arranged.' And i. 478: 'I know
that the categories which Kant laid down are in no way _proved_ by
him to be conditions of self-consciousness, but only said to be so:
I know that space and time and what in the original consciousness is
inseparable from them and fills them both, are still less deduced as
such conditions, for of them it is not even said expressly--as of the
categories--that they are so, but only inferentially. But I believe
quite as surely that I know that Kant had the thought of such a system:
that everything he actually propounds are fragments and results of this
system; and that his statements have meaning and coherence only on this
presupposition.' Cf. viii. 362.
P. 89, § 42. Transcendental unity of self-consciousness. Kant's _Kritik
der reinen Vernunft,_ § 16: 'The _I think_ must be able to accompany
all my ideas.... This idea is an act of spontaneity. ... I name it
pure apperception ... or original apperception ... because it is that
self-consciousness which can be accompanied by none further. The unity
of it I also call the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, in
order to denote the possibility of cognition _à priori_ from it.'
P. 92, § 44. _Caput mortuum:_ a term of the Alchemists to denote the
non-volatile precipitate left in the retort after the spirit had been
extracted: the fixed or dead remains, 'quando spiritus animam sursum
vexit.'
P. 92, § 45. Reason and Understanding. In the Wolfian School (_e.g._
in Baumgarten's _Metaphysik,_ § 468) the term intellect (Verstand)
is used of the general faculty of higher cognition, while _ratio_
(Vernunft) specially denotes the power of seeing distinctly the
connexions of things. So Wolff (_Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, &c._ §
277) defines Verstand as 'the faculty of distinctly representing the
possible,' and Vernunft (§ 368) as 'the faculty of seeing into the
connexion of truths.' It is on this use of _Reason_ as the faculty of
inference that Kant's use of the term is founded: though it soon widely
departs from its origin. For upon the 'formal' use of reason as the
faculty of syllogising, Kant superinduces a transcendental use as a
'faculty of _principles_,' while the understanding is only 'a faculty
of _rules.'_ 'Reason,' in other words, 'itself begets conceptions,'
and 'maxims, which it borrows neither from the senses nor from the
understanding.' (_Kritik d. r. Vern., Dialektik,_ Einleit. ii. A.) And
the essential aim of Reason is to give unity to the various cognitions
of understanding. While the unity given by understanding is 'unity of
a possible experience,' that sought by reason is the discovery of an
unconditioned which will complete the unity of the former (_Dial._
Einleit. iv), or of 'the totality of the conditions to a given
conditioned.' (_Dial,_ vii.)
It is this distinction of the terms which is dominant in Fichte and
Hegel, where Verstand is the more practical intellect which seeks
definite and restricted results and knowledges, while Vernunft is
a deeper and higher power which aims at completeness. In Goethe's
more reflective prose we see illustrations of this usage: _e.g.
Wilh. Meister's Wanderjahre,_ i. it is said to be the object of
the 'reasonable' man 'das entgegengesetzte zu überschauen und in
Uebereinstimmung zu bringen': or Bk. ii. Reasonable men when they have
devised something verständig to get this or that difficulty out of the
way, &c. Goethe, in his _Sprüche in Prosa_ (896), _Werke,_ iii. 281,
says 'Reason has for its province the thing in process (das Werdende),
understanding the thing completed (das Gewordene): the former does not
trouble itself about the purpose, the latter asks not whence. Reason
takes delight in developing; understanding wishes to keep everything as
it is, so as to use it.' (Similarly in Eckermann's Convers. Feb. 13,
1829.) Cf. Oken, Naturphilosophie, § 2914. Verstand ist Microcosmus,
Vernunft Macrocosmus.
Kant's use of the term Reason, coupled with his special view of
Practical Reason and his use of the term Faith (Glaube), leads on to
the terminology of Jacobi. In earlier writings Jacobi had insisted on
the contrast between the superior authority of feeling and faith (which
are in touch with truth) and the mechanical method of intelligence and
reasoning (Verstand and Vernunft). At a later period however he changed
and fixed the nomenclature of his distinction. What he had first called
Glaube he latterly called Vernunft,--which is in brief a 'sense for
the supersensible'--an intuition giving higher and complete or total
knowledge--an immediate apprehension of the real and the true. As
contrasted with this reasonable faith or feeling, he regards Verstand
as a mere faculty of inference or derivative knowledge, referring one
thing to another by the rule of identity.
This distinction which is substantially reproduced by Coleridge
(though with certain clauses that show traces of Schellingian
influence) has connexions--like so much else in Jacobi--with the
usage of Schopenhauer, 'Nobody,' says Jacobi, 'has ever spoken of an
animal Vernunft: a mere animal Verstand however we all know and speak
of.' (Jacobi's _Werke,_ iii. 8.) Schopenhauer repeats and enforces
the remark. All animals possess, says Schopenhauer, the power of
apprehending causality, of cognising objects: a power of immediate and
intuitive knowledge of real things: this is Verstand. But Vernunft,
which is peculiar to man, is the cognition of _truth_ (not of reality):
it is an abstract judgment with a sufficient reason (_Welt als W._ i. §
6).
One is tempted to connect the modern distinction with an older one
which goes back in its origin to Plato and Aristotle, but takes form in
the Neo-Platonist School, and enters the Latin world through Boëthius.
_Consol. Phil._ iv. 6: _Igitur uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio,
ad id quod est id quod gignitur, ad aeternitatem tempus,_ and in v.
4 there is a full distinction of _sensus, imaginatio, ratio_ and
_intelligentia_ in ascending order. _Ratio_ is the discursive knowledge
of the idea (_universali consideratione perpendit): intelligentia_
apprehends it at once, and as a simple _forma (pura mentis acie
contuetur)_: [cf. Stob. _Ed._ i. 826-832: Porphyr. _Sentent._15].
Reasoning belongs to the human species, just as intelligence to the
divine alone. Yet it is assumed--in an attempt to explain divine
foreknowledge and defend freedom--that man may in some measure place
himself on the divine standpoint (v. 5).
This contrast between a higher mental faculty (_mens_) and a lower
(_ratio_) which even Aquinas adopts from the interpretation of
Aristotle (_Summa Theol._ i. 79, 9) is the favourite weapon in the
hands of mysticism. After the example of Dionysius Areop., Nicolaus of
Cusa, Reuchlin, and other thinkers of the Renaissance depreciate mere
discursive thought and logical reasoning. It is the inner _mens_--like
a simple ray of light--penetrating by an immediate and indivisible
act to the divine--which gives us access to the supreme science. This
_simplex intelligentia,--_ superior to imagination or reasoning--as
Gerson says, _Consid. de Th._ 10, is sometimes named _mens,_ sometimes
_Spiritus,_ the light of intelligence, the shadow of the angelical
intellect, the divine light. From Scotus Erigena to Nicolas of Cusa
one tradition is handed down: it is taken up by men like Everard Digby
(in his _Theoria Analytica_) and the group of Cambridge Platonists and
by Spinoza in the seventeenth century, and it reappears, profoundly
modified, in the German idealism between 1790 and 1820.
P. 99, § 48. 'Science of Logic'; Hegel's large work on the subject,
published between 1812-16. The discussions on the Antinomies belong
chiefly to the first part of it.
P. 102, § 50. 'Natural Theology,' here to be taken in a narrower sense
than in p. 73, where it is equivalent to Rational Theology in general.
Here it means 'Physico-theology'--the argument from design in nature.
P. 103, § 50. Spinoza--defining God as 'the union of thought with
extension.' This is not verbally accurate; for according to _Ethica,_
i. pr. 11, God, or the substance, consists of infinite attributes,
each of which expresses the eternal and infinite essence. But Spinoza
mentions of 'attributes' only two: _Ethica,_ ii. pr. 1. I Thought is
an attribute of God: pr. 2, Extension is an attribute of God. And he
adds, _Ethica,_ i. pr. 10, Schol. 'All the attributes substance has
were always in it together, nor can one be produced by another.' And
in _Ethica,_ ii. 7. Sch. it is said: 'Thinking substance and extended
substance is one and the same substance which is comprehended now under
this, now under that attribute.'
P. 110, § 54. 'Practical in the true sense of the word.' Cf. Kant,
_Werke,_ Ros. and Sch. i. 581: 'A great misunderstanding, exerting an
injurious influence on scientific methods, prevails with regard to what
should be considered "practical" in such sense as to justify its place
in practical philosophy. Diplomacy and finance, rules of economy no
less than rules of social intercourse, precepts of health and dietetic
of the soul no less than the body, have been classed as practical
philosophy on the mere ground that they all contain a collection of
practical propositions. Hut although such practical propositions
differ in mode of statement from the theoretical propositions which
have for import the possibility of things and the exposition of their
nature, they have the same content. "Practical," properly so called,
are only those propositions which relate to _Liberty_ under laws. All
others whatever are nothing but the theory of what pertains to the
_nature_ of things--only that theory is brought to bear on the way in
which the things may be produced by us in conformity with a principle;
_i.e._ the possibility of the things is presented as the result of
a voluntary action which itself too may be counted among physical
causes.' And Kant, _Werke,_ iv. 10. 'Hence a sum of practical precepts
given by philosophy does not form a special part of it (co-ordinate
with the theoretical) merely because they are practical. Practical
they might be, even though their principle were wholly derived from
the theoretical knowledge of nature,--as _technico-practical_ rules.
They are practical in the true sense, when and because their principle
is not borrowed from the nature-conception (which is always sensuously
conditioned) and rests therefore on the supersensible, which the
conception of liberty alone makes knowable by formal laws. They are
therefore ethico-practical, _i.e._ not merely _precepts and rules_ with
this or that intention, but laws without antecedent reference to ends
and intentions.'
P. 111, § 54. Eudaemonism. But there is Eudaemonism and Eudaemonism;
as Cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ i. 8. 4 The time had come when the infinite
longing away beyond the body and the world had reconciled itself
with the reality of existence. Yet the reality which the soul was
reconciled to--the objective which the subjectivity recognised--was
actually only empirical existence, common world and actuality.... And
though the reconciliation was in its heart and ground sure and fast,
it still needed an objective form for this ground: the very necessity
of nature made the blind certitude of immersion in the reality of
empirical existence seek to provide itself with a justification and a
good conscience. This reconciliation for consciousness was found in the
Happiness-doctrine: the fixed point it started from being the empirical
subject, and what it was reconciled to, the vulgar actuality, whereon
it might now confide, and to which it might surrender itself without
sin. The profound coarseness and utter vulgarity, which is at the basis
of this happiness-doctrine, has its only elevation in its striving
after justification and a good conscience, which however can get no
further than the objectivity of mere intellectualism.
'The dogmatism of eudaemonism and of popular philosophy (Aufklärung)
therefore did not consist in the fact that it made happiness and
enjoyment the supreme good. For if Happiness be comprehended as an
_Idea,_ it ceases to be something empirical and casual--as also to be
anything sensuous. In the supreme existence, reasonable act (Thun) and
supreme enjoyment are one. So long as supreme blessedness is supreme
_Idea_ it matters not whether we try to apprehend the supreme existence
on the side of its ideality,--which, as isolated may be first called
reasonable act--or on the side of its reality--which as isolated may
be first called enjoyment and feeling. For reasonable act and supreme
enjoyment, ideality and reality are both alike in it and identical.
Every philosophy has only one problem--to construe supreme blessedness
as supreme Idea. So long as it is by reason that supreme enjoyment is
ascertained, the distinguishability of the two at once disappears:
for this comprehension and the infinity which is dominant in act, and
the reality and finitude which is dominant in enjoyment, are taken up
into one another. The controversy with happiness becomes a meaningless
chatter, when happiness is known as the blessed enjoyment of the
eternal intuition. But what was called eudaemonism meant--it must
be said--an empirical happiness, an enjoyment of sensation, not the
eternal intuition and blessedness.'
P. 112, § 55. Schiller. _Ueber die aesthetische Erziehung des
Menschen_(1795), 18th letter. 'Through beauty the sensuous man is led
to form and to thought; through beauty the intellectual man is led back
to matter and restored to the sense-world. Beauty combines two states
which are opposed to one another.' Letter 25. 'We need not then have
any difficulty about finding a way from sensuous dependence to moral
liberty, after beauty has given a case where liberty can completely
co-exist with dependence, and where man in order to show himself an
intelligence need not make his escape from matter. If--as the fact
of beauty teaches--man is free even in association with the senses,
and if--as the conception necessarily involves--liberty is something
absolute and supersensible, there can no longer be any question how
he comes to elevate himself from limitations to the absolute: for
in beauty this has already come to pass.' Cf. _Ueber Anmuth und
Würde_(1793). 'It is in a beautiful soul, then, that sense and reason,
duty and inclination harmonize; and grace is their expression in the
appearance. Only in the service of a beautiful soul can nature at the
same time possess liberty.' (See Bosanquet's _History of Aesthetic._)
P. 115, § 60. The quotation in the note comes from § 87 of the _Kritik
der Urtheilskraft_ (_Werke,_ ed. Ros. and Sch. iv. 357).
P. 120, § 60. Fichte, _Werke,_ i. 279. 'The principle of life and
consciousness, the ground of its possibility, is (as has been shown)
certainly contained in the Ego: yet by this means there arises no
actual life, no empirical life in time--and another life is for us
utterly unthinkable. If such an actual life is to be possible, there
is still needed for that a special impulse (Aufstoss) striking the
Ego from the Non-ego. According to my system, therefore, the ultimate
ground of all actuality for the Ego is an original action and re-action
between the Ego and something outside it, of which all that can be said
is that it must be completely opposed to the Ego. In this reciprocal
action nothing is brought into the Ego, nothing foreign imported;
everything that is developed from it _ad infinitum_ is developed from
it solely according to its own laws. The Ego is merely put in motion by
that opposite, so as to act; and without such a first mover it would
never have acted; and, as its existence consists merely in action, it
would not even have existed. But the source of motion has no further
attributes than to set in motion, to be an opposing force which as such
is only felt.
'My philosophy therefore is realistic. It shows that the consciousness
of finite natures cannot at all be explained, unless we assume a force
existing independently of them, and completely opposed to them;--on
which as regards their empirical existence they are dependent. But
it asserts nothing further than such an opposed force, which is
merely _felt,_ but not _cognised,_ by finite beings. All possible
specifications of this force or non-ego, which may present themselves
_ad infinitum_ in our consciousness, my system engages to deduce from
the specifying faculty of the Ego....
'That the finite mind must necessarily assume outside it something
absolute (a Ding:an:sich), and yet must on the other hand acknowledge
that this something only exists for the mind (is a necessary noümenon):
this is the circle which may be infinitely expanded, but from which the
finite mind can never issue.' Cf. Fichte's _Werke,_ i. 248, ii. 478.
CHAPTER V.
P. 121, § 62. F. H. Jacobi (_Werke,_ v. 82) in his _Woldemar_ (a
romance contained in a series of letters, first published _as a whole_
in 1781) writes: 'The philosophical understanding (Verstand) is jealous
of everything unique, everything immediately certain which makes itself
true, without proofs, solely by its existence. It persecutes this
faith of reason even into our inmost consciousness, where it tries to
make us distrust the feeling of our identity and personality.' 'What
is absolutely and intrinsically true,' he adds (v. 122), 'is not got
by way of reasoning and comparison: both our immediate consciousness
(Wissen)--I am--and our conscience (Gewissen) are the work of a secret
something in which heart, understanding, and sense combine.' 'Notions
(Begriffe), far from embalming the living, really turn it into a
corpse' (v. 380).
Cf. Fichte's words (_Werke,_ ii. 255), Aus dem Gewissen allein stammt
die Wahrheit, &c.
P. 122, § 62. The Letters on the doctrine of Spinoza, published in
1785, were re-issued in 1789 with eight supplements.
'A science,' says Jacobi in his latest utterance (_Werke,_ iv. pref.
xxx.) 'is only a systematic register of cognitions mutually referring
to one another--the first and last point in the series is wanting.'
P. 123, § 62. Lalande's dictum is referred to by Fries (_Populäre
Vorlesungen über Sternkunde,_ 1813) quoted by Jacobi in his _Werke,_
ii. 55. What Lalande has actually written in the preface to his work on
astronomy is that the science as he understands it has no relation to
natural theology--in other words, that he is not writing a Bridgewater
treatise.
P. 123, § 63. Jacobi, _Werke,_ ii. 222. 'For my part, I regard the
principle of reason as all one with the principle of life.' And ii.
343: 'Evidently reason is the true and proper life of our nature.'
It is in virtue of our inner tendency and instinct towards the
eternal (Richtung und Trieb auf das Ewige),--of our sense for the
supersensible--that we, human beings, really subsist (iv. 6. 152). And
this Organ der Vernehmung des Uebersinnlichen is Reason (iii. 203, &c).
The language of Jacobi fluctuates, not merely in words, but in the
intensity of his intuitionalism. Thus, _e.g._ iii. 32: 'The reason man
has is no faculty giving the science of the true, but only a presage'
(Ahndung des Wahren). 'The belief in a God,' he says, at one time (iii.
206) 'is as natural to man as his upright position': but that belief
is, he says elsewhere, only 'an inborn devotion (Andacht) before an
unknown God.' Thus, if we have an immediate awareness (Wissen) of
God, this is not knowledge or science (Wissenschaft). Such intuition
of reason is described (ii. 9) as 'the faculty of _presupposing_ the
intrinsically (an sich) true, good, and beautiful, with full confidence
in the objective validity of the presupposition.' But that object we
are let see only in feeling (ii. 61). 'Our philosophy,' he says (iii.
6) 'starts from feeling--of course an objective and pure feeling.'
P. 124, § 63. Jacobi (_Werke,_ iv. a, p. 211): 'Through faith (Glaube)
we know that we have a body.' Such immediate knowledge of our own
activity--'the feeling of I am, I act' (iii. 411)--the sense of
'absolute self-activity' or freedom (of which the 'possibility cannot
be cognised,' because logically a contradiction) is what Jacobi calls
Anschauung (Intuition). He distinguishes a sensuous, and a rational
intuition (iii. 59).
P. 125, § 63. Jacobi expressly disclaims identification of his Glaube
with the faith of Christian doctrine (_Werke,_ iv. a, p. 210). In
defence he quotes from Hume, Inquiry V, and from Reid, passages to
illustrate his usage of the term 'belief--by the distinction between
which and faith certain ambiguities are no doubt avoided.
P. 129, § 66. Kant had said _'Concepts without intuitions are empty'_
It is an exaggeration of this half-truth (the other half is _Intuitions
without concepts are blind_) that is the basis of these statements of
Jacobi (and of Schopenhauer)--a view of which the following passage
from Schelling (_Werke,_ ii. 125) is representative. 'Concepts
(Begriffe) are only silhouettes of reality. They are projected by
a serviceable faculty, the understanding, which only comes into
action when reality is already on the scene,--which only comprehends,
conceives, retains what it required a creative faculty to produce....
The mere concept is a word without meaning.... All reality that can
attach to it is lent to it merely by the intuition (Anschauung) which
preceded it. ... Nothing is real for us except what is _immediately
given_ us, without any mediation by concepts, without our feeling at
liberty. But nothing reaches us immediately except through intuition.'
He adds, however, 'Intuition is due to the activity of mind (Sein):
it demands a disengaged sense (freier Sinn) and an intellectual organ
(geistiges Organ).'
P. 134. Cicero: _De Natura Deorum,_ i. 16; ii. 4, _De quo autem omnium
natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est_; cf. Seneca, Epist. cxvii.
6. The principle is common to Stoics and Epicureans: it is the maxim
of Catholic truth _Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum
est_--equivalent to Aristotle's ὄ πᾶσι δοκεῖ, τοῦτ' εἷναι φάμεν--But as
Aristotle remarks (_An. Post._ i. 31) τὸ καθόλον καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἀδίνατον
αἰσθάνεσθαι.
Jacobi: _Werke,_ vi. 145. 'The general opinion about what is true and
good must have an authority equal to reason.'
P. 136, § 72. Cf. _Encyclop._ § 400: 'That the heart and the feeling
is not the form by which anything is justified as religious, moral,
true, and just, and that an appeal to heart and feeling either means
nothing or means something bad, should hardly need enforcing. Can any
experience be more trite than that hearts and feelings are also bad,
evil, godless, mean, &c.? Ay, that the heart is the source of such
feelings only, is directly said in the words: Out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, &c. In times when the heart and the sentiment are, by
scientific theology and philosophy, made the criterion of goodness,
religion, and morality, it is necessary to recall these trivial
experiences.'
CHAPTER VI.
P. 145, § 80. Goethe; the reference is to _Werke,_ ii. 268 (Natur und
Kunst):
Wer Groszes will, muß sich zusammenraffen:
In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister,
Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben.
Such 'limitation' of aim and work is a frequent lesson in _Wilhelm
Meister's Wanderjahre, e.g._ i. ch. 4. 'Many-sidedness prepares,
properly speaking, only the element in which the one-sided can act....
The best thing is to restrict oneself to a handi-work.' And i. ch. 12:
'To be acquainted with and to exercise one thing rightly gives higher
training than mere tolerableness (halfness) in a hundred sorts of
things.' And ii. ch. 12: 'Your general training and all establishments
for the purpose are fool's farces.'
P. 147, § 81. Cf. Fichte, _Werke,_ ii. 37. 'Yet it is not _we_ who
analyse: but knowledge analyses itself, and can do so, because in all
its being it is a _for-self_ (Für:sich),' &c.
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.
P. 158, § 86. Cf. Schelling, iii. 372: I = I expresses the identity
between the 'I,' in so far as it is the producing, and the 'I' as the
produced; the original synthetical and yet identical proposition: the
_cogito=sum_ of Schelling.
P. 159. Definition of God as _Ens realissimum, e.g._ Meier's
_Baumgarten's Metaphysic,_ § 605.
Jacobi, _Werke,_ iv. 6, thus describes Spinoza's God.
As to the beginning cf. Fichte, _Werke,_ ii. 14 (speaking of 'absolute
knowing'): 'It is not a knowing of something, nor is it a knowing of
nothing (so that it would be a knowing of somewhat, but this somewhat
be nothing): it is not even a knowing of itself, for it is no knowledge
at all _of_;--nor is it _a_ knowing (quantitatively and in relation),
but it is (the) knowing (absolutely qualitatively). It is no act, no
event, or that somewhat is in knowing; but it is just the knowing, in
which alone all acts and all events, which are there set down, can be
set down.'
History of Philosophy; cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ i. 165. 'If the Absolute,
like its phenomenon Reason, be (as it is) eternally one and the same,
then each reason, which has turned itself upon and cognised itself,
has produced a true philosophy and solved the problem which, like its
solution, is at all times the same. The reason, which cognises itself,
has in philosophy to do only with itself: hence in itself too lies
its whole work and its activity; and as regards the inward essence of
philosophy there are neither predecessors nor successors.
'Just as little, as of constant improvements, can there be talk of
"peculiar views" of philosophy.... The true peculiarity of a philosophy
is the interesting individuality, in which reason has organised itself
a form from the materials of a particular age; in it the particular
speculative reason finds spirit of its spirit, flesh of its flesh; it
beholds itself in it as one and the same, as another living being.
Each philosophy is perfect in itself, and possesses totality, like a
work of genuine art. As little as the works of Apelles and Sophocles,
if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, could have seemed to them
mere preliminary exercises for themselves--but as cognate spiritual
powers;--so little can reason in its own earlier formations perceive
only useful preparatory exercises.' Cf. Schelling, iv. 401.
P. 160, § 86. Parmenides (ap. Simplic. _Phys._): of the two ways of
investigation the first is that _it is,_ and that not-to-be is not.
ἡ μὲν ὅπως ἓστι τε καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἓστι μὴ εἶναι
P. 161, § 87. The Buddhists. Cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ xi. 387. Modern
histories of Buddhism insist upon the purely ethico-religious character
of the teaching. Writers like von Hartmann (_Religionsphilosophie,_ p.
320) on the contrary hold that Buddhism carried out the esoteric theory
of Brahmanism to the consequence that the abstract one is nothing.
According to Vassilief, _Le Bouddhisme,_ p. 318 seqq., one of the
Buddhist metaphysical schools, the Madhyamikas, founded by Nâgârdjuna
400 years after Buddha, taught that All is Void.--Such metaphysics were
probably reactions of the underlying Brahmanist idea.
But generally Buddhism (as was not unnatural 60 years ago) is hardly
taken here in its characteristic historical features.
P. 167, § 88. Aristotle, _Phys,_ i. 8 (191 a. 26): 'Those philosophers
who first sought the truth and the real substance of things got on a
false track, like inexperienced travellers who fail to discover the
way, and declared that nothing can either come into being or disappear,
because it is necessary that what comes into being should come into
being either from what is or from what is not, and that it is from both
of these impossible: for what is does not become (it already is), and
nothing would become from what is not.'
(5) is an addition of ed. 3 (1830); cf. _Werke,_ xvii. 181.
P. 168, § 88. The view of Heraclitus here taken is founded on the
interpretation given by Plato (in the _Theaetetus,_152; _Cratylus,_
401) and by Aristotle, of a fundamental doctrine of the Ephesian--which
however is expressed in the fragments by the name of the everliving
fire. The other phrase (Ar. _Met._ i. 4) is used by Aristotle to
describe the position, not of Heraclitus, but of Leucippus and
Democritus. Cf. Plutarch, _adv. Colotem,_ 4. 2 Δημόκριτος διορίζεται μὴ
μᾱλλον τὸ δὲν ἥ τὸ μηδν εἶναι; cf. Simplic. in Ar. _Phys._ fol. 7.
P. 169, § 89. Daseyn: Determinate being. Cf. Schelling, i. 209.
'Being (Seyn) expresses the absolute, Determinate being (Daseyn) a
conditional, 'positing': Actuality, one conditioned in a definite sort
by a definite condition. The single phenomenon in the whole system
of the world has _actuality;_ the world of phenomena in general has
Daseyn; but the absolutely-posited, the Ego, _is. I am_ is all the Ego
can say of itself.'
P. 171, § 91. Being-by-self: An:sich:seyn.
Spinoza, _Epist._ 50, _figura non aliud quam determinatio et
determinatio negatio est._
P. 172, § 92. Grenze (limit or boundary), and Schranke (barrier or
check) are distinguished in _Werke,_ iii. 128-139 (see Stirling's
_Secret of Hegel,_ i. 377 seqq.). Cf. Kant's remark, _Krit. d. r.
Vernunft,_ p. 795, that Hume only erschränkt our intellect, ohne ihn zu
begrenzen.
P. 173, § 92. Plato, _Timaeus,_ c. 35 (formation of the world-soul):
'From the individual and ever-identical essence (ὀυσία) and the
divisible which is corporeal, he compounded a third intermediate
species of essence.... And taking these, being three, he compounded
them all into one form (ἰδέα), adjusting perforce the unmixable nature
of the other and the same, and mingling them all with the essence, and
making of three one again, he again distributed this total into as many
portions as were fitting, but each of them mingled out of the same and
the other and the essence.'
P. 175, § 94. Philosophy. Cf. Schelling, _Werke,_ ii. 377. 'A various
experience has taught me that for most men the greatest obstacle to the
understanding and vital apprehension of philosophy is their invincible
opinion that its object is to be sought at an infinite distance.
The consequence is, that while they should fix their eye on what is
present (das Gegenwärtige), every effort of their mind is called out
to get hold of an object which is not in question through the whole
inquiry.' ... 'The aim of the sublimest science can only be to show the
actuality,--in the strictest sense the actuality, the presence, the
vital existence (Daseyn)--of a God in the whole of things and in each
one.... Here we deal no longer with an extra-natural or supernatural
thing, but with the immediately near, the alone-actual to which we
ourselves also belong, and in which we are.'
P. 177, § 95. Plato's _Philebus,_ ch. xii-xxiii (pp. 23-38): cf.
_Werke,_ xiv. 214 seqq.: 'The absolute is therefore what in one unity
is finite and infinite.'
P. 178. Idealism of Philosophy: cf. Schelling, ii. 67. 'Every
philosophy therefore is and remains Idealism; and it is only under
itself that it embraces realism and idealism; only that the former
Idealism should not be confused with the latter, which is of a merely
relative kind.'
Hegel, _Werke,_ iii. 163. 'The proposition that the finite is "ideal"
constitutes Idealism. In nothing else consists the Idealism of
philosophy than in recognising that the finite has no genuine being....
The contrast of idealistic and realistic philosophy is therefore of
no importance. A philosophy that attributed to finite existences as
such a genuine ultimate absolute being would not deserve the name
philosophy.... By "ideal" is meant existing as a representation in
consciousness: whatever is in a mental concept, idea or imagination is
"ideal": "ideal" is just another word for "in imagination,"--something
not merely distinct from the real, but essentially not real. The mind
indeed is the great idealist: in the sensation, representation, thought
of the mind the fact has not what is called _real_ existence; in the
simplicity of the Ego such external being is only suppressed, existing
_for me,_ and "ideally" in me. This subjective idealism refers only to
the representational form, by which an import is mine.'
P. 180, § 96. The distinction of nature and mind as real and ideal is
especially Schelling's: See _e.g._ his _Einleitung,_ &c. iii. 272. 'If
it is the problem of Transcendental Philosophy to subordinate the real
to the ideal, it is on the contrary the problem of the philosophy of
nature to explain the ideal from the real.'
P. 183, § 98. Newton: see _Scholium_ at the end of the _Principia,_ and
cf. _Optics,_ iii. qu. 28.
Modern Atomism, besides the conception of particles or molecules, has
that of mathematical centres of force.
Kant, _Werke,_ v. 379 (ed. Rosenk.). 'The general principle of the
_dynamic_ of material nature is that all reality in the objects of the
external senses must be regarded as moving force: whereby accordingly
so-called solid or absolute impenetrability is banished from natural
science as a meaningless concept, and repellent force put in its
stead; whereas true and immediate attraction is defended against all
the subtleties of a self-misconceiving metaphysic and declared to be a
fundamental force necessary for the very possibility of the concept of
matter.'
P. 184, § 98. Abraham Gottheit Kästner (1719-1800), professor
forty-four years at Göttingen, enjoyed in the latter half of the
eighteenth century a considerable repute, both in literature and in
mathematical science. Some of, his epigrams are still quoted.
P. 190, § 102. The two 'moments' of number Unity, and Sum (Anzahl),
may be compared with the Greek distinction between one and ἀριθμός
(cf. Arist. _Phys._ iv. 12 ἐλάχίστος ἀριθμός ἡ δυάς). According
to Rosenkranz (_Leben Hegels_) the classification of arithmetical
operations often engaged Hegel's research. Note the relation in Greek
between λογικόν and λογιστικόν. Cf. Kant's view of the 'synthesis' in
arithmetic.
P. 193, § 103. Intensive magnitude. Cf. Kant, _Kritik der reinen
Vernunft,_ p. 207, on Anticipation of Perception (Wahrnehmung), and p.
414, in application to the question of the soul's persistence.
P. 195, § 104. Not Aristotle, but rather Simplicius on the _Physics_
of Aristotle, fol. 306: giving Zeno's argument against the alleged
composition of the line from a series of points. What you can say of
one supposed small real unit, you can say of a smaller, and so on _ad
infinitum._ (Cf. Burnet's _Early Greek Philosophy,_ p. 329.)
P. 196, § 104. The distinction between imagination and intellect made
by Spinoza in _Ep._ xii. (olim xxix.) in _Opp._ ed. Land vol. ii. 40
seqq. is analogous to that already noted (p. 402) between _ratio_ and
_intellegentia,_ and is connected, as by Boëthius, with the distinction
which Plato, _Timaeus,_ 37, draws between eternity (αἰών) and time.
The infinite (_Eth._ i. prop. 8. Schol. I) is the 'absolute affirmation
of a certain nature's existence,' as opposed to finitude which is
really _ex parte negatio._ 'The problem has always been held extremely
difficult, if not inextricable, because people did not distinguish
between what is concluded to be infinite by its own nature and the
force of its definition, and what has no ends, not in virtue of its
essence, but in virtue of its cause. It was difficult also because
they did not distinguish between what is called infinite because it
has no ends, and that whose parts (though we may have a maximum and
minimum of it) we cannot equate or explicate by any number. Lastly
because they lid not distinguish between what we can only understand
(_intelligere,_) but not imagine, and what we can also imagine.'
To illustrate his meaning, Spinoza calls attention to the distinction
of substance from mode, of eternity from duration. We can 'explicate'
the existence only of modes by duration: that of substance, 'by
eternity, _i.e._ by an infinite fruition of existence or being' (_per
aeternitatem, hoc est, infinitam existendi, sive, invita latinitate,
essendi fruitionem._) The attempt therefore to show that extended
_substance_ is composed of parts is an illusion,--which arises because
we look at quantity 'abstractly or superficially, as we have it in
imagination by means of the senses.' So looking at it, as we are liable
to do, a quantity will be found divisible, finite, composed of parts
and manifold. But if we look at it as it really is,--as a Substance
--as it is in the intellect alone--(which is a work of difficulty), it
will be found infinite, indivisible, and unique. 'It is only therefore
when we abstract duration and quantity from substance, that we use
time to determine duration and measure to determine quantity, so as to
be able to imagine them. Eternity and substance, on the other hand,
are no objects of imagination but only of intellect; and to try to
explicate them by such notions as measure, time, and number--which are
only modes of thinking or rather of imagining--is no better than to
fall into imaginative raving.' 'Nor will even the modes of Substance
ever be rightly understood, should they be confounded with this sort
of _entia rationis_' (_i.e. modi cogitandi_ subserving the easier
retention, explication and _imagination_ of things _understood_)'
or aids to imagination. For when we do so, we separate them from
substance, and from the mode in which they flow from eternity, without
which they cannot be properly understood.' (Cf. Hegel's _Werke,_ i. 63.)
The verses from Albr. von Haller come from his poem on Eternity (1736).
Hegel seems to quote from an edition before 1776, when the fourth line
was added in the stanza as it thus finally stood:--
Ich häufe ungeheure Zahlen,
Gebürge Millionen auf,
Ich welze Zeit auf Zeit und Welt auf Welten hin,
Und wenn ich auf der March des endlichen nun bin,
Und von der fürchterlichen Höhe
Mit Schwindeln wieder nach dir sehe,
Ist alle Macht der Zahl, vermehrt mit tausend Malen,
Noch nicht ein Theil von dir.
Ich tilge sie, und du liegst ganz vor mir.
Kant, _Kritik d. r. Vernunft,_ p. 641. 'Even Eternity, however _eerily_
sublime may be its description by Haller,' &c.
P. 197, § 104. Pythagoras in order of time probably comes between
Anaximenes (of Ionia) and Xenophanes (of Elea). But the mathematical
and metaphysical doctrines attributed to the Pythagorean are known
to us only in the form in which they are represented in Plato and
Aristotle, _i.e._ in a later stage of development. The Platonists (cf.
Arist. _Met._ i. 6; xi. 1. 12; xii. 1. 7; cf. Plat. _Rep._ p. 510)
treated mathematical fact as mid-way between 'sensibles' and 'ideas';
and Aristotle himself places mathematics as a science between physical
and metaphysical (theological) philosophy.
The tradition (referred to p. 198) about Pythagoras is given by
Iamblichus, _Vita Pyth._ §115 seqq.: it forms part of the later
Neo-Pythagorean legend, which entered literature in the first centuries
of the Christian era.
P. 201, § 107. Hebrew hymns: _e.g. Psalms_ lxxiv. and civ.; Proverbs
viii. and Job xxxviii. _Vetus verbum est,_ says Leibniz (ed. Erdmann,
p. 162), _Deum omnia pondere, mensura, numero, fecisse._
P. 202, § 108. The antinomy of measure. These logical puzzles
are the so-called fallacy of Sorites (a different thing from the
chain-syllogism of the logic-books); cf. Cic. _Acad._ ii. 28, 29; _De
Divin._ ii. 4--and the φαλακρός cf. Horace, _Epist._ ii. 1-45.
CHAPTER VIII.
P. 211, § 113. Self-relation--(sich) auf sich beziehen.
P. 213, § 115. The 'laws of thought' is the magniloquent title given
in the Formal Logic since Kant's day to the principles or maxims
(_principia_, Grundsätze) which Kant himself described as 'general and
formal criteria of truth.' They include the so-called principle of
contradiction, with its developments, the principle of identity and
excluded middle: to which, with a desire for completeness, eclectic
logicians have added the Leibnizian principle of the reason. Hegel
has probably an eye to Krug and Fries in some of his remarks. The
three laws may be compared and contrasted with the three principles,
--homogeneity, specification, and continuity of forms, in Kant's
_Kritik d. r. Vern._ p. 686.
P. 217, § 117. Leibniz, _Nouveaux Essais,_ Liv. ii. ch. 27, § 3 (ed.
Erdmann, p. 273: cf. fourth Letter to Clarke). _Il n'y a point deux
individus indiscernables. Un gentilhomme d'esprit de mes amis, en
parlant avec moi en présence de Madame l'Electrice dans le jardin de
Herrenhausen, crut qu'il trouverait bien deux feuilles entièrement
semblables. Madame l'Electrice l'en défia, et il courut longtems en
vain pour en chercher._
The principle of individuation or indiscernibility is: 'If two
individuals were perfectly alike and equal and, in a word,
indistinguishable by themselves, there would be no principle of
individuation: (Leibniz, ed. Erdm. p. 277) _Poser deux choses
indiscernables est poser la même chose sous deux noms_ (p. 756).
_Principium individuationis idem est quod absolutae specificationis quâ
res ita sit determinata, ut ab aliis omnibus distingui possit._
P. 221, § 119. Polarity. Schelling, ii. 489. 'The law of Polarity is a
universal law of nature'; cf. ii. 459: 'It is a first principle of a
philosophic theory of nature to have a view (in the whole of nature),
on polarity and dualism.' But he adds (476), 'It is time to define
more accurately the concept of polarity.' So Oken, _Naturphilosophie_:
§76: 'A force consisting of two principles is called Polarity.' § 77:
'Polarity is the first force which makes its appearance in the world.'
§ 81: 'The original movement is a result of the original polarity.'
P. 223, § 119. Cf. Fichte, ii. 53. 'To everything but this the
logically trained thinker can rise. He is on his guard against
contradiction. But, in that case, how about the possibility of the
maxim of his own logic that we can think no contradiction. In some way
he must have got hold of contradiction and thought it, or he could
make no communications about it. Had such people only once regularly
asked themselves how they came to think the _merely_ possible or
contingent (the not-necessary), and how they actually do so! Evidently
they here leap through a not-being, not-thinking, &c, into the utterly
unmediated, self-initiating, free,--into beënt non-being,--in short,
the above contradiction, as it was laid down. With consistent thinkers
the result of this incapacity is nothing but the utter abolition of
freedom,--the most absolute fatalism and Spinozism.
P. 227, §121. Leibniz (ed. Erdmann, p. 515). 'The principle of _la
raison déterminante_ is that nothing ever occurs without there being a
cause for it, or at least a determinant reason, _i.e._ something which
may serve to render a reason _à priori_ why that is existent rather
than in any other way. This great principle holds good in all events.'
Cf. p. 707. 'The principle of "sufficient reason" is that in virtue
of which we consider that no fact could be found true or consistent,
no enunciation truthful, without there being a sufficient reason why
it is so and not otherwise.... When a truth is necessary, we can find
the reason of it by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and
truths, until we come to primitive ideas.... But the sufficient reason
ought also to be found in contingent truths or truths of fact, _i.e._
in the series of things spread through the universe of creatures,
or the resolution into particular reasons might go into a limitless
detail: ... and as all this detail embraces only other antecedent, or
more detailed contingencies, ... the sufficient or final (_dernière_)
reason must be outside the succession or series of this detail of
contingencies, however infinite it might be. And it is thus that the
final reason of things must be in a "necessary substance," in which the
detail of the changes exists only _eminenter,_ as in the source,--and
it is what we call God.' _(Monadology_ §§ 32-38.)
Hence the supremacy of final causes. Thus _Opp._ ed. Erdmann, p. 678:
_Ita fit ut efficientes causae pendeant a finalibus, et spiritualia
sint natura priora materialibus._ Accordingly he urges, p. 155, that
final cause has not merely a moral and religious value in ethics and
theology, but is useful even in physics for the detection of deep-laid
truths. Cf. p. 106: _C'est sanctifier la Philosophie que de faire
couler ses ruisseaux de la fontaine des attributs de Dieu. Bien loin
d'exclure les causes finales et la considération d'un être agissant
avec sagesse, c'est de là qu'il faut tout déduire en Physique._ Cf.
also _Principes de la Nature_ (Leibn. ed. Erdm. p. 716): 'It is
surprising that by the sole consideration of efficient causes or
of matter, we could not render a reason for those laws of movement
discovered in our time. _Il y faut recourir aux causes finales_.'
P. 228, § 121 Socrates. The antitheses between Socrates and the
Sophists belongs in the main to the Platonic dialogues,--not co the
historical Socrates. It is the literary form in which the philosophy of
Plato works out its development through the criticism of contemporary
opinions and doctrines. And even in Plato's writings the antagonism is
very unlike what later interpretations have made out of it.
P. 231, § 124. Thing by itself (thing in itself) the Ding:an:sich.
P. 235, § 126. Cf. _Encycl._ § 334 (_Werke,_ viii. 1. p. 411). 'In
empirical chemistry the chief object is the _particularity_ of the
matters and products, which are grouped by superficial abstract
features which make impossible any system in the special detail. In
these lists, metals, oxygen, hydrogen, &c.--metalloids, sulphur,
phosphorus appear side by side as _simple_ chemical bodies on the same
level. The great physical variety of these bodies must of itself create
a prepossession against such coordination; and their chemical origin,
the process from which they issue, is clearly no less various. But
in an equally chaotic way, more abstract and more real processes are
put on the same level. If all this is to get scientific form, every
product ought to be determined according to the grade of the concrete
and completely developed process from which it essentially issues, and
which gives it its peculiar significance; and for that purpose it is
not less essential to distinguish grades in abstractness or reality
of the process. Animal and vegetable substances in any case belong
to a quite other order: so little can their nature be understood from
the chemical process, that they are rather destroyed in it, and only
the way of their death is apprehended. These substances, however,
ought above all to serve to counter-act the metaphysic predominant
in chemistry as in physics,--the ideas or rather wild fancies of the
_unalterability of matters_ under all circumstances, as well as the
categories of the _composition_ and the _consistence_ of bodies from
such matters. We see it generally admitted that chemical matters lose
in combination the _properties_ which they show in separation: and yet
we find the idea prevailing that they are the same things _without_ the
properties as they are _with_ them,--so that as things _with_ these
properties they are not results of the process.'--Cf. _Werke,_ vii. a.
372: 'Air does not consist of oxygen and nitrogen: but these are the
forms under which air is put,' cf. _ib._403.
P. 241, § 131. Fichte's _Sonnenklarer Bericht_ appeared in 1801.
P. 247, § 136. Herder's _Gott: Gespräche über Spinoza's System,_ 1787,
2nd ed. 1800. 'God is, in the highest and unique sense of the word,
Force, _i.e._ the primal force of all forces, the soul of all souls'
(p. 63), 'All that we call matter, therefore, is more or less animate:
it is a realm of efficient forces. One force predominates: otherwise
there were no _one,_ no whole' (p. 207). 'The supreme being (Daseyn)
could give its creatures nothing higher than being. (_Theophron._) But,
my friend, being and being, however simple in the concept, are in their
estate very different; and what do you suppose, Philolaus, marks its
grades and differences? (_Phil._) Nothing but forces. In God himself
we found no higher conception; but all his forces were only one. The
supreme force could not be other than supreme goodness and wisdom,
ever-living, ever-active. (_Theoph._) Now you yourself see, Philolaus,
that the supreme, or rather the All (for God is not a supreme unit in
a scale of beings like himself), could not reveal himself otherwise
than in the universe as active. In him nothing could slumber, and what
he expressed was himself. He is before everything, and everything
subsists in him: the whole world an expression, an appearance of his
ever-living, ever-acting forces' (p. 200).
'It was the mistake of Spinoza,' says Herder, 'to be unduly influenced
by the Cartesian phraseology. Had he chosen the conception of force and
effect, everything would have gone easier, and his system become much
more distinct and coherent. 'Had he developed the conception of power,
and the conception of matter, he must in conformity with his system
necessarily have come to the conception of forces, which work as well
in matter as in organs of thinking: he would in that case have regarded
power and thought as forces, _e.g._ as one.' (Cf. H. Spencer, 'Force,
the Ultimate of Ultimates.' First Princ. p 169)
According to Rosenkranz (_Leben Hegels,_ p. 223) there exists in
manuscript a criticism by Hegel on the second edition of Herder's
_God._ Herder's Dialogue belongs to the controversy aroused by Jacobi's
letters on Spinoza.
P. 250, § 136. Newton. Leibniz charges him with the view that God needs
from time to time _remonter sa montre,_ otherwise it would cease going:
that his machine requires to be cleaned (_décrasser_) by extraordinary
aid' (ed. Erdm. p. 746).
P. 252, § 140. The verses quoted occur in Goethe's _Werke_ ii. 376,
under the heading Allerdings. Originally the first four lines appeared
in Haller's poem _Die menschlichen Tugenden_ thus--
Ins Innre der Natur bringt sein erschaffner Geist:
Zu glücklich, wenn sie noch die äußre Schale weist!
(To nature's heart there penetrates no mere created mind:
Too happy if she but display the outside of her rind.)
Hegel--reading weizt for weist--takes the second line as
Too happy, if he can but know the outside of her rind.
Goethe's attack upon a vulgar misuse of the lines belongs to his
dispute with the scientists. His verses appeared in 1820 as _Heiteres
Reimstück_ at the end of Heft 3 _zur Morphologie,_--of which the
closing section is entitled _Freundlicher Zuruf_ (_Werke_ xxvii. 161),
as follows:--
"Ins Innre der Natur,"
O du Philister!--
"Dringt kein erschaffner Geist."
. . . . . .
"Glückselig! wem sie nur
Die äußre Schale weis't."
Das hör' ich sechzig Jahre wiederholen,
Ich fluche drauf, aber verstohlen:
Sage mir taufend tausendmale:
Alles giebt sie reichlich und gern;
Natur hat weder Stern
Noch Schale,
Alles ist sie mit einem Male.
[The last seven lines may be thus paraphrased in continuation:
I swear--of course but to myself--as rings within my ears
That same old warning o'er and o'er again for sixty years,
And thus a thousand thousand times I answer in my mind:
--With gladsome and ungrudging hand metes nature from her store:
She keeps not back the core,
Nor separates the rind,
But all in each both rind and core has evermore combined.]
P. 254, § 140. Plato and Aristotle: cf. Plato, _Phaedrus,_ 247 A
(φθόνoς γὰρ ξω θείον χόρoυ ἴσταται); _Timaeus,_ 29 E; and Aristotle,
_Metaph._ i. 2. 22.
P. 256, § 140. Goethe: _Sämmtl. Werke,_ iii. 203 (_Maxime und
Reflexionen_). Gegen große Vorzüge eines Andern giebt es kein
Rettungsmittel als die Liebe. Cf. Schiller to Goethe, 2 July, 1796.
'How vividly I have felt on this occasion ... that against surpassing
merit nothing but Love gives liberty' (daß es dem Vortrefflichen
gegenüber seine Freiheit giebt als die Liebe).
'Pragmatic.' This word, denoting a meddlesome busybody in older English
and sometimes made a vague term of abuse, has been in the present
century used in English as it is here employed in German.
According to Polybius, ix. I. 2, the πραγματικὸς τρόπος τῆς ἱστορίας
is that which has a directly utilitarian aim. So Kant, _Foundation of
Metaph. of Ethic (Werke,_ viii. 41, note): 'A history is pragmatically
composed when it renders prudent, _i.e._ instructs the world how it may
secure its advantage better or at least as well as the ages preceding.'
Schelling (v. 308) quotes in illustration of pragmatic history-writing
the words of Faust to Wagner (Goethe, xi. 26):
Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst,
Das ist im Grund der herren eigner Geist,,
In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.
Cf. also Hegel, _Werke,_ ix. 8. 'A second kind of reflectional history
is the pragmatic. When we have to do with the past and are engaged
with a distant world, the mind sees rising before it a present, which
it has from its own action as a reward for its trouble. The events are
different; but their central and universal fact, their structural
plan is identical. This abolishes the past and makes the event
present. Pragmatic reflections, however abstract they be, are thus in
reality the present, and vivify the tales of the past with the life of
to-day.--Here too a word should specially be given to the moralising
and the moral instructions to be gained through history,--for which it
was often studied.... Rulers, statesmen, nations, are especially bidden
learn from the experience of history. But what experience and history
teach is that nations and governments never have learned anything from
history, or acted upon teaching which could have been drawn from it.'
Cf. Froude: _Divorce of Catherine,_ p. 2. 'The student (of history)
looks for an explanation (of political conduct) in elements which he
thinks he understands--in pride, ambition, fear, avarice, jealousy, or
sensuality.'
P. 257, § 141. Cf. Goethe, xxiii, 298. 'What is the outside of an
organic nature but the ever-varied phenomenon of the inside? This
outside, this surface is so exactly adapted to a varied, complex,
delicate, inward structure that it thus itself becomes an inside:
both aspects, the outside and the inside, standing in most direct
correlation alike in the quietest existence and in the most violent
movement.'
P. 260, § 143. Kant, _Kritik der reinen Vernunft,_ 2nd ed. p. 266.
P. 269, § 147. Cf. Schelling, _Werke,_ v. 290 (cf. iii. 603). 'There
are three periods of history, that of nature, of destiny, and of
providence. These three ideas express the same identity, but in a
different way. Destiny too is providence, but recognised in the real,
as providence, is also destiny, but beheld (angeschaut) in the ideal.'
P. 275, § 151. On the relation between Spinoza and Leibniz cf. Hegel,
_Werke,_ iv. 187-193. It would be a mistake, however, to represent
Leibniz as mainly engaged in a work of conscious antagonism to Spinoza.
P. 277, § 153. Jacobi.--Jacobi (like Schopenhauer) insists specially on
the distinction between grounds (Gründe)--which are formal, logical,
and verbal, and causes (Ursachen)--which carry us into reality and
life and nature. To transform the mere _Because_ into the _cause_
we must (he says) pass from logic and the analytical understanding
to experience and the inner life. Instead of the timelessness of
simultaneity which characterises the logical relation cf ground and
consequent, the nexus of cause and effect introduces the element
of time,--thereby acquiring reality (Jacobi, _Werke,_ iii. 452).
The conception of Cause--meaningless as a mere category of abstract
thought--gets reality as a factor in experience, ein Erfahrungsbegriff,
and is immediately given to us in the consciousness of our own
causality (Jacobi, _Werke,_ iv. 145-158). Cf. Kant, _Kritik der reinen
Vern._ p. 116.
P. 283, § 158. The _Amor intellectualis Dei_ (Spinoza, _Eth._ v. 32)
is described as a consequence of the third grade of cognition, viz.
the _scientia intuitiva_ which 'proceeds from an adequate idea of the
formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate cognition
of the essence of things (ii. 40, Schol. 2). From it arises (v.
27), the highest possible _acquiescentia mentis,_ in which the mind
contemplates all things _sub specie aeternitatis_ (v. 29), knows itself
to be in God and sees itself and all things in their divine essence.
But this intellectual love of mind towards God is part of the infinite
love wherewith God loves himself (v. 36) 'From these things we clearly
understand in what our salvation or blessedness or liberty consists: to
wit, in the constant and eternal love towards God, or in the love of
God towards men' (Schol. to v. 36).
CHAPTER IX.
Page 289, § 161. Evolution and development in the stricter sense
in which these terms were originally used in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries imply a theory of preformation, according
to which the growth of an organic being is simply a process of
enlarging and filling out a miniature organism, actual but invisible,
because too inconspicuous. Such was the doctrine adopted by Leibniz
(_Considérations sur le principe de vie; Système nouveau de la Nature_,
&c). According to it development is no real generation of new parts,
but only an augmentation into bulk and visibility of parts already
outlined. This doctrine of preformation (as opposed to epigenesis)
is carried out by Charles Bonnet, who in his _Considérations sur les
corps organisés_ (1762) propounds the further hypothesis that the
'germs' from which living beings proceed contain, enclosed one within
another, the germs of all creatures yet to be. This is the hypothesis
of '_Emboîtement._' 'The system which regards generations as mere
educts' says Kant (_Kritik der Urteilskraft,_ § 80; _Werke,_ iv. 318)
'is called that of _individual_ preformation or the evolution theory:
the system which regards them as products is called Epigenesis.--which
might also be called the theory of _generic_ preformation, considering
that the productive powers of the générants follow the inherent
tendencies belonging to the family characteristics, and that the
specific form is therefore a 'virtual' preformation, in this way the
opposing theory of individual preformation might be better called
the involution theory, or theory of Einschachtelung (_Emboîtement._)
Cf. Leibniz (_Werke,_ Erdmann, 715). 'As animals generally are not
entirely born at conception or _generation,_ no more do they entirely
perish at what we call _death_; for it is reasonable that what does
not commence naturally, does not finish either in the order of nature.
Thus quitting their mask or their rags, they only return to a subtler
theatre, where however they can be as sensible and well regulated as
in the greater.... Thus not only the souls, but even the animals are
neither generable nor perishable: they are only developed, enveloped,
re-clothed, unclothed,--transformed. The souls never altogether quit
their body, and do not pass from one body into another body which is
entirely new to them. There is therefore no metempsychosis, but there
is metamorphosis. The animals change, take and quit only parts: which
takes place little by little and by small imperceptible parcels, but
continually, in nutrition: and takes place suddenly notably but rarely,
at conception, or at death, which make them gain or lose much all at
once.'
The theory of _Emboîtement_ or _Envelopment,_ according to Bonnet
(_Considérations,_ &c. ch. I) is that 'the germs of all the organised
bodies of one species were inclosed (_renfermés_) one in another,
and have been developed successively.' So according to Haller
(_Physiology,_ Tome vii. § 2) 'it is evident that in plants the
mother-plant contains the germs of several generations; and there is
therefore no inherent improbability in the view that _tous les enfans,
excepté un, fussent renfermés dans l'ovaire de la première Fille
d'Eve.'_ Cf. Weismann's _Continuity of the Germ-plasma._ Yet Bonnet
(_Contemplation de la Nature,_ part vii. ch. 9, note 2), says, 'The
germs are not enclosed like boxes or cases one in another, but a germ
forms part of another germ, as a grain forms part of the plant in which
it is developed.'
P. 293, § 163. Rousseau, _Contrat Social,_ liv. ii. ch. 3.
P. 296, § 165. The 'adequate' idea is a sub-species of the 'distinct.'
When an idea does not merely distinguish a thing from others (when
it is _clear),_ or in addition represent the characteristic marks
belonging to the object so distinguished (when it is _distinct),_ but
also brings out the farther characteristics of these characteristics,
the idea is _adequate._ Thus adequate is a sort of second power of
distinct. (Cf. Baumeister's _Instit. Philos. Ration._ 1765, §§ 64-94.)
Hegel's description rather agrees with the 'complete idea' 'by which
I put before my mind singly marks sufficient to discern the thing
represented from all other things in every case, state, and time'
(Baumeister, _ib._ § 88). But cf. Leibniz, ed. Erdm. p. 79: _notitia
adaequata._
P. 298, § 166. Cf. Baumeister, _Instit. Phil. Rat._ § 185: _Judicium
est idearum conjunctio vel separatio._
P. 299, § 166. _Punctum saliens:_ the _punctum sanguineum saliens_ of
Harvey (_de Generat. Animal, exercit._ 17), or first appearance of the
heart: the _στιγμὴ αἱματίνη_ in the egg, of which Aristotle (_Hist.
Anim._ vi. 3) says τoῡτο τὸ σημεῖον πηδᾷ καὶ κινεῖται ὥσπερ ἓμψυχον.
P. 301, § 169. Cf. Whately, _Logic_ (Bk. ii. ch. I, § 2), 'Of these
terms that which is spoken of is called the _subject;_ that which is
said of it, the _predicate._'
P. 303, § 171. Kant, _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_ (p. 95, 2nd ed.) § 9.
P. 304, § 172. Cf. Jevons, _Principles of Science,_ ch. 3, 'on limited
identities' and 'negative propositions.'
P. 309. Ear-lobes. The remark is due to Blumenbach: cf. Hegel's
_Werke,_ v. 285.
P. 312. Colours, _i.e._ painters' colours; cf. _Werke,_ vii. 1. 314
(lecture-note). 'Painters are not such fools as to be Newtonians: they
have red, yellow, and blue, and out of these they make their other
colours.'
P. 315, § 181. For the genetic classification of judgments and
syllogisms and the passage from the former to the latter compare
especially Lotze's _Logic,_ Book i. And for the comprehensive
exhibition of the systematic process of judgment and inference see B.
Bosanquet's _Logic, or the Morphology of Knowledge._ The passage from
Hegel's _Werke,_ v. 139, quoted at the head of that work is parallel to
the sentence in p. 318, 'The interest, therefore,' &c.
P. 320, § 186. The letters I-P-U, of course, stand for Individual,
Particular, and Universal.
P. 321, § 187. Fourth figure. This so-called Galenian figure was
differentiated from the first figure by the separation of the five
moods, which (after Arist. _An._ pr. i. 7 and ii. I) Theophrastus and
the later pupils, down at least to Boëthius, had subjoined to the four
recognised types of perfect syllogism. But its Galenian origin is more
than doubtful.
P. 325, § 190. Cf. Mill's _Logic,_ Bk. ii. ch. 3. 'In every syllogism
considered as an argument to prove the conclusion there is a _petitio
principii._'
Hegel's Induction is that strictly so called or complete induction, the
argument from the sum of actual experiences--that _per enumerationem
simplicem,_ and _διὰ πάντων._ Of course except by accident or by
artificial arrangement such completeness is impossible _in rerum
natura._
P. 326, § 190. The 'philosophy of Nature' referred to here is probably
that of Oken and the Schellingians; but later critics (_e.g._ Riehl,
_Philosoph. Criticismus,_ iii. 120) have accused Hegel himself of even
greater enormities in this department.
P. 328, § 192. _Elementarlehre:_ Theory of the Elements, called by
Hamilton (_Lectures on Logic,_ i. 65) Stoicheiology as opposed to
methodology. Cf. the Port Royal Logic. Kant's _Kritik_ observes the
same division of the subject.
P. 332, § 193. Anselm, _Proslogium,_ c. 2. In the _Monologium_ Anselm
expounds the usual argument from conditioned to unconditioned (_Est
igitur unum aliquid, quod solum maxime et summe omnium est; per quod
est quidquid est bonum vel magnum, el omnino quidquid aliquid est.
Monol._ c. 3). But in the Proslogium he seeks an argument _quod nullo
ad se probandum quam se solo indigeret--i.e._ from the conception of
(God as) the highest and greatest that can be (_aliquid quo nihil majus
cogitari potest_) he infers its being (_sic ergo vere_ EST _aliquid
quo majus cogitari non potest, ut nec cogitari possit non esse._) The
absolute would not be absolute if the idea of it did not _ipso facto_
imply existence.
Gaunilo of Marmoutier in the _Liber pro insipiente_ made the objection
that the fact of such argument being needed showed that idea and
reality were _prima facie_ different. And in fact the argument of
Anselm deals with an Absolute which is object rather than subject,
thought rather than thinker; in human consciousness realised, but
not essentially self-affirming--implicit (an:sich) only, as said in
pp. 331, 333. And Anselm admits c. 15 _Domine, non solum es, quo
majus cogitari nequit, sed es quiddam majus quam cogitari potest_
(transcending our thought).
P. 333, line 2. This sentence has been transposed in the translation.
In the original it occurs after the quotation from the Latin in p. 332.
P. 334, § 194. Leibniz: for a brief account of the Monads see Caird's
_Crit. Philosophy of J. Kant,_ i. 86-95.
A monad is the simple substance or indivisible unity corresponding
to a body. It is as simple what the world is as a multiplicity: it
'represents,' _i.e._ concentrates into unity, the variety of phenomena:
is the expression of the material in the immaterial, of the compound in
the simple, of the extended outward in the inward. Its unity and its
representative capacity go together (cf. Lotze, _Mikrokosmus._) It is
the 'present which is full of the future and laden with the past' (ed.
Erdm. p. 197); the point which is all-embracing, the totality of the
universe. And yet there are monads--in the plural.
P. 334, § 194. Fichte, _Werke,_ i. 430. 'Every thorough-going dogmatic
philosopher is necessarily a fatalist.'
P. 338, § 195. Cf. _Encyclop._ § 463. 'This supreme inwardising of
ideation (Vorstellung) is the supreme self-divestment of intelligence,
reducing itself to the mere being, the general space of mere names and
meaningless words. The ego, which is this abstract being, is, because
subjectivity, at the same time the power over the different names, the
empty link which fixes in itself series of them and keeps them in fixed
order.'
Contemporaneously with Hegel, Herbart turned psychology in the line of
a 'statics and dynamics of the mind.' See (besides earlier suggestions)
his _De Attentionis mensura causisque primariis_ (1822) and his
_Ueber die Möglichkeit und Notwendigkeit, Mathematik auf Psychologie
anzuwenden_ (1822).
P. 340, § 198. _Civil_ society: distinguished as the social
and economical organisation of the _bourgeoisie,_ with their
particularist-universal aims, from the true universal unity of
_citoyens_ in the state or ethico-political organism.
P. 345, § 204. Inner design: see Kant's _Kritik der Urtheilskraft,_ §
62.
Aristotle, _De Anima,_ ii. 4 (415. b. 7) φανερὸν δ' ὠς καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα ἡ
ψυχὴ ατία: ii. 2 ζωὴν λέγομεν τὴν δι' αὑτοῦ τροφήν τε καὶ αὔξησιν καὶ
φθίσιν.
P. 347, § 206. Neutral first water, cf. _Encyclop._§ 284, 'without
independent individuality, without rigidity and intrinsic
determination, a thorough-going equilibrium.' Cf. _Werke,_ vii. 6.
168. 'Water is absolute neutrality, not like salt, an individualised
neutrality; and hence it was at an early date called the mother of
everything particular.' 'As the neutral it is the solvent of acids and
alkalis.' Cf. Oken's _Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie,_ §§ 294 and 432.
P. 348, § 206. Conclude = beschliessen: Resolve = entschliessen. Cf.
Chr. Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften,_ ii. 115, _seqq._
P. 359, § 216. Aristotle, _De Anim. Generat._ i. (726. b. 24) ἡ χεὶρ
ἄνεν ψυχικῆς δυνάμεως οὐκ ἔστι χεὶρ ἀλλὰ μόνον ὁμώνυμον.
Arist. _Metaph._ viii. 6 (1045. b. 11) ο δὲ (λέγoυσi) σύνθεσιν ἥ
σύνδεσμον ψυχῆς σώματι τὸ ζῆν.
P. 360, § 218. Sensibility, &c. This triplicity (as partly
distinguished by Haller after Glisson) of the functions of organic life
is largely worked out in Schelling, ii. 491.
P. 361, § 219. Cf. Schelling, ii. 540. As walking is a constantly
prevented falling, so life is a constantly prevented extinction of the
vital process.
P. 367, § 229. Spinoza (_Eth._ i. def. I) defines _causa sui_ as
_id cujus essentia involvit existentiam,_ and (in def. 3) defines
_substantia_ as _id quod in se est et per se concipitur._
Schelling: _e.g. Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie_ (1801),
(_Werke,_ iv. 114): 'I call reason the absolute reason, or reason,
in so far as it is thought as total indifference of subjective and
objective.'
P. 367, § 230. 'Mammals distinguish themselves': unter; unter:scheiden,
instead of scheiden: cf. _Werke,_ ii. 181. 'The distinctive marks of
animals, _e.g._ are taken from the claws and teeth: for in fact it
is not merely cognition which by this means distinguishes one animal
from another: but the animal thereby separates itself off: by these
weapons it keeps itself to itself and separate from the universal.'
Cf. _Werke,_ vii. a. 651 _seqq._ (_Encycl._ § 370) where reference is
made to Cuvier, _Recherches sur les ossements fossiles des quadrupèdes_
(1812), &c.
P. 368, § 230. Kant, _Kritik der Urtheilskraft:_ Einleitung, § 9
(note), (_Werke,_ ed. Ros. iv. 39); see Caird's _Critical Philosophy of
I. Kant,_ Book i. ch. 5; also Hegel's _Werke,_ ii. 3.
P. 369, § 231. An example of Wolfs pedantry is given in Hegel, _Werke,_
v. 307, from Wolfs _Rudiments of Architecture,_ Theorem viii. 'A window
must be broad enough for two persons to recline comfortably in it, side
by side. _Proof._ It is customary to recline with another person on the
window to look about. But as the architect ought to satisfy the main
views of the owner (§ I) he must make the window broad enough for two
persons to recline comfortably side by side.'
'Construction': cf. _Werke,_ ii. 38. 'Instead of its own internal life
and spontaneous movement, such a simple mode (as subject, object,
cause, substance, &c.) has expression given to it by perception (here
= sense-consciousness) on some superficial analogy: and this external
and empty application of the formula is called "Construction." The
procedure shares the qualities of all such formalism. How stupid-headed
must be the man, who could not in a quarter of an hour master the
theory of asthenic, sthenic and indirectly asthenic diseases' (this is
pointed at Schelling's _Werke,_ iii. 236) 'and the three corresponding
curative methods, and who, when, no long time since, such instruction
was sufficient, could not in this short period be transformed from
a mere practitioner into a "scientific" physician? The formalism of
_Naturphilosophie_ may teach _e.g._ that understanding is electricity,
or that the animal is nitrogen, or even that it is _like_ the South or
the North, or that it represents it,--as baldly as is here expressed
or with greater elaboration in terminology. At such teachings the
inexperienced may fall into a rapture of admiration, may reverence the
profound genius it implies,--may take delight in the sprightliness
of language which instead of the abstract _concept_ gives the more
pleasing _perceptual_ image, and may congratulate itself on feeling its
soul akin to such splendid achievement. The trick of such a wisdom is
as soon learnt as it is easy to practice; its repetition, when it grows
familiar, becomes as intolerable as the repetition of juggling once
detected. The instrument of this monotonous formalism is not harder to
manipulate than a painter's palette with two colours on it, say red and
green, the former to dye the surface if a historic piece, the latter if
a landscape is asked for.'
Kant (_Werke,_ iii. 36) in the 'Prolegomena to every future
Metaphysic,' § 7, says: 'We find, however, it is the peculiarity
of mathematical science that it must first exhibit its concept in
a percept, and do so _à priori_,--hence in a pure percept. This
observation with regard to the nature of mathematics gives a hint as to
the first and supreme condition of its possibility: it must be based
on some pure percept in which it can exhibit all its concepts _in
concreto_ and yet _à priori,_ or, as it is called, _construe_ them.'
The phrase, and the emphasis on the doctrine, that perception must be
taken as an auxiliary in mathematics,' belong specially to the second
edition of the _Kritik, e.g._ Pref. xii. To learn the properties of
the isosceles triangle the mathematical student must 'produce (by
'construction') what he himself thought into it and exhibited _à
priori_ according to concepts.'
'Construction, in general,' says Schelling (_Werke,_ v. 252:
cf. iv. 407) 'is the exhibition of the universal and particular
in unity':--'absolute unity of the ideal and the real.' v. 225.
Darstellung in intellektueller Anschauung ist philosophische
Konstruktion.
P. 372. 'Recollection' = Erinnerung: _e.g._ the return from
differentiation and externality to simplicity and inwardness:
distinguished from Gedächtniss = memory (specially of words).
P. 373, § 236. Cf. Schelling, _Werke,_ iv. 405. 'Every particular
object is in its absoluteness the Idea; and accordingly the Idea is
also the absolute object (Gegenstand) itself,--as the absolutely ideal
also the absolutely real.'
P. 374, § 236. Aristotle, _Metaphys._ xi. 9 (1074. 6. 34) αὑτὸν ἅρα
νοεῖ (ὁ νοῦς = θεος), εἵπερ ἐστὶ τὸ κράτιστον, καὶ ἐστιν ἡ νόησις
νοήσεως νόησις. Cf. Arist. _Metaph._ xii. 7.
P. 377, §239. 'Supposes a correlative' = ist für Eines. On Seyn: für
Eines, cf. _Werke,_ iii. 168. Das Ideëlle ist notwendig für:Eines, aber
es ist nicht für ein Anderes: das Eine für welches es ist, ist nur es
selbst.... God is therefore for-self (to himself) in so far as he
himself is that which is for him.
P. 379, § 244. The percipient idea (anschauende Idee), of course both
object and subject of intuition, is opposed to the Idea (as logical)
in the element of _Thought_: but still _as Idea_ and not--to use
Kant's phrase (_Kritik der r. Vern._ § 26)--as _natura materialiter
spectata._
THE END.
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