Chapter 14

[1]E. g. 'formal' inHamlet, iv. 5. 215; 'informal' inMeasure for Measure,v. 236.

[2]Encycl.§ 574 (Philosophy of Mind,p. 196).

[3]Encycl.§ 377.

[4]Logic, vol. ii. p. 30.

[5]The criticisms of A. Trendelenburg, in hisLogische Untersuchungen,rest on such assumptions. 'Trendelenburg,' says Hartmann, 'means low-water mark in German philosophy.'

[6]See above all Bradley'sPrinciples of Logic, and Bosanquet'sLogic, &c.

[7]'Das Wahre ist der bacchantische Taumel, an dem kein Glied nicht trunken ist; und weil jedes, indem es sich absondert, ebenso unmittelbar sich auflöst,—ist es ebenso die durchsichtige und einfache Ruhe.'Phenom. des Geistes,p 35.

[8]Prantl,Geschichte der Logik,i. 87.

[9]Wissenschaft der Logik, i. p. 39.

[10]SeeEncyclop.§ 549(Philosophy of Mind, pp. 148 seqq.). It is, of course, quite another question—to be answered by intelligent research—how far in particular cases Hegel has accurately studied a thinker, and faithfully interpreted him. Some of his critics in this line appear to mistake philology—which is a highly important authority in its own field—for philosophy: and will no doubt go on doing so.

[11]Hegel'sWerke, iii., 33.

[12]Wissenschaft der Logik, i. p. 43.

According to the strict reasonings of Kant in hisCriticism of Pure Reason, and the somewhat looser discussions of Mr. Spencer in hisFirst Principlesa science of Metaphysics or theory of the Infinite, Absolute, or Unconditioned is impossible. As a result of the criticism by Kant, Jacobi claimed the Absolute for Faith: and Spencer banishes the Absolute or Unknowable to the sphere of Religion to be worshipped or ignored, but in either case blindly. As we have already seen, Hegel does not accept this distribution of provinces between religion and philosophy. There is only one world, one reality: but it is known more or less fully, more or less truly and adequately. It is presented in one way to the sensuous imagination: in another to the scientific analyst: in a third to the philosopher. To the first it is a mere succession or expanse of pictures, facts, appearances: and outside it—somewhere, but not here,—there is a land, a being of perfect wholeness and harmony. To the second it is an unending chain of causes and effects, of one thing simplified by being referred to another till at last a mighty all-explaining nullity, called an 'Ultimate Cause,' is presumed to linger, eternally unperceived at the infinitely-distant end of the series. To the thirdeverything is seen in connexion, but not a mere uni-linear connexion: each, when studied, more and more completes itself by including those relations which seemed to stand outside: each fully realised, or completely invested with its ideal implications, is seen no longer to be an incident or isolated fact, but an implicit infinite, and a vice-gerent of the eternal. Philosophy thus releases both ordinary and scientific knowledge from their limitations; it shows the finite passing into the infinite. And Hegel, accordingly, purposes to show that this unfathomable Absolute is very near us, and at our very door: in our hands, as it were, and especially present in our every-day language. If we are ever to gain the Absolute, we must be careful not to lose one jot or tittle of the Relative[1]. The Absolute—this term, which is to some so offensive and to others so precious—always presents itself to us in Relatives: and when we have persistently traced the Proteus through all its manifestations,—when we have, so to speak, seen the Absolute Relativity of Relation, there is very little more needed in order to apprehend the Absolute pure and entire. One may say of the Absolute what Goethe[2]says of Nature: 'She lives entirely in her children: and the mother, where is she?'

It is a great step, when we have detected the Relativity of what had hitherto seemed Absolute,—when a new aspect of the infinite fullness of the world, the truth of things, dawns upon us. But it is even a greater step when we see that the Relativity which we havethus discovered is itself Relative. And this is one advantage of first studying the value of the categories of ethics and physics on Logical ground. On the concreter region of Nature and Mind, the several grades and species into which reality is divided have a portentous firmness and grandeur about them, and the intrinsic dialectic seems scarcely adequate to shaking the foundations of their stability. They severally stand as independent self-sustaining entities, separate from each other, and stereotyped in their several formations. But in the ether of abstract Idea, in the fluid and transparent form of mere thoughts, the several stages in the development of the Absolute, the various grades of category, clearly betray their Relativity, and by the negation of this Relativity lead on to a higher Absolute.

To the practical man,—so long as his reflection does not go deep,—the concepts on which his knowledge and faith are built seem eternal, unshifting rock, parts of the inmost fabric of things. He accepts them as ultimate validities. To him matter and force, cause and effect, distinctions between form and content, whole and part, quantity and quality, belong to the final constitution of the world. (And so, in a sense, they do.) If he ever overcome the absoluteness which popular thought attributes to the individual things of sense and imagination, and show their relativity, he does so only to fall under the glamour of a new deception. Causes and matters, forces and atoms, become new ultimates, new absolutes, of another order. Fictions or postulates of the understanding take the place of the figments of imagination. The ordinary scientific man labours especially under the 'metaphysical' fallacy: he realises abstractions in their abstractness. As against this it is the business of the logician to show how suchterms are to be interpreted as steps in a process of interpretation—containing so much that others of simpler structure have handed on, and themselves presupposing by implication a great deal they fail properly to explicate. Thus, the logician evinces at one blow the relativity of each term in its mereness, abstractness, or false absoluteness, and the ideal absoluteness which always carries it beyond itself, and makes it mean more than it says.

The natural mind always hastens to substantiate the terms it employs. It makes them a fixed, solid foundation, an hypostasis, on which further building may be raised. If such pseudo-absolutising of concepts is to be called metaphysics, then logic has to free us from the illusions of metaphysics, to de-absolutise them, to disabuse us of a false Absolute. The false Absolute is what Hegel calls the Abstract: it is the part which, because it succeeded in losing sight of its dependence, had believed itself to be a whole. Logic shows—in the phrase of Hegel—that each such term or concept is only an attempt to express, explicate, or define the Absolute[3]: a predicate of the Absolute, but falling short of its subject, or only uttering part of the whole truth of reality. But while Logic shows it only to be an attempt, and therefore in an aspect relative, it equally shows its ingrained tendency to complete itself, to carry out to realisation its ideal implication,—shows, in short, that e. g. force is more thanmereforce, that thing-in-itself is not properly even a thing; that a veritable notion (Begriff) or grasp of a thing is more than amere(subjective) notion, &c. Thus the true Absolute is not the emptiest and most meagre of abstractions,—what is left as a residual after the relative in all its breadth and length has been cut out of it;it is the concretest of all being, the whole which includes without destroying all partial aspects. Yet as it includes them, it shows itself their master and more than master: making each lose and win in the other, till all are satisfied in unity, and no shade of individuality is utterly lost in the totality of the Universal.

Accordingly, Metaphysics and Logic tend to form one body. For the distant and transcendent Absolute, which was the object of older Metaphysics, was substituted an Absolute, self-revealing in the terms of thought. Being is deposed from its absoluteness, and made the first postulate of thought. Former Metaphysics had dashed itself in vain against the reefs that girdle the island of the supersensible and noümenal, the supposed world of true Being: and the struggle at last grew so disastrous that Kant gave the signal to retreat, and to leave the world of true Being, the impregnable Thing-in-itself, to its repose. His advice to metaphysicians[4]was that, while scientific research continued to concentrate the attack of analysis upon single experiences conforming to certain conditions, they should investigate these' conditions of possible experience or foundations of objectivity. In other words, he turned observation to what he called Transcendental Logic. It was by means of this suggestion, understood in the widest sense, that Hegel was led to treat Logic as the science of ultimate reality. He had to show how these conditions when carried out in full gave the Unconditioned. He attacked the Absolute, if we may say so, in detail. The Absolute, as the totality, universe or system of Relativity,lays itself open to observation by deposing itself to a Relative. It possesses the differentiating power of separating itself as an object in passivity, from itself as a subject in action,—of deposing itself to appearance, of beingforitself, and alsoinandforitself. And thus Thought is the active universal,—which actualises itself more and more out of abstraction into concreteness.

Hegel, then, solved the problem of Metaphysics by turning it into Logic. The same principle, Thought, appeared in both: in the former as a fixed and passive result, showing no traces of spontaneity,—in the latter as an activity, with a mere power of passing from object to object, discovering and establishing connexions and relations. The two sciences were fragments, unintelligible and untenable, when taken in abstract isolation. This is the justification, if justification be required, for Hegel's unification of Logic and Metaphysics. The Hegelian Logic falls into three parts: the theory of Transitory Being: the theory of Relative Being: and the theory of the Notion. The first and second of these in his Science of Logic are called Objective Logic; they also might be described as Metaphysics. The third part is more strictly on Logical ground. Or perhaps it is best to describe the whole as the Metaphysics of Logic.

The Logic of Hegel is the Science of Thought as an organic system of its characteristic forms, which in their entirety constitute the Idea. These forms or types of thought, the moulds in which the Idea confines itself in its evolution, are not unlike what have been otherwise called the Categories. (Of course the foreign word 'Categories' does not commend itself to Hegel).[5]Theyare the modifications or definite forms, the articulated and distinct shapes, in which the process of Thought ever and anon culminates in the course of its movement. The Infinite and Absolute at these points conditions itself, and as so conditioned or differentiated is apprehended and stamped with a name. They specify the unspecified, and give utterance to the ineffable. They are the names by which reason grasps the totality of things,—the names by which the truth (or God) reveals itself, however inadequately. From one point of view they constitute a series, each evolved from the other, a more completely detailed term or utterance of thought resulting by innate contradiction from a less detailed. From another point of view the total remains perpetually the same; and the change seems only on the surface. The one aspect of the movement conceals the Absolute: the other puts the Relative into the background.

What then are the Categories? We may answer: They are the ways in which expression is given to the unifying influence of thought: and we have to consider them as points or stations in the progress of this unification, and in the light of this influence. These Categories are the typical structures marking the definite grades in the growth of thought,—the moulds or forms which thought assumes and places itself in,—those instants when the process of thought takes a determinate form, and admits of being grasped. The growth of thought, like other growths, is often imperceptible and impalpable.And then, unexpectedly, a condensation takes place, a form is precipitated out of the transparent medium. A new concept, a new grasp of reality, emerges from the solution of elements: and a name is created to realise the new shade of the Idea. These thought-terms are the world of Platonic forms, if we consider his 'form of Good' as corresponding to the 'Idea' of Hegel. For if we look carefully into this mystic word 'Good' which plays so brilliant a part in ancient philosophy, we shall see that it only expresses in a more concrete and less analytic form, as ancient thought often does, the same thing as so many moderns love to speak of as Relativity, and which is also implied in Aristotle's conception of an End. To see thingssub specie boni—which Plato describes as the supreme quality of the truth-seeker who is to guide men into uprightness, or into conformity with the true nature of things,—is to see them elevated above their partial self-subsistence into the harmony and totality of that which is always and unvaryingly its real self. The Good is the sun-light in which things lose their earlier character (which they had in the days of our bondage and ignorance) of mysterious and perplexing spectres of the night. In the light of the Good, things are shorn of their false pretence of self-subsistence and substantiality, deposed by comparison with the perfect and unspotted, and as it were stung into seeking a higher form of being by struggle. And this is the abstract moral way of looking. But to see them in the form of Good means also that they are seen to be more and better than we thought, that they are not condemned to inadequacy, but bear in them the witness and revelation of infinity and absoluteness. And this is rather the faith of religion and the vision of art. And the 'form of Good' is only a brief and undevelopedvision of an Absolute, which is the 'form of Relativity,'—Relativity elevated into an Absolute.

A Category is often spoken of as if it were the highest extreme of generalisation, the most abstract and most widely applicable term possible. If we climb sufficiently far and high up the Porphyry's tree of thought, we may expect, thought the old logicians, to reach the 'summa genera' or highest species of human thought. Nor have modern logicians always refrained from this byway. But these quantitative distinctions of greater and less, in which the Formal Logic revels, are not very suitable to any of the terms or processes of thought, and they certainly give an imperfect description of the Categories. The essential function which the Categories perform in the fabric of thought and language is, in the first place, to combine, affirm, demonstrate, relate, and unify,—andnotto generalise.[6]Their action may be better compared to that fulfilled by those symbols in an algebraical expression, which likeplusandminusdenote an operation to be performed in the way of combining or relating, than to the office of the symbols which in these expressions denote the magnitudes themselves.

To the student of language the Categories sometimes present themselves as pronominal, or formal roots,—those roots which, as it is said, do not denote things, but relations between things. He meets them in the inflections of nouns and verbs; in the signs of number, gender, case, and person: but, as thus presented, their influence is subordinate to the things of which they are, as it were, the accidents. He meets them in a moreindependent and tangible shape in the articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and numerals, and in what are called the auxiliary verbs. In these apparently trifling, and in some languages almost non-existent words or parts of words, we have the symbols of relations,—the means of connexion between single words,—the cement which binds significant speech together. There are languages, such as the older and classical forms of Chinese, where these categorising terms are, as it were, in the air: where they are only felt in accent and position, and have no separate existence of their own. But in the languages of the Indo-European family they gradually appear, at first in combination, perhaps, with the more material roots, and only in the course of time asserting an independent form. Originally they appear to denote the relations of space and time,—the generalised or typical links between the parts of our sense-perceptions: but from there they are afterwards, and in a little while, transferred into the service of intellect. These little words are the very life-blood of a language,—its spirit and force. It is in these categories, as they show themselves in the different linguistic families, that a nation betrays its mode and tone of thought. The language of the Altaic races, e. g., expresses activity only as a piece of property, an appropriation of a substance, and knows no true distinction of noun and verb: the Semitic Tongues in their tense-system perhaps betray the intense inwardness of the race: whereas the immense inflectionalism of the Indo-European seems not unconnected with his greater versatility and energy. Complete mastery in the manipulation of these particles and forms is what makes an idiomatic knowledge of a language, as distinct from a mere remembrance of the vocabulary. And philosophy is the recognition of their import and significance.Thus in Greek philosophy the central questions turn upon such words as Being and not-Being: Becoming: that out of which: that for the sake of which: the what-was-being: the what is: the other: the one: the great and small: that which is upon the whole: what is according to each: this somewhat: &c.[7]And again in Modern Philosophy, how often has the battle raged about the meaning of such words as I: will: can: must: because: same and different: self: &c.!

[1]Cf. Herbart's maxim, 'Wie viel Schein, so viel Hindeutung auf Sein.' (Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik.)

[2]Die Natur(1780): 'Sie lebt in lauter Kindern: und die Mutter, wo ist sie?.... Sie ist ganz und doch immer unvollendet.... Sie verbirgt sich in tausend Namen und Termen, und ist immer dieselbe.'

[3]Logic (Encyclop.)§§ 85, 87, 112, 194, &c.

[4]Metaphysic is, in Kant's usage, ambiguous. It means (a) a supposed science of the supersensible or unconditioned reality; (b) a study of the conditions or presuppositions—the Kantiana priori—of some aspect of Experience, e. g. a Metaphysic of Moral rules.

[5]His usual term isDenkbestimmungen,the several expressions or specific forms of the unification which thought is. The term Categories has been identified by Kant with his list ofStammbegriffe.and by Mill with his classes of nameable things,—with some critical remarks on Aristotle's use of the word. That use—to denote the elements of predicable reality, what Grote calledens—is probably not so 'rhapsodical' as Kant, with his new-born zeal for the contrast of sensibility and intellect, was inclined to suppose. A real history of the Category-theory would be almost a history of philosophy. Perhaps the name might be more sparingly used.

[6]Generalisation is only one small aspect of thought, with specialisation as its, at least as important, pendant. To read certain logics, one might think the all-comprehensive virtue of truths were to be general,—not to be true.

[7]ὅν and μὴ ὅν: τὸ γιγνόμενον: τὸ ἐξ οὗ: τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα: τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι: τὸ τί ἐστι: θάτερον: ἕν: τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν: τὸ καθ' ὅλου: τὸ καθ' ἔκαστον: τόδε τί.

Logic, as it is understood in these pages, is the critical history of the terms of thought by which reality, the sum of experience, the world, is described or expressed. It is the philosophical criticism of the concepts, or elements of conception, by which we define or develop the Totality, the Absolute. It describes the constitution of the intellectual realm, by and in which we give body, coherence, unity, and system to reality. It is the self-developing organisation of the thoughts by which we think things, and by which things are what they are. It is the ripe fruit of the experience of the ages of humanity, and it therefore bears in itself a principle of growth. But if it be a fruit, it is a fruit which can watch its own growth, which reflects upon its own life. Its three parts show the main stages of its development, beginning with the least adequate and most abstract or general description of reality.

The first part of Logic, the theory of Being[1], may becalled the theory of unsupported and freely-floating Being. We do not mean something whichis,but the mere 'is,' the bare fact of Being, without any substratum. The degree of condensation or development, where substantive and attribute, or noun and verb, co-exist, has not yet come. The terms or forms of Being float as it were freely in the air, and we go from one to another, or—to put it more correctly—one passes into another. The terms in question are Is and Not: Become: There is: Some and Other: Each: One: Many: and so on through the terms of number to degree and numerical specificality. This Being is immediate: i.e. it contains no reference binding it with anything beyond itself, but stands forward baldly and nakedly, as if alone; and, if hard pressed, it turns over into something else. It includes the three stages of Quality, Quantity, and Measure. The ether of 'Is' presumes no substratum, or further connexion with anything: and we only meet a series of points as we travel along the surface of thought. Toname,tonumber, tomeasure, are the three grades of our ordinary and natural thought: so simple, that one is scarcely disposed to look upon them as grades ofthought at all. And yet if thought is self-specification, what more obvious forms of specifying it are there than to name (so pointing it out, or qualifying it), to number (so quantifying it, or stating its dimensions), and to measure it? These are the three primary specificates by which we think,—the three primary dimensions of thought. Thought, in so determining, plays upon the surface, and has no sense of the interdependence of its terms. And if we could imagine a natural state of consciousness in which sensations had not yet hardened into permanent things, and into connexions between things, we should have something like the range of Immediate Being. Colours and sounds, a series of floating qualities, pass before the eye and the ear: these colours and sounds are in course of time counted: and then, by applying the numbers to these qualities, we get the proportions or limits ascertained. When this process in actual life,—the advance from the vague feelings which tell us of sweet, cold, &c., by means of a definite enumeration of their phenomena, to the rules guiding their operation,—is reduced to its most abstract terms, we have the process of Being. It would be the period when a distinction between things and their actions or properties has not arisen. The demonstrative pronouns and the numerals are among the linguistic expressions of Being in its several stages. Perhaps too we may illustrate it by the so-called 'impersonal' verb—which has hardly reached the stage of verb proper, having no subject: or by the name which still fluctuates between the stage of substantive or adjective.

The first sphere was that of Being directly confronting us, and using the demonstrative pronouns first of all. The second is Relative or Reflective Being: and in this we have to deal with the relative pronouns. Thesurface of Being is now seen to exhibit a secondary formation, to involve a sort of permanent standard in itself, and to be essentially relative. The mere quality, when reduced to number, is seen to be subjected to a certain measure, rule, sort, or standard: and this reflex of itself always haunts it, modifying and determining it. Thus instead of qualities, we begin to speak of the properties of a thing: we have, as it were, two levels of Being, in intimate and necessary connexion, where there was only one before. At first it was but a mere surface-picture, one thing here and another there: a this and a that; one,now,and another,then. This,it might be, was round, andthatsquare:now,it was bright, andthen,it was dull:herewas a head, andtherewas a limb. But the comparison of quality with quantity, measuring one by the other, gave rise to the conception of something permanent, a true nucleus amid the changes. The fact, previously single, is now become double: the mere event is now a phenomenon, a temporary and outward manifestation of something inner. We now see each thatis,in the halo of what ithas been,or will be: the passing modification in the light of the permanent type. But as yet the permanent and the passing are separate, and only throw light on each other: A explaining itself by B and B by A. We have apparently two facts; neither of which can however stand by itself and therefore refers us to the other. But to get a real rest in this incessant round of mutual reference of one to another we must take a higher stand-point.

In this sphere of Relativity the terms expressive of things come in pairs: such as Same and Different, Like and Unlike: True Being and Show or Semblance: Cause and Effect: Substance and Accident: Matter and Form: and the like. If we compare mere Beingto the cell in its simple state, we may say that in the second sphere of Logic a nucleus has been formed,—that a distinction has sprung up between two elements, which are still in closest interconnexion. We have penetrated behind the seeming simplicity of the surface: and in fact discovered it to be mere seeming in the light of the substratum, cause, or essence, upon which it is now reflected. In immediate Being one category, or specificate, or dimension of thought passes over into another, and then disappears: but in mediated Being one category has a meaning only by its relation to another,—only by its reflection on another,—only by the light which another casts upon it. Thus a cause has no meaning except in connexion with its effect: a force implies or postulates an exertion of that force: an essence is constituted by the existence which issues from it. Instead of 'is,' therefore, which denotes resting-upon-self, or connexion-with-self, the verb of the second sphere is 'has,' denoting reference, or connexion-with-something-else: e.g. the causehasan effect: the thinghasproperties. Instead of numerals, come the prepositions and pronouns of relation, such as which, same, like, as, by, because. The only conjunction in the first stage or Being was 'And,'—mere juxtaposition; and even that conjunction was perhaps premature, and due to reflective thought, going beyond what was immediately before it, and tracing out connexions with other things. The first stage, as we have seen, treated of the terms of natural thought present in the action of the senses: the second stage—that of Essential Being—deals with scientific, reflective, or mediate thought. What, why, are the questions: comparison and connexion the methods: the establishment of relations of similarity, causation, and co-existence, the purpose in this range of logical method. Its categories are those most familiarto science in its reflective and comparative stage. It is the peculiar home of what are known as Metaphysical subtleties. The natural but delusive tendency of reasoning is to throw the emphasis on one side of the relation, and to regard the other as accessary and secondary. Contrasts betweenessentiaandexistentia: substantiaandmodi: cause and effect: real and apparent: constantly occur.

If the first branch of Logic was the sphere of simple Being in a point or series of points, the second is that of difference and discordant Being, broken up in itself. The progress in this second sphere—ofEssentiaor Relative being—consists in gradually overcoming the antithesis and discrepancy between the two sides in it—the Permanent and the Phenomenal. At first the stress rests upon the Permanent and true Being which lies behind the seeming—upon the essence or substratum in the background, on which the show of immediate Being has been proved by the process in the first sphere really to rest. Then, secondly, Existence comes to the front, and Appearances or Phenomena are regarded as the only realities with which science can deal. And yet even in this case we cannot but distinguish between matter and form, between the phenomena and their laws, between force and its exercises: and thus repeat the relativity, though both terms in it are now on the whole transferred into the range of the Phenomenal world. The third range of Essential Being is known as Actuality, where the two elements in relation rise to the level of independent existences, essences in phenomenal guise—bound together, and deriving their very characteristics from that close union. Relativity or correlation is now clearly apparent in actual form, and comprises the three heads of Substantial Relation, Causal Relation,and Reciprocal Relation. In this case while the two members of the relation are now indissolubly linked together, they are no more submitted to each other than they are independent. According to Reciprocity everything actual is at once cause and effect: it is the meeting-point of relations: a whole with independent elements in mutual interconnexion. Such a total is the Notion.

This brings us to the third branch of Logic,—the theory of the Notion, or Grasp of Thought.[2]The theory of Causality, with which the second branch closed, continued to let the thought fall asunder into two unequal halves—always however in relation or connexion with each other. But in the present part of the Logic the two halves are re-united, or in their difference their identity is also recognised. Instead of a cause of a thing (which is separate from it in order), we have a concept which is its principle of unity, its universal in which it is individualised. Instead of incessant and endless Relativity, we have Development. By development is meant self-specification, or self-actualisation: the thing is what it becomes, or while it changes it remains identical with itself. The Category or Development is the category or method of philosophic or speculative science: just as Being corresponded to natural thought, and Relativity or Reflection to metaphysical and realistic science. According to the law of Development diversity and unity both receive their due. Mere unity or Being reappears now as Universality or Generality. Merediversity, or the relativity of essence, re-appears as Particularity, or the speciality of details. And the union of the two is seen in the Individualised notion or real object. In other words, the true thought which really grasps and gets all round its object, which is a real whole, is a Triplicity: it is first seen all as the ground or self-same, the possibility—secondly, all as the existence in details, and difference, the actuality or contingency—and thirdly, all as the self-same in difference, and the possible in actuality. Every object in its full reality is an innate movement; and to grasp it wholly we must apprehend it as such a self-evolving and self-involving unity of elements, in each of which however it is whole and entire. Thus the Notion embraces the three elements or factors of universal, particular and individual. These three elements first rise to independence and get their full significance or explication in the syllogism, with its three terms and judgments, exhibiting the various ways in which any two of these elements in thought are brought into unity by means of the third. This adequate form is a system or organic unity which contains in itself the premisses of its conclusion or the means to its realisation,—which is a process within itself, and when complete and self-supporting perforce gives itself reality.

The Notion orBegriffis where Hegel makes his special mark on Logic. Schelling, even, following on Kant, had (like Schopenhauer after him) lauded the merit of the Intuition at the expense of the mere notion[3]and expressed himself surprised at Hegel's use of the word. But what Hegel wants first to insist upon is that the Intuition or Perception (Anschauung) is built upon the Notion—that it is only because there is a universal principle in its details that the individual realityof the percept is assured. That we can elicit a notion from a perception is only possible because it is implicitly dominated by a universal. Secondly, Hegel wishes to note (as elsewhere) that the full adequate notion, the notion as self-explaining and self-constituting, is all that is meant by the object. Thus the Notion or Subject—Causa Sui—when it is fully realised in the plenitude of its elements or differences,—when each element has scope of its own, is the Object—the actual and individualised total of thought, or syllogism in reality. This objective world or Object appears in three forms. An Object is either a mechanical, a chemical, or a teleological object. The terms mechanical and chemical are not to be understood in the narrow sense of a machine or chemical compound. They are to be taken in an analogical sense, just as J. S. Mill speaks of a chemical or geometrical method of treating social problems. The object or realised notion is mechanical, when the unification of the members in the totality comes or seems to come from without, so that the whole or universal they form is external and almost indifferent to the particulars, and only arranges them. An object is chemical, when the connexion or genesis of the compound from its factors is not evident: when the elements are as it were lost, and only give rise to a fresh particular. An object is teleological, when the universal is, though not distinctly conceived as realised, still always as tending to be realised by the particulars. And in each of these grades the object comes more and more to be seen to be a self-enacting, self-legislating being; more and more a due pendant to the subject-notion. Modern science is a vehement opponent of teleology: and with justice, so far as in teleology, means and end fall apart. But it is mistaken in supposing itself to return to the mechanicalpoint of view. On the contrary its success is most generally secured by rising to the point of view given by the Idea of Life, and by looking upon the objective world as an Organism, that is, as the notion in objectivity, soul indissolubly united with body. But even the Idea of Life, in which we enter the third stage of the notion, is defective as a representation of the truth of Objectivity: for body and soul must part. The conception of an Organism or living being is too crude. Reality is no doubt well described as alive: the Absolute well defined as Life. But here again Life is taken in a higher than its sense ofmereLife: it is life as intelligent and volitional energy. If the universe—the Absolute—can be said to be living, it must be said also that it is more than Living. Such a life—such existence—is what Aristotle has calledθεωρίαand ἐνέργεια of the highest in man. It is mental and spiritual life. In its consummation it is the Idea—the absolute Idea—the totality which is and is aware of itself,—the developed unity of the Notion with Objectivity. This unity thus presented is what lies implicit to our perception in Nature: and thus the Idea, as developed in Logic, forms the prologue and presupposition to the Philosophy of Nature.

[1]Being (das Seyn) probably conveys much more to an English reader than is here meant or wanted. It is Being, where the distinction between essence and appearance has not yet emerged or been thought of. If being = τὸ ὄν, then essence (Wesen) =τὸ ὄντωςὄν, the being which underlies and yet includes appearance.Wesenhas more right to the substantival vocable of Being:Seynis little better than an 'Is' or 'Be.'In writers of Locke's time, 'Being seems to mean a reality, an actually existing object, e.g. Clarke: 'There has existed from eternity some one unchangeable and independent Being.' 'What the substance oressenceof that Being is, we have no idea.' 'Essence,' says Locke, 'may be taken for the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is.' Of course Aristotle long ago noted Being as one of the terms with variety of implication; and his own fluctuation aboutοὐσίαis an obvious illustration of this.In the translation of theLogic,Wesenis occasionally rendered by Being (e. g. Supreme Being);Seyn,by existence.Seynhere means so little that one can hardly find any word of sufficiently minimal content for it.

In writers of Locke's time, 'Being seems to mean a reality, an actually existing object, e.g. Clarke: 'There has existed from eternity some one unchangeable and independent Being.' 'What the substance oressenceof that Being is, we have no idea.' 'Essence,' says Locke, 'may be taken for the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is.' Of course Aristotle long ago noted Being as one of the terms with variety of implication; and his own fluctuation aboutοὐσίαis an obvious illustration of this.

In the translation of theLogic,Wesenis occasionally rendered by Being (e. g. Supreme Being);Seyn,by existence.Seynhere means so little that one can hardly find any word of sufficiently minimal content for it.

[2]No doubt, as Dr. W. T. Harris remarks,Notion(used by Dr. Stirling) is a quite insignificant rendering of Hegel'sBegriff:—for which he proposes Self-activity. But, as he admits, that is just Hegel's way: he coins brand-new the old terms, and forces us, if we will follow him, to think full meaning into them.

[3]See vol. ii, Notes and Illustrations, p. 408.

If there be one thing which, more than another, distinguishes Modern Philosophers from the Ancient Philosophy of Athens, it is the desire to discover a First Principle of certainty, a handle by which they may get hold of and set in due order the perplexed mass of reality. They find themselves born to an inheritance of tradition, a mass of belief and lore which overwhelms where it does not support. The long watches of the Middle Ages had been a time of preparation—even if the 'cerebration' had been somewhat unconscious. The mind had been by discipline trained to freedom. As it worked amid the material and tried to order it and defend it, the intellect grew to recognise its lordship over the load of authority. Overt revolts indeed against coercion by decrees and by canons of dogma had never been wanting even in the quietest of the so-called 'ages of faith.' But it is not in the loudest outcry or the most rampant dissent that progress shows its most effective course. The 'catholic' and 'orthodox' tradition equally bears witness to a movement to emancipation, to self-centred intelligence. Such an emancipation however cannot be complete and self-realised without a sharp and painful wrench at the moment of mental birth. The greatword of disruption, of self-assertion, of defiance to the past and to the dominant, must be said: and, as human beings are constituted, it will be said in a tone of acerbity for which neither the revolutionist nor the reactionary are severally alone responsible.

Thus to hear the brave words and the bold defiance hurled out by the thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one might fancy they, like Archimedes, sought a supernal vantage-ground from which they could move the world. Yet, unlike the material earth, the intellectual globe is a burden we each carry with us,—which we find upon us when—if ever—we begin to shake ourselves out of the slothful unconsciousness of our merely vegetative life. For though we all carry it, we do not all feel its weight. In some individuals and in some ages there is so accurate a proportion between the inner power and the outer pressure that the load of belief and custom is but a well-fitting garb, almost a second nature. To others there is a felt disproportion, a sense of superincumbent clothes and uncongenial, unnatural trappings. Out of such struggles to be free, grow, occasionally, philosophers, and reformers. To the former the burden is the burden of the unintelligible: to the latter the burden of the unbearable and intolerable. To the philosopher the removal of the burden consists in such a re-adjustment of the intellectual world that it shall be no longer a foreign thing, but bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. But, to re-adjust and to re-organise, one must stand back from the objective: one must cast it forth, and look about for a clue to an exit from the maze of confusion. The given and subsistent is put on probation: not rejected, but for the moment declined: not denied, but asked to present its credentials.[1]Thisis the ἐποχή of the sceptical schools of later Greece; the invitation to doubt addressed by Descartes to his own soul. It is the protest against that vulgar precipitancy which in primitive and modern credulity is ready to give itself away to any doctrine which has the voice and the garb of outward authority. Or is it the assertion! of the royal and inalienable sovereignty of the Subjectivity to becertainof whatever claims to be objective andtrue: the assertion that what is true must be seen and experienced to be true. Or it is, in another way, the principle of Socrates: that the beginning of knowledge, the first step in the way of wisdom, is to know that you know nothing—to realise the absolute supremacy of self-consciousness.

It is in short the same demand as Augustine's. There is indeed a wide gulf of temperament and circumstances dividing the bishop of Hippo from the mathematician Descartes and the rationalist Spinoza. But in the cry for the knowledge of 'God and my Soul' as the first, the indispensable, the sole knowledge: as theoneknowledge which binds the finite and the infinite together,—the knowledge on which turns the truth of science, and the reality of experience, the great thinkers of these diverse ages are at one.[2]They turn their backs upon the external that they may find rest in the truly internal, on the inner certainty, which is not a mere subjective but a very objective also: not a mereanima mea,but in close unity therewithDeus meus.This is perhaps more explicit in Spinoza, in some points, than in Descartes, and in many respects more decisively put by Augustine than by either. But this is what is really meant by the initial concentration of suspense: this is what is sought when a Principle is sought.Nothing short of this unity of subjective and objective in an Absolute—we may say—Ego, is a principle.

But 'principles' like other terms are sometimes lightly taken; and can be in the plural—just as in lower levels of religion and society there can be gods many and lords many. Nor in a way wrongly. For, as has been before pointed out, a principle is the unity of beginning and end: it is only caught hold of by approaching from different directions: it loses its life and power when cut off from the many organs by which it distributes itself so as to grasp reality. If it be essentially one, it is not a bare unit: it cannot, without injury, be reduced to utter simplicity, and accepted in the shape of a single term. And yet this is what almost inevitably happens to every so-called principle.

Like adeus ex machina, or a trick of the trade, it is applied to unloose every knot, and to clear any difficulties that arise. But a principle of this stamp possesses no intimate connexion or organic solidarity with the theory which it helps to prop. It is always at hand as a ready-made schema or heading, and can be attached to the most incongruous orders of fact. Thus in the works of Aristotle, the principle of 'End' or 'Activity' has sometimes seemed to be applied to whatever subject comes forward, and like a hereditary official vestment to suit all its wearers equally well or equally ill. What is true 'on the whole' is not always true 'of each': theκαθόλονnever quite equals theκαθ' ἔκαστον.The modern principle of Utility is equally flexible in its application to the problems of moral and social life. It costs no trouble to pronounce the magic word, and even 'such as are of weaker capacity' may make something out of such a formula. But an abstract formula, which is equally applicableto everything, is not particularly applicable to anything. While it seems to save trouble, and is so plain as to be almost tautological (as when the worth of a thing or act is explained to mean its utility), it really suggests fresh questions in every case, and multiplies the difficulty. Having an outward adaptability to every kind of fact, the principle has no true sympathy with any: it becomes a mere form, which we use as we do a measuring-rod, moving it along from one thing to another. We are always reverting to first principles as our last principles also. Even Aristotle, when he remarked that an object had to be criticised from its own principles and not from general formulae, saw through the fallacy of this style of argument.

This is like asking for bread and getting a stone. The philosopher, who ought to take us through the shut chambers of the world, merely hands us a key at the gate, telling us that it will unlock every door, and then the insides will speak for themselves. But we would have our philosopher do a little more than this. Not being ourselves omniscient, we should be glad of a guide-book at the least, and perhaps even of the services of an interpreter to explain some peculiarities, some startling phenomena, and sights even more unpleasant than those which appalled the spouse of the notorious Bluebeard. Or, dropping metaphor, we wish the formula to be applied systematically and thoroughly. When that is done the formula loses its abstractness; it gains those necessary amplifications and qualifications, as we call them, without which no theory explains much or gives much information. And thus, instead of fancying that our initial formula contains the truth in a nutshell, we shall find that it is only one step to be taken on the way to truth, and that its narrow statement sinks more and moreinto insignificance, as its amplified theory gains in significance.

But an adequate principle must have other qualities.[3]What has been said up to this point, only amounts to a condition, that our principle must cease to be abstract and formal, and must become concrete and real. What we want, it may be said, is a Beginning. But a beginning is not exactly the same thing as a principle: a beginning is to a large extent a matter of choice and convenience,—a matter depending on the state and prospects of the beginner; and the main point is not where we should begin, but that we should be thorough in our treatment. It is otherwise, however, in the present case. For the skill of the expositor simply lies in the exactitude with which he reproduces the spontaneous movement of growth in his object. His art iscelare artem:to retire, as it were, into the background, and seem to leave the object to expound itself. In a dramatic work it is no doubt the hand of the dramatist that seems to set the whole of the characters in motion, that weaves destinies and snips the thread of life. And yet in a perfect work of dramatic art everything must seem to flow on by a necessity of character, a consecution of inner fate. The true artist dare not act or allow thedeus ex machina.So every genuine work of science—which is more than a compilation, a school-book, a bundle of notes, and contributions toward a subject—must be a self-determined unity—a self-justifying scheme in which the personality of the worker enters into and is absorbed in the system of his work.

If this is generally true, it is above all a canon to rule the logician. He at least must follow the Logos and the Logos alone. His theme must be a law unto itself: all its movements must be freely and nobly objective. For his subject-matter is at least an organism, and develops according to an inward law. But it is even more than an organism: it must not merely develop, as organisms do,—not merely live and grow—butknowthat it develops and as it werewillits own development—and in that harmony of being, willing, and knowing, be essentially one. In Hegelian language it must not merely be implicit—an sichorfür uns—the subject of a change which it undergoes and feels, but without definitely realising,—the subject of a change which we (the historians) perceive. It must also befür sich: aware of its modifications, an agent in bringing them about: and yet withal in so looking forth and willing, be self-possessed, and self-enjoying.

The principle of Hegelianism is the principle of Development, the principle of the Notion—but a Notion which is objective as well as subjective—the Idea. That principle then determines the beginning of Logic. We must know the whole course of growth and history before we can say where is the true commencement. It must be that out of which the end can obviously and spontaneously issue. In a sense, it must implicitly contain the end. It must show us the very beginning of thought, before it has yet come to the full consciousness of itself,—when the truth of what it is still lurks in the background and has to be developed. We must see thought in its first and fundamental calling. As the biologist, when he describes the structure of a plant, rests upon the assumption of a previous development of parts, in an existing plant, which has resulted in a seed,—but begins with the seed from which theplant is derived: so the logician must begin with a point which in a way presupposes the system to which it leads. But in its beginning this presupposition is not apparent: and in fact, the presupposition will only appear when the development of the system is complete. The first step in a process, just because it is a step, may be said to presuppose the completed process. Thus the beginning of Logic presumes the fullest realisation of Mind, as the beginning of botany can only be told by one who knows the whole story of the plant. It is from this circumstance that Hegel describes philosophy as a circle rounded in itself, where the end meets with the beginning, or says that philosophy has to grasp its original grasp or conceive its concept. In other words, it is not till we reach the conclusion that we see, in the light thus shed upon the beginning, what that beginning really was. From the general analogy of the sciences we should not expect that the beginning of thought would be full-grown thought, or indeed seem to the undiscerning eye to be thought at all. In many cases, the embryonic organism shows but little similarity to the adult, and occasionally a violent abruptness seems, on cursory glance, to mark off one stage of a creation's growth from the next. Who that knew not the result could in the seed prefigure to himself the tree? The beginning is not usually identifiable with the final issue, except by some effort to trace the process of connexion. The object of science only appears in its truth when the science has done its work.

The beginning of philosophy must hold a germ of development, however dead and motionless it may seem. But it must also to some extent be a result,—the result of the development or concentration of consciousness;—of the other forms of which it is the hypothetical foundation, or, of which it is (otherwise viewed) the firstappearance. The variety of imaginative conception, and the chaos of sense, must vanish in a point, by an act of abstraction, which leaves out all the variety and the chaos,—or rather by an act of distillation, which draws out of them their real essence and concentrated virtue. This variety, when thoroughly examined and tested, shrivels up into a point:—it onlyis.Everything definite as we call it, the endless repetitions of existence, have disappeared, and have left only the energy of concentration, the unitary point of Being.

We may describe the process in two ways. We may say that we have left out of sight all existing differences,—that we have stripped off every vestige of empirical conceptions, and left a residue of pure thought. The thought is pure, perhaps, but it is not entire. In this way of describing it, pure thought is the most abstract thought,—the last outcome of those operations which have divested our conceptions of everything real and concrete about them. But thus to speak of the process as Abstraction would be to express half of the truth only: and would really leave us a mere zero, or gulf of vacuity. In the beginning there would then be nothing—the mere annihilation of all possible and actual existence. And it is certainly true that in the beginning there can be nothing.—On the other hand, and secondly, there is affirmation as well as negation involved in the ultimate action by which sense and imagination pass into thought. They are not left behind, and the emptiness only retained: they are carried into their primary consequence, or into their proximate truth. They are reduced to their simplest equivalent or their lowest term in the vocabulary of thought: which is Being. The process which creates the initial point of pure thought is at once an abstraction from everything, and a concentration upon itself in a point:—which point, accordingly, is a unity or inter-penetration of positive and negative. This absolute self-concentration into a point is the primary step by which Mind comes to know itself,—the first step in the Absolute's process of self-cognition—that process which it is the purpose of Logic to trace, so far as it is conducted in the range of mere thought.

The bare point of Being and nothing more is the beginning in the process of the Absolute's self-cognition: it is, in other words, our first and rudimentary apprehension of reality,—the narrow edge by which we come in contact with the universe of Reason. For these are two aspects of the same. The process of the self-cognition or manifestation of the Absolute Idea is the very process by which philosophers (not philosophers only) have built up the edifice of thought. What the one statement views from the universal side or the totality, the other views in connexion with the several achievements of individual thinkers. Of course the evolution of the system of thought, as it is brought about by individuals, leaves plenty of room for the play of what is known as Chance. The Natural History of Thought or the History of Philosophers has to regard the action of national character upon individual minds, and the reciprocal action of these minds upon one another. The History of Organic Nature similarly presents the dependence of the species upon their surroundings, and of one species upon another in the medium of its conditions. Gradually Physical Science reduces these conditions to their universal forms, and may try to exhibit the evolution of the animal through its species in all grades of development. So in the Science of the development of this Idea the accidents, as we may call them, disappear: and the temporary and local questions, which once engrossed the deepest attention,fade away into generalised forms of universal application. Philosophy, as it historically presents itself in the world, is not an accidental production, or dependent on the arbitrary choice of men. The accident, if such there be, is that these particular men should have been the philosophers, and not that such should have been their philosophy. They were, according to their several capacity for utterance, only the mouth-pieces of the Spirit of the Times,—of the absolute mind under the superficial limitations of their period. They saw the Idea of their world more clearly and distinctly than other men; and therein lies their title to fame: but really their words were only a reflex,—an almost involuntary and necessary movement, due to the pressure of the cosmical reason. The great philosophers are, like all men in all estates, and according to their measure, the ministers of the Truth,—apostles charged to bring about that consummation of the times in which reality is more fully apprehended and more adequately estimated. Necessity is laid upon them to consecrate themselves to the service of the Idea, and to devote their lives to the noble but austere work of speculation—the work which seekssine ira et studioto reconstruct that city of God which is the permanent, if it often be the hidden, foundation of human life.

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