The single members of the body are what they are only by and in relation to their unity. A hande.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 ownself, 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 itassimilates 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 isvirtuallythe same as what life isactually.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 aKind, 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 theanimal 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 progressad 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, ispureself-contained distinguishing of the idea,—intuition which keeps itself in this identical universality. But, asspecificdistinguishing, 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 itsown 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 termsCognition. 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 socalled:—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 atabula 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 isdistinguished 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 theAnalytical 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 chemiste.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 theSynthetic 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 theDefinition. 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 genusgenus 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 tobe 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 thecausa 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 byDivisionin 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 generaltype 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 aTheorem. 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 theDemonstration.
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 withthe 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 inaccepting its content as given or found. Necessityquânecessity 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 baretabula 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 theGood. 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 endin 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 thefinitudeof 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 inposseand inesse: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 theSpeculativeor 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 whichthe 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. Hithertowehave had the idea in development through its various grades asourobject, but now the idea comes to be itsown 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 avast 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 wholedecursus vitaeis 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 theformof 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 isBeing 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 immediatelyis,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 thatend, 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 thejudgmentimplicit 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.
Page5, § 2. After-thought = Nachdenken,i.e.thought which retraces and reproduces an original, but submerged, thought (cf. Hegel'sWerke, vi. p. xv): to be distinguished fromReflexion(cf.Werke, i. 174).
P.7, § 3. On the blending of universal (thought) and individual (sensation) in what is called perception (Wahrnehmen) seeEncycl.§§ 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 andof 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 comprehendwhat is,is the task of philosophy: forwhat isis 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) inWerke,iv. 178seqq.
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. TheAnnals of Philosophyappeared from 1813 to 1826.—The art of preserving the hairwas 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. TheTimesof 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 hisAttempt 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 ofContributions 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 theCritical Journal of Philosophy(Werke,i. 267seqq.), calls 'philosophising before philosophy.'—A similar spirit is operative in Krug's proposal (in hisFundamental 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. 362seqq.) 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 hisInstitutio Theologicahe lays it down that the essential character of all spiritual reality (aσώματον) is to be πρὸς ἑαυτὸ ἐπιστρεπτικόν,i.e.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) asprocessio(ordivisio),reditus,andadunatio.From God 'proceed'—by aneternalcreation—the creatures, who however are not outside the divine nature; and to God all things createdeternallyreturn.
P.31, § 19. Truth:—as early asWerke,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 'TheI thinkmust 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:Inandwiththe 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 oneindividual 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 repetibilityad 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 (continuedad 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 itsprinciple 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 anythinginherentlyvicious 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 anact.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,i.e.a conviction bad in its content, the judgment to be pronounced must be bad,i.e.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? Itis 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 convincedissomething supremely trivial? if I cannotknowtruth, 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 ofWerke,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 andab 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 allraisonnementand the imperturbability with which his eye meets every divergence from the accustomed path and every paradox. It would bequite 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 alsoWerke,xiv. 280seqq.
P.46, § 24. Schelling's expression, 'petrified intelligence.' The reference is to some verses of Schelling inWerke,iv. 546 (first published inZeitschrift 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 DingenThut 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 KräfteBis zum Erguss der ersten Lebenssäfte,. . . . . . .herauf zu des Gedankens JugendkraftWodurch 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 andunconscious 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'sBriefwechsel,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 theindividual 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 andrecognises 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, 1sterStück; and Schelling,Werke,i. (1. Abth.) 34.
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 mereinferencethe 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.'