BD
UC-NRLF
B 3 3h3 52fi
S^U>\\ :\V,
■H
^m^
^^^w
»v
N'«
HEQEUANISn
^
AN D
HUHAN PERSONALITY
w-
sW¥^
^v
Xnnircrt3it\? StuMci> ll-lo. 10
iiE(iEiJA\isji m mm peiiso.\aijtv
$
Kj
-/y
BY
HIRALAL HALDAR, M.A., Ph.D.,
Professor of Philosophy, Krishnath College, Berhampur
Thesis ax)j)roved for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in' the University of Calriitta
1910
PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA
1910
3A)^\fe
PRINTED BY ATULCHANDRA BHATTACHARYYA,
CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY PRESS:
23, Bhawanicharan Dutt's Lank,
Calcwtta.
PREFACE.
The conclusions embodied in this essay are the outcome of many years of study of and reflection on the Philosophy of Hegel. For many years, I was satisfied with the usual British interpre- tation of Hegel and accepted it without reserve. My attitude of that time is expresed in my little book, Tivo Essays on Theology and Ethics, published nearly twenty years ago (now republished under the title of Two Essays on General Philoso- phy and Ethics), and in numerous articles written subsequent ly. I have not now departed from Hegelian principles. Not in the least. I remain an adherent of the Idealistic School, a humble follower of the great masters — Hegel, Green, Caird, Stirling and others who have profoudly influenced me and moulded my intellectual life. This essay is written from the Hegelian stand-point. I only give a new interpretation of Hegel and am convinced that it is the right interpretation. My present views are not inconsistent with those of the Two Essays. They are only a further development of them. How that develop- ment came about, I shall briefly indicate.
Some years ago, my attention was directed to the pheno- menon of multiple personality and the problem arose in my mind : How is this fact to be harmonised with the Idealistic theory of the unity of the self I have always been of opinion that a philosophy which is opposed to empirical facts and cannot give a rational interpretation of them stands self- condemned. As I said in my article on the " Conception of the Absolute" in the Philosophical Revieiv, (New York) "a conception of the Absolute which is violently opposed to the conclusions of science and the sober common sense of practical men must, at once, be rejected as such, however plausible and unanswerable may be the arguments urged in its
IV PREFACE.
behalf. A theory that is not congruous with well-verified facts is worse than an idle dream." I could not, therefore, continue to hold the Idealistic theory of the unity of the self, unless it was capable of being reconciled with the f\\ct of multiple personality. I was greatly perplexed and was beginn- ing to waver in my allegiance to Idealism when a flood of new light was, for me, thrown upon the pages of Hegel. I discover- ed that Hegel, after all, does not teach that the Absolute is a unitar}^ personality. His real theory is that the Absolute is a unity differentiated into persons. It, in one word, is the organic unity of selves — the very thing that multiple perso- nality is ! I found a solution and my difficulties were over. 1, however, shrank from publishing my views and kept them to myself for several years. Who would have believed that an obscure Indian student has discovered the real meaning of Hegel, especially when it is claimed that that meaning is that the diffierentiations of the Absolute are persons. Probably the consequence of publishing such a theory would have been that, in some quarters, it would have been regarded as one more evidence of the total failure of university education in India.
Early in 1909, I read fur the first time, Dr. J. E. McTaggart's Studies in Hegelian Cosmology. I was greatly delighted to find that he also concludes that the Absolute is a unity diffe- rentiated into selves. To find myself suj^ported by so eminent ^n authority, was a great joy and encouragement to me. But though I agree with Dr. McTaggart in thinking that the Absolute is a unity differentiated into persons, my differen- ces with him are serious. I hold that the Absolute is a self- conscious unity of its constituent selves, while Dr. McTaggart is of opinion that it is an impersonal unity of persons. I have subjected Dr. McTaggart's theory to a somew^hat searching criticism. This criticism was necessary to develop my own theory. I now decided to publish my views. There was no longer any reason to feel diffident. I am glad to go forth into the world partially supported by the high authority of Dr. McTaggart.
I'11KKA<'K. V
The theory advanced in this thesis appears to me likc^ly to provide a philosophical foundation for the empirical fact of multiple personality. It also explains what the " subliminal self" of man is, to the existence of which recent investigations point. Further, it shows the way to a reconciliation between Idealistic Monism and Pluralism.
The views of Dr. McTaggart to which reference has been made will be found in the chapters on " Human Immortality " and "The Personality of the Absolute" in his Stiulie.^ in Hegelian Cosmology.''
HiKALAL HaLDAR.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Page. The Absolute and Human Personality ... 1
CHAPTER 11.
Dr. McTaggart on the Personality of the Absolute ... ... •-. ... 28
CHAPTER III. The Absolute and Human Knowledge ... 40
., » » »
HEGELIANISM AND HUMAN PERSONALITY.
CHAPTER L THE ABSOLUTE AND HUMAN PERSONALITY,
" Interpreters of the Hegelian Philosoph}-," says Wallace, "have contradicted each other almost as variously as the several conimontatoi's on the Bible. He is claimed as their head by widely diflferent schools of thought, all of which appeal to him as the original source of their line of argu- ment." Perhaps on no subject connected with the Philo- sophy of Hegel has the divergence of opinion been more marked than on the question of the relation of human personality to the Absolute. In the judgment of critics of one class, Hegelianism is only revived Spinozism and merely inculcates the teachings of the great Jewish Philosopher in more puzzling and less straight-forward language purposely designed to make an old thought appear new. Human personality, we arc asked to believe, is, in Hegel's view, only a transient modification of the Absolute, as evanescent and unsubstantial as the passing waves upon the surface of the ocean. In direct antithesis to this oft-repeated interpretation, we have the theory put forwaixl by one of the ablest and latest expositors of Hegel that the Absolute is an iinpei-sonal unity, a society of finite but perfect in(li\ iduals. Hegel's Absolute, Dr. McTaggart assures us, is "a unity of pei-sons, but it is not a person itself" (Shulif.s in Hegelian CosinoUnfif, J). oS\ Dr. McTaggart does not seem to be quite sure in his own mind that his interpretation of the nature of the Absolute Idea is the right one, fnr he t«'lls us that he proposes "to consider not Hegel's own opinions on the personality of the Absolute, but the con- clusions on the subject which ought logically to be
2 TffK ABS'OLI'TE Wlf
deduced from his conception of the Absohite as determined in the Logic." Dr. McTaggart's theory must be distinguished from that of the Hegelians of the Left, according to whom the Alisolute is unconscious Reason and first comes to conscious- ness only in man. Dr. McTaggart however hokls that the self- differentiations of the Absolute are "perfect finite persons," of some of whom our own selves are the imperfect and limited manifestations. Opposed to all these contradictory views is the conclusion of the bulk of the British expositors of Hegel thai the Absolute is a person, a subject and not a mere sub- stance, who necessarily reveals Himself in nature and more fully in man. A prolonged study of the philosophy of Hegel and the copious literature on it in the English language has brought me to the conclusion t-hivt the tnith is to be found in the synthesis, in the Hegelian sense of the term, of the views of Caird, Wallace, and others on the one side, and of Dr. McTaggart on the other. My object in this essay is to expound and defend this thesis. There are three points of fundamental im- portance to be considered in connection with this subject. AVhat is human personality, and how is it related to the personality of the Absolute, if it be a pei-sonality ? How are the categories related to human knowledge and to the Absolute ? What is the relation of the content of human experience to Reality ? I propose to take up these points for discussion in succession.
Before we are in a position to determine the rela- tion of man to the Absolute, it is necessary to acquire a clear comprehension of the nature of the Absolute. The commonly accepted view of the nature of Hegel's Absolute is that it is the self-conscious unity that comprehends within itself and transcends the relative distinction of subject and object. It is the central unity, the supreme spiritual principle, in which all things have their being and find their ultinjate explanation and out of which they proceed. It is the absolute subject without relation to which no object can exist and whose own existence depends upon its manifestation in the' universe of inter-related objects. Hegel's Absolute Idea is, as Dr.
IR'MAN rEK>S()NALITV. 8
Caird interpi>els it, "the idea of a solt'-consciousness which iiiaiiifests itself in the ditference of self and not-self that through this ditteixince, and by overcoming it, it may atUiin the highest unity with itself." {Ilf'(jd, p, IS^). It is not a unity in which all differences are lost ; it is rather the unity which realises t/^'c// in the ditferonces. The x\bsolute is nob like the substance of Spinoza, oninij)oti;nt in swallowing up its modes but impotent to explain their origin. It is the unity of self-consciousness which exists in and through the plurality of finite objects and to which they refer themselves as their source and explanation. "The 'free' existence of the world," argues Dr. Caird, "as an external aggregate of objects in space, with no appearance of relation to mind, and the ' free ' existence of each object in the world as external to the other objects and merely in contingent relation to them are characteristics which belong to these objects, just because they are the manifestations of a self-determined principle, which can realise itself only as it goes out of itself, or gives itself away, but w^hich in this 'self-alienation' remains 'secure of itself and resting in itself,' On the other hand, this security of intelligence in the freedom of its object is possible just because its own nature is what it has given to the object which, there- fore, in realising itself must return to its source." [Ibid., jx 108). If the foregoing statement gives a correct representa- tion of Hegel's conception of the Absolute, the charge of Pantheism cannot, of course, be legitimately brought against it. The essence of Pantheism is to lay such stress on the unity of all reality that the element of difference is simply ignored or explained away. But Hegelianism, as understood by its leading British exponents, accords equal recognition to the elements of unity and difference in the concrete whole — the Absolute. We are constantly reminded that the ultimate unity of self-consciousness is mejiningless apart from the plurality of finite objects, and the plurality of finit-e objects presupposes and has its being in the \mity of self-conscious- ness, " As the consciousness of the self," s^iys Dr. Caiixl, " is
4 THE ABS^jLUTE and
ojirelatire with the conseionsness of the not-seif, no concep- tioii of either can be satisfactory, which does not recognise a principle of unity, which manifests itself in both, which under- lies all their difference and oppowtion, and which must, therefore, be regarded as capable of reconciling them/' {Idealism ami the Theory of kifiO'idedfje,p. W). Bnt in spite of this clear statement that in HegeFs system the unity of the Absolnte is not incompatible with bnt presupposes the differen- ces of Reality, Hegelianism has never been able to free itself from the imputation of Pantheism. It is easy to say that this is ^eer misunderstanding, but a misunderstanding which cannot be removed even by the most lucid expositions of such a master of style as Dr. Edward Caird, must be presumed to have some justification. Now the main root of the misunderstanding, it seems to me. lies in the over-eraphasis which is apt to be laid, miconscioiisly but inevitably, upon the supreme unity of self- conscioaaieaB to which all reality is traced, and in the line of cleaTage, so to speak, which still remains b<=*tween the subject and object in spite of the clearest possible demonstration of their correlativity. If all reality is at bottom one, and that unity is the unity of self-consciousness, its value and significance is necesaarily greater than that of the mere object, however much the existence of the object may be implied in that of the self. The self Ls more than the object, and the object, in spite of its essential correlativity with the self, is, when comjmred with it, nncrmsciously rerlucefl to the pr^sition of a mere shallow. The Cf>rrelativity, that is to say, is apt to become rather one-sided. This tendency to exalt the self at the expense of the object is intensified by the fact that the correlativity of the subject and object is unable to bridge over the gulf that lies fixed between them. The subject may have no reality apart from the object and conversely, but the subject, be it remembered, %fi nfd the object, nor is the object, subject. What is more natural undeT the cirrrumstance'S than that the object, unable to attain to the level of the subject, should dwindle into in- significance in comparison with it ? And when in this manner
Iff \f V V rMJ>-<»V M.I r\
th«! obj^frtive Wf>rl»l i« tacitly takm to !><• K-mm phI than thr. unity of n(i\('Ci)UH(:'ui\\Hj\*'nn which \h lUr huMul priruiplr of the iinivfirwi, and, con.Sf'fiucntly, morrr and riion" Htr»->iM in laid on the latter, the result Im, if not Pant lui.Mni. nonu-thing \'cry like it. I do not, of course, ari^ue that thin in our explicit thou;(ht. On the contrary, ho far a.s (Hjr conMeionn lf>^ic iM concerned, wr. never allow ourMelv«:M to f«»r^et that "the real unity of the world nianiftntM it.Mt^lf thnm^h its cfjually real dit!'erenceM. " But the >/,yif/<'r-«:»/.rrrn/ of thought jn what I have «Utefl it to bfi. KruphaMiMC the essential corre- lation of the m\( and not-self ever mo naich, the self is self and the not-sfdf U not-»j-'lf, and the two never come into touch with each other. As l'»ng as the matter stands tlnis, the unity of the self tenfl« to Ui fatal to fht? plurality of mere ohje'Cts. how- ever chw^j and vital nmy be the relation of the latter to the former.
The only way to avoid tlu.'s ditheulty, t.liiM irresiMtihle* drift towards Farithf-ism is to realise that the ohjf^ct in vvhirrh the self manifests itself is not only related to the s«lf, hut Im the s^ilf. Every object is also a subject and rire-trrmi.. To Jiay so is not to makt; a simple identification of the one with the other m as to obliterate all distinction between them. What is a subject from its own point of view is an object in relation to other selves. As a knowing wrlf, a thing C(»ntaini all other things within its^ilf as its objects; but it, as an ohject, w itsfilf embraced within the knowledge of the other things regarrled as subjects. To A, regarfb^d as a siibjret. IJ, C, I). K etc, are related as objects of its knowleflge, but A its«lf is an object to B conceivwl as subject and so oi». A l>, C, D anri the rest are thus subjects and objects by turns. The unity of the AWilute is not »«^)mething standing ovi.-r against the dif[>:rences of its objectH. It is realis<?d in the s«rlf-consci- ousnessof each of its oV)jf;cts. It is a unity only in so as far it differentiates itself into the selvf^s of its obj.rcts. It. in other worrK w not an aUtract unity, but a concn;te and organic unitv of its cr»nstituent sfdves. Th- AbM.,tut.r pn M«-nt in the
6 THE ABSOLUTE AXD
self-consciousness of A, whole and undivided, has B, C, D and the rest as its objects, present completely in B as its self-con- sciousness, it has A and others as objects and so on. As Ribot says of the human self that it is a co-ordination, so we may say evenof the Absolute, that it is not a single unitary persona- lity, but a co-ordination of many selves — a self of selves. Such a conception is certainly not destructive to the unity of the Absolute. It, on the contrary, deepens it by showing that in thus going the round of its objects by successively becoming their selves, it remains securely one with itself, supreme and undivided. The idea may best be illustrated by the Leibni- tzian theory of the universe as a system of monads. Each monad is a complete whole which ideates the whole universe from its own point of view. The fundamental mistake of Leibnitz was to isolate the monads completely from each other. If we amend his theory by conceiving of the monads as in in- teraction w^ith and organically related to each other, and regard the monad of monads not as a separate monad but as the unity of the monads realised in them, we shall get something analog- ous to the conception we need. So conceived, each monad would reproduce the whole universe within itself as its object, while it itself would form part of the objective world reproduced in the consciousness of the other monads, the monad of monads being the organic unity of all of them and its consciousness consisting of their consciousness. (1). The Absolute self, that is to say, is a society of selves correlated wdth the universe as a systematic whole of inter-related objects. (2). It, as the self of selves, has for its objective counter-part the universe as
(1) The monads of Leibnitz ideate the universe with different degrees of clearness and distinctness. But in the illustration given the monads must be supposed to reflect the universe, each froin its own point of view, with perfect clearness. What Leibntiz calls imperfect monads would, on this supposition, be imperfect manifestations of the monads which as the constituent elements of the monad of monads— the Absolute, are all perfect.
(2) The term 'society' hardly conveys the meaning, but there is no suitable substitute for it. The personalities into which the Absolute is diflFerentiated are unified in the absolute far more closely than are the individuals in society.
IIIMA.V l'i:i!S(>\ \MTV. 7
an organic whole, while its constituent selves arc the selves of thr particular ohject.s which fonn parts of the world.
"There is a sense," says Dr. Caird, "in which every idealist must admit that the only object of mind is mind. Every one who holds that the real is relative to mind, and, therefore, that the diti'erence between mind and its object cannot be an absolute difference, must acknowledge that what- ever is real (and just so far as it is real) has the nature of mind manifested in it. Reality cannot be alien to the subject that knows it, nor can the intelligence comprehend any object except as it finds itself in it." {Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, Vol. I, p. 193.) But he goes on to say that "it is not necessary to infer from this that every object, which is in any sense real thinks or is a thinking subject." (Hid). It is not a question of inference however. As Dr. Caird himself admits^ "the only object of mind is mind." Of course, every object is not a conscious subject in isolation from others or outside of the Absolute consciousness. But it can be an integral element of the Absolute personality only as having a self of its own. It is impossible to conceive of the Absolute, which is present, whole and undivided, as much in the meanest object as in the totality of nature, as a mere unit}^ It is a plurality as much as a unity. Dr. Caird is most emphatic in declaring that the unity of the Absolute embraces real differences. These differences, however, as self-differentia- tions of the Absolute cannot be ^n^re objects. Objects which are the manifestations of a self, which cannot exist apart from the self, are, I submit, selves as much as objects. It is impossible to avoid this conclusion by arguing that there are differences of degree in Reality. Every object which is in relation to the consciousness of the Absolute, in which the Absolute con- sciousness is manifested, as it must be, completely and in- divisibly, must partake of the perfection of the Absolute. If there are differences of degree in Reality, they belong to the fragmentary and incomplete manifestations of Reality and not to Reality itself. The nnpiriral fact of the dit^erences of
8 THE ATlSol.rTF AND
degree in Reality cannot stand in the way of the conclusion, reached on speculative grounds, that the total system of things in which the Absolute is revealed shares in its perfection. Now, if the total system of things is perfect, there must be a point of view from which every constituent element of it is perfect. It is impossible to say that the universe in which everything is imperfect is, as a whole, perfect. One inclined to take such a view would do well to remember Mr. Bradley's joke about the best of possible worlds in which everything is bad.
Dr. Caird seems to imply that the view that the self- differentiations of the Absolute are themselves selves leads to the conclusion that "nothing exists except minds and their states." Each object, we have seen, is a self from its own point of view and a not-self from the point of view of other objects. It is both a subject, or rather subject-object, and an object, but from different points of view. Every object, indeed, is from its own point of view^ not only a subject, but also an object to itself, but it is an object to itself in the same sense in which the body is the object of the self that animates it. What exist, therefore, are not minds and their sfr(f(?s but minds and their objects, which objects, however, are themselves minds. Dr. Caird's objection can legitimately be urged only against a theory like that of Leibnitz which so cuts off things from each other that no sort of mutual influence is possible between them. Minds, therefore, become incapable of having any content except their own internal states. But a genuine Idealism conceives of objects as the differences in which the ultimate spiritual principle of unity is manifested, which is present in them as their selves, _2^a7'^ici<ZaW6;ecZ but whole and undivided, and gathers them all up into itself without detriment to their I distinctness.
Now the theory set forth above, I maintain, gives a correct and adequate representation of Hegel's conception of the Absolute. Most of the commentators of Hegel are agreed that the Absolute is a personality, but they lay so much stress
HUMAN PERSONA mv. 9
oji its unit}- (hal they <>v»rl'»<'k IIk' iiiijxtrtanl i'act that it is vn\y as a cu-oidiiiatiuii, dcuiuniduit ij of solves, that the Absohite is a self. I agree with Dr. McTaggart in thinking "that the element of differentiation and multiplicity occupies a murh stronger place in Hegel's system than is generally believed." (Sfiulie.'i in Hcijelian Cosiiiolor/y, p. J.). No one denies that ihr unity of the Absolute is, in Hegel's view, the correlative of an 1 founlo 1 on its differences. But what is the nature of thi'se differences ? Are they mere objects ? Objects they most assuredly are, but what is all but universally forgotten is that they are selves as well, selves which exist not on their own account or in isolation from and in total disregard of each other, but {IS integral elements of the Absolute Personality. They, organically related to each other, constitute the Absolute Personality. The phrase organic relation is indeed inadequate to express the truth. The union is much cl )ser than any mere oiganic union can be. But, however close the union may be, it is not incompatible with, but is the other aspect of the relative independence of the selves. Dr. McTaggart has rendered a Vciluable service to higher philosophy by clearly proving that in Hegel's system the self-differentiations of the Absolute are not mere things, but perso^is. But he has also con- verted an important truth into a serious error by declaring that the Absolute is not a person. I shall have later on to examine his conclusion at some length. At present, I wish to dwell U2)on that part of his theory in which I am most heartily in agreement with him, and to cite further evidence from Hegel's works in support of it than he has found it possible to do. "We are certain," says Dr. McTaggart very truly, "that the doctrine of the Absolute Idea teaches us that all reality is spirit. No one, I believe, has ever doubted that this is Hegel's meaning. And it is also beyond doubt, I think, that he con- ceived this spirit as necessarily differentiated. Each of these differences, as not being the whole of spirit will be finite (1).
(1) Dr. McTaggail's use of the term "tiuite"' is apt to be misleading. As each differentiation of the Absolute has others outside it, it is, of course,
B
10 THE ABSOLUTE AND
It is the eternal nature of spirit to be differentiated into finite spirits." {Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 2')' 7). Again, "The meaning of the Absolute Idea is that Reality is a differentiated iinity, in which the unity, has no meaning but the differentia- tions, and the differentiations have no meaning but the unity. The differentiations are individuals for each of whom the unity exists, and whose whole nature consists in the fact that the unity is for them, as the whole nature of the unity consists in the fact that it is for the individuals. And, finally, in the harmony between the unity and the individuals neither side is sub-ordinated to the other, but the harmony is an immediate and ultimate fact." [Ibid, j)- 19.)
Hegel defines the Absolute Idea thus : "The Idea, as unity of the subjective and objective idea, is the notion of the Idea, — a notion whose object is the Idea as such, and for which the objective is Idea, — an object which embraces all characteristics in its unity. This unity is consequently the Absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself — and here at least as a thinking or Logical Idea." [HegeVs Logic, Wallace's Translation, Second Edition, pp. 37-3-7 J^). This, to be sure, is one of the most enigmatical utterances of Hegel. It hardly affords us any clue to his inner meaning. Isolated passages and paragraphs, taken by themselves, will often be found to be of the same description. They are impenetrable and hard as adamant. The only way to compel this dark philosopher to surrender his meaning is laboriously and patiently to keep pace with him, with bad falls occasionally no doubt, as he explains the movement of the categories from Pure Being to tlie Absolute Idea. You must think with him, watch his thought, so to speak, in the making. One must understand tlie whole of Hegel or nothing of him. A hard task un- doubtedly, but there is no way to avoid it. There is no royal road to the citadel of the Absolute Idea. Much help will also be found in the study of the application of his general
finite, but inasmuch as its knowledge embraces the whole of P»-eaIity, it is Infinite in Hegel's sense of the term.
ni'MAX im;i{,s(>x \ijTv. 11
|)rinciples to the concrete facts of life and cxiMriencc. In oidtr, therefore, to ac(|uire an insi't^ht into the meaning of the Abso- lute Idea, Nvi' must go back to the early stages of the dialectic. But even in the definition of it quoted above, it is easy to see that, in Hegel's view, the object of the Idea is its(;lfldea. The highest Reality — the unity of the subjective and objective Idea, "the notion of the Idea" has for its object Idea. The object of nund or spirit, in plainer language, is not a mere thing but mind.
The categories which tirst reveal Hegel's central thought, incompletely no doubt, but unmistakably, are the Infinite and Being-for-self. Hegel heartily endorses Spinoza's dictum, Omnis determinatio est negatio. Everything, in order to be, must have a determinate nature, but determination implies affirmation as much as negation. To say that some- what is, is also to say that it is not something else from which it is distinguished. *'A thing is what it is, only in and by reason of its limit." But that which limits it is itself another thing needing limitation as the condition of its rising into reality. "Something becomes an other ; this other is itself somewhat ; therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on ad infinitum' [HegeVs Logic, Wallaces translation^ Second Edition, p. 174). Thus arises endless progression or what Hegel calls the false infinite. In endless progression, we never leav^e the region of the finite, and have only a tedious iteration of it. Nor is the true infinite to be found somewhere beyond the finite. That which is beyond the finite, being out- side it, is necessarily limited by it and is, therefore, only another finite. An infinite which steers clear of the finite and does not somehow include it within itself is a contradiction. The finite, as finite, passes over into amUher finite which, however, is not alien to it but is involved in its own being, is its alter ego. What thus passes over endlessly from one finite to another does in reality abide with itself. It is the inner being of the finite, the soul of it— the genuine Infinite. "Since what is passed into is quite the same as what passes
12 THE ABSOLUTE AXO
over, since both have one and the same attribute viz. to be an other, it follows that something in its passage into other only joins with itself. To be thus self-related in the passage and in the other, is the genuine infinity." (HeyeVs Logic, Wallaces Translation, Second Edition, P. 176.) What is involved here is the negation of negation, the overcoming of the limit which finitude implies, and, consequently, self-restora- tion. Being thus restored through the negation but not cancellation of limit, Hegel calls Being-for-self
"In Being-for-self," says Hegel, "enters the category of Ideality." (Ibid, P. 178). This is a pronouncement of the utmost importance. The finite which returns upon itself through the negation of its limit is Infinite and, as such, ideal. The determinate Being, "Being-there-and-then" is limited and real, but as the unity which refers to itself in passing over into its other, it is ideal. "The truth of the finite is rather its ideality." Everything, therefore, which exists has a two-fold aspect. As a reality, it is finite and limited and excludes all other things from it ; but as ideal it comprehends everything within itself What is real is also ideal and the ideal must have reality and limitedness of being. "Man," observes Hegel shrewdly, "if he wishes to be actual, must be there and then, and to this end, he must set a limit to himself People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality". (Logic, Wallaces Translation, P. 173). The ideal and the real, the self and the object, body and soul are one and the same and the difference is one of aspects only. On its ideal side, an object is co-extensive with the universe itself — it is omniscient, but as real it is lowly and humble, takes its proper place among other reals and ties its ideal — its self down to \^ itself This explains how it is that every particular self in- cludes all that it knows and yet excludes them. The reality of the ideal is its body and hence the body is not excluded in the same sense in which all other things are. (1). "Being-for-
(1) The interesting and suggestive thought of Leibnitz that the monad, which, as a spiritual entity, luvb the whole iiniverye ideally within itself, is
Ill MAN i'i:i;.s()NAi.ri \'. 13
self," says Ht'gL'l, ''may be (Icsciilnd as ideality, jusL as H(,'iiig- tliero-and-tlK'ii was described as reality. It is said that be- sides reality there is also an ideality. Thus the two categories arc made equal and parallel. I'loperly speaking ideality is not somewhat outside of and beside reality : the notion of ideal- ity just lies in its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when reality is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, it is at once seen to be ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper estimation, when you allow that reality is not all in all, but that an ideality must be recognised outside of it. Such an ideality external to or it may be even beyond reality, would be no better than an empty name. Ideality only h;is a meaning when it is the ideality of something : but this something is not a mere indefinite this or that, but existence characterised as reality which if retained in isolation, possesses no truth." (Logic, Wallaces Translation, pp. 172-78).
Now it does not require much penetration to discern what Hegel is driving at. What he means to say is that the ideality of an object, its inmost essence, is its self. A thing, in so far as it is real, is only one among many things, but the ideal element of it, its unity of self-consciousness is that which has for its object the entire circle of reality. What, as an ideality, includes all other reals is, in so far as it is real, inclu- ded in the ideal elements of other reals. Indeed Hegel, who at times is so obscure, does not leave us in any doubt as to his meaning on this point. He expressly says that Being- for-self is self-consciousness. "The readiest instance of Being- for-self is found in the "I". We know ourselves as existents, distinguished in the first place from other existents, and with certain relations thereto. But we also come to know this ex- pansion of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it were, to a point in the simple form of Being-for-self. When we say "I", we express the reference to self which is infinite, and at the
also a body throvigh its own inherent limitedness— 77ia/erja prima, does not, I think, usually get the consideration it deserves. It ixMiuires modilication, no doubt, but it suggests an important truth.
14 THE ABSOLUTE AND
same time negative." {Logic, Walla es Translation, P. 179). The finite things in their ideality are Beings-for-self, unities of self-consciousness. The whole of reality exists in and for each of them and they exist in the whole. It is beyond doubt that in Being-for-sclf, we have a plurality of selves, a connected sys- tem of ideating centres, in each of which the whole world is re- flected. What conceals this truth from view is, I suspect, the failure to distinguish Being-for-self from the category of the one and many which immediately follows it. Being-for-self, abstractly considered as a self-subsistent real, and in negative relation to others which it excludes, is one. The ideality is for the moment lost sight of and the mere Being-there-and-then, the somewhat, with the power, no doubt, of the ideal at its back, becomes the one. The profounder element is temporarily eclipsed and the development in the subsequent movement of the categories is, till the Notion is reached, mainly on the i^al side, A great inequality exists between the two ele- ments of Being-for-self. Its ideal factor is already "I", but the side of reality is little better than a mere Daseyn. It is like a strong soul animating a frail body. The dialectical move- ment which follows serves to remove this disparity. A serious and needless difficulty is thrown in the way of properly appre- hending Hegel's meaning by the erroneous supposition that the evolution of the categories is really as regular and rhyth- mical as he suggests it to be. On this subject Dr, McTaggart has thrown much valuable light, (Vide Studies in Heijelian Dialectic) but even he, I think, is inclined to suppose that there is more regularity of movement than is really the case. In Being-for-self, the sublime height of the Absolute Idea is already visible, dimly outlined in the distance, even from the low ground of the categories of quality, but in the process of the toilsome ascent to it, we, for long intervals, lose sight of it. If we take care to remember Hegel's explicit statement that "the readiest instance of Being-for-self is the "I", what we have at this stage is a plurality of selves, each infinite, confron- ting each other. The stress is laid decidedly on the aspect of
II (MAN l'i:i!S()\.\I.lT^'. 1'
plurality, .and it is the uiiily (hat is in daii^ci- of bcint,^ ovcr- InokcMl. In later categories, Hegel, as I shall show, ])rings nut piominently the as})ect (t\' \uu\y and liaimonises it with jjIii- rality, but the result gained in the earlier stages is not allowed to be missed. The later stages of the dialectic do not annul the earlier ones. The more developed categories enrich and supplement the poorer and more abstract categories, but what is once gained is never lost.
In the Notion, we have the Ideality of Being- for-self back again, deepened and enriched, and with the unity of the whole strongly emphasised, though the element of plura- lity is by no means ignored. "The Notion", says Hegel, "is a systematic wdiole, in which each of its constituent functions is the very total which the Notion is, and is jxit as indisso- lubly one with it. Thus in its self-identity it has original and complete determinateness" (Logic, Wallace's Translation, P. 287). The explication of the Notion, Hegel calls Development, in order to signalise the truth that in the unfolding of the categories under this section no new element is added, but what is implicit in the universal is made explicit. The Notion is not an abstract universal, but a concrete universal, which involves particularisation in the individuals ofwhiehitisa system. In it "the elements distinguished are without more ado at the same time declared to be identical with one another and with the whole, and the specific character of each is a free being of the whole Notion" (Ibid, P. 289 ). The function of the judgment is to show that the universal cannot abide with itself in aloofness from the individuals, but must parti- cularise itself in them, while the syllogism demonstrates that these individuals must, on their part, surrender themselves to it and thereby become a systematic totality. It is to be doubted whether Hegel was happ}' in his choice of the terms notion, judgment and syllogism, with their inevitable sub- jective implications and association with Formal Logic to express his meaning. But what he seeks to convey through the terminology of Formal Logic is obvious. The Notion is
14
THE ABSOLUTE AND
same time negative." {Logic, Walla es Translation, P. 179). The finite things in their ideality arc Beings-for-self, unities of self-consciousness. The whole of reality exists in and for each of them and they exist in the whole. It is beyond doubt that in Being-for-self, we have a plurality of selves, a connected sys- tem of ideating centres, in each of which the whole world is re- flected. What conceals this truth from view is, I suspect, the foihire to distinguish Being-for-self from the category of the one and many which immediately follows it. Being-for-self, abstractly considered as a self-subsistent real, and in negative relation to others which it excludes, is one. The ideality is for the moment lost sight of and the mere Being- there-and-then, the somewhat, with the power, no doubt, of the ideal at its back, becomes the one. The profounder element is temporarily eclipsed and the development in the subsequent movement of the categories is, till the Notion is reached, mainly on the i^al side, A great inequality exists between the two ele- ments of Being-for-self. Its ideal factor is already "I", but the side of reality is little better than a mere Daseyn. It is like a strong soul animating a frail body. The dialectical move- ment which follows serves to remove this disparity. A serious and needless difficulty is thrown in the way of properly appre- hending Hegel's meaning by the erroneous supposition that the evolution of the categories is really as regular and rhyth- mical as he suggests it to be. On this subject Dr. McTaggart has thrown much valuable light, {Vide Studies in Hegelian Dialectic) but even he, I think, is inclined to suppose that there is more regularity of movement than is really the case. In Being-for-self, the sublime height of the Absolute Idea is already visible, dimly outlined in the distance, even from the low ground of the categories of quality, but in the process of the toilsome ascent to it, we, for long intervals, lose sight of it. If we take care to remember Hegel's explicit statement that "the readiest instance of Being-for-self is the "I", what we have at this stage is a plurality of selves, each infinite, confron- tincr each other. The stress is laid decidedly on the aspect of
ft
IKMAX IT.nsoN'ALITV.
M
plurality, and it is tlic unity that is in (lanc;ci' (»ri)<'in^^ over- looked. In later catoe^ories, Hegel, as I sliall show, luin^^s out prominently the aspect ot" imity and liarnitniises it witli phi- rality, but the result gained in the earlier stages is not idlowcd to be missed. The later stages of the dialectic do not annul the earlier ones. The more developed categories enrich and supplement the poorer an<l more abstract categories, but what is once gained is never lost.
In the Notion, we have the Ideality of Being-for-self back again, deepened and enriched, and with the unity of the whole strongly emphasised, though the element of plura- lity is by no means ignored. "The Notion", says Hegel, "is a systematic whole, in which each of its constituent functions is the very total which the Notion is, and is put as indisso- lubly one w^ith it. Thus in its self-identity it has original and complete determinateness" (Logic, Wallaces Translation, P. ^87). The explication of the Notion, Hegel calls Development, in order to signalise the truth that in the unfolding of the cateo-ories under this section no new element is added, but what is implicit in the universal is made explicit. The Notion is not an abstract universal, but a concrete universal, which involves particularisation in the individuals of which it is a system. In it "the elements distinguished are without more ado at the same time declared to be identical with one another and with the whole, and the specific character of each is a free being of the whole Notion" (Ibid, P. 289 ). The function of the judgment is to show that the universal cannot abide with itself in aloofness from the individuals, but must parti- cularise itself in them, while the syllogism demonstrates that these individuals must, on their part, surrender themselves to it and thereby become a systematic totality. It is to be doubted whether Hegel was happy in his choice of the terms notion, judgment and syllogism, with their inevitable sub- jective implications and association with Formal Logic to express his meaning. But what he seeks to convey through the terminology of Formal Logic is obvious. The Notion is
l(j THE ABSOLUTE AND
tho Spiritual piiiuiplc of unity from Avhicli all things proceed and t«» which all things return. Each of these things is it- self the Notion with a j)articular (U'terniination. "Each func- tion and moment of the Notion is itself the whole Notion." The individual ^^' the universal specified and determined in a j)articular way. It does not, however, exhaust the universal. A particular determination demands other determinations and every individual has other individuals as its aliev egos and. therefore, in eternal and indissoluble fellowship with it. The relation between the universal and the individual, it is of the utmost importance to remember, is not one of the whole and the parts. This is a category which in the Hegelian dialectic is long left behind at the stage of the Notion. The universal, the whole, is differentiated into the individuals, each of which i.s itself a whole. "It is a macrocosm made up of microcosms, which is all in every part." The reality of the universal, it will thus be seen, lies in the individuals, so related to one another as to form an organic whole. Hegel would have fully endorsed Professor Seth Pringle-Pattison's dictum that the individual alone is real, only that care must be taken not to tear off the indi\ idual from other individuals and the systematic totality of them — the universal, to which it belongs. The relation between universality, particularity and individuality is thus expressed by Hegel : "The universal is the self-identical with the express qualification that it simultaneously contains the particular and the individual. Again, the particular is the different or the specific character, but with the qualification that it is in itself universal and is as an individual. Similarly the individual must be understood to be a subject or subs- tratum which involves the genus and species in itself and po.sse.sses a substantial existence." (HeijeVs Logic, Wallace's Trandation, pp. ^9/^-9o).
The individual, it is essential to remember, is not a mere object. It being a specific determination of the Notion is like the Notion, a self. It is subject-object, the unity of the ideal and real, of the finite and the infinite, of soul and body.
HUMAN rF.l!S()XAMTV. 17
The object is the iii(li\ i<hi;il with its subjectivity abstracted from. The Notion is realised in the indivichials and the indivi- (luals live, move and have their bein^ in the Notion. It is the unit}' of the whole that goes out of itself to them and only in this way reduces them to subordination to itself. "Every individual being", says Hegel, "is some one aspect of the Idea: for which, therefore, yet other actualities are needed, which in their turn appear to have a self-subsistence of their own. It is only in the:n altogether and in their relation that the Notion is realised" (HegeVs Logic, W<ilh tec's Translation, P. -l-l.i). The Notion, in short, is a unity of self-consciousness which is a system, a totality, an organic unity of subordinate unities of self-consciousness, each of which, determined and particularised and thus embodied in an object, is a whole and infinite. At the siage of Being- for-self, we had the unity of the whole rather thrust into the background. Now, however, it is prominently forward, not extinguishing but vitalising the subordinate selves, the Beings-for-self, the individuals. It gives reality to them and apart fi-om them it itself has no reality. Hegel's Absolute, we thus see, is the unity of the ideal and the real, which on the ideal side is a community of selves and on the real side a universe of inter-related objects.
The Notion completely developed and as a fully ex- pressed totality of individuals is, when viewed externally, so to speak, the object. It, in its perfection, is the unity of the
subject and the object the Idea. Hegel begins with the
ideality of the Notion and shows that w^hen it is fully explicated, it is embodied in the object. The object, again, taken one- sidedly and in abstraction from the subject, is in contradiction with itself and leads us back to the ideal element, which is all along presupposed and without which it would not be. The evolution of objectivity tow^ards ideality, we may pass over, as it is not of prime importance in illustrating our theme, but here also Hegel steadily keeps eye on the two aspects of
Reality unity and plurality. In object qua object, a
reconciliation of these two moments is not possible, and it is
c
18 THE ARSOIJJTE AND
this con trad iction which is the sprinr^ that makes the dialec- tical coach move forward at this point. The object, sa3's Hegvl, is a totality "which breaks up into distinct parts each of which is itself the totality". Now the dialectic, in the second section of the doctrine of the Notion, seeks to prove that the part which is an independent totality, and yet is subordinated to a more comprehensive totality, must be a spiritual unity.
In the categories of Life and Cognition, the correlati- vity of oneness and difference is further exhibited on a hig'her j)lane and the teleological character of the miity of the whole is explicitly brought out. Dr. McTaggart has fully dealt with these categories in arguing that the self-differentiations of the Al>solute are persons and I do not, therefore, intend to say much al>out them. The im2)ortance of these categories lies in the fact that in them the unity of the Absolute is expressly shown to be a purposive unity. This is certainly implied in the conception of the whole which so sunders itself into parts as to remain in each of them a whole, the parts, on their side, returning in mutual fellowship to the source from which they proceed. But here the iniplied idea is made ex- plicit and j^rominent, and immanent design becomes the ground-plan of the world. According to the categ-ory of Life, "Reality", to quote Dr. McTaggart, "is a unity differentiated into phn-ality ( or a plurality combined into unity) in such a way that the whole meaning and significance of the unity lies in its being differentiated in that particular plurality, and that the whole meaning and significance of the parts of the plurality lies in their being combined into that particular unity". The consideration that unless the unity exists in and for each individual, the unity is bound to be flxtal to the plurality makes it impossible for us to rest in the category of Life and compels the transition to Cognition and ultimately to the Absolute Idea. Complete satisfaction is found only in the idea of a system of organically inter-connected and inter-conscious indivi- duals that proceed from and surrender themselves to a supreme
iiiMAX i'i:i;.s()N.\i,nv. 19
and Lill-einbracint^ unity of sclf'-consciousncss re.-ili.scd in Lhcni and not beyond thcin.
The conclusion that, the Al)s<.liite Idea is a spiritual principle of unity ditierentiated into selves, which have their being in it as organic elements of ib, is confirmeci by what Hegel says in part III of the Phihh^ophy of Rdiffion, in which he treats of "The Absolute Religion". In the important discussion of this subject, which throws considerable light on his meaning, he distinguishes between, i'God in His eternal idea in and for self; the kingdom of the Father", "The eternal idea of God in the element of consciousness or ordinary thought, or the kingdom of the Son", and "The Idea in the element of the Church or spiritual community — the Kingdom of the Spirit". These constitute the three-fold aspect of the Absolute Spirit who, Hegel maintains, is correctly, though figuratively, re- presented as the Trinity. The first, it is easy to see, corres- ponds to the Absolute Idea of the Logic ; the second to the externalisation of the Idea in nature and man, in so far as man is a natural being ; and the third to the Absolute Spirit. God, the Father, or, as Hegel figuratively puts it, God jis He was in Himself before creation, is not a unitary Being, but is Himself Triune (1). He differentiates Himself within Himself, without yet going out of Himself to nature and man. These self-ditierentiations of God are the Son, not the Son made flesh, but the Son who is eternally with God and is God. God, as the organic unity of these differentiations, is Spirit. Now nothing could be a greater mistake than to suppose that the differences in which the unity of the Absolute is realised cons- titute nature. This appears to be the current idea, but it is erroneous. Nature is the embodiment, the incurnation of
the Son the self-differentiations of God. These differences
being of God are God. The differences of nature are the expression not of a unitary or monadic God, but of a Triune
(U The "unitv" of the Abosolute is, from Hegel's point of view, hv no means a correct expression. The Ahsohite is more appropriately ea]le<I the Trinity, though even this term, as suggestive of mere number, i.s far from adequate.
20 THE ABSOLUTE AND
Gorl. It would be a great mistake to suppose that Hegel so constantl}' speaks of the Trinity in order to accommodate himself to Christianity. It is a well-known fact of his life that he, at the outset of his philosophic career, used to extol the Greek religion of beauty and to disparage Christianity. Later on, he, on speculative grounds, first came to the conclusion that it is the nature of the Absolute to be differentiated into selves which form an organic totality in which they cannot be isohited from one another, to become, in other words, a sjiirit and then began to appreciate what he, rightly or wrongly, regarded as the genuine kernel lying within the husks of orthodox Chris- tianity. The ordinary representation of Hegel's thought that nature is the manifestation of a spiritual principle of unity, though approximately correct, is by no means exact. The spiritual principle of unity is not a barren identity, but a differentiated unity and nature is not the differentiations but the real side, the bodying forth of these differentiations. God, who as spirit is the union of His differentiations, His sons, freely lets Himself go into nature and through the ascending stadia of nature and the progressive civilisation and spiri- tualisation of man, the incarnation of the Son, returns to Him- self in man's religious and philosophic knowledge of Him. As such. He is the Absolute Spirit. Such, in bare outline, is Hegel's thought.
"For the understanding", says Hegel, "God is the one, the essence of essences. This empty identity without difference is the false representation of God given by the understanding and by modern Theology. God is spirit, who gives itself an objective form and knows itself in that." {Philosophy of Reli- gion, English Translation, Volume III, P. ^1.) Real identity, concrete identity, is founded upon difference. "It is only the dead understanding that is self-identical." God is Spirit, the concrete universal, only as a totality of His determinations into which He resolves Himself and to which He imparts Him- self without losing His own unity. "God", observes Hegel, "who represents Being-in-and-for-self eternally i^^'^^^i^ces
Ill MAN I'KKSONALriV. 21
Himself in the form of Tils son, (li.stingiii.shcs Hims»jlffrom Himself, and is the absolute act of judgment and ditfoientia- tion. What He thus distinguishes from Hims<'lf docs not take on the form of something which is other than Himself; but, on the contrary, what is thus distinguished is nothing more or
less than that from which it has been distinguished In
being in the othor whom He has brought into definite existence, or posited. He is simply with Himself, has n(^t gone outside of
Himself God is Himself just this entire act. He is
the beginning, He does this definite thing but He is e(4ually the end only, the totality, and it is as totality that God is spirit. (Philosophy of Relifjion, English Translation, Volume III, P. 12). Again, "God beholds Himself in what is differen- tiated ; and when in His other He is united merely with Himself, He is there with no other but Himself, He is in close union only with Himself, He beholds Himself, in His other ( Ibid, P. IS.) "God thought of simply as the Father", Hegel tolls us, "is not yet the true". 80 conceived He is the "abs- tract God". It is only as the all-embracing totality, in which He is characterised as Himself that God is Spirit, the true Triune God. The passages which I have quoted and many others which might be quoted make it, I think, abundantly clear that, in Hefcel's view% the differentiations of God are not mere objects, but are like Himself, subjects, selves. The object is the self in so far as it is real, limited and externalised. It is the other of self, its body. These selves, Hegel is careful to explain, do not exist in independence of God regarded as Father and in isolation from each other. They "are posited not as exclusive but as existing only in the mutual inclusion of the one by the other". God not only distinguishes Himself but "is at the same time the eternal abolition of the distinction. He posits Himself in the element of difference, but He also abolishes it as well." The unity of God it not prior to His differences. The differentiation which it undergoes "is not of an external kind, but must be defined as an inward <Jifferentiation
22 THE ABSOLUTE AND
in such a way that the First or the Father is to be conceived of i\s the Last."
A different interpretation of Hegel's theory of the Trinity, in so far as it relates to the "Kingdom of the Father", is possible, but is not, I think, tenable. It is that God as Spirit is the unity of subject and object. As subject, He is the Father and as object, opposed to the subject, He is the Son. This appears to be the interpretation usually put upon his doctrine, but it is not adequate. There is this much of truth in it that God as the totality of the selves into which He is differentiated is also the unity that explains and transcends the distinction between subject and object. What God distin- guishes from and opposes to Himself is, no doubt, the object or, more precisely, a universe of inter-related objects, but the object, Hegel maintains, is Himself. This cannot mean that the object which God distinguishes from Himself is Himself in the sense that it is not the other of Him as the Spirit that over-reaches the distinction between self and object. To the Spirit, nothing is opposed : it reconciles moments of it opposed to and distinguished from each other. By the expre- ssions which he uses, Hegel, therefore, can only mean that the objects which God, as the first person in the Trinity, opposes to Himself are like him, selves. It must be remembered that Hegel calls the totality of objects which God distinguishes from Himself, the Son. Now if the object were mere object, such a characterisation of it would be, to say the least, extremely inappropriate. It would also entail the absurdity of saying that man, who is the incarnation of the Son, is the incarnation of the object. Of course, as I have already said, what is opposed to God as subject is the totality of objects, but the objects are also selves. The unity of the Divine self goes out to the plurality of finite objects, in each of which, as the ideality of it, it is realised. Its differentiation into objects, that is to say, is a corresponding differentiation into selves. The objects are exclusive of each other, but their selves exist only "in the mutual inclusion of the one by the other." It is
ill MAX rKltSoN'ALITV. 23
for tliis reason tliat Hrf^cl says that what (Jod distinofuishps tVoin Himsclt" "doos not take on the form o\' soniethin<r whicli is other than liimsi'lf, but, on the contrary, what is thus distinguished is nothing more nor less than tliat from which it has been distinguished," This, at all events, seems to me to be the interpretation of his meaning which is more appro- priate. In fine, God as Spirit is both the totality of selves and the unity that transcends the distinction between subject and object. What He is not is a solitary subject-object.
To sum up : The conclusion to which the Logic un- mistakably points and which is decidedly confirmed by the Pliilosophy of Relvjion is that the Absolute is not a principle c>f unity differentiated into objects, but a self whose nature it is to surrender itself to its constituent selv^es, in each of which it is present, completely and indivisibly, and to brincr them back into its own unity, th(^ objective world being the otherness of this system of selves. Nature, to express the idea in another way, is related to a spiritual principle which is not a barren identity, but a concrete unity of persons.
In the Absolute as a totality of persons, what is the place of man ? This is a question to which it is not easy to find an unambiguous answer in Hegel. "Man as Spirit", he says, "is a reflection of God" (Pliilo>iopliAj of Religion, Eikj- lish Translation, Vohinie III, P. 46]. But what is the nature of this reflection ? Is his existence essential to God ? Does God need him as he needs God, or is he only a creature of the hour, an essentially ephemeral being, whose existence or non-existence makes no difference whatsoever to the fulness of His life ? Various solutions have been given of the problem. It is very hard to find passages in Hegel's writings which nnequi vocally express his meaning, but, on the svh«ile, I am inclined to think that he regards man's existence as essential to the self-realisation of the Absolute. In the return movement from nature to God, man, in Hegel's system, plays the part of the mediator. It is in him that nature comes to a consciousness of itself, and religion and
24 THE ABSOLUTE AXD
philosophy, and Hegel even suggests that his own philosoph3^ are the mediums through which God, incarnated as man, returns to Himself. The ideas of incarnation and atonement figure conspicuously in his system, he is almost obsessed with them and it is impossible not to take him seriously when he descants, upon these high themes. Man is the connecting link between nature and God ; he is the incarnation of God, not of God the Father but of God the Son. This distinction is of very great importance. Man is the incarnation of the Son. That this should be Hegel's view is antecedently probable. The absolute, as we have seen, is differentiated into selves ; it is the organic unity of these selves and there is no surplusage of it above and be3^ond them. If, therefore, man is the reproduction of God, he can only be the reproduction of one of his differentiations.
This view is, I think, supported by a number of passages in the Pliilosophy of Religion. The self-differentia- tions of God, are persons, but they exist iyi God as the elements of His being. " This act of differentiation is merely a move- ment, a playing of love with itself, in which it does not get to the otherness or other being in any serious sense, nor actually reach a condition of separation and division". (PJiilosopJiy of Rdiffion, English Trandaiion, Volume HI, P. So). " Eternal Being-in-and-for-itself is something which unfolds itself, determines itself, differentiates itself, posits itself as its own difference, but the difference, again, is at the same time eter- nally done away with and absorbed ; what has essential Being, Being-in-and-for-itself eternally returns to itself in this, and only in so far as it does this is it spirit " (Ibid, P. 35). When, however, the element of difference acquires what Hegel calls the form of " Otherness which is possessed of Being ", that is to say, when in one aspect of it, it is relatively detached from the whole to which it belongs, we have the Son incarnated as man. " What first appears in the Idea," says Hegel, " is merely the relation of Father and Son; but the other also comes to have the characteristic of other-being or otherness, of something which is " (Ibid, P. S7). The other is a self differentiation of
HUMAN PERSONAM I' V. '2o
God, tho Son of Ool as he is eternally </•//// the Father, but the Other, which aLsu comes to have the characteristic of other-be i)i(j or otJterness is man.
But apart from Hegel's own conclusi<jn on the subject of the relation of man to the Absolute, it is, I think, possible to show on general specuhxtive grounds and in accordance with his principles, that the essential nature of human personality is such that it could not have it unless it were a manifestation of a fundamental differentiation of the Absolute. A differentia- tion of the Absolute is an individual which contains in itself the content of the whole and yet excludes it. As a finite object, it excludes all other finite objects, but as the ideality of it, it is such that there is nothing which is not within it. This double function of the inclusion and exclusion of all, is the fundamental characteristic of the individual. What, as finite, is a real and excludes everything else is, as ideal, infinite and inclusive of everything. It is one and the same thing viewed from two different sides. Now the human self possesses exactly these characteristics and the legitimate inference therefore is, that it is a particular determination of the Absolute, with this difference that inasmuch as it does not reflect the whole actually but only potentially, it must be regarded as an incomplete reproduction of it. Knowledge implies that the object of knowledge is relative to the self that knows and yet is opposed to it. To imagine that the knowing mind is distinct from the thing that is known is the mistake of Realism, and to reduce the objects of knowledge to mere states of mind is the opposite mistake of subjective Idealism. If things were really external to the knowing mind, no miracle could ever bring them inside it and Kant, in his fomous refuta- tion of Idealism, has shown once and for all that knowledge presupposes the existence of objects as the correlative of the knowing mind. Human knowledge, besides conforming to this general condition of knowledge, possesses a characteristic which is not a necessary consequence of that condition. The things which we know are not only relative and opposed to our minds,
D
26 THE ABSOLUTE AND
but are also in a manner, independent of them. This indepen- dence is due to, is, in fact, an aspect of, their externality to the body, while the knowledp^e of them is possible because the mind, which is the ideality of the body, is all-inclusive. Now tliis inclusion of all things in knowledge, and the exclusion of them as particular facts of existence, is what we have seen to be the essential nature of a self-differentiation of the Absolute, arising from the circumstance that it, as one among many differentiations, is finite and limited. The characteristics of the human self as subject of knowledge, we thus see, are identical with those of a fundamental differentiation of the Absolute (1). Its relation to the human body is analogous to the relation between the ideal and real aspects of Being-for-self, and any difference that exists is explicable by the fact that the body of man is the expression not of the fractional entity we call man, but of his true being, viz, a specific determination of the Absolute. There does not seem to be the same intimate connection between man's soul and his body, so much so that the latter has, to some extent, the character of being an other- being like anythin'^ else to the former, as there is between the infinite and the finite, the ideal and real, because the body is the objectivity not of the finite man but of his truer self, or, if you like the expression, his subliminal self(2).
(1) Dr. McTaggart has treated of this point, though in a slightly different wa}', at some length and I, therefore, do not dwell further on it.
(2) It is strange that no commentator of Hegel has thouglit fit to indicate what liis theory of the relation between soul and body is. I claim that the view expressetl in this essay is in agreement with Hegel's. In support of my contention, I rely on passages like the following, besides the whole trend of his teaching : "The notion and its existence are two sides, distinct yet miited, like soul and body. Tlie body is the same life as the soul, and yet the two can })e named independently. A soul without a body would not be a living thing and virp.-vej-sa. The visible existence of the notion is its body" (quoted from the Philosophy of Right in E. S. Haldane's Wif<do)7i and I'eligion of a German Philosopher, p. 135). "In so far as the "I" lives, the soul, which conceives, and, what is more, is free, is not separated from the body. The body is the outward embodiment of freedom and in it the "1" is sensible". (Philosophy of Right, Dyde's Tranxlation, p. 54).
HUMAN PERSONALITY. 27
The body of man, as is well-known, is an organic unity. Ideally, therefore, it must be a system of selves, a self-differen- tiation of the Absolute which is itself a system of differentiations. There is nothing surprising in this. On the contrary, it is exactly what was to be expected. The parts of an organic whole are likely to be organic wholes themselves. If the universe be an organism which is organic in every i)art, it, subjectively, is a system of selves, each of which is itself a system of selves. Which objects of nature are organic wholes is a question on which speculative philosophy can have nothing to say. It must be settled by means of scientific observation. In strict deduction, therefore, from the principle which has been expounded in this essay and which, I am convinced, is the principle of Hegel, it follow^s that man's real self, the ideality of his body, is, like the Absolute whose differentiation it is, a society of selves, though, of course, it is a subordinate society. And is not this the nature of man himself, the fragmentary manifestation ? Let empirical psychology answer this question. The day does not seem to be far distant, if it has not already arrived, when it will be defi- nitely established that human personality is a colony rather than an abstract unity. No other hypothesis, it seems, would serve to explain various normal and abnormal phenomena of the mind. Leonie, Felida X, Sally Beauchamp and a host of others proclaim from the house tops that the self of man is not a simple unitary self, but a complex whole of component selves (1).
To conclude : The human self is a fragmentary manifesta- tion of a differentiation of the Absolute, which is itself a system of differentiations, with the aspect of otherness strongly emphasised and in relative detachment from the totality of the Absolute life and consciousness, in which its transcendental self — the self-differentiation of the Absolute, has its being.
(1) This theory does not by any means destroy the unity of the human
personality M'hich consists not in its substantiality but in its purpof'ivtness. It is too large a subject for me to introduce into this paper.
CHAPTER II.
Dr. McTAGGART ON THE PERSONALITY OF THE ABSOLUTE.
Dr. McTaggarfc, to whom I have ah'eady referred several times, is, so far as I am aware, the only commentator of Hegel who clearly recognises that the Absolute is not a soli- tary self, but a unity of selves. He, however, is so carried away by the enthusiasm of his new discovery of Hegel's real meaning that he forgets altogether the unity of the Absolute, in the only sense in which that unity can have any meaning for us. He denies that the Absolute is a personality. It is a "unity of individuals, each of Avhom is perfectly individual through his perfect unity w^ith all the rest", but it is not itself a person. And as personality is the essential attribute of God, it is better he concludes, "to express our result by saying that the Absolute is not God, and, in consequence, that there is no God." This, in all conscience, is a startling conclusion and we cannot help asking Avhat are the arguments whose irresistible force drives one to it. I am bound to say that his reasoning, when closely examined, is found to be utterly inadequate to support a conclu- sion like this. Indeed, it seems to me, that it is an apt illus- tration of Mr. Bradley's epigi'am that "Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct."
The personality of the Absolute as an all-embracing unity is clearly demanded by the paradoxical character of each constituent self of it, if it be taken as the ultimate form of personality. "If we ask", observes Dr. McTaggart, "what is contained in each individual differentiation, the answer is every thing. But if we ask Avhat is contained in each difierentiation in such a way as not to be also outside it, the answer is nothing. Now this is exactly the form that the paradox of the self would take, if we suppose a self whose knowledge and volition were perfect so that it knew and acquiesced in the whole of Reality."
TfU: PEHSOXAIJTV ay TIIK AliSOLl'TK. 29
(Stndict; tu Hiyelian Co.^riwloiiy, p. 26). And thus he thinks that the paradox of the self would be justified and it cannot, in his view, be justified in any other way. Dr. Mc Taggart rightly says that any attempt to solve the parfidox by either denying that the self includes anything which is external to it, or denying that it excludes what it includes will simply not do. But his own solution is hardly a solution. Incredible as it seems, he contents himself with the assertion that the paradox of the self would be justified by the mere process of recognising that it is a paradox. His reason for thinking so is that "if we are to take the idea of self, not as a mere error, 3'et as less than absolute truth, we must find some justification of it which will show that the necessary course of thought leads up to it and also over it — that it is relatively true as transcending contradic- tions which would otherwise be unreconciled, but relatively as itself developing contradictions which must again be transcended. Can such a deduction be found ? We cannot say with cer- tainty that it never will be, but at any rate it does not seem to have been suggested yet" (Ihid p. 26) Xow Dr. McTaggart deliberately deprives himself of the means of solving the contradiction involved in the idea of the finite self, in the manner which he himself suggests. Of course, the higher idea to which the finite self leads up, cannot be anything which transforms the essential characteristics of self beyond recognition, but it is to be found in the conception of the Absolute as a self differentiated into many selves. Dr. McTaggart does not deny the reality of an ultimate unity which embraces all particular selves within itself On the contrary, he strongly insists upon it. The only question is whether it is a personal unity or not. Xow each particular self, in so far as it contains everything, is identical with the Supreme Reality within which everything falls. Its consciousness as all-embracing must coincide with the Supreme Reality and the Supreme Reality, on its part, must, therefore, coincide with its consciousness and hence he consciousness. I do not see how it is possible to evade this conclusion. A particular differentiation of the Absolute, as a
3Q 1)K. McTAGGART ON
finite (U'terminate thing, excludes all others, but it inchides everything not in its own strength, but in virtue of the identity of its all-embracing consciousness with the Ultimate Reality, which cannot, consequently, be other than consciousness. The conception of a particular self ideally including everything becomes tenable only on the supposition that the inclusion is also real, and if the ideal inclusion is conscious inclusion, so the real inclusion must also be.
Dr. McTaggart argues that "while the unity is for the individuals, the individuals are not for the unity," though they are in it. He devotes considerable space to the consideration of this point and evidently attaches much importance to it. His meaning is that as the whole of the unity must be coii-ipletely in each individual and also be the bond which unites all the individuals, the problem arises, " How is it possible that the whole can be in each of its parts and yet be the whole of which they are parts." "The solution," he tells us, "can only be found by the introduction of a new and higher idea. The conception which, according to Hegel, will overcome the difficulties of the categories of Life, is that of a unity which is not only in the individuals, but also for the in- dividuals. There is only one example of such a category known to us in experience, and that is a system of conscious indivi- duals" (Ihid, p. 13). "The whole point of saying that the unity is /o?' an individual," he further explains, "is that it exists both out of him and in him." The individuals do not certainly exist for the unity, in the sense in which Dr. McTaggart uses the word, because it is not itself an individual, but such a mode of existence is surely a defect due to the fini- tude of the individual and cannot be regarded as the test of the personality of the Absolute. The externality to the indivi- dual which the existence of the whole of Reality /o?" it im- plies, and which nevertheless is in it, is prevented from being a down-right contradiction and sheer nonsense, by the fact that the self-consciousness of the individual is identical with the unity of the Absolute within which all reality falls. Dr.
THE PERSONAT.ITV OF THK AMSOLUTE. 31
McTjiggart's objection turns on the nnwarrantable assumption that as the individuals do not exist /o?^ the unity, it cannot be a self-conscious unity. A relation of this kind is not the con- dition of self-consciousness, but the consequence of the in- completeness and one-sidedness of it. The truth underlying l)i-. ^IcTaorcrart's contention of course is that consciousness implies distinction and opposition, A's consciousness of B, i% J) implies the opposition of B, C, D to A. l^ut the inclusion of all individuals in the Absolute does not mean the cancellation of difference and opposition. The Absolute, in so far as it is a particular individual, excludes others, but the other aspect of this reciprocal exclusion is that they are gathered up, focussed in the unity of the Absolute, without the difference and op- position disappearing.
No one is more emphatic than Dr. McTaggart in declaring that the unity of the Absolute is not less real than its differentiations. To him it is not an abstraction or only another name for a mere aggregate. It is a real unity, an har- monious and coherent whole. All finite selves which are its differentiations are included in it. It is not above and beyond these differentiations but in and through them. The relation of each finite self to the Absolute is organic. The whole is in each part and is equal to the part. Now if the whole, in so far as it is in the part, is personal and can say "I am," how can the whole itself be impersonal ? Once touched with self- consciousness at a particular point, where, be it remembered, it is completely present, how can it ever shake it off? The part is not a fraction of the whole, and it is impossible to argue that though one part of the Absolute is self-conscious, it, as a whole, may not be so. The part is the whole and if it is self-conscious, so must the whole be. If my eyes see a thing, I see it ; if my ears hear a sound, I hear it ; so if the Absolute is a person in me, it must itself have personality. To think otherwise is not to be serious with the doctrine that "the whole of the unity shall be in each individual." The differ- entiations of the Absolute are admittedly persons. If so, it
32 DR. MCTAGGART OX
is inconceivable that their unity, the Absolute, should not be a person. The unity may be more but cannot certainly be less than a person.
The Absolute, as Dr. McTaggart conceives it, is a so- ciety of perfect but finite individuals and, as such, is a spiri- tual unity. Each individual, as perfect, includes and, as finite, excludes all the rest. P, Q, R, let us suppose, are the indivi- duals, whose unity is M, the Absolute. Now M as P consci- ously includes Q and R, M as Q includes P and R and so on. Between the inclusion of Q and R in the consciousness of M as P and that of P and R in the consciousness of M as Q, there can be no breach of continuity. This continuity, how- ever, which must necessarily be a fact of consciousness is not in the consciousness either of P or of Q or of R. P does not itself carry forward the items of its consciousness to Q, nor Q to R. This is the function which belongs to M. The only fact present in the consciousness of P is that it includes Q and R and so with each of the rest. The inference that there is such a continuity must not be confounded with the fact of it. Now it IS this continuity which, as I have said, must be a conscious fact that is realised in M. The facts in the separate consciousnesses of P, Q and R get re-interpreted in the light of their continuity, and so re-interpreted constitute M. This simple and unavoidable reasoning does, I think, establish bey- ond dispute that the Absolute is a conscious unity. The only alternative is to deny that it is a unit}^ at all and so to be driven to monadism.
"If the Absolute," argues Dr. McTaggart, "is to be called a person, because it is a spiritual unity, then every college, every goose-club, every gang of thieves, must also be called a person. For they are all spiritual unities. They all consist exclusively of human beings, and they all unite all their members in some sort of unity. Their unities are indeed much less perfect than the uni<"y of the Absolute. But if an imperfect unity is not to be called an imperfect person, then the name of person must be denied to ourselves as manifested
THE PERsf^XALITV or THE A I'.SOTJ'TK. 33
here and now Now wo call ourselves persons, but
no one, I believe, has ever proposed to call a foot-ball team a person. But if we call the Absolute a person, we should have no defence for refusing the name to the foot-ball team" {Ibid, p. 86). The analogy between a college or a foot-ball team and the Absolute is by no means self-evident. Subordinate unities like the college or the foot-ball team exist for tempo- rary and 2^'^i'ticular purposes and can be formed or dissolved without the least advantage or detriment to the essential nature of their members, but all such subordinate unities presuppose and are grounded on the unity of the Absolute, apart from which ntjthing can even exist. A foot-ball team is a union of its members in so for as they are sportsmen and has no bearing on their life in other respects. So a college is a combination for purposes which cannot be realised without it and the members of it, considered as interested and concern- ed in the execution of these purposes, have no being apart from it, but as individuals with other capacities and functions they have no relation to it. The relation, however, of the Absolute to its constituent individuals is different. It is a union which makes not this or that phase of their existence but the whole of their existence, including their existence as inter-conscious memhers of it possible. It is the pre- condition of and is realised in the inter-consciousness of the individuals it unites, and is ipso facto a conscious unity. If any analogy between such widely disparate entities is at all to be drawn, it is, I venture to think, least misleading to express it in this way. The unity of the foot-ball team is no other than the community of purposes of the sportsmen. The unity of the college consists in the common academic interests of its members. So the unity of the Absolute is, besides other things, the continuity of consciousness involved in the inter-conscious- ness of the selves that constitute it.
Dr. McTaggart justly contends that the conscious- ness of the non-ego is an essential condition of the personality of a finite person. "Such a consciousness the £
34 DR. McTACifJART OX
Absolute cannot possess. For there is nothing outside it, froni
which it can distinguish itself The Absolute has not a
characteristic which is admitted to be essential to all finite personality, which is all the personality of which we have any experience. Is this characteristic essential to personalit}' or only to finite personality ? We know of no personality with- out a non-ego. Nor can we imagine what such a personality would be like. For lue certainly can never say "I" without raising the idea of the non-ego, and so we can never form any idea of the way in which the Absolute would say "I" {Ibid, pp. 68-69). The essential condition of self- consciousness is the opposition and not the externality of the n on -ego to the ego. The non-ego is external to the body and thus comes to have the appearance of externality to the finite mind, because the finite mind is the ideality of the body. Dr. McTaggart fiiils to distinguish an accidental circumstance of our self-consciousness from the essential condition of it. The Absolute, of course^ has nothing outside it from which it can distinguish itself, but from this it does not follow that within it there is no non-ego in distinction from which it has the consciousness of self. For, in relation to every finite differentia- tion of the Absolute, the other differentiations are non-egos. These differentiations, therefore, are by turns egos and non- egos. In the Absolute, all its differences are united but not lost. They retain their fundamental characteristics. The Absolute which says "I" in each of its determinations, has self- consciousness in so fixr as these egos are brought together in its unity. Their self-consciousness is its self-consciousness On the other hand, the differences, in so far as they are non- egos, do not cease to be so by their coming together in it. In the unity of the Absolute, therefore, the double character which belongs to its differentiations is preserved. To say that the element of the non-ego is absent from it, is to say that an essential feature of its component factors is somehow lost in it. But this is impossible if the Absolute is "the differentiated unity or the unified differentiations." The Abso-
THE PERSON ALITV (U TJJi: ABSOLUTE. 35
lute is self-conscious iu and as the totality of the selves which compose it, and the non-ego which it is not without in them is not lost to it. It, in fine, is the unity which transcends but does not annul the relative distinction between e^fo and non- ego set up in the process of differentiation which it undergoes, in order, to exist as the deepest and most comprehensive unity.
Dr. McTaggart takes it for granted that "personality cannot be the attribute of a unity which has no indivisible centre of reference and which is from all points of view all in every part." His thought, it seems to me, is coloured throughout by his view that the self is a substance. "In the identity of the substance," we are told, "lies the personal identity." Dr. McTaggart admits that "this is a rather unfashionable mode of expression." "Unfashionable mode of thought," he might have said. It certainly is not the thought of Hegel, who repeatedly insists on the difference bet- ween a substance and a subject. It is substantially a revival of the pre-Kantian dogmatic theory of the soul, however much it may be modified by the reflection that "each self can only exist in virtue of its connection with all the others and with the Absolute which is their unity." A differentiation of the Absolute is no doubt a substance, but it is much more. On Hegel's principles, it, as a moment of the Absolute Idea, shares in the nature of the Absolute Idea and the Absolute Idea as the ultimate category is immeasurably richer than substance. Instead of saying that personal identity lies in the identity of substance, we should rather invert the proposition and say that the identity of substance lies in its being the objective expression of the identity of self. The unity of the self is, no doubt, realised in each "unity of centre", bub is by no means confined to it. The fact that it is realised in an individual centre, as a particular, is made pos- sible by its going beyond it to other individuals which are thus gathered up into the synthetic unity of the Absolute and thereby reduced to a systematic totality. This is the im-
t^IVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY
Return to desk from which borrowed Tl. book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
NOV 3 1947
%i'
'J t
^' ^ "
■G It
<l
^
ss^
otc
RECEPED LOAN CPT.
LD 21-lOOm!),' 1(-A5702sl6)476
#1
603481
BOA
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRAY
/
3G DR. MCTAGGART ON
portant lesson that we learn from Hegel's doctrine of the Notion. The Absolute is, as Dr. McTaggart says, the "unity of system," but a unity of system which is not the expresion of a unity of self-consciousness is onl\' a mechanical aggregate, or, at best, what Hegel calls Absolute mechanism. Dr. McTaggart speaks as if the conception of an individual including in its know- ledge the whole of Reality, which, at the same time, it ex- cludes, is, in itself, a satisfying conception. It is nothing of the kind. It is in reality a contradictory conception, pointing to the solution of it in the inclusion of the individuals in a wider unity, where it and other selves like it come together and are commingled without loss of their individuality. The one-sidedness of the being and consciousness of the individual, to which the exclusion of the rest is due, presupposes a many- sided and all-embracing consciousness in which each individual gets its proper place in relation to others.
This leads us to the consideration of the question whether the self can be conceived as the totality of selves. "Can we attach," asks Dr. McTaggart, "any meaning to the statement that one self-conscious being should consist of a multiijlicity ot self-conscious beings in such a way that it had no reality apart from them ? Or that one self-conscious being should be part of another in such a way that it had no reality apart from it ?" This question must emphatically be answered in the affirmative. Our own self is, within its limits, of such a nature. It is nothing if not a totality. The true nature of the self is hidden from us by the manner in which the distinc- tion between the self and its states is usually drawn. Each mental state is not merely a state of the self, but is the self in that state. It is because this is so that the states of cons- ciousness are not accidentally associated with, but are intrinsi- cally related to, one another. "All self-consciousness," as Professor Stout says, "implies a division of the total self. When I think about niyself, the I and the myself are never quite identical. The self of which I have an idea is always distinguished from the self which has the idea" {McLiiual
THK HEKSONALITV OF THK ABSOLUTE. 37
of Psijclioluijy, p. 'K^o)- The conscious states are not related to the self as the modes of Spinoza are rehited to the substance. The self is sj)lit up into its states in cMch of which the whole of it is present. When Iluiiu,' .said that he was unable to get at the pure self, but always stumbled upon some particular state of the self, he said no more than the truth, only that he failed to realise that the particular mental state is itself the self so expressed. Had he discerned this the problem of the relatedness of impressions would have been solved for him. Fortunately this is a conclu- sion which does not rest on mere speculative grounds. Empi- rical facts establish it beyond all reasonable doubt. The phenomenon which abnormal cases of the disintegration of personality present, is explicable only on the hypothesis that the normal self consists in the integration of selves. To say so is not to imply that the self is a mere aggregate. It is a totality, no doubt, but a totality whose ground lies in its purposiveness. Its unity is not to be sought for in its substantiality, but in the abiding aim or purpose which holds together the units of it, (1). Such an abiding jjurpose is not a single purpose but a system of purposes in and through which the ultimate meaning of life is progressively realised. The self is one, as far as and no further than, a common purpose runs through it. When the last vestige of a common purpose is gone, the last prepartion for the mad house is completed.
If we are to say that the unity of the Absolute is not a personal unity, what alternative has Dr. McTaggart to ofter ? How is that unity to be conceived ? It will scarcely do to say that it is the unity of unconscious Reason. Dr. McTaggart is hardly likely to resuscitate a theory once fashionable, but now decently buried. Unconscious Reason is as much a chimera as unconscious matter unrelated to intelligence. If the Absolute is not a person, if it is not unconscious Reason, the only alternative that remains is to conceive of it as realised
(1). Professor Josiah Royce has exhaustively treated of the relation of purposiveness to personality in his Conception of God and Gifford lectures.
38 DH. MeTAGOAHT ON
in the selt-consciousness of each individual and the unity of it becomes a mere name. It is only the self-consciousness of P-fthe self-consciousness of Q-f-the self-consciousness of R and so on. Of what avail is it to reiterate, as Dr. McTaggart does, that the unity of the Absolute is as real as its differences, that it is an organic unity and so forth, when all conception of it is rendered impossible by the assertion that consciousness does not belong to it ? Of course, it is not personal as man is personal. Probably it is better to call it, as Mr. Bradley suggests, super-personal ; but to regard it as spiritual minus conscious- ness is, I maintain, impossible. That the denial of self- consciousness to the Absolute must inevitably lead to pluralism is evidenced by Dr. McTaggart's comparison of it to such things as a foot-ball team or a gang of thieves. Of course, these are mere illustrations, though perhaps, not particularly happy ones ; but does not a straw show which v^ay the wind blows ? I suspect that in spite of his stout disclaimers, pluralism silently dominates the thought of Dr. McTaggart more than he himself realises. Between pluralism and the doctrine that the Absolute is a self-conscious unity, there is really no choice.
Dr. McTaggart asserts, though with some hesitation, that "Hegel does not himself regard the Absolute as personal." " It seems clear," he argues. " from the Philosophy of Religion that the truth of God's nature, according to Hegel, is to be found in the kingdom of the Holy Ghost and the kingdom of the Holy Ghost appears to be not a person but a community." (Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 59.) Again, "if God is really personal, He must be personal in the kingdom of the Spirit, for that is the synthesis and in that alone do we get an adequate representation of God's nature" [Ibid, p. 208). I have already stated what, in my judgment, Hegel's view on this subject is and need not dwell on it at any length here. Suffice it to say, that if the kingdom of the Father taken by itself and in isolation from the kingdom of the Son and the kingdom of the Spirit is an abstraction, the kingdom of the Spirit apart from the kingdom of the Father, is equally so. The
THE PERSONA MTV ol TIIK Ar.SoMTK. -SO
validity of Dr. McTaggarts argument depends upon the as- sumption that the kingditm <»r the Father is merged in the kingdom of the Holy Ghost. But, most assuredly, this is not Hegel's meaning. Hegel, who tells us that nature — and to this, be it remembered, the kingdom of the Son corresponds — "is the extreme self-alienation of Spirit, in which it yet remains one with itself" and that "the idea freely lets itself go out of itself, while yet resting in itself, and remaining absolutely secure of itself," cannot possibly teach that in the return to Himself which the stage of the kingdom of the Spirit represents, He ceases to be what He is even in the second kingdom of " extreme self-alienation of Spirit." The Church as a spiritual community is not a person, but has for its presupposition the Personality of God the Father who on His part, "is not God", as Hegel tells us, "without the world" and the community of His incarnate Sons, viz., the Church. In the kingdom of the Spirit, God, who "in the extreme self-alienation of Spirit,'' (nature) "remains absolutely secure" of Himself, returns to Himself, through man's cons- ciousness of Him. "If God were personal," .saj's Dr. McTaggart, "as manifested in the first and second kingdoms, but not in the third, it would mean that He was personal, when viewed inadequately but not when viewed adequately" (Ibid, p. 208). But why should He not be Personal when viewed adequately ? The truth is that Dr. McTaggart conceives of the kingdom of the Spirit as a mere brotherhood of finite Spirits, but in reality and, as I believe, in Hegel's view, it is the brotherhood of finite spirits grounded on the Fatherhood of God or the Fatherhood of God realised in the brotherhood of His children. And this is the view which is in harmony with the substance of Christianity, the defence of which by Hegel is not half- hearted, but whole-hearted and sincere.
CHAPTER III. THE ABSOLUTE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
We now come to the second subject of our inquiry, viz., the relation of the categories to the Absohite and to human knowledge. It is hardly appropriate to speak of the relation of the categories to the Absolute. The categories, according to Hegel, are to be looked upon "as definitions of the Absolute, or metaphj'sical definitions of God" or the expression of "God's nature in thoughts as such." The dia- lectic does not describe the movement of mere human thought, but unfolds the content of the Absolute Mind. This is unquestionably Hegel's view. Logic is Absolute knowledge. In other words, it is the Absolute Mind's consciousness of itself as it really is. It is the self-consciousness of God. No doubt, the philosopher, who traces out the inter-connections of the categories, is a human being, but in Absolute knowledge he rises to the standpoint of the Absolute and transcends the limitations of his nature. "The object of religion, as of philo- sophy is the eternal truth in its very objectivity, — God and nothing but God — and the explication of God." Philosophic knowledge is God's knowledge of Himself through man's knowledge of Him. In so far as man has true philosophic knowledge of God, he is one with God. To be cognisant of the dialectical evolution of the categories is, therefore, to feel the very pulse-beats of the Absolute. "Philosophy", Hegel tells us, "has to consider its object in its necessity, not, indeed, in its subjective necessity or external arrangement, classification etc., but it has to unfold and demonstrate the object out of the necessity of its own inner nature." It exhibits in systematic completeness the elements of the inmost life of the Absolute.
All this may sound strange to ordinary common sense and may seem to be little better than the meaningless utterances
HUMAN KXoWI.KncJE. 41
of a philo.s<^phy gone mad. Yet a little reflection will .show- that the.se paradoxical statements contain nothing but the sober truth. "I think Thy thoughts after Thee, O God ! " exclaimed Kepler, and no body ever dreams of accusing him of blasphemy and over-weening conceit. On the contrary, it is taken as an indication of Kepler's great piety. Hegel says exactly the same thing in the technical language of philosophy. The only difference between him and others like Kepler is that the truth which flashes ujDon their minds only on rare occasions is the permanent basis of his thought which is never off his mind. The agreement of thought with Reality is the ta.ut presupposition on which both science and philo- sophy proceed. If there were a chasm between our thought and Reality, how could we by means of thinking become aware of even the most insignificant truths about things ? To interpose a barrier between human thought and Reality is to make all knowledge impossible, even the knowledge that there is a Reality. Indeed the very problem as to the relation between Thought and Reality can arise only if the distinction between the two has somehow been overcome. In so far as man's thought lays hold of Reality, it is not a mere subjective process, but coincides with the inmost essence of things. The great error of Hegel, no doubt, is that he supposes that man's philosophical knowledge of Reality coincides with the whole content of Reality, but this should not make us blind to the element of truth of what he teaches. Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge of truth so far as it goes, and knowledge of truth is the thinking of God's thought after God, or what Hegel calls the explication of the Absolute.
Green has given a different account of the method of Hegel, If, he says, Thought is to be identified with Reality, it "cannot be the process of philosophising, though Hegel himself, by what seems to us the one essential aberration of his doctrine, treats this process as a sort of movement of the Absolute Thought" {Woih^, Vol III, p. US). Hegel's tault, we are told, is that for an answer to the que.stion, What is
42 THE ABSOLUTE AND
Thought, the questioner "instecad of being duly directed to an investigation of the objective world, and the source of the relations which determine its cont'ent, is rather put on the track of an introspective inquiry what and how he can or cannot conceive." (Ibid, p. 14^3). The world, Green tells us, will not accept the Hegelian view of the relation between God and the world ''until it is made clear that the nature of that thought, which Hegel declares to be the reality of things, is to be ascertained, if at all, from analysis of the objective world, not from reflection on the processes of our intelligence which
really presuppose that world Language which seems
to imply the identification of our discursive understanding with God, or with the world in its spiritual reality can lead to nothing but confusion." {Works, Vol III, j^p- lU-¥>)' <^^i'een sums up his criticism of Hegel by declaring that he suspects that "all along Hegel's method has stood in the way of an acceptance of his conclusion, because, he, at any rate, seemed to arrive at his conclusion as to the spirituality of the world, not by interrogating the w^orld, but by interrogating his own thoughts." The fundamental conclusion of Hegel, however, that "all that is real is the activity or expression of one spiritual self-conscious being," Green heartily accepts, but he states that whoever would present this conclusion in "a form which will command some general acceptance among serioui and scientific men, though he cannot drink too deep of Hegel should rather sit loose to the dialectical method"
{ihidp.ne).
Now this decidedly unfavourable judgment of the dialectical method is, as Dr. Caird rightly says, "not valid against Hegel." The point of it is the assumption that the Hegelian doctrine of the identity of Thought and Being means that there is not even a relative difference between them and that Reality is the same as the psychological process of thinking. This is, of course, far from Hegel's meaning. The process of thinking, as Green says, presupposes the world, but the dependence is not one-sided. The world
HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 4»^
equally presupposes the process of thinking and the unity of the two does not mean their simple sameness, but the higher synthesis of them in which their relative oi)positi<)n to each other is at once preserved and annulled. The opposition between the subjective process of thinking and the objective reality of the world, in the manner in which Green states that opposition, is really irrelevant from Hegel's point of view. Hegel deals with Reality as a whole and the distinctions between the various phases of that Reality, including the distinction between subject and object, fall within its unity,. The business of philosophy is to explain the precise meaning of these distinctions and to show their proper places in the systematic unity of the whole. This is the great task which the dialectical method seeks to accomplish and to sit loose to it is to give up philosophy altogether in despair. An inquiry into the nature of Reality is in one sense "reflection on the processes of our intelligence," in another, it is not. All Reality is relative to intelligence and is the manifestation of it. The distinction between subject and object is created and overcome by intelligence. The various phases of Reality are, therefore^ at the same time modes of intelligence, and as our intelligence is an integral part of the Absolute, an investigation of the objective world is also a study of the forms of intelligence, which are as much forms of the Absolute Thought as of our intelli- gence. But if any one supposes that an introspective examination of the contents of his particular consciousness will reveal to hin\ the nature of Reality, he is, no doubt, open to the censure of Green. Hegel, however, has not in any way made himself amenable to the censure. In his system, if Thought is identi- fied with Being, it is also opposed to it. Thought, as the sub- ject of knowledge, is the correlative of, and, therefore, opposed to the object of knowledge. But this correlativity and op- position implies a unity which transcends the opposition. The ultimate unity within which the distinction of subject and object falls is Thought, as is the subject to which the object is correlative. It is with Thought as the ultimate unity — the
44 THE ABSOLUTE AND
Absolute, that Hegel identifies Reality and not with it as the mere subject of knowledge. Green, I think, overlooks this important distin ction.
What, after all, is the dialectical method which is so obnoxious to Green ? It is not, as he seems to think, a means of determining what and how a man can or cannot conceive, but the method which seeks to show that a partial and inade- quate conception of Reality is inherently contradictory and therefore, leads on to a fuller and more adequate conception, which, in turn, is found to be equally onesided and defective, till we reach the conception of a systematic totality of things in which a single spiritual principle is manifested, or Avhat Hegel calls, the Absolute Idea. (1) The final conclusion of a philosophical system does not rest on the mere ijose dixit of the philosopher. Its justification lies in the fact that from the standpoint of the philosopher no other conception is found to be equally adequate and satisfactory. The truth is that every philosophy must employ the dialectical method con- sciously or unconsciously. The only question is whether it is to be employed thoroughly and systematically or in a perfunc- tory and external manner. Green's o^n method of develop- ing his theory is, in effect, the dialectical method. An object, he shows, taken by itself and held in isolation is a self-con- tradictory thing. Its apparent being is in reality non-being. This contradiction latent in the unscientific view^ that objects are self-subsistent entities is overcome when we realise that to be is to stand in relations. A thing has reality only in so far as it is related to other things. The world, therefore, is not a mere assemblage of things, but a unity based on the con- nectedness of things. Relativity, again, reveals a fresh con- tradiction, unless it is remembered that the objects related to one another can become one, without ceasing to be many, only if we suppose them to be co-present to, and ex- pressions of, a unifying consciousness. Apart from such
(1). This brief description of the Absolute Idea must be understood in the light, of what I have said on t4iis subject above.
a anityiag consciousness^ the ide^ of tlie rebatedu^sts of
objects leads us to the tiagmat coQbradictioo that *>bjjeetSt, as related to one another, are one, and yet thejr are not one, because, unless they are many they cannot beoHoe related to one an»)ther. An argument of this kind is essentially Hegelian and the metho<l of it is in efiect^ the macli decried dialectical method. The great merit of Hegel is that he is not content with examining only a fei^ conicepti<'>n« picked up at random, but undergoes a truly Hercniean laboar in bringing to light the fundamental categories of thouiglit and in showing them to be different phases of the life of the Absolute. He turns to man's theotetic and pnwiical life, to language and science, tO' art and leKgion and by an exhaustive survey of them, sacii as no man has ever undertaken, discovers their ground-concepkioiis and diows that each of them represents a phase of the Absohite, Talid in its own proper sphere, but, taken as complete and setf^nffiang; self-contradictory, and necessitating a ibrwaid moTement tiSl we find that nothing less than the Abeolnite itself can affbid us a final and secure resting ground.
But when all this is said, all difficulties are noi obviated and all doubts are not finally set at rest. The stndeni of Hegel is forced to recognise that phil<3s«:»phy, if it is to be of any worth, must be an explication of Beaiity as a wfaide. To admit this is to admit that man, in ao ^ as he poaBeases philosophical knowle<ige, is a participator in the Thooght of the Absolute. But, nevertheless, it is impoesible not to find a certain unsatisfactoriness in a doctrine which seems to remoie all distinction between frail and finite man and the Ahsirfute. This feeling is well-expressed by Green when he aajs that **when we have satisfied ourselvea that the world in its truth or full reality is spiritual, becaose on no other snp|»6ition is its unity explicable, we may still hare to coofeas that a knowledge of it in its spiritual reality — each a knowledge of it as would be a knowledge of God is impofisible to osw To know God, we must be God The aniiying pnncipie of the
46 THE ABSOLUTE AND
world is indeed in us ; it is our self. But, as in us, it is so conditioned by a particular animal nature that, while it yields the idea of the world as one which regulates all our knowledge, our actual knowledge is a piecemeal process. We spell out the relations of things one by one, we pass from condi- tion to condition, from effect to effect ; but, as one fragment of truth is grasped another has escaped us and we never reach that totality of apprehension through which alone, we could know the world as it is and God in it" ( Works, Vol III, p. 1-^5). In preaching the truth that man's knowledge of Reality is knowledge of the Absolute, Hegel is apt to forget that the whole content of Absolute knowledge is not revealed to him. Between the proposition that the categories of human knowledge are not merely subjective, but integral elements of Absolute Reality, and the proposition that man's knowledge of the Absolute is co-extensive with the Absolute, there is no necessary connection whatsoever. The cardinal error of Hegel the "one essential aberration of his doctrine," to use the lan- guage of Green, is that he passes from the first proposition, which is tenable, to the second proposition, which is untenable and absurd, without warrant or justification. It is ridiculous to imagine that the 60 or 70 categories of Hegel's Logic exhaust the wealth of Divine knowledge. This wholly gratui- tous and presumptuous limitation imposed on the possibilities of Divine knowledge and not his method, as Green supposes, that has really stood in the way of an acceptance of his con- clusions. In the fundamental principles of Hegel, there is nothing which makes such a conclusion necessary. On the contrary, there is a great deal to show that although the logical categories are aspects of Reality, they are only a frac- tion of it which comes within the purview of human knowledge. The notion that to follow the movement of the categories from Pure Being to the Absolute Idea is to take a full measure of the Absolute is, in fact, only a peculiar whim of Hegel's. Everywhere he is inclined to claim finality. The Absolute Thought is analysable exactly into the catergories treated
HIM AN KNoWLEDr.E. 47
of in the Logic, neither more nor less ; Nature is rational — only in so far as it is the other of the logical categories, the extra element that refuses to fit into the categories is only the play of chance ; the quintessence of political wisdom is embodied in the Prussian constitution as it was about the year 1826 ; God reveals Himself in History only on the shores of the Meditteranean and returns to Himself only in the philosophy of Hegel, which, of course, contains the last word of philosophy. All this is perhaps excusable in Hegel himself, for, the greatest philosopher of the world though he is, he is only a man and has his prejudices and bias from which no man is free. But there is no reason why his followers should be tied down to the letter of his system. To deny that the categories of Logic are a complete explication of the Absolute is not to set up a barrier between our knowledge and Reality. They, so far as they go, do reveal the Absolute, but there is more in the Absolute than is dreamt of in Hegel's Logic. What Ave know, we truly know, but we do not know all.
The categories of Hegel bear marks which unmistak- ably indicate that they do not constitute the whole of Reality. If they exhausted the content of the Absolute Life, why should the task of tracing out their inter-connections be so puzzling and difficult of achievement ? We should see at a glance the mutual relations of the categories, if we had all of them before us and there ought to be no uncertainty and hesitation in determining the exact place of each of them in relation to the rest. What is once found to be true would not be liable to subsequent revision and modification. There is no room for tentative procedure in Absolute cognition. Having the whole of Reality and all its constituent elements before him, nothing would be easier for the philosopher than to comprehend how exactly the whole is expressed in the parts and in what precise manner the parts are rt^lated to one another. And the experience of the student of Hegel's philosophy would be equally delightful. Scanning the pages of the Logic, he
48 THE ABSOLUTE AND
would find the whole panorama of Reality unrolled before his eyes and the comprehension of it a process unerring, imme- diate and facile. The actual fact, however, is very different from all this. It is well-known that Hegel did not by any means find the task of linking up the categories an easy one. He speaks of the "labour of the notion" and the hesitancy of his procedure is evidenced by the modifications in the arrange- ment of the categories which he made in the several editions of the Greater Logic and the Encyclopoedia. Is it not strange that there should be so much uncertainty as to the exact relations of the categories to one another, when Hegel professes to know all of them as organic elements of the Absolute ? The logical implication of the claim to a complete knowledge of the Abso- lute is omniscience and if there is no omniscience, it follows that the only knowledge of the Absolute possible to man is piecemeal and sketchy and not detailed and complete.
It is sometimes supposed that the dialectical evolu- tion of the categories is independent of experience. If only the philosophic gaze is fixed steadfiistly on Pure Being a movement will set in which will ultimately carry the philoso- pher to the crowning summit of the Absolute Idea. The dialectic, it is imagined, not only interprets but also generates the categories and for the discovery of them no reference to empirical facts is necessary. Pure Being, by an inner necessity, by its own immanent energy, passes into the next category and this into the next and so on and so on, till in an automatic manner the process is completed when the final category of the Absolute Idea is reached. All this, however, is only a fancy-picture of Hegel's method and is very far from the ac- tual truth. What Hegel really does is that he gathers, mainly from science and language, the root-conceptions which underlie experience and constitute experience and which, therefore, we employ in order to interpret experience and shows how they belong to, are members of, one all-inclusive Reality. Such a procedure, it is needless to explain, depends from beginning to end on experience. Its presupposition is experience and
HUMAN kn()\vij:i)(;k. 49
its o^o;\l is experience ; presupposition, because the eatep^ories are derived from it, goal, because the highest etVort «>t' philoso- phy is directed towards the demonstration of it ,as the systematic unity and embodiment of the categories. Philosophy, therefore, can begin its work only when the sciences have, partially at least, completed theirs. It must wait for a prior interpreta- tion of experience by science. Each science brings to light the fundamental principles or the categories which rule the phenomena with which it deals. Philosophy takes up these catesfories themselves for investigation. It examines them with a view to determine their scope and limitations and the manner in which the lower or more abstract ones lead up to, become merged into, the higher. Depending for its materials on the sciences it must from time to time revise and correct itself, as the sciences make progress in their interpretation of the world. It must follow in the wake of the sciences and cannot anticipate their results. Any claim, therefore, of the finality of philosophy is bound to be futile. If Hegel could come to life again and re- write the Logic to-day, it is certain that he would write it very differently. The old sciences have made enormous progress and profoundly modified many of their con- clusions and new ones have come into existence since his time. Any scheme of the mutual filiation of the categories drawn up to-da}' would be so materially different from Hegel's Logic that very little similarity could be traced between the two. The science of Biology alone, which had no existence in Hegel's time, w^ould furnish so many new categories that, viewed in their light, some at least of the categories of Hegel's Logic would necessarily present a very different appearance. These consi- derations are enough to show that it is absurd to imagine that Hegel's categories are a complete and final explication of the Absolute. Such a supposition would imply the finality of the scientific knowledge which the world had in the first quarter of the last century. "We have no claim," as Professor Laillie says, "to regard Hegel's Logic as finished and unalterable body of truth, the validity of which as a whole stands or tails with G
50 THE ABSOLUTE AND
the validity of each part of it." "No stress," he rightly observes, "can be laid on the seeming finality which is characteristic of the system." {Origin and Significance of Hcgd's Logic, p. 355).
That there are large gaps between the categories in spite of their apparently seamless continuity with each other becomes evident if we glance at some of them. What these missing links are, we cannot even conjecture, but that they do exist, is, I think, undoubted. Take the category of quantity, for example, and the puzzle of the endlessness of space and the infinite divisibility of matter. Hegel's solution of these Kantian antinomies of Cosmology is that they arise from our failure to take together the two moments of quantity, continuity and discreteness, and allowing them to alternate with each other. The difficulty about the endlessness of space troubles us when Ave forget that quantity is not only continuous but also discrete, and the idea of the limitedness of the world in space becomes an embarrassment when we abstract from continuity. An object, in so far as its quantitative aspect is concerned, is the synthesis of continuity and discreteness. Now this answer is no doubt valid, so far as it goes, but it does not ultimately obviate the difficulties involved in the antinomies of Kant. Continuity and discrete- ness are abstractions apart from each other and are true only as mutually related aspects of quantity. To show this, however, is not to perfectly harmonise these opposed moments of quantity with each other. What Hegel proves is that continuity implies discreteness and not that it become or turns over into discreteness and vice-versa. The point will become clear if Ave compare the triad of continuity, discreteness and quantum Avith the triad Being, nothing and Becoming. Being, carefully scruti- nised, turns out to he Nothing and Nothing is Being. Of course the identity is not mere sameness, but Avith all their difference. Being is Nothing and Nothing is Being and the process of the one jydssing over into the other is Becoming. Becoming is thus a real reconciliation of Being and Nothing. The reason of this,
HUMAN' K\nWl.i:i.(jE. 51
no doubt, is that Being and Nothing being the poorest and most abstract categories are, for that very reason, nearest each other. But continuity does not become discreteness, nor, discreten(iss, continuity. The one prcxiippoHeH the other and quantum is their reconciliation only in this sense that the concept of it is analys- ablo into the concepts of continuity and discreteness. Continuity is an element of quantity and cannot be torn off fn^m it. Its correlative, eternal partner, is discreteness, but on its own ground, as distinct, though not separate from discreteness, it gives rise to the puzzle of the endlessness of space. Similarly, in another direction, continuity, as opposed to discreteness, leads to the difficulty of the infinite divisibility of matter. To point to the correlativity of these two categories is not to solve the problem which each from its own point of view raises. To move on to the higher categories is, no doubt, to avoid but not necessarily to conquer the difficulties connec- ted with the lower ones. Had continuity and discreteness passed over into each other, while retaining their difference, like Being and Nothing, the defects of the one might have been supplied by the other, but this is not what happens. The prob- lems arising from continuity and discreteness, in so far as they are distinct from each other, remain unsolved in spite of their correlativity. The truth is that Hegel does not overcome the antinomies of Kant, but only shows that the failure of the two opposed moments of quantity to come into perfect harmony with each other does not in any way discredit Reality, for Reality is vastly more than mere quantity. Nevertheless, the antin(jmies arising from quantity remain unsolved and suggest that though the solution is beyond our comprehension, there must be supplementary categories in the Absolute conscious- ness of such a nature that in the light of them the mysteries of quantity are fully explained.
The false infinite of quality is another illustration of a lacuna in the Hegelian scheme of categories. The difficulty about quantity considered above, is, in fact, only a recurrence on a higher plane of that connected with qualitatively infinite
52 THE ABSOLUTE AND
progression. A somewhat passes over into another, this into somewhat else and so on ad infinituon. The truth of this in- finite series, as we have seen, is the genuine Infinite, w^hich comprehends the infinite series within itself. Reality is more than an infinite series. But this insight does not help us in summing up the infinite series itself. The difficulty inherent in it is not solved by our advancing to a more adequate category. But in the Absolute, the series must somehow be summed up. In other words, the Absolute must have a form of cognition which enables it to comprehend the series as a whole, but, we, lacking in it, are burdened Avith the difficulty w^ithout the means of solving it.
The idea of Time conveys the same lesson. (1). It implies unending succession and yet in the Absolute conscious- ness, the infinite series must be completed. One of the ablest discussions of the relation of Time to the Absolute is to be found in Professor Royce's great work, The World and the Individual. A condensed statement of his views is to be found in a note to his little book. The Conception of Tm- Tnortality. Professor Royce convincingly explains that Eternity means neither the momentary now, nor timelessness, but the whole of Time which over-reaches the distinction between past, present and future. "Let the sequence be a, b, c. Then, in ouv first sense of the term present, when b is present, a is no longer, and c is not yet. And this fact makes the temporal sequence what it is. But in the second sense of the term present, a, b, c, despite this perfectly genuine but relative difference of no longer and not yet or of j9(X.s^ and future, are all present as a totum siomd to the consciousness that grasps the entire sequence" {Conception of Immortality, p. 86). "There is no sort of contradiction," Professor Ro3^ce goes on to observe, "in supposing a form of consciousness for which the events of the Archaean and of the Silurian and of the later (1). Time, of course, is not a category in Hegel's Logic. It is an aspect of the 'otherness' — nature, in which the categories are embodied. This means that it has its ground- work in the categories, which, I think, is to be found in such categories as substance and accident, cause and effect etc.
HUMAN KNOWLKDCE. 53
geolocrical periods sliould be present at once. l«)g(;th('r willi the ftxcts of today's history" {Ihid). The term Etp.rmd consnious- nrss, Professor Royce justly argues, does not mean consciousness not in timn but "a consciousness whose span embraces the whole of Time". "What is present at once to such a conscious- ness, viz., the whole of what ha})pens in time, taken together with all the distinctions of past and of future that hold inifhln the series of temporal events — this whole, I say, constitutes Eternity.'' That a consciousness which is eternally complete must mean a whole within which the relative distinctions of past, present and future fall is indisputable, but it is also true that it is a notion entirely beyond us. It is not enough to say, as Professor Royce does, that we ourselves possess the type of an eternal consciousness. The time of our consciousness is, no doubt, a whole, but it is not a complpie whole. It is inter- minable at both ends. But what for us is an interminable series and a complete whole only idecdly must, for the Absolute, be a really complete whole. Have we the faintest conception of what this is like ? Do we possess any idea of a "conscious- ness whose span embraces the whole of Time" ? Because it must be so, it does not follow that we understand hoiu it is so. Most readers, I am afraid, will find Professor Royce's reasoning in the supplementary essay at the end of the first volume of his Giiibrd lectures more subtle than convincing. The dilemma is that while we cannot deny that Time, as a com- plete series, is a real element of the Absolute, we have not the least idea as to what the higher consciousness is which has the idea of Time, with its antinomies perfectly solved. The indi- cation, however, is that in the Absolute there are categories — modes of consciousness, which so supplement and modify Time as to free it from its inconsistencies. The contradiction of the category of Life, for example, disappears when it passrs into Cognition, and the contradiction of Cognition is solved when it is viewed as a moment of the Absolute Idea. But the contra- diction involved in the idea of Time as an infinite series, which is nevertheless a complete whole, is not overcome by the con-
54 THE ABSOLUTE AXD
siderabioii that the whole of Time is present to the Absolute consciousness. The Absolute has evidently a mode of conscious- ness— a category or categories into which the contra.diction of Time vanishes and which, if it formed an element of our con- sciousness, would obviate for us too the difficulties involved in the idea of Time.
The admissions which we have made may, at first sight, seem to be fatal to the validity of the dialectical method, but a little reflection will serve to remove this doubt. The categories of human knowledge are constitutive elements of Reality, but in Reality there are more of them than come within the ken of human knowledge. Only a section of them is, so to speak, fenced off from their context and constitute human knowledge. As such, they present the appearance of an artificial aggregate. Nevertheless, the categories are organic elements of the Absolute and however much they may seem to be parted off from one another, as known to us, they are members one of another. They, therefore, as participators in one life, as different expressions of one Reality, are naturally drawn towards one another. They have a craving for each other and seek to come together. It is this underlying unity that the dialectic brings to light and becomes possible because of it. But there is another aspect of the matter. The categories though interwoven with one another as organic elements of a single whole are, in so far as they are factors of our knowledge, artificially kept asunder by their partial dis- continuity arising from the fragmentariness of our knowledge. Their mutual relations, therefore, are somewhat puzzling to us. While driven resistlessly towards one another, they are yet unable to come completely together. It is this circumstance which makes the task of tracing out their mutual relations possible, but difficult. The categories being expressions of a single Reality, a connection between any two of them is dis- coverable, but it would seem to be natural, or forced and arti- ficial, according to the extent of the breach of continuity bet- ween them. This is the reason why in Hegel's Logic, we find
TIUMy\N K\o\V|j:i)r.i:. 55
that while in many, perhaps in the majority of instances, the transition of one category into another is p<Tfectly natural and intelligible, there are other instances in which the dialec- tic is little better than verbal (juibbling and the almost com- plete break-down of the argument is concealed by a cloud of words. This is only what was to be expected. When a mis- sing link separates one category from another, it wouM be dithcult to connect the one with the other, though it is n<it impossible ; for, in virtue of the ultimate unity of all of them, there must be an affinity between any two of them.
There is thus a sense in which the dialectic is a subjective procedure, or, as Green says, "an interrogation of subjective consciousness." The inter-connections between the categories which we succeed in tracing out are only such as exist between them as elements of our knowledge and not as they really are between the phases of the Absolute, as known to the Absolute. But this does not mean that our knowledge is merely subjective or false. It is subjective, because it is not completely objective, but valid so far as it goes, and, to that extent, objective. With the growth of knowledge, new elements of it are brought to light and its old relations have necessarily to be recast and modified, but the incomplete knowledge, although absorbed and transformed into the more complete knowledge, does not cease to be valid on its own level. All development implies the absorption of the lower stage into the higher stage, but the lower stage is not thereby proved to be unreal. When we, doubting and hesitating, spell out jjiece-meal the relations between the elements of Reality, we are veritably in touch with it, though touch with Reality does not mean an exhaustive knowledge of it. Hegel's contention that philosophic knowledge is Absolute knowledge or God's knowledge of Himself is not WTong, only that he is apt to forget the correlative truth that, in man, God knows Himself under the conditions and limita- tions of human knowledge. (1).
(1). Thirteen years ago, when I wiote my article on "Some aspects of
56 THE AliSOLUTK ANH
After what has been already stated, it is not necessary to say much on the third branch of our inquiry, viz., the relation of man's experience to the content of Absolute Expe- rience. There is an idea that the Logical categories are complete by themselves and the transition from Logic to nature is similar to the transition from a lower category to a higher category. This supposed transition to nature has always been regarded by the critics of Hegelianism as its weakest point and their main attack has accordingly been directed to that point. Schelling, for example, laid the flattering unction to his soul that he had demolished Hege- lianism once and for all by showing that nature could not be deduced from pure Thought. In truth, however, Hegel was never so absurd as to imagine that he could deduce empirical facts a priori. He has repeatedly told us that nature is the other of Thought. If nature has no meaning apart from Thought, it is equally true that Thought has no meaning apart from nature. Thought without nature is empty and nature without Thought, a non-entity. Logic is an exposition of God cis He is in Himself before creation, but the existence of God before creation, Hegel has expressly told us, is an unreal abstraction. He exists only as revealed in the world. Locric deals with the universal aspect of Reality, but the universal is an abstraction apart from particularity. Nature is the totality of the particular elements in which the Logical Idea is realised and apart from which it has no being. There is, therefore, no transition at all from Logic to nature. In passing on from Logic to the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel does not pretend to deduce nature, but only draws attention to the element of particularity implied throughout the Logic, but abstracted from, for purposes of exposition. Absolute Hegel's Philosophy'* in the PhiloHophioil Jieritir (New York) I had not arrived at my present cjonclusiou^. I then argued that the change in the rela- tions between the categories which the discovery of new categories must mean, invalidates the dialectical method altogether. I did not then sufficient- ly realise that DcN-elopment is more than mere contrariety. {Philosophical Hevietr, Vol. T. Xo. 3. j>. ;/rj-?->.)
lirMW K N'nW I, i: I )(;!■•:. ."7
Thought is eniboflied in Absolute ExptM'iouoe and nat nn- is a part of Absolute Experience.
r have said that nature is part of Absolute Experience. This is not what Hegel says but what, in ordor t<> save his philosophy from utter self-stultification, he ought to have said. He supposes that in natur<', the Logical Idoa is rr>mplr'telv realised and that tin.' Logic expresses the whole uiiivfise. Both the j)ropositions are absolutely untenable. The conrlu- s?ion which Hegel draws from these false premisses of course is, that in God there is nothing which is not manifested in the sensible world. As Pn^fessor Pringle-Pattison rightly sa3's, "in preaching the truth that the Absolute is revealed in the world of its appearances, not craftily concealed behind them, Hegel seems to pass to a sheer identification of the two. But while it is true that the two aspects must hk everywhere combined — an Absolute which does not appear oi- reveal itself, and an appearance without something which appears being cor- relative abstractions — that is not tantamount to saying that the appearance of the Absolute to itself — the Divine Life as lived by God Himself — is identical with the appearance which the world presents to the Hegelian philosopher." (2' wo Lectures on Theism, p. 36). Hegel, however, finds nature, even as it is known to us, rather a hard nut to crack. It refuses to be squeezed into his symmetrically constructed sx^heme of categories. Evidently, it is more than a mere embodiment of the categories recognised in his Logic. Instead of frankly admitting, under the circumstances, that the Logic is not a complete exposition of the Absolute, Hegel adopts the strange course of disparaging nature. In so far as he fails to under- stand it, it is not rational at all 1 He concludes that there is an element of contingency in nature of whith no rational explanation is possible, and does not stop to enquire whether such a conclusion is consistent with his fundamental principles and whether the seeming contingency of nature may not be due to the fact that it is the incomplete expression of a Thought richer and more comprehensive than that of which H
58 THK Al'.SOLri'K A\l>
tho Loi^ic Is tlip exposition. Because he fails to explain all thf mysteries of nature, Hegel seems to bear a sort of grudge a^Niinst it. He never misses an opportunity of belittling it. He, for example, is unwilling to recognise the beauty of nature. Heauty, he tells us, belongs to Art rather than to nature In th<^ starry heavens al)ove, which filled the mind of Immanufl Kant with awe and wonder, Hegel finds only eru])tinns in the face of the sky! The philosopher, in his study, makes up his mind that inasmuch as he with his logical tape, as wonderful as Aladin's lamp, has taken a full mejvsure of the Absolute Thought, nature, as the embodiment of that Thought, shall be intelligible through and through and all mystciT shall vanish from it. But nature does not obey the ])hil<)sopher any more than the waves obeyed Canute. What wonder then that he should lose all patience with it. and unable to punish it in any other w^ay, pour contempt on it I
Nature is a part of Absolute Experience and is not co-extensive with it. It is the name given to only so much of the section of Reality which our senses can cognise as is the subject of common discourse, and is the product of inter-subjective communication. It is, therefore, a mere skeleton. The living Reality is a much bigger thing and has endless aspects of which our senses take in only a few. From (lod, Spinoza truly observes, an infinite number of things fnllnw in nil infinite number of ways. It is the ignorance and \'anity of man that lead him to imagine that his perception is the measure of Reality. Are w^e the sole denizens of the universe to whom Reality is revealed ? The dumb creatures around us are presumably capable of perception and not mere automata, as Descartes imagined. They too belong to the Absolute and participate in its life. Some measure of the self- revelation of the Absolute is vouch-safed to them too. The aspects of Reality presented to them are, in their own grades, as much real as those presented to us, but, evidently, they are different. The bird that flies in the air, the fish that lives in
in MAX kn()Wm;fm;k. 59
water and the worm that crawls on oarth has each a perception of Reality with which oins can have very little in common. The vulture feeding on the carcass surely finds its repast as enjoyable as the ban(juet provided for us by Peliti or Kellnerl Evidently, the filthy drain is to the rat what the finest quarters of Simla or Darjeeling are to v.s ! How, one wonders, does the world look to the house-lizard that creeps over the ceiling I Can we deny that the Absolute Experience must include and is the source of all these diverse experiences ? It is the pride of man that makes him rebel against the notion. If the rat in the drain could philosophise, it would, no doubt, dogmatise that the world, in its true nature, is as it appears to it. And if there be beings higher than man in the universe, what reason there is to suppose that they do not exceed man's measure of the perception of Reality ? The truth is that the experiences of all finite creatures, however humble and however exalted, are included, supplemented and rearranged in the Absolute Experience. It is, therefore, a much bigger thing than any finite being can comprehend. The Absolute Experience is the embodiment of Absolute Thought and if the Absolute Thought is infinitely richer than ours, so must the Absolute Experience be. Our notion of Reality is very much like the blind man's idea of the elephant in the fable. One blind man touching a leg of the elephant says that the elephant is like a pillar; another, touching the ear, says that it is like the winnowing fan ; a third touching the trunk declares that the elephant is like the thigh. The elephant, of course, is much more than these blind men imagine, though the perception of it of every one of them is quite correct, so far as it goes.
There is a fine passage in the Sarttyr Resartu.'^ which inimitably expresses the truth. " Systems of Nature ;" observes Carlyle, "To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expression ; and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a planet, is partially known to U5 ; but
68
THK Al'.SOLI.^TE AND
the Logic is the exposition. Because he fails to explain all the mysteries of nature, Hegel seems to bear a sort of grudge against it. He never misses an opportunity of belittling it. He, for example, is unwilling to recognise the beauty of nature. Beauty, he tells us, belongs to Art rather than to nature. In the starry heavens above, which filled the mind of Immanuel Kant with aAve and wonder, Hegel finds only eruptions in the face of the sky ! The philosopher, in his study, makes up his mind that inasmuch as he with his logical tape, as wonderful as Aladin's lamp, has taken a full measure of the Absolute Thought, nature, as the embodiment of that Thought, shall be intelligible through and through and all mystery shall vanish from it. But nature does not obey the philosopher any more than the waves obeyed Canute. What wonder then that he should lose all patience with it, and unable to punish it in any other way, pour contempt on it !
Nature is a part of Absolute Experience and is not co-extensive with it. It is the name given to only so much of the section of Reality which our senses can cognise as is the subject of common discourse, and is the product of inter-subjective communication. It is, therefore, a mere skeleton. The living Reality is a much bigger thing and has endless aspects of which our senses take in only a few. From God, Spinoza truly observes, an infinite number of things follow in an infinite number of waj'S. It is the ignorance and vanity of man that lead him to imagine that his perception is the measure of Reality. Are we the sole denizens of the universe to whom Reality is revealed ? The dumb creatures around us are presumably capable of perception and not mere automata, as Descartes imagined. They too belong to the Absolute and participate in its life. Some measure of the self- revelation of the Absolute is vouch-safed to them too. The aspects of Reality presented to them are, in their own grades, as much real as those presented to us, but, evidently, they are different. The bird that flies in the air, the fish that lives in
IF
mWI
in.M.W KN (»\VLI:|)(;K.
5f)
IT pfiur
toil IS f
dvso
lai lias
Mfhe
water ;in<.l the worm that crawls on caith has viuih a percL'pLiuu ut' Reality wilh which onrs can ha\i' \iMy little in coininon. The viiltiiiH' fcecJini;' on the carcass surely finds its n-past as enjoyable as the bancjuet provided for us by Peliti or Kellner! Evidently, the filthy drain is tu the rat what the finest (juarters of Simla or Darjeeling are to v.s ! How, one wonders, (lo»js the world look to the house-lizard that creeps over the ceiling I Can we deny that the Absolute Experience must include and is the source of all these diverse experiences ? It is the pride of man that makes him rebel against the notion. If the rat in the drain could philosophise, it would, no doubt, dogmatise that the world, in its true nature, is as it appears to it. And if there be beings higher than man in the universe, what reason there is to suppose that they do not exceed man's mea.sure of the perception of Reality ? The truth is that the experiences of all finite creatures, however humble and however exalted, are included, supplemented and rearranged in the Absolute Experience. It is, therefore, a much bigger thing than any finite being can comprehend. The Absolute Experience is the embodiment of Absolute Thought and if the Absolute Thought is infinitely richer than ours, so must the Absolute Experience be. Our notion of Reality is very much like the blind man s idea of the elephant in the fable. One blind man touching a leg of the elephant says that the elephant is like a pillar; another, touching the ear, says that it is like the winnowing fan ; a third touching the trunk declares that the elephant is like the thigh. The elephant, of course, is much more than these blind men imagine, th<mgh the perception of it of every one of them is quite correct, so far as it goes.
There is a fine passage in the S(irt(^r Raaartas which inimitably expresses the truth. " Systems of Nature ;" observi-.s Carlyle, "To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite i7^/i7U^e depth, of quite infinite expression; and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a planet, is partially known to us ; but
60 THE ABSOLUTE AND
who knows what deeper courses these depend on — what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on ? To the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident of its little native creek may have become familiar; but does the minnow understand the Ocean Tides, and periodic currents, the Trade-Winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses ; by all which the condition of its little creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (un miraculously enough) be quite overset and reversed ? Such a minnow is man ; his creek this planet Earth ; his Ocean the immeasurable All ; his Monsoons and Periodic currents the mysterious course of Providence through Aeons of Aeons." Such a theory as I have endeavoured to sketch out in this essay, goes, I think, as far in the direction of a knowledge of the Absolute as it is possible to go. We can reasonably conclude that man is a partial manifestation of a self-differentiation of the Absolute, which is the ideality of his body. His knowledge and experience forms part of the Absolute Thought and Experience and is valid so far as it goes. What he understands and perceives, the Absolute understands and perceives in him, but the Absolute under- stands and perceives infinitely more then he ever does. It is sheer presumption to equate the content of the Divine con- sciousness with the world in which we live. Such an absurdity is by no means a necessary consequence of Hegelianism. There is nothing in the fundamental principles of Hegel's philosophy which makes its air of omniscience necessary. It is the accident and not the essence of the system, and is due to the personal equation of Hegel. Every man has his crotchets and the greater the man, the more preposterous his crotchets often are. The notion that Reality is fully and exhaustively revealed to human knowledge is, it seems to me, only a crotchet of Hegel's. It is also, partly, the result of an extreme reaction against the medieval dualism of the sensible and the super-sensible world. Agnosticism may be bad, but a cheap Gnosticism is worse. It, I think, has a rather
Ill MAN KXoWLKl )(;!•:. (ij
disastrous effect on soiiio of the better sides of huiinm nature. Agnosticism, kept within propei- limits, is, after all, not so v('ry bad a thing as some people i magi no. It, at auy rate, k«jeps alive the sentiments of wonder and reverence without which man would be a very unamiable being indeed. The Absolut«i is undoubtedly within our knowledge, but is also <.»v(3r and beyond it. In the wise words of Professor Pringle-rattison, we may conclude that "the truth about the Absolute which we extract from our experience is hardly likely to be the final truth ; it may be taken up and superseded in a wider and fuller truth. And in this way we might pass, in successive cycles of finite existence, from sphere to sphere of experience, from orb to orb of truth ; and even the highest would still remain a finite truth ; and fall infinitely short of truth. But such a doctrine of relativity in no way invalidates the truth of the revelation at any given stage. The fact that the truth I reach is the truth for me, does not make it, on that account, less true. It is true so far as it goes, and if my experience can carry me no further, I am justified in treating it as ultimate until it is superseded. Should it ever be superseded I shall then see both how it is modified by being comprehended in a higher truth, and also how it and no other statement of the truth could have been true at my former stand-point. But before that higher stand-point is reached to seek to discredit our present insight by the general reflection that its truth is partial and requires correction, is a perfectly empty truth, which, in its bearing upon human life, must almost certainly have the efiect of an untruth." {Ttvo lectures on Theism, FF, 61-62:)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY
Return to desk from which borrowed This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
NOV 28 1947
"^'^ 41952
Si:P9
,2^^
y,ii=<i-- ''i^
BtC
*.*^.
? ^iwtJ
fW?18'69
RECEIVED
H 1 *:> Di) -3 tVI LOAN DEPT.
LD 21-100m.9,'47(A5702sl6)476
UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY