/^6^3fi6Z

Walsh Philosophy Collection

PRESENTED /ort.

LIBRARIES of the

UNIVERSITY o/TORONTO

A Holiday with a Hegelian

A Holiday with a Hegelian

By

Francis Sedlak

London

A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G.

1911

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLVMOUTH

Contents

Chapter I.	What is Thought ?	Page 7
II.	God is ...... .	17
III.	Tears and Laughter .....	24
IV.	The Problem of Post-mortem Existence	31
V.	An Introduction to the Science of Logic .	39
VI.	First Act of Thought (First Cycle) .	51
VII.	Second Act of Thought (Second and Third Cycles) .......	58
VIII.	Comments ......	67
IX.	Third Act of Thought (Fourth Cycle) .	73
X.	Fourth Act of Thought : A. Fifth Cycle ....	80
XL	Fourth Act of Thought : B. Sixth Cycle .....	86
XII.	Fifth Act of Thought (Seventh Cycle)	103
XIII.	Sixth Act of Thought : A. Eighth Cycle .....	"5
XIV.	Sixth Act of Thought : B. Ninth Cycle .....	127
XV.	Seventh Act of Thought (Tenth Cycle)	142
XVI.	The Meaning of Planetary Distances .	162
XVII.	Our Destiny ......	179

A Holiday with a Hegelian

CHAPTER I WHAT IS THOUGHT?

/^NLY a short time ago, a pretence to the knowledge of absolute Truth would have seemed to me foolish. Nothing appeared more evident than that our knowledge must needs remain only relative, and that every endeavour to transcend facts of observation can result only in a web of subjective fancies. Not that I was a confessed disciple of some notable thinker. I read what came to hand, but I never attached much importance to labels, preferring above everything else to remain in close touch with sound common- sense. The various authors I read were to me simply con- tributors of material to be moulded by my own mental spontaneity. This may seem conceited ; but let me say that I have never troubled myself as to whether my en- deavour to stand on my own legs might strike others as arrogant or not. Nevertheless, I myself came to realise on what tottering legs I was trying to steady myself.

I spent my last holiday in an out-of-the-way place in i\Ioravia. I hired a room in the most decent house in the \-illage Tetchitse, arranged for my meals in the public- house, and looked forward to making acquaintance with the routine and mental horizon of the sturdy Czech popula- tion. It so happens that I am thoroughly at home in Russian (as I have frequently occasion to visit Russia), and once one knows one Slav language, the rest is compara- tively easy.

8 A Holiday with a Hegelian

The village nestled at the foot of an extensive wood, covering the slopes of a range of hills. Eastward from the northern end, there stretched a valley, the recesses of which roused my exploring instincts the very next morning of my stay. The valley twisted after a bit slightly towards the south, and shortly after there disclosed itself on the oppo- site slope a little cottage. At first sight I thought it might be the abode of the gamekeeper, and as it was barely seven o'clock, I decided to wait about on the chance of catching him starting for his round, as an opportunity to learn some- thing about the local poachers, or, at least, to learn my way about.

It was a beautiful morning, and I enjoyed pacing up and down along the cart-road opposite to the cottage. When- ever I find myself in some secluded place on the Continent, I feel as if my whole being were renewed. People who spend their life in the same rut can never have an idea what a vivifying effect even a short stay among a strange people exercises on all one's faculties. It is not so much change of scenery that appeals to me ; in this respect I am unlike most Enghshmen. I like to experience vividly a change of manners, language, temperament, religion— a change, in short, in mental horizon. When I realise that what in one country is considered a matter of course, if not a sine qua non, of hfe — say, the carrying of sleeping garments with us — is of no consequence in another, I feel strangely free. _ In watching the cottage and the waving forest on either side of that remote valley, I could not help musing how narrow, after all, is individual life. Up till now I had been quite obHvious of the very existence of these parts. So far as I was concerned, all has come to be only now. Yet, in spite of my obhviousness, human hearts were throbbing here with joy and distress, with hope and despair.

Of course, this goes without saying. Who does not know that he is not the measure of universal life ? But, then, why should a vivid realisation of this common reflection strike one so wondrously ? Why should one start with sur- prise at the idea that something could happen or exist in seeming independence of one's own existence and interest ?

Surely, the fascination exercised over our imagination by

What is Thought ?

old castles and remnants of the historic past is at bottom due to the thrilling wonder that people lived and suffered even before our birth. One may have passed a particular place a hundred times in complete indifference ; let it, however, become known to one that the place was once a Roman camp or cemetery, and with what interest will one gaze at it ! Imagination tries to conjure up the dead past. The idea suddenly presents itself that the place existed long, long ago when one was not, and one cannot help feehng astonished again and again, as though the thought had struck one just for the first time.

In my endeavour to analyse and voice the something pressing within me for expression, I became quite oblivious of my surroundings, and did not notice steps approaching from behind until a pleasant voice roused me from my self- absorption. " Dobre jUro" (good morning), it was saying, and, looking up, I saw a man of about forty years of age, tall as I (six feet), clothed in an easy grey summer suit, head covered by a wide-brimmed straw hat, from under which I saw a pair of most sympathetic eyes beaming at me. The lower portion of his face was covered by a most luxuriant growth of blonde beard, without hiding a well-cut mouth. So little prepared was I for this meeting that I fell into talking English.

" Ah, you are an Englishman ! " exclaimed my new acquaintance in fluent English. " Perhaps you were seeking me. Well, if I can be of any use to you, pray dispose of me. My name is Joseph Veverka."

He was evidently under the impression that I was di- rected to him as the one person in the neighbourhood with whom I might converse in my own language. Having learned of my stay in the village, and the reason of my pacing up and down before his cottage, he remarked genially :

" Well, the fact is, my cottage was originally a game- keeper's abode. Though, however, fate has made me its occupant, this need not mean your forgoing a ramble through the wood. Only you will have to do without the anticipated information about the local poachers. I have no knowledge of them."

10 A Holiday with a Hegelian

" This is indeed a very fortunate coincidence," said I, after our preliminary remarks about the weather and a few nothings. " I had not dreamt of uttering a single English word for the next month."

" I dare say it must seem astonishing that the very first person you come across in this seemingly forlorn valley, far from your country, should speak English," assented Mr. — or let me say at once, Dr. — Veverka. " But we Slavs learn languages easily. Moreover, it so happens that I spent a few months in England some time ago. And if I am right in guessing, the object of my stay there was pretty much the same as the object of your stay here."

" I am sure I said nothing to make you guess the reason of my stay here," I said. " I am curious what you suppose it to be."

" Well, if you were an admirer of mere scenery," Dr. Veverka proceeded, " you would have gone to Switzerland, Tyrol, Norway, or anywhere but here. Hence, your object is rather to study a strange people."

" Perfectly true," I exclaimed. " And you went to England to study our character ? It would be interesting to compare our notes by and by. I am most interested in knowing what impression we make on others."

" Well, your countrymen do not seem to travel about with your intention," remarked Dr. Veverka, smiling suggestively. " I suppose I shall have to correct my impressions. You, at any rate, like to go beyond mere particularities of observation."

" If you say anything more," I protested somewhat shamefacedly, " I shall infer that you are a thought- reader."

" Oh, I am drawing simple inferences from the avowed object of your stay here," retorted Dr. Veverka. " A man cannot have a liking for the study of a strange people unless he feels himself universal. But suppose even that I could read thoughts, why should that seem surprising ? "

" Surely, it is not an every-day experience," I replied. " I read much about it, but to tell the truth, I have been hitherto rather sceptical on the point."

" Why, pray ? " exclaimed he with vivacity. " You

What is Thought ? 1 1

see we have to talk about something, and since you care for mere scenery about as much as I do, we may as well indulge in a philosophical discussion."

" I cannot pretend to being a scholar," I remarked, " but I undoubtedly like to inquire into metaphysical problems. And I am, indeed, most interested in the subject of Thought. I have not yet been able to account for its raison d'etre satisfactorily. Can you tell me what it is exactly ? "

" Your question suggests that you are accustomed to view Thought as though it were an objective thing. So long as you entertain such an external standpoint towards it, you cannot, of course, grasp its nature."

" But then, surely. Thought must have some cause ? " I insisted.

" First of all ask yourself on what authority you make this assertion," was the reply.

" Well, is it not sheer common sense to suppose that everything must have a cause ? "

" What do you mean by sheer common sense ? " asked Dr. Veverka calmly.

" That which everyone recognises as true at first sight," I answered.

" And how am I to know that everyone, even were the experiment of asking everyone feasible, would bear out what you happen to assert in the name of sheer common sense ? " Dr. Veverka asked further, with humour.

I felt puzzled. " Do you mean that the assertion that everything has a cause is questionable ? "

" No, not exactly. I only wish to draw your attention to the fact that nothing is easier than to elevate any sub- jective assumption to the rank of sheer common sense. Such is invariably the case when the criterium of a truly common-sense standpoint amounts to a more or less naive expectation that everyone would unhesitatingly accept our assertion at first sight. This is just what remains to be proved."

This was fair. I did not know what to say,

" It so happens," proceeded Dr. Veverka, in his genially serene manner which somehow forced me down to the

12 A Holiday with a Hegelian

position of a learner without intention on his part, " that the assertion that everything has a cause is quite safe as regards things, though you could not assert it otherwise than as a generally accepted verity which j'ou would be puzzled how to prove to a sceptic. Well, suppose I were to question it," he added with a twinkle in his eyes, in response to a somewhat abrupt movement of mine, " what would be your line of defence ? "

At first sight nothing seemed easier than to confute the supposed sceptic. On second thoughts, ho^^■ever, all I had to say amounted, indeed, to a naive expectation that since the assertion seemed to me self-evident, it was bound to appear so to everyone else. And as Dr. Veverka said, this was just what was wanted to be proved. The assertion had with me only the strength of subjective certainty.

My companion gave me time, and it was not until he had rolled a cigarette and smoked a third of it that I inter- rupted the silence : " Our knowledge can deal only with the relation between facts, and since these are infinitely many, our knowledge cannot be more than a limited record of those which have been already observed. All our asser- tions are bound to remain open to modification or denial."

" That is to say, you yourself have turned into a sceptic towards the very assertion which you had to defend," Dr. Veverka resumed his good-humoured cannonade of my position. " I find that you have based your scepticism on the assumption that our knowledge must needs have the character of a mere peep at the curtain of the Unknowable, the veil of Isis. Are you aware that you have thus implied that Truth is beyond reach ? "

" Such, indeed, is my present conviction," I assented.

" A subjective conviction, of course, open to denial ? " went on my companion mercilessly''. " You see, your argument cuts both ways. In the end, j'ou are only confessing that your standpoint is purely subjective. All you are justified in asserting is simply this : This or that seems to me certain or doubtful, but, really, I cannot say why I hold this view rather than another ; I understand nothing at all."

What is Thought ? 13

I felt irritated— but at myself, not at Dr. Veverka. As to him, there was not the faintest suggestion of superiority in his manner. His words were directed, not to me as a man, but to the standpoint I had assumed in my argu- ment ; and it vexed me that I should be such a poor match for him.

" Well, perhaps j^ou are right," I admitted at last, reluctantly. " It is no good to pretend to know when one does not. Nevertheless, I am curious to hear how you would confute him who would question that everything has a cause."

" A full proof would consist in a circumstantial realisa- tion of mental self-development, as is embodied, for in- stance, in Hegel's Science of Logic, " replied Dr. Veverka. " This, of course, is at present out of the question. But it may be pointed out that the category Cause presupposes a state of things which is not to vary from individual to individual ; namely, the fact that everything is funda- mentally a contradiction of seeming self-subsistence and relativity. In order, then, to advance beyond a naive trust in common sense, we must realise all that is necessarily implied in the thought of an actual tiling. You cannot assume that the nature of Thought varies subjectively; hence, to prove an assertion, one must show that it is founded in the very nature of Thought."

" And what if I question whether the nature of Thought is one and the same for every individual ? " I suggested inquiringly.

" Then you simply condemn yourself to isolation and silence," rephed Dr. Veverka, with a shrug of shoulders. " What use would be any further discussion ? "

" I spoke thoughtlessly," I readily admitted. " Still, is it not rather one of the most prominent facts that no two men hold identical views ? Indeed, did not Kant prove that every endeavour to transcend the region of facts leads to a cul-de-sac ? "

" By no means," Dr. Veverka replied imperturbably. " Kant certainly established the fact that argumentation runs up against contradictions, but that is no cul-de-sac for our knowledge of truth."

14 A Holiday with a Hegelian

" How not so ? " I exclaimed. " Can Truth be com- patible with contradiction ? "

" Ah, of course, j^ou take your stand on the law of Identit5^" retorted my opponent, as if set musing by a recollection. " You hold that Truth is safeguarded properly only so long as one confines oneself to statements like these : A tree is — a tree, God is — God, etc. Did it ever occur to you to find out what people think of such a way of speaking the truth ? "

" Well, I myself hold that it amounts to saying just nothing at all," I hastened to voice what Dr. Veverka himself implied to be sound common sense. " But since this is the only way to speak absolute Truth, am I not justified in saying that whenever one really does commit oneself to a positive judgment, one at once becomes subjective ? "

" Not so quick ! " laughed Dr. Veverka. " You imply that the only way to secure agreement with everyone else is to say just nothing at all ! "

" I own that I am no match for you," I admitted ruefully. " But if you are not bored, I should like you to draw my attention to some of my prepossessions. To get rid of one- sidedness is my profoundest desire. What do you say is the cardinal prejudice ? "

" This is hardly a question to be answered in a cut and dried manner," he replied meditatively. " Prejudices form really a system, so that each imphes all the rest of them. Their detection ensues properly only when one has reached the knowledge of absolute Truth : until then, one is only exchanging one mental bias for another. If, however, your question has the sense of what is the cardinal obstacle to the gaining of mental Freedom, then the reply would point to instinctive Ego-ism ; that is to say, to that attitude in which one is swayed by personal considerations or selfish interests without being even aware of it.

" To make my meaning clear I must add that to get rid of this instinctive Egoism, it is not enough to profess altruism. In speaking of an instinctive Egoist, I do not mean a morally inferior creature, but refer even to a saint, so far as conduct goes, if his object is merely personal

What is Thought ? 15

holiness. What is wanted is, first of all, to ask oneself, ' What am I ? ' The ' I' is felt as something most sub- stantial, certain, positive : well, what I mean by instinctive Egoism is the propensity to allow oneself to be controlled by this feeling of self without the least attempt to penetrate it intelligently : to raise it into rational self-realisation, into Self-knowledge ! "

" And do you mean to say that the answer which people would give themselves would be ultimately identical ? " I asked further.

" Ultimately — you say well : ultimately — yes ! No agreement could be expected in the immediate answers, as everyone would try to define the Ego in a purely sub- jective manner, in terms of what would seem subjectively most fundamental in connection with its existence. The fact remains, however, that we feel at bottom universal and free from spatial and temporal restrictions. When people knock at a door and hear the question, ' Who is it ? ' everyone says instinctively, 'I,' and only afterwards mentions his name, often with a curious sense of reluctance.^ The Ego is, then, penetrated with the sense of its uni- versality, and the question, ' What am I ? ' therefore, is not answered satisfactorily so long as one answers it in terms of something phenomenal on which the Ego is made dependent."

" All that falls into the sphere of phenomena," Dr. Veverka went on after a short pause ; " the ' Not-I ' is, after all, known only through the ' I.' Hence, the assertion that the ' I ' stands opposite to something radically different from it — a something of which it only gets an idea, but which is taken to be substantially independent of it — invites doubt and ultimate denial. There is no getting away from the fact that a radically different ' Not- I ' presents itself to us as an absolute blankness of every thinkable determination."

" Perfectly true ! " I exclaimed enthusiastically. " How simple it all is — I mean the solution of this puzzle which

^ It is, indeed, owing to this sense of reluctance that I have omitted to mention that my name is Richard Broadway, junior partner of Broadway and Co., corn merchants, London.

i6 A Holiday with a Hegelian

has for so long exercised my brains : the existence of the ' Not-I ' ! Of course, were it radically different from the Ego, all that could be said of it would be that it is not. And to think that Kant did not realise it ! "

" It certainly seems amazing that a mere Nothing should cause so much worry," continued my companion. " But, after all, this Nothing is the threshold to Truth, and so it is well that it should present itself in the shape of a realm where finite knowledge cannot penetrate. So far, Kant was in a sense right. His error lay in the preconception that Thought is per se empty. And this, again, was due to his omission to trace out the spontaneous nature of the Ego. Had he tried to find out how categories are connected in Thought, instead of taking them for granted as a ready-made content of mind, he would have realised that his postulated Thing-in-itself is unknowable, for the simple reason that there is nothing to be known in it : seeing that it is to be the Not of every determination of Thought ! In short, he would have discovered that the Ego is ultimately the very principle of Thought, in cor- roboration of Descartes' Cogito ergo sum.

" And now you may see the reason of your inability to account satisfactorily for the raison d'etre of Thought. You have sought the answer in terms of the ' Not-I,' when yet the Ego and Thought are one and the same principle. The only way to answer ' What am I ?' is by answering the question, ' What is Thought ? ' And the only way to realise what Thought exactly is, is to think. Now, is this not a mere platitude ? "

I said nothing, but I seemed to hear the old Thought- world of mine crushing down into ruin.

CHAPTER II GOD IS

TT may be that Dr. Veverka realised intuitively that solitude suited best my mood just then. We had arrived at a crossing of roads, and, after giving me a plain instruction about my way back to the village, he excused himself and departed. " I shall see you before long," he remarked, smiling in his charming manner. " For I take my meals in the same place as you."

And so I found myself alone. My mind seemed to be at first blank : in any case, I appeared to myself incapable of a clear thought. I looked mechanically at my watch, but put it back in its place without having noticed the time. Presently I tried to shake off my dazed condition. " The deuce ! What is the matter ? " I murmured. " What has happened to me ? " A feeling came over me, as if I had just come into existence, and I was curiously amazed to find myself alive. Yes, there was a wood about me. The sun was shining through the leafy roof. I stared at the trees in an absent-minded mood. Something seemed to have vanished from my memory, and, try hard as I would, I could not recollect myself. All that I saw appeared as a kind of phantasmagoria wrested from the context of my experience. Only a sense of intense wonder pervaded me. Was I awake, after all ?

But now there flashed on my mental vision the radiant smile on Dr. Veverka's face. A wave of a strange joy welled up in my heart. It was as if I had found the key that would unlock every mystery. I sighed with relief. " What a marvellous man ! " I kept on repeating, under the vivid impression of a mj^sterious something that surrounded his person, radiated from his eyes, thrilled

B 17

1 8 A Holiday with a Hegelian

in his voice. " Just look at him," I sohloquised, " and can you help wishing to be with him always ? " I have not yet been in love ; but if it is true that a mere remem- brance of the beloved being suffuses everything around with glory, then I must have fallen in love with Dr. Veverka — and fallen in love at first sight ! His very presence appeared like a guarantee of eternal life.

I felt now thoroughly alive and full of joyous energy. " To think that I could have overlooked such a simple thing," I went on, reflecting on my past attitude towards the Unknowable. " Is it not perfectly plain that no one knows anything about it just because there is nothing in it ? It is not ! Of course, it is not ! What can you say of it, if you must not apply to it anything that you can think of ? Ah, you wish to pretend that it is something, only a something that cannot be grasped. But look here, you silly ass," I apostrophised myself merrily, " cannot you see that you must not speak of the Unknowable even as a something ? Something is perfectly knowable, a deter- mination of your own thinking ; and how can you, then, speak of the Unknowable as a something, if it is to be altogether outside the pale of your thinking ? After all, you have even no right to speak of it as Nothing ; for this, too, is thought. Do we not say that Nothing is ? Do we not ask, ' What is nothing ? ' That is to say, do we not acknowledge that Nothing falls within the pale of our thinking ? But just for that reason, your notion of the Unknowable is not even a Nothing ! You must not even ask what it is. What sense is in the question, * What is the Unknowable ? ' But, then, what is it really ? "

I stopped abruptly, and then burst out laughing. " What, I am telling you that it is absurd to ask what it is, and you reply by asking what, then, it is really ? By Jove, you have got yourself into a nice corner ! Rack your brains, my dear fehow, as much as you like : this is not a matter of opinion ! You would not believe it ? Ah, very well, then, perhaps you will kindly point out him who can explain what the Unknowable is, if it is to be something else than a baseless, illogical, altogether inadmissible monstrosity of thoughtlessness ! "

God Is 19

Suddenly a thought struck me. " Now, is not this very insistence on reahsing what the Unknowable is, in spite of a plain and irrefutable demonstration of the senselessness of such an insistence, only an evidence that Thought is absolutely all-embracing ? But heavens, how is it possible that I have ignored all this ? And not I alone, but people of some repute as Thinkers ? Just think of Kant, Spencer, Schopenhauer, Haeckel, and crowds and crowds of people who cannot be called idiots ! Why has it never occurred to me to challenge boldly the generally accepted standpoint that Thought is only a kind of ap- pendage to a solid world of tangible and absolutely self- subsistent things ? "

But I had only to recall Dr. Veverka's reference to in- stinctive Ego-ism, and I could now see for myself that the explanation of the obtuseness which thus caused me no end of surprise lay truly in a purely instinctive exercise of reason. " For instance, look at these trees. My first impression is that they are perfectly independent of mj^self. I feel myself in a body, and this body is in no direct con- nection with them, except when I touch them one by one ; and then I appear only to prove to myself that I am not a tree. So arises, then, the distinction of the ' I ' and the ' Not-L' But what is the authority for the assumption that the ' Not-I ' is radically different from the ' I' ? At best onl}' the first impression that an external object does not respond directly to my will. As regards my body, I easily forget its externality, so far as it directly embodies my will ; and even when it is not quite amenable to my control, its resistance is not felt by me in the same manner as the resistance of an external object. It is, then, certainly a fact that I am less a tree than I am my body : but am I on that account absolutely different from a tree ? This could be only the case if the tree were entirely outside the pale of my being ; but, then, do I not at least see it ? Is not my sight a connecting link between me and an ex- ternal object ? Or do I not hear the clanging of bells even when I cannot see them ? Or do not flowers betray their presence to my sense of smell ? In analysing the way in which I know of things, I get simply conceptions of what

20 A Holiday with a Hegelian

I feel, I smell, I taste, I hear, I see ; and however external things may be, the fact remains that to me they are simply an array of predicables which are no less mine than theirs. On what, then, can I base the assumption that apart from these predicables there is still something in objects which is beyond my reach ? Knowledge is surely unthinkable apart from a subject, the knower ; hence, nothing can be known of an absolutely self-subsistent ' Not-I,' because such an object cannot have a subject or knower without ceasing to be absolutely self-subsistent. But just for that reason it is absurd to talk, as if such an object of No- knowledge, of Ignorance, were the very substance of things. The absurdity of such a standpoint can be ignored only when one refuses to penetrate intelligently the first im- pression of things, and obstinately insists on treating their apparent foreignness to us as the most fundamental fact. Nevertheless, this can be done only so long as one is so absorbed in a mere staring out that one remains blind to the reflection that this very foreignness of things is itself only an impression of the ' I ' which there must be to begin with."

The more I pondered this point, the more stupefying it seemed to me that the most glorified advance of modern science consists just in a wholesale endorsement of such a grotesque perversion of the very A B C of Self-knowledge.

" On what authority can it be asserted, in sufficient answer to the question, ' What is Man ? ', that he is a developed animal ? Is it not plain that the basis is thus a postulated ' Not-I ', which, although it cannot properly be even said to be a something, is yet elevated to the rank of supreme Reality ? The basis is thus truly sought in Ignorance ! Protoplasm ? Matter ? Why, are not these terms the result of man's endeavour to understand the nature of things as they appear to him ? Yet he promptly leaves this obvious fact out of the question, and converts himself into a developed monke}^ : allows himself to be swallowed up by a silly conception of his, raises his own product to the rank of his God ! A shoemaker might just as well trace his origin to the boot he had just finished ! No wonder that truth appears to be beyond reach, if it is

God Is 21

to be reached from such an absurd premise. Of course, how could it be reached by those who elevatej absolute thoughtlessness, the ' Not-I ', to the rank of the most fundamental fact of knowledge ? If there is anything absolutely certain, it is the fact that I cannot think of myself as if I were not. I cannot possibly experience my own Non-being ; hence, if I wish to stand on solid facts, I must in no case postulate a radically different ' Not-I ', as a warranted premise of sound reasoning. Yet what a crowd is there of would-be free-thinkers, who thought- lessly repeat such a blunder, and triumphantly pooh-pooh the belief in our immortality as a degrading superstition ! Ah yes, we, English people, hate Popery — unless the Pope is called a man of science ! The orthodox believer views himself at least in the image of God, the free-thinker prefers to put in the place of God a mere figment of his finite mind."

" But wait a bit, old chap ! " I suddenly checked myself in my elation. " What about the existence of this world ? Surely, you do not mean to say that it is only a creation of your mind, a feat of sub-conscious imagining ? After all, did not Kant, too, realise that aU we know of things is what we label them ? There is the fact that the world is mighty httle concerned about what I think of it. I am not the world : there is no getting away from that. My dear friend," I remarked, thinking of Dr. Veverka, " we shall have to talk about that ! After all, one must keep a cool head on one's shoulders. I am not so quick in swaHowing everything and anything as all that." ■■ •

" Not so quick ! " I seemed to hear Dr. Veverka's good- humoured laughter. Did he not use the very words as a damper to my self-assurance ? Just a moment ago I was calling myself an empty-headed idiot, and behold me now, suddenly claiming that I am not quick in swaUowing non-sense ! Ah, well, Rome was not built in a day, and a youth cannot become a philosopher in a moment, although he is ever ready to think so.

It was half-past ten, and I thought it was time to wend my way towards the vihage. My elated mood returned.

" True, there are points on which I am in the dark.

22 A Holiday with a Hegelian

But this in no wise invalidates the fact that there is no unknowable ' Not-L' On that point at least, there is not a shadow of doubt possible — or, rather, rationally admissible, for I myself have doubted it. If you still doubt," I ad- dressed myself to an imaginary opponent, " well and good : doubt just as much that j-ou are alive, or that 2 + 2 = 4 ! "

I felt light, like a bird. What a glorious thing it is to live, and to know that the universe can have no impene- trable mystery as to its origin and purpose ! The know- ledge made me feel, as if I had been born for the second time.

" Up till now," I was saying to myself, " I have been only like a worm burrowing in the ground, or like a chry- salis awaiting emergence into full life : but henceforth I shall flutter my wings in glorious Freedom ! Truly, truly, the ' Truth will make you free ! ' "

But suddenly I received, as it were, a stunning blow. Whilst repeating to myself the oft-quoted scriptural saying, I realised in a flash, and with terrific intensity, that God exists for the very reason that I exist : and there issued from my heart a wave of such an overpowering emo- tion, mingled with such a heartrending anguish (for in that very same flash of intuition I also experienced a paralysing horror at my past, loudly voiced unbelief in, and even ridicule of, God) that tears swamped my eyes, and, as if endeavouring to sink into the ground, I threw myself down.

" God be merciful to me a sinner ! " was the only thought I could formulate, lost in immense grief and choked with convulsive sobs. But (such is the complexity of our nature when we acquire the habit of introspection !) the next moment I seemed to be floating on the crest of my emotion, and there ensued a regular duel between me and the abandoned wretch at my feet.

" Get up, old chap ! " I said irritably. " What an actor you are to be sure ! 'Tis only your wretched self-pity, you know ! "

But the prostrate self retorted by a still greater flood of tears.

" You heartless brute ! " he interjected between his sobs. " Cannot you stop your ridicule, even in this most

God Is 23

solemn hour of my life ? May God have mercy on your cynical soul."

" What stuff and non-sense ! " was the reply. " The idea of God taking the slightest interest in your hysterical self- conceit ! The truth is, you like to cut a pathetic figure in your own eyes : ' Behold me, crying for mercy — now, is this not most marvellous ? Am I not like one of the Saints ? ' Oh, shut up, you snivelling idiot ! It is absolutely ridiculous ! Get up, I say : suppose anyone were to see you ! "

I felt a stream of hot blood flooding my cheeks, and the next moment up I was, looking round anxiously, and hastily endeavouring to banish every evidence of my emotion. Yet my heart felt sad. I felt ashamed of crying, but no less ashamed of the cynicism which some demon whispered in my ear. But the fear of being surprised by the game-keeper with my eyes red with weeping overbore for the moment everything else, and with an effort I resumed the bearing of self-control on which an Englishman prides himself most.

" This will have to be looked into ! " I said to myself, and lighting a cigarette, stepped out quite composedly towards the village. Indeed, I started humming a merry song, and when my heart murmured in an undertone, " You humbug ! " I smiled, as if to say, " Oh well, we shall see about that ; have no fear ! "

CHAPTER III TEARS AND LAUGHTER

f^N finding myself once again with Dr. Veverka, I ^^ soon cut short the flow of casual conversation by asking him as to the why of tears and laughter. "It is no good saying," I said, " that we laugh because we are merry, or cry because we suffer pain. I should like to know how these moods fit in with the true nature of the Ego."

" Ah yes, I see," nodded Dr. Veverka, stroking his magnificent beard, whilst his eyes assumed an absent expression. After spending some little time in this self- absorption, he replied slowly :

"I see perfectly what you mean, and I am pleased to find that you endeavour boldly to transcend the stand- point of mere observation. On the other hand, however, I must warn you that the answer to your question is still beyond your grasp, because it implies a thorough ac- quaintance with the dialectical nature of Thought, not only in itself, but also in its otherwiseness. All I can do, so far, is to indicate barely the way towards the full explanation."

Lest the reader should credit him with a propensity to patronage, let me emphatically deny that his manner implied any such attitude. Words conveyed in black and white often produce a diametrically opposite impression to that which they give when spoken — and spoken, to boot, by such a man as he ! What he said was not so much addressed to myself as it was of the nature of a perfectly impersonal comment on the matter in hand, which was made difficult of elucidation by my imperfectly developed philosophical understanding.

24

Tears and Laughter 25

" My dear Dr. Veverka," I said, profoundly impressed by the benevolence which formed a so to speak tangible background to his words, " I am ashamed of boring you, but if you knew how I appreciate your kindness . . ."

" Tut, tut," he interrupted me, with a quaint air of self- depreciation. " Did I not tell you that Philosophy is my hobby ? You have suggested an interesting problem, and to tackle problems is my special vice. After all, understand that I am only a student of Hegel's works, and if anything I might say appears to you original and profound, I must ask you to regard me as a mere echo. It would pain me to usurp, even for a moment, to a stranger, the place of my great teacher."

He bowed with involuntary reverence in uttering the last words, and I was startled by the suggestion of deep-felt humihty in his voice. Ah, yes, Hegel — the deuce ! How was it that Hegel, for all I knew of him, might have never existed ?

We were walking slowly through the valley after our midday meal. The sun was shining brilliantly, and although the road was shaded by trees, walking seemed tiring. Dr. Veverka invited me to come and see his cottage ; but for the time being a rest on soft, green moss, of which there was abundance, appeared most inviting. Shortly afterwards I pressed my foot against the trunk of the tree in front of me, and with hands clasped behind my head, stared straight up into the leafy shelter above, leaving the words of my new friend to play on my ears like an infinitely tender caress of soul. Ah, how my heart throbs at the memory of that afternoon ! I was far from my country, but when did I feel so thoroughly at home ? Well, if I did not then appreciate that time, as it now seems to me I ought to have done, the reason is due to my absorption in the subject of our discussion.

" That a philosophical explanation of laughing or crying presupposes a full grasp of the true nature of the ' I ' is obvious ; for tears and laughter are particular modes of its expression. First of all, then, it is necessary to clarify the notion of the ' I ' from a philosophical standpoint. I have explained to you already that there is no such thing

26 A Holiday with a Hegelian

as an unknowable ' Not-L' But I am not sure how far you have succeeded in penetrating intelhgently my remark that the * I ' is essentially Thought. No term is used more thoughtlessly than Thought, and I dare say you will be surprised to hear that it is not Imagination, nor even the intellectual capacity to formulate statements of facts, or to solve mathematical problems. To think means to bear witness to the ideality of every conceivable distinction ; to be merged in the eternally self-begotten Now ; to be no longer conscious as an inert ' I ' opposed to an external world, but to be the all-embracing totality in its absolute Freedom from subjection to anything but its own self- revelation ; in short, to be one with God. Unless this is at least adumbrated, the denial of there being an un- knowable ' Not-I ' translates itself very easily into the apparent only alternative that the world is merely a pageant of subconscious imagining."

" Well, 5'ou know," I exclaimed, " that is the very thing which has worried me all this time ! The way you can lay your finger on every weak spot in my mental attitude to objectivity is simply astounding."

I sat up : this was certainly worth a cigarette.

" Ah, it did worry you ? " smiled Dr. Veverka. " Good, that shows that you are mentally alive. The fact is, that unless one has subjected oneself to a most rigid training in strictly logical thinking, one cannot help remaining under the sway of the most stupid preconceptions. The pos- tulated Unknowable is only a confession of the impossi- bility to comprehend the world through the exercise of mere imagination. In this case one truly deals only with appearances : not, however, because the world is a mere phantasmagoria of imagination, but simply because, so far, one fails to think it. Imagination can never explain how the world comes to be, because it seizes on what seems the ready-made material of the Universe, and is satisfied with that, whilst Thought is self-regulative even when its subject-matter is the external world. You have only to eliminate every subjective assumption and realise what is strictly logical, what must be admitted as a purely spon- taneous flow of Thought when beginning has been made

Tears and Laughter 27

with a perfectly universal premise, and you will gradually establish the raison d'etre of all the distinctions which constitute the inner and outer world. In this case, it is not you as the ordinary ' I ' that formulates _ a shaky theory of the universe, but you as merged in, and identified with, the very essence of God as the creator and preserver of all that is ; as the universal 'I.'

" That which Nature forces on the attention of the man of science : the recognition of a law over which the fanciful ' I ' has no controlling power, which asserts itself for its own sake, and is nothing but a manifestation of its own self — this law is the mainspring of logical thought ! Begin with the least that can be thought at all by anyone, and if you wish to remain strictly logical, the rest is taken out of your hands. You cannot begin the system of strictly logical thinking by sketching in advance a plan of its structure. You find yourself in the grip of a power which insists on going its own way with absolute necessity and in just that way guarantees Absolute Truth on its formal side. The fanciful ' I ' is, then, truly only a figment of fancy. Thought, as it were, estranged from itself, or, rather, only its attempt to estrange itself from itself : which attempt, however, reveals only its own futility — the futility of Thought-lessness !— and so is, as to its existence, only a longing to return !

" That which comprehends all that is, is not the ordinary ' I,' but the T ' which is Thought or God. The ordinary consciousness fancies an unknowable ' Not-I ' only as a reflex of its own chnging to a thought-less 'I.' It does not penetrate to the very essence of the world, because it does not realise its own focus in Thought ; and so it appears to itself only as floating on the surface of the Unknowable, which is its counter for Thought. A philosophical ex- planation of facts is, therefore, not carried from the stand- point of the ordinary consciousness, but from that of strictly logical thought which begins, not with the ' I,' but with the simplest determination of itself, namely, the notion of pure Being, since all that can be said of this is Nothing. The next step consists in the realisation of this unity of pure Being and Nothing, which no one can help thinking

28 A Holiday with a Hegelian

if he tries to grasp what pure Being is. But so one thinks : Becoming, which admits only of the distinction of a Coming-to-be and Ceasing-to-be, and tliese, in turn, must be further recognised as resulting in an equilibrium as Presence ; and so on, quite apart from the likes or dislikes of the fanciful, whimsical, arbitrary, self-willed, thought- less ' I.'

" Now, were it feasible to reproduce the system of philo- sophical Thought at a sitting, we should arrive in due time at the notion of Sensibility, as the form of the dull and as yet unconscious existence of the Soul in its healthy fellowship with the life of its bodily part. That is to say, we should realise the raison d'etre of Sensation as a transient aspect of the psychic life. The distinction which Thought gives itself in its spontaneous activit3^ and which distinction is at first only as pure Being and Nothing, presents itself now under the aspect of two spheres of feeling : one, where what is at first a corporeal affection is inwardised, and another, where what is at first an inner mood is out- wardised or embodied. The equilibrium resulting from the transition of these two spheres into one another is next grasped in the notion of the soul as a reflected totality of sensations.

" Since the psychic life is a manifestation of Thought at a particular stage of its self-determination, the principle of systematisation for the sensations is to be found in the characteristic moments of a cycle of thought, implying generally a simple notion which determines itself into a pair of opposites and as a contradiction presses restlessly for its solution in the conclusion. Accord- ingly the system of external sensations falls under the three heads of firstly, physical Ideality (seeing and hearing), secondly, real Difference (smell and taste), and thirdly, earthly Totality (feeling or touch). As regards the inwardly originating sensations, their corporisation takes place in the system of bodily organs corresponding to (a) simple Sensibihty, (&) Irritabihty, (c) Reproduction.

" Well, now, the reason for laughing or crying lies in the further necessity also to get rid of the inner sensations, in connection with the regaining of the total feeling of their

Tears and Laughter 29

transiency. This means that the sensations are to be embodied in a purely transient way, as the most adequate expression of their fundamental nature. Such an ex- pression is procured in Sound, which is generally a purely transient immediacy. The conscious ' I ' articulates its content in language, but as Thought, at the stage of psychic hfe, is as j'et unconscious of itself, its utterance can betoken only generally the dialectical nature of the voiced feeling. The shutting out of every contradiction from itself is voiced by the reflected totality of sensations (i.e. Soul) in a forcible and intermittent ejection of breath, and the abstract nature of the regained totality is further em- phasised by an increased shining of the eyes, the organ of purely ideal relation to objectivity — there results Laughter.

" We laugh readily at a victim to a perplexity which is transparent to us or which remains purely external to us. He who is not interested in anything substantial laughs at everything that surpasses his own trivial concerns, and much laughter indicates truly inner emptiness, the lack of a content capable of or worth articulate expression. But there is also the case of felt contradiction, when, namely, the reflected totahty of sensations or the sensient soul becomes itself entangled in a transient sensation, and so experiences within its own self that very incongruity which otherwise would make it laugh. What is voiced in this case is a feeling of inner disruption, of a tension which presses for its removal and finally gives way in a fit of crying when the emotion actually materialises itself and flows away. The fact that tears form themselves in the eyes outwardises the suspension of a purely ideal relation- ship towards objectivity which the soul undergoes during an inner conflict.

" And just because such a suspension appears also as a relapse into an inferior condition, a fit of crying awakens readily a sense of shame, so far as the soul resents its former entanglement in a limited content as unworthy of itself as a totality of sensations. So it vindicates its own essential Ideahty and, once again regaining its unruffled self-complacency, it finally even jokes at its own expense by turning its own grief into something ridiculous."

30 A Holiday with a Hegelian

" Perfectly true," was my only comment, although I did not think it necessary to explain the real background of the remark — my experience of the morning.

Dr. \^everka, too, seemed to ponder for a while some experience of his own, but at last he got up, saj'ing apolo- getically :

" I am afraid my explanation was not as lucid to you as I wished it to be. But I warned you of the difficulty of plunging straight away into the heart of things. Com- prehension comes slowly. . . . Well, let's go."

CHAPTER IV

THE PROBLEM OF POST-MORTEM EXISTENCE

AS Dr. Veverka had told me before, his cottage was "^ originally a gamekeeper's abode. He was only renting it for the summer, having learned that owing to the recent removal of its former tenant to another estate, it was temporarily unoccupied. " I used to spend my vacations in travelling," he remarked, " but too much dis- traction exasperates me now." He was a professor of mathematics in Briinn, the capital of Moravia, and, as he explained to me, was in the habit of spending his vacations, lasting from July to October, in some quiet retreat in the country.

" It is a very nice situation, indeed," I said, looking about when we arrived at the cottage. " The effect of sunshine on the forest opposite is simply wonderful."

" Yes, there are few places I have got to like so much. It is beautiful, and above everything else, quiet. I hate

noise."

There was a httle garden attached to the cottage, but the ground was, of course, uncultivated. The cottage itself was most simple in its plan. On the one side of the entrance passage were two rooms, of which one had to serve as kitchen, whilst on the other side was a store- room. Absence of an upper storey was in keeping with the general style of houses in the country. Dr. Veverka had to furnish the rooms, and so I was not surprised to find in them only what was necessary for a short stay. A woman might have complained of the bareness of the walls ; but I perfectly agreed with his opinion that provided one has a

32 A Holiday with a Hegelian

bed to sleep in and a table to sit at, one may very well do without all unnecessary bric-a-brac. The only unnecessary article was a photo of a beautiful woman on the table close to the window, on a little stand beside some paper- covered volumes of Hegel's works, I should have liked to have known who the woman was, but a feeling of delicacy restrained me. Noticing, however, that I observed the photo. Dr. Veverka anticipated my desire. " This is the photo of my wife," he said simply.

" Ah, so you are married ? " I exclaimed, showing re- newed interest in the sweet, though rather melancholy face.

" Yes, married — but a widower," was the reply, and something in Dr. Veverka's voice touched me to the quick.

" My dear Dr. Veverka ! " I exclaimed, whilst my heart was thrilling with sympathy. To think that he should have reason to grieve quite shocked me. Unconsciously I seized him by the hand and pressed it mutely.

" Thank you," he said, and his face shone with dreamy tenderness. " Yes, I have been a widower these six years. Sufficiently long to get accustomed to it. Ah, well, joy is good, and pain is good. To live means to experience

both "

e*.This grand simplicity in accepting the facts of life only raised my admiration for him. I should have liked to say something worthy of the occasion, but racked my brains in vain. I have never been in love, much less married : what, then, could I know of how a man feels in remembering his well-beloved, departed wife ? Moreover, Dr. Veverka was a philosopher, and his next remark bears witness to the curious mixture of ordinary human nature and superhuman detachment with which philosophers regard those painful personal experiences they share with the rest of mankind.

" To tell the truth," he said, falling into his easy and genial manner, " but for the death of my wife, I should hardly have turned my attention towards Philosophy. The pain of losing her was in a sense the most useful shock administered to my instinctive Egoism. So long as one is happy, one little desires to know oneself, and so remains

Post-mortem Existence 33

merged in one's instinctive nature. The law of growth does not, consequently, permit of life-long happiness. Of course, we grumble when grief comes to us, but sooner or later the comprehension comes that all is for the best. What is grief, after all, but an entanglement of the soul in a limited content which is to be transcended ? We feel our freedom instinctively^ and grief is only the means of regaining our birthright with full consciousness. In looking back at my despair when my wife died, I appear to myself to have been downright impious. Well, I do not say that I am positively glad of being a widower, but ' Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all ! ' to use the words of your Tennyson."

I indulged in a little private cogitation, staring out of the window. The sun was just disappearing behind the forest on the opposite slope of the valley, and the cottage would soon be enveloped in the receding shadow. Dr. Veverka was rolling a cigarette absent-mindedly, and so for a time there was silence.

" If you do not mind," I said at last, " I should like you to explain to me your view of the post-mortem existence. I confess that hitherto I have been rather sceptical on this point. After our discussion this morning, the subject appeared to me in a different light. I realised that it is absurd to wish to interpret ourselves in terms of an un- knowable ' Not-I,' as is done by the current evolutionary theory, and so it seemed to me quite logical to credit the * I ' with immortality. Your further explanation, however, that the 'I,' too, is properly only a figment of fancy, has again shifted my ground, so that I do not know what to think."

" Let me emphasise to begin with," answered Dr. Veverka, " that the statement as to the ' I ' being only a figment of fancy concerns the ' I ' as credited with definite existence, apart from all content. In this case, the ' I ' is obviously the same as pure Being ; that is to say, the same as Nothing. You have only to take your stand by a simple self-analysis, to realise that the ' I ' is de facto used only as a subject of definite experience ; and philo- sophy maintains the same standpoint ; only as the ' I ' is

34 A Holiday with a Hegelian

to be realised in this case in its truth, it is defined in terms of pure Thought.

' ' Comprehension must always be sought in the system of strictly logical Thought. And here one learns that there are three kinds of Being in such an inseparable unity, that each implies the other two, and is j'et also distinguished from them. This is a contradiction, but instead of quarrel- ling whether such a contradiction is at all possible, it is more in place to try to realise that our very existence is an illustration thereof.

"When we say One, we naturally think of a particular thing among the totality of things. But it is obvious that we cannot think of /\ll-Oneness, i.e. of that Oneness which is Thought, in the sense of a One, used in counting up things. We cannot really even think of it as one heap, composed of all the separately existing things, because we would thus exclude the bond of perfect unity which is familiar to us in our Self-feeling. Does not our body appear to consist of many separate organs and members ? Yet, are not all these parts felt by us as one body ? And since Thought (or All-oneness) contains all that is, must it not equally contain this kind of Oneness which we are with respect to our bodily existence ?

" We have, then, only to take ourselves as we actually are, to realise that the existing manifoldness of distinctions does not clash with the postulated Oneness in Thought. All perplexity in this connection arises only from inter- preting All-oneness in the sense of a mathematical unit, instead of in the sense of our own living Oneness, as a flux of arising and vanishing distinctions. The doctrine of Trinity is, after all, nothing but a record of the true nature of All-oneness : its presumable absurdity is simply a consequence of the intellectual clinging to the inert, mathematical One. There could be no clearer illustration of intellectual absent-mindedness (of the ordinary pro- pensity simply to stare out and handle appearances without giving the least thought to him who thus stares out : to one's own self !) than the vehement pooh-poohing of an assertion which is demonstrated by our very self-feeling.

" So far as Thought is spontaneously active, it must needs

Post-mortem Existence 35

discern itself within itself. Thinking cannot be realised otherwise than as a breaking-up of simple Identity into a Distinction which is next again reconciled in a richer notion. If it, then, seems that at first one deals only with immediate Being, the course of spontaneous dialectic proves before long that the immediate Being is de facto an untenable contradiction, having its reconcihation in the second kind of Being, that of Reflection, or in Essence, And since this is found to have been practically presupposed from the very beginning, the two kinds of Being are finally realised as forming truly a negative (i.e. self-active or living) unity which is the third kind of Being, that of the Notion.

" Since, now, the philosophical treatment of the ignorant conception of the Ego, as a figment of fancy (as nothing but an image of the mathematical oneness), in no way implies a denial of the actuality of a living Individual who experiences the contradictory nature of Thought, each of the three kinds of Being is related to a corres- ponding aspect of our Self, Hence the threefold distinction of Body, Soul, and Spirit, Bodily or physical Existence concerns our Experience of the dialectic of the immediate Being, whilst post-mortem Existence is a compulsory Experience of the second kind of Being. The third kind of Being is experienced properly only on reaching full mental Freedom, from the standpoint of which the dis- tinction of this and the other world is suspended in the Eternal Now, or grasped in its true meaning as an eter- nally arising and vanishing Illusion,

" So long as one remains under the sway of the mathe- matical conception of Oneness, one naturally identifies the soul with the body, and denies the post-mortem existence (whilst the term Spirit appears to stand for no Being at all). And if a man becomes, so to speak, incapable of conscious thinking (owing to an exclusive devotion to the analysis of external facts), every argument concerning the Soul as also distinct from the Body is wasted on him. Still, truth does not depend on a " consensus gentium." Once one awakens to the obvious fact that we are such a Oneness that it is a flux of spontaneously arising and vanishing distinctions, one cannot help making the dis-

36 A Holiday with a Hegelian

tinction of the Body and Soul. After all, everyone de facto does the same thing, whenever he speaks of his body. In any case, the body often aches, and this it could not were it not also distinguishable from the soul. Onlj' an utter tyro in self-analysis cannot realise as much.

" So far as this world is the totality of distinctions only from the standpoint of the senses, and we know very well that sensuous objects are reproducible by our imagination, and so equally may exist imaginatively, it suggests itself at first sight that there ought to be a counterpart of this world. And this suggestion is confirmed by the Science of Logic. In any case, when we realise that Truth exists only as a flux of distinctions, and that we are founded in Truth — that we are the truth — ^we must infer that our faculties have equally a universal aspect. All-oneness, Thought, or God implies all there is in us, and so, in our faculties, we only share what must needs have equally a universal significance. Otherwise, All-oneness would be a meaning- less word. As a matter of fact, do not our senses presuppose the world of sense ? And is the universal correspondence of our capacities to apply only to our senses, i.e. to the lowest grade of manifested Intelhgence ? By virtue of which logical principle can it be denied that there is equally a world of Imagination, i.e. a world of the second kind of Being, and finally a world of Actuality, or of the third kind of Being ? Only the mentally stultified calls all that is beyond this ^^'orld a problem. The belief in another world is as old as the hills, and it is to be grasped that an instinc- tive religious belief has a surer basis than a purely in- tellectual theory : the former arises from the sense of our full Self, or is founded in our instinctively logical nature, whilst the latter is always only a matter of eccentric reasoning, a matter of sophistry, so far as sophistry means reasoning from absurd premises.

" Can we experience our own annihilation ? Very well, men of science boast of basing their reasoning on facts of Experience, yet, as regards our immortality, they assume absurdly, as if the experience of our annihilation were the most sohd of all facts. What becomes of the whole problem when one grasps that we absolutely cannot experience

Post-mortem Existence 37

Unconsciousness, simply because Experience implies Consciousness ? Undoubtedly we go daily to sleep, but do we experience our unconsciousness in deep sleep ? Do we not, after all, only infer that we lose consciousness on the strength of having seen somebody asleep, i.e. appar- ently unconscious ? All we are justified in inferring is that we periodically cease to be aware for some time of this world. When we cannot remember what we were doing at a particular time in the past, do we jump to the conclusion that we were then unconscious ? We are certain to have been doing something or other, because we were then alive : very well, is there less certaint}^ that we are all through our sleep, even when we do not remem- ber how we spend the time in the other world ?

Our deepest unconsciousness cannot mean a destruction of our universal Self because this is just this : to make abstraction from every possible phenomenal distinction ! The blankness of our memory concerning the state of deep sleep is readily intelligible as a fit of complete self absorp- tion, as is the case in deep thinking. Being cannot be thought away, because thought cannot think away its own Being. Thought itself is. We cannot experience our beginning or end simply because we, our true Being, is eternal. Everything apparently unconscious or dead has for its background a conscious Ego : him who points it out ! Unconsciousness is not, therefore, a fact of ex- perience, but an Illusion ; and so far as this illusion counts as the most solid fact in the sphere of empiricism, men of science are, to that extent, mere sophists.

" Seeing that All-oneness exists only as a flux of self- produced distinctions, and we share its nature, we must live alternately in this and the other world. In a sense, we live in the other world even whilst living in this world, so far as we always exercise our imagination. But so long as we live in this world, we do not reahse the nature of the other world objectively, because our attention is claimed by the things of this world. Imagination and Thought appear, so far, only as an appendage to the life in this world. Still, we find, even here, that imagination and thought are equally distinct spheres from that of sense.

38 A Holiday with a Hegelian

Fancy is no less creative than receptive, and pure thinking is actually quite independent from any sensuous material, since its object is its own nature. Now, since this sub- jectively realised distinction between the spheres of our aspects points to their universal counterpart, our death in this world means an awakening in the world of imagina- tion. The Eastern conception of Reincarnation refers to an alternation between the two worlds (to the Essential Relation, dealt with in the doctrine of Essence), as a con- dition of our progress towards full Self-knowledge.

" Of course, this is a very superficial account of all that may be said on this subject. As you see, all comes back to the system of strictly logical thought, and before you have some knowledge of the latter, I can only put before you a few general conclusions. As the Ego has meaning only through a content, the realisation of all possible Content in its truth, i.e. the Science of Logic, obviously must contain the answer to every possible query as to the Ego. But, of course, in order to get the answer, the Ego must be identified with a particular content. Thus instead of asking vaguely : ' Shall I live after death ? ' one must ask, ' What is the Body, Soul, Consciousness, Nature, etc. ? ' Questions which bring the Ego to the front, as something to be dealt with per se, i.e. apart from a definite content, are irrational. But just because thoughtless people are for ever in majority (even among the professors of philosophy), Hegel appears to them to have denied the existence of the Ego. Hence the outcry against him ; hence the pooh-poohing of the Science of Logic as a string of empty abstractions of no subjective significance ! And it is, as a rule, in the name of truth that this grandest revelation of the nature of God is derided ! But, then, thoughtless people (and the more letters after a name, the greater, as a rule, the thoughtlessness !) are given to the naive conceit that Truth depends on their sanction ! And thus it is not surprising that every puny whipster fancies himself per- fectly qualified to discourse glibly on Hegelian fallacies."

CHAPTER V

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC

T T was natural that I should desire to make acquaintance with the system of strictly logical thought, and Dr. Veverka declared himself willing to give me as many lessons as I cared to have.

Strictly speaking, thought is always logical. The reason that people arrive at different conclusions from the same premises is simply due to carelessness in maintaining pure continuity of thought, or also to a hazy grasp of the pre- mises with which beginning is made. Indeed, so long as a premise is chosen at random in some conception of a com- plex nature, it cannot be expected that everyone should grasp identically all that is thus implied in the starting point. And if it is not clearly realised that purely con- tinuous thinking must refrain from introducing any further material from outside, but depend purely on its own spon- taneity, termed shortly Logic, it is not surprising that the ordinary reasoning admits only too easily more than is implied in its premise. It is in this way, then, that the door is left open to an infinite variety of inferences from professedly identical premises. The S37stem of pure thought, or the Science of Logic, is, therefore, necessarily bound, not only to record pure spontaneity of thought, i.e. to exclude all falling back on ready-made material in the sphere of facts, but to begin with a premise which must needs be thought exactly alike by everyone. So comes it then, that the Science of Logic begins with pure Being. The very fact that all that can be said of this is Nothing, proves that in this way we begin by taking nothing for granted. However plain the necessity of such

40 A Holiday with a Hegelian

a beginning appeared to me at first sight, I seemed to grasp it thoroughly only after Dr. Veverka had thrown it into relief as the final outcome of the ordinary pursuit of knowledge :

" No matter how long one may be content to take oneself simply for granted, and spend one's life in an instinctive exercise of the faculties which are the common heritage of every man, one awakens sooner or later from this initial self-indulgence and asks : ' What am I ? ' That is to say, one comes to realise that it is not enough simply to be, but that human dignity consists properly in Knowing what one is. This deepening of self-consciousness is, after all, only the climax of our attitude to the world in which we live,

"We are not satisfied simply to take notice of things, but cannot help trying to discover what they are. The least we must do is to describe their appearance, and the de- scription records then the result of our comparison of them in various respects. In this respect, things are alike ; in another respect, they differ.

" So far, things are credited with independence of us. It is only we who seem to connect them together in our consciousness, whilst they themselves appear indifferent to any relationship. External comparison involves only that which presents itself in them immediately to view ; they are compared, first of all, only as regards their colour, sound, smell, taste, and external shape.

' ' Nevertheless, things are credited also with co-relatedness in their own self. The next step in our attitude to them consists in an endeavour to fathom the nature of this their essential relatedness. Thus we observe the way in which things act and react on one another. The primary external comparison of their appearance is succeeded by empiricism, meant to establish the laws governing their action and reaction.

"It is plain, however, that, so far, it is overlooked that the attitude to things is man's attitude to them, and, consequently, that if the In-itself of things is to be dis- covered, the share of the experimentor in this research must not be left out of the question. Things have no labels attached to them ; whatever is predicated of them is due

The Science of Logic 41

just as much to us as to them. Hence, it is indispensable that we awaken, sooner or later, from the so-to-speak absent-minded attitude to things, and include our mental behaviour in the field of our search for knowledge. But whilst we thus reach the climax of the external attitude to things, we still perpetuate the same attitude to the Ego. Even when already realising that the Ego, too, is at least a Thing-in-itself, we begin our ascent towards Self- knowledge by an external observation of the Ego.

" This is the sphere of empirical Psychology. Self- knowledge amounts here only to a certain measure of insight into the peculiarities of our character under various circumstances. The pure nature of the Ego is still hidden, or has only the form of an hypothesis, the Ego passing as a rule for a Thing. For this reason, empirical psychology is incapable of establishing laws of consciousness. Whatever law is erected concerning the working of the latter, refers only to a particular mode of consciousness, and conse- quently lacks the characteristic feature of a law, i.e. the In-itself of an appearing content.

" For instance, Weber's so-called Law that Stimulation must increase in geometric proportion in order that Sensibihty may advance in arithmetical proportion, concerns properly, firstly, subconsciousness — if con- sciousness is understood to imply relatedness to an ex- ternally subsistent objectivity ; and, secondly, even if Sensibihty could be viewed as a mode of consciousness proper, said Law would still be quite external to it, because it expresses only a ratio between the magnitude of stimu- lation and sensibility, and Magnitude is on the whole an unessential feature of sensibility, since the latter depends essentially, not merely on external stimulation, but also on the presence of a working Soul, and its healthy fellowship with the hfe of its bodily part.

" The search for the laws of consciousness in the shape of ratios is abandoned when it dawns on us that the proper meaning of the Law is in this respect the essential nature of the Ego. And, when we thus realise ourselves as the Centre of the universe, we proceed to inquire into the relationship between the Ego and Things.

42 A Holiday with a Hegelian

" There are things, and the Ego first of all only appre- hends them by means of the senses, thus acquiring a figurate Conception of them. But they are next also examined with respect to their mutual relatedness. The result of this examination is no longer merely a figurate Conception, but the grasping of the Essence of things ; that which cannot be derived simply by means of the senses, but the ascertainment of which is a matter of Understanding or Intellect, i.e. the Notion of things. The Notion is the In-itself of the Ego, as well as of things, and the essential nature of things is, therefore, not foreign to the Ego, but identical with its own nature. The pre- sumably unknowable Thing-in-itself is not a positive con- tent, setting bounds to our knowledge, but only a Nothing credited with self -subsistence. So far as the Thing-in- itself is referred to a cognising Ego, it has a positive sense only as a circle of existing circumstances which are per- fectly knowable. And so far as it seems to be just possible that the Ego does not exhaust the whole content of things by acquiring the Notion of their properties, this Possibihty refers to no actual content.

" The apparent cul-de-sac, reached at the critical stage of Self-knowledge (embodied notably in the Kantian Philosophy), lands one at the very threshold of true know- ledge : this takes nothing for granted, and the unknowable Thing-in-itself is truly Nothing ! All that is required to enter the realm of pure Thought is to brush off the assumed self-subsistence of the Nothing, and to think it as the tabula rasa of all development.

" The negation of the unknowable Thing-in-itself is here the outcome of a perfectly common-sense attitude to things, so far as this attitude insists on basing itself on actual facts. It is a fact that all that we know of things is just as much proper to them as to the Ego. It is a fact that even the unknowable Thing-in-itself is only our own notion ; and since this notion is to imply nothing of what can enter either in figurate Conception or in Thought, the assumption of unimaginable and unthinkable properties can be urged only in the name of abstract Possibility, which argues just as much absolute Impossibility of the Un-

The Science of Logic 43

knowable. In disposing of this preconception, we directly emphasise that the Ego or Thought is essentially one and the same content with things or generally Being. It is a fact that the Ego has an innate intuition of its universality and expresses this intuition in its very attitude to things, treating them instinctively as its Property. From the standpoint of the essential relatedness of things, it is equally a fact that their properties are cognised only by means of categories which the Ego finds within itself a priori. Space and Time are themselves only moments of Thought, and it is, in fact, impossible to point out anything at all without implying an act of Thought.

" We cannot help thinking. To think is our very deter- minateness as men. But we think, first of all, only in- stinctively. Conscious thinking refers to the standpoint which has already superseded the antithesis between Thought and Being, and, consequentl5^ no longer seeks Knowledge through an inquiry into the nature of given things, but directly by means of an examination of the nature of Thought qua Thought. Things appear to imply more than Thought ; but the more which Things have against Thought is only an unessential content : all that which appeals to senses, which, however, amounts per se to pure Nothing. Indeed, this unessential content counts for Nothing in Empiricism itself, so far as the latter aims at the discovery of natural Laws. Cognition is concerned with what Things are in themselves, not with a simple record of the way in which they appeal to our senses. And since essential properties of Things are in any case a matter of Thought, an inquiry into the nature of Thought is eo ipso equally an inquiry into the nature of Being.

" Hegel's Science of Logic is the most thorough inquiry into the nature of Thought that has ever been published. The term Logic may seem to be used in various senses, but these senses amount really to a modification of the same fundamental meaning pari passu with the stages of mental development discussed above. Thus, so far as Logic is supposed to deal only with the formal Laws of Thought, the standpoint occupied with respect to Thought is that of a purely external attitude to Things, Thought and

44 A Holiday with a Hegelian

Being being treated as radically different even whilst they are manifestly also co-related. So far as the purely external attitude to Things goes, next, over into Empiricism, Logic is, secondly, taken as ' the science of the operations of the understanding, which are subservient to the estimation of evidence' (Mih's Logic, Intr.). This standpoint plainly aims at harmonising Thought with facts or Being, Thought being still, however, treated as an appendage to Things rather than as their true In-itself, In other terms, this standpoint still ignores that Things are cognised through the use of categories given in our mind a priori. This point is recognised in Kant's Transcendental Logic, where a distinction is made between the general and particular use of the understanding, the former being again either pure or applied, so far as empirical conditions under which the understanding is exercised are either abstracted from or retained. The Applied Logic has been recently elaborated into a whole system by Prof. Baldwin, but it is plain that Thought remains thus still only as what is found ready to hand : the principle of a systematic co-relation is not yet sought directly in Thought's own spontaneity, but in psychologic or utilitarian interest. Full recognition of the unity of Thought and Being is only the starting-point of Hegel's Science of Logic.

" Any objections to this standpoint amount simply to a relapse into one of the preliminary attitudes to objectivity. So far as the unity of Thought and Being appears as assumed, attention is to be drawn to the circumstance that this assumption has the vahdity of a statement of fact. As Hegel himself says in his Introduction to the Science of Logic, the only justification of which its premise is capable before its proper substantiation within the Logic itself, is its necessary appearance in Consciousness. Since the Science of Logic expounds the nature of Thought in its purity, its beginning must take up the final result of the development of Consciousness, and this result amounts to a recognition of the unity of Thought and Being as a fact of Conscious- ness. Prof. Baldwin's objection that Hegel unjustifiably anticipates the nature of ' Reahty ' is, therefore, untenable.

" Even were the object of the Science of Logic traced

The Science of Logic 45

simply to a capricious resolve to dog the dialectic which unfolds the nature of Thought in its spontaneity, its beginning would still have to be sought in the simplest notion, or rather in an attempt to think this simplest notion, because, as will be reahsed, the simplest notion of the unity of Thought and Being is already the outcome of the first act of Thought. In this attempt we should have to abstract from everything that admits of a distinction between definite Content and Form. For otherwise, we would begin with something analysable, or the beginning would already embody a more or less concrete form of Thought, whilst it yet should imply no progress made in knowing, no achieved act of Thought. Hence, the beginning must be the beginning of the very first act of Cognition : and before anything else we must clearly think, first of all. Being qua Being, i.e. pure Being. And as we must think pure Being because of our determination to make an abstraction from all determinateness, pure Being is avowedly the same vacuity of content as pure Nothing.

" To decry this unity of Being and Nothing as something taken quite gratuitously for granted is obviously most unfair. Hegel is thus taken to task, as a common conjurer, for doing what he plainly must do : what must be done by everybody who wishes to perform the very first act of Thought ! In taking up the final result of our ordinary attitude to objectivity, we start ^^ith the notion of the unity of Thought and Being ; that is to say, with the notion of Truth. But since this notion is to receive its full import only by a dialectic consideration of the nature of Being, the task of the verification of the notion of Truth must begin with an attempt to think pure Being or Nothing.

" This may be also stated thus : An exposition of absolute Truth must take Nothing for granted ; and so far as the exposition amounts immediately to an inquiry into the nature of Being, Being must be in the beginning only another word for Nothing : hence, pure Being. An objection to this synonymy would have sense only if Nothing and Being had a concrete meaning, which, how- ever, they expressly have not. The distinction between them is, consequently, purely nominal : the same vacuity

46 A Holiday with a Hegelian

of content is named twice necessarily, because the notion of Truth imphes distinction. Distinctions there mani- festly are ; hence, the notion of Truth is unthinkable as a pure Oneness, and so it happens that the very vacuity of all content, or the very attempt to think the simplest notion, gives rise to the nominal distinction of Being and Nothing.

" But even when one fully realises the rational necessity of the beginning with pure Being or Nothing, one is far from finding the dialectical development of Thought easy. Hegel's discourse from paragraph to paragraph appears, at first sight, to be couched in so strange a language that a beginner is quite at a loss to realise what he aims at. As a matter of fact, the discourse is perfectly lucid and admirably simple. The first volume of the Science of Logic was revised by Hegel just before his death in 1831 ; and it may be safely taken for granted that he was by then fully competent to say just what he wished to say : and to say it, too, in the simplest possible way, especially as a so-to-speak paternal anxiety to make himself intelligible to his students characterised him all through his career as a lecturer.

" The difficulties connected with the study of the Science of Logic must be traced simply to the fact that the student does not feel at once at home in the realm of pure Thought. So far, he has been accustomed to think pic- torially, and now finds himself staring, as it were, into utter emptiness, as the absence of figurate conception in pure thinking is bound to appear at first. No wonder, then, that many a student who has been accustomed to a comparatively easy success in his studies, so far as these depended chiefly on good memory, begins by being amazed at the seeming impenetrability of Hegel's discourse, and ends by inferring that the Science of Logic must be non- sense : for the very reason that he finds it incomprehen- sible 1 Such at least appears to be Prof. Wm. James' way of saying that Hegelian grapes are sour, so far as he con- fesses freely his inability to follow Hegel's dialectic, but nevertheless has no hesitation in denying its rationality : Hegel was presumably a man of unusually impressionistic

The Science of Logic 47

mind, only unfortunately his method and expression were so non-sensical ! {Hih. Journ., January, 1909).

" The absence of figurate conception has, of course, its reason in this, that the object of pure Thought is Thought itself. This means that all habits of Reflection based on the ordinary attitude to objectivity must be left behind : all that remains over of the form of objectivity is Names. Unlike Imagination, Thought simply names itself. We think in names. When speaking of Essence, Cause, Judgment, Syllogism, etc., we do not speak of something capable of visualisation, but imply a content which is understood only by being thought.

" Names generally convey a meaning independently of figurate conception even when they refer to an objective existence. For something given in space and time acquires, by being named, the peculiar characteristic of existing only as superseded. To explain :

" Since all that appeals merely to sense amounts, from the standpoint of Thought, to Thought's own Otherwise- ness, the exercise of the senses is fer se a thoughtless activity, having the significance of a protracted attempt to think that Nothing which is the beginning of Wisdom : a verity acknowledged one-sidedly by those who trace mental development to sensuous impressions. The first step to- wards the removal of this one-sidedness — consisting, firstly, in the ignoring of the fact that Being and Thought are in such negative unity that neither is apart from the other, and, secondly, in an unawareness that Thought against Being is the positive — is figurate conception, which is the inwardising of external manifoldness and, therefore, con- stitutes the middle between that state of Intelligence in which it finds itself immediately subject to modification, and that state in which it is in its Freedom, or as Thought. Just because Imagination begins from Intuition, the ready-found material still continues to affect its activity and Intelhgence appears, consequently, still dependent. Since, however, Thought is the Truth of Being, said appearance of dependency is truly only a challenge pro- voking Intelligence to embody objectivity in conformance with its fundamental nature as Thought. Now, as figurate

48 A Holiday with a Hegelian

conception cannot be said truly to be, just because it remains conditioned by contrast witli the world of sense, and this latter is to acquire that Immediacy which belongs to it as what is thought : Intelligence finally embodies objectivity in Language, thus giving it that existence which belongs to sensation, intuition and conception in Thought's ideational realm. The Name alone, if we understand it, is the unimaged, simple conception. One has no need of ever having seen the sea, to understand what it means. Intelligence works up figurate conceptions into species, genera, laws, forces, etc., in short, into Categories, thus indicating that the given material does not get the Truth of its Being except in these thought-forms : and so far as Intelligence explains things out of its cate- gories, it understands them, i.e. it puts itself in their place or stands under them as their neutral basis.

" But so Intelhgence functions, first of all, only as Understanding or Intellect. What remains still to be achieved before it truly returns into itself is to remove the immediacy which notions have in its ideational realm. In other terms, Intelligence must bring its categories into a system, the principle of which lies in the very nature of Thought as infinite negativity. As spontaneously active, Thought must needs discern itself within itself, and the tracing out of the how it builds up the system of its cate- gories by its own dialectical potency constitutes the task of pure thinking.

" This makes plain that a study of the Science of Logic becomes fruitful only after Thought has ceased to be viewed as a life-less abstraction. Until one has come so far, one cannot get rid of the suspicion as though Hegel's dia- lectic were just Hegel's, i.e. a subjective dialectic which might possibly admit of a different turn from individual to individual. For instance, to Prof. Eucken, ' the so- called " oppositions " as logical thought handles them, are essentially self-made ; they exist only so long as thought forbears to use the category that is adequate to reconcile them. Once this category is brought into play, the op- positions magically vanish, and the thinker finds himself at a point of view from which the universe appears in-

The Science of Logic 49

finitely rational and right. And the moral which consistent intellectualism draws from tliis victory over these opposi- tions (or contradictions, as it significantly calls them) is that the truth, the whole and perfect truth, is already present in the universe, but is sealed from the gaze of all who cannot make use of that mysterious key — the right logical category.' ^

" It is plain that Prof. Eucken entirely ignores the nature of thinking, as an immaculate Self-begetting of Intelhgence, or else it would have struck him that categories must form a system which is perfectly independent of any subjective disposition for sophistic trickery. His incapacity of crossing the threshold of pure Knowledge is demonstrated by his resentment of the philosophical (and, indeed, quite current) notion of Truth as what is eternal, hence eo ipso also already now present. Considered closer, this resent- ment springs simply from the ordinary attitude to ob- jectivity, according to which Thought and Being are opposed in such wise, that the former is treated either as purely formal, or as an appendage of the latter. The principle of development is in this manner sought in subjective experience, in the sphere of figurate conception, whereby the infinite negativity of Thought comes to appear only as a growth in Time and the notion of Eternity is degraded into that of an infinite progress in a straight line : heedlessly of the fact that this line, just because it is straight, and therefore only a reference to self, is actually a return into self, i.e. a circle having no beginning nor end. It is, therefore, not surprising to find Prof. Eucken laying special stress on his conviction ' that the possibilities of the universe have not yet been played out, as hoary-headed wisdom would have us believe, and that our spiritual life still finds itself battling in mid-flood, with much of the world's work still before it ' — as though Hegel asserted that the possibilities of the universe could ever play them- selves out !

" He who would penetrate into the realm of pure Thought cannot be cautioned strongly enough against the stand- point of the ordinary consciousness with its illusory sound- 1 Boyce, Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of Life, p. i;jS. D

50 A Holiday with a Hegelian

ness. It is comparatively easy to transcend the first or descriptive stage, but the standpoint forming the next higher background of the external attitude to things, i.e. the simple certainty of self called the Ego constitutes a veritable stumbling block to the final return of Intelligence into itself as pure Knowing, The Ego is the notion in its immediacy in such wise that its immanent content appears also externally as the Universe. Owing to this delegation of its spontaneous activity to a seemingly self-subsistent objectivity, the Notion remains on the side of the Ego as an empty form of the Universal. But just because Thought or the Notion is fundamentally in negative unity with the apparent Universe, the Ego cannot maintain itself except as a Recovery of its true meaning. Nevertheless, until Thought ceases to be viewed as a lifeless abstraction, the Ego clings to Self-feeling — ^^'hich is, indeed, all that preserves its illusory independence — and in this manner obstinatelv refuses to surrender its eccentricitv."

CHAPTER VI

FIRST ACT OF THOUGHT

AT the end of his discourse, Dr. Veverka gave me the ■^ following paper for my private study :

FIRST ACT OF THOUGHT First step : Pure Being

0. Reahsation of the meaning of taking nothing for granted.

Second step : Being, Nothing

1. Being is the indeterminate Immediate, is in fact Nothing.

2. Nothing is the same absence of determinateness as pure Being.

Third step : Becoming

3. What is the truth is neither Being nor Nothing, but that Being — does not go over — but is gone over into Nothing, and Nothing into Being : Becoming.

Fourth step : Coming-to-be, Ceasing-to-be

4. Being and Nothing sink down from their immediately conceived self-subsistence into moments which are still dis- tinct, but at the same time suspended.

5. Grasped in this their distinctiveness, each is in unity with the other.

6. Becoming is in this manner in double determination : as Coming-to-be and Ceasing-to-be.

7. Coming-to-be and Ceasing-to-be interpenetrate each other, or, rather, each suspends itself through its own nature, because it is in itself its own contrary.

8. Owing to the interpenetration or equilibrium of its

51

52 A Holiday with a Hegelian

distinct moments, the Becoming itself collapses as well into peaceful unity.

9. So far as becoming is the disappearing of that very distinctiveness on which alone it rests (the distinction of Being and Nothing), it is self-contradictory, and therefore untenable.

10. The result of its suspension is Being : but the Being of the peaceful unity of Being and Nothing.

11. Such a Being is called Presence : that Being which there is.

Fifth step : Presence

12. Presence appears as a First with which beginning is made.

13. According to its Becoming, Presence is generally Being with a Non-Being in such wise that the unity of both simply is : the Non-Being stands, so far, only for the Determinateness as such (not yet for another Being).

14. In referring to another Being, however, we anticipate what belongs properly to the dialectical development still before us : it is most important not to allow pure continuity of thought to get disturbed by anticipations of what must yield itself dialectically.

15. True, just because Presence is no longer pure Being, there must needs spring up in it several determinations, embodying distinct relations of its moments.

16. Nevertheless, at first sight, Determinateness has not yet detached itself from Being.

17. As thus wholly simple and immediate, Determinate- ness is Quality.

Sixth step : Reality, Negation

18. In the distinct character of Being, Quality is Reahty ; as fraught with negativity. Quality is Negation as such.

19. These two moments of Quality pass for being dis- tinct : but each is immediately the other.

Seventh step : Being-within-self

20. In that the distinction in Quahty is just as much suspended, Quality is not at all separated from Presence.

First Act of Thought 53

21. The suspendedness of the distinction is a deter- minateness within Presence, which latter is thus Being- within-self or Something.

Dr. Veverka explained to me that this paper formed a part of his own digest of the Science of Logic, in which he condensed every paragraph of Hegel's discourse, so far as the latter concerns the dialectical movement proper, to a simple statement, with the view of getting a compre- hensive grasp of the whole subject-matter.

" Of course," he remarked, " I could reproduce the whole theme in my own words. But, then, you will not be always with me, and I am thinking of your future study of the Science of Logic itself. I am sure that my digest, if you care to copy it out for yourself, will prove very useful to you. The chief difficulty of a student of the Science of Logic consists in his inability to keep his bearing through the maze of dialectic, and my digest is meant to remove this difficulty by drawing attention to the central idea of every paragraph belonging to the dialectical movement proper (that is to say, when prefatory and independent Remarks are left out of the question) from the standpoint of pure continuity of Thought.

" But my digest is more than this. You will find that I take no notice of Hegel's own subdivision of the subject- matter in question, but introduce a subdivision of my own. Not that I find fault with Hegel's arrangement of the Science of Logic. My departure from it is simply due to the fact that I proposed, in my Digest, to test the objec- tivity of Hegel's dialectic from the standpoint of the necessary anticipation which arises in mind at the end of the first act of Thought, as I am aboutto explain.

" Namely, when one begins simply to think purely, one finds that the first act of Thought is properly achieved only in the notion of Being- within-self or Something. It is only here that pure Thought admits of a pause, because Becoming is thought only as an unrestful unity of Being and Nothing and thus not as a result. True, at first sight it would seem that the first act comes to its full stop in the notion of Presence, which has accordingly been characterised as ' a First with which beginning (the beginning of the second

54 A Holiday with a Hegelian

act) is made ' (§12). But what is the notion of Something but Presence reahsed in its character as the result of the first act of Thought ? The term Presence simply dis- tinguishes Being as a result of Becoming from its initial connotation as pure Being. So far as we bring home its present connotation, as the peaceful unity of Being and Nothing in the form of Being (and, therefore, by anticipa- tion, only in a one-sided form, since the peaceful unity may evidently be equally thought in the no less one-sided form of Nothing, as is the case in the not of Something, i.e. in something else or an Other), we record this its char- acteristic meaning in Determinateness as such. But this tenii stands still only generally for the result of Becoming, i.e. for all that is become, not as yet distinctly for the simplest or first result of Becoming : this is recorded pro- perly in Quality. And the very fact that this is the concluded first act means that Quality is to be grasped as a suspended distinction of Being and Nothing, i.e. of Reality and Negation. This its meaning must clearly be still included in the first act, because the distinction of Reality and Negation is not yet the distinction of a Quality from another Quality, of Something from an Other, but a purely abstract distinction within the Quality as such. Reality cannot be opposed to Negation as to another Quality, because Quality has meaning only as a direct or immediate unity of Reahty and Negation.

" Besides, is not the very obstinacy of ordinary con- sciousness, to substitute Something, i.e. a Quahty (a definite Being) for the pure Being, and thus to repudiate the direct unity of Being and Nothing, an instinctively logical evidence that the first act of Thought goes as far as the notion of Something ? Just because the ordinary, only instinctively logical consciousness does not concern itself with an abstract analysis of the moments implied in every act of thought, it begins at least with the result of its first act : with Something which as a Presence is, of course, at once opposed to another Presence (as will be found in the second act of thought).

" Of course (to complete this digression), just because the ordinary consciousness insists on beginning with the

First Act of Thought 55

result of the first act of Thought, it must needs also pre- suppose that very unity of Being and Nothing which it pooh-poohs with such vehemence : Becoming. Why, this is precisely why it is exercised as to the Origin of all that is ! The perplexing question as to the Why : what is it but the way in which the instinctively logical nature forces on our attention that Something is the beginning of the second act of Thought, consequently a Being having Becoming (Origin, Decease) at its back ! On the strength of the first act of Thought it is already plain what is to be thought of the presumable insolubility of this question : the insolubility amounts to an obstinate refusal (or utter incapacity) to think pure Being ! And thus it may be anticipated that all argumentation as to the thinkableness of a beginning, on the part of the ordinary consciousness, is simply a tissue of sophistry. For instance, so far as Kant proposes to prove indisputably that the world has a beginning, he assumes a given moment, as though the beginning itself were not a given moment. And so far as he professes to prove indisputably the contrary, he assumes a time before the beginning : remaining all through unaware that the beginning is the Becoming degraded to a mere conception of Time and arriving, on the contrary, at the conclusion that just because Reason (presumably) supplies an indisputable proof of contradictory assertions, it is incapable of discovering the truth !

" Now, in saying that the conundrum of the Origin of all that is, is already solved through the analysis of the very first act of Thought, I am voicing the afore-mentioned necessary anticipation as regards the nature of Thought, namely, that Thought reveals itself in its every complete act as a whole of the same typical moments ; or, in other terms, that the very first act bears already a witness to the substantial nature of Thought in its most comprehensive sense. That Hegel himself is quite aware of these typical moments of every act of Thought becomes obvious in connection with the dialectic of the One. ' The moments of the development of this notion,' he says, ' are by anticipation : (i) Negation in general, (2) Two Negations, (3) consequently two such that they are the same tiling,

56 A Holiday with a Hegelian

(4) and directly opposed to one another, (5) Identity as such, (6) negative reference and yet to self.' He does not mention the seventh moment, but its presence is self- understood.

" The steps of mediation could be equally characterised thus : (i) Premise, (2) Difference, (3) Abstract middle term, (4) Antithesis, (5) Identity of the opposites or the concreted middle term, (6) Self-contradiction, (7) Con- clusion. And if they are traced directly to the Notion (the just stated characterisation referring to the stand- point of the Essence), their intelligible whole amounts to a definition of the true, seeing that the true is a matter of pure thinking, hence definable only in terms of the typical moments of every act of Thought. As a matter of fact, Prof. Bolland, the enthusiastic Hegelian at Leyden, defines the true to be this : ' To distinguish itself within itself, to establish the other of its own self in order to arrive in it (the other) at its own self : to convert it and thus to be for itself.' ^

" Although we are, so far, extending the result of the analysis of the first act of Thought over the whole dialectic by means of which Thought verifies to itself its own unity with Being, we are justified in doing so on the strength of the unity of Thought and Being as a fact of consciousness. Still, what is thus quite justifiably anticipated, is yet to be verified philosophically. And as this verification is not to set aside the result of the analysis of the first act of Thought, but only to justify the correctness of our present application of it, we shall establish this correctness on finding that the whole dialectic of the Objective Logic actually does form seven main subdivisions, the first of which is to be identified with the first act of Thought. We may, therefore, say that the task before us consists in a verification whether the dialectical whole which, according to Hegel, is meant to establish philosophically that unity of Thought and Being which he postulates to

^ " Het ware is dit, zich in zichzelf te onderscheiden, van zichzelf het andere te stellen, om daarin tot zichzelf te komen, het te ver- keeren en voor zich te zijn." — Zuiverc Rede en hare Weykclijkheid, Leiden, A. H. Adriani, 1909 (2d. ed.)-

First Act of Thought 57

begin with as a fact of consciousness, forms truly seven acts of Thought. Further, so far as the second, fourth, and sixth steps of mediation of the first act are dual, it is to be seen equally whether the second, fourth, and sixth acts of Thought are similarly dual. The One dialectical whole of the Objective Logic ought to be by anticipation, properly a whole of ten dialectical wholes, which wholes, in dis- tinction from the septenary subdivision, may be called arbitrarily Cycles. You see, then, that in proceeding to subdivide the dialectical movement by means of which Thought proves its unity with Being in the stated manner, we are giving ourselves the satisfaction of testing the adequacy of Hegel's rendering of purely continuous think- ing in a purely objective or impersonal manner."

CHAPTER VII

SECOND ACT OF THOUGHT

'T'HE subject-matter of the second act of Thought was subdivided by Dr. Veverka as follows :

A. SECOND CYCLE

1. Something as such

22. Something is the first Negation of the Negation, as the simple Being of reference to self.

23. Something is thus equally the mediation of itself with itself.

24. As, however, this mediation has, so far, no concrete determinations to its sides, Something is estabhshed primarily only as simply maintaining itself in its reference to self, and its negative (the Negation of which it is the first Negation) is now equally a Quality, but at first only an Other in general.

2. Something, Other

25. Something and Other are both, in the first place. Presence or Something.

26. Secondly, each is equally an Other : the dis- tinguishing and fixing of the one Something is a subjective designating, a matter of choice.

27. But since there is no Presence that is not without another Presence and thus not itself an Other ;

28. And since, further, the identity of the Other with Something falls only into the external comparison of both :

29. The Other is to be taken, thirdly, equally in reference to its own self : as the Other as such.

58

Second Act of Thought 59

30. But so we have before us, a self-identical Something : since the Other as such is the Other in its own self, hence the Other of its own self, or the Other of the Other, the dis- tinction of Something and Other is suspended.

3. Something and Other in one Reference, or

Altering

31. Something is essentially one with the Other, and just as essentially not one with it.

32. So far as Something is one with the Other, and the Other is, nevertheless, also not one with it, it refers to another, or its Being is Being-for-other (Being as and in the Other).

SS- And so far as Something (or Other) refers to itself against its reference to something else, or against its Being-for-other, its Being is Being-in-itself.

4. Being-in-itself, Being-for-other

34. Being-in-itself and Being-for-other are the names for Something and Other, as moments of one and the same reference, of one and the same Something.

35. Or, rather, they embody the present sense of the original distinction of Being and Nothing,

36. Being-in-itself records that Being is not simply negative reference to Non-Being, but that it has Non-Being also in it : that it is the Not of Being-for-other.

37. Similarly, Being-for-other records that Non-Being is, not simply negative reference to Being, but that, just by being the Not of Being, it itself also is as against Being, i.e. that it points to the Being-in-itself as to a Being re- flected within its own self.

38. So far, then, as Something (or Other) is in itself and for another :

39. The distinction of Being-in-itself and Being-for-other is also null or suspended ; or Something has in it v;hat it is in itself : it is in itself what it is for another.

40. From this it follows that Being-in-itself loses all meaning, if abstraction is made from all Being-for-other

6o A Holiday with a Hegelian

(as is the case in connection with the current conception of the Thing in-itself).

41. And it is equally plain that Being-for-other would lose all meaning were it opposed to Being-in-itself without implying it ; but this distinction involves the result of the doctrine of Being — the established Being — and therefore falls properly into the sphere of Essence.

5. Determination or the In-itself

42. The identity of the Being-in-itself and the Being-for- other in the form of the In-itself is Determination.

43. This is the present meaning of Determinateness as such, or also of Something as such.

44. Determination is the affirmative Determinateness, with which Something, in its Presence, remains congruous against its involution with Other by which it might be determined, maintaining itself in its equality with itself, and making it good in its Being-for-other.

45. The distinction between Determinateness as such and Determination has, for instance, with respect to Man, the meaning of Thought as such (pure Thought) and of thinking Reason.

6. Determination, Constitution

46. So far as Being for other is equally distinguishable from its identity with the Being-in-itself, yet the dis- tinction must remain purely qualitative (§41), the Being- for-other acquires the sense of Constitution.

47. To have a Constitution, i.e. to be involved in ex- ternal relationship, is, therefore, not a mere contingency attaching to Something, but its very Quality.

48. At first sight it would seem that Something alters only externally, or only in its Constitution, since Deter- mination is its affirmative Determinateness.

49. But that this cannot be so is plain from the fact that Determination and Constitution are distinct sides of one and the same Something : they have their simple middle in Determinateness as such and their distinction is, therefore, equally suspended.

Second Act of Thought 6i

50. But this means that there is before us such a dis- tinction that its sides are one and the same Something : the Other is now estabhshed to be the Being-within-self of the Something itself : Alteration converts the first Negation of Negation into another, second one.

7. Ceasing-to-be-an-Other or Non-Being-for- Other

51. There are now two Somethings, each of which refers itself to itself by means of the suspension of the Other, so that reference to self is now equally a Ceasing to be an Other, or an estabhshing of the Non-Being-for-Other.

52. There is One determinateness of the two Somethings which is as well identical with their In-itself (so far as this latter is Negation of the Negation, §44), as it also (so far as these Negations are against one another as other Some- things, §50) concludes them out of their own self : the One determinateness in question is called Limit.

B. THIRD CYCLE

I. Limit as such

53. The development of this notion manifests itself rather as entanglement.

54. So far as the Limit is primarily the Non-Being of the Other, yet the Other is itself a Something, the Limit is the Non-Being of the Something in general.

55. Since, however, the Non-Being of the Other has now the sense of the established Being of the Something, the Limit is, at the same time, itself only the Being or Quality of the Something.

56. The Limit is, therefore, the mediation whereby Something and Other each as well is and is not.

'O

2. Limit, Presence

57. Thus, however, the Limit is also as the Third to Something and Other which have their Presence on the other side, the one from the other, of their Limit.

58. This is the side from which Limit is approached

62 A Holiday with a Hegelian

primarily by Conception and which is to be found specially in things of space.

59. Since, then, Something has its Presence only in the Limit, and the Limit and immediate Presence are, at the same time, each the negative of the other : the Something which is only in its Limit just as much sunders itself from its own self and points beyond itself to its Non-Being, enunciating it as its own Being and so passing over into it.

60. This conclusion has its illustration, firstly (as regards the one determination that something is what it is in its Limit) in the Point, Line and Plane, so far as they are elements or principles of the Line, Plane and Volume re- spectively ; secondly (as regards the immediate unity of Limit and Presence as self-contradiction) in the current conception that Line originates through the movement of a Point, Plane through that of a Line and Volume through that of a Plane.

3. FiNITUDE

61. Something with its immanent Limit, estabhshed as the contradiction of its own self, through which contra- diction it is what is not, is the Finite.

62. The Finite is, therefore, the Negation fixed in itself and so eternal.

63. Were, however, the Finite not to pass away in the affirmative, we should be again back at that first, abstract Nothing which is long since passed.

64. Finitude is thus a higher restatement of Becoming.

65. We have now to see what moments are contained in its notion.

4. Limitation, Ought-to-be

66. The proper Limit of the Something, established by it as a negative which is at the same time essential, is not only Limit as such, but Limitation ; whilst the In-itself, as the negative reference to its own self as Limitation is what ought to be.

67. In order that the Limit which is in the Something generally, be a Limitation, the Something must at the same

Second Act of Thought 63

time transcend it within its own self, and thus transcend equally its own self.

68. The Ought-to-be is, therefore, directly united with the Limitation as well as distinct from it.

69. Only the Limitation is established as the Finite.

70. What only ought to be is the Determination es- tablished as it is de facto ; namely, at the same time only a Determinateness (§13).

71. The In-itself reduces itself, therefore, to what ought to be when Being-for-other is established as Something's Limitation.

72. Thus the Ought-to-be transcends the same deter- minateness which is its negation.

73. As the Ought-to-be, consequently, the Something is raised above its Limitation, but even as so raised it nevertheless remains limited through its reference to its Finitude.

74. Owing to this its self-contradictory nature, the Finite suspends itself and goes over into the Infinite, i.e. into the Other as such of finite Being.

5. Infinitude

75. The Infinite is the true Being, reached through the rising superior to the Limitation.

76. It does not, however, arise externally to the Finite : this latter is only this, to convert itself into its Other, the Infinite, through its own nature.

77. Thus the Finite is swallowed up in the Infinite, and that which truly is, is the Infinite.

6. Alternation of the Finite and the Infinite

78. As only immediate, the Infinite appears, however, still opposed to the Finite.

I.

79. As against the circle of determinatenesses or realities, the Infinite is the indeterminate blankness, the Beyond of the Finite.

64 A Holiday with a Hegelian

80. This is the bad Infinite, the Infinite of the Intellect, to which it has the value of the highest, of absolute truth.

81. From this standpoint there are two determinate- nesses or worlds, one infinite and one finite, and in their reference the Infinite is only a Limit of the Finite, i.e. only a determinateness, finite Infinitude.

82. The Finite stands as the Presence on this side, w^hile the Infinite, in spite of being the In-itself of the Finite, is pushed, as a Beyond, into a dim, inaccessible distance, out of which the Finite finds itself and remains on this side.

3-

83. But in that each is, in its own self and from its own determination, the establishing of the other, they are inseparable, although their unity remains hidden in their qualitative otherness.

84. Each arises immediately in the other, and their relation is only an external one.

85. Transcendence is made beyond the Finite into the Infinite, but the latter immediately relapses into the Finite which is again transcended — and so on ad infinitwn.

86. There is present an alternating determination of the Finite and the Infinite.

87. Presenting itself as the Progresses ad Infinitum, this alternation passes in many forms and applications for the ultimufn which cannot be transcended.

88. This bad Infinitude is in itself the same thing as the perennial Ought-to-be : it is indeed the negation of the Finite, but it cannot in truth free itself therefrom, because it is only as in reference to the Finite, which latter being other to it,

89. The Finite has thus the determination of a Presence which perennially regenerates itself in its Beyond, ever assuming a different aspect.

Second Act of Thought 65

90. In the indicated hither and thither of the alternating determination of the Finite and the Infinite, their truth is already in itself present :

91. There lies in each the determinateness of the other whether they are taken with reference to one another or without any reference at all.

5-

92. Both modes of consideration give one and the same result :

93. The decried unity of the Finite and the Infinite.

6.

94. But in that they are abo to be taken as different, the Infinite is a finitised Infinite, the Finite the infinitised Finite.

95. Intellect falsifies this double unity in assuming the sides as not negated,

96. This falsification is due to forgetting what the notion of these moments is for the intellect itself.

97. In both cases it is only the negation which suspends itself in the negation.

98. What is, then, present in both is the same negation of the negation which is in itself reference to itself, or affirma- tion, but as return to itself.

7-

99. A simple reflection shows that this conclusion is established in the infinite Progress.

100. The Finite is here found to have gone together with itself, or to have in its Beyond only found itself again : whether it be taken as simple, consequently as separate and only successive, or as in reference.

loi. The same is the case with the Infinite.

102. They are thus results, not, consequently, that which they are in the determination of their beginning.

103. Their distinction is only the double sense of the true Infinite.

66 A Holiday with a Hegelian

7. Ideality

104. The true Infinite is not simply a unity of the Finite and the Infinite, but rather essentially only as Becoming : but Becoming now further determined in its moments.

105. As Being-returned-into-itself, this Infinite is Being having the affirmation of Presence in it : its image is the line which has reached itself, which is closed and quite present, without beginning and end : the Circle as against the straight line of the infinite Progress.

106. The true Infinite which, as Presence, is established affirmatively against the abstract negation, is Reality in a higher sense than the former one determined as simple Reality : Reality has obtained a concrete content.

107. The Negation against which it is the affirmation is the Negation of the Negation. Reality has thus acquired the concrete meaning of Ideahty : of Reality opposed to that Reality which finite Presence is.

CHAPTER VIII

COMMENTS

f DO not say that I found the second act of Thought easy to follow. Still, I managed to force my way through it much easier than I expected. I had only to view the import of the dialectic movement in the light of ordinary common sense to satisfy myself that it agrees with our ordinary attitude to Something.

We postulate an Other along with Something, and this Other is taken in the same sense as the Something. The distinction of Something and Other is, therefore, treated, at first sight, as purely nominal, that is to say, as a matter of subjective choice (§26). If one of two things is called Something, then the other thing is the Other ; but since either of them is Something, either is equally an Other. Hence, the Other as such has the same meaning as Some- thing as such (§30). And because either term is only a label applicable indifferently to one of two things, the Being designated in this way is necessarily a Being-for-other (§§31. 32).

If I call a chair an article of furniture, then since this designation fits equally well a table, the Being of a chair is designated, not as what is absolutely unrelated, but as a related Being ; and it is clearly this relatedness of Some- thing that Hegel calls Being-for-other. And so far as I draw a distinction between a chair and a table, I distin- guish in an article of furniture two sides : as what it is for other and as what it is in itself.

These two sides are to be found in connection with every- thing. Hence, Being is no longer taken as pure Being, because Non-Being is now a Being-for-other ; instead of pure Being we have, then, Being as a not of Being-for-other ;

67

68 A Holiday with a Hegelian

Being-in-itself (§35). And if we, therefore, try to isolate Being-in-itself or Being-for-other, we find that either loses all meaning apart from the other. They are definable only in terms of one another (§§36-37). That Something is in itself what it is for other is obvious because it is the immediate unity of these two sides : Determination, This term is a further restatement of the Being-within-self, so far as its two sides are no longer simply Reality and Negation, but Being-in-itself and Being-for-other. Deter- mination is thus equally a higher or more pointed restate- ment of Determinateness as such : the latter connotes the Being of the simplest unity of Being and Nothing, the former the Being of the simplest unity of Being-in-itself and Being-for-other, and therefore refers to a Presence. Everything implies Determinateness in its Determination, just as a species implies a genus. Our determinateness is Thought, as the genus Man ; but Thought is in us as thinking Reason, which latter is, therefore, our Deter- mination or vocation.

Determination may be also defined as Being-for-other taken up in a unity with Being-in-itself in such wise, that the concrete whole is in the one-sided form of Being-in- itself, or as the In-itself. The In-itself or Determination is, therefore, opposed to the same concrete whole under the form of Being-for-other. So the Something is to be taken also as involved in external influence, as having a Con- stitution, Along with our vocation to think, we also receive impressions from outside, and are constituted accordingly. Whether or not a chair fulfils its determina- tion depends on its Constitution. The same applies to the State and to everything. And so it is at once plain that Determination and Constitution cannot be torn apart ; that they are only aspects of one and the same thing. The conception that Something alters only in its Con- stitution has its place only at first sight (§48), For although Determination and Constitution are distinct sides of Something (§49), their distinctiveness is equally suspended. External impressions influence our mental development, and our mental attitude influences, in turn, our Constitu- tion, So far, then, as Determination and Constitution are

Comments 69

distinct as well as self identical, they must be taken in the sense of a duplicated unity of both : there are now two Somethings (§51), conjoined and disjoined in one deter- minateness called Limit (§52).

The dialectic of Limit amounts to saying that since Limit at once conjoins and disjoins two Somethings and so is at once their Being and Non-Being, it has truly the sig- nificance of a higher restatement of Becoming (§64). The definition of the Finite (§62) refers to the contradictory nature of a limited Something, as being not this, not that, not anything else, because no sooner is it this than it has turned already in that. The Not is the Negation fixed in itself. The addition ' hence eternal ' puzzled me at first, but it became obvious to me that the eternity of the Finite is founded on its direct unity with the Infinite. The Finite as such is the established Other as such, and therefore its endless alteration is a going-together-with-self : a Being-returned-into-self called Ideality. No matter what the Finite is, it always ought to be something else ; and since every limit assigned to it is to be transcended, there is only a question of Limitation. And it is equally plain that the Ought-to-be and Limitation are directly con- vertible into one another. The Infinite is simply the positive basis of this restless alternation. The distinction of a finitised Infinite and an infinitised Finite is a return to the original empty distinction of Being and Nothing. The Infinite emphatically is, the Finite emphatically is not : but the is and not simply refer to the nature of the true Infinite as Becoming, which Becoming goes over into Ideality.

Dr. Veverka's praise of this my rendering of the second act of Thought was not unqualified. " I must draw your attention to the fact," he remarked, " that the chief point in the study of the Science of Logic is to think the transition from one step of mediation to the next. In satisfying yourself that we actually do postulate an Other along with Something ; that we actually do conceive Something only as against something else and therewith equally at once treat Something as hmited and eo ipso as a Finite which is immediately also contrasted with the Infinite : you have

70 A Holiday with a Hegelian

converted the import of the dialectic unfoldment of the notion Something into a statement of facts to be found in our ordinary consciousness. Yet the real object of the second act of Thought is to explain why we postulate an Other along with Something ; why Something must alter and become an endless negation of every Quality assigned to it ; why the true Being is sought beyond the sphere of Finitude. The answer to these and similar questions lies, of course, already in the premise of the Science of Logic ; but this premise has itself so far only the validity of a fact of consciousness which is to be verified within the Science. For this reason, then the first act of Thought takes Nothing for granted, and the unity of Being and Essence is to be proved by the mediation of Thought by and with itself. This mediation begins in its second step with the result of the first step ; and so far as the chief interest in the study of the Science of Logic lies in a verification, not of its correctness as a statement of familiar facts of consciousness, but of its truth as a matter of comprehending (or speculative) thought, we must make abstraction from all that is not implied in the first act of Thought. Hence, Something must not be identified at once with a conception of, say, an article of furniture, but thought as a Being-within-self. Now, since the answer to the question, ' What is Something ? ' must be sought in the notion of Being-within-self, as the suspendedness of Reality and Negation, Something is the first Negation of the Negation. So far, further, as the Negation is at this stage quite abstract, not yet a Qualit}', opposed to another Quality called Reality, Something simply maintains itself as a reference to self, or is a mediation with self. In framing these definitions of the notion of Something, we are only restating more circumstantially the result of the first act of Thought. The Negation, of which Something is the first Negation, is only an abstract moment of Qualit5\ We have realised that Quality is immediately a unity of Reality and Negation, and that, consequently, the Nega- tion as such, that is to say, as sundered from Reality, has the meaning of pure Nothing. The notion of Quality has, therefore, the Negation within itself, or else the Negation

Comments 71

is not qualitative ; and so far as Quality negates the Negation as such, in that it is only by means of the Nega- tion, it is at once a mediation with Negation as its own moment (a mediation with self or a simple reference to self) as well as the first Negation of the Negation : Something. But, now, just because Something is the first Negation of the Negation, as a mediation with self, it maintains itself in its reference to self as against the negated Negation as such : that is to say, as against the Negation, not as pure Nothing, but as in unity with Reality : as a second Negation of the Negation as such, hence as another Some- thing.

" As you see, the arising of an Other along with Something is explained through the double meaning of Suspension : (i) as doing away with, (2) as preserving — a duplicity based on the impossibility of thinking Being and Nothing isolatedly. So far as Something is the first Negation of the Negation, and the Negation, of which it is the Negation, necessarily is, and then necessarily is itself a Negation of the Negation, a second one. Something is unthinkable without an Other.

" And this explains why the second act of Thought has two subdivisions. The two subordinate cycles develop the two principal moments of the first act of Thought : Be- coming and Presence. In the second cycle. Something is realised as an untenable contradiction, i.e. its Presence is realised to have the sense of Becoming which is established in Finitude. In the third cycle, we have a higher restate- ment of the transition of the two sides of Becoming — under the name of the Ought-to-be and Limitation — into the true Being or Infinitude.

" So far as the dialectic of the alternating determination of the Finite and Infinite might, and indeed mostly does, appear unnecessarily long-\\inded, I have subdivided it into a supplementary cycle of mediation ; in order to show that the extended treatment is not a chaotic re-iteration of repetition, but has the nature of deliberately planned recapitulation of the whole act of Thought. So far as subject-matter calls for an extension of treatment pari passu with dialectic progress, the middle steps of mediation

72 A Holiday with a Hegelian

will have hence regularly the form of supplementary cycles. ' Everything depends upon not taking for the Infinite what bears the stamp of a particular and finite in its very determination. For this reason we have bestowed a greater amount of attention on this distinction : the fundamental notion of Philosophy, the true Infinite, depends upon it.' {Enc. §95)."

CHAPTER IX

THE THIRD ACT OF THOUGHT

npHE reader is aware that the third act of Thought * counts equally as the fourth cycle :

1. Being-for-self as such

io8. In its Immediacy, as the Quahty of Infinitude, Ideality is Being-for-self.

2. Being-for-self, Being-for-one

109. Presence is now bent back into the infinite unity of the Being-for-self and the moment of Being-for-other is, therefore, reduced to Being-for-one.

no. The Idealistic is necessarily for One, but not for another One : the One for which it is, is only its own self.

3. The One

111. Being-for-self and Being-for-one are, therefore, not different meanings of Ideality, but essential moments of the same.

112. Being-for-self is thus Something- for-self : and in that, in this Immediacy, its inner import disappears, it is a purely abstract Limit of itself — the One.

113. The moments of the development of this notion are by anticipation : (i) Negation in general (2) Two Negations, (3) consequently two such that they are the same thing, (4) and directly opposed to one another, (5) Identity as such, (6) negative reference and yet to self.

4. Repulsion, Attraction

I.

114. In its own self, the One is unalterable.

115. There is no Other to which to go : a direction out

73

74 A Holiday with a Hegelian

from it is immediately turned round, and so has returned into itself.

ii6. There is Nothing in it : but Nothing, established as in the One, is Emptiness, which is thus the Quality of the One in its Immediacy.

2.

117 So far, now, as the One is, Nothing as Emptiness is also different from it : outside it.

118. In that the Being- for-self determines itself in this manner as the One and Emptiness, it has again recovered Presence.

3.

119. The Being-for-self of the One is, nevertheless, essentially Ideality, or the Being returned in the Other into self : hence, the One and Emptiness is rather a Becoming of Many Ones.

120. Properly, however, this Becoming, as a negative reference of the One to itself, is Repulsion.

121. Repulsion floats primarily before Conception only as a mutual keeping-off of presupposed, already present Ones : it is to be seen how Repulsion as such determines itself to this external Repulsion, or Exclusion.

4-

122. The One repels only itself from itself, therefore becomes not, but already is.

123. The becoming estabhshed of the Ones is thus im- mediately suspended.

124. That is to say, they are equally pre-established, or their reference is again the previously established Empti- ness.

125. The manifolding of the One is thus the Infinitude as an unconcernedly recurrent contradiction.

126. This is why Repulsion finds also that immediately before it which is repelled, thus acquiring the significance of Exclusion.

127. Repulsion becomes thus a common reference of the Ones as present in the Void.

Third Act of Thought 75

128. And this means further that the Being-for-one is degraded to a Being-for-other.

129. This degradation is, however, directly negated :

130. We have only to compare the present Ones in both of their determinations as Presences— as regards the Being- in-itself and Being-for-other— to find that they form one affirmative unity.

131. This unity is, indeed, established equally in their very co-relatedness, because they themselves are only so far as they negate one another and at the same time negate this their negating.

132. The negative relation of the Ones to one another is consequently a Going-together-with-self.

133. This establishing of themselves, on the part of the many Ones, as one One is Attraction.

5.

134. The IdeaUty present in Attraction has in it still also the determination of the negation of its own self, i.e. of Repulsion or Exclusion.

135. But along with this their immediate unity, At- traction and Repulsion are also distinguished.

136. The All-embracing One imphes thus a mediation of Attraction and Repulsion :

137. Their as yet indeterminate unity has to yield itself more definitely.

6.

138. Repulsion, as the ground-determination of the One, appears first and immediate ;• as, similarly, Attraction, against the Ones that are, has the side of an immediate Presence, affecting them externally.

139. Repulsion is, however, essentially Reference — the negative Reference of the One to itself — and Reference is here identical with Attraction (§132).

140. So far, then, as Repulsion and Attraction are held to be different determinations, each has its presupposition in the other.

76 A Holiday with a Hegelian

141 According to this determination, they are in- separable as the Ought-to-be and Limitation.

142. From this it follows further that each pre-estabhshes or pre-supposes only its own self :

143. The Many Ones, presupposed by Repulsion, are its own establishedness : are the Repulsion itself ;

144. And since Attraction presupposes the Many Ones in the sense of the Being-for-one (§§130, 131), it equally at once presupposes only its own self.

145. And this pre-estabhshing of self is, at the same time, an establishment of self as the negative of self (§141).

7.

146. The relative suspending of Repulsion and Attrac- tion proves itself in this way to go over into an infinite reference of mediation which, in the vacuousness of its moments, collapses into simple immediacy — Quantity.

5. Quantity

147. Quantity implies (a) Being, (/3) Presence, (7) Being- for-self.

148. Attraction, as a moment of Quantity, is Continuity.

149. Continuity is thus the moment of Equahty with self in the Being-out-of-one-another.

150. Repulsion, as a moment of Quantity, is Dis- creteness, in distinction from which latter Continuity is only Constancy : the continuity of a constant One.

6. Continuous and discrete Magnitude

151. As an immediate unity of Continuity and Dis- creteness, Quantity is primarily in the form of Continuity :

152. Quantity is thus Continuous Magnitude.

153. It has, next, also to be taken in the form of its other moment :

154. In this respect, Quantity is established as Discrete Magnitude.

7. Quantum

155. Discrete Magnitude is the Being-out-of-one-another of the plural One : but as of the equal or constant One.

Third Act of Thought 77

156. Discrete Magnitude has, then, firstly, the One for its principle ; secondly, it is a manifoldness of the Ones, and the Ones are, thirdly, essentially constant.

157. The real discrete Quantity is in this manner a present Quantity : Quantum.

158. The One is now Limit in the Continuity as such, and the distinction of Continuous and Discrete Magnitude becomes thus indifferent.

I was now able to appreciate Dr. Veverka's objection to my tendency to treat the dialectic development of Thought as a mere statement of facts of consciousness. Our ordinary way of thinking appears to be quite out of harmony with the true attitude to the One and Many, and so, by clinging to the ordinary attitude, one becomes incapable of reconciling the fact of the existing manifoldness of the Ones with the all-embracing Oneness. Of course, even the ordinary consciousness must bear witness to truth, but it does this only instinctively, and thus fails to realise consciously its own corroboration of the verities which it pooh-poohs. For instance, we realise ourselves only as a flux of existing distinctions, and consequently nothing should be more familiar to us than the notion of Ideality. Indeed, we do postulate fundamental Oneness of all that is, and thus imply that the Many Ones — be they called as they may — are only a Being-for-one ; that their Presence is ideational. Yet such is our eccentricity of judgment that we, at the same time, treat the existing manifoldness as a primary datum and convert the all- embracing Oneness into an insoluble mystery. The present act of Thought is of interest because it supplies the solution of this mystery. If one takes nothing for granted, one must admit that Being and Nothing are truly Becoming ; that Becoming goes over into Presence ; that Presence is immediately Qualitj^ ; that Quality becomes Some- thing and Other ; that Something and Other are con- joined and disjoined in Limit ; that they thus assume the significance of the Finite, hence of what only ought to be and what, therefore, is only as Limitation ; that this distinction is a ceaseless alternation of the Finite and

78 A Holiday with a Hegelian

the Infinite and for that very reason also a Being-returned- into-self or Ideahty ; that Being-for-other becomes thus Being-for-one ; that even the Being-for-one is suspended in the One ; that the One is consequently utterly empty ; that the distinction of the One and Emptiness at once is and is not valid ; that the two are, therefore, only moments of a Becoming ; that, however, the Becoming of the One is properly its Repelling of itself from itself ; that the origin of the Many Ones lies thus in the contradictory nature of the One as what is directly both identical with and distinct from Emptiness ; that the present Ones expHcate only the side according to which the One and Emptiness are distinct ; that just because the One is the Being returned in the Emptiness into itself, the arisen Being-for-other in connection with the present Ones is in the same breath negated ; and that the One remains thus one One all through its endless multiplicity.

The terms Repulsion and Attraction appeared to me at first sight unsuitable in connection with the Becoming of the Many Ones and their Establishing as the one One. But Dr. Veverka drew m}' attention to the fact that these terms are used currently also in connection with beauty and ugliness. And even were thej^ used only in the sphere of Physics, the negative reference of the One to itself is just as much the notion of the origin of material mani- foldness as of idealistic self-exclusion.

It is important to notice that Attraction does not attach to the present Ones, but presupposes already that their Being-for-other is truly a Being-for-one. Were this not so, each of the present Ones would insist on all the rest being for it, and at the same time refuse to be for others — and just for that very reason equally lose the right to be at all. The true meaning of Attraction is acknowledged in Religion, so far as Love of one's neighbour is traced, not to the natural man, but to his universality as one with God.

The third act of Thought reproduces on the whole the first act of Thought, so far as beginning is made, no longer with pure Being, but with Being-for-self : the Quality of the Infinite. Any difficulty in connection with its subject-

Third Act of Thought 79

matter is traceable to a relapse into the standpoint of the ordinary attitude to objectivity. There is now presupposed the notion of Ideality ; and as the meaning of Ideality is to be grasped already at the end of the second act of Thought, it is properly superfluous to repeat at this stage that Idealitj^ must not be treated as something outside and beside realistic Presence, but thought in its universal sense as the Presence of the true Infinite.

Henceforth I shall quote my version of Dr. Veverka's comments directly in connection with the paragraphs which thej'^ are meant to elucidate. If, however, even his comments should not render the study of his Digest quite easy, the reader must be reminded that the Digest is meant to be primarily only a help in the study of the Science of Logic itself, not, perhaps, to take its place altogether.^

^ True, there is as yet no translation of the Science of Logic to be had (a fact which ought to make every intelligent Englishman blush with shame) : but were everyone interested in the present work to clamour for it, the chief obstacle to its publication, the alleged absence of interest in pure thinking, on the part of the English people, would be removed. The subject-matter of the Science of Logic runs into about 400,000 words (about six times the size of the present work), so that it could be published at a price not exceeding one guinea. The first two volumes (the Doctrine of Being and Essence, or the Objective Logic) are ready for publica- tion, and the third volume, the Subjective Logic, will be ready by the end of 191 1. Let those willing to subscribe communicate with the author (at White way, near Stroud, Gloucestershire).

CHAPTER X FOURTH ACT OF THOUGHT:

A. FIFTH CYCLE.

1. Number as such

159. Quantity has a Limit whether it be continuous or discrete Magnitude, i.e. it is Quantum.

160. The Limit remains, however. One of Quantity.

161. This One is, therefore, (a) self-referent Limit, {(3) enclosing Limit, (y) other-excluding Limit.

162. Completely established in these determinations, Quantum is Number.

Note. — Quantum is the concluding notion of the fourth cycle, and thus corresponds to the Being-within-self of the first cycle. Number is a definite Quantum ; hence, no longer generally a quantative Limit, symbolised by a or b, i.e. by an algebraical magnitude, but by a magnitude embodying a distinct Amount, i, 2, 3.

2. Unity, Amount

163. Discreteness is in the Number, Amount, Continuity, Unity.

164. The Amount consists of many Units, but it is equally the Unity of the Units composing it.

Note. — The term consists lays emphasis on the fact that the many units composing a particular Number are equally distinguishable from their Ideality in the one Number, in which case, of course, they correspond to the many Ones as against the one One. Hence, a Number is the Ideality of units which are also mutually excluding and therefore themselves numbers.

80

Fourth Act of Thought 8i

3. Numerical One

165. The Quality of Number is, therefore, to consist of Numbers, tlie distinguishing of which falls only into the comparing external Reflection.

Note. — So the distinguishing of the present Ones was seen to fall only into the comparing external Reflection. Since, however, the present Ones are now moments of a Number, and these moments, as Ones of Quantity, are themselves also Numbers, the distinguishing acquires the sense of Annumeration : of an Adding of a One to itself, or of an external colligation of units because it rests on a thoughtless repetition of one and the same empty thought, the One. The numerical One has, therefore, no qualitative Being of its own, or its Quality is to have no Quality. For this reason, figures acquire meaning only when they are applied to something. Their meaning can be only shown — on fingers, bullets, apples, etc. In their own self, they are only an empty figure of thought.

4. Extensive and Intensive Quantum

166. Constituted with its Limit as what is numerous in its own self, Quantum is extensive magnitude.

Note. — Everj^ number, i.e. Quantum, is the One of Quantit}^ or such a Limit that it consists of manj^ units — hence, every number, or generally Quantum, is extensive magnitude.

167. Extension is Continuity as a moment of every Number, so far as the latter is a Unitj' (Ideality) of present units (ones).

168. From this it follows, however, directly, that the externality of the units is suspended.

169. Quantum is thus properly intensive magnitude or Degree.

170. That is to say, Degree is Number as suspended Amount, as an ordinal number.

171. As thus estabhshed. Number excludes from itself the indifference and externality of the Amount and is Reference to self as Reference through its own self to an external.

82 A Holiday with a Hegelian

172. Accordingly, Degree is simple qualitative deter- minateness among a severality of such intensive magnitudes that they are singly simple references to self, hence different, yet at the same time in essential reference to one another.

173. But since the determinateness of the simple Degree consists in its reference to other Degrees out of it (§171), Degree also contains an Amount.

Note. — The term contains is meant to remind us that Degree shows forth the very same character which belongs to qualitative Something : its determinateness is identical with the qualitative In-itself and, consequently, we are finding that Quantum, as Degree, is no longer a purely empty figure of thought. The distinction of degrees is, indeed, no longer a matter of purely external reflection on our side, but belongs also to the nature of things. This is why temperature is measurable by a thermometer, etc. And so far as Degree is qualitative In-itself, it implies in its own self its own negation, i.e. the Degrees out of it, or is in one also extensive :

174. So far, then, as Degree suspends its own Amount, it is extensive magnitude.

5. Identity of Extensive and Intensive Mag- nitude.

175. Extensive and Intensive Magnitudes are one and the same determinateness of the Quantum.

Note. — The numerical One is only an empty figure of Thought (and consequently arts of Reckoning may even be performed by a machine). The present conclusion confirms, on one hand, the already made reflection that number acquires meaning only through application ; but, on the other, it is borne in upon us that the association of numbers with something properly exemplifies externally the very 'notion of Quantum, so far as Quantum is itself the In-itself of qualitative Something. The dia- lectical movement itself brings in here qualitative Some- thing, because the distinction of Extensive and Intensive Quantum concerns the Quality of Quantum, as a Reference to self in its own otherwiseness (§171), Quality being

Fourth Act of Thought 83

the simplest Being of the unity of Being and Nothing. At the same time it is to be reahsed that Something has here the significance of Being-in-itself : it is the quahtative character of Quantum, as the identity of intensive and extensive magnitude, that is, so far, covered by the term Something ; or it is only an abstract self-recovery of Quality in Quantity that is under our notice.

6. Quantitative Progress " ad infinitum "

I.

176. With the Identity of Extensive and Intensive there enters qualitative Something : the suspended distinction constitutes the Quality of the Quantum.

2.

177. Quantum is thus established in its contradictory nature.

178. That is to say, it is now established that Quantum must alter.

Note. — The impulse which prompts us to exceed every quantitative determinateness (enough has been wittily defined as meaning : a little more !) is nothing than the notion of the Quantum, as a moment of our logical nature. Counting is indeed a matter of annumeration, but even the thoughtless adding of a unit to itself is, after all, an establishing of the notion of Quantum (§i6i).

3-

179. Quantum must by its own nature force itself be3'ond itself and become another, to increase or decrease.

180. The Limit which it is keeps on suspending itself ad infinitum.

4-

181. Thus, however, so far as it is determined for itself, it is rather determined in another ; whilst, conversely, it is the suspended determinedness-in-another, as an indifferent Being-for-self.

182. Quantum is, therefore at once finite and infinite : finite, firstly, as what is hmited in general and, secondly,

84 A Holiday with a Hegelian

as what is determined in another ; infinite, firstly, as what transcends every hmit and, secondly, as what returns in the other into itself.

5-

183. From this it follows that the quantitative Finite does not continue itself into its Infinitude only in itself, as is the case with the qualitative Finite, but in it, i.e. without becoming qualitatively other.

Note. — Qualitative Finite and Infinite appear at first sight also qualitatively distinct (§83) because they have not the notion of Ideality at their back, but ahead of them. Since the Quality of Quantum lies in the identity of ex- tension and intension. Quantum does not become quali- tatively other.

6.

184. The alternate determination of the quantitative Finite and Infinite is the Quantitative Infinite Progress.

185. So far, the Infinite is recurrently produced without becoming positive and present.

186. The continuity of the Quantum into its other leads to the union of both in the expression of the infinitely great or of the infinitely small.

187. This Infinitude is, however, to be designated as the bad quantitative Infinite.

188. The bad quantitative Infinite is simply an image of figurate conception which, on closer consideration, shows itself to be idle mist.

7-

189. Quantum continues itself into its Non-Being, because it has in the latter its very determinateness.

190. The quantitative infinite progress establishes, there- fore, the notion of Quantum.

191. There is present in it the suspending of the Quantum as well as of its Beyond : consequently the Negation of the Quantum as well as the Negation of this Negation.

7. Quantitative Relation or Ratio

192. There is thus arisen Quantum determined according to its notion : once again qualitative^ determined.

Fourth Act of Thought 85

193. The quantitative Infinite is de facto nothing else than QuaHty.

194. Quantum as such is suspended Quahty, and its going out beyond itself is, therefore, in itself the Negation of the negated Quality, i.e. its Restoration, but as the Being-for-self (by" virtue of the implied quantitativity).

195. Quantum is therewith established as repelled from itself, whereby there are two Quanta, as moments of one Unity : Quantitative Relation.

Note. — This is clearly the present correspondence of the Limit, of two Somethings conjoined and disjoined in One determinateness. As has been pointed out (§175. note), Something has now the sense of the In-itself of Quantum, not yet of something present objectively. Quality is, therefore, so far, restored only with respect to Quantum, and not yet with respect to its own Presence.

CHAPTER XI

FOURTH ACT OF THOUGHT:

B. SIXTH CYCLE

I. Direct Ratio

196. In the quantitative Relation, which is immediately direct, there is only One determinateness, or Limit, of the two sides : the Exponent.

197. The Exponent is a qualitatively fixed Quantum, each of whose moments appears as a distinct Quantum.

198. The Exponent is thus, firstly, the Amount of a Unity, which latter is itself a numerical One ; secondly, the qualitative element of the sides.

Note. — Accordingly |=C may be written A=BC. The notion of the Exponent advances Counting from simple Annumeration (Addition and Subtraction) to the Addition of one and the same number a fixed amount of times, i.e. to the Multiplication of a number by another number. A is the result of this Multiplication.

199. But as the sides constitute, so far, moments of One Quantum, each is distinctly only as one moment and, for that reason, in itself negative of the other moment.

Note. — A and B in |=C or A=BC are not inter- changeable. So far as they are distinct Quanta, each implies Amount and Unit}^ ; but when they become moments of the direct Relation in either of its forms, A stands only for a fixed Amount (C) of B, B only for an arbitrary Unity contained a fixed amount of times in A. And since then, the significance of either side of the Relation is not interchangeable with the significance of the other, each is in itself negative of the other. But so far

86

Fourth Act of Thought 87

as Something is in itself what it has in it and the quahtative element of the sides has the character of Something, we are forced logically to admit that the sides must be equally interchangeable, because each implies also the significance of the other side. This correction, however, of the one- sidedness discovered in the direct Ratio amounts to a dialectical transition into the Inverted Ratio.

200. Established with this their negation, the sides are in Inverted Relation.

2. Inverted Relation (Inverse Ratio)

201. Whereas the Exponent of the direct Ratio is a fixed Amount,

202. The Exponent of the Inverted Relation (Inverse Ratio), while being equally an immediate Quantum, as- sumed as fixed, is not a fixed Amount of the Unity in the Relation.

Note. — That is to say, the Exponent has now mathe- matically the significance of a fixed Product of two factors. So far, then, as we illustrate the notion of the inverse Ration by A=B C, we must not fancy that this is connected with the previous illustration of the direct Ratio. The sides of Ratio are now B and C, whilst A is the Exponent. The transition from the direct to the inverse Ratio must be effected dialectically, and there is therefore no mathe- matical connection between the former and the present significance of A=B C.

2.

203. The Exponent is now negative against itself as a moment of the Ratio and has therefore acquired the sig- nificance of qualitative Limit.

Note. — The Exponent of the direct Ratio is not yet a qualitatively established Limit, because it does not dis- tinguish itself qualitatively, i.e. both affirmatively and negatively, from itself as a moment of the Ratio (the amount A in •^=C). A is so far a fixed amount of B, i.e. A=B C, no matter what value is given to B. So far.

88 A Holiday with a Hegelian

however, as A has the significance of a fixed Product of B and C, it has the character of quahtatively estabhshed Limit, because it is not only in itself identifiable with either of its moments, but also negatively distinguished from them. The amount which A is now of either B or C depends on the numerical value assigned to either of them. That is

to say, C=gand B=^.

3-

204. There is, herewith, before us, firstly, the \A'hole as a present, affirmative Quantum (A), which, being at the same time Limit, is, secondly, distinguished into two Quanta (B, C) and, thirdly, forms their negative unity as the Limit to their mutual limiting (A=B C).

4-

205. Accordingly, each moment of the Ratio continues itself negatively into the other.

206. By virtue of this continuity, each is at once the whole Exponent and only as a moment of the Ratio.

5-

207. The affirmatively present Exponent (the fixed amount A), is, therefore, equally an inaccessible Beyond of an infinite approximation to it, on the part of the sides of the Relation, whereby the bad Infinitude of quantitative progress (§§184-188) is now established as it is in truth : only as pure negativity, as the Negation as such.

Note. — A is the maximum to which B or C cannot be- come equal de facto, though each of them implies it in itself, being determined by its means (B=^, C=g). They

can, therefore, only infinitely approximate to it as the reached Limit (mathematically, A stands for the differen- tial coefficient of B and C, as functions of one another). And thus we have here at once quantitative progress ad infinitum, and its true meaning as an approximation to a qualitatively determined Quantum (§192). The true Infinitude of quantitative progress restores Quality from its immediate suspendedness in Quantity, and this

Fourth Act of Thought 89

conclusion of the fifth Cycle is now established. And since the bad Infinitude of approximation is now established as an Ideahty of the aflirmatively present Exponent, i.e. as a Being-for-one, it is per se, or on its own account, only as pure negativity, only an image of figurate conception (§188).

6.

208. Herewith, however, the Inverted Relation has acquired another determination than that which it had at first sight.

209. Qualitativity is now present, not merely as Fixed- ness of a Quantum (§202), nor as the negativity of this Quantum of itself as a moment of the Ratio (§203), but as the negation of this negativity : as a conclusion of the fixed Quantum in its self-external otherwiseness (the progress ad infinitum of the sides of the Ratio) with itself.

7

210. Owing to this involution of the otherwiseness, the Relation is now an involved one.

3. Involved Relation and its transition into

Measure

211. Estabhshed as returned into itself, as being im- mediately itself and its otherwiseness, the Quantum as- sumes the significance of Power.

212. Power is the Exponent of quantitative Relation established as wholly qualitative.

Note. — The relation is now symbohsed by a^=a.a or -=«.

And so far, then, as the involved Relation or the Relation of Powers {PotenzenverJidUniss) is already implied in the grasp of the Exponent as the reached (affirmatively present) Limit of two Quanta in inverted relation, i.e. of two Quanta such that they are functions of one another, we find that the answer to Hutchinson Stirling's query as to the connection between the differential coefficient and Power {The Secret of Hegel, p. 593) presents no difficulty. Power establishes the true meaning of the differential coefficient.

90 A Holiday with a Hegelian

213. Involution, as an external alteration of Quantum, is thus seen to embody that which Quantum is in itself : its qualitative character.

214. In the direct Relation, the Quahty of the Exponent (the qualitative Quantum) lies only in the Fixedness of a Quantum as the Amount of an arbitrary unity ; in the inverted Relation, the qualitativity amounts onl}- to the first Negation; in the involved relation, however, the qualitativity has the nature of the second Negation, because the Exponent is present in the distinction as of itself from itself.

215. And in this way we have now fully estabUshed the return of Quantity into Quahty.

216. Quality has been realised to go over into Quantity, yet Quantity is now found to return into Quality : owing to this double transition, Quality is now established as resting on Quantity.

217. We have before us Quantum as that whereby Something is what it is : Measure.

Note.— So far as external reflection, i.e. that reasoning which does not raise itself to the standpoint of pure thought, chngs to the notion of Quantum in its primary abstract sense, as a limit which is no qualitative Limit, the stated transition of the Quantum into Measure— and generally every purely dialectic transition — naturally appears undeduced, unjustified or illegitimate, to use Prof. MacTaggart's favourite terms in his Commentary on Hegel's Logic. Yet no transition could be, after all, more self- evident. Quantity presupposes Quality or Something from the very first ; Quantum has per se no meaning, but receives meaning onTy through application, for which reason counting is de facto teachable only by means of bullets, fingers, etc. ; the handling of mathematical formula depends on memory, not on thinking. Now, so far as Quan- tum is declared to be that whereby Something is what it is, we only assert that the application of Quantum to some- thing is not only an external counting of something, but that everything, just because it admits of quantitative determination, implies Quantum as a moment of its own

Fourth Act of Thought 91

self. But for this verity, of what consequence would be measuring ? The inability fo realise the true sense of the present transition of Power into Measure is obviously due to an insistence on treating Quantum as still only suspended Quality after its character, as the Exponent of the in- volved Relation, as Power, is realised to have become wholly qualitative by means of the suspension of the bad quantitative Infinitude.

4. Quantitative Relation as Measure (Real- istic Measure)

I.

218. Measure is primarily an immediate specific Quan- tum.

219. Every Presence has a magnitude belonging to its very nature.

220. This magnitude has, however, no absolute Standard except through agreement.

Note. — That is to say, the unit of measure — the length of a yard, a pint, etc., is arbitrary. Hence the existing variety in measures in various countries and counties. The One is empty Thought, hence, not to be fixed by means of Thought. Of course, the nature of something may be equally determined as a system of measures from the standpoint of pure thought whenever the something under consideration has its organising principle in pure thought alone, as is, for instance, the case with the plane- tary distances from the Sun, or, to take the nearest example, with the dialectical movement itself. But in these cases we deal only with comparative numbers, not with the magnitude of a unit in the sense of a specific Quantum.

2.

221. Since i\Ieasure is no longer a purely quantitative Limit, its alteration, as of a specific Quantum, has only a limited range of alteration.

222. That is to say, everything is liable to ruin through quantitative alteration.

223. This fact was exhibited in popular examples already by the ancients.

92 A Holiday with a Hegelian

224. Such examples are truly products of consciousness concerned with facts of thought,

223. The ruination of something through quantitative alteration, which, at first sight, does not seem to affect its Quality, should warn us not to fall into the trap set for us by the Notion in the preconceptions of our ordinary con- sciousness.

3-

226. The two sides of specific Quantum have also different existence.

227. So far, now, as the magnitude belonging to one side serves as unity against the Quantum existing in the other different side, it forms the Rule or Standard.

Note. — The foUowing footnote on page 89 of Prof. Mac- Taggart's Commentary on Hegel's Logic may serve as a single instance of his comprehension of Hegel : "In the EncyclopcBdia Hegel seems to use Rule to indicate a Measure in which the Quantity does not pass the limits which involve a change of Quality [Enc. 108). This is different from the use of Rule in the Greater Logic (cp. above, Section 79)." Looking up this Section, one finds that Prof. MacTaggart fancies (in fact, all his comments appear purely fanciful) that the Rule is to stand, from Hegel's standpoint in the Science of Logic, for the limiting temperatures of liquid water (o'-ioo" C. or 32°-2i2° F.), simply because " the dialectic has now passed beyond mere Quantity to Measure, where a change of Quantity brings about a change of Quality." But Prof. MacTaggart for- gets (or does not seem to be at all aware of) the distinc- tion between what is only in itself and what is already established. The change of Quality, owing to the change of Quantity, is not yet established at the stage of the third moment of the present supplementary cycle, even though it be anticipated from the very first. This antici- pation must be first of all verified by a dialectic considera- tion of Measure in its own self, and the Rule stands just only for the immediate unity of the two sides of the specific Quantum, their relatedness having yet to be mediated. But, then, Prof. MacTaggart calls this mediation

Fourth Act of Thought 93

" the unjustified and useless loop which stretches from Rule to Elective Affinity in the Greater Logic " (p. 90). To intercept all his fancies would be too tedious.

4-

228. Having in it also the moment of Being-for-other, Measure is open to external alteration.

229. Owing, however, to its character as the specific Quantum, it specifies the arithmetical amount of alteration received from outside : it is a specifying Measure.

230. The specifying JMeasure implies thus the taking up of an immediate magnitude of alteration in another amount.

231. There arises, hence, in this respect, a Relation of Quanta having for its Exponent the qualitative element itself which specifies the external amount of alteration : an involved Relation.

Note. — The fact that external alteration, to which the something of Measure is subjected (by heat, pressure or faUing), is taken up by it in an involved relation, demon- strates the effect of the realised transition of the Quantita- tive Relation into jMeasure. We bear witness to the logical necessity of this transition, so far as we take for granted that the result of mathematical operations has objective validity. The result reached by the Calculus is con- firmed by the changes in measured relations of things, because the specifying Measure has the sense of an objective embodiment of that relationship between two functions which is the subject-matter of the Calculus.

5-

232. Since, now, the external Quantum is itself the Quantum of another Measure, the Relation of the two sides is properly a quantitative Relation of two specifying Measures.

233. This form of Measure may be called Realistic Measure.

234. And this relationship establishes the true meaning of the variable magnitude in Higher Mathematics.

94 A Holiday with a Hegelian

Note. — Hegel circumstantially discusses the notional meaning of the Differential and Integral Calculus in lengthy Remarks which, although introduced at the end of the fifth cycle, i.e., at the end of the second main sub- division of the doctrine of Being, Quantity, anticipate the present result of the dialectic of Measure, and, indeed, become fully intelligible only after a thorough assimilation of the whole sixth cycle. That this is so, is acknowledged by him in the last paragraph of his prefatory comment on the subject-matter of the Quantitative Relation : " As to the nature of the following Relations," he says, " much has been anticipated in the foregoing Remarks concerning the Infinite of Quantity, i.e. its Quahtativity ; all that remains, therefore, for discussion is the abstract Notion of these Relations." And, as has been repeatedly pointed out above, the dialectic of Measure establishes said abstract Notion in its Presence, i.e. as embodied realistically in specified ]Measures.

6.

235. The sides of the realistic Measure have, therefore, according to their abstract nature as Qualities in general, some particular significance (e.g. that of Space and Time).

236. Amount attaches to the extensive element, Unity to the intensive. (Spaces covered by a falling body are pro- portional to the squares of Time.)

Is[oTE. — The sixth step of mediation concerns the alter- nating determination of the two sides of the fourth step. Now, the fourth step of the present supplementary cycle establishes simply that the specificity of Something as Measure shows itself with respect to the amount of its external alteration as an involved Relation, so far as the Quantum of alteration which is received from outside, e.g. temperature, pressure, movement, is not taken on im- mediately but in another amount. So far, we have before us only a single instance of the Quantitative Relation of two Qualities. The sixth step of mediation generalises the single instance into a flux of external alteration — a flux which has its mathematical embodiment in the theory of Functions.

Fourth Act of Thought 95

237. So far, then, the quahtative moment, or Specificity, of the Relation of specified Measures concerns only their quantitative determinateness.

Note. — This may remind us of the fact that the alter- nating determination of the two sides of realistic Measure comes under the head of the fourth main moment of the sixth cycle and, consequently, the conclusion of the present supplementary cycle of mediation establishes only the immediate Identity of the two abstract Qualities in Relation. The alteration of realistic Measure is still ex- ternal ; the two sides do not j'et go over into one another : this kind of mediation falls under the head of the sixth main step in the present cycle. So far, each Quality specifies only the immediate amount of the alteration received from outside, without being affected in its own immediate subsistence, or without affecting the other side with respect to its qualitative persistence. Things specify the amount of temperature in the air without ceasing to be : their specificity as realistic Measures shows itself only with respect to their quantitative determinateness. As a matter of fact, things are affected also qualitatively by an external alteration, and indeed also cease to be — this has been already implied in itself under the second main step, but the fourth main step does not yet establish the full import of said anticipation, but goes only as far as the stated relation of specified Measures : without concerning their liability to ruin through quantitative alteration !

5. Abstract Being-for-self in Measure

238. As the sides of the realistic Measure are to be taken only in the sense of immediate Qualities, their involved Relation is equally only a direct Relation of the im- mediate Quanta belonging to them.

239. The Exponent of this Relation has the significance of abstract Being-for-self in Measure, and is, therefore, an empirical coefficient.

Note. — As has been already pointed out, the dialectic of Measure concerns generally the subject-matter of the

96 A Holiday with a Hegelian

Calculus. And so far as the dialectic of Measure comes under the head, firstly, of the quantitatively qualitative Relation of Measures, called shortly realistic Measure, and, secondly, of the qualitatively quantitative Relation of ]\Ieasures, which Relation, it will be found presently, yields the Nodal Line of real Measures, the quantitatively qualitative Relation refers mainly to the Algebraic function, the qualitatively quantitative Relation to the Exponential function. The present step is the middle of the two kinds of Relations, and so comes it that both the algebraic and exponential function imply a constant term. Thus ~.=a, or x = b e'^^ (Wilhelmy's lav/ for the velocity of chemical reactions, according to which the amount of chemical change in a given time is directly proportional to the quantum of reacting substance present in the system.) "If in any physical investigation we find some function, say <}i, varjdng at a rate proportional to itself (with or without some constant term), we guess at once that we are dealing with an exponential function " (J. W. Mel- lor's Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and Physics, 2nd ed., 1905, p. 56).

240. But just because the sides of the direct Relation in question are equally in involved Relation, the reached Being-for-self in Measure is not abstract, but real : the Something of realistic Measure is not an immediate Measure as a Being-for-other, but as Something-for-self — and, therewith, equally a Repelling of itself into distin- guished Self-subsistences.

Note. — The preceding two paragraphs concern primarily only the Identity of the two sides of realistic Measure and thus only their direct Relation. So far, the Being-for-self in Measure is still only in itself. Now emphasis is laid on the concrete meaning of the Identity in question, which concrete meaning is, however, yet to be properly es- tablished. The significance of the transition from the immediate to real Being-for-self in Measure is, of course, to involve also the Qualitativity of the sides of realistic Measure in their mediation with one another (§236) : to make the alteration concern also their quaUta-

Fourth Act of Thought 97

tive determinateness. Or rather, it is logically necessary to raise the immediate Qualities involved in the Relation of specified Measures to the rank of present Ones, but of Ones which are Measures and then are the Self-repulsion of the real Being-for-self in Measure (§§119, 120 : the One is now Measure-for-self). From the standpoint of the former correspondence of the fourth act of Thought with the second act, we have now restated the dialectic of the immediate Infinite, and are about to restate the dialectic of the alternating determination of the Finite and Infinite in terms of Measure.

6, Qualitatively quantitative Relation of

Measures

I.

241. The real Being-for-self in Measure is immediately again only a direct Relation of its sides, but the Amount attaches to the intensive side, the Unity to the extensive.

Note. — The inversion of the significance attaching to the sides of the reahstic Measure at this stage is due to the fact that the real Measure is to be no longer subject only to purely external alteration, but to enter into a relation with other Measures also qualitatively. Hence, the amount of its alteration must now concern its intensive side. The direct relation now under discussion may be illustrated on specific gravity : the relation of the Weight of a Mass to its Volume. But it is to be remarked that a real Measure is not necessarily a material thing ; it applies equally, for instance, to the number of vibrations (measured ar- bitrarily) in a tone, or to the mentioned limits of tempera- ture of a Hquid (§227, Note). Unless one is aware that Measure does not necessarily apply to physical Matter (we have not yet developed the notion of Matter or of Thingness resting on material Properties), one easily credits everything measurable with physical materiality, and thus proceeds to imagine, for instance, that planets and generally celestial bodies must be of the same nature as this Earth.

98 A Holiday with a Hegelian

242. Seeing, now, that the specific determinedness-in- itself of a real Measure exhibits itself immediately as an immediate Quantum, it is determinable only in comparison with other real Measures,

243. To compare, however, means now to combine ; and so far as the something of real Measure is with respect to its Combinations, degraded to a Being-for-Other, its alteration remains still only external.

Note. — Thus we are predicting (i.e. realising on purely logical grounds) that a mixture of two substances affects the volume, not the weight of its constituents.

244. Nevertheless, the specific determinedness-in-itself too shows itself as alterable :

245. The Exponent of a freshly formed Combination is itself only a Quantum.

246. Hence, the something of real Measure distinguishes itself truly by a peculiar series of Exponents, i.e. of the Amounts which it, taken as Unity, forms with other such self-subsistences, when combined with them.

247. Now, two (or several) self-subsistences, forming different series of Exponents with the same series of opposite self-subsistences, must be comparable, and this they can be only if the members of the different series of Exponents maintain a constant relation inter se.

Note. — We are predicting that, when for a kah, taken as unity, the series of comparative amounts of acids, re- quired for its saturation, has been determined, then for every other kali this series is to be taken in a certain amount all through.

248. Thus, each self-subsistence is, firstly, Unity in general against the opposite series ; secondly, one of the amounts or exponents for each member of the opposite series ; and thirdly, a comparative number to the rest of the members on its own side.

249. Its Affinity, therefore, is not merely a matter of external Combination, but rather founded in its own nature: Elective Affinity.

Fourth Act of Thought 99

3.

250. The term Elective Affinity is taken from the sphere of Chemistry, but the notion which it is meant to embody exhibits itself also in other spheres, for instance, in Har- mony.

Note. — Or in the principle of Perturbation, added by Newton to Keplerian Laws. This taking of the names for speculative notions from empirical sciences is usually viewed as a defect of Hegel's exposition, as though it were his fault that current language uses the same terms for pure notions and their concrete instances. Prof. MacTaggart begins at once by objecting to the term Becoming ; Prof. Rosenkranz objected to the term Life, and a crowd of other terms, being treated as logical categories — and so most exponents are pleased to demonstrate their superiority to Hegel's own supreme grasp of the scope of the Science of Logic by suggesting trivial improvements on his ter- minology. As though names were not per se empty sounds ! And as though the living genius of languages — Thought — had to beg the permission of these would-be Hegelians for its identification of pure notions with their particular embodiments ! Were one to remove from the Science of Logic every term recalling concrete facts, there would remain no terminology at all to fall back upon for the recording of pure notions. Objectivity cannot be separated from the Notion ; and so far as the Science of Logic includes, in its terminology, terms current in the sphere of empirical sciences or in ordinary life, it simply establishes their exact meaning : the notion which they record in their ordinary usage ! And we have, then, to realise that Elective Affinity stands for the logically necessary inference that real Measures do not stand in a purely external or arbitrary relationship, but that they relate themselves to one another owing to their own nature.

251. At first sight it would seem that Elective Affinity, as a firmer holding together of one Combination against other possibihties of Combination, is only a matter of intensity : but so the qualitative element which dis-

100 A Holiday with a Hegelian

tinguishes Elective Affinity from simple openness to any combination would be still left out of the question.

Note. — This concerns the blunder of separating the intensive magnitude from the extensive and consequent trying to explain in terms of the intensive magnitude what altogether transcends mere quantitative distinction. To account for Elective Affinity in degrees of Affinity means to interpret it still only externally : we record thus only the result of our comparison without accounting for the foundation of this result in the affinity itself.

252. The fact remains, however, that Elective Affinity brings about only a break in the simple Affinity : it fixes a particular Combination in the quantitatively continuous series of Exponents representing the specific determined- ness-in-itself of a real Measure : there is, then, before us a series of Relations which are now mere Affinities, now Elective Affinities.

4-

253. Still, as regards its reference to other Neutralities, the excludent elective affinity involves no further principle of specification : it exemplifies simply the Separability of its moments, as of self-subsistent somethings which are in simple affinity to any other member of the opposite series.

Note. — Just as the Identity of the intensive and extensive Quantum establishes the alterableness of the Quantum as such (§178), so Elective Affinity amounts to an establishing of the background (to be named further on the Substrate) of the previously discussed openness of a real Measure to any combination.

254. As against its externalness and consequent alter- ableness, the excludent elective Affinity is a permanent Substrate reaching over the specification of its quantitative side.

255. Thus we have before us a Nodal Line of Measure Relations in one and the same Substrate.

5.

256. The Substrate is the inner specifying unity entering into Presence in the Nodal Line of Measure Relations, every

Fourth Act of Thought loi

newly arisen Something being distinct from the previous one only quantitatively.

Note. — So far as empiricism traces the Identity of material self-subsistences to an ^Ether endowed with all the properties of Matter, it conceives the inner specifying unity, not as only entering into Presence, but as already fully entered into Presence, The blunder is in this respect of the same kind as that occurring in connection with the search of the quantitative Infinite in the guise of a Quan- tum : only of an infinitely great or small one ! To account for Matter, one postulates thus — Matter : only infinitely refined ! We shall realise, however, that this postulated Matter — iEther — is Illusion pure and simple.

6.

257. The transition from one self-subsistent something into another is, therefore, a Leap.

Note. — Yet empirical science holds that Natura non facit saltum. Just because self-subsistent somethings are the inner specifying unity on the spring into Presence, they enter into Presence as only quantitatively distinct, consequently in the same way as Numbers which, while being in principle purely continuous, are j'et as regards their Presence (a) self-referent, (/3) enclosing, and (7) other- excluding. Of course, when the inner specifying unity, which stands for the Ideality of the self-subsistent some- things, is itself degraded to the rank of realistic Presence, all change is conceived only by degrees : only then there is no accounting for the qualitative change along with the quantitative progress. In truth, the qualitative change rests onl}^ on Quantum : but the Quantum is now the quantitative Presence of the inner specifying unity !

258. The Excludent Measure (Elective Affinity) remains affected by the moment of its quantitative Presence, and is, therefore, driven beyond itself into the Measureless, getting ruined through the mere alteration of its Magnitude.

Note. — Here, then, we have established the anticipated nature of Measure (§222).

I02 A Holiday with a Hegelian

259. Thus there is estabhshed an infinite progress of alternation of Self-subsistences with one another, both as mere Affinities and Elective Affinities.

7-

260. This going over of Quahtativity and Quantitativity into one another takes place on the ground of their unity, the sense of this process being nothing else than to show or estabhsh that there lies at the bottom such a Substrate.

7. Ideality as a State of Being

261. Alteration is now realised to be only an othering of a State of Being, and the transient is established as remaining therein one and the same Being.

262. And thus we see that the dialectic of Measure is just as much its progressive determination to what is for itself as its degradation to what is merely in itself.

Note. — It is now plain that the fourth act of Thought is truly a higher reproduction of the second : so far, namely, as Something and Other have acquired, from the stand- point of Ideality, the significance of Quality and Quantity. The third act of Thought takes up Ideality in corres- pondence to pure Being, and results in Quantum in cor- respondence to Being-within-self. The Other is now at first only another Quantum ; but, in correspondence to the Limit, Quantum is established, at the end of the fifth cycle, as Quantitative Relation, whilst the sixth cycle ends in a restatement of the conclusion of the third cycle.

Ideality has been asserted from the very first to be the all in all, and this assertion may be viewed as having been put to the test by the dialectic of the third and fourth act of thought. And thus, from the standpoint of the Objective Logic, as One act of Thought, we have arrived at its fifth step : the notion of Being as the Identity of the Being-for- self and Being-in-self : of the Being-in-and-for-self — of a Being which is at once the totality of all Being and only a transient Being, or self-degraded to the rank of immediate Being.

CHAPTER XII FIFTH ACT OF THOUGHT

SEVENTH CYCLE

1. Absolute Indifference

263. So far as all the determinatenesses of Being (Quality, Quantity and Measure) are now a simple unity, mediated through their negation, Being may now be called Absolute Indifference.

264. But just so Being ceases to be only a Substrate, but is within its own self Mediation,

265. And it is now to be seen, how this Mediation is established in it.

2. Absolute Indifference as Mediation within

ITSELF

I.

266. As regards its determinateness, the Indifference is, then, primarily the Substrate.

2.

267. The distinction in it being thus at first purely quantitative, the Indifference is, so far, the Sum of two Quanta in Inverted Relation.

Note. — The Indifference does not itself enter into the Mediation as its moment, so far as the Mediation is within it purely quantitative. Remaining, then, a mere Sub- strate of the Mediation, the Indifference acquires the significance of a mere Sum of every quantitative distinction made in it. And so far as the sides of the distinction are the sides of a Mediation, they are in inverted Relation. A mathematical illustration of the present stage is found in

103

I04 A Holiday with a Hegelian

the differential coefficient of a function of two variables, or also in the principle of the mutual independence of different reactions, lying at the base of physical and chemical dynamics. " When a number of changes are simultaneously taking place in any system, each one pro- ceeds as if it were independent of the others ; the total change is the sum of all the independent changes." So far as empirical sciences presuppose the totality of Being only in the sense of Substrate, we may now understand why iEther appears to be their last word. But, at the same time, we are able to censure the tendency to trace to an .^ther phenomena which presuppose, in their notion, a higher significance of the present totality of Being than that of a Substrate. This is the case, for instance, in the current undulatory theory of Light. But, then, until men of science will awaken to the realisation that their theories are based on a logically untenable attitude to objectivity, our censure is likely to give rise to supercilious smiling ; and Newtonian fallacies will continue to blind all disciples of scientific popes to what is, after all, sheer common sense (s. Goethe's Farbenlehre) against inferences based on experimental trickery. Still, magna est Veritas et prevalebit !

3-

268. Seeing, however, that each of the sides is in itself the whole, the distinction is equally qualitative : each side contains two Qualities, of which the one or the other only preponderates quantitatively.

4-

269. Each side is thus in its own self an inverted Relation and, whilst being qualitatively continuous with the other, is also estabhshed against it as the whole Indifference.

270. We have thus before the Indifference as such, as indifferent to itself as developed determinateness, i.e. to itself as self-degraded to the whole-in-itself.

271. Consequently (a) distinctions in it (the Indifference as such) on the whole simply stand out, i.e. show them- selves in it in a purely immediate manner or groundlessly.

Fifth Act of Thought 105

272. (/?) The mode of their subsisting in it (the quanti- tative determinateness of the sides as sums of two Quanta in inverted Relation) is equally determined only externally.

273. (7) Since, however, in distinction from this their Presence, the sides are in themselves the totality of In- difference, neither of the two Qualities into which the quahtative moment disrupts itself is, at the same time, restricted by the quantitative Limit.

Note. — According to (a) Absolute Indifference is iden- tified with its immediate Presence ; and because it is equally indifferent to this its own Presence, the quantitative determination in this latter respect (/3) concerns only the external reflection or empiricism ; and the finding of the latter (y) is, at the same time, negated by the fact that the quantitative distinction does not truly concern the Sub- strate in its own self, i.e. the finding does not throw any light on its true nature. The distinctions are many — infinitely so — single instances of Becoming or entering into the Presence on the part of the Substrate. Their arising is a leap. In Biblical language, they are created from Nothing : the Nothing having the significance of the present totality of Being as the all in all, to be called ultimately the Notion, To realise clearly — to comprehend — the process of Creation is the object of the rest of the Science of Logic : at present we are only in a position to deny the conception of it as a kind of fashioning of some primordial stuff — a conception endeavouring to explain the arising of Qualities only by a gradual quantitative change, not as a leap.

5-

274. On the ground of their qualitative Identity, then, a More of the one Quahty, i.e. quantitative distinction of the sides, is out of the question : the sides are in Equi- librium.

6.

275. But, seeing that the Presence of the sides rests only on the inequahty of their Quantum, their Equilibrium is equally out of the question, as regards their Presence.

276. Hence, their Presence is an all-sided Contradiction.

io6 A Holiday with a Hegelian

7-

277. Absolute Indifference proves itself to be de facto absolute Negativity.

3. Essence

278. The determining and becoming determined is, therefore, not a going over, nor an external alteration, nor a standing out of determinations in the Indifference, but its own referring to itself, its own repeUing of itself from itself.

279. Determinations, as such repelled ones, are as moments — firstly, as belonging to the totality of Being as it is in itself, secondly, as immanent to it as it is for itself.

Note. — The firstly refers to the sides, the secondly to the Indifference as the all in all.

280. Being is in this manner determined to be simple Being through the suspending of all Being : this Being-in- and-for-itself is called Essence.

4. Reflection or Essential Becoming

I.

281. Essence is, however, the Being-in-and-for-itself only as the first Negation of the sphere of Being and has, therefore, the Immediacy opposite to itself as such an one from which it has become, and which, in its suspendedness, has preserved and maintained itself.

2.

282. Being and Essence are in this manner still in the mutual relation of Others in general : as the Non-essential and the Essential.

283. Still, this distinction concerns the Essence only as relapsed into the sphere of Presence.

284. In truth, the Essence is absolute negativity of Being ; and the Immediate, still distinguished from it, is, therefore, not merely an unessential Presence, but in and for itself null : a No-thing or Illusion.

285. The Being of Illusion consists solely in the sus- pendedness of its Being : in its Nullity.

Fifth Act of Thought 107

286. So far as it appears to have still an immediacy apart from the Essence, the immediacy stands for the other- wiseness as the Negation as such.

287. It is, then, only to be shown that the determinations distinguishing it from the Essence are determinations of the Essence itself ; and that this determinateness of the Essence which is the Illusion is suspended in the Essence itself.

3.

288. Now, since Being is essentially Non-Being, the Immediacy of this Non-Being is the own absolute Being-in- itself of the Essence : the Immediacy proper to the Essence itself.

289. There is not before us an Illusion of Being in the Essence, or an Illusion of the Essence in Being, but the Illusion of the Essence itself.

290. That whereby the Essence presents itself as its own Illusion is the fact that it is immanently determined and thereby also distinguished from its absolute Unity : but in such wise that the determinateness of Being is just as much directly suspended in its own self.

291. The Illusion is, therefore, a negative having a Being, its Immediacy being the reference of the Negative, of the Non-self-subsistent, to itself.

292. This Negativity which is identical with the Imme- diacy, and thus the Immediacy which is identical with the Negativity, is an essential Becoming.

Note. — The Illusion stands for the German ' Schein,' whilst the essential Becoming is my rendering of ' das Scheinen des Wesens in sich selbst ' — literally, the shining of the Essence in its own self. Light is an objective illustration of this shining as a self-suspending immediacy.

293. In its self-movement, the Essence is Reflection.

4-

294. The Illusion is the Null, or the Essence-less, as a moment of the absolute Reflection.

295. This self-to-self-referent Negative is directly the Negating of its own self.

io8 A Holiday with a Hegelian

296. Primarily, then, Reflection is a Going over as a Suspending of the Going over : a Movement from Nothing to Nothing.

297. Its Immediacy is only the Return of the Negative into itself and, therefore, purely only as Determinateness or as self-suspending Immediacy.

Note. — Determinateness as such is the simple Being of the unity of Being and Nothing, and the Being, therefore, directly is and is not. The first act of Thought lays stress on the ' is,' whilst, as a result of the foregoing dialectic of Being, the accent falls now on the ' not.'

298. Reflection is thus, as regards its immediacy, at once establishing and pre-establishing.

Note. — This its nature has forced itself on our attention already in the third act — clearly, because this act deals with the Immediacy of the Ideality and thus must needs anticipate what becomes properly established only when the notion of Ideality is grasped in the present sense.

299. The Reflection is pre-establishing, so far as its arriving at its own self is its suspending of itself ; and it is establishing, so far as its repelling of itself from itself is its arriving at its own self.

300. The reflective movement is to be taken as an absolute Rebound on itself.

301. For, only thus the suspending of the Negative is a going together with itself, a fusion with self.

302. But so the Reflection is equally determined, starting from the Immediate as its own Other : taken in this sense, it is the external Reflection.

303. This is the pre-establishing Reflection as against the establishing Reflection.

304. The pre-establishedness counts to the external Reflection, not as an Illusion, but as an immediate starting- point (in the sense of Quality).

305. The external Reflection concludes in this manner the two moments of the absolute Reflection (§298) by means of the determined Immediac3^

306. For, the Immediate is, on one side, determined by it,

Fifth Act of Thought 109

the external Reflection, as its other and, on the other, only pre-established : in determining the Immediate as its Other, the external Reflection determines its own self, as its Other and is, therefore, the Determining Reflection.

Note. — Of course, the ordinary consciousness stops only at the sense of the Immediate as the Other as such — just as it equally takes the Repulsion of the One from itself only in the sense of Exclusion. The determining Re- flection is the present meaning of the Ideality of the present Ones.

5-

307. The Determining Reflection is generally the unity of the establishing and external Reflection.

308. The Immediate of the external Reflection is now the established Being ;

309. An Other : but in such wise that the equality of the Reflection with itself is directly maintained.

Note. — So far as the establishing had from the very first the sense of putting explicitly what is at first only in itself, the Being-in-itself suggested the notion of Essence already in §41.

6.

310. The Establishedness is not, however, simply the middle concluding Presence with Essence, or vice versa : it is an absolute Pre-establishedness of the external Reflection, hence, a Determination of Reflection.

311. The Estabhshedness fixes itself into a Determination of Reflection, because the Reflection is, in its negatedness, equality with self.

312. Owing to the fact, however, that this equality of the Reflection with itself is lost in its negatedness. Deter- minations of Reflection appear as free Essentialities, floating in the void without mutual Attraction or Re- pulsion.

Note. — Philosophy of Nature identifies free Essentiali- ties in fixed Stars. There is no Attraction nor Repulsion between them, because an Essentiality is not for another, nor for self, as a present One, but as an Illusion pure

no A Holiday with a Hegelian

and simple. Stars are only points of Light, the essential Illusion.

7.

313. The determination of Reflection is, then, firstly, an Establishedness or the Negation as such ; secondly, the Refiection-within-self :

314. It bends the reference to another back into itself, and is that Negation which is equal to itself, which is the unity of itself, and of its Other, and only thereby Essentiality.

5. Essential Identity.

315. As equal to itself in its absolute negativity, the Essence is simple Identity with self.

316. It is not that equality with self which the Being, or also the Nothing, is, but that equahty with self which suspends Being and all its determinatenesses, thus being the Being of the essential Becoming : essential Identity.

317. That is to say, the Identity is generally still the same thing as the Essence.

318. As absolute Negation, it is an immediately self- negating Negation, or a distinguishing whereby nothing is distinguished : absolute Distinction.

319. Distinction is, however, absolute, so far as it is not the Identity : so far as it is absolute Non-Identity ; hence, the Identity is in its own self absolute Non-Identity.

320. And so far, then, as the Identity is equally Reflec- tion-within-self, establishing its own self as its own Non- Being (in which it is the return into self), it is also deter- mined, as the Identity against the absolute Distinction or Non-Identity.

6. Essential Distinction

I.

321. The Distinction is the negativity contained within the Identity itself.

322. It is the Distinction in and for itself ; hence, simple or absolute Distinction.

323. It is it itself and the Identity.

Fifth Act of Thought 1 1 1

324. But so it is equally determined within itself : the determined Distinction-in-and-for-self :

325. Difference or Diversity.

2.

326. The Identity breaks up in its own self into Difference because, being absolute Distinction within itself, it estab- lishes itself, as the negative of itself, and yet remains essentially identical.

327. Difference constitutes the otherwiseness as such of the Reflection.

328. Its moments are not determined against one another : the determinateness to be only Identity, or only Distinction, is suspended.

329. This determinateness, is, then, purely a matter of the external Reflection.

330. The Difference is the One Reflection, of the Identity and Distinction, within itself ; but so far as this Reflection- within-itself is at first only in itself, its two moments are established externally.

331. Identity becomes thus mere Equality : an Identity which is not in and for itself, but only as an establishedness ; just so Inequality is the Distinction falling outside the unequal.

332. The determined Distinction being the negated absolute Distinction, its moments are referred to the Reflection-within-self as to a Third.

333. In the self-estranged (external) Reflection, Equality and Inequality fall asunder, each referring itself only to itself.

334. But this very self-reference, on the part of each, is the Equahty of both.

3.

335. The external Distinction proves itself to be in its own self negativity of itself.

336. So far, however, as the Equalitj^ as which the sides of the external Distinction prove themselves to be in their separate self-reference, is equally as their Third (the Com-

112 A Holiday with a Hegelian

parer, the Reflection-within-itself), and the sides, con- sequently, are separately also unequal with this Third, each is established as a negative unity of both.

337. Instead of Difference, we have thus before us Opposition or Antithesis :

338. The completed determined Reflection,

339. As the sides of the external Reflection are now established as a negative unity of both in opposition to their One negative unity, i.e. in opposition to the Being- in-and-for-itself, their establishedness is a simple Being, their non-estabhshedness a Non-Being.

340. Each is in its determinateness the whole, containing as it does its other moment : but this other is an in- different Being, so that each is the whole (or Reflection- within-self) only as essentially referent to its Non-Being.

341. This immanently reflected Equality with self which contains within itself the reference to the Inequality, is the Positive ; in turn, the Inequality containing within its own self the reference to its Non-Being, the Equality, is the Negative.

342. Each is a reference to its Non-Being, as a suspending of this Otherwiseness within itself : but since the es- tablishedness is now (in opposition to the Being-in-and-for- itself) a Being, each is equally only so far as its Non-Being is.

343. The Positive and Negative are, therefore, firstly, absolute moments of the Antithesis, so far as their subsisting is inseparably One Reflection.

344. They are, secondly, also merely different, each being of the kind that it may be taken as well positively as negatively.

345. And, thirdly, their reference to one another in one unity as which they themselves are not (their significance as absolute moments of the Antithesis) is taken back into each as what is in its own self positive and negative.

Fifth Act of Thought 113

5.

346. Each is thus a unity with itself independently of the other : the Positive as the Non-opposed : as the suspended Antithesis, while j'et remaining its side,

347. Conversely, the Negative is the Opposed subsisting for itself against the Non-opposed : the whole Antithesis, opposed to its own self-identical establishedness,

348. The Positive and Negative are thus positive and negative, not only in themselves, but in and for themselves.

349. They are independent determinations of Reflection.

350. But now, each thus excludes the Other out of itself while containing it.

351. That is to say, each excludes in its self-subsistence its own self-subsistence : this is self-contradictory.

352. The Contradiction which the Distinction in general is in itself (§326), is now established in the Excluding Reflection.

353. The Excluding Reflection is the establishing of the Positive, as what excludes the Other in such wise that this estabhshing is immediately an establishing of the Other which excludes it.

354. And since the establishing of both is One Reflection, the absolute Contradiction of the Positive is immediately also the absolute Contradiction of the Negative.

355. Nevertheless, the Contradiction is properly es- tabhshed in the Negative, because this is identical with itself against the Identity (which latter, as the Positive, is only in itself the absolute Contradiction).

356. Now, so far as the Identity, against which the Negative is identical with itself, is its own Identity, the excluding of this Identity out from the Negative does away with the whole Antithesis.

7-

357. The Contradiction has vanished.

358. At first sight the result of the restless disappearing of the Opposites in their own self appears to be the Zero.

IT

114 A Holiday with a Hegelian

359. It must, however, be remembered that the self- excluding Reflection is at the same time the establishing Reflection.

360. The Self-exclusion is truly a Self-conversion into a reference to the Negative : to that verj' Negative which M'as to be suspended !

361. And thus there is before us the Self-subsistence as a suspending Self-reference.

7. The Finding of the Ground

362. Seeing, then, that the Self-subsistence makes itself in the Antithesis, as the self-excluding Reflection, to an Establishedness by means of the suspending of this its Establishedness, the Antithesis is truly a Return into its unity with itself.

363. This its returning unity with itself is the notion of the Ground.

364. The Ground is the established Identity of the simple Essence with itself in its own Negativity : the completed Self-subsistence of the essential Becoming.

Note. — The so-called Laws of Thought, the maxims of Identity, Difference, the excluded Middle and the sufficient Ground (there should be also the maxim of Contradiction) are simply the corresponding categories in the form of abstract propositions ; and it is now plain that it is wrong to treat these propositions as absolutely valid apart from their dialectical connectedness.

The task of the Objective Logic, to vindicate the premise of the Science of Logic, or rather of Philosophy in general, as absolute Idealism, is now advanced to that stage, at which the immediate Being has a raison d'etre only as the established Identity of the simple Essence with itself. That is to say, the unity of Being and Essence is now practically proved through the self-evolution of Thought itself. All that remains still to be done is to explicate, to establish, the nature of the already in itself established essential Identity as a negative reference in the Other (Being) to self : lest it be grasped only in the sense of an inert background of all that is !

CHAPTER XIII

SIXTH ACT OF THOUGHT:

A. EIGHTH CYCLE

I. Absolute Ground

365. Presence has now the significance of an Estabhshed- ness which presupposes essentially a Ground as the Non- established.

Note. — Unless Presence is grounded, it is mere Illusion or the Null, No doubt the reader was at first startled by the declaration that the sphere of Presence is the sphere of what is in and for itself null (§284). The declaration smacked too much of purely subjective Idealism. But it has been since corrected : the Illusion is the Null only so far as it is credited with independent subsistence per se, or as against the Essence : for Being is thus obviously Essence-less, hence mere Illusion. And we have, or ought to have, realised that such a conception of Being — materialism — is due to the one-sidedness of the External Reflection before its grasp of itself as the Determining Reflection (§306). And by means of the dialectic of the determining Reflection, we are now in a position to remove the first impression, as though the sphere of Being were to be taken simply in the sense of subjective Idealism : represented notably by the Christian Science. Henceforth, we shall have to view Presence as objectively real, and so far as the sense of mere Illusion is now to be corrected into that of the essential Illusion, of such an Illusion that it, as Presence, is the Return of the Essence into itself, that it, in short, is grounded, not merely ground-less, we shall use for it the term Form : a form of the Essence itself !

366. The Determinateness (Presence) of the Essence, as

"5

ii6 A Holiday with a Hegelian

the Ground, becomes thus the double one : of the Ground and the Grounded : the distinction of the Essence in general (the Positive) and its Mediation within itself (the Negative).

367. And in this latter respect the Essence is distin- guished from its simple Identity as Form.

Note. — Presence being now established essentially — as the Identity of the sides of the essential Becoming, called the Ground, the raison d'etre — Determinateness is an immediate unity, not simply of Being and Nothing, as is the case in the first act of thought, but of the Ground and the Grounded, these being the present sense of Being and Nothing, as a result of the foregoing five acts of thought. And it is plain that the Form is the present sense of Quality.

2. The Ground and the Grounded

I.

368. The Essence as such is one with its Reflection and undistinguishably its movement itself : the Essence as Ground is the determined Essence : Form.

2.

369. To the Form belongs on the whole all that is deter- mined as an Establishedness distinguished from that of which it is the Form.

370. That is to say, the Form, as the completed whole of the Reflection (§367), contains also the determination of the same to be as suspended (as an antithesis).

371. Now, although that which is distinguished from the Form, is truly the Essence itself : so far as the Essence is determined as the formless Identitj^ its proper name is Matter.

372. Matter is the proper basis or Substrate of the Form.

373. And consequently something utterly abstract or groundless.

Note. — Of course, being the formless Identity of the Essence in opposition to its essential Identit}', Matter as such is mere Illusion. But, in connection with the Note to §365, it is plain that Matter as such is not to be identified

Sixth Act of Thought 117

with that which appeals to the sense of touch in things. Matter as such is not even visible : it is the Null, and the existence with which this Null is credited has simply the rank of figments of fanc}', e.g. /Ether in the West or Akasa in the East (§256, Note). What the tangible truly is will be realised as we go along.

3-

374. Nevertheless, Matter as such does contain the Form in itself (being definable only in its terms), hence, it must be grasped as formed ; just as the Form, too, must materialise itself.

375. This amounts simply to saying that their separate- ness from one another is an Illusion which suspends itself.

4-

376. So far as they, firstly, pre-estabhsh (or presuppose) one another, they simply bear witness to the nature of the one essential Identity as a negative reference to self.

377. So far as, secondly, the Form necessarily suspends itself and thus becomes Matter, it remains essential Identity with itself.

378. Or, conversely, the agency of the Form whereby Matter as such is determined, is just as much the Movement proper to the Matter itself.

Note. — This Movement has its logical exposition in the very dialectic of the fifth act of thought, so far as this establishes the truth of the Substrate in the Ground ; or generally, in the whole dialectic of the sphere of Being.

379. In short, the externality of the relation, both for the Form and Matter, is simply due to the fact that each, or rather their primary unity, the absolute Ground, is in its establishing also a pre-establishing.

380. Thirdly, therefore, the Doing (agency) of the Form is distinguished from the Movement or Becoming of Matter only in this, that the former is the negativity as established (as the Negative), the latter the negativity as a determina- tion in itself (as the Positive) (§355).

ii8 A Holiday with a Hegelian

5.

381. Matter is, then, the Ground of its determinations only so far as it is not merely an inert basis for the Form, but the absolute unity as the Essence and Form ; and the same applies to the Form.

382. As this established unity of Matter and Form — in the formed Matter or materialised Form — the Ground acquires the meaning of the essential Content.

Note. — Having drawn an analogy between the absolute Ground and Determinateness as such, and correlated the Form with Quality, we may now see that Matter and Form are essential restatements of Reality and Negation and the Content that of the Being-within-self. But, so far as the sixth act of thought is more properly grasped as the final restatement of the second act, the stated purely abstract correspondence had better be shifted by correlating the absolute Ground with Something as such, Matter and Form with Something and Other, and the Content with the Other as such. But, then, this kind of correspondence is obvious from the cyclical arrangement of the dialectical movement and calls for no comments, these being, in any case, merely an external after-thought.

383. As Content, that which was previously the self- identical — first of all, as the Ground, then as the Form, and finally as Matter — comes under the sway of the Form and is again one of its determinations.

384. Content has, firstly, a Form and a Matter which are essential only as belonging to it, or are its Form as mere establishedness.

385. But the Content is, secondly, the negative reflection of the determinations of its Form within themselves, so that they have also a material, indifferent subsistence.

386. Consequently, the Ground which has at first sight vanished in the Content (§383) is truly returned in the latter into its unity with itself.

Sixth Act of Thought 119

7-

387. Therewith, the Ground has converted itself, as a

whole, into the determined Ground and thus is to be dis- tinguished, firstly, as regards its Form, secondly, as regards its Content.

3. The formal Ground

388. So far as the Ground is distinguished only formally, its Content is determined as an indifferent, positive unity against the mediation of the Form.

389. The Form refers itself, however, in its mediation, through its own self to the determined Content, as to its own positive, mediating agency.

390. Consequently, so far as the determined Ground is considered on two sides, once as Content (Ground), another time as Form (the Grounded), the Content (the whole Ground) itself is just as much a moment of the Form.

391. There is nothing in the Ground which is not in the Grounded, and likewise nothing in the Grounded which is not in the Ground.

4. The real Ground

I.

392. The determined Ground is thus present only as pure Form, not yet really determined in its two sides, or also as regards its Content : the reference of the Ground and the Grounded does not, so far, concern the Content ; or it (the reference) is only formal.

Note. — The formal Ground is, therefore, nothing but a tautology : one and the same content is simply presented under another name, and explaining amounts thus to an exercise of empty reflection. Such way of explaining facts as would not satisfy an ordinary rustic is considered to be scientific par excellence. At one time, it was the term God which was given in reply to every query as to the why of facts : now it is tenns like Electricity, ^ther. Vibration, etc., that have superseded the vain use of the name God. That is to say, the emptiness of scientific explanations of the world we live in simply

120 A Holiday with a Hegelian

illustrates that mere words explain nothing. What is required is to use words, and then especially the word God, as a vehicle for Thought, not simply as a label for vague impressions of the beyond of facts. Of course, so long as men of science do not realise that they put empty words in the place of Thought, they cannot realise that Hegel does the very reverse : for his explanations must needs appear mere logomachy to those who seek fulness of meaning only in Thought's own otherwiseness.

2.

393. But, then, the Content is the Identity of the Ground and the Grounded — the primary unity of the Ground with itself in the sense of an established unity of Form and Matter — and, consequently, the reference of the Ground and the Grounded applies equally to the Content itself.

394. It is plainly only so far as the Content becomes different with its Form, i.e. accordingly as it has the sense of the Ground or of the Grounded, that the reference of the Ground and the Grounded ceases to be an empty tautology.

Note. — It is to be kept in mind that Difference converts the essential Identity or absolute Distinction into the Equality and Inequality of the external Reflection (§328}.

3-

395. In its difference from the Ground, the Grounded (or Form) appears to have also a pecuhar Content of its own in addition to the Content of the Ground, i.e. the Grounded appears as an immediate unity of a twofold Content,

396. The One of the Something which constitutes this unity of the Ground and of the peculiar content beside the essential Content, is, therefore (the unity being im- mediate) only an external tie.

Note. — The peculiar content is, as against the essential Content or the Ground, non-essential and therefore mani- fold. The meaning of the One of the Something is that the manifold content to be found in anything includes equally, in its manifold determinations, that one which

Sixth Act of Thought 121

constitutes the Ground of the rest : but there is, so far, no clue as to which particular determination is to have this rank. The tracing of the rest to a particular deter- mination of the One of the Something, as to their Ground, would result only in the assignment of a formal Ground, because the distinction of the Ground and the Grounded would not as yet concern the whole content of the One of the Something under consideration. Or the reference of the Ground and the Grounded would only appear to be real. In order to become real, the Ground and the One of the Something must become different contents. And that they are different contents is implied in the very fact that the One of the Something is an external tie which does not contain the unessential manifold content as a moment of the Ground-reference. Hence, the next paragraph proceeds :

4.

397, The two references, the essential Content, as the simple, immediate Identity of the Ground and the Grounded, and the One of the Something, as the reference (immediate unity) of the distinguished (twofold) Content are two different bases.

398. Which of these two different bases is the Ground and which the Grounded becomes a matter of external reflection and the Ground is thus real.

Note. — This means that none of the determinations of something is per se the Ground of the rest. So far as any of them is assigned this value, and the assignment is not to appear to be purely arbitrary, all that one can do in support of its validity is to point out that the twofold content in question is to be found equally in something else. But even though the Other, which is immediately the same unity of the twofold content, is multiplied ad lib., the Ground remains a matter of external reflection : it is still only an external Ground which does not concern the raison d'etre, but rests on mere famiharitj^ with facts. Of course, the inadequacy of real Grounds to lead to the knowledge of what things are in themselves is obvious to everyone who

122 A Holiday with a Hegelian

has the sHghtest ghmmer of the meaning of taking nothing for granted.

399. But the real or external Ground is thus directly also only formal, because it is only an absolute reference of the two determinations of Content and their com- bination.

5.

400. The arisen unity of the formal and real Ground represents the complete Ground or the total Ground- reference.

6.

401. So far as the sides of the complete Ground are a double Content, the distinction concerns only the mode of reference between the two determinations of one and the same content.

402. The two determinations are once (on the side of the Ground) found in an original unity, another time (on the side of the Grounded) they are given the relation of the Ground and Grounded because they are to be found also in an original unity (in another Something).

Note. — " The conclusion is that because in a Something the determination B is in itself joint with the determination A, B is also joint with it in another Something, when the latter implies immediately only the one determination A. In the second Something there is not only this second determination mediated, but it is also mediated that its immediate determination is the Ground : to wit, owing to its original reference to B in the first Something. This reference is therefore the Ground of the Ground A, and the whole Ground-reference is in the second Something as established or grounded " (Hegel's Werke, 4 : 103).

403. The real Ground shows itself, then, as the self- external or pre-establishing Reflection of the Ground : Something is Ground as an original reference of immediate determinations : hence as reference to its negation : the Ground as what rests on an original combination pre- estabhshes its own suspendedness.

Note. — Explanations derived from facts can never account for the facts themselves !

Sixth Act of Thought 123

7-

404. Thus the total Ground-reference has determined itself to the conditioning mediation.

5. Condition

405. The Immediate to which the Ground refers itself as to its own pre-established Otherwiseness, or as to its essential presupposition, is the Condition.

406. The Condition is, therefore, firstly, an immediate, manifold Something which, secondly, is not to be in- differently for itself, nor generally for another, but, thirdly, to constitute that material for the Ground which is the sine qua non of the total (complete) Ground-reference, i.e. to constitute the unconditioned In-itself of the Ground.

Note. — This significance of an immediate, manifold Something — of the sphere of Being — lies at the back of our inability to remain satisfied with what we find immediately before us : we ask why ? and have an ineradicable tendency to co-relate immediate findings, to trace everything to a Ground, because the sphere of Being is realised by our logical nature to be an essential presupposition of all reasoning from grounds. It is this realisation that con- stitutes the platform of empiricism. But, of course, this is not yet the true standpoint towards objectivity, and as Philosophy has for its object truth alone, it must con- stantly draw attention to the shortcomings of empiricism, even while justifying its raison d'etre as one of its own Conditions.

6. The conditioning Mediation

I.

407. As against the content of the Condition (as an immediate material to which the reference to a Ground is external, while it yet equally constitutes the latter's unconditioned In-itself), the content of the Ground is essentially formed, and therefore equally unconditioned : the Condition is not its Ground !

2.

408. Condition and Ground are thus, on one side, in- different and unconditioned, on the other, also mediated.

124 A Holiday with a Hegelian

409. They are primarily an essential Becoming, each having its own peculiar Content apart from their essential Identity.

4.

410. Seeing, however, that Presence is in its own self only this, to suspend itself and, in coming to the Ground, to become the Ground : the Form whereby Presence is Condition is not external to it : and the Condition is, there- fore, the whole Form of the reference to the Ground.

411. Similarly, the Ground-reference is just as much the whole itself because the Condition, as to its moment of both Being-in-itself and Immediac}^ is its own moment.

5.

412. There is thus present only One whole of the Form, and just as much only One whole of the Content.

413. This One whole is the true Unconditioned : the first Cause,

6.

414. The first Cause conditions itself and places itself opposite to its Conditions as the Ground {raison d'etre) : its reference of itself to its Conditions is thus an essential Becoming ; or, in referring to its Conditions, it communes purely with its own self.

415. The sphere of Being (Presence) is not determined as Condition and used as Material by a radically different Being : its very Becoming is now realised to be the essential Becoming of the first Cause and this means, then, that the immediate Being converts itself through its own self into a Condition.

Note. — This conclusion has been anticipated already in connection with the dialectic of Finitude. As we go along, we keep on restating what has been implied in the very first results of pure thinking ^^'ith the difference that the all-embracing significance of what lies now at our back is becoming increasingly clearer. At first sight, on entering on the study of the Science of Logic, it is most difficult to

Sixth Act of Thought 125

attend wholly to the subject-matter in hand, because of its very simplicity ! We are instinctively so alive to the fulness of thought that we cannot help rebelling against inner emptiness, and for that reason find it most difficult to exclude deliberately every concrete content from our mind and begin with pure Being. It is this instinctive abhorrence of the void, of annihilation, that bars the entrance to philo- sophy to most people. Those who have been able to over- come sufficiently this instinctive clinging to Egoism (to the fulness of external reflection) to enter on, and to proceed with, the study of Logic, will find now little difficulty in answering the questions which as a rule present them- selves to every student until he feels at home in the realm of pure thought. Nothing seems at first more unlikely than the fulfilment of the promise made on behalf of the Science of Logic : to reveal the nature of God as He is in His very essence, to solve every perplexity as to the Creation of the World ; to awaken in us the Knowledge of Absolute Truth ! Yet behold, how every further Cj'cle brings us nearer and nearer to the central focus of every mj^stery ! As the subject-matter of the dialectical move- ment is taking an ever-deepening hold of our mind, we are gaining a correspondingly keener realisation of its universal sway. \Mien we look now around and contemplate the sphere of immediate Being, we are able to declare with full conviction that its unity-less manifoldness is the side of Conditions of the first Cause and only for that reason has the Form of formless Being. If we are asked why there should be such a manifoldness of Beings, differing as to Quality, Quantity, Measure, Grounds, we have only to fall back upon the preceding dialectic to find the required answer : the first Cause conditions itself and the side of Conditions embraces, or displays, all that comes under the head of Quality, Quantity, Measure, etc. ! Have we not grasped the very principle of the ordinary attitude towards the objective world, so far as things are, first of all, simply described as to their quality and quantity ; so far as one seeks, further, for their mathematical principles and, still further, for their essence and raison d'etre ? And is it indeed by means of mere words that we find our per-

126 A Holiday with a Hegelian

plexities solved ? Those who have truly digested, who have truly realised the logical force of the preceding dialectic, can only smile at the charge of mere logomachy levelled at Hegel. Of course, those who will not think, must go on living in conceited ignorance of truth and finally die in stupidity !

416. The movement of the first Cause to become es- tablished, on one hand, through its Conditions, on the other, through its Ground, amounts truly to the dis- appearing of the illusion of the mediation.

7-

417. The mediation between Conditions and the Ground is a tautological movement of the first Cause in its own self.

7. The Entrance of the first Cause into Existence .

418. As unified with Conditions, the first Cause is immediately present.

419. But so far as Presence is now groundless and unconditioned, it is Existence.

Note. — A further deepening of our view of the sphere of Being : it is not simply a material ready to hand for all manner of purposes (so it is only the unconditioned In- itself of the Ground, which latter is therefore also something else), but it is the very Presence of the first Cause itself (which therefore does not dwell in some other world beyond reach, but is here and now). In other words, we are now ratifying what has been anticipated from the very first, i.e. that the question as to the Origin of all that is concerns only the standpoint of dualism in our ordinary conscious- ness. The Origin hes in truth in the first Cause as the essential Becoming of the Groimd and Condition : Exis- tence is therefore groundless and unconditioned.

CHAPTER XIV SIXTH ACT OF THOUGHT:

B. NINTH CYCLE

1. Existence as such

420. Existence is, first of all, only an immediate deter- mination, distinguished from the qualitative Something by the present significance of Immediacy, as the Reflection of the mediation within itself : the existing Something is a Thing.

421. So far, then, as a Thing is distinguished from its Existence, the distinction is not a transition, but properly only an analysis : the Existence as such contains this distinction itself in the moment of its mediation, — the distinction of the Thing-in-itself and of the external Existence.

2. Tpie self-external Existence

I.

422. The Thing-in-itself is the essential Immediate, the mediated Being of which is an immanently manifold and external Presence.

423. As the simple reflectedness of the Existence within itself, the Thing-in-itself is not, therefore, the Ground of the unessential Presence, but only its inert Basis : this is why the Reflection, as the Presence which mediates itself by means of something else, falls out of the Thing-in-itself, or is an external Reflection.

2.

424. The difference is, therefore, present as the reference of an Other to the Thing-in-itself : but this Other is nothing subsisting for itself.

127

128 A Holiday with a Hegelian

Note. — This Other is nothing subsisting for itself be- cause it stands for the sphere of immediate Being as against the Thing-in-itself. So far, then, as the latter is the simple reflectedness of the Existence within itself and thus is the present significance of the Being-in-and-for-itself, the Other, as the Presence which mediates itself by means of another Presence, is the present re-appearance of the Illusion. And from this it follows that Existence must not be simply identified with the determinations of immediate Being, that is to say, with Quality, Quantity, and Measure. These determinations are proper to the Thing-in-itself in the same way in which Illusion is proper to the Essence : the Thing-in-itself cannot be grasped by means of them because they concern onl}^ its external Immediacy and on further inquiry vanish : simply because an exhaustive inquiry amounts in this respect to a recapitulation of the dialectic of Being ! This realisation points subjectively to an impossibility of getting at the essence of things by means of our senses : these must needs deal only with the unessential side of Existence. The Thing-in-itself cannot even be reached by means of the Reflection as to the Grounds and Conditions : all explanations of this kind are simply the work of external Reflection, in which the Thing-in-itself remains purely self-external, leaving itself out of the question, and thus failing to grasp itself. This self-externality of the Thing-in-itself has its most appro- priate illustration in the scientific attitude towards the world we live in, and we are now realising that this attitude is due to a self-discernment of the first Cause in its im- mediacy.

425. The unessential Reflection collapses in its own self outside the Thing-in-itself, and the resulting essential Identity is the Other as such of the Thing-in-itself.

426. And thus the Thing-in-itself becomes many things- in-themselves :

427. Its own reference to itself as to an Other constitutes its Determinateness :

428. Property.

429. As against Quality, or the Negation whereby Being

Sixth Act of Thought 129

is Something, Property is the negativitj' of the Reflection, whereby Existence is generally something existing : a Thing (the present One of the Thing-in-itself).

430. Property is, then, firstly, the side of the estabhshed- ness (of the external immediacy) of the Thing-in-itself, so far as, secondly, the Thing remains, in its estabhshedness, in itself, i.e. liberated from alteration :

431. There is only One Thing-in-itself which relates itself in the external Reflection to itself : owing to this its essential existence, its external immediacy is an es- tablishedness-in-itself.

432. And this means, then, that Property constitutes that whereby a thing exists essentially : apart from its Property (or Properties), a thing is only an unessential extent and external aggregate.^

3-

433. Instead of being simply the middle of separately existing things. Property, as the essential thingness, is truly One Reflection and One Continuity of the same, apart from which they disappear as subsisting extremes.

434. And as that whereby things subsist, Property has the significance of self-subsistent Matter.

435. This transition of Property into Matter is the familiar transition which Chemistry makes, in that it seeks to ehminate the Property of Colour, Smell, Taste, etc. ; as a Pigment, odoriferous Matter, Salt, etc., or just only assumes other stuffs (caloric, electric, magnetic) and therewith is convinced of having got hold of the Property in its truthfulness.

1 This means to say that the abstract distinction of the Thing- in-itself and of that which constitutes its Determinateness, or its external Immediacy, is untenable : we have arrived at the point where the established Being is opposed to the In-itself, not as a simple Determinateness (as the Being-for-other of §41), but as a Being-for-other which is itself an establishedness-in-itself. Instead of mere Constitution we have now Property : the external im- mediacy of the Thing-in-itself! The Thing-in-itself is thus, on one side, distinguished from the Property (or Properties, since the external immediacy implies manifoldness) as from its unessential side, yet, on the other side, it exists essentially in this its very unessentiality (and therefore is, as will be seen, Appearance).

130 A Holiday with a Hegelian

4-

436. But, firstly, seeing that the Property is self- sutJsistent Matter only so far as the distinction of things has suspended itself (§433), its Self-subsistence is, as this negative unity, the restored Thing-in-itself, which latter, owing to this its return in every thing into itself, is now, secondly, immediately before us as this (every and any) Thing,

437. And, of course, the restored Thing-in-itself, as a manifoldness of things which have no separate existence (since that whereby they exist is only the manifoldness of their essential Identity, or the Illusion of Many in their essential Oneness), exists, thirdly, in the element of Non- essentiahty (§432).

438. There is before us the distinction of the simple, identically self-to-self-referent Self-subsistent (of this Thing) against its own manifoldness (Matters).

439. This Thing consists of self-subsistent Matters which are indifferent to their reference in it, as to a purely unessential connection ; and the distinction of things rests thus only on the amount of particular Matters, con- tained in them in varying measure-relations.

440. Matters circulate unceasingly into or out of this Thing, just because it is an external tie of what is essen- tially one :

441. Hence, this Thing is such a reference of Matters that this and that Matter subsist within it together (as co- existences, each of which at the same time subsists) only so far as the other does not subsist.

5.

442. Existence has thus reached its truth in this Thing : its immediate self -subsistence reveals itself as what is in itself self-contradictory, hence, null — an Appearance.

443. Appearance subsists in its negativity : its self- subsistence, as this Thing, is the existence of the essential Illusion.

Sixth Act of Thought 131

Note. — Existence is the immediacy of the first Cause, so far as this is identical with the sphere of its own Con- ditions. For this reason, Existence is Groundless and unconditioned. But, on the strength of its dialectic, we must now realise that its immediacy is not for that reason (as what is groundless and unconditioned) absolutely self- existent, but only an Appearance : only the self-suspending establishedness of Matter. Just because Existence is the external immediacy of the first Cause, so far as the latter is identified only with its self-pre-establishedness, its dia- lectic must needs expose this one-sidedness and thus amount at bottom to a recapitulation of the transition from the sphere of immediate Being into that of Essence. Appearance is thus the present restatement of the im- mediate Being as it is to be viewed in the sphere of Essence, i.e. as an immediacy which is only as a Return of the Null into itself. The Null stands, of course, for the realised nature of Matter as an all-sided contradiction. So far, then, as Existence simply affirms the identity of Being and Essence with the accent on Being, Appearance corrects this one-sidedness by laying the accent on Essence.

444. And so far as Appearance is not the Illusion in a Self-subsistence, but an Illusion only in Illusion, the positive Identity, contained immediately in this negative mediation, has the sense of the essential Identity.

445. The self-contradiction of the Appearance, as what subsists so in the other that it is at the same time only in its Not, comes to the Ground : the Establishedness of the One is also the Establishedness of the Other.

7-

446. There is before us the essential Content in its com- plete determinateness : One Subsistence discerned into a Different, mutually indifferent Content : the Law of Appearance.

3. The Law of Appearance

447. The Law is the Positive of the mediation of the Appearance, as of the unessential Existence.

448. Accordingly, the Law is, firstly, opposed to the

132 A Holiday with a Hegelian

Immediacy which belongs to the Existence as the Non- essential subsisting in its Nullity ; but the Law is opposed to this simple Immediacy as to its own Reflection-within- itself and thus, secondly, established as the Essential and truly Positive against the Non-essential.

449. Thirdly, then, the Appearance and Law have one and the same Content : their Difference concerns only the Form of the identical Content.

450. This Content constitutes, herewith, the Basis of the Appearance : the positive side of the Essentiality, whereby Existence is Appearance,

451. The Existence as such goes back into the Law as into its Ground : the realm of Laws is the quiescent image of the existing or appearing World, or rather, both is One Totality.

452. But so far as the Identity of the Law with its Existence is at first only immediate, the Law is, firstly, indifferent to its Existence ; hence, secondly, opposed to the Form and its movement as such, contained in the Appearance, and the Content of the Law is thereby, thirdly, at first only a different one, i.e. devoid of the self- moving Form,

Note, — In the Law, the recapitulation of the dialectic of the preceding cycles advances as far as the formal Ground. The unity of Thought and Being is, as has been pointed out in the conclusion of the fifth act, estabhshed in itself already in the notion of the essential Identity. The last two acts of thought have for their object to restate all that precedes in its proper significance from the standpoint of the essential Identity which deepens, pari passu with this restatement, into the fully established conclusion of the Objective Logic. Thus we have realised already that the sphere of immediate Being is the external Immediacy of the first Cause ; and so far as the first Cause is thus embodied in everything, every Thing is a congeries of all that is imphed in the first Cause, i.e. in the conclusion of the eighth cycle. And we may now fancy ourselves as putting this inference to the test — that is to say, so far as we assume simply the position of onlookers towards the dia-

Sixth Act of Thought 133

lectical movement which, of course, goes its own way with perfect disregard of preconceived aims on the part of the external Reflection. The student may be interested to learn that the Law has its natural illustration in Elec- tricit}^

4. This and the other World

I.

453. The Appearance is in its changes also a Persisting, and the Law, as this simple Identity of the Appearance with itself, is only the inert basis of the same, and, so far, also an Appearance.

2.

454. Seeing, however, that the Law is also an Appear- ance, it has the Reflection of the Appearance in its own self and thus is not only its identical Basis, but the Other of the Appearance as such : its negative Reflection as into its Other.

455. Or the Law considered merely for itself, the sides of its Content are indifferent to one another as one and the same Content, and as they are, therefore, just as much suspended, the subsisting of each is also the not-subsisting of its own self : each is not only the establishedness of itself, but also of the other.

456. The Law has acquired therewith equally the lacking moment of the Negative Form of its sides : the imman- ently reflected Appearance is now a World which discloses itself over the appearing \\'orld as a World-in-and-for- itself.

Note. — The " Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return " obviously concerns only the fate of our body, as an Appearance. We are also the essential Other of our body : the Soul ; and the coming to the Ground of the Body does not affect this our positive essentiality. Death is also said to be the gate of Life. Our coming to the Ground in the appearing World means our entrance into the World-in-and-for-itself which is not merely the Basis — the formless and therefore groundless Self-Identity — but the self-recovered Ground after its own suspension in the appearing World.

134 A Holiday with a Hegelian

3-

457. The realm of Laws contains only the simple, change- less, or different content of the existing World : in being now the total Reflection of the later, it also contains the moment of its unessential manifoldness,

458. The supersensuous World — as the World-in-and- for-itself is also called, so far as the existing World is deter- mined as sensuous, namelj^ as such that it is a matter of Sense-consciousness — has equally immediacy, but as a reflected, essential Existence : it is only as belonging to another, supersensuous World that Things are established, firstly, as truthful existences, and, secondly, as the True against that which simply is.

Note. — As against the sensuous Perception of the existing World, the supersensuous World is perceived clairvoyantly : it is the so-called Astral Plane of the Theo- sophists and Rosicrucians. Yet, according to Bosanquet (' Introd. to Hegel's Phil, of Fine Art,' p. xv.) : " The things not seen of Plato or of Hegel are not a ' double ' or a ' projection ' of the existing world. Plato indeed wavered between the two conceptions in a way that should have warned his interpreters of the divergence in his track of thought, but in Hegel at least there is no ambiguity. The world of spirits with him is not a world of ghosts."

4-

459. In that, now, the World-in-and-for-itself is in its own self the absolute negativity of Form, its Reflection- within-itself is negative reference to self : just because it is the totality of Existence, it is also only as one side of the same and constitutes in this determination a Self-subsistence that is different from the appearing World.

460. It is further not only generally the Ground of the appearing World, but its determined Ground as its Nega- tion : as an opposite World to the same.

461. The identical connection of the two Worlds is, at the same time, determined as Opposition, because the Form of the appearing World is the Reflection into its Other\viseness and, therefore, is truly so returned into its

Sixth Act of Thought 135

own self in the World-in-and-for-itself that this latter is the reverse of the appearing one.

Note. — Accordingly the things of this World are seen clairvo5^antly as if in a mirror, and this is indeed how Mme. Blavatsky excuses her mistakes in copying figures, seen clairvoyantly in books lying far away in different libraries, from right to left. The opposition between the two worlds is, of course, all round, not simply confined to the appear- ance of things but to the whole of experience :

462. What in the World of Appearance is positive, is in the World-in-and-for-itself negative, and vice versa : thus what appears as an evil, misfortune, etc., is in and for itself, good, luck, etc.

Note. — Accordingly, pleasant dreams of future events are popularly interpreted to mean the very reverse, so far, that is, as there is still any belief left in the connection between dreams and the other World.

5.

463. In effect, just in this antithesis of both worlds, this distinction has vanished, and what was to be the World-in-and-for-itself is itself the appearing World, and this latter, conversely, in its own self the former.

464. The distinct Self-subsistence of each is, therefore, now established in such wise, that it is an essential refer- ence to the other and has its self-subsistence in this unity of both.

465. The Law is determined only in itself in such wise, that the establishedness of one of its sides is the established- ness of the other side : now, however, the Law is realised.

466. The Law is thus Essential Relation.

Note. — " The essential Relation is not yet the true Third to the Essence and Existence ; nevertheless, it already contains the determined unification of both. The Essence is so realised within it, that it has for its subsisting independent existences ; and these are gone back from their indifference to their essential unity, having only this latter for their subsisting. The reflective determinations of the Positive and Negative are equally reflected within

136 A Holiday with a Hegelian

themselves only as reflected into their Opposite, but they have no other determination than this their negative unity. On the contrary, the essential Relation has such for its sides that they are established as self-subsistent totalities. It is the same antithesis as that of the Positive and Nega- tive : but, at the same time, as a reversed World. The side of the essential Relation is a totahty which, however, as essential, has an Opposite, a Beyond of itself. It is only an Appearance : its Existence is rather not its own, but that of its Other. It is, therefore, as what is broken in its own self ; but this its suspendedness consists in this, that it is the unity of its own self and of its Other ; hence, the Whole having just on that account self-subsistent Existence and being essential Reflection within itself." (Hegel's Werke, 4 : 156).

6.

467. The essential Relation is at first the Relation of the Whole and Parts, so far as its two sides— the negative unity or reflected Self-subsistence and the immediate unity or positive Self-subsistence — are connected by the Also, each being the Basis of the Other.

468. The Whole is the Self-subsistent, Parts being only moments of this unity ; but Parts are just as much also the Self-subsistent, their reflected unity being only a moment ; and each is in its Self-subsistence directly the Relative of its Other.

469. The Whole is a Relative, because that which con- stitutes it is rather its Other, Parts : it consists of Parts in such wise that without them it is nothing.

470. Conversely, without a Whole there are no Parts ; and the Whole is not merely an external moment of their immediate self-subsistence because they collapse in their own self, as a manifold existence, and thus subsist truly in their Other, the Whole.

7-

471. Hence, the Whole and Parts condition themselves reciprocally, and the whole Relation is, owing to this reciprocity, the return of the Conditioning into its own self : the not Relative, the Unconditioned.

Sixth Act of Thought 137

5, The self-excluding Totality

472. There is present only One Identity of the Whole and Parts, as of two self-subsistent existences which are in- different to one another :

473. The Whole is equal to the Parts and the Parts to the Whole.

474. The Whole is, however, in the Parts, equal only to itself ; or the equality of the same and of the Parts ex- presses only the tautology : the Whole as a whole is equal, not to the Parts, but to the Whole.

475. And since Parts are conversely, in the Whole, equal only to the latter's manifold determinations, their equahty with the Whole amounts to the same tautology : Parts as Parts are equal, not to the Whole as such, but within it to their own self : to Parts.

476. Now, since the two sides are equally One Identity, the indifferent self-subsistence which each has for itself, is rather the negation of its own self : each has its self- subsistence in the other, as its pre-established Immediate that ought to be a First and its beginning ; but this First of each is only such that it is not First, but has its beginning in the other,

477. The truth of their Relation consists, then, in the Mediation in which just as much the reflected as the present immediacy are suspended.

478. In this determination, the Relation is no longer that of the Whole and Parts : as a mediated immediate transi- tion of the sides into one another, the Relation is that of Force and its Expression.

6. Force and its Expression

I.

479. Force has in it, firstly, the moment of the present Immediacy, and so far as it, as this establishedness, has the Thing — an existing Something — essentially for its pre- supposition, for its First, it appears as what is externally bound up with, or forced into, the Thing by a foreign Power.

480. As this immediate subsisting, Force is a peaceful

138 A Holiday with a Hegelian

determination of the Thing in general, and is, therefore, also designated as Matter : instead of the magnetic, electric, etc., Force, there is assumed magnetic, electric, etc., Matter ; or instead of the famous attractive Force, a fine Ether, which holds everything together.

Note. — It is especially Occultism that designates Forces in this way, because the reflected Existence has equally a self-subsistence of its own which is clairvoyantly visible. The visible is, however, as such, immaterial, because seeing is a purely ideal relationship to things. Occult Matter is the stuff of which dreams are made : Illusion.

2.

481. The Thing, however, in which Force ought to subsist, has here no longer any meaning : the Force itself is rather the Establishing of the externality which appears as Existence.

482. As the self-from-self-repellent contradiction, Force is, secondly, active, becoming out of itself the existent external manifoldness.

483. But, thirdly, Force is so far only in itself (or im- mediately) Activity, because it is the reflected unity and just as essentially the negation of the same, as of an Im- mediacy external to it.

3-

484. But, then, the Activity of the Force is conditioned by its own self as by the Other to its own self : by a Force.

485. It is Forces that stand in Relation, and in Essential Relation : but the unity of their Relation is, at first, only the inner unity, the unity-in-itself.

4-

486. The externaUty present for the Force is its own pre- establishing Activity itself, estabhshed primarily as another Force.

487. This Pre-establishing is, further, reciprocal.

488. The Pre-establishing being thus directly also the suspending of the other Force, the Force converts its negation to a mere Shock which only stirs it up as its own

Sixth Act of Thought 139

doing : its doing consists in the suspending of the exter- nahty of said Shock, by estabhshing it as the own repelhng of itself from itself, as its own Expression.

489. The one of the two Forces in Relation becomes soliciting, the other solicited.

490. But, the one Force is sohciting only so far as it is solicited by the other to be soliciting ; conversel}', it is solicited only so far as it itself solicits the other to solicit it.

491. The pre-establishing Reflection, to which the con- ditionedness of the Force and the Shock belong, is, therefore, immediately also the self -returning Reflection, and the Activity is essentially reacting against its own self.

5-

492. What Force expresses in truth is this : that its Externality is identical with its Internality

493. The distinction of self-subsistent Forces is an empty, transparent distinction : an Illusion, but so that this Illusion is the Mediation which is the self-subsistent Subsisting itself.

6.

494. The Inner is determined as the Form of the re- flected Immediacy, or of the Essence, against the Outer, as the Form of Being.

495. The holding fast of the Form is, however, on the whole, the side of Determinateness.

7-

496. The Outer and Inner are the Determinateness so established that each of these both determinations not only presupposes the other and goes over into it as into its truth, but that it, so far as it is this truth of the other, remains established as Determinateness pointing to the totality of both which their mediation still lacks.

7. One Absolute Totality

497. The first of the considered Identities of the Inner and Outer (§492) is the Identity as Content, the second (§496) is the Identity as pure Form : but these both Identities are only the sides of the One Totality.

I

40 A Holiday with a Hegelian

498. Thereby, conversely, the distinctions of the Form, the Inner and the Outer, are each estabhshed in its own self as the Totality of itself and of its Other.

499. Consequently, Something is what it is quite in its externahty, and its Appearance is not only the Reflection into something else, but into itself, as the absolute Identity of the Inner and Outer, mediated through the deter- minateness with its own self.

500. In this Identity of the Appearance with the Inner, or the Essence, the essential Relation has determined itself to Actuality.

Note. — The dialectical movement has now returned to its very Beginning, for the unmediated Identity of the Form (§496) presents itself in the pure Being, as what is im- mediately gone over into Nothing. " On the whole," says Hegel (4 : 175), " everything real is in its beginning such an only immediate Identity ; for, in its beginning, it has the moments not yet as opposed and developed ; it has not yet, on one hand, recollected itself from its externality, nor, on the other, externahsed and produced itself from its internahty by its own activity : it is, hence, only the Inner, as Determinateness, against the Outer, and only the Outer as Determinateness against the Inner. Consequently, it is, partly, only an immediate Being, partly, so far as it is just as much the negativity which is to become the activity of development, it is as such at first only an Inner. Every natural, scientific and spiritual development in general bears this out, and it is essential to realise that the First (in that Something is, at first, only inner or also in its Notion) is just on that account only its immediate passive Presence. . . . Thus the sphere of Being in general is, at first, only that which is plainly only Inner and which, con- sequently, is the sphere of the present Immediacy or of Externality. — The Essence is, at first, only the Inner and, therefore, also taken in the sense of a quite external, system-less community : we speak of public instruction (Schulwesen), press {Zeitungswesen), and understand thereby something common, arrived at by an external taking to- gether of existing objects, so far as they are without any

Sixth Act of Thought 141

essential connection, without organisation. — Or in concrete objects, the germ of a plant, a child, is at first only an inner plant, an inner man. But, as germ, a plant or man is only something immediate, external which has not yet given itself negative reference to its own self : something passive, exposed to otherwiseness. — Thus also God in His im- mediate Notion is not Spirit : the Spirit is not the Immediate, the Opposed to mediation, but rather the Essence, as eternally establishing its Immediacy and eternally returning from it into itself. Immediately, there- fore, God is only Nature. Or Nature is only the inner God, not actual as Spirit, and therefore not the true God. — Or God is in the thinking, as first thinking, only pure Being, or also the Essence, the abstract Absolute : not God as absolute Spirit, as which alone is the true nature of God."

CHAPTER XV

SEVENTH ACT OF THOUGHT:

TENTH CYCLE

" '"pHE simple substanced Identity of the Absolute is undetermined, or, within it, all determinateness of the Essence and Existence, or of the Being in general as well as of Reflection, has rather resolved itself. So far, the determining of what the Absolute is falls out negatively, and the Absolute itself appears only as the negation of all predicates and as the Empty. But in that it just as much must be enunciated as the position of all predicates, it appears as the most formal contradiction. So far as said negating and this establishing belong to the external Reflection, this is a formal, unsystematic dialectic which has no difficulty in taking up, here and there, various deter- minations, and in demonstrating with equal ease that they are, on one hand, finite and merely relative, and, on the other, yet equally apply to the Absolute, since the Absolute floats before it as the totality of all determinations, even though it, the external Reflection, does not know how to raise these position and negations to their true unit3\ — The object is, however, to establish what the Absolute is : which establishing cannot be a Determining, nor a matter of the external Reflection — the Absolute would be thus treated as a Becoming — but is the Exposition, and the own Exposition, of the Absolute, and only a Demonstration of that which it is " (Hegel's Werke, 4 : 179).

I. The Absolute as such 501. The Absolute is neither only the Outer or Being, nor only the Inner or Essence : as the absolute unity of both, it is that which constitutes the Ground of the essen- tial Relation.

142

Seventh Act of Thought 143

2. The Exposition of the Absolute, negative and positive

I.

502. From this it follows that the determination of the Absolute is, to be the absolute Form, having for its mo- ments the complete Content ; or, conversely, the absolute Content, having in its indifferent manifoldness the negative reference of the Form, whereby its manifoldness is only One substanced Identity.

2.

503. There is no Becoming within the Absolute as such, for it is not the Being ; nor is it the self-reflective Deter- mining, for it is not the Essence determining itself only in itself ; and neither is it an Expressing of itself, for it is the absolute Identity of the Inner and Outer : thus the move- ment of the Reflection stands opposite to its absolute Identity and, as the preceding whole of the logical move- ment, constitutes the negative Exposition of the Absolute.

504. The positive side, contained by this negative Exposition, is not so much the positive Exposition of the Absolute itself as rather only the positive Exposition of the determinations of Being and Essence : a demonstration that they have the Absolute for their Abyss as well as for their Ground ; or that that to which they owe their sub- sisting, as a transparent Illusion, is the Absolute itself.

505. Although, therefore, this positive side of the Ex- position is itself only an essential Becoming which returns into the Absolute, it still begins with a determination ex- ternal to the Absolute : with a NulHty which the Exposition assumes from outside.

Note. — Surely, no objector to Hegel's beginning with pure Being or Nothing could be better aware of the proper value of this beginning than Hegel himself ! We have here a clear demonstration of the true source of all such objections : our Identity with the true Absolute, with the Notion, by virtue of which we instinctively shrink from identifying ourselves with a Nullity which he who would truly learn what Being or Essence is, must begin by assuming from outside. Would that every objector had

144 A Holiday with a Hegelian

patience enough to close the circle of the Objective Logic and thus to acquire a clear estimate of the value of his objections in the light of Thought that knows itself as Thought !

3.

506. In effect, however, the negati^'e Exposition of the Absolute is its own Doing, which begins by itself and arrives at itself : the Absolute which is only an absolute Identity is only the Absolute of the external Reflection — not the absolute Absolute, but the Absolute in a Deter- minateness : Attribute.

507. The Absolute is, however, not only the Attribute, because it is the Object of the external Reflection : just by being external to the Absolute, Reflection is equally internal to it ; and it is, therefore, only its own absolute Form {§502) which determines the Absolute to the Attribute.

4-

508. The Attribute is the relative Absolute, i.e. the Absolute as a determination of Form in such wise, that this determination, say, the World or Force, has, per se, the rank of Illusion.

509. The Attribute has the Absolute for its Content and Subsisting : its formal determination, whereby it is an Attribute, is, therefore, also established immediately as mere Illusion.

510. The Reflection, in that it, as inner Form, deter- mines the Absolute to an Attribute, does not penetrate the Absolute, but its Expression simply disappears.

511. The Form whereby the Absolute should be an Attribute is mere Kind and Manner : a Mode of the Absolute.

5.

512. The Mode is the Out-of-itselfness of the Absolute : its Being-gone-over into the Opposite without any return into itself.

513. But so the Mode is the Illusion as Illusion, or the Reflection of the Form within itself : hence, the very Identity with self which the Absolute is.

Seventh Act of Thought 145

6.

514. The Mode is, then, not only the extremest ex- ternahty, but also the self-resolving Reflection, as which the Absolute is absolute Being.

515. Its true significance is that of the own movement of the Absolute from within outward, but in such wise that this Outwardness is just as much its Inwardness.

516. When, therefore, it is asked after the Content of the Exposition — as to what the Absolute shows ? — the answer is, that the distinction of Form and Content is within the Absolute resolved : the Content of the Exposition is the Exposition itself.

517. The Absolute, as this self-sustained movement of the Exposition, as the Kind and Manner which is its absolute Identity with itself, is an Expression, not of an Inner, nor against an Other, but only as an absolute Manifesting of itself for itself : Actuality.

Note. — " As the Manifestation which is nothing besides and has no Content other than that of being the manifesta- tion of itself, the Absolute is the absolute Form. Actuality is to be taken as this reflected Absoluteness. The Being is not yet actual : it is the first immediacy ; its Reflection is, therefore. Becoming and Transition into something else ; or its immediacy is no Being-in-and-for-itself. The Actuality stands also higher than Existence. True, this latter is the immediacy issued out of the Ground and Conditions, or also out of the Essence and its Reflection. It is, therefore, in itself that which the Actuality is : real Reflection ; but it is not yet the established unity of the Reflection and Immediacy. Existence goes hence over into Appearance, in that it develops the Reflection which it contains. Appearance is the Ground come to the Ground ; its determination is the restoration of the same, in which way it becomes essential Relation, and its last Reflection is that its Immediacy is established as the Reflection-within-itself, and vice versa. This unity in which Existence or Immediacy, and the In-itself (the Ground or the Reflected), are directly moments, is now Actuality " (Hegel's Werke, 4 : 194).

146 A Holiday with a Hegelian

3. Contingency or

Formal Actuality, Possibility and Necessity

518. Actuality is formal, so far as it is viewed, first of all, as an immediate unreflected Actualitj^ ; hence, only as a moment of the absolute Form in contrast with its concrete unity : only as Possibility.

519. PossibiHty is the reflection-into-self of the formal Actuality, w'hich reflection is, herewith, on the whole, only the determination of the Identity with self or of the In- itself in general.

Note. — Possibility is the unmediated Identity of the Form of §496, (S. equally §500, Note.)

520. Possibility contains, therefore, the two moments : firstly, the positive, that it is reflected within itself ; secondly, the negative, that it is reduced, in the absolute Form, to a moment, hence to something defective, point- ing to an Other and completing itself in it.

521. According to the first, merely positive side, Possi- bility is a relation-less, undetermined receptacle for every- thing in general : Everything is possible that does not contradict itself.

522. Thus, however, Nothing is said, just as by the formal statement : A is A.

523. The Possible contains, however, more than the merely identical proposition : it is the Identical directly as the Ought-to-be of the totality of Form ; and, according to this its negative side, Possibility is in its own self Im- possibility.

524. This contradiction makes itself noticeable primarily with respect to the Content which Possibility has in it as a Form-determination established as suspended : so far as the Content is only a possible one, it is an In-itself which is at the same time its own opposite, and Possibility is, therefore, the referring ground that just because A =A, also -A- -A.

525. As this contradictory reference must suspend itself and its determination is to be the self-suspending Reflected, it is therewith also the Immediate and hence becomes Actuality.

Seventh Act of Thought 147

Note. — So far as Possibility is self-contradictory, the suspension of its contradictory nature coincides with its own determination as the self-suspending Reflected, i.e. as a moment of the absolute Form. As has been pointed out, Possibility is Actuahty degraded to the unmediated Identity of the Form : hence, its dialectic must needs lead back to the notion of Actuality (s. §§496-500). Since the suspension of Possibility is its own self-suspending Re- flection, it remains what it is before as after, and is there- with also the Immediate, mediated through the determin- ateness with its own self — Actuality.

526. This Actuality is not the first, but the reflected one, estabhshed as unity of itself and of Possibility : seeing that the Actual is, as such, possible, and that Possibilitj' has determined itself as onty Possibility, the Actual, too, is determined as only a Possible.

527. Possibility or Actuality is at this stage only Being or Existence in general.

528. This unity of Possibility and Actuality is Con- tingency or Chance : mere Being or Existence, but es- tablished to have the value of an establishedness or possibihty.

529. The Contingent offers, therefore, the two sides : firstly, it has the Possibility immediately in it and is, therefore, immediately actual ; or it has no Ground.

530. The Contingent is, however, secondly, the Actual as an only Possible which has its true Reflection-within-self in an Other : it has a Ground.

Note. — The two sides refer to the immediate positive Identity of Actuality and Possibility and to the estab- hshed unity of both.

531. The Contingent has, then, no Ground just because it is contingent ; and it just as much has a ground just because it is contingent.

532. It is the established, unmediated alternation of the Inner and Outer : established by this, that Possibility and Actuality have each this determination in their own self, owing to their being moments of the absolute Form.

148 A Holiday with a Hegelian

533. But just because each immediately veers round into the opposite one, it rather goes in the latter just as much directly together with its own self : this Identity of the one in the other is Necessity.

534. The Contingent is necessary, just because the Actual is determined as possible, its immediac}^ being thus suspended and repelled into the Ground or In-itself and into the Grounded (§530), as also because this its Possibihty, the Ground-reference, is directly suspended and established as Being (§529).

Note. — The impossibihty of separating Possibility, Contingency and Necessity from one another is, of course, due to the fact that the intermediating process has vanished to a mere tautology already in the essential Relation. The distinctions by means of which the one identical Content, the Absolute, continues its positive exposition are, per se, empty abstractions. The mediation reveals itself now to be a mere play, because every distinction has been already overcome and dissolved in the fundamental unity of Refiectedness-within-self or Essence and Being. As a matter of fact, the mediation has been a play all through the sphere of Being and Essence, only we were not aware of it. Why ? Because in order to demonstrate the unit}' of Essence and Being, we had to begin by crediting the determinations of Being or Essence with that sort of distinctiveness which is familiar to the standpoint of the ordinary understanding. Or, rather, it was the Notion itself that imposed upon itself such limitations ; that thus pre-estabhshed itself, in order to demonstrate to itself its own depth. So far, then, as the seventh act of Thought makes us realise already in its second step of mediation that the dialectic of Being and Essence constitutes the negative Exposition of the Absolute (§503), and we now occupy the standpoint that Being and Essence are mere Attributes, or Modes of the Absolute itself, their determina- tions are found to have a ground only so far as they have no Ground : the mediation is now the positive Exposition of the Absolute ; and, as this its own display, the media- tion also appears as a mere play — a manifesting having no

Seventh Act of Thought 149

other object than this manifesting. For the Absolute is no Becoming, simple or essential — in spite of all that superficial objectors urge against Hegel's presumable view of God as a Becoming — hence, all mediation must now only bear witness to absolute Self-activity. What was at first Being, is now mere Possibility ; what was the Essence is now only Contingency, and the Absolute, as the Ground of these its formal distinctions, is Necessity — at first, equally only formal Necessity. Or, just because these distinctions are purely formal Actuality, Possibility may be equallj^ viewed as the present restatement of Essence, Contingency as that of Being ; just as either of them may be equally given the significance of a unity of the other two, Necessity standing both for Being and Essence. What is possible, is contingent and equally necessary. The contingent is both possible and necessary ; and the necessary, in turn, both possible and contingent. If the third step of mediation of the present act of Thought appears unduly complex, the reason lies in said insepara- bihty of the distinctions implied in the formal Actualitj'.

4. Relative and Absolute Necessity

535. Seeing that the immediate unity of the determina- tions of Form constitutes the Content of Actuality, and the Content, as indifferent Identitj^ contains also the Form as indifferent and thereby is a manifold content in general, Actuality is real.

2.

536. What is actual can act, i.e. it reveals itself by that which it produces, its relating to another being neither a going over, nor an appearing, but a manifesting of itself.

537. The real Actuality is, at first, in one of the de- terminations of Form — only the immediate unity of itself and Possibility — hence, it is also distinguished from its own In-itself.

538. As the In-itself of real Actuality, Possibihty is itself real.

539. This real Possibility is no longer an unre-

150 A Holiday with a Hegelian

fleeted Actuality, as is the case with the formal Possibility, i.e. no longer only as the abstract Identity that Something is not self-contradictory, but the present manifoldness of circumstances, referring to the really possible :

540. The whole of Conditions : an Actuality, determined to be the In-itself of its own self as an Other and to have to return into itself.

Note. — The Actuality which constitutes the possibility of a thing is not its own Possibility, but the In-itself of another Actual : it itself is the Actuality destined to be suspended, i.e. the formal Actuality or only Possibility — Actuality in one of the determinations of Form and, there- fore, distinguished from the other (§537).

541. So far, then, as the really Possible is the In-itself as one determination of Form, it is a self-identical Content in Contradiction with its own self.

Note. — The distinction between the Conditions and Ground is already transcended in Existence, as what is Groundless and Unconditioned ; and as the Ground is now the Absolute itself, the immediate Actuality depends on Conditions only so far as this dependency bears wit- ness to its nature as the self-contradictory Self-Identity. The Actual acts just because it is immediately self-con- tradictory, for Activity — Actuality — is nothing than an establishing of the Identity of the Outer with the Inner. Contradiction is the spring of all movement — thus when the Notion is given the significance of mere (pure) Being, this its immediate Contradiction becomes the source of the foregoing dialectic movement. We are now simply realising why the Objective Logic must be a circle.

542. Now, that which suspends itself in the self -suspend- ing real Possibility is, firstly, its formal Actuality, as the sphere of Conditions — the Actuality as the In-itself of another Actual which Other is, however, the really Possible itself ; secondly, its moment of the In-itself, as formal Possibihty — the Possibility of the other which is its own self.

Seventh Act of Thought 151 3.

543. The Negation of the real Possibihty is, therefore, its Identity with itself ; and, as the real Possibihty is, in its suspending, the rebound of this suspending on itself, it is the real Necessity.

544. What is really necessary, cannot be otherwise, because it is not generally, but really possible.

Note. — It is only from the standpoint of formal Possi- bility that the very reason for which a thing exists is the referring Ground that its contrary also exists. When, however, a thing is conditioned, i.e. really possible, it can no longer be otherwise. Only one thing is necessary under stated conditions ; but, then, this one thing is, as a content- full reference, as the really necessary, indifferent to the distinction of Form and for that very reason comes itself equahy under the sway of the Form. What is really necessary, cannot be otherwise : not in the sense that in these circumstances either this or that can happen, but in the sense that it does not matter which of the two alternatives happens. That which is necessary in these circumstances is indifferently this or that, because it is, as to Form, identical with both : a formal Identity of the Possible and Actual.

A-

545. Seeing, however, that the really Possible becomes necessary owing to the ascertained fact that the Other of which it is the In-itself is immediately its own self, the real Necessity is, at the same time, relative, the pre- estabhshing and the self-returning movement being still separate.

546. The Content being at first the indifferent Identity against the Form, hence distinguished from it and a determined Content in general, the real Necessary is some kind of limited Actuahty which is, on account of its limitedness, also only a Contingent.

547. Nevertheless, the Contingency is contained also in the Form of the real Necessity, so far as the real Possi- bility is only in itself necessary, being the return-into-self

152 A Holiday with a Hegelian

from the restless Otherwiseness of the Actuahty and Possibihty against one another.

548. The present unity-in-itself of Necessity and Con- tingency is to be called absolute Actuality ; namely :

549. The real Necessity is determined Necessity : its Determinateness consists in this, that it has in it its negation. Contingency.

550. Seeing, however, that this determinateness is, in its first simplicity. Actuality, the determined Necessity is immediately actual Necessity, i.e. necessary or absolute Actuality.

Note. — This means equally immediately that Con- tingency, too, is absolutely necessary — a verity ignored by the Calculus of Probability. " Pour une intelligence (omnisciente)," says Liagre, " tout evenement a venir serait certain ou impossible " {Higher Mathematics, J. W. Mellor, p. 492). Accordingly, " the terms ' chance ' and ' probability ' are nothing but conventional modes of expressing our ignorance of the courses of events as indicated by our inability to predict the results." " The problem of science, "says Hegel {Enc, §145, Note, Wallace's translation), " and especially of philosophy, undoubtedly consists in eliciting the necessity concealed under the semblance of contingency. That, however, is far from meaning that the contingent belongs to our subjective conception alone, and must therefore be simply set aside, if we wish to get at the truth. All scientific researches which pursue this tendency exclusively, lay themselves fairly open to the charge of mere jugglery and an over- strained precisionism." In short, were there no con- tingency in the real Necessity, Freedom would be an empty word. In any case, we should not be able to realise it even on the grade of option or free choice, since this latter is its form of contingency.

551. This Actuahty is an empty determination, i.e. mere Possibility of being determined just as much as Possibility as Actuality, which Possibility is, therefore, equally absolute and, as this Indifference to its own self, is estabhshed as an empty, contingent determination.

Seventh Act of Thought 153

552. So the real Necessity contains Contingency not only in itself, but this latter also becomes in it, and the Becoming is not only immediate, but essential.

Note. — The real Necessity contains Contingency only in itself, so far as it is relative or determined Necessity. But since the determined Necessity is absolute Actuality, i.e. an empty determination, the Contingent from which it starts as its presupposition becomes in it, and thereby is its own establishing. The pre-establishing and the self- returning movement (§545) are no longer separate.

553. It is hence it itself which determines itself as Contingency.

5-

554. So the Form has in its reahsation interpenetrated all its distinctions and made itself transparent, being as absolute Necessity only this simple Identity of the Being in its Negation, or in the Essence, with itself,

555. The absolute Necessary is only because it is, or also because it is : as Being it has no condition, nor ground ; as Reflection, it has only its own self for its condition and ground.

6.

556. Absolute Necessity is thus the Reflection or Form of the Absolute : simple Immediac3^ which is absolute Negativity : an Other having Actuahty in the Being is determined to be absolutely only Possible, because all mediation-by-another is now out of the question.

557. This manifestation of that which Determinateness is in truth is the transition of the Actual into the Possible as a going-together-with-self.

7-

558. This Identity of the Being in its Negation (or Essence) with itself is Substance.

Note. — " The Absolute, expounded first of all by the external Reflection, expounds now, as an absolute Form, or as Necessity, its own self : this Exposition of its own self is its Self-establishing, and it is only this Self- establishing. — Just as the Light of Nature is not Something,

154 A Holiday with a Hegelian

nor a Thing, but its Being is only its shining, so the mani- festation is the self-equal absolute Actuality " (Hegel's Werke, 4 : 211).

5. The Relation of Substantiality

559. The Substance is the immediate Actuality itself, as absolute Reflectedness-within-itself, as a Subsisting- in-and-for-itself, which Subsisting is the immediate vanishing and becoming of the absolute Illusion within itself : Accidentahty.

Note. — In the Attribute, the Absolute appears only in one of its moments, so far as it is only the Absolute of the external Reflection {§506). Accidentahty is the self- estabhshed Absolute : that which the Attribute is in truth, i.e. the immediate vanishing and becoming of the totality within itself : a distinguishment of the Absolute in a Relation, the sides of which are Totalities, hence equally absolutely illusory, the Relation being, consequently, absolute or none at all : no longer the external Reflection.

560. The movement of Accidentahty expresses, there- fore, in each of its moments the essential Becoming of the totahty of Being and Essence.

561. This movement of the Accidentahty is the Self- activity of the Substance as a peaceful arising of its own self.

562. Accidentahty is the whole Substance itself : the differentiation of this latter into the simple Identity of Being and into a vortex of Accidences is a Form of its Illusion.

563. Whereas the simple Identity of Being is the form- less Substance of Conception, to which the Illusion has not determined itself as Illusion, the vortex or sequence of Accidences is the Substance as absolute Might : as creative Might, through its translation of the Possible into the Ac- tual, or as destructive Might, through the reduction of the x\ctual back into the Possible, the one being self- identically the other.

564. Accidences as such — and there are several of them, severality being one of the determinations of Being —

Seventh Act of Thought 155

have no Might over one another : so far as an Accidental appears to exercise Might over an Other, the Might is that of the Substance.

Note. — The Illusion of an independent subsistence of things and forces is now fully realised, hence all that is and happens is traced to one total Subject. The Substance stands already for the Notion in its immediate character as the almighty Creator, Destroyer and Preserver of all that is.

565. In this first determination, as immediately identical within the Accidences, with itself, the Substance is not yet manifested in its whole notion : it is to be also dis- tinguished as the self-identical Being-in-and-for-itself, from itself as the Totahty of Accidences, when it is, as Might, that which mediates,

6. The Relation of Causality

I.

566. In determining itself as Might, the Substance immediately suspends this detennining in such wise that the Determined, from which it seems to start, becomes by means of its returning-into-itself, or is the Effect of its own self as the Cause.

2.

567. As the Cause, Substance is no longer merely the In- itself of its Accidence, but is also estabhshed as this In-itself , or is the actual Substance : a self-subsistent Source of the Bringing forth out of itself.

568. The Cause is Cause only so far as it produces an Effect ; conversely, the Effect, so far as its Cause has vanished, is no longer an Effect, but an indifferent Actual.

3.

569. In this Identity of the Cause and Effect, the Form whereby they are distinguished, as the In-itself and as the Establishedness, is suspended : the Causahty gone out in the Effect is an Immediacy that is indifferent to the relation of Cause and Effect and has it externally in itself.

570. Cause and Effect are, consequently, established as

156 A Holiday with a Hegelian

different, the Form as against the Content being a Caus- ahty that is only immediately actual or contingent.

571. Further, the Content is here also only the finite Substance (the Causahty gone out in the Effect), hence a different Content in its own self, and Cause and Effect are, consequently, not merely the formal, but the determined relation of Causality.

4-

572. The determined relation of Causality has a given Content, and takes its course as an external distinction in this Identical (as what is different in its own self).

573. Owing to this Identity of the Content, the finite Causality is an analytical proposition, e.g. Rain makes wet, or Gravitation is the Cause of the movement of Fall.

574. So far as the Cause has also another Content be- sides its Effect, this further Content is a contingent by- essence which does not concern Causality.

575. And neither must a Cause be identified with a single moment belonging to the circumstances of Possibility.

576. The relation of Causality is misapplied whenever that which is called the Cause shows itself to have another Content than the Effect, e.g. Food and Blood.

577. True, the determination of Form is also a deter- mination of Content, and Cause and Effect are, therefore, also another Content : but the different Content is con- nected externally with the Cause and with the Effect, with- out entering itself into the Causation and its Relation.

578. This external Content is, therefore, relation-less : an immediate existence having manifold determinations of its Presence, among others, also this, that it is, in a particular respect, a Cause or also an Effect.

579. Its Causahty consists in this, to refer itself nega- tively to itself as to an establishedness constituted by the Causahty itself, seeing that it itself is (i) an estabhshedness to which (2) Causality is external.

580. As causal Substance, then, a thing suspends its externality, so far as this latter is constituted by another Cause, and restores its abstract originality.

Seventh Act of Thought 157

Note. — This is only an explication of the substantial self- determination as Might (§566). The Cause is the Might of the Substance in its truth, as an establishing of the nature of Accidentality in its very Becoming — the Accidentality being, namely, the immediate vanishing and becoming of the absolute Illusion within itself. The Cause establishes the Substance as the Source of every Accidentality : as being absolutely original, and as remaining the whole Substance all through the vortex of Accidences. So far, then, as a thing produces an Effect, or acts as a Cause, its Causality is not due to its immediate actuality, but must be traced to the mighty Substance. Since, however, the Cause is, at the same time, identical with an immediate actuality, this latter, as causal Substance, bears witness to the notion of Causality as a negative reference to self : hence ' ' it starts from an Other, liberates itself from this external determination, and its return into itself is the maintenance of its immediate existence and the suspension of its established Causality, and therewith of its Causality in general." Thus the Causality of a thing appears as a getting rid of a determination which is foreign to its original Identity with itself, and which has, therefore, been forced into it or imposed on it bj^ an Other : in acting as a Cause, a thing is a returning into itself by means of the removal of its establishedness by another Cause. A clock goes until the effect of the \\inding-up is removed.

581. The just considered determinateness of Causality concerns the Form of the self-external Causality, as the Originality that is just as much in its own self Established- ness or Effect : this union of the opposite determinations in a present substrate constitutes the infinite Regression from Cause to Cause.

582. The infinite Progress from Effect to Effect is the same thing as the infinite Regress from Cause to Cause.

Note. — So far as start is made from an Effect, this latter has a Cause, which has again a Cause, and so forth. Or if start is made from a Cause, this is immediately the effect of another Cause, which is again the Effect of another Cause, and so forth. Although the unity of both is here

I

58 A Holiday with a Hegelian

equally established, it remains unnoticed so long as atten- tion is riveted to the different Content which is connected externally with the Cause or with the Effect. But in this case, the ordinary consciousness remains unaware that the different Content is connected with Cause and Effect externally : that, in calling something a Cause, we do not name a thing, but only apply to it the notion of Causality as it is in our mind a priori. The infinite Regression from Cause to Cause, or the infinite Progression from Effect to Effect, is nothing but a protest on the part of our in- stinctively logical nature against the simple identification of the first Cause with an immediate actuality. Such an identification yields, after all, only the notion of Existence which, as has been realised, is immediately onh^Appearance. And since we have now advanced to the true Ground of all appearances in absolute Might, in the Substance as the absolute Mediation in its own self, the first Cause acquires its true meaning as the absolute Self-activity, the proper name of which is the Notion. — Everything is caused : but the great thing is to grasp that Cause enters into Existence through its own self, through Thought ! And this not merely in the sense that the correlation of Cause and Effect is only our way of classifying objective happenings, but in the sense that the first Cause itself is Thought ! The very objection that things would remain as Causes and Effects even did we not attempt to trace out the nature of their relationship, takes for granted that things are essentially constituted in a thinkable manner : just because it is only on the ground of our thinking nature that we are prompted to remove the first im- pression of our sense-consciousness of an apparent un- connectedness of things. As has been asserted already by Kant, the relationship of Cause and Effect is not a result, but rather the sine qua non of experience. Experience is possible only on the ground of the unity of Thought and Being, which unity has now fully verified itself through the self-development of Thought itself.

583. So far, the Cause has indeed an Effect and is, at the same time, itself the Effect ; or the Cause not only has a Cause but also is a Cause : the Effect, however,

Seventh Act of Thought 159

which the Cause has and the Effect which it is — just so the Cause M'hich an Effect has and the Cause which it is — are different.

584. The movement of the determined relation of Causahty has, however, brought about this, that the Cause not only goes out in the Effect, and therewith also the Effect (as in the formal Causahty), but that the Cause, in its going out, in the Effect, re-becomes ; that the Effect disappears in the Cause, but in it just as much re-becomes.

5.

585. Causahty is pre-estabhshing Doing : the sub- stantial Identity, in which the formal Causality disappears, is the Cause so far as it has restored itself in the determined Causahty by means of the Negation of itself,

586. This Cause is the negative Might over its own self as the passive Substance :

587. Violence — the Appearance of Might.

6.

588. In suffering Violence, the passive Substance is established as what it is in truth, i.e. as an Establishedness constituted by the Causahty itself (§579).

Note. — The passive Substance is the Identit5^-in-itself of Cause and Effect as against the restored substantial Identity, as the active Substance. The passive Substance is, therefore, the immediate actuality which is, firstly, an establishedness to which, secondly. Causality is external and which, consequently, is acted upon by the active Substance or suffers Violence. But in suffering Violence, the passive Substance loses, firstly, its immediate es- tablishedness, secondly, its externality to the active Substance, i.e. it becomes established as an Established- ness constituted by the Causality itself : it becomes that negative reference to its own self which is its own Causality — in suffering Violence, it suffers through its own Doing or receives only what is its due. Let the reader ponder that this conclusion does not simply apply to things, but also to our own self ! Or, rather, that it is to be particularly applied to our own suffering, since we are the true em-

i6o A Holiday with a Hegelian

bodiment of the substantial Identity, as the estabhshed truth of the passive Substance ! " We may note in pass- ing," says Hegel in a Note to §147, Enc. (Wallace's transl.), ' ' how important it is for any man to meet everything that befalls him with the spirit of the old proverb which describes each man as the architect of his own fortune. That means that it is only himself after all of which a man has the usufruct. The other way would be to lay the blame of whatever we experience upon other men, upon unfavourable circumstances, and the like. And this is a fresh example of the language of unfreedom, and at the same time the spring of discontent. If man saw, on the contrary, that whatever happens to him is only the outcome of himself, and that he only bears his own guilt, he would stand free, and in everything that came upon him would have the consciousness that he suffered no wrong. A man who lives in dispeace with himself and his lot, commits much that is perverse and amiss, for no other reason than because of the false opinion that he is wronged by others. No doubt, too, there is a great deal of chance in what befalls us. But the chance has its root in the ' natural ' man. So long, however, as a man is otherwise conscious that he is free, his harmony of soul and peace of mind will not be destroyed by the disagreeables that befall him."

589. Owing to this conversion of the passive Substance itself into the Cause, there is, firstly, the Effect suspended in it : therein consists its Reaction in general.

590. Secondly, the Reaction goes against the first acting Cause which, owing to said suspension of its Effect, loses its Causality and thereby becomes itself the passive Sub- stance against the reacting Cause.

7.

591. Accordingly, the infinite Progress of the finite Causality is now bent round and becomes a self-returning acting : infinite Reciprocity or Action and Reaction.

7. Reciprocity or Action and Reaction

592. Reciprocity contains, firstly, the disappearing of the original Persisting of the immediate substantiahty,

Seventh Act of Thought i6i

secondly, the originating of the Cause and therevidth the Originahty as a mediation with itself through its Nega- tion.

593. The Cause not only has an Effect, but stands, in the Effect, in a reference with its own self as Cause.

594. Therewith, Causahty has returned back to its absolute Notion and, at the same time, arrived at the Notion itself, at Freedom.

595. Necessity becomes Freedom by manifesting its still inner Identity (§548).

596. The inner, the outer and the substantial Identity are now established as One and the same Identity, called indifferently the Universal, the Particular or the Singular — the three moments of the Notion.

CHAPTER XVI

THE MEANING OF PLANETARY DISTANCES

TT was merely on account of the little time at our dis- posal that Dr. Veverka did not dilate on the Sub- jective Logic. Yet it is there, as he told me, that thought displays itself in its fullest plasticity, as may be easily understood, seeing that the Objective Logic has essentially the significance of a verification of the final result of the development of the ordinary consciousness and therefore forms only a preliminary stage of fully self-conscious thinking.

All through the Objective Logic the student finds it more or less difficult to limit his mind to the matter in hand, because the subject-matter consists of abstractions, and thus does not admit of a full display of our instinctively logical nature. It seems, then, as though one were com- pelled to let go one's sense of wholeness and plunge into a void. But this sense of compulsory limitation gradually disappears, and finally it is realised that the beginning with pure Being is an inevitable condition of thinking self- realisation. It is only at the end of the Objective Logic that every hesitation as regards the truth of the premise of pure thinking is overcome and one is properly prepared to taste the joys of fully self-conscious thinking in its element of untrammelled freedom.

" The Notion," thus opens Hegel's doctrine of the Notion, £'nc., §i6o, " is the principle of Freedom, the power of substance self-realised. It is a sj^stematic whole, in which each of its constituent functions is the very total which the notion is, and is put as indissolubly one v/ith it. Thus in its self-identity it has original and complete determinateness." The next paragraph continues : " The

162

Meaning of Planetary Distances 163

onward movement of the notion is no longer a transition into, or a reflection on something else, but Development. For in the notion, the elements distinguished are without more ado at the same time declared to be identical with one another and with the whole, and the determinateness of each is a free being of the whole notion."

Thus is it, then, that the dialectic within the Subjective Logic no longer deals with Being as such or Essence as such, but amounts to a perfectly free self-exposition of the Notion. It is here that all questions suggested by the study of the Objective Logic, receive a fully adequate answer. The Objective Logic may be said to deal with Thought only as a fact. So far, one only takes notice, how Being is Thought, not yet why it is thus thought ; or the why is answered only from the standpoint of essen- tial Reflection. Consequently, there still remains room for a sense of limitation to our knowledge : a sense having its origin in the already arising need of full comprehension. And to satisfy this need is just the object of the doctrine of the Notion. True, the dialectic must needs continue to imply self-limitation ; but just because the limitation is a spontaneous self-hmitation, it no longer produces the sense of a more or less artificial paralysis of one's instinctive clinging to one's fulness. One retains all through the sense that the turns of dialectic — the development — although of universal validity, are yet also of one's own free making. This realisation of what is logically necessary as a manifestation of one's own Freedom means just that one realises oneself truly identified with the nature of God as He is in His own essence : as the Creator, Destroyer and Preserver of all that is. And so comes it, then, that, in his Remark to §i6i, Enc, Hegel asserts that " the movement of the notion is as it were to be looked upon merely as play."

But, as already said, time did not admit of a detailed, not even of a cursory, exposition, on the part of Dr. Veverka, of the Subjective Logic. It will be easily under- stood that the mere copying of the seven acts of thought was enough to swallow the greatest part of my holiday. And thus I shall conclude this report of my most remark-

164 A Holiday with a Hegelian

able experience with a transcription of Dr. Veverka's last discourse from my shorthand record of it, leaving the reader at liberty to draw his conclusions.

" You are aware," said Dr. Veverka the last evening of our stay together, " that astronomers have as yet failed to erect a satisfactory law of planetary distances from the Sun. Hegel himself appears to have taken for granted that this law concerns only empiricism ; but as one of his most notable followers at present times, Prof. Bolland, at Leyden, says in his Zuivere Rede en hare Werkelijkheid (p. 320), we are here, and generally in Nature, in face with ' de berekenbaarheid, die in berekenbaarheid niet opgaat,' i.e. with calculableness admitting of no formula. Is it, then, to be inferred that the distances in question are pure contingencies ? I infer quite the contrary, namely, that their problem does truly concern Philosophy, not Empiricism.

" True, Contingency plays quite a legitimate role in Nature, which latter, being in its very notion the Other- wiseness of the Idea (as the Notion is called at the end of the Subjective Logic), is impotent of preserving notional distinctions in their pure form, but allows them to fall asunder and thus to assume the form of manifold being. To track this manifoldness in all its contingent variety of unessential distinctions — contingent, just because their determination can be only a matter of external reflection, thus requiring a relapse of the Notion into the sphere of its negative exposition, i.e. of mere facts — is, of course, no business of Philosophy. It is, however, questionable whether the distances of the planets from the Sun are simply such a manifoldness of purely contingent dis- tinctions. Bode's law, with all its limitations, is surely a sufficient evidence that there is at bottom an organising principle.

" Indeed, if one grasps that Nature is in a sense an objec- tive illustration which the Idea is eternally giving itself of its own negative self-exposition in the doctrine of Being and Essence ; and that Nature admits, therefore, of being systematised by means of this dialectic (when, of course, the logical categories concerned assume the significance

Meaning of Planetary Distances 165

of natural forms, pure Being standing for pure Space, Quality for the forms of Space, Ideality or Being-for-self for Time, Quantity for the science of pure mathematics, Quantitative Relation and Measure for Movement, etc.), one recognises easily in Bode's law the natural correspon- dence of the Substrate of the Nodal Line of Measures.

" According to §235 of my Digest, the sides of the realistic Measure have, according to their abstract nature as Qualities in general, some particular significance. In the dialectical development of the Philosophy of Nature, this particular significance is identified with Space and Time, so far as the former occupies in the systematic exposition of Nature the same position as Quality in the system of the Objective Logic, and the latter the same position as Quantity. Hence realistic Measure has its representative natural exemplification in the movement of a falling body, so far as the law of this movement implies an inverted relation of Space and Time, Amount attaching to Space, Unity to Time (§236). Although, however, Spaces covered by a falling body are proportional to the squares of Time, Space and Time remain still equally only immediate Qualities, because the relation of specified Measures concerns only their quantitative determinate- ness (§237). Along, then, with being quantitatively in inverted relation, they are qualitatively in direct relation, the exponent of which latter has the significance of the empirical coefficient of the law of a falling body Q^ = a). But the inverted and direct relation co-exist ; hence, the empirical coefficient stands truly for the real Being-for-self in Measure (§§238-240). And so far as Nature is, according to her Notion, as the Idea's own Otherwiseness, an objective illustration of the dialectical nature of Thought, there must exist necessarily a natural form which embodies eniincnily the notion of the real Being-for-self in Measure,

" I lay emphasis on the word eminently, because the dialectic of the real Measure may be illustrated mani- foldly, for instance, in connection with the chemical process. But in this case, we do not get a representative illustration of the dialectic of real Measure, because this dialectic is, at the stage of the chemical process, sub-

1 66 A Holiday with a Hegelian

ordinated to a higher dialectical standpoint. Namely, we deal in this case properly with the transition from physical Matter into Life, in illustration of the concluding portion of the ninth cycle of Thought (the dialectic of the essential Relation). At the stage of Measure, or of the sixth cycle, we deal with purely abstract Matter, only with its abstract notion, i.e. with that significance of it which it has as the still formless Form of the Essence (§§369-373). Physical Matter is an illustration of the essential Content (§382). And thus it is plain that the naturally representa- tive illustration of the real Measure must be sought in such a natural existence which does not come under the head of physical Matter.

" Let me draw your attention to the fact that the realistic Measure^ too, is in its natural existence independent of the properties of physical Matter. These properties appeal to the senses, but that which determines the law of a falling body is a pure relationship of Space and Time. So far, then, as the naturally representative illustration of the real Measure is to be sought in such a natural existence that it does not imply phj'sical Matter — something tangible — this does not by any means mean that we are asked to relin- quish our hold of existing things after a handling of them already in connection with the illustration of the realistic Measure in the law of a falling body. This law has still a purely immaterial existence, just because it illustrates only the abstract Being-for-self in Measure. What the falling body is physically is, so far, of no consequence, and the handling of a thing is in this connection an external circumstance, the disappearance of which, in connection with the representative illustration of the dialectic of the qualitatively quantitative relation of Measures implies

^ Notice the distinction between the meaning of reaUstic and real : reaHstic Measure is meant to stand for the purely quantita- tive relation of two specifying Measures (§232), real Measure for the qualitatively quantitative relation of self-subsistent Measures (§240). In short, the distinction is meant to be parallel to the distinction between the idealistic and ideal. Current language does not emphasise it, but for philosophical purposes it is permis- sible to utilise it in such wise that the ending ' -istic ' is taken to stand for a mere adumbration (or vision) of the fundamental true root-meaning.

Meaning of Planetary Distances 167

that this illustration refers to a higher rather than to a lower natural form than that implied in the law of a falling body. Namely, the empirical coefficient ceases to stand merely for the abstract Being-for-self in Measure and, acquiring the significance of an objectively fixed Self- subsistence, stands for an objectively fixed distance — or rather for many objectively fixed distances (real Measures).

" If we have properly grasped the trend of the dialectic of Measure, we realise that we seek a natural illustration of the degradation of Quality, Quantity, and Measure to the rank of mere moments of that Being-in-and-for-itself which is the first Negation of the sphere of immediate Being. That is to say. Space, Time and their unity or Movement (the notion of Heaviness) must present themselves in the required illustration as a mere entering into Presence of an inner specifying unity, the proper name of which is Essence. The immediately manifold real Measures are truly a matter of Essential Becoming ; and so far as they are connected with existing bodies, these latter must present themselves as what is in its immediacy the Null, No-thing or Illusion. It is for this reason that the dialectic of the real Measure does away, in its representative natural illustration, even with that presence of a thing which constitutes an external circumstance in connection with the law of a falhng body. The relation of real Measures affects the Quality ; the dialectic has in this respect for its object to demonstrate that the relation of Measures, does not concern merely their quantitative determinateness, but that it involves also their qualitative ceasing-to-be ; that the relation is not the relation of truly self-subsistent things, but of purely illusory bodies.

' ' And now you need not be surprised to hear that the Philosophy of Nature identifies the representative natural illustration of the dialectic of real Measure with the starry heaven. But, perhaps, I had better first of all remove from your mind the impression, as if Spectroscopy disproved Hegel's view of celestial bodies, as of immaterial exis- tences. It should be enough to point out that the only reliable test of physical Matter is to be found by means of practical relationship to it, by means of the actual hand-

1 68 A Holiday with a Hegelian

ling of it, whilst the testimony to the ph3'sical materiality of celestial bodies by means of Spectroscopy is, after all, only a matter of optical phenomena. But so long as optical phenomena and simple seeing are interpreted as a matter of practical relationship to the visible, it is necessary to enter deeper into this question. Thus prepare yourself for a more or less lengthy digression from my main theme.

" Although the first rule for the making of hypothesis ought to be, according to Newton or Herschel, simplicity of conception, such a simplicity is, as a rule, conspicuous by its absence in scientific theories. The scientific interpretation of seeing is only one instance of the way in which men of science pit themselves against sound common sense, i.e. against our instinctively logical nature. We see presum- ably as a result of the impact of the ethereal waves, stirred up by the vibrations of the visible, on the retina. In this way, then, seeing is made dependent on physical Matter (as indeed Ether has been recently credited with all the known properties of Matter). Our eyes are presumably only intercepting ethereal waves, and we see only when such waves strike the retina. Yet, as a matter of fact, the visibility of objects across somebody else's visual rays is not affected, although, if the waves propagate a material im- pulse in a material medium, they should interfere with one another — and presumably actually do interfere ! Still, everyone is familiar with the fact that we see also during our dreams, or that we may see what is not there. Granted, one is in such a case a victim to hallucination ; the fact remains that every hallucination is a protest against the tracing of visibility to the agency of physical Matter.

" That which is only seen, is not necessarily a thing. The very art of painting confirms this obvious statement. St. Thomas did not believe in the physical actuality of Jesus until he touched his body. Seeing by itself gives no clue to the materiality of the visible ; hence, it is inadmissible to make seeing dependent on an impact of the ethereal waves, sent out by the visible, on the retina. Such a standpoint is simply an evidence of the absent-mindedness characteristic of the ordinary consciousness, so far as it

Meaning of Planetary Distances 169

makes itself dependent on the ' Not-I ' and thus delegates its own activity to an external source instead of to the Notion. FaiHng yet to grasp itself in pure Thought, it credits the external world with independent self-subsistence and comes to fancy that things are there to begin with and that its own impressions of them are caused by their activity, whilst it itself is nothing than a more or less contingent receptacle of them. So comes it, then, that a material ether is postulated : the true connection between things and the Ego — the element of Thought — becomes degraded into a mere conception of an externahy existing link (which yet does not exist empirically) ; and when the absurdity of such a conception is pointed out, one finds the whole scientific world supremely contemptuous of every criticism of its self-complacent infallibility. Behold, Hegel should know better than Newton or Lord Kelvin ! And yet, Hegel has on his side the whole weight of sound common sense and Religion !

"Seeing, then, that the scientific theory of Sight and Light rests on an absurd premise, it is inevitable that the interpretation of optical phenomena should be equally absurd. Unless one has secured oneself against the sway of thoughtless assumptions by a thorough logical training, it is practically impossible to observe a phenomenon in a state of plastic receptivity to ah its details. And so it must needs happen that the very thing which calls at first sight for an explanation in connection with a phenomenon is often passed by in silence. This is the case, for instance, in connection with the scientific explanation of the so- called Refraction of Light. According to this explanation, the bottom of a basin filled with water should logically appear at its true distance only directly under the eye, the rest being brought gradually nearer to the surface, and so assuming a concave shape. Or a stick submerged per- pendicularly should appear broken when viewed sideways. That is to say, so far as the law of Refraction is expressed in terms only of the sines of the angle of incidence and refraction, the truly characteristic feature of the whole phenomenon, the rising of the bottom of the basin, is left entirely out of the question.

lyo A Holiday with a Hegelian

" The rising is that which is noticeable at first sight, and if it is ignored, then a perpendicular incidence ray suffers (by inference from the scientific law of Refraction) no modification whatever, whilst a stick submerged per- pendicularly should appear broken when viewed sideways. And at the same time it remains a mystery why the per- pendicular incidence ray should be exempted from re- fraction, since it, too, passes from one medium into another. On the contrary, when the deviation or alteration of the direction of a ray of vision is realised as a simple conse- quence of the apparent raising of every spatial point under water, the interpretation of the so-called (since there is no) Refraction of Light consists in the answer to this question : What is that which is seen (the whole pheno- menon being a matter of seeing), when the bottom of a basin appears to be raised under water ?

" Well, what is there to be seen in this case ? The bottom appears raised when the basin gets filled with Water : what else, then, is here to fall back upon for an explanation than the fact of seeing Water ? That which is under Water is not seen in the same wa}^ as if there were no Water above it : so far as it is visible at all, the water is transparent ; but so far as it appears where it is not physically, the transparency must really imply also the visibility of some property of water. And this property can be only its Density or Gravity. The rising of the bottom is therefore a pictorial illustration of the meaning of Gravity as a spatial altering. The bottom of a water-bucket appears raised, because it checks or negates the tendency of the water to fall. Similarly, the submerged end of a uniformly thick stick appears broken towards the surface and thicker with depth, because the replaced volume of water is thus seen as a negative reflection of the increasing density of water with depth. And just because the visi- bility of water consists in making everything material appear raised towards the surface, its visibility in the case of an immaterial ray must show forth the latter's negation of the appearance of rising. Hence, a ray of Light appears refracted towards the actual position of the thing (under water) , at the image of which it aims.

Meaning of Planetary Distances 171

" I have dealt with the so-called Refraction of Light in order to make you adumbrate that spectral analysis concerns analogously the seeing of the prism and variously specified light (called then also stars). Although there is an analogy between the spectrum of chemical substances and that yielded by the stars, spectral analysis supplies no proof of the fabled physical constitution of celestial bodies for the same reason for which mere spatial measureableness does not imply necessarily that the measurable is a physical thing. After all, the spectrum is always traceable to the passage of Light through a prism, so that the fact that the Light is given out by a solid body heated to white heat is in this respect an external circumstance which does not concern the Light given out by stars, since this Light illustrates the Essential Reflection, as the prototype of the idealisation which finite, physical Matter undergoes in the process of combustion (in illustration of the en- trance of the first Cause into Existence). In short, the inferences based on spectral analysis imply a reduction of the universal processes of Nature to the level of the con- ditions obtaining in laboratories, in which ^^•ay freely existing facts are vitiated in the image of their finite counterparts. And yet Hegel's view of the celestial bodies as witnesses to the eternal spontaneity of the Notion is objected to as a kind of belittling of the grandeur of the universe ! To conceive the source of their light in the image of a furnace is presumably a higher tribute to God than to identify this source with God's own eternal Essence and its Reflection ! The irony of the scientific talk of the grandeur of the universe ! Take, for instance. Prof. Lowell's account of the Martians in his Mars as the Abode of Life. Five-eighths of Mars is presumably an arid waste. The dying process which brought it to its present pass must go on to the bitter end, until the last spark of Martian life goes out and all that will remain will be a dead world rolling through space, its evolutionary career for ever ended. And the extraordinary interest of the spectacle which meets the gaze of the astronomer is pre- sumably that it is the prefiguration of the fate of the earth. ' The outcome,' says the author, ' is doubtless yet far off,

172 A Holiday with a Hegelian

but it is as fatalistically sure as that to-morrow's sun will rise, unless some other catastrophe anticipate our end. It is perhaps not pleasing to learn the manner of our death. But science is concerned only with the fact, and Mars we have to thank for its presentment ! '

" Here you have an eloquent instance of scientific bank- ruptcy as regards the profoundest instincts of every in- telhgent (and eo ipso religious) man. We and our whole destiny are just at mercy of contingent catastrophes. At best, we shall die out. Truth ? Freedom ? God ? From Prof. Lowell's standpoint these are merely chimeras. Be- cause Schiaperelli discovered some extraordinary marks on Mars some twenty years ago and photographs have since proved beyond peradventure that the marks are there : the fact that Mars is inhabited admits of no doubt ! The marks are surely canals, and how could there be canals on Mars were it uninhabited ? Besides, does not photography equally prove that water vapour does exist in the spectrum of the atmosphere of Mars ? Finally, does not the greater part of its surface show to the powerful telescope as an ochre or reddish expanse ? And do 5'ou not know that ochre or red is the colour of deserts on earth ? Surely it is time that men of science should realise that, as it is the mind that frames theories, its manner of handling facts ought not to be ignored ! A closer study of the Sub- jective Logic will make you realise that all the talk of habitable planets or manifold solar systems has the nature of mere analogies with the conditions obtaining on Earth, so far as this latter is ignorantly degraded to the rank of a mere planet. In truth, the solar system, the starry heaven in general, is a moment of this One Earth ; and there is only One Earth because there is only One universal Subject in Nature. In short, the Earth as we know it, as the substrate of Nature and Life, stands for the premise of the tenth cycle of Thought, for the Absolute.

" Let me now return to my original theme. I repeat that the dialectic of the real Measure has its representative natural illustration in the starry heaven, and my main object is to indicate to you broadly that the connection

Meaning of Planetary Distances 173

between Bode's law and the Substrate of the Nodal Line of Measures is no mere fancy.

" Now, in illustration of the transition from the immediate real Measure and its specific determinedness (the two series of which latter clearly refer to the two streams of stars recently discovered) to Elective Affinit}', we must postulate a s^'stem of stellar distances in the sense of a kind of peri- phery to an inner specifying unit3^ And such a system is surely the system of planetary distances from Mercury, i.e. beginning with the first step of the inner specifying unity into Presence. So far as the entering of the Substrate into Presence gives rise to purely quantitative distinctions in such wise that the distinctions become immediately also quahtative, the Substrate has been said to estabhsh the Being-for-self in Measure in the sense of the differential coefficient as against the empirical coefficient standing for the abstract Being-for-self in Measure. Of course, the differental coefficient is that of the law of a faUing body ; hence, twice the empirical coefficient. Pure continuity of the dialectic under discussion leads, then, to the inference that the law of planetary distances from Mercury has the form of 2a, so far, however, as a stands generallj' for a real Measure in the sense of the distance from Mercury to another planet. Since a, as the real Being-for-self in Measure, implies severality, it is not to be identified simply with the distance from Mercury to Venus, but with the distance from Mercury to any other planet, and the meaning of 2a is, then, that the distance of every further planet is twice the distance of the preceding planet from Mercury. This is precisely the meaning of Bode's law, so far as the distance of the planets from the Sun is left out of the question.

' ' The successive duplication appears to clash with the significance of the differential coefficient of the law of a falhng body as Acceleration. But so far SLS~ = 2a is taken in this latter sense, we deal with it (the differential co- efficient) only abstractly. That is to say, we only an- ticipate its real meaning as the Substrate of the Nodal Line of Measures. Just as the empirical coefficient of the law of a falling body is not objectively fixed, but has the

174 A Holiday with a Hegelian

sense of the Exponent of a direct Relation (the quaUty of which still lacks an objective fixation) , so the Acceleration ^ too, remains, so far, a matter of an externally made dis-

tinction. In fact, it does not refer to a natural existence, but to an invented existence, traceable to an identification of the analytical treatment of the law of a falling body with its actual existence. A falling body does not increase in velocity in a jerky fashion with every unit of time ; consequently, its Acceleration, however useful in calculating the final velocity, has de facto no existence. Yet the Substrate does enter into Presence by leaps, and it is, there- fore, only when the differential coefficient stands for the natural illustration of the Substrate that the Acceleration acquires an objective significance. But as it then ceases to refer to a falhng body, its establishing as it is in truth disposes of its meaning as Acceleration : its truth is to be the law of the nodal line of real Measures.

"By viewing next the system of universal gravitation from the standpoint of Absolute Indifference, we get at the rationale of Keplerian laws. The elliptical shape of the planetary orbit has its explanation in the Indifference as a sum of two Quanta in inverted relation. The sides of the latter have, of course, the meaning of Space and Time, i.e. of the natural correspondences of the two moments of Measure ; and they figure in the law of planetary move- ment (^ = «) as Powers, because the sides of Indifference are each in itself the whole. Therefore, Space must imply in itself the notional meaning of Time, and this latter that of Space. Now, Time is the Ideality of Space established for itself against its developed determinateness (§257, Enc). Hence, the implicitness of Time in Space gives the notion of one Space, i.e. of a Volume, which, with respect to the specific Quantum of a planet in its spatial immediacy, its distance (now) from the Sun, is the Cube of this distance. Conversely, the impHcitness of Space in Time stands for the truth of Quantity, the Square. The opposition, then, of the Indifference as such to itself as developed determinateness means the opposition of the universal centre of gravity to a system of planets revolving round it according to the Keplerian laws, in demonstration

Meaning of Planetary Distances 175

of the all-sided contradiction attaching to the Indifference in its Presence.

" And we need not stop at the standpoint of Indifference. In fact, in order to account for the distances of planets from the Sun, we must ascend to the standpoint of the Notion. We are free to do so because Philosophy of Nature has the Science of Logic already at its back. This is why Hegel does not present his thinking consideration of Nature as a plain re-embodiment of the dialectic of Being and Essence, but seeks the organising principle directly in the Notion. The dialectical whole of Nature remains even thus a whole of seven subdivisions corre- sponding distinctly to the seven acts of thought in the Objective Logic, only the correspondence drops then out of sight or forces itself on attention as an after- thought. And then every subdivision is realised to stand at the same time for the dialectical whole of the Objective Logic, just because it is the realised Notion that thus subdivides itself. When, therefore, Space is said to stand for Quality, i.e. the second act of thought, or Time for Quantity as far as the notion of Quantitative Relation, etc., each of these subdivisions implies in itself the dialectic of the whole Objective Logic and goes over into the next main sub- division by means of this dialectic. In a summary sys- tematisation of Nature, there is, however, no need to repro- duce the whole of this dialectic in a so to speak pedestrian fashion, but it is sufficient to indicate it merely in its main moments. For instance, Hegel sums it up with re- spect to Space as follows :

" Being in itself the Notion, Space contains its dis- tinctions, which {a), with respect to spatial immediate indifference, form the merely different, quite undetermined three Dimensions (§255).

" {b) The distinction is, however, essentially determined or qualitative. The distinction is thus (a) first of all the Negation of the Space itself because the latter is an immediate, distinctionless Asunderness — the Point. {(3) Because, however, the Negation [the Point] is the Negation of the Space, it is itself spatial ; the Point, as essentially this reference, i.e. as a process of self -suspension, is the

176 A Holiday with a Hegelian

Line, the first othenviseness, i.e. spaciousness of the Point ; (7) the truth of otherwiseness being the Negation of the Negation, the Line goes over into the Plane, which is, on one side, a determinateness against the Line and Point, hence Plane as such, on the other, however, the suspended negation of the Space, consequently a restoration of the spacious totality, but so that this totahty contains now the negative moment in its own self, whereby the Plane acquires the significance of an enveloping Surface sur- rounding a single whole Space [a Volume] (§256).

" (c) Now, the Negativity which refers itself as the Point to the Space, developing in it its determinations as Line and Plane, is in the sphere of Asundemess equally for itself. Its determinations are thus established in the sphere of asunderness, whilst it itself (the Negativity) appears at the same time to be indifferent to their peaceful side-by-side. As thus estabhshed for itself [as the Ideality of spaciousness], the Negativity is Time (§257).

"Were it, however, our object to develop a detailed dialectic of the notion of Space — Philosophy ot Geometry — we should have to dog a geometrical illustration of the whole Objective Logic. The first act of thought would then concern the transition from pure Space to the mathe- matical Point, which would be next, by virtue of the dialectic contained in the second cycle, realised as a spatial Limit and thus go over, at the end of the third cycle, into the process of self-suspension or a self-referent Line. This line would acquire further, through the dialectic of the fourth cycle, the significance of circumference described round a central point and the circle, grasped as the identity of the extensive and intensive magnitude, yield the notion of Plane, as a relationship of two dimensions. This rela- tionship ultimates in the Square, whilst the relation of specifying Measure has its geometrical illustration in the relation of the Square to its Base. The Pythagorean theorem embodies the notion of Elective Affinity, the geo- metrical locus of right-angled triangles on the same hypo- tenuse, the nodal line of Measures, the hypotenuse standing thus for the Substrate, etc.

" My remarks on the Bode's law fall in the Philosophy of

Meaning of Planetary Distances 177

absolute Mechanics, so far as one attempts to elaborate it systematically in a similar manner. The law of the distances from Mercury stands for the Substrate or the conclusion of the sixth cycle within this Philosophy, the Keplerian laws for the seventh cycle. The import of the remaining three cycles is shortly the realisation that the system of universal gravitation illustrates the self-actualisation of the Notion at the stage of Indifference. And, therefore, in order to remove the shortcomings of the Bode's law, we must view the distances of the planets from the Sun as an outward embodiment of those distinctions w^hich are essential moments of every act of Thought, In short, we arrive at the conclusion that the system of planetary distances from the Sun must bear witness to the definition of the true. And they can bear such a witness only so far as they are taken in the sense of ordinal numbers of logical categories with respect to their order in the Objective Logic (§220, Note).

"Well, now, the mean distance of Mercury (35,392,000 miles or 3-87 for i = 9,143,000 miles) refers to Becoming ; that of Venus (7-23) to Quahty ; that of Earth (10) to Being-within-self ; that of Mars (15-22) to Being-for-other or Being-in-itself ; that of Planetoids (22-34) to the dia- lectic of the Finite and its Transition into the self-repellent One ; that of Jupiter (52-03) to the estabhshing of the bad Infinitude as it is in truth (§207) ; finally, that of Saturn (96) to absolute Actuality.

" Leaving for the time being the distances of Uranus and Neptune out of the question and taking notice that the distances of Mercury and Venus point to the tw'o main moments of the first act of Thought, we find that the intelligible whole of the notions singled out by the distances of Earth, Mars, Planetoids, Jupiter and Saturn does, indeed, embody the already familiar definition of the true. Earth stands for the true in the sense of Something as such. Mars for the distinguishment of the true within itself. Planetoids for the other as such which the true establishes of its own self, Jupiter for the conclusion of the true in the Other with its own self (for its arriving in the Other at its own self) , Saturn for the final self-actualisa- tion of the true in and for itself.

M

178 A Holiday with a Hegelian

" Notice that the fifth and sixth acts of Thought are not represented in the definition of the true. This is obviously due to the fact that the mediation whereby the Notion verifies to itself its own Freedom is practically concluded in the dialectic of the inverted Relation. Determination of Reflection relates itself to the Other in its own self (§313), hence, so far as the definition of the true em- phasises the Becoming of Otherwiseness, i.e. its arising (in the Being-for-other), fixing (in the Finite, the fixed Negation) and suspending (in the affirmatively present Beyond of the inverted relation), it takes no account of Reflection, but connects the conclusion of the inverted Relation at once with the conclusion of the Objective Logic.

" Turning now our attention to Uranus and Neptune, their distances ought to exemplify the notional meaning of Saturn. Saturn stands for the conclusion of the Ob- jective Logic ; hence, for the actually established nature of the Notion, so far as it is established as Possibility, Con- tingency and Necessity whilst remaining in this distinction one and the same whole. The moments of the Notion fall, however, in Nature apart from one another. Saturn stands, therefore, properly only for one moment of the Notion, or it is followed by two further planets. These two planets must needs be only formally distinguished from Saturn and the formal distinction can have here only the meaning of numbering. That is to say, the distances of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune should, on logical grounds, form the series i, 2, 3. And such indeed is the case."

CHAPTER XVII OUR DESTINY

A VAILING myself of a pause on Dr. Veverka's part, ■^~*' I asked him Avhether he could explain also the meaning of the number of days in planetary years or of the comparative sizes of planetary diameters.

" Well," he said, " I have got reason to assert that the intelligible whole of the number of days in planetary yea.Ys amounts to a negative version of the definition of the true. On the whole, however, it is in this respect as in mathe- matics : it is easy to explain simple operations, but the explanation of complex formulae loses itself, as it were, in the element of fancy. And since the proper object of Philosophy is Truth, its interest vanishes pari passu with the coming of figurate and fanciful conceptions to the front. Moreover, Contingency, too, must have its legiti- mate play in the solar system (§550, Note).

" It is, however, necessary to realise that in thus giving up the pretence to explain problems which particularly appeal to the ordinary consciousness. Philosophy is far from confessing its impotence to penetrate to the very bottom of things. That which Philosophy gives thus up concerns simply the standpoint of external Reflection alone : the determination of mere Appearance which is of no philosophical interest ! A problem set up by the external Reflection invariably implies a giving up of the standpoint of the Notion, a degradation of the true Infinite to the bad Infinite, and Philosophy refuses to let pass such a degradation, and to entangle itself in a problem which is ab initio irrational. Conception would like to see how the World is created ; how the Infinite limits itself to the Finite ; how Matter and Life enter into Existence,

179

i8o A Holiday with a Hegelian

how this Earth looked a milhon or a biUion of years ago and how it will look a million or a billion of years hence, etc. ; but Philosophy is concerned with the eternal Now, with the eternal self-actuahsation of the Idea ; hence, the problems of Conception do not exist for it. Or it realises in them only a striving, on the part of Conception, to return into the properly human element, that of Thought, since Thought is man's determinateness.

"As I have pointed out to you on the very first day of our acquaintance, Thought opposes itself only to its own self, not to things as they appear to the ordinary conscious- ness. So far, then, as the ordinary Ego asks for the Origin of things, or wishes to account for the how they come to be there, it voices only its premonition of the standpoint of the Notion which continues to sway it all through its fit of rational self-obhvion, just because Thought mediates itself in its otherwiseness with its own self and bears wit- ness to its own nature in our instinctively logical nature. The Idea is eternal self-activity, absolute negativity, self- discernment and self-recollection, or self-paralysis and self-actualisation ; and so far as it is eternally a self- pre-establishing activity, there is no beginning and no end to its phenomenological display. It is an eternal reproduction of its own self, and, therefore, transcends mere duration in Time.

"The evolution in Nature and human Life is, therefore, only one-sidedly a matter of Time. From the standpoint of Finitude there is Progress, but the Progress is eternally bent back to its beginning, amounting to the alternating determination of the Finite and Infinite. The end of evolution is perfect Self-knowledge ; but that which comes thus to be known is realised to have been the first, to have only revealed its own depth, to have only examined its own eternal self. Whereas we, at first, argue that the Eternal is because the Finite is : ultimately we realise that the Infinite alone is the true Being ; that our develop- ment amounts to the mediation, by means of which Thought verifies to itself its own unity of Being and Essence. Subjectivity and Objectivity appear to us, first of all, as an irreconcilable antithesis — o\ving to the

Our Destiny i8i

eternally arising Judgment (self-disparting) of the Idea ; but the antithesis comes to the Ground, and the Ground is realised to be rather the Non-established which establishes itself in the course of evolution. Caught in the circle of the Conditions constituting the real PossibiHty of the Actual (which is in itself the Notion), Time looms large on our mental horizon, but ultimately our temporal experience appears only as the Idea's pastime : the play in which it eternally disports itself ! When one reaches the true standpoint, one feels as though one had known it always : its arising under such or such conditions does not affect the sense of having been it from the very first ! In looking back, one brings home to oneself that one's development amounted only to an awakening to the knowledge of what one truly is, and that the very forgetfulness of this know- ledge was incidental to the carrying out of an originally self-imposed task : the task of verifying to oneself one's Freedom. What a student of the Science of Logic does deliberately, that very thing is done by everyone in the course of his phenomenal and intellectual development, to which development, it must be understood, one remains subjected even when one has already mastered the Science of Logic. For Space and Time, and the Necessity which presses hard on the ordinary man, are not wiped out through the knowledge of absolute Truth. On the con- trary, it is this knowledge that makes one reahse the clearer that the ordinary life with all its limitations is a necessary presupposition of true Self-consciousness. Where- as, however, the ordinary man hankers after purely sub- jective Freedom and allows himself to be oppressed by adverse circumstances, the true philosopher, in sharing the common fate as regards his phenomenal embodiment, the earning of his livehhood, etc., reahses in adverse cir- cumstances a call to train himself to the point when his knowledge and comprehension of life will become the guiding principle of all his actions.

"Truth is sought, primarily, for its own sake ; and, in this respect, the study of the Science of Logic is the last. But the Idea voluntarily reveals its depth in the sphere of Space and Time and makes itself concrete only by means

1 82 A Holiday with a Hegelian

of its return from its own otherwiseness. And although the study of the Science of Logic amounts already to this return of the Idea into itself, its established concreteness implies also that one sliould equally experience its self- reduction to its manifested actualisation. For this reason the Knower of absolute Truth must consciously realise his knowledge also as the first, as the beginning of con- sciously rational life. Hence, the attainment to the knowledge of Truth is phenomenally also the beginning of a training in the practice of the attained knowledge concerning Nature and human life. The goal is, after all, to live Truth ; to embody it, so to speak, in one's instincts ; to manifest consciously what one knows to be true. The knowledge of Truth, too, is first of all only in itself, and, consequently, is to be established (s. §500, Note).

" The accomplishment of our destiny, as the Idea returned into itself, implies, therefore, also a direct experience of the external World, as a moment of our omu true Self. And such a direct experience can be reached pheno- menally only by the development of faculties which, from the ordinary standpoint, appear utterly abnormal, but, on second thoughts, are our ordinary faculties established adequately to their notion. Just as Logic is, at first, only instinctive with us, but, ultimately, to be studied in its purity, apart from all sensuous content, so the instinctive use of our faculties. Perception, Imagination, Associa- tion of ideas. Memory, etc., is, too, to give way finally to their conscious exercise independently of the limitations attaching to their instinctive use.

' ' To give an illustration : A cubical block of 27 variously coloured cubes is apprehended normally only in one of the 24 positions, in which it may be presented to view. If, however, we train ourselves in visualising every position at a moment's notice, then, in visualising ultimately the 24 distinct positions in a restless succession, we shall get the impression, as though the block of 27 cubes were observed from every side at the same time. It is this result that led Mr. Hinton to postulate a Space of four dimen- sions ; and such a postulate springs up in the ordinary consciousness only because it does not grasp Intelligence

Our Destiny 183

as the subject and the potentiahty of the objectivity. Mr. Hinton's experience simply brings home the notional meaning of Representation, as the recollected or in- wardised Intuition, when the Intelligence itself is as Atten- tion its Time and also its Space. At the stage of simple Perception, Intelhgence identifies itself with its objectivity by means of the ordinary five senses, giving to things an apparent self-subsistence in Space and Time. But since the world of Appearance is Intelligence's own self-pre- establishing, it recollects itself in the scattered manifoldness of its immediate In-itselfness and, in advancing to the Representation of the external objectivity, demonstrates itself as a night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations without being in consciousness. ' Such a grasp of intelligence,' saj^s Hegel in a note to §453, Enc, ' is from the one point of view the universal postulate, which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, e.g. the germ as affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree. Inabihty to grasp a universal like this, which, though intrinsically concrete, still con- tinues simple, is what led people to talk about special fibres and areas as receptacles of particular ideas. It was felt that what was diverse should in the nature of things have a local habitation peculiar to itself. But whereas the reversion of the germ from its existing specialisations to its simplicity in a purely potential existence takes place only in another germ, — the germ of the fruit ; intelligence qua intelligence shows the potential coming to free exist- ence in its development, and yet at the same time collecting itself in its inwardness. Hence from the other point of view intelligence is to be conceived as this sub-conscious mine, i.e. as the existent universal in which the different has not yet been realised in its separations. And it is indeed this potentiality which is the first form of univers- ality offered in mental Representation.'

"As you see, this characterisation of Representation fits in with all that may be said on the subject of Clairvoyance. All that is necessary to identify Remembrance with

184 A Holiday with a Hegelian

consciously practised Clairvoj^ance is to give prominence to the factor of universality in the doing of Intelligence at this stage. Similarly, the psychometrical faculty is the full manifestation of the ordinary Association of Ideas, or the materialising or dematerialising capacity that of productive Fancy. Although, however, I greet in these so-called occult faculties the manifestation of the Might of the Notion, I am far from encouraging their development previous to sound logical training, because they can be developed in this case only at the price of mental stulti- fication, if not at a direct risk of imbecility. Of course, it is another thing when the occult faculties are developed, or rather manifest sua sponte, subsequently to a sound logical training. In this case, one only experiences what one already fully understands ; and occult development becomes only then a necessary moment of full self-realisa- tion. In short, the attainment to the knowledge of absolute Truth must be put before mere phenomena-mongering. " And, of course, I am all the time implying that the ac- complishment of our destiny necessitates Reincarnation. I have already referred to this notion the very first day of our acquaintance. But it is only now that you may be better able to appreciate its logical background. Needless to say, I do not refer to Transmigration of a ready-made Soul. What has in this respect philosophical interest con- cerns, in Hegel's words {History of Philosophy, in connection with the discussion of Pythagoras, 2, d, 3) : ' " the eternal Idea " of the Metempsychosis, as the inner all- pervading Notion ; the oriental unity w'hich is the principle of all formation.' In Transmigration, ' we have not this sense ; at most only its adumbration. As to a definite soul migrating through all forms as a Thing, it must be pointed out, firstly, that the Soul is not a " Thing " in the image of the Leibnitzian Monad, which becomes, perhaps, as a bubble in a cup of coffee, a sentient, thinking Soul ; secondly, such an empty identity of the Soul as Thing would have no interest with respect to Immortality.' The Reincarnation I am speaking of is, indeed, the eternal Idea of Metempsychosis. I — and Hegel — identify human spirit with the Idea returned from its Otherwiseness in

Our Destiny 185

Nature into itself. Nature, as I have already made you understand, is an objective illustration of the dialectic whereby the Idea establishes its own Freedom, after having freely assumed the disguise of natural forms. Just as the Objective Logic is ultimately realised as a presupposition of the positive self-exposition of the Notion in the Sub- jective Logic : so Nature, too, culminates in the return of the Idea from its self-begotten Otherwiseness into itself ; and the Idea thus returned into itself is the existing Notion : the Ego. Our development is the development of the Notion in the Subjective Logic.

" Just as natural forms may be presented as an objective counterpart of the system of the Objective Logic, so our own constitution and interests are a faithful objective counterpart (or existence) of the spontaneously developing Notion. The necessity for such counterparts lies in the very nature of Thought as what discerns itself within itself, establishes itself as an Other, returns in this Other into itself and thus is for itself. So far as the Science of Logic is not only the last, but also the first of the philosophical sciences, the Objective Logic has equally the significance of the second step of mediation in the whole system of the Idea (the first step referring to the development of the ordinary consciousness), the Subjective Logic of the third step. Nature of the fourth step, the Subjective Spirit of the fifth step, the Objective Spirit of the sixth step, and the Absolute Spirit of the seventh step. Thus the thinking consideration of our own nature as individuals is a concrete restatement of the first part of the Subjective Logic. All that concerns our body, soul and spirit or Reason illustrates nodes of the free exposition of the Subjective Notion with the same exactness as is the case with Nature, as an illustration of the nodes of the Objective Logic. We are the Idea in its immediacy as the Subjective Notion, and, in this way, presuppose, in our development, Nature as a moment of our own Self.

" Nature as such is, as it were, a disbandment of what is held by our Self in an organic unity : in us, Nature reaches her truth ; apart from us she is the Null ! She is created from Nothing ; the self-subsistence of her forms is a Mode

1 86 A Holiday with a Hegelian

of the Notion which is We. In communing with her, we commune with our own self, so far as this self is at the same time self-estranged, self-oblivious. The Knower alone is clearlj;' aware of what Nature truly is and consequently recognises in her forms his own self-pre-establishing activity. He knows what it is to see, to hear, to smell, etc. ; he knows what it is to remember, to imagine ; hence, to him alone Nature is unveiled and deposed from her supposed grandeur to the rank of a more or less grotesque refraction of his own self — as is the case in a nightmare or an absurd dream. True, there is a rational skeleton at the bottom of her forms, but this skeleton is covered with rags of empty reflection, of thoughtlessness. Spirit feels at home in the realm of pure Thought alone ; hence, the sphere of the thoughtless disbandment of spiritual autonomy, of self-abandonment, has no attraction for it. One can get enthusiastic over Nature only so long as one does not comprehend the meaning of the saying that God must be worshipped in Spirit and Truth alone. The true worship of God is to think, and in order to know what thinking means one must study the Science of Logic.

' ' Now, the Science of Logic proves that there is a super- sensuous World, and that this and the other World are in Essential Relation. In connection with the dialectic of the Substance we learn that its subsisting-in-and-for- itself is such a subsisting that it is the immediate vanishing and becoming of the absolute Illusion within itself, or Accidentality. And the movement of Accidentality ex- presses in each of its moments the essential Becoming of the totality of Being and Essence, as a peaceful arising of the total Substance. And since we come certainly at least under the head of Accidentality, you may realise already on the authority of the Objective Logic that every Ego must bear witness to the essential Becoming of the totality of Being and Essence. The Subjective Logic presupposes the Ob- jective Logic as the own negative self-exposition of the Notion, and this presupposing means, with respect to our development, that we establish our Freedom only by means of the experience of the essential Becoming of the totaUty

Our Destiny 187

of Being and Essence (of this and the other World), which experience impHes Reincarnation.

" ' Tlie process of spiritual self-reahsation,' says Hegel himself in the close of his Phenomenology , ' exhibits a linger- ing movement and succession of minds, a gallery of images, each of which, equipped with the complete wealth of mind, only seems to linger because the Self has to penetrate and to digest this wealth of its Substance. As its perfection lies in coming to know what its substance is, this knowledge is its self-involution in which it deserts its outward existence and surrenders its shape to recollection. Thus self-involved, it is sunk in the night of its self-consciousness : but in that night its vanished Being is preserved, and that Being, thus in Idea preserved — old, but now new-born of the Spirit — is the new sphere of Being, a new World, a new phase of Spirit. In this new phase it has again to begin afresh, and from the beginning, and again nurture itself to maturity from its own resources, as if for it all that preceded were lost, and it had learned nothing from the experience of the earlier minds. Yet is that recollection a preservation of experience : it is the quintessence and in fact a higher form of the substance. If, therefore, this new mind appears to count on its own resources, and to start quite fresh and blank, it is at the same time on a higher grade that it starts.'

" True, this passage was not \\Titten expressly in support of the idea of Reincarnation, but the idea is there all the same. So far as it is objected that Hegel did not commit himself openly to a belief in Reincarnation, no, nor to that in post-mortem existence, the reply is that it is quite thinkable that he himself did not penetrate the full depth of all that he propounded in the Science of Logic and else- where. According to §163, Enc, ' it is not we who frame the notions. The Notion is not something which is originated at all. ... It is a mistake to imagine that the objects which form the content of our mental ideas come first and that our subjective agency then supervenes, and by the aforesaid operation of abstraction, and by colligating the points possessed in common by the objects, frame notions of them. Rather the Notion is the genuine first ; and things are what they are through the action of the

1 88 A Holiday with a Hegelian

notion, immanent in them, and revealing itself in them. In religious language we express this by saying that God created the world out of nothing.' That is to say, we are only the mouth-piece of the Idea, and, consequently, it is one thing to voice the Nature of Thought, as is done in the Science of Logic, and another thing to realise the full meaning of what the Notion thus reveals of itself. The standpoint of absolute Idealism is already implied in Kant's Criiic of Pure Reason — in his Unity of Apperception — yet it has taken Fichte and Shelling, before the standpoint was consciously grasped by Hegel. Even illiterate people say often things which would do honour to the deepest philosopher. To grasp what the Notion is revealing of itself in the simplest mind is precisely the task of Philo- sophy. For this reason, the study and even a passable comprehension of the import of the Science of Logic is also only the beginning of a subsequent endeavour to reconsider carefully every otherwise already quite familiar turn of dialectic in its bearing on the most trivial ex- periences. Those who fancy that a ready grasp of the Science of Logic means a full stop to all further development, that henceforth one has nothing to do, are very much mistaken. There is no beginning and no end to the infinite mediation of the Notion through itself and with itself. One need not be afraid of ever being reduced to dolce far niente. By losing one's personal life, one enters Life eternal. And so you see it is no depreciation of Hegel's depth to say that he himself left very much unsaid and even unnoticed — even though it be implied in his very words ! To bring to the front all he omitted to recognise or discuss is just the work of those who follow in his steps. The Spirit of the Age does not permit a single individual to outstrip its phenomenal stage of maturity ; and although, therefore, pure Thought is within reach at all times, the gauging of its full depth has a limit in a man bounded by the phenomenal self-limitation of the Idea, which latter has equally its cycle of Re-births in the successive Civilisations.

" Let a man deny Reincarnation or post-mortem existence and he pits himself against the very nature of Thought.

Our Destiny 189

What becomes then of the moment of mediation, without which there is no Immediacy ? How is the objector to account for his own particular stage of development, especially if he already has the need of pure Knowledge ? If it is asserted that an individual simply reaps the result of his ancestors' experience without any subjective con- tinuity, one degrades human spirit to animal level. We realise ourselves as one and the same individual through the changes filhng our phenomenal existence. We speak of those changes as our experience, our growth, and thus acknowledge that the principle of Metamorphosis is our very self ; that our progress is not a passage from nothing to nothing, but rather the peaceful arising of Self-know- ledge. Consequently, it is mere thoughtlessness to view our subjectivity from the standpoint of an animal, i.e. to degrade ourselves to a subjectivity which has not ^-et reached the level of the subjective Spirit, and therefore does not yet assert itself as the principle of Metamorphosis. The Idea is thus denied the right to individualise itself, whilst yet it de facto is individuahsed in us. And it passes equally unnoticed that, from such an inhuman standpoint, W'e are simply what we are, i.e. that personal wish for development is absurd, since it amounts to an assertion of one's Self as the principle of growth. There is then a yawning chasm between God and man, and the talk of our human destiny, of our rights and duties, loses all sig- nificance (and, as a matter of fact, is treated as mere chatter by modern fatalists !). If the Idea chooses to step forth — as Self-knowledge — in this man, leaving the rest to die in stupidity, that is its own concern ! In short, the Idea is thus presented in the light of the capricious God of old. Our Freedom, the significant feature of Christianity, is denied and the status of slaves by birth is again to the front. It is an impossible standpoint, and it is to be de- plored that Hegel is often, by some strange misunderstand- ing, used as a peg for it. Hegel whose fundamental category is Freedom !

" Let me conclude with the following beautiful passage from the Philosophy of Religion : ri^^^.

" ' Whatever excites our doubts and alarms, all grief and

190 A Holiday with a Hegelian

all anxiety, all that the petty fields of finitude can offer to attract us, we leave behind on the shoals of time : and as the traveller on the highest peak of a mountain range, removed from every distinct view of the earth's surface, quietly lets his vision neglect all the restrictions of the landscape and the world ; so in the pure region of faith man, lifted above the hard and inflexible reality, sees it with his mind's eye reflected in the rays of the mental sun to an image where its discords, its lights and shades, are softened to eternal calm. In this region flow the waters of forgetfulness, from which Psyche drinks and in which she drowns all her pain : and the darknesses of this life are here softened to a dream-image, and transfigured into a mere setting for the splendours of the Eternal.' "

The End

Now Ready. Cr. Svo. 5;. neU. Postage 3^/.

Unconscious Memory

By Samuel Butler

Author of " Life and Habit," « Erewhon," "The Way of All Flesh," etc.

New Edition With a 26-page Introduction by Marcus Hartog

Professor of Zoology, University College, Cork

"We welcome a new and revised edition of Butler's Unconscious Memory, with an admirable introduction by Professor Marcus Hartog. He brings forward abundant evidence of that recognition of Butler's work which has been a recent feature of science. . . . The trend of Butler's views, if it can be regarded as heretical at all nowadays, is heresy widely encouraged. The book is, like all his writings, distinguished for its admirably clear style and the intellectual honesty which it exhibits. It never had a fair chance of recognition before. . , . This re-issue of Butler's works happily arranged under the auspices of Mr. Fifield will, we hope, bring one of the most original of thinkers and versatile of writers before a wider public. He lives, at any rate, secure in the hearts and minds of all who knew him." — The xAthenneum,

"It is nearly thirty years since the first edition of Unconscious Memory appeared, yet the problem of which it mainly treats is as much to the front to- day as it was then. Mr. Fifield's re-issue is therefore very welcome — the more so as Butler's views, after temporary eclipse, are gaining ground among scientific men of philosophical habit of mind. . . . His theory has far-reaching consequences. It involves the attribution of some sort of psychical life, not only to cells, but even — as with Haeckel — to molecules and atoms. In a word, Butler's IFeltanschauung is a panpsychism — a manifestation of spirit through matter — such as is more and more becoming the philosophical creed of the twentieth-century men of science. " — Hibbert Journal,

"The whole book makes most interesting reading, and should be on the table of every thinker on biological problems. Its honesty, originality, and courage are as fine as its scientific strength." — Pall Mall Gazette,

Nmujirst piiblishecL Cr, 8w. Ij". 6d. nett. Postage 3^.

God the Known & God the Unknown

By Samuel Butler

" Only now has ' Erewhon ' really dug into the ribs of the human race and its civilisation, turned it upside down, and laughed at it. . . . But you should read also the serious work of the satirist, who has sought God with every will of humour and research. . . . Samuel Butler, the satirist of humanity, could not believe in any ultimate unreason of the universe. He laughed at man, but he did not laugh at his own God." — Clarence Rook, in D^ily Chronicle.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

New Books

Lite and Habit. By Samud Butler, Author of

" Erewhon," "The Way of all Flesh," etc. A new edition, with the Author's Addenda, and a Preface by R. A. Streatfeild. Crown 8vo, Canvas. 5/. nett, postage ^d.

" Life and Habit " is quite the most important of Butler's contributions to philosophy and science, and its ever-widening international reputation may probably outlive even that of " Erewhon " and " The Way of all Flesh." When Butler wrote it thirty years ago he was too much in advance of his time to get a hearing, but to-day its sugges- tions are interweaving themselves in the whole texture of science. As a writer in the Hihbert Journal says: — "In a word, Butler's Weltanschauung is a pan-psychism — a manifestation of spirit through matter — such as is more and more becoming the philo- sophical creed of the twentieth-century men of science."

Other- World. By Harold B. Shepheard, Author

of " The Shadow of Eternity," " Parables of Man and God," etc. Foolscap 8vo, 60 pages. Grey Boards. \s. nett, postage \\d,

" Here is a man writing because he has something to say. . . . The book is germinal . . and yet it is complete and ample." — Dr. R. F. Horton in Christian IVorld. " The quaint title should arrest attention, the charming style should hold it. And when the reader rises from the perusal of these pages, he will feel that he has received something like a revelation. . . . The writer of this little book may go far." — Britiih Cou^egaiionalist.

A Modern Humanist. The miscellaneous

papers of B. Kirkman Gray. Edited, with a Biographical Intro- duction, by Henry Bryan Binns, an appreciation by Clementina Black, and a photogravure portrait. Crown 8vo, 272 pages, cloth gilt. 5/. nett, postage ^d.

" The sketch which Mr. Binns gives us of Mr. Gray's life and work is interesting . . . and no reader who has pursued the man's career will fail to go on to the characteristic examples of his thought which follow. We find ourselves often differing from the author's opinion, but we recognise his single-minded desire to get at the truth."— Spectator. " With its biographical introduction— a model of its kind — this volume is the record not only of a point of view, but of a large-hearted and generous life. The book reveals wherein lay his consolation and reward." — English Jieinev.'.

The White Slaves of England.

By R. H. Sherard. 7th Edition. Wrappers, 6d. nett, postage l^d. Cloth, with 80 page Appendix, \s. 6d. nett, postage il^d.

A further reprint of this trustworthy picture of six of the deadly and most sweated trades of England, including the Chain-Making of Cradley Heath.

London : A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G.

^^k

{ A *

1 ^/^y; ^

< <!■

T-1 .:l"l

4 :i ,;i . ^

I 4 • 14 4 4 4 ,4 ,

a -4 '^ -« 4 ^ -^ n

'■ J .t •■« 4 t ■■% i

J 4

4 M

-S M ■% r

" M i ^^

^ '^ ti ^^ 4 ■■■ "

■4, ^ ,, ...

-^ 'vg ^^ _

'« i'*.

*K ?

-4 4 4 •€ f % fj M

'L \i . . ' '^ 4 4 V ■-.

"^ .%

.:.^.^

.fc, £

B. IL M.. f

v. U:V: f

%' Wx" ^' i

fX

. k-^^ k

' |-.>

'-^^^.^^

■ ^ '¥ te, 'fe- # %V B i^' W

m f"

w t

>fcl' •■ fr:

■fr ^

1* 1. 1
|i; 1^ f . *•	» i
% !■	, fc 1.
fe i. ft. W	Wi. fc 1

V5 ■ M:^ 'te

r r^ f - r

■- M- M' ¥

srM3r:f;i:i

M...-M.^^..^.

1 . * '«

j J ;4 :*S : i „i ;;^ .« ,n ■i 5 ,««! :^ r^ ,'l ,r

.■« '.1	.•* .^<
^ ^^	i -%
	"« f
	^^

■- ^^^^^^^1

n- :^

«.' ■#

> .^-^^ .,.■

^4 '^4

■« ^,

t « * -# ''^ ■

...t; .-3" "■ K? •,?,.

: 't i 4 -^ :m ^ ^■ • 4. •'! .^ ^^ "
" t t n n -'1 "- ^ -^ii I
1 -^ % '^1 ^ -^ - m '^ffi ■•« A T^i
«tj. -J™ !>^ Si; ■'H i -4 4 4 ^ ;€ 4 t^ .** ,1 ■.'r ,-:* JIf <ia .«.A ^^ veS
-J	■4 '^ '■€ ^^ ;M >^ ■
■'4 >;-'^ ■	■« wi -:^ ''^ -^^ ■■•^ ■^. 4 i :4 « ^Sl :. ,,
	'« S ■«. .'^ -'■ ^-i :,.,