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BY

HIRALAL HALDAR, M.A., Ph.D.,

Professor of Philosophy, Krishnath College, Berhampur

Thesis ax)j)roved for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in' the University of Calriitta

1910

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA

1910

3A)^\fe

PRINTED BY ATULCHANDRA BHATTACHARYYA,

CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY PRESS:

23, Bhawanicharan Dutt's Lank,

Calcwtta.

PREFACE.

The conclusions embodied in this essay are the outcome of
many years of study of and reflection on the Philosophy of Hegel.
For many years, I was satisfied with the usual British interpre-
tation of Hegel and accepted it without reserve. My attitude
of that time is expresed in my little book, Tivo Essays on
Theology and Ethics, published nearly twenty years ago (now
republished under the title of Two Essays on General Philoso-
phy and Ethics), and in numerous articles written subsequent
ly. I have not now departed from Hegelian principles. Not in the
least. I remain an adherent of the Idealistic School, a humble
follower of the great masters — Hegel, Green, Caird, Stirling
and others who have profoudly influenced me and moulded
my intellectual life. This essay is written from the Hegelian
stand-point. I only give a new interpretation of Hegel and
am convinced that it is the right interpretation. My present
views are not inconsistent with those of the Two Essays. They
are only a further development of them. How that develop-
ment came about, I shall briefly indicate.

Some years ago, my attention was directed to the pheno-
menon of multiple personality and the problem arose in my
mind : How is this fact to be harmonised with the Idealistic
theory of the unity of the self I have always been of opinion
that a philosophy which is opposed to empirical facts and
cannot give a rational interpretation of them stands self-
condemned. As I said in my article on the " Conception of the
Absolute" in the Philosophical Revieiv, (New York) "a
conception of the Absolute which is violently opposed to the
conclusions of science and the sober common sense of
practical men must, at once, be rejected as such, however
plausible and unanswerable may be the arguments urged in its

IV PREFACE.

behalf. A theory that is not congruous with well-verified
facts is worse than an idle dream." I could not, therefore,
continue to hold the Idealistic theory of the unity of the self,
unless it was capable of being reconciled with the f\\ct of
multiple personality. I was greatly perplexed and was beginn-
ing to waver in my allegiance to Idealism when a flood of new
light was, for me, thrown upon the pages of Hegel. I discover-
ed that Hegel, after all, does not teach that the Absolute is a
unitar}^ personality. His real theory is that the Absolute is a
unity differentiated into persons. It, in one word, is the
organic unity of selves — the very thing that multiple perso-
nality is ! I found a solution and my difficulties were over.
1, however, shrank from publishing my views and kept them
to myself for several years. Who would have believed that an
obscure Indian student has discovered the real meaning of Hegel,
especially when it is claimed that that meaning is that the
diffierentiations of the Absolute are persons. Probably the
consequence of publishing such a theory would have been that,
in some quarters, it would have been regarded as one more
evidence of the total failure of university education in India.

Early in 1909, I read fur the first time, Dr. J. E. McTaggart's
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology. I was greatly delighted to
find that he also concludes that the Absolute is a unity diffe-
rentiated into selves. To find myself suj^ported by so eminent
^n authority, was a great joy and encouragement to me.
But though I agree with Dr. McTaggart in thinking that
the Absolute is a unity differentiated into persons, my differen-
ces with him are serious. I hold that the Absolute is a self-
conscious unity of its constituent selves, while Dr. McTaggart
is of opinion that it is an impersonal unity of persons. I have
subjected Dr. McTaggart's theory to a somew^hat searching
criticism. This criticism was necessary to develop my own
theory. I now decided to publish my views. There was no
longer any reason to feel diffident. I am glad to go forth
into the world partially supported by the high authority of
Dr. McTaggart.

I'11KKA<'K. V

The theory advanced in this thesis appears to me likc^ly to
provide a philosophical foundation for the empirical fact of
multiple personality. It also explains what the " subliminal
self" of man is, to the existence of which recent investigations
point. Further, it shows the way to a reconciliation between
Idealistic Monism and Pluralism.

The views of Dr. McTaggart to which reference has been
made will be found in the chapters on " Human Immortality "
and "The Personality of the Absolute" in his Stiulie.^ in
Hegelian Cosmology.''

HiKALAL HaLDAR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Page.
The Absolute and Human Personality ... 1

CHAPTER 11.

Dr. McTaggart on the Personality of the
Absolute ... ... •-. ... 28

CHAPTER III.
The Absolute and Human Knowledge ... 40

., » » »

HEGELIANISM AND HUMAN
PERSONALITY.

CHAPTER L
THE ABSOLUTE AND HUMAN PERSONALITY,

" Interpreters of the Hegelian Philosoph}-," says
Wallace, "have contradicted each other almost as variously as
the several conimontatoi's on the Bible. He is claimed as
their head by widely diflferent schools of thought, all of which
appeal to him as the original source of their line of argu-
ment." Perhaps on no subject connected with the Philo-
sophy of Hegel has the divergence of opinion been more
marked than on the question of the relation of human
personality to the Absolute. In the judgment of critics of
one class, Hegelianism is only revived Spinozism and merely
inculcates the teachings of the great Jewish Philosopher in
more puzzling and less straight-forward language purposely
designed to make an old thought appear new. Human
personality, we arc asked to believe, is, in Hegel's view, only
a transient modification of the Absolute, as evanescent and
unsubstantial as the passing waves upon the surface of the
ocean. In direct antithesis to this oft-repeated interpretation,
we have the theory put forwaixl by one of the ablest and
latest expositors of Hegel that the Absolute is an iinpei-sonal
unity, a society of finite but perfect in(li\ iduals. Hegel's
Absolute, Dr. McTaggart assures us, is "a unity of pei-sons,
but it is not a person itself" (Shulif.s in Hegelian CosinoUnfif,
J). oS\ Dr. McTaggart does not seem to be quite sure
in his own mind that his interpretation of the nature
of the Absolute Idea is the right one, fnr he t«'lls us
that he proposes "to consider not Hegel's own opinions
on the personality of the Absolute, but the con-
clusions on the subject which ought logically to be

2 TffK ABS'OLI'TE Wlf

deduced from his conception of the Absohite as determined
in the Logic." Dr. McTaggart's theory must be distinguished
from that of the Hegelians of the Left, according to whom the
Alisolute is unconscious Reason and first comes to conscious-
ness only in man. Dr. McTaggart however hokls that the self-
differentiations of the Absolute are "perfect finite persons,"
of some of whom our own selves are the imperfect and limited
manifestations. Opposed to all these contradictory views is
the conclusion of the bulk of the British expositors of Hegel
thai the Absolute is a person, a subject and not a mere sub-
stance, who necessarily reveals Himself in nature and more
fully in man. A prolonged study of the philosophy of Hegel
and the copious literature on it in the English language has
brought me to the conclusion t-hivt the tnith is to be found in
the synthesis, in the Hegelian sense of the term, of the views
of Caird, Wallace, and others on the one side, and of Dr.
McTaggart on the other. My object in this essay is to expound
and defend this thesis. There are three points of fundamental im-
portance to be considered in connection with this subject. AVhat
is human personality, and how is it related to the personality
of the Absolute, if it be a pei-sonality ? How are the categories
related to human knowledge and to the Absolute ? What is the
relation of the content of human experience to Reality ? I
propose to take up these points for discussion in succession.

Before we are in a position to determine the rela-
tion of man to the Absolute, it is necessary to acquire a
clear comprehension of the nature of the Absolute. The
commonly accepted view of the nature of Hegel's Absolute
is that it is the self-conscious unity that comprehends within
itself and transcends the relative distinction of subject and
object. It is the central unity, the supreme spiritual principle,
in which all things have their being and find their ultinjate
explanation and out of which they proceed. It is the absolute
subject without relation to which no object can exist and whose
own existence depends upon its manifestation in the' universe
of inter-related objects. Hegel's Absolute Idea is, as Dr.

IR'MAN rEK>S()NALITV. 8

Caird interpi>els it, "the idea of a solt'-consciousness which
iiiaiiifests itself in the ditference of self and not-self that
through this ditteixince, and by overcoming it, it may atUiin
the highest unity with itself." {Ilf'(jd, p, IS^). It is not a
unity in which all differences are lost ; it is rather the unity
which realises t/^'c// in the ditferonces. The x\bsolute is nob
like the substance of Spinoza, oninij)oti;nt in swallowing up
its modes but impotent to explain their origin. It is the
unity of self-consciousness which exists in and through the
plurality of finite objects and to which they refer themselves
as their source and explanation. "The 'free' existence of
the world," argues Dr. Caird, "as an external aggregate of
objects in space, with no appearance of relation to mind, and
the ' free ' existence of each object in the world as external to
the other objects and merely in contingent relation to them
are characteristics which belong to these objects, just because
they are the manifestations of a self-determined principle, which
can realise itself only as it goes out of itself, or gives itself away,
but w^hich in this 'self-alienation' remains 'secure of itself
and resting in itself,' On the other hand, this security of
intelligence in the freedom of its object is possible just because
its own nature is what it has given to the object which, there-
fore, in realising itself must return to its source." [Ibid., jx 108).
If the foregoing statement gives a correct representa-
tion of Hegel's conception of the Absolute, the charge of
Pantheism cannot, of course, be legitimately brought against
it. The essence of Pantheism is to lay such stress on the
unity of all reality that the element of difference is simply
ignored or explained away. But Hegelianism, as understood
by its leading British exponents, accords equal recognition to
the elements of unity and difference in the concrete whole — the
Absolute. We are constantly reminded that the ultimate
unity of self-consciousness is mejiningless apart from the
plurality of finite objects, and the plurality of finit-e objects
presupposes and has its being in the \mity of self-conscious-
ness, " As the consciousness of the self," s^iys Dr. Caiixl, " is

4 THE ABS^jLUTE and

ojirelatire with the conseionsness of the not-seif, no concep-
tioii of either can be satisfactory, which does not recognise a
principle of unity, which manifests itself in both, which under-
lies all their difference and oppowtion, and which must,
therefore, be regarded as capable of reconciling them/'
{Idealism ami the Theory of kifiO'idedfje,p. W). Bnt in spite of
this clear statement that in HegeFs system the unity of the
Absolnte is not incompatible with bnt presupposes the differen-
ces of Reality, Hegelianism has never been able to free itself
from the imputation of Pantheism. It is easy to say that this is
^eer misunderstanding, but a misunderstanding which cannot
be removed even by the most lucid expositions of such a master
of style as Dr. Edward Caird, must be presumed to have some
justification. Now the main root of the misunderstanding, it
seems to me. lies in the over-eraphasis which is apt to be laid,
miconscioiisly but inevitably, upon the supreme unity of self-
conscioaaieaB to which all reality is traced, and in the line of
cleaTage, so to speak, which still remains b<=*tween the subject
and object in spite of the clearest possible demonstration of their
correlativity. If all reality is at bottom one, and that unity is
the unity of self-consciousness, its value and significance is
necesaarily greater than that of the mere object, however much
the existence of the object may be implied in that of the self.
The self Ls more than the object, and the object, in spite of its
essential correlativity with the self, is, when comjmred with it,
nncrmsciously rerlucefl to the pr^sition of a mere shallow. The
Cf>rrelativity, that is to say, is apt to become rather one-sided.
This tendency to exalt the self at the expense of the object is
intensified by the fact that the correlativity of the subject
and object is unable to bridge over the gulf that lies fixed
between them. The subject may have no reality apart from
the object and conversely, but the subject, be it remembered,
%fi nfd the object, nor is the object, subject. What is more
natural undeT the cirrrumstance'S than that the object, unable
to attain to the level of the subject, should dwindle into in-
significance in comparison with it ? And when in this manner

Iff \f V V rMJ>-<»V M.I r\

th«! obj^frtive Wf>rl»l i« tacitly takm to !><• K-mm phI than thr.
unity of n(i\('Ci)UH(:'ui\\Hj\*'nn which \h lUr huMul priruiplr of
the iinivfirwi, and, con.Sf'fiucntly, morrr and riion" Htr»->iM in laid
on the latter, the result Im, if not Pant lui.Mni. nonu-thing
\'cry like it. I do not, of course, ari^ue that thin in our
explicit thou;(ht. On the contrary, ho far a.s (Hjr conMeionn
lf>^ic iM concerned, wr. never allow ourMelv«:M to f«»r^et that
"the real unity of the world nianiftntM it.Mt^lf thnm^h its
cfjually real dit!'erenceM. " But the >/,yif/<'r-«:»/.rrrn/ of thought
jn what I have «Utefl it to bfi. KruphaMiMC the essential corre-
lation of the m\( and not-self ever mo naich, the self is self and
the not-sfdf U not-»j-'lf, and the two never come into touch with
each other. As l'»ng as the matter stands tlnis, the unity of
the self tenfl« to Ui fatal to fht? plurality of mere ohje'Cts. how-
ever chw^j and vital nmy be the relation of the latter to the
former.

The only way to avoid tlu.'s ditheulty, t.liiM irresiMtihle*
drift towards Farithf-ism is to realise that the ohjf^ct in vvhirrh
the self manifests itself is not only related to the s«lf, hut Im
the s^ilf. Every object is also a subject and rire-trrmi.. To
Jiay so is not to makt; a simple identification of the one with
the other m as to obliterate all distinction between them.
What is a subject from its own point of view is an object in
relation to other selves. As a knowing wrlf, a thing C(»ntaini
all other things within its^ilf as its objects; but it, as an ohject,
w itsfilf embraced within the knowledge of the other things
regarrled as subjects. To A, regarfb^d as a siibjret. IJ, C, I). K
etc, are related as objects of its knowleflge, but A its«lf
is an object to B conceivwl as subject and so oi». A l>, C,
D anri the rest are thus subjects and objects by turns. The
unity of the AWilute is not »«^)mething standing ovi.-r against
the dif[>:rences of its objectH. It is realis<?d in the s«rlf-consci-
ousnessof each of its oV)jf;cts. It is a unity only in so as far
it differentiates itself into the selvf^s of its obj.rcts. It. in other
worrK w not an aUtract unity, but a concn;te and organic
unitv of its cr»nstituent sfdves. Th- AbM.,tut.r pn M«-nt in the

6 THE ABSOLUTE AXD

self-consciousness of A, whole and undivided, has B, C, D and
the rest as its objects, present completely in B as its self-con-
sciousness, it has A and others as objects and so on. As Ribot
says of the human self that it is a co-ordination, so we may say
evenof the Absolute, that it is not a single unitary persona-
lity, but a co-ordination of many selves — a self of selves. Such
a conception is certainly not destructive to the unity of the
Absolute. It, on the contrary, deepens it by showing that in
thus going the round of its objects by successively becoming
their selves, it remains securely one with itself, supreme and
undivided. The idea may best be illustrated by the Leibni-
tzian theory of the universe as a system of monads. Each
monad is a complete whole which ideates the whole universe
from its own point of view. The fundamental mistake of
Leibnitz was to isolate the monads completely from each other.
If we amend his theory by conceiving of the monads as in in-
teraction w^ith and organically related to each other, and regard
the monad of monads not as a separate monad but as the unity
of the monads realised in them, we shall get something analog-
ous to the conception we need. So conceived, each monad
would reproduce the whole universe within itself as its object,
while it itself would form part of the objective world reproduced
in the consciousness of the other monads, the monad of monads
being the organic unity of all of them and its consciousness
consisting of their consciousness. (1). The Absolute self, that
is to say, is a society of selves correlated wdth the universe as a
systematic whole of inter-related objects. (2). It, as the self
of selves, has for its objective counter-part the universe as

(1) The monads of Leibnitz ideate the universe with different degrees of
clearness and distinctness. But in the illustration given the monads must
be supposed to reflect the universe, each froin its own point of view, with
perfect clearness. What Leibntiz calls imperfect monads would, on this
supposition, be imperfect manifestations of the monads which as the constituent
elements of the monad of monads— the Absolute, are all perfect.

(2) The term 'society' hardly conveys the meaning, but there is no suitable
substitute for it. The personalities into which the Absolute is diflFerentiated
are unified in the absolute far more closely than are the individuals in society.

IIIMA.V l'i:i!S(>\ \MTV. 7

an organic whole, while its constituent selves arc the selves of
thr particular ohject.s which fonn parts of the world.

"There is a sense," says Dr. Caird, "in which every
idealist must admit that the only object of mind is mind.
Every one who holds that the real is relative to mind, and,
therefore, that the diti'erence between mind and its object
cannot be an absolute difference, must acknowledge that what-
ever is real (and just so far as it is real) has the nature
of mind manifested in it. Reality cannot be alien to the
subject that knows it, nor can the intelligence comprehend
any object except as it finds itself in it." {Evolution of
Theology in the Greek Philosophers, Vol. I, p. 193.) But he
goes on to say that "it is not necessary to infer from this that
every object, which is in any sense real thinks or is a thinking
subject." (Hid). It is not a question of inference however.
As Dr. Caird himself admits^ "the only object of mind is mind."
Of course, every object is not a conscious subject in isolation
from others or outside of the Absolute consciousness. But it
can be an integral element of the Absolute personality
only as having a self of its own. It is impossible to conceive
of the Absolute, which is present, whole and undivided, as much
in the meanest object as in the totality of nature, as a mere
unit}^ It is a plurality as much as a unity. Dr. Caird is most
emphatic in declaring that the unity of the Absolute embraces
real differences. These differences, however, as self-differentia-
tions of the Absolute cannot be ^n^re objects. Objects which are
the manifestations of a self, which cannot exist apart from the
self, are, I submit, selves as much as objects. It is impossible to
avoid this conclusion by arguing that there are differences of
degree in Reality. Every object which is in relation to the
consciousness of the Absolute, in which the Absolute con-
sciousness is manifested, as it must be, completely and in-
divisibly, must partake of the perfection of the Absolute. If
there are differences of degree in Reality, they belong to the
fragmentary and incomplete manifestations of Reality and not
to Reality itself. The nnpiriral fact of the dit^erences of

8 THE ATlSol.rTF AND

degree in Reality cannot stand in the way of the conclusion,
reached on speculative grounds, that the total system of things
in which the Absolute is revealed shares in its perfection.
Now, if the total system of things is perfect, there must be a
point of view from which every constituent element of it is
perfect. It is impossible to say that the universe in which
everything is imperfect is, as a whole, perfect. One inclined to
take such a view would do well to remember Mr. Bradley's joke
about the best of possible worlds in which everything is
bad.

Dr. Caird seems to imply that the view that the self-
differentiations of the Absolute are themselves selves leads to
the conclusion that "nothing exists except minds and their
states." Each object, we have seen, is a self from its own point
of view and a not-self from the point of view of other objects.
It is both a subject, or rather subject-object, and an object,
but from different points of view. Every object, indeed, is
from its own point of view^ not only a subject, but also an object
to itself, but it is an object to itself in the same sense in which
the body is the object of the self that animates it. What exist,
therefore, are not minds and their sfr(f(?s but minds and their
objects, which objects, however, are themselves minds. Dr.
Caird's objection can legitimately be urged only against a
theory like that of Leibnitz which so cuts off things from each
other that no sort of mutual influence is possible between them.
Minds, therefore, become incapable of having any content except
their own internal states. But a genuine Idealism conceives
of objects as the differences in which the ultimate spiritual
principle of unity is manifested, which is present in them as
their selves, _2^a7'^ici<ZaW6;ecZ but whole and undivided, and
gathers them all up into itself without detriment to their
I distinctness.

Now the theory set forth above, I maintain, gives a
correct and adequate representation of Hegel's conception of
the Absolute. Most of the commentators of Hegel are agreed
that the Absolute is a personality, but they lay so much stress

HUMAN PERSONA mv. 9

oji its unit}- (hal they <>v»rl'»<'k IIk' iiiijxtrtanl i'act that it is
vn\y as a cu-oidiiiatiuii, dcuiuniduit ij of solves, that the Absohite
is a self. I agree with Dr. McTaggart in thinking "that the
element of differentiation and multiplicity occupies a murh
stronger place in Hegel's system than is generally believed."
(Sfiulie.'i in Hcijelian Cosiiiolor/y, p. J.). No one denies that
ihr unity of the Absolute is, in Hegel's view, the correlative
of an 1 founlo 1 on its differences. But what is the nature of
thi'se differences ? Are they mere objects ? Objects they most
assuredly are, but what is all but universally forgotten is that
they are selves as well, selves which exist not on their own
account or in isolation from and in total disregard of each other,
but {IS integral elements of the Absolute Personality. They,
organically related to each other, constitute the Absolute
Personality. The phrase organic relation is indeed inadequate
to express the truth. The union is much cl )ser than any mere
oiganic union can be. But, however close the union may be,
it is not incompatible with, but is the other aspect of the
relative independence of the selves. Dr. McTaggart has
rendered a Vciluable service to higher philosophy by clearly
proving that in Hegel's system the self-differentiations of the
Absolute are not mere things, but perso^is. But he has also con-
verted an important truth into a serious error by declaring that
the Absolute is not a person. I shall have later on to examine
his conclusion at some length. At present, I wish to dwell
U2)on that part of his theory in which I am most heartily in
agreement with him, and to cite further evidence from Hegel's
works in support of it than he has found it possible to do.
"We are certain," says Dr. McTaggart very truly, "that the
doctrine of the Absolute Idea teaches us that all reality is
spirit. No one, I believe, has ever doubted that this is Hegel's
meaning. And it is also beyond doubt, I think, that he con-
ceived this spirit as necessarily differentiated. Each of these
differences, as not being the whole of spirit will be finite (1).

(1) Dr. McTaggail's use of the term "tiuite"' is apt to be misleading.
As each differentiation of the Absolute has others outside it, it is, of course,

B

10 THE ABSOLUTE AND

It is the eternal nature of spirit to be differentiated into finite
spirits." {Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 2')' 7). Again, "The
meaning of the Absolute Idea is that Reality is a differentiated
iinity, in which the unity, has no meaning but the differentia-
tions, and the differentiations have no meaning but the unity.
The differentiations are individuals for each of whom the
unity exists, and whose whole nature consists in the fact that
the unity is for them, as the whole nature of the unity consists
in the fact that it is for the individuals. And, finally, in the
harmony between the unity and the individuals neither side
is sub-ordinated to the other, but the harmony is an immediate
and ultimate fact." [Ibid, j)- 19.)

Hegel defines the Absolute Idea thus : "The Idea, as
unity of the subjective and objective idea, is the notion of the
Idea, — a notion whose object is the Idea as such, and for
which the objective is Idea, — an object which embraces all
characteristics in its unity. This unity is consequently the
Absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself — and here
at least as a thinking or Logical Idea." [HegeVs Logic, Wallace's
Translation, Second Edition, pp. 37-3-7 J^). This, to be sure,
is one of the most enigmatical utterances of Hegel. It hardly
affords us any clue to his inner meaning. Isolated passages
and paragraphs, taken by themselves, will often be found to
be of the same description. They are impenetrable and hard
as adamant. The only way to compel this dark philosopher to
surrender his meaning is laboriously and patiently to keep
pace with him, with bad falls occasionally no doubt, as he
explains the movement of the categories from Pure Being to
tlie Absolute Idea. You must think with him, watch his
thought, so to speak, in the making. One must understand
tlie whole of Hegel or nothing of him. A hard task un-
doubtedly, but there is no way to avoid it. There is no royal
road to the citadel of the Absolute Idea. Much help will also
be found in the study of the application of his general

finite, but inasmuch as its knowledge embraces the whole of P»-eaIity, it is
Infinite in Hegel's sense of the term.

ni'MAX im;i{,s(>x \ijTv. 11

|)rinciples to the concrete facts of life and cxiMriencc. In oidtr,
therefore, to ac(|uire an insi't^ht into the meaning of the Abso-
lute Idea, Nvi' must go back to the early stages of the dialectic.
But even in the definition of it quoted above, it is easy to see
that, in Hegel's view, the object of the Idea is its(;lfldea.
The highest Reality — the unity of the subjective and objective
Idea, "the notion of the Idea" has for its object Idea. The
object of nund or spirit, in plainer language, is not a mere
thing but mind.

The categories which tirst reveal Hegel's central
thought, incompletely no doubt, but unmistakably, are the
Infinite and Being-for-self. Hegel heartily endorses Spinoza's
dictum, Omnis determinatio est negatio. Everything, in order
to be, must have a determinate nature, but determination
implies affirmation as much as negation. To say that some-
what is, is also to say that it is not something else from
which it is distinguished. *'A thing is what it is, only in and
by reason of its limit." But that which limits it is itself
another thing needing limitation as the condition of its rising
into reality. "Something becomes an other ; this other is
itself somewhat ; therefore it likewise becomes an other, and
so on ad infinitum' [HegeVs Logic, Wallaces translation^
Second Edition, p. 174). Thus arises endless progression or
what Hegel calls the false infinite. In endless progression, we
never leav^e the region of the finite, and have only a tedious
iteration of it. Nor is the true infinite to be found somewhere
beyond the finite. That which is beyond the finite, being out-
side it, is necessarily limited by it and is, therefore, only
another finite. An infinite which steers clear of the finite and
does not somehow include it within itself is a contradiction.
The finite, as finite, passes over into amUher finite which,
however, is not alien to it but is involved in its own being, is
its alter ego. What thus passes over endlessly from one
finite to another does in reality abide with itself. It is the
inner being of the finite, the soul of it— the genuine Infinite.
"Since what is passed into is quite the same as what passes

12 THE ABSOLUTE AXO

over, since both have one and the same attribute viz. to be an
other, it follows that something in its passage into other
only joins with itself. To be thus self-related in the
passage and in the other, is the genuine infinity." (HeyeVs
Logic, Wallaces Translation, Second Edition, P. 176.) What
is involved here is the negation of negation, the overcoming of
the limit which finitude implies, and, consequently, self-restora-
tion. Being thus restored through the negation but not
cancellation of limit, Hegel calls Being-for-self

"In Being-for-self," says Hegel, "enters the category
of Ideality." (Ibid, P. 178). This is a pronouncement of the
utmost importance. The finite which returns upon itself
through the negation of its limit is Infinite and, as such, ideal.
The determinate Being, "Being-there-and-then" is limited and
real, but as the unity which refers to itself in passing over into
its other, it is ideal. "The truth of the finite is rather its
ideality." Everything, therefore, which exists has a two-fold
aspect. As a reality, it is finite and limited and excludes all
other things from it ; but as ideal it comprehends everything
within itself What is real is also ideal and the ideal must
have reality and limitedness of being. "Man," observes Hegel
shrewdly, "if he wishes to be actual, must be there and then,
and to this end, he must set a limit to himself People who
are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality".
(Logic, Wallaces Translation, P. 173). The ideal and the
real, the self and the object, body and soul are one and the
same and the difference is one of aspects only. On its ideal
side, an object is co-extensive with the universe itself — it is
omniscient, but as real it is lowly and humble, takes its proper
place among other reals and ties its ideal — its self down to
\^ itself This explains how it is that every particular self in-
cludes all that it knows and yet excludes them. The reality
of the ideal is its body and hence the body is not excluded in
the same sense in which all other things are. (1). "Being-for-

(1) The interesting and suggestive thought of Leibnitz that the monad,
which, as a spiritual entity, luvb the whole iiniverye ideally within itself, is

Ill MAN i'i:i;.s()NAi.ri \'. 13

self," says Ht'gL'l, ''may be (Icsciilnd as ideality, jusL as H(,'iiig-
tliero-and-tlK'ii was described as reality. It is said that be-
sides reality there is also an ideality. Thus the two categories
arc made equal and parallel. I'loperly speaking ideality is
not somewhat outside of and beside reality : the notion of ideal-
ity just lies in its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when
reality is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, it is at once
seen to be ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper
estimation, when you allow that reality is not all in all, but
that an ideality must be recognised outside of it. Such an
ideality external to or it may be even beyond reality, would be
no better than an empty name. Ideality only h;is a meaning
when it is the ideality of something : but this something is not
a mere indefinite this or that, but existence characterised as
reality which if retained in isolation, possesses no truth." (Logic,
Wallaces Translation, pp. 172-78).

Now it does not require much penetration to discern
what Hegel is driving at. What he means to say is that the
ideality of an object, its inmost essence, is its self. A thing,
in so far as it is real, is only one among many things, but the
ideal element of it, its unity of self-consciousness is that which
has for its object the entire circle of reality. What, as an
ideality, includes all other reals is, in so far as it is real, inclu-
ded in the ideal elements of other reals. Indeed Hegel, who
at times is so obscure, does not leave us in any doubt as to
his meaning on this point. He expressly says that Being-
for-self is self-consciousness. "The readiest instance of Being-
for-self is found in the "I". We know ourselves as existents,
distinguished in the first place from other existents, and with
certain relations thereto. But we also come to know this ex-
pansion of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it were, to
a point in the simple form of Being-for-self. When we say "I",
we express the reference to self which is infinite, and at the

also a body throvigh its own inherent limitedness— 77ia/erja prima, does not,
I think, usually get the consideration it deserves. It ixMiuires modilication,
no doubt, but it suggests an important truth.

14 THE ABSOLUTE AND

same time negative." {Logic, Walla es Translation, P. 179).
The finite things in their ideality are Beings-for-self, unities of
self-consciousness. The whole of reality exists in and for each
of them and they exist in the whole. It is beyond doubt that
in Being-for-sclf, we have a plurality of selves, a connected sys-
tem of ideating centres, in each of which the whole world is re-
flected. What conceals this truth from view is, I suspect, the
failure to distinguish Being-for-self from the category of the one
and many which immediately follows it. Being-for-self, abstractly
considered as a self-subsistent real, and in negative relation to
others which it excludes, is one. The ideality is for the
moment lost sight of and the mere Being-there-and-then, the
somewhat, with the power, no doubt, of the ideal at its back,
becomes the one. The profounder element is temporarily
eclipsed and the development in the subsequent movement
of the categories is, till the Notion is reached, mainly on
the i^al side, A great inequality exists between the two ele-
ments of Being-for-self. Its ideal factor is already "I", but the
side of reality is little better than a mere Daseyn. It is like
a strong soul animating a frail body. The dialectical move-
ment which follows serves to remove this disparity. A serious
and needless difficulty is thrown in the way of properly appre-
hending Hegel's meaning by the erroneous supposition that
the evolution of the categories is really as regular and rhyth-
mical as he suggests it to be. On this subject Dr, McTaggart
has thrown much valuable light, (Vide Studies in Heijelian
Dialectic) but even he, I think, is inclined to suppose that
there is more regularity of movement than is really the case.
In Being-for-self, the sublime height of the Absolute Idea is
already visible, dimly outlined in the distance, even from the
low ground of the categories of quality, but in the process of
the toilsome ascent to it, we, for long intervals, lose sight of it.
If we take care to remember Hegel's explicit statement that
"the readiest instance of Being-for-self is the "I", what we
have at this stage is a plurality of selves, each infinite, confron-
ting each other. The stress is laid decidedly on the aspect of

II (MAN l'i:i!S()\.\I.lT^'. 1'

plurality, .and it is the uiiily (hat is in daii^ci- of bcint,^ ovcr-
InokcMl. In later categories, Hegel, as I shall show, ])rings nut
piominently the as})ect (t\' \uu\y and liaimonises it with jjIii-
rality, but the result gained in the earlier stages is not allowed
to be missed. The later stages of the dialectic do not annul
the earlier ones. The more developed categories enrich and
supplement the poorer and more abstract categories, but what
is once gained is never lost.

In the Notion, we have the Ideality of Being- for-self
back again, deepened and enriched, and with the unity of
the whole strongly emphasised, though the element of plura-
lity is by no means ignored. "The Notion", says Hegel, "is a
systematic wdiole, in which each of its constituent functions
is the very total which the Notion is, and is jxit as indisso-
lubly one with it. Thus in its self-identity it has original and
complete determinateness" (Logic, Wallace's Translation, P.
287). The explication of the Notion, Hegel calls Development,
in order to signalise the truth that in the unfolding of the
categories under this section no new element is added, but
what is implicit in the universal is made explicit. The Notion
is not an abstract universal, but a concrete universal, which
involves particularisation in the individuals ofwhiehitisa
system. In it "the elements distinguished are without more
ado at the same time declared to be identical with one another
and with the whole, and the specific character of each is a
free being of the whole Notion" (Ibid, P. 289 ). The function
of the judgment is to show that the universal cannot abide
with itself in aloofness from the individuals, but must parti-
cularise itself in them, while the syllogism demonstrates that
these individuals must, on their part, surrender themselves
to it and thereby become a systematic totality. It is to be
doubted whether Hegel was happ}' in his choice of the terms
notion, judgment and syllogism, with their inevitable sub-
jective implications and association with Formal Logic to
express his meaning. But what he seeks to convey through
the terminology of Formal Logic is obvious. The Notion is

l(j THE ABSOLUTE AND

tho Spiritual piiiuiplc of unity from Avhicli all things proceed
and t«» which all things return. Each of these things is it-
self the Notion with a j)articular (U'terniination. "Each func-
tion and moment of the Notion is itself the whole Notion."
The individual ^^' the universal specified and determined in a
j)articular way. It does not, however, exhaust the universal.
A particular determination demands other determinations and
every individual has other individuals as its aliev egos and.
therefore, in eternal and indissoluble fellowship with it. The
relation between the universal and the individual, it is of the
utmost importance to remember, is not one of the whole and
the parts. This is a category which in the Hegelian dialectic
is long left behind at the stage of the Notion. The universal,
the whole, is differentiated into the individuals, each of which
i.s itself a whole. "It is a macrocosm made up of microcosms,
which is all in every part." The reality of the universal, it will
thus be seen, lies in the individuals, so related to one another
as to form an organic whole. Hegel would have fully endorsed
Professor Seth Pringle-Pattison's dictum that the individual
alone is real, only that care must be taken not to tear off the
indi\ idual from other individuals and the systematic totality
of them — the universal, to which it belongs. The relation
between universality, particularity and individuality is thus
expressed by Hegel : "The universal is the self-identical with
the express qualification that it simultaneously contains the
particular and the individual. Again, the particular is the
different or the specific character, but with the qualification
that it is in itself universal and is as an individual. Similarly
the individual must be understood to be a subject or subs-
tratum which involves the genus and species in itself and
po.sse.sses a substantial existence." (HeijeVs Logic, Wallace's
Trandation, pp. ^9/^-9o).

The individual, it is essential to remember, is not a mere
object. It being a specific determination of the Notion
is like the Notion, a self. It is subject-object, the unity of the
ideal and real, of the finite and the infinite, of soul and body.

HUMAN rF.l!S()XAMTV. 17

The object is the iii(li\ i<hi;il with its subjectivity abstracted
from. The Notion is realised in the indivichials and the indivi-
(luals live, move and have their bein^ in the Notion. It is the
unit}' of the whole that goes out of itself to them and only in
this way reduces them to subordination to itself. "Every
individual being", says Hegel, "is some one aspect of the Idea:
for which, therefore, yet other actualities are needed, which in
their turn appear to have a self-subsistence of their own. It
is only in the:n altogether and in their relation that the Notion
is realised" (HegeVs Logic, W<ilh tec's Translation, P. -l-l.i).
The Notion, in short, is a unity of self-consciousness which is a
system, a totality, an organic unity of subordinate unities of
self-consciousness, each of which, determined and particularised
and thus embodied in an object, is a whole and infinite. At the
siage of Being- for-self, we had the unity of the whole rather
thrust into the background. Now, however, it is prominently
forward, not extinguishing but vitalising the subordinate selves,
the Beings-for-self, the individuals. It gives reality to them
and apart fi-om them it itself has no reality. Hegel's Absolute,
we thus see, is the unity of the ideal and the real, which on the
ideal side is a community of selves and on the real side a
universe of inter-related objects.

The Notion completely developed and as a fully ex-
pressed totality of individuals is, when viewed externally, so
to speak, the object. It, in its perfection, is the unity of the

subject and the object the Idea. Hegel begins with the

ideality of the Notion and shows that w^hen it is fully explicated,
it is embodied in the object. The object, again, taken one-
sidedly and in abstraction from the subject, is in contradiction
with itself and leads us back to the ideal element, which is all
along presupposed and without which it would not be. The
evolution of objectivity tow^ards ideality, we may pass over, as
it is not of prime importance in illustrating our theme, but
here also Hegel steadily keeps eye on the two aspects of

Reality unity and plurality. In object qua object, a

reconciliation of these two moments is not possible, and it is

c

18 THE ARSOIJJTE AND

this con trad iction which is the sprinr^ that makes the dialec-
tical coach move forward at this point. The object, sa3's Hegvl,
is a totality "which breaks up into distinct parts each of which
is itself the totality". Now the dialectic, in the second section
of the doctrine of the Notion, seeks to prove that the part
which is an independent totality, and yet is subordinated
to a more comprehensive totality, must be a spiritual
unity.

In the categories of Life and Cognition, the correlati-
vity of oneness and difference is further exhibited on a hig'her
j)lane and the teleological character of the miity of the whole
is explicitly brought out. Dr. McTaggart has fully dealt
with these categories in arguing that the self-differentiations
of the Al>solute are persons and I do not, therefore, intend to
say much al>out them. The im2)ortance of these categories
lies in the fact that in them the unity of the Absolute is
expressly shown to be a purposive unity. This is certainly
implied in the conception of the whole which so sunders itself
into parts as to remain in each of them a whole, the parts, on
their side, returning in mutual fellowship to the source from
which they proceed. But here the iniplied idea is made ex-
plicit and j^rominent, and immanent design becomes the
ground-plan of the world. According to the categ-ory of Life,
"Reality", to quote Dr. McTaggart, "is a unity differentiated
into phn-ality ( or a plurality combined into unity) in such a
way that the whole meaning and significance of the unity lies
in its being differentiated in that particular plurality, and that
the whole meaning and significance of the parts of the plurality
lies in their being combined into that particular unity". The
consideration that unless the unity exists in and for each
individual, the unity is bound to be flxtal to the plurality makes
it impossible for us to rest in the category of Life and compels
the transition to Cognition and ultimately to the Absolute
Idea. Complete satisfaction is found only in the idea of a
system of organically inter-connected and inter-conscious indivi-
duals that proceed from and surrender themselves to a supreme

iiiMAX i'i:i;.s()N.\i,nv. 19

and Lill-einbracint^ unity of sclf'-consciousncss re.-ili.scd in Lhcni
and not beyond thcin.

The conclusion that, the Al)s<.liite Idea is a spiritual
principle of unity ditierentiated into selves, which have their
being in it as organic elements of ib, is confirmeci by what
Hegel says in part III of the Phihh^ophy of Rdiffion, in which
he treats of "The Absolute Religion". In the important
discussion of this subject, which throws considerable light on
his meaning, he distinguishes between, i'God in His eternal
idea in and for self; the kingdom of the Father", "The eternal
idea of God in the element of consciousness or ordinary thought,
or the kingdom of the Son", and "The Idea in the element of
the Church or spiritual community — the Kingdom of the Spirit".
These constitute the three-fold aspect of the Absolute Spirit
who, Hegel maintains, is correctly, though figuratively, re-
presented as the Trinity. The first, it is easy to see, corres-
ponds to the Absolute Idea of the Logic ; the second to the
externalisation of the Idea in nature and man, in so far as
man is a natural being ; and the third to the Absolute Spirit.
God, the Father, or, as Hegel figuratively puts it, God jis He
was in Himself before creation, is not a unitary Being, but is
Himself Triune (1). He differentiates Himself within Himself,
without yet going out of Himself to nature and man. These
self-ditierentiations of God are the Son, not the Son made flesh,
but the Son who is eternally with God and is God. God, as
the organic unity of these differentiations, is Spirit. Now
nothing could be a greater mistake than to suppose that the
differences in which the unity of the Absolute is realised cons-
titute nature. This appears to be the current idea, but it is
erroneous. Nature is the embodiment, the incurnation of

the Son the self-differentiations of God. These differences

being of God are God. The differences of nature are the
expression not of a unitary or monadic God, but of a Triune

(U The "unitv" of the Abosolute is, from Hegel's point of view, hv
no means a correct expression. The Ahsohite is more appropriately ea]le<I
the Trinity, though even this term, as suggestive of mere number, i.s far from
adequate.

20 THE ABSOLUTE AND

Gorl. It would be a great mistake to suppose that Hegel so
constantl}' speaks of the Trinity in order to accommodate himself
to Christianity. It is a well-known fact of his life that he,
at the outset of his philosophic career, used to extol the Greek
religion of beauty and to disparage Christianity. Later on,
he, on speculative grounds, first came to the conclusion that
it is the nature of the Absolute to be differentiated into selves
which form an organic totality in which they cannot be isohited
from one another, to become, in other words, a sjiirit and then
began to appreciate what he, rightly or wrongly, regarded as
the genuine kernel lying within the husks of orthodox Chris-
tianity. The ordinary representation of Hegel's thought that
nature is the manifestation of a spiritual principle of unity,
though approximately correct, is by no means exact. The
spiritual principle of unity is not a barren identity, but a
differentiated unity and nature is not the differentiations but
the real side, the bodying forth of these differentiations. God,
who as spirit is the union of His differentiations, His sons,
freely lets Himself go into nature and through the ascending
stadia of nature and the progressive civilisation and spiri-
tualisation of man, the incarnation of the Son, returns to Him-
self in man's religious and philosophic knowledge of Him. As
such. He is the Absolute Spirit. Such, in bare outline, is
Hegel's thought.

"For the understanding", says Hegel, "God is the one,
the essence of essences. This empty identity without difference
is the false representation of God given by the understanding
and by modern Theology. God is spirit, who gives itself an
objective form and knows itself in that." {Philosophy of Reli-
gion, English Translation, Volume III, P. ^1.) Real identity,
concrete identity, is founded upon difference. "It is only the
dead understanding that is self-identical." God is Spirit, the
concrete universal, only as a totality of His determinations
into which He resolves Himself and to which He imparts Him-
self without losing His own unity. "God", observes Hegel,
"who represents Being-in-and-for-self eternally i^^'^^^i^ces

Ill MAN I'KKSONALriV. 21

Himself in the form of Tils son, (li.stingiii.shcs Hims»jlffrom
Himself, and is the absolute act of judgment and ditfoientia-
tion. What He thus distinguishes from Hims<'lf docs not take
on the form of something which is other than Himself; but,
on the contrary, what is thus distinguished is nothing more or

less than that from which it has been distinguished In

being in the othor whom He has brought into definite existence,
or posited. He is simply with Himself, has n(^t gone outside of

Himself God is Himself just this entire act. He is

the beginning, He does this definite thing but He is e(4ually
the end only, the totality, and it is as totality that God is spirit.
(Philosophy of Relifjion, English Translation, Volume III,
P. 12). Again, "God beholds Himself in what is differen-
tiated ; and when in His other He is united merely with
Himself, He is there with no other but Himself, He is in close
union only with Himself, He beholds Himself, in His other
( Ibid, P. IS.) "God thought of simply as the Father", Hegel
tolls us, "is not yet the true". 80 conceived He is the "abs-
tract God". It is only as the all-embracing totality, in which
He is characterised as Himself that God is Spirit, the true
Triune God. The passages which I have quoted and many
others which might be quoted make it, I think, abundantly
clear that, in Hefcel's view% the differentiations of God are not
mere objects, but are like Himself, subjects, selves. The object
is the self in so far as it is real, limited and externalised. It is
the other of self, its body. These selves, Hegel is careful to
explain, do not exist in independence of God regarded as
Father and in isolation from each other. They "are posited
not as exclusive but as existing only in the mutual inclusion
of the one by the other". God not only distinguishes
Himself but "is at the same time the eternal abolition
of the distinction. He posits Himself in the element
of difference, but He also abolishes it as well." The
unity of God it not prior to His differences. The
differentiation which it undergoes "is not of an external
kind, but must be defined as an inward <Jifferentiation

22 THE ABSOLUTE AND

in such a way that the First or the Father is to be conceived
of i\s the Last."

A different interpretation of Hegel's theory of the Trinity,
in so far as it relates to the "Kingdom of the Father", is
possible, but is not, I think, tenable. It is that God as Spirit
is the unity of subject and object. As subject, He is the
Father and as object, opposed to the subject, He is the Son.
This appears to be the interpretation usually put upon his
doctrine, but it is not adequate. There is this much of truth
in it that God as the totality of the selves into which He is
differentiated is also the unity that explains and transcends
the distinction between subject and object. What God distin-
guishes from and opposes to Himself is, no doubt, the object
or, more precisely, a universe of inter-related objects, but the
object, Hegel maintains, is Himself. This cannot mean that
the object which God distinguishes from Himself is Himself
in the sense that it is not the other of Him as the Spirit that
over-reaches the distinction between self and object. To the
Spirit, nothing is opposed : it reconciles moments of it
opposed to and distinguished from each other. By the expre-
ssions which he uses, Hegel, therefore, can only mean that the
objects which God, as the first person in the Trinity, opposes
to Himself are like him, selves. It must be remembered that
Hegel calls the totality of objects which God distinguishes from
Himself, the Son. Now if the object were mere object, such
a characterisation of it would be, to say the least, extremely
inappropriate. It would also entail the absurdity of saying
that man, who is the incarnation of the Son, is the incarnation
of the object. Of course, as I have already said, what is
opposed to God as subject is the totality of objects, but the
objects are also selves. The unity of the Divine self goes
out to the plurality of finite objects, in each of which, as the
ideality of it, it is realised. Its differentiation into objects,
that is to say, is a corresponding differentiation into selves.
The objects are exclusive of each other, but their selves exist
only "in the mutual inclusion of the one by the other." It is

ill MAX rKltSoN'ALITV. 23

for tliis reason tliat Hrf^cl says that what (Jod distinofuishps
tVoin Himsclt" "doos not take on the form o\' soniethin<r whicli
is other than liimsi'lf, but, on the contrary, what is thus
distinguished is nothing more nor less than tliat from which
it has been distinguished," This, at all events, seems to me
to be the interpretation of his meaning which is more appro-
priate. In fine, God as Spirit is both the totality of selves
and the unity that transcends the distinction between subject
and object. What He is not is a solitary subject-object.

To sum up : The conclusion to which the Logic un-
mistakably points and which is decidedly confirmed by the
Pliilosophy of Relvjion is that the Absolute is not a principle
c>f unity differentiated into objects, but a self whose nature
it is to surrender itself to its constituent selv^es, in each of
which it is present, completely and indivisibly, and to brincr
them back into its own unity, th(^ objective world being the
otherness of this system of selves. Nature, to express the
idea in another way, is related to a spiritual principle which
is not a barren identity, but a concrete unity of persons.

In the Absolute as a totality of persons, what is the
place of man ? This is a question to which it is not easy to
find an unambiguous answer in Hegel. "Man as Spirit", he
says, "is a reflection of God" (Pliilo>iopliAj of Religion, Eikj-
lish Translation, Vohinie III, P. 46]. But what is the
nature of this reflection ? Is his existence essential to God ?
Does God need him as he needs God, or is he only a creature
of the hour, an essentially ephemeral being, whose existence
or non-existence makes no difference whatsoever to the fulness
of His life ? Various solutions have been given of the problem.
It is very hard to find passages in Hegel's writings which
nnequi vocally express his meaning, but, on the svh«ile, I
am inclined to think that he regards man's existence as
essential to the self-realisation of the Absolute. In the
return movement from nature to God, man, in Hegel's
system, plays the part of the mediator. It is in him that
nature comes to a consciousness of itself, and religion and

24 THE ABSOLUTE AXD

philosophy, and Hegel even suggests that his own philosoph3^
are the mediums through which God, incarnated as man, returns
to Himself. The ideas of incarnation and atonement figure
conspicuously in his system, he is almost obsessed with them
and it is impossible not to take him seriously when he descants,
upon these high themes. Man is the connecting link between
nature and God ; he is the incarnation of God, not of God the
Father but of God the Son. This distinction is of very great
importance. Man is the incarnation of the Son. That this
should be Hegel's view is antecedently probable. The absolute,
as we have seen, is differentiated into selves ; it is the organic
unity of these selves and there is no surplusage of it above and
be3^ond them. If, therefore, man is the reproduction of God,
he can only be the reproduction of one of his differentiations.

This view is, I think, supported by a number of
passages in the Pliilosophy of Religion. The self-differentia-
tions of God, are persons, but they exist iyi God as the elements
of His being. " This act of differentiation is merely a move-
ment, a playing of love with itself, in which it does not get to
the otherness or other being in any serious sense, nor actually
reach a condition of separation and division". (PJiilosopJiy of
Rdiffion, English Trandaiion, Volume HI, P. So). " Eternal
Being-in-and-for-itself is something which unfolds itself,
determines itself, differentiates itself, posits itself as its own
difference, but the difference, again, is at the same time eter-
nally done away with and absorbed ; what has essential Being,
Being-in-and-for-itself eternally returns to itself in this, and
only in so far as it does this is it spirit " (Ibid, P. 35). When,
however, the element of difference acquires what Hegel calls
the form of " Otherness which is possessed of Being ", that is to
say, when in one aspect of it, it is relatively detached from the
whole to which it belongs, we have the Son incarnated as man.
" What first appears in the Idea," says Hegel, " is merely the
relation of Father and Son; but the other also comes to have
the characteristic of other-being or otherness, of something
which is " (Ibid, P. S7). The other is a self differentiation of

HUMAN PERSONAM I' V. '2o

God, tho Son of Ool as he is eternally </•//// the Father, but
the Other, which aLsu comes to have the characteristic of
other-be i)i(j or otJterness is man.

But apart from Hegel's own conclusi<jn on the subject
of the relation of man to the Absolute, it is, I think, possible
to show on general specuhxtive grounds and in accordance with
his principles, that the essential nature of human personality
is such that it could not have it unless it were a manifestation
of a fundamental differentiation of the Absolute. A differentia-
tion of the Absolute is an individual which contains in itself
the content of the whole and yet excludes it. As a finite
object, it excludes all other finite objects, but as the ideality of
it, it is such that there is nothing which is not within it.
This double function of the inclusion and exclusion of all, is
the fundamental characteristic of the individual. What, as
finite, is a real and excludes everything else is, as ideal, infinite
and inclusive of everything. It is one and the same thing
viewed from two different sides. Now the human self possesses
exactly these characteristics and the legitimate inference
therefore is, that it is a particular determination of the
Absolute, with this difference that inasmuch as it does not
reflect the whole actually but only potentially, it must be
regarded as an incomplete reproduction of it. Knowledge
implies that the object of knowledge is relative to the self that
knows and yet is opposed to it. To imagine that the knowing
mind is distinct from the thing that is known is the mistake of
Realism, and to reduce the objects of knowledge to mere states
of mind is the opposite mistake of subjective Idealism. If
things were really external to the knowing mind, no miracle
could ever bring them inside it and Kant, in his fomous refuta-
tion of Idealism, has shown once and for all that knowledge
presupposes the existence of objects as the correlative of the
knowing mind. Human knowledge, besides conforming to this
general condition of knowledge, possesses a characteristic which
is not a necessary consequence of that condition. The things
which we know are not only relative and opposed to our minds,

D

26 THE ABSOLUTE AND

but are also in a manner, independent of them. This indepen-
dence is due to, is, in fact, an aspect of, their externality to the
body, while the knowledp^e of them is possible because the
mind, which is the ideality of the body, is all-inclusive. Now
tliis inclusion of all things in knowledge, and the exclusion of
them as particular facts of existence, is what we have seen to
be the essential nature of a self-differentiation of the Absolute,
arising from the circumstance that it, as one among many
differentiations, is finite and limited. The characteristics of the
human self as subject of knowledge, we thus see, are identical
with those of a fundamental differentiation of the Absolute (1).
Its relation to the human body is analogous to the
relation between the ideal and real aspects of Being-for-self,
and any difference that exists is explicable by the fact that the
body of man is the expression not of the fractional entity we
call man, but of his true being, viz, a specific determination of
the Absolute. There does not seem to be the same intimate
connection between man's soul and his body, so much so that
the latter has, to some extent, the character of being an other-
being like anythin'^ else to the former, as there is between the
infinite and the finite, the ideal and real, because the body is
the objectivity not of the finite man but of his truer self, or,
if you like the expression, his subliminal self(2).

(1) Dr. McTaggart has treated of this point, though in a slightly
different wa}', at some length and I, therefore, do not dwell further on it.

(2) It is strange that no commentator of Hegel has thouglit fit to indicate
what liis theory of the relation between soul and body is. I claim that the
view expressetl in this essay is in agreement with Hegel's. In support of my
contention, I rely on passages like the following, besides the whole trend of his
teaching : "The notion and its existence are two sides, distinct yet miited, like
soul and body. Tlie body is the same life as the soul, and yet the two can })e
named independently. A soul without a body would not be a living
thing and virp.-vej-sa. The visible existence of the notion is its body" (quoted
from the Philosophy of Right in E. S. Haldane's Wif<do)7i and I'eligion of a
German Philosopher, p. 135). "In so far as the "I" lives, the soul, which
conceives, and, what is more, is free, is not separated from the body. The
body is the outward embodiment of freedom and in it the "1" is sensible".
(Philosophy of Right, Dyde's Tranxlation, p. 54).

HUMAN PERSONALITY. 27

The body of man, as is well-known, is an organic unity.
Ideally, therefore, it must be a system of selves, a self-differen-
tiation of the Absolute which is itself a system of differentiations.
There is nothing surprising in this. On the contrary, it is
exactly what was to be expected. The parts of an organic whole
are likely to be organic wholes themselves. If the universe be
an organism which is organic in every i)art, it, subjectively, is a
system of selves, each of which is itself a system of selves. Which
objects of nature are organic wholes is a question on which
speculative philosophy can have nothing to say. It must be
settled by means of scientific observation. In strict deduction,
therefore, from the principle which has been expounded in this
essay and which, I am convinced, is the principle of Hegel, it
follow^s that man's real self, the ideality of his body, is, like the
Absolute whose differentiation it is, a society of selves, though,
of course, it is a subordinate society. And is not this the nature
of man himself, the fragmentary manifestation ? Let empirical
psychology answer this question. The day does not seem to be
far distant, if it has not already arrived, when it will be defi-
nitely established that human personality is a colony rather
than an abstract unity. No other hypothesis, it seems, would
serve to explain various normal and abnormal phenomena of
the mind. Leonie, Felida X, Sally Beauchamp and a host of
others proclaim from the house tops that the self of man is not
a simple unitary self, but a complex whole of component
selves (1).

To conclude : The human self is a fragmentary manifesta-
tion of a differentiation of the Absolute, which is itself a system
of differentiations, with the aspect of otherness strongly
emphasised and in relative detachment from the totality of the
Absolute life and consciousness, in which its transcendental
self — the self-differentiation of the Absolute, has its being.

(1) This theory does not by any means destroy the unity of the human

personality M'hich consists not in its substantiality but in its purpof'ivtness.
It is too large a subject for me to introduce into this paper.

CHAPTER II.

Dr. McTAGGART ON THE PERSONALITY OF
THE ABSOLUTE.

Dr. McTaggarfc, to whom I have ah'eady referred
several times, is, so far as I am aware, the only commentator
of Hegel who clearly recognises that the Absolute is not a soli-
tary self, but a unity of selves. He, however, is so carried away
by the enthusiasm of his new discovery of Hegel's real meaning
that he forgets altogether the unity of the Absolute, in the
only sense in which that unity can have any meaning for us.
He denies that the Absolute is a personality. It is a "unity of
individuals, each of Avhom is perfectly individual through his
perfect unity w^ith all the rest", but it is not itself a person.
And as personality is the essential attribute of God, it is better
he concludes, "to express our result by saying that the Absolute
is not God, and, in consequence, that there is no God." This, in
all conscience, is a startling conclusion and we cannot help
asking Avhat are the arguments whose irresistible force drives
one to it. I am bound to say that his reasoning, when closely
examined, is found to be utterly inadequate to support a conclu-
sion like this. Indeed, it seems to me, that it is an apt illus-
tration of Mr. Bradley's epigi'am that "Metaphysics is the
finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct."

The personality of the Absolute as an all-embracing
unity is clearly demanded by the paradoxical character of each
constituent self of it, if it be taken as the ultimate form of
personality. "If we ask", observes Dr. McTaggart, "what is
contained in each individual differentiation, the answer is every
thing. But if we ask Avhat is contained in each difierentiation
in such a way as not to be also outside it, the answer is nothing.
Now this is exactly the form that the paradox of the self would
take, if we suppose a self whose knowledge and volition were
perfect so that it knew and acquiesced in the whole of Reality."

TfU: PEHSOXAIJTV ay TIIK AliSOLl'TK. 29

(Stndict; tu Hiyelian Co.^riwloiiy, p. 26). And thus he thinks
that the paradox of the self would be justified and it cannot,
in his view, be justified in any other way. Dr. Mc Taggart
rightly says that any attempt to solve the parfidox by either
denying that the self includes anything which is external to it,
or denying that it excludes what it includes will simply not do.
But his own solution is hardly a solution. Incredible as it
seems, he contents himself with the assertion that the paradox
of the self would be justified by the mere process of recognising
that it is a paradox. His reason for thinking so is that "if we
are to take the idea of self, not as a mere error, 3'et as less than
absolute truth, we must find some justification of it which will
show that the necessary course of thought leads up to it and
also over it — that it is relatively true as transcending contradic-
tions which would otherwise be unreconciled, but relatively as
itself developing contradictions which must again be transcended.
Can such a deduction be found ? We cannot say with cer-
tainty that it never will be, but at any rate it does not seem
to have been suggested yet" (Ihid p. 26) Xow Dr. McTaggart
deliberately deprives himself of the means of solving the
contradiction involved in the idea of the finite self, in the manner
which he himself suggests. Of course, the higher idea to which
the finite self leads up, cannot be anything which transforms
the essential characteristics of self beyond recognition, but it
is to be found in the conception of the Absolute as a self
differentiated into many selves. Dr. McTaggart does not deny
the reality of an ultimate unity which embraces all particular
selves within itself On the contrary, he strongly insists upon
it. The only question is whether it is a personal unity or not.
Xow each particular self, in so far as it contains everything, is
identical with the Supreme Reality within which everything
falls. Its consciousness as all-embracing must coincide with
the Supreme Reality and the Supreme Reality, on its part,
must, therefore, coincide with its consciousness and hence he
consciousness. I do not see how it is possible to evade this
conclusion. A particular differentiation of the Absolute, as a

3Q 1)K. McTAGGART ON

finite (U'terminate thing, excludes all others, but it inchides
everything not in its own strength, but in virtue of the identity
of its all-embracing consciousness with the Ultimate Reality,
which cannot, consequently, be other than consciousness. The
conception of a particular self ideally including everything
becomes tenable only on the supposition that the inclusion is
also real, and if the ideal inclusion is conscious inclusion, so the
real inclusion must also be.

Dr. McTaggart argues that "while the unity is for the
individuals, the individuals are not for the unity," though they
are in it. He devotes considerable space to the consideration of
this point and evidently attaches much importance to it. His
meaning is that as the whole of the unity must be coii-ipletely
in each individual and also be the bond which unites all the
individuals, the problem arises, " How is it possible that the
whole can be in each of its parts and yet be the whole
of which they are parts." "The solution," he tells us, "can
only be found by the introduction of a new and higher idea.
The conception which, according to Hegel, will overcome
the difficulties of the categories of Life, is that of a unity
which is not only in the individuals, but also for the in-
dividuals. There is only one example of such a category known
to us in experience, and that is a system of conscious indivi-
duals" (Ihid, p. 13). "The whole point of saying that the
unity is /o?' an individual," he further explains, "is that it
exists both out of him and in him." The individuals do not
certainly exist for the unity, in the sense in which Dr.
McTaggart uses the word, because it is not itself an individual,
but such a mode of existence is surely a defect due to the fini-
tude of the individual and cannot be regarded as the test of
the personality of the Absolute. The externality to the indivi-
dual which the existence of the whole of Reality /o?" it im-
plies, and which nevertheless is in it, is prevented from being
a down-right contradiction and sheer nonsense, by the fact
that the self-consciousness of the individual is identical with
the unity of the Absolute within which all reality falls. Dr.

THE PERSONAT.ITV OF THK AMSOLUTE. 31

McTjiggart's objection turns on the nnwarrantable assumption
that as the individuals do not exist /o?^ the unity, it cannot be
a self-conscious unity. A relation of this kind is not the con-
dition of self-consciousness, but the consequence of the in-
completeness and one-sidedness of it. The truth underlying
l)i-. ^IcTaorcrart's contention of course is that consciousness
implies distinction and opposition, A's consciousness of B, i%
J) implies the opposition of B, C, D to A. l^ut the inclusion of
all individuals in the Absolute does not mean the cancellation
of difference and opposition. The Absolute, in so far as it is a
particular individual, excludes others, but the other aspect of
this reciprocal exclusion is that they are gathered up, focussed
in the unity of the Absolute, without the difference and op-
position disappearing.

No one is more emphatic than Dr. McTaggart in
declaring that the unity of the Absolute is not less real than
its differentiations. To him it is not an abstraction or only
another name for a mere aggregate. It is a real unity, an har-
monious and coherent whole. All finite selves which are its
differentiations are included in it. It is not above and beyond
these differentiations but in and through them. The relation
of each finite self to the Absolute is organic. The whole is in
each part and is equal to the part. Now if the whole, in so far
as it is in the part, is personal and can say "I am," how can
the whole itself be impersonal ? Once touched with self-
consciousness at a particular point, where, be it remembered,
it is completely present, how can it ever shake it off? The
part is not a fraction of the whole, and it is impossible to argue
that though one part of the Absolute is self-conscious, it, as a
whole, may not be so. The part is the whole and if it is
self-conscious, so must the whole be. If my eyes see a thing,
I see it ; if my ears hear a sound, I hear it ; so if the Absolute
is a person in me, it must itself have personality. To think
otherwise is not to be serious with the doctrine that "the
whole of the unity shall be in each individual." The differ-
entiations of the Absolute are admittedly persons. If so, it

32 DR. MCTAGGART OX

is inconceivable that their unity, the Absolute, should not be
a person. The unity may be more but cannot certainly be less
than a person.

The Absolute, as Dr. McTaggart conceives it, is a so-
ciety of perfect but finite individuals and, as such, is a spiri-
tual unity. Each individual, as perfect, includes and, as finite,
excludes all the rest. P, Q, R, let us suppose, are the indivi-
duals, whose unity is M, the Absolute. Now M as P consci-
ously includes Q and R, M as Q includes P and R and so on.
Between the inclusion of Q and R in the consciousness of
M as P and that of P and R in the consciousness of M as Q,
there can be no breach of continuity. This continuity, how-
ever, which must necessarily be a fact of consciousness is not
in the consciousness either of P or of Q or of R. P does not
itself carry forward the items of its consciousness to Q, nor Q
to R. This is the function which belongs to M. The only
fact present in the consciousness of P is that it includes Q and
R and so with each of the rest. The inference that there is
such a continuity must not be confounded with the fact of it.
Now it IS this continuity which, as I have said, must be a
conscious fact that is realised in M. The facts in the separate
consciousnesses of P, Q and R get re-interpreted in the light of
their continuity, and so re-interpreted constitute M. This
simple and unavoidable reasoning does, I think, establish bey-
ond dispute that the Absolute is a conscious unity. The only
alternative is to deny that it is a unit}^ at all and so to be
driven to monadism.

"If the Absolute," argues Dr. McTaggart, "is to be
called a person, because it is a spiritual unity, then every
college, every goose-club, every gang of thieves, must also be
called a person. For they are all spiritual unities. They all
consist exclusively of human beings, and they all unite all
their members in some sort of unity. Their unities are indeed
much less perfect than the uni<"y of the Absolute. But if an
imperfect unity is not to be called an imperfect person, then
the name of person must be denied to ourselves as manifested

THE PERsf^XALITV or THE A I'.SOTJ'TK. 33

here and now Now wo call ourselves persons, but

no one, I believe, has ever proposed to call a foot-ball team a
person. But if we call the Absolute a person, we should have
no defence for refusing the name to the foot-ball team" {Ibid,
p. 86). The analogy between a college or a foot-ball team
and the Absolute is by no means self-evident. Subordinate
unities like the college or the foot-ball team exist for tempo-
rary and 2^'^i'ticular purposes and can be formed or dissolved
without the least advantage or detriment to the essential
nature of their members, but all such subordinate unities
presuppose and are grounded on the unity of the Absolute,
apart from which ntjthing can even exist. A foot-ball team
is a union of its members in so for as they are sportsmen and
has no bearing on their life in other respects. So a college
is a combination for purposes which cannot be realised without
it and the members of it, considered as interested and concern-
ed in the execution of these purposes, have no being apart
from it, but as individuals with other capacities and functions
they have no relation to it. The relation, however, of the
Absolute to its constituent individuals is different. It is a
union which makes not this or that phase of their existence
but the whole of their existence, including their existence
as inter-conscious memhers of it possible. It is the pre-
condition of and is realised in the inter-consciousness of the
individuals it unites, and is ipso facto a conscious unity. If any
analogy between such widely disparate entities is at all to be
drawn, it is, I venture to think, least misleading to express it
in this way. The unity of the foot-ball team is no other than
the community of purposes of the sportsmen. The unity of
the college consists in the common academic interests of its
members. So the unity of the Absolute is, besides other things,
the continuity of consciousness involved in the inter-conscious-
ness of the selves that constitute it.

Dr. McTaggart justly contends that the conscious-
ness of the non-ego is an essential condition of the
personality of a finite person. "Such a consciousness the
£

34 DR. McTACifJART OX

Absolute cannot possess. For there is nothing outside it, froni

which it can distinguish itself The Absolute has not a

characteristic which is admitted to be essential to all finite
personality, which is all the personality of which we have any
experience. Is this characteristic essential to personalit}' or
only to finite personality ? We know of no personality with-
out a non-ego. Nor can we imagine what such a personality
would be like. For lue certainly can never say "I" without
raising the idea of the non-ego, and so we can never form any
idea of the way in which the Absolute would say "I" {Ibid,
pp. 68-69). The essential condition of self- consciousness is
the opposition and not the externality of the n on -ego to
the ego. The non-ego is external to the body and thus comes
to have the appearance of externality to the finite mind,
because the finite mind is the ideality of the body. Dr.
McTaggart fiiils to distinguish an accidental circumstance of our
self-consciousness from the essential condition of it. The
Absolute, of course^ has nothing outside it from which it can
distinguish itself, but from this it does not follow that within
it there is no non-ego in distinction from which it has the
consciousness of self. For, in relation to every finite differentia-
tion of the Absolute, the other differentiations are non-egos.
These differentiations, therefore, are by turns egos and non-
egos. In the Absolute, all its differences are united but not
lost. They retain their fundamental characteristics. The
Absolute which says "I" in each of its determinations, has self-
consciousness in so fixr as these egos are brought together in
its unity. Their self-consciousness is its self-consciousness
On the other hand, the differences, in so far as they are non-
egos, do not cease to be so by their coming together in it. In
the unity of the Absolute, therefore, the double character
which belongs to its differentiations is preserved. To say
that the element of the non-ego is absent from it, is to say
that an essential feature of its component factors is somehow
lost in it. But this is impossible if the Absolute is "the
differentiated unity or the unified differentiations." The Abso-

THE PERSON ALITV (U TJJi: ABSOLUTE. 35

lute is self-conscious iu and as the totality of the selves which
compose it, and the non-ego which it is not without in them
is not lost to it. It, in fine, is the unity which transcends but
does not annul the relative distinction between e^fo and non-
ego set up in the process of differentiation which it undergoes,
in order, to exist as the deepest and most comprehensive
unity.

Dr. McTaggart takes it for granted that "personality
cannot be the attribute of a unity which has no indivisible
centre of reference and which is from all points of view all in
every part." His thought, it seems to me, is coloured
throughout by his view that the self is a substance.
"In the identity of the substance," we are told, "lies the
personal identity." Dr. McTaggart admits that "this is a
rather unfashionable mode of expression." "Unfashionable
mode of thought," he might have said. It certainly is not the
thought of Hegel, who repeatedly insists on the difference bet-
ween a substance and a subject. It is substantially a revival
of the pre-Kantian dogmatic theory of the soul, however much
it may be modified by the reflection that "each self can only
exist in virtue of its connection with all the others and with
the Absolute which is their unity." A differentiation of the
Absolute is no doubt a substance, but it is much more. On
Hegel's principles, it, as a moment of the Absolute Idea,
shares in the nature of the Absolute Idea and the Absolute
Idea as the ultimate category is immeasurably richer than
substance. Instead of saying that personal identity lies in
the identity of substance, we should rather invert the
proposition and say that the identity of substance lies in
its being the objective expression of the identity of
self. The unity of the self is, no doubt, realised in each "unity
of centre", bub is by no means confined to it. The fact that it is
realised in an individual centre, as a particular, is made pos-
sible by its going beyond it to other individuals which are
thus gathered up into the synthetic unity of the Absolute and
thereby reduced to a systematic totality. This is the im-

3G DR. MCTAGGART ON

portant lesson that we learn from Hegel's doctrine of the Notion.
The Absolute is, as Dr. McTaggart says, the "unity of system,"
but a unity of system which is not the expresion of a unity of
self-consciousness is onl\' a mechanical aggregate, or, at best,
what Hegel calls Absolute mechanism. Dr. McTaggart
speaks as if the conception of an individual including in its know-
ledge the whole of Reality, which, at the same time, it ex-
cludes, is, in itself, a satisfying conception. It is nothing of
the kind. It is in reality a contradictory conception, pointing
to the solution of it in the inclusion of the individuals in a
wider unity, where it and other selves like it come together
and are commingled without loss of their individuality. The
one-sidedness of the being and consciousness of the individual,
to which the exclusion of the rest is due, presupposes a many-
sided and all-embracing consciousness in which each individual
gets its proper place in relation to others.

This leads us to the consideration of the question
whether the self can be conceived as the totality of selves.
"Can we attach," asks Dr. McTaggart, "any meaning to the
statement that one self-conscious being should consist of a
multiijlicity ot self-conscious beings in such a way that it had
no reality apart from them ? Or that one self-conscious being
should be part of another in such a way that it had no reality
apart from it ?" This question must emphatically be answered
in the affirmative. Our own self is, within its limits, of such a
nature. It is nothing if not a totality. The true nature of
the self is hidden from us by the manner in which the distinc-
tion between the self and its states is usually drawn. Each
mental state is not merely a state of the self, but is the self
in that state. It is because this is so that the states of cons-
ciousness are not accidentally associated with, but are intrinsi-
cally related to, one another. "All self-consciousness," as
Professor Stout says, "implies a division of the total self. When
I think about niyself, the I and the myself are never quite
identical. The self of which I have an idea is always
distinguished from the self which has the idea" {McLiiual

THK HEKSONALITV OF THK ABSOLUTE. 37

of Psijclioluijy, p. 'K^o)- The conscious states are not related
to the self as the modes of Spinoza are rehited to the
substance. The self is sj)lit up into its states in cMch
of which the whole of it is present. When Iluiiu,' .said
that he was unable to get at the pure self, but always
stumbled upon some particular state of the self, he
said no more than the truth, only that he failed to realise that
the particular mental state is itself the self so expressed. Had
he discerned this the problem of the relatedness of impressions
would have been solved for him. Fortunately this is a conclu-
sion which does not rest on mere speculative grounds. Empi-
rical facts establish it beyond all reasonable doubt. The
phenomenon which abnormal cases of the disintegration of
personality present, is explicable only on the hypothesis that
the normal self consists in the integration of selves. To say
so is not to imply that the self is a mere aggregate. It is a
totality, no doubt, but a totality whose ground lies in its
purposiveness. Its unity is not to be sought for in its
substantiality, but in the abiding aim or purpose which holds
together the units of it, (1). Such an abiding jjurpose is not a
single purpose but a system of purposes in and through which
the ultimate meaning of life is progressively realised. The self
is one, as far as and no further than, a common purpose runs
through it. When the last vestige of a common purpose is
gone, the last prepartion for the mad house is completed.

If we are to say that the unity of the Absolute is not
a personal unity, what alternative has Dr. McTaggart to ofter ?
How is that unity to be conceived ? It will scarcely do to
say that it is the unity of unconscious Reason. Dr. McTaggart
is hardly likely to resuscitate a theory once fashionable, but
now decently buried. Unconscious Reason is as much a
chimera as unconscious matter unrelated to intelligence. If
the Absolute is not a person, if it is not unconscious Reason,
the only alternative that remains is to conceive of it as realised

(1). Professor Josiah Royce has exhaustively treated of the relation of
purposiveness to personality in his Conception of God and Gifford lectures.

38 DH. MeTAGOAHT ON

in the selt-consciousness of each individual and the unity of
it becomes a mere name. It is only the self-consciousness of
P-fthe self-consciousness of Q-f-the self-consciousness of
R and so on. Of what avail is it to reiterate, as Dr. McTaggart
does, that the unity of the Absolute is as real as its differences,
that it is an organic unity and so forth, when all conception of
it is rendered impossible by the assertion that consciousness
does not belong to it ? Of course, it is not personal as man is
personal. Probably it is better to call it, as Mr. Bradley suggests,
super-personal ; but to regard it as spiritual minus conscious-
ness is, I maintain, impossible. That the denial of self-
consciousness to the Absolute must inevitably lead to pluralism is
evidenced by Dr. McTaggart's comparison of it to such things
as a foot-ball team or a gang of thieves. Of course, these are
mere illustrations, though perhaps, not particularly happy ones ;
but does not a straw show which v^ay the wind blows ? I
suspect that in spite of his stout disclaimers, pluralism silently
dominates the thought of Dr. McTaggart more than he himself
realises. Between pluralism and the doctrine that the
Absolute is a self-conscious unity, there is really no choice.

Dr. McTaggart asserts, though with some hesitation,
that "Hegel does not himself regard the Absolute as personal."
" It seems clear," he argues. " from the Philosophy of Religion
that the truth of God's nature, according to Hegel, is to be
found in the kingdom of the Holy Ghost and the kingdom of
the Holy Ghost appears to be not a person but a community."
(Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 59.) Again, "if God is
really personal, He must be personal in the kingdom of the
Spirit, for that is the synthesis and in that alone do we get
an adequate representation of God's nature" [Ibid, p. 208).
I have already stated what, in my judgment, Hegel's view on
this subject is and need not dwell on it at any length here.
Suffice it to say, that if the kingdom of the Father taken by
itself and in isolation from the kingdom of the Son and the
kingdom of the Spirit is an abstraction, the kingdom of the
Spirit apart from the kingdom of the Father, is equally so. The

THE PERSONA MTV ol TIIK Ar.SoMTK. -SO

validity of Dr. McTaggarts argument depends upon the as-
sumption that the kingditm <»r the Father is merged in the
kingdom of the Holy Ghost. But, most assuredly, this is not
Hegel's meaning. Hegel, who tells us that nature — and to
this, be it remembered, the kingdom of the Son corresponds —
"is the extreme self-alienation of Spirit, in which it yet
remains one with itself" and that "the idea freely lets itself
go out of itself, while yet resting in itself, and remaining
absolutely secure of itself," cannot possibly teach that in the
return to Himself which the stage of the kingdom of the Spirit
represents, He ceases to be what He is even in the second
kingdom of " extreme self-alienation of Spirit." The
Church as a spiritual community is not a person, but has
for its presupposition the Personality of God the Father who
on His part, "is not God", as Hegel tells us, "without the
world" and the community of His incarnate Sons, viz., the
Church. In the kingdom of the Spirit, God, who "in the
extreme self-alienation of Spirit,'' (nature) "remains absolutely
secure" of Himself, returns to Himself, through man's cons-
ciousness of Him. "If God were personal," .saj's Dr. McTaggart,
"as manifested in the first and second kingdoms, but not in
the third, it would mean that He was personal, when viewed
inadequately but not when viewed adequately" (Ibid, p. 208).
But why should He not be Personal when viewed adequately ?
The truth is that Dr. McTaggart conceives of the kingdom
of the Spirit as a mere brotherhood of finite Spirits, but in
reality and, as I believe, in Hegel's view, it is the brotherhood
of finite spirits grounded on the Fatherhood of God or the
Fatherhood of God realised in the brotherhood of His children.
And this is the view which is in harmony with the substance
of Christianity, the defence of which by Hegel is not half-
hearted, but whole-hearted and sincere.

CHAPTER III.
THE ABSOLUTE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

We now come to the second subject of our inquiry,
viz., the relation of the categories to the Absohite and to
human knowledge. It is hardly appropriate to speak of the
relation of the categories to the Absolute. The categories,
according to Hegel, are to be looked upon "as definitions of
the Absolute, or metaphj'sical definitions of God" or the
expression of "God's nature in thoughts as such." The dia-
lectic does not describe the movement of mere human thought,
but unfolds the content of the Absolute Mind. This is
unquestionably Hegel's view. Logic is Absolute knowledge.
In other words, it is the Absolute Mind's consciousness of
itself as it really is. It is the self-consciousness of God. No
doubt, the philosopher, who traces out the inter-connections
of the categories, is a human being, but in Absolute knowledge
he rises to the standpoint of the Absolute and transcends the
limitations of his nature. "The object of religion, as of philo-
sophy is the eternal truth in its very objectivity, — God and
nothing but God — and the explication of God." Philosophic
knowledge is God's knowledge of Himself through man's
knowledge of Him. In so far as man has true philosophic
knowledge of God, he is one with God. To be cognisant of
the dialectical evolution of the categories is, therefore, to feel
the very pulse-beats of the Absolute. "Philosophy", Hegel
tells us, "has to consider its object in its necessity, not,
indeed, in its subjective necessity or external arrangement,
classification etc., but it has to unfold and demonstrate the
object out of the necessity of its own inner nature." It
exhibits in systematic completeness the elements of the inmost
life of the Absolute.

All this may sound strange to ordinary common sense and
may seem to be little better than the meaningless utterances

HUMAN KXoWI.KncJE. 41

of a philo.s<^phy gone mad. Yet a little reflection will .show-
that the.se paradoxical statements contain nothing but the
sober truth. "I think Thy thoughts after Thee, O God ! "
exclaimed Kepler, and no body ever dreams of accusing him
of blasphemy and over-weening conceit. On the contrary,
it is taken as an indication of Kepler's great piety. Hegel
says exactly the same thing in the technical language of
philosophy. The only difference between him and others like
Kepler is that the truth which flashes ujDon their minds only
on rare occasions is the permanent basis of his thought which
is never off his mind. The agreement of thought with Reality
is the ta.ut presupposition on which both science and philo-
sophy proceed. If there were a chasm between our thought
and Reality, how could we by means of thinking become
aware of even the most insignificant truths about things ?
To interpose a barrier between human thought and Reality is
to make all knowledge impossible, even the knowledge that
there is a Reality. Indeed the very problem as to the relation
between Thought and Reality can arise only if the distinction
between the two has somehow been overcome. In so far as
man's thought lays hold of Reality, it is not a mere subjective
process, but coincides with the inmost essence of things. The
great error of Hegel, no doubt, is that he supposes that
man's philosophical knowledge of Reality coincides with the
whole content of Reality, but this should not make us blind
to the element of truth of what he teaches. Philosophical
knowledge is the knowledge of truth so far as it goes, and
knowledge of truth is the thinking of God's thought after
God, or what Hegel calls the explication of the Absolute.

Green has given a different account of the method of
Hegel, If, he says, Thought is to be identified with Reality,
it "cannot be the process of philosophising, though Hegel
himself, by what seems to us the one essential aberration of
his doctrine, treats this process as a sort of movement of the
Absolute Thought" {Woih^, Vol III, p. US). Hegel's tault,
we are told, is that for an answer to the que.stion, What is

42 THE ABSOLUTE AND

Thought, the questioner "instecad of being duly directed to an
investigation of the objective world, and the source of the
relations which determine its cont'ent, is rather put on the
track of an introspective inquiry what and how he can or
cannot conceive." (Ibid, p. 14^3). The world, Green tells us,
will not accept the Hegelian view of the relation between God
and the world ''until it is made clear that the nature of that
thought, which Hegel declares to be the reality of things, is
to be ascertained, if at all, from analysis of the objective world,
not from reflection on the processes of our intelligence which

really presuppose that world Language which seems

to imply the identification of our discursive understanding
with God, or with the world in its spiritual reality can lead to
nothing but confusion." {Works, Vol III, j^p- lU-¥>)' <^^i'een
sums up his criticism of Hegel by declaring that he suspects
that "all along Hegel's method has stood in the way of an
acceptance of his conclusion, because, he, at any rate, seemed
to arrive at his conclusion as to the spirituality of the world,
not by interrogating the w^orld, but by interrogating his own
thoughts." The fundamental conclusion of Hegel, however,
that "all that is real is the activity or expression of one
spiritual self-conscious being," Green heartily accepts, but he
states that whoever would present this conclusion in "a form
which will command some general acceptance among serioui
and scientific men, though he cannot drink too deep of
Hegel should rather sit loose to the dialectical method"

{ihidp.ne).

Now this decidedly unfavourable judgment of the
dialectical method is, as Dr. Caird rightly says, "not valid
against Hegel." The point of it is the assumption that the
Hegelian doctrine of the identity of Thought and Being means
that there is not even a relative difference between them and
that Reality is the same as the psychological process of
thinking. This is, of course, far from Hegel's meaning.
The process of thinking, as Green says, presupposes
the world, but the dependence is not one-sided. The world

HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 4»^

equally presupposes the process of thinking and the unity of
the two does not mean their simple sameness, but the higher
synthesis of them in which their relative oi)positi<)n to each
other is at once preserved and annulled. The opposition
between the subjective process of thinking and the objective
reality of the world, in the manner in which Green states that
opposition, is really irrelevant from Hegel's point of view.
Hegel deals with Reality as a whole and the distinctions
between the various phases of that Reality, including the
distinction between subject and object, fall within its unity,.
The business of philosophy is to explain the precise meaning
of these distinctions and to show their proper places in the
systematic unity of the whole. This is the great task which
the dialectical method seeks to accomplish and to sit loose to
it is to give up philosophy altogether in despair. An inquiry
into the nature of Reality is in one sense "reflection on the
processes of our intelligence," in another, it is not. All Reality
is relative to intelligence and is the manifestation of it. The
distinction between subject and object is created and overcome
by intelligence. The various phases of Reality are, therefore^
at the same time modes of intelligence, and as our intelligence
is an integral part of the Absolute, an investigation of the
objective world is also a study of the forms of intelligence, which
are as much forms of the Absolute Thought as of our intelli-
gence. But if any one supposes that an introspective examination
of the contents of his particular consciousness will reveal to hin\
the nature of Reality, he is, no doubt, open to the censure of
Green. Hegel, however, has not in any way made himself
amenable to the censure. In his system, if Thought is identi-
fied with Being, it is also opposed to it. Thought, as the sub-
ject of knowledge, is the correlative of, and, therefore, opposed
to the object of knowledge. But this correlativity and op-
position implies a unity which transcends the opposition. The
ultimate unity within which the distinction of subject and
object falls is Thought, as is the subject to which the object
is correlative. It is with Thought as the ultimate unity — the

44 THE ABSOLUTE AND

Absolute, that Hegel identifies Reality and not with it as the
mere subject of knowledge. Green, I think, overlooks this
important distin ction.

What, after all, is the dialectical method which is so
obnoxious to Green ? It is not, as he seems to think, a means
of determining what and how a man can or cannot conceive,
but the method which seeks to show that a partial and inade-
quate conception of Reality is inherently contradictory and
therefore, leads on to a fuller and more adequate conception,
which, in turn, is found to be equally onesided and defective,
till we reach the conception of a systematic totality of things
in which a single spiritual principle is manifested, or Avhat
Hegel calls, the Absolute Idea. (1) The final conclusion of
a philosophical system does not rest on the mere ijose dixit of
the philosopher. Its justification lies in the fact that from
the standpoint of the philosopher no other conception is found
to be equally adequate and satisfactory. The truth is that
every philosophy must employ the dialectical method con-
sciously or unconsciously. The only question is whether it is
to be employed thoroughly and systematically or in a perfunc-
tory and external manner. Green's o^n method of develop-
ing his theory is, in effect, the dialectical method. An object,
he shows, taken by itself and held in isolation is a self-con-
tradictory thing. Its apparent being is in reality non-being.
This contradiction latent in the unscientific view^ that objects
are self-subsistent entities is overcome when we realise that to
be is to stand in relations. A thing has reality only in so far
as it is related to other things. The world, therefore, is not
a mere assemblage of things, but a unity based on the con-
nectedness of things. Relativity, again, reveals a fresh con-
tradiction, unless it is remembered that the objects related
to one another can become one, without ceasing to be many,
only if we suppose them to be co-present to, and ex-
pressions of, a unifying consciousness. Apart from such

(1). This brief description of the Absolute Idea must be understood in
the light, of what I have said on t4iis subject above.

a anityiag consciousness^ the ide^ of tlie rebatedu^sts of

objects leads us to the tiagmat coQbradictioo that *>bjjeetSt,
as related to one another, are one, and yet thejr are not
one, because, unless they are many they cannot beoHoe
related to one an»)ther. An argument of this kind is essentially
Hegelian and the metho<l of it is in efiect^ the macli
decried dialectical method. The great merit of Hegel is that
he is not content with examining only a fei^ conicepti<'>n«
picked up at random, but undergoes a truly Hercniean laboar
in bringing to light the fundamental categories of thouiglit
and in showing them to be different phases of the life
of the Absolute. He turns to man's theotetic and pnwiical
life, to language and science, tO' art and leKgion and by
an exhaustive survey of them, sacii as no man has ever
undertaken, discovers their ground-concepkioiis and diows that
each of them represents a phase of the Absohite, Talid in
its own proper sphere, but, taken as complete and setf^nffiang;
self-contradictory, and necessitating a ibrwaid moTement tiSl
we find that nothing less than the Abeolnite itself can affbid
us a final and secure resting ground.

But when all this is said, all difficulties are noi
obviated and all doubts are not finally set at rest. The stndeni
of Hegel is forced to recognise that phil<3s«:»phy, if it is to be
of any worth, must be an explication of Beaiity as a wfaide.
To admit this is to admit that man, in ao ^ as he poaBeases
philosophical knowle<ige, is a participator in the Thooght of
the Absolute. But, nevertheless, it is impoesible not to find
a certain unsatisfactoriness in a doctrine which seems to remoie
all distinction between frail and finite man and the Ahsirfute.
This feeling is well-expressed by Green when he aajs that
**when we have satisfied ourselvea that the world in its truth
or full reality is spiritual, becaose on no other snp|»6ition is
its unity explicable, we may still hare to coofeas that a
knowledge of it in its spiritual reality — each a knowledge of
it as would be a knowledge of God is impofisible to osw To
know God, we must be God The aniiying pnncipie of the

46 THE ABSOLUTE AND

world is indeed in us ; it is our self. But, as in us, it is
so conditioned by a particular animal nature that, while it
yields the idea of the world as one which regulates all our
knowledge, our actual knowledge is a piecemeal process. We
spell out the relations of things one by one, we pass from condi-
tion to condition, from effect to effect ; but, as one fragment
of truth is grasped another has escaped us and we never reach
that totality of apprehension through which alone, we could
know the world as it is and God in it" ( Works, Vol III,
p. 1-^5). In preaching the truth that man's knowledge of
Reality is knowledge of the Absolute, Hegel is apt to forget
that the whole content of Absolute knowledge is not revealed
to him. Between the proposition that the categories of human
knowledge are not merely subjective, but integral elements of
Absolute Reality, and the proposition that man's knowledge of
the Absolute is co-extensive with the Absolute, there is no
necessary connection whatsoever. The cardinal error of Hegel
the "one essential aberration of his doctrine," to use the lan-
guage of Green, is that he passes from the first proposition,
which is tenable, to the second proposition, which is untenable
and absurd, without warrant or justification. It is ridiculous
to imagine that the 60 or 70 categories of Hegel's Logic
exhaust the wealth of Divine knowledge. This wholly gratui-
tous and presumptuous limitation imposed on the possibilities
of Divine knowledge and not his method, as Green supposes,
that has really stood in the way of an acceptance of his con-
clusions. In the fundamental principles of Hegel, there is
nothing which makes such a conclusion necessary. On the
contrary, there is a great deal to show that although the
logical categories are aspects of Reality, they are only a frac-
tion of it which comes within the purview of human knowledge.
The notion that to follow the movement of the categories from
Pure Being to the Absolute Idea is to take a full measure of
the Absolute is, in fact, only a peculiar whim of Hegel's.
Everywhere he is inclined to claim finality. The Absolute
Thought is analysable exactly into the catergories treated

HIM AN KNoWLEDr.E. 47

of in the Logic, neither more nor less ; Nature is rational —
only in so far as it is the other of the logical categories,
the extra element that refuses to fit into the categories
is only the play of chance ; the quintessence of political wisdom
is embodied in the Prussian constitution as it was about the
year 1826 ; God reveals Himself in History only on the shores
of the Meditteranean and returns to Himself only in the
philosophy of Hegel, which, of course, contains the last word
of philosophy. All this is perhaps excusable in Hegel himself,
for, the greatest philosopher of the world though he is, he
is only a man and has his prejudices and bias from which no
man is free. But there is no reason why his followers should
be tied down to the letter of his system. To deny that the
categories of Logic are a complete explication of the Absolute
is not to set up a barrier between our knowledge and
Reality. They, so far as they go, do reveal the Absolute, but
there is more in the Absolute than is dreamt of in Hegel's
Logic. What Ave know, we truly know, but we do not know
all.

The categories of Hegel bear marks which unmistak-
ably indicate that they do not constitute the whole of Reality.
If they exhausted the content of the Absolute Life, why
should the task of tracing out their inter-connections be so
puzzling and difficult of achievement ? We should see at
a glance the mutual relations of the categories, if we had all
of them before us and there ought to be no uncertainty and
hesitation in determining the exact place of each of them in
relation to the rest. What is once found to be true would
not be liable to subsequent revision and modification. There
is no room for tentative procedure in Absolute cognition.
Having the whole of Reality and all its constituent elements
before him, nothing would be easier for the philosopher than
to comprehend how exactly the whole is expressed in the parts
and in what precise manner the parts are rt^lated to one another.
And the experience of the student of Hegel's philosophy would
be equally delightful. Scanning the pages of the Logic, he

48 THE ABSOLUTE AND

would find the whole panorama of Reality unrolled before his
eyes and the comprehension of it a process unerring, imme-
diate and facile. The actual fact, however, is very different
from all this. It is well-known that Hegel did not by any
means find the task of linking up the categories an easy one.
He speaks of the "labour of the notion" and the hesitancy of
his procedure is evidenced by the modifications in the arrange-
ment of the categories which he made in the several editions of
the Greater Logic and the Encyclopoedia. Is it not strange that
there should be so much uncertainty as to the exact relations
of the categories to one another, when Hegel professes to know
all of them as organic elements of the Absolute ? The logical
implication of the claim to a complete knowledge of the Abso-
lute is omniscience and if there is no omniscience, it follows
that the only knowledge of the Absolute possible to man is
piecemeal and sketchy and not detailed and complete.

It is sometimes supposed that the dialectical evolu-
tion of the categories is independent of experience. If only
the philosophic gaze is fixed steadfiistly on Pure Being a
movement will set in which will ultimately carry the philoso-
pher to the crowning summit of the Absolute Idea. The
dialectic, it is imagined, not only interprets but also generates
the categories and for the discovery of them no reference to
empirical facts is necessary. Pure Being, by an inner necessity,
by its own immanent energy, passes into the next category and
this into the next and so on and so on, till in an automatic
manner the process is completed when the final category of
the Absolute Idea is reached. All this, however, is only a
fancy-picture of Hegel's method and is very far from the ac-
tual truth. What Hegel really does is that he gathers, mainly
from science and language, the root-conceptions which underlie
experience and constitute experience and which, therefore, we
employ in order to interpret experience and shows how they
belong to, are members of, one all-inclusive Reality. Such a
procedure, it is needless to explain, depends from beginning
to end on experience. Its presupposition is experience and

HUMAN kn()\vij:i)(;k. 49

its o^o;\l is experience ; presupposition, because the eatep^ories
are derived from it, goal, because the highest etVort «>t' philoso-
phy is directed towards the demonstration of it ,as the systematic
unity and embodiment of the categories. Philosophy, therefore,
can begin its work only when the sciences have, partially at
least, completed theirs. It must wait for a prior interpreta-
tion of experience by science. Each science brings to light
the fundamental principles or the categories which rule the
phenomena with which it deals. Philosophy takes up these
catesfories themselves for investigation. It examines them
with a view to determine their scope and limitations and the
manner in which the lower or more abstract ones lead up to,
become merged into, the higher. Depending for its materials
on the sciences it must from time to time revise and correct
itself, as the sciences make progress in their interpretation of the
world. It must follow in the wake of the sciences and cannot
anticipate their results. Any claim, therefore, of the finality
of philosophy is bound to be futile. If Hegel could come to
life again and re- write the Logic to-day, it is certain that he
would write it very differently. The old sciences have made
enormous progress and profoundly modified many of their con-
clusions and new ones have come into existence since his time.
Any scheme of the mutual filiation of the categories drawn up
to-da}' would be so materially different from Hegel's Logic that
very little similarity could be traced between the two. The
science of Biology alone, which had no existence in Hegel's
time, w^ould furnish so many new categories that, viewed in their
light, some at least of the categories of Hegel's Logic would
necessarily present a very different appearance. These consi-
derations are enough to show that it is absurd to imagine that
Hegel's categories are a complete and final explication of the
Absolute. Such a supposition would imply the finality of the
scientific knowledge which the world had in the first quarter
of the last century. "We have no claim," as Professor Laillie
says, "to regard Hegel's Logic as finished and unalterable body
of truth, the validity of which as a whole stands or tails with
G

50 THE ABSOLUTE AND

the validity of each part of it." "No stress," he rightly observes,
"can be laid on the seeming finality which is characteristic
of the system." {Origin and Significance of Hcgd's Logic,
p. 355).

That there are large gaps between the categories in
spite of their apparently seamless continuity with each other
becomes evident if we glance at some of them. What these
missing links are, we cannot even conjecture, but that they do
exist, is, I think, undoubted. Take the category of quantity,
for example, and the puzzle of the endlessness of space and the
infinite divisibility of matter. Hegel's solution of these
Kantian antinomies of Cosmology is that they arise from
our failure to take together the two moments of quantity,
continuity and discreteness, and allowing them to alternate
with each other. The difficulty about the endlessness
of space troubles us when Ave forget that quantity is
not only continuous but also discrete, and the idea of the
limitedness of the world in space becomes an embarrassment
when we abstract from continuity. An object, in so far as its
quantitative aspect is concerned, is the synthesis of continuity
and discreteness. Now this answer is no doubt valid, so far as
it goes, but it does not ultimately obviate the difficulties
involved in the antinomies of Kant. Continuity and discrete-
ness are abstractions apart from each other and are true only
as mutually related aspects of quantity. To show this, however,
is not to perfectly harmonise these opposed moments of
quantity with each other. What Hegel proves is that continuity
implies discreteness and not that it become or turns over into
discreteness and vice-versa. The point will become clear if Ave
compare the triad of continuity, discreteness and quantum Avith
the triad Being, nothing and Becoming. Being, carefully scruti-
nised, turns out to he Nothing and Nothing is Being. Of course
the identity is not mere sameness, but Avith all their difference.
Being is Nothing and Nothing is Being and the process of the
one jydssing over into the other is Becoming. Becoming is thus
a real reconciliation of Being and Nothing. The reason of this,

HUMAN' K\nWl.i:i.(jE. 51

no doubt, is that Being and Nothing being the poorest and most
abstract categories are, for that very reason, nearest each other.
But continuity does not become discreteness, nor, discreten(iss,
continuity. The one prcxiippoHeH the other and quantum is their
reconciliation only in this sense that the concept of it is analys-
ablo into the concepts of continuity and discreteness. Continuity
is an element of quantity and cannot be torn off fn^m
it. Its correlative, eternal partner, is discreteness, but on its
own ground, as distinct, though not separate from discreteness,
it gives rise to the puzzle of the endlessness of space.
Similarly, in another direction, continuity, as opposed to
discreteness, leads to the difficulty of the infinite divisibility
of matter. To point to the correlativity of these two categories
is not to solve the problem which each from its own point of
view raises. To move on to the higher categories is, no doubt,
to avoid but not necessarily to conquer the difficulties connec-
ted with the lower ones. Had continuity and discreteness
passed over into each other, while retaining their difference,
like Being and Nothing, the defects of the one might have been
supplied by the other, but this is not what happens. The prob-
lems arising from continuity and discreteness, in so far as they
are distinct from each other, remain unsolved in spite of their
correlativity. The truth is that Hegel does not overcome the
antinomies of Kant, but only shows that the failure of the two
opposed moments of quantity to come into perfect harmony
with each other does not in any way discredit Reality, for
Reality is vastly more than mere quantity. Nevertheless, the
antin(jmies arising from quantity remain unsolved and suggest
that though the solution is beyond our comprehension, there
must be supplementary categories in the Absolute conscious-
ness of such a nature that in the light of them the mysteries
of quantity are fully explained.

The false infinite of quality is another illustration of
a lacuna in the Hegelian scheme of categories. The difficulty
about quantity considered above, is, in fact, only a recurrence on
a higher plane of that connected with qualitatively infinite

52 THE ABSOLUTE AND

progression. A somewhat passes over into another, this into
somewhat else and so on ad infinituon. The truth of this in-
finite series, as we have seen, is the genuine Infinite, w^hich
comprehends the infinite series within itself. Reality is more
than an infinite series. But this insight does not help us
in summing up the infinite series itself. The difficulty inherent
in it is not solved by our advancing to a more adequate category.
But in the Absolute, the series must somehow be summed up. In
other words, the Absolute must have a form of cognition which
enables it to comprehend the series as a whole, but, we, lacking
in it, are burdened Avith the difficulty w^ithout the means of
solving it.

The idea of Time conveys the same lesson. (1). It
implies unending succession and yet in the Absolute conscious-
ness, the infinite series must be completed. One of the ablest
discussions of the relation of Time to the Absolute is to be
found in Professor Royce's great work, The World and the
Individual. A condensed statement of his views is to be
found in a note to his little book. The Conception of Tm-
Tnortality. Professor Royce convincingly explains that Eternity
means neither the momentary now, nor timelessness, but the
whole of Time which over-reaches the distinction between
past, present and future. "Let the sequence be a, b, c.
Then, in ouv first sense of the term present, when b is present,
a is no longer, and c is not yet. And this fact makes the
temporal sequence what it is. But in the second sense of the
term present, a, b, c, despite this perfectly genuine but relative
difference of no longer and not yet or of j9(X.s^ and future, are
all present as a totum siomd to the consciousness that grasps
the entire sequence" {Conception of Immortality, p. 86).
"There is no sort of contradiction," Professor Ro3^ce goes on to
observe, "in supposing a form of consciousness for which
the events of the Archaean and of the Silurian and of the later
(1). Time, of course, is not a category in Hegel's Logic. It is an aspect
of the 'otherness' — nature, in which the categories are embodied. This means
that it has its ground- work in the categories, which, I think, is to be found in
such categories as substance and accident, cause and effect etc.

HUMAN KNOWLKDCE. 53

geolocrical periods sliould be present at once. l«)g(;th('r willi the
ftxcts of today's history" {Ihid). The term Etp.rmd consnious-
nrss, Professor Royce justly argues, does not mean consciousness
not in timn but "a consciousness whose span embraces the
whole of Time". "What is present at once to such a conscious-
ness, viz., the whole of what ha})pens in time, taken together
with all the distinctions of past and of future that hold inifhln
the series of temporal events — this whole, I say, constitutes
Eternity.'' That a consciousness which is eternally complete
must mean a whole within which the relative distinctions of
past, present and future fall is indisputable, but it is also true
that it is a notion entirely beyond us. It is not enough to say,
as Professor Royce does, that we ourselves possess the type
of an eternal consciousness. The time of our consciousness is,
no doubt, a whole, but it is not a complpie whole. It is inter-
minable at both ends. But what for us is an interminable
series and a complete whole only idecdly must, for the Absolute,
be a really complete whole. Have we the faintest conception
of what this is like ? Do we possess any idea of a "conscious-
ness whose span embraces the whole of Time" ? Because it
must be so, it does not follow that we understand hoiu it is so.
Most readers, I am afraid, will find Professor Royce's reasoning
in the supplementary essay at the end of the first volume of
his Giiibrd lectures more subtle than convincing. The dilemma
is that while we cannot deny that Time, as a com-
plete series, is a real element of the Absolute, we have not the
least idea as to what the higher consciousness is which has the
idea of Time, with its antinomies perfectly solved. The indi-
cation, however, is that in the Absolute there are categories —
modes of consciousness, which so supplement and modify Time
as to free it from its inconsistencies. The contradiction of the
category of Life, for example, disappears when it passrs into
Cognition, and the contradiction of Cognition is solved when it
is viewed as a moment of the Absolute Idea. But the contra-
diction involved in the idea of Time as an infinite series, which
is nevertheless a complete whole, is not overcome by the con-

54 THE ABSOLUTE AXD

siderabioii that the whole of Time is present to the Absolute
consciousness. The Absolute has evidently a mode of conscious-
ness— a category or categories into which the contra.diction of
Time vanishes and which, if it formed an element of our con-
sciousness, would obviate for us too the difficulties involved in
the idea of Time.

The admissions which we have made may, at first
sight, seem to be fatal to the validity of the dialectical method,
but a little reflection will serve to remove this doubt. The
categories of human knowledge are constitutive elements of
Reality, but in Reality there are more of them than come
within the ken of human knowledge. Only a section of them
is, so to speak, fenced off from their context and constitute
human knowledge. As such, they present the appearance of
an artificial aggregate. Nevertheless, the categories are
organic elements of the Absolute and however much they may
seem to be parted off from one another, as known to us, they
are members one of another. They, therefore, as participators
in one life, as different expressions of one Reality, are naturally
drawn towards one another. They have a craving for each
other and seek to come together. It is this underlying
unity that the dialectic brings to light and becomes possible
because of it. But there is another aspect of the matter. The
categories though interwoven with one another as organic
elements of a single whole are, in so far as they are factors of
our knowledge, artificially kept asunder by their partial dis-
continuity arising from the fragmentariness of our knowledge.
Their mutual relations, therefore, are somewhat puzzling to us.
While driven resistlessly towards one another, they are yet
unable to come completely together. It is this circumstance
which makes the task of tracing out their mutual relations
possible, but difficult. The categories being expressions of a
single Reality, a connection between any two of them is dis-
coverable, but it would seem to be natural, or forced and arti-
ficial, according to the extent of the breach of continuity bet-
ween them. This is the reason why in Hegel's Logic, we find

TIUMy\N K\o\V|j:i)r.i:. 55

that while in many, perhaps in the majority of instances, the
transition of one category into another is p<Tfectly natural
and intelligible, there are other instances in which the dialec-
tic is little better than verbal (juibbling and the almost com-
plete break-down of the argument is concealed by a cloud of
words. This is only what was to be expected. When a mis-
sing link separates one category from another, it wouM be
dithcult to connect the one with the other, though it is n<it
impossible ; for, in virtue of the ultimate unity of all of them,
there must be an affinity between any two of them.

There is thus a sense in which the dialectic is a
subjective procedure, or, as Green says, "an interrogation of
subjective consciousness." The inter-connections between the
categories which we succeed in tracing out are only such as
exist between them as elements of our knowledge and
not as they really are between the phases of the Absolute,
as known to the Absolute. But this does not mean that our
knowledge is merely subjective or false. It is subjective,
because it is not completely objective, but valid so far as it
goes, and, to that extent, objective. With the growth of
knowledge, new elements of it are brought to light and its
old relations have necessarily to be recast and modified, but
the incomplete knowledge, although absorbed and transformed
into the more complete knowledge, does not cease to be valid on
its own level. All development implies the absorption of
the lower stage into the higher stage, but the lower stage is
not thereby proved to be unreal. When we, doubting and
hesitating, spell out jjiece-meal the relations between the
elements of Reality, we are veritably in touch with it, though
touch with Reality does not mean an exhaustive knowledge
of it. Hegel's contention that philosophic knowledge is
Absolute knowledge or God's knowledge of Himself is not
WTong, only that he is apt to forget the correlative truth that,
in man, God knows Himself under the conditions and limita-
tions of human knowledge. (1).

(1). Thirteen years ago, when I wiote my article on "Some aspects of

56 THE AliSOLUTK ANH

After what has been already stated, it is not necessary
to say much on the third branch of our inquiry, viz., the
relation of man's experience to the content of Absolute Expe-
rience. There is an idea that the Logical categories are
complete by themselves and the transition from Logic to
nature is similar to the transition from a lower category to a
higher category. This supposed transition to nature has
always been regarded by the critics of Hegelianism as its
weakest point and their main attack has accordingly been
directed to that point. Schelling, for example, laid the
flattering unction to his soul that he had demolished Hege-
lianism once and for all by showing that nature could not be
deduced from pure Thought. In truth, however, Hegel was
never so absurd as to imagine that he could deduce empirical
facts a priori. He has repeatedly told us that nature is the
other of Thought. If nature has no meaning apart from
Thought, it is equally true that Thought has no meaning
apart from nature. Thought without nature is empty and
nature without Thought, a non-entity. Logic is an exposition
of God cis He is in Himself before creation, but the existence
of God before creation, Hegel has expressly told us, is an
unreal abstraction. He exists only as revealed in the world.
Locric deals with the universal aspect of Reality, but the
universal is an abstraction apart from particularity. Nature
is the totality of the particular elements in which the Logical
Idea is realised and apart from which it has no being. There
is, therefore, no transition at all from Logic to nature. In
passing on from Logic to the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel
does not pretend to deduce nature, but only draws attention
to the element of particularity implied throughout the Logic,
but abstracted from, for purposes of exposition. Absolute
Hegel's Philosophy'* in the PhiloHophioil Jieritir (New York) I had not arrived
at my present cjonclusiou^. I then argued that the change in the rela-
tions between the categories which the discovery of new categories must
mean, invalidates the dialectical method altogether. I did not then sufficient-
ly realise that DcN-elopment is more than mere contrariety. {Philosophical
Hevietr, Vol. T. Xo. 3. j>. ;/rj-?->.)

lirMW K N'nW I, i: I )(;!■•:. ."7

Thought is eniboflied in Absolute ExptM'iouoe and nat nn- is a
part of Absolute Experience.

r have said that nature is part of Absolute Experience.
This is not what Hegel says but what, in ordor t<> save his
philosophy from utter self-stultification, he ought to have said.
He supposes that in natur<', the Logical Idoa is rr>mplr'telv
realised and that tin.' Logic expresses the whole uiiivfise.
Both the j)ropositions are absolutely untenable. The conrlu-
s?ion which Hegel draws from these false premisses of course
is, that in God there is nothing which is not manifested in the
sensible world. As Pn^fessor Pringle-Pattison rightly sa3's,
"in preaching the truth that the Absolute is revealed in the
world of its appearances, not craftily concealed behind them,
Hegel seems to pass to a sheer identification of the two. But
while it is true that the two aspects must hk everywhere
combined — an Absolute which does not appear oi- reveal itself,
and an appearance without something which appears being cor-
relative abstractions — that is not tantamount to saying that the
appearance of the Absolute to itself — the Divine Life as lived
by God Himself — is identical with the appearance which the
world presents to the Hegelian philosopher." (2' wo Lectures
on Theism, p. 36). Hegel, however, finds nature, even as it
is known to us, rather a hard nut to crack. It refuses to be
squeezed into his symmetrically constructed sx^heme of
categories. Evidently, it is more than a mere embodiment of
the categories recognised in his Logic. Instead of frankly
admitting, under the circumstances, that the Logic is not a
complete exposition of the Absolute, Hegel adopts the strange
course of disparaging nature. In so far as he fails to under-
stand it, it is not rational at all 1 He concludes that there
is an element of contingency in nature of whith no rational
explanation is possible, and does not stop to enquire whether
such a conclusion is consistent with his fundamental principles
and whether the seeming contingency of nature may not be
due to the fact that it is the incomplete expression of a
Thought richer and more comprehensive than that of which
H

58 THK Al'.SOLri'K A\l>

tho Loi^ic Is tlip exposition. Because he fails to explain all
thf mysteries of nature, Hegel seems to bear a sort of grudge
a^Niinst it. He never misses an opportunity of belittling it.
He, for example, is unwilling to recognise the beauty of
nature. Heauty, he tells us, belongs to Art rather than to
nature In th<^ starry heavens al)ove, which filled the mind of
Immanufl Kant with awe and wonder, Hegel finds only
eru])tinns in the face of the sky! The philosopher, in his
study, makes up his mind that inasmuch as he with his
logical tape, as wonderful as Aladin's lamp, has taken a full
mejvsure of the Absolute Thought, nature, as the embodiment
of that Thought, shall be intelligible through and through
and all mystciT shall vanish from it. But nature does
not obey the ])hil<)sopher any more than the waves obeyed
Canute. What wonder then that he should lose all patience
with it. and unable to punish it in any other w^ay, pour
contempt on it I

Nature is a part of Absolute Experience and is
not co-extensive with it. It is the name given to only so
much of the section of Reality which our senses can cognise
as is the subject of common discourse, and is the product of
inter-subjective communication. It is, therefore, a mere
skeleton. The living Reality is a much bigger thing and has
endless aspects of which our senses take in only a few. From
(lod, Spinoza truly observes, an infinite number of things
fnllnw in nil infinite number of ways. It is the ignorance
and \'anity of man that lead him to imagine that his perception
is the measure of Reality. Are w^e the sole denizens of the
universe to whom Reality is revealed ? The dumb creatures
around us are presumably capable of perception and not mere
automata, as Descartes imagined. They too belong to the
Absolute and participate in its life. Some measure of the self-
revelation of the Absolute is vouch-safed to them too. The
aspects of Reality presented to them are, in their own grades,
as much real as those presented to us, but, evidently, they are
different. The bird that flies in the air, the fish that lives in

in MAX kn()Wm;fm;k. 59

water and the worm that crawls on oarth has each a perception
of Reality with which oins can have very little in common.
The vulture feeding on the carcass surely finds its repast as
enjoyable as the ban(juet provided for us by Peliti or Kellnerl
Evidently, the filthy drain is to the rat what the finest quarters
of Simla or Darjeeling are to v.s ! How, one wonders, does the
world look to the house-lizard that creeps over the ceiling I
Can we deny that the Absolute Experience must include and
is the source of all these diverse experiences ? It is the pride
of man that makes him rebel against the notion. If the rat
in the drain could philosophise, it would, no doubt, dogmatise
that the world, in its true nature, is as it appears to it. And
if there be beings higher than man in the universe, what reason
there is to suppose that they do not exceed man's measure
of the perception of Reality ? The truth is that the experiences
of all finite creatures, however humble and however exalted,
are included, supplemented and rearranged in the Absolute
Experience. It is, therefore, a much bigger thing than any
finite being can comprehend. The Absolute Experience is the
embodiment of Absolute Thought and if the Absolute Thought
is infinitely richer than ours, so must the Absolute Experience
be. Our notion of Reality is very much like the blind man's
idea of the elephant in the fable. One blind man touching a leg
of the elephant says that the elephant is like a pillar; another,
touching the ear, says that it is like the winnowing fan ; a third
touching the trunk declares that the elephant is like the thigh.
The elephant, of course, is much more than these blind men
imagine, though the perception of it of every one of them is
quite correct, so far as it goes.

There is a fine passage in the Sarttyr Resartu.'^ which
inimitably expresses the truth. " Systems of Nature ;" observes
Carlyle, "To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains
of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expression ; and all
experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries
and measured square miles. The course of Nature's phases, on
this our little fraction of a planet, is partially known to U5 ; but

60 THE ABSOLUTE AND

who knows what deeper courses these depend on — what
infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves
on ? To the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality
and accident of its little native creek may have become
familiar; but does the minnow understand the Ocean Tides,
and periodic currents, the Trade-Winds, and Monsoons,
and Moon's Eclipses ; by all which the condition of its
little creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (un
miraculously enough) be quite overset and reversed ? Such
a minnow is man ; his creek this planet Earth ; his Ocean
the immeasurable All ; his Monsoons and Periodic currents
the mysterious course of Providence through Aeons of Aeons."
Such a theory as I have endeavoured to sketch out
in this essay, goes, I think, as far in the direction of a
knowledge of the Absolute as it is possible to go. We can
reasonably conclude that man is a partial manifestation of a
self-differentiation of the Absolute, which is the ideality of
his body. His knowledge and experience forms part of the
Absolute Thought and Experience and is valid so far as it
goes. What he understands and perceives, the Absolute
understands and perceives in him, but the Absolute under-
stands and perceives infinitely more then he ever does. It is
sheer presumption to equate the content of the Divine con-
sciousness with the world in which we live. Such an absurdity
is by no means a necessary consequence of Hegelianism. There
is nothing in the fundamental principles of Hegel's philosophy
which makes its air of omniscience necessary. It is the
accident and not the essence of the system, and is due to the
personal equation of Hegel. Every man has his crotchets and
the greater the man, the more preposterous his crotchets often
are. The notion that Reality is fully and exhaustively
revealed to human knowledge is, it seems to me, only
a crotchet of Hegel's. It is also, partly, the result of
an extreme reaction against the medieval dualism of the
sensible and the super-sensible world. Agnosticism may be
bad, but a cheap Gnosticism is worse. It, I think, has a rather

Ill MAN KXoWLKl )(;!•:. (ij

disastrous effect on soiiio of the better sides of huiinm nature.
Agnosticism, kept within propei- limits, is, after all, not so v('ry
bad a thing as some people i magi no. It, at auy rate, k«jeps
alive the sentiments of wonder and reverence without which
man would be a very unamiable being indeed. The Absolut«i
is undoubtedly within our knowledge, but is also <.»v(3r and
beyond it. In the wise words of Professor Pringle-rattison,
we may conclude that "the truth about the Absolute which
we extract from our experience is hardly likely to be the final
truth ; it may be taken up and superseded in a wider and
fuller truth. And in this way we might pass, in successive
cycles of finite existence, from sphere to sphere of experience,
from orb to orb of truth ; and even the highest would still
remain a finite truth ; and fall infinitely short of truth. But
such a doctrine of relativity in no way invalidates the truth
of the revelation at any given stage. The fact that the truth I
reach is the truth for me, does not make it, on that account,
less true. It is true so far as it goes, and if my experience
can carry me no further, I am justified in treating it as
ultimate until it is superseded. Should it ever be superseded
I shall then see both how it is modified by being comprehended
in a higher truth, and also how it and no other statement of
the truth could have been true at my former stand-point. But
before that higher stand-point is reached to seek to discredit
our present insight by the general reflection that its truth is
partial and requires correction, is a perfectly empty truth,
which, in its bearing upon human life, must almost certainly
have the efiect of an untruth." {Ttvo lectures on Theism,
FF, 61-62:)

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