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THE LOGIC OF HEGEL
WALL ACE
THE LOGIC OF HEGEL
TRANSLATED FROM
THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE
PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES
WILLIAM WALLACE, M.A., LL.D.
FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE
AND WHYTe's professor OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
tOAN STACK
FIRST EDITION 1873
SECOND EDITION 1892
REPRINTED I904
Reprinted lithographically in Great Britain
by LOWE & BRYDONE (PRINTERS) LTD., LONDON
from sheets of the second edition
1931. 1950. 1959
oicm
13 P-'?/?
E6-W3
NOTE
The present volume contains a translation, which
has been revised throughout and compared with the
original, of the Logic as given in the first part of
Hegel's Encyclopaedia, preceded by a bibliographical
account of the three editions and extracts from the
prefaces of that work, and followed by notes and
illustrations of a philological rather than a philo-
sophical character on the text. This introductory
chapter and these notes were not included in the
previous edition.
The volume containing my Prolegomena is under
revision and will be issued shortly.
W. W.
557
CONTENTS
Bibliographical Notice on the three Editions and three
Prefaces of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical
Sciences ix
THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC.
CHAPTER I.
iNfTROPUCTlON 3
CHAPTER H.
Preliminary Notion 30
CHAPTER HI.
First Attitude of Thought to Objectivity ... 60
CHAPTER IV.
Second Attitude of Thought to Objectivity : —
I. Empiricism ........ 76
n. The Critical Philosophy 8a
CHAPTER V.
Third Attitude of Thought to Objectivity : —
Immediate or Intuitive Knowledge . . . . . lai
CHAP^-ER VI.
Logic further Defined and Divided 143
CHAPTER VII.
First Subdivision of Logic : —
The Doctrine of Being . . . . . . . 156
vm
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
Second Subdivision of Logic : —
Tht Doctrine ef Essence .
CHAPTER IX.
Third Subdivision of Logic : —
The Doctrine of the Notion
207
287
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
On Chapter I
II
III
IV .
V
VI .
VII ,
VIII
IX ,
383
387
395
398
406
409
410
417
424
INDEX
433
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
ON THE THREE EDITIONS AND THREE
PREFACES OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA
The Encyclopaedia of the Philos.ophical Sciences
IN Outline is the third in time of the four works which
Hegel pubhshed. It was preceded by the Phenomeno-
logy of Spirit, in 1807, and the Science of Logic (in
two volumes), in 1812-16, and was followed by the OuU
lines of the Philosophy of Law in 1820. The only
other works which came directly from his hand are a
few essays, addresses, and reviews. The earliest of
these appeared in the Critical Journal of Philosophy,
issued by his friend Schelling and himself, in 1802 —
when Hegel was one and thirty, which, as Bacon
thought, ' is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass ' ;
and the latest were his contributions to the Jahrbiicher
fiir wissenschaftliche Kritik, in the year of his death
(1831).
This Encyclopaedia is the only complete, matured,
and authentic statement of Hegel's philosophical system.
But, as the title-page bears, it is only an outline ; and
its primary aim is to supply a manual for the guidance
of his students. In its mode of exposition the free
flight of speculation is subordinated to the needs of the
professorial class-room. Pegasus is put in harness.
X THE THREE PREFACES
Paragraphs concise in form and saturated with mean-
ing postulate and presuppose the presiding spirit of
the lecturer to fuse them into continuity and raise them
to higher lucidity. Yet in two directions the works of
Hegel furnish a supplement to the defects of the
Encyclopaedia.
One of these aids to comprehension is the Pheno-
menology of Spirit, published in his thirty-seventh year.
It may be going too far to say with David Strauss that
it is the Alpha and Omega of Hegel, and his later
writings only extracts from it \ Yet here the Pegasus
of mind soars free through untrodden fields of air,
and tastes the joys of first love and the pride of fresh
discovery in the quest for truth. The fire of young
enthusiasm has not yet been forced to hide itself
and smoulder away in apparent calm. The mood is
Olympian — far above the turmoil and bitterness of
lower earth, free from the bursts of temper which
emerge later, when the thinker has to mingle in the
fray and endure the shafts of controversy. But the
Phenomenology, if not less than the Encyclopaedia it
contains the diamond purity of Hegelianism, is a key
which needs consummate patience and skill to use
with advantage. If it commands a larger view, it de-
mands a stronger wing of him who would join its
voyage through the atmosphere of thought up to its
purest empyrean. It may be the royal road to the
Idea, but only a kingly soul can retrace its course.
The other commentary on the Encyclopaedia 'ts,
supplied partly by Hegel's other published writings,
and partly by the volumes (IX-XV in the Collected
works) in which his editors have given his Lectures
on the Philosophy of History, on Aesthetic, on the
Philosophy of Religion, and on the History of Philo-
' Christian Mdrklin, cap. 3.
OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA. XI
sophy. All of these lectures, as well as the Philosophy
of Law, published by himself, deal however only with
the third part of the philosophic system. That system
(p. 28) includes (i) Logic, (ii) Philosophy of Nature, and
(iii) Philosophy of Spirit. It is this third part — or
rather it is the last two divisions therein (embracing the
great general interests of humanity, such as law and
morals, religion and art, as well as the development of
philosophy itself) which form the topics of Hegel's most
expanded teaching. It is in this region that he has
most appealed to the liberal culture of the century, and
influenced (directly or by reaction) the progress of
that philosophical history and historical philosophy of
which our own generation is reaping the fast-accumu-
lating fruit. If one may foist such a category into
systematic philosophy, we may say that the study of the
' Objective ' and 'Absolute Spirit ' is the most interesting
part of Hegel.
Of the second part of the system there is less to be
said. For nearly half a century the study of nature has
passed almost completely out of the hands of the philo-
sophers into the care of the specialists of science.
There are signs indeed everywhere— and among others
Helmholtz has lately reminded us— that the higher
order of scientific students are ever and anon driven by
the very logic of their subject into the precincts or
the borders of philosophy. But the name of a Philo-
sophy of Nature still recalls a time of hasty enthusiasms
and over-grasping ambition of thought which, in its
eagerness to understand the mystery of the universe,
jumped to conclusions on insufficient grounds, trusted
to bold but fantastic analogies, and lavished an unwise
contempt on the plodding industry of the mere hodman
of facts and experiments. Calmer retrospection will
perhaps modify this verdict, and sift the various contri-
Xll THE THREE PREFACES
butions (towards a philosophical unity of the sciences)
which are now indiscriminately damned by the title of
NaturphUo Sophie. For the present purpose it need
only be said that, for the second part of the Hegelian
system, we are restricted for explanations to the notes
collected by the editors of Vol. VII. part i. of the
Collected works — notes derived from the annotations
which Hegel himself supplied in the eight or more
courses of lectures which he gave on the Philosophy of
Nature between 1804 and 1830.
Quite other is the case with the Logic— the first
division of the Encyclopaedia. There we have the
collateral authority of the 'Science of Logic,' the larger
Logic which appeared whilst Hegel was schoolmaster at
Niirnberg. The idea of a new Logic formed the natural
sequel to the publication of the Phenomenology in 1807.
In that year Hegel was glad to accept, as a stop-gap and
pot-boiler, the post of editor of the Bamberg Journal.
But his interests lay in other directions, and the circum-
stances of the time and country helped to determine
their special form. 'In Bavaria,' he says in a letter \
' it looks as if organisation were the current business.'
A very mania of reform, says another, prevailed.
Hegel's friend and fellow-Swabian, Niethammer, held
an important position in the Bavarian education office,
and wished to employ the philosopher in the work of
carrying out his plans of re-organising the higher edu-
cation of the Protestant subjects of the crown. He
asked if Hegel would write a logic for school use, and
if he cared to become rector of a grammar school.
Hegel, who was already at work on his larger Logic, was
only half-attracted by the suggestion. * The traditional
Logic,' he replied'*, 'is a subject on which there are
text-books enough, but at the same time it is one which
* Hegel's Briefe, i. 141, "^ Ibid, i. 172.
OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA. xiii
can by no means remain as it is : it is a thing nobody
can make anything of: 'tis dragged along like an old
heirloom, only because a substitute — of which the want
is universally felt— is not yet in existence. The whole
of its rules, still current, might be written on two pages :
every additional detail beyond these two is perfectly
fruitless scholastic subtlety ; — or if this logic is to get a
thicker body, its expansion must come from psycho-
logical paltrinesses.' Still less did he like the prospect of
instructing in theolog}', as then rationalised. 'To write
a logic and to be theological instructor is as bad as to
be white-washer and chimney-sweep at once.' 'Shall
he, who for many long years built his eyry on the wild
rock beside the eagle and learned to breathe the free
air of the mountains, now learn to feed on the carcases
of dead thoughts or the still-born thoughts of the
moderns, and vegetate in the leaden air of mere
babble ^ ? '
At Nilrnberg he found the post of rector of the
'gymnasium' by no means a sinecure. The school
had to be made amid much lack of funds and general
bankruptcy of apparatus:— all because of an 'all-
powerful and unalterable destiny which is called the
course of business.' One of his tasks was ' by graduated
exercises"to introduce his pupils to speculative thought,'
— and that in the space of four hours weekly". Of its
practicability — and especially with himself as instra-
ment — he had grave doubts. In theory, he held that
an intelligent study of the ancient classics was the best
introduction to philosophy ; and practically he preferred
starting his pupils with the principles of law, morality
and religion, and reserving the logic and higher
philosophy for the highest class. Meanwhile he con-
1 Hegel's Briefe, i. 138. ' Ibid. i. 339.
xiv THE THREE PREFACES
tinued to work on his great Logic, the first volume of
which appeared in two parts, 1812, 1813, and the second
in 1816.
This is the work which is the real foundation of the
Hegelian philosophy. Its aim is the systematic re-
organisation of the commonwealth of thought. It gives
not a criticism, like Kant ; not a principle, like Fichte ;
not a bird's eye view of the fields of nature and history,
like Schelling; it attempts the hard work of re-con-
structing, step by step, into totality the fragments of the
organism of intelligence. It is scholasticism, if scho-
lasticism means an absolute and all-embracing system ;
but it is a protest against the old school-system and
those who tried to rehabilitate it through their compre-
hensions of the Kantian theory. Apropos of the logic
of his contemporary Fries (whom he did not love),
published in 181 1, he remarks: 'His paragraphs are
mindless, quite shallow, bald, trivial ; the explanatory
notes are the dirty linen of the professorial chair,
utterly slack and unconnected \' Of himself he thus
speaks : ' I am a schoolmaster who has to teach philo-
sophy,— who, possibly for that reason, believes that
philosophy like geometry is teachable, and must no less
than geometry have a regular structure. But again, a
knowledge of the facts in geometry and philosophy is
one thing, and the mathematical or philosophical talent
which procreates and discovers is another : my province
is to discover that scientific form, or to aid in the forma-
tion of it^' So he writes to an old college friend ; and
in a letter to the rationalist theologian Paulus, in 1814^,
he professes : ' You know that I have had too much to
do not merely with ancient literature, but even with
mathematics, latterly with the higher analysis, differen-
' Hegel's Briefe, i. 328. ' Ibid. i. 273. ' Ibid. i. 373.
OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA. xv
tial calculus, chemistry, to let myself be taken in by
the humbug of SRaturp^ilofop^ie, philosophising without
knowledge of fact and by mere force of imagination, and
treating mere fancies, even imbecile fancies, as Ideas.'
In the autumn of 1816 Hegel became professor of
philosophy at Heidelberg. In the following year ap-
peared the first edition of his Encyclopaedia : two
others appeared in his lifetime (in 1827 and 1830).
The first edition is a thin octavo volume of pp. xvi.
288, published (like the others) at Heidelberg. The
Logic in it occupies pp. 1-126 (of which 12 pp. are
©inleitung and 18 pp. a3or6egriff ) ; the Philosophy of
Nature, pp. 127-204 ; and the Philosophy of Mind
(Spirit), pp. 205-288.
In the Preface the book is described (p. iv) as
setting forth 'a new treatment of philosophy on a
method which will, as I hope, yet be recognised as the
only genuine method identical with the content.* Con-
trasting his own procedure with a mannerism of the
day which used an assumed set of formulas to produce
in the facts a show of symmetry even more arbitrary
and mechanical than the arrangements imposed ab
extra in the sciences, he goes on : ' This wilfulness
we saw also take possession of the contents of philo-
sophy and ride out on an intellectual knight-errantry —
for a while imposing on honest true-hearted workers,
though elsewhere it was only counted grotesque, and
grotesque even to the pitch of madness. But oftener
and more properly its teachings — far from seeming im-
posing or mad — were found out to be familiar trivialities,
and its form seen to be a mere trick of wit, easily
acquired, methodical and premeditated, with its quaint
combinations and strained eccentricities, — the mien of
earnestness only covering self-deception and fraud upon
the public. On the other side, again, we saw shallow-
^^ THE THREE PREFACES
ness and unintelligence assume the character of a
scepticism wise in its own eyes and of a criticism
modest in its claims for reason, enhancing their vanity
and conceit in proportion as their ideas grew more vacu-
ous. For a space of time these two intellectual ten-
dencies have befooled German earnestness, have tired
out Its profound craving for philosophy, and have been
succeeded by an indifference and even a contempt for
philosophic science, till at length a self-styled modesty
has the audacity to let its voice be heard in controver-
sies touching the deepest philosophical problems, and
to deny philosophy its right to that cognition by reason
the form of which was what formerly was called
demonstration*
'The first of these phenomena may be in part ex-
plained as the youthful exuberance of the new age
which has risen in the realm of science no less than in
the world of politics. If this exuberance greeted with
rapture the dawn of the intellectual renascence, and
without profounder labour at once set about enjoying
the Idea and revelling for a while in the hopes and
prospects which it offered, one can more readily forgive
its excesses; because it is sound at heart, and the
surface vapours which it had suffused around its solid
worth must spontaneously clear off But the other
spectacle is more repulsive; because it betrays exhaus-
tion and impotence, and tries to conceal them under a
hectoring conceit which acts the censor over the philo-
sophical intellects of all the centuries, mistaking them,
but most of all mistaking itself.
'So much the more gratifying is another spectacle
yet to be noted ; the interest in philosophy and the
earnest love of higher knowledge which in the presence
ot both tendencies has kept itself single-hearted and
without affectation. Occasionally this interest may have
OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA. xvii
taken too much to the language of intuition and feel-
ing; yet its appearance proves the existence of that
inward and deeper-reaching impulse of reasonable in-
telligence which alone gives man his dignity, — proves it
above all, because that standpoint can only be gained
as a result of philosophical consciousness ; so that what
it seems to disdain is at least admitted and recognised
as a condition. To this interest in ascertaining the
truth I dedicate this attempt to supply an introduction
and a contribution towards its satisfaction.'
The second edition appeared in 1827. Since the
autumn of 1818 Hegel had been professor at Berlin :
and the manuscript was sent thence (from August 1826
onwards) to Heidelberg, where Daub, his friend — him-
self a master in philosophical theology — attended to the
revision of the proofs. 'To the Introduction,' writes
Hegel ^, * I have given perhaps too great an amplitude :
but it, above all, would have cost me time and trouble
to bring within narrower compass. Tied down and
distracted by lectures, and sometimes here in Berlin
by other things too, I have— without a general survey
— allowed myself so large a swing that the work has
grown upon me, and there was a danger of its turn-
ing into a book. I have gone through it several times.
The treatment of the attitudes (of thought) which I
have distinguished in it was to meet an interest of the
day. The rest I have sought to make more definite,
and so far as may be clearer; but the main fault is
not mended — to do which would require me to limit
the detail more, and on the other hand make the
whole more surveyable, so that the contents should
better answer the title of an Encyclopaedia.' Again, in
Dec. 1826, he writes': 'In the 0tatur^^iIofo^^ie I have
made essential changes, but could not help here and
^ Hegel's Briefe, iL 204. ■ Ibid. ii. 230.
VOL. II b
xviii THE THREE PREFACES
there going too far into a detail which is hardly in
keeping with the tone of the whole. The second half
of the ®eifieS^^ilofo))^ie I shall have to modify entirely.'
In May 1827, Hegel offers his explanation of delay
in the preface, which, like the concluding paragraphs,
touches largely on contemporary theology. By August
of that year the book was finished, and Hegel off to
Paris for a holiday.
In the second edition, which substantially fixed the
form of the Encyclopaedia , the pages amount to xlii,
534 — nearly twice as many as the first, which, however,
as Professor Caird remarks, 'has a compactness, a
brief energy and conclusiveness of expression, which
he never surpassed.* The Logic now occupies pp. i-
214, Philosophy of Nature 215-354, and Philosophy
of Spirit from 355-534. The second part therefore
has gained least ; and in the third part the chief single
expansions occur towards the close and deal with
the relations of philosophy, art, and religion in the
State; viz. § 563 (which in the third edition is trans-
posed to § 552), and § 573 (where two pages are en-
larged to 18). In the first part, or the Logic, the main
increase and alteration falls within the introductory
chapters, where 96 pages take the place of 30. The
SSorfcegriff (preliminary notion) of the first edition had
contained the distinction of the three logical ' moments '
(see p. 142), with a few remarks on the methods, first, of
metaphysic, and then (after a brief section on empiri-
cism), of the ' Critical Philosophy through which phi-
losophy has reached its close.' Instead of this the
second edition deals at length, under this head, with the
three 'attitudes (or positions) of thought to objectivity;'
where, besides a more lengthy criticism of the Critical
philosophy, there is a discussion of the doctrines of
Jacobi and other Intuitivists.
OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA. xix
The Preface, like much else in this second edition, is
an assertion of the right and the duty of philosophy to
treat independently of the things of God, and an em-
phatic declaration that the result of scientific investiga-
tion of the truth is, not the subversion of the faith, but
'the restoration of that sum of absolute doctrine which
thought at first would have put behind and beneath
itself— a restoration of it however in the most charac-
teristic and the freest element of the mind.' Any oppo-
sition that may be raised against philosophy on religious
grounds proceeds, according to Hegel, from a religion
which has abandoned its true basis and entrenched
itself in formulae and categories that pervert its real
nature. 'Yet,' he adds (p. vii), ' especially where reli-
gious subjects are under discussion, philosophy is
expressly set aside, as if in that way all mischief were
banished and security against error and illusion at-
tained;* ... 'as if philosophy — the mischief thus kept
at a distance — were anything but the investigation of
Truth, but with a full sense of the nature and value of
the intellectual links which give unity and form to all
fact whatever.' ' Lessing,' he continues (p. xvi), ' said
in his time that people treat Spinoza like a dead
dog'. It cannot be said that in recent times Spinozism
and speculative philosophy in general have been better
treated.'
The time was one of- feverish unrest and unwhole-
some irritability. Ever since the so-called Carlsbad
decrees of 1819 all the agencies of the higher literature
and education had been subjected to an inquisitorial
supervision which everywhere surmised political insub-
ordination and religious heresy. A petty provincialism
pervaded what was then still the small 0ieftpcn3=6tabt
Berlin; and the King, Frederick William III, cherished
* Jacobi's Werke, iv. A, p, 63.
XX THE THREE PREFACES
to the full that paternal conception of his position which
has not been unusual in the royal house of Prussia.
Champions of orthodoxy warned him that Hegelianism
was unchristian, if not even anti-christian. Franz von
Baader, the Bavarian religious philosopher (who had
spent some months at BerUn during the winter of
1823-4, studying the religious and philosophical teaching
of the universities in connexion with the revolutionary
doctrines which he saw fermenting througliout Europe),
addressed the king in a communication which described
the prevalent Protestant theology as infidel in its very
source, and as tending directly to annihilate the foun-
dations of the faith. Hegel himself had to remind the
censor of heresy that 'all speculative philosophy on
religion may be carried to atheism: all depends on who
carries it ; the peculiar piety of our times and the male-
volence of demagogues will not let us want carriers \'
His own theology was suspected both by the Rationa-
lists and by the Evangelicals. He writes to his wife
(in 1827) that he had looked at the university buildings
in Louvain and Liege with the feeling that they might
one day afford him a resting-place 'when the parsons in
Berlin make the Kupfergraben completely intolerable
for him^' 'The Roman Curia,' he adds, 'would be
a more honourable opponent than the miserable cabals
of a miserable boiling of parsons in Berlin.' Hence
the tone in which the preface proceeds (p. xviii).
' ReUgion is the kind and mode of consciousness in
which the Truth appeals to all men, to men of every
degree of education; but the scientific ascertainment
of the Truth is a special kind of this consciousness,
involving a labour which not all but only a few under-
take. The substance of the two is the same ; but as
Homer says of some stars that they have two names,—
I Hegel's Briefe, ii. 54. » Ibid. u. 276.
OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA. xxi
the one in the language of the gods, the other in the
language of ephemeral men — so for that substance there
are two languages, — the one of feeling, of pictorial
thought, and of the limited intellect that makes its
home in finite categories and inadequate abstractions,
the other the language of the concrete notion. If we
propose then to talk of and to criticise philosophy from
the religious point of view, there is more requisite
than to possess a familiarity with the language of the
ephemeral consciousness. The foundation of scientific
cognition is the substantiality at its core, the indwell-
ing idea with its stirring intellectual life ; just as the
essentials of religion are a heart fully disciplined, a
mind awake to self collectedness, a wrought and refined
substantiality. In modern times religion has more and
more contracted the intelligent expansion of its contents
and withdrawn into the intensiveness of piety, or even
of feeling, — a feeling which betrays its own scantiness
and emptiness. So long however as it still has a creed,
a doctrine, a system of dogma, it has what philosophy
can occupy itself with and where it can find for itself a
point of union with religion. This however is not to
be taken in the wrong separatist sense (so dominant in
our modern religiosity) representing the two as mutually
exclusive, or as at bottom so capable of separation that
their union is only imposed from without. Rather, even
in what has gone before, it is implied that religion may
well exist without philosophy, but philosophy not with-
out religion — which it rather includes. True religion
— intellectual and spiritual religion— must have body
and substance, for spirit and intellect are above all con-
sciousness, and consciousness implies an objective body
and substance.
'The contracted religiosity which narrows itself to a
point in the heart must make that heart's softening and
VOL. II b 3
xxil THE THREE PREFACES
contrition the essential factor of its new birth ; but it
must at the same time recollect that it has to do with
the heart of a spirit, that the spirit is the appointed
authority over the heart, and that it can only have such
authority so far as it is itself born again. This new
birth of the spirit out of natural ignorance and natural
error takes place through instruction and through that
faith in objective truth and substance which is due to
the witness of the spirit. This new birth of the spirit
is besides ipso facto a new birth of the heart out of that
vanity of the onesided intellect (on which it sets so
much) and its discoveries that finite is different from
infinite, that philosophy must either be polytheism, or,
in acuter minds, pantheism, &c. It is, in short, a new
birth out of the wretched discoveries on the strength of
which pious humility holds its head so high against
philosophy and theological science. If religiosity per-
sists in clinging to its unexpanded and therefore un-
intelligent intensity, then it can be sensible only of the
contrast which divides this narrow and narrowing form
from the intelligent expansion of doctrine as such, re-
ligious not less than philosophical.*
After an appreciative quotation from Franz von Baader,
and noting his reference to the theosophy of Bohme,
as a work of the past from which the present generation
might learn the speculative interpretation of Christian
doctrines, he reverts to the position that the only
mode in which thought will admit a reconciliation with
religious doctrines, is when these doctrines have learned
to 'assume their worthiest phase — the phase of the
notion, of necessity, which binds, and thus also makes
free everything, fact no less than thought.' But it is
not from Bohme or his kindred that we are hkely to get
the example of a philosophy equal to the highest theme
— to the comprehension of divine things. ' If old things
OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA. XXlll
are to be revived — an old phase, that is; for the
burden of the theme is ever young— the phase of the
Idea such as Plato and, still better, as Aristotle con-
ceived it, is far more deserving of being recalled, — and
for the further reason that the disclosure of it, by
assimilating it into our system of ideas, is, ipso facto,
not merely an interpretation of it, but a progress of the
science itself. But to interpret such forms of the Idea
by no means lies so much on the surface as to get hold
of Gnostic and Cabbalistic phantasmagorias ; and to
develope Plato and Aristotle is by no means the sinecure
that it is to note or to hint at echoes of the Idea in the
medievalists.'
The third edition of the Encyclopaedia, vv^hich ap-
peared in 1830, consists of pp. Iviii, 600— a slight
additional increase. The increase is in the Logic,
eight pages ; in the Philosophy of Nature, twenty-three
pages ; and in the Philosophy of Spirit, thirty-four
pages. The concrete topics, in short, gain most.
The preface begins by alluding to several criticisms
on his philosophy, — 'which for the most part have
shown little vocation for the business ' — and to his dis-
cussion of them in the Jahrhilcher of 1829 [Vermischte
Schrifien, ii. 149). There is also a paragraph devoted to
the quarrel originated by the attack in Hengstenberg's
Evangelical Journal on the rationalism of certain pro-
fessors at Halle (notably Gesenius and Wegscheider), —
(an attack based on the evidence of students' note-books),
and by the protest of students and professors against
the insinuations. ' It seemed a little while ago,' says
Hegel (p. xli), ' as if there was an initiation, in a scientific
spirit and on a wider range, of a more serious inquiry,
from the region of theology and even of religiosity,
touching God, divine things, and reason. But the very
beginning of the movement checked these hopes ; the
XXIV THE THREE PREFACES
issue turned on personalities, and neither the preten-
sions of the accusing pietists nor the pretensions of the
free reason they accused, rose to the real subject, still
less to a sense that the subject could only be discussed
on philosophic soil. This personal attack, on the basis
of very special externalities of religion, displayed the
monstrous assumption of seeking to decide by arbitrary
decree as to the Christianity of individuals, and to
stamp them accordingly with the seal of temporal and
eternal reprobation. Dante, in virtue of the enthusiasm
of divine poesy, has dared to handle the keys of Peter,
and to condemn by name to the perdition of hell many
— already deceased however — of his contemporaries,
even Popes and Emperors. A modern philosophy has
been made the subject of the infamous charge that in it
human individuals usurp the rank of God ; but such a
fictitious charge — reached by a false logic — pales before
the actual assumption of behaving like judges of the
world, prejudging the Christianity of individuals, and
announcing their utter reprobation. The Shibboleth
of this absolute authority is the name of the Lord Christ,
and the assertion that the Lord dwells in the hearts of
these judges.' But the assertion is ill supported by the
fruits they exhibit, — the monstrous insolence with which
they reprobate and condemn.
But the evangelicals are not alone to blame for the
bald and undeveloped nature of their religious life ; the
same want of free and living growth in religion charac-
terises their opponents. ' By their formal, abstract,
nerveless reasoning, the rationalists have emptied re-
ligion of all power and substance, no less than the
pietists by the reduction of all faith to the Shibboleth
of Lord ! Lord ! One is no whit better than the other :
and when they meet in conflict there is no material on
which they could come into contact, no common ground.
OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA. XXV
and no possibility of carrying on an inquiry which
would lead to knowledge and truth. " Liberal " theo-
logy on its side has not got beyond the formalism of
appeals to liberty of conscience, liberty of thought,
liberty of teaching, to reason itself and to science.
Such liberty no doubt describes the infinite right of
fhe spirit, and the second special condition of truth,
supplementary to the first, faith. But the rationalists
steer clear of the material point : they do not tell us the
reasonable principles and laws involved in a free and
genuine conscience, nor the import and teaching of free
faith and free thought ; they do not get beyond a bare
negative formalism and the liberty to embody their
liberty at their fancy and pleasure — whereby in the
end it matters not how it is embodied. There is a
further reason for their failure to reach a solid doctrine.
The Christian community must be, and ought always to
be, unified by the tie of a doctrinal idea, a confession of
faith ; but the generalities and abstractions of the stale,
not living, waters of rationalism forbid the specificality
of an inherently definite and fully developed body of
Christian doctrine. Their opponents, again, proud of
the name Lord ! Lord ! frankly and openly disdain
carrying out the faith into the fulness of spirit, reality,
and truth.'
In ordinary moods of mind there is a long way from
logic to religion. But almost every page of what Hegel
has called Logic is witness to the belief in their ultimate
identity. It was no new principle of later years for
him. He had written in post-student days to his friend
Schelling : ' Reason and freedom remain our watch-
word, and our point of union the invisible church ^'
His parting token of faith with another youthful com-
rade, the poet Holderlin, had been 'God's kingdom ^'
' Hegel's Brie/e, i. 13. * Holderlin's Leben (Litzmann), p. 183.
XXVI THREE PREFACES OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
But after 1827 this religious appropriation of philosophy
becomes more apparent, and in 1829 Hegel seemed
deliberately to accept the position of a Christian philo-
sopher which Goschel had marked out for him. 'A
philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect,'
he remarks \ 'are abstractions from the true life of
knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy
leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not
illuminate may be assured that the fault lies in them,
not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an
alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.'
This is not the place — in a philological chapter — to
discuss the issues involved in the announcement that
the truth awaits us ready to hand ^ * in all genuine con-
sciousness, in all religions and philosophies.' Yet one
remark may be offered against hasty interpretations of a
'speculative' identity. If there is a double edge to the
proposition that the actual is the reasonable, there is
no less caution necessary in approaching and studying
from both sides the far-reaching import of that equation
to which Joannes Scotus Erigena gave expression ten
centuries ago : ' Non alia est philosophia, i. e. sapientiae
studium, et alia religio. Quid est aliud de philosophia
tractare nisi verae religionis regulas exponere ? '
' Fernt. Schr. ii. 144. ^ Hegel's Briefe, ii. 80.
The following Errata in the Edition of the Logic as given
in the Collected Works {Vol. VI.) are corrected in the trans-
lation. The references in brackets are to the German text.
Page 95, line i. Unb DbieftitJttdt has dropped out after bet iSubjefti;
»itdt [VI. 98, 1. lo from bottom.]
P. 97, 1. 2. The and ed. reads (bie Oebanfen) nt^t in ©oI($CBt,
instead of nid^t afg in ©cld^em {yd cd.). [VI. p. 100, 1. 3 from
bottom.]
P. 169, 1. 13 from bottom. Instead of the reading of the Werke
and of the 3rd ed. read asin ed. II. 8l(fo ifi biefer ©egenftanb nicfltg.
[VI. p. 178, 1. II.]
P. 177, 1. 3 from bottom. S3erjianbe5;@egcnflanbc3 is a mistake for
a3erfianbe3,'@e0enfafce0, as in edd. II and III. [VI. p. 188, 1: a.]
P. 331, 1. 19. h)cittn should be toeitetn. [VI. p. 251, 1. 3 from
bottom.]
P. 316, 1. 15. !Dingli(^tcit is a misprint for 2)in0ftcit, as in Hegel's
own editions. [VI. p. 347, L i.]
P. 35a, 1. 14 from bottom, for feine Sbeatitdt read feiner Sbealitdt.
[VI. p. 385, 1.8.]
THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC
{THE FIRST PART OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA
OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES
IN OUTLINE)
By G. W. F. HEGEL
THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
1.] Philosophy misses an advantage enjoyed by
the other sciences. It cannot like them rest the
existence of its objects on the natural admissions of
consciousness, nor can it assume that its method of
cognition, either for starting or for continuing, is one
already accepted. The objects of philosophy, it is true,
are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In
both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which
God and God only is the Truth. Both in like manner
go on to treat of the finite worlds of Nature and the
human Mind, with their relation to each other and to
their truth in God. Some acquaintance with its objects,
therefore, philosophy may and even must presume,
that and a certain interest in them to boot, were it for
no other reason than this : that in point of time the
mind makes general images of objects, long before it
makes notions of them, and that it is only through these
mental images, and by recourse to them, that the think-
ing mind rises to know and comprehend thinkingly.
But with the rise of this thinking study of things,
it soon becomes evident that thought will be satisfied
with nothing short of showing the necessity of its
4 INTRODUCTION. [i-a.
facts, of demonstrating the existence of its objects,
as well as their nature and qualities. Our original
acquaintance with them is thus discovered to be
inadequate. We can assume nothing, and assert
nothing dogmati :ally ; nor can we accept the assertions
and assumptions of others. And yet we must make a
beginning : and a beginning, as primary and underived,
makes an assumption, or rather is an assumption. It
seems as if it were impossible to make a oeginning
at all.
2.] This thinking study of things may serve, in a
general way, as a description of philosophy. But the
description is too wide. If it be correct to say, that
thought makes the distinction between man and the
lower animals, then everything human is human, for the
sole and simple reason that it is due to the operation
of thought. Philosophy, on the other hand, is a peculiar
mode of thinking — a mode in which thinking becomes
knowledge, and knowledge through notions. However
great therefore may be the identity and essential unity
of the two modes of thought, the philosophic mode gets
to be different from the more general thought which
acts in all that is human, in all that gives humanity its
distinctive character. And this difference connects
itself with the fact that the strictly human and thought-
induced phenomena of consciousness do not originally
appear in the form of a thought, but as a feeling, a
perception, or mental image— all of which aspects must
be distinguished from the form of thought proper.
According to an old preconceived idea, which has
passed into a trivial proposition, it is thought which
marks the man off from the animals. Yet trivial as this
old belief may seem, it must, strangely enough, be
recalled to mind in presence of certain preconceived
ideas of the present day. These ideas would put
2.] PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 5
feeling and thought so far apart as to make them
opposites, and would represent them as so antagonistic,
that feeling, particularly religious feeling, is supposed
to be contaminated^, perverted, and even annihilated by
thought. They also emphatically hold that religion and
piety grow out of, and rest upon something else, and
not on thought. But those who make this separation
forget meanwhile that only man has the capacity for
religion, and that animals no more have religion than
they have law and morality.
Those who insist on this separation of religion from
thinking usually have before their minds the sort of
thought that may be styled after-thought. They mean
'reflective' thinking, which has to deal with thoughts
as thoughts, and brings them into consciousness.
Slackness to perceive and keep in view this distinction
which philosophy definitely draws in respect of think-
ing is the source of the crudest objections and re-
proaches against philosophy. Man,— and that just
because it is his nature to think, — is the oply being
that possesses law, religion, and morality. In these
spheres of human life, therefore, hinking, under the
guise of feeling, faith, or generalised image, has not
been inactive : its action and its productions are there
present and therein contained. But it is one thing to
have such feelings and generalised images that have
been moulded and permeated by thought, and another
thing to have thoughts about them. The thoughts, to
which after-thought upon those modes of consciousness
gives rise, are what is comprised under reflection,
general reasoning, and the like, as well as under philo-
sophy itself.
The neglect of this distinction between thought in
general and the reflective thought of philosophy has
also led to another and more frequent misunderstand-
6 INTRODUCTION. [a-3.
ing. Reflection of this kind has been often maintained
to be the condition, or even the only way, of attaining
a consciousness and certitude of the Eternal and True.
The (now somewhat antiquated) metaphysical proofs of
God's existence, for example, have been treated, as if a
knowledge of them and a conviction of their truth were
the only and essential means of producing a belief and
conviction that there is a God. Such a doctrine would
find its parallel, if we said that eating was impossible
before we had acquired a knowledge of the chemical,
botanical, and zoological characters of our food ; and
that we must delay digestion till we had finished the
study of anatomy and physiology. Were it so, these
sciences in their field, like philosophy in its, would gain
greatly in point of utility; in fact, their utility would
rise to the height of absolute and universal indispen-
sableness. Or rather, instead of being indispensable,
they would not exist at all.
3.] The Content, of whatever kind it be, with which
our consciousness is taken up, is what constitutes the
qualitative character of our feelings, perceptions, fancies,
and ideas ; of our aims and duties ; and of our thoughts
and notions. From this point of view, feeling, per-
ception, &c. are the forms assumed by these contents.
The contents remain one and the same, whether
they are felt, seen, represented, or willed, and whether
they are merely felt, or felt with an admixture of
thoughts, or merely and simply thought. In any one
of these forms, or in the admixture of several, the con-
tents confront consciousness, or are its object. But
when they are thus objects of consciousness, the modes
of the several forms ally themselves with the contents ;
and each form of them appears in consequence to give
rise to a special object. Thus what is the same at
bottom, may look like a different sort of fact.
3.] FORM AND CONTENT OF THOUGHT. 7
The several modes of feeling, perception, desire, and
will, so far as we are aware of them, are in general
called ideas (mental representations) : and it may be
roughly said, that philosophy puts thoughts, categories,
or, in more precise language, adequate notions, in the
place of the generalised images we ordinarily call ideas.
Mental impressions such as these may be regarded as
the metaphors of thoughts and notions. But to have
these figurate conceptions does not imply that we appre-
ciate their intellectual significance, the thoughts and
rational notions to which they correspond. Conversely,
it is one thing to have thoughts and intelligent notions,
and another to know what impressions, perceptions,
and feelings correspond to them.
This difference will to some extent explain what
people call the unintelligibility of philosophy. Their
difficulty lies partly in an incapacity — which in itself is
nothing but want of habit— for abstract thinking ; t. e. in
an inability to get hold of pure thoughts and move about
in them. In our ordinary state of mind, the thoughts
are clothed upon and made one with the sensuDus
or spiritual material of the hour; and in reflection,
meditation, and general reasoning, we introduce a blend
of thoughts into feelings, percepts, and mental images.
(Thus, in propositions where the subject-matter is due
to the senses — e. g. ' This leaf is green ' — we have such
categories introduced, as being and individuality.) But
it is a very different thing to make the thoughts pure
and simple our object.
But their complaint that philosophy is unintelligible
is as much due to another reason ; and that is an im-
patient wish to have before them as a mental picture
that which is in the mind as a thought or notion. When
people are asked to apprehend some notion, they often
complain that they do not know what they have to think.
8 INTRODUCTION.
1 3-5.
But the fact is that in a notion there is nothing further
to be thought than the notion itself. What the phrase
reveals, is a hankering after an image with which we
are already familiar. The mind, denied the use of its
familiar ideas, feels the ground where it once stood firm
and at home taken away from beneath it, and, when
transported into the region of pure thought, cannot tell
where in the world it is.
One consequence of this weakness is that authors,
preachers, and orators are found most intelligible, when
they speak of things which their readers or hearers
already know by rote, — things which the latter are
conversant with, and which require no explanation.
4.] The philosopher then has to reckon with popular
modes of thought, and with the objects of religion. In
dealing with the ordinary modes of mind, he will first of
all, as we saw, have to prove and almost to awaken the
need for his peculiar method of knowledge. In dealing
with the objects of religion, and with truth as a whole,
he will have to show that philosophy is capable of ap-
prehending them from its own resources ; and should
a difference from religious conceptions come to light,
he will have to justify the points in which it diverges.
5.] To give the reader a preliminary explanation of
the distinction thus made, and to let him see at the
same moment that the real import of our consciousness
is retained, and even for the first time put in its proper
light, when translated into the form of thought and the
notion of reason, it may be well to recall another of
these old unreasoned beliefs. And that is the con-
viction that to get at the truth of any object or event,
even of feelings, perceptions, opinions, and mental ideas,
we must think it over. Now in any case to think things
over is at least to transform feelings, ordinary ideas, &c.
into thoughts.
5-6.J THE CRITICS OF PHILOSOPHY. 9
Nature has given every one a faculty of thought.
But thought is all that philosophy claims as the form
proper to her business : and thus the inadequate view
which ignores the distinction stated in § 3, leads to
a new delusion, the -reverse of the complaint previously
mentioned about the unintelligibility of philosophy.
In other words, this science must often submit to the
slight of hearing even people who have never taken any
trouble with it talking as if they thoroughly under-
stood all about it. With no preparation beyond an
ordinary education they do not hesitate, especially
under the influence of religious sentiment, to philoso-
phise and to criticise philosophy. Everybody allows that
to know any other science you must have first studied
it, and that you can only claim to express a judg-
ment upon it in virtue of such knowledge. Everybody
allows that to make a shoe you must have learned and
practised the craft of the shoemaker, though every man
has a model in his own foot, and possesses in his hands
the natural endowments for the operations required. For
philosophy alone, it seems to be imagined, such study,
care, and application are not in the least requisite.
This comfortable view of what is required for a
philosopher has recently received corroboration through
the theory of immediate or intuitive knowledge.
6.] So much for the form of philosophical knowledge.
It is no less desirable, on the other hand, that philo-
sophy should understand that its content is no other
than actuality, that core of truth which, originally pro-
duced and producing itself within the precincts of the
mental life, has become the world, the inward and
outward world, of consciousness. At first we become
aware of these contents in what we call Experience.
But even Experience, as it surveys the wide range of
inward and outward existence, has sense enough to
lO INTRODUCTION. [6.
distinguish the mere appearance, which is transient and
meaningless, from what in itself really deserves the
name of actuality. As it is only in form that philo-
sophy is distinguished from other modes of attaining an
acquaintance with this same sum of being, it must neces-
sarily be in harmony with actuality and experience. In
fact, this harmony may be viewed as at least an extrinsic
means of testing the truth of a philosophy. Similarly it
may be held the highest and final aim of philosophic
science to bring about, through the ascertainment of this
harmony, a reconciliation of the self-conscious reason
with the reason which is in the world, — in other words,
with actuality.
In the preface to my Philosophy of Law, p. xix, are
found the propositions :
What is reasonable is actual ;
and, What is actual is reasonable.
These simple statements have given rise to expressions
of surprise and hostility, even in quarters where it
would be reckoned an insult to presume absence of
philosophy, and still more of religion. Religion at
least need not be brought in evidence ; its doctrines of
the divine government of the world affirm these propo-
sitions too decidedly. For their philosophic sense, we
must pre-suppose intelligence enough to know, not only
that God is actual, that He is the supreme actuality,
that He alone is truly actual ; but also, as regards the
logical bearings of the question, that existence is in
part mere appearance, and only in part actuality. In
common life, any freak of fancy, any error, evil and
everything of the nature of evil, as well as every
degenerate and transitory existence whatever, gets
in a casual way the name of actuality. But even
our ordinary feelings are enough to forbid a casual
(fortuitous) existence getting the emphatic name of an
6.] PHILOSOPHY DEALS WITH ACTUALITY. Ii
actual ; for by fortuitous we mean an existence which
has no greater value than that of something possible,
which may as well not be as be. As for the term
Actuality, these critics would have done well to consider
the sense in which I employ it. In a detailed Logic
I had treated amongst other things of actuality, and
accurately distinguished it not only from the fortuitous,
which, after all, has existence, but even from the cog-
nate categories of existence and the other modifications
of being.
The actuality of the rational stands opposed by the
popular fancy that Ideas and ideals are nothing but
chimeras, and philosophy a mere system of such
phantasms. It is also opposed by the very different
fancy that Ideas and ideals are something far too
excellent to have actuality, or something too im-
potent to procure it for themselves. This divorce
between idea and reality is especially dear to the
analytic understanding which looks upon its own
abstractions, dreams though they are, as something true
and real, and prides itself on the imperative ' ought,'
which it takes especial pleasure in prescribing even on
the field of politics. As if the world had waited on
it to learn how it ought to be, and was not 1 For,
if it were as it ought to be, what would come of the
precocious wisdom of that ' ought ' ? When understand-
ing turns this ' ought ' against trivial external and tran-
sitory objects, against social regulations or conditions,
which very likely possess a great relative importance
for a certain time and special circles, it may often be
right. In such a case the intelligent observer may meet
much that fails to satisfy the general requirements of
right ; for who is not acute enough to see a great deal
in his own surroundings which is really far from being
as it ought to be ? But such acuteness is mistaken in
12 INTRODUCTION. [6-7.
the conceit that, when it examines these objects and
pronounces what they ought to be, it is dealing with
questions of philosophic science. The object of philo-
sophy is the Idea: and the Idea is not so impotent
as merely to have a right or an obligation to exist
without actually existing. The object of philosophy is
an actuality of which those objects, social regulations
and conditions, are only the superficial outside.
7.] Thus reflection — thinking things over— in a
general way involves the principle (which also means
the beginning) of philosophy. And when the reflective
spirit arose again in its independence in modern times,
after the epoch of the Lutheran Reformation, it did not,
as in its beginnings among the Greeks, stand merely
aloof, in a world of its own, but at once turned its
energies also upon the apparently illimitable material
of the phenomenal world. In this way the name philo-
sophy came to be applied to all those branches of know-
ledge, which are engaged in ascertaining the standard
and Universal in the ocean of empirical individualities,
as well as in ascertaining the Necessary element, or
Laws, to be found in the apparent disorder of the
endless masses of the fortuitous. It thus appears that
modern philosophy derives its materials from our own
personal observations and perceptions of the external
and internal world, from nature as well as from the
mind and heart of man, when both stand in the im-
mediate presence of the observer.
This principle of Experience carries with it the un-
speakably important condition that, in order to accept
and believe any fact, we must be in contact with it ; or,
in more exact terms, that we must find the fact united
and combined with the certainty of our own selves.
We must be in touch with our subject-matter, whether
it be by means of our external senses, or, else, by our
7.1 WHAT THE ENGLISH CALL PHILOSOPHY. 13
profounder mind and our intimate self-consciousness.
—This principle is the same as that which has in the
present day been termed faith, immediate knowledge,
the revelation in the outward world, and, above all, in
our own heart.
Those sciences, which thus got the name of philo-
sophy, we call empirical sciences, for the reason that
they take their departure from experience. Still the
essential results which they aim at and provide, are
laws, general propositions, a theory — the thoughts of
what is found existing. On this ground the Newtonian
physics was called Natural Philosophy. Hugo Grotius,
again, by putting together and comparing the behaviour
of states towards each other as recorded in history,
succeeded, with the help of the ordinary methods of
general reasoning, in laying down certain general prin-
ciples, and establishing a theory which may be termed
the Philosophy of International Law. In England this
is still the usual signification of the term philosophy.
Newton continues to be celebrated as the greatest of
philosophers : and the name goes down as far as the
price-lists of instrument-makers. All instruments, such
as the thermometer and barometer, which do not come
under the special head of magnetic or electric apparatus,
are styled philosophical instruments \ Surely thought,
and not a mere combination of wood, iron, &c. ought to
' The journal, to j, edited by Thomson is called ' Annals of Philo-
sophy; or, Magazine of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Mechanics, Natural
History, Agriculture, and Arts.' We can easily guess from the title
what sort of subjects are here to be understood under the term
' philosophy.' Among the advertisements of books just published,
I lately found the following notice in an English newspaper: 'The
Art of Preserving the Hair, on Philosophical Principles, neatly
printed in post 8vo, price seven shillings.' By philosophical prin-
ciples for the pt eser\'ation of the hair are probably meant chemical
or physiological principles.
14 INTRODUCTION. [7-8.
be called the instrument of philosophy ! The recent
science of Political Economy in particular, which in
Germany is known as Rational Economy of the State,
or intelligent national economy, has in England especi-
ally appropriated the name of philosophy \
8.] In its own field this empirical knowledge may at
first give satisfaction ; but in two ways it is seen to
come short. In the first place there is another circle
of objects which it does not embrace. These are Free-
dom, Spirit, and God. They belong to a different
sphere, not because it can be said that they have
nothing to do with experience ; for though they are
certainly not experiences of the senses, it is quite an
identical proposition to say that whatever is in con-
sciousness is experienced. The real ground for
assigning them to another field of cognition is that in
their scope and content these objects evidently show
themselves as infinite.
There is an old phrase often wrongly attributed to
^ In connexion with the general principles of Political Economy,
the term ' philosophical ' is frequently heard from the lips of English
statesmen, even in their public speeches. In the House of Commons,
on the 2nd Feb. 1825, Brougham, speaking on the address in reply
to the speech from the throne, talked of ' the statesman-like and
philosophical principles of Free-trade, — for philosophical they un-
doubtedly are — upon the acceptance of which his majesty this day
congratulated the House.' Nor is this language confined to members
of the Opposition. At the shipowners' yearly dinner in the same
month, under the chairmanship of the Premier Lord Liverpool,
supported by Canning the Secretary of State, and Sir C. Long the
Paymaster- General of the Army, Canning in reply to the toast which
had been proposed said : 'A period has just begun, in which ministers
have it in their power to apply to the administration of this country
the sound maxims of a profound philosophy.' Differences there may
be between English and German philosophy : still, considering that
elsewhere the name of philosophy is used only as a nickname and
insult, or as something odious, it is a matter of rejoicing to see it
still honoured in the mouth of the English Government.
8-9.] SHORTCOMINGS OF EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 15
Aristotle, and supposed to express the general tenor of
his philosophy. ' Nihil est in intellectu quod nonfuerit in
sensu ' : there is nothing in thought which has not been
in sense and experience. If speculative philosophy
refused to admit this maxim, it can only have done so
from a misunderstanding. It will, however, on the
converse side no less assert : ' Nihil est in sensu quod
nonfuerit in intellectu.^ And this may be taken in two
senses. In the general sense it means that voSs or
spirit (the more profound ideaof voC? in modern thought)
is the cause of the world. In its special meaning (see
§ 2) it asserts that the sentiment of right, morals,
and religion is a sentiment (and in that way an expe-
rience) of such scope and such character that it can
spring from and rest upon thought alone.
9.] But in the second place in point of form the
subjective reason desires a further satisfaction than
empirical knowledge gives ; and this form, is, in the
widest sense of the term, Necessity (§ i). The method
of empirical science exhibits two defects. The first is
that the Universal or general principle contained in it,
the genus, or kind, &c., is, on its own account, indeter-
minate and vague, and therefore not on its own account
connected with the Particulars or the details. Either
is external and accidental to the other ; and it is the
same with the particular facts which are brought into
union : each is external and accidental to the others.
The second defect is that the beginnings are in every
case data and postulates, neither accounted for nor
deduced. In both these points the form of necessity
fails to get its due. Hence reflection, whenever it sets
itself to remedy these defects, becomes speculative
thinking, the thinking proper to philosophy. As a
species of reflection, therefore, which, though it has a
certain community of nature with the reflection already
1 6 INTRODUCTION. [9-10.
mentioned, is nevertheless different from it, philosophic
thought thus possesses, in addition to the common
forms, some forms of its own, of which the Notion may
be taken as the type.
The relation of speculative science to the other
sciences may be stated in the following terms. It does
not in the least neglect the empirical facts contained in
the several sciences, but recognises and adopts them :
it appreciates and applies towards its own structure the
universal element in these sciences, their laws and
classifications : but besides all this, into the categories
of science it introduces, and gives currency to, other
categories. The difference, looked at in this way, is
only a change of categories. Speculative Logic con-
tains all previous Logic and Metaphysics : it preserves
the same forms of thought, the same laws and objects,
— while at the same time remodelling and expanding
them with wider categories.
From notion in the speculative sense we should dis-
tinguish what is ordinarily called a notion. The phrase,
that no notion can ever comprehend the Infinite, a
phrase which has been repeated over and over again
till it has grown axiomatic, is based upon this narrow
estimate of what is meant by notions.
10.] This thought, which is proposed as the instru-
ment of philosophic knowledge, itself calls for further
explanation. We must understand in what way it pos-
sesses necessity or cogency : and when it claims to be
equal to the task of apprehending the absolute objects
(God, Spirit, Freedom), that claim must be substan-
tiated. Such an explanation, however, is itself a lesson
in philosophy, and properly falls within the scope of
the science itself A preliminary attempt to make
matters plain would only be unphilosophical, and con-
sist of a tissue of assumptions, assertions, and inferen-
lo.] CRITICISM BEFORE PHILOSOPHY ? 1 7
tial pros and cons, i. e. of dogmatism without cogenc}',
as against which there would be an equal right of
counter-dogmatism.
A main line of argument in the Critical Philosophy
bids us pause before proceeding to inquire into God or
into the true being of things, and tells us first of all to
examine the faculty of cognition and see whether it is
equal to such an effort. We ought, says Kant, to
become acquainted with the instrument, before we
undertake the work for which it is to be employed ; for
if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be
spent in vain. The plausibility of this suggestion has
won for it general assent and admiration ; the result of
which has been to withdraw cognition from an interest
in its objects and absorption in the study of them, and
to direct it back upon itself; and so turn it to a ques-
tion of form. Unless we wish to be deceived bywords,
it is easy to see what this amounts to. In the case of
other instruments, we can try and criticise them jn
other ways than by setting about the special work for
which they are destined. But the examination of
knowledge can only be carried out by an act of know-
ledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the
same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before
we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of Scholas-
ticus, not to venture into the water until he had learned
to swim.
Reinhold saw the confusion with which this style of
commencement is chargeable, and tried to get out of
the difficulty by starting with a hypothetical and proble-
matical stage of philosophising. In this way he sup-
posed that it would be possible, nobody can tell how, to
get along, until we found ourselves, further on, arrived
at the primary truth of truths. H is method, when closely
looked into, will be seen to be identical with a very
VOL. II. c
l8 INTRODUCTION. [lo-ii.
common practice. It starts from a substratum of ex-
periential fact, or from a provisional assumption which
has been brought into a definition ; and then proceeds
to analyse this starting-point. We can detect in Rein-
hold's argument a perception of the truth, that the
usual course which proceeds by assumptions and antici-
pations is no better than a hypothetical and proble-
matical mode of procedure. But his perceiving this
does not alter the character of this method ; it only
makes clear its imperfections.
11.] The special conditions which call for the exist-
ence of philosophy may be thus described. The mind
or spirit, when it is sentient or perceptive, finds its
object in something sensuous ; when it imagines, in a
picture or image ; when it wills, in an aim or end. But
in contrast to, or it may be only in distinction from,
these forms of its existence and of its objects, the mind
has also to gratify the cravings of its highest and most
inward life. That innermost self is thought. Thus the
mind renders thought its object. In the best meaning
of the phrase, it comes to itself; for thought is its prin-
ciple, and its very unadulterated self But while thus
occupied, thought entangles itself in contradictions,
i. e. loses itself in the hard-and-fast non-identity of its
thoughts, and so, instead of reaching itself, is caught
and held in its counterpart. This result, to which
honest but narrow thinking leads the mere under-
standing, is resisted by the loftier craving of which we
have spoken. That craving expresses the persever-
ance of thought, which continues true to itself, even
in this conscious loss of its native rest and independ-
ence, ' that it may overcome ' and work out in itself the
solution of its own contradictions.
To see that thought in its very nature is dialectical,
and that, as understanding, it must fall into contra-
II-I2.] THE PHILOSOPHIC STIMULUS. ig
diction, — the negative of itself, will form one of the
main lessons of logic. When thought grows hopeless
of ever achieving, by its own means, the solution of the
contradiction which it has by its own action brought
upon itself, it turns back to those solutions of the
question with which the mind had learned to pacify
itself in some of its other modes and forms. Unfor-
tunately, however, the retreat of thought has led it, as
Plato noticed even in his time, to a very uncalled-for
hatred of reason (misology) ; and it then takes up against
its own endeavours that hostile attitude of which an
example is seen in the doctrine that 'immediate*
knowledge, as it is called, is the exclusive form in
which we become cognisant of truth.
12.] The rise of philosophy is due to these cravings
of thought. Its point of departure is Experience; in-
cluding under that name both our immediate conscious-
ness and the inductions from it. Awakened, as it were,
by this stimulus, thought is vitally characterised by
raising itself above the natural state of mind, above the
senses and inferences from the senses into its own
unadulterated element, and by assuming, accordingly,
at first a stand-aloof and negative attitude towards the
point from which it started. Through this state of
antagonism to the phenomena of sense its first satis-
faction is found in itself, in the Idea of the universal
essence of these phenomena : an Idea (the Absolute,
or God) which may be more or less abstract. Mean-
while, on the other hand, the sciences, based on experi-
ence, exert upon the mind a stimulus to overcome the
form in which their varied contents are presented, and
to elevate these contents to the rank of necessary truth.
For the facts of science have the aspect of a vast con-
glomerate, one thing coming side by side with another,
as if they were merely given and presented, — as in
C 2
20 INTRODUCTION. [12.
short devoid of all essential or necessary connexion.
In consequence of this stimulus thought is dragged out
of its unrealised universality and its fancied or merely
possible satisfaction, and impelled onwards to a develop-
ment from itself. On one hand this development only
means that thought incorporates the contents of science,
in all their speciality of detail as submitted. On the
other it makes these contents imitate the action of the
original creative thought, and present the aspect of a
free evolution determined by the logic of the fact alone.
On the relation between ' immediacy ' and ' mediation '
in consciousness we shall speak later, expressly and
with more detail. Here it may be sufficient to premise
that, though the two ' moments ' or factors present them-
selves as distinct, still neither of them can be absent,
nor can one exist apart from the other. Thus the
knowledge of God, as of every supersensible reality,
is in its true character an exaltation aboye sensations
or perceptions : it consequently involves a negative
attitude to the initial data of sense, and to that extent
implies mediation. For to mediate is to take some-
thing as a beginning and to go onward to a second
thing; so that the existence of this second thing de-
pends on our having reached it from something else
contradistinguished from it. In spite of this, the know-
ledge of God is no mere sequel, dependent on the
empirical phase of consciousness : in fact, its indepen-
dence is essentially secured through this negation and
exaltation. — No doubt, if we attach an unfair promin-
ence to the fact of mediation, and represent it as imply-
ing a state of conditionedness, it may be said — not that
the remark would mean much — that philosophy is the
child of experience, and owes its rise to a posteriori
fact. (As a matter of fact, thinking is always the nega-
tion of what we have immediately before us.) With
12.] EXPERIENCE INDISPENSABLE. 21
as much truth however we may be said to owe eating
to the means of nourishment, so long as we can have
no eating without them. If we take this view, eating
is certainly represented as ungrateful : it devours that
to which it owes itself. Thinking, upon this view of
its action, is equally ungrateful.
But there is also an a priori aspect of thought, where
by a mediation, not made by anything external but by
a reflection into self, we have that immediacy which is
universality, the self-complacency of thought which is
so much at home with itself that it feels an innate in-
difference to descend to particulars, and in that way
to the development of its own nature. It is thus also
with religion, which, whether it be rude or elaborate,
whether it be invested with scientific precision of detail
or confined to the simple faith of the heart, possesses,
throughout, the same intensive nature of contentment
and felicity. But if thought never gets further than the
universality of the Ideas, as was perforce the case in the
first philosophies (when the Eleatics never got beyond
Being, or Heraclitus beyond Becoming), it is justly
open to the charge of formalism. Even in a more ad-
vanced phase of philosophy, we may often find a doc-
trine which has mastered merely certain abstract pro-
positions or formulae, such as, ' In the absolute all is
one,' 'Subject and object are identical,'— and only re-
peating the same thing when it comes to particulars.
Bearing in mind this first period of thought, the period
of mere generality, we may safely say that experience
is the real author o^ growth and advance in philosophy.
For, firstly, the empirical sciences do not stop short
at the mere observation of the individual features of
a phenomenon. By the aid of thought, they are able
to meet philosophy with materials prepared for" it, in
the shape of general uniformities, i. e. laws, and classi-
22 INTRODUCTION. [12-13.
fications of the phenomena. When this is done, the
particular facts which they contain are ready to be
received into philosophy. This, secondly, implies a
certain compulsion on thought itself to proceed to these
concrete specific truths. The reception into philosophy
of these scientific materials, now that thought has re-
moved their immediacy and made them cease to be
mere data, forms at the same time a development of
thought out of itself. Philosophy, then, owes its de-
velopment to the empirical sciences. In return it gives
their contents what is so vital to them, the freedom of
thought, — gives them, in short, an a priori character.
These contents are now warranted necessary, and no
longer depend on the evidence of facts merely, that
they were so found and so experienced. The fact as
experienced thus becomes an illustration and a copy
of the original and completely self-supporting activity
of thought.
13.] Stated in exact terms, such is the origin and
development of philosophy. But the History of Philo-
sophy gives us the same process from an historical and
external point of view. The stages in the evolution
of the Idea there seem to follow each other by accident,
and to present merely a number of different and un-
connected principles, which the several systems of
philosophy carry out in their own way. But it is not
so. For these thousands of years the same Architect
has directed the work : and that Architect is the one
living Mind whose nature is to think, to bring to self-
consciousness what it is, and, with its being thus set
as object before it, to be at the same time raised above
it, and so to reach a higher stage of its own being.
The different systems which the history of philosophy
presents are therefore not irreconcilable with unity.
We may either say, that it is one philosophy at different
13-14.] RELATION OF SUCCESSIVE SYSTEMS. 23
degrees of maturity : or that the particular principle,
which is the groundwork of each system, is but a branch
of one and the same universe of thought. In philosophy
the latest birth of time is the result of all the systems
that have preceded it, and must include their principles ;
and so, if, on other grounds, it deserve the title of philo-
sophy, will be the fullest, most comprehensive, and most
adequate system of all.
The spectacle of so many and so various systems of
philosophy suggests the necessity of defining more
exactly the relation of Universal to Particular. When
the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated
with the particular, as if it were on the same level, it
sinks into a particular itself. Even common sense in
every-day matters is above the absurdity of setting a
universal beside the particulars. Would any one, who
wished for fruit, reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on
the ground that they were cherries, pears, or grapes,
and not fruit ? But when philosophy is in question,
the excuse of many is that philosophies are so different,'
and none of them is the philosophy, — that each is only
a philosophy. Such a plea is assumed to justify any
amount of contempt for philosophy. And yet cherries
too are fruit. Often, too, a system, of which the prin-
ciple is the universal, is put on a level with another
of which the principle is a particular, and with theories
which deny the existence of philosophy altogether.
Such systems are said to be only different views of
philosophy. With equal justice, light and darkness
might be styled different kinds of light.
14.] The same evolution of thought which is exhibited
in the history of philosophy is presented in the System
of Philosophy itself. Here, instead of surveying the
process, as we do in history, from the outside, we see
the movement of thought clearly defined in its native
24 INTRODUCTION. [14-15.
medium. The thought, which is genuine and self-sup-
porting, must be intrinsically concrete ; it must be an
Idea; and when it is viewed in the whole of its univer-
sality, it is the Idea, or the Absolute. The science of
this Idea must form a system. For the truth is con-
crete ; that is, whilst it gives a bond and principle of
unity, it also possesses an internal source of develop-
ment. Truth, then, is only possible as a universe or
totality of thought ; and the freedom of the whole, as
well as the necessity of the several sub-divisions, which
it implies, are only possible when these are discrimi-
nated and defined.
Unless it is a system, a philosophy is not a scientific
production. Unsystematic philosophising can only be
expected to give expression to personal peculiarities
of mind, and has no principle for the regulation of its
contents. Apart from their interdependence and or-
ganic union, the truths of philosophy are valueless, and
must then be treated as baseless hypotheses, or personal
convictions. Yet many philosophical treatises confine
themselves tc ^uch an exposition of the opinions and
sentiments of the author.
The term system is often misunderstood. It does
not denote a philosophy, the principle of which is
narrow and to be distinguished from others. On the
contrary, a genuine philosophy makes it a principle to
include every particular principle.
15.] Each of the parts of philosophy is a philoso-
phical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself.
In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea
is found in a particular specificality or medium. The
single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through
the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives
rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in
this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea ap-
I5-I6.] AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY. 25
pears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the
whole Idea is constituted by the system of these pecu-
liar phases, and each is a necessary member of the
organisation.
16.] In the form of an Encyclopaedia, the science
has no room for a detailed exposition of particulars,
and must be limited to setting forth the commencement
of the special sciences and the notions of cardinal im-
portance in them.
How much of the particular parts is requisite to con-
stitute a particular branch of knowledge is so far inde-
terminate, that the part, if it is to be something true,
must be not an isolated member merely, but itself an
organic whole. The entire field of philosophy therefore
really forms a single science ; but it may also be viewed
as a total, composed of several particular sciences.
The encyclopaedia of philosophy must not be con-
founded with ordinary encyclopaedias. An ordinary
encyclopaedia does not pretend to be more than an
aggregation of sciences, regulated by no principle, and
merely as experience offers them. Sometimes it even
includes what merely bear the name of sciences, while
they are nothing more than a collection of bits of
information. In an aggregate like this, the several
branches of knowledge owe their place in the ency-
clopaedia to extrinsic reasons, and their unity is there-
fore artificial : they are arranged, but we cannot say
they form a system. For the same reason, especially
as the materials to be combined also depend upon no
one rule or principle, the arrangement is at best an
experiment, and will always exhibit inequalities.
An encyclopaedia of philosophy excludes three kinds
of partial science. I. It excludes mere aggregates of
bits of information. Philology in its prima facie aspect
belongs to this class. II. It rejects the quasi-sciences,
INTRODUCTION.
which are founded on an act of arbitrary will alone,
such as Heraldry. Sciences of this class are positive
from beginning to end. III. In another class of
sciences, also styled positive, but which have a rational
basis and a rational beginning, philosophy claims that
constituent as its own. The positive features remain
the property of the sciences themselves.
The positive element in the last class oi sciences is
of different sorts. (I) Their commencement, though
rational at bottom, yields to the influence of fortuitous-
ness, when they have to bring their universal truth into
contact with actual facts and the single phenomena of
experience. In this region of chance and change, the
adequate notion of science must yield its place to
reasons or grounds of explanation. Thus, e.g. in the
science of jurisprudence, or in the system of direct
and indirect taxation, it is necessary to have certain
points precisely and definitively settled which lie be-
yond the competence of the absolute lines laid down
by the pure notion. A certain latitude of settlement
accordingly is left : and each point may be determined
in one way on one principle, in another way on another,
and admits of no definitive certainty. Similarly the
Idea of Nature, when parcelled out in detail, is dissi-
pated into contingencies. Natural history, geography,
and medicine stumble upon descriptions of existence,
upon kinds and distinctions, which are not determined by
reason, but by sport and adventitious incidents. Even
history comes under the same category. The Idea is
its essence and inner nature ; but, as it appears, every-
thing is under contingency and in the field of voluntary
action. (II) These sciences are positive also in failing
to recognise the finite nature of what they predicate,
and to point out how these categories and their whole
sphere pass into a higher. They assume their state-
I6-I7.] POSITIVE ELEMENTS IN THE SCIENCES. 27
merits to possess an authority beyond appeal. Here
the fault lies in the finitude of the form, as in the pre-
vious instance it lay in th^ matter. (Ill) In close
sequel to this, sciences are positive in consequence of
the inadequate grounds on which their conclusions
rest : based as these are on detached and casual infer-
ence, upon feeling, faith, and authority, and, generally
speaking, upon the deliverances of inward and outward
perception. Under this head we must also class the
philosophy which proposes to build upon 'anthropo-
logy,' facts of consciousness, inward sense, or outward
experience. It may happen, however, that empirical is
an epithet applicable only to the form of scientific ex-
position ; whilst intuitive sagacity has arranged what
are mere phenomena, according to the essential se-
quence of the notion. In such a case the contrasts
between the varied and numerous phenomena brought
together serve to eliminate the external and accidental
circumstances of their conditions, and the universal
thus comes clearly into view. Guided by such an in-
tuition, experimental physics will present the rational
science of Nature,— as history will present the science
of human affairs and actions — in an external picture,
which mirrors the philosophic notion.
17.] It may seem as if philosophy, in order to start
on its course, had, like the rest of the sciences, to begin
with a subjective presupposition. The sciences postu-
late their respective objects, such as space, number, or
whatever it be ; and it might be supposed that philo-
sophy had also to postulate the existence of thought.
But the two cases are not exactly parallel. It is by
the free act of thought that it occupies a point of view,
in which it is for its own self, and thus gives itself an
object of its own production. Nor is this all. The
very point of view, which originally is taken on its
28 INTRODUCTION. [17-18.
own evidence only, must in the course of the science
be converted to a result, — the ultimate result in which
philosophy returns into itself and reaches the point
with which it began. In this manner philosophy ex-
hibits the appearance of a circle which closes with
itself, and has no beginning in the same way as the
other sciences have. To speak of a beginning of philo-
sophy has a meaning only in relation to a person who
proposes to commence the study, and not in relation
to the science as science. The same thing may be thus
expressed. The notion of science— the notion therefore
with which we start — which, for the very reason that it
is initial, impMes a separation between the thought which
is our object, and the subject philosophising which is,
as it were, external to the former, must be grasped and
comprehended by the science itself. This is in short
the one single aim, action, and goal of philosophy — to
arrive at the notion of its notion, and thus secure its
return and its satisfaction.
18.] As the whole science, and only the whole, can
exhibit what the Idea or system of reason is, it is im-
possible to give in a preliminary way a general impres-
sion of a philosophy. Nor can a division of philosophy
into its parts be intelligible, except in connexion with
the system. A preliminary division, like the limited con-
ception from which it comes, can only be an anticipation.
Here however it is premised that the Idea turns out to
be the thought which is completely identical with itself,
and not identical simply in the abstract, but also in its
action of setting itself over against itself, so as to gain
a being of its own, and yet of being in full possession of
itself while it is in this other. Thus philosophy is sub-
divided into three parts :
I. Logic, the science of the Idea in and for
itself.
i8.] PHILOSOPHY, HOW TRIPARTITE. 29
II. The Philosophy of Nature: the science of the
Idea in its otherness.
III. The Philosophy of Mind: the science of the
Idea come back to itself out of that otherness.
As observed in § 15, the differences between the
several philosophical sciences are only aspects or
specialisations of the one Idea or system of reason,
which and which alone is alike exhibited in these
different media. In Nature nothing else would have to
be discerned, except the Idea: but the Idea has here
divested itself of its proper being. In Mind, again, the
Idea has asserted a being of its own, and is on the way
to become absolute. Every such form in which the Idea
is expressed, is at the same time a passing or fleeting
stage : and hence each of these subdivisions has not
only to know its contents as an object which has being
for the time, but also in the same act to expound how
these contents pass into their higher circle. To repre-
sent the relation between them as a division, therefore,
leads to misconception ; for it co-ordinates the several
parts or sciences one beside another, as if they had no
innate development, but were, like so many species,
really and radically distinct.
CHAPTER II.
PRELIMINARY NOTION.
19.] Logic is the science of the pure Idea; pure,
that is, because the Idea is in the abstract medium of
Thought,
This definition, and the others which occur in these
introductory outhnes, are derived from a survey of the
whole system, to which accordingly they are subsequent.
The same remark applies to all prefatory notions what-
ever about philosophy.
Logic might have been defined as the science of
thought, and of its laws and characteristic forms. But
thought, as thought, constitutes only the general medium,
or qualifying circumstance, which renders the Idea dis-
tinctively logical. If we identify the Idea with thought,
thought must not be taken in the sense of a method or
form, but in the sense of the self-developing totality of
its laws and peculiar terms. These laws are the work
of thought itself, and not a fact which it finds and must
submit to.
From different points of view. Logic is either the
hardest or the easiest of the sciences. Logic is hard,
because it has to deal not with perceptions, nor, like
geometry, with abstract representations of the senses,
but with pure abstractions; and because it demands
a force and facility of withdrawing into pure thought, of
keeping firm hold on it, and of moving in such an
ip.] LOGIC DEFINED. 3I
element. Logic is easy, because its facts are nothing
but our own thought and its familiar forms or terms :
and these are the acme of simplicity, the a b c of every-
thing else. They are also what we are best acquainted
with: such as, 'Is' and 'Is not': quality and magni-
tude : being potential and being actual : one, man}-, and
so on. But such an acquaintance only adds to the
difficulties of the study; for while, on the one hand, we
naturally think it is not worth our trouble to occupy
ourselves any longer with things so familiar, on the
other hand, the problem is to become acquainted with
them in a new way, quite opposite to that in which
we know them already.
The utility of Logic is a matter which concerns its
bearings upon the student, and the training it may give
for other purposes. This logical training consists in
the exercise in thinking which the student has to go
through (this science is the thinking of thinking) : and
in the fact that he stores his head with thoughts, in their
native unalloyed character. It is true that Logic, being
the absolute form of truth, and another name for the
very truth itself, is something more than merely useful.
Yet if what is noblest, most liberal and most indepen-
dent is also most useful, Logic has some claim to the
latter character. Its utility must then be estimated at
another rate than exercise in thought for the sake of the
exercise.
(l) The first question is: What is the object of our
science ? The simplest and most intelligible answer to this
question is that Truth is the object of Logic. Truth is a
noble word, and the thing is nobler still. So long as man
is sound at heart and in spirit, the search for truth must
awake all the enthusiasm of his nature. But immediately
there steps in the objection- Are we able to know truth?
There seems to be a disproportion between finite beings
like ourselves and the truth which is absolute : and doubts
32 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [19.
suggest themselves whether there is any bridge between
the finite and the infinite. God is truth : how shall we know
Him ? Such an undertaking appears to stand in contra-
diction with the graces of lowliness and humihty. — Others
who ask whether we can know the truth have a different
purpose. They want to justify themselves in living on
contented with their petty, finite aims. And humility of
this stamp is a poor thing.
But the time is past when people asked : How shall I, a
poor worm of the dust, be able to know the truth ? And in
its stead we find vanity and conceit : people claim, without
any trouble on their part, to breathe the very atmosphere of
truth. The young have been flattered into the belief that
they possess a natural birthright of moral and religious
truth. And in the same strain, those of riper years are
declared to be sunk, petrified, ossified in falsehood. Youth,
say these teachers, sees the bright fight of dawn : but the
older generation Hes in the slough and mire of the common
day. They admit that the special sciences are something
that certainly ought to be cultivated, but merely as the
means to satisfy the needs of outer life. In all this it is not
humility which holds back from the knowledge and study
of the truth, but a conviction that we are already in full
possession of it. And no doubt the young carry with them
the hopes of their elder compeers ; on them rests the ad-
vance of the world and science. But these hopes are set
upon the young, only on the condition that, instead of re-
maining as they are, they undertake the stern labour of
mind.
This modesty in truth-seeking has still another phase :
and that is the genteel indifference to truth, as we see it in
Pilate's conversation with Christ. Pilate asked 'What is
truth ? ' with the air of a man who had settled accounts with
everything long ago, and concluded that nothing particularly
matters : — he meant much the same as Solomon when he
says : ' All is vanity.' When it comes to this, nothing is
left but self-conceit.
The knowledge of the truth meets an additional obstacle
in timidity. A slothful mind finds it natural to say : ' Don't
X9.] LOGIC — THE QUEST OF TRUTH. 33
let it be supposed that we mean to be in earnest with our
philosophy. We shall be glad inter alia to study Logic : but
Logic must be sure to leave us as we were before.' People
have a feeling that, if thinking passes the ordinary range of
our ideas and impressions, it cannot but be on the evil road.
They seem to be trusting themselves to a sea on which they
will be tossed to and fro by the waves of thought, till at
length they again reach the sandbank of this temppral
scene, as utterly poor as when they left it. What comes of
such a view, we see in the world. It is possible within these
limits to gain varied information and many accomplishments,
to become a master of official routine, and to be trained for
special purposes. But it is quite another thing to educate
the spirit for the higher life and to devote our energies to
its service. In our own day it may be hoped a longing for
sorhething better has sprung up among the young, so that
they will not be contented with the mere straw of outer
knowledge.
(2) It is universally agreed that thought is the object of
Logic. But of thought our estimate may be very mean, or
it may be very high. On one hand, people say : ' It is only
a thought.' In their view thought is subjective, arbitrary
and accidental— distinguished from the thing itself, from the
true and the real. On the other hand, a very high estimate
may be formed of thought ; when thought alone is held
adequate to attain the highest of all things, the nature of
God, of which the senses can tell us nothing. God is a
spirit, it is said, and must be worshipped in spirit and in
truth. But the merely felt and sensible, we admit, is not the
spiritual ; its heart of hearts is in thought ; and only spirit
can know spirit. And though it is true that spirit can de-
mean itself as feeling and sense— as is the case in religion,
the mere feeling, as a mode of consciousness, is one thing,
and its contents another. Feeling, as feeling, is the general
form of the sensuous nature which we have in common
with the brutes. This form, viz. feeling, may possibly seize
and appropriate the full organic truth : but the form has no
real congruity with its contents. The form of feeling is the
lowest in which spiritual truth can be expressed. The
VOL. II. D
34 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [19.
world of spiritual existences, God himself, exists in proper
truth, only in thought and as thought. If this be so, there-
fore, thought, far from being a mere thought, is the highest
and, in strict accuracy, the sole mode of apprehending the
eternal and absolute.
As of thought, so also of the science of thought, a very
high or a very low opinion may be formed. Any man, it is
supposed, can think without Logic, as he can digest without
studying physiology. If he have studied Logic, he thinks
afterwards as he did before, perhaps more methodically, but
with little alteration. If this were all, and if Logic did no
more than make men acquainted with the action of thought
as the faculty of comparison and classification, it would
produce nothing which had not been done quite as well
before- And in point of fact Logic hitherto had no other
idea of its duty than this. Yet to be well-informed about
thought, even as a mere activity of the subject-mind, is
honourable and interesting for man. It is in knowing what
he is and what he does, that man is distinguished from the
brutes. But we may take the higher estimate of thought—
as what alone can get really in touch with the supreme and
true. In that case, Logic as the science of thought occupies
a high ground. If the science of Logic then considers
thought in its action and its productions (and thought being
no resultless energy produces thoughts and the particular
tliought required), the theme of Logic is in general the
supersensible world, and to deal with that theme is to dwell
for a while in that world. Mathematics is concerned with
the abstractions of time and space. But these are still the
object of sense, although the sensible is abstrr.ct and
idealised. Thought bids adieu even to this last and abstract
sensible : it asserts its own native independence, renounces
the field of the external and internal sense, and puts away
the interests and inclinations of the individual. When Logic
takes this ground, it is a higher science than we are in the
habit of supposing.
(3) The necessity of understanding Logic in a deeper
sense than as the science of the mere form of thought is
enforced by the interests of religion and politics, of law and
i9-ao.] LOGIC — THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 35
morality. In earlier days men meant no harm by thinking :
they thought away freely and fearlessly. They thought
about God, about Nature, and the State ; and they felt sure
that a knowledge of the truth was obtainable through thought
only, and not through the senses or any random ideas or
opinions. But while they so thought, the principal ordi-
nances of life began to be seriously affected by their con-
clusions. Thought deprived existing institutions of their
force. Constitutions fell a victim to thought : religion was
assailed by thought: firm religious beliefs which had been
always looked upon as revelations were undermined, and in
many minds the old faith was upset. The Greek philo-
sophers, for example, became antagonists of the old religion,
and destroyed its beliefs. Philosophers were accordingly
banished or put to death, as revolutionists who had sub-
verted religion and the state, two things which were in-
separable. Thought, in short, made itself a power in the
real world, and exercised enormous ir luence. The matter
ended by drawing attention to the influence of thought, and
its claims were submitted to a more rigorous scrutiny, by
which the world professed to find that thought arrogated too
much and was unable to perform what it had undertaken.
It had not— people said— learned the real being of God, of
Nature and Mind. It had not learned what the truth was.
What it had done, was to overthrow religion and the state.
It became urgent therefore to justify thought, with reference
to the results it had produced : and it is this examination
into the nature of thought and this justification which in
recent times has constituted one of the main problems of
philosophy.
20.] If we take our prima facie impression of
thought, we find on examination first {a) that, in its
usual subjective acceptation, thought is one out of many
activities or faculties of the mind, co-ordinate with such
others as sensation, perception, imagination, desire,
volition, and the like. The product of this activity, the
form or character peculiar to thought, is the universal,
or, in general, the abstract. Thought, regarded as an
D2
36 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [20.
activity, may be accordingly described as the active uni-
versal, and, since the deed, its product, is the universal
once more, may be called a self-actualising universal.
Thought conceived as a subject (agent) is a thinker, and
the subject existing as a thinker is simply denoted by
the term ' I.'
The propositions giving an account of thought in this
and the following sections are not offered as assertions
or opinions of mine on the matter. But in these pre-
liminary chapters any deduction or proof would be
impossible, and the statements may be taken as matters
in evidence. In other words, every man, when he
thinks and considers his thoughts, will discover by the
experience of his consciousness that they possess the
character of universality as well as the other aspects of
thought to be afterwards enumerated. We assume of
course that his powers of attention and abstraction have
undergone a previous training, enabling him to observe
correctly the evidence of his consciousness and his con-
ceptions.
This introductory exposition has already alluded to
the distinction between Sense, Conception, and Thought.
As the distinction is of capital importance for under-
standing the nature and kinds of knowledge, it will
help to explain matters if we here call attention to it.
For the explanation of Sense, the readiest method cer-
tainly is, to refer to its external source— the organs of
sense. But to name the organ does not help much to
explain what is apprehended by it. The real distinction
between sense and thought lies in this — that the essen-
tial feature of the sensible is individuality, and as the
individual (which, reduced to its simplest terms, is the
atom) is also a member of a group, sensible existence
presents a number of mutually exclusive units, — of
units, to speak in more definite and abstract formulae.
2o.j SENSE, CONCEPTION, THOUGHT. 37
which exist side by side with, and after, one another.
Conception or picture-thinking works with materials
from the same sensuous source. But these materials
when conceived are expressly characterised as in me and
therefore mine : and secondly, as universal, or simple,
because only referred to self. Nor is sense the only
source of materialised conception. There are concep-
tions constituted by materials emanating from self con-
scious thought, such as those of law, morality, religion,
and even of thought itself, and it requires some effort
to detect wherein lies the difference between such con-
ceptions and thoughts having the same import. For it
is a thought of which such conception is the vehicle, and
there is no want of the form of universahty, without
which no content could be in me, or be a conception at
all. Yet here also the peculiarity of conception is,
generally speaking, to be sought in the individualism or
isolation of its contents. True it is that, for example,
law and legal provisions do not exist in a sensible
space, mutually excluding one another. Nor as regards
time, though they appear to some extent in succession,
are their contents themselves conceived as affected by
time, or as transient and changeable in it. The fault in
conception lies deeper. These ideas, though implicitly
possessing the organic unity of mind, stand isolated
here and there on the broad ground of conception, with
its inward and abstract generality. Thus cut adrift,
each is simple, unrelated : Right, Duty, God. Concep-
tion in these circumstances either rests satisfied with
declaring that Right is Right, God is God : or in a
higher grade of culture, it proceeds to enunciate the
attributes; as, for instance, God is the Creator of the
world, omniscient, almighty, &c. In this way several
isolated, simple predicates are strung together : but in
spite of the link supplied by their subject, the predicates
38 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [ao.
never get beyond mere contiguity. In this point Con-
ception coincides with Understanding : the only distinc-
tion being that the latter introduces relations of universal
and particular, of cause and effect, &c., and in this way
supplies a necessary connexion to the isolated ideas of
conception ; which last has left them side by side in its
vague mental spaces, connected only by a bare ' and.'
The difference between conception and thought is of
special importance : because philosophy may be said to
do nothing but transform conceptions into thoughts, —
though it works the further transformation of a mere
thought into a notion.
Sensible existence has been characterised by the
attributes of individuality and mutual exclusion of the
members. It is well to remember that these very attri-
butes of sense are thoughts and general terms. It will
be shown in the Logic that thought (and the universal)
is not a mere opposite of sense : it lets nothing escape
it, but, outflanking its other, is at once that other and
itself. Now language is the work of thought : and
hence all that is expressed in language must be uni-
versal. What I only mean or suppose is mine : it
belongs to me, — this particular individual. But language
expresses nothing but universality; and so I cannot say
what I merely mean. And the unutterable, — feeling or
sensation, — far from being the highest truth, is the most
unimportant and untrue. If I say 'The individual/
'This individual,' 'here,' 'now,' all these are universal
terms. Everything and anything is an individual, a
' this,' and if it be sensible, is here and now. Similarly
when I say, ' I,' I mean my single self to the exclusion
of all others : but what I say, viz. ' I,' is just every 'I,*
which in like manner excludes all others from itself. In
an awkward expression which Kant used, he said that I
accompany all my conceptions, — sensations, too, desires,
30.] SUBJECTIVE THOUGHT AND FORMAL LOGIC. 39
actions, &c. 'I * is in essence and act the universal :
and such partnership is a form, though an external
form, of universality. All other men have it in common
with me to be ' I ' : just as it is common to all my sen-
sations and conceptions to be mine. But * I,' in the
abstract, as such, is the mere act of self-concentration
or self relation, in which we make abstraction from all
conception and feeling, from every state of mind and
every peculiarity of nature, talent, and experience. To
this extent, ' I ' is the existence of a wholly abstract
universality, a principle of abstract freedom. Hence
thought, viewed as a subject, is what is expressed by
the word ' I ' : and since I am at the same time in all my
sensations, conceptions, and states of consciousness,
thought is everywhere present, and is a category that
runs through all these modifications.
Our first impression when we use the term thought is of
a subjective activity — one amongst many similar faculties,
such as memory, imagination and will. Were thought
merely an activity of the subject-mind and treated under
that aspect by logic, logic would resemble the other sciences
in possessing a well-marked object. It might in that case
seem arbitrary to devote a special science to thought, whilst
will, imagination and the rest were denied the same privilege.
The selection of one faculty however might even in this view
be very well grounded on a certain authority acknowledged
to belong to thought, and on its claim to be regarded as the
true nature of man, in which consists his distinction from the
brutes. Nor is it unimportant to study thought even as a
subjective energy. A detailed analysis of its nature would
exhibit rules and laws, a knowledge of which is derived
from experience. A treatment of the laws of thought, from
this point of view, used once to form the body of logical
science. Of that science Aristotle was the founder. He
succeeded in assigning to thought what properly belongs to
it. Our thought is extremely concrete : but in its composite
contents we must distinguish the part that properly belongs
40 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [20.
to thought, or to the abstract mode of its action. A subtle
spiritual bond, consisting in the agency of thought, is what
gives unity to all these contents, and it was this bond, the
form as form, that Aristotle noted and described. Up to the
present day, the logic of Aristotle continues to be the re-
ceived system. It has indeed been spun out to greater
length, especially by the labours of the medieval Schoolmen
who, without making any material additions, merely refined
in details. The moderns also have left their mark upon this
logic, partly by omitting many points of logical doctrine due
to Aristotle and the Schoolmen, and partly by foisting in a
quantity of psychological matter. The purport of the science
is to become acquainted with the procedure of finite thought :
and, if it is adapted to its pre-supposed object, the science is
entitled to be styled correct. The study of this formal logic
undoubtedly has its uses. It sharpens the wits, as the phrase
goes, and teaches us to collect our thoughts and to abstract
— whereas in common consciousness we have to deal with
sensuous conceptions which cross and perplex one another.
Abstraction moreover implies the concentration of the mind
on a single point, and thus induces the habit of attending to
our inward selves. An acquaintance with the forms of
finite thought may be made a means of training the mind
for the empirical sciences, since their method is regulated by
these forms : and in this sense logic has been designated
Instrumental. It is true, we may be still more liberal, and
say : Logic is to be studied not for its utility, but for its own
sake ; the super-excellent is not to be sought for the sake of
mere utility. In one sense this is quite correct : but it may
be replied that the super-excellent is also the most useful :
because it is the all-sustaining principle which, having a
subsistence of its own, may therefore serve as the vehicle of
special ends which it furthers and secures. And thus,
special ends, though they have no right to be set first, are
still fostered by the presence of the highest good. Religion,
for instance, has an absolute value of its own ; yet at the
same time other ends flourish and succeed in its train. As
Christ says : ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all
these things shall be added unto you.' Particular ends can
20-2I.] THE UNIVERSAL AS THOUGHT-PRODUCT. 4I
be attained only in the attainment of what absolutely is and
exists in its own right.
21.] {b) Thought was described as active. We now,
in the second place, consider this action in its bearings
upon objects, or as reflection upon something. In
this case the universal or product of its operation con-
tains the value of the thing— is the essential, inward, and
true.
In § 5 the old belief was quoted that the reality in
object, circumstance, or event, the intrinsic worth or
essence, the thing on which everything depends, is not
a self-evident datum of consciousness, or coincident with
the first appearance and impression of the object ; that,
on the contrary, Reflection is required in order to dis-
cover the real constitution of the object — and that by
such reflection it will be ascertained.
To reflect is a lesson which even the child has to learn.
One of his first lessons is to join adjectives with substantives.
This obliges him to attend and distinguish : he has to re-
member a rule and apply it to the particular case. This rule
is nothing but a universal : and the child must see that the
particular adapts itself to this universal. In life, again, we
have ends to attain. And with regard to these we ponder
which is the best way to secure them. The end here re-
presents the universal or governing principle : and we have
means and instruments whose action we regulate in con-
formity to the end. In the same way reflection is active in
questions of conduct. To reflect here means to recollect the
right, the duty, — the universal which serves as a fixed rule
to guide our behaviour in the given case. Our particular
act must imply and recognise the universal law. — We find
the same thing exhibited in our study of natural phenomena.
For instance, we observe thunder and lightning. The
phenomenon is a familiar one, and we often perceive it.
But man is not content with a bare acquaintance, or with
the fact as it appears to the senses ; he. would like to get
behind the surface, to know what it is, and to comprehend
42 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [ai.
it. This leads him to reflect : he seeks to find out the cause
as something distinct from the mere phenomenon : he tries
to know the inside in its distinction from the outside. Hence
the phenomenon becomes double, it splits into inside and
outside, into force and its manifestation, into cause and
effect. Once more we find the inside or the force identified
with the universal and permanent : not this or that flash of
lightning, this or that plant— but that which continues the
same in them all. The sensible appearance is individual
and evanescent: the permanent in it is discovered by
reflection. Nature shows us a countless number of indi-
vidual forms and phenomena. Into this variety we feel a
need of introducing unity : we compare, consequently, and
try to find the universal of each single case. Individuals are
born and perish : the species abides and recurs in them all :
and its existence is only visible to reflection. Under the
same head fall such laws as those regulating the motion of
the heavenly bodies. To-day we see the stars here, and to-
morrow there : and our mind finds something incongruous
in this chaos — something in which it can put no faith, be-
cause it believes in order and in a simple, constant, and
universal law. Inspired by this belief, the mind has directed
its reflection towards the phenomena, and learnt their laws.
In other words, it has established the movement of the
heavenly bodies to be in accordance with a universal law
from which every change of position may be known and
predicted. — The case is the same with the influences which
make themselves felt in the infinite complexity of human
conduct. There, too, man has the belief in the sway of
a general principle. — From all these examples it may be
gathered how reflection is always seeking for something
fixed and permanent, definite in itself and governing the
particulars. This universal which cannot be apprehended
by the senses counts as the true and essential. Thus, duties
and rights are all-important in the matter of conduct: and
an action is true when it conforms to those universal
formulae.
In thus characterising the universal, we become aware of
its antithesis to something else. This something else is the
at-22.] THE UNIVERSAL AS ESSENCE OF THINGS. 43
merely immediate, outward and individual, as opposed to
the mediate, inward and universal. The universal does not
exist externally to the outward eye as a universal. The kind
as kind cannot be perceived : the laws of the celestial motions
are not written on the sky. The universal is neither seen
nor heard, its existence is only for the mind. Religion leads
us to a universal, which embraces all else within itself, to an
Absolute by which all else is brought into being: and this
Absolute is an object not of the senses but of the mind and
of thought.
22.] (c) By the act of reflection something is altered
in the way in which the fact was originally presented
in sensation, perception, or conception. Thus, as it
appears, an alteration of the object must be interposed
before its true nature can be discovered.
What reflection elicits, is a product of our thought. Solon,
for instance, produced out of his head the laws he gave to
the Athenians. This is half of the truth: but we must not
on that account forget that the universal (in Solon's case,
the laws) is the very reversr of merely subjective, or fail to
note that it is the essential, true, and objective being of
things. To discover the truth in things, mere attention is
not enough ; we must call in the action of our own faculties
to transform what is immediately before us. Now, at first
sight, this seems an inversion of the natural order, calculated
to thwart the very purpose on which knowledge is bent.
But the method is not so irrational as it seems. It has been
the conviction of every age that the only way of reaching the
permanent substratum was to transmute the given pheno-
menon by means of reflection. In modern times a doubt
has for the first time been raised on this point in connexion
with the difference alleged to exist between the products of
our thought and the things in their own nature. This real
nature of things, it is said, is very different from what we
make out of them. The divorce between thought and thing
is mainly the work of the Critical Philosophy, and runs
counter to the conviction of all previous ages, that their
agreement was a matter of course. The antithesis between
44 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [22-23.
them is the hinge on which modern philosophy turns.
Meanwhile the natural belief of men gives the lie to it. In
common life we reflect, without particularly reminding our-
selves that this is the process of arriving at the truth, and we
think without hesitation, and in the firm beUef that thought
coincides with thing. And this belief is of the greatest
importance. It marks the diseased state of the age when we
see it adopt the despairing creed that our knowledge is only
subjective, and that beyond this subjective we cannot go.
Whereas, rightly understood, truth is objective, and ought
so to regulate the conviction of every one, that the conviction
of the individual is stamped as wrong when it does not agree
with this rule. Modern views, on the contrary, put great
value on the mere fact of conviction, and hold that to be
convinced is good for its own sake, whatever be the burden
of our conviction, — there being no standard by which we
can measure its truth.
We said above that, according to the old belief, it was the
characteristic right of the mind to know the truth. If this
be so, it also implies that everything we know both of out-
ward and inward nature, in one word, the objective world,
is in its own self the same as it is in thought, and that to
think is to bring out the truth of our object, be it what it
may. The business of philosophy is only to bring into
explicit consciousness what the world in all ages has
believed about thought. Philosophy therefore advances
nothing new; and our present discussion has led us to a
conclusion which agrees with the natural belief of mankind.
23.] [d) The real nature of the object is brought to
Hght in reflection ; but it is no less true that this exer-
tion of thought is my act. If this be so, the real nature
is a product of my mind, in its character of thinking
subject— generated by me in my simple universality,
self-collected and removed from extraneous influences,
— in one word, in my Freedom.
Think for yourself, is a phrase which people often
use as if it had some special significance. The fact
23-24-] LOGIC IDENTIFIED WITH METAPHYSICS. 45
is, no man can think for another, any more than he can
eat or drink for him : and the expression is a pleonasm.
To think is in fact ipso facto to be free, for thought as
the action of the universal is an abstract relating of
self to self, where, being at home with ourselves, and
as regards our subjectivity, utterly blank, our con-
sciousness is, in the matter of its contents, only in the
fact and its characteristics. If this be admitted, and
if we apply the term humility or modesty to an attitude
where our subjectivity is not allowed to interfere by
act or quality, it is easy to appreciate the question
touching the humility or modesty and pride of philo-
sophy. For in point of contents, thought is only true
in proportion as it sinks itself in the facts ; and in point
of form it is no private or particular state or act of
the subject, but rather that attitude of consciousness
where the abstract self, freed from all the special limi-
tations to which its ordinary states or qualities are
liable, restricts itself to that universal action in which
it is identical with all individuals. In these circum-
stances philosophy may be acquitted of the charge of
pride. And when Aristotle summons the mind to rise
to the dignity of that attitude, the dignity he seeks is
won by letting slip all our individual opinions and pre-
judices, and submitting to the sway of the fact.
24.] With these explanations and qualifications,
thoughts may be termed Objective Thoughts, — among
which are also to be included the forms which are
more especially discussed in the common logic, where
they are usually treated as forms of conscious thought
only. Logic therefore coincides with Metaphysics, the
science of things set and held in thoughts, — thoughts ac-
credited able to express the essential reality of things.
An exposition of the relation in which such forms
as notion, judgment, and syllogism stand to others.
46 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [24.
such as causality, is a matter for the science itself.
But this much is evident beforehand. If thought tries
to form ?. notion of things, this notion (as well as its
proximate phases, the judgment and syllogism) cannot
be composed of articles and relations which are alien
and irrelevant to the things. Reflection, it was said
above, conducts to the universal of things : which uni-
versal is itself one of the constituent factors of a notion.
To say that Reason or Understanding is in the world,
is equivalent in its import to the phrase ' Objective
Thought.' The latter phrase however has the incon-
venience that thought is usually confined to express
what belongs to the mind or consciousness only, while
objective is a term applied, at least primarily, only to
the non-mental.
(i) To speak of thought or objective thought as the heart
and soul of the world, may seem to be ascribing conscious-
ness to the things of nature. We feel a certain repugnance
against making thought the inward function of things,
especially as we speak of thought as marking the divergence
of man from nature. It would be necessary, therefore, if
we use the term thought at all, to speak of nature as the
system of unconscious thought, or, to use ScheUing's
expression, a petrified intelligence. And in order to prevent
misconception, thought-form or thought-type should be
substituted for the ambiguous term thought.
From what has been said the principles of logic are to be
sought in a system of thought-types or fundamental cate-
gories, in which the opposition between subjective and
objective, in its usual sense, vanishes. The signification
thus attached to thought and its characteristic forms may be
illustrated by the ancient saying that 'vovs governs the
world,' or by our own phrase that ' Reason is in the
world ' : which means that Reason is the soul of the world
it inhabits, its immanent principle, its most proper and
inward nature, its universal. Another illustration is offered
by the circumstance that in speaking of some definite
24.] THE WORLD-REASON — THOUGHT IN THINGS. 47
animal we say it is (an) animal. Now, the animal, qua
animal, cannot be shown ; nothing can be pointed out
excepting some special animal. Animal, qua animal, does
not exist: it is merely the universal nature of the individual
animals, whilst each existing animal is a more concretely
defined and particularised thing. But to be an animal,— the
law of kind which is the universal in this case,— is the
property of the particular animal, and constitutes its definite
essence. Take away from the dog its aniinality, and it be-
comes impossible to say what it is. All things have a
permanent inward nature, as well as an outward existence.
They live and die, arise and pass away ; but their essential
and universal part is the kind ; and this means much more
than something common to them all.
If thought is the constitutive substance of external things,
it is also the universal substance of what is spiritual. In all
human perception thought is present ; so too thought is the
universal in all the acts of conception and recollection ; in
short, in every mental activity, in willing, wishing and the
like. All these faculties are only further specialisations of
thought. When it is presented in this light, thought has
a different part to play from what it has if we speak of a
faculty of thought, one among a crowd of other faculties,
such as perception, conception and will, with which it stands
on the same level. When it is seen to be the true universal
of all that nature and mind contain, it extends its scope far
beyond all these, and becomes the basis of everything. From
this view of thought, in its objective meaning as vovs, we may
next pass to consider the subjective sense of the term. We
say first, Man is a being that thinks ; but we also say at the
same time, Man is a being that perceives and wills. Man is a
thinker, and is universal: but he is a thinker only because
he feels his own universality. The animal too is by impli-
cation universal, but the universal is not consciously felt by
it to be universal : it feels only the individual. The animal
sees a singular object, for instance, its food, or a man. For
the animal all this never goes beyond an individual thing.
Similarly, sensation has to do with nothing but singulars,
such as this pain or this sweet taste. Nature does not bring
48 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [24.
its vovs into consciousness : it is man who first makes him-
self double so as to be a universal for a universal. This
first happens when man knows that he is ' I.' By the term
' I ' I mean myself, a single and altogether determinate
person. And yet I really utter nothing peculiar to myself,
for every one else is an ' I ' or ' Ego,' and when I call my-
self I,' though I indubitably mean the single person myself,
I express a thorough universal. ' I,' therefore, is mere
being-for-self, in which everything peculiar or marked is
renounced and buried out of sight; it is as it were the ultimate
and unanalysable point of consciousness. We may say ' I '
and thought are the same, or, more definitely, * I ' is thought
as a thinker. What I have in my consciousness, is for me.
' I ' is the vacuum or receptacle for anything and everything :
for which everything is and which stores up everything in
itself. Every man is a whole world of conceptions, that lie
buried in the night of the ' Ego.' It follows that the ' Ego '
is the universal in which we leave aside all that is particular,
and in which at the same time all the particulars have a
latent existence. In other words, it is not a mere universality
and nothing more, but the universality which includes in it
everything. Commonly we use the word ' I ' without
attaching much importance to it, nor is it an object of study
except to philosophical analysis. In the ' Ego,' we have
thought before us in its utter purity. While the brute cannot
say ' I,' man can, because it is his nature to think. Now in
the ' Ego ' there are a variety of contents, derived both from
within and from without, and according to the nature of these
contents our state may be described as perception, or con-
ception, or reminiscence. But in all of them the ' I ' is
found : or in them all thought is present. Man, therefore, is
always thinking, even in his perceptions : if he observes
anything, he always observes it as a universal, fixes on a
single point which he places in relief, thus withdrawing l\is
attention from other points, and takes it as abstract and uni-
versal, even if the universality be only in form.
In the case of our ordinary conceptions, two things may
happen. Either the contents are moulded by thought, but
not the form : or, the form belongs to thought and not the
24.] PURE ABSTRACT THOUGHT. 49
contents. In using such terms, for instance, as anger, rose,
hope, I am speaking of things which I have learnt in the
way of sensation, but I express these contents in a universal
mode, that is, in the forni of thought. I have left out much
that is particular and given the contents in their generality:
but still the contents remain sense-derived. On the other
hand, when I represent God, the content is undeniably a
product of pure thought, but the form still retains the sen-
suous limitations which it has as I find it immediately
present in myself. In these generalised images the content
is not merely and simply sensible, as it is in a visual inspec-
tion ; but either the content is sensuous and the form apper-
tains to thought, or vice versa. In the first case the material
is given to us, and our thought suppHes the form : in the
second case the content which has its source in thought is
by means of the form turned into a something given, which
accordingly reaches the mind from without.
(2) Logic is the study of thought pure and simple, or of
the pure thouglit-forms. In the ordinary sense of the term,
by thought we generally represent to ourselves something
more than simple and unmixed thought ; we mean some
thought, the material of which is from experience. Whereas
in logic a thought is understood to include nothing else but
what depends on thinking and what thinking has brought
into existence. It is in these circumstances that thoughts
are pure thoughts. The mind is then in its own home-ele-
ment and therefore free : for freedom means that the other
thing with which you deal is a second self— so that you
never leave your own ground but give the law to your-
self. In the impulses or appetites the beginning is from
something else, from something which we feel to be ex-
ternal. In this case then we speak of dependence. For
freedom it is necessary that we should feel no presence of
something else which is not ourselves. The natural man,
whose motions follow the rule only of his appetites, is not
his own master. Be he as self-willed as he may, the con-
stituents of his will and opinion are not his own, and his free-
dom is merely formal. But when we think, we renounce
our selfish and particular being, sink ourselves in the thing,
VOL. II. E
50 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [24.
allow thought to follow its own course, and,— if we add any-
thing of our own, we think ill.
If in pursuance of the foregoing remarks we consider
Logic to be the system of the pure types of thought, we find
that the other philosophical sciences, the Philosophy of
Nature and the Philosophy of Mind, take the place, as it
were, of an Applied Logic, and that Logic is the soul which
animates them both. Their problem in that case is only to
recognise the logical forms under the shap>es they assume
in Nature and Mind,— shapes which are only a particular
mode of expression for the forms of pure thought. If for
instance we take the syllogism (not as it was understood in
the old formal logic, but at its real value), we shall find it
gives expression to the law that the particular is the middle
term which fuses together the extremes of the universal
and the singular. The syllogistic form is a universal form
of all things. Everything that exists is a particular, which
couples together the universal and the singular. But Nature
is weak and fails to exhibit the logical forms in their purity.
Such a feeble exemplification of the syllogism may be seen
in the magnet. In the middle or point of indifference of a
magnet, its two poles, however they may be distinguished,
are brought into one. Phj'sics also teaches us to see the
universal or essence in Nature : and the only difference
between it and the Philosophy of Nature is that the latter
brings before our mind the adequate forms of the notion in
the physical world.
It will now be understood that Logic is the all-animating
spirit of all the sciences, and its categories the spiritual hier-
archy. They are the heart and centre of things : and yetat
the same time they are always on our lips, and, apparently
at least, perfectly familiar objects. But things thus familiar
are usually the greatest strangers. Being, for example, is
a category of pure thought: but to make *Is' an object of
investigation never occurs to us. Common fancy puts the
Absolute far away in a world beyond. The Absolute is
rather directly before us, so present that so long as we
think, we must, though without express consciousness of it,
always carry it with us and always use it. Language is the
24.] THE LOGICAL CATEGORIES. 5 1
main depository of these t^'pes of thought ; and one use of
the grammatical instruction which children receive is un-
consciously to turn their attention to distinctions of thought.
Logic is usually said to be concerned with forms only and
to derive the material for them from elsewhere. But this
' only,' which assumes that the logical thoughts are nothing
in comparison with the rest of the contents, is not the word
to use r'jout forms which are the absolutely-real ground of
everything. Everything else rather is an 'only' compared
wuth these thoughts. To make such abstract forms a problem
pre-supposes in the inquirer a higher level of culture than
ordinary ; and to study them in themselves and for their
own sake signifies in addition that these thought-tj'^pes must
be deduced out of thought itself, and their truth or reality
examined by the light of their own laws. We do not assume
them as data from without, and then define them or exhibit
their value and authority by comparing them with the shape
they take in our minds. If we thus acted, we should pro-
ceed from observation and experience, and should, for
instance, say we habitually employ the term ' force ' in such
a case, and such a meaning. A definition like that would be
called correct, if it agreed with the conception of its object
present in our ordinary state of mind. The defect of this
empirical method is that a notion is not defined as it is in
and for itself, but in terms of something assumed, which is
then used as a criterion and standard of correctness. No
such test need be applied : we have merely to let the
thought- forms follow the impulse of their own organic life.
To ask if a category is true or not, must sound strange
to the ordinary mind: for a category apparently becomes
true only when it is applied to a given object, and apart
from this application it would seem meaningless to inquire
into its truth. But this is the very question on which
everything turns. We must however in the first place un-
derstand clearly what we mean by Truth. In common life
truth means the agreement of an object with our conception
of it. We thus pre-suppose an object to which our concep-
tion must conform. In the philosophical sense of the word,
on the other hand, truth may be described, in general
E 2
52 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [24.
abstract terms, as the agreement of a thought-content with
itself. This meaning is quite different from the one given
above. At the same time the deeper and philosophical
meaning of truth can be partially traced even in the ordinary
usage of language. Thus we speak of a true friend ; by
which we mean a friend whose manner of conduct accords
with the notion of friendship. In the same way we speak
of a true work of Art. Untrue in this sense means the
same as bad, or self-discordant. In this sense a bad state is
an untrue state ; and evil and untruth may be said to consist
in the contradiction subsisting between the function or no-
tion and the existence of the object. Of such a bad object
we may form a correct representation, but the import of such
representation is inherently false. Of these correctnesses,
which are at the same time untruths, we may have many in
our heads.— God alone is the thorough harmony of notion
and reality. All finite things involve an untruth : they have a
notion and an existence, but their existence does not meet
the requirements of the notion. For this reason they must
perish, and then the incompatibility between their notion
and their existence becomes manifest. It is in the kind
that the individual animal has its notion : and the kind
liberates itself from this individuality by death.
The study of truth, or, as it is here explained to mean,
consistency, constitutes the proper problem of logic. In our
every-day mind we are never troubled with questions about
the truth of the forms of thought. — We may also express the
problem of logic by saying that it examines the forms of
thought touching their capability to hold truth. And the
question comes to this : What are the forms of the infinite,
and what are the forms of the finite ? Usually no suspicion
attaches to the finite forms of thought ; they are allowed to
pass unquestioned. But it is from conforming to finite cate-
gories in thought and action that all deception originates.
(3) Truth may be ascertained by several methods, each
of which however is no more than a form. Experience is
the first of these methods. But the method is only a
form : it has no intrinsic value of its own. For in experience
everything depends upon the mind we bring to bear upon
24.] LOGICAL TRUTH. 53
actuality. A great mind is great in its experience ; and in
the motley play of phenomena at once perceives the point of
real significance. The idea is present, in actual shape, not
something, as it were, over the hill and far away. The
genius of a Goethe, for example, looking into nature or
history, has great experiences, catches sight of the living
principle, and gives expression to it. A second method of
apprehending the truth is Reflection, which defines it by
intellectual relations of condition and conditioned. But in
these two modes the absolute truth has not yet found its
appropriate form. The most perfect method of knowledge
proceeds in the pure form of thought : and here the attitude
of man is one of entire freedom.
That the form of thought is the perfect form, and that
it presents the truth as it intrinsically and actually is, is
the general dogma of all philosophy. To give a proof of
the dogma there is, in the first instance, nothing to do
but show that these other forms of knowledge are finite.
The grand Scepticism of antiquity accomplished this task
when it exhibited the contradictions contained in every one
of these forms. That Scepticism indeed went further : but
when it ventured to assail the forms of reason, it began by
insinuating under them something finite upon which it
might fasten. All the forms of finite thought will make
their appearance in the course of logical development, the
order in which they present themselves being determined
by necessary laws. Here in the introduction they could
only be unscientifically assumed as something given. In
the theory of logic itself these forms will be exhibited, not
only on their negative, but also on their positive side.
When we compare the different forms of ascertaining
truth with one another, the first of them, immediate know-
ledge, may perhaps seem the finest, noblest and most
appropriate. It includes everything which the moralists
term innocence as well as religious feeling, simple trust,
love, fidelity, and natural faith. The two other forms, first
reflective, and secondly philosophical cognition, must leave
that unsought natural harmony behind. And so far as they
have this in common, the methods which claim to appre-
54 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [24.
hend the truth- by thought may naturally be regarded as
part and parcel of the pride which leads man to trust to his
own powers for a knowledge of the truth. Such a position
involves a thorough-going disruption, and, viewed in that
light, might be regarded as the source of all evil and wicked-
ness-the original transgression. Apparently therefore the
only way of being reconciled and restored to peace is to
surrender all claims to think or know.
This lapse from natural unity has not escaped notice,
and nations from the earliest times have asked the meaning
of the wonderful division of the spirit against itself. No
such inward disunion is found in nature : natural things do
nothing wicked.
The Mosaic legend of the Fall of Man has preserved an
ancient picture representing the origin and consequences of
this disunion. The incidents of the legend form the basis
of an essential article of the creed, the doctrine of original
sin in man and his consequent need of succour. It may be
well at the commencement of logic to examine the story
which treats of the origin and the bearings of the very
knowledge which logic has to discuss. For, though philo-
sophy must not allow herself to be overawed by religion,
or accept the position of existence on sufferance, she can-
not afford to neglect these popular conceptions. The tales
and allegories of religion, which have enjoyed for thousands
of years the veneration of nations, are not to be set aside as
antiquated even now.
Upon a closer inspection of the story of the Fall we find,
as was already said, that it exemplifies the universal bearings
of knowledge upon the spiritual life. In its instinctive and
natural stage, spiritual life wears the garb of innocence and
confiding simplicity : but the very essence of spirit implies
the absorption of this immediate condition in something
higher. The spiritual is distinguished from the natural,
and more especially from the animal, life, in the circum-
stance that it does not continue a mere stream of tendency,
but sunders itself to self-realisation. But this position of
severed life has in its turn to be suppressed, and the spirit
has by its own act to win its way to concord again. The
24.] STORY OF THE FALL. 55
final concord then is spiritual ; that is, the principle of re-
storation is found in thought, and thought only. The hand
that inflicts the wound is also the hand which heals it.
We are told in our story that Adam and Eve, the first
human beings, the types of humanitj', were placed in a
garden, where grew a tree of life and a tree of the know-
ledge of good and evil. God, it is said, had forbidden them
to eat of the fruit of this latter tree : of the tree of life for
the present nothing further is said. These words evidently
assume that man is not intended to seek knowledge, and
ought to remain in the state of innocence. Other medita-
tive races, it may be remarked, have held the same belief
that the primitive state of mankind was one of innocence
and harmony. Now all this is to a certain extent correct.
The disunion that appears throughout humanity is not a
condition to rest in. But it is a mistake to regard the
natural and immediate harmony as the right state. The
mind is not mere instinct : on the contrary, it essentially
involves the tendency to reasoning and meditation. Child-
like innocence no doubt has in it something fascinating and
attractive : but only because it reminds us of what the spirit
must win for itself. The harmoniousness of childhood is a
gift from the hand of nature : the second harmony must
spring from the labour and culture of the spirit. And so
the words of Christ, ' Except ye become as little children,'
&c., are very far from telling us that we must always remain
children.
Again, we find in the narrative of Moses that the occasion
which led man to leave his natural unity is attributed to
solicitation from without. The serpent was the tempter.
But the truth is, that the step into opposition, the awakening
of consciousness, follows from the very nature of man : and
the same history repeats itself in every son of Adam. The
serpent represents likeness to God as consisting in the
knowledge of good and evil : and it is just this knowledge in
which man participates when he breaks with the unity of
his instinctive being and eats of the forbidden fruit. The
first reflection of awakened consciousness in men told them
that they were naked. This is a naive and profound trait.
56 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [24.
For the sense of shame bears evidence to the separation of
man from his natural and sensuous life. The beasts never
get so far as this separation, and they feel no shame. And
it is in the human feeling of shame that we are to seek the
spiritual and moral origin of dress, compared with which
the merely physical need is a secondary matter.
Next comes the Curse, as it is called, which God pro-
nounced upon man. The prominent point in that curse
turns chiefly on the contrast between man and nature. Man
must work in the sweat of his brow : and woman bring forth
in sorrow. As to work, if it is the result of the disunion, it
is also the victory over it. The beasts have nothing more to
do but to pick up the materials required to satisfy their
wants : man on the contrary can only satisfy his wants by
himself producing and transforming the necessary means.
Thus even in these outside things man is dealing with
himself.
The story does not close with the expulsion from Paradise.
We are further told, God said, ' Behold Adam is become as
one of us, to know good and evil.' Knowledge is now
spoken of as divine, and not, as before, as something wrong
and forbidden. Such words contain a confutation of the
idle talk that philosophy pertains only to the finitude of the
mind. Philosophy is knowledge, and it is through know-
ledge that man first realises his original vocation, to be the
image of God. When the record adds that God drove men
out of the Garden of Eden to prevent their eating of the tree
of life, it only means that on his natural side certainly man
is finite and mortal, but in knowledge infinite.
We all know the theological dogma that man's nature is
evil, tainted with what is called Original Sin. Now while we
accept the dogma, we must give up the setting of incident
which represents original sin as consequent upon an acci-
dental act of the first man. For the very notion of spirit is
enough to show that man is evil by nature, and it is an error
to imagine that he could ever be otherwise. To such extent
as man is and acts like a creature of nature, his whole be-
haviour is what it ought not to be. For the spirit it is a
duty to be free, and to realise itself by its own act. Nature
24-25.] STORY OF THE FALL. 57
is for man only the starting-point which he has to transform.
The theological doctrine of original sin is a profound truth ;
but modern enlightenment prefers to believe that man is
naturally good, and that he acts right so long as he continues
true to nature.
The hour when man leaves the path of mere natural
being marks the difference between him, a self-conscious
agent, and the natural world. But this schism, though it
forms a necessary element in the very notion of spirit, is
not the final goal of man. It is to this state of inward breach
that the whole finite action of thought and will belongs.
In that finite sphere man pursues ends of his own and
draws from himself the material of his conduct. While he
pursues these aims to the uttermost, while his knowledge
and his will seek himself, his own narrow self apart from
the universal, he is evil ; and his evil is to be subjective.
We seem at first to have a double evil here : but both
are really the same. Man in so far as he is spirit is not the
creature of nature : and wiien he behaves as such, and
follows the cravings of appetite, he wills to be so. The
natural wickedness of man is therefore unUke the natural
life of animals. A mere natural life may be more exactly de-
fined by saying that the natural man as such is an individual :
for nature in every part is in the bonds of individualism.
Thus when man wills to be a creature of nature, he wills in
the same degree to be an individual simply. Yet against
such impulsive and appetitive action, due to the individualism
of nature, there also steps in the law or general principle.
This law may either be an external force, or have the form
of divine authority. So long as he continues in his natural
state, man is in bondage to the law. — It is true that among
the instincts and affections of man, there are social or
benevolent inclinations, love, sympathy, and others, reach-
ing beyond his selfish isolation. But so long as these
tendencies are instinctive, their virtual universality of scope
and purport is vitiated by the subjective form which always
allows free play to self-seeking and random action.
25.] The term ' Objective Thoughts ' indicates the
/nUh — the truth which is to be the absolute object of philo-
58 PRELIMINARY NOTION. [25.
sophy, and not merely the goal at which it aims. But
the very expression cannot fail to suggest an opposi-
tion, to characterise and appreciate which is the main
motive of the philosophical attitude of the present time,
and which forms the real problem of the question about
truth and our means of ascertaining it. If the thought-
forms are vitiated by a fixed antithesis, i.e. if they are
only of a finite character, they are unsuitable for the
self-centred universe of truth, and truth can find no
adequate receptacle in thought. Such thought, which
can produce only limited and partial categories and
proceed by their means, is what in the stricter sense
of the word is termed Understanding. The finitude,
further, of these categories lies in two points. Firstly,
they are only subjective, and the antithesis of an ob-
jective permanently clings to them. Secondly, they
are always of restricted content, and so persist in
antithesis to one another and still more to the Abso-
lute. In order more fully to explain the position and
import here attributed to logic, the attitudes in which
thought is supposed to stand to objectivity will next be
examined by way of further introduction.
In my Phenomenology of the Spirit, which on that
account was at its publication described as the first part
of the System of Philosophy, the method adopted was
to begin with the first and simplest phase of mind, im-
mediate consciousness, and to show how that stage
gradually of necessity worked onward to the philoso-
phical point of view, the necessity of that view being
proved by the process. But in these circumstances it
was impossible to restrict the quest to the mere form
of consciousness. For the stage of philosophical know-
ledge is the richest in material and organisation, and
therefore, as it came before us in the shape of a result,
it pre-supposed the existence of the concrete formations
25-] CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 59
of consciousness, such as individual and social morality,
art and religion. In the development of consciousness,
which at first sight appears limited to the point of form
merely, there is thus at the same time included the
development of the matter or of the objects discussed
in the special branches of philosophy. But the latter
process must, so to speak, go on behind consciousness,
since those facts are the essential nucleus which is raised
into consciousness. The exposition accordingly is ren-
dered more intricate, because so much that properly
belongs to the concrete branches is prematurely dragged
into the introduction. The survey which follows in the
present work has even more the inconvenience of being
only historical and inferential in its method. But it
tries especially to show how the questions men have
proposed, outside the school, on the nature of Know-
ledge, Faith and the like, — questions which they imagine
to have no connexion with abstract thoughts, — are really
reducible to the simple categories, which first get cleared
up in Logic.
CHAPTER III.
FIRST ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
26.] The first of these' attitudes of thought is seen in
the method which has no doubts and no sense of the
contradiction in thought, or of the hostility of thought
against itself. It entertains an unquestioning belief
that reflection is the means of ascertaining the truth,
and of bringing the objects before the mind as they
really are. And in this belief it advances straight upon
its objects, takes the materials furnished by sense and
perception, and reproduces them from itself as facts of
thought ; and then, believing this result to be the truth,
the method is content. Philosophy in its earliest stages,
all the sciences, and even the daily action and move-
ment of consciousness, live in this faith.
27.] This method of thought has never become aware
of the antithesis of subjective and objective : and to that
extent there is nothing to prevent its statements from
possessing a genuinely philosophical and speculative
character, though it is just as possible that they may
never get beyond finite categories, or the stage where
the antithesis is still unresolved. In the present in-
troduction the main question for us is to observe this
attitude of thought in its extreme form ; and we shall
accordingly first of all examine its second and inferior
aspect as a philosophic system. One of the clearest
27-a8.] PRE-KANTIAN METAPHYSIC. 6l
instances of it, and one lying nearest to ourselves, may
be found in the Metaphysic of the Past as it subsisted
among us previous to the philosophy of Kant. It is
however only in reference to the history of philosophy
that this Metaphysic can be said to belong to the past :
the thing is always and at all places to be found, as the
view whi'i'h the abstract understanding takes of the ob-
jects of reason. And it is in this point that the real and
immediate good lies of a closer examination of its main
scope and its modus operandi.
28.] This metaphysical system took the laws and
forms of thought to be the fundamental laws and forms
of things. It assumed that to think a thing was the
means of finding its very self and nature : and to that
extent it occupied higher ground than the Critical
Philosophy which succeeded it. But in the first in-
stance (i) these terms of thought were cut off from their
connexion, their solidarity; each was believed valid by
itself and capable of serving as a predicate of the truth.
It was the general assumption of this metaphysic that
a knowledge of the Absolute was gained by assigning
predicates to it. It neither inquired what the terms of
the understanding specially meant or what they were
•orth, nor did it test the method which characterises
the Absolute by the assignment of predicates.
As an example of such predica*:es may be taken.
Existence, in the proposition, * God has existence : '
Finitude or Infinity, as in the question, 'Is the world
finite or infinite?' : Simple and Complex, in u.e propo-
sition, ' The soul is simple,' — or again, ' The thing is a
unity, a whole,' &c. Nobody asked whether such predi-
cates had any intrinsic and independent truth, or if the
propositional form could be a form of truth.
The Metaphysic of the past assumed, as unsophisticated
belief always does that thought apprehends the very self of
62 FIRST ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [28.
things, and that things, to become what they truly are, re-
quire to be thought. For Nature and the human soul are a
very Proteus in their perpetual transformations ; and it soon
occurs to the observer that the first crude impression of things
is not their essential being.— This is a point of view the very
reverse of the result arrived at by the Critical Philosophy ;
a result, of which it may be said, that it bade man go and
feed on mere husks and chaff.
We must look more closely into the procedure of that old
metaphysic. In the first place it never went beyond the
province of the analytic understanding. Without preliminary
inquiry it adopted the abstract categories of thought and
let them rank as predicates of truth. But in using the term
thought we must not forget the difference between finite or
discursive thinking and the thinking which is infinite and
rational. The categories, as they meet ns prima facie and in
isolation, are finite forms. But truth is always infinite, and
cannot be expressed or presented to consciousness in finite
terms. The phrase infinite thought may excite surprise, if
we adhere to the modern conception that thought is always
limited. But it is, speaking rightly, the very essence of
thought to be infinite. The nominal explanation of calling
a thing finite is that it has an end, that it exists up to a
certain point only, where it comes into contact with, and is
limited by, its other. The finite therefore subsists in
reference to its other, which is its negation and presents
itself as its limit. Now thought is always in its own sphere ;
its relations are with itself, and it is its own object. In
having a thought for object, I am at home with myself. The
thinking power, the ' I,' is therefore infinite, because, when
it thinks, it is in relation to an object which is itself. Gene-
rally speaking, an object means a something else, a negative
confronting me. But in the case where thought thinks
itself, it has an object which is at the same time no object :
in other words, its objectivity is suppressed and transformed
into an idea. Thought, as thought, therefore in its unmixed
nature involves no limits ; it is finite only when it keeps to
limited categories, which it beheves to be ultimate. Infinite
or speculative thought, on the contrary, while it no less
28.] PRE-KANTIAN METAPHYSIC. 63
defines, does in the very act of limiting and defining make
that defect vanish. And so infinity is not, as most frequently
happens, to be conceived as an abstract away and away for
ever and ever, but in the simple manner previously indicated.
The thinking of the old metaphysical system was finite.
Its whole mode of action was regulated by categories, the
limits of which it believed to be permanently fixed and not
subject to any further negation. Thus, one of its questions
was : Has God existence ? The question supposes that
existence is an altogether positive term, a sort of ne plus
ultra. We shall see however at a later point that existence
is by no means a merely positive term, but one which is too
low for the Absolute Idea, and unworthy of God. A second
question in these metaphysical systems was : Is the world
finite or infinite ? The very terms of the question assume
that the finite is a permanent contradictor}' to the infinite :
and one can easily see that, when they are so opposed, the
infinite, which of course ought to be the whole, only appears
as a single aspect and suffers restriction from the finite.
But a restricted infinity is itself only a finite. In the same
way it was asked whether the soul was simple or composite.
Simpleness was, in other words, taken to be an ultimate
characteristic, giving expression to a whole truth. Far from
being so, simpleness is the expression of a half-truth, as
one-sided and abstract as existence :— a term of thought,
which, as we shall hereafter see, is itself untrue and hence
unable to hold truth. If the soul be viewed as merely and
abstractly simple, it is characterised in an inadequate and
finite way.
It was therefore the main question of the pre-Kantian
metaphysic to discover whether predicates of the kind
mentioned were to be ascribed to its objects. Now these
predicates are after all only limited formulae of the under-
standing which, instead of expressing the truth, merely
impose a limit. More than this, it should be noted that the
chief feature of the method lay in ' assigning ' or ' attributing'
predicates to the object that was to be cognised, for example,
to God. But attribution is no more than an external re-
flection about the object : the predicates by which the
64 FIRST ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [28-29.
object is to be determined are supplied from the resources
of picture-thought, and are applied in a mechanical way.
Whereas, if we are to have genuine cognition, the object
must characterise its own self and not derive its predicates
from without. Even supposing we follow the method of
predicating, the mind cannot help feeling that predicates of
this sort fail to exhaust the object. From the same point of
view the Orientals are quite correct in calling God the many-
named or the myriad-named One. One after another of
these finite categories leaves the soul unsatisfied, and the
Oriental sage is compelled unceasingly to seek for more and
more of such predicates. In finite things it is no doubt the
case that they have to be characterised through finite predi-
cates : and with these things the understanding finds proper
scope for its special action. Itself finite, it knows only the
nature of the finite. Thus, when I call some action a theft,
I have characterised the action in its essential facts : and
such a knowledge is sufficient for the judge. Similarly,
finite things stand to each other as cause and effect, force
and exercise, and when they are apprehended in these
categories, they are known in their finitude. But the objects
of reason cannot be defined by these finite predicates. To
try to do so was the defect of the old metaphysic.
29.] Predicates of this kind, taken individually, have
but a limited range of meaning, and no one can fail to
perceive how inadequate they are, and how far they fall
below the fulness of detail which our imaginative thought
gives, in the case, for example, of God, Mind, or Nature.
Besides, though the fact of their being all predicates of
one subject supplies them with a certain connexion,
their several meanings keep them apart : and conse-
quently each is brought in as a stranger in relation to
the others.
The first of these defects the Orientals sought to
remedy, when, for example, they defined God by attri-
buting to Him many names; but still they felt that the
number of names would have had to be infinite.
30-3r.] PRE-KANTIAN META PHYSIC. 65
30.] (2) In the second place, the metaphysical systems
adopted a wrong criterion. Their objects were no doubt
totalities which in their own proper selves belong to
reason, — that is, to the organised and systematically-
developed universe, of thought. But these totalities —
God, the Soul, the World, — were taken by the meta-
physician as subjects made and ready, to form the
basis for an application of the categories of the under-
standing. They were assumed from popular conception.
Accordingly popular conception was the only canon for
settling whether or not the predicates were suitable and
sufficient.
31.] The common conceptions of God, the Soul, the
World, may be supposed to afford thought a firm and
fast footing. They do not really do so. Besides having
a particular and subjective character clinging to them,
and thus leaving room for great variety of interpreta-
tion, they themselves first of all require a firm and fast
definition by thought. This may be seen in any of
these propositions where the predicate, or in philo-
sophy the category, is needed to indicate what the sub-
ject, or the conception we start with, is.
In such a sentence as ' God is eternal,' we begin with
the conception of God, not knowing as yet what he is :
to tell us that, is the business of the predicate. In the
principles of logic, accordingly, where the terms formu-
lating the subject-matter are those of thought only, it is
not merely superfluous to make these categories predi-
cates to propositions in which God, or, still vaguer, the
Absolute, is the subject, but it would also have the
disadvantage of suggesting another canon than the
nature of thought. Besides, the prepositional form
(and for proposition, it would be more correct to sub-
stitute judgment) is not suited to express the concrete
— and the true is always concrete — or the speculative.
VOL. II. F
66 FIRST ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [31-33.
Every judgment is by its form one-sided and, to that
extent, false.
This metaphysic was not free or objective thinking. In-
stead of letting the object freely and spontaneously expound
its own characteristics, metaphysic pre-supposed it ready-
made. If anyone wishes to know what free thought means,
he must go to Greek philosophy : for Scholasticism, Hke
these metaphysical systems, accepted its facts, and accepted
them as a dogma from the authority of the Church. We
moderns, too, by our whole up-bringing, have been initiated
into ideas which it is extremely difficult to overstep, on
account of their far-reaching significance. But the ancient
philosophers were in a different position. They were men
who lived wholly in the perceptions of the senses, and who,
after their rejection of mythology and its fancies, pre-sup-
posed nothing but the heaven above and the earth around.
In these material, non-metaphysical surroundings, thought
is free and enjoys its own privacy,— cleared of everything
material, and thoroughly at home. This feeling that we are
all our own is characteristic of free thought — of that voyage
into the open, where nothing is below us or above us, and
we stand in solitude with ourselves alone.
^2.] (3) In the third place, this system of metaphysic
turned into Dogmatism. When our thought never
ranges beyond narrow and rigid terms, we are forced
to assume that of two opposite assertions, such as were
the above propositions, the one must be true and the
other false.
Dogmatism may be most simply described as the contrary
of Scepticism. The ancient Sceptics gave the name of
Dogmatism to every philosophy whatever holding a system
of definite doctrine. In this large sense Scepticism may
apply the name even to philosophy which is properly Specu-
lative. But in the narrower sense, Dogmatism consists in
the tenacity which draws a hard and fast line between cer-
tain terms and others opposite to them. We may see this
clearly in the strict * Either— or ' : for instance, The world is
32-33.] ONTOLOGY. 67
either finite or infinite ; but one of these two it must be.
The contrary of this rigidity is the characteristic of all
Speculative truth. There no such inadequate formulae
are allowed, nor can they possibly exhaust it. These for-
mulae Speculative truth holds in union as a totality, whereas
Dogmatism invests them in their isolation with a title to
fixity and truth.
It often happens in philosophy that the half-truth takes
its place beside the whole truth and assumes on its own
account the position of something permanent. But the fact
is that the half-truth, instead of being a fixed or self-sub-
sistent principle, is a mere element absolved and included
in the whole. The metaphysic of understanding is dog-
matic, because it maintains half-truths in their isolation:
whereas the idealism of speculative philosophy carries out
the principle of totality and shows that it can reach beyond
the inadequate formularies of abstract thought. Thus ideal-
ism would say :— The soul is neither finite only, nor infinite
only ; it is really the one just as much as the other, and in
that way neither the one nor the other. In other words,
such formularies in their isolation are inadmissible, and
only come into account as formative elements in a larger
notion. Such idealism we see even in the ordinary phases of
consciousness. Thus we say of sensible things, that they
are changeable : that is, they are, but it is equally true that
they are not. We show more obstinacy in dealing with
the categories of the understanding. These are terms
which we believe to be somewhat firmer— or even abso-
lutely firm and fast. We look upon them as separated from
each other by an infinite chasm, so that opposite categories
can never get at each other. The battle of reason is the
struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding
has reduced everything.
33.] The first part of this metaphysic in its systematic
form is Ontology, or the doctrine of the abstract
characteristics of Being. The multitude of these
characteristics, and the limits set to their applicability,
are not founded upon any principle. They have in
68 FIRST ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [33-34-
consequence to be enumerated as experience and cir-
cumstances direct, and the import ascribed to them is
founded only upon common sensualised conceptions,
upon assertions that particular words are used in a par-
ticular sense, .*nd even perhaps upon etymology. If
experience pronounces the list to be complete, and if
the usage of language, by its agreement, shows the
analysis to be correct, the metaphysician is satisfied ;
and the intrinsic and independent truth and necessity
of such characteristics is never made a matter of inves-
tigation at all.
To ask if being, existence, finitude, simplicity, com-
plexity, &c. are notions intrinsically and independently
true, must surprise those who believe that a question
about truth can only concern propositions (as to
whether a notion is or is not with truth to be attri-
buted, as the phrase is, to a subject), and that falsehood
lies in the contradiction existing between the subject in
our ideas, and the notion to be predicated of it. Now
as the notion is concrete, it and every character of it in
general is essentially a self-contained -unity of distinct
characteristics. If truth then were nothing more th^.n
the absence of contradiction, it would be first of all
necessary in the case of every notion to examine
whether it, taken individually, did not contain this sort
of intrinsic contradiction.
34.] The second branch of the metaphysical system
was Rational Psychology or Pneumatology. It dealt
with the metaphysical nature of the Soul, — that is, of
t'le Mind regarded as a thing. -It expected to find
immortality in a sphere dominated by the laws of com-
position, time, qualitative change, and quantitative
increase or decrease.
The name ' rational,' given to this species of psychology,
served to contrast it with empirical modes of observing
34.] RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 69
the phenomena of the soul. Rational psychology viewed
the soul in its metaphysical nature, and through the cate-
gories supplied by abstract thought. The rationalists en-
deavoured to ascertain the inner nature of the soul as it
is in itself and as it is for thought.— In philosophy at pre-
sent we hear little of the soul : the favourite term now is
mind (spirit). The two are distinct, soul being as it were
the middle term between body and spirit, or the bond
between the two. The mind, as soul, is immersed in
corporeity, and the soul is the animating principle of the
body.
The pre-Kantian metaphysic, we say, viewed the soul as
a thing. * Thing ' is a very ambiguous word. By a thing,
we mean, firstly, an immediate existence, something we re-
present in sensuous form: and in this meaning the term
has been applied to the soul. Hence the question regard-
ing the seat of the soul. Of course, if the soul have a seat,
it is in space and sensuously envisaged. So, too, if the
soul be viewed as a thing, we can ask whether the soul is
simple or composite. The question is important as bear-
ing on the immortality of the soul, which is supposed to
depend on the absence of composition. But the fact is,
that in abstract simplicity we have a category, which as
little corresponds to the nature of the soul, as that of com-
positeness.
One word on the relation of rational to empirical psycho-
logy. The former, because it sets itself to apply thought
to cognise mind and even to demonstrate the result of such
thinking, is the higher ; whereas empirical psychology starts
from perception, and only recounts and describes what
perception supplies. But if we propose to think the mind,
we must not be quite so shy of its special phenomena.
Mind is essentially active in the same sense as the School-
men said that God is ' absolute actuosity.' But if the mind
is active it must as it were utter itself. It is wrong therefore
to take the mind for a processless ens, as did the old meta-
physic which divided the processless inward life of the
mind from its outward life. The mind, of all things, must
be looked at in its concrete actuality, in its energy ; and
70 FIRST ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [34-35.
in such a way that its manifestations are seen to be deter-
mined by its inward force.
35.] The third branch of metaphysics was Cosmology.
The topics it embraced were the world, its contingency,
necessity, eternity, limitation in time and space : the
laws (only formal) of its changes : the freedom of man
and the origin of evil.
To these topics it applied what were believed to be
thorough-going contrasts : such as contingency and
necessity; external and internal necessity; efficient and
final cause, or causality in general and design ; essence
or substance and phenomenon ; form and matter ; free-
dom and necessity; happiness and pain; good and
evil.
The object of Cosmology comprised not merely Nature,
but Mind too, in its external complication in its pheno-
menon,—in fact, existence in general, or the sum of finite
things. This object however it viewed not as a concrete
whole, but only under certain abstract points of view. Thus
the questions Cosmology attempted to solve were such as
these : Is accident or necessity dominant in the world ? Is
the world eternal or created ? It was therefore a chief con-
cern of this study to lay down what were called general
Cosmological laws : for instance, that Nature does not act
by fits and starts. And by fits and starts (sal/us) they
meant a qualitative difference or qualitative alteration
showing itself without any antecedent determining mean :
whereas, on the contrary, a gradual change (of quantity) is
obviously not without intermediation.
In regard to Mind as it makes itself felt in the world, the
questions which Cosmology chiefly discussed turned upon
the freedom of man and the origin of evil. Nobody can
deny that these are questions of the highest importance.
But to give them a satisfactory answer, it is above all things
necessary not to claim finality for the abstract formulae of
understanding, or to suppose that each of the two terms in
an antithesis has an independent subsistence or can be
35-36.] COSMOLOGY. 7 1
treated in its isolation as a complete and self-centred truth.
This however is the general position taken by the metaphy-
sicians before Kant, and appears in their cosmological dis-
cussions, which for that reason were incapable of compassing
their purpose, to understand the phenomena of the world.
Observe how they proceed with the distinction between
freedom and necessity, in their application of these cate-
gories to Nature and Mind. Nature they regard as subject
in its workings to necessity ; Mind they hold to be free.
No doubt there is a real foundation for this distinction in
the very core of the Mind itself: but freedom and necessity,
when thus abstractly opposed, are terms applicable only
in the finite world to which, as such, they belong. A free-
dom involving no necessity, and mere necessity without
freedom, are abstract and in this way untrue formulae of
thought. Freedom is no blank indeterminateness : essentially
concrete, and unvaryingly self-determinate, it is so far at the
same time necessary. Necessity, again, in the ordinary
acceptation of the term in popular philosophy, means deter-
mination from without only,— as in finite mechanics, where
a body moves only when it is struck by another body, and
moves in the direction communicated to it by the impact.
This however is a merely external necessity, not the real
inward necessity which is identical with freedom.
The case is similar with the contrast of Good and Evil, —
the favourite contrast of the introspective modern world.
If we regard Evil as possessing a fixity of its own, apart
and distinct from Good, we are to a certain extent right :
there is an opposition between them : nor do those who
maintain the apparent and relative character of the oppo-
sition mean that Evil and Good in the Absolute are one, or,
in accordance with the modern phrase, that a thing first
becomes evil from our way of looking at it. The error
arises when we take Evil as a permanent positive, instead
of— what it really is— a negative which, though it would fain
assert itself, has no real persistence, and is, in fact, only the
absolute sham-existence of negativity in itself.
36.] The fourth branch of metaphysics is Natural or
Rational Theology. The notion of God, or God as
72 FIRST ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [36.
a possible being, the proofs of his existence, and his
properties, formed the study of this branch.
(a) When understanding thus discusses the Deity,
its main purpose is to find what predicates correspond
or not to the fact we have in our imagination as God.
And in so doing it assumes the contrast between posi-
tive and negative to be absolute ; and hence, in the long
run, nothing is left for the notion as understanding
takes it, but the empty abstraction of indeterminate
Being, of mere reality or positivity, the lifeless product
of modern * Deism.'
(b) The method of demonstration employed in finite
knowledge must always lead to an inversion of the true
order. For it requires the statement of some objective
ground for God's being, which thus acquires the ap-
pearance of being derived from something else. This
mode of proof, guided as it is by the canon of mere
analytical identity, is embarrassed by the difficulty of
passing from the finite to the infinite. Either the finitude
of the existing world, which is left as much a fact as it
was before, clings to the notion of Deity, and God has
to be defined as the immediate substance of that world,
— which is Pantheism : or He remains an object set
over against the subject, and in this way, finite, — which
is Dualism.
(c) The attributes of God which ought to be various
and precise, had, properly speaking, sunk and disap-
peared in the abstract notion of pure reality, of indeter-
minate Being. Yet in our material thought, the finite
world continues, meanwhile, to have a real being, with
God as a sort of antithesis : and thus arises the further
picture of different relations of God to the world.
These, formulated as properties, must, on the one hand,
as relations to finite circumstances, themselves possess
a finite character (giving us such properties as just,
36.] NATURAL THEOLOGY. 73
gracious, mighty, wise, &c.) ; on the other hand they
must be infinite. Now on this level of thought the
only means, and a hazy one, of reconciling these op-
posing requirements was quantitative exaltation of the
properties^ forcing them into indeterminateness, — into
the sensus eminentior. But it was an expedient which
really destroyed the property and left a mere name.
The object of the old metaphysical theology was to see
how far unassisted reason could go in the knowledge of
God. Certainly a reason-derived knowledge of God is the
highest problem of philosophy. The earliest teachings of
religion are figurate conceptions of God. These concep-
tions, as the Creed arranges them, are imparted to us in
youth. They are the doctrines of our religion, and in so far
as the individual rests his faith on these doctrines and feels
them to be the truth, he has all he needs as a Christian.
Such is faith : and the science of this faith is Theology.
But until Theology is something more than a bare enumera-
tion and compilation of these doctrines ab extra, it has no
right to the title of science. Even the method so much in
vogue at present— the purely historical mode of treatment—
which for example reports what has been said by this or
the other Father of the Church— does not invest theology
with a scientific character. To get that, we must go on to
comprehend the facts by thought, — which is the business
of philosophy. Genuine theology is thus at the same time
a real philosophy of religion, as it was, we may add, in the
Middle Ages.
And now let us examine this rational theology more nar-
rowly. It was a science which approached God not by
reason but by understanding, and, in its mode of thought,
employed the terms without any sense of their mutual limi-
tations and connexions. The notion of God formed the
subject of discussion ; and yet the criterion of our know-
ledge was derived from such an extraneous source as the
materiahsed conception of God. Now thought must be free
in its movements. It is no doubt to be remembered, that
the result of indei>endent thought harmonises with the im-
74 FIRST ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [36.
port of the Christian religion :— for the Christian religion is
a revelation of reason. But such a harmony surpassed the
efforts of rational theology. It proposed to define the figu-
rate conception of God in terms of thought ; but it resulted
in a notion of God which was what we may call the abstract
of positivity or reality, to the exclusion of all negation.
God was accordingly defined to be the most real of all
beings. Any one can see however that this most real of
beings, in which negation forms no part, is the very oppo-
site of what it ought to be and of what understanding sup-
poses it to be. Instead of being rich and full above all
measure, it is so narrowly conceived that it is, on the con-
trary, extremely poor and altogether empty. It is with
reason that the heart craves a concrete body of truth ; but
without definite feature, that is, without negation, contained
in the notion, there can only be an abstraction. When the
notion of God is apprehended only as that of the abstract or
most real being, God is, as it were, relegated to another
world beyond : and to speak of a knowledge of him would
be meaningless. Where there is no definite quality, know-
ledge is impossible. Mere light is mere darkness.
The second problem of rational theology was to prove the
existence of God. Now, in this matter, the main point to be
noted is that demonstration, as the understanding employs
it, means the dependence of one truth on another. Tn such
proofs we have a pre-supposition — something firm and
fast, from which something else follows ; we exhibit the de-
pendence of some truth from an assumed starting-point.
Hence, if this mode of demonstration is applied to the exist-
ence of God, it can only mean that the being of God is to
depend on other terms, which will then constitute the
ground of his being. It is at once evident that this will lead
to some mistake : for God must be simply and solely the
ground of everything, and in so far not dependent upon
anything else. And a perception of this danger has in
modern times led some to say that God's existence is not
capable of proof, but must be immediately or intuitively
apprehended. Reason, however, and even sound common
sense give demonstration a meaning quite different from
36.] NATURAL THEOLOGY. 75
that of the understanding. The demonstration of reason no
doubt starts from something which is not God. But, as it
advances, it does not leave the starting-point a mere unex-
plained fart, which is what it was. On the contrary it exhibits
that point as derivative and called into being, and then God
is seen to be primary, truly immediate and self-subsisting,
with the means of derivation wrapt up and absorbed in him-
self. Those who say : ' Consider Nature, and Nature will
lead you to God ; you will find an absolute final cause : ' do
not mean that God is something derivative : they mean that
it is we who proceed to God himself from another ; and in
this way God, though the consequence, is also the absolute
ground of the initial step. The relation of the two things is
reversed ; and what came as a consequence, being shown to
be an antecedent, the original antecedent is reduced to a
consequence. This is always the way, moreover, whenever
reason demonstrates.
If in the light of the present discussion we cast one glance
more on the metaphysical method as a whoje, we find its
main characteristic was to make abstract identity its prin-
ciple and to try to apprehend the objects of reason by the
abstract and finite categories of the understanding. But
this infinite of the understanding, this pure essence, is still
finite : it has excluded all the variety of particular things,
which thus limit and deny it. Instead of winning a con-
crete, this metaphysic stuck fast on an abstract, identity.
Its good point was the perception that thought alone con-
stitutes the essence of all that is. It derived its materials
from earlier philosophers, particularly the Schoolmen. In
speculative philosophy the understanding undoubtedly forms
a stage, but not a stage at which we should keep for ever
standing. Plato is no metaphysician of this imperfect
type, still less Aristotle, although the contrary is generally
believed.
CHAPTER IV.
SECOND ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
I, Empiricism.
37.] Under these circumstances a double want began
to be felt. Partly it was the need of a concrete subject-
matter, as a counterpoise to the abstract theories of the
understanding, which is unable to advance unaided
from its generalities to specialisation and determination.
Partly, too, it was the demand for something fixed and
secure, so as to exclude the possibihty of proving any-
thing and everything in the sphere, and according to
the method, of the finite formulae of thought. Such was
the genesis of Empirical philosophy, which abandons
the search for truth in thought itself, and goes to fetch
it from Experience, the outward and the inward present.
The rise of Empiricism is due to the need thvxs stated of
concrete contents, and a firm footing— needs which the ab-
stract metaphysic of the understanding failed to satisfy.
Now by concreteness of contents it is meant that we must
know the objects of consciousness as intrinsically determinate
and as the unity of distinct characteristics. But, as we have
already seen, this is by no means the case v/ith the meta-
physic of understanding, if it conform to its principle. With
the mere understanding, thinking is limited to the form of
an abstract universal, and can never advance to the particu-
larisation of this universal. Thus we find the metaphysicians
engaged in an attempt to elicit by the instrumentality of
37-38.] EMPIRICISM. 77
thought, what was the essence or fundamental attribute of
the Soul. The Soul, they said, is simple. The simplicity
thus ascribed to the Soul meant a mere and utter simplicity,
from which difference is excluded : difference, or in other
words composition, being made the fundamental attribute
of body, or of matter in general. Clearly, in simplicity of
this narrow type we have a very shallow category, quite in-
capable of embracing the wealth of the soul or of the mind.
When it thus appeared that abstract metaphysical thinking
was inadequate, it was felt that resource must be had to
empirical psychology. The same happened in the case of
Rational Physics. The current phrases there were, for
instance, that space is infinite, that Nature makes no leap, &c.
Evidently this phraseology was wholly unsatisfactory in
presence of the plenitude and life of nature.
38.] To some extent this source from which Empiri-
cism draws is common to it with metaphysic. It is in
our materialised conceptions, i.e. in facts which emanate,
in the first instance, from experience, that metaphysic
also finds the guarantee for the correctness of its defini-
tions (including both its initial assumptions and its more
detailed body of doctrine). But, on the other hand, it
must be noted that the single sensation is not the same
thing as experience, and that the Empirical School
elevates the facts included under sensation, feeling, and
perception into the form of general ideas, propositions
or laws. This, however, it does with the reservation
that these general principles (such as force), are to have
no further import or validity of their own beyond that
taken from the sense-impression, and that no connexion
shall be deemed legitimate except what can be shown to
exist in phenomena. And on the subjective side Em-
pirical cognition has its stable footing in the fact that in
a sensation consciousness is directly present and certain
of itself.
In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever
78 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [38.
is true must be in the actual world and present to sen-
sation. This principle contradicts that ' ought to be '
on the strength of which ' reflection * is vain enough to
treat the actual present with scorn and to point to a
scene beyond — a scene which is assumed to have place
and being only in the understanding of those who talk of
it. No less than Empiricism, philosophy (§ 7) recognises
only what is, and has nothing to do with what merely
ought to be and what is thus confessed not to exist.
On the subjective side, too, it is right to notice the
valuable principle of freedom involved in Empiricism.
For the main lesson of Empiricism is that man must see
for himself and feel that he is present in every fact of
knowledge which he has to accept.
When it is carried out to its legitimate consequences,
Empiricism— being in its facts limited to the finite
sphere — denies the super-sensibie in general, or at
least any knowledge of it which would define its nature ;
it leaves thought no powers except abstraction and
formal universality and identity. But there is a funda-
mental delusion in all scientific empiricism. It employs
the metaphysical categories of matter, force, those of
one, many, generality, infinity, &c. ; following the clue
given by these categories it proceeds to draw conclu-
sions, and in so doing pre-supposes and applies the
syllogistic form. And all the while it is unaware that it
contains metaphysics — in wielding which, it makes use
of those categories and their combinations in a style
utterly thoughtless and uncritical.
From Empiricism came the cry : ' Stop roaming in empty
abstractions, keep your eyes open, lay hold on man and
nature as they are here before you, enjoy the present
moment.' Nobody can deny that there is a good deal of
truth in these words. The every-day world, what is here
and now, was a good exchange for the futile other-world
38.] EMPIRICISM. 79
— for the mirages and the chimeras of the abstract under-
standing. And thus was acquired an infinite principle, — that
solid footing so much missed in the old metaphysic. Finite
principles are the most that the understanding can pick out
— and these being essentially unstable and tottering, the
structure they supported must collapse with a crash.
Always the instinct of reason was to find an infinite
principle. As yet, the time had not come for finding it in
thought. Hence, this instinct seized upon the present, the
Here, the This,— where doubtless there is implicit infinite
form, but not in the genuine existence of that form. The
external world is the truth, if it could but know it: for the
truth is actual and must exist. The infinite principle, the
self-centred truth, therefore, is in the world for reason to
discover: though it exists in an individual and sensible
shape, and not in its truth.
Besides, this school makes sense-perception the form in
which fact is to be apprehended : and in this consists
the defect of Empiricism. Sense-perception as such is
always individual, alwa3'S transient : not indeed that the pro-
cess of knowledge stops short at sensation : on the contrary,
it proceeds to find out the universal and permanent element
in the individual apprehended by sense. This is the pro-
cess leading from simple perception to experience.
In order to form experiences, Empiricism makes especial
use of the form of Analysis. In the impression of sense we
have a concrete of many elements, the several attributes
of which we are expected to peel oft' one by one, like the
coats of an onion. In thus dismembering the thing, it is
understood that we disintegrate and take to pieces these
attributes which have coalesced, and add nothing but our
own act of disintegration. Yet analysis is the process from
the immediacy of sensation to thought : those attributes,
which the object analysed contains in union, acquire the
form of universality by being separated. Empiricism there-
fore labours under a delusion, if it supposes that, while
analysing the objects, it leaves them as they were : it really
transforms the concrete into an abstract. And as a conse-
quence of this change the living thing is killed: life can
8o SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [38.
exist only in the concrete and one. Not that we can do
without this division, if it be our intention to comprehend.
Mind itself is an inherent division. The error lies in for-
getting that this is only one-half of the process, and that the
main point is the re-union of what has been parted. And it
is where analysis never gets beyond the stage of partition
that the words of the poet are true :
* Encheiresin Naturae nennt'g bie (Sfiemie,
<S^)cttet i^rcc felbft, unb tceif nid^t, »oic:
§at bie %\)nU in itircr ^anb,
ge'^It feiber luir bag flcijitge S3anb.'
Analysis starts from the concrete ; and the possession of
this material gives it a considerable advantage over the
abstract thinking of the old metaphysics. It establishes the
differences in things : and this is very important : but these
very differences are nothing after all but abstract attributes,
i. e. thoughts. These thoughts, it is assumed, contain the
real essence of the objects ; and thus once more we see the
axiom of bygone metaphysics reappear, that the truth of
things lies in thought.
Let us next compare the empirical theory with that of
metaphysics in the matter of their respective contents. We
find the latter, as already stated, taking for its theme the
universal objects of the reason, viz. God, the Soul, and the
World : and these themes, accepted from popular conception,
it was the problem of philosophy to reduce into the form of
thoughts. Another specimen of the same method was the
Scholastic philosophy, the theme pre-supposed by which
was formed by the dogmas of the Christian Church : and it
aimed at fixing their meaning and giving them a systematic
arrangement through thought— The facts on which Empiri-
cism is based are of entirely different kind. They are the
sensible facts of nature and the facts of the finite mind. In
other words, Empiricism deals with a finite material— and
the old metaphysicians had an infinite, — though, let us add,
they made this infinite content finite by the finite form of
the understanding. The same finitude of form reappears in
Empiricism— but here the facts are finite also. To this ex-
tent, then, both modes of philosophising have the same
38-39-] EMPIRICISM. 8l
method ; both proceed from data or assumptions, which
they accept as ultimate. Generally speaking, Empiricism
finds the truth in the outward world ; and even if it allow a
super-sensible world, it holds knowledge of that world to be
impossible, and would restrict us to the province of sense-
perception. This doctrine when systematically carried out
produces what has been latterly termed Materiahsm.
Materialism of this stamp looks upon matter, qua matter,
as the genuine objective world. But with matter we are
at once introduced to an abstraction, which as such cannot
be perceived : and it may be maintained that there is no
matter, because, as it exists, it is always something definite
and concrete. Yet the abstraction we term matter is sup-
posed to lie at the basis of the whole world of sense, and
expresses the sense-world in its simplest terms as out-and-
out individualisation, and hence a congeries of points in
mutual exclusion. So long then as this sensible sphere is
and continues to be for Empiricism a mere datum, we have
a doctrine of bondage : for we become free, when we are
confronted by no absolutely alien world, but depend upon
a fact which we ourselves are. Consistently with the
empirical point of view, besides, reason and unreason can
only be subjective : in other words, we must take what is
given just as it is, and we have no right to ask whether and
to what extent it is rational in its own nature.
39.] Touching this principle it has been justly ob-
served that in what we call Experience, as distinct
from mere single perception of single facts, there are
two elements. The one is the matter, infinite in its
multiplicity, and as it stands a mere set of singular^ :
the other is the form, the characteristics of universality
and necessity. Mere experience no doubt offers many,
perhaps innumerable cases of similar perceptions : but,
after all, no multitude, however great, can be the same
thing as universality. Similarly, mere experience
affords perceptions of changes succeeding each other
and of objects in juxtaposition ; but it presents no
VOL. II. G
82 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [39-40.
necessary connexion. If perception, therefore, is to
maintain its claim to be the sole basis of what men hold
for truth, universality and necessity appear something
illegitimate : they become an accident of our minds,
a mere custom, the content of which might be otherwise
constituted than it is.
It is an important corollary of this theory, that on
this empirical mode of treatment legal and ethical prin-
ciples and laws, as well as the truths of religion, are
exhibited as the work of chance, and stripped of their
objective character and inner truth.
The scepticism of Hume, to which this conclusion
was chiefly due, should be clearly marked off from
Greek scepticism. Hume assumes the truth of the
empirical element, feeling and sensation, and proceeds
to challenge universal principles and laws, because they
have no warranty from sense-perception. So far was
ancient scepticism from making feeling and sensation
the canon of truth, that it turned against the deliverances
of sense first of all, (On Modern Scepticism as com-
pared with Ancient, see Schelling and Hegel's Critical
Journal of Philosophy : 1802, vol. I. i.)
II. The Critical Philosophy.
40.] In common with Empiricism the Critical Philo-
sophy assumes that experience affords the one sole
foundation for cognitions ; which however it does not
allow to rank as truths, but only as knowledge of
phenomena.
The Critical theory starts originally from the distinc-
tion of elements presented in the analysis of experience,
viz. the matter of sense, and its universal relations.
Taking into account Hume's criticism on this distinction
40-4I.] THE •CRITICAL' PHILOSOPHY. 83
as given in the preceding section, viz. that sensation
does not expHcitly apprehend more than an individual
or more than a mere event, it insists at the same time
on the fact tha't universahty and necessity are seen to
perform a function equally essential in constituting what
is called experience. This element, not being derived
from the empirical facts as such, must belong to the
spontaneity of thought ; in other words, it is a priori.
The Categories or Notions of the Understanding con-
stitute the objectivity of experiential cognitions. In
every case they involve a connective reference, and
hence through their means are formed synthetic judg-
ments a priori, that is, primary and underivative con-
nexions of opporites.
Even Hume's scepticism does not deny that the
characteristics of universality and necessity are found in
cognition. And even in Kant this fact remains a pre-
supposition after all ; it may be said, to use the ordinary
phraseology of the sciences, that Kant did no more than
offer another explanation of the fact.
41.] The Critical Philosophy proceeds to test the
value of the categories employed in metaphysic, as well
as in other sciences and in ordinary conception. This
scrutiny however is not directed to the content of these
categories, nor does it inquire into the exact relation
they bear to one another : but simply considers them as
affected by the contrast between subjective and objec-
tive. The contrast, as we are to understand it here,
bears upon the distinction (see preceding §) of the two
elements in experience. The name of objectivity is
here given to the element of universality and necessity,
i.e. to the categories themselves, or what is called the
a priori constituent. The Critical Philosophy however
widened the contrast in such away, that the subjectivity
comes to embrace the ensemble of experience, including
G 2
84 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [41.
both of the aforesaid elements ; and nothing remains on
the other side but the * thing-in-itself.'
The special forms of the a priori element, in other
words, of thought, which in spite of its objectivity is
looked upon as a purely subjective act, present them-
selves as follows in a systematic order which, it may be
remarked, is solely based upon psychological and his-
torical grounds.
(i) A very important step was undoubtedly made, when
the terms of the old metaphysic were subjected to scrutiny.
The plain thinker pursued his unsuspecting way in those
categories which had offered themselves naturally. It never
occurred to him to ask to what extent these categories had
a value and authority of their own. If, as has been said,
it is characteristic of free thought to allow no assumptions
to pass unquestioned, the old metaphysicians were not
free thinkers. They accepted their categories as they
were, without further trouble, as an a priori datum, not yet
tested by reflection. The Critical philosophy reversed this.
Kant undertook to examine how far the forms of thought
were capable of leading to the knowledge of truth. In
particular he demanded a criticism of the faculty of cogni-
tion as preliminary to its exercise. That is a fair demand,
if it mean that even the forms of thought must be made an
object of investigation. Unfortunately there soon creeps in
the misconception of already knowing before you know,—
the error of refusing to enter the water until you have
learnt, to swim. True, indeed, the forms of thought should
be subjected to a scrutiny before they are used : yet what is
this scrutiny but ipso facto a cognition? So that what we
want is to combine in our process of inquiry the acdon of
the forms of thought with a criticism of them. The forms
of thought must be studied in their essential nature and
complete development : they are at once the object of
research and the action of that object. Hence they examine
themselves : in their own action they must determine their
limits, and point out their defects. This is that action of
thought, which will hereafter be specially considered under
41.] kant's problem. 85
the name of Dialectic, and regarding which we need only
at the outset observe that, instead of being brought to bear
upon the categories from without, it is immanent in their
own action.
We may therefore state the first point in Kant's philo-
sophy as follows : Thought must itself investigate its own
capacity of knowledge. People in the present day have
got over Kant and his philosophy : everybody wants to get
further. But there are tvyo ways of going further — a back-
ward and a forward. The light of criticism soon shows that
many of our modern essays in philosophy are mere repeti-
tions of the old metaphysical method, an endless and un-
critical thinking in a groove determined by the natural bent
of each man's mind.
(2) Kant's examination of the categories suffers from the
grave defect of viewing them, not absolutely and for their
own sake, but in order to see whether they are subjective or
objective. In the language of common life we mean by
objective what exists outside of us and reaches us from with-
out by means of sensation. What Kant did, was to deny
that the categories, such as cause and effect, were, in this
sense of the word, objective, or given in sensation, and to
maintain on the contrary that they belonged to our own
thought itself, to the spontaneity of thought. To that extent
therefore, they were subjective. And yet in spite of tJiis,
Kant gives the name objective to what is thought, to the
universal and necessary, while he describes as subjective
whatever is merely felt. This arrangement apparently
reverses the first-mentioned use of the word, and has
caused Kant to be charged with confusing language. But
the charge is unfair if we more narrowly consider the
facts of the case. The vulgar believe that the objects of
perception which confront them, such as an individual
animal, or a single star, are independent and permanent
existences, compared with which, thoughts are unsubstantial
and dependent on something else. In fact however the
perceptions of sense are the properly dependent and
secondary feature, while the thoughts are really inde-
pendent and primary. This being so, Kant gave the title
86 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [41-42.
objective to the intellectual factor, to the universal and
necessary : and he was quite justified in so doing. Our
sensations on the other hand are subjective ; for sensations
lack stability in their owji nature, and are no less fleeting
and evanescent than thought is permanent and self-subsist-
ing. At the present day, the special line of distinction
established by Kant between the subjective and objective
is adopted by the phraseology of the educated world. Thus
the criticism of a work of art ought, it is said, to be not
subjective, but objective ; in other words, instead of springing
from the particular and accidental feeling or temper of the
moment, it should keep its eye on those general points of
view which the laws of art establish. In the same acceptation
we can distinguish in any scientific pursuit the objective and
the subjective interest of the investigation.
But after all, objectivity of thought, in Kant's sense, is
again to a certain extent subjective. Thoughts, according to
Kant, although universal and necessary categories, are only
our thoughts— separated by an impassable gulf from the
thing, as it exists apart from our knowledge. But the true
objectivity of thinking means that the thoughts, far from
being merely ours, must at the same time be the real essence
of the things, and of whatever is an object to us.
Objective and subjective are convenient expressions in
current use, the employment of which may easily lead to
confusion. Up to this point, the discussion has shown three
meanings of objectivity. First, it means what has external
existence, in distinction from which the subjective is what
is only supposed, dreamed, &c. Secondly, it has the mean-
ing, attached to it by Kant, of the universal and necessary,
as distinguished from the particular, subjective and occasional
element which belongs to our sensations. Thirdly, as has been
just explained, it means the thought-apprehended essence of
the existing thing, in contradistinction from what is merely
our thought, and what consequently is still separated from
the thing itself, as it exists in independent essence.
42.] [a) The Theoretical Faculty. — Cognition qua
cognition. The specific ground of the categories is
declared by the CriticaJ system to lie in the primary
42.] THE CATEGORIES AND THEIR PRINCIPLE. 87
identity of the ' I ' in thought, — what Kant calls the
' transcendental unity of self-consciousness.' The im-
pressions from feeling and perception are, if we look to
their contents, a multiplicity or miscellan}' of elements :
and the multiplicity is equally conspicuous in their form.
For sense is marked by a mutual exclusion of members ;
and that under two aspects, namely space and time,
which, being the forms, that is to say, the universal type
of perception, are themselves a priori. This congeries,
afforded by sensation and perception, must however
be reduced to an identity or primary synthesis. To
accomplish this the ' I ' brings it in relation to itself and
unites it there in one consciousness which Kant calls
' pure apperception.' The specific modes in which the
Ego refers to itself the multiplicity of sense are the pure
concepts of the understanding, the Categories.
Kant, it is well known, did not put himself to much
trouble in discovering the categories. ' I,' the unity of
self-consciousness, being quite abstract and completely
indeterminate, the question arises, how are we to get at
the specialised forms of the ' I,' the categories ? Fortu-
nately, the common logic offers to our hand an empirical
classification of the kinds oi judgment. Now, to judge
is the same as to think of a determinate object. Hence
the various modes of judgment, as enumerated to our
hand, provide us with the several categories of thought.
To the philosophy of Fichte belongs the great merit of
having called attention to the need of exhibiting the
necessity of these categories and giving a genuine deduc-
tion of them. Fichte ought to have produced at least
one effect on the method of logic. One might have
expected that the general laws of thought, the usual
stock-in-trade of logicians, or the classification of no-
tions, judgments, and syllogisms, would be no longer
taken merely from observation and so only empirically
88 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [42.
treated, but be deduced from thought itself. If thought
is to be capable of proving anything at all, if logic must
insist upon the necessity of proofs, and if it proposes to
teach the theory of demonstration, its first care should
be to give a reason for its own subject-matter, and to
see that it is necessary.
(i) Kant therefore holds that the categories have their
source in the ' Ego,' and that the ' Ego ' consequently sup-
plies the characteristics of universality and necessity. If
we observe what we have before us primarily, we may de-
scribe it as a congeries or diversity : and in the categories
we find the simple points or units, to which this congeries
is made to converge. The world of sense is a scene of
mutual exclusion : its being is outside itself. That is the
fundamental feature of the sensible. 'Now 'has no mean-
ing except in reference to a before and a hereafter. Red,
in the same way, only subsists by being opposed to yellow
and blue. Now this other thing is outside the sensible ;
which latter is, only in so far as it is not the other, and only
in so far as that other is. But thought, or the ' Ego,' occu-
pies a position the very reverse of the sensible, with its
mutual exclufi' ns, and its being outside itself. The ' I ' is
the primary identity — at one with itself and all at home in
itself The word ' I ' expresses the mere act of bringing-to-
bear-upon-self : and whatever is placed in this unit or focus,
is aflfected by it and transformed into it. The ' I' is as it
were the crucible and the fire which consumes the loose
plurality of sense and reduces it to unity. This is the pro-
cess which Kant calls pure apperception in distinction from
the common apperception, to which the plurality it receives
is a plurality still ; whereas pure apperception is rather an
act by which the ' I ' makes the materials ' mine.'
This view has at least the merit of giving a correct ex-
pression to the nature of all consciousness. The tendency of
all man's endeavours is to understand the world, to appro-
priate and subdue it to himself: and to this end the positive
reality of the world must be as it were crushed and pounded,
in other words, idealised. At the same time we must note
42.] THE TRANSCENDENTAL UNITY 89
that it is not the mere act of our personal self-consciousness,
which introduces an absolute unity into the variety of sense.
Rather, this identity is itself the absolute. The absolute
is, as it were, so kind as to leave individual things to their
own enjoyment, and it again drives them back to the abso-
lute unity.
(2) Expressions like 'transcendental unity of self-con-
sciousness ' have an ugly look about them, and suggest a
monster in the background : but their meaning is not so
abstruse as it looks. Kant's meaning of transcendental may
be gathered by the way he distinguishes it from transcen-
dent. The transcendent may be said to be what steps out
beyond the categories of the understanding : a sense in
which the term is first employed in mathematics. Thus in
geometry you are told to conceive the circumference of a
circle as formed of an infinite number of infinitely small
straight lines. In other words, characteristics which the un-
derstanding holds to be totally diff'erent, the straight line and
the curve, are expressly invested with identity. Another
transcendent of the same kind is the self-consciousness
which is identical with itself and infinite in itself, as distin-
guished from the ordinary consciousness which derives its
form and tone from finite materials. That unity of self-
consciousness, however, Kant called transcendental only;
and he meant thereby that the unity was only in our minds
and did not attach to the objects apart from our knowledge
of them.
(3) To regard the categories as subjective only, i.e. as a
part of ourselves, must seem very odd to the natural mind ;
and no doubt there is something queer about it. It is quite
true however that the categories are not contained in the
sensation as it is given us. When, for instance, we look at
a piece of sugar, we find it is hard, white, sweet, &c. All
these properties we say are united in one object. Now it is
this unity that is not found in the sensation. The same
thing happens if we conceive two events to stand in the
relation of cause and effect. The senses only inform us
of the two several occurrences which follow each other in
time. But that the one is cause,, the other effect,— in other
90 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [42-43.
words, the causal nexus between the two, — is not perceived
by sense ; it is only evident to thought. Still, though the
categories, such as unity, or cause and effect, are strictly
the property of thought, it by no means follows that they
must be ours merely and not also characteristics of the
objects. Kant however confines them to the subject-mind,
and his philosophy may be styled subjective idealism : for
he holds that both the form and the matter of knowledge
are supplied by the Ego— or knowing subject— the form by
our intellectual, the matter by our sentient ego.
So far as regards the content of this subjective idealism,
not a word need be wasted. It might perhaps at first sight
be imagined, that objects would lose their reahty when
their unity was transferred to the subject. But neither we
nor the objects would have anything to gain by the mere
fact that they possessed being. The main point is not, that
they are, but what they are, and whether or not their con-
tent is true. It does no good to the things to say merely
that they have being. What has being, will also cease to be
when time creeps over it. It might also be alleged that
subjective ideahsm tended to promote self-conceit. But
surely if a man's world be the sum of his sensible pei:cep-
tions, he has no reason to be vain of such a world. Laying
aside therefore as unimportant this distinction between sub-
jective and objective, we are chiefly interested in knowing
what a thing is : i.e. its content, which is no more objective
than it is subjective. If mere existence be enough to make
objectivity, even a crime is objective : but it is an existence
which is nullity at the core, as is definitely made apparent
when the day of punishment comes.
43.] The Categories may be viewed in two aspects.
On the one hand it is by their instrumentality that the
mere perception of sense rises to objectivity and ex-
perience. On the other hand these notions are unities
in our consciousness merely : they are consequently
conditioned by the material given to them, and having
nothing of their own they can be applied to use only
within the range of experience. But the other con-
43-44-] SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM. 9T
stituent of experience, the impressions of feeling and
perception, is not one whit less subjective than the
categories.
To assert that the categories taken by themselves a'-e empty
can scarcely be right, seeing that they have a content, at all
events, in the special stamp and significance which they pos-
sess. Of course the content of the categories is not percep-
tible to the senses, nor is it in time and space : but that is
rather a merit than a defect. A glimpse of this meaning of
content may be observed to affect our ordinary thinking. A
book or a speech for example is said to have a great deal in
it, to be full of content, in proportion to the greater number
of thoughts and general results to be found in it : whilst,
on the contrary, we should never say that any book, e.g. a
novel, had much in it, because it included a great number of
single incidents, situations, and the like. Even the popular
voice thus recognises that something more than the facts of
sense is needed to make a work pregnant with matter.
And what is this additional desideratum but thoughts, or in
the first instance the categories? And yet it is not alto-
gether wrong, it should be added, to call the categories of
themselves empty, if it be meant that they and the logical
Idea, of which they are the members, do not constitute the
whole of philosophy, but necessarily lead onwards in due
progress to the real departments of Nature and Mind. Only
let the progress not be misunderstood. The logical Idea
does not thereby come into possession of a content origin-
ally foreign to it : but by its own native action is specialised
and developed to Nature and Mind.
44.] It follows that the categories are no fit terms to
express the Absolute — the Absolute not being given in
perception; — and Understanding, or knowledge by
means of the categories, is consequently incapable of
knowing the Things-in-themselves.
The Thing-in-itself (and under 'thing' is embraced
even Mind and God) expresses the object when we
leave out of sight all that consciousness makes of it, all
92 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [44-45-
its emotional aspects, and all specific thoughts of it. It
is easy to see what is left, — utter abstraction, total
emptiness, only described still as an 'other-world' — the
negative of every image, feeling, and definite thought.
Nor does it require much penetration to see that this
caput moriuum is still only a product of thought, such as
accrues when thought is carried on to abstraction un-
alloyed : that it is the work of the empty ' Ego,' which
makes an object out of this empty self identity of its
own. The negative characteristic which this abstract
identity receives as an object, is also enumerated among
the categories of Kant, and is no less familiar than the
empty identity aforesaid. Hence one can only read
with surprise the perpetual remark that we do not know
the Thing-in-itself On the contrary there is nothing
we can know so easily.
45.] It is Reason, the faculty of the Unconditioned,
which discovers the conditioned nature of the know-
ledge comprised in experience. What is thus called
the object of Reason, the Infinite or Unconditioned, is
nothing but selfsameness, or the primary identity of
the ' Ego ' in thought (mentioned in § 42). Reason
itself is the name given to the abstract 'Ego' or thought,
which makes this pure identity its aim or object (cf note
to the preceding §). Now this identity, having no
definite attribute at all, can receive no illumination from
the truths of experience, for the reason that these refer
always to definite facts. Such is the sort of Uncon-
ditioned that is supposed to be the absolute truth of
Reason, — what is termed the Idea ; whilst the cognitions
of experience are reduced to the level of untruth and
declared to be appearances.
Kant was the first definitely to signalise the distinction be-
tween Reason and Understanding. The object of the former,
as he applied the term, was the infinite and unconditioned, of
45-] SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM. 93
the latter the finite and conditioned. Kant did valuable ser-
vice when he enforced the finite character of the cognitions
of the understanding founded merely upon experience, and
stamped their contents with the name of appearance. But
his mistake was to stop at the purely negative point of view,
and to limit the unconditionality of Reason to an abstract
self-sameness without any shade of distinction. It degrades
Reason to a finite and conditioned thing, to identify it with
a mere stepping beyond the finite and conditioned range of
understanding. The real infinite, far from being a mere
transcendence of the finite, always involves the absorption
of the finite into its own fuller nature. In the same way
Kant restored the Idea to its proper dignity : vindicating it
for Reason, as a thing distinct from abstract analytic deter-
minations or from the merely sensible conceptions which
usually appropriate to themselves the name of ideas. But
as respects the Idea also, he never got beyond its negative
aspect, as what ought to be but is not.
The view that the objects of immediate consciousness,
which constitute the body of experience, are mere appear-
ances (phenomena), was another important result of the
Kantian philosophy. Common Sense, that mixture of sense
and understanding, believes the objects of which it has
knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting ;
and when it becomes evident that they tend towards and
limit one another, the interdependence of one upon another is
reckoned something foreign to them and to their true nature.
The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately
known are mere appearances— in other words, the ground
of their being is not in themselves but in something else.
But then comes the important step of defining what this
something else is. According to Kant, the things that we
know about are to us appearances only, and we can never
know their essential nature, which belongs to another
world we cannot approach. Plain minds have not unreason-
ably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with its
reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal
world, created by ourselves alone. For the true statement
of the case is rather as follows. The things of which we
94 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [45-46.
have direct consciousness are mere pl:enomena, not for us
only, but in their own nature ; and the true and proper case
of these things, finite as they are, is to have their existence
founded not in themselves but in the universal divine Idea.
This view of things, it is true, is as idealist as Kant's ; but
in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical
philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute
idealism, however, though it is far in advance of vulgar real-
ism, is by no means merely restricted to philosophy. It hes
at the root of all rehgion ; for religion too believes the actua'
world we see, the sum total of existence, to be created and
governed by God.
46.] But it is not enough simply to indicate the
existence of the object of Reason. Curiosity impels us
to seek for knowledge of this identity, this empty thing-
in-itself. Now knowledge means such an acquaintance
with the object as apprehends its distinct and special
subject-matter. But such subject-matter involves a
complex inter-connexion in the object itself, and sup-
plies a ground of connexion with many other objects.
In the present case, to express the nature of the features
of the Infinite or Thing-in-itself, Reason would have
nothing except the categories : and in any endeavour so
to employ them Reason becomes over-soaring or ' tran-
scendent.'
Here begins the second stage of the Criticism of
Reason — which, as an independent piece of work, is
more valuable than the first. The first part, as has been
explained above, teaches that the categories originate in
the unity of self-consciousness ; that any knowledge
which is gained by their means has nothing objective in
it, and that the very objectivity claimed for them is only
subjective. So far as this goes, the Kantian Criticism
presents that 'common' type of idealism known as
Subjective Idealism. It asks no CiueSw'ons about the
meaning or scope of the categories, but simply considers
46-47-] CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. 95
the abstract form of subjectivity and objectivity, and that
even in such a partial way, that the former aspect, that
of subjectivity, is retained as a final and purely affirma-
tive term of thought. In the second part, however,
when Kant examines the application, as it is called,
which Reason makes of the categories in order to
know its objects, the content of the categories, at least
in some points of view, comes in for discussion :
or, at any rate, an opportunity presented itself for a
discussion of the question. It is worth while to see
what decision Kant arrives at on the subject of meta-
physic, as this application of the categories to the
unconditioned is called. His method of procedure we
shall here briefly state and criticise.
47.] (o) The first of the unconditioned entities which
Kant examines is the Soul (see above, § 34). * In my
consciousness,' he says, ' I always find that I (i) am the
determining subject : (2) am singular, or abstractly
simple : (3) am identical, or one and the same, in all
the variety of what I am conscious of: (4) distinguish
myself as thinking from all the things outside me.'
Now the method of the old metaphysic, as Kant cor-
rectly states it, consisted in substituting for these state-
ments of experience the corresponding categories or
metaphysical terms. Thus arise these four new propo-
sitions : (a) the SoUl is a substance : {b) it is a simple
substance : (c) it is numerically identical at the various
periods of existence : [d) it stands in relation to space.
Kant discusses this translation, and draws attention
to the Paralogism or mistake of confounding one kind
of truth with another. He points out that empirical
attributes have here been replaced by categories : and
shows that we are not entitled to argue from the former
to the latter, or to put the latter in place of the former.
This criticism obviously but repeats the observation
96 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [47.
of Hume (§ 39) that the categories as a whole, — ideas of
universality and necessity, — are entirely absent from
sensation ; and that the empirical fact both in form and
contents differs from its intellectual formulation.
If the purely empirical fact were held to constitute the
credentials of the thought, then no doubt it would be
indispensable to be able precisely to identify the 'idea'
in the 'impression.'
And in order to make out, in his criticism of the meta-
physical psychology, that the soul cannot be described
as substantial, simple, self-same, and as maintaining its
independence in intercourse with the material world,
Kant argues from the single ground, that the several
attributes of the soul, which consciousness lets us feel
in experience, are not exactly the same attributes as
result from the action of thought thereon. But we have
seen above, that according to Kant all knowledge, even
experience, consists in thinking our impressions — in
other words, in transforming into intellectual categories
the attributes primarily belonging to sensation.
Unquestionably one good result of the Kantian criti-
cism was that it emancipated mental philosophy from
the ' soul-thing,' from the categories, and, consequently,
from questions about the simplicity, complexity, materi-
ality, &c. of the soul. But even for the common sense
of ordinary men, the true point of view, from which the
inadmissibility of these forms best appears, will be, not
that they are thoughts, but that thoughts of such a stamp
neither can nor do contain truth.
If thought and phenomenon do not perfectly corre-
spond to one another, we are free at least to choose
which of the two shall be held the defaulter. The
Kantian idealism, where it touches on the world of
Reason, throws the blame on the thoughts ; saying that
the thoughts are defective, as not being exactly fitted to
47-48.] PARALOGISMS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 97
the sensations and to a mode of mind wholly restricted
within the range of sensation, in which as such there
are no traces of the presence of these thoughts. But as
to the actual content of the thought, no question is
raised.
Paralogisms are a species of unsound syllogism, the
especial vice of which consists in employing one and the
same word in the two premisses with a different meaning.
According to Kant the method adopted by the rational psy-
chology of the old metaphysicians, when they assumed that
the qualities of the phenomenal soul, as given in experi-
ence, formed part of its own real essence, was based upon
such a Paralogism. Nor can it be denied that predicates like
simplicity, permanence, &c., are inapplicable to the soul.
But their unfitness is not due to the ground assigned by
Kant, that Reason, by applying them, would exceed its ap-
pointed bounds. The true ground is that this style of ab-
stract terms is not good enough for the soul, which is very
much more than a mere simple or unchangeable sort of
thing. And thus, for example, while the soul may be ad-
mitted to be simple self-sameness, it is at the same time
active and institutes distinctions in its own nature. But
whatever is merely or abstractly simple is as such also a
mere dead thing. By his polemic against the metaphysic of
the past Kant discarded those predicates from the soul or
mind. He did well ; but when he came to state his reasons,
his failure is apparent.
48.] ifi) The second unconditioned object is the
World (§ 35). In the attempt which reason makes to
comprehend the unconditioned nature of the World, it
falls into what are called Antinomies. In other words
it maintains two opposite propositions about the same
object, and in such a way that each of them has to be
maintained with equal necessity. From this it follows
that the body of cosmical fact, the specific statements
descriptive of which run into contradietion, cannot be
a self-si.bsistent reality, but only an appearance. The
VOL. II. H
98 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [48.
explanation offered by Kant alleges that the contradic-
tion does not affect the object in its own proper essence,
but attaches only to the Reason which seeks to compre-
hend it.
In this way the suggestion was broached that the con-
tradiction is occasioned by the subject-matter itself, or by
the intrinsic quality of the categories. And to offer the
idea that the contradiction introduced into the world
of Reason by the categories of Understanding is in-
evitable and essential, was to make one of the most
important steps in the progress of Modern Philosophy.
But the more important the issue thus raised the more
trivial was the solution. Its only motive was an excess
of tenderness for the things of the world. The blemish
of contradiction, it seems, could not be allowed to mar
the essence of the world : but there could be no objec-
tion to attach it to the thinking Reason, to the essence
of mind. Probably nobody will feel disposed to deny
that the phenomenal world presents contradictions to
the observing mind; meaning by 'phenomenal' the
world as it presents itself to the senses and understand-
ing, to the subjective mind. But if a comparison is
instituted between the essence of the world and the
essence of the mind, it does seem strange to hear how
calmly and confidently the modest dogma has been ad-
vanced by one, and repeated by others, that thought or
Reason, and not the World, is the seat of contradiction.
It is no escape to turn round and explain that Reason
falls into contradiction only by applying the categories.
For this application of the categories is maintained to
be necessary, and Reason is not supposed to be equipped
with any other forms but the categories for the purpose
of cognition. But cognition is determining and deter-
minate thinking: so that, if Reason be mere empty
indeterminate thinking, it thinks nothing. And if in the
48; COSMOLOGY— THE ANTINOMIES. 99
end Reason be reduced to mere identity without diver-
sity (see next §), it will in the end also win a happy
release from contradiction at the slight sacrifice of all its
facts and contents.
It may also be noted that his failure to make a more
thorough study of Antinomy was one of the reasons why
Kant enumerated only four Antinomies. These four
attracted his notice, because, as may be seen in his dis-
cussion of the so-called Paralogisms of Reason, he
assumed the list of the categories as a basis of his argu-
ment. Employing what has subsequently become a
favourite fashion, he simply put the object under a rubric
otherwise ready to hand, instead of deducing its charac-
teristics from its notion. Further deficiencies in the
treatment of the Antinomies 1 have pointed out, as occa-
sion offered, in my 'Science of Logic' Here it will be
sufficient to say that the Antinomies are not confined to
the four special objects taken from Cosmology : they
appear in ail objects of every kind, in all conceptions,
notions and Ideas. To be aware of this and to know
objects in this property of theirs, makes a vital part in a
philosophical theory. For the property thus indicated
is what we shall afterwards describe as the Dialectical
influence in logic.
The principles of the metaphysical philosophy gave rise
to the belief that, when cognition lapsed into contradictions,
it was a mere accidental aberration, due to some subjective
mistake in argument and inference. According to Kant,
however, thought has a natural tendency to issue in contra-
dictions or antinomies, whenever it seeks to apprehend the
infinite. We have in the latter part of the above paragraph
referred to the philosophical importance of the antinomies of
reason, and shown how the recognition of their existence
helped largely to get rid of the rigid dogmatism of the meta-
physic of understanding, and to direct attention to the Dia-
lectical movement of thought. But here too Kant, as we
H 2
TOO SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [48.
must add, never got beyond the negative result that the
thing-in-itself is unknowable, and never penetrated to the
discovery of what the antinomies really and positively mean.
That true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this :
that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed
elements. Consequently to know, or, in other words, to
comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it
as a concrete unity of opposed determinations. The old
metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the
objects of which it sought a metaphysical knowledge, went
to work by applying categories abstractly and to the ex-
clusion of their opposites. Kant, on the other hand, tried to
prove that the statements, issuing through this method,
could be met by other statements of contrary import with
equal warrant and equal necessity. In the enumeration of
these antinomies he narrowed his ground to the cosmology
of the old metaphysical system, and in his discussion made
out four antinomies, a number which rests upon the list of
the categories. The first antinomy is on the question :
Whether we are or are not to think the world limited in
space and time. In the second antinomy we have a discus-
sion of the dilemma: Matter must be conceived either as
endlessly divisible, or as consisting of atoms. The third
antinomy bears upon the antithesis of freedom and neces-
sity, to such extent as it is embraced in the question,
Whether everything in the world must be supposed subject
to the condition of causality, or if we can also assume free
beings, in other words, absolute initial points of action, in
the world. Finally, the fourth antinomy is the dilemma:
Either the world as a whole has a cause or it is uncaused.
The method which Kant follows in discussing these anti-
nomies is as follows. He puts the two propositions implied
in the dilemma over against each other as thesis and anti-
thesis, and seeks to prove both : that is to say he tries to
exhibit them as inevitably issuing from reflection on the
question. He particularly protests against the charge of
being a special pleader and of grounding his reasoning on
illusions. Speaking honestly, however, the arguments
which Kant offers for his thesis and antithesis are mere
48-49-] COSMOLOGY — THE ANTINOMIES. lOI
shams of demonstration. The thing to be proved is invari-
ably implied in the assumption he starts from, and the
speciousness of his proofs is only due to his prolix and
apagogic mode of procedure. Yet it was, and still is, a great
achievement for the Critical philosophy, when it exhibited
these antinomies : for in this way it gave some expression
(at first certainly subjective and unexplained) to the actual
unity of those categories which are kept persistently sepa-
rate by the understanding. The first of the cosmological
antinomies, for example, implies a recognition of the doc-
trine that space and time present a discrete as well as a
continuous aspect : whereas the old metaphysic, laying ex-
clusive emphasis on the continuity, had been led to treat the
world as unlimited in space and time. It is quite correct to
say that we can go beyond every definite space and beyond
every definite time : but it is no less correct that space and
time are real and actual only when they are defined or
specialised into ' here ' and ' now,'— a specialisation which is
involved in the very notion of them. The same observa-
tions apply to the rest of the antinomies. Take, for example,
the antinomy of freedom and necessity. The main gist of it
is that freedom and necessity as understood by abstract
thinkers are not independently real, as these thinkers
suppose, but merely ideal factors (moments) of the true
freedom and the true necessity, and that to abstract and
isolate either conception is to make it false.
49.] (y) The third object of the Reason is God (§36):
He also must be known and defined in terms of thought.
But in comparison with an unalloyed identity, every
defining term as such seems to the understanding to be
only a limit and a negation : every reality accordingly
must be taken as limitless, i.e. undefined. Accordingly
God, when He is defined to be the sum of all realities,
the most real of beings, turns into a mere abstract.
And the only term under which that most real of real
things can be defined is that of Being— itself the height
of abstraction. These are the two elements, abstract
I02 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [49-50-
identity, on one hand, which is spoken of in this place
as the notion ; and Being on the other, — which Reason
seeks to unify. And their union is the Ideal of Reason.
50.] To carry out this unification two ways or two
forms are admissible. Either we may begin with Being
and proceed to the ahstractimi of Thought : or the
movement may begin with the abstraction and end in
Being.
We shall, in the first place, start from Being. But
Being, in its natural aspect, presents itself to view as
a Being of infinite variety, a World in all its plenitude.
And this world may be regarded in two ways : first, as
a collection of innumerable unconnected facts ; and
second, as a collection of innumerable facts in mutual
relation, giving evidence of design. The first aspect is
emphasised in the Cosmological proof: the latter in the
proofs of Natural Theology. Suppose now that this
fulness of being passes under the agency of thought.
Then it is stripped of its isolation and unconnectedness,
and viewed as a universal and absolutely necessary
being which determines itself and acts by general pur-
poses or laws. And this necessary and self-determined
being, different from the being at the commencement,
is God.
The main force of Kant's criticism on this process
attacks it for being a syllogising, i.e. a transition. Per-
ceptions, and that aggregate of perceptions we call the
world, exhibit as they stand no traces of that univer-
sality which they afterwards receive from the purifying
act of thought. The empirical conception of the world
therefore gives no warrant for the idea of universality.
And so any attempt on the part of thought to ascend
from the en pirical conception of the world to God is
checked by the argument of Hume (as in the para-
logisms, § 47), according to which we have no right to
50.] PRINCIPLES OF THEOLOGY. 103
think sensations, that is, to eUcit universality and neces-
sity from them.
Man is essentially a thinker : and therefore sound
Common Sense, as well as Philosophy, will not yield
up their right of rising to God from and out of the
empirical view of the world. The only basis on which
this rise is possible is the thinking study of the world,
not the bare sensuous, animal, attuition of it. Thought
and thought alone has eyes for the essence, substance,
universal power, and ultimate design of the world.
And what men call the proofs of God's existence are,
rightly understood, ways of describing and analysing the
native course of the mind, the course of thought think-
ing the data of the senses. The rise of thought beyond
the world of sense, its passage from the finite to the
infinite, the leap into the super-sensible which it takes
when it snaps asunder the chain of sense, all this tran-
sition is thought and nothing but thought. Say there
must be no such passage, and you say there is to be no
thinking. And in sooth, animals make no such transi-
tion. They never get further than sensation and the
perception of the senses, and in consequence they have
no religion.
Both on general grounds, and in the particular case,
there are two remarks to be made upon the criticism of
this exaltation in thought. The first remark deals with
the question of form. When the exaltation is exhibited
in a syllogistic process, in the shape of what we call
proofs of the being of God, these reasonings cannot
but start from some sort of theory of the world, which
makes it an aggregate either of contingent facts or of
final causes and relations involving design. The merely
syllogistic thinker may deem this starting-point a solid
basis and suppose that it remains throughout in the
same empirical light, left at last as it was at the first. In
I04 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [50.
this case, the bearing of the beginning upon the con-
clusion to which it leads has a purely affirmative aspect,
as if we were only reasoning from one thing which is
and continues to be, to another thing which in like
manner is. But the great error is to restrict our
notions of the nature of thought to its form in under-
standing alone. To think the phenomenal world rather
means to re-cast its form, and transmute it into a uni-
versal. And thus the action of thought has also a
negative effect upon its basis : and the matter of sensa-
tion, when it receives the stamp of universality, at once
loses its first and phenomenal shape. By the removal
and negation of the shell, the kernel within the sense-
percept is brought to the light (§§ 13 and 23). And it is
because they do not, with sufficient prominence, express
the negative features implied in the exaltation of the
mind from the world to God, that the metaphysical
proofs of the being of a God are defective interpreta-
tions and descriptions of the process. If the world is
only a sum of incidents, it follows that it is also deciduous
and phenomenal, in esse and posse null. That upward
spring of the mind signifies, that the being which the
world has is only a semblance, no real being, no abso-
lute truth ; it signifies that, beyond and above that
appearance, truth abides in God, so that true being is
another name for God. The process of exaltation might
thus appear to be transition and to involve a means, but
it is not a whit less true, that every trace of transition
and means is absorbed ; since the world, which might
have seemed to be the means of reaching God, is ex-
plained to be a nullity. Unless the being of* the world
is nullified, the point d'dppui for the exaltation is lost.
In this way the apparent means vanishes, and the pro-
cess of derivation is cancelled in the very act by which
it proceeds. It is the affirmative aspect of this rela-
50.] PRINCIPLES OF THEOLOGY. I05
tion, as supposed to subsist between two things, either
of which is as much as the other, which Jacobi mainly
has in his eye when he attacks the demonstrations of the
understanding. Justly censuring them for seeking con-
ditions [i.e. the world) for the unconditioned, he remarks
that the Infinite or God must on such a method be pre-
sented as dependent and derivative. But that elevation,
as it takes place in the mind, serves to correct this
semblance : in fact, it has no other meaning than to
correct that semblance. Jacobi, however, failed to re-
cognise the genuine nature of essential thought— by
which it cancels the mediation in the very act of
mediating; and consequently, his objection, though it
tells against the merely ' reflective ' understanding, is
false when applied to thought as a whole, and in par-
ticular to reasonable thought.
To explain what we mean by the neglect of the nega-
tive factor in thought, we may refer by way of illustration
to the charges of Pantheism and Atheism brought
against the doctrines of Spinoza. The absolute Sub-
stance of Spinoza certainly falls short of absolute spirit,
and it is a right and' proper requirement that God
should be defined as absolute spirit. But when the
definition in Spinoza is said to identify the world with
God, and to confound God with nature and the finite
world, it is implied that the finite world possesses a
genuine actuality and affirmative reality. If this as-
sumption be admitted, of course a union of God with
the world renders God completely finite, an J degrades
Him to the bare finite and adventitious congeries of
existence. But there are two objections to be noted.
In the first place Spinoza does not define God as the
unity of God with the world, but as the union of thought
with extension, that is, with the material world. And
secondly, even if we accept this awkward popular state-
Io6 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [50,
ment as to this unity, it would still be true that the
system of Spinoza was not Atheism but Acosmism, de-
fining the world to be an appearance lacking in true
reality. A philosophy, which affirms that God and God
alone is, should not be stigmatised as atheistic, when even
those nations which worship the ape, the cow, or images
of stone and brass, are credited with some religion.
But as things stand the imagination of ordinary men
feels a vehement reluctance to surrender its dearest
conviction, that this aggregate of finitude, which it calls
a world, has actual reality ; and to hold that there is no
world is a way of thinking they are fain to believe im-
possible, or at least much less possible than to entertain
the idea that there is no God. Human nature, not
much to its credit, is more ready to believe that a system
denies God, than that it denies the world. A denial of
God seems so much more intelligible than a denial of
the world.
The second remark bears on the criticism of the
material propositions to which that elevation in thought
in the first instance leads. If these propositions have
for their predicate such terms as substance of the world,
its necessary essence, cause which regulates and directs
it according to design, they are certainly inadequate to
express what is or ought to be understood by God. Yet
apart from the trick of adopting a preliminary popular
conception of God, and criticising a result by this as-
sumed standard, it is certain that these characteristics
have great value, and are necessary factors in the idea
of God. But if we wish in this way to bring before
thought the genuine idea of God, and give its true value
and expression to the central truth, we must be careful
not to start from a subordinate level of facts. To
speak of the ' merely contingent * things of the world
is a very inadequate description of the premisses. The
5o-5r.] PRINCIPLES OF THEOLOGY. 107
organic structures, and the evidence they afford of mutual
adaptation, belong to a higher province, the province of
animated nature. But even without taking into con-
sideration the possible blemish which the study of
animated nature and of the other teleological aspects of
existing things may contract from the pettiness of the
final causes, and from puerile instances of them and
their bearings, merely animated nature is, at the best,
incapabl'^ of supplying the material for a truthful ex-
pression to the idf . of God. God is more than life :
He is Spirit. And therefore if the thought of the Abso-
lute takes a startinp--point for its rise, and desires to
take the nearest, the most true and adequate starting-
point will be found in the nature of spirit alone.
51.] The other way of unification by which to realise
the Ideal of Reason is to set out from the ahstractum of
Thought and seek to characterise it : for which purpose
Being is the only available term. This is the method of
the Ontological proof The opposition, here presented
from a merely subjective point of view, lies between
Thought and Being; whereas in the first way of junc-
tion, being is common to the two sides of the antithesis,
and the contrast lies only between its individualisation
and universalit}'. Understanding meets this second
way with what is implicitly the same objection, as it made
to the first. It denied that the empirical involves the
universal : so it denies that the universal involves the
specialisation, which specialisation in this instance is
being. In other words it says : Being cannot be de-
duced from the notion by any analysis.
The uniformly favourable reception and acceptance
which attended Kant's criticism of the Ontological
proof was undoubtedly due to the illustration which
he made use of. To explain the difference between
thought and being, he took the instance of a hundred
Io8 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [51.
sovereigns, which, for anything it matters to the notion,
are the same hundred whether they are real or only
possible, though the difference of the two cases is very
perceptible in their effect on a man's purse. Nothing
can be more obvious than that anything we only think
or conceive is not on that account actual : that mental
representation, and even notional comprehension, always
falls short of being. Still it may not unfairly be styled
a barbarism in language, when the name of notion is
given to things like a hundred sovereigns. And, putting
that mistake aside, those who perpetually urge against
the philosophic Idea the difference between Being and
Thought, might have admitted that philosophers were
not wholly ignorant of the fact. Can there be any pro-
position more trite than this ? But after all, it is well
to remember, when we speak of God, that we have an
object of another kind than any hundred sovereigns,
and unlike any one particular notion, representation,
or however else it may be styled. It is in fact this and
this alone which marks everything finite : — its being in
time and space is discrepant from its notion. God, on
the contrary, expressly has to be what can only be
'thought as existing'; His notion involves being. It
is this unity of the notion and being that constitutes
the notion of God.
If this were all, we should have only a formal expres-
sion of the divine nature which would not really go
beyond a statement of the nature of the notion itself.
And that the notion, in its most abstract terms, involves
being is plain. For the notion, whatever other deter-
mination it may receive, is at least reference back on
itself, which results by abolishing the intermediation,
and thus is immediate. And what is that reference to
self, but being ? Certainly it would be strange if the
notion, the very inmost of mind, if even the 'Ego,' or
51-52.] PRINCIPLES OF THEOLOGY. 109
above all, the concrete totality we call God, were not
rich enough to include so poor a category as being, the
very poorest and most abstract of all. For, if we look
at the thought it holds, nothing can be more insignificant
than being. And yet there may be something still more
insignificant than being,— that which at first sight is
perhaps supposed to be, an external and sensible exist-
ence, like that of the paper lying before me. However,
in this matter, nobody proposes to speak of the sensible
existence of a limited and perishable thing. Besides,
the petty stricture of the Kritik that ' thought and being
are different ' can at most molest the path of the human
mind from the thought of God to the certainty that He
is : it cannot take it away. It is this process of transi-
tion, depending on the absolute inseparability of the
thought of God from His being, for which its proper
authority has been re-vindicated in the theory of faith or
immediate knowledge,— whereof hereafter.
52.] In this way thought, at its highest pitch, has to
go outside for any determinateness : and although it is
continually termed Reason, is out-and-out abstract think-
ing. And the result of all is that Reason supplies
nothing beyond the formal unity required to simplify
and systematise experiences ; it is a canon, not an
organon of truth, and can furnish only a criticism of
knowledge, not a doctrine of the infinite. In its final
analysis this criticism is summed up in the assertion
that in strictness thought is only the indeterminate unity
and the action of this indeterminate unity.
Kant undoubtedly held reason to be the faculty of the
unconditioned ; but if reason be reduced to abstract identity
only, it by implication renounces its unconditionality and is
in reality no better than empty understanding. For reason
is unconditioned, only in so far as its character and quality
are not due to an extraneous and foreign content, only in so
no SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [52-54-
far as it is self-characterising, and thus, in point of content,
is its own master. Kant, however, expressly explains that
the action of reason consists solely in applying the categories
to systematise the matter given by perception, ;. e. to place
it in an outside order, under the guidance of the principle ot
non- contradiction.
53.] {b) The Practical Keason is understood by Kant
to mean a thinking Will, i.e. a Will that determines
itself on universal principles. Its office is to give objec-
tive, imperative laws of freedom, — laws, that is, which
state what ought to happen. The warrant for thus
assuming thought to be an activity which makes itself
felt objectively, that is, to be really a Reason, is the
alleged possibility of proving practical freedom by ex-
perience, that is, of showing it in the phenomenon of
self-consciousness. This experience in consciousness
is at Once met by all that the Necessitarian produces
from contrary experience, particularly by the sceptical
induction (employed amongst others by Hume) from the
endless diversity of what men regard as right and
duty, — i.e. from the diversity apparent in those pro-
fessedly objective laws of freedom.
54.] What, then, is to serve as the law which the
Practical Reason embraces and obeys, and as the
criterion in its act of self-determination ? There is no
rule at hand but the same abstract identity of under-
standing as before : There must be no contradiction in
the act of selfdetermination. Hence the Practical
Reason never shakes off the formalism which is repre-
sented as the climax of the Theoretical Reason.
But this Practical Reason does not confine the uni-
versal principle of the Good to its own inward regula-
tion : it first becomes practical, in the true sense of the
word, when it insists on the Good being manifested in
the world with an outward objectivity, and requires that
54.] PRACTICAL REASON. Ill
the thought shall be objective throughout, and not
merely subjective. We shall speak of this postulate
of the Practical Reason afterwards.
The free self-determination which Kant denied to the
speculative, he has expressly vindicated for the practical
reason. To many minds this particular aspect of the
Kantian philosophy made it welcome ; and that for good
reasons. To estimate rightly what we owe to Kant in the
matter, we ought to set before our minds the form of practical
philosophy and in particular of 'moral philosophy,' which
prevailed in his time. It may be generally described as a
system of Eudaemonism, which, when asked what man's
chief end ought to be, replied Happiness. And by happiness
Eudaemonism understood the satisfaction of the private
appetites, wishes and wants of the man : thus raising the
contingent and particular into a principle for the will and
its actualisation. To this Eudaemonism, which was desti-
tute of stability and consistency, and which left the 'door
and gate ' wide open for every whim and caprice, Kant
opposed the practical reason, and thus emphasised the need
for a principle of will which should be universal and lay
the same obligation on all. The theoretical reason, as has
been made evident in the preceding paragraphs, is identified
by Kant with the negative faculty of the infinite ; and as it
has no positive content of its own, it is restricted to the
function of detecting the finitude of experiential knowledge.
To the practical reason, on the contrary, he has expressly
allowed a positive infinity, by ascribing to the will the power
of modifying itself in universal modes, i.e. by thought.
Such a power the will undoubtedly has : and it is well to
remember that man is free only in so far as he possesses it
and avails himself of it in his conduct. But a recognition of
the existence of this power is not enough and does not avail
to tell us what are the contents of the will or practical
reason. Hence to saj'^, that a man must make the Good the
content of his will, raises the question, what that content is,
and what are the means of ascertaining what good is. Nor
does one get over the difficulty by the principle that the
112 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [54-55.
will must be consistent with itself, or by the precept to do
duty for the sake of duty.
55.] {c) The Reflective Power of Judgment is in-
vested by Kant with the function of an Intuitive Under-
standing. That is to say, whereas the particulars had
hitherto appeared, so far as the universal or abstract
identity was concerned, adventitious and incapable of
being deduced from it, the Intuitive Understanding
apprehends the particulars as moulded and formed by
the universal itself. Experience presents such univer-
salised particulars in the products of Art and of organic
nature.
The capital feature in Kant's Criticism of the Judg-
ment is, that in it he gave a representation and a name,
if not even an intellectual expression, to the Idea. Such
a representation, as an Intuitive Understanding, or an
inner adaptation, suggests a universal which is at the
same time apprehended as essentially a concrete unity.
It is in these aper^us alone that the Kantian philosophy
rises to the speculative height. Schiller, and others, have
found in the idea of artistic beauty, where thought and
sensuous conception have grown together into one, a
way of escape from the abstract and separatist under-
standing. Others have found the same relief in the
perception and consciousness of life and of living things,
whether that life be natural or intellectual, — The work
of Art, as well as the living individual, is, it must be
owned, of limited content. But in the postulated har-
mony of nature (or necessity) and free purpose, — in the
final purpose of the world conceived as realised, KantJ
has put before us the Idea, comprehensive even in itg
content. Yet what may be called the laziness of
thought, when dealing with this supreme Idea, finds
a too easy mode of evasion in the ' ought to be ' : instead
of the actual realisation of the ultimate end, it clings
55-57-] AESTHETIC AND ORGANIC IDEAS. II3
hard to the disjunction of the notion from reality. Yet
if thought will not think the ideal realised, the senses
and the intuition can at any rate see it in the present
reality of living organisms and of the beautiful in Art.
And consequently Kant's remarks on these objects were
well adapted to lead the mind on to grasp and think the
concrete Idea.
56.] We are thus led to conceive a different relation
between the universal of understanding and the par-
ticular of perception, than that on which the theory of
the Theoretical and Practical Reason is founded. But
while this is so, it is not supplemented by a recognition
that the former is the genuine relation and the ver}'
truth. Instead of that, the unity (of universal with par-
ticular) is accepted only as it exists in finite phenomena,
and is adduced only as a fact of experience. Such ex-
perience, at first only personal, may come from two
sources. It may spring from Genius, the faculty which
produces 'aesthetic ideas'; meaning by aesthetic ideas,
the picture-thoughts of the free imagination which sub-
serve an idea and suggest thoughts, although their con-
tent is not expressed in a notional form, and even admits
of no such expression. It may also be due to Taste, the
feeling of congruity between the free play of intuition or
imagination and the uniformity of understanding.
57.] The principle by which the Reflective faculty of
Judgment regulates and arranges the products of ani-
mated nature is described as the End or final cause, — the
notion in action, the universal at once determining and
determinate in itself. At the same time Kant is careful
to discard the conception of external or finite adaptation,
in which the End is only an adventitious form for the
means and material in which it is realised. In the living
organism, on the contrary, the final cause is a mould-
ing principle and an energy immanent in the matter,
VOL. II. 1
114 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [57-60.
and every member is in its turn a means as well as an
end.
58.] Such an Idea evidently radically transforms the
relation which the understanding institutes between
means and ends, between subjectivity and objectivity.
And yet in the face of this unification, the End or
design is subsequently explained to be a cause which
exists and acts subjectively, i. e. as our idea only : and
teleology is accordingly explained to be only a principle
of criticism, purely personal to our understanding.
After the Critical philosophy had settled that Reason
can know phenomena only, there would still have been
an option for animated nature between two equally sub-
jective modes of thought. Even according to Kant's
own exposition, there would have been an obligation to
admit, in the case of natural productions, a knowledge
not confined to the categories of quality, cause and
effect, composition, constituents, and so on. The prin-
ciple of inward adaptation or design, had it been kept to
and carried out in scientific application, would have led
to a different and a higher method of observing nature.
59.] If we adopt this principle, the Idea, when all
limitations were removed from it, would appear as
follows. The universality moulded by Reason, and
described as the absolute and final end or the Good,
would be realised in the world, and realised moreover
by means of a third thing, the power which proposes
this End as well as realises it, — that is, God. Thus in
Him, who is the absolute truth, those oppositions of
universal and individual, subjective and objective, are
solved and explained to be neither self-subsistent nor
true,
60.] But Good, — which is thus put forward as the final
cause of the world,— has been already described as only
our good, the moral law of our Practical Reason. This
6o.] KANT'S ULTIMATE POSITION. 115
being so, the unity in question goes no further than
make the state of the world and the course of its events
harmonise with our moral standards '. Besides, even
with this limitation, the final cause, or Good, is a vague
abstraction, and the same vagueness attaches to what is
to be Duty. But, further, this harmony is met by the
revival and re-assertion of the antithesis, which it by its
own principle had nullified. The harmony is then de-
scribed as merely subjective, something which merely
ought to be, and which at the same time is not real, — a.
mere article of faith, possessing a subjective certainty,
but without truth, or that objectivity which is proper to
the Idea. This contradiction may seem to be disguised
by adjourning the realisation of the Idea to a future, to
a time when the Idea will also be. But a sensuous con-
dition like time is the reverse of a reconciliation of the
discrepancy ; and an infinite progression — which is the
corresponding image adopted by the understanding —
on the very face of it only repeats and re-enacts the
contradiction.
A general remark may still be offered on the result to
which the Critical philosophy led as to the nature of
knowledge ; a result which has grown one of the current
'idols' or axiomatic beliefs of the day. In every
dualistic system, and especially in that of Kant, the
fundamental defect makes itself visible in the incon-
' In Kant's own words (Criticism of the Power of Judgment,
p. 427) : ' Final Cause is merely a notion of our practical reason. It
cannot be deduced from any data of experience as a theoretical
criterion of nature, nor can it be applied to know nature. No
employment of this notion is possible except solely for the practical
reason, by moral laws. The final purpose of the Creation is that
constitution of the world which harmonises with that to which alone
we can give definite expression on universal principles, viz. the final
purpose of our pure practical reason, and with that in so far as it
means to be practical.'
I 2
Il6 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [60.
sistency of unifying at one moment, what a moment
before had been explained to be independent and there-
fore incapable of unification. And then, at the very
moment after unification has been alleged to be the
truth, we suddenly come upon the doctrine that the two
elements, which, in their true status of unification, had
been refused all independent subsistence, are only true
and actual in their state of separation. Philosophising
of this kind wants the little penetration needed to dis-
cover, that this shuffling only evidences how unsatisfac-
tory each one of the two terms is. And it fails simply
because it is incapable of bringing two thoughts together.
(And in point of form there are never more than two.)
It argues an utter want of consistency to say, on the one
hand, that th« understanding only knows phenomena,
and, on the other, assert the absolute character of this
knowledge, by such statements as ' Cognition can go no
further ' ; ' Here is u\e natural and absolute limit of
human knowledge.' But 'natural' is the wrong word
here. The things of nature are limited and are natural
things only to such extent as they are not aware of their
universal limit, or to such extent as their mode or quality
is a limit from our point of view, and not from their own.
No one knows, or even feels, that anything is a limit
or defect, until he is at the same time above and beyond
it. Living beings, for example, possess the privilege of
pain which is denied to the inanimate : even with living
beings, a single mode or quality passes into the feeling
of a negative. For living beings as such possess
within them a universal vitality, which overpasses and
includes the single mode; and thus, as they maintain
themselves in the negative of themselves, they feel the
contradiction to exist within them. But the contradic-
tion is within them, only in so far as one and the same
subject includes both the universality of their sense of
6o.] CRITICISM OF KANT'S POSITION. I17
life, and the individual mode which is in negation with
it. This illustration will show how a limit or imperfec-
tion in knowledge comes to be termed a limit or imper-
fection, only when it is compared with the actually-
present Idea of the universal, of a total and perfect.
A very little consideration might show, that to call
a thing finite or limited proves by implication the very
presence of the infinite and unlimited, and that our
knowledge of a limit can only be when the unlimited is
on this side in consciousness.
The result however of Kant's view of cognition sug-
gests a second remark. The philosophy of Kant could
have no influence on the method of the sciences. It
leaves the categories and method of ordinary knowledge
quite unmolested. Occasionally, it may be, in the first
sections of a scientific work of that period, we find pro-
positi ns borrowed from the Kantian philosophy : but
the course of the treatise renders it apparent that these
propositions were superfluous decoration, and that the
few first pages might have been omitted without produc-
ing the least change in the empirical contents \
We may next institute a comparison of Kant with the
metaphysics of the empirical school. Natural plain
Empiricism, though it unquestionably insists most upon
sensuous perception, still allows a super-sensible world
or spiritual reality, whatever may be its structure and
constitution, and whether derived from intellect, or from
imagination, Si.c. So far as form goes, the facts of this
super-sensible world rest on the authority of mind, in
^ Even Hermann's ' Handbook of Prosody' begins with paragraphs
of Kantian philosophy. In § 8 it is argued that a law of rhythm must
be (i) objective, (2) formal, and (3) determined a priori. With these
requirements and with the principles of Causality and Reciprocity
which follow later, it were well to compare the treatment of. the
various measures, upon which those formal principles do not exercise
the slightest influence.
Il8 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [60.
the same way as the other facts, embraced in empirical
knowledge, rest on the authority of external perception.
But when Empiricism becomes reflective and logically
consistent, it turns its arms against this dualism in the
ultimate and highest species of fact ; it denies the inde-
pendence of the thinking principle and of a spiritual
world which developes itself in thought. Materialism
or Naturalism, therefore, is the consistent and thorough-
going system of Empiricism. In direct opposition to
such an Empiricism, Kant asserts the principle of
thought and freedom, and attaches himself to the first-
mentioned form of empirical doctrine, the general prin-
ciples of which he never departed from. There is a
dualism in his philosophy also. On one side stands the
world of sensation, and of the understanding which
reflects upon it. This world, it is true, he alleges to be
a world of appearances. But that is only a title or
formal description ; for the source, the facts, and the
modes of observation continue quite the same as in
Empiricism. On the other side and independent stands
a self-apprehending thought, the principle of freedom,
which Kant has in common with ordinary and bygone
metaphysic, but emptied of all that it held, and without
his being able to infuse into it anything new. For, in
the Critical doctrine, thought, or, as it is there called,
Reason, is divested of every specific form, and thus
bereft of all authority. The main effect of the Kantian
philosophy has been to revive the consciousness of
Reason, or the absolute inwardness of thought. Its
abstractness indeed prevented that inwardness from de-
veloping into anything, or from originating any special
forms, whether cognitive principles or moral laws ; but
nevertheless it absolutely refused to accept or indulge
anything possessing the character of an externality.
Henceforth the principle of the independence of Reason,
6o.] KANT AND FICHTE. II9
or of its absolute self-subsistence, is made a general
principle of philosophy, as well as a foregone conclusion
of the time.
(i) The Critical philosophy has one great negative merit.
It has brought home the conviction that the categories of
understanding are finite in their range, and that any cogni-
tive process confined within their pale falls short of the
truth. But Kant had only a sight of half the truth. He
explained the finite nature of the categories to mean that
they were subjective only, valid only for our thought, from
which the thing-in-itself was divided by an impassable gulf
In fact, however, it is not because they are subjective, that
the categories are finite : they are finite by their very nature,
and it is on their own selves that it is requisite to exhibit
their finitude. Kant however holds that what we think is
false, because it is we who think it. A further deficiency in
the system is that it gives only an historical description of
thought, and a mere enumeration of the factors of conscious-
ness. The enumeration is in the main correct: but not a
word touches upon the necessity of what is thus empirically
colligated. The observations, made on the various stages
of consciousness, culminate in the summary statement, that
the content of all we are acquainted with is only an ap-
pearance. And as it is true at least that all finite thinking
is concerned with appearances, so far the conclusion is
justified. This stage of 'appearance' however — the pheno-
menal world— is not the terminus of thought: there is
another and a higher region. But that region was to the
Kantian philosophy an inaccessible ' other world.'
(2) After all it was only formally, that the Kantian system
established the principle that thought is spontaneous and
self-determining. Into details of the manner and the extent
of this self-determination of thought, Kant never went.
It was Fichte who first noticed the omission ; and who,
after he had called attention to the want of a deduction for
the categories, endeavoured really to supply something of
the kind. With Fichte, the 'Ego' is the starting-point in
the philosophical development : and the outcome of its
action is supposed to be visible in the categories. But in
I20 SECOND ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [60.
Fichte the 'Ego' is not really presented as a free, sponta-
neous energy ; it is supposed to receive its first excitation by
a shock or impulse from without. Against this shock the
' Ego ' will, it is assumed, react, and only through this re-
action does it first become conscious o'f itself. Meanwhile,
the nature of the impulse remains a stranger beyond our
pale : and the ' Ego,' with something else always confronting
it, is weighted with a condition. Fichte, in consequence,
never advanced beyond Kant's conclusion, that the finite
only is knowable, while the infinite transcends the range of
thought. What Kant calls the thing-by-itself, Fichte calls
the impulse from without— that abstraction of something
else than ' I,' not otherwise describable or definable than as
the negative or non-Ego in general. The ' I ' is thus looked
at as standing in essential relation with the not-I, through
which its act of self-determination is first awakened. And
in this manner the * I ' is but the continuous act of self-
liberation from this impulse, never gaining a real freedom,
because with the surcease of the impulse the ' I,' whose
being is its action, would also cease to be. Nor is the con-
tent produced by the action of the * I ' at all different from
the ordinary content of experience, except by the supple-
mentary remark, that this content is mere appearance.
CHAPTER V.
THIRD ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
Immediate or Intuitive Knowledge.
61.] If we are to believe the Critical philosophy,
thought is subjective, and its ultimate and invincible
mode is abstract universality or formal identity. Thought
is thus set in opposition to Truth, which is no abstrac-
tion, but concrete universality. In this highest mode of
thought, which is entitled Reason, the Categories are
left out of account. — The extreme theory on the oppo-
site side holds thought to be an act of the particular
only, and on that ground declares it incapable of appre-
hending the Truth. This is the Intuitional theory.
62.] According to this theory, thinking, a private and
particular operation, has its whole scope and product in
the Categories. But, these Categories, as arrested by
the understanding, are limited- vehicles of thought, forms
of the conditioned, of the dependent and derivative.
A thought limited to these modes has no sense of the
Infinite and the True, and cannot bridge over the gulf
that separates it from them. (This stricture refers to
the proofs of God's existence.) These inadequate modes
or categories are also spoken of as notions : and to get
a notion of an object therefore can only mean, in this
language, to grasp it under the form of being conditioned
and derivative. Consequently, if the object in question
be the True, the Infinite, the Unconditioned, we change
122 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [62.
it by our notions into a finite and conditioned; whereby,
instead of apprehending the truth by thought, we have
perverted it into untruth.
Such is the one simple line of argument advanced for
the thesis that the knowledge of God and of truth must
be immediate, or intuitive. At an earlier period all sort
of anthropomorphic conceptions, as they are termed,
were banished from God, as being finite and therefore
unworthy of the infinite ; and in this way God had been
reduced to a tolerably blank being. But in those days
the thought-forms were in general not supposed to come
under the head of anthropomorphism. Thought was
believed rather to strip finitude from the conceptions of
the Absolute, — in agreement with the above-mentioned
conviction of all ages, that reflection is the only road to
truth. But now, at length, even the thought-forms are
pronounced anthropomorphic, and thought itself is de-
scribed as a mere faculty of finitisation.
Jacobi has stated this charge most distinctly in the
seventh supplement to his Letters on Spinoza, — borrow-
ing his line of argument from the works of Spinoza
himself, and applying it as a weapon against knowledge
in general. In his attack knowledge is taken to mean
knowledge of the finite only, a process of thought from
one condition in a series to another, each of which is at
once conditioning and conditioned. According to such
a view, to explain and to get the notion of anything, is
the same as to show it to be derived from something
else. Whatever such knowledge embraces, conse-
quently, is partial, dependent and finite, while the
infinite or true, i. e. God, lies outside of the mechanical
inter-connexion to which knowledge is said to be con-
fined.— It is important to observe that, while Kant
makes the finite nature of the Categories consist mainly
in the formal circumstance that they are subjective,
6a-63.] PHILOSOPHY OF JACOBI. I23
Jacobi discusses the Categories in their own proper
character, and pronounces them to be in their very
import finite. What Jacobi chiefly had before his eyes,
when he thus described science, was the brilHant suc-
cesses of the physical or ' exact ' sciences in ascertaining
natural forces and laws. It is certainly not on the finite
ground occupied by these sciences that we can expect
to meet the in-dwelling presence of the infinite. Lalande
was right when he said he had swept the whole heaven
with his glass, and seen no God. (See note to § 60.)
In the field of physical science, the universal, which is
the final result of analysis, is only the indeterminate
aggregate, — of the external finite, — in one word, Matter:
and Jacobi well perceived that there was no other issue
obtainable in the way of a mere advance from one
explanatory clause or law to another.
63.] All the while the doctrine that truth exists for
the mind was so strongly maintained by Jacobi, that
Reason alone is declared to be that by which man lives.
This Reason is the knowledge of God. But, seeing
that derivative knowledge is restricted to the compass
of finite facts. Reason is knowledge underivative, or
Faith.
Knowledge, Faith, Thought, Intuition are the cate-
gories that we meet with on this line of reflection.
These terms, as presumably familiar to every one, are
only too frequently subjected to an arbitrary use, under
no better guidance than the conceptions and distinctions
of psychology, without any investigation into their
nature and notion, which is the main question after all.
Thus, we often find knowledge contrasted with faith,
and faith at the same time explained to be an underiva-
tive or intuitive knowledge : — so that it must be, at least
some s6rt of knowledge. And, besides, it is unquestion-
ably a fact of experience, firstly, that what we believe is
124 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [63.
in our consciousness, — which implies that we know about
it) and secondly, that this belief is a certainty in our
consciousness, — which implies that we know it. Again,
and especially, we find thought opposed to immediate
knowledge and faith, and, in particular, to intuition.
But if this intuition be qualified as intellectual, we must
really mean intuition which thinks, unless, in a question
about the nature of God, we are willing to interpret intel-
lect to mean images and representations of imagination.
The word faith or belief, in the dialect of this system,
comes to be employed even with reference to common
objects that are present to the senses. We believe, says
Jacobi, that we have a body, — we believe in the existence
of the things of sense. But if we are speaking of faith
in the True and Eternal, and saying that God is given
and revealed to us in immediate knowledge or intuition,
we are concerned not with the things of sense, but with
objects special to our thinking mind, with truths of
inherently universal significance. And when the indi-
vidual * I,' or in other words personality, is under
discussion — not the ' I ' of experience, or a single private
person — above all, when the personality of God is
before us, we are speaking of personality unalloyed, —
of a personality in its own nature universal. Such per-
sonality is a thought, and falls within the province of
thought only. More than this. Pure and simple intui-
tion is completely the same as pure and simple thought.
Intuition and belief, in the first instance, denote the
definite conceptions we attach to these words in our
ordinary employment of them : and to this extent they
differ from thought in certain points which nearly every
one can understand. But here they are taken in a
higher sense, and must be interpreted to mean a belief
in God, or an intellectual intuition of God ; in short, we
must put aside all that especially distinguishes thought
63.] BELIEF, FAITH, INTUITION. 125
on the one side from belief and intuition on the other.
How belief and intuition, when transferred to these
higher regions, differ from thought, it is impossible for
any one to say. And yet, such are the barren distinc-
tions of words, with which men fancy that they assert
an important truth : even while the formulae they main-
tain are identical with those which they impugn.
The term Faith brings with it the special advantage of
suggesting the faith of the Christian religion ; it seems
to include Christian faith, or perhaps even to coincide
with it ; and tiius the Philosophy of Faith has a
thoroughly orthodox and Christian look, on the strength
of which it takes the liberty of uttering its arbitrary
dicta with greater pretension and authority. But we
must not let ourselves be deceived by the semblance
surreptitiously secured by a merely verbal similarity.
The two things are radically distinct. Firstly, the
Christian faith comprises in it an authority of the
Church : but the faith of Jacobi's philosophy has no
other authority thaii that of a personal revelation. And,
secondl}^, the Christian faith ib a copious body of objec-
tive truth, a system of knowledge and doctrine : while
the scope of the philosophic faith is so utterly indefinite,
that, while it has room for the faith of the Christian, it
equally admits a belief in the divinity of the Dalai-lama,
the ox, or the monkey, — thus, so far as it goes, narrowing
Deity down to its simplest terms, a 'Supreme Being.*
Faith itself, taken in this professedly philosophical sense,
is nothing but the sapless abstract of immediate know-
ledge,— a purely formal category applicable to very
different facts ; and it ought never to be confused or
identified with the spiritual fulness of Christian faith,
whether we look at that faith in the heart of the believer
and the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit, or in the system
of theological doctrine.
126 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [63-64.
With what is here called faith or immediate know-
ledge must also be identified inspiration, the heart's
revelations, the truths implanted in man by nature, and
also in particular, healthy reason or Common Sense,
as it is called. All these forms agree in adopting as
their leading principle the immediacy, or self-evident
way, in which a fact or body of truths is presented in
consciousness.
64.] This immediate knowledge consists in knowing
that the Infinite, the Eternal, the God which is in
our idea, really is : or, it asserts that in our conscious-
ness there is immediately and inseparably bound up
with this idea the certainty of its actual being.
To seek to controvert these maxims of immediate
knowledge is the last thing philosophers would think of.
They may rather find occasion for self-gratulation when
these ancient doctrines, expressing as they do the
general tenor of philosophic teaching, have, even in this
unphilosophical fashion, become to some extent uni-
versal convictions of the age. The true marvel rather
is that any one could suppose that these principles were
opposed to philosophy, — the maxims, viz., that whatever
is held to be true is immanent in the mind, and that
there is truth for the mind (§ 63). From a formal point
of view, there is a peculiar interest in the maxim that
the being of God is immediately and inseparably bound
up with the thought of God, that objectivity is bound up
with the subjectivity which the thought originally pre-
sents. Not content with that, the philosophy of imme
diate knowledge goes so far in its one-sided view, as to
affirm that the attribute of existence, even in perception,
is quite as inseparably connected with the conception we
have of our own bodies and of external things, as it is
with the thought of God. Now it is the endeavour of
philosophy to prove such a unity, to show that it lies in
64.] JACOBI AND DESCARTES. 127
the very nature of thought and subjectivity, to be in-
separable from being and objectivity. In these circum-
stances therefore, philosophy, whatever estimate may be
formed of the character of these proofs, must in any case
be glad to see it shown and maintained that its maxims
are facts of consciousness, and thus in harmony with
experience. The difference between philosophy and
the asseverations of immediate knowledge rather centres
in the exclusive attitude which immediate knowledge
adopts, when it sets itself up against philosophy.
And yet it was as a self-evident or immediate truth
that the ' Cogito, ergo sum,' of Descartes, the maxim on
which may be said to hinge the whole interest of
Modern Philosophy, was first stated by its author.
The man who calls this a syllogism, must know little
more about a syllogism than that the word ' Ergo '
occurs in it. Where shall we look for the middle term ?
And a middle term is a much more essential point of a
syllogism than the word ' Ergo,' If we try to justify the
name, by calling the combination of ideas in Descartes
an 'immediate' syllogism, this superfluous variety of
syllogism is a mere name for an utterly unmediated
synthesis of distinct terms of thought. That being so,
the synthesis of being with our ideas, as stated in the
maxim of immediate knowledge, has no more and no
less claim to the title of syllogism than the axiom of
Descartes has. From Hotho's ' Dissertation on the
Cartesian Philosophy' (published 1826), I borrow the
quotation in which Descartes himself distinctly declares
that the maxim 'Cogito, ergo sum,' is no syllogism.
The passages are Respons. ad II Object. : De Methodo
IV: Ep. I. 118. From the first passage I quote the
words more immediately to the point. Descartes says :
' That we are thinking beings is "prima quaedam notio
quae ex nullo syllogismo concluditur" ' (a certain primary
128 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [64-65.
notion, which is deduced from no syllogism) ; and goes
on: ' neque cum quis dicit ; Ego cogito, ergo sum sive
existo, existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum deductt.'
(Nor, when one says, I think, therefore I am or exist,
does he deduce existence from thought by means of a
syllogism.) Descartes knew what it implied in a syllo-
gism, and so he adds that, in order to make the maxim
admit of a deduction by syllogism, we should have to
add the major premiss : ' Illud omne quod cogitat, est sive
existit.' (Everything which thinks, is or exists.) Of
course, he remarks, this major premiss itself has to be
deduced from the original statement.
The language of Descartes on the maxim that the ' I '
which thinks must also at the same time be, his saying
that this connexion is given and implied in the simple
perception of consciousness, — that this connexion is the
absolute first, the principle, the most certain and evident
of all things, so that no scepticism can be conceived so
monstrous as not to admit it : — all this language is so
vivid and distinct, that the modern statements of Jacobi
and others on this immediate connexion can only pass
for needless repetitions.
65.] The theory of which we are speaking is not
satisfied when it has shown that mediate knowledge
taken separately is an adequate vehicle of truth. Its
distinctive doctrine is that immediate knowledge alone,
to the total exclusion of mediation, can possess a con-
tent which is true. This exclusiveness is enough to
show that the theory is a relapse into the metaphysical
understanding, with its pass-words ' Either — or.' And
thus it is really a relapse into the habit of external
mediation, the gist of which consists in clinging to those
narrow and one-sided categories of the finite, which it
falsely imagined itself to have left for ever behind.
This point, however, we shall not at present discuss in
65-66.] EXCLUSIVENESS OF INTUITIONALISM. 129
detail. An exclusively immediate knowledge is asserted
as a fact only, and in the present Introduction we can
only study it from this external point of view. The real
significance of such knowledge will be explained, when
we come to the logical question of the opposition be-
tween mediate and immediate. But it is characteristic
of the view before us to decline to examine the nature
of the fact, that is, the notion of it ; for such an exami-
nation would itself be a step towards mediation and
even towards knowledge. The genuine discussion on
logical ground, therefore, must be deferred till we come
to the proper province of Logic itself.
The whole of the second part of Logic, the Doctrine
of Essential Being, is a discussion of the intrinsic and
self-aflfirming unity of immediacy and mediation.
66.] Beyond this point then we need not go : imme-
diate knowledge is to be accepted as a fact. Under
these circums'ances examination is directed to the field
of experience, to a psychological phenomenon. If that
be so, we need only note, as the commonest of ex-
periences, that truths, which we well know to be results
of complicated and highly mediated trains of thought,
present themselves immediately and without effort to
the mind of any man who is familiar with the subject.
The mathematician, like every one who has mastered
a particular science, meets any problem with ready-made
solutions which pre-suppose most complicated analyses:
and every educated man has a number of general views
and maxims which he can muster without trouble, but
which can only have sprung from frequent reflection
and long experience. The facility we attain in any sort
of knowledge, art, or technical expertness, consists in
having the particular knowledge or kind of action pre-
sent to our mind in any case that occurs, even we may
say, immediate in our very limbs, in an out-going
VOL. II K
130 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [66-67.
activity. In all these instances, immediacy of know-
ledge is so far from excluding mediation, that the
two things are linked together, — immediate knowledge
being actually the product and result of mediated know-
ledge.
It is no less obvious that immediate existence is bound
up with its mediation. The seed and the parents are
immediate and initial existences in respect of the off-
spring which they generate. But the seed and the
parents, though they exist and are therefore immediate,
are yet in their turn generated : and the child, without
prejudice to the mediation of its existence, is immediate,
because it is. The fact that I am in Berlin, my im-
mediate presence here, is mediated by my having made
the journey hither.
67.] One thing may be observed with reference to
the immediate knowledge of God, of legal and ethical
principles (including under the head of immediate know-
ledge, what is otherwise termed Instinct, Implanted or
Innate Ideas, Common Sense, Natural Reason, or
whatever form, in short, we give to the original spon-
taneity). It is a matter of general experience that
education or development is required to bring out into
consciousness what is therein contained. It was so
even with the Platonic reminiscence ; and the Christian
rite of baptism, although a sacrament, involves the
additional obligation of a Christian up-bringing. In
short, religion and morals, however much they may
be faith or immediate knowledge, are still on every
side conditioned by the mediating process which is
termed development, education, training.
The adherents, no less than the assailants, of the
doctrine of Innate Ideas have been guilty throughout
of the like exclusiveness and narrowness as is here
noted. They have drawn a hard and fast line between
67.] INNATE IDEAS. 131
the essential and immediate union (as it may be de-
scribed) of certain universal principles with the soul,
and another union which has to be brought about in
an external fashion, and through the channel of given
objects and conceptions, There is one objection,
borrowed from experience, which was raised against
the doctrine of Innate ideas. All men, it was said,
must have these ideas ; they must have, for example, the
maxim of contradiction, present in the mind, — they must
be aware of it; for this maxim and others like it were
included in the class of Innate ideas. The objection
may be set down to misconception ; for the principles
in question, though innate, need not on that account
have the form of ideas or conceptions of something
we are aware of. Still, the objection completely meets
and overthrows the crude theory of immediate know-
ledge, which expressly maintains its formulae in so far
as they are in consciousness. — Another point calls for
notice. We may suppose it admitted by the intuitive
school, that the special case of religious faith involves
supplementing by a Christian or religious education
and development. In that case it is acting capriciously
when it seeks to ignore this admission when speaking
about faith, or it betrays a want of reflection not to
know, that, if the necessity of education be once ad-
mitted, mediation is pronounced indispensable.
The reminiscence of ideas spoken of by Plato is equiva-
lent to saying that ideas implicitly exist in man, instead of
being, as the Sophists assert, a foreign importation into his
mind. But to conceive knowledge as reminiscence does
not interfere with, or set aside as useless, the development
of what is implicitly in man ;— which development is another
word for mediation. The same holds good of the innate
ideas that we find in Descartes and the Scotch philosophers.
These ideas are only potential in the first instance, and
K 2
132 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [67-69.
should be looked at as being a sort of mere capacity in
man.
68.] In the case of these experiences the appeal
turns upon something that shows itself bound up with
immediate consc'ousness. Even if this combination be
in the first instance taken as an external and empirical
connexion, still, even for empirical observation, the fact
of its being constant shows it to be essential and in-
separable. But, agai.i, if this immediate conscious-
ness, as exhibited in experience, be taken separately,
so far as it is a consciousness of God and the divine
nature, the state of mind which it implies is generally
described as an exaltation above the finite, above the
senses, and above the instinctive desires and affections
of the natural heart : which exaltation passes over into,
and terminates in, faith in God and a divine order.
It is apparent, therefore, that, though faith may be
an immediate knowledge and certainty, it equally im-
plies the interposition of this process as its antecedent
and condition.
It has been already observed, that the so-called
proofs of the being of God, which start from finite
being, give an expression to this exaltation. In that
light they are no inventions of an over-subtle reflection,
but the necessary and native channel in which the
movement of mind runs : though it may be that, in
their ordinary form, these proofs have not their correct
and adequate expression.
69.] It is the passage (§ 64) from the subjective Idea
to being which forms the main concern of the doctrine
oi immediate knowledge. A primary and self-evident
inter-connexion is declared to exist between our Idea
and being. Yet precisely this central point of transi-
tion, utterly irrespective of any connexions which show
in experience, clearly involves a mediation. And the
69-7 1 •] MEPIATE AND IMMEDIATE, 1 33
mediation is of no imperfect or unreal kind, where
the mediation takes place with and through something
external, but one comprehending both antecedent and
conclusion.
70.] For, what this theory asserts is that truth lies
neither in the Idea as a merely subjective thought, nor
in mere being on its own account ; — that mere being
per se, a being that is not of the Idea, is the sensible
finite being of the world. Now all this only affirms,
without demonstration, that the Idea has truth only
by means of being, and being has truth only by means
of the Idea. The maxim of immediate knowledge
rejects an indefinite empty immediacy (and such is
abstract being, or pure unity taken by itself), and
affirms in its stead the unity of the Idea with being.
And it acts rightly in so doing. But it is stupid not
to see that the unity of distinct terms or modes is not
irerely a purely im.mediate unity, i.e. unity empty and
indeterminate, but that— with equal emphasis— the one
term is shown to have truth only as mediated through
the other; — or, if the phrase be preferred, that either
term is only mediated with truth through the other.
That the quality of mediation is involved in the very
immediacy of intuition is thus exhibited as a fact,
against which understanding, conformably to the funda-
mental maxim of immediate knowledge that the evi-
dence of consciousness is infallible, can have nothing
to object. It is only ordinary abstract understanding
which takes the terms of mediation and immediacy,
each by itself absolutely, to represent an inflexible line
of distinction, and thus draws upon its own head the
hopeless task of reconciling them. The difficulty, as
we have shown, has no existence in the fact, and it
vanishes in the speculative notion.
71.] The one-sidedness of the intuitional school has
134 TUIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [71.
certain characteristics attending upon it, which we shall
proceed to point out in their main features, now that
we have discussed the fundamental principle. The
first of these corollaries is as follows. Since the crite-
rion of truth is found, not in the nature of the content,
but in the mere fact of consciousness, every alleged
truth has no other basis than subjective certitude and
the assertion that we discover a certain fact in our
consciousness. What I discover in my consciousness
is thus exaggerated into a fact of the consciousness of
all, and even passed off for the very nature of con-
sciousness.
Among the so-called proofs of the existence of God,
there used to stand the consensus gentium, to which
appeal is made as early as Cicero. The consensus
gentium is a weighty authority, and the transition is
easy and natural, from the circumstance that a certain
fact is found in the consciousness of every one, to the
conclusion that it is a necessary element in the very
nature of consciousness. In this category of general
agreement there was latent the deep-rooted perception,
which does not escape even the least cultivated mind,
that the consciousness of the individual is at the same
time particular and accidental. Yet unless we examine
the nature of this consciousness itself, stripping it of
its particular and accidental elements and, by the toil-
some operation of reflection, disclosing the universal
in its entirety and purity, it is only a unanimous agree-
ment upon a given point that can authorize a decent
presumption that that point is part of the very nature
of consciousness. Of course, if thought insists on
seeing the necessity of what is presented as a fact of
general occurrence, the consensus gentium is certainly
not sufficient. Yet even granting the universality of
the fact to be a satisfactory proof, it has been found
71.] THE CONSENSUS GENTIUM. I35
impossible to establish the belief in God on such an
argument, because experience shows that there are
individuals and nations without any such faith '. But
there can be nothing shorter and more convenient than
to have the bare assertion to make, that we discover
a fact in our consciousness, and are certain that it is
true : and to declare that this certainty, instead of
proceeding from our particular mental constitution only,
belongs to the very nature of the mind.
^ In order to judge of the greater or less extent to which Experi-
ence shows cases of Atheism or of the belief in God, it is all-important
to know if the mere general conception of deity suffices, or if a more
definite knowledge of God is required. The Christian world would
certainly refuse the title of God to the idols of the Hindoos and the
Chinese, to the fetiches of the Africans, and even to the gods of
Greece themselves. If so, a believer in these idols would not be a
believer in God. If it were contended, on the other hand, that such
a belief in idols implies some sort of belief in God, as the species
implies the genus, then idolatry would argue not faith in an idol
merely, but faith in God. The Athenians took an opposite view.
The poets and philosophers who explained Zeus to be a cloud, and
maintained that there was only one God, were treated as atheists
at Athens.
The danger in these questions lies in looking at what the mind
may make out of an object, and not what that object actually and
explicitly is. If we fail to note this distinction, the commonest per-
ceptions of men's senses will be religion : for every such perception,
and indeed every act of mind, implicitly contains the principle which,
when it is purified and developed, rises to religion. But to be
capable of religion is one thing, to have it another. And religion yet
implicit is only a capacity or a possibility.
Thus in modem times, travellers have found tribes (as Captains
Ross and Parry found the Esquimaux) which, as they tell us, have
not even that small modicum of religion possessed by African sor-
cerers, the goetes of Herodotus. On the other hand, an Englishman,
who spent the first months of the last Jubilee at Rome, says, in his
account of the modern Romans, that the common people are bigots,
whilst those who can read and write are atheists to a man.
The charge of Atheism is seldom heard in modern times : prin-
cipally because the facts and the requirements of religion are reduced
to a minimum. (See § 73.)
136 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [72-74.
72.] A second corollary which results from holding
immediacy of consciousness to be the criterion of truth
is that all superstition or idolatry is allowed to be truth,
and that an apology is prepared for any contents of
the will, however wrong and immoral. It is because
he believes in them, and not from the reasoning and
syllogism of what is termed mediate knowledge, that
the Hindoo finds God in the cow, the monkey, the
Brahmin, or the Lama. But the natural desires and
affections spontaneously carry and deposit their interests
in consciousness, where also immoral aims make them-
selves naturally at home : the good or bad character
would thus express the definite being of the will, which
would be known, and that most immediately, in the
interests and aims.
73.] Thirdly and lastly, the immediate consciousness
of God goes no further than to tell us that He is : to tell
us ivhat He is, would be an act of cognition, involving
mediation. So that God as an object of religion is
expressly narrowed down to the indeterminate super-
sensible, God in general : and the significance of re-
ligion is reduced to a minimum.
If it were really needful to win back and secure the
bare belief that there is a God, or even to create it,
we might well wonder at the poverty of the age which
can see a gain in the merest pittance of religious con-
sciousness, and which in its church has sunk so low as
to worship at the altar that stood in Athens long ago,
dedicated to the ' Unknown God.'
74.] We have still briefly to indicate the general
nature of the form of immediacy. For it is the essential
one-sidedness of the category, which makes whatever
comes under it one sided and, for that reason, finite.
And, first, it makes the universal no better than an
abstraction external to the particulars, and God a being
7-i.] MEDIATE AND IMMEDIATE. 137
without determinate quality. But God can only be
called a spirit when He is known to be at once the
beginning and end, as well as the mean, in the process
of mediation. Without this unification of elements He
is neither concrete, nor living, nor a spirit. Thus the
knowledge of God as a spirit necessarily implies media-
tion. The form of immediacy, secondly, invests the
particular with the character of independent or self-
centred being. But such predicates contradict the very
essence of the particular, — which is to be referred to
something else outside. They thus invest the finite
with the character of an absolute. But, besides, the
form of immediacy is altogether abstract : it has no
preference for one set of contents more than another,
but is equally susceptible of all : it may as well sanction
what is idolatrous and immoral as the reverse. Only
when we discern that the content, — the particular, is not
self-subsistent, but derivative from something else, are
its finitude and untruth shown in their proper light.
Such discernment, where the content we discern carries
with it the ground of its dependent nature, is a know-
ledge which involves mediation. The only content
which can be held to be the truth is one not mediated
with something else, not limited by other things : or,
otherwise expressed, it is one mediated by itself, where
mediation and immediate reference-to-self coincide. The
understanding that fancies it has got clear of finite
knowledge, the identity of the analytical metaphysicians
and the old ' rationalists,' abruptly takes again as prin-
ciple and criterion of truth that immediacy which, as
an abstract reference-to-self, is the same as abstract
identity. Abstract thought (the scientific form used
by ' reflective ' metaphysic) and abstract intuition (the
form used by immediate knowledge) are one and the
same.
138 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [74-76.
The stereotyped opposition between the form of im-
mediacy and that of mediation gives to the former a half-
ness and inadequacy, that affects every content which is
brought under it. Immediacy means, upon the whole, an
abstract reference-to-self, that is, an abstract identity or
abstract universaHty. Accordingly the essential and real
universal, when taken merely in its immediacy, is a mere
abstract universal ; and from this point of view God is con-
ceived as a being altogether without determinate quality.
To call God spirit is in that case only a phrase: for the
consciousness and self-consciousness, which spirit implies,
are impossible without a distinguishing of it from itself and
from something else, i.e. without mediation.
75.] It was impossible for us to criticise this, the
third attitude, which thought has been made to take
towards objective truth, in any other mode than what
is naturally indicated and admitted in the doctrine itself.
The theory asserts that immediate knowledge is a fact.
It has been shown to be untrue in fact to say that there
is an immediate knowledge, a knowledge without media-
tion either by means of something else or in itself. It
has also been explained to be false in fact to say that
thought advances through finite and conditioned cate-
gories only, which are always mediated by a something
else, and to forget that in the very act of mediation
the mediation itself vanishes. And to show that, in
point of fact, there is a knowledge which advances
neither by unmixed immediacy nor by unmixed media-
tion, we can point to the example of Logic and the
whole of philosophy.
76.] Ifwe view the maxims of immediate knowledge
in connexion with the uncritical metaphysic of the past
from which we started, we shall learn from the com-
parison the reactionary nature of the school of Jacobi.
His doctrine is a return to the modern starting-point
of this metaphysic in the Cartesian philosophy. Both
76.] JACOBI AND DESCARTES. I39
Jacobi and Descartes maintain the following three
points :
(i) The simple inseparability of the thought and
being of the thinker. ' Cogito, ergo sum ' is the same
doctrine as that the being, reality, and existence of the
' Ego ' is immediately revealed to me in consciousness.
(Descartes, in fact, is careful to state that by thought
he means consciousness in general. Princip. Phil. I. 9.)
This inseparability is the absolutely first and most cer-
tain knowledge, not mediated or demonstrated.
(2) The inseparability of existence from the con-
ception of God : the former is necessarily implied in
the latter, or the conception never can be without
the attribute of existence, which is thus necessary and
eternaP.
* Descartes, Princip. Phil. I. 15 : Magi's hoc {ens sumnte perfectutti
exisiere) credet, si atiendat, nullius alterius ret ideam apud se inveniri,
in qua eodem ntodo necessariam existentiam contineri anintadvertat ; —
intelliget illam ideam exhibere veram et immutabilem tiaturam, quaeque
non potest tion existere, cunt necessaria existentia in ea conttneatur.
(The reader will be more disposed to believe that there exists a being
supremely perfect, if he notes that in the case of nothing else is
there found in him an idea, in which he notices necessary existence
to be contained in the same way. He will see that that idea exhibits
a true and unchangeable nature, — a nature which cannot btit exist,
since necessary existence is contained in if.) A remark which imme-
diately follows, and which sounds like mediation or demonstration,
does not really prejudice the original principle.
In Spinoza we come upon the same statement that the essence or
abstract conception of God implies existence. The first of Spinoza's
definitions, that of the Causa Sui (or Self-Cause), explains it to be
atjus essentia invohit existentiam, sive id a<jus natura non potest con-
cipi nisi existens ^^that of which the essence involves existence, or that
whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing). The insepa-
rability of the notion from being is the main point and fundamental
hypothesis in his system. But what notion is thus inseparable from
being? Not the notion of finite things, for they are so constituted as
to have a contingent and a created existence. Spinoza's nth propo-
sition, which follows with a proof that God exists necessarily, and
I40 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [76-77.
(3) The immediate consciousness of the existence of
external things. By this nothing more is meant than
sense-consciousness. To have such a thing is the
slightest of all cognitions : and the only thing worth
knowing about it is that such immediate knowledge
of the being of things external is error and delusion,
that the sensible world as such is altogether void of
truth ; that the being of these external things is acci-
dental and passes away as a show ; and that their very
nature is to have only an existence which is separable
from their essence and notion.
77.] There is however a distinction between the two
points of view :
(i) The Cartesian philosophy, from these unproved
postulates, which it assumes to be unprovable, proceeds
to wider and wider details of knowledge, and thus gave
rise to the sciences of modern times. The modern
theory (of Jacobi), on the contrary, (§ 62) has come to
what is intrinsically a most important conclusion that
cognition, proceeding as it must by finite mediations,
can know only the finite, and never embody the truth ;
and would fain have the consciousness of God go no
further than the aforesaid very abstract belief that
God is"^.
his 20th, showing that God's existence and his essence are one and
the same, are really superfluous, and the proof is more in form than
in reality. To say, that God is Substance, the only Substance, and
that, as Substance is Causa Sui, God therefore exists necessarily, is
merely stating that God is that of which the notion and the being
are inseparable.
' Anselm on the contrary says : NegUgentiae ntihi videiur, si post-
quant conjimuiti sumus in fide, non studemus, quod credimus, intelligere.
(Methinks it is carelessness, if, after we have been confirmed in the
faith, we do not exert ourselves to see the meaning 0/ what we believe.)
[Tractat. Cur Deus Homol] These words of Anselm, in connexion
with the concrete truths of Christian doctrine, offer a far harder
problem for investigation, than is contemplated by this modern faith.
77-78-] JACOBI AND DESCARTES. 141
(2) The modern doctrine on the one hand makes no
change in the Cartesian method of the usual scientific
knowledge, and conducts on the same plan the experi-
mental and finiie sciences that have sprung from it.
But, on the other hand, when it comes to the science
which has infinity for its scope, it throws aside that
method, and thus, as it knows no other, it rejects all
methods. It abandons itself to wild vagaries of imagin-
ation and assertion, to a moral priggishness and senti-
mental arrogance, or to a reckless dogmatising and lust
of argument, which is loudest against philosophy and
philosophic doctrines. Pnilosophy of course tolerates
no mere assertions or conceits, and checks the free
play of argumentative see-saw.
78.] We must then reject the opposition between an
independent immediacy in the contents or facts of con-
sciousness and an equally independent mediation, sup-
posed incompatible with the former. The incompatibility
is a mere assumption, an arbitrary assertion. All other
assumptions and postulates must in like manner be left
behind at the entrance to philosophy, whether they are
derived from the intellect cr the imagination. For philo-
sophy is the science, in which every such proposition
must first be scrutinised and its meaning and opposi-
tions be ascertained.
Scepticism, made a negative science and systematically
applied to all forms of knowledge, might seem a suit-
able introduction, as pointing out the nullity of such
assumptions. But a sceptical introduction would be
not only an ungrateful but also a useless course ;
and that because Dialectic, as we shall soon make
appear, is itself an ess ntial element of affirmative
science. Scepticism, besides, could only get hold of
the finite forms as they were suggested by experience,
taking them as given, instead of deducing them scientifi-
142 THIRD ATTITUDE TO OBJECTIVITY. [78.
cally. To require such a scepticism accomplished is
the same as to insist on science being preceded by
universal doubt, or a total absence of presupposition.
Strictly speaking, in the resolve that wills pure thought,
this requirement is accomplished by freedom which,
abstracting from everything, grasps its pure abstraction,
the simplicity of thought-
CHAPTER VI.
LOGIC FURTHER DEFINED AND DIVIDED.
79.] In point of form Logical doctrine has three sides :
(a) the Abstract side, or that of understanding : (/?) the
Dialectical, or that of negative reason : (y) the Specula-
tive, or that of positive reason.
These three sides do not make three parts of logic,
but are stages or ' moments ' in every logical entity, that
is, of every notion and truth whatever. They may all
be put under the first stage, that of understanding,
and so kept isolated from each other ; but this would
give an inadequate conception of them. — The state-
ment of the dividing lines and the characteristic aspects
of logic is at this point no more than historical and anti-
cipatory.
80.] (a) Thought, as Understanding, sticks to fixity
of characters and their distinctness from one another :
every such limited abstract it treats as having a sub-
sistence and being of its own.
In our ordinary usage of the term thought and even
notion, we often have before our eyes nothing more than
the operation of Understanding. And no doubt thought is
primarily an exercise of Understanding:— only it goes
further, and the notion is not a function of Understanding
merely. The action of Understanding may be in general
described as investing its subject-matter with the form of
universality. But this universal is an abstract universal :
that is to say, its opposition to the particular is so rigorously
144 LOGIC DEFINED AND DIVIDED. [80.
maintained, that it is at the same time also reduced to the
character of a particular again. In this separating and
abstracting attitude towards its objects, Understanding is the
reverse of immediate perception and sensation, which, as
such, keep completely to their native sphere of action in
the concrete.
It is by referring to this opposition of Understanding to
sensation or feeling that we must explain the frequent
attacks made upon thought for being hard and narrow, and
for leading, if consistently developed, to ruinous and
pernicious results. The answer to these charges, in so far
as they are warranted by their facts, is, that they do not
touch thinking in general, certainly not the thinking of
Reason, but only the exercise of Understanding. It must
be added however, that the merit and rights of the mere
Understanding should unhesitatingly be admitted. And
that merit lies in the fact, that apart from Understanding
there is no fixity or accuracj' in the region either of theory
or of practice.
Thus, in theory, knowledge begins by apprehending
existing objects in their specific differences. In the study of
nature, for example, we distinguish matters, forces, genera
and the like, and stereotype each in its isolation. Thought
is here acting in its analytic capacity, where its canon is
identity, a simple reference of each attribute to itself It is
under the guidance of the same identity that the process in
knowledge is effected from one scientific truth to another.
Thus, for example, in mathematics magnitude is the feature
which, to the neglect of any other, determines our advance.
Hence in geometry we compare one figure with another,
so as to bring out their identity. Similarly in other fields of
knowledge, such as jurisprudence, the advance is primarily
regulated by identity. In it we argue from one specific law
or precedent to another : and what is this but to proceed on
the principle of identity ?
But Understanding is as indispensable in practice as it is
in theory. Character is an essential in conduct, and a man
of character is an understanding man, who in that capacity
has definite ends in view and undeviatingly pursues them.
8o.] LOGIC OF UNDERSTANDING. 145
The man who will do something great must learn, as Goethe
says, to limit himself. The man who, on the contrary, would
do everything, really would do nothing, and fails. There is
a host of interesting things in the world : Spanish poetry,
chemistry, politics, and music are all very interesting, and if
any one takes an interest in them we need not find fault.
But for a person in a given situation to accomplish anything,
he must stick to one definite point, and not dissipate his
forces ih many directions. In every calling, too, the great
thing is to pursue it with understanding. Thus the judge
must stick to the law, and give his verdict in accordance with
it, undeterred by one motive or another, allowing no excuses,,
and looking neither left nor right. Understanding, too, is
always an element in thorough training. The trained
intellect is not satisfied with cloudy and indefinite impres-
sions, but grasps the objects in their fixed character : where-
as the uncultivated man wavers unsettled, and it often costs
a deal of trouble to come to an understanding with him on
the matter under discussion, and to bring him to fix his eye
on the definite point in question.
It has been already explained that the Logical principle in
general, far from being merely a subjective action in our
minds, is rather the very universal, which as such is also
objective. This doctrine is illustrated in the case of under-
standing, the first form of logical truths. Understanding in
this larger sense corresponds to what we call the goodness
of God, so far as that means that finite things are and sub-
sist. In nature, for example, we recognise the goodness of
God in the fact that the various classes or species of animals
and plants are provided with whatever they need for their
preservation and welfare. Nor is man excepted, who, both
as an individual and as a nation, possesses partly in the
given circumstances of climate, of quality and products of
soil, and partly in his natural parts or talents, all that is
required for his maintenance and development. Under this
shape Understanding is visible in every department of the
objective world ; and no object in that world can ever be
wholly perfect which does not give full satisfaction to the
canons of understanding. A state, for example, is imperfect,
VOL. II. L
146 LOGIC DEFINED AND DIVIDED. [80.
so long as it has not reached a clear differentiation of orders
and callings, and so long as those functions of politics and
government, which are different in principle, have not
evolved for themselves special organs, in the same way as
we see, for example, the developed animal organism pro-
vided with separate organs for the functions of sensation,
motion, digestion, &c.
The previous course of the discussion may serve to show,
that understanding is indispensable even in those spheres
and regions of action which the popular fancy would deem
furthest from it, and that in proportion as understanding is
absent from them, imperfection is the result. This parti-
cularly holds good of Art, Religion, and Philosophy. In
Art, for example, understanding is visible where the forms
of beauty, which differ in principle, are kept distinct and
exhibited in their purity. The same thing holds good also
of single works of art. It is part of the beauty and perfection
of a dramatic poem that the characters of the several
persons should be closely and faithfully maintained, and
that the different aims and interests involved should be
plainly and decidedly exhibited. Or again, take the province
of Religion. The superiority of Greek over Northern
mythology (apart from other differences of subject-matter
and conception) mainly consists in this : that in the former
the individual gods are fashioned into forms of sculpture-like
distinctness of outHne, while in the latter the figures fade
away vaguely and hazily into one another. Lastly comes
Philosophy. That Philosophy never can get on without
the understanding hardly calls for special remark after what
has been said. Its foremost requirement is that every
thought shall be grasped in its full precision, and nothing
allowed to remain vague and indefinite.
It is usually added that understanding must not go too
far. Which is so far correct, that understanding is not an
ultimate, but on the contrary finite, and so constituted that
when carried to extremes it veers round to its opposite. It
is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions: but the
man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract
' either — or,' arid keeps to the concrete.
8i.] DIALECTIC. 147
81.] (/?) In the Dialectical stage these finite charac-
terisations or formulae supersede themselves, and pass
into their opposites.
(i) But when the Dialectical principle is employed
by the understanding separately and independently, —
especially as seen in its application to philosophical
theories. Dialectic becomes Scepticism ; in which the
result that ensues from its action is presented as a
mere negation.
(2) It is customary to treat Dialectic as an adven-
titious art, which for very wantonness introduces con-
fusion and a mere semblance of contradiction into
definite notions. And in that light, the semblance is
the nonentity, while the true reality is supposed to be-
long to the original dicta of understanding. Often,
indeed. Dialectic is nothing more than a subjective see-
saw of arguments pro and con, where the absence of
sterling thought is disguised by the subtlety which gives
birth to such arguments. But in its true and proper
character. Dialectic is the very nature and essence of
everything predicated by mere understanding, — the law
of things and of the finite as a whole. Dialectic is
different from 'Reflection.' In the first instance, Reflec-
tion is that movement out beyond the isolated predicate
of a thing which gives it some reference, and brings out
its relativity, while still in other respects leaving it its
isolated validity. But by Dialectic is meant the in-
dwelling tendency outwards by which the one-sidedness
and limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen
in its true light, and shown to be the negation of them.
For anything to be finite is just to suppress itself and put
itself aside. Thus understood the Dialectical principle
constitutes the life and soul of scientific progress, the
dynamic which alone gives immanent connexion and
necessity to the body of science ; and, in a word, is seen
L 2
148 LOGIC DEFINED AND DIVIDED. [8x.
to constitute the real and true, as opposed to the ex-
ternal, exaltation above the finite.
(i) It is of the highest importance to ascertain and under-
stand rightly the nature of Dialectic. Wherever there is
movement, wherever there is hfe, wherever anything is
carried into effect in the actual world, there Dialectic is at
work. It is also the soul of all knowledge which is truly
scientific. In the popular way of looking at things, the
refusal to be bound by the abstract deliverances of under-
standing appears as fairness, which, according to the proverb
Live and let live, demands that each should have its turn ;
we admit the one, but we admit the other also. But when
we look more closely, we find that the limitations of the
finite do not merely come from without ; that its own nature
is the cause of its abrogation, and that by its own act it
passes into its counterpart. We say, for instance, that man
is mortal, and seem to think that the ground of his death is
in external circumstances only ; so that if this way of
looking were correct, man would have two special properties,
vitality and— also— mortality. But the true view of the matter
is that life, as life, involves the germ of death, and that the
finite, being radically self-contradictory, involves its own
self-suppression.
Nor, again, is Dialectic to be confounded with mere
Sophistry. The essence of Sophistry lies in giving authority
to a partial and abstract principle, in its isolation, as may
suit the interest and particular situation of the individual
at the time. For example, a regard to my existence, and
my having the means of existence, is a vital motive of conduct,
but if I exclusively emphasise this consideration or motive
of my welfare, and draw the conclusion that I may steal or
betray my country, we have a case of Sophistry. Similarly,
it is a vital principle in conduct that I should be sub-
jectively free, that is to say, that I should have an insight
into what I am doing, and a conviction that it is right. But
if my pleading insists on this principle alone I fall into
Sophistry, such as would overthrow all the principles of
morality. From this sort of party-pleading Dialectic is
8 1.] DIALECTIC. I49
wholly diiferent ; its purpose is to study things in their own
being and movement and thus to demonstrate the finitude of
the partial categories of understanding.
Dialectic, it may be added, is no novelty in philosophy.
Among the ancients Plato is termed the inventor of
Dialectic ; and his right to the name rests on the fact, that
the Platonic philosophy first gave the free scientific, and
thus at the same time the objective, form to Dialectic.
Socrates, as we should expect from the general character
of his philosophising, has the dialectical element in a pre-
dominantly subjective shape, that of Irony. He used to
turn his Dialectic, first against ordinary consciousness, and
then especially against the Sophists. In his conversations
he used to simulate the wish for some clearer knowledge
about the subject under discussion, and after putting all
sorts of questions with that intent, he drew on those with
whom he conversed to the opposite of what their first im-
pressions had pronounced correct. If, for instance, the
Sophists claimed to be teachers, Socrates by a series of
questions forced the Sophist Protagoras to confess that all
learning is only recollection. In his more strictly scientific
dialogues Plato employs the dialectical method to show the
finitude of all hard and fast terms of understanding. Thus
in the Parmenides he deduces the many from the one, and
shows nevertheless that the many cannot but define itself
as the one. In this grand style did Plato treat Dialectic. / In
modern times it was, more than any other, Kant who re-
suscitated the name of Dialectic, and restored it to its post
of honour, j He did it, as we have seen (§ 48), by working
out the Antinomies of the reason. The problem of these
Antinomies is no mere subjective piece of work oscillating
between one set of grounds and another ; it really serves
to show that every abstract proposition of understanding,
taken precisely as it is given, naturally veers round into its
opposite.
However reluctant Understanding may be to admit the
action of Dialectic, we must not suppose that the recognition
of its existence is peculiarly confined to the philosopher.
It would be truer to say that Dialectic gives expression to a
150 LOGIC DEFINED AND DIVIDED. [81.
law which is felt in all other grades of consciousness, and
in general experience. Everything that surrounds us may
be viewed as an instance of Dialectic. We are aware that
everything finite, instead of being stable and ultimate, is
rather changeable and transient; and this is exactly what
we mean by that Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, as
implicitly other than what it is, is forced beyond its own im-
mediate or natural being to turn suddenly into its opposite.
We have before this (§ 80) identified Understanding with
what is imphed in the popular idea of the goodness of God ;
we may now remark of Dialectic, in the same objective sig-
nification, that its principle answers to the idea of his power.
All things, we say,— that is, the finite world as such,— are
doomed ; and in saying so, we have a vision of Dialectic as
the universal and irresistible power before which nothing
can stay, however secure and stable it may deem itself.
The category of power does not, it is true, exhaust the depth
of the divine nature or the notion of God ; but it certainly
forms a vital element in all rehgious consciousness.
Apart from this general objectivity of Dialectic, we find
traces of its presence in each of the particular provinces
and phases of the natural and the spiritual world. Take as
an illustration the motion of the heavenly bodies. At this
moment the planet stands in this spot, but implicitly it is the
possibility of being in another spot; and that possibility of
being otherwise the planet brings into existence by moving.
Similarly the 'physical' elements prove to be Dialectical.
The process of meteorological action is the exhibition of
their Dialectic. It is the same dynamic that lies at the root
of every other natural process, and, as it were, forces nature
out of itself. To illustrate the presence of Dialectic in the
spiritual world, especially in the provinces of law and mo-
rality, we have only to recollect how general experience
shows us the extreme of one state or action suddenly shift-
ing into its opposite : a Dialectic which is recognised in
many ways in common proverbs. Thus surnmum jus
summa injuria: which means, that to drive an abstract
right to its extremity is to do a wrong. In political life,
as every one knows, extreme anarchy and extreme despot-
8r.] DIALECTIC AND SCEPTICISM. 151
ism naturally lead to one another. The perception of Dia-
lectic in the province of individual Ethics is seen in the
well-known adages, Pride comes before a fall : Too much
wit outwits itself Even feeling, bodily as well as mental,
has its Dialectic. Every one knows how the extremes of
pain and pleasure pass into each other : the heart overflow-
ing with joy seeks relief in tears, and the deepest melan-
choly will at times betray its presence bj' a smile.
(2) Scepticism should not be looked upon merely as a
doctrine of doubt. It would be more correct to say that the
Sceptic has no doubt of his point, which is the nothingness
of all finite existence. He who only doubts still clings to
the hope that his doubt may be resolved, and that one or
other of the definite views, between which he wavers, will
turn out solid and true. Scepticism properly so called is a
very different thing : it is complete hopelessness about all
which understanding counts stable, and the feeling to which
it gives birth is one of unbroken calmness and inward re-
pose. Such at least is the noble Scepticism of antiquity,
especially as exhibited in the writings of Sextus Empiricus,
when in the later times of Rome it had been systematised as
a complement to the dogmatic systems of Stoic and Epi-
curean. Of far other stamp, and to be strictly distinguished
from it, is the modern Scepticism already mentioned § (39),
which partly preceded the Critical Philosophy, and partly
sprung out of it. That later Scepticism consisted solely in
denying the truth and certitude of the super-sensible, and in
pointing to the facts of sense and of immediate sensations as
what we have to keep to.
Even to this day Scepticism is often spoken of as the
irresistible enemy of all positive knowledge, and hence of
philosophy, in so far as philosophy is concerned with posi-
tive knowledge. But in these statements there is a miscon-
ception. It is only the finite thought of abstract understand-
ing which has to fear Scepticism, because unable to with-
stand it : philosophy includes the sceptical principle as a
subordinate function of its own, in the shape of Dialectic.
In contradistinction to mere Scepticism, however, philosophy
does not remain content with the purely negative result of
152 LOGIC DEFINED AND DIVIDED. [81-82.
Dialectic. The sceptic mistakes the true value of his result,
when he supposes it to be no more than a negation pure and
simple. For the negative, which emerges as the result of
dialectic, is, because a result, at the same time the positive :
it contains what it results from, absorbed into itself, and
made part of its own nature. Thus conceived, however,
the dialectical stage has the features characterising the third
grade of logical truth, the speculative form, or form of posi-
tive reason.
82.] (y) The Speculative stage, or stage of Positive
Reason, apprehends the unity of terms (propositions)
in their opposition, — the affirmative, which is involved
in their disintegration and in their transition.
(i) The result of Dialectic is positive, because it has
a definite content, or because its result is not empty and
abstract nothing, but the negation of certain specific
propositions which are contained in the result, — for the
very reason that it is a resultant and not an immediate no-
thing. (2) It follows from this that the 'reasonable'
result, though it be only a thought and abstract, is still
a concrete, being not a plain formal unity, but a unity
of distinct propositions. Bare abstractions or formal
thoughts are therefore no business of philosophy, which
has to deal only with concrete thoughts. (3) The logic
of mere Understanding is involved in Speculative logic,
and can at will be elicited from it, by the simple process
of omitting the dialectical and 'reasonable' element.
When that is done, it becomes what the common logic
is, a descriptive collection of sundry thought-forms and
rules which, finite though they are, are taken to be some-
thing infinite.
If we consider only what it contains, and not how it con-
tains it, the true reason-world, so far from being the exclu-
sive property of philosophy, is the right of every human
being on whatever grade of culture or mental growth he
8a.] SPECULATIVE LOGIC. 1 53
may stand ; which would justify man's ancient title of ra-
tional being. The general mode by which experience first
makes us aware of the reasonable order of things is by
accepted and unreasoned belief; and the character of the
rational, as already noted (§ 45), is to be unconditioned, and
thus to be self-contained, self-determining. In this sense
man above all things becomes aware of the reasonable order,
when he knows of God, and knows Him to be the completely
self-determined. Similarly, the consciousness a citizen has
of his country and its laws is a perception of the reason-
world, so long as he looks up to them as unconditioned and
likewise universal powers, to which he must subject his in-
dividual will. And in the same sense, the knowledge and
will of the child is rational, w^hen he knows his parents'
will, and wills it.
Now, to turn these rational (of course positively-rational)
reahties into speculative principles, the only thing needed is
that they be thought. The expression ' Speculation ' in
common life is often used with a very vague and at the
same time secondary sense, as when we speak of a matri-
monial or a commercial speculation. By this we only
mean two things : first, that what is immediately at hand
has to be passed and left behind ; and secondly, that the
subject-matter of such speculations, though in the first place
only subjective, must not remain so, but be realised or
translated into objectivity.
What was some time ago remarked respecting the Idea,
may be applied to this common usage of the term ' specula-
tion ' : and we may add that people who rank themselves
amongst the educated expressly speak of speculation even
as if it were something purely subjective. A certain theory
of some conditions and circumstances of nature or mind may
be, say these people, very fine and correct as a matter of
speculation, but it contradicts experience and nothing of the
sort is admissible in reality. To this the answer is, that the
speculative is in its true signification, neither preliminarily
nor even definitively, something merely subjective : that, on
the contrary, it expressly rises above such oppositions as
that between subjective and objective, which the under-
154 LOGIC DEFINED AND DIVIDED. [82.
standing cannot get over, and absorbing them in itself,
evinces its own concrete and all-embracing nature. A one-
sided proposition therefore can never even give expression
to a speculative truth. If we say, for example, that the
absolute is the unity of subjective and objective, we are
undoubtedly in the right, but so far one-sided, as we enun-
ciate the unity only and lay the accent upon it, forgetting
that in reality the subjective and objective are not merely
identical but also distinct.
Speculative truth, it may also be noted, means very much
the same as what, in special connexion with religious ex-
perience and doctrines, used to be called Mysticism. The
term Mysticism is at present used, as a rule, to designate
what is mysterious and incomprehensible: and in propor-
tion as their general culture and way of thinking vary, the
epithet is applied by one class to denote the real and the
true, by another to name everything connected with super-
stition and deception. On which we first of all remark that
there is mystery in the mystical, only however for the un-
derstanding which is ruled by the principle of abstract
identity ; whereas the mystical, as synonymous with the
speculative, is the concrete unity of those propositions,
which understanding only accepts in their separation and
opposition. And if those who recognise Mysticism as the
highest truth are content to leave it in its original utter
mystery, their conduct only proves that for them too, as
well as for their antagonists, thinking means abstract iden-
tification, and that in their opinion, therefore, truth can only
be won by renouncing thought, or as it is frequently ex-
pressed, by leading the reason captive. But, as we have
seen, the abstract thinking of understanding is so far from
being either ultimate or stable, that it shows a perpetual
tendency to work its own dissolution and swing round into
its opposite. Reasonableness, on the contrary, just consists
in embracing within itself these opposites as unsubstantial
elements. Thus the reason-world may be equally styled
mystical,— not however because thought cannot both reach
and comprehend it, but merely because it lies beyond the
compass of understanding.
83.] SUBDIVISIONS OF LOGIC. 155
83.] Logic is subdivided into three parts : —
I. The Doctrine of Being:
II. The Doctrine of Essence :
III. The Doctrine of Notion and Idea.
That is, into the Theory of Thought :
I. In its immediacy : the notion implicit and in
germ.
II. In its reflection and mediation : the being-for-self
and show of the notion.
III. In its return into itself, and its developed abid-
ing by itself: the notion in and for itself.
The division of Logic now given, as well as the whole of
the previous discussion on the nature of thought, is antici-
patory : and the justification, or proof of it, can only result
from the detailed treatment of thought itself For in philo-
sophy, to prove means to show how the subject by and from
itself makes itself what it is. The relation in which these
three leading grades of thought, or of the logical Idea, stand
to each other must be conceived as follows. Truth comes
only with the notion : or, more precisely, the notion is the
truth of being and essence, both of which, when separately
maintained in their isolation, cannot but be untrue, the
former because it is exclusively immediate, and the latter
because it is exclusively mediate. Why then, it may be
asked, begin with the false and not at once with the true ?
To which we answer that truth, to deserve the name, must
authenticate its own truth : which authentication, here within
the sphere of logic, is given, when the notion demonstrates
itself to be what is mediated by and with itself, and thus at
the same time to be truly immediate. This relation be-
tween the three stages of the logical Idea appears in a real
and concrete shape thus : God, who is the truth, is known
by us in His truth, that is, as absolute spirit, only in so far as
we at the same time recognise that the world which He
created, nature and the finite spirit, are, in their difference
from God, untrue.
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.
THE DOCTRINE OF BEING.
84.] Being is the notion implicit only : its special
forms have the predicate ' is ' ; when they are distin-
guished they are each of them an 'other': and the shape
which dialectic takes in them, i.e. their further speciali-
sation, is a passing over into another. This further
determination, or specialisation, is at once a forth-put-
ting and in that way a disengaging of the notion implicit
in being; and at the same time the withdrawing of
being inwards, its sinking deeper into itself. Thus the
explication of the notion in the sphere of being does
two things : it brings out the totality of being, and it
abolishes the immediacy of being, or the form of being
as such.
85.] Being itself and the special sub-categories of it
which follow, as well as those of logic in general, may
be looked upon as definitions of the Absolute, or meta-
physical definitions of God : at least the first and third
category in every triad may, — the first, where the
thought-form of the triad is formulated in its simplicity,
and the third, being the return from differentiation to a
simple self- reference. For a metaphysical definition of
God is the expression of His nature in thoughts as such :
and logic embraces all thoughts so long as they continue
in the thought-form. The second sub-category in each
85.] THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. 1 57
triad, where the grade of thought is in its differentiation,
gives, on the other hand, a definition of the finite. The
objection to the form of definition is that it implies a
something in the mind's eye on which these predicates
may fasten. Thus even the Absolute (though it pur-
ports to express God in the style and character of
thought) in comparison with its predicate (which really
and distinctly expresses in thought what the subject
does not), is as yet only an inchoate pretended thought
— the indeterminate subject of predicates yet to come.
The thought, which is here the matter of sole import-
ance, is contained only in the predicate : and hence the
propositional form, like the said subject, viz. the Abso-
lute, is a mere superfluity (cf. § 31, and below, on the
Judgment).
Each of the three spheres of the logical idea proves to be
a systematic whole of thought-terms, and a phase of the
Absolute. This is the case with Being, containing the three
grades of quality, quantity, and measure. Quality is, in the
first place, the character identical with being : so identical,
that a thing ceases to be what it is, if it loses its quality.
Quantity, on the contrary, is the character external to being,
and does not affect the being at all. Thus e.g. a house re-
mains what it is, whether it be greater or smaller ; and red
remains red, whether it be brighter or darker. Measure,
the third grade of being, which is the unity of the first two,
is a qualitative quantity. All things have their measure : ;. e.
the quantitative terms of their existence, their being so or so
great, does not matter within certain limits ; but when these
limits are exceeded by an additional more or less, the things
cease to be what they were. From measure follows the
advance to the second sub-division of the idea. Essence.
The three forms of being here mentioned, just because
they are the first, are also the poorest, i.e. the most abstract.
Immediate (sensible) consciousness, in so far as it simul-
taneously includes an intellectual element, is especially re-
stricted to the abstract categories of quality and quantity.
158 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [85-86.
The sensuous consciousness is in ordinary estimation the
most concrete and thus also the richest ; but that is only
true as regards materials, whereas, in reference to the thought
it contains, it is really the poorest and most abstract.
A. — Quality.
{a) Being.
86.] Pure Being makes the beginning : because it is
on one hand pure thought, and on the other immediacy
itself, simple and indeterminate ; and the first beginning
cannot be mediated by anything, or be further deter-
mined.
All doubts and admonitions, which might be brought
against beginning the science with abstract empty being,
will disappear, if we only perceive what a beginning
naturally implies. It is possible to define being as
'1 = 1,' as 'Absolute Indifference' or Identity, and so
on. Where it is felt necessary to begin either with
what is absolutely certain, i.e. the certainty of oneself,
or with a definition or intuition of the absolute truth,
these and other forms of the kind may be looked on as
if they must be the first. But each of these forms con-
tains a mediation, and hence cannot be the real first :
for all mediation implies advance made from a first on
to a second, and proceeding from something different.
If 1 = 1, or even the intellectual intuition, are really
taken to mean no more than the first, they are in this
mere immediacy identical with being : while conversely,
pure being, if abstract no longer, but including in it
mediation, is pure thought or intuition.
If we enunciate Being as a predicate of the Absolute,
we get the first definition of the latter. The Absolute
is Being. This is (in thought) the absolutely initial
definition, the most abstract and stinted. It is the defi-
nition given by the Eleatics, but at the same time is also
86.] QUALITY — BEING. 159
the well-known definition of God as the sum of all reali-
ties. It means, in short, that we are to set aside that
limitation which is in every reality, so that God shall
be only the real in all reality, the superlatively real.
Or, if we reject reality, as implying a reflection, we get
a more immediate or unreflected statement of the same
thing, when Jacobi says that the God of Spinoza is the
principium of being in all existence.
(i) When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought
in its merest indeterminateness : for we cannot determine
unless there is both one and another ; and in the beginning
there is yet no other. The indeterminate, as we here have
it, is the blank we begin with, not a featurelessness reached
by abstraction, not the elimination of all character, but the
original featurelessness which precedes all definite character
andisthe very first of all. And this we call Being. It is not to
be feh, or perceived by sense, or pictured in imagination : it is
only and merely thought, and as such it forms the beginning.
Essence also is indeterminate, but in another sense : it has
traversed the process of mediation and contains implicit the
determination it has absorbed.
(2) In the history of philosophy the different stages of the
logical Idea assume the shape of successive systems, each
based on a particular definition of the Absolute. As the
logical Idea is seen to unfold itself in a process from the
abstract to the concrete, so in the history of philosophy the
earliest systems are the most abstract, and thus at the same
time the poorest. The relation too of the earlier to the later
systems of philosophy is much like the relation of the cor-
responding stages of the logical Idea : in other words, the
earlier are preserved in the later ; but subordinated and sub-
merged. This is the true meaning of a much misunderstood
phenomenon in the history of philosophy— the refutation of
one system by another, of an earlier by a later. Most com-
monly the refutation is taken in a purely negative sense to
mean that the system refuted has ceased to count for any-
thing, has been set aside and done for. Were it so, the
history of philosophy would be of all studies most saddening,
l6o THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [86.
displaying, as it does, the refutation of every system which
time has brought forth. Now, although it may be admitted
that every philosophy has been refuted, it must be in an
equal degree maintained, that no philosophy has been re-
futed, nay, or can be refuted. And that in two ways. For
first, every philosophy that deserves the name always em-
bodies the Idea : and secondly, every system represents one
particular factor or particular stage in the evolution of the
Idea. The refutation of a philosophy, therefore, only means
that its barriers are crossed, and its special principle reduced
to a factor in the completer principle that follows. Thus the
history of philosophy, in its true meaning, deals not with a
past, but with an eternal and veritable present : and, in its
results, resembles not a museum of the aberrations of the
human intellect, but a Pantheon of Godlike figures. These
figures of Gods are the various stages of the Idea, as they
come forward one after another in dialectical development.
To the historian of philosophy it belongs to point out more
precisely, how far the gradual evolution of his theme coin-
cides with, or swerves from, the dialectical unfolding of the
pure logical Idea. It is sufficient to mention here, that logic
begins where the proper history of philosophy begins.
Philosophy began in the Eleatic school, especially with Par-
menides. Parmenides, who conceives the absolute as Being,
says that ' Being alone is and Nothing is not.' Such was
the true starting-point of philosophy, which is always know-
ledge by thought : and here for the first time we find pure
thought seized and made an object to itself.
Men indeed thought from the beginning : (for thus only
were they distinguished from the animals). But thousands
of years had to elapse before they came to apprehend thought
in its purity, and to see in it the truly objective. The Elea-
tics are celebrated as daring thinkers. But this nominal
admiration is often accompanied by the remark that they
went too far, when they made Being alone true, and denied
the truth of every other object of consciousness. We must
go further than mere Being, it is true : and yet it is absurd to
speak of the other contents of our consciousness as some-
what as it were outside and beside Being, or to say that
86-87.] BEING AND NOTHING. l6l
there are other things, as well as Being. The true state of
the case is rather as follows. Being, as Being, is nothing
fixed or ultimate : it yields to dialectic and sinks into its op-
posite, which, also taken immediately, is Nothing. After all,
the point is, that Being is the first pure Thought ; whatever
else you may begin with (the 1 = 1, the absolute indifference, or
God Himself), you begin with a figure of materialised concep-
tion, not a product of thought ; and that, so far as its thought-
content is concerned, such beginning is merely Bein^.
87.] But this mere Being, as it is mere abstraction,
is therefore the absolutely negative : which, in a simi-
larly immediate aspect, is just Nothing.
(i) Hence was derived the second definition of the
Absolute ; the Absolute is the Nought. In fact this
definition is implied in saying that the thing-in-itself
is the indeterminate, utterly without form and so
without content, — or in saying that God is only the
supreme Being and nothing more ; for this is really
declaring Him to be the same negativity as above. The
Nothing which the Buddhists make the universal prin-
ciple, as well as the final aim and goal of everything, is
the same abstraction.
(2) If the opposition in thought is stated in this im-
mediacy as Being and Nothing, the shock of its nullity
is too great not to stimulate the attempt to fix Being and
secure it against the transition into Nothing. With this
intent, reflection has recourse to the plan of discovering
some fixed predicate for Being, to mark it off from
Nothing. Thus we find Being identified with what
persists amid all change, with matter, susceptible of
innumerable determinations, — or even, unreflectingly,
with a single existence, any chance object of the senses
or of the mind. But every additional and more concrete
characterisation causes Being to lose that integrity and
simplicity it has in the beginning. Only in, and by
virtue of, this mere generality is it Nothing, something
VOL. II, M
t62 the doctrine of being. [87.
inexpressible, whereof the distinction from Nothing is
a mere intention or meaning.
All that is wanted is to realise that these beginnings
are nothing but these empty abstractions, one as empty
as the other. The instinct that induces us to attach a
settled import to Being, or to both, is the very necessity
which leads to the onward movement of Being and
Nothing, and gives them a true or concrete significance.
This advance is the logical deduction and the movement
of thought exhibited in the sequel. The reflection which
finds a profounder connotation for Being and Nothing
is nothing but logical thought, through which such con-
notation is evolved, not, however, in an accidental, but a
necessary way. Every signification, therefore, in which
they afterwards appear, is only a more precise specifica-
tion and truer definition of the Absolute. And when
that is done, the mere abstract Being and Nothing are
replaced by a concrete in which both these elements
form an organic part. — The supreme form of Nought as
a separate principle would be Freedom : but Freedom
is negativity in that stage, when it sinks self-absorbed
to supreme intensity, and is itself an affirmation, and
even absolute affirmation.
The distinction between Being and Nought is, in the first
place, only implicit, and not yet actually made : they only
ought to be distinguished. A distinction of course implies
two things, and that one of them possesses an attribute
which is not found in the other. Being however is an abso-
lute absence of attributes, and so is Nought. Hence the
distinction between the two is only meant to be ; it is a quite
nominal distinction, which is at the same time no distinction.
In all other cases of difference there is some common point
which comprehends both things. Suppose e.g. we speak of
two different species : the genus forms a common ground
for both. But in the case of mere Being and Nothing, dis-
tinction is without a bottom to stand upon : hence there can be
87-88.] BEING AND NOTHING. 163
no distinction, both determinations being the same bottom-
lessness. If it be replied that Being and Nothing are both
of them thoughts, so that thought may be reckoned common
ground, the objector forgets that Being is not a particular
or definite thought, and hence, being quite indeterminate, is
a thought not to be distinguished from Nothing.— It is natural
too for us to represent Being as absolute riches, and No-
thing as absolute poverty. But if when we view the whole
world we can only say that everything is, and nothing
more, we are neglecting all speciality and, instead of abso-
lute plenitude, we have absolute emptiness. The same stric-
ture is applicable to those who define G<'d to be mere
Being ; a definition rot a whit better than that of the Bud-
dhists, who make God to be Nought, and who from that
principle draw the further conclusion that self-annihilation is
the means by which man becomes God.
88.] Nothing, if it be thus immediate and equal to
itself, is also conversely the same as Being is. The
truth of Being and of Nothing is accordingly the unity
of the two : and this unity is Becoming.
(i) The proposition that Being and Nothing is the
same seems so paradoxical to the imagination or under-
standing, that it is perhaps taken for a joke. And in-
deed it is one of the hardest things thought expects
itself to do : for Being and Nothing exhibit the funda-
mental contrast in all its immediacy, — that is, without the
one term being invested with any attribute which would
involve its connexion with the other. This attribute
however, as the above paragraph points out, is implicit
in them — the attribute which is just the same in both.
So far the deduction of their unity is completely analy-
tical : indeed the whole progress of philosophising in
every case, if it be a methodical, that is to say a neces-
sary, progress, merely renders explicit what is implicit
in a notion. — It is as correct however to say that Being
and Nothing are altogether different, as to assert their
M 2
164 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [88.
unity. The one is not what the other is. But since the
distinction has not at this point assumed definite shape
(Being and Nothing are still the immediate), it is, in the
way that the}' have it, something unutterable, which we
merely mean.
(2) No great expenditure of wit is needed to make
fun of the maxim that Being and Nothing are the same,
or rather to adduce absurdities which, it is erroneously
asserted, are the consequences and illustrations of that
maxim.
If Being and Nought are identical, say these objec-
tors, it follows that it makes no difference whether my
home, my property, the air I breathe, this city, the sun,
the law, mind, God, are or are not. Now in some of
these cases, the objectors foist in private aims, the utility
a thing has for me, and then ask, whether it be al' the
same to me if the thing exist and if it do not. For that
matter indeed, the teaching of philosophy is precisely
what frees man from the endless crowd of finite aims
and intentions, by making him so insensible to them,
that their existence or non-existence is to him a matter
of indifference. But it is never to be forgotten that,
once mention something substantial, and you thereby
create a connexion with other existences and other pur-
poses which are ex hypothesi worth having : and on such
hypothesis it comes to depend whether the Being and
not- Being of a determinate subject are the same or not.
A substantial distinction is in these cases secretly sub-
stituted for the empty distinction of Being and Nought.
In others of the cases referred to, it is virtually absolute
existences and vital ideas and aims, which are placed
under the mere category of Being or not- Being. But
there is more to be said of these concrete objects, than
that they merely are or are not. Barren abstractions,
like Being and Nothing— the initial categories which.
88.] BECOMING. 165
for that reason, are the scantiest anywhere to be found
—are utterly inadequate to the nature of these objects.
Substantial truth is something far above these abstrac-
tions and their oppositions. — And always when a con-
crete existence is disguised under the name of Being
and not-Being, empty-headedness makes its usual mis-
take of speaking about, and having in the mind an image
of, something else than what is in question : and in this
place the question is about abstract Being and Nothing.
(3) It may perhaps be said that nobody can form
a notion of the unity of Being and Nought. As for that,
the notion of the unity is stated in the sections preced-
ing, and that is all : apprehend that, and you have
comprehended this unity. What the objector really
means by comprehension— by a notion — is more than
his language properly implies : he wants a richer and
more complex state of mind, a pictorial conception which
will propound the notion as a concrete case and one
more familiar to the ordinary operations of thought.
And so long as incomprehensibility means only the want
of habituation for the effort needed to grasp an abstract
thought, free from all sensuous admixture, and to seize
a speculative truth, the reply to the criticism is, that
philosophical knowledge is undoubtedly distinct in kind
from the mode of knowledge best known in common
life, as well as from that which reigns in the other
sciences. But if to have no notion merely means that
we cannot represent in imagination the oneness of Being
and Nought, the statement is far from being true; for
every one has countless ways of envisaging this unity.
To say that we have no such conception can only mean,
that in none of these images do we recognise the notion
in question, and that we are not aware that they exem-
plify it. The readiest example of it is Becoming.
Every one has a mental idea of Becoming, and will
l66 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [88.
even allow that it, is one idea : he will further allow that,
when it is analysed, it involves the attribute of Being,
and also what is the very reverse of Being, viz. Nothing :
and that these two attributes lie undivided in the one
idea : so that Becoming is the unity of Being and
Nothing. — Another tolerably plain example is a Be-
ginning. In its beginning, the thing is not yet, but it is
more than merely nothing, for its Being is already in
the beginning. Beginning is itself a case of Becoming ;
only the former term is employed with an eye to the
further advance. — If we were to adapt logic to the more
usual method of the sciences, we might start with the
representation of a Beginning as abstractly thought, or
with Beginning as such, and then analyse this repre-
sentation ; and perhaps people would more readily
admit, as a result of this analysis, that Being and
Nothing present themselves as undivided in unity.
(4) It remains to note that such phrases as ' Being
and Nothing are the same,' or ' The unity of Being and
Nothing' — like all other such unities, that of subject
and object, and others — give rise to reasonable objec-
tion. They misrepresent the facts, by giving an exclu-
sive prominence to the unity, and leaving the difference
which undoubtedly exists in it (because it is Being and
Nothing, for example, the unity of which is declared)
without any express mention or notice. It accordingly
seems as if the diversity had been unduly put out of
court and neglected. The fact is, no speculative prin-
ciple can be correctly expressed by any such proposi-
tional form, for the unity has to be conceived in the
diversity, which is all the while present and explicit.
' To become ' is the true expression for the resultant of
' To be ' and ' Not to be ' ; it is the unity of the two ; but
not only is it the unity, it is also inherent unrest, — the
unity, which is no mere reference-tojself and therefore
88.] BECOMING. 167
without movement, but which, through the diversity of
Being and Nothing that is in it, is at war within itself.
— Determinate being, on the other hand, is this unity,
or Becoming in this form of unity: hence all that 'is
there and so,' is one-sided and finite. The opposition
between the two factors seems to have vanished ; it is
only implied in the unity, it is not explicitly put in it.
(5) The maxim of Becoming, that Being is the pas-
sage into Nought, and Nought the passage into Being, is
controverted by the maxim of Pantheism, the doctrine
of the eternity of matter, that from nothing comes
nothing, and that something can only come out of some-
thing. The ancients saw plainly that the maxim, ' From
nothing comes nothing, from something something,'
really abolishes Becoming : for what it comes from and
what it becomes are one and the same. Thus explained,
the proposition is the maxim of abstract identity as up-
held by the understanding. It cannot but seem strange,
therefore, to hear such maxims as, 'Out of nothing
comes nothing : Out of something comes something,'
calmly taught in these days, without the teacher being
in the least aware that they are the basis of Pantheism,
and even without his knowing that the ancients have
exhausted all that is to be said about them.
Becoming is the first concrete thought, and therefore the
first notion : whereas Being and Nought are empty abstrac-
tions. The notion of Being, therefore, of which we some-
times speak, must mean Becoming ; not the mere point
of Being, which is empty Nothing, any more t-han Nothing,
which is empty Being. In Being then we have Nothing,
and in Nothing Being : but this Being which does not lose
itself in Nothing is Becoming. Nor must we omit the dis-
tinction, while we emphasise the unity of Becoming : with-
out that distinction we should once more return to abstract
Being. Becoming is only the explicit statement of what
Being is in its truth.
l68 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [88.
We often hear it maintained that thought is opposed to
being. Now in the face of such a statement, our first ques-
tion ought to be, what is meant by being. If we under-
stand being as it is defined by reflection, all that we can say
of it is that it is what is wholly identical and affirmative. And
if we then look at thought, it cannot escape us that thought
also is at least what is absolutely identical with itself. Both
therefore, being as well as thought, have the same attribute.
This identity of being and thought is not however to be
taken in a concrete sense, as if we could say that a stone, so
far as it has being, is the same as a thinking man. A concrete
thing is always very different from the abstract category as
such. And in the case of being, we are speaking of nothing
concrete : for being is the utterly abstract. So far then the
question regarding the being of God— a being which is in
itself concrete above all measure— is of slight importance.
As the first concrete thought-term. Becoming is the first
adequate vehicle of truth. In the history of philosophy, this
stage of the logical Idea finds its analogue in the system of
Heraclitus. When Heraclitus says ' All is flowing ' {navra pel),
he enunciates Becoming as the fundamental feature of all
existence, whereas the Eleatics, as already remarked, saw
the only truth in Being, rigid processless Being. Glancing
at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then goes on
to say : Being no more is than not-Being {olbev fiaWov to t>v
Tou fiq ovTos fVri) : a statement expressing the negativity of
abstract Being, and its identity with not-Being, as made ex-
plicit in Becoming : both abstractions being alike untenable.
This maybe looked at as an instance of the real refutation of
one system by another. To refute a philosophy is to exhibit
the dialectical movement in its principle, and thus reduce it
to a constituent member of a higher concrete form of the
Idea. Even Becoming however, taken at its best on its own
ground, is an extremely poor term : it needs to grow in
depth and weight of meaning. Such deepened force we
find e.g. in Life. Life is a Becoming ; but that is not enough
to exhaust the notion of life. A still higher form is found in
Mind. Here too is Becoming, but richer and more inten-
sive than mere logical Becoming. The elements, whose
88- 89- J DETERMINATE BEING. 1 69
unity constitutes mind, are not the bare abstracts of Being and
of Nought, but the system of the logical Idea and of Nature.
{b) Being Determinate.
89.] In Becoming the Being which is one with
Nothing, and the Nothing which is one with Being, are
only vanishing factors ; they are and they are not.
Thus by its inherent contradiction Becoming collapses
into the unity in which the two elements are absorbed.
This result is accordingly Being Determinate (Being
there and so).
In this first example we must call to mind, once for
all, what was stated in § 82 and in the note there : the
only way to secure any growth and progress in know-
ledge is to hold results fast in their truth. There is
absolutely nothing whatever in which we cannot and
must not point to contradictions or opposite attributes ;
and the abstraction made by understanding therefore
means a forcible insistance on a single aspect, and a real
effort to obscure and remove all consciousness of the
other attribute which is involved. Whenever such con-
tradiction, then, is discovered in any object or notion,
the usual inference is, Hence this object is nothing.
Thus Zeno, who first showed the contradiction native
to motion, concluded that there is no motion : and the
ancients, who recognised origin and decease, the two
species of Becoming, as untrue categories, made use
of the expression that the One or Absolute neither
arises nor perishes. Such a style of dialectic looks only
at the negative aspect of its result, and fails to notice,
what is at the same time really present, the definite
result, in the present case a pure nothing, but a Nothing
which includes Being, and, in like manner, a Being
which includes Nothing. Hence Being Determinate is
(1) the unity of Being and Nothing, in which we get rid
170 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [89 90.
of the immediacy in these determinations, and their
contradiction vanishes in their mutual connexion, — the
unity in which they are only constituent elements. And
{2) since the result is the abolition of the contradiction,
it comes in the shape of a simple unity with itself: that
is to say, it also is Being, but Being with negation or
determinateness : it is Becoming expressly put in the
form of one of its elements, viz. Being.
Even our ordinary conception of Becoming implies that
somewhat comes out of it, and that Becoming therefore has
a result. But this conception gives rise to the question, how
Becoming does not remain mere Becoming, but has a re-
sult.? The answer to this question follows from what Be-
coming has already shown itself to be. Becoming always
contains Being and Nothing in such a way, that these two
are always changing into each other, and reciprocally can-
celling each other. Thus Becoming stands before us in
utter restlessness — unable however to maintain itself in
this abstract restlessness : for since Being and Nothing
vanish in Becoming (and that is the very notion of Becom-
ing), the latter must vanish also. Becoming is as it were a
fire, which dies out in itself, when it consumes its m_aterial.
The result of this process however is not an empty Nothing,
but Being identical with the negation,— what we call Being
Determinate (being then and there) : the primary import of
which evidently is that it has become.
90.J (a) Determinate Being is Being with a character
or mode — which simply is ; and such un-mediated
character is Quality. And as reflected into itself in
this its character or mode. Determinate Being is a some-
what, an existent. — The categories, which issue by
a closer analysis of Determinate Being, need only be
mentioned briefly.
Quality may be described as the determinate mode imme-
diate and identical with Being — as distinguished from Quan-
tity (to come afterwards), which, although a mode of Being,
90-9I.] QUALITY. 17I
is no longer immediately identical with Being, but a mode
indifferent and external to it. A Something is what it is in
virtue of its quality, and losing its quality it ceases to be what
it is. Quality, moreover, is completely a category only of
the finite, and for that reason too it has its proper place in
Nature, not in the world of Mind. Thus, for example, in
Nature what are styled the elementary bodies, oxygen,
nitrogen, &;c., should be regarded as existing qualities. But
in the sphere of mind, Quality appears in a subordinate way
only, and not as if its qualitativeness could exhaust any
specific aspect of m'nd. If, for example, we consider the
subjective mind, which forms the object of psychology, we
may describe what is called (moral and mental) character, as
in logical language identical with Quality. This however
does not mean that character is a mode of being which per-
vades the soul and is immediately identical with it, as is the
case in the natural world with the elementary bodies before
mentioned. Yet a more distinct manifestation of Quality as
such, in mind even, 11 found in the case of besotted or morbid
conditions, especially in states of passion and when the pas-
sion rises to derangement. The state of mind of a deranged
person, being one mass of jealousy, fear, &c., may suitably
be described as Quality.
91.] Quality, as determinateness which is, as con-
trasted with the Negation which is involved in it but
distinguished from it, is Reality. Negation is no longer
an abstract nothing, but, as a determinate being and
somewhat, is only a form on such being — it is as Other-
ness. Since this otherness, though a determination
of Quality itself, is in the first instance distinct from it,
Quality is Being-for-another — an expansion of the mere
point of Determinate Being, or of Somewhat. The
Being as such of Quality, contrasted with this reference
lo somewhat else, is Being-by-self.
The foundation of all determinateness is negation (as
Spinoza says, Omnis determinaiio est negatio). The unre-
flecting observer supposes that determinate things are merely
172 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [91-92.
positive, and pins them down under the form of being.
Mere being however is not the end of the matter : — it is, as
we have already seen, utter emptiness and instability besides.
Still, when abstract being is confused in this way with being
modified and determinate, it implies some perception of the
fact that, though in determinate being there is involved an
element of negation, this element is at first wrapped up, as it
were, and only comes to the front and receives its due in
Being-for-self.— If we go on to consider determinate Being
as a determinateness which is, we get in this way what is
called Reality. We speak, for example, of the reality of a
plan or a purpose, meaning thereby that they are no longer
inner and subjective, but have passed into being-there-and-
then. In the same sense the body may be called the reality
of the soul, and the law the reality of freedom, and the world
altogether the reality of the divine idea. The word ' reality '
is however used in another acceptation to mean that some-
thing behaves conformably to its essential characteristic or
notion. For example, we use the expression : This is a real
occupation : This is a real man. Here the term does not
merely mean outward and immediate existence : but rather
that some existence agrees with its notion. In which sense,
be it added, reality is not distinct from the ideality which
we shall in the first instance become acquainted with in the
shape of Being-for-self.
92.] (3) Being, if kept distinct and apart from its deter-
mintite mode, as it is in Being-by-self (Being implicit),
would be only the vacant abstraction of Being. In Being
(determinate there and then), the determinateness is
one with Being ; yet at the same time, when explicitly
made a negation, it is a Limit, a Barrier. Hence the
otherness is not something indifferent and outside it,
but a function proper to it. Somewhat is by its quality,
— firstly finite,— secondly alterable; so that finitude
and variability appertain to its being.
In Being-there-and-then, the negation is still directly one
with the Being, and this negation is what we call a Limit
92. J REALITY AND LIMIT. 1 73
(Boundary). A thing is what it is, only in and by reason of
its limit. We cannot therefore regard the limit as only ex-
ternal to being which is then and there. It rather goes
through and through the whole of such existence. The
view of limit, as merely an external characteristic of being-
there-and-then, arises from a confusion of quantitative with
qualitative limit. Here we are speaking primarily of the
qualitative limit. If, for example, we observe a piece of
ground, three acres large, that circumstance is its quantita-
tive limit. But, in addition, the ground is, it may be, a
meadow, not a wood or a pond. This is its qualitative limit.
— Man, 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,
but linger lost in abstraction, and their light dies away.
If we take a closer look at what a limit implies, we see it
involving a contradiction in itself, and thus evincing its dia-
lectical nature. On the one side the limit makes the reality
of a thing ; on the other it is its negation. But, again, the
limit, as the negation of something, is not an abstract no-
thing but a nothingwhich/s,— what wecallan 'other.' Given
something, and up starts an other to us : we know that there
is not something only, but an other as well. Nor, again, is
the other of such a nature that we can think something apart
from it ; a something is implicitlj' the other of itself, and the
somewhat sees its limit become objective to it in the other.
If we now ask for the difference between something and an-
other, it turns out that they are the same : which sameness is
expressed in Latin by calling the pair aliud—aliud. The other,
as opposed to the something, is itself a something, and hence
we say some other, or something else ; and so on the other
hand the first something when opposed to the other, also
defined as something, is itself an other. When we say
'something else' our first impression is. that something
taken separately is only something, and that the quality of
being another attaches to it only from outside considerations.
Thus we suppose that the moon, being something else than
the sun, might very well exist without the sun. But really
the moon, as a something, has its other implicit in it : Plato
174 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [92-94-
says: God made the world out of the nature of the 'one'
and the 'other' {tov erfpov): having brought these together,
he formed from them a third, which is of the nature of the
'one' and the 'other.' In these words we have in general
terms a statement of the nature of the finite, which, as some-
thing, does not meet the nature of the other as if it had no
affinity to it, but, being implicitly the other of itself, thus
undergoes alteration. Alteration thus exhibits the inherent
contradiction which originally attaches to determinate being,
and which forces it out of its own bounds. To materialised
conception existence stands in the character of something
solely positive, and quietly abiding within its own limits :
though we also know, it is true, that everything finite (such as
existence) is subject to change. Such changeableness in
existence is to the superficial eye a mere possibility, the
realisation of which is not a consequence of its own nature.
But the fact is, mutability lies in the notion of existence, and
change is only the manifestation of what it irr.plicitly is.
The living die, simply because as living they bear in them-
selves the germ of death.
93.] Something becomes an other : this other is itself
somewhat : therefore it likewise becomes an other, and
so on ad infinitum.
94.] This Infinity is the wrong or negative infinity :
it is only a negation of a finite : but the finite rises again
the same as ever, and is never got rid of and absorbed.
In other words, this infinite only expresses the ought-to-
be elimination of the finite. The progression to infinity
never gets further than a statement of the contradiction
involved in the finite, viz. that it is somewhat as well as
somewhat else. It sets up with endless iteration the
alternation between these two terms, each of which calls
up the other.
If we let somewhat and another, the elements of determi-
nate Being, fall asunder, the result is that some becomes
other, and this other is itself a somewhat, which then as
such changes likewise, and so on ad infinitum. This result
94.] THE INFINITE PROGRESSION. 175
seems to superficial reflection something very grand, the
grandest possible. But such a progression to infinity is not
the real infinite. That consists in being at home with itself
in its other, or, if enunciated as a process, in coming to itself
in its other. Much depends on rightly apprehending the
notion of infinity, and not stopping short at the wrong in-
finity of endless progression. When time and space, for
example, are spoken of as infinite, it is in the first place the
infinite progression on which our thoughts fasten. We say,
Now, This time, and then we keep continually going for-
wards and backwards beyond this limit. The case is the
same with space, the infinity of which has formed the
theme of barren declamation to astronomers with a talent
for edification. In the attempt to contemplate such an in-
finite, our thought, we are commonly informed, must sink
exhausted. It is true indeed that we must abandon the
unending contemplation, not however because the occu-
pation is too sublime, but because it is too tedious. It is
tedious to expatiate in the contemplation of this infinite pro-
gression, because the same thing is constantly recurring.
We lay down a limit : then we pass it : next we have a
limit once m.ore, and so on for ever. All this is but super-
ficial alternation, which never leaves the region of the finite
behind. To suppose that by stepping out and away into that
infinity we release ourselves from the finite, is in truth but
to seek the release which comes by flight. But the man
who flees is not yet free : in fleeing he is still conditioned by
that from which he flees. If it be also said, that the infinite
is unattainable, the statement is true, but only because to
the idea of infinity has been attached the circumstance of
being simply and solely negative. With such empty and
other-world stuff" philosophy has nothing to do. What
philosophy has to do with is always something concrete
and in the highest sense present.
No doubt philosophy has also sometimes been set the task
of finding an answer to the question, how the infinite comes
to the resolution of issuing out of itself. This question,
founded, as it is, upon the assumption of a rigid opposition
between finite and infinite, may be answered by saying that
176 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [94-95
the opposition is false, and that in point of fact the infinite
eternally proceeds out of itself, and yet does not proceed
out of itself. If we further say that the infinite is the not-
finite, we have in point of fact virtually expressed the truth :
for as the finite itself is the first negative, the not-finite is
the negative of that negation, the negation which is identical
with itself and thus at the same time a true affirmation.
The infinity of reflection here discussed is only an attempt
to reach the true Infinity, a wretched neither-one-thing-nor-
another. Generally speaking, it is the point of view which
has in recent times been emphasised in Germany. The
finite, this theory tells us, ought to be absorbed ; the infinite
ought not to be a negative merely, but also a positive. That
' ought to be ' betrays the incapacity of actually making good
a claim which is at the same time recognised to be right.
This stage was never passed by the systems of Kant and
Fichte, so far as ethics are concerned. The utmost to which
this way brings us is only the postulate of a never-ending
approximation to the law of Reason : which postulate has
been made an argument for the immortality of the soul.
96.] (7) What we now in point of fact have before us,
is that somewhat comes to be an other, and that the
other generally comes to be an other. Thus essentially
relative to another, somewhat is virtually an other
against it : and since what is passed into is quite the
same as what passes over, since both have one and the
same attribute, viz. to be an other, it follows that some-
thing 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. Or, under a negative
aspect: vi^hat is altered is the other, it becomes the
other of the other. Thus Being, but as negation of the
negation, is restored again : it is now Being-for-self.
Dualism, in putting an insuperable opposition be-
tween finite and infinite, fails to note the simple circum-
stance that the infinite is thereby only one of two, and
is reduced to a particular, to which the finite forms the
95] FINITE AND INFINITE. 177
Other particular. Such an infinite, which is only a par-
ticular, is co-terminous with the finite which makes for
it a limit and a barrier : it is not what it ought to be,
that is, the infinite, but is only finite. In such circum-
stances, where the finite is on this side, and the infinite
on that, — this world as the finite and the other world as
the infinite, — an equal dignity of permanence and inde-
pendence is ascribed to finite and to infinite. The
being of the finite is made an absolute being, and by this
dualism gets independence and stability. Touched, so
to speak, by the infinite, it would be annihilated. But
it must not be touched by the infinite. There must be
an abyss, an impassable gulf between the two, with the
infinite abiding on yonder side and the finite steadfast
on this. Those who attribute to the finite this inflexible
persistence in comparison with the infinite are not, as
they imagine, far above metaphysic : they are still on the
level of the most ordinary metaphysic of understanding.
For the same thing occurs here as in the infinite pro-
gression. At one time it is admitted that the finite has
no independent actuality, no absolute being, no root
and development of its own, but is only a transient.
But next moment this is straightway forgotten ; the
finite, made a mere counterpart to the infinite, wholly
separated from it, and rescued from annihilation, is con-
ceived to be persistent in its independence. While
thought thus imagines itself elevated to the infinite, it
meets with the opposite fate : it comes to an infinite which
is only a finite, and the finite, which it had left behind,
has always to be retained and made into an absolute.
After this examination (with which it were well to
compare Plato's Philebus), tending to show the nullity
of the distinction made by understanding between the
finite and the infinite, we are liable to glide into the
statement that the infinite and the finite are therefore
VOL. II. N
178 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [95.
one, and that the genuine infinity, the truth, must be
defined and enunciated as the unity of the finite and
infinite. Such a statement would be to some extent
correct ; but is just as open to perversion and falsehood
as the unity of Being and Nothing already noticed.
Besides it may very fairly be charged with reducing the
infinite to finitude and making a finite infinite. For, so
far as the expression goes, the finite seems left in its
place, — it is not expressly stated to be absorbed. Or,
if we reflect that the finite, when identified with the
infinite, certainly cannot remain what it was out of such
unity, and will at least suffer some change in its charac-
teristics ( — as an alkali, when combined with an acid,
loses some of its properties), we must see that, the same
fate awaits the infinite, which, as the negative, will on
its part likewise have its edge, as it were, taken off" on
the other. And this does really happen with the ab-
stract one-sided infinite of understanding. The genuine
infinite however is not merely in the position of the one-
sided acid, and so does not lose itself. The negation
of negation is not a neutralisation : the infinite is the
affirmative, and it is only the finite which is absorbed.
In Being-for-self enters the category of Ideality.
Being-there-and-then, as in the first instance appre-
hended in its being or affirmation, has reality (§ 91) :
and thus even finitude in the first instance is in the
category of reality. But the truth of the finite is rather
its ideality. Similarly, the infinite of understanding,
which is co-ordinated with the finite, is itself only one
of two finites, no whole truth, but a non-substantial
element. This ideality of the finite is the chief maxim
of philosophy ; and for that reason every genuine philo-
sophy is idealism. But everything depends upon not
taking for the infinite what, in the very terms of its
characterisation, is. at the same time made a particular
95-96] REALITY AND IDEALITY. I79
and finite. — For this reason we have bestowed a greater
amount of attention on this distinction. The funda-
mental notion of philosophy, the genuine infinite, de-
pends upon it. The distinction is cleared up by the
simple, and for that reason seemingly insignificant, but
incontrovertible reflections, contained in the first para-
graph of this section.
{c) Being-for-self.
96.] (fl) Being-for self, as reference to itself, is imme-
diacy, and as reference of the negative to itself, is a
self-subsistent, the One. This unit, being without dis-
tinction in itself, thus excludes the other from itself.
To be for self— to be one — is completed Quality, and as
such, contains abstract Being and Being modified as non-
substantial elements. As simple Being, the One is simple
self-reference ; as Being modified it is determinate : but
the determinateness is not in this case a finite determinate-
ness— a somewhat in distinction from an other— but infinite,
because it contains distinction absorbed and annulled in
itself.
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 expansion 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 same time
negative. Man, it may be said, is distinguished from the
animal world, and in that way from nature altogether, by
knowing himself as ' I ' : which amounts to saying that
natural things never attain a free Being-for-self, but as
limited to Being-there-and-then, are always and only Being
for an other. — Again, Being-for-self may be described as
ideality, just as Being-there-and-then was described as
reality. It is said, that besides reality there is also an
ideality. Thus the two categories are made equal and
parallel. Properly speaking, ideality is not somewhat out-
N 2
l8o THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [96-97.
side of and beside reality : the notion of ideality just lies in
its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when reality is
explicitly put as what it impHcitly is, it is at once seen to be
ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper estima-
tion, 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 has 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.
The distinction between Nature and Mind is not improperly
conceived, when the former is traced back to reality, and the
latter to ideality as a fundamental category. Nature however
is far from being so fixed and complete, as to subsist even
without Mind : in Mind it first, as it were, attains its goal
and its truth. And similarly, Mind on its part is not merely
a world beyond Nature and nothing more : it is really, and
with full proof, seen to be mind, only when it involves Nature
as absorbed in itself. — Apropos of this, we should note the
double meaning of the German word aufhcben (to put by, or
set aside). We mean by it (i) to clear away, or annul :
thus, we say, a law or a regulation is set aside : (2) to
keep, or preserve : in which sense we use it when we
say: something is well put by. This double usage of
language, which gives to the same word a positive and nega-
tive meaning, is not an accident, and gives no ground for
reproaching language as a cause of confusion. We should
rather recognise in it the speculative spirit of our language
rising above the mere ' Either— or ' of understanding.
07.] (/S) The relation of the negative to itself is a
negative relation, and so a distinguishing of the One
from itself, the repulsion of the One ; that is, it makes
Many Ones, So far as regards the immediacy of the
self-existents, these Many are : and the repulsion of
every One of them becomes to that extent their repul-
sion against each other as existing units,— in other
words, their reciprocal exclusion.
97-98.] THE ONE AND THE MANY. l8l
Whenever we speak of the One, the Many usually come
into our mind at the same time. Whence, then, we are
forced to ask, do the Many comr- ? This question is un-
answerable by the consciousness which pictures the Many as
a primary datum, and treats the One as only one among the
Many. But the philosophic notion teaches, contrariwise, that
the One forms the pre-supposition of the Many ; and in the
thought of the One is implied that it explicitly make itself
Many. The self-existing unit is not, like Being, void of all
connective reference : it is a reference, as well as Being-
there-and-then was, not however a reference connecting
somewhat with an other, but, as unity of the some and the
other, it is a connexion with itself, and this connexion be it
noted is a negative connexion. Hereby the One manifests
an utter incompatibility with itself, a self-repulsion : and
what it makes itself explicitly be, is the Many. We may
denote this side in the process of Being-for-self by the
figurative term Repulsion. Repulsion ^s a term originally
employed in the study of matter, to mean that matter, as a
Many, m each of these many Ones, behaves as exclusive to
all the others. It would be wrong however to view the pro-
cess of repulsion, as if the One were the repellent and the
Many the repelled. The One, as already remarked, just is
self-exclusion and explicit putting itself as the Many. Each
of the Many however is itself a One, and in virtue of its so
behaving, this all-round repulsion is by one stroke converted
into its opposite, — Attraction.
98.] (y) But the Many are one the same as another:
each is One, or even one of the Many ; they are con-
sequently one and the same. Or when we study all
that Kepulsion involves, we see that as a negative
attitude of many Ones to one another, it is just as
essentially a connective reference of them to each other;
and as those to which the One is related in its act of
repulsion are ones, it is in them thrown into relation
with itself. The repulsion therefore has an equal right
to be called Attraction ; and the exclusive One, or
Being-for-self, suppresses itself. The qualitative cha-
l82 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [98.
racter, which in the One or unit has reached the ex-
treme point of its characterisation, has thus passed
over into determinateness (quality) suppressed, /'. e. into
Being as Quantity.
The philosophy of the Atomists is the 'doctrine in
which the Absolute is formulated as Being-for-self, as
One, and many ones. And it is the repulsion, which
shows itself in the notion of the One, which is assumed
as the fundamental force in these atoms. But instead
of attraction, it is Accident, that is, mere unintelligence,
which is expected to bring them together. So long as
the One is fixed as one, it is certainly impossible to
regard its congression with others as anything but
external and mechanical. The Void, which is assumed
as the complementary principle to the atoms, is repul-
sion and nothing else, presented under the image of
the nothing existing between the atoms. — Modern
Atomism— and physics is still in principle atomistic —
has surrendered the atoms so far as to pin its faith
on molecules or particles. In so doing, science has
come closer to sensuous conception, at the cost of
losing the precision of thought. — To put an attractive
by the side of a repulsive force, as the moderns have
done, certainly gives completeness to the contrast : and
the discovery of this natural force, as it is called, has
been a source of much pride. But the mutual impli-
cation of the two, which makes what is true and con-
crete in them, would have to be wrested from the
obscurity and confusion in which they were left even
in Kant's Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science.
— In modern times the importance of the atomic theory
is even more evident in political than in physical science.
According to it, the will of individuals as such is the
creative principle of the State : the attracting force is
the special wants and inclinations of individuals; and
98.] ATOMISM. 183
the Universal, or the State itself, is the external nexus
of a compact.
(i) The Atomic philosophy forms a vital stage in the
historical evolution of the Idea. The principle of that system
may be described as Being-for-selfin the shape of the Many.
At present, students of nature who are anxious to avoid
metaphysics turn a favourable ear to Atomism. But it is not
possible to escape metaphysics and cease to trace nature
back to terms of thought, by throwing ourselves into the
arms of Atomism. The atom, in fact, is itself a thought ; and
hence the theory which holds matter to.consist of atoms is
a metaphysical theory. Newton gave physics an express
warning to beware of metaphysics, it is true ; but, to his
honour be it said, he did not by any means obey his own
warning. The only mere physicists are the animals : they
alone do not think: while man is a thinking being and a
born metaphysician. The real question is not whether we
shall apply metaphysics, but whether our metaphysics are
of the right kind : in other words, whether we are not, in-
stead of the concrete logical Idea, adopting one-sided forms
of thought, rigidly fixed by understanding, and making these
the basis of our theoretical as well as our practical work.
It is on this ground that one objects to the Atomic philo-
sophy. The old Atomists viewed the world as a many, as
their successors often do to this day. On chance they laid
the task of collecting the atoms which float about in the
void. But, after all, the nexus binding the many with one
another is by no means a mere accident : as we have already
remarked, the nexus is founded on their very nature. To
Kant we owe the completed theory of matter as the unity
of repulsion and attraction. The theory is correct, so far
as it recognises attraction to be the other of the two elements
involved in the notion of Being-for-self : and to be an element
no less essential than repulsion to constitute matter. Still
this dynamical construction of matter, as it is termed, has
the fault of taking for granted, instead of deducing, attraction
and repulsion. Had they been deduced, we should then
have seen the How and the Why of a unity which is merely
asserted. Kant indeed was careful to inculcate that Matter
184 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [98.
must not be taken to be in existence per se, and then as it
were incidentally to be provided with the two forces men-
tioned, but must be regarded as consisting solely in their
unity. German physicists for some time accepted this pure
dynamic. But in spite of this, the majority of these physicists
in modern times have found it more convenient to return to the
Atomic point of view, and in spite of the warnings of Kastner,
one of their number, have begun to regard Matter as con.
sisting of infinitesimally small particles, termed 'atoms' —
which atoms have then to be brought into relation with one
another by the play of forces attaching to them,— attractive,
repulsive, or whatever they may be. 1 his too is meta-
physics ; and metaphysics which, for its utter unintelligence,
there would be sufficient reason to guard against.
(2) The transition from Quality to Quantity, indicated in
the paragraph before us, is not found in our ordinary way of
thinking, which deems each of these categories to exist in-
dependently beside the other. We are in the habit of say-
ing that things are not merely qualitatively, but also quanti-
tatively defined ; but whence these categories originate, and
how they are related to each other, are questions not further
examined. The fact is, quantity just means quaUty super-
seded and absorbed : and it is by the dialectic of quality
here examined that this supersession is effected. First of all,
we had Being : as the truth of Being, came Becoming :
which formed the passage to Being Determinate : and the
truth of that we found to be Alteration. And in its result
Alteration showed itself to be Being-for-self, exempt from
implication of another and from passage into another ;—
which Being-for-self, finally, in the two sides of its process,
Repulsion and Attraction, was clearly seen to annul itself,
and thereby to annul quality in the totality of its stages.
Still this superseded and absorbed quality is neither an ab-
stract nothing, nor an equally abstract and featureless being :
it is only being as indifferent to determinateness or character.
This aspect of being is also what appears as quantity in our
ordinary conceptions. We observe things, first of all, with
an eye to their quality — which we take to be the character
identical with the being of the thing. If we proceed to con-
98-99-] QUANTITY. 185
sider their quantity, we get the conception of an indifferent
and external character or mode, of such a kind that a thing
remains what it is, though its quantity is altered, and the
thing becomes greater or less.
B. — Quantity.
{a) Pure Quantity.
99.] Quantity is pure being, where the mode or
character is no longer taken as one with the being
itself, but explicitly put as superseded or indifferent.
(i) The expression Magnitude especially marks de-
terminate Quantity, and is for that reason not a suitable
name for Quantity in general. (2) Mathematics usually
define magnitude as what can be increased or dimi-
nished. This definition has the defect of containing
the thing to be defined over again : but it may serve
to show that the category of magnitude is explicitly
understood to be changeable and indifferent, so that,
in spite of its being altered by an increased extension
or intension, the thing, a house, for example, does not
cease to be a house, and red to be red. {3) The Abso-
lute is pure Quantity. This point of view is upon the
whole the same as when the Absolute is defined to be
Matter, in which, though form undoubtedly is present,
the form is a characteristic of no importance one way
or another. Quantity too constitutes the main charac-
teristic of the Absolute, when the Absolute is regarded
as absolute indifference, and only admitting of quanti-
tative distinction.— Otherwise pure space, time, &c. may
be taken as examples of Quantity, if we allow ourselves
to regard the real as whatever fills up space and time,
it matters not with what.
The mathematical definition of magnitude as what may be
increased or diminished, appears at first sight to be more
l86 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [99.
plausible and perspicuous than the exposition of the notion
in the present section. When closely examined, however, it
involves, undercover of pre-suppositions andimages.the same
elements as appear in the notion of quantity reached by the
method of logical development. In other words, when we
say that the notion of magnitude lies in the possibility of
being increased or diminished, we state that magnitude (or
more correctly, quantity), as distinguished from quality, is a
characteristic of such kind that the characterised thing is not
in the least affected by any change in it. What then, it may
be asked, is the fault which we have to find with this defini-
tion? It is that to increase and to diminish is the same
thing as to characterise magnitude otherwise. If this aspect
then were an adequate account of it, quantity would be
described merely as whatever can be altered. But quality
is no less than quantity open to alteration ; and the distinction
here given between quantity and quality is expressed by
saying increase or diminution : the meaning being that,
towards whatever side the determination of magnitude be
altered, the thing still remains what it is.
One remark more. Throughout philosophy we do not seek
merely for correct, still less for plausible definitions, whose
correctness appeals directly to the popular imagination ; we
seek approved or verified definitions, the content of which
is not assumed merely as given, but is seen and known to
warrant itself, because warranted by the free self-evolution
of thought. To apply this to the present case. However
correct and self-evident the definition of quantity usual in
Mathematics may be, it will still fail to satisfy the wish to
see how far this particular thought is founded in universal
thought, and in that way necessary. This difficulty, how-
ever, is not the only one. If quantity is not reached through
the action of thought, but taken uncritically from our general-
ised image of it, we are liable to exaggerate the range of its
validity, or even to raise it to the height of an absolute cate-
gory. And that such a danger is real, we see when the title
of exact science is restricted to those sciences the objects of
which can be submitted to mathematical calculation. Here
we have another trace of the bad metaphysics (mentioned in
99.] THE MATHEMATICAL CATEGORIES. 187
§ 98, note) which replace the concrete idea bj' partial and in-
adequate categories of understanding. Our knowledge would
be in a very awkward predicament if such objects as free-
dom, law, morality, or even God Himself, because they cannot
be measured and calculated, or expressed in a mathematical
formula, were to be reckoned beyond the reach of exact
knowledge, and we had to put up with a vague generalised
image of them, leaving their details or particulars to the
pleasure of each individual, to make out of them what he
will. The pernicious consequences, to which such a theory
gives rise in practice, are at once evident. And this mere
mathematical view, which identifies with the Idea one of its
special stages, viz. quantity, is no other than the principle of
Materialism. Witness the history of the scientific modes of
thought, especially in France since the middle of last century.
Matter, in the abstract, is just what, though of course there is
form in it, has that form only as an indifferent and external
attribute.
The present explanation would be utterly misconceived if
it were supposed to disparage mathematics. By calling the
quantitative characteristic merely external and indifferent,
we provide no excuse for indolence and superficiality, nor do
we assert that quantitative characteristics may be left to mind
themselves, or at least require no very careful handling.
Quantity, of course, is a stage of the Idea : and as such it
must have its due, first as a logical category, and then in the
world of objects, natural as well as spiritual. Still even so,
there soon emerges the different importance attaching to the
category of quantity according as its objects belong to the
natural or to the spiritual world. For in Nature, where the
form of the Idea is to be other than, and at the same time out-
side, itself, greater importance is for that very reason attached
to quantity than in the spiritual world, the world of free in-
wardness. No doubt we regard even spiritual facts under a
quantitative point of view ; but it is at once apparent that in
speaking of God as a Trinity, the number three has by no
means the same prominence, as when we consider the three
dimensions of space or the three sides of a triangle ;— the
fundamental feature of which last is just to be a surface
l88 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [99-100.
bounded by three lines. Even inside the realm of Nature
we find the same distinction of greater or less importance of
quantitative features. In the inorganic world, Quantity plays,
so to say, a more prominent part than in the organic. Even
in organic nature when we distinguish mechanical functions
from what are called chemical, and in the narrower sense,
physical, there is the same difference. Mechanics is of all
branches of science, confessedly, that in which the aid -of
mathematics can be least dispensed with, — where indeed we
cannot take one step without them. On that account me-
chanics is regarded next to mathematics as the science par
excellence ; which leads us to repeat the remark about the
coincidence of the materialist with the exclusively mathe-
matical point of view. After all that has been said, we can-
not but hold it, in the interest of exact and thorough know-
ledge, one of the most hurtful prejudices, to seek all dis-
tinction and determinateness of objects merely in quantitative
considerations. Mind to be sure is more than Nature and
the animal is more than the plant : but we know very little
of these objects and the distinction between them, if a more
and less is enough for us, and if we do not proceed to com-
prehend them in their peculiar, that is their qualitative
character,
100.] Quantity, as we saw, has two sources : the
exclusive unit, and the identification or equahsation
of these units. When we look therefore at its imme-
diate relation to self, or at the characteristic of self-
sameness made explicit by attraction, quantity is Con-
tinuous magnitude ; but when we look at the other
characteristic, the One implied in it, it is Discrete
magnitude. Still continuous quantity has also a certain
discreteness, being but a continuity of the Many : and
discrete quantity is no less continuous, its continuity
being the One or Unit, that is, the self-same point of
the many Ones.
(i) Continuous and Discrete magnitude, therefore,
must not be supposed two species of magnitude, as
loo.] CONTINUOUS AND DISCRETE. 189
if the characteristic of the one did not attach to the
other. The only distinction between them is that the
same whole (of quantity) is at one time explicitly put
under the one, at another under the other of its cha-
racteristics. (2) The Antinomy of space, of time, or of
matter, which discusses the question of their being divi-
sible for ever, or of consisting of indivisible units, just
means that we maintain quantity as at one time Dis-
crete, at another Continuous. If we explicitly invest
time, space, or matter with the attribute of Continuous
quantity alone, they are divisible ad infinitum. When,
on the contrary, they are invested with the attribute
of Discrete quantity, they are potentially divided al-
ready, and consist of indivisible units. The one view
is as inadequate as the other.
Quantity, as the proximate result of Being-for-self, in-
volves the two sides in the process of the latter, attraction
and repulsion, as constitutive elements of its own idea; It is
consequently Continuous as well as Discrete. Each of these
two elements involves the other also, and hence there is no
such thing as a merely Continuous or a merely Discrete
quantity. We may speak of the two as two particular and
opposite species of magnitude ; but that is merely the result
of our abstracting reflection, which in viewing definite magni-
tudes waives now the one, now the other, of the elements
contained in inseparable unity in the notion of quantity.
Thus, it may be said, the space occupied by this room is a
continuous magnitude, and the hundred men, assembled in
it, form a discrete magnitude. And yet the space is con-
tinuous and discrete at the same time ; hence we speak of
points of space, or we divide space, a certain length, into so
many feet, inches, &c., which can be done only on the hypo-
thesis that space is also potentially discrete. Similarly, on
the other hand, the discrete magnitude, made up of a
hundred men, is also continuous : and the circumstance on
which this continuity depends, is the common element, the
190 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [100-102.
species man, which pervades all the individuals and unites
them with each other.
(b) Quantum {How Much).
101.] Quantity, essentially invested with the exclu-
sionist character which it involves, is Quantum (or
How Much): i.e. limited quantity.
Quantum is, as it were, the determinate Being of quantity:
whereas mere quantity corresponds to abstract Being, and
the Degree, which is next to be considered, corresponds to
Being-for-self. As for the details of the advance from mere
quantity to quantum, it is founded on this : that whilst in
mere quantity the distinction, as a distinction of continuity
and discreteness, is at first only implicit, in a quantum the
distinction is actually made, so that quantity in general now
appears as distinguished or limited. But in this way the
quantum breaks up at the same time into an indefinite
multitude of Quanta or definite magnitudes. Each of these
definite magnitudes, as distinguished from the others, forms
a unity, while on the other hand, viewed per se, it is a many.
And, when that is done, the quantum is described as
Number.
102.] In Number the quantum reaches its develop-
ment and perfect mode. Like the One, the medium
in which it exists, Number involves two qualitative
factors or functions; Annumeration or Sum, which
depends on the factor discreteness, and Unity, which
depends on continuity.
In arithmetic the several kinds of operation are
usually presented as accidental modes of dealing with
numbers. If necessity and meaning is to be found
in these operations, it must be by a principle : and
that must come from the characteristic elements in the
notion of number itself (This principle must here be
briefly exhibited.) These characteristic elements are
Annumeration on the one hand, and Unity on the
loa.] NUMBER. I9I
Other, which together constitute number. But Unity,
when applied to empirical numbers, is only the equality
of these numbers : hence the principle of arithmetical
operations must be to put numbers in the ratio of Unity
and Sum (or amount), and to elicit the equality of these
two modes.
The Ones or the numbers themselves are indifferent
towards each other, and hence the unity into which
they are translated by the arithmetical operation takes
the aspect of an external colligation. All reckoning
is therefore making up the tale : and the difference
between the species of it lies only in the qualitative
constitution of the numbers of which we make up the
tale. The principle for this constitution is given by
the way we fix Unity and Annumeration.
Numeration comes first: what we may call, making
number; a colligation of as many units as we please.
But to get a species of calculation, it is necessary that
what we count up should be numbers already, and no
longer a mere unit.
First, and as they naturally come to hand. Numbers
are quite vaguely numbers in general, and so, on the
whole, unequal. The colligation, or telling the tale
of these, is Addition.
The second point of view under which we regard
numbers is as equal, so that they make one unity, and
of such there is an annumeration or sum before us.
To tell the tale of these is Multiplication. It makes
no matter in the process, how the functions of Sum
and Unity are distributed between the two numbers,
or factors of the product ; either may be Sum and
either may be Unity.
The third and final point of view is the equality of
Sum (amount) and Unity. To number together num-
bers when so characterised is Involution; and in the
192 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. 102-103.
first instance raising them to the square power. To
raise the number to a higher power means in point
of form to go on multiplying a number with itself an
indefinite amount of times. — Since this third type of
calculation exhibits the complete equality of the sole
existing distinction in number, viz. the distinction be-
tween Sum or amount and Unity, there can be no
more than these three modes of calculation. Corre-
sponding to the integration we have the dissolution of
numbers according to the same features. Hence besides
the three species mentioned, which may to that extent
be called positive, there are three negative species of
arithmetical operation.
Number, in general, is the quantum in its complete spe-
cialisation. Hence we may employ it not only to determine
what we call discrete, but what are called continuous magni-
tudes as well. For that reason even geometry must call in
the aid of number, when it is required to specify definite
figurations of space and their ratios.
{c) Degree.
103.] The limit (in a quantum) is identical with the
whole of the quantum itself. As in itself multiple, the
limit is Extensive magnitude ; as in itself simple deter-
minateness (qualitative simplicity), it is Intensive mag-
nitude or Degree.
The distinction between Continuous and Discrete
magnitude differs from that between Extensive and
Intensive in the circumstance that the former apply
to quantity in general, while the latter apply to the
limit or determinateness of it as such. Intensive and
Extensive magnitude are not, any more than the other,
two species, of which the one involves a character not
possessed by the other : what is Extensive magnitude
is just as much Intensive, and vice versa.
I03.J INTENSIVE AND EXTENSIVE QUANTITY. 1 93
Intensive magnitude or Degree is in its notion distinct
from Extensive magnitude or the Quantum. It is therefore
inadmissible to refuse, as many do, to recognise this dis-
tinction, and vi^ithout scruple to identify the two forms of
magnitude. They are so identified in physics, when differ-
ence of specific gravity is explained by saying, that a body,
with a specific gravity twice that of another, contains within
the same space twice as many material parts (or atoms) as
the other. So with heat and light, if the various degrees of
temperature and brilliancy were to be explained by the
greater or less number of particles (or molecules) of heat and
light. No doubt the physicists, who employ such a mode of
explanation, usually excuse themselves, when they are re-
monstrated with on its untenableness, by saying that the ex-
pression is without prejudice to the confessedly unknowable
essence of such phenomena, and employed merely for greater
convenience. This greater convenience is meant to point to
the easier application of the calculus : but it is hard to see
why Intensive magnitudes, having, as they do, a definite
numerical expression of their own, should not be as con-
venient for calculation as Extensive magnitudes. If con-
venience be all that is desired, surely it would be more con-
venient to banish calculation and thought altogether. A
further point against the apology offered by the physicists is,
that, to engage in explanations of this kind, is to overstep the
sphere of perception and experience, and resort to the realm
of metaphysics and of what at other times would be called
idle or even pernicious speculation. It is certainly a fact of
experience that, if one of two purses filled with shillings is
twice as hea\'y as the other, the reason must be, that the one
contains, say two hundred, and the other only one hundred
shillings. These pieces of money we can see and feel with
our senses : atoms, molecules, and the like, are on the con-
trary beyond the range of sensuous perception ; and thought
alone can decide whether they are admissible, and have a
meaning. But (as already noticed in § 98, note) it is abstract
understanding which stereotypes the factor of multeity
(involved in the notion of Being-for-self) in the shape of
atoms, and adopts it as an ultimate principle. It is the same
194 ^^^ DOCTRINE OF BEING. [103-104.
abstract understanding which, in the present instance, at
equal variance with unprejudiced perception and with real
concrete thought, regards Extensive magnitude as the sole
form of'quantity, and, where Intensive magnitudes occur, does
not recognise them in their own character, but makes a vio-
lent attempt by a wholly untenable hypothesis to reduce
them to Extensive magnitudes.
Among the charges made against modern philosophy, one
is heard more than another. Modern philosophy, it is said,
reduces everything to identity. Hence its nicknapie, the
Philosophy of Identity. But the present discussion may
teach that it is philosophy, and philosophy alone, which insists
on distinguishing what is logically as well as in experience
different ; while the professed devotees of experience are the
people who erect abstract identity into the chief principle
of knowledge. It is their philosophy which might more ap-
propriately be termed one of identity. Besides it is quite cor-
rect that there are no merely Extensive and merely Intensive
magnitudes, just as little as there are merely continuous and
merely discrete magnitudes. The two characteristics of
quantity are not opposed as independent kinds. Every In-
tensive magnitude is also Extensive, and vice versa. Thus a
certain degree of temperature is an Intensive magnitude,
which has a perfectly simple sensation corresponding to it
as such. If we look at a thermometer, we find this degree
of temperature has a certain expansion of the column of
mercury corresponding to it ; which Extensive magnitude
changes simultaneously with the temperature or Intensive
magnitude. The case is similar in the world of mind : a
more intensive character has a wider range with its effects
than a less intensive.
104.] In Degree the notion of quantum is explicitly
put. It is magnitude as indifferent on its own account
and simple : but in such a way that the character (or
modal being) which makes it a quantum lies quite
outside it in other magnitudes. In this contradiction,
where the independent indifferent limit is absolute ex-
ternality, the Infinite Quantitative Progression is made
104.] THE INFINITE PROGRESSION. 195
explicit— an immediacy which immediately veers round
into its counterpart, into mediation (the passing beyond
and over the quantum just laid down), and vice versa.
Number is a thought, but thought in its complete
self-externalisation. Because it is a thought, it does
not belong to perception : but it is a thought which is
characterised by the externality of perception. — Not
only therefore may the quantum be increased or dimi-
nished without end : the very notion of quantum is
thus to push out and out beyond itself. The infinite
quantitative progression is only the meaningless repeti-
tion of one and the same contradiction, which attaches
to the quantum, both generally and, when explicitly in-
vested with its special character, as degree. Touching
the futility of enunciating this contradiction in the form
of infinite progression, Zeno, as quoted by Aristotle,
rightly says, ' It is the same to say a thing once, and
to say it for ever.'
(i) If we follow the usual definition of the mathematicians,
given in § 99, and say that magnitude is what can be in-
creased or diminished, there may be nothing to urge against
the correctness of the perception on which it is founded ; but
the question remains, how we come to assume such a
capacity of increase or diminution. If we simply appeal for
an answer to experience, we try an unsatisfactory course ;
because apart from the fact that we should merely have a
material image of magnitude, and not the thought of it,
magnitude would come out as a bare possibility (of increas-
ing or diminishing) and we should have no key to the neces-
sity for its exhibiting this behaviour. In the way of our
logical evolution, on the contrary, quantity is obviously a
grade in the process of self-determining thought ; and it has
been shown that it lies in the very notion of quantity to
shoot out beyond itself In that way, the increase or dimi-
nution (of which we have heard) is not merely possible, but
necessary.
196 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [104.
(2) The quantitative infinite progression is what the re-
flective understanding usually relies upon when it is en-
gaged with the general question of Infinity. The same thing
however holds good of this progression, as was already
remarked on the occasion of the qualitatively infinite pro-
gression. As was then said, it is not the expression of a
true, but of a wrong infinity' ; it never gets further than a
bare 'ought,' and thus really remains within the limits of
finitude. The quantitative form of this infinite progression,
which Spinoza rightly calls a mere imaginary infinity
{infinitum imaginafionis), is an image often employed by
poets, such as Haller and Klopstock, to depict the infinity,
not of Nature merely, but even of God Himself. Thus we
find Haller, in a famous description of God's " infinity,
saying :
3c^ I>nife ungct)ciirc 3al)(fn,
©ebirge 9)ii(lionfn auf,
5(^ fc|e 3eit auf 3ett
Unb SBelt auf ©ctt ju ipauf,
Unb trenn i* von bet graufen ^b^'
9Wit @cfcuMube( uncber iiacf) I)iv fe"^ :
3ft a((e 2«ac^t ber 3a{)l,
S^erntfftvt ju Saufnibniat,
9Jo(J> ni^t eiu %\){\[ »ou iDir.
[I heap up monstrous numbers, mountains of millions • I
pile time upon time, and world on the top of world ; and
when from the aw.^ul height I cast a dizzy look towards
Thee, all the power of number, multiplied a thousand times,
is not yet one part of Thee.]
Here then we meet, in the first place, that continual ex-
trusion of quantity, and especially of number, beyond itself,
which Kant describes as 'eery.' The only really 'eery'
th^ng about it is the wearisomeness of ever fixing, and anon
unfixing a limit, without advancing a single step. The same
poet however well adds to that description of false infinity
the closing line :
3^ l\i\) jle ab, nnb ©u (iegft ganj vor ntir.
[These I remove, and Thou liest all before me. J
I04.] PYTH 4GOREAN PHILOSOPHY. 197
Which means, that the true infinite is more than a mere
world beyond the finite, and ihat we, in order to become
conscii^us of it, must renounce that progressus in infimtum.
(3) Pythagoras, as is well known, philosophised in num-
bers, and conceived number as the fundamental principle of
things. To the ordinary mind this view must at first glance
seem an utter part-dox, perhaps a mere craze. What, then,
are we to think of it? To answer this question, we must,
in the first place, remember that the problem of philosophy
consists in tracing back things to thoughts, and, of course, to
definite thoughts. Now, number is undoubtedly a thought :
it is the thought nearest the sensible, or, more precisely
expressed, it is the thought of the sensible itself, if we take
the sensible to mean what is many, and in reciprocal ex-
clusion. The attempt to apprehend the universe as number
is therefore the first step to metaphysics. In the history of
philosophy, Pythagoras, as we know, stands between the
Ionian philosophers and the Eleatics. While the former, as
Aristotle says, never get beyond viewing the essence of
things as material {vXrj), and the latter, especially Parmenides,
advanced as* far as pure thought, in the shape of Being, the
principle of the Pythagorean philosophy forms, as it were,
the bridge from the sensible to the super-sensible.
We may gather from this, what is to be said of those who
suppose that Pythagoras undoubtedly went too far, when he
conceived the essence of things as mere number. It is true,
they admit, that. we can number things; but, they contend,
things are far more than mere numbers. But in what re-
spect are they more? The ordinary sensuous conscious-
ness, from its own point of view, would not hesitate to
answer the question by handing us over to sensuous per-
ception, and remarking, that things are not merely numer-
able, but also visible, odorous, palpable, &c. In the phrase
of modern times, the fault of Pythagoras would be described
as an excess of idealism. As may be gathered from what
has been said on the historical position of the Pythagorean
school, the real state of the case is quite the reverse. Let
it be conceded that things are more than numbers ; but
the meaning of that admission must be that the bare
igS THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. '^104-105.
thought of number is still insufficient to enunciate the
definite notion or essence of things. Instead, then, of say-
ing that Pythagoras went too far with his philosophy of
number, it would be nearer the truth to say that he did not
go far enough ; and in fact the Eleatics were the first to take
the further step to pure thought.
Besides, even if there are not things, there are states of
things, and phenomena of nature altogether, the character of
which mainly rests on definite numbers and proportions. This
is especially the case with the difference of tones and their
harmonic concord, which, according to a well-known
tradition, first suggested to Pythagoras to conceive the
essence of things as number. Though it is unquestionably
important to science to trace back these phenomena to the
definite numbers on which they are based, it is wholly in-
admissible to view the characterisation by thought as a
whole, as merely numerical. We may certainly feel our-
selves prompted to associate the most general characteristics
of thought with the first numbers : saying, i is the simple
and immediate ; 2 is difference and mediation ; and 3 the
unity of both of these. Such associations however are
purely external : there is nothing in the mere numbers to
make them express these definite thoughts. With every step
in this method, the more arbitrary grows the association of
definite numbers with definite thoughts. Thus, we may
view 4 as the unity of i and 3, and of the thoughts associated
with them, but 4 is just as much the double of 2 ; similarly 9
is not merely the square of 3, but also the sum of 8 and i, of
7 and 2, and so on. To attach, as do some secret societies ol
modern times, importance to all sorts of numbers and
figures, is to some extent an innocent amusement, but it is
also a sign of deficiency of intellectual resource. These
numbers, it is said, conceal a profound meaning, and suggest
a deal to think about. But the point in philosophy is, not
what you may think, but what you do think : and the genuine
air of thought is to be sought in thought itself, and not in
arbitrarily selected symbols.
105.] That the Quantum in its independent character
is external to itself, is what constitutes its quality. In
I05-106.] NUMBER AND RATIO. 1 99
that externality it is itself and referred connectively to
itself. There is a union in it of externality, i.e. the
quantitative, and of independency (Being-for-self),^the
qualitative. The Quantum when explicitly put thus
in its own self, is the Quantitative Ratio, a mode of
being which, while, in its Exponent, it is an immediate
quantum, is also mediation, viz. the reference of some
one quantum to another, forming the two sides of the
ratio. But the two quanta are not reckoned at their
immediate value : their value is only in this relation.
The quantitative infinite progression appears at first as a
continual extrusion of number beyond itself. On looking
closer, it is, however, apparent that in this progression
quantity returns to itself: for the meaning of this progres-
sion, so far as thought goes, is the fact that number is detei*-
mined by number. And this gives the quantitative ratio.
Take, for example, the ratio 2:4. Here we have two
magnitudes (not counted in their several immediate values)
in which we are only concerned with their mutual relations.
This relation of the two terms (the exponent of the ratio) is
itself a magnitude, distinguished from the related magni-
tudes by this, that a change in it is followed by a change of
the ratio, whereas the ratio is unaffected by the change of
both its sides, and remains the same so long as the exponent
is not changed. Consequently, in place of 2:4, we can put
3 : 6 without changing the ratio ; as the exponent 2 remains
the same in both cases.
106.] The two sides of the ratio are still immediate
quanta : and the qualitative and quantitative character-
istics still external to one another. But in their truth,
seeing that the quantitative itself in its externality is
relation to self, or seeing that the independence and
the indifference of the character are combined, it is
Measure.
Thus quantity by means of the dialectical movement so far
studied through its several stages, turns out to be a return to
200 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [106,
quality. The first notion of quantity presented to us was
that of quaUty abrogated and absorbed. That is to say,
quantity seemed an external character not identical with
Being, to which it is quite immaterial. This notion, as we
have seen, underlies the mathematical definition of magni-
tude as what can be increased or diminished. At first sight
this definition may create the impression that quantity is
merely whatever can be altered : — increase and diminution
alike implying determination of magnitude otherwise— and
may tend to confuse it with determinate Being, the second
stage of quality, which in its notion is similarly conceived as
alterable. We can, however, complete the definition by
adding, that in quantity we have an alterable, which in spite
of alterations still remains the same. The notion of quantity,
it thus turns out, implies an inherent contradiction. This
contradiction is what forms the dialectic of quantity. The
result of the dialectic however is not a mere return to
quality, as if that were the true and quantity the false notion,
but an advance to the unity and truth of both, to qualitative
quantity, or Measure.
It may be well therefore at this point to observe that
whenever in our study of the objective world we are engaged
in quantitative determinations, it is in all cases Measure
which we have in view, as the goal of our operations.
This is hinted at even in language, when the ascertainment
of quantitative features and relations is called measuring. We
measure, e.g. the length of different chords that have been
put into a state of vibration, with an eye to the qualitative
difference of the tones caused by their vibration, correspond-
ing to this difference of length. Similarly, in chemistry, we
try to ascertain the quantity of the matters brought into
combination, in order to find out the measures or pro-
portions conditioning such combinations, that is to say, those
quantities which give rise to definite qualities. In statistics,
too, the numbers with which the study is engaged are im-
portant only from the qualitative results conditioned by them.
Mere collection of numerical facts, prosecuted without re-
gard to the ends here noted, is justly called an exercise of
idle curiosity, of neither theoretical nor practical interest.
MEASURE.
C. — MEASURE.
107.] Measure is the qualitative quantum, in the
first place as immediate, — a quantum, to which a deter-
minate being or a quality is attached.
Measure, where quality and quantity are in one, is thus
the completion of Being. Being, as we first apprehend it, is
something utterly abstract and characterless : but it is the
very essence of Being to characterise itself, and its complete
characterisation is reached in Measure. Measure, like the
other stages of Being, may serve as a definition of the
Absolute : God, it has been said, is the Measure of all things.
It is this idea which forms the ground-note of many of the
ancient Hebrew hymns, in which the glorification of God
tends in the main to show that He has appointed to every-
thing its bound : to the sea and the solid land, to the rivers
and mountains ; and also to the various kinds of plants and
animals. To the religious sense of the Greeks the divinity
of measure, especially in respect of social ethics, was re-
presented by Nemesis. That conception implies a general
theory that all human things, riches, honour, and power, as
well as joy and pain, have their definite measure, the trans-
gression of which brings ruin and destruction. In the world
of objects, too, we have measure. We see, in the first place,
existences in Nature, of which measure forms the essential
structure. This is the case, for example, with the solar
system, which may be described as the realm of free
measures. As we next proceed to the study of inorganic
nature, measure retires, as it were, into the background ;
at least we often find the quantitative and qualitative
characteristics showing indifference to each other. Thus the
quality of a rock or a river is nof tied to a definite magni-
tude. But even these objects when closely inspected are
found not to be quite measureless : the water of a river, and
the single constituents of a rock, when chemically analysed,
are seen to be qualities conditioned by quantitative ratios
between the matters they contain. In organic nature, how-
ever, measure again rises full into immediate perception.
202 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [107-108.
The various kinds of plants and animals, in the whole as
well as in their parts, have a certain measure : though it is
worth noticing that the more imperfect forms, those which
are least removed from inorganic nature, are partly dis-
tinguished from the higher forms by the greater indefinite-
ness of their measure. Thus among fossils, we find some
ammonites discernible only by the microscope, and others
as large as a cart-wheel. The same vagueness of measure
appears in several plants, which stand on a low level of
organic development, — for instance, ferns.
108.] In so far as in Measure quality and quantity
are only in immediate unity, to that extent their differ-
ence presents itself in a manner equally immediate.
Two cases are then possible. Either the specific quan-
tum or measure is a bare quantum, and the definite
being (there-and-then) is capable of an increase or a
diminution, without Measure (which to that extent is
a Rule) being thereby set completely aside. Or the
alteration of the quantum is also an alteration of the
quality.
The identity between quantity and quality, which is found
in Measure, is at first only implicit, and not yet explicitly
realised. In other words, these two categories, which unite
in Measure, each claim an independent authority. On the
one hand, the quantitative features of existence may be
altered, without aflFecting its quality. On the other hand, this
increase and diminution, immaterial though it be, has its
limit, by exceeding which the quality suffers change. Thus
the temperature of water is, in the first place, a point of no
consequence in respect of its liquidity : still with the increase
or diminution of the temperature of the liquid water, there
comes a point where this state of cohesion suffers a quali-
tative change, and the water is converted into steam or ice.
A quantitative change takes place, apparently without any
further significance : but there is something lurking behind,
and a seemingly innocent change of quantity acts as a
kind of snare, to catch hold of the quality. The antinomy
io8.] MEASURE. 203
of Measure which this implies was exemplified under more
than one garb among the Greeks. It was asked, for example,
whether a single grain makes a heap of wheat, or whether
it makes a bald-tail to tear out a single hair from the horse's
tail. At first, no doubt, looking at the nature of quantity as
an indifferent and external character of Being, we are dis-
posed to answer these questions in the negative. And yet,
as we must admit, this indifferent increase and diminution
has its limit : a point is finally reached, where a single
additional grain makes a heap of wheat ; and the bald-tail
is produced, if we continue plucking out single hairs. These
examples find a parallel in the storj' of the peasant who, as
his ass trudged cheerfully along, went on adding ounce after
ounce to its load, till at length it sunk under the unendurable
burden. It would be a mistake to treat these examples as
pedantic futility ; they really turn on thoughts, an acquain-
tance with which is of great importance in practical life,
especially in ethics. Thus in the matter of expenditure, there
is a certain latitude within which a more or less does not
matter ; but when the Measure, imposed by the individual
circumstances of the special case, is exceeded on the one
side or the other, the qualitative nature of Measure (as in the
above examples of the different temperature of water) makes
itself felt, and a course, which a moment before was held
good economy, turns into avarice or prodigality. The same
principle may be applied in politics, when the constitution of
a state has to be looked at as independent of, no less than as
dependent on, the extent of its territory, the number of its
inhabitants, and other quantitative points of the same kind.
If we look e.g. at a state with a territory of ten thousand
square miles and a population of four millions, we should,
without hesitation, admit that a few square miles of land or
a few thousand inhabitants more or less could exercise no
essential influence en the character of its constitution. But,
on the other hand, we must not forget, that by the continual
increase or diminishing of a state, we finally get to a point
where, apart from all other circumstances, this quantitative
alteration alone necessarily draws with it an alteration in the
quality of the constitution. The constitution of a little Swiss
204 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [108 no.
canton does not suit a great kingdom ; and, similarly, the
constitution of the Roman republic was unsuitable when
transferred to the small imperial towns of Germany.
109.] In this second case, when a measure through
its quantitative nature has gone in excess of its qualita-
tive character, we meet, what is at first an absence of
measure, the Measureless. But seeing that the second
quantitative ratio, which in comparison with the first is
measureless, is none the less qualitative, the measureless
is also a measure. These two transitions, from quality
to quantum, and from the latter back again to quality,
may be represented under the image of an infinite
progression — as the self-abrogation and restoration of
measure in the measureless.
Quantity, as we have seen, is not only capable of alteration,
i.e. of increase or diminution : it is naturally and necessarily
a tendency to exceed itself. This tendency is maintained
even in measure. But if the quantity present in measure
exceeds a certain limit, the quality corresponding to it is
also put in abeyance. This however is not a negation of
quality altogether, but only of this definite quality, the place
of which is at once occupied by another. This process of
measure, which appears alternately as a mere change in
quantity, and then as a sudden revulsion of quantity into
quality, may be envisaged under the figure of a nodal (knotted)
line. Such lines we find in Nature under a variety of forms.
We have already referred to the qualitatively different
states of aggregation water exhibits under increase or
diminution of temperature. The same phenomenon is pre-
sented by the different degrees in the oxidation of metals.
Even the difference of musical notes may be regarded as an
example of what takes place in the process of measure, —
the revulsion from what is at first merely quantitative into
qualitative alteration.
110.] What really takes place here is that the imme-
diacy, which still attaches to measure as such, is set
aside. In measure, at first, quality and quantity itself
no -1 1 1.] MEASURE. 205
are immediate, and measure is only their ' relative '
identity. But measure shows itself absorbed and super-
seded in the measureless : yet the measureless, although
it be the negation of measure, is itself a unity of quantity
and quality. Thus in the measureless the measure is
still seen to meet only with itself.
111.] Instead of the more abstract factors, Being and
Nothing, some and other, &c., the Infinite, which is
affirmation as a negation of negation, now finds its
factors in quality and quantity. These ( -) have in the
first place passed over, quality into quantity, (§ 98), and
quantity into quality (§ 105), and thus are both shown
up as negations. (iS) But in their unity, that is, in
measure, they are originally distinct, and the one is
only through the instrumentality of the other. And
(y) after the immediacy of this unity has turned out
to be self-annulling, the unity is explicitly put as what
it implicitly is, simple relation-to-self, which contains
in it being and all its forms absorbed. — Being or imme-
diacy, which by the negation of itself is a mediation
with self and a reference to self, — ^rhich consequently
is also a mediation which cancels itself into reference-
to-self, or immediacy, — is Essence.
The process of measure, instead of being only the wrong
infinite of an endless progression, in the shape of an ever-
recurrent recoil from quality to quantity, and from quantity to
quality, is also the true infinity of coincidence with self in
another. In measure, quality and quantity originally confront
each other, like some and other. But quality is implicitly
quantity, and conversely quantity is implicitly quality. In the
process of measure, therefore, these two pass into each other :
each of them becomes what it already was implicitly: and
thus we get Being thrown mto abeyance and absorbed, with
its several characteristics negatived. Such Being is Essence.
Measure is implicitly Essence ; and its process consists in
realising what it is implicitly. — The ordinary consciousness
206 THE DOCTRINE OF BEING. [in.
conceives things as being, and studies them in quality,
quantity, and measure. These immediate characteristics how-
ever soon show themselves to be not fixed btit transient ;
and Essence is the result of their dialectic. In the sphere of
Essence one category does not pass into another, but refers
to another merely. In Being, the form of reference is
purely due to our reflection on what takes place : but it is
the special and proper characteristic of Essence. In the
sphere of Being, when somewhat becomes another, the
somewhat has vanished. Not so in Essence : here there is
no real other, but only diversity, reference of the one to its
other. The transition of Essence is therefore at the same
time no transition : for in the passage of different into
different, the different does not vanish : the different terms
remain in their relation. When we speak of Being and
Nought, Being is independent, so is Nought. The case is
otherwise with the Positive and the Negative. No doubt
these possess the characteristic of Being and Nought. But
the positive by itself has no sense ; it is wholly in reference
to the negative. And it is the same with the negative. In
the sphere of Being the reference of one term to another is
only implicit ; in Essence on the contrary it is explicit And
this in general is the distinction between the forms of Being
and Essence : in Being everything is immediate, in Essence
everything is relative.
CHAPTER VIII.
SECOND SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.
THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE.
112.] The terms in Essence are always mere pairs of
correlatives, and not yet absolutely reflected in them-
selves : hence in essence the actual unity of the notion
is not realised, but only postulated by reflection. Es-
sence,— which is Being coming into mediation with itself
through the negativity of itself— is self-relatedness, only
in so far as it is relation to an Other, — this Other how-
ever coming to view at first not as something which
ts, but as postulated and hypothetised. — Being has not
vanished : but, firstly, Essence, as simple self-relation,
is Being, and secondly as regards its one-sided charac-
teristic of immediacy. Being is deposed to a mere nega-
tive, to a seeming or reflected light — Essence accordingly
is Being thus reflecting light into itself.
The Absolute is the Essence. This is the same defi-
nition as the previous one that the Absolute is Being, in
so far as Being likewise is simple self-relation. But it
is at the same time higher, because Essence is Being
that has gone into itself: that is to say, the simple self-
relation (in Being) is expressly put as negation of the
negative, as immanent self-mediation. — Unfortunately
when the Absolute is defined to be the Essence, the
negativity which this implies is often taken only to mean
the withdrawal of all determinate predicates. This
2o3 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [112.
negative action of withdrawal or abstraction thus falls
outside of the Essence — which is thus left as a mere
result apart from its premisses.— the caput mortuum of
abstraction. But as this negativity, instead of being
external to Being, is its own dialectic, the truth of the
latter, viz. Essence, will be Being as retired within
itself, — immanent Being. That reflection, or light
thrown into itself, constitutes the distinction between
Essence and immediate Being, and is the peculiar
characteristic of Essence itself.
Any mention of Essence implies that we distinguish it
from Being : the latter is immediate, and, compared with the
Essence, we look upon it as mere seeming. But this seem-
ing is not an utter nonentity and nothing at all, but Being
superseded and put by. The point of view given by the
Essence is in general the standpoint of ' Reflection.' This
word ' reflection ' is originally applied, when a ray of light in
a straight line impinging upon the surface of a mirror is
thrown back from it. In this phenomenon we have two
things,— first an immediate fact which is, and secondly the
deputed, derivated, or transmitted phase of the same.—
Something of this sort takes place when we reflect, or think
upon an object ; for here we want to know the object, not in
its immediacy, but as derivative or mediated. The problem
or aim of philosophy is often represented as the ascertain-
ment of the essence of things : a phrase which only means
that things instead of being left in their immediacy, must be
shown to be mediated by, or based upon, something else.
The immediate Being of things is thus conceived under the
image of a rind or curtain behind which the Essence lies
hidden.
Everything, it is said, has an Essence ; that is, things
really are not what they immediately show themselves.
There is therefore something more to be done than merely
rove from one quality to another, and merely to advance
from qualitative to quantitative, and vice versa : there is
a permanent in things, and that permanent is in the first
ria.] ESS EN I 209
instance their Essence. With respect to other meanings
and uses of the category of Essence, we may note that in
the German auxihary verb ' sein ' the past tense is expressed
by the term for Essence ( ^.?s^w) • we designate past being
as gewesen. This anomaly of language implies to some ex-
tent a correct perception of the relation between Being and
Essence. Essence we may certainly regard as past Being,
remembering however meanwhile that the past is not
utterly denied, but only laid aside and thus at the same time
preserved. Thus, to say, Caesar was in Gaul, only denies
the immediacy of the event, but not his sojourn in Gaul
altogether. That sojourn is just what forms the import of
the proposition, in which however it is represented as over
and gone.— ' PVesen' in ordinary life frequently means only
a collection or aggregate : Zeitungswesen (the Press), Post-
wesen (the Post-Office), Steuerwesen (the Revenue). All
that these terms mean is that the things in question are not to
be taken single, in theirimmediacy,but as a complex, and then,
perhaps, in addition, in their various bearings. This usage
of the term is not very different in its implication from ourown.
People also speak oi finite Essences, such as man. But
the very term Essence implies that we have made-q step
beyond finitude : and the title as applied to man is so far in-
exact. It is often added that there is a supreme Essence
(Being) : by which is meant God. On this two remarks
may be made. In the first place the phrase 'there is'
suggests a finite only : as when we say, there are so many
planets, or, there are plants of such a constitution and
plants of such an other. In these cases we are speaking of
something which has other things beyond and beside it.
But God, the absolutely infinite, is not something outside
and beside whom there are other essences. All else outside
God, if separated from Him, possesses no essentiality : in its
isolation it becomes a mere show or seeming, without stay or
essence of its own. But, secondly, it is a poor way of talking
to call God the highest or supreme Essence, The category
of quantity which the phrase employs has its proper place
within the compass of the finite. When we call one mountain
the highest on the earth, we have a vision of other high
2IO THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [112.
mountains beside it. So too when we call any one the
richest or most learned in his country. But God, far from
being a Being, even the highest, is the Being. This definition,
however, though such a representation of God is an important
and necessary stage in the growth of the religious conscious-
ness, does not by any means exhaust the depth of the
ordinary Christian idea of God. If we consider God as the
Essence only, and nothing more, we know Him only as the
universal and irresistible Power ; in other words, as the
Lord. Now the fear of the Lord is, doubtless, the beginning,
— but only the beginning, of wisdom. To look at God in this
light, as the Lord, and the Lord alone, is especially character-
istic of Judaism and also of Mohammedanism. The defect of
these religions lies in their scant recognition of the finite,
which, be it as natural things or as finite phases of mind, it is
characteristic of the heathen and (as they also for that reason
are) polytheistic religions to maintain intact. Another not
uncommon assertion is that God, as the supreme Being,
cannot be known. Such is the view taken by modern
* enlightenment * and abstract understanding, which is con-
tent to say, II y a un etre supreme : and there lets the matter
rest. To speak thus, and treat God merely as the supreme
other-world Being, implies that we look upon the world
before us in its immediacy as something permanent and
positive, and forget that true Being is just the superseding of
all that is immediate. If God be the abstract super-sensible
Being, outside whom therefore lies all difference and all
specific character. He is only a bare name, a mere caput
mortuum of abstracting understanding. The true knowledge
of God begins when we know that things, as they im-
mediately are, have no truth.
In reference also to other subjects besides God the category
of Essence is often liable to an abstract use, by which, in the
study of anything, its Essence is held to be something unaf-
fected by, and subsisting in independence of, its definite pheno-
menal embodiment. Thus we say, for example, of people,
that the great thing is not what they do or how they behave,
but what they are. This is correct, if it means that a man's
conduct should be looked at, not in its immediacy, but only
I12-II4.] ESSENCE — REFLECTION. 211
as it is explained by his inner self, and as a revelation of
that inner self. Still it should be remembered that the only
means by which the Essence and the inner self can be
verified, is their appearance in outward reality ; whereas
the appeal which men make to the essential life, as distinct
from the material facts of conduct, is generally prompted by
a desire to assert their own 'subjectivity and to elude an
absolute and objective judgment.
113.] Self-relation in Essence is the form of Identity
or of reflection-into-self, which has here taken the place
of the immediacy of Being. They are both the same
abstraction, — self-relation.
The unintelligence ofsei.se, to take everything limited
and finite for Being, passes into the obstinacy of under-
standing, which views the finite as self-identical, not in-
herently self-contradictory.
114.] This identity, as it has descended from Being,
appears in the first place only charged with the charac-
teristics of Being, and referred to Being as to something
external. This external Being, if taken in separation
from the true Being (of Essence), is called the Unessen-
tial. But that turns out a mistake. Because Essence
is Being-in-self, it is essential only to the extent that it
has in itself its negative, /'. e. reference to another, or
mediation. Consequently, it has the unessential as its
own proper seeming (reflection) in itself. But in seem-
ing or mediation there is distinction involved : and since
what is distinguished (as distinguished from the identity
out of which it arises, and in which it is not, or lies as
seeming,) receives itself the form of identit}', the sem-
blance is still in the mode of Being, or of self-related
immediacy. The sphere of Essence thus turns out to be
a still imperfect combination of immediacy and mediation.
I n it every term is expressly invested with the character of
self-relatedness, while yet at the same time one is forced
P 2
212 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [114-115.
beyond it. It has Being, — reflected being, a being in
which another shows, and which shows in another.
And so it is also the sphere in which the contradiction,
still implicit in the sphere of Being, is made explicit.
As the one notion is the common principle underlying
all logic, there appear in the developrnent of Essence
the same attributes or terms as in the development of
Being, but in a reflex form. Instead of Being and
Nought we have now the forms of Positive and Nega-
tive ; the former at first as Identity corresponding to
pure and uncontrasted Being, the latter developed
(showing in itself) as Difference. So also, we have
Becoming represented by the Ground of determinate
Being: which itself, when reflected upon the Ground,
is Existence.
The theory of Essence is the most difficult branch
of Logic. It includes the categories of metaphysic and
of the sciences in general. These are products of re-
flective understanding, which, while it assumes the
differences to possess a footing of their own, and at
the same time also expressly affirms their relativity,
still «)mbines the two statements, side by side, or one
after the other, by an 'Also,' without bringing these
thoughts into one, or unifying them into the notion.
A. — Essence as Ground of Existence.
{a) The pure principles or categories of Reflection.
(a) Identity.
115.] The Essence lights up in itself or is mere reflec-
tion : and therefore is only self-relation, not as imme-
diate but as reflected. And that reflex relation is
self-Identity.
This Identity becomes an Identity in form only, or of
115.] IDENTITY. 213
the understanding, if it be held hard and fast, quite aloof
from difference. Or, rather, abstraction is the imposi-
tion of this Identity of form, the transformation of some-
thing inherently ccuicrete into this form of elementary
simplicity. And this may be done in two ways. Either
we may neglect a part of the multiple features which are
found in the concrete thing (by what is called analysis)
and select only one of them ; or, neglecting their variety,
we may concentrate the multiple characters into one.
If we associate Identity with the Absolute, making
the Absolute the subject of a proposition, we get : The
Absolute is what is identical with itself. However true
this proposition may be, it is doubtful whether it be
meant in its truth : and therefore it is at least imperfect
in the expression. For it is left undecided, whether it
means the abstract Identity of understanding, — abstract,
that is, because contrasted with the other characteristics
of Essence, or the Identity which is inherently concrete.
In the latter case, as will be seen, true Identity is first
discoverable in the Ground, and, with a higher truth, in
the Notion. — Even the word Absolute is often used to
mean no more than 'abstract.' Absolute space and
absolute time, for example, is another way of saying
abstract space and abstract time.
When the principles of Essence are taken as essen-
tial principles of thought they become predicates of
a presupposed subject, which, because they are essen-
tial, is ' Everything.' The propositions thus arising
have been stated as universal LawS of Thought. Thus
the first of them, the maxim of Identity, reads : Every-
thing is identical with itself, A=A: and, negatively, A
cannot at the same time be A and not A. — This maxim,
instead of being a true law of thought, is nothing but
the law of abstract understanding. The propositional
form itself contradicts it : for a proposition always pro-
214 ^^^ DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [115.
mises a distinction between subject and predicate ; while
the present one does not fulfil what its form requires.
But the Law is particularly set aside by the following
so-called Laws of Thought, which make laws out of its
opposite.— It is asserted that the maxim of Identity,
though it cannot be proved, regulates the procedure of
every consciousness, and that experience shows it to be
accepted as soon as its terms are apprehended. To
this alleged experience of the logic-books may be op-
posed the universal experience that no mind thinks or
forms conceptions or speaks, in accordance with this
law, and that no existence of any kind whatever con-
forms to it. Utterances after the fashion of this pre-
tended law (A planet is— a planet; Magnetism is —
magnetism ; Mind is — mind) are, as they deserve to be,
reputed silly. That is certainly matter of general ex-
perience. The logic which seriously propounds such
laws and the scholastic world in which alone they are
valid have long been discredited with practical common
sense as well as with the philosophy of reason.
Identity is, in the first place, the repetition of what we
had earlier as Being, but as become, through supersession of
its character of immediateness. It is therefore Being as
Ideality.— It is important to come to a proper understanding
on the true meaning of Identity : and, for that purpose, we
must especially guard against taking it as abstract Identity,
to the exclusion of all Difference. That is the touch-stone
for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what alone
deserves the name of philosophy. Identity in its truth, as
an Ideality of what immediately is, is a high category for our
religious modes of mind as well as all other forms of thought
and mental activity. The true knowledge of God, it may be
said, begins when we know Him as identity, — as absolute
identity. To know so much is to see that all the power and
glory of the world sinks into nothing in God's presence,
and subsists only as the reflection of His power and His
115-116.] IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE. 215
glory. In the same way, Identity, as self-consciousness, is
what dis^jngi\ishes man from nature, particularly from the
brutes which never reach the point of comprehending
themselves as ' I,' that is, pure self-contained unity. So
again, in connexion with thought, the main thing is not to
confuse the true Identity, which contains Being and its
characteristics ideally transfigured in it, with an abstract
Identity, identity of bare form. All the charges of narrow-
ness, hardness, meaninglessness, which are so often directed
against thought from the quarter of feeling and immediate
perception, rest on the perverse assumption that thought
acts only as a faculty of abstract Identification. The Formal
Logic itself confirms this assumption by laying down the
supreme law of thought (so-called) which has been discussed
above. If thinking were no more than an abstract Identity,
we could not but own it to be a most futile and tedious
business. No doubt the notion, and the idea too, are iden-
tical with themselves : but identical only in so far as they
at the same time involve distinction.
[S) Difference.
116.] Essence is mere Identity and reflection in itself
only as it is self-relating negativity, and in that way
self-repulsion. It contains therefore essentially the
characteristic of Difference.
Other-being is here no longer qualitative, taking the
shape of the character or limit. It is now in Essence,
in self-relating essence, and therefore the negation is at
the same time a relation, — is, in short, Distinction, Re-
lativity, Mediation.
To ask, ' How Identity comes to Difference,' assumes
that Identity as mere abstract Identity is something of
itself, and Difference also something else equally inde-
pendent. This supposition renders an answer to the
question impossible. If Identity is viewed as diverse from
Difference, all that we have in this way is but Difference ;
and hence we cannot demonstrate the advance to difference,
because the person who asks for the How of the progress
2l6 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [116-117.
thereby implies that for him the starting-point is non-
existent. The question then when put to the test has
obviously no meaning, and its proposer may be met with
the question what he means by Identity ; whereupon we
should soon see that he attaches no idea to it at all, and
that Identity is for him an empty name. As we have seen,
besides, Identity is undoubtedly a negative, — not however an
abstract empty Nought, but the negation of Being and its
characteristics. Being so. Identity is at the same time self-
relation, and, what is more, negative self-relation ; in other
words, it draws a distinction between it and itself.
117.] Difference is, first of all, (i) immediate differ-
ence, i. e. Diversity or Variety. In Diversity the dif-
ferent things are each individually what they are, and
unaffected by the relation in which they stand to each
other. This relation is therefore external to them. In
consequence of the various things being thus indifferent
to the difference between them, it falls outside them into
a third thing, the agent of Comparison. This external
difference, as an identity of the objects related, is Like-
ness; as a non-identity of them, is Unlikeness.
The gap wiiich understanding allows to divide these
characteristics, is so great, that although comparison
has one and the same substratum for likeness and un-
likeness, which are explained to be different aspects and
points of view in it, still likeness by itself is the first of
the elements alone, viz. identity, and unlikeness by itself
is difference.
Diversity has, like Identity, been transformed into a
maxim: 'Everything is various or different': or, 'There
are no two things completely like each other.' Here
Everything is put under a predicate, which is the re-
verse of the identity attributed to it in the first maxim ;
and therefore under a law contradicting the first. How-
ever there is an explanation. As the diversity is sup-
posed due only to external comparison, anything taken
117.] ^^^^ ^^^ UNLIKE. 217
per se is expected and understood always to be identical
with itself, so that the second law need not interfere
with the first. But, in that case, variety does not belong
to the something or everything in question : it constitutes
no intrinsic characteristic of the subject: and the second
maxim on this showing does not admit of being stated at
all. If, on the other hand, the something itself \s. as the
maxim says diverse, it must be in virtue of its own proper
character: but in this case the specific difference, and
not variety as such, is what is intended. And this is
the meaning of the maxim of Leibnitz.
When understanding sets itself to study Identity, it has
already passed beyond it, and is looking at Difference in the
shape of bare Variety. If we follow the so-called law of
Identity, and say,— The sea is the sea, The air is the air,
The moon is the moon, these objects pass for having no
bearing on one another. What we have before us therefore
is not Identity, but Difference. We do not stop at this
point however, or regard things merely as different. We
compare them one with another, and thus discover the
features of likeness and unlikeness. The work of the finite
sciences lies to a great extent in the application of these
categories, and the phrase 'scientific treatment' generally
means no more than the method which has for its aim com-
parison of the objects under examination. This method has
undoubtedly led to some important results ;— we may par-
ticularly mention the great advance of modern times in the
provinces of comparative anatomy and comparative lin-
guistic. But it is going too far to suppose that the compara-
tive method can be employed with equal success in all
branches of knowledge. Nor— and this must be emphasised
— can mere comparison ever ultimately satisfy the require-
ments of science. Its results are indeed indispensable, but
they are still labours only preliminary to truly intelligent
cognition.
If it be the office of comparison to reduce existing differ-
ences to Identity, the science, which most perfectly fulfils
that end, is mathematics. The reason of that is, that quan-
2l8 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [i 17-118.
titative difference is only the difference which is quite ex-
ternal. Thus, in geometry, a triangle and a quadrangle,
figures qualitatively different, have this qualitative difference
discounted by abstraction, and are equalised to one another
in magnitude. It follows from Vv^hat.has been formerly said
about the mere Identity of understanding that, as has also
been pointed out (§ 99, note), neither philosophy nor the
empirical sciences need envy this superiority of Mathe-
matics.
The story is told that, when Leibnitz propounded the
maxim of Variety, the cavaliers and ladies of the court, as
they walked round the garden, made efforts to discover two
leaves indistinguishable from each other, in order to confute
the law stated by the philosopher. Their device was un-
questionably a convenient method of dealing with meta-
physics,—one which has not ceased to be fashionable. All
the same, as regards the principle of Leibnitz, difference
must be understood to mean not an external and indifferent
diversity merely, but difference essential. Hence the very
nature of things implies that they must be different.
118.] Likeness is an Identity only of those things
which are not the same, not identical with each other :
and Unlikeness is a relation of things unlike. The two
therefore do not fall on different aspects or points of
view in the thing, without any mutual affinity : but one
throws light into the other. Variety thus comes to be
reflexive difference, or difference (distinction) implicit
and essential, determinate or specific difference.
While things merely various show themselves unaffected
by each other, likeness and unlikeness on the contrary are
a pair of characteristics which are in completely reciprocal
relation. The one of them cannot be thought without the
other. This advance from simple variety to opposition ap-
pears in our common acts of thought, when we allow that
comparison has a meaning only upon the hypothesis of
an existing difference, and that on the other hand we can
distinguish only on the hypothesis of existing similarity.
1 18-119.] SPECIFIC DIFFERENCE. 219
Hence, if the problem be the discovery of a difference, we
attribute no great cleverness to the man who only distin-
guishes those objects, of which the difference is palpable,
e.g. a pen and a camel: and similarly, it implies no very
advanced faculty of comparison, when the objects compared,
e.g. a beech and an oak, a temple and a church, are near
akin. In the case of difference, in short, we like to see
identity, and in the case of identity we like to see difference.
Within the range of the empirical sciences however, the one
of these two categories is often allowed to put the other out
of sight and mind. Thus the scientific problem at one time
is to reduce existing differences to identity; on another
occasion, with equal one-sidedness, to discover new differ-
ences. We see this especially in physical science. There
the problem consists, in the first place, in the continual
search for new 'elements,' new forces, new genera, and
species. Or, in another direction, it seeks to show that all
bodies hitherto believed to be simple are compound : and
modern physicists and chemists smile at the ancients, who
were satisfied with four elements, and these not simple.
Secondly, and on the other hand, mere identity is made the
chief question. Thus electricity and chemical affinity are
regarded as the same, and even the organic processes of
digestion and assimilation are looked upon as a mere ghemical
operation. Modern philosophy has often been nicknamed
the Philosophy of Identity. But, as was already remarked
(§ 103, note), it is precisely philosophy, and in particular
speculative logic, which lays bare the nothingness of the
abstract, undifferentiated identity, known to understanding ;
though it also undoubtedly urges its disciples not to rest
at mere diversity, but to ascertain the inner unity of all
existence.
119.] Difference implicit is essential difference, the
Positive and the Negative : and that is this way. The
Positive is the identical self-relation in such a way as
not to be the Negative, and the Negative is the different
by itself so as not to' be the Positive. Thus either has
an existence of its own in proportion as it is not the
220 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [119.
Other. The one is made visible in the other, and is only
in so far as that other is. Essential difference is there-
fore Opposition ; according to which the different is not
confronted by any other but by its other. That is, either
of these two (Positive and Negative) is stamped with a
characteristic of its own only in its relation to the other :
the one is only reflected into itself as it is reflected into
the other. And so with the other. Either in this way
is the other's own other.
Difference implicit or essential gives the maxim.
Everything is essentially distinct ; or, as it has also
been expressed, Of two opposite predicates the one
only can be assigned to anything, and there is no third
possible. This maxim of Contrast or Opposition most
expressly controverts the maxim of Identity : the one
says a thing should be only self-relation, the other says
that it must be an opposite, a relation to its other. The
native unintelligence of abstraction betrays itself by
setting in juxtaposition two contrary maxims, like these,
as laws, without even so much as comparing them. —
The Maxim of Excluded Middle is the maxim of the
definite understanding, which would fain avoid contra-
diction, but in so doing falls into it. A must be either
+ A or — A, it says. It virtually declares in these
words a third A which is neither + nor — , and which
at the same time is yet invested with + and — characters.
If + W mean 6 miles to the West, and — W mean
6 miles to the East, and if the -f and — cancel each
other, the 6 miles of way or space remain what they
were with and without the contrast. Even the mere
plus and minus of number or abstract direction have, if
we like, zero, for their third : but it need not be denied
that the empty contrast, which understanding institutes
between plus and minus, is not without its value in such
abstractions as number, direction, &c.
119.] POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE. 221
In the doctrine of contradictory concepts, the one
notion is, say, blue (for in this doctrine even the
sensuous generalised image of a colour is called a
notion) and the other not-blue. This other then would
not be an affirmative, say, yellow, but would merely be
kept at the abstract negative. — That the Negative in its
own nature is quite as much Positive (see next §), is
implied in saying that what is opposite to another is its
other. The inanity of the opposition between what are
called contradictory notions is fully exhibited in what we
may call the grandiose formula of a general law, that
Everything has the one and not the other of all predi-
cates which are in such opposition. In this way, mind
is either white or not-white, yellow or not-yellow, &c.,
ad mfinitum.
It was forgotten that Identity and Opposition are
themselves opposed, and the maxim of Opposition was
taken even for that of Identity, in the shape of the
principle of Contradiction. A notion, which possesses
neither or both of two mutually contradictory marks,
e.g. a quadrangular circle, is held to be logically false.
Now though a multangular circle and a rectilineal arc
no less contradict this maxim, geometers never hesitate
to treat the circle as. a polygon with rectilineal sides.
But anything like a circle (that is to say its mere character
or nominal definition) is still no notion. In the notion of
a circle, centre and circumference are equally essen-
tial ; both marks belong to it : and yet centre and
circumference are opposite and contradictory to each
other.
The conception of Polarity, which is so dominant in
physics, contains by implication the more correct defini-
tion of Opposition. But physics for its theory of the
laws of thought adheres to the ordinary logic ; it might
therefore well be horrified in case it should ever work
222 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [119.
out the conception of Polarity, and get at the thoughts
which are impHed in it.
(i) With the positive we return to identity, but in its
higher truth as identical self-relation, and at the same time
with the note that it is not the negative. The negative
per se is the same as difference itself The identical as such
is primarily the yet uncharacterised : the positive on the
other hand is what is self-identical, but with the mark of
antithesis to an other. And the negative is difference as
such, characterised as not identity. This is the diflFerence
of difference within its own self
Positive and negative are supposed to express an absolute
difference. The two however are at bottom the same : the
name of either might be transferred to the other. Thus, for
example, debts and assets are not two particular, self-sub-
sisting species of property. What is negative to the debtor,
is positive to the creditor. A way to the east is also a way
to the west. Positive and negative are therefore intrinsically
conditioned by one another, and are only in relation to each
other. The north pole of the magnet cannot be without the
south pole, and vice versa. If we cut a magnet in two, we
have not a north pole in one piece, and a south pole in the
other. Similarly, in electricity, the positive and the negative
are not two diverse and independent fluids. In opposition,
the different is not confronted by any other, but by its other.
Usually we regard different things as unaffected by each
other. Thus we say : I am a human being, and around me
are air, water, animals, and all sorts of things. Everything
is thus put outside of every other. But the aim of philo-
sophy is to banish indifference, and to ascertain the neces-
sity of things. By that means the other is seen to stand
over against its other. Thus, for example, inorganic nature
is not to be considered merely something else than organic
nature, but the necessary antithesis of it. Both are in
essential relation to one another ; and the one of the two is,
only in so far as it excludes the other from it, and thus
relates itself thereto. Nature in like manner is not without
mind, nor mind without nature. An important step has
been taken, when we cease in thinking to use phrases hke ;
II9-I20.] LAIV OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE. 223
Of course something else is also possible. While we so
speak, we are still tainted with contingency : and all true
thinking, we have already said, is a thinking of necessity.
In modern physical science the opposition, first observed
to exist in magnetism as polarity, has come to be regarded
as a universal law pervading the whole of nature. This
would be a real scientific advance, if care were at the same
time taken not to let mere variety revert without explana-
tion, as a valid category, side by side with opposition. Thus
at one time the colours are regarded as in polar opposition
to one another, and called complementary colours ; at an-
other time they are looked at in their indifferent and merely
quantitative difference of red, yellow, green, &;c.
(2) Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle
(which is the maxim of abstract understanding) we should
rather say : Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor
in earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there
anywhere such an abstract 'Either — or' as the understand-
ing maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference
and opposition in itself The finitude of things will then lie in
the want of correspondence between their immediate being,
and what they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature,
the acid is implicitly at the same time the base : in other
words, its only being consists in its relation to its other.
Hence also the acid is not something that persists quietly in
the contrast : it is always in effort to realise what it poten-
tially is. Contradiction is the very moving principle of the
world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction is. un-
thinkable. The only thing correct in that statement is that
contradiction js not the end of the matter, but cancels itself.
But contradiction, when cancelled, does not leave abstract
identity ; for that is itself only one side of the contrariety.
The proximate result of opposition (when realised as con-
tradiction) is the Ground, which contains identity as well as
difference superseded and deposed to elements in the com-
pleter notion.
120.] Contrariety then has two forms. The Positive
is the aforesaid various (different) which is understood
to be independent, and yet at the same not to be
224 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [120-121.
unaffected by its relation to its other. The Negative is
to be, no less independently, negative self-relating, self-
subsistent, and yet at the same time as Negative must
on every point have this its self-relation, i.e. its Positive,
only in the other. Both Positive and Negative are
therefore explicit contradiction ; both are potentially
the same. Both are so actually also ; since either is the
abrogation of the other and of itself. Thus they fall to
the Ground. — Or as is plain, the essential difference, as
a difference, is only the difference of it from itself, and
thus contains the identical : so that to essential and
actual difference there belongs itself as well as iden-
tity. As self-relating difference it is likewise virtually
enunciated as the self-identical. And the opposite is in
general that which includes the one and its other, itself
and its opposite. The immanence of essence thus de-
fined is the Ground.
(y) The Ground.
121.] The Ground is the unity of identity and differ-
ence, the truth of what difference and identity have
turned out to be, — the reflection-into-self, which is
equally a reflection-into-an-other, and vice versa. It is
essence put explicitly as a totality.
The maxim of the Ground runs thus : Everything has
its Sufficient Ground : that is, the true essentiality of
any thing is not the predication of it as identical with
itself, or as different (various), or merely positive, or
merely negative, but as having its Being in an other,
which, being its self-same, is its essence. And to this
extent the essence is not abstract reflection into self, but
into an other. The Ground is the essence in its own
inwardness ; the essence is intrinsically a ground ; and
it is a ground only when it is a ground of somewhat, of
an other.
lai.] GROUND AND CONSEQUENCE. 225
We must be careful, when we say that the ground is the
unity of identity and difference, not to understand by this
unity an abstract identity. Otherwise we only change the
name, while we still think the identity (of understanding)
already seen to be false. To avoid this misconception we
may say that the ground, besides being the unity, is also
the difference of identity and difference. In that case in the
ground, which promised at first to supersede contradiction, a
new contradiction seems to arise. It is however a contra-
diction which, so far from persisting quietly in itself, is
rather the expulsion of it from itself. The ground is a
ground only to the extent that it affords ground : but the
result which thus issued from the ground is only itself. In
this lies its formalism. The ground and what is grounded
are one and the same content : the difference between the
two is the mere difference of form which separates simple
self-relation^ on the one hand, from mediation or derivative-
ness on the othen Inquiry into the grounds of things goes
with the pointof view which, as already noted (note to § 112),
is adopted by Reflection. We wish, as it were, to see the
matter double, first in its immediacy, and secondly in its
ground, where it is no longer immediate. This is the plain
meaning of the law of sufficient ground, as it is called ; it
asserts that things should essentially be viewed as mediated.
The manner in which Formal Logic establishes this law of
thought, sets a bad example to other sciences. Formal
Logic asks these sciences not to accept their subject-matter
as it is immediately given ; and yet herself lays down a law
of thought without deducing it,— in other words, without
exhibiting its mediation. With the same justice as the
logician maintains our faculty of thought to be so consti-
tuted that we must ask for the ground of everything, might
the physicist, when asked why a man who falls into water is
drowned, reply that man happens to be so organised that he
cannot live under water; or the jurist, when asked why a
criminal is punished, reply that civil society happens to be
so constituted that crimes cannot be left unpunished.
Yet even if logic be excused the duty of giving a ground
for the law of the sufficient ground, it might at least explain
VOL. II. Q
226 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [121.
what is to be understood by a ground. The common ex-
planation, which describes the ground as what has a conse-
quence, seems at the first glance more lucid and intelligible
than the preceding definition in logical terms. If you ask
however what the consequence is, you are told that it is
what has a ground ; and it becomes obvious that the expla-
nation is intelligible only because it assumes what in our
case has been reached as the termination of an antecedent
movement of thought. And this is the true business of
logic : to show that those thoughts, which as usually em-
ployed merely float before consciousness neither understood
nor demonstrated, are really grades in the self-determination
of thought. It is by this means that they are understood and
demonstrated.
In common life, and it is the same in the finite sciences,
this reflective form is often employed as a key to the secret
of the real condition of the objects under investigation. So
long as we deal with what may be termed the household
needs of knowledge, nothing can be urged against this method
of study. But it can never afford definitive satisfaction,
either in theory or practice. And the reason why it fails is
that the ground is yet without a definite content of its own ;
so that to regard anything as resting upon a ground merely
gives the formal difference of mediation in place of imme-
diacy. We see an electrical phenomenon, for example, and
we ask for its ground (or reason) : we are told that electricity
is the ground of this phenomenon. What is this but the
same content as we had immediately before us, only trans-
lated into the form of inwardness ?
The ground however is not merely simple self-identity,
but also different : hence various grounds may be alleged
for the same sum of fact. This variety of grounds, again,
following the logic of difference, culminates in opposition of
grounds pro and contra. In any action, such as a theft, there
is a sum of fact in which several aspects may be distin-
guished. The theft has violated the rights of property : it
has given the means of satisfying his wants to the needy
thief: possibly too the man, from whom the theft was made,
misused his property. The violation of property is unques-
121.] THE SUFFICIENT REASON. 227
tionably the decisive point of view before wliich the others
must give way : but the bare law of the ground cannot settle
that question. Usually indeed the law is interpreted to
speak of a sufficient ground, not of any ground whatever :
and it might be supposed therefore, in the action referred
to, that, although other points of view besides the violation
of property might be held as grounds, yet they would not be
sufficient grounds. But here comes a dilemma. If we use
the phrase * sufficient ground,' the epithet is either otiose,
or of such a kind as to carry us past the mere category
of ground. The predicate is otiose and tautological, if it
only states the capability of giving a ground or reason : for
the ground is a ground, only in so far as it has this capa-
bility. If a soldier runs away from battle to save his life, his
conduct is certainly a violation of duty : but it cannot be
held that the ground which led him so to act was insuffi-
cient, otherwise he would have remained at his post. Be-
sides, there is this also to be said. On one hand any ground
suffices : on the other no ground suffices as mere ground ;
because, as already said, it is yet void of a content objec-
tively and intrinsically determined, and is therefore not self-
acting and productive. A content thus objectively and
intrinsically determined, and hence self-acting, will herealter
come before us as the notion : and it is the notion which
Leibnitz had in his eye when he spoke of sufficient ground,
and urged the study of things under its point of view. His
remarks were originally directed against that merely me-
chanical method of conceiving things so much in vogue
even now; a method which he justly pronounces insufficient.
We may see an instance of this mechanical theory of inves-
tigation, when the organic process of the circulation of the
blood is traced back merely to the contraction of the heart ;
or when certain theories of criminal law explain the pur-
pose of punishment to lie in deterring people from crime, in
rendering the criminal harmless, or in other extraneous
grounds of the same kind. It is unfair to Leibnitz to sup-
pose that he was content with anything so poor as this
formal law of the ground. The method of investigation
which he inaugurated is the verj' reverse of a formalism
Q 2
228 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [121.
which acquiesces in mere grounds, where a full and concrete
knowledge is sought. Considerations to this effect led Leib-
nitz to contrast causae efficientes and causae Jinales, and to
insist on the place of final causes as the conception to which
the efficient were to lead up. If we adopt this distinction,
light, heat, and moisture would be the causae efficientes, not
the causa finalis of the growth of plants : the causa finalis is
the notion of the plant itself.
To get no further than mere grounds, especially on ques-
tions of law and morality, is the position and principle of the
Sophists. Sophistry, as we ordinarily conceive it, is a
method of investigation which aims at distorting what is
just and true, and exhibiting things in a false light. Such
however is not the proper or primary tendency of Sophistry :
the standpoint of which is no other than that of 'Raisonne-
ment.' The Sophists came on the scene at a time when the
Greeks had begun to grow dissatisfied with mere authority
and tradition and felt the need of intellectual justification for
what they were to accept as obligatory. That desideratum
the Sophists supplied by teaching their countrymen to seek
for the various points of view under which things may be
considered: which points of view are the same as grounds.
But the ground, as we have seen, has no essential and
objective principles of its own, and it is as easy to discover
grounds for what is wrong and immoral as for what is moral
and right. Upon the observer therefore it depends to decide
what points are to have most weight. The decision in such
circumstances is prompted by his individual views and sen-
timents. Thus the objective foundation of what ought to
have been of absolute and essential obligation, accepted by
all, was undermined : and Sophistry by this destructive
action deservedly brought upon itself the bad name pre-
viously mentioned. Socrates, as we all know, met the
Sophists at every point, not by a bare re-assertion of autho-
rity and tradition against their argumentations, but by show-
ing dialectically how untenable the mere grounds were, and
by vindicating the obligation of justice and goodness,— by re-
instating the universal or notion of the will. In the present
day such a method of argumentation is not quite out of fashion.
121-122.] THE SUFFICIENT REASON. 229
Nor is that the case only in the discussion of secular matters.
It occurs even in sermons, such as those where every pos-
sible ground of gratitude to God is propounded. To such
pleading Socrates and Plato would not have scrupled to
apply the name of Sophistry. For Sophistr\' has nothing
to do with what is taught :— that may very possibly be true.
Sophistry lies in the formal circumstance of teaching it by
grounds which are as available for attack as for defence.
In a time so rich in reflection and so devoted to raisonm-
ment as our own, he must be a poor creature who cannot
advance a good ground for everything, even for what is
worst and most depraved. Everything in the world that
has become corrupt has had good ground for its corruption.
An appeal to grounds at first makes the hearer think of
beating a retreat : but when experience has taught him the
real state of these matters, he closes his ears against them,
and refuses to be imposed upon any more.
122.] As it first comes, the chief feature of Essence is
show in itself and intermediation in itself. But when it
has completed the circle of intermediation, its unity with
itself is expHcitly put as the self-annulling of difference,
and therefore of intermediation. Once more then we
come back to immediacy or Being, — but Being in so far
as it is intermediated by annulling the intermediation.
And that Being is Existence.
The ground is not yet determined by objective prin-
ciples of its own, nor is it an end or final cause : hence
it is not active, nor productive. An Existence only
proceeds from the ground. The determinate ground is
therefore a formal matter : that is to say, any point will
do, so long as it is expressly put as self-relation, as
affirmation, in correlation with the immediate existence
depending on it. If it be a ground at all, it is a good
ground: for the term 'good' is employed abstractly as
equivalent to affirmative ; and any point (or feature) is
good which can in any way be enunciated as confessedly
23© THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [122-123.
affirmative. So it happens that a ground can be found
and adduced for everything : and a good ground (for
example, a good motive for action) may effect some-
thing or may not, it may have a consequence or it may
not. It becomes a motive (strictly so called) and effects
something, e.g. through its reception into a will; there
and there only it becomes active and is made a cause.
{b) Existence.
123.] Existence is the immediate unity of reflection-
into-self and reflection-into-another. It follows from
this that existence is the indefinite multitude of existents
as reflected-into-themselves, which at the same time
equally throw light upon one another, — which, in short,
are co-relative, and form a world of reciprocal depend-
ence and of infinite interconnexion between grounds and
consequents. The grounds are themselves existences :
and the existents in like manner are in many directions
grounds as well as consequents.
The phrase ' Existence ' (derived from existere) suggests
the fact of having proceeded from something. Existence is
Being which has proceeded from the ground, and been
reinstated by annulling its intermediation. The Essence, as
Being set aside and absorbed, originally came before us as
shining, or showing in self, and the categories of this re-
flection are identity, difference and ground. The last is the
unity of identity and difference.; and because it unifies them
it has at the same time to distinguish itself from itself. But
that which is in this way distinguished from the ground is
as little mere difference, as the ground itself is abstract same-
ness. The ground works its own suspension : and when
suspended, the result of its negation is existence. Having
issued from the ground, existence contains the ground in it
the ground ooes not remain, as it were, behind existence,
but by its very nature supersedes itself and translates itself
into existence. This is exemplified even in our ordinary
133-134.] EXISTENCE. 23I
mode of thinking, when we look upon the ground of a thing,
not as something abstractly inward, but as itself also an
existent. For example, the lightning-flash which has set a
house on fire would be considered the ground of the con-
flagration : or the manners of a nation and the condition of
its life would be regarded as the ground of its constitution.
Such indeed is the ordinary aspect in which the existent
world originally appears to reflection, — an indefinite crowd
"of things existent, which being simultaneously reflected on
themselves and on one another are related reciprocally as
ground and consequence. In this motley play of the world,
if we may so call the sum of existents, there is nowhere
a firm footing to be found : everything bears an aspect of
relativity, conditioned by and conditioning something else.
The reflective understanding makes it its business to elicit
and trace these connexions running out in every dii ection ;
but the question touching an ultimate design is so far left un-
answered, and therefore the craving of the reason after
knowledge passes with the further development of the
logical Idea beyond this position of mere relativity.
124.] The reflection-on-another of the existent is
however inseparable from the reflection-on-se.lf : the
ground is their unity, from which existence has issued.
The existent therefore includes relativity, and has on
its own part its multiple interconnexions with other
existents : it is reflected on itself as its ground. The
existent is, when so described, a Thing,
The ' thing-by-itself ' (or thing in the abstract), so
famous in the philosophy of Kant, shows itself here in
its genesis. It is seen to be the abstract reflection-on-
self, which is clung to, to the exclusion of reflection-on-
other-things and of all predication of difference. The
thing-by-itself therefore is the empty substratum for these
predicates of relation.
If to know means to comprehend an object in its concrete
character, then the thing-by-itself, which is nothing but the
quite abstract and indeterminate thing in general, must
S32 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [124-125.
certainly be as unknowable as it is alleged to be. With as
much reason however as we speak of the thing-by-itself,
we might speak of quality-by-itself or quantity-by-itself, and
of any other category. The expression would then serve to
signify that these categories are taken in their abstract
immediacy, apart from their development and inward
character. It is no better than a whim of the understanding,
therefore, if we attach the qualificatory 'in or by-itself to
the thing only. But this ' in or by-itself is also applied to
the facts of the mental as well as the natural world : as we
speak of electricity or of a plant in itself, so we speak of
man or the state in itself. By this ' in-itself ' in these objects
we are meant to understand what they strictly and properly
are. This usage is liable to the same criticism as the phrase
' thing-in-itself.' For if we stick to the mere ' in-itself ' of an
object, we apprehend it not in its truth, but in the inadequate
form of mere abstraction. Thus the man, by or in himself,
is the child. And what the child has to do is to rise out of
this abstract and undeveloped ' in-himself,' and become * for
himself what he is at first only ' in-himself,' — a free and
reasonable being. Similarly, the state-in-itself is the yet im-
mature and patriarchal state, where the various political
functions, latent in the notion of the state, have not received
the full logical constitution which the logic of political princi-
ples demands. In the same sense, the germ may be called
the plant-in-itself. These examples may show the mistake
of supposing that the 'thing-in-itself or the 'in-itself of
things is something inaccessible to our cognition. All
things are originally in-themselves, but that is not the end
of the matter. As the germ, being the plant-in-itself, means
self-development, so the thing in general passes beyond its
in-itself, (the abstract reflection on self,) to manifest itself
further as a reflection on other things. It is in this sense
that it has properties.
{c) The Thing.
125.] («) The Thing is the totality— the development
in expHcit unity — of the categories of the ground and
of existence. On the side of one of its factors, viz.
125.] TH^ THING AND ITS PROPERTIES. 233
reflection-on-other-things, it has in it the differences, in
virtue of which it is a characterised and concrete thing.
These characteristics are different from one another ;
theyliave their reflection-into-self not on their own part,
but on the part of the thing. They are Properties of
the thing : and their relation to the thing is expressed
by the word ' have.'
As a term of relation, ' to have ' takes the place of ' to
be.' True, somewhat has qualities on its part too : but
this transference of 'Having' into the sphere of Being
is inexact, because the character as quality is directly
one with the somewhat, and the somewhat ceases to be
when it loses its quality. But the thing is reflection-
into-self: for it is an identity which is also distinct from
the difference, i.e. from its attributes. — Pn many lan-
guages 'have' is employed to denote past time. And
with reason : for the past is absorbed or suspended
being, and the mind is its reflection-into-self; in the
mind only it continues to subsist, — the mind however
distinguishing from itself this being in it which has
been absorbed or suspended.
In the Thing all the characteristics of reflection recur as
existent. Thus the thing, in its initial aspect, as the thing-
by-itself, is the self-same or identical. But identity, it was
proved, is not found without difference : so the properties,
which the thing has, are the existent difference in the form
of diversity. In the case of diversity or variety each diverse
member exhibited an indifference to every other, and they
had no other relation to each other, save what was given by
a comparison external to them. But now in the thing we
have a bond which keeps the various properties in union.
Property, besides, should not be confused with quality.
No doubt, we also say, a thing has qualities. But the
phraseology is a misplaced one: 'having' hints at an in-
dependence, foreign to the ' Somewhat,' which is still
directly identical with its quality. Somewhat is what it is
234 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [125-126.
only by its quality : whereas, though the thing indeed exists
only as it has its properties, it is not confined to this or that
definite property, and can therefore lose it, without ceasing-
to be what it is.
126.] (0) Even in the ground, however, the reflection-
on-something-else is directly convertible with reflection-
on-self. And hence the properties are not merely dif-
ferent from each other ; they are also self-identical, in-
dependent, and relieved from their attachment to the
thing. Still, as they are the characters of the thing
distinguished from one another (as reflected-into-self),
they are not themselves things, if things be concrete ;
but only existences reflected into themselves as abstract
characters. They are what ar€ called Matters.
Nor is the name ' things ' given to Matters, such as
magnetic and electric matters. They are qualities pro-
per, a reflected Being, — one with their Being, — they are
the character that has reached immediacy, existence :
they are ' entities.'
To elevate the properties, which the Thing has, to the in-
dependent position of matters, or materials of which it con-
sists, is a proceeding based upon the notion of a Thing :
and for that reason is also found in experience. Thought
and experience however alike protest against concluding
from the fact that certain properties of a thing, such as
colour, or smell, may be represented as particular colour-
ing or odorific matters, that we are then at the end of the
inquiry, and that nothing more is needed to penetrate to the
true secret of things than a disintegration of them into their
component materials. This disintegration into independent
matters is properly restricted to inorganic nature only. The
chemist is in the right therefore when, for example, he
analyses common salt or gypsum into its elements, and finds
that the former consists of muriatic acid and soda, the latter of
sulphuric acid and calcium. So too the geologist does well
to regard granite as a compound of quartz, felspar, and
mica. These matters, again, of which the thing consists, are
126-137.] MATTER. 235
themselves partly things, which in that way may be once
more reduced to more abstract matters. Sulphuric acid, for
example, is a compound of sulphur and oxygen. Such
matters or bodies can as a matter of fact be exhibited as
subsisting by themselves : but frequently we find other
properties of things, entirely wanting this self-subsistence,
also regarded as particular matters. Thus we hear caloric,
and electrical or magnetic matters spoken of Such matters
are at the best figments of understanding. And we see here
the usual procedure of the abstract reflection of under-
standing. Capriciously adopting single categories, whose
value entirely depends on their place in the gradual evolution
of the logical idea, it employs them in the pretended interests
of explanation, but in the face of plain, unprejudiced percep-
tion and experience, so as to trace back to them every object
investigated. Nor is this all. The theory, which makes things
consist of independent matters, is frequently applied in a
region where it has neither meaning nor force. For within
the limits of nature Lven, wherever there is organic life, this
category is obviously inadequate. An animal may be said
to consist of bones, muscles, nerves, &c. : but evidently we
are here using the term 'consist' in a very different sense
from its use when we spoke of the piece of granite as con-
sisting of the above-mentioned elements. The elements of
granite are utterly indifferent to their combination : they
could subsist as well without it. The diff"erent parts and
members of an organic body on the contrary subsist only in
their union : they cease to exist as such, when they are
separated from each other.
127.] Thus Matter is the mere abstract or indetermi-
nate reflection-into-something-else, or reflection-into-self
at the same time as determinate ; it is consequently
Thinghood which then and there is, — the subsistence
of the thing. By this means the thing has on the part
of the matters its reflection-into-self (the reverse of
§ 125) ; it subsists not on its own part, but consists of
the matters, and is only a superficial association between
them, an external combination of them.
236 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [128.
128.] (y) Matter, being the immediate unity of exist-
ence with itself, is also indifferent towards specific
character. Hence the numerous diverse matters coa-
lesce into the one Matter, or into existence under the
reflective characteristic of identit3^ In contrast to this
one Matter these distinct properties and their external
relation which they have to one another in the thing,
constitute the Form, — the reflective category of differ-
ence, but a difference which exists and is a totality.
This one featureless Matter is also the same as the
Thing-by-itself was : only the latter is intrinsically quite
abstract, while the former essentially implies relation to
something else, and in the first place to the Form.
The various matters of which the thing consists are
potentially the same as one another. Thus we get one
Matter in general to which the difference is expressly
attached externally and as a bare form. This theory which
holds things all round to have one and the same matter at
bottom, and merely to differ externally in respect of form,
is much in vogue with the reflective understanding. Matter
in that case counts for naturally indeterminate, but susceptible
of any determination; while at the same time it is perfectly
permanent, and continues the same amid all change and
alteration. And in finite things at least this disregard of
matter for any determinate form is certainly exhibited. For
example, it matters not to a block of marble, whether it
receive the form of this or that statue or even the form of a
pillar. Be it noted however that a block of marble can disre-
gard form only relatively, that is, in reference to the sculptor:
it is by no means purely formless. And so the minera-
logist considers the relatively formless marble as a special
formation of rock, differing from other equally special form-
ations, such as sandstone or porphyry. Therefore we say it
is an abstraction of the understanding which isolates matter
into a certain natural formlessness. For properly speaking
the thought of matter includes the principle of form through-
out, and no formless matter therefore appears anywhere
1 28-130.] MATTER AND FORM. 237
even in experience as existing. Still the conception of matter
as original and pre-existent, and as naturally formless, is a
very ancient one ; it meets us even among the Greeks, at
first in the mythical shape of Chaos, which is supposed to
represent the unformed substratum of the existing world.
Such a conception must of necessity tend to make God not
the Creator of the world, but a mere world-moulder or
demiurge. A deeper insight into nature reveals God as
creating the world out of nothing. And that teaches two
things. On the one hand it enunciates that matter, as such,
has no independent subsistence, and on the other that the
form does not supervene upon matter from without, but as a
totality involves the principle of matter in itself. This free
and infinite form will hereafter come before us as the
notion.
129.] Thus the Thing suffers a disruption into Matter
and Form. Each of these is the totahty of thinghood
and subsists for itself. But Matter, which is meant to
be the positive and indeterminate existence, contains,
as an existence, reflection-on-another, every whit as
much as it contains self-enclosed being. Accordingly
as uniting these characteristics, it is itself the totality
of Form. But Form, being a complete whole of char-
acteristics, ipso facto involves reflection-into-self; in
other words, as self-relating Form it has the very
function attributed to Matter. Both are at bottom the
same. Invest them with this unit}', and you have the
relatiori of Matter and Form, which are also no less
distinct.
130.] The Thing, being this totality, is a contradiction.
On the side of its negative unity it is Form in which
Matter is determined and deposed to the rank of pro-
perties (§ 125). At the same time it consists of Matters,
which in the reflection-of-the-thing-into-itself are as much
independent as they are at the same time negatived.
Thus the thing is the essential existence, in such a way
238 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [130.
as to be an existence that suspends or absorbs itself in
itself. In other words, the thing is an Appearance or
Phenomenon.
The negation of the several matters, which is insisted
on in the thing no less than their independent existence,
occurs in Physics as porosity. Each of the several mat-
ters (colouring matter, odorific matter, and if we believe
some people, even sound-matter, — not excluding caloric,
electric matter, &c;) is also negated : and in this nega-
tion of theirs, or as interpenetrating their pores, we find
the numerous other independent matters, which, being
similarly porous, make room in turn for the existence
of the rest. Pores are not empirical facts ; they are
figments of the understanding, which uses them to re-
present the element of negation in independent matters.
The further working-out of the contradictions is con-
cealed by the nebulous imbroglio in which all matters
are independent and all no less negated in each other.
— If the faculties or activities are similarly hypostatised
in the mind, their living unity similarly turns to the
imbroglio of an action of the one on the others.
These pores (meaning thereby not the pores in an
organic body, such as the pores of wood or of the skin,
but those in the so-called 'matters,' such as colouring
matter, caloric, or metals, crystals, &c.) cannot be veri-
fied by observation. In the same way matter itself, —
furthermore form which is separated from matter, —
whether that be the thing as consisting of matters, or the
view that the thing itself subsists and only has proper
ties, — is all a product of the reflective understanding
which, while it observes and professes to record only
what it observes, is rather creating a metaphysic, brist-
ling with contradictions of which it is unconscious.
131.] APPEARANCE. 239
B. —Appearance.
131.] The Essence must appear or shine forth. Its
shining or reflection in it is the suspension and trans-
lation of it to immediacy, which, whilst as reflection-
on-self it is matter or subsistence, is also form, reflec-
tion-on-something-else, a subsistence which sets itself
aside. To show or shine is the characteristic by which
essence is distinguished from being, — by which it is
essence ; and it is this show which, when it is developed,
shows itself, and is Appearance. Essence accord-
ingly is not something beyond or behind appearance,
but just because it is the essence which exists — the
existence is Appearance (Forth-shining).
Existence stated explicitly in its contradiction is Appear-
ance. But appearance (forth-shining) is not to be confused
with a mere show (shining). Show is the proximate truth
of Being or immediacy. The immediate, instead of being,
as we suppose, something independent, resting on its
own self, is a mere show, and as such it is packed or
summed up under the simplicity of the immanent essence.
The essence is, in the first place, the sum total of the show-
ing itself, shining in itself (inwardly) ; but, far from abiding
in this inwardness, it comes as a ground forward into
existence; and this existence being grounded not in itself,
but on something else, is just appearance. In our imagination
we ordinarily combine with the term appearance or pheno-
menon the conception of an indefinite congeries of things
existing, the being of which is purely relative, and which
consequently do not rest on a foundation of their own, but
are esteemed only as passing stages. But in this conception
it is no less implied that essence does not linger behind or
beyond appearance. Rather it is, we may say, the infinite
kindness which lets its own show freely issue into immediacy,
and graciously allows it the joy of existence. The appear-
ance which is thus created does not stand on its own feet,
and has its being not in itself but in something else. God
24.0 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [isr.
who is the essence, when He lends existence to the passing
stages of His own show in Himself, may be described as the
goodness that creates a world ; but He is also the power
above it, and the righteousness, which manifests the merely
phenomenal character of the content of this existing world,
whenever it tries to exist in independence.
Appearance is in every way a very important grade of the
logical idea. It may be said to be the distinction of philo-
sophy from ordinary consciousness that it sees the merely
phenomenal character of what the latter supposes to have a
self-subsistent being. The significance of appearance how-
ever must be properly grasped, or mistakes will arise. To
say that anything is a mere appearance may be misinterpreted
to mean that, as compared with what is merely phenomenal,
there is greater truth in the immediate, in that which is.
Now in strict fact, the case is precisely the reverse. Appear-
ance is higher than mere Being, — a richer category because
it holds in combination the two elements of reflection-into-
self and reflection-into-another : whereas Being (or imme-
diacy)is still mere relationlessness,and apparently rests upon
itself alone. Still, to say that anything is only an appearance
suggests a real flaw, which consists in this, that Appearance
is still divided against itself and without intrinsic stability.
Beyond and above mere appearance comes in the first place
Actuality, the third grade of Essence, of which we shall
afterwards speak.
In the history of Modern Philosophy, Kant has the merit
of first rehabilitating this distinction between the common
and the philosophic modes of thought. He stopped half-way
however, when he attached to Appearance a subjective
meaning only, and put the abstract essence immovable out-
side it as the thing-in-itself beyond the reach of our cogni-
tion. For it is the very nature of the world of immediate
objects to be appearance only. Knowing it to be so, we
know at the same time the essence, which, far from staying
behind or beyond the appearance, rather manifests its own
essentiality by deposing the world to a mere appearance.
One can hardly quarrel with the plain man who, in his
desire for totality, cannot acquiesce in the doctrine of sub-
131-133.] THE PHENOMENAL WORLD. 241
jective idealism, that we are solely concerned with pheno-
mena. The plain man, however, in his desire to save the
objectivity of knowledge, may very naturally return to
abstract immediacy, and maintain that immediacy to be true
and actual. In a little work published under the title, 'A
Report, clear as day, to the larger Public touching the proper
nature of the Latest Philosophy : an Attempt to force the reader
to understand,' Fichte examined the opposition between
subjective idealism and immediate consciousness in a popular
form, under the shape of a dialogue between the author and
the reader, and tried hard to prove that the subjective
idealist's point of view was right. In this dialogue the
reader complains to the author that he has completely failed
to place himself in the idealist's position, and is inconsolable
at the thought that things around him are no real things but
mere appearances. The affliction of the reader can scarcely
be blamed when he is expected to consider himself hemmed
in by an impervious circle of purely subjective conceptions.
Apart from this subjective view of Appearance, however, we
have all reason to rejoice that the things which environ us
are appearances and not steadfast and independent existences ;
since in that case we should soon perish of hunger, both
bodily and mental.
(a) The World of Appearance.
132.] The Apparent or Phenomenal exists in such a
way, that its subsistence is ipso facto thrown into abey-
ance or suspended and is only one stage in the form
itself. The form embraces in it the matter or subsist-
ence as one of its characteristics. In this way the phe-
nomenal has its ground in this (form) as its essence, its
reflection-into-self in contrast with its immediacy, but,
in so doing, has it only in another aspect of the form.
This ground of its is no less phenomenal than itself, and
the phenomenon accordingly goes on to an endless me-
diation of subsistence by means of form, and thus equally
by non-subsistence. This endless inter-mediation is at
VOL. II. R
242 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [132-133-
the same time a unity of self-relation ; and existence is
developed into a totality, into a world of phenomena, —
of reflected finitude,
{b) Content and Form.
133.] Outside one another as the phenomena in this
phenomenal world are, they form a totality, and are
wholly contained in their self-relatedness. In this way
the self-relation of the phenomenon is completely speci-
fied, it has the Form in itself: and because it is in this
identity, has it as essential subsistence. So it comes
about that the form is Content : and in its mature phase
is the Law of the Phenomenon. When the form, on
the contrary, is not reflected into self, it is equivalent
to the negative of the phenomenon, to the non-inde-
pendent and changeable : and that sort of form is the
indifferent or External Form.
The essential point to keep in mind about the oppo-
sition of Form and Content is that the content is not
formless, but has the form in its own self, quite as much
as the form is external to it. There is thus a doubling of
form. At one time it is reflected into itself; and then
is identical with the content. At another time it is not
reflected into itself, and then is the external existence,
which does not at all affect the content. We are here
in presence, implicitly, of the absolute correlation of
content and form : viz. their reciprocal revulsion, so that
content is nothing but the revulsion of form into con-
tent, and form nothing but the revulsion of content into
form. This mutual revulsion is one of the most impor-
tant laws of thought. But it is not explicitly brought
out before the Relations of Substance and Causality.
Form and content are a pair of terms frequently employed
by the reflective understanding, especially with a habit of
looking on the content as the essential and independent, the
133-] CONTENT AND FORM. 243
form on the contrary as the unessential and dependent.
Against this it is to be noted that both are in fact equally
essential ; and that, while a formless content can be as little
found as a formless matter, the two (content and matter)
are distinguished by this circumstance, that matter, though
implicitly not without form, still in its existence manifests a
disregard of form, whereas the content, as such, is what it is
only because the matured form is included in it. Still the
form comes before us sometimes as an existence indifferent
and external to content, and does so for the reason that the
whole range of Appearance still suffers from externality.
In a book, for instance, it certainly has no bearing upon the
content, whether it be written or printed, bound in paper or
in leather. That however does not in the least imply that
apart from such an indifferent and external form, the content
of the book is itself formless. There are undoubtedly books
enough which even in reference to their content may well be
styled formless : but want of form in this case is the same as
bad form, and means the defect of the right form, not the
absence of all form whatever. So far is this right form from
being unaffected by the content that it is rather the content
itself A work of art that wants the right form is for that
very reason no right or true work of art : and it is a bad way
of excusing an artist, to say that the content of his works is
good and even excellent, though they want the right form.
Real works of art are those where content and form exhibit
a thorough identity. The content of the Iliad, it may be
said, is the Trojan war, and especially the wrath of Achilles.
In that we have everything, and yet very little after all ; for
the Iliad is made an Iliad by the poetic form, in which that
content is moulded. The content of Romeo and Juliet may
similarly be said to be the ruin of two lovers through the
discord between their families : but something more is
needed to make Shakespeare's immortal tragedy.
In reference to the relation of form and content in the
field of science, we should recollect the difference between
philosophy and the rest of the sciences. The latter are finite,
because their mode of thought, as a merely formal act, de-
rives its content from without. Their content therefore is
244 7-//^ DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. '133-134.
not known as moulded from within through the thoughts
which he at the ground of it, and form and content do not
thoroughly interpenetrate each other. Thxs partition dis-
appears in philosophy, and thus justifies its title of infinite
knowledge. Yet even philosophic thought is often held to
be a merely formal act ; and that logic, which confessedly
deals only with thoughts qua thoughts, is merely formal, is
especially a foregone conclusion. And if content means no
more than what is palpable and obvious to the senses, all
philosophy and logic in particular must be at once acknow-
ledged to be void of content, that is to say, of content per-
ceptible to the senses. Even ordinary forms of thought
however, and the common usage of language, do not in the
least restrict the appellation of content to what is perceived
by the senses, or to what has a being in place and time. A
book without content is, as every one knows, not a book
with empty leaves, but one of which the content is as good
as none. We shall find as the last result on closer analysis,
that by what is called content an educated mind means no-
thing but the presence and power of thought. But this is to
admit that thoughts are not empt}^ forms without affinity to
their content, and that in other spheres as well as in art the
truth and the sterling value of the content essentially depend
on the content showing itself identical with the form.
134.] But immediate existence is a character of the
subsistence itself as well as of the form : it is conse-
quently external to the character of the content ; but in
an equal degree this externality, which the content has
through the factor of its subsistence, is essential to it.
When thus explicitly stated, the phenomenon is rela-
tivity or correlation : where one and the same thing,
viz. the content or the developed form, is seen as the
externality and antithesis of independent existences,
and as their reduction to a relation of identity, in which
identification alone the two things distinguished are
what they are.
135-] CORRELATION. 245
[c) Relation or Correlation.
135.] (<i) The immediate relation is that of the "Whole
and the Parts. The content is the whole, and consists
of the parts (the form), its counterpart. The parts are
diverse one from another. It is they that possess in-
dependent being. But they are parts, only when they
are identified by being related to one another ; or, in so
far as they make up the whole, when taken together.
But this ' Together ' is the counterpart and negation of
the part.
Essential correlation is the specific and completely uni-
versal phase in which things appear. Everything that exists
stands in correlation, and this correlation is the veritable
nature of every existence. The existent thing in this way
has no being of its own, but only in something else : in this
other however it is self-relation ; and correlation is the unity
of the self- relation and relation-to-others.
The relation of the whole and the parts is untrue to this
extent, that the notion and the reahty of the relation are not
in harmony. The notion of the whole is to contain parts :
but if the whole is taken and made what its notion implies,
i.e. if it is divided, it at once ceases to be a whole. Things
there are, no doubt, which correspond to this relation : but
for that very reason they are low and untrue existences.
We must remember however what ' untrue ' signifies. When
it occurs in a philosophical discussion, the term 'untrue'
does not signify that the thing to which it is applied is
non-existent. A bad state or a sickly body may exist all
the same ; but these things are untrue, because their notion
and their reality are out of harmony.
The relation of whole and parts, being the immediate
relation, comes easy to reflective understanding; and for
that reason it often satisfies when the question really turns
on profounder ties. The limbs and organs, for instance, of
an organic body are not merely parts of it : it is only in
their unity that they are wliat they arc, and they arc un-
246 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [135-136.
questionably affected by that unity, as they also in turn affect
it. These limbs and organs become mere parts, only when
they pass under the hands of the anatomist, whose occupa-
tion, be it remembered, is not with the living body but with
the corpse. Not that such analysis is illegitimate : we only
mean that the external and mechanical relation of whole
and parts is not sufficient for us, if we want to study organic
life in its truth. And if this be so in organic life, it is the
case to a much greater extent when we apply this relation to
the mind and the formations of the spiritual world. Psycho-
logists may not expressly speak of parts of the soul or mind,
but the mode in which this subject is treated by the analytic
understanding is largely founded on the analogy of this
finite relation. At least that is so, when the different forms
of mental activity are enumerated and described merely in
their isolation one after another, as so-called special powers
and faculties.
136.] (3) The one-and-same of this correlation (the
self-relation found in it) is thus immediately a negative
self-relation. The correlation is in short the mediating
process whereby one and the same is first unaffected
towards difference, and secondly is the negative self-
relation, which repels itself as reflection-into-self to differ-
ence, and invests itself (as reflection-into-something-else)
with existence, whilst it conversely leads back this re-
flection-into-other to self-relation and indifference. This
gives the correlation of Force and its Expression.
The relationship of whole and part is the immediate
and therefore unintelligent (mechanical) relation, — a
revulsion of self-identity into mere variety. Thus we
pass from the whole to the parts, and from the parts
to the whole : in the one we forget its opposition to the
other, while each on its own account, at one time the
whole, at another the parts, is taken to be an indepen-
dent existence. In other words, when the parts are
declared to subsist in the whole, and the whole to con-
sist of the parts, we have either member of the relation
136.] FORCE. 247
at diflferent times taken to be permanently subsistent,
while the other is non-essential. In its superficial form
the mechanical nexus consists in the parts being inde-
pendent of each other and of the whole.
This relation may be adopted for the progression ad
infinitum, in the case of the divisibility of matter : and
then it becomes an unintelligent alternation with the
two sides. A thing at one time is taken as a whole :
then we go on to specify the parts : this specifying is
forgotten, and what was a part is regarded as a whole :
then the specifying of the part comes up again, and so
on for ever. But if this infinity be taken as the negative
which it is, it is the negative self-relating element in
the correlation, — Force, the self-identical whole, or im-
manency; which yet supersedes this immanency and
gives itself expression ; — and conversely the expression
which vanishes and returns into Force.
Force, notwithstanding this infinity, is also finite : for
the content, or the one and the same of the Force and
its out-putting, is this identity at first only for the ob-
server : the two sides of the relation are not yet, each
on its own account, the concrete identity of that one
and same, not yet the totality. For one another they
are therefore different, and the relationship is a finite
one. Force consequently requires solicitation from
without : it works blindly : and on account of this de-
fectiveness of form, the content is also limited and ac-
cidental. It is not yet genuinely identical with the
form : not yet is it as a notion and an end ; that is to say,
it is not intrinsically and actually determinate. This
difference is most vital, but not easy to apprehend : it will
assume a clearer formulation when we reach Design.
If it be overlooked, it leads to the confusion of con-
ceiving God as Force, a confusion from which Herder's
God especially suffers.
248 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [136.
It is often said that the nature of Force itself is un-
known and only its manifestation apprehended. But,
in the first place, it may be replied, every article in the
import of Force is the same as what is specified in the
Exertion : and the explanation of a phenomenon by a
Force is to that extent a mere tautology. What is sup-
posed to remain unknown, therefore, is really nothing
but the empty form of reflection-into-self, by which alone
the Force is distinguished from the Exertion, — and that
form too is something familiar. It is a form that does
not make the slightest addition to the content and to
the law, which have to be discovered from the pheno-
menon alone. Another assurance always given is that
to speak of forces implies no theory as to their nature :
and that being so, it is impossible to see why the
form of Force has been introduced into the sciences
at all. In the second place the nature of Force is un-
doubtedly unknown : we are still without any necessity
binding and connecting its content together in itself,
as we are without necessity in the content, in so far as
it is expressly limited and hence has its character by
means of another thing outside it.
(i) Compared with the immediate relation of whole and
parts, the relation between force and its putting-forth may
be considered infinite. In it that identity of the two sides is
realised, which in the former relation only existed for the
observer. The whole, though we can see that it consists of
parts, ceases to be a whole when it is divided : whereas force
is only shown to be force when it exerts itself, and in its
exercise only comes back to itself. The exercise is only
force once more. Yet, on further examination even this
relation will appear finite, and finite in virtue of this me-
diation : just as, conversely, the relation of whole and parts
is obviously finite in virtue of its immediacy. The first
and simplest evidence for the finitude of the mediated re-
lation of force and its exercise is, that each and every force
136.] FORCE. 249
is conditioned and requires something else than itself for its
subsistence. For instance, a special vehicle of magnetic
force, as is well known, is iron, the other properties of which,
such as its colour, specific weight, or relation to acids, are
independent of this connexion with magnetism. The same
thing is seen in all other forces, which from one end to the
other are found to be conditioned and mediated by some-
thing else than themselves. Another proof of the finite
nature of force is that it requires solicitation before it can
put itself forth. That through which the force is solicited, is
itself another exertion of force, which cannot put itself forth
without similar solicitation. This brings us either to a
repetition of the infinite progression, or to a reciprocity of
soliciting and being solicited. In either case we have no
absolute beginning of motion. Force is not as yet, like the
final cause, inherently self-determining: the content is given
to it as determined, and force, when it exerts itself, is,
according to the phrase, blind in its working. That phrase
implies the distinction between abstract force-manifestation
and teleological action.
(2) The oft-repeated statement, that the exercise of the
force and not the force itself admits of being known, must be
rejected as groundless. It is the very essence of force to
manifest itself, and thus in the totality of manifestation, con-
ceived as a law, we at the same time discover the force itself.
And yet this assertion that force in its own self is unknow-
able betrays a well-grounded presentiment that this relation
is finite. The several manifestations of a force at first meet
us in indefinite multiplicity, and in their isolation seem acci-
dental : but, reducing this multiplicity to its inner unity,
which we term force, we see that the apparentl}- contingent is
necessar}', by recognising the law that rules it. But the dif-
ferent forces themselves are a multiplicity again, and in their
mere juxtaposition seem to be contingent. Hence in em-
pirical physics, we speak of the forces of gravity, magnetism,
electricity, &c., and in empirical psychology of the forces
of memory, imagination, will, and all the other faculties.
All this multiplicity again excites a craving to know these
different forces as a single whole, nor would this craving be
250 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [136.
appeased even if the several forces were traced back to
one common primary force. Such a primary force would
be really no more than an empty abstraction, with as little
content as the abstract thing-in-itself. And besides this,
the correlation of force and manifestation is essentially a
mediated correlation (of reciprocal dependence), and it must
therefore contradict the notion of force to view it as primary
or resting on itself.
Such being the case with the nature of force, though we
may consent to let the world be called a manifestation of
divine forces, we should object to have God Himself viewed
as a mere force. For force is after all a subordinate and
finite category. At the so-called renascence of the sciences,
when steps were taken to trace the single phenomena of
nature back to underlying forces, the Church branded the
enterprise as impious. The argument of the Church was as
follows. If it be the forces of gravitation, of vegetation, &c.
which occasion the movements of the heavenly bodies, the
growth of plants, &c., there is nothing left for divine pro-
vidence, and God sinks to the level of a leisurely onlooker,
surveying this play of forces. The students of nature, it is
true, and Newton more than others, when they employed
the reflective category of force to explain natural pheno-
mena, have expressly pleaded that the honour of God, as
the Creator and Governor of the world, would not thereby
be impaired. Still the logical issue of this explanation by
means of forces is that the inferential understanding pro-
ceeds to fix each of these forces, and to maintain them in
their finitude as ultimate. And contrasted with this de-
infinitised world of independent forces and matters, the only
terms in which it is possible still to describe God will pre-
sent Him in the abstract infinity of an unknowable supreme
Being in some other world far away. This is precisely the
position of materialism, and of modern ' free-thinking,'
whose theology ignores what God is and restricts itself to
the mere fact that He is. In this dispute therefore the
Church and the religious mind have to a certain extent the
right on their side. The finite forms of understanding
certainly fail to fulfil the conditions for a knowledge either
136-I37-] FORCE. 251
of Nature or of the formations in the world of Mind as they
truly are. Yet on the other side it is impossible to overlook
the formal right which, in the first place, entitles the empi-
rical sciences to vindicate the right of thought to know the
existent world in all the speciality of its content, and to seek
something further than the bare statement of mere abstract
faith that God creates and governs the world. When our
religious consciousness, resting upon the authority of the
Church, teaches us that God created the world by His
almighty will, that He guides the stars in their courses, and
vouchsafes to all His creatures their existence and their well-
being, the question Why ? is still left to answer. Now it is
the answer to this question which forms the common task of
empirical science and of philosophy. When religion refuses
to recognise this problem, or the right to put it, and appeals
to the unsearchableness of the decrees of God, it is taking
up the same agnostic ground as is taken by the mere En-
lightenment of understanding. Such an appeal is no better
than an arbitrary dogmatism, which contravenes the express
command of Christianity, to know God in spirit and in truth,
and is prompted by a humility which is not Christian, but
born of ostentatious bigotry.
137.J Force is a whole, which is in its own self nega-
tive self-relation ; and as such a whole it continually
pushes itself off from itself and puts itself forth. But
since this reflection-into-another (corresponding to the
distinction between the Parts of the Whole) is equally
a reflection-into-self, this out-putting is the way and
means by which Force that returns back into itself is
as a Force. The very act of out-putting accordingly
sets in abeyance the diversity of the two sides which
is found in this correlation, and expressly states the
identity which virtually constitutes their content. The
truth of Force and utterance therefore is that relation,
in which the two sides are distinguished only as Outward
and Inward.
252 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [138-140.
138.] (y) The Inward (Interior) is the ground, when
it stands as the mere form of the one side of the Ap-
pearance and the Correlation, — the empty form of re-
flection-into-self. As a counterpart to it stands the
Outward. (Exterior), — Existence, also as the form of
the other side of the correlation, with the empty char-
acteristic of reflection-into-something-else. But Inward
and Outward are identified : and their identity is iden-
tity brought to fulness in the content, that unity of
reflection-into-self and reflection-into-other which was
forced to appear in the movement of force. Both are
the same one totality, and this unity makes them the
content.
139.] In the first place then. Exterior is the same
content as Interior. What is inwardly is also found
outwardly, and vice versa. The appearance shows no-
thing that is not in the essence, and in the essence there
is nothing but what is manifested.
140.] In the second place, Inward and Outward, as
formal terms, are also reciprocally opposed, and that
thoroughly. The one is the abstraction of identity with
self; the other, of mere multiplicity or reality. But as
stages of the one form, they are essentially identical :
so that whatever is at first explicitly put only in the
one abstraction, is also as plainly and at one step only
in the other. Therefore what is only internal is also
only external : and what is only external, is so far only
at first internal.
It is the customary mistake of reflection to take the
essence to be merely the interior. If it be so taken,
even this way of looking at it is purely external, and that
sort of essence is the empty external abstraction.
3nS 3iuiere bcr 5)latur
JDringt tein eifc^affner ©eifi,
MO.] INWARD AND OUTWARD. 253
3" gliicflicfj irenn cr mtr
3)ie aut'?cre @ci>aale ivei)!.'
It ought rather to have been said that, if the essence
of nature is ever described as the inner part, the person
who so describes it only knows its outer shell. In
Being as a whole, or even in mere sense-perception,
the notion is at first only an inward, and for that very
reason is something external to Being, a subjective
thinking and being, devoid of truth.— In Nature as well
as in Mind, so long as the notion, design, or law are at
first the inner capacity, mere possibilities, they are first
only an external, inorganic nature, the knowledge of a
third person, alien force, and the like. As a man is
outwardly, that is to say in his actions (not of course in
his merely bodily outwardness), so is he inwardly: and
if his virtue, morality, &.c. are only inwardly his, — that
is if they exist only in his intentions and sentiments,
and his outward acts are not identical with them, the
one half of him is as hollow and empty as the other.
The relation of Outward and Inward unites the two rela-
tions that precede, and at the same time sets in abeyance
mere relativity and phenomenalit}'^ in general. Yet so long
as understanding keeps the Inward and Outward fixed in
their separation, they are empty forms, the one as null as
the other. Not only in the study of nature, but also of the
spiritual world, much depends on a just appreciation of the
relation of inward and outward, and especially on avoiding
the misconception that the former only is the essential point
on which everything turns, while the latter is unessential
and trivial. We find this mistake made when, as is often
done, the difference between nature and mind is traced back
' Compare Goethe's indignant outcry — 'To Natural Science,'
vol. i. pt. 3 :
2)a3 ^cr' xi) fecf^ig 3at)re h?icber^oIen,
Unt) flu^e brauf, aber Oftflc^Ien, —
Dhtur ^at h)cbcr ^ern nc^ Sc^aate,
51 Hf^ ifl fte mit einftn ^o.U.
254 T-Z/E DOCTRIN£^ OF ESSENCE. [140.
to the abstract difference between inner and outer. As for
nature, it certainly is in the gross external, not merely to
the mind, but even on its own part. But to call it external
'in the gross' is not to imply an abstract externality— for
there is no such thing. It means rather that the Idea which
forms the common content of nature and mind, is found in
nature as outward only, and for that very reason only in-
ward. The abstract understanding, with its * Either — or,'
may struggle against this conception of nature. It is none
the less obviously found in our other modes of consciousness,
particularly in religion. It is the lesson of religion that
nature, no less than the spiritual world, is a revelation of
God : but with this distinction, that while nature never gets
so far as to be conscious of its divine essence, that conscious-
ness is the express problem of the mind, which in the matter
of that problem is as yet finite. Those who look upon the
essence of nature as mere inwardness, and therefore inacces-
sible to us, take up the same line as that ancient creed which
regarded God as envious and jealous ; a creed which both
Plato and Aristotle pronounced against long ago. All that
God is. He imparts and reveals ; and He does so, at first, in
and through nature.
Any object indeed is faulty and imperfect when it is only
inward, and thus at the same time only outward, or, (which
is the same thing,) when it is only an outward and thus only
an inward. For instance, a child, taken in the gross as
human being, is no doubt a rational creature ; but the reason
of the child as child is at first a mere inward, in the shape of
his natural ability or vocation, &c. This mere inward, at the
same time, has for the child the form of a more outward, in
the shape of the will of his parents, the attainments of his
teachers, and the whole world of reason that environs him.
The education and instruction of a child aim at making him
actually and for himself what he is at first potentially and
therefore for others, viz. for his grown-up friends. The
reason, which at first exists in the child only as an inner
possibility, is actualised through education : and conversely,
the child by these means becomes conscious that the good-
ness, religion, and science which he had at first looked upon
1
140.] INWARD AND OUTWARD. 255
as an outward authority, are his own and inward nature.
As with the child so it is in this matter with the adult, when,
in opposition to his true destiny, his intellect and will remain
in the bondage of the natural man. Thus, the criminal sees
the punishment to which he has to submit as an act of
violence from without : whereas in fact the penalty is only
the manifestation of his own criminal will.
From what has now been said, we may learn what to
think of a man who, when blamed for his shortcomings,
it may be, his discreditable acts, appeals to the (professedly)
excellent intentions and sentiments of the inner self he dis-
tinguishes therefrom. There certainly may be individual
cases, where the malice of outward circumstances frustrates
well-meant designs, and disturbs the execution of the best-
laid plans. But in general even here the essential unity be-
tween inward and outward is maintained. We are thus
justified in saying that a man is what he does ; and the
lying vanity which consoles itself with the feeling of inward
excellence, may be confronted with the words of the gospel :
' By their fruits ye shall know them.' That grand saying
applies primarily in a moral and religious aspect, but it also
holds good in reference to performances in art and science..
The keen eye of a teacher who perceives in his pupil
decided evidences of talent, may lead him to state his opinion
that a Raphael or a Mozart lies hidden in the boy : and the
result will show how far such an opinion was well-founded.
But if a daub of a painter, or a poetaster, soothe themselves
by the conceit that their head is full of high ideals, their
consolation is a poor one ; and if they insist on being judged
not by their actual works but by their projects, we may
safely reject their pretensions as unfounded and unmeaning.
The converse case however also occurs. In passing judg-
ment on men who have accomplished something great and
good, we often make use of the false distinction between
inward and outward. All that they have accomplished, we
say, is outward -merely ; inwardly they were acting from
some very different motive, such as a desire to gratify their
vanity or other unworthy passion. This is the spirit of
envy. Incapable of any great action of its own, envy tries
256 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [140.
hard to depreciate greatness and to bring it down to its own
level. Let us, rather, recall the fine expression of Goethe,
that there is no remedy but Love against great superiorities
of others. We may seek to rob men's great actions of their
grandeur, by the insinuation of hypocrisy ; but, though it is
possible that men in an instance now and then may dis-
semble and disguise a good deal, they cannot conceal the
whole of their inner self, which infallibly betrays itself in
the decursHS vitae. Even here it is true that a man is nothing
but the series of his actions.
What is called the ' pragmatic ' writing of history has in
modern times frequently sinned in its treatment of great
historical characters, and defaced and tarnished the true con-
ception of them by this fallacious separation of the outward
from the inward. Not content with telling the unvarnished
tale of the great acts which have been wrought by the
heroes of the world's history, and with acknowledging that
their inward being corresponds with the import of their
acts, the pragmatic historian fancies himself justified and
even obliged to trace the supposed secret motives that lie
behind the open facts of the record. The historian, in that
case, is supposed to write with more depth in proportion as
he succeeds in tearing away the aureole from all that has
been heretofore held grand and glorious, and in depressing
it, so far as its origin and proper significance are concerned,
to the level of vulgar mediocrity. To make these prag-
matical researches in history easier, it is usual to recom-
mend the study of psychology, which is supposed to make
us acquainted with the real motives of human actions. The
psychology in question however is only that petty know-
ledge of men, which looks away from the essential and
permanent in human nature to fasten its glance on the
casual and private features shown in isolated instincts and
passions. A pragmatical psychology ought at least to leave
the historian, who investigates the motives at the ground of
great actions, a choice between the ' substantial ' interests of
patriotism, justice, religious truth and the like, on the one
hand, and the subjective and ' formal ' interests of vanity,
ambition, avarice and the like, on the other. The latter
140-142.] ACTUALITY. 257
however are the motives which must be viewed by the
pragmatist as really efficient, otherwise the assumption of a
contrast between the inward (the disposition of the agent)
and the outward (the import of the action) would fall to the
ground. But inward and outward have in truth the same
content ; and the right doctrine is the very reverse of this
pedantic judiciality. If the heroes of history had been ac-
tuated by subjective and formal interests alone, they would
never have accomplished what they have. And if we have
due regard to the unity between the inner and the outer, we
must own that great men willed what they did, and did what
they willed.
141.] The empty abstractions, by means of which the
one identical content perforce continues in the two cor-
relatives, suspend themselves in the immediate transi-
tion, the one in the other. The content is itself nothing
but their identity (§ 138) : and these abstractions are
the seeming of essence, put as seeming. By the mani-
festation of force the inward is put into existence : but
this putting is the mediation by empty abstractions. In
its own self the intermediating process vanishes to the
immediacy, in which the inward and the outward are
absolutely identical and their difference is distinctly no
more than assumed and imposed. This identity is Ac-
tuality.
C— Actuality.
142.] Actuality is the unity, become immediate, of
essence with existence, or of inward with outward.
The utterance of the actual is the actual itself: so that
in this utterance it remains just as essential, and only
is essential, in so far as it is in immediate external
existence.
We have ere this met Being and Existence as forms
of the immediate. Being is, in general, unreflected im-
mediacy and transition into another. Existence is im-
mediate unity of being and reflection ; hence appearance :
VOL 11. s
258 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [142.
it comes from the ground, and falls to the ground. In
actuality this unity is explicitly put, and the two sides
of the relation identified. Hence the actual is exempted
from transition, and its externality is its energising.
In that energising it is reflected into itself: its exist-
ence is only the manifestation of itself, not of an other.
Actuality and thought (or Idea) are often absurdly opposed.
How commonly we hear people saying that, though no
objection can be urged against the truth and correctness of
a certain thought, there is nothing of the kind to be seen
in actuality, or it cannot be actually carried out! People
who use such language only prove that they have not pro-
perly apprehended the nature either of thought or of actu-
ality. Thought in such a case is, on one hand, the synonym
for a subjective conception, plan, intention or the like, just as
actuality, on the other, is made synonymous with external
and sensible existence. This is all very well in common
life, where great laxity is allowed in the categories and the
names given to them : and it may of course happen that
e.g. the plan, or so-called idea, say of a certain method of
taxation, is good and advisable in the abstract, but that no-
thing of the sort is found in so-called actuality, or could
possibly be carried out under the given conditions. But
when the abstract understanding gets hold of these cate-
gories and exaggerates the distinction they imply into a
hard and fast line of contrast, when it tells us that in this
actual world we must knock ideas out of our heads, it is
necessary energetically to protest against these doctrines,
alike in the name of science and of sound reason. For on
the one hand Ideas are not confined to our heads merely,
nor is the Idea, upon the whole, so feeble as to leave the
question of its actuaUsation or non-actualisation dependent
on our will. The Idea is rather the absolutely active as well
as actual. And on the other hand actuality is not so bad and
irrational, as purblind or wrong-headed and muddle-brained
would-be reformers imagine. So far is actuality, as dis-
tinguished from mere appearance, and primarily present-
ing a unity of inward and outward, from being in contrariety
142-143] ACTUALITY. 259
with reason, that it is rather thoroughly reas6nable, and
everything which is not reasonable must on that very ground
cease to be held actual. The same view may be traced in
the usages of educated speech, which declines to give the
name of real poet or real statesman to a poet or a statesman
who can do nothing really meritorious or reasonable.
In that vulgar conception of actuality which mistakes for
it what is palpable and directly obvious to the senses, we
must seek the ground of a wide-spread prejudice about the
relation of the philosophy of Aristotle to that of Plato.
Popular opinion makes the difference to be as follows.
While Plato recognises the idea and only the idea as the
truth, Aristotle, rejecting the idea, keeps to what is actual,
and is on that account to be considered the founder and
chief of empiricism. On this it may be remarked : that
although actuality certainly is the principle of the Aristotelian
philosophy, it is not the vulgar actuality of what is imme-
diately at hand, but the idea as actuality. Where then lies
the controversy of Aristotle against Plato ? It lies in this.
Aristotle calls the Platonic idea a mere hvvafu^, and estab-
lishes in opposition to Plato that the idea, which both
equally recognise to be the only truth, is essentially to be
viewed as an tvipyeia, in other words, as the inward which
is quite to the fore, or as the unity of inner and outer, or as
actuality, in the emphatic sense here given to the word.
143.] Such a concrete category as Actuality includes
the characteristics aforesaid and their difference, and
is therefore also the development of them, in such a
way that, as it has them, they are at the same time
plainly understood to be a show, to be assumed or im-
posed (§ 141).
(a) Viewed as an identity in general, Actuality is first
of all Possibility — the reflection-into-self which, as in
contrast with the concrete unity of the actual, is taken
and made an abstract and unessential essentiality.
Possibility is what is essential to reality, but in such a
way that it is at the same time only a possibility.
26o THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [143.
It was probably the import of Possibility which in-
duced Kant to regard it along with necessity and ac-
tuality as Modalities, 'since these categories do riot in
the least increase the notion as object, but only express
its relation to the faculty of knowledge.' For Possi-
bility is really the bare abstraction of reflection-into-self,
— what was formerly called the Inward, only that it is
now taken to mean the external inward, lifted out of
reality and with the being of a mere supposition, and
is thus, sure enough, supposed only as a bare modality,
an abstraction which comes short, and, in more con-
crete terms, belongs only to subjective thought. It
is otherwise with Actuality and Necessity. They are
anything but a mere sort and mode for something else :
in fact the very reverse of that. If they are supposed,
it is as the concrete, not merely supposititious, but intrin-
sically complete.
As Possibility is, in the first instance, the mere form
of identity-with-self (as compared with the concrete
which is actual), the rule for it merely is that a thing
must not be self-contradictory. Thus everything is
possible; for an act of abstraction can give any content
this form of identity. Everything however is as impos-
sible as it is possible. In every content, — which is and
must be concrete, — the speciality of its nature may be
viewed as a specialised contrariety and in that way as a
contradiction. Nothing therefore can be more mean-
ingless than to speak of such possibility and impossi-
bility. In philosophy, in particular, there should never
be a word said of showing that ' It is possible,' or * There
is still another possibility,' or, to adopt another phrase-
ology, ' It is conceivable.' The same consideration
should warn the writer of history against employing a
category which has now been explained to be on its
own merits untrue : but the subtlety of the empty un-
1 43-] POSSIBILITY. 26 1
derstanding finds its chief pleasure in the fantastic inge-
nuity of suggesting possibih'ties and lots of possibilities.
Our picture-thought is at first disposed to see in possi-
bihty the richer and more comprehensive, in actuality the
poorer and narrower category. Everything, it is said, is
possible, but everything which is possible is not on that
account actual. In real truth, however, if we deal with
them as thoughts, actuality is the more comprehensive,
because it is the concrete thought which includes possibility
as an abstract element. And that superiority is to some
extent expressed in our ordinary mode of thought when we
speak of the possible, in distinction from the actual, as only
possible. Possibility is often said to consist in a thing's
being thinkable. ' Think,' however, in this use of the word,
only means to conceive any content under the form of an
abstrac. identity. Now every content can be brought under
this form, since nothing is required except to separate it
from the relations in which it stands. Hence any content,
however absurd and nonsensical, can be viewed as possible.
It is possible that the moon might fall upon the earth to-
night ; for the moon is a body separate from the earth, -
and may as well fall down upon it as a stone thrown into
the air does. It is possible that the Sultan may becomt
Pope ; for, being a man, he may be converted to the Chris-
tian faith, may become a Catholic priest, and so on. In lan-
guage like this about possibilities, it is chiefly the law of the
sufficient ground or reason which is manipulated in the
style already explained. Everything, it is said, is possible,
for which you can state some ground. The less education a
man has, or, in other words, the less he knows of the specific
connexions of the objects to which he directs his observa-
tions, the greater is his tendency to launch out into all sorts
of empty possibilities. An instance of this habit in the
political sphere is seen in the pot-house politician. In prac-
tical life too it is no uncommon thing to see ill-will and
indolence slink behind the category of possibility, in order
to escape definite obligations. To such conduct the same
remarks apply as were made in connexion with the law
262 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [143-144-
of sufficient ground. Reasonable and practical men refuse
to be imposed upon by the possible, for the simple ground
that it is possible only. They stick to the actual (not mean-
ing by that word merely whatever immediately is now and
here). Many of the proverbs of common life express the
same contempt for what is abstractly possible. ' A bird in
the hand is worth two in the bush.'
After all there is as good reason for taking everything to
be impossible, as to be possible: for every content (a content
is always concrete) includes not only diverse but even oppo-
site characteristics. Nothing is so impossible, for instance,
as this, that I am : for ' I ' is at the same time simple self-
relation and, as undoubtedly, relation to something else.
The same may be seen in every other fact in the natural or
spiritual world. Matter, it may be said, is impossible : for it
is the unity of attraction and repulsion. The same is true of
life, law, freedom, and above all, of God Himself, as the true,
i. e. the triune God,— a notion of God, which the abstract
'Enlightenment' of Understanding, in conformity with its
canons, rejected on the allegation that it was contradictory in
thought. Generally speaking, it is the empty understanding
which haunts these empty forms : and the business of philo-
sophy in the matter is to show how null and meaningless
they are. Whether a thing is possible or impossible, de-
pends altogether on the subject-matter : that is, on the sum
total of the elements in actuality, which, as it opens itself
out, discloses itself to be necessity.
144.] (/3) But the Actual in its distinction from possi-
bility (which is reflection-into-self) is itself only the out-
ward concrete, the unessential immediate. In other
words, to such extent as the actual is primarily (§ 142)
the simple merely immediate unity of Inward and Out-
ward, it is obviously made an unessential outward, and
thus at the same time (^ 140) it is merely inward, the
abstraction of reflection-into-self. Hence it is itself
characterised as a merely possible. When thus valued
at the rate of a mere possibility, the actual is a Con-
144-145-] CONTINGENCY. 263
tingent or Accidental, and, conversely, possibility is
mere Accident itself or Chance.
145.] Possibility and Contingenc}^ are the two factors
of Actuality, — Inward and Outward, put as mere forms
which constitute the externality of the actual. They
have their reflection-into-self on the body of actual fact,
or content, with its intrinsic definiteness which gives
the essential ground of their characterisation. The
finitude of the contingent and -the possible lies, there-
fore, as we now see, in the distinction of the form-deter-
mination from the content : and, therefore, it depends
on the content alone whether anything is contingent
and possible.
As possibility is the mere inside of actuality, it is for that
reason a mere outside actuality, in other words, Contingency.
The contingent, roughly speaking, is what has the ground of
its being not in itself but in somewhat else. Such is the
aspect under which actuality first comes before conscious-
ness, and which is often mistaken for actuality itself. But the
contingent is only one side of the actual, — the side, namely,
of reflection on somewhat else. It is the actual, in the
signification of something merely possible. Accordingly w^e
consider the contingent to be what may or may not be,
what may be in one way or in another, whose being or
not-being, and whose being on this wise or otherwise,
depends not upon itself but on something else. To over-
come this contingency is, roughly speaking, the problem of
science on the one hand ; as in the range of practice, on the
other, the end of action is to rise above the contingency of
the will, or above caprice. It has however often happened,
most of all in modern times, that contingency has been un-
warrantably elevated, and had a value attached to it, both in
nature and the world of mind, to which it has no just claim.
Frequently Nature— to take it first,— has been chiefly admired
for the richness and variety of its structures. Apart, how-
ever, from what disclosure it contains of the Idea, this rich-
ness gratifies none of the higher interests of reason, and in
264 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [145-
its vast variety of structures, organic and inorganic, affords
us only the spectacle of a contingency losing itself in
vagueness. At anj'^ rate, the chequered scene presented by
the several varieties of anjmals and plants, conditioned as it
is by outward circumstances,— the complex changes in the
figuration and grouping of clouds, and the like, ought not to
be ranked higher than the equally casual fancies of the mind
which surrenders itself to its own caprices. The wonder-
ment with which such phenomena are welcomed is a most
abstract frame of mind, from which one should advance to a
closer insight into the innerharmonyand uniformity of nature.
Of contingency in respect of the Will it is especially im-
portant to form a proper estimate. The Freedom of the Will
is an expression that often means mere free-choice, or the
will in the form of contingency. Freedom of choice, or the
capacity of determining ourselves towards one thing or
another, is undoubtedly a vital element in the will (which in
its very notion is free) ; but instead of being freedom itself,
it is only in the first instance a freedom in form. The
genuinely free will, which includes free choice as sus-
pended, is conscious to itself that its content is intrinsically
firm and fast, and knows it at the same time to be thoroughly
its own. A will, on the contrary, which remains standing
on the grade of option, even supposing it does decide in
favour of what is in import right and true, is always haunted
by the conceit that it might, if it had so pleased, have decided
in favour of the reverse course. When more narrowly ex-
amined, free choice is seen to be a contradiction, to this
extent that its form and content stand in antithesis. The
matter of choice is given, and known as a content dependent
not on the will itself, but on outward circumstances. In
reference to such a given content, freedom lies only in the
form of choosing, which, as it is only a freedom in form, may
consequently be regarded as freedom only in supposition.
On an ultimate analysis it will be seen that the same out-
wardness of circumstances, on which is founded the content
that the will finds to its hand, can alone account for the will
giving its decision for the one and not the other of the two
alternatives.
145-146] CHANCE AND FREEWILL. 265
Although contingency, as it has thus been shown, is only
one aspect in the whole of actuality, and therefore not to be
mistaken for actuality itself, it has no less than the rest of
the forms of the idea its due office in the world of objects.
This is, in the first place, seen in Nature. On the surface of
Nature, so to speak, Chance ranges unchecked, and that
contingency must simply be recognised, without the pre-
tension sometimes erroneously ascribed to philosophy, of
seeking to find in it a could-only-be-so-and-not-otherwise.
Nor is contingency less visible in the world of Mind. The will,
as we have already remarked, includes contingency under
the shape of option or free-choice, but only as a vanishing and
abrogated element. In respect of Mind and its works, just
as in the case of Nature, we must guard against being so far
misled by a well-meant endeavour after rational knowledge,
as to try to exhibit the necessity of phenomena which are
marked by a decided contingency, or, as the phrase is, to
construe them a priori. Thus in language (although it be, as
it were, the body of thought) Chance still unquestionably
plays a decided part ; and the same is true of the creations
of law, of art, &c. The problem of science, and especially
of philosophy, undoubtedly consists in eliciting the necessity
concealed under the semblance of contingency. That how-
ever is far from meaning that the. contingent belongs to our
subjective conceptioa alone, and must therefore be simply
set aside, if we wish to get at the truth. All scientific re-
searches which pursue this tendency exclusively, lay them-
selves fairly open to the charge of mere jugglery and an
over-strained precisianism.
146.] When more closely examined, what the afore-
said outward side of actuality implies is this. Con-
tingency, which is actuality in its immediacy, is the
self-identical, essentially only as a supposition which
is no sooner made than it is revoked and leaves an
existent externality. In this way, the external con-
tingency is something pre-supposed, the immediate
existence of which is at the same time a possibility,
and has the vocation to be suspended, to be the pos-
266 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [146-147-
sibility of something else. Now this possibility is the
Condition.
The Contingent, as the immediate actuality, is at the same
time the possibility of somewhat else,— no longer however
that abstract possibility which we had at first, but the possi-
bility which is. And a possibility existent is a Condition.
By the Condition of a thing we mean first, an existence, in
short an immediate, and secondly the vocation of this im-
mediate to be suspended and subserve the actualising of
something else. — Immediate actuality is in general as such
never what it ought to be ; it is a finite actuality with an
inherent flaw, and its vocation is to be consumed. But the
other aspect of actuality is its essentiality. This is primarily
the inside, which as a mere possibility is no less destined to
be suspended. Possibility thus suspended is the issuing of
a new actuality, of which the first immediate actuality was
the pre-supposition. Here we see the alternation which is
involved in the notion of a Condition. The Conditions of a
thing seem at first sight to involve no bias any way. Really
however an immediate actuality of this kind includes in it
the germ of something else altogether. At first this some-
thing else is only a possibility : but the form of possibility is
soon suspended and translated into actuality. This new
actuality thus issuing is the very inside of the immediate
actuality which it uses up. Thus there comes into being
quite an other shape of things, and yet it is not an other: for
the first actuality is only put as what it in essence was. The
conditions which are sacrificed, which fall to the ground and
are. spent, only unite with themselves in the other actuality.
Such in general is the nature of the process of actuality.
The actual is no mere case of immediate Being, but, as
essential Being, a suspension of itj own immediacy, and
thereby mediating itself with itself
147.] (y) When this externality (of actuality) is thus
developed into a circle of the two categories of possi-
bility and immediate actuality, showing the intermedia-
tion of the one by the other, it is what is called Real
147-] NECESSITY. 267
Possibility. Being such a circle, further, it is the
totality, and thus the content, the actual fact or affair
in its all-round definiteness. Whilst in like manner, if
we look at the distinction between the two characteristics
in this unity, it realises the concrete totality of the form,
the immediate self-translation of inner into outer, and
of outer into inner. This self-movement of the form is
Activity, carrying into effect the fact or affair as a
real ground which is self-suspended to actuality, and
carrying into effect the contingent actuality, the condi-
tions; i.e. it is their reflection-in-self, and their self-
suspension to an other actuality, the actuality of the
actual fact. If all the conditions are at hand, the fact
(event) musi be actual ; and the fact itself is one of the
conditions : for being in the first place only inner, it is
at first itself only pre-supposed. Developed actuality,
as the coincident alternation of inner and outer, the
alternation of their opposite motions combined into a
single motion, is Necessity.
Necessity has been defined, and rightly so, as the
union of possibility and actuality. This mode of ex-
pression, however, gives a superficial and therefore
unintelligible description of the very difficult notion of
necessity. It is difficult because it is the notion itself,
only that its stages or factors are still as actualities,
which are yet at the same time to be viewed as forms
only, collapsing and transient. In the two following
paragraphs therefore an Exposition of the factors which
constitute necessity must be given at greater length.
When anything is said to be necessary, the first question'
we ask is. Why ? Anything necessary accordingly comes
before us as something due to a supposition, the result of
certain antecedents. If we go no further than mere deri-
vation from antecedents however, we have not gained a
complete notion of what necessity means. What is merely
268 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [147.
derivative, is what it is, not through itself, but through some-
thing else ; and in this way it too is merely contingent. What
is necessary, on the other hand, we would have be what it is
through itself; and thus, although derivative, it must still
contain the antecedent whence it is derived as a vanishing
element in itself Hence we say of what is necessary, ' It is.'
We thus hold it to be simple, self-relation, in which all de-
pendence on something else is removed.
Necessity is often said to be blind. If that means that in
the process of necessity the End or final cause is not explicitly
and overtly present, the statement is correct. The process
of necessity begins with the existence of scattered circum-
stances which appear to have no inter-connexion and no
concern one with another. These circumstances are an
immediate actuality which collapses, and out of this negation
a new actuality proceeds. Here we have a content which in
point of form is doubled, once as content of the final realised
fact, and once as content of the scattered circumstances
whi'.ii appear as if they were positive, and make themselves
at first felt in that character. The latter content is in itself
nought and is accordingly inverted into its negative, thus be-
coming content of the realised fact. The immediate circum-
stances fall to the ground as conditions, but are at the same
time retained as content of the ultimate reality. From such
circumstances and conditions there has, as we say, proceeded
quite another thing, and it is for that reason that we call this
process of necessity blind. If on the contrary we consider
teleological action, we have in the end of action a content
which is already fore-known. This activity therefore is not
bhnd but seeing. To say that the world is ruled by Pro-
vidence implies that design, as what has been absolutely
pre-determined, is the active principle, so that the issue
corresponds to what has been fore-known and fore-willed.
The theory however which regards the world as deter-
mined throagh necessity and the belief in a divine provi-
dence are by no means mutually excluding points of view.
The intellectual principle underlying the idea of divine
providence will hereafter be shown to be the notion. But
the notion is the truth of necessity, which it contains in sus-
147-] NECESSITY AND FROVIDENCE. 269
pension in itself; just as, conversely, necessity is the notion
implicit. Necessity is blind only so long as it is not under-
stood. There is nothing therefore more mistaken than the
charge of blind f^italism made against the Philosophy of
History, when it takes for its problem to understand the
necessity of every event. The philosophy of history rightly
understood takes the rank of a Theodicee ; and those, who
fancy they honour Divine Providence by excluding necessity
from it, are really degrading it by this exclusiveness to a blind
and irrational caprice. In the simple language of the religious
mind which speaks of God's eternal and immutable decrees,
there is implied an express recognition that necessity forms
part of the essence of God. In his difference from God, man,
with his own private opinion and will, follows the call of
caprice and arbitrary humour, and thus often finds his acts
turn out something quite different from what he had meant
and willed. But God knows what He wills, is determined in
His eternal will neither by accident from within nor from
without, and what He wills He also accomplishes, irresistibly.
Necessity gives a point of view which has important bear-
ings upon our sentiments and behaviour. When we look upon
events as necessary, our situation seems at first sight to lack
freedom completely. In the creed of the ancients, as we know,
necessity figured as Destiny. The modern point of view, on
the contrary, is that of Consolation. And Consolation means
that, if we renounce our aims and interests, we do so only in
prospect of receiving compensation. Destiny, on the contrary,
leaves no room for Consolation. But a close examination of
the ancient feeling about destiny, will not by any means
reveal a sense of bondage to its power. Rather the reverse.
This will clearly appear, if we remember, that the sense
of bondage springs from inability to surmount the antithesis,
and from looking at what is, and what happens, as contra-
dictory to what ought to be and happen. In the ancient mind
the feeling was more of the following kind : Because such a
thing is, it is, and as it is, so ought it to be. Here there is no
contrast to be seen, and therefore no sense of bondage, no
pain, and no sorrow. True, indeed, as already remarked, this
attitude towards destiny is voio of consolation. But then, on
270 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [147.
the other hand, it is a frame of mind which does not need
consolation, so long as personal subjectivity has not acquired
its infinite significance. It is this point on which special
stress should be laid in comparing the ancient sentiment with
that of the modern and Christian world.
By Subjectivity, however, we may understand, in the first
place, only the natural and finite subjectivity, with its con-
tingent and arbitrary content of private interests and in-
clinations,—all, in short, that we call person as distinguished
from thing : taking ' thing ' in the emphatic sense of the
word (in which we use the (correct) expression that it is a
question oi things and not oi persons). In this sense of sub-
jectivity we cannot help admiring the tranquil resignation of
the ancients to destiny, and feeling that it is a much higher
and worthier mood than that of the moderns, who obstinately
pursue their subjective aims, and when they find themselves
constrained to resign the hope of reaching them, console
themselves with the prospect of a reward in some other
shape. But the term subjectivity is not to be confined merely
to the bad and finite kind of it which is contrasted with the
thing (fact). In its truth subjectivity is immanent in the fact,
and as a subjectivity thus infinite is the very truth of the fact.
Thus regarded, the doctrine of consolation receives a newer
and a higher significance. It is in this sense that the
Christian religion is to be regarded as the religion of conso-
lation, and even of absolute consolation, Christianity, we
know, teaches that God wishes all men to be saved. That
teaching declares that subjectivity has an infinite value.
And that consoling power of Christianity just lies in the fact
that God Himself is in it known as the absolute subjectivity,
so that, inasmuch as subjectivity involves the element of
particularity, our particular personality too is recognised
not merely as something to be solely and simply nullified,
but as at the same time something to be preserved. The gods
of the ancient world were also, it is true, looked upon as
personal ; but the personality of a Zeus and an Apollo is
not a real personality : it is only a figure in the mind. In
other words, these gods are mere personifications, which,
being such, do not know themselves, and are only known.
147-148] THE CONSOLATIONS OF NECESSITY. 271
An evidence of this defect and this powcrlessness of the old
gods is found even in the rehgious beliefs of antiquity. In
the ancient creeds not only men, but even gods, were repre-
sented as subject to destiny (n-fTrpaj/xtVov or fifxnp^fvr]), a destiny
which we must conceive as necessity not unveiled, and thus
as something wholly impersonal, selfless, and bhnd. On the
other hand, the Christian God is God not known merely, but
also self-knowing ; He is a personality not merely figured in
our minds, but rather absolutely actual.
We must refer to the Philosophy of Religion for a further
discussion of the points here touched. But we may note in
passing how important it is for any man to meet everything
that befalls him with the spirit of the old proverb which de-
scribes each man as the architect of his own fortune. That
means that it is only himself after all of which a man has
the usufruct. The other way would be to lay the blame of
whatever we experience upon other men, upon unfavourable
circumstances, and the like. And this is a fresh example of
the language of unfreedom, and at the same time the spring
of discontent. If man saw, on the contrary, that whatever
happens to him is only the outcome of himself, and that he
only bears his own guilt, he would stand free, and in every-
thing that came upon him would have the consciousness
that he suffered no wrong. A man who lives in dispeace
with himself and his lot, commits much that is perverse and
amiss, for no other reason than because of the false opinion
that he is wronged by others. No doubt too there is a great
deal of chance in what befalls us. But the chance has its
root in the ' natural ' man. So long however as a man is
otherwise conscious that he is free, his harmony of soul and
peace of mind will not be destroyed by the disagreeables that
befall him. It is their view of necessity, therefore, which is
at the root of the content and discontent of men, and which
in that way determines their destiny itself.
148.] Among the three elements in the process of
necessity — the Condition, the Fact, and the Activity —
a. The Condition is {") what is pre-supposed or ante-
stated, i. e. it is not only supposed or stated, and so only
272 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [148.
a correlative to the fact, but also prior, and so inde-
pendent, a contingent and external circumstance which
exists without respect to the fact. While thus contin-
gent, however, this pre-supposed or ante-stated term,
in respect withal of the fact, which is the totality, is a
complete circle of conditions. (;3) The conditions are
passive, are used as materials for the fact, into the
content of which they thus enter. They are likewise
intrinsically conformable to this content, and already
contain its whole characteristic.
b. The Fact is also (a) something pre-supposed or
ante-stated, i.e. it is at first, and as supposed, only inner
and possible, and also, being prior, an independent con-
tent by itself. (/3) By using up the conditions, it receives
its external existence, the realisation of the articles of its
content, which reciprocally correspond to the conditions,,
so that whilst it presents itself out of these as the fact, it
also pioceeds from them.
c. The Activity similarly has (a) an independent
existence of its own (as a man, a character), and at the
same time it is possible only where the conditions are
and the fact. (^) It is the movement which translates
the conditions into fact, and the latter into the former
as the side of existence, or rather the movement which
educes the fact from the conditions in which it is poten-
tially present, and which gives existence to the fact by
abolishing the existence possessed by the conditions.
In so far as these three elements stand to each other
in the shape of independent existences, this process has
the aspect of an outward necessity. Outward necessity
has a limited content for its fact. For the fact is this
whole, in phase of singleness. But since in its form
this whole is external to itself, it is self-externalised
even in its own self and in its content, and this exter-
nality, attaching to the fact, is a limit of its content.
I49-I50-] SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENTS. 273
149.] Necessity, then, is potentially the one essence,
self-same but now full of content, in the reflected light
of which its distinctions take the form of independent
realities. This self-sameness is at the same time, as
absolute form, the activity which reduces into depen-
dency and mediates into immediacy. — Whatever is
necessary is through an other, which is broken up into
the mediating ground (the Fact and the Activity) and
an immediate actuality or accidental circumstance, which
is at the same time a Condition. The necessary, being
through an other, is not in and for itself: hypothetical,
it is a mere result of assumption. But this inter-
mediation is just as immediately however the abrogation
of itself. The ground and contingent condition is trans-
lated into immediacy, by which that dependency is now
lifted up into actuality, and the fact has closed with
itself. In this return to itself the necessary simply and
positively is, as unconditioned actuality. The necessary
is so, mediated through a circle of circumstances : it is
so, because the circumstances are so, and at the same
time it is so, unmediated : it is so, because it is.
{a) Relationship of Substantiality.
150.J The necessary is in itself an absolute correlation
of elements, i.^e. the process developed (in the preceding
paragraphs), in which the correlation also suspends itself
to absolute identity.
In its immediate form it is the relationship of Sub-
stance and Accident. The absolute self-identity of this
relationship is Substance as such, which as necessity
gives the negative to this form of inwardness, and thus
invests itself with actuality, but which also gives the
negative to this outward thing. In this negativity, the
actual, as immediate, is only an accidental which through
this bare possibility passes over into another actuality.
VOL. II. T
274 ^^^ DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [150-151.
This transition is the identity of substance, regarded as
form-activity (§§ 148, 149),
151.] Substance is accordingly the totality of the Ac-
cidents, revealing itself in them as their absolute nega-
tivity, (that is to say, as absolute power,) and at the
same time as the wealth of all content. This content
however is nothing but that very revelation, since the
character (being reflected in itself to make content) is
only a passing stage of the form which passes away in the
power of substance. Substantiality is the absolute form-
activity and the power of necessity : all content is but
a vanishing element which merely belongs to this pro-
cess, where there is an absolute revulsion of form and
content into one another.
In the history of philosophy we meet with Substance as
the principle of Spinoza's system. On the import and value
of that much-praised and no less decried philosophy there
has been great misunderstanding and a deal of talking since
the days of Spinoza. The atheism and, as a further charge,
the pantheism of the system has formed the commonest
ground of accusation. These cries arise because of Spinoza's
conception of God as substance, and substance only. What
we are to think of this charge follows, in the first in-
stance, from the place which substance takes in the sys-
tem of the logical idea. Though an essential stage in the
evolution of the idea, substance is not the same with abso-
lute Idea, but the idea under the still limited form of neces-
sity. It is true that God is necessity, or, as we may also put
it, that He is the absolute Thing : He is however no less the
absolute Person. That He is the absolute Person however
is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached :
and on that side it falls short of the true notion of God
which forms the content of religious consciousness in Chris-
tianity. Spinoza was by descent a Jew ; and it is upon the
whole the Oriental way of seeing things, according to which
the nature of the finite world seems frail and transient, that
has found its intellectual expression in his system. This
151.] SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENTS. 275
Oriental view of the unity of substance certainly gives the
basis for all real further development. Still it is not the final
idea. It is marked by the absence of the principle of the
Western World, the principle of individuality', which first
appeared under a philosophic shape, contemporaneously
with Spinoza, in the Monadology of Leibnitz,
From this point we glance back to the alleged atheism of
Spinoza. The charge will be seen to be unfounded if we
remember that his system, instead of denying God, rather
recognises that He alone really is. Nor can it be main-
tained that the God of Spinoza, although he is described as
alone true, is not the true God, and therefore as good as no
God. If that were a just charge, it would only prove that
all other systems, where speculation has not gone beyond
a subordinate stage of the idea, — that the Jews and Moham-
medans who know God onl}' as the Lord,— and that even the
many Christians for whom God is merely the most high,
unknowable, and transcendent being, are as much atheists
as Spinoza. The so-called atheism of Spinoza is merely an
exaggeration of the fact that he defrauds the principle of
difference or finitude of its due. Hence his system, as it
holds that there is properly speaking no world, at any rate
that the world has no positive being, should rather be styled
Acosmism. These considerations will also show what is to
be said of the charge of Pantheism. If Pantheism means,
as it often does, the doctrine which takes finite things in
their finitude and in the complex of them to be God, we
must acquit the system of Spinoza of the crime of Pan-
theism. For in that system, finite things and the world as
a whole are denied all truth. On the other hand, the
philosophy which is Acosmism is for that reason certainly
pantheistic.
The shortcoming thus acknowledged to attach to the con-
tent turns out at the same time to be a shortcoming in
respect of form. Spinoza puts substance at the head of his
system, and defines it to be the unity of thought and exten-
sion, without demonstrating how he gets to this distinction,
or how he traces it back to the unity of substance. The
further treatment of the subject proceeds in what is called
T 2
276 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [151-153.
the. mathematical method. Definitions and axioms are first
laid down : after them comes a series of theorems, which
are proved by an analytical reduction of them to these un-
proved postulates. Although the system of Spinoza, and
that even by those' who altogether reject its contents and
results, is praised for the strict sequence of its method, such
unqualified praise of the form is as little justified as an un-
qualified rejection of the content. The defect of the content
is that the form is not known as immanent in it, and there-
fore only approaches it as an outer and subjective form.
As intuitively accepted by Spinoza without a previous me-
diation by dialectic, Substance, as the universal negative
pov/er, is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs
all definite content as radically null, and produces from
itself nothing that has a positive subsistence of its own.
152.] At the stage, where substance, as absolute power,
is the self-relating power (itself a merely inner possibility)
which thus determines itself to accidentality, — from which
power the externality it thereby creates is distinguished
— necessity is a correlation strictly so called, just as in
the first form of necessity, it is substance. This is the
correlation of Causality.
[b) Relationship of Causality.
153.] Substance is Cause, in so far as substance re-
flects into self as against its passage into accidentality
and so stands as the primary fact, but again no less
suspends this reflection-into-self (its bare possibility),
laj's itself down as the negative of itself, and thus pro-
duces an Eflfect, an actuality, which, though so far only
assumed as a sequence, is through the process that
effectuates it at the same time necessary.
As primary fact, the cause is qualified as having
absolute independence and a siibsistence maintained in
face of the effect : but in the necessity, whose identity
153.] CAUSE AND EFFECT. 277
constitutes that primariness itself, it is wholly passed
into the effect. So far again as we can speak of a
definite content, there is no content in the effect that
is not in the cause. That identity in fact is the absolute
content itself: but it is no less also the form-character-
istic. The primariness of the cause is suspended in the
effect in which the cause makes itself a dependent being.
The cause however does not for that reason vanish and
leave the effect to be alone actual. F'or this dependency
is in like manner directly suspended, and is rather the
reflection of the cause in itself, its primariness : in short,
it is in the effect that the cause first becomes actual and
a cause. The cause consequently is in its full truth
causa sui. — Jacobi, sticking to the partial conception of
mediation (in his Letters on Spinoza, second edit. p. 416),
has treated the causa sui (and the effectus sui is the
same), which is the absolute truth of the cause, as a
mere formalism. He has also made the remark that
God ought to be defined not as the ground of things,
but essentially as cause. A more thorough considera-
tion of the nature of cause would have shown that
Jacobi did not by this means gain what he intended.
Even in the finite cause and its conception we can see
this identity between cause and effect in point of con-
tent. The rain (the cause) and the wet (the effect) are
the self-same existing water. In point of form the cause
(rain) is dissipated or lost in the effect (wet): but in that
case the result can no longer be described as effect; for
without the cause it is nothing, and we should have only
the unrelated wet left.
In the common acceptation of the causal relation the
cause is finite, to such extent as its content is so (as is
also the case with finite substance), and so far as cause
and effect are conceived as two several independent exist-
ences: which they are, however, only when we leave the
278 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [153.
causal relation out of sight. In the finite sphere we never
get over the difference of the form-characteristics in their
relation: and hence we turn the matter round and
define the cause also as something dependent or as an
effect. This again has another cause, and thus there
grows up a progress from effects to causes ad infinitum.
There is a descending progress too : the effect, looked
at in its identity with the cause, is itself defined as a
cause, and at the same time as another cause, which
again has other effects, and so on for ever.
The way understanding bristles up against the idea
of substance is equalled by its readiness to use the re-
lation of cause and effect. Whenever it is proposed to
view any sum of fact as necessary, it is especially the
relation of causality to which the reflective understand-
ing makes a point of tracing it back. Now, although this
relation does undoubtedly belong to necessity, it forms
only one aspect in the process of that category. That
process equally requires the suspension of the media-
tion involved in causality and the exhibition of it as simple
self-relation. If we stick to causality as such, we have it
not in its truth. Such a causality is merely finite, and its
finitude lies in retaining the distinction between cause and
effect unassimilated. But these two terms, if they are dis-
tinct, are also identical. Even in ordinary consciousness
that identity may be found. We say that a cause is a cause,
only when it has an effect, and vice versa. Both cause and
effect are thus one and the same content : and the distinc-
tion between them is primarily only that the one lays down,
and the other is laid down. This formal difference however
again suspends itself, because the cause is not only a cause
of something else, but also a cause of itself ; while the effect
is not only an effect of something else, but also an effect of
itself. The finitude of things consists accordingly in this.
While cause and effect are in their notion identical, the two
forms present themselves severed so that, though the cause
is also an effect, and the effect also a cause, the cause is not
an effect in the same connexion as it is a cause, nor the
153-I54-] CAUSE AND EFFECT. 279
effect a cause in the same connexion as it is an effect. This
again gives the infinite progress, in the shape of an endless
series of causes, which shows itself at the same time as an
endless series of effects.
154.] The effect is different from the cause. The
former as such has a being dependent on the latter.
But such a dependence is likewise reflection-into-self
and immediacy : and the action of the cause, as it con-
stitutes the effect, is at the same time the pre-constitution
of the effect, so long as effect is kept separate from
cause. There is thus already in existence another
substance on which the effect takes place. As imme-
diate, this substance is not a self related negativity and
active, but passive. Yet it is a substance, and it is there-
fore active also : it therefore suspends the immediacy it
was originally put forward with, and the effect which
was put into it : it reacts, i. e. suspends the activity of
the first substance. But this first substance also in the
same way sets aside its own immediacy, or the effect
which is put into it ; it thus suspends the activity of the
other substance and reacts. In this manner causality
passes into the relation of Action and Reaction, or
Reciprocity.
In Reciprocity, although causality is not yet invested
with its true characteristic, the rectilinear movement out
from causes to effects, and from effects to causes, is bent
round and back into itself, and thus the progress ad in-
finitum of causes and effects is, as a progress, really and
truly suspended. This bend, which transforms the in-
finite progression into a self-contained relationship, is
here as always the plain reflection that in the above
meaningless repetition there is only one and the same
thing, viz. one cause and another, and their connexion
with one another. Reciprocity — which is the develop-
ment of this relation -itself however only distinguishes
28o THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [154-156.
turn and turn about ( — not causes, but) factors of causa-
tion, in each of which — just because they are inseparable
(on the principle of the identity that the cause is cause
in the effect, and vice versa) — the other factor is also
equally supposed.
(c) Reciprocity or Action and Reaction.
155.] The characteristics which in Reciprocal Action
are retained as distinct are (a) potentially the same.
The one side is a cause, is primary, active, passive, &c.,
just as the other is. Similarly the pre-supposition of
another side and the action upon it, the immediate
primariness and the dependence produced by the alter-
nation, are one and the same on both sides. The cause
assumed to be first is on account of its immediacy
passive, a dependent being, and an effect. The dis-
tinction of the causes spoken of as two is accordingly
void : and properly speaking there is only one cause,
which, while it suspends itself (as substance) in its effect,
also rises in this operation only to independent exist-
ence as a cause.
156.] But this unity of the double cause is also [ii)
actual. All this alternation is properly the cause in act
of constituting itself and in such constitution lies its
being. The nullity of the distinctions is not only po-
tential, or a reflection of ours (§ 155). Reciprocal
action just means that each characteristic we impose is
also to be suspended and inverted into its opposite, and
that in this way the essential nullity of the 'moments * is
explicitly stated. An effect is introduced into the pri-
mariness; in other words, the primariness is abolished :
the action of a cause becomes reaction, and so on.
Reciprocal action realises the causal relation in its com-
plete development. It is this relation, therefore, in which
reflection usually takes shelter when the conviction grows that
156.] ACTION AND REACTION. 2&1
things can no longer be studied satisfactorily from a causal
point of view, on account of the infinite progress already
spoken of. Thus in historical research the question may
be raised in a first form, whether the character and manners
of a nation are the cause of its constitution and its laws, or
if they are not rather the effect. Then, as the second step,
the character and manners on one side and the constitu-
tion and laws on the other are conceived on the principle
of reciprocity : and in that case the cause in the same
connexion as it is a cause will at the same time be an effect,
and vice versa. The same thing is done in the study of
Nature, and especially of living organisms. There the
several organs and functions are similarly seen to stand to
each other in the relation of reciprocity. Reciprocity is un-
doubtedly the proximate truth of the relation of cause and
effect, and stands, so to say, on the threshold of the notion ;
but on that very ground, supposing that our aim is a
thoroughly comprehensive idea, we should not rest content
with applying this relation. If we get no further than study-
ing a given content under the point of view of reciprocity,
we are taking up an attitude which leaves matters utterly
incomprehensible. We are left with a mere dry fact ; and
the call for mediation, which is the chief motive in applying
^he relation of causality, is still unanswered. And if we
look more narrowly into the dissatisfaction felt in applying
the relation of reciprocity, we shall see that it consists in the
circumstance, that this relation, instead of being treated as an
equivalent for the notion, ought, first of all, to be known and
understood in its own nature. And to understand the rela-
tion of action and reaction we must not let the two sides rest
in their state of mere given facts, but recognise them, as has
been shown in the two paragraphs preceding, for factors of
a third and higher, which is the notion and nothing else.
To make, for example, the manners of the Spartans the
cause of their constitution and their constitution conversely
the cause of their manners, may no doubt be in a way cor-
rect. But, as we have comprehended neither the manners
nor the constitution of the nation, the result of such reflec-
tions can never be final or satisfactory. The satisfactory
282 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [156-158,
point will be reached only when these two, as well as all
other, special aspects of Spartan life and Spartan history are
seen to be founded in this notion.
157.] This pure self-reciprocation is therefore Neces-
sity unveiled or realised. The link of necessity qua
necessity is identity, as still inward and concealed,
because it is the identity of what are esteemed actual
things, although their very self-su"bsistence is bound to
be necessity. The circulation of substance through
causality and reciprocity therefore only expressly makes
out or states that self-subsistence is the infinite negative
self- relation — a relation negative, in general, for in it the
act of distinguishing and intermediating becomes a pri-
mariness of actual things independent one against the
other, — and infinite self -relation, because their indepen-
dence only lies in their identity.
158.] This truth of necessity, therefore, is Freedom :
and the truth of substance is the Notion, — an indepen-
dence which, though self-repulsive into distinct inde-
pendent elements, yet in that repulsion is self-identical,
and in the movement of reciprocity still at home and
conversant only with itself.
Necessity is often called hard, and rightly so, if we keep
only to necessity as such, i. e. to its immediate shape. Here
we have, first of all, some state or, generally speaking,
fact, possessing an independent subsistence : and necessity
primarily implies that there falls upon such a fact something
else by which it is brought low. This is what is hard and
sad in necessity immediate or abstract. The identity of the
two things, which necessity presents as bound to each other
and thus bereft of their independence, is at first only inward,
and therefore has no existence for those under the yoke of
necessity. Freedom too from this point of view is only ab-
stract, and is preserved only by renouncing all that we
immediately are and have. But, as we have seen already,
158-159] NECESSITY AND FREEDOM. 283
the process of necessity is so directed that it overcomes
the rigid externality which it first had and reveals its
inward nature. It then appears that the members, linked
to one another, are not really foreign to each other, but only
elements of one whole, each of them, in its connexion with
the other, being, as it were, at home, and combining with
itself. In this way necessity is transfigured into freedom,
— not the freedom that consists in abstract negation, but free-
dom concrete and positive. From which we may learn
what a mistake it is to regard freedom and necessity as
mutually exclusive. Necessity indeed qtui necessity is far
from being freedom : yet freedom pre-supposes necessity,
and contains it as an unsubstantial element in itself. A good
man is aware that the tenor of his conduct is essentially
obligatory and necessary. But this consciousness is so far
from making an}' abatement from his freedom, that without
it real and reasonable freedom could not be distinguished
from arbitrary choice, — a freedom which has no reality and
is merely potential. A criminal, when punished, may look
upon his punishment as a restriction of his freedom. Really
the punishment is not foreign constraint to which he is sub-
jected, but the manifestation of his own act: and if he recog-
nises this, he comports himself as a free man. In short,
man is most independent when he knows himself to be
determined by the absolute idea throughout. It was this
phase of mind and conduct which Spinoza called Amor
intellectualis Dei.
159.] Thus the Notion is the truth of Being and
Essence, inasmuch as the shining or show of self-
reflection is itself at the same time independent im-
mediacy, and this being of a different actuality is im-
mediately only a shining or show on itself.
The Notion has exhibited itself as the truth of Being
and Essence, as the ground to which the regress of
both leads. Conversely it has been developed out of
being as its ground. The former aspect of the advance
may be regarded as a concentration of being into its
284 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [159.
depth, thereby disclosing its inner nature : the latter
aspect as an issuing of the more perfect from the less
perfect. When such development is viewed on the
.latter side only, it does prejudice to the method of
philosophy. The special meaning which these super-
ficial thoughts of more imperfect and more perfect have
in this place is to indicate the distinction of being, as an
immediate unity with itself, from the notion, as free
mediation with itself. Since being has shown that it
is an element in the notion, the latter has thus exhibited
itself as the truth of being. As this its reflection in
itself and as an absorption of the mediation, the notion
is the pre-supposition of the immediate — a pre-sup-
position which is identical with the return to self; and
in this identity lie freedom and the notion. If the
partial element therefore be called the imperfect, then
the notion, or the perfect, is certainly a development
from the imperfect ; since its very nature is tlius to
suspend its pre-supposition. At the same time it
is the notion alone which, in the act of supposing
itself, makes its pre-supposition ; as has been made
apparent in causality in general and especially in re-
ciprocal action.
Thus in reference to Being and Essence the Notion
is defined as Essence reverted to the simple immediacy
of Being, — the shining or show of Essence thereby hav-
ing actuality, and its actuality being at the same time
a free shining or show in itself. In this manner the
notion has being as its simple self-relation, or as the
immediacy of its immanent unity. Being is so poor
a category that it is the least thing which can be shown
to be found in the notion.
The passage from necessity to freedom, or from
actuality into the notion, is the very hardest, because it
proposes that independent actuality shall be thought as
T59-] NECESSITY AND FREEDOM 285
having all its substantiality in the passing over and iden-
tity with the other independent actuality. The notion,
too, is extremely hard, because it is itself just this very
identity. But the actual substance as such, the cause,
which in its exclusiveness resists all invasion, is ipso facto
subjected to necessity or the destiny of passing into de-
pendency : and it is this subjection rather where the
chief hardness lies. To think necessity, on the con-
trary, rather tends to melt that hardness. For thinking
means that, in the other, one meets with one's self. —
It means a liberation, which is not the flight of ab-
straction, but consists in that which is actual having
itself not as something else, but as its own being and
creation, in the other actuality with which it is bound
up by the force of necessity. As existing in an in-
dividual form, this liberation is called I : as developed
to its totality, it is free Spirit ; as feeling, it is Love ;
and as enjoyment, it is Blessedness. — The great vision
of substance in Spinoza is only a potential liberation
from finite exclusiveness and egoism : but the notion
itself realises for its own both the power of necessity
and actual freedom.
When, as now, the notion is called the truth of Being and
Essence, we must expect to be asked, why we do not begin
with the notion ? The answer is that, where knowledge by
thought is our aim, we cannot begin with the truth, because
the truth, when it forms the beginning, must rest on mere
assertion. The truth when it is thought must as such
verify itself to thought. If the notion were put at the head
of Logic, and defined, quite correctly in point of content, as
the unity of Being and Essence, the following question would
come up : What are we to think under the terms ' Being '
and 'Essence,' and how do they come to be embraced in
the unity of the Notion ? But if we answered these ques-
tions, then our beginning with the notion would be merely
nominal. The real start would be made with Being, as we
286 THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE. [159.
have here done : with this diiference, that the characteristics
of Being as well as those of Essence would have to be ac-
cepted uncritically from figurate conception, whereas we
have observed Being and Essence in their own dialectical
development and learnt how they lose themselves in the
unity of the notion.
CHAPTER IX.
THIRD SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION.
160.] The Notion is the principle of freedom, the
power of substance self-reaHsed. It is a systematic
whole, in which each of its constituent functions is
the very total which the notion is, and is put as in-
dissolubly one with it. Thus in its self-identity it has
original and complete determinateness.
The position taken up by the notion is that of absolute
idealism. Philosophy is a knowledge through notions be-
cause it sees that what on other grades of consciousness is
taken to have Being, and to be naturally or immediately
independent, is but a constituent stage in the Idea. In the
logic of understanding, the notion is generally reckoned a
mere form of thought, and treated as a general conception.
It is to this inferior view of the notion that the assertion
refers, so often urged on behalf of the heart and sentiment,
that notions as such are something dead, empty, and ab-
stract. The case is really quite the reverse. The notion is, on
the contrary, the principle of all life, and thus possesses at
the same time a character of thorough concreteness. That
it is so follows from the whole logical movement up to this
point, and need not be here proved. The contrast between
form and content, which is thus used to criticise the notion
when it is alleged to be merely formal, has, like all the other
contrasts upheld by reflection, been already left behind and
overcome dialecticaliy or through itself The notion, in
short, is what contains all the earlier categories of thought
merged in it. It certainly is a form, but an infinite and
288 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [i6o-i6r.
creative form, which includes, but at the same time releases
from itself, the fulness of all content. And so too the notion
may, if it be wished, be styled abstract, if the name concrete
is restricted to the concrete facts of sense or of immediate
perception. For the notion is not palpable to the touch,
and when we are engaged with it, hearing and seeing must
quite fail us. And yet, as it was before remarked, the no-
tion is a true concrete ; for the reason that it involves Being
and Essence, and the total wealth of these two spheres with
them, merged in the unity of thought.
If, as was said at an earlier point, the different stages of
the logical idea are to be treated as a series of definitions of
the Absolute, the definition which now results for us is that
the Absolute is the Notion. That necessitates a higher
estimate of the notion, however, than is found in formal
conceptualist Logic, where the notion is a mere form of
our subjective thought, with no original content of its own.
But if Speculative Logic thus attaches a meaning to the
term notion so very different from that usually given, it may
be asked why the same word should be employed in two
contrary acceptations, and an occasion thus given for con-
fusion and misconception. The answer is that, great as the
interval is between the speculative notion and the notion of
Formal Logic, a closer examination shows that the deeper
meaning is not so foreign to the general usages of language
as it seems at first sight. We speak of the deduction of a
content from the notion, e.g. of the specific provisions of the
law of property from the notion of property ; and so again
we speak of tracing back these material details to the notion.
We thus recognise that the notion is no mere form without
a content of its own : for if it were, there would be in the
one case nothing to deduce from such a form, and in the
other case to trace a given body of fact back to the empty
form of the notion would only rob the fact of its specific
character, without making it understood.
161.] The onward movement of the notion is no
longer either a transition into, or a reflection on some-
thing else, but Development. For in the notion, the
i6i.] DEVELOPMENT. 289
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.
Transition into something else is the dialectical process
within the range of Being : reflection (bringing something
else into light), in the range of Essence. The movement of
the Notion is development: by which that only is explicit
which is already implicitly present. In the world of nature
it is organic life that corresponds to the grade of the notion.
Thus e.g. the plant is developed from its germ. The germ
virtually involves the whole plant, but does so only ideally
or in thought : and it would therefore be a mistake to regard
the development of the root, stem, leaves, and other different
parts of the plant, as meaning that they were realiter pre-
sent, but in a very minute form, in the germ. That is the
so-called ' box-within-box ' hypothesis ; a theory which
commits the mistake of supposing an actual existence of
what is at first found only as a postulate of the completed
thought. The truth of the hvpothesis on the other hand
Ues in its perceiving that in the process of development the
notion keeps to itself and only gives rise to alteration of
form, without making any addition in point of content. It
is this nature of the notion— this manifestation of itself in its
process as a development of its own self,— which is chiefly
in view with those who speak of innate ideas, or who,
like Plato, describe all learning merely as reminiscence. Of
course that again does not mean that everything which is
embodied in a mind, after that mind has been formed by
instruction, had been present in that mind beforehand, in
its definitely expanded shape.
The movement of the notion is as it were to be looked
upon merely as play : the other which it sets up is in
reality not an other. Or, as it is expressed in the teaching
of Christianity : not merely has God created a world which
confronts Him as an other ; He has also from all eternity
begotten a Son in whom He, a Spirit, is at home with
Himself.
VOL. n. U
290 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [162.
162.] The doctrine of the notion is divided into three
parts, (i) The first is the doctrine of the Subjective
or Formal Notion. (2) The second is the doctrine of
the notion invested with the character of immediacy, or
of Objectivity. (3) The third is the doctrine of the
Idea, the subject-object, the unity of notion and ob-
jectivity, the absolute truth.
The Common Logic covers only the matters which
come before us here as a portion of the third part of
the whole system, together with the so-called Laws of
Thought, which we have already met ; and in the Ap-
plied Logic it adds a little about cognition. This is
combined with psychological, metaphysical, and all sorts
of empirical materials, which were introduced because,
when all was done, those forms of thought could not
be made to do all that was required of them. But with
these additions the science lost its unity of aim. Then
there was a further circumstance against the Common
Logic. Those forms, which at least do belong to the
proper domain of Logic, are supposed to be categories
of conscious thought only, of thought too in the character
of understanding, not of reason.
The preceding logical categories, those viz. of Being
and Essence, are, it is true, no mere logical modes or
entities : they are proved to be notions in their trans-
ition or their dialectical element, and in their return into
themselves and totality. But they are only in a modified
form notions (cp. §§ 84 and 112), notions rudimentary,
or, what is the same thing, notions for us. The anti-
thetical term into which each category passes, or in
which it shines, so producing correlation, is not charac-
terised as a particular. The third, in which they return
to unity, is not characterised as a subject or an indi-
vidual : nor is there any explicit statement that the cate-
gory is identical in its antithesis,— in other words, its
i6a-i63.1 SUBJECTIVE NOTION. 29I
freedom is not expressly stated : and all this because the
category is not universality, — What generally passes
current under the name of a notion is a mode of under-
standing, or, even, a mere general representation^ and
therefore, in rhort, a finite mode of thought (cp. § 62).
The Logic of the Notion is usually treated as a science
of form only, and understood to deal with the form of
notion, judgment, and syllogism as form, without in the
least touching the question whether an^'thing is true.
The answer to that question is supposed to depend on
the content only. If the logical forms of the notion
were really dead and inert receptacles of conceptions
and thoughts, careless of what they contained, know-
ledge about them would be an idle curiosity which the
truth might dispense with. On the contrary they
really are, as forms of the notion, the vital spirit of the
actual world. That only is true of the actual which is
true in virtue of these forms, through them and in them.
As yet, however, the truth of these forms has never
been considered or examined on their own account any
more than their necessary interconnexion.
A. — The Subjective Notion.
[a) The Notion as Notion.
163.] The Notion as Notion contains the three fol-
lowing 'moments* or functional parts, (i) The first is
Universality— meaning that it is in free equality with
itself in its specific character. (2) The second is Parti-
cularity— that is, the specific character, in which the uni-
versal continues serenely equal to itself. (3) The third
is Individuality — meaning the reflection-into-self of the
specific characters of universality and particularity ;
— which negative self-unity has complete and original
determinateness, without any loss to its self-identity or
universality.
292 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [163.
Individual and actual are the same thing : only the
former has issued from the notion, and is thus, as a
universal, stated expressly as a negative identity with
itself. The actual, because it is at first no more than a
potential or immediate unity of essence and existence,
may possibly have effect : but the iadividuality of the
notion is the very source of effectiveness, effective more-
over no longer as the cause is, with a show of effecting
something else, but effective of itself. — Individuality,
however, is not to be understood to mean the immediate
or natural individual, as when we speak of individual
things or individual men : for that special phase of
individuality does not appear till we come to the judg-
ment. Every function and 'moment' of the notion is
itself the whole notion (§ 160).; but the individual or
subject is the notion expressly put as a totality.
(i) The notion is generally associated in our minds with
abstract generality, and on that account it is often described
as a general conception. We speak, accordingly, of the
notions of colour, plant, animal, &c. They are supposed
to be arrived at by neglecting the particular features which
distinguish the different colours, plants, and animals from
each other, and by retaining those common to them all.
This is the aspect of the notion which is familiar to under-
standing ; and feeling is in the right when it stigmatises
such hollow and empty notions as mere phantoms and
shadows. But the universal of the notion is not a mere
sum of features common to several things, confronted b}?- a
particular which enjo3'S an existence of its own. It is, on
the contrary, self-particularising or self-specifying, and with
undimmed clearness finds itself at home in its antithesis.
For the sake both of cognition and of our practical conduct,
it is of the utmost importance that the real universal should
not be confused with what is merely held in common. All
those charges which the devotees of feeling make against
thought, and especially against philosophic thought, and
the reiterated statement that it is dangerous to carry thought
163.] THE NOTION AS UNIVERSAL. 293
to what they call too great lengths, originate in the confusion
of these two things.
The universal in its true and comprehensive meaning is a
thought which, as we know, cost thousands of years to make
it enter into the consciousness of men. The thought did
not gain its full recognition till the days of Christianity. The
Greeks, in other respects so advanced, knew neither God
nor even man in their true universality. The gods of the
Greeks were only particular powers of the mind ; and the
universal God, the God of all nations, was to the Athenians
still a God concealed. They believed in the same way that
an absolute gulf separated themselves from the barbarians.
Man as man was not then recognised to be of infinite worth
and to have infinite rights. The question has been asked,
why slavery has vanished from modern Europe. One
special circumstance after another has been adduced in
explanation of this phenomenon. But the real ground why
there are no more slaves in Christian Europe is only to be
found in the very principle of Christianit}^ itself, the religion
of absolute freedom. Only in Christendom is man respected
as man, in his infinitude and universality. What the slave
is without, is the recognition that he is a person : and the
principle of personality is universality. The master looks
upon his slave not as a person, but as a selfless thing. The
slave is not himself reckoned an 'I'; — his *I' is his
master.
The distinction referred to above between what is merely
in common, and what is truly universal, is strikingly ex-
pressed by Rousseau in his famous ' Contrat Social,' when
he says that the laws of a state must spring from the
universal will [volonte ge'ne'rale), but need not on that account
be the will of all {volonte de tous). Rousseau would have
made a sounder contribution towards a theory of the state,
if he had always keep this distinction in sight. The general
will is the notion of the will : and the laws are the special
clauses of this will and based upon the notion of it.
(2) We add a remark upon the account of the origin and
formation of notions which is usually given in the Logic of
Understanding. It is not vce who frame the notions. The
294 ^^^ DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [163-164.
notion is not something which is originated at all. No
doubt the notion is not mere Being, or the immediate : it
involves mediation, but the mediation lies in itself. In other
words, the notion is what is mediated through itself and
with itself. It is a mistake to imagine that the objects
which form the content of our mental ideas come first
and that our subjective agency then supervenes, and by
the aforesaid operation of abstraction, and by colligating
the points possessed in common by the objects, frames
notions of them. Rather the notion is the genuine first; and
things are what they are through the action of the notion,
immanent in them, and revealing itself in them. In re-
ligious language we express this by saying that God created
the world out of nothing. In other words, the world and
finite things have issued from the fulness of the divine
thoughts and the divine decrees. Thus religion recognises
thought and (more exactly) the notion to be the infinite
form, or the free creative activity, which can realise itself
without the help of a matter that exists outside it.
164.] The notion is concrete out and out : because the
negative unity with itself, as characterisation pure and
entire, which is individuality, is just what constitutes
its self-relation, its universality. The functions or
' moments * of the notion are to this extent indissoluble.
The categories of 'reflection' are expected to be severally
apprehended and separately accepted as current, apart
from their opposites. But in the notion, where their
identity is expressly assumed, each of its functions can
be immediately apprehended only from and with the
rest.
Universality, particularity, and individuality are, taken
in the abstract, the same as identity, difference, and
ground. But 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
164.] MOMENTS OF THE NOTION. 295
individual. Similarly- the individual must be understood
to be a subject or substratum, which involves the genus
and species in itself and possesses a substantial exist-
ence. Such is the explicit or realised inseparability of
the functions of the notion in their difference (§ 160)—
what may be called the clearness of the notion, in which
each distinction causes no dimness or interruption, but
is quite as much transparent.
No complaint is oftener made against the notion than
that it is abstract Of course it is abstract, if abstract
means that the medium in which the notion -exists is
thought in general and not the sensible thing in its
empirical concreteness. It is abstract also, because the
notion falls short of the idea. To this extent the sub-
jective notion is still formal. This however does not
mean that it ought to have or receive another content
than its own. It is itself the absolute form, and so is all
specific character, but as that character is in its truth.
Although it be abstract therefore, it is the concrete, con-
crete altogether, the subject as such. The absolutely
concrete is the mind (see end of § 159)— the notion when
it exists as notion distinguishing itself from its objectivity,
which notwithstanding the distinction still continues to
be its own. Everything else which is concrete, however
rich it be, is not so intensely identical with itself and
therefore not so concrete on its own part, — least of all
what is commonly supposed to be concrete, but is only
a congeries held together by external influence. —
What are called notions, and in fact specific notions,
such as man, house, animal, &c., are simply denotations
and abstract representations. These abstractions re-
tain out of all the functions of the notion only that of
universality; they leave particularity and individuality
out of account and have no development in these
directions. By so doing they just miss the notion.
296 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [165.
165.] It is the element of Individuality which first
explicitly differentiates the elements of the notion. In-
dividuality is the negative reflection of the notion into
itself, and it is in that way at first the free differentiating
of it as the first negation, by which the specific character
of the notion is realised, but under the form of particu-
larity. That is to say, the different elements are in
the first place only qualified as the several elements
of the notion, and, secondly, their identity is no less
explicitly stated, the one being said to be the other.
This realised particularity of the notion is the Judgment.
The ordinary classification of notions, as clear, distinct
and adequate, is no part of the notion ; it belongs to
psychology. Notions, in fact, are here synonymous
with mental representations ; a clear notion is an abstract
simple representation : a distinct notion is one where,
in addition to the simplicity, there is one 'mark' or
character emphasised as a sign for subjective cognition.
There is no more striking mark of the formalism and
decay of Logic than the favourite category of the 'mark.'
The adequate notion comes nearer the notion proper, or
even the Idea : but after all it expresses only the formal
circumstance that a notion or representation agrees
with its object, that is, with an external thing. — The
division into what are called subordinate and co-ordinate
notions implies a mechanical distinction of universal
from particular, which allows only a mere correlation of
them in external comparison. Again, an enumeration
of such kinds as contrary and contradictory, affirmative
and negative notions, &c., is only a chance-directed
gleaning of logical forms which properly belong to the
sphere of Being or Essence, (where they have been
already examined,) and which have nothing to do with
the specific notional character as such. The true dis-
tinctions in the notion, universal, particular, and in-
165-166.] JUDGMENT. 297
dividual, may be said also to constitute species of it, but
only when they are kept severed from each other by
external reflection. The immanent differentiating and
specifying of the notion come to sight in the judgment:
for to judge is to specify the notion.
(b) The Judgment.
166.] The Judgment is the notion in its particularity,
as a connexion which is also a distinguishing of its
functions, which are put as independent and yet as
identical with themselves, not with one another.
One's first impression about the Judgment is the in-
dependence of the two extremes, the subject and the
predicate. The former we take to be a thing or term
per se, and the predicate a general term outside the said
subject and somewhere in our heads. The next point
is for us to bring the latter into combination with the
former, and in this way frame a Judgment. The copula
' is ' however enunciates the predicate 0/ the subject,
and so that external subjective eubsumption is again
put in abeyance, and the Judgment taken as a deter-
mination of the object itself. — The etymological meaning
of the Judgment {Urtheil) in German goes deeper, as it
were declaring the unity of the notion to be primary,
and its distinction to be the original partition. And
that is what the Judgment really is.
In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the
proposition: 'The individual is the universal.' These
are the terms under which the subject and the predi-
cate first confront each other, when the functions of the
notion are taken in their immediate character or first
abstraction, [Propositions such as, ' The particular is
the universal,' and 'The individual is the particular,'
belong to the further specialisation of the judgment,] It
298 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [166.
shows a strange want of observation in the logic-books,
that in none of them is the fact stated, that in every
judgment there is such a statement made, as, The indi-
vidual is the universal, or still more definitely. The sub-
ject is the predicate : {e.g. God is absolute spirit). No
doubt there is also a distinction between terms like
individual and universal, subject and predicate : but it
is none the less the universal fact, that every judgment
states them to be identical.
The copula ' is ' springs from the nature of the notion,
to be self-identical even in parting with its own. The in-
dividual and universal are its constituents, and therefore
characters which cannot be isolated. The earlier cate-
gories (of reflection) in their correlations also refer to
one another: but their interconnexion is only 'having'
and not 'being,' i.e. it is not the identity which is
realised as identity or universality. In the judgment,
therefore, for the first time there is seen the genuine
particularity of the notion : for it is the speciality or
distinguishing of the latter, without thereby losing
universality.
Judgments are generally looked upon as combinations of
notions, and, be it added, of heterogeneous notions. This
theory of judgment is correct, so far as it implies that it is
the notion which forms the presupposition of the judgment,
and which in the judgment comes up under the form of
difference. But on the other hand, it is false to speak of
notions differing in kind. The notion, although concrete, is
still as a notion essentially one, and the functions which it
contains are not different kinds of it. It is equally false to
speak of a combination of the two sides in the judgment, if
we understand the term 'combination' to imply the inde-
pendent existence of the combining members apart from the
combination. The same external view of their nature is
more forcibly apparent when judgments are described as
produced by the ascription of a predicate to the subject.
166-167.] JUDGMENT. 299
Language like this looks upon the subject as self-subsistent
outside, and the predicate as found somewhere in our head.
Such a conception of the relation between subject and
predicate however is at once contradicted by the copula ' is.'
By saying 'This rose is red,' or 'This picture is beautiful,'
we declare, that it is not we who from outside attach beauty
to the picture or redness to the rose, but that these are the
characteristics proper to these objects. An additional fault
in the way in which Formal Logic conceives the judgment
is, that it makes the judgment look as if it were something
merely contingent, and does not offer any proof for the
advance from notion on to judgment. For the notion does
not, as understanding supposes, stand still in its own immo-
bility. It is rather an infinite form, of boundless activity, as
it were the pimctum saliens of all vitality, and thereby self-
differentiating. This disruption of the notion into the differ-
ence of its constituent functions, — a disruption imposed by
the native act of the notion, is the judgment. A judgment
therefore means th.> particularising of the notion. No doubt
the notion is implicitly the particular. But in the notion as
notion the particular is not yet explicit, and still remains in
transparent unity with the universal. Thus, for example, as
we remarked before (§ 160, note), the germ of a plant
contains its particular, such as root, branches, leaves, &c. :
but these details are at first present only potentially, and are
not realised till the germ uncloses. This unclosing is, as it
were, the judgment of the plant. The illustration may also
serve to show how neither the notion nor the judgment are
merelj' found in our head, or merely framed by us. The
notion is the very heart of things, and makes them what they
are. To form a notion of an object means therefore to
become aware of its notion : and when we proceed to a
criticism or judgment of the object, we are not performing a
subjective act, and merely ascribing this or that predicate to
the object. We are, on the contrary, observing the object in
the specific character imposed by its notion.
167.] The Judgment is usually taken in a subjective
sense as an operation and a form, occurring merely in
self-conscious thought. This distinction, however, has no
300 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [167-168.
existence on purely logical principles, by which the
judgment is taken in the quite universal signification
that all things are a judgment. That is to say, they are
individuals, which are a universality or inner nature in
themselves, — a universal which is individualised. Their
universality and individuality are distinguished, but the
one is at the same time identical with the other.
The interpretation of the judgment, according to
which it is assumed to be merely subjective, as if we
ascribed a predicate to a subject, is contradicted by the
decidedly objective expression of the judgment. The
rose is red ; Gold is a metal. It is not by us that some-
thing is first ascribed to them. — A judgment is however
distinguished from a proposition. The latter contains
a statement about the subject, which does not stand to
it in any universal relationship, but expresses some
single action, or some state, or the like. Thus, ' Caesar
was born at Rome in such and such a year, waged war
in Gaul for ten years, crossed the Rubicon, &c.,' are
propositions, but not judgments. Again it is absurd to
say that such statements as^ 'I slept well last night,' or
' Present arms ! ' may be turned into the form of a judg-
ment. * A carriage is passing by ' — would be a judgment,
and a subjective one at best, only if it were doubtful,
whether the passing object was a carriage, or whether it
and not rather the point of observation was in motion :
— in short, only if it were desired to specify a conception
which was still short of appropriate specification.
168.] The judgment is an expression of finitude.
Things from its point of view are said to be finite,
because they are a judgment, because their definite
being and their universal nature, (their body and their
soul,) though united indeed (otherwise the things would
be nothing), are still elements in the constitution which
are already different and also in any case separable.
169-170.] JUDGMENT. 301
169.] The abstract terms of the judgment, 'The in-
dividual is the universal/ present the subject (as nega-
tively self-relating) as what is immediately concrete,
w^hile the predicate is what is abstract, indeterminate, in
short, the universal. But the two elements are connected
together by an 'is': and thus the predicate (in its
universality) must also contain the speciality of the
subject, must, in short, have particularity : and so is
realised the identity between subject and predicate ;
which, being thus unaffected by this difference in form,
is the content.
It is the predicate which first gives the subject, which
till then was on its own account a bare mental repre-
sentation or an empty name, its specific character and
content. In judgments like 'God is the most real of
all things,' or 'The Absolute is the self-identical,' God
and the Absolute are mere names ; what they are we
only learn in the predicate. What the subject may be
in other respects, as a concrete thing, is no concern of
this judgment. (Cp. § 31.)
To define the subject as that of which something is said,
and the predicate as what is said about it, is mere trifling.
It gives no information about the distinction between the
two. In point of thought, the subject is primarily the in-
dividual, and the predicate the universal. As the judgment
receives further development, the subject ceases to be
merely the immediate individual, and the predicate merely
the abstract universal : the former acquires the additional
significations of particular and universal,— the latter the
additional significations of particular and individual. Thus
while the same names are given to the two terms of the
judgment, their meaning passes through a series of changes.
170.] We now go closer into the speciality of sub-
ject and predicate. The subject as negative self-rela-
tion (§§ 163, 166) is the stable substratum in which the
predicate has its subsistence and where it is ideally
302 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [170- 171.
present. The predicate, as the phrase is, inheres in the
subject. Further, as the subject is in general and
immediately concrete, the specific connotation of the
predicate is only one of the numerous characters of the
subject. Thus the subject is ampler and wider than the
predicate.
Conversely, the predicate as universal is self-sub
sistent, and indifferent whether this subject is or not
The predicate outflanks the subject, subsuming it under
itself: and hence on its side is wider than the subject
The specific content of the predicate (§ i6_>) alone con
stitutes the identity of the two.
171.] At first, subject, predicate, and the specific con
tent or the identity are, even in their relation, still pu
in the judgment as different and divergent. By implica
tion, however, that is, in their notion, they are identical
For the subject is a concrete totality, — which means no*^
any indefinite multiplicity, but individuality alone, the
particular and the universal in an identity : and the
predicate too is the very same unity (§ 170). — The
copula again, even while stating the identity of subject
and predicate, does so at first only by an abstract 'is.'
Conformably to such an identity the subject has to be
put also in the characteristic of the predicate. By this
means the latter also receives ihe characteristic of the
former : so that the copula receives its full complement
and full force. Such is the continuous specification by
which the judgment, through a copula charged with
content, comes to be a syllogism. As it is primarily
exhibited in the judgment, this gradual specification
consists in giving to an originally abstract, sensuous
universality the specific character of allness, of species,
of genus, and finally of the developed universality of
the notion.
After we are made aware of this continuous specifica-
171.] JUDGMENT. 303
tion of the judgment, we can see a meaning and an
interconnexion in what are usually stated as the kinds
of judgment. Not only does the ordinary enumeration
seem purely casual, but it is also superficial, and even
bewildering in its statement of their distinctions. The
distinction between positive, categorical and assertory
judgments, is either a pure invention of fancy, or is left
undetermined. On the right theory, the different judg-
ments follow necessarily from one another, and present
the continuous specification of the notion ; for the judg-
ment itself is nothing but the notion specified.
When we look at the two preceding spheres of Being
and Essence, we see that the specified notions as judg-
ments are reproductions of these spheres, but put in the
simplicity of relation peculiar to the notion.
The various kinds of judgment are no empirical aggre-
gate. They are a systematic whole based on a principle ;
and it was one of Kant's great merits to have first empha-
sised the necessity of showing this. His proposed division,
according to the headings in his table of categories, into
judgments of quality, quantity, relation and modality, can
not be called satisfactory, partly from the merely formal
application of this categorical rubric, partly on account of
their content. Still it rests upon a true perception of the
fact that the different species of judgment derive their
features from the universal forms of the logical idea itself.
If we follow this clue, it will supply us with three chief
kinds of judgment parallel to the stages of Being, Essence,
and Notion. The second of these kinds, as required by the
character of Essence, which is the stage of differentiation,
must be doubled. We find the inner ground for this sys-
tematisation of judgments in the circumstance that when the .
Notion, which is the unity of Being and Essence in a com-
prehensive thought, unfolds, as it does in the judgment, it
must reproduce these two stages in a transformation proper
to the notion. The notion itself meanwhile is seen to mould
and form the genuine grade of judgment.
304 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [171-172,
Far from occupying the same level, and being of equal
value, the different species of judgment form a series of
steps, the difference of which rests upon the logical signifi-
cance of the predicate. That judgments differ in value is
evident even in our ordinary ways of thinking. We should
not hesitate to ascribe a very slight faculty of judgment to a
person who habitually framed only such judgments as, ' This
wall is green,' 'This stove is hot.' On the other hand we
should credit with a genuine capacity of judgment the
person whose criticisms dealt with such questions as
whether a certain work of art was beautiful, whether a
certain action was good, and so on. In judgments of the
first-mentioned kind the content forms only an abstract
quality, the presence of which can be sufficiently detected
by immediate perception. To pronounce a work of art to be
beautiful, or an action to be good, requires on the contrary a
comparison of the objects with what they ought to be, i.e.
with their notion.
(a) Qualitative Judgment.
172.] The immediate judgment is the judgment of
definite Being. The subject is invested with a univer-
sality as its predicate, which is an immediate, and
therefore a sensible quality. It may be (i) a Positive
judgment : The individual is a particular. But the
individual is not a particular : or in more precise
language, such a single quality is not congruous with
the concrete nature of the subject. This is (2) a
Negative judgment.
It is one of the fundamental assumptions of dogmatic
Logic that Qualitative judgments such as, ' The rose is
red,* or 'is not red,' can contain truth. Correct they
may be, i.e. in the limited circle of perception, of finite
conception and thought : that depends on the content,
which likewise is finite, and, on its own merits, untrue.
Truth, however, as opposed to correctness, depends
solely on the form, viz. on the notion as it is put and
172.] QUALITATIVE JUDGMENTS. 305
the reality corresponding to it. But truth of that stamp
is not found in the Qualitative judgment.
In common life the terms truth and correctness are often
treated as synonymous : we speak of the truth of a content,
when we are only thinking of its correctness. Correctness,
generally speaking, concerns only the formal coincidence
between our conception and its content, whatever the con-
stitution of this content may be. Truth, on the contrary,
lies in the coincidence of the object with itself, that is, with
its notion. That a person is sick, or that some one has com-
mitted a theft, may certainly be correct. But the content is
untrue. A sick body is not in harmony with the notion of
body, and there is a want of congruity between theft and the
notion of human conduct. These instances may show that
an immediate judgment, in which an abstract quality is pre-
dicated of an immediately individual thing, however correct
it may be, cannot contain truth. The subject and predicate
of it do not stand to each other in the relation of reality and
notion.
We may add that the untruth of the immediate judgment
lies in the incongruity between its form and content. To
say ' This rose is red,' involves (in virtue of the copula ' is ')
the coincidence of subject and predicate. The rose however
is a concrete thing, and so is not red only : it has also an
odour, a specific form, and many other features not implied
in the predicate red. The predicate on its part is an abstract
universal, and does not apply to the rose alone. There
are other flowers and other objects which are red too. The
subject and predicate in the immediate judgment touch, as it
were, only in a single point, but do not cover each other. The
case is different with the notional judgment. In pronouncing
an action to be good, we frame a notional judgment. Here,
as we at once perceive, there is a closer and a more intimate
relation than in the immediate judgment. The predicate in
the latter is some abstract quality which may or may not be
applied to the subject. In the judgment of the notion the
predicate is, as it were, the soul of the subject, by which the
subject, as the body of this soul, is characterised through
and through.
VOL. II. X
306 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [173.
173.] This negation of a particular- quality, which is
the first negation, still leaves the connexion of the
subject with the predicate subsisting. The predicate is
in that manner a sort of relative universal, of which a
special phase only has been negatived. [To say, that
the rose is not red, implies that it is still coloured — in
the first place with another colour; which however
would be only one more positive judgment.] The in-
dividual however is not a universal. Hence (3) the
judgment suffers disruption into one of two forms. It
is either {a) the Identical judgment, an empty identical
relation stating that the individual is the individual ; or
it is [b) what is called the Infinite judgment, in which
we are presented with the total incompatibility of subject
and predicate.
Examples of the latter are : * The mind is no elephant : '
* A lion is no table ; ' propositions which are correct but
absurd, exactly like the identical propositions: 'A lion
is a lion ; ' ' Mind is mind.' Propositions like these
are undoubtedly the truth of the immediate, or, as it is
called, Qualitative judgment. But they are not judg-
ments at all, and can only occur in a subjective thought
where even an untrue abstraction may hold its ground.
— In their objective aspect, these latter judgments ex-
press the nature of what is, or of sensible things, which,
as they declare, suffer disruption into an empty identity
on the one hand, and on the other a fully-charged rela-
tion— only that this relation is the qualitative antagonism
of the things related, their total incongruity.
The negatively-infinite judgment, in which the subject has
no relation whatever to the predicate, gets its place in the
Formal Logic solely as a nonsensical curiosity. But the
infinite judgment is not really a mere casual form adopted
by subjective thought. It exhibits the proximate result of
the dialectical process in the immediate judgments preceding
173-174.] JUDGMENTS OF REFLECTION. 307
(the positive and simply -negative), and distinctly displays their
finitude and untruth. Crime may be quoted as an objective
instance of the negatively-infinite judgment. The person
committing a crime, such as a theft, does not, as in a suit
about civil rights, merely deny the particular right of another
person to some one definite thing. He denies the right of that
person in general, and therefore he is not merely forced to
restore what he has stolen, but is punished in addition, be-
cause he has violated law as law, i.e. law in general. The
civil-law suit on the contrary is an instance of the negative
judgment pure and simple where merely the particular law
is violated, whilst law in general is so far acknowledged.
Such a dispute is precisely paralleled by a negative judg-
ment, like, ' This flower is not red : ' by which we merely
deny the particular colour of the flower, but not its colour in
general, which may be blue, yellow, or any other. Similarly
death, as a negatively-infinite judgment, is distinguished
from disease as simply- negative. In disease, merely this or
that function of life is checked or negatived : in death, as we
ordinarily say, body and soul part, i.e. subject and predicate
utterly diverge.
(^) Judgment of Reflection.
174.] The individual put as individual (i. e. as re-
flected-into-self) into the judgment, has a predicate, in
comparison with which the subject, as self- relating,
continues to be still an other thing. — In existence the
subject ceases to be immediately qualitative, it is in
correlation, and inter-connexion with an other thing, —
with an external world. In this way the universality
of the predicate comes to signify this relativity — [e.g.
useful, or dangerous ; weight or acidity ; or again, in-
stinct ; are examples of such relative predicates).
The Judgment of Reflection is distinguished from the
Qualitative judgment by the circumstance that its predicate
is not an immediate or abstract quality, but of such a kind as
to exhibit the subject as in relation to something else. When
we say, e.g. ' This rose is red,' we regard the subject in its
X 2
3o8 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION.
'74-175-
immediate individuality, and without reference to anything
else. If, on the other hand, we frame the judgment, ' This
plant is medicinal,' we regard the subject, plant, as standing
in connexion with something else (the sickness which it
cures), by means of its predicate (its medicinality). The case
is the same with judgments like : This body is elastic : This
instrument is useful : This punishment has a deterrent
influence. In every one of these instances the predicate is
some category of reflection. They all exhibit an advance
beyond the immediate individuality of the subject, but none
of them goes so far as to indicate the adequate notion of it.
It is in this mode of judgment that ordinary raisonnement
luxuriates. The greater the concreteness of the object in
question, the more points of view does it offer to reflection ;
by which however its proper nature or notion is not ex-
hausted.
175.] (i) Firstly then the subject, the individual as
individual (in the Singular judgment), is a universal.
But (2) secondly, in this relation it is elevated above
its singularity. This enlargement is external, due to
subjective reflection, and at first is an indefinite number
of particulars, (This is seen in the Particular judg-
ment, which is obviously negative as well as positive :
the individual is divided in itself: partly it is self-related,
partly related to something else.) (3) Thirdly, Some
are the universal : particularity is thus enlarged to
universality : or universality is modified through the
individuality of the subject, and appears as allness
Community, the ordinary universality of reflection.
The subject, receiving, as in the Singular judgment, a uni-
versal predicate, is carried out beyond its mere individual
self. To say, 'This plant is wholesome,' implies not only
that this single plant is wholesome, but that some or several
are so. We have thus the particular judgment (some plants
are wholesome, some men are inventive, &c.). By means of
particularity the immediate individual comes to lose its inde-
pendence, and enters into an inter-connexion with something
175-176.] JUDGMENTS OF REFLECTION. 309
else. Man, as this man, is not this single man alone : he
stands beside other men and becomes one in the crowd.
Just by this means however he belongs to his universal, and
is consequently raised. — The particular judgment is as much
negative as positive. If only some bodies are elastic, it is
evident that the rest are not elastic.
On this fact again depends the advance to the third form
of the Reflective judgment, viz. the judgment of allness (all
men are mortal, all metals conduct electricity). It is as ' all '
that the universal is in the first instance generally en-
countered by reflection. The individuals form for reflection
the foundation, and it is orly our subjective action which
collects and describes them as 'all,' So far the universal
has the aspect of an external fastening, that holds together a
number of independent individuals, which have not the least
affinity towards it. This semblance of indifterence is how-
ever unreal : for the universal is the ground and foundation,
the root, and substance of the individual. If ^.^. we take
Caius, Titus, Sempronius, and the other inhabitants of a
town or country, the fact that all of them are men is not
merel}' something which they have in common, but their
universal or kind, without which these individuals would
not be at all. The case is very different with that superficial
generality falsely so called, which really means only what
attaches, or is common, to all the individuals. It has been
remarked, for example, that men, in contradistinction from
the lower animals, possess in common the appendage of
ear-lobes. It is evident, however, that the absence of these
ear-lobes in one man or another would not affect the rest of
his being, character, or capacities : whereas it would be
nonsense to suppose that Caius, without being a man, would
still be brave, learned, &c. The individual man is what he
is in particular, only in so far as he is before all things a
man as man and in general. And that generality is not
something external to, or something in addition to other
abstract qualities, or to mere features discovered by re-
flection. It is what permeates and includes in it everything
particular.
176.] The subject being thus likewise characterised
3IO THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [176-177.
as a universal, there is an express identification of
subject and predicate, by which at the same time the
speciality of the judgment-form is deprived of all im-
portance. This unity of the content (the content being
the universality which is identical with the negative
reflection-in-self of the subject) makes the connexion in
judgment a necessary one.
The advance from the reflective judgment of allness to the
judgment of necessity is found in our usual modes of thought,
when we say that whatever appertains to all, appertains to
the species, and is therefore necessary. To say all plants,
or all men, is the same thing as to say the plant, or the man.
(y) Judgment of Necessity.
177.] The Judgment of Necessity, /'. e. of the identity
of the content in its diflference (i), contains, in the pre-
dicate, partly the substance or nature of the subject, the
concrete universal, the genus ; partly, seeing that this
universal also contains the specific character as negative,
the predicate represents the exclusive essential character,
the species. This is the Categorical judgment.
(2) Conformably to their substantiality, the two terms
receive the aspect of independent actuality. Their
identity is then inward only ; and thus the actuality of
the one is at the same time not its own, but the being of
the other. This is the Hypothetical judgment.
(3) If, in this self-surrender and self-alienation of the
notion, its inner identity is at the same time explicitly
put, the universal is the genus which is self-identical
in its mutually-exclusive individualities. This judgment,
which has this universal for both its terms, the one time
as a universal, the other time as the circle of its self-
excluding particularisation in which the 'either— or' as
much as the ' as well as ' stands for the genus, is the
177.] JUDGMENTS OF NECESSITY. 3II
Disjunctive judgment. Universality, at first as a genus,
and now also as the circuit of its species, is thus described
and expressly put as a totality.
The Categorical judgment (such as ' Gold is a metal,' * The
rose is a plant') is the un-mediated judgment of necessity,
and finds within the sphere of Essence its parallel in the
relation of substance. All things are a Categorical judg-
ment. In other words, they have their substantial nature,
forming their fixed and unchangeable substratum. It is
only when things are studied from the point of view of their
kind, and as with necessity determined by the kind, that the
judgment first begins to be real. It betrays a defective
logical training to place upon the same level judgments like
'gold is dear,' and judgments like 'gold is a metal.' That
'gold is dear' is a matter of external connexion between it
and our wants or inclinations, the costs of obtaining it, and
other circumstances. Gold remains the same as it was,
though that external reference is altered or removed. Metal-
leity, on the contrary, constitutes the substantial nature of
gold, apart from which it, and all else that is in it, or can be
predicated of it, would be unable to subsist. The same is the
case if we say, 'Caius is a man.' We express by that, that
whatever else he maybe, has worth and meaning, only when
it corresponds to his substantial nature or manhood.
But even the Categorical judgment is to a certain extent
defective. It fails to give due place to the function or ele-
ment of particularity. Thus ' gold is a metal,' it is true ; but
so are silver, copper, iron : and metalleity as such has no
leanings to any of its particular species. In these circum-
stances we must advance from the Categorical to the Hypo-
thetical judgment, which may be expressed in the formula :
If A is, B is. The present case exhibits the same advance
as formerly took place from the relation of substance to the
relation of cause. In the Hypothetical judgment the specific
character of the content shows itself mediated and dependent
on something else : and this is exactly the relation of cause
and effect. And if we were to give a general interpretation
to the Hypothetical judgment, we should say that it expressly
312 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [177-178.
realises the universal in its particularising. This brings us
to the third form of the Judgment of Necessity, the Dis-
junctive judgment. A is either B or C ot D. A work of
poetic art is either epic or lyric or dramatic. Colour is either
yellow or blue or red. The two terms in the Disjunctive
judgment are identical. The genus is the sum total of the
species, and the sum total of the species is the genus. This
unity of the universal and the particular is the notion : and
it is the notion which, as we now see, forms the content of
the judgment
(S) Judgment of the Notion.
178.] The Judgment of the Notion has for its content
the notion, the totality in simple form, the universal
with its complete speciality. The subject is, (i) in the
first place, an individual, which has for its predicate the
reflection of the particular existence on its universal ;
or the judgment states the agreement or disagreement
of these two aspects. That is, the predicate is such a
term as good, true, correct. This is the Assertory
judgment.
Judgments, such as whether an object, action, &c. is
good, bad, true, beautiful, &;c., are those to which even
ordinary language first applies the name of judgment.
We should never ascribe judgment to a person who
framed positive or negative judgments like, This rose is
red, This picture is red, green, dusty, &c.
The Assertory judgment, although rejected by society
as out of place when it claims authority on its own show-
ing, has however been made the single and all-essential
form of doctrine, even in philosophy, through the in-
fluence of the principle of immediate knowledge and
faith. In the so-called philosophic works which main-
tain this principle, we may read hundreds and hundreds
of assertions about reason, knowledge, thought, &c.
178-180.] JUDGMENTS OF THE NOTION. 313
which, now that external authority counts for Httle, seek
to accredit themselves by an endless restatement of the
same thesis.
179.] On the part of its at first un-mediated subject,
the Assertory judgment does not contain the relation of
particular with universal which is expressed in the
predicate. This judgment is consequently a mere sub-
jective particularity, and is confronted by a contrary
assertion with equal right, or rather want of right. It
is therefore at once turned into (2) a Problematical
judgment. But when we explicitly attach the objective
particularity to the subject and make its speciality the con-
stitutive feature of its existence, the subject (3) then ex-
presses the connexion of that objective particularity with
its constitution, i.e. with its genus; and thus expresses
what forms the content of the predicate (see § 178).
[This {the immediate individuality) house {the gemts),
being so and so constituted {particularity), is good or
bad.] This is the Apodictic judgment. All things
are a genus {i.e. have a meaning and purpose) in an
individual actuality of a particular constitution. And
they are finite, because the particular in them may and
also may not conform to the universal.
180.] In this manner subject and predicate are each
the whole judgment. The immediate constitution of the
subject is at first exhibited as the intermediating ground,
where the individuality of the actual thing meets with
its universality, and in this way as the ground of the
judgment. What has been really made explicit is the
oneness of subject and predicate, as the notion itself,
filling up the empty 'is' of the copula. While its con-
stituent elements are at the same time distinguished as
subject and predicate, the notion is put as their unity, as
the connexion which serves to intermediate them : in
short, as the Syllogism.
314 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [181.
[c] The Syllogism.
181.] The Syllogism brings the notion and the judg-
ment into one. It is notion, — being the simple identity
into which the distinctions of form in the judgment have
retired. It is judgment, — because it is at the same time
set in reality, that is, put in the distinction of its terms.
The Syllogism is the reasonable, and everything
reasonable.
Even the ordinary theories represent the Syllogism
to be the form of reasonableness, but only a subjective
form ; and no inter-connexion whatever is shown to
exist between it and any other reasonable content, such
as a reasonable principle, a reasonable action, idea, &c.
The name of reason is much and often heard, and
appealed to : but no one thinks of explaining its specific
character, or saying what it is, — least of all that it has
any connexion with Syllogism. But formal Syllogism
really presents what is reasonable in such a reasonless
way that it has nothing to do with any reasonable
matter. But as the matter in question can only be
rational in virtue of the same quality by which thought
is reason, it can be made so by the form only : and that
form is Syllogism. And what is a Syllogism but an
explicit putting, i.e. realising of the notion, at first in
form only, as stated above ? Accordingly the Syllogism
is the essential ground of whatever is true : and at the
present stage the definition of the Absolute is that it is
the Syllogism, or stating the principle in a proposition :
Everything is a Syllogism. Everything is a notion, the
existence of which is the differentiation of its members
or functions, so that the universal nature of the Notion
gives itself external reality by means of particularity,
and thereby, and as a negative reflection-into-self, makes
itself an individual. Or, conversely: the actual thing is
i8i-i82.j SYLLOGISM. 315
an individual, which by means of particularity rises to
universality and makes itself identical with itself — The
actual is one : but it is also the divergence from each
other of the constituent elements of the notion ; and the
Syllogism represents the orbit of intermediation of its
elements, by which it realises its unity.
The Syllogism, like the notion and the judgment, is usually
described as a form merely of our subjective thinking. The
Syllogism, it is said, is the process of proving the judgment.
And certainly the judgment does in every case refer us to
the Syllogism. The step from the one to the other however
is not brought about by our subjective action, but by the
judgment itself which puts itself as Syllogism, and in the
conclusion returns to the unity of the notion. The precise
point by which we pass to the Syllogism is found in the
Apodictic judgment. In it we have an individual which by
means of its qualities connects itself vVith its universal or
notion. Here we see the particular becoming the mediating
mean between the individual and the universal. This gives
the fundamental form of the Syllogism, the gradual specifica-
tion of which, formally considered, consists in the fact that
universal and individual also occupy this place of mean.
This again paves the way for the passage from subjectivity
to objectivity.
182.] In the 'immediate' Syllogism the several as-
pects of the notion confront one another abstractly, and
stand in an external relation only. We have first the
two extremes, which are Individuality and Universality;
and then the notion, as the mean for locking the two
together, is in like manner only abstract Particularity.
In this way the extremes are put as independent and
without affinity either towards one another or towards
their mean. Such a Syllogism contains reason, but in
utter notionlessness,— the formal Syllogism of Under-
standing. In it the subject is coupled with an other
character; or the universal by this mediation subsumes
3l6 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [182.
a subject external to it. In the rational Syllogism, on
the contrary, the subject is by means of the mediation
coupled, with itself. In this manner it first comes to be
a subject : or, in the subject we have the first germ of
the rational Syllogism.
In the following examination, the Syllogism of Under-
standing, according to the interpretation usually put
upon it, is expressed in its subjective shape ; the shape
which it has when we are said to make such Syllogisms.
And it really is only a subjective syllogising. Such
Syllogism however has also an objective meaning; it
expresses only the finitude of things, but does so in the
specific mode which the form has here reached. In
the case of finite things their subjectivity, being only
thinghood, is separable from their properties or their
particularity, but also separable from their universality :
not only when the universality is the bare quality of the
thing and its external inter-connexion with other things,
but also when it is its genus and notion.
On the above-mentioned theory of syllogism, as the ra-
tional form par excellence, reason has been defined as the
faculty of syllogising, whilst understanding is defined as the
faculty of forming notions. We might object to the con-
ception on which this depends, and according to which the
mind is merely a sum of forces or faculties existing side by
side. But apart from that objection, we may observe in
regard to the parallelism of understanding with the notion,
as well as of reason with syllogism, that the notion is as
little a mere category of the understanding as the syllogism
is without qualification definable as rational. For, in the
first place, what the Formal Logic usually examines in its
theory of syllogism, is really nothing but the mere syllogism
of understanding, which has no claim to the honour of being
made a form of rationality, still less to be held as the em-
bodiment of all reason. The notion, in the second place, so
far from being a form of understanding, owes its degradation
i8a-i83.] QUALITATIVE SYLLOGISMS. 317
to such a place entirely to the influence of that abstract mode
of thought. And it is not unusual to draw such a distinction
between a notion of understanding and a notion of reason.
The distinction however does not mean that notions are of
two kinds. It means that our own action often stops short
at the mere negative and abstract form of the notion, when
we might also have proceeded to apprehend the notion in its
true nature, as at once positive and concrete. It is e.g. the
mere understanding, which thinks liberty to be the abstract
contrary of necessity, whereas the adequate rational notion
of liberty requires the element of necessity to be merged
in it. Similarly the definition of God, given by what is called
Deism, is merely the mode in which the understanding
thinks God : whereas Christianity, to which He is known as
the Trinity, contains the rational notion of God.
(a) Qualitative Syllogism.
183.] The first syllogism is a syllogism of definite
being, — a Qualitative Syllogism, as stated in the last
paragraph. Its form (i) is I — P— U : i.e. a subject
as Individual is coupled (concluded) with a Universal
character by means of a (Particular) quality.
Of course the subject [terminus minor) has other
characteristics besides individuality, just as the other
extreme (the predicate of the conclusion, or terminus
major) has other characteristics than mere universality.
But here the interest turns only on the characteristics
through which these terms make a syllogism.
The syllogism of existence is a syllogism of understanding
merely, at least in so far as it leaves the individual, the
particular, and the universal to confront each other quite
abstractly. In this syllogism the notion is at the very
height of self-estrangement. We have in it an immediately
individual thing as subject : next some one particular aspect
or property attaching to this subject is selected, and by
means of this property the individual turns out to be a
universal. Thus we may say, This rose is red : Red is a
3l8 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [183-184.
colour : Therefore, this rose is a coloured object. It is this
aspect of the syllogism which the common logics mainly
treat of. There was a time when the syllogism was regarded
as an absolute rule for all cognition, and when a scientific
statement was not held to be valid until it had been shown
to follow from a process of syllogism. At present, on the
contrary, the different forms of the syllogism are met no-
where save in the manuals of Logic ; and an acquaintance
with them is considered a piece of mere pedantry, of no
further use either in practical life or in science. It would
indeed be both useless and pedantic to parade the whole
machinery of the formal syllogism on every occasion. And
yet the several forms of syllogism make themselves con-
stantly felt in our cognition. If any one, when awaking on
a winter morning, hears the creaking of the carriages on the
street, and is thus led to conclude that it has frozen hard in
the night, he has gone through a syllogistic operation : — an
operation which is every day repeated under the greatest
variety of conditions. The interest, therefore, ought at least
not to be less in becoming expressly conscious of this daily
action of our thinking selves, than confessedly belongs to
the study of the functions of organic life, such as the pro-
cesses of digestion, assimilation, respiration, or even the
processes and structures of the nature around us. We do
not, however, for a moment deny that a study of Logic is no
more necessary to teach us how to draw correct conclusions,
than a previous study of anatomy and physiology is required
in order to digest or breathe.
Aristotle was the first to observe and describe the dif-
ferent forms, or, as they are called, figures of syllogism, in
their subjective meaning : and he performed his work so
exactly and surely, that no essential £(ddition has ever been
required. But while sensible of the value of what he has
thus done, we must not forget that the forms of the syllogism
of understanding, and of finite thought altogether, are not
what Aristotle has made use of in his properly philosophical
investigations. (See § 189.)
184.] This syllogism is completely contingent («) in the
matter of its terms. The Middle Term, being an abstract
184.] QUALITATIVE SYLLOGISMS. 319
particularity, is nothing but any quality whatever of
the subject : but the subject, being immediate and thus
empirically concrete, has several others, and could there-
fore be coupled with exactly as many other universalities
as it possesses single qualities. Similarly a single par-
ticularity may have various characters in itself, so that
the same medius terminus would serve to connect the
subject with several different universals.
It is more a caprice of fashion, than a sense of its in-
correctness, which has led to the disuse of ceremonious
syllogising. This and the following section indicate
the uselessness of such syllogising for the ends of truth.
The point of view indicated in the paragraph shows
how this style of syllogisrn can ' demonstrate ' (as the
phrase goes) the most diverse conclusions. All that is
requisite is to find a medius terminus from which the
transition can be made to the proposition sought. An-
other medius terminus would enable us to demonstrate
something else, and even the contrary of the last. And
the more concrete an object is, the more aspects it has,
which may become such middle terms. To determine
which of these aspects is more essential than another,
again, requires a further syllogism of this kind, which
fixing on the single quality can with equal ease discover
in it some aspect or- consideration by which it can make
good its claims to be considered necessary and im-
portant.
Little as we usually think on. the Syllogism of Under-
standing in the daily business of life, it never ceases to play
its part there. In a civil suit, for instance, it is the duty of
the advocate to give due force to the legal titles which make
in favour of his client. In logical language, such a legal title
is nothing but a middle term. Diplomatic transactions afford
another illustration of the same, when, for instance, different
powers lay claim to one and the same territory. In such a
case the laws of inheritance, the geographical position of the
320 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [184-186.
country, the descent and the language of its inhabitants, or
any other ground, may be emphasised as a mediiis terminus-
185.] (/3) This syllogism, if it is contingent in point
of its terms, is no less contingent in virtue of the form
of relation which is found in it. In the syllogism,
according to its notion, truth lies in connecting two
distinct things by a Middle Term in which they are
one. But connexions of the extremes with the Middle
Term (the so-called premisses, the major and the minor
premiss) are in the case of this syllogism much
more decidedly immediate connexions. In other words,
they have not a proper Middle Term.
This contradiction in the syllogism exhibits a new
case of the infinite progression. Each of the premisses
evidently calls for a fresh syllogism to demonstrate it :
and as the new syllogism has two immediate premisses,
like its predecessor, the demand for proof is doubled at
every step, and repeated without end.
186.] On account of its importance for experience,
there has been here noted a defect in the syllogism,
to which in this form absolute correctness had been
ascribed. This defect however must lose itself in the
further specification of the syllogism. For we are now
within the sphere of the notion ; and here therefore, gs
well as in the judgment, the opposite character is not
merely present potentially, but is explicit. To work
out the gradual specification of the syllogism, therefore,
there need only be admitted and accepted what is at
each step realised by the syllogism itself.
Through the immediate syllogism I — P— U, the In-
dividual is mediated (through a Particular) with the
Universal, and in this conclusion put as a universal. It
follows that the individual subject, becoming itself a
universal, serves to unite the two extremes, and to form
their ground of intermediation. This gives the second
186-187.] SYLLOGISTIC FIGURES. 321
figure of the syllogism, (2) U — I — P. It expresses the
truth of the first ; it shows in other words that the inter-
mediation has taken place in the individual, and is thus
something contingent.
187.] The universal, which in the first conclusion
was specified through individuality, passes over into the
second figure and there now occupies the place that
belonged to the immediate subject. In the second
figure it is concluded with the particular. By this con-
clusion therefore the universal is explicitly put as
particular — and is now made to mediate between the
two extremes, the places of which are occupied by the
two others (the particular and the individual). This is
the third figure of the syllogism : (3) P — U — I.
What are called the Figures of the syllogism (b^ing
three in number, for the fourth is a superfluous and even
absurd addition of the Moderns to the three known to
Aristotle) are in the usual mode of treatment put side
by side, without the slightest thought of showing their
necessity, and still less of pointing out their import and
value. No wonder then that the figures have been in
later times treated as an empty piece of formalism.
They have however a very real significance, derived
from the necessity for every function or characteristic
element of the notion to become the whole itself, and
to stand as mediating ground. — But to find out what
* moods ' of the propositions (such as whether they may
be universals, or negatives) are needed to enable us to
draw a correct conclusion in the different figures, is
a mechanical inquiry, which its purely mechanical nature
and its intrinsic meaninglessness have very properly
consigned to oblivion. And Aristotle would have been
the last person to give any countenance to those who
wish to attach importance to such inquiries or to the
syllogism of understanding in general. It is true that
322 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [187-188.
he described these, as well as numerous other forms of
mind and nature, and that he examined and expounded
their specialities. But in his metaphysical theories, as
well as his theories of nature and mind, he was very far
from taking as basis, or criterion, the syllogistic forms
of the 'understanding.' Indeed it might be maintained
that not one of these theories would ever have come into
existence, or been allowed to exist, if it had been com-
pelled to submit to the laws of understanding. With
all the descriptiveness and analytic faculty which Aris-
totle after his fashion is substantially strong in, his
ruling principle is always the speculative notion ; and
that syllogistic of 'understanding' to which he first gave
such a definite expression is never allowed to intrude in
the higher domain of philosophy.
In their objective sense, the three figures of the syllogism
declare that everything rational is manifested as a triple
syllogism ; that is to say, each one of the members takes in
turn the place of the extremes, as well as of the mean which
reconciles them. Such, for example, is the case with the
three branches of philosophy; the Logical Idea, Nature,
and Mind. As we first see them, Nature is the middle term
which links the others together. Nature, the totality im-
mediately before us, unfolds itself into the two extremes of
the Logical Idea and Mind. But Mind is Mind only when
it is mediated through nature. Then, in the second place,
Mind, which we know as the principle of individuality, or as
the actualising principle, is the mean ; and Nature and the
Logical Idea are the extremes. It is Mind which cognises
the Logical Idea in Nature and which thus raises Nature to
its essence. In the third place again the Logical Idea itself
becomes the mean : it is the absolute substance both of mind
and of nature, the universal and all-pervading principle.
These are the members of the Absolute Syllogism.
188.] In the round by which each constituent function
assumes successively the place of mean and of the two
188-189.] MATHEMATICAL SYLLOGISMS. 323
extremes, their specific difference from each other has
been superseded. In this form, where there is no dis-
tinction between its constituent elements, the syllogism
at first has for its connective link equality, or the external
identity of understanding. This is the Quantitative or
Mathematical Syllogism: if two things are equal to
a third, they are equal to one another.
Everybody knows that this Quantitative syllogism appears
as a mathematical axiom, which like other axioms is said to
be a principle that does not admit of proof, and which in-
deed being self-evident does not require such proof. These
mathematical axioms however are really nothing but logical
propositions, which, so far as they enunciate definite and
particular thoughts, are deducible from the universal and
self-characterising thought. To deduce them, is to give their
proof That is true of the Quantitative syllogism, to which
mathematics gives the rank of an axiom. It is really the
proximate result of the qualitative or immediate syllogism.
Finally, the Quantitative syllogism is the syllogism in utter
formlessness. The difference between the terms which is
required by the notion is suspended. Extraneous circum-
stances alone can decide what propositions are to be pre-
misses here : and therefore in applying this syllogism we
make a pre-supposition of what has been elsewhere proved
and established.
189.] Two results follow as to the form. In the first
place, each constituent element has taken the place and
performed the function of the mean and therefore of the
whole, thus implicitly losing its partial and abstract
character (§ 182 and § 184); secondly, the mediation
has been completed (§ 185), though the completion too
is only implicit, that is, only as a circle of mediations
which in turn pre-suppose each other. In the first
figure I — P — U the two premisses I is P and P is U are
yet without a mediation. The former premiss is mediated
in the third, the latter in the second figure. But each
Y 2
324 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [189-190.
of these two figures, again, for the mediation of its pre-
misses pre-supposes the two others.
In consequence of this, the mediating unity of the
notion must be put no longer as an abstract particularity,
but as a developed unity of the individual and universal
— and in the first place a reflected unity of these
elements. That is to say, the individuality gets at the
same time the character of universality. A mean of
this kind gives the Syllogism of Reflection.
(3) Syllogism of Reflection.
190.] If the mean, in the first place, be not only an
abstract particular character of the subject, but at the
same time all the individual concrete subjects which
possess that character, but possess it only along with
others, (i) we have the Syllogism of Allness. The
major premiss, however, which has for its subject the
particular character, the terminus medtus, as allness,
pre-supposes the very conclusion which ought rather to
have pre-supposed it. It rests therefore (2) on an
Induction, in which the mean is given by the complete
list of individuals as such,- -a, b, c, d, Sic. On account
of the disparity, however, between universality and an
immediate and empirical individuality, the list can never
be complete. Induction therefore rests upon (3) Analogy.
The middle term of Analogy is an individual, which
however is understood as equivalent to its essential
universality, its genus, or essential character. — The
first syllogism for its intermediation turns us over to the
oecond, and the second turns us over to the third. But
the third no less demands an intrinsically determinate
Universality, or an individuality as type of the genus,
after the round of the forms of external connexion
between individuality and universality has been run
through in the figures of the Reflective Syllogism.
igo.] SYLLOGISMS OF REFLECTION. 325
By the Syllogism of Allness the defect in the first
form of the Syllogism of Understanding, noted in § 184,
is remedied, but only to give rise to a new defect. This
defect is that the major premiss itself pre-supposes what
really ought to be the conclusion, and pre-supposes it as
what is thus an 'immediate' proposition. All men are
mortal, therefore Caius is mortal : All metals conduct
electricity, therefore e.g. copper does so. In order to
enunciate these major premisses, which when they say
' all ' mean the ' immediate ' individuals and are properly
intended to be empirical propositions, it is requisite that
the propositions about the individual man Caius, or the
individual metal copper, should previously have been
ascertained to be correct. Everybody feels not merely
the pedantry, but the unmeaning formalism of such
syllogisms as : All men are mortal, Caius is a man,
therefore Caius is mortal.
1 he syllogism of Allness hands us over to the syllogism
of Induction, in which the individuals form the coupling
mean, ' All metals conduct electricity,' is an empirical pro-
position derived from experiments made with each of the
individual metals. We thus get the syllogism of Induction
I
in the following shape P— I— U.
I
Gold is a metal : silver is a metal : so is copper, lead, &c.
This is the major premiss. Then comes the minor premiss :
All these bodies conduct electricity ; and hence results the
conclusion, that all metals conduct electricity. The point
which brings about a combination here is individuality in the
shape of allness. But this syllogism once more hands us
over to another syllogism. Its mean is constituted by the
complete list of the individuals. That pre-supposes that
over a certain region observation and experience are com-
pleted. But the things in question here are individuals ; and
326 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [190,
so again we are landed in the progression ad infinitum
(i, i, i, &c.). In other words, in no Induction can we ever
exhaust the individuals. The 'all metals,' 'all plants,' of our
statements, mean only all the metals, all the plants, which
we have hitherto become acquainted with. Every Induction
is consequently imperfect. One and the other observation,
many it may be, have been made : but all the cases, all the
individuals, have not been observed. By this defect of In-
duction we are led on to Analogy. In the syllogism of
Analogy we conclude from the fact that some things of a
certain kind possess a certain quality, that the same quality
is possessed by other things of the same kind. It would be
a syllogism of Analogy, for example, if we said : In all
planets hitherto discovered this has been found to be the
law of motion, consequently a newly discovered planet will
probably move according to the same law. In the experiential
sciences Analog^' deservedly occupies a high place, and has
led to results of the highest importance. Analogy is the in-
stinct of reason, creating an anticipation that this or that
characteristic, which experience has discovered, has its root
in the inner nature or kind of an object, and arguing on the
faith of that anticipation. Analogy it should be added may
be superficial or it may be thorough. It would certainly be
a very bad analogy to argue that since the man Caius is
a scholar, and Titus also is a man, Titus will probably be a
scholar too: and it would be bad because a man's learning
is not an unconditional consequence of his manhood. Super-
ficial analogies of this kind however are very frequently met
with. It is often argued, for example : The earth is a celestial
body, so is the moon, and it is therefore in all probability
inhabited as well as the earth. The analogy is not one whit
better than that previously mentioned. That the earth is
inhabited does not depend on its being a celestial body, but
on other conditions, such as the presence of an atmosphere,
and of water in connexion with the atmosphere, &c. : and
these are precisely the conditions which the moon, so far as
we know, does not possess. What has in modern times been
called the Philosophy of Nature consists principally in a
frivolous play with empty and external analogies, which,
igo-iga.] SYLLOGISMS OF NECESSITY. 327
however, claim to be considered profound results. The
natural consequence has been to discredit the philosophical
study of nature.
(y) Syllogism of Necessity.
191.] The Syllogism of Necessity, if we look to its
purely abstract characteristics or terms, has for its mean
the Universal in the same way as the Syllogism of
Reflection has the Individual, the latter being in the
second, and the former in the third figure (§ 187). The
Universal is expressly put as in its very nature intrinsic-
ally determinate. In the first place (i) the Particular,
meaning by the particular the specific genus or species,
is the term for mediating the extremes — as is done in
the Categorical syllogism. (2) The same office is per-
formed by the Individual, taking the individual as
immediate being, so that it is as much mediating as
mediated :— as happens in the Hypothetical syllogism,
(3) We have also the mediating Universal explicitly put
as a totality of its particular members, and as a single
particular, or exclusive individuality :— which happens
in the Disjunctive syllogism. It is one and the same
universal which is in these terms of the Disjunctive
syllogism ; they are only different forms for express-
ing it.
192.] The syllogism has been taken conformably to
the distinctions which it contains ; and the general
result of the course of their evolution has been to show
that these differences work out their own abolition and
destroy the notion's outwardness to its own self. And,
as we see, in the first place, (i) each of the dynamic
elements has proved itself the systematic whole of these
elements, in short a whole syllogism, — they are conse-
quently implicitly identical. In the second place, (2) the
negation of their distinctions and of the mediation of
328 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [192.
one through another constitutes independency ; so that
it is one and the same universal which is in these forms,
and which is in this way also explicitly put as their
identity. In this ideality of its dynamic elements, the
syllogistic process may be described as essentially in-
volving the negation of the characters through which its
course runs, as being a mediative process through the
suspension of mediation, — as coupling the subject not
with another, but with a suspended other, in one word,
with itself
In the common logic, the doctrine of syllogism is supposed
to conclude the first part, or what is called the ' elementary '
theory. It is followed by the second part, the doctrine of
Method, which proposes to show how a body of scientific
knowledge is created by applying to existing objects the
forms of thought discussed in the elementary part. Whence
these objects originate, and what the thought of objectivity
generally speaking implies, are questions to which the Logic
of Understanding vouchsafes no further answer. It believes
thought to be a mere subjective and formal activity, and the
objective fact, which confronts thought, to have a separate
and permanent being. But this dualism is a half-truth : and
there is a want of intelligence in the procedure which at once
accepts, without inquiring into their origin, the categories of
subjectivity and objectivity. Both of them, subjectivity as
well as objectivity, are certainly thoughts — even specific
thoughts : which must show themselves founded on the
universal and self-determining thought. This has here been
done — at least for subjectivity. We have recognised it, or
the notion subjective (vvhich includes the notion proper, the
judgment, and the syllogism) as the dialectical result of the
first two main stages of the Logical Idea, Being and Essence.
To say that the notion is subjective and subjective only, is so
far quite correct : for the notion certainly is subjectivity itself
Not less subjective than the notion are also the judgment
and syllogism : and these forms, together with the so-called
Laws of Thought (the Laws of Identity, Difference, and
I92-I93-] NOTION AND OBJECT. 329
Sufficient Ground), make up the contents of what is called
the ' Elements ' in the common logic. But we may go a
step further. This subjectivity, with its functions of notion,
judgment, and syllogism, is not like a set of empty compart-
ments which has to get filled from without by separately-
existing objects. It would be truer to say that it is sub-
jectivity itself which, as dialectical, breaks through its own
barriers and opens out into objectivity by means of the
syllogism.
193.] This ' realisation ' of the notion,— a realisation
in which the universal is this one totality withdrawn
back into itself (of which the different members are no
less the whole, and) which has given itself a character
of 'immediate ' unity by merging the mediation: — this
realisation of the notion is the Object.
This transition from the Subject, the notion in general,
and especially the syllogism, to the Object, may, at the
first glance, appear strange, particularly if we look only
at the Syllogism of Understanding, and suppose syllo-
gising to be only an act of consciousness. But that
strangeness imposes on us no obligation to seek to
make the transition plausible to the image-loving con-
ception. The only question which can be considered
is, whether our usual conception of what is called an
'object' approximately corresponds to the object as
here described. By ' object ' is commonly understood
not an abstract being, or an existing thing merely, or
any sort of actuality, but something independent, con-
crete, and self-complete, this completeness being the
totality of the notion. That the object {Objekt) is also
an object to us {Gegenstand) and is external to some-
thing else, will be more precisely seen, when it puts
itself in contrast with the subjective. At present, as that
into which the notion has passed from its mediation, it
is only immediate object and nothing more, just as the
330 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [193.
notion is not describable as subjective, previous to the
subsequent contrast with objectivity.
Further, the Object in general is the one total, in
itself still unspecified, the Objective World as a whole,
God, the Absolute Object. The object, however, has
also difference attaching to it : it falls into pieces, in-
definite in their multiplicity (making an objective world);
and each of these individualised parts is also an object,
an intrinsically concrete, complete, and independent
existence.
Objectivity has been compared with being, existence,
and actuality ; and so too the transition to existence and
actuality (not to being, for it is the primary and quite
abstract immediate) maybe compared with the transition
to objectivity. The ground from which existence pro-
ceeds, and the reflective correlation which is merged in
actuality, are nothing but the as yet imperfectly realised
notion. They are only abstract aspects of it, — the
ground being its merely essence-bred unity, and the
correlation only the connexion of real sides which are
supposed to have only self-reflected being. The notion
is the unity of the two ; and the object is not a merely
essence-like, but inherently universal unity, not only
containing real distinctions, but containing them as
totalities in itself.
It is evident that in all these transitions there is a
further purpose than merely to show the indissoluble
connexion between the notion or thought and being.
It has been more than once remarked that being is
nothing more than simple self-relation, and this meagre
category is certainly implied in the notion, or even in
thought. But the meaning of these transitions is not to
accept characteristics or categories, as only implied ; —
a fault which mars even the Ontological argument for
God's existence, when it is stated that being is one
193.] NOTION AND OBJECT. 331
among realities. What such a transition does, is to take
the notion, as it ought to be primarily characterised per
se as a notion, with which this remote abstraction of
being, or eve of objectivity, has as yet nothing to do,
and looking at its specific character as a notional
character alone, to see when and whether it passes over
into a form which is different from the character as it
belongs to the notion and appears in it.
If the Object, the product of this transition, be brought
into relation with the notion, which, so far as its special
form is concerned, has vanished in it, we may give a
correct expression to the result, by saying that notion
(or, if it be preferred, subjectivity) and object are im-
plicitly the same. But it is equally correct to say that
they are different. In short, the two modes of expres-
sion are equally correct and incorrect. The true state
of the case can be presented in no expressions of this
kind. The 'implicit' is an abstraction, still more
partial and inadequate than the notion itself, of which
the inadequacy is upon the whole suspended, by suspend-
ing itself to the object with its opposite inadequacy.
Hence that implicitness also must, by its negation, give
itself the character of explicitness. As in every case,
speculative identity is not the above-mentioned triviality
of an implicit identity of subject and object. This has
been said often enough. Yet it could not be too
often repeated, if the intention were really to put an
end to the stale and purely malicious misconception in
regard to this identity: — of which however there can be
no reasonable expectation.
Looking at that unity in a quite general way, and
raising no objection to the one-sided form of its implicit-
ness, we find it as the well-known pre-supposition of
the ontological proof for the existence of God. There,
it appears as supreme^perfection. Anselm, in whom the
332 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [193.
notable suggestion of this proof first occurs, no doubt
originally restricted himself to the question whether
a certain content was in our thinking only. His
words are briefly these : ' Certe id quo majus cogitari
nequtt, non potest esse in intellectu solo. Si enint vel in
solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re : quod majus
est. Si ergo id quo majus cogitari non- potest, est in solo
intellectu ; id ipsum quo majus cogitari non potest, est quo
majus cogitari potest. Sed certe hoc esse non potest.'
(Certainly that, than which nothing greater can be
thought, cannot be in the intellect alone. For even if it
is in the intellect alone, it can also be thought to exist
in fact : and that is greater. If then that, than which
nothing greater can be thought, is in the intellect alone;
then the very thing, which is greater than anything
which can be thought, can be exceeded in thought.
But certainly this is impossible.) The same unity
received a more objective expression in Descartes,
Spinoza and others : while the theory of immediate cer-
titude or faith presents it, on the contrary, in somewhat
the same subjective aspect as Anselm. These Intui-
tionalists hold that in our consciousness the attribute of
being is indissolubly associated with the conception of
God. The theory of faith brings even the conception of
external finite things under the same inseparable nexus
between the consciousness and the being of them, on
the ground that perception presents them conjoined with
the attribute of existence : and in so saying, it is no
doubt correct. It would be utterly absurd, however, to
suppose that the association in consciousness between
existence and our conception of finite things is of the
same description as the association between existence
and the conception of God. To do so would be to
forget that finite things are changeable and transient,
i. e. that existence is associated with them for a season,
193] NOTION AND OBJECT. 333
but that the association is neither eternal nor insepar-
able. Speaking in the phraseology of the categories
before us, we may say that, to call a thing finite, means
that its objective existence is not in harmony with the
thought of it, with its universal calling, its kind and its
end. Anselm, consequently, neglecting any such con-
junction as occurs in finite things, has with good reason
pronounced that only to be the Perfect which exists
not merely in a subjective, but also in an objective
mode. It does no good to put on airs against the On-
tological proof, as it is called, and against Anselm thus
defining the Perfect. The argument is one latent in
every unsophisticated mind, and it recurs in every
philosophy, even against its wish and without its
knowledge — as may be seen in the theory of immediate
belief.
The real fault in the argumentation of Anselm is one
which is chargeable on Descartes and Spinoza, as well
as on the theory of immediate knowledge. It is this.
This unity which is enunciated as the supreme perfec-
tion or, it may be, subjectively, as the true knowledge,
is pre-supposed, ;', e. it is assumed only as potential.
This identity, abstract as it thus appears, between the
two categories may be at once met and opposed by their
diversity; and this was the very answer given to Anselm
long ago. In short, the conception and existence of the
finite is set in antagonism to the infinite ; for, as pre-
viously remarked, the finite possesses objectivity of
such a kind as is at once incongruous with and different
from the end or aim, its essence and notion. Or, the
finite is such a conception and in sach a way subjective,
that it does not involve existence. This objection and
this antithesis are got over, only by snowing the finite
to be untrue and these categories in their separation to
be inadequate and null. Their identity is thus seen to
334 ^^^ DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [193-194.
be one into which they spontaneously pass over, and in
which they are reconciled.
B. — The Object.
194.] The Object is immediate being, because in-
sensible to difference, which in it has suspended itself.
It is, further, a totality in itself, whilst at the same time
(as this identity is only the implicit identity of its dynamic
elements) it is equally indifferent to its immediate unity.
It thus breaks up into distinct parts, each of which is
itself the totality. Hence the object is the absolute
contradiction between a complete independence of the
multiplicity, and the equally complete non-independence
of the different pieces.
The'definition, which states that the Absolute is the
Object, is most definitely implied in the Leibnitzian
Monad. The Monads are each an object, but an object
implicitly 'representative,' indeed the total representa-
tion of the world. In the simple unity of the Monad, all
difference is merely ideal, not independent or real.
Nothing from without comes into the monad : It is the
whole notion in itself, only distinguished by its own
greater or less development. None the less, this simple
totality parts into the absolute multeity of differences,
each becoming an independent monad. In the monad
of monads, and the Pre-established Harmony of their
inward developments, these substances are in like
manner again reduced to 'ideality' and unsubstantiality.
The philosophy of Leibnitz, therefore, represents con-
tradiction in its complete development.
As Fichte in modern times has especially and with justice
insisted, the theory which regards the Absolute or God as
the Object and there stops, expresses the point of view taken
by superstition and slavish fear. No doubt God is the
Object, and, indeed, the Object out and out, confronted with
194.] THE OBJECT. 335
which our particular or subjective opinions and desires have
no truth and no validity. As absolute object however,
God does not therefore take up the position of a dark and
hostile power over against subjectivity. He rather involves
it as a vital element in Himself Such also is the meaning of
the Christian doctrine, according to which God has willed
that all men should be saved and all attain blessedness. The
salvation and the blessedness of men are attained when they
come to feel themselves at one with God, so that God, on the
other hand, ceases to be for them mere object, and, in that
way, an object of fear and terror, as was especially the case
with the religious consciousness of the Romans. But God
in the Christian religion is also known as Love, because in
His Son, who is one with Him, He has revealed Himself to
men as a man amongst men, and thereby redeemed them.
All which is only another way of saying that the antithesis
of subjective and objective is implicitly overcome, and that it
is our affair to participate in this redemption by laying aside
our immediate subjectivity (putting off the old Adam), and
learning to know God as our true and essential self.
Just as religion and religious worship consist in overcom-
ing the antithesis of subjectivity and objectivity, so science
too and philosophy have no other task than to overcome this
antithesis by the medium of thought. The aim of knowledge
is to divest the objective world that stands opposed to us of
its strangeness, and, as the phrase is, to find ourselves at
home in it : which means no more than to trace the objective
world back to the notion, — to our innermost self We may
learn from the present discussion the mistake of regarding
the antithesis of subjectivity and objectivity as an abstract
and permanent one. The two are wholly dialectical. The
notion is at first only subjective : but without the assistance
of any foreign material or stuff it proceeds, in obedience to
its own action, to objectify itself So, too, the object is not
rigid and processless. Its process is to show itself as what
is at the same time subjective, and thus form the step onwards
to the idea. Any one whoj from want of familiarity with the
categories of subjectivity and objectivity, seeks to retain them
in their abstraction, will find that the isolated categories slip
336 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [i94-i95-
through his fingers before he is aware, and that he says the
exact contrary of what he wanted to say.
(2) Objectivity contains the three forms of Mechanism,
Chemism, and Teleology. The object of mechanical type is
the immediate and undifferentiated object. No doubt it con-
tains difference, but the different pieces stand, as it were,
without affmity to each other, and their connexion is only
extraneous. In chemism, on the contrary, the object exhibits
an essential tendency to differentiation, in such a way that
the objects are what they are only by their relation to each
other: this tendency to difference constitutes their quahty.
The third type of objectivity, the teleological relation, is the
unity of mechanism and chemism. Design, like the me-
chanical object, is a self-contained totality, enriched however
by the principle of differentiation which came to the fore in
chemism, and thus referring itself to the object that stands
over against it. Finally, it is the realisation of design which
forms the transition to the Idea.
{a) Mechanism.
196.] The object (i) in its immediacy is the notion
only potentially ; the notion as subjective is primarily
outside it ; and all its specific character is imposed from
without. As a unity of differents^ therefore, it is a com-
posite, an aggregate ; and its capacity of acting on any-
thing else continues to be an external relation. This is
Formal Mechanism. — Notwithstanding, and in this con-
nexion and non-independence, the objects remain inde-
pendent and offer resistance, external to each other.
Pressure and impact are examples of mechanical
relations. Our knowledge is said to be mechanical or
by rote, when the words have no meaning for us, but
continue external to sense, conception, thought; and
when, being similarly external to each other, they form
a meaningless sequence. Conduct, piety, &c. are in the
same way mechanical, when a man's behaviour is settled
for him by ceremonial laws, by a spiritual adviser, &c. ;
195-] MECHANISM. 337
in short, when his own mind and will are not in his
actions, which in this way are extraneous to himself.
Mechanism, the first form of objectivity, is also the category
which primarily offers itself to reflection, as it examines the
objective world. It is also the category beyond which re-
flection seldom goes. It is, however, a shallow and super-
ficial mode of observation, one that cannot carry us through
in connexion with Nature and still less in connexion with
the world of Mind. In Nature it is only the veriest abstract
relations of matter in its inert masses which obey the law of
mechanism. On the contrary the phenomena and operations
of the province to which the term ' physical ' in its narrower
sense is applied, such as the phenomena of light, heat, mag-
netism, and electricity, cannot be explained by any mere
mechanical processes, such as pressure, impact, displace-
ment of parts, and the like. Still less satisfactory is it to
transfer these categories and apply them in the field of
organic nature ; at least if it be our aim to understand the
specific features of that field, such as the growth and nourish-
ment of plants, or, it may be, even animal sensation. It is
at any rate a very deep-seated, and perhaps the main, defect
of modern researches into nature, that, even where other and
higher categories than those of mere mechanism are in
operation, they still stick obstinately to the mechanical
laws ; although they thus conflict with the testimony of
unbiassed perception, and foreclose the gate to an- adequate
knowledge of nature. But even in considering the formations
in the world of Mind, the mechanical theory has been re-
peatedly invested with an authority which it has no right to.
Take as an instance the remark that man consists of soul
and body. In this language, the two things stand each self-
subsistent, and associated only from without. Similarly we
find the soul regarded as a mere group of forces and faculties,
subsisting independently side by side.
Thus decidedly must we reject the mechanical mode of in-
quiry when it comes forward and arrogates to itself the place
of rational cognition in general, and seeks to get mechanism
accepted as an absolute category. But we must not on that
account forget expressly to vindicate for mechanism the
VOL. II. z
338 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [195.
right and import of a general logical category. It would be,
therefore, a mistake to restrict it to the special physical
department from which it derives its name. There is no
harm done, for example, in directing attention to mechanical
actions, such as that of gravity, the lever, &c., even in de-
partments, notably in physics and in physiology, beyond the
range of mechanics proper. It must however be remembered,
that within these spheres the laws of mechanism cease to be
final or decisive, and sink, as it were, to a subservient
position. To which may be added, that, in Nature, when the
higher or organic functions are in any way checked or dis-
turbed in their normal efficiency, the otherwise subordinate
category of mechanism is immediately seen to take the upper
hand. Thus a sufferer from indigestion feels pressure on the
stomach, after partaking of certain food in slight quantity ;
whereas those whose digestive organs are sound remain free
from the sensation, although they have eaten as much. The
same phenomenon occurs in the general feeling of heaviness
in the limbs, experienced in bodily indisposition. Even in
the world of Mind, mechanism has its place ; though there,
too, it is a subordinate one. We are right in speaking of
mechanical memory, and all sorts of mechanical operations,
such as reading, writing, playing on musical instruments,
&c. In memory, indeed, the mechanical quality of the
action is essential : a circumstance, the neglect of which has
not unfrequently caused great harm in the training of the
young, from the misapplied zeal of modern educationalists
for the freedom of intelligence. It would betray bad
psychology, however, to have recourse to mechanism for an
explanation of the nature of memory, and to apply mechanical
laws straight off to the soul. The mechanical feature in
memory lies m.erely in the fact that certain signs, tones, &c.
are apprehended in their purely external association, and
then reproduced in this association, without attention being
expressly directed to their meaning and inward association.
To become acquainted with these conditions of mechanical
memory requires no further study of mechanics, nor would
that study tend .at all to advance the special inquiry of
psychology.
196-198.] MECHANISM. 339
196.] The want of stability in itself which allov/s the
object to suffer violence, is possessed by it (see preced-
ing §) only in so far as it has a certain stability. Now
as the object is implicitly invested with the character of
notion, the one of these characteristics is not merged
into its other ; but the object, through the negation of
itself (its lack of independence), closes with itself, and
not till it so closes, is it independent. Thus at the same
time in distinction from the outwardness, and negativing
that outwardness in its independence, does this inde-
pendence form a negative unity with self, — Centrality
(subjectivity). So conceived, the object itself has direc-
tion and reference towards the external. But this
external object is similarly central in itself, and being so,
is no less only referred towards the other centre ; so that
it no less has its centrality in the other. This is (2)
Mechanism with Afilnity (with bias, or ' difference '),
and may be illustrated by gravitation, appetite, social
instinct, &c.
197.] This relationship, when fully carried out, forms*
a syllogism. In that syllogism the immanent negativity,
as the central individuality of an object, (abstract centre,)
relates itself to non-independent objects, as the other
extreme, by a mean which unites the centrality with the
non-independence of the objects, (relative c^'ntre.) This
is (3) Absolute Mechanism.
198.] The syllogism thus indicated (I — P — U) is a
triad of syllogisms. The wrong individuality of non-
independent objects, in which formal Mechanism is at
home, is, by reason of that non-independence, no less
universality, though it be only external. Hence these
objects also form the mean between the absolute and
the relative centre (the form of syllogism being U — I — P):
for it is by this want of independence that those two are
kept asunder and made extremes, as well as related to
z 2
340 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [198-199.
one another. Similarly absolute centrality, as the per-
manently-underlying universal substance (illustrated by
the gravity which continues identical), which as pure
negativity equally includes individuality in it, is what
mediates between the relative centre and the non-inde-
pendent objects (the form of syllogism being P — U — I).
It does so no less essentially as a disintegrating force,
in its character of immanent individuality, than in virtue
of universality, acting as an identical bond of union and
tranquil self-containedness.
Like the solar system, so for example in the practical
sphere the state is a system of three syllogisms, (i) The
Individual or person, through his particularity or physi-
cal or mental needs (which when carried out to their
full development give civil society), is coupled with the
universal, i. e. with society, law, right, government.
(2) The will or action of the individuals is the inter-
mediating force which procures for these needs satis-
faction in society, in law, &c., and which gives to society,
law, &c. their fulfilment and actualisation. (3) But the
universal, that is to say the state, government, and law,
is the permanent underlying mean in which the indi-
viduals and their satisfaction have and receive their
fulfilled reality, inter-mediation, and persistence. Each
of the functions of the notion, as it is brought by inter-
mediation to coalesce with the other extreme, is brought
into union with itself and produces itself: which pro-
duction is self-preservation. — It is only by the nature of
this triple coupling, by this triad of syllogisms with the
same termini, that a whole is thoroughly understood in
its organisation.
199.] The immediacy of existence, which the objects
have in Absolute Mechanism, is implicitly negatived by
the fact that their independence is derived from, and due
to, their connexions with each other, and therefore to
X99-aoo.] CHEMISM. 34I
their own want of stability. Thus the object must be
explicitly stated as in its existence having an Affinity
(or a bias) towards its other, — as not-indiflferent.
{b) Cliemism.
200.] The not-indifferent (biassed) object has an
immanent mode which constitutes its nature, and in
which it has existence. But as it is invested with the
character of total notion, it is the contradiction between
this totality and the special mode of its existence.
Consequently it is the constant endeavour to cancel this
contradiction and to make its definite being equal to the
notion.
Chemism is a category of objectivity which, as a rule, is
not particularly emphasised, and is generally put under the
head of mechanism. The common name of mechanical
relationship is applied to both, in contra-distinction to the
teleological. There is a reason for this in the common
feature which belongs to mechanism and chemism. In them
the notion exists, but only implicit and latent, and they are
thus both marked off from teleology where the notion
has real independent existence. This is true : and yet
chemism and n>echanism are very decidedly distinct. The
object, in the form of mechanism, is primarily only an in-
different reference to self, while the chemical object is seen
to be completely in reference to something else. No doubt
even in mechanism, as it develops itself, there spring up
references to something else : but the nexus of mechanical
objects with one another is at first only an external nexus,
so that the objects in connexion with one another still retain
the semblance of independence. In nature, for example;
the several celestial bodies, which form our solar system,
compose a kinetic system, and thereby show that they are
related to one another. Motion, however, as the unity of
time and space, is a connexion which is purely abstract and
external. And it seems therefore as if these celestial bodies,
which are thus externally connected with each other, would
342 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [200-202.
continue to be what they are, even apart from this reciprocal
relation. The case is quite different with chemism. Objects
chemically biassed are what they are expressly by that bias
alone. Hence they are the absolute impulse towards in-
tegration by and in one another.
201.] The product of the chemical process conse-
quently is the Neutral object, latent in the two extremes,
each on the alert. The notion or concrete universal,
by means of the bias of the objects (the particularity),
coalesces with the individuality (in the shape of the
product), and in that only with itself. In this process
too the other syllogisms are equally involved. The
place of mean is taken both by individuality as activity,
and by the concrete universal, the essence of the
strained extremes ; which essence reaches definite
being in the product.
202.] Chemism, as it is a reflectional nexus of objec-
tivity, has pre-supposed, not merely the bias or non-
indifferent nature of the objects, but also their immediate
independence. The process of chemism consists in
passing to and fro from one form to another; which
forms continue to be as external as before. — In the
neutral product the specific properties, which the ex-
tremes bore towards each other, are merged. But
although the product is conformable to the notion, the
inspiring principle of active differentiation does not exist
in it ; for it has sunk back to immediacy. The neutral
body is therefore capable of disintegration. But the
discerning principle, which breaks up the neutral body
into biassed and strained extremes, and which gives to
the indifferent object in general its affinity and anima-
tion towards another; — that principle, and the process
as a separation with tension, falls outside of that first
process.
The chemical process does not rise above a conditioned
3oa-204.] TELEOLOGY. 343
and finite process. The notion as notion is only the heart
and core of the process, and does not in this stage come to
an existence of its own. In the neutral product the process
is extinct, and the existing cause falls outside it.
203.] Each of these two processes, the reduction of
the biassed (not-indifferent) to the neutral, and the
differentiation of the indifferent or neutral, goes its own
way without hindrance from the other. But that want
of inner connexion shows that they are finite, by their
passage into products in which they are merged and lost.
Conversely the process exhibits the nonentity of the
pre-supposed immediacy of the not-indifferent objects.
— By this negation of immediacy and of externalism in
which the notion as object was sunk, it is liberated and
invested with independent being in face of that exter-
nalism and immediacy. In these circumstances it is the
End (Final Cause).
The passage from chemism to the teieological relation is
implied in the mutual cancelling of both of the forms of the
chemical process. The result thus attained is the liberation
of the notion, which in chemism and mechanism was present
only in the germ, and not yet evolved. The notion in the
shape of the aim or end thus comes into independent
existence.
[c) Teleology.
204.] In the End the notion has entered on free
existence and has a being of its own, by means of the
negation of immediate objectivity. It is characterised
as subjec!".ve, seeing that this negation is, in the first
place, abstract, and hence at first the relation between
it and objectivity still one of contrast. This character
of subjectivity, however, compared with the totality of
the notion, is one-sided, and that, be it added, for the
End itself, in which all specific characters have been
put as subordinated and merged. For it therefore even
344 ^^^ DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [204.
the object, which it pre-supposes, has only hypothetical
(ideal) reality, — essentially no-reality. The End in
short is a contradiction of its self-identity against the
negation stated in it, i.e. its antithesis to objectivity, and
being so, contains the eliminative or destructive activity
which negates the -antithesis and renders it identical
with itself. This is the realisation of the End : in
which, while it turns itself into the other of its subjec-
tivity and objectifies itself, thus cancelling the distinc-
tion between the two, it has only closed with itself, and
retained itself.
The .notion of Design or End, while on one hand
called redundant, is on another justly described as the
rational notion, and contrasted with the abstract uni-
versal of understanding. The latter only subsumes the
particular, and so connects it with itself: but has it not
in its own nature. — The distinction between the End or
final cause, and the mere efficient cause (which is the
cause ordinarily so called), is of supreme importance.
Causes, properly so called, belong to the sphere of
necessity, b-nd, and not yet laid bare. The cause
therefore appears as passing into its correlative, and
losing its primordiality there by sinking into dependency.
It is only by implication, or for us, that the cause is in
the effect made for the first time a cause, and that
it there returns into itself. The End, on the other
hand, is expressly stated as containing the specific
character in its own self, — the effect, namely, which in
the purely causal relation is never free from otherness.
The End therefore in its efficiency does not pass over,
but retains itself, i.e. it carries into effect itself only, and
is at the end what it was in the beginning or primordial
state. Until it thus retains itself, it is not genuinely
primordial. — The End then requires to be specula-
tively apprehended as the notion, which itself in the
ao4.] TELEOLOGY. 345
proper unity and ideality of its characteristics contains
the judgment or negation, — the antithesis of subjective
and objective, — and which to an equal extent suspends
that antithesis.
By End however we must not at once, nor must we
ever merely, think of the form which it has in conscious-
ness as a mode of mere mental representation. By
means of the notion of Inner Design Kant has resusci-
tated the Idea in general and particularly the idea of
life. Aristotle's definition of life virtually implies inner
design, and is thus far in advance of the notion of design
in modern Teleology, which had in view finite and out-
ward design only.
Animal wants and appetites are some of the readiest
instances of the End. They are the felt contradiction,
which exists within the living subject, and pass into the
activity of negating this negation which mere subjec-
tivity-still is. The satisfaction of the want or appetite
restores the peace between subject and object. The
objective thing which, so long as the contradiction
exists, t. e. so long as the want is felt, stands on the
other side, loses this quasi-independence, by its union
with the subject. Those who talk of the permanence
and immutability of the finite, as well subjective as
objective, may see the reverse illustrated in the opera-
tions of every appetite. Appetite is, so to speak, the
conviction that the subjective is only a half-truth, no
more adequate than the objective. But appetite in the
second place carries out its conviction. It brings about
the supersession of these finites : it cancels the antithesis
between the objective which would be and stay an ob-
jective only, and the subjective which in like manner
would be and stay a subjective only.
As regards the action of the End, attention may be
called to the fact, that in the syllogism, which represents
346 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [204-205.
that action, and shows the end closing with itself by the
means of realisation, the radical feature is the negation
of the termini. That negation is the one just mentioned
both of the immediate subjectivity appearing in the End
as such, and of the immediate objectivity as seen in the
means and the objects pre-supposed. This is the same
negation, as is in operation when the mind leaves the
contingent things of the world as well as its own sub-
jectivity and rises to God. It is the ' moment ' or factor
which (as noticed in the Introduction and § 192) was
overlooked and neglected in the analytic form of syllo-
gisms, under which the so-called proofs of the Being of
a God presented this elevation.
205.] In its primary and immediate aspect the Teleo-
logical relation is external design, and the notion con-
fronts a pre-supposed object. The End is consequently
finite, and that partly in its content, partly in the cir-
cumstance that it has an external condition in the object,
which has to be found existing, and which is taken as
material for its realisation. Its self-determining is to
that extent in form only. The un-mediatedness of the
End has the further result that its particularity or con-
tent— which as form-characteristic is the subjectivity of
the End — is reflected into self, and so different from the
totality of the form, subjectivity in general, the notion.
This variety constitutes the finitude of Design within its
own nature. The content of the End, in this way, is
quite as limited, contingent, and given, as the object is
particular and found ready to hand.
Generally speaking, the final cause is taken to mean
nothing more than external design. In accordance with this
view of it, things are supposed not to carry their vocation in
themselves, but merely to be means employed and spent in
realising a purpose which lies outside of them. That may
be said to be the point of view taken by Utility, which once
205-206.] MEANS AND ENDS. 347
played a great part even in the sciences, but of late has
fallen into merited disrepute, now that people have begun
to see that it failed to give a genuine insight into the nature
of things. It is true that finite things as finite ought in justice
to be viewed as non-ultimate, and as pointing beyond them-
selves. This negativity of finite things however is their own
dialectic, and in order to ascertain it we must pay attention
to their positive content.
Teleological observations on things often proceed from
a well-meant wish to display the wisdom of God as it is
especially revealed in nature. Now in thus trying to dis-
cover final causes for which the things serve as means, we
must remember that we are stopping short at the finite, and
are liable to fall into trifling reflections : as, for instance, if we
not merely studied the vine in respect of its well-known use
for man, but proceeded to consider the cork-tree in con-
nexion with the corks which are cut from its bark to put into
the wine-bottles. Whole books used to be written in this
spirit. It is easy to see that they promoted the genuine
interest neither of religion nor of science. External design
stands immediately in front of the idea : but what thus
stands on the threshold often for that reason is least ade-
quate.
206.] The teleological relation is a syllogism in
which the subjective end coalesces with the objectivity
external to it, through a middle term which is the unity
of both. This unity is on one hand the purposive action,
on the other the Means, i. e. objectivity made directly
subservient to purpose.
The development from End to Idea ensues by three
stages, first, Subjective End ; second. End in process of
accomplishment; and th rd, EJnd accomplished. First of all
we have the Subjective End ; and that, as the notion in
independent being, is itself the totality of the elementary
functions of the notion. The first of these functions is that
of self-identical universality, as it were the neutral first
water, in which everything is involved, but nothing as yet
discriminated. The second of these elements is the particu-
348 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [ao6-ao8.
larising of this universal, by which it acquires a specific con-
tent. As this specific content again is reaUsed by the
agency of the universal, the latter returns by its means back
to itself, and coalesces with itself. Hence too when we set
some end before us, we say that we ' conclude ' to do some-
thing: a phrase which implies that we were, so to speak,
open and accessible to this or that determination. Similarly
we also at a further step speak of a man ' resolving ' to do
something, meaning that the agent steps forward out of his
self-regarding inwardness and, enters into dealings with the
environing objectivity. This supplies the step from the merely
Subjective End to the purposive action which tends outwards.
207.] (i) The first syllogism of the final cause repre-
sents the Subjective End. The universal notion is
brought to unite with individuality by means of particu-
larity, so that the individual as self-determination acts
as judge. That is to say, it not only particularises
or makes into a determinate content the still indeter-
minate universal, but also explicitly puts an antithesis
of subjectivity and objectivity, and at the same time is in
its own self a return to itself; for it stamps the subjec-
tivity of the notion, pre-supposed as against objectivity,
with the mark of defect, in comparison with the complete
and rounded totality, and thereby at the same time turns
outwards.
208.] (2) This action which is directed outwards is
the individuality, which in the Subjective End is identical
with the particularity under which, along with the con-
tent, is also comprised the external objectivity. It
throws itself in the first place immediately upon the
object, which it appropriates to itself as a Means. The
notion is this immediate power; for the notion is the
self-identical negativity, in which the being of the object
is characterised as wholly and merely ideal. — The whole
Means then is this inward power of the notion, in the
shape of an agency, with which the object as Means is
flo8-ao9.] MEANS AND ENDS. 349
* immediately ' united and in obedience to which it
stands.
In finite teleology the Means is thus broken up into
two elements external to each other, (a) the action and
{b) the object which serves as Means. The relation of
the final cause as power to this object, and the subjuga-
tion of the object to it, is immediate (it forms the first
premiss in the syllogism) to this extent, that in the
teleological notion as the self-existent ideality the object
is put as potentially null. This relation, as represented
in the first premiss, itself becomes the Means, which at
the same time involves the syllogism, that through this
relation — in which the action of the End is contained
and dominant — the End is coupled with objectivity.
The execution of the End is the mediated mode of realising
the End ; but the immediate realisation is not less needful.
The End lays hold of the object immediately, because it is
the power over the object, because in the End particularity,
and in particularity objectivity also, is involved. — A living
being has a body ; the soul takes possession of it and with-
out intermediary has objectified itself in it. The human soul
has much to do, before it makes its corporeal nature into a
means. Man must, as it were, take possession of his body,
so that it may be the instrument of his soul.
209.] (3) Purposive action, with its Means, is still
directed outwards, because the End is also not identical
with the object, and must consequently first be mediated
with it. The Means in its capacity of object stands, in
this second premiss, in direct relation to the other
extreme of the syllogism, namely, the material or ob-
jectivity which is pre-supposed. This relation is the
sphere of chemism and mechanisrrl, which have now
become the servants of the Final Cause, where lies
their truth and free notion. Thus the Subjective End,
which is the power ruling these processes, in which the
350 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [209-aii.
objective things wear themselves out on one another,
contrives to keep itself free from them, and to preserve
itself in them. Doing so, it appears as the Cunning of
Reason is as cunning as it is powerful. Cunning may be
said to lie in the inter-mediative action which, while it
permits the objects to follow their own bent and act upon
one another till they waste away, and does not itself
directly interfere in the process, is nevertheless only work-
ing out its own aims. With this explanation, Divine Provi-
dence may be said to stand to the world and its process in
the capacity of absolute cnnning. God lets men do as they
please with their particular passions and interests ; but the
result is the accomplishment of— not their plans, but His, and
these differ decidedly from the ends primarily sought by
those whom He employs.
210.] The realised End is thus the overt unity of
subjective and objective. It is however essentially
characteristic of this unity, that the subjective and
objective are neutralised and cancelled only in the point
of their one-sidedness, while the objective is subdued
and made conformable to the End, as the free notion,
and thereby to the power above it. The End maintains
itself against and in the objective : for it is no mere
one-sided subjective or particular, it is also the concrete
universal, the implicit identity of both. This universal,
as simply reflected in itself, is the content which remains
unchanged through all the three termini of the syllogism
and their movement.
211.] In finite design, however, even the executed
End has the same radical rift or flaw as had the Means
and the initial End. We have got therefore only a form
extraneously impressed on a pre-existing material : and
this form, by reason of the limited content of the End,
is also a contingent characteristic. The End achieved
211-213.] MEANS AND ENDS. 35 1
consequently is only an object, which again becomes
a Means or material for other Ends, and so on for
ever.
212.] But what virtually happens in the realising of the
End is that the one-sided subjectivity and the show of ob-
jective independence confronting it are both cancelled.
In laying hold of the means, the notion constitutes itself
the very implicit essence of the object. In the mechani-
cal and chemical processes the independence of the
object has been already dissipated implicitly, and in the
course of their movement under the dominion of the
End, the show of that independence, the negative which
confronts the notion, is got rid of But in the fact that
the End achieved is characterised only as a Means and
a material, this object, viz, the teleological, is there and
then put as implicitly null, and only ' ideal.' This being
so, the antithesis between form and content has also
vanished. While the End by the removal and absorp-
tion of all form-characteristics coalesces with itself, the
form as self-identical is thereby put as the content, so
that the notion, which is the action of form, has only
itself for content. Through this process, therefore,
there is made explicitly manifest what was the notion of
design : viz. the implicit unity of subjective and objec-
tive is now realised. And this is the Idea.
This finitude of the End consists in the circumstance, that,
in the process of realising it, the material, which is employed
as a means, is only externally subsumed under it and made
conformable to it. But, as a matter of fact, the object is the
notion implicitly : and thus when the notion, in the shape of
End, is realised in the object, we have but the manifestation
of the inner nature of the object itself. Objectivity is thus,
as It were, only a covering under which the notion lies con-
cealed. Within the range of the finite we can never see or
experience that th^ End has been really secured. The con-
summation of the infinite End, therefore, consists merely in
352 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [212-213.
removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccom-
plished. The Good, the absolutely Good, is eternally
accomplishing itself in the world : and the result is that it
needs not wait upon us, but is already by implication, as
well as in full actuality, accomplished. This is the illusion
under which we live. It alone supplie* at the same time
the actualising force on which the interest in the world
reposes. In the -course of its process the Idea creates
that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it ; and its
action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has
created. Only out of this error does the truth arise. In
this fact lies the reconciliation with error and with finitude.
Error or other-being, when superseded, is still a necessary
dynamic element of truth : for truth can only be where it
makes itself its own result.
C— The Idea.
213.] The Idea is truth in itself and for itself, — the
absolute unity of the notion and objectivity. Its ' ideal '
content is nothing but the notion in its detailed terms :
its 'real' content is only the exhibition which the notion
gives itself in the form of external existence, whilst yet,
by enclosing this shape in its ideality, it keeps it in its
power, and so keeps itself in it.
The definition, which declares the Absolute to be the
Idea, is itself absolute. All former definitions come
back to this. The Idea is the Truth : for Truth is the
correspondence of objectivity with the notion :— not of
course the correspondence of external things with my
conceptions, — for these are only correct conceptions
held by me, the individual person. In the idea we have
nothing to do with the individual, nor with figurate con-
ceptions, nor with external things. And yet, again,
everything actual, in so far as it is true, is the Idea, and
has its truth by and in virtue of the Idea alone. Every
individual being is some one aspect of the Idea : for
2 IS-] THE IDEA. 353
which, therefore, yet other actualities are needed, which
in their turn appear to have a self-subsistence of their
own. It is only in them altogether and in their relation
that the notion is realised. The individual by itself
does not correspond to its notion. It is this limitation
of its existence which constitutes the finitude and the
ruin of the individual.
The Idea itself is not to be taken as an idea of some-
thing or other, any more than the notion is to be taken
as merely a specific notion. The Absolute is the uni-
versal and one idea, which, by an act of 'judgment,'
particularises itself to the system of specific ideas ;
which after all are constrained by their nature to come
back to the one idea where their truth lies. As issued
out of this 'judgment' the Idea is in the first place only
the one universal substance : but its developed and
genuine actuality is to be as a subject and in that way as
mind.
Because it has no existence for starting-point and point
cTappui, the Idea is frequently treated as a mere logical
form. Such a view must be abandoned to those theories,
which ascribe so-called reality and genuine actuality to
the existent thing and all the other categories which
have not yet penetrated as far as the Idea. It is no
less false to imagine the Idea to be mere abstraction.
It is abstract certainly, in so far as everything untrue is
consumed in it : but in its own self it is essentially con-
crete, because it is the free notion giving character to
itself, and that character, reality. It would be an
abstract form, only if the notion, which is its principle,
were taken as an abstract unity, and not as the nega-
tive return of it into self and as the subjectivity which
it really is.
Truth is at first taken to mean that I know how something
15. This is truth, however, only in reference to conscious-
VOL. II. A a
354 T^^ DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [213.
ness ; it is formal truth, bare correctness. Truth in the
deeper sense consists in the identity between objectivity and
the notion. It is in this deeper sense of truth that' we speak
of a true state, or of a true work of art. These objects
are true, if they are as they ought to be, i.e. if their reality
corresponds to their notion. When thus viewed, to be untrue
means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an
untrue man, a man who does not behave as his notion or his
vocation requires. Nothing however can subsist, if it be
wholly devoid of identity between the notion and reality.
Even bad and untrue things have being, in so far as their
reality still, somehow, conforms to their notion. What-
ever is thoroughly bad or contrary to the notion, is for that
very reason on the way to ruin. It is by the notion
alone that the things in the world have their subsistence ;
or, as it is expressed in the language of religious conception,
things are what they are, only in virtue of the divine and
thereby creative thought which dwells within them.
When we hear the Idea spoken of, we need not imagine
something far away beyond this mortal sphere. The idea is
rather what is completely present : and it is found, however
confused and degenerated, in every consciousness. We
conceive the world to ourselves as a great totality which is
created by God, and so created that in it God has manifested
Himself to us. We regard the world also as ruled by
Divine Providence : implying that the scattered and divided
parts of the world are continually brought back, and made
conformable, to the unity from which they have issued.
The purpose of philosophy has always been the intellec-
tual ascertainment of the Idea ; and everything deserving
the name of philosophy has constantly been based on
the consciousness of an absolute unity where the under-
standing sees and accepts only separation.— It is too
late now to ask for proof that the Idea is the truth. The
proof of that is contained in the whole deduction and
development of thought up to this point. The idea is the
result of this course of dialectic. Not that it is to be sup-
posed that the idea is mediate only, i.e. mediated through
something else than itself. It is rather its own result, and
213-214.] THE IDEA. 355
being so, is no less immediate than mediate. The stages
hitherto considered, viz. those of Being an-^ Essence, as well
as those of Notion and of Objectivity, are not, when so
distinguished, something permanent, resting upon them-
selves. They have proved to be dialectical ; and their only
truth is that they are dynamic elements of the idea.
214.] The Idea may be described in many ways. It
may be called reason (and this is the proper philo-
sophical signification of reason) ; subject-object ; the
unity of the ideal and the real, of the finite and the in-
finite, of soul and body ; the possibility which has its
actuality in its own self; that of which the nature can
be thought only as existent, &c. All these descriptions
apply, because the Idea contains all the relations of
understanding, but contains them in their infinite self-
return and self-identity.
It is easy work for the understanding to show that
everything said of the Idea is self-contradictory. But
that can quite as well be retaliated, or rather in the
Idea the retaliation is actually made. And this work,
which is the work of reason, is certainly not so easy
as that of the understanding. Understanding may
demonstrate that the Idea is self-contradictory : because
the subjective is subjective only and is always confronted
by the objective, — because being is different from notion
and therefore cannot be picked out of it — because the
finite is finite only, the exact antithesis of the infinite,
and therefore not identical with it ; and so on with every
term of the description. The reverse of all this however
is the doctrine of Logic. Logic shows that the subjec-
tive which is to be subjective only, the finite which
would be finite only, the infinite which would be infinite
only, and so on, have no truth, but contradict them-
selves, and pass over into their opposites. Hence this
transition, and the unity in which the extremes are
A a 2
356 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [214.
merged and become factors, each with a merely reflected
existence, reveals itself as their truth.
The understanding, which addresses itself to deal
with the Idea, commits a double misunderstanding. It
takes y?rs/ the extremes of the Idea (be they expressed
as they will, so long as they are in their unity), not as
they are understood when stamped with this concrete
unity, but as if they remained abstractions outside of it.
It no less mistakes the relation between them, ever
when it has been expressly stated. Thus, for example,
it overlooks even the nature of the copula in the judg
ment, which, affirms that the individual, or subject, is
after all not individual, but universal. But, in the
second place, the understanding believes /'/5 'reflection,' —
that the self-identical Idea contains its own negative, or
contains contradiction, — to be an external reflection
which does not lie within the Idea itself. But the
reflection is really no peculiar cleverness of the under-
standing. The Idea itself is the dialectic which for
ever divides and distinguishes the self-identical from
the differentiated, the subjective from the objective, the
finite from the infinite, soul from body. Only on these
terms is it an eternal creation, eternal vitality, and
eternal spirit. But while it thus passes or rather trans-
lates itself into the abstract understanding, it for ever
remains reason. The Idea is the dialectic which again
makes this mass of understanding and diversity under-
stand its finite nature and the pseudo-independence in
its productions, and which brings the diversity back to
unity. Since this double movement is not separate or
distinct in time, nor indeed in any other way— otherwise
it would be only a repetition of the abstract understand-
ing— the Idea is the eternal vision of itself in the other,
— notion which in its objectivity has carried out itself, —
object which is inward design, essential subjectivity.
214-215.] THE IDEA. 357
The different modes of apprehending the Idea as
unity of ideal and real, of finite and infinite, of identity
and difference, &c. are more or less formal. They
designate some one stage of the specific notion. Only
the notion itself, however, is free and the genuine uni-
versal : in the Idea, therefore, the specific character of
the notion is only the notion itself, — an objectivity, viz.
into which it, being the universal, continues itself, and
in which it has only its own character, the total character.
The Idea is the infinite judgment^ of which the terms
are severally the independent totality ; and in which, as
each grows to the fulness of its own nature, it has
thereby at the same time passed into the other. None
of the other specific notions exhibits this totality
complete on both its sides as the notion itself and
objectivity.
215.] The Idea is essentially a process, because its
identity is the absolute and free identity of the notion,
only in so far as it is absolute negativity and for that
reason dialectical. It is the round of movement, in
which the notion, in the capacity of universality which
is individuality, gives itself the character of objectivity
and of the antithesis thereto ; and this externality which
has the notion for its substance, finds its way back to
subjectivity through its immanent dialectic.
As the idea is (a) a process, it follows that such an ex-
pression for the Absolute as unity of thought and
being, of finite and infinite, &c. is false ; for unity
expresses an abstract and merely quiescent identity.
As the Idea is {b) subjectivity, it follows that the expres-
sion is equally false on another account. That unity of
which it speaks expresses a merely virtual or underlying
presence of the genuine unity. The infinite would thus
seem to be merely neutralised by the finite, the subjective
by the objective, thought by being. But in the negative
358 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [215-216.
unity of the Idea, the infinite overlaps and includes the
finite, thought overlaps being, subjectivity overlaps ob-
jectivity. The unity of the Idea is thought, infinity, and
subjectivity, and is in consequence to be essentially dis-
tinguished from the Idea as substance, just as this over-
lapping subjectivity, thought, or infinity is to be distin-
guished from the one-sided subjectivity, one-sided
thought, one-sided infinity to which it descends in
judging and defining.
The idea as a process runs through three stages in its
development. The first form of the idea is Life : that is, the
idea in the form of immediacy. The second form is that of
mediation or differentiation ; and this is the idea in the form
of Knowledge, which appears under the double aspect of the
Theoretical and Practical idea. The process of knowledge
eventuates in the restoration of the unity enriched by differ-
ence. This gives the third form of the idea, the Absolute
Idea : which last stage of the logical idea evinces itself to be
at the same time the true first, and to have a being due to
itself alone.
{a) Life.
216.] The immediate idea is Life. As soul, the notion
is realised in a body of whose externality the soul is
the immediate self-relating universality. But the soul is
also its particularisation, so that the body expresses no
other distinctions than follow from the char-^.cterisations
of its notion. And finally it is the Individuality of the
body as infinite negativity, — the dialectic of that bodily
objectivity, with its parts lying out of one another, con-
veying them away from the semblance of independent
subsistence back into subjectivity, so that all the mem-
bers are reciprocally momentary means as well as
momentary ends. Thus as life is the initial particu-
larisation, so it results in the negative self-asserting unity:
in the dialectic of its corporeity it only coalesces with
216-2.8.] LIFE. 359
itself. In this way life is essentially something alive,
and in point of its immediacy this individual living thing.
It is characteristic of finitude in this sphere that, by
reason of the immediacy of the idea, body and soul are
separable. This constitutes the mortality of the living
being. It is only, however, when the living being is
dead, that these two sides of the idea are different
ingredients.
The single members of the body are what they are only
by and in relation to their unity. A hand e.g. when hewn
oflF from the body is, as Aristotle has observed, a hand in
name only, not in fact. From the point of view of under-
standing, Hfe is usually spoken of as a mystery, and in
general as incomprehensible. By giving it such a name,
however, the Understanding only confesses itr own finitude
and nullity. So far is life from being incomprehensible, that
in it the very notion is'presented to us, or rather the imme-
diate idea existing as a notion. And having said this, we have
indicated the defect of life. Its notion and reality do not
thoroughly correspond to each other. The notion of life is
the soul, and this notion has the body for its reality. The
soul is, as it were, infused into its corporeity ; and in that
way it is at first sentient only, and not yet freely self-
conscious. The process of life consists in getting the better
of the immediacy with which it is still beset : and this pro-
cess, which is itself threefold, results in the idea under the
form of judgment, i.e. the idea as Cognition.
217.] A living being is a syllogism, of which the very
elements are in themselves systems and syllogisms
(§§ 198, 201, 207). They are however active syllogisms
or processes ; and in the subjective unity of the vital
agent make only one process. Thus the living being is
the process of its coalescence with itself, which runs on
through three processes.
218.] (i) The first is the process of the living being
inside itself. In that process it makes a split on its own
360 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [218-219.
self, and reduces its corporeity to its object or its in-
organic nature. This corporeity, as an aggregate of
correlations, enters in its very nature into difference and
opposition of its elements, which mutually become each
other's prey, and assimilate one another, and are re-
tained by producing themselves. Yet this action of the
several members (organs), is only the living subject's
one act to which their productions revert ; so that in
these productions nothing is produced except the sub-
ject : in other words, the subject only reproduces itself.
The process of the vital subject within its own limits has
in Nature the threefold form of Sensibility, Irritability, and
Reproduction. As Sensibility, the living being is immedi-
ately simple self-relation — it is the soul omnipresent in its
body, the outsideness of each member of which to others
has for it no truth. As Irritability, the living being appears
split up in itself; and as Reproduction, it is perpetually
restoring itself from the inner distinction of its members
and organs. A vital agent only exists as this continually
self-renewing process within its own limits.
219.] (2) But the judgment of the notion proceeds, as
free, to discharge the objective or bodily nature as an
independent totality from itself; and the negative rela-
tion of the living thing to itself makes, as immediate
individuality, the pre-supposition of an inorganic nature
confronting it. As this negative of the animate is no
less a function in the notion of the animate itself, it
exists consequently in the latter (which is at the same
time a concrete universal) in the shape of a defect or
want. The dialectic by which the object, being implicitly
null, is merged, is the action of the self-assured living
thing, which in this process against an inorganic nature
thus retains, develops, and objectifies itself.
The living being stands face to face, with an inorganic
nature, to which it comports itself as a master and which it
a [9-221.] LIFE. 361
assimilates to itself. The result of the assimilation is not, as
in the chemical process, a neutral product in which the inde-
pendence of the two confronting sides is merged ; but the
living being shows itself as large enough to embrace its
other which cannot withstand its power. The inorganic
nature which is subdued by the vital agent suffers this fate,
because it is virtually the same as what life is actually. Thus
in the other the living being only coalesces with itself. But
when the soul has fled from the body, the elementary
powers of objectivity begin their play. These powers are,
as it were, continually on the spring, ready to begin their
process in the organic body ; and life is the constant battle
against them.
220.] (3) The living individual, which in its first
process comports itself as intrinsically subject and
notion, through its second assimilates its external objec-
tivity and thus puts the character of reality into itself.
It is now therefore implicitly a Kind, with essential
universality of nature. The particularising of this Kind
is the relation of the living subject to another subject of
its Kind : and the judgment is the tie of Kind over
these individuals thus appointed for each other. This
is the Affinity of the Sexes.
221.] The process of Kind brings it to a being of its
own. Life being no more than the idea immediate, the
product of this process breaks up into two sides. On
the one hand, the living individual, which was at first
pre-supposed as immediate, is now seen to be mediated
and generated. On the other, however, the living indi-
viduality, which, on account of its first immediacy, stands
in a negative attitude towards universality, sinks in the
superior power of the latter.
The living being dies, because it is a contradiction. Im-
plicitly it is the universal or Kind, and yet immediately it
exists as an individual only. Death shows the Kind to be
the power that rules the immediate individual. For the
362 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [221-224.
animal the process of Kind is the highest point of its vitality.
But the animal never gets so far in its Kind as to have a
being of its own ; it succumbs to the power of Kind. In the
process of Kind the immediate living being mediates itself
with itself, and thus rises above its immediacy, only however
to sink back into it again. Life thus runs away, in the
first instance, only into the false infinity of the progress ad
infinitum. The real result, however, of the process of life,
in the point of its notion, is to merge and overcome that
immediacy with which the idea, in the shape of life, is still
beset.
222.] In this manner however the idea of life has
thrown off not some one particular and immediate
'This,' but this first immediacy as a whole. It thus
comes to itself, to its truth : it enters upon existence as a
free Kind self-subsistent. The death of merely immediate
and individual vitality is the ' procession ' of spirit.
{b) Cognition in general.
223.] The idea exists free for itself, in so far as it has
universality for the medium of its existence, — as objec-
tivity itself has notional being, — as the idea is its own
object. Its subjectivity, thus universalised, is pure self-
contained distinguishing of the idea, — intuition which
keeps itself in this identical universality. But, as
specific distinguishing, it is the further judgment of
repelling itself as a totality from itself, and thus, in the
first place, pre-supposing itself as an external universe.
There are two judgments, which though implicitly iden-
tical are not yet explicitly put as identical.
224.] The relation of these two ideas, which implicitly
and as life are identical, is thus one of correlation : and
it is that correlativity which constitutes the characteristic
of finitude in this sphere. It is the relationship of re-
flection, seeing that the distinguishing of the idea in its
224-225.] KNOWLEDGE AND WILL. 363
own self is only the first judgment — presupposing the
other and not yet supposing itself to constitute it. And
thus for the subjective idea the objective is the immediate
world found ready to hand, or the idea as life is in the
phenomenon of individual existence. At the same time,
in so far as this judgment is pure distinguishing within
its own limits (§ 223), the idea realises in one both itself
and its other. Consequently it is the certitude of the
virtual identity between itself and the objective world. —
Reason comes to the world with an absolute faith in its
abilit;, to make the identity actual, and to raise its certi-
tude to truth ; and with the instinct of realising explicitly
the nullity of that contrast which it sees to be implicitly
null.
225.] This process is in general terms Cognition.
In Cognition in a single act the contrast is virtually
superseded, as rega~ds both the one-sidedness of sub-
jectivity and the one-sidedness of objectivity. At first,
however, the supersession of the contrast is but implicit.
The process as such is in consequence immediately in-
fected with the finitude of this sphere, and splits into the
twofold movement of the instinct of reason, presented as
two different movements. On the one hand it supersedes
the one-sidedness of the Idea's subjectivity by receiving
the existing world into itself, into subjective conception
and thought ; and with this objectivity, which is thus
taken to be real and true, for its content it fills up the
abstract certitude of itself. On the other hand, it super-
sedes the one-sidedness of the objective world, which is
now, on the contrary, estimated as only a mere sem-
blance, a collection of contingencies and shapes at
bottom visionary. It modifies and informs that world
by the inward nature of the subjective, which is here
taken to be the genuine objective. The former is the
instinct of science after Truth, Cognition properly so
364 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [225-227.
called : — the Theoretical action of the idea. The latter
is the instinct of the Good to fulfil the same — the
Practical activity of the idea or Volition.
(a) Cognition proper.
226.] The universal finitude of Cognition, vv^hich lies
in the one judgment, the pre-supposition of the contrast
(§ 224), — a pre-supposition in contradiction of which its
own act lodges protest, specialises itself more precisely
on the face of its own idea. The result of that speciali-
sation is, that its two elements receive the aspect of
being diverse from each other, and, as they are at least
complete, they take up the relation of ' reflection/ not
of 'notion,' to one another. The assimilation of the
matter, therefore, as a datum, presents itself in the light
of a reception of it into categories which at the same time
remain external to it, and which meet each other in the
same style of diversity. Reason is active here, but it is
reason in the shape of understanding. The truth
which such Cognition can reach will therefore be only
finite : the infinite truth (of the notion) is isolated and
made transcendent, an inaccessible goal in a world of
its own. Still in its external action cognition stands
under the guidance of the notion, and notional principles
form the secret clue to its movement.
The finitude of Cognition lies in the pre-supposition of a
world already in existence, and in the consequent view of the
knowing subject as a tabula rasa. The conception is one
attributed to Aristotle ; but no man is further than Aristotle
from such an outside theory of Cognition. Such a style of
Cognition does not recognise in itself the activity of thd
notion— an activity which it is implicitly, but not consciously.
In its own estimation its procedure is passive. Really that
procedure is active.
227.] Finite Cognition, when it pre-supposes what is
227.] SCIENTIFIC METHODS. 365
distinguished from it to be something already existing
and confronting it, — to be the various facts of external
nature or of consciousness — has, in the first place,
(i) Formal identity or the abstraction of universality
for the form of its action. Its activity therefore consists
in analysing the given concrete object, isolating its
differences, and giving them the form of abstract univer-
sality. Or it leaves the concrete thing as a ground, and
by setting aside the unessential-looking particulars,
brings into relief a concrete universal, the Genus, or
Force and Law. This is the Analyticsil Method.
People generally speak of the analytical and synthetical
methods, as if it depended solely on our choice which we
pursued. This is far from the case. It depends on the form
of the objects of our investigation, which of the two methods,
that are derivable from the notion of finite cognition, ought
to be applied. In the first place, cognition is analj^ical.
Analytical cognition deals with an. object which is presented
in detachment, and the aim of its action is to trace back to a
universal the individual object before it. Thought in such
circumstances means no more than an act of abstraction or
of formal identity. That is the sense in which thought is
understood by Locke and all empiricists. Cognition, it is
often said, can never do more than separate the given
concrete objects into their abstract elements, and then con-
sider these elements in their isolation. It is, however, at
once apparent that this turns things upside down, and that
cognition, if its purpose be to take things as they are, thereby
falls into contradiction with itself Thus the chemist e.g.
places a piece of flesh in his retort, tortures it in many ways,
and then informs us that it consists of nitrogen, carbon,
hydrogen, &c. True: but these abstract matters have
ceased to be flesh. The same defect occurs in the reason-
ing of an empirical psychologist when he analyses an
action into the various aspects which it presents, and then
sticks to these aspects in their separation. The object which
is subjected to analysis is treated as. a sort of onion from
which one coat is peeled off after another..
366 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [228-229.
228.] This universality is (2) a'so a specific univer-
sality. In this case the line of activity follows the three
'momen's' of the notion, which (as it has not its infinity
in finite cognition) is the specific or definite notion of
understanding. The reception of the object into the
forms of this notion is the Synthetic Method.
The movement of the Synthetic method is the reverse of
the Analytical method. The latter starts from the indi-
vidual, and proceeds to the universal ; in the former the
starting-point is given by the universal (as a definition),
from which we proceed by particularising (in division) to
the individual (the theorem). The Synthetic method thus
presents itself as the developmen the ' moments ' of the
notion on the object.
229.] (n) When the object has been i:i the first in-
stance brought by cognition into the form of the specific
notion in general, so that in this way its genus and its
universal character or speciality are explicitly stated, we
nave the Definition. The materials and the proof of
Definition are procured by means of the Analytical
method (§ 227). The specific character however is
expected to be a ' mark ' only : that is to say it is to be
in behoof only of the purely subjective cognition which
is external to the object.
Definition involves the three organic elements of the
notion : the universal or proximate genus (genus proximum),
the particular or specific character of the genus [qualitas
specified), and the individual, or object defined. — The first
question that definition suggests, is where it comes from.
The general answer to this question is to sajr, that definitions
originate by way of analysis. This will explain how it
happens that people quarrel about the correctness of pro-
posed definitions ; for here everything depends on what
perceptions we started from, and what points of view we
had before our eyes in so doing. The richer the object to
229-230.] SCIENTIFIC METHODS. 367
be defined is, that is, the more numerous are the aspects
which it offers to our notice, the more various are the defini-
tions we may frame of it. Thus there are quite a host of
definitions of life, of the state, &c. Geometry, on the con-
trary, dealing with a theme so abstract as space, has an easy
task in giving definitions. Again, in respect of the matter or
contents of the objects defined, there is no constraining
necessity present. We are expected to admit that space
exists, that there are plants, animals, &c., nor is it the busi-
ness of geometry, botany, &c. to demonstrate that the objects
in question necessarily are. This very circumstance makes
the synthetical method of cognition as little suitable for
philosophy as the analytical : for philosophy has above all
things to leave no doubt of the necessity of its objects. And
yet several attempts have been made to introduce the syn-
thetical method into philosophy. Thus Spinoza, in par-
ticular, begins with definitions. He says, for instance, that
substance is the causa sni. His definitions are unquestionably
a storehouse of the most speculative truth, but it takes the
shape of dogmatic assertions. The same thing is also true
of Schelling.
230.] (;3) The statement of the second element of the
notion, i.e. of the specific character of the universal as
particularising, is given by Division in accordance with
some external consideration.
Division we are told ought to be complete. That requires
a principle or ground of division so constituted, that the
division based upon it embraces the whole extent of the
region designated by the definition in general. But, in
division, there is the further requirement that the principle
of it must be borrowed from the nature of the object in
question. If this condition be satisfied, the division is
natural and not merely artificial, that is to say, arbitrary.
Thus, in zoology, the ground of division adopted in the
classification of the mammalia is mainly afforded by their
teeth and claws. That is so far sensible, as the mammals
themselves distinguish themselves from one another by these
parts of their bodies ; back to which therefore the general
368 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [230-231.
type of their various classes is to be traced. In every case
the genuine division must be controlled by the notion. To
that extent a division, in the first instance, has three
members : but as particularity exhibits itself as double, the
division may go to the extent even of four members. In
the sphere of mind trichotomy is predominant, a circum-
stance which Kant has the credit of biinging into notice.
231.] (y) In the concrete individuality, where the mere
unanalysed quality of the definition is regarded as a cor-
relation of elements, the object is a synthetical nexus of
distinct characteristics. It is a Theorem. Being different,
these characteristics possess but a mediated identity.
To supply the materials, which form the middle terms,
is the office of Construction : and the process of media-
tion itself, from which cognition derives the necessity of
that nexus, is the Demonstration.
As the difference between the analytical and synthetical
methods is commonly stated, it seems entirely optional
which of the two we employ. If we assume, to start
with, the concrete thing which the synthetic method
presents as a result, we can analyse from it as conse-
quences the abstract propositions which formed the pre-
siippositions and the material for the proof. Thus, alge-
braical definitions of curved lines are theorems in the
method of geometry. Similarly even the Pythagorean
theorem, if made the definition of a right-angled
triangle, might yield to analysis those propositions
which geometry had already demonstrated on its be-
hoof. The optionalness of either method is due to
both alike starting from an external pre-supposition. So
far as the nature of the notion is concerned, analysis is
prior; since it has to raise the given material with it§
empirical concreteness into the form of general abstrac-
tions, which may then be set in the front of the synthe-
tical method as definitions.
231.] SCIENTIFIC METHODS. 369
That these methods, however indispensable and bril-
liantly successful in their own province, are unservice-
able for philosophical cognition, is self-evident. They
have pre-suppositions ; and their style of cognition is
that of understanding, proceeding under the canon of
formal identity. In Spinoza, who was especially ad-
dicted to the use of the geometrical method, we are at
once struck by its characteristic formalism. Yet his
ideas were speculative in spirit ; whereas the system of
Wolf, who carried the method out to the height of
pedantry, was even in subject-matter a metaphysic of the
understanding. The abuses which these methods with
their formalism once led to in philosophy and science
have in modern times been followed by the abuses of
what is called ' Construction.' Kant brought into vogue
the phrase that mathematics ' construes ' its notions.
All that was meant by the phrase was that mathematics
has not to do with notions, but with abstract qualities of
sense-perceptions. The name 'Construction (constru-
ing) of notions ' has since been given to a sketch or
statement of sensible attributes which were picked up
from perception, quite guiltless of any influence of the
notion, and to the additional formalism of classifying
scientific and philosophical objects in a tabular form on
some pre-supposed rubric, but in other respects at the
fancy and discretion of the observer. In the back-
ground of all this, certainly, there is a dim conscious-
ness of the Idea, of the unity of the notion and objec-
tivity,— a consciousness, too, that the idea is concrete.
But that play of what is styled 'construing' is far from
presenting this unity adequately — a unity which is none
other than the notion properly so called : and the sen-
suous concreteness of perception. is as little the concrete-
ness of reason and the idea.
Another point calls for notice. Geometry works with
VOL. II. B b
370 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [231-232.
the sensuous but abstract perception of space ; and in
space it experiences no difficulty in isolating and defin-
ing certain simple analytic modes. To geometry alone
therefore belongs in its perfection the synthetical method
of finite cognition. In its course, however (and this is
the remarkable point), it finally stumbles upon what are
tei ned irrational and incommensurable quantities ; and
in their case any attempt at further specification drives
it beyond the principle of the understanding. This is
only one of many instances in terminology, where the
title rational is perversely applied to the province of
understanding, while we stigmatise as irrational that
which shows a beginning and a trace of rationality.
Other sciences, removed as they are from the simplicity
of space or number, often and necessarily reach a point
where understanding permits no further advance : but
they get over the difficulty without trouble. They make
a break in the strict sequence of their procedure, and
assume whatever they require, though it be the reverse
of what preceded, from some external quarter, — opinion,
perception^ conception or any other source. Its inob-
servancy as to the nature of its methods and their rela-
tivity to the subject-matter prevents this finite cognition
from seeing that, when it proceeds by definitions and
divisions, &c., it is really led on by the necessity of the
laws of the notion. For the same reason it cannot see
when it has reached its limit ; nor, if it have trans-
gressed that limit, does it perceive that it is in a sphere
where the categories of understanding, which it still
continues rudely to apply, have lost all authority.
232.] The necessity, which finite cognition produces
in the Demonstration, is, in the first place, an external
necessity, intended for the subjective intelligence alone.
But in necessity as such, cognition itself has left behind
its presupposition and starting-point, which consisted in
333-334.] WILL. 371
accepting its content as given or found. Necessity qua
necessity is implicitly the self-relating notion. The sub-
jective idea has thus implicitly reached an original and
objective determinateness, — a something not-given, and
for that reason immanent in the subject. It has passed
over into the idea of Will.
The necessity which cognition reaches by means of the
demonstration is the reverse of what formed its starting-
point. In its starting-point cognition had a given and a con-
tingent content ; but now, at the close of its movement, it
knows its content to be necessary. This necessity is reached
by means of subjective agency. Similarly, subjectivity at
starting was quite abstract, a bare tabula rasa. It now shows
itself as a modifying and determining principle. In this way
we pass from the idea of cognition to that of will. The
passage, as will be apparent on a closer examination, means
that the universal, to be truly apprehended, must be appre-
hended as subjectivity, as a notion self-moving, active, and
form-imposing.
08) Volition.
233.] The subjective idea as original and objective
determinateness, and as a simple uniform content, is
the Good. Its impulse towards self-realisation is in its
behaviour the reverse of the idea of truth, and rather
directed towards moulding the world it finds before it
into a shape conformable to its purposed End. — This
Volition has, on the one hand, the certitude of the
nothingness of the pre-supposed object; but, on the
other, as finite, it at the same time pre-supposes the
purposed End of the Good to be a mere subjective idea,
and the object to be independent.
234.] This action of the Will is finite : and its finitude
lies in the contradiction that in the inconsister-t terms
applied to the objective world the End of the Good
is just as much not executed as executed, — the end
B b 2
372 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [334.
in question put as unessential as much as essential,
— as actual and at the same, time as merely possible.
This contradiction presents itself to imagination as an
endless progress in the actualising of the Good ; which
is therefore set up and fixed as a mere ' ought,' or goal
of perfection. In point of form however this contra-
diction vanishes when the action supersedes the sub-
jectivity of the purpose, and along with it the objectivity,
with the contrast which makes both finite ; abolish-
ing subjectivity as a whole and not merely the one-
sidedness of this form of it, (For another new sub-
jectivity of the kind, that is, a new generation of the
contrast, is not distinct from that which is supposed to be
past and gone.) This return into itself is at the same
time the content's own 'recollection* that it is the
Good and the implicit identity of the two sides, — it is
a ' recollection * of the pre-supposition of the theoretical
attitude of mind (§ 224) that the objective world is its
own truth and substantiality.
While Intelligence merely proposes to take the world as
it is, Will takes steps to make the world what it ought to be.
Will looks upon the immediate and given present not as
solid being, but as mere semblance without reality. It is
here that we meet those contradictions which are so be-
wildering from the standpoint of abstract morality. This
position in its ' practical ' bearings is the one taken by the
philosophy of Kant, and even by that of Fichte. The Good,
say these writers, has to be realised : we have to work in
order to produce it : and Will is only the Good actualising
itself. If the world then were as it ought to be, the action of
Will would be at an end. The Will itself therefore requires
that its End should not be realised. In these words, a
correct expression is given to the finitude of Will. But
finitude was not meant to be the ultimate point : and it is
the process of Will itself which abolishes finitude and the
contradiction it involves. The reconciliation is achieved,
234-236.] WILL. 373
when Will in its result returns to the pre-supposition made
by cognition. In other words, it consists in the unity of the
theoretical and practical idea. Will knows the end to be its
own, and Intelligence apprehends the world as the notion
actual. This is the right attitude of rational cognition.
Nullity and transitoriness constitute only the superficial
features and not the real essence of the world. That
essence is the notion in posse and in esse: and thus the
world is itself the idea. All unsatisfied endeavour ceases,
when we recognise that the final purpose of the world is
accomplished no less than ever accomplishing itself. Gene-
rally speaking, this is the man's way of looking ; while the
young imagine that the world is utterly sunk in wickedness,
and that the first thing needful is a thorough transformation.
The rehgious mind, on the contrary, views the world as
ruled by Divine Providence, and therefore correspondent
with what it ought to be. But this harmony between the
' is ' and the ' ought to be ' is not torpid and rigidly stationary.
Good, the final end of the world, has being, only while it
constantly produces itself. And the world of spirit and the
world of nature continue to have this distinction, that the
latter moves only in a recurring cycle, while the former
certainly also makes progress.
235.] Thus the truth of the Good is laid down as the
unity of the theoretical and practical idea in the doc-
trine that the Good is radically and really achieved,
that the objective world is in itself and for itself the
Idea, just as it at the same time eternally lays itself
down as End, and by action brings about its actuality.
This life which has returned to itself from the bias and
finitude of cognition, and which by the activity of the
notion has become identical with it, is the Speculative
or Absolute Idea.
{c) The Absolute Idea.
236.] The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objec-
tive Idea, is the notion of the Idea,— a notion whose
object {Gegenstand) is the Idea as such, and for which
374 ^-^^ DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [236-237.
the objective {Objekt) 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.
The Absolute Idea is, in the first place, the unity of the
theoretical and practical idea, and thus at the same time the
unity of the idea of life with the idea of cognition. In cog-
nition we had the idea in a biassed, one-sided shape. The
process of cognition has issued in the overthrow of this bias
and the restoration of that unity, which as unity, and in its
immediacy, is in the first instance the Idea of Life. The
defect of life lies in its being only the idea implicit or
natural: whereas cognition is in an equally one-sided way
the merely conscious idea, or the idea for itself. The unity
and truth of these two is the Absolute Idea, which is both in
itself and for itself Hitherto we have had the idea in
development through its various grades as our object, but
now the idea comes to be its own object. This is the vorian
voT](Tecoi which Aristotle long ago termed the supreme form
of the idea.
237.] Seeing that there is in it no transition, or pre-
supposition, and in general no specific character other
than what is fluid and transparent, the Absolute Idea is
for itself the pure form of the notion, which contem-
plates its content as its own self. It is its own content,
in so far as it ideally distinguishes itself from itself, and
the one of the two things distinguished is a self-identity
in which however is contained the totality of the form
as the system of terms describing its content. This
content is the system of Logic. All that is at this stage
left as form for the idea is the Method of this content,
— the specific consciousness of the value and currency of
the ' moments ' in its development.
To speak of the absolute idea may suggest the conception
that we are at length reaching the right thing and the sum
of the whole matter. It is certainly possible to indulge in a
337-238.] THE ABSOLUTE IDEA. 375
vast amount of senseless declamation about the idea abso-
lute. But its true content is only the whole system of
which we have been hitherto studying the development. It
may also be said in this strain that the absolute idea is the
universal, but the universal not merely as an abstract form
to which the particular content is a stranger, but as the
absolute form, into which all the categories, the whole full-
ness of the content it has given being to, have retired. The
absolute idea may in this respect be compared to the old
man who utters the same creed as the child, but for whom it
is pregnant with the significance of a lifetime. Even if the
child understands the truths of religion, he cannot but
imagine them to be something outside of which Hes the
whole of life and the whole of the world. The same may be
said to be the case with human life as a whole and the
occurrences with which it is fraught. All work is directed
only to the aim or end ; and when it is attained, people are
surprised to find nothing else but just the very thing which
they had wished for. The interest lies in the whole move-
ment. When a man traces up the steps of his life, the end
may appear to him very restricted : but in it the whole
decursus vitae is comprehended. So, too, the content of the
absolute idea is the whole breadth of ground which has
passed under our view up to this point. Last of all comes
the discovery that the whole evolution is what constitutes
the content and the interest. It is indeed the prerogative of
the philosopher to see that everything, which, taken apart, is
narrow and restricted, receives its value by its connexion
with the whole, and by forming an organic element of the
idea. Thus it is that we have had the content already, and
what we have now is the knowledge that the content is the
living development of the idea. This simple retrospect is
contained in the form of the idea. Each of the stages
hitherto reviewed is an image of the absolute, but at first in
a limited mode, and thus it is forced onwards to the whole,
the evolution of which is what we termed Method.
238.] The several steps or stages of the Speculative
Method are, first of all, (a) the Beginning, which is
376 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [238.
Being or Immediacy : self-subsistent, for the simple
reason that it is the beginning. But looked at from
the speculative idea, Being is its self-specialising act,
which as the absolute negativity or movement of the
notion makes a judgment and puts itself as its own
negative. Being, which to the beginning as beginning
seems mere abstract affirmation, is thus rather negation,
dependency, derivation, and pre-supposition. But it is
the notion, of which Being is the negation : and the
notion is completely self-identical in its otherness, and is
the certainty of itself. Being therefore is the notion
implicit, before it has been explicitly put as a notion.
This Being therefore, as the still unspecified notion, — a
notion that is only implicitly or 'immediately' specified
— is equally describable as the Universal.
When it means immediate being, the beginning is
taken from sensation and perception— the initial stage
in the analytical method of finite cognition. When it
means universality, it is the beginning of the synthetic
method. But since the Logical Idea is as much a
universal as it is in being — since it is pre-supposed by
the notion as much as it itself immediately is, its
beginning is a synthetical as well as an analytical
beginning.
Philosophical method is analytical as well as synthetical,
not indeed in the sense of a bare juxtaposition or mere
alternating employment of these two methods of finite
cognition, but rather in sueh a way that it holds them
merged in itself. In every one of its movements therefore
it displays an attitude at once analytical and synthetical.
Philosophical thought proceeds analytically, in so far as it
only accepts its object, the Idea, and while allowing it its own
way, is only, as it were, an on-looker at its movement and
development. To this extent philosophising is wholly
passive. Philosophic thought however is equally synthetic,
and evinces itself to be the action of the notion itself. To that
238-341.] THE ABSOLUTE IDEA. 377
end, however, there is required an eflbrt to keep back the
incessant impertinence of our own fancies and private
opinions.
239.] [b] The Advance renders explicit the judgment
implicit in the Idea. The immediate universal, as the
notion implicit, is the dialectical force which on its own
part deposes its immediacy and universality to the
level of a mere stage or ' moment.' Thus is put the
negative of the beginning, its specific character : it
supposes a correlative, a relation of different terms, —
the stage of Reflection.
Seeing that the immanent dialectic only states ex-
plicitly what was involved in the immediate notion, this
advance is Analytical ; but seeing that in this notion this
distinction was not yet stated,^t is equally Synthetical.
In the advance of the idea, the beginning exhibits itself as
what it is implicitly. It is seen to be mediated and deriva-
tive, and neither to have proper being nor proper imme-
diacy. It is only for the consciousness which is itself
immediate, that Nature forms the commencement or im-
mediacy, and that Spirit appears as what is mediated by
Nature. The truth is that Nature is the creation of Spirit,
and it is Spirit itself which gives itself a pre-supposition in
Nature.
240.] The abstract form of the advance is, in Being,
an other and transition into an other; in Essence
showing or reflection in the opposite ; in Notion, the
distinction of individual from universality, which con-
tinues itself as such into, and is as an identity with,
what is distinguished from it.
241.] In the second sphere the primarily implicit
notion has come as far as shining, and thus is already
the idea in germ. The development of this sphere
becomes a regress into the first, just as the de-
velopment of the first is a transition into the second.
378 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION. [241-243.
It is only by means of this double movement, that th(
difference first gets its due, when each of the two
members distinguished, observed on its own part,
completes itself to the totality, and in this way works
out its unity with the other. It is only by both merging
their one-sidedness on their own part, that their unity is
kept from becoming one-sided.
242.] The second sphere developes the relation of
the differents to what it primarily is, — to the contradic-
tion in its own nature. That contradiction which is
seen in the infinite progress is resolved [c) into the end
or terminus, where the differenced is explicitly stated
as what it is in notion. The end is the negative of the
first, and as the identity with that, is the negativity of
itself. It is consequently the unity in which both of
these Firsts, the immediate and the real First, are made
constituent stages in thought, merged, and at the same
time preserved in the unity. The notion, which from
its implicitness thus comes by means of its differentiation
and the merging of that differentiation to close with
itself, is the realised notion,— the notion which contains
the relativity or dependence of its special features in its
own independence. It is the idea which, as absolutely
first (in the method), regards this terminus as tnerely the
disappearance of the show or semblance, which made
the beginning appear immediate, and made itself seem
a result. It is the knowledge that the idea is the one
systematic whole.
243.] It thus appears that the method is not an ex-
traneous form, but the soul and notion of the content,
from which it is only distinguished, so far as the
dynamic elements of the notion even on their own part
come in their own specific character to appear as the
totality of the notion. This specific character, or the
content, leads itself with the form back to the idea ;
243-244.] THE ABSOLUTE IDEA. 379
and thus the idea is presented as a systematic totality
which is only one idea, of which the several elements
are each implicitly the idea, whilst they equally by the
dialectic of the notion produce the simple independence
of the idea. The science in this manner concludes by
apprehending the notion of itself, as of the pure idea
for which the idea is.
244.] The Idea which is independent or for itself,
when viewed on the point of this its unity with itself, is
Perception or Intuition, and the percipient Idea is
Nature. But as intuition the idea is, through an ex-
ternal 'reflection,' invested with the one-sided charac-
teristic of immediacy, or of negation. Enjoying how-
ever an absolute liberty, the Idea does not merely pass
over into life, or as finite cognition allow life to show
in it : in its own absolute truth it resolves to let the
'moment' of its particularity, or of the first charac-
terisation and other-being, the immediate idea, as its
reflected image, go forth freely as Nature.
We have now returned to the notion of the Idea with
which we began. This return to the beginning is also an
advance. We began with Being, abstract Being : where we
now are we also have the Idea as Being : but this Idea which
has Being is Nature.
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER I.
Page 5, § 2. After-thought = 9'?a(^bcnfen, i. e. thought which
retraces and reproduces an original, but submerged, thought (cf.
Hegel's Werke, vi. p. xv) : to be distinguished from Reflexion (cf.
Werke, i. 174).
P. 7, § 3. On the blending of universal (thought) and indi-
vidual (sensation) in what is called perception (SfBa^rnel^men) see
EncycL §§ 420, 421.
P. 8, § 3. Cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 454 : ' Hence for the com-
mon sort of hearers and readers the uncommon intelligibility of
certain sermons and lectures and writings, not one word of which
is intelligible to the man who thinks for himself,— because there
is really no intelligence in them. The old woman who frequents
the church— for whom by the way I cherish all possible respect —
finds a sermon very intelligible and very edifying which contains
lots of texts and verses of hymns she knows by rote and can
repeat. In the same way readers, who fancy themselves far
superior to her, find a work very instructive and clear which
tells them what they already know, and proofs very stringent
which demonstrate what they already beheve. The pleasure the
reader takes in the writer is a concealed pleasure in himself.
What a great man ! (he says to himselQ ; it is as if I heard or
read myself.'
P. 10, § 6. Cf. Hegel, Werke, viii. 17 : 'In this conviction
(that what is reasonable is actual, and what is actual is reason-
able) stands every plain man, as well as the philosopher ; and
from it philosophy starts in the study both of the spiritual and
384 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
of the natural universe. . . . The great thing however is, in the
show of the temporal and the transient to recognise the sub-
stance which is immanent and the eternal which is present.
For the work of reason (which is synonymous with the Idea),
when in its actuality it simultaneously enters external existence,
emerges with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and
phases, and envelopes its kernel with the motley rind with
which consciousness is earliest at home,— a rind which the
notion must penetrate before it can find the inward pulse and
feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But the infinite
variety of circumstance which is formed in this externality by
the light of the essence shining in it,— all this infinite material,
with its regulations, — is not the object of philosophy. ... To
comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy : for what is is
reason. As regards the individual, each, whatever happens,
is a son of his time. So too philosophy is its time apprehended
in thoughts. It is just as foolish to fancy that a philosophy can
overleap its present world as that an individual can overleap
his time. If his theory really goes beyond actualities, if it
constructs an ideal, a world as it ought to be, then such exist-
ence as it has is only in his intentions — a yielding element in
which anything you please may be fancy-formed.' Cf. Schelling,
Werke, iv. 390: 'There are very many things, actions, &c. of
which we may judge, after vulgar semblance, that they are
unreasonable. All the same we presuppose and assume that
everything which is or which happens is reasonable, and that
reason is, in one word, the prime matter and the real of all
being.'
P. 11, § 6. Actuality (®irntc^feit) in Werke, iv. 178 seqq.
P. 12, § 7. Cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 333 : ' Man has nothing at
all but experience; and everything he comes to he comes to
only through experience, through life itself. All his thinking,
be it loose or scientific, common or transcendental, starts from
experience and has experience ultimately in view. Nothing has
unconditional value and significance but life ; all other thinking,
conception, knowledge has value only in so far as in some way
or other it refers to the fact of life, starts from it, and has in
view a subsequent return to it.'
P. 13, § 7 (note). Thomas Thomson (1773- 1852), Professor
of Chemistry at Glasgow, distinguished in the early history of
chemistry and allied sciences. The Annals of Philosophy
CHAPTER I. §§ 6-13. 385
appeared from 1813 to 1826. — The art of ■preserving the hair
was published (anonymous) at London in 1825.
P. 14, § 7 (note). The speech from the throne was read on
Feb. 3rd, 1825.
The shipowners' dinner was on Feb. 12. The Times of
Feb. 14 gives as Canning's the words * the just and wise maxims
of sound not spurious philosophy.'
P. 17, § 10. ' Scholasticus ' is the guileless 'freshman,' hero
of certain Facetiae (attributed to the Pythagorean philosopher
Hierocles) which used occasionally to form part of the early
Greek reading of schoolboys.
K. L. Reinhold (1754-1823) presents in his intellectual history
a picture of the development of ideas in his age. At the be-
ginning his Attempt of a new theory of the human representa-
tive faculty (1789) is typical of the tendency to give a subjective
psychological interpretation of Kant's theory of knowledge.
But the period of Reinhold's teaching here referred to is that of
the Contributions to an easier survey of the condition of philo-
sophy at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Seitrdge, 1801) :
the tendency which Hegel, who reviewed him in the Critical
Journal of Philosophy ( Werke, i. 267 seqq.), calls ' philosophising
before philosophy.' — A similar spirit is operative in Krug's pro-
posal (in his Fundamental Philosophy, 1803) to st,art with what
he called ' philosophical problematics.'
P. 19, § II. Plato, Phaedo, p. 89, where Socrates protests
against the tendency to confound the defect of a particular piece
of reasoning with the incompetence of human reason altogether,
P. 22, § 13. The dictum that the historical succession of
philosophical systems is identical with their logical sequence
should not be taken too literally and mechanically. Its essential
point is simply the theorem that history is not a casual series of
unconnected events, — the deeds of particular persons, but is an
evolution under laws and uniformities :— it is this theorem ap-
plied to philosophies. But difficulties may easily arise in the
application of the general principle: e.g. it will be seen (by
comparison of § 86 and § 104) that though Pythagoras precedes
Parmenides, and number is a stepping-stone to pure thought,
still pure Being comes at an earlier stage than Quantity.
P. 23, § 13. There is a silent reference to what Reinhold
professed to make the subject of his teaching at Jena — ' philo-
sophy without surnames ' (c^iie ©einamcu),— /. e. not a * critical '
VOL. II. C C
386 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
philosophy ;— or to the * Philosophy which may not bear any
man's name' of Beck. As Hegel says, Werke, xvi. 138, 'The
solicitude and apprehension against being one-sided is only too
often part of the weakness which is capable only of many-sided
illogical superficiality.'
P. 27, § i6. By ' anthropology ' is meant not the anthropology
of modem writers, who use the name to denote mainly the his-
tory of human culture in its more rudimentary stages, and as
exhibited chiefly in material products, but the study of those
aspects of psychology which are most closely allied with physio-
logical conditions.
With the power of the intuition of genius to give almost all
that logical synthesis can produce, cf. Werke, I. 331 : ' In this
way a grand and pure intuition is able, in the purely architec-
tonic features of its picture, though the inter-connection of neces-
sity and the mastery of form does not come forward into visibility,
to give expression to the genuine ethical organism— like a
building which silently exhibits the spirit of its author in the
several features of its mass, without the image of that spirit being
set forth anywhere in one united shape. In such a delinea-
tion, made by help of notions, it is only a want of technical skill
which prevents reason from raising the principle it embraces
and pervades into the " ideal " form and becoming aware of it as
the Idea. If the intuition only remains true to itself and does
not let analytic intellect disconcert it, it will probably— just
because it cannot dispense with notions for its expression —
behave awkwardly in dealing with them, assume distorted shapes
in its passage through consciousness, and be (to the speculative
eye) both incoherent and contradictory : but the arrangement of
the parts and of the self-modifying characters betray the inward
spirit of reason, however invisible. And so far as this appear-
ance of that spirit is regarded as a product and a result, it will
as product completely harmonise with the Idea.' Probably
Goethe is before Hegel's mind.
P. 28, § 17. The triplicity in unity of thought— its forthgoing
('procession,' cf. p. 362 seqq.) and its return, which is yet an
abiding in itself (5}ci;fid^;f€iu) was first explicitly schematised by
Proclus, the consummator of Neo-Platonism. In his Institutio
Theologica he lays it down that the essential character of all
spiritual reality (do-co/xaToi)) is to be itpihi kavro fnia-rpfiTTiKov, i. e.
to return upon itself, or to be a unity in and with difference, —
CHAPTER I, § 12— CHAPTER H, ^ 20. 387
to be an original and spontaneous principle of movement (c. 1 5) :
or, as in C. 31 : nav to trpoibv an6 rivos kot ovainv €Tri(rrpt<f)fTai irpos
fKf'ivo a0' ov npofiaiv. Its movement, therefore, is circular
{KVKXiKqv €X" rqv (vipyeiav) (c. 33) : for everything must at the
same time remain altogether in the cause, and proceed from it,
and revert to it (c. 35). Such an essence is self-subsistent
a\)6vn6(TTaTov), — is at once agent {napayov) and patient {napayo-
fjL(vov). This ' mysticism ' (of a trinity which is also unity of
motion which is also rest), with its jrp6o8os, f'ina-Tpocfifj, and p-dvrj,
is taken up, in his own way, by Scotus Erigena {De Divisione
Naturae) as processio (or divisio), reditus, and adunatio. From
God ' proceed ' — by an eternal creation — the creatures, who
however are not outside the divine nature ; and to God all things
created eternally return.
CHAPTER II.
P. 31, § 19. Truth :— as early as Werke, i. 82, i.e. 1801,
Hegel had come — perhaps influenced by the example of Jacobi —
to the conclusion that ' Truth is a word which, in philosophical
discourse, deserves to be used only of the certainty of the Eternal
and non-empirical Actual.' (And so Spinoza, ii. 310.)
P. 32. * The young have been flattered ' — e. g. by Fichte,
Werke, i. 435 : ' Hence this science too promises itself few
proselytes amongst men already formed : if it can hope for any
at all, it hopes for them rather from the young world, whose
inborn force has not yet been ruined in the laxity of the age.'
P. 38, § 20. What Kant actually said {Kritik der reinen
Vemunft: Elementarlehre, § 16), was 'The I think must be
able to accompany all my conceptions ' (SBorjleKungcn). Here, as
often elsewhere, Hegel seems to quote from memory,— with
some shortcoming from absolute accuracy.
From this point Fichte's idealism takes its spring, e. g.
Werke, ii. 505 : * The ground of all certainty, — of all conscious-
ness of fact in life, and of all demonstrative knowledge in
science, is this : In and with the single thing we afifirm (fe^en)
(and whatever we aflirm is necessarily something single) we also
affirm the absolute totality as such. . . . Only in so far as we
have so affirmed anything, is it certain for us,— from the single
unit we have comprehended under it away to every single thing
in the infinity we shall comprehend under it,— from the one
c c 2
388 NOT^S AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
individual who has comprehended it, to all individuals who will,
comprehend it. . . . Without this absolute "positing " of the abso-
lute totality in the individual, we cannot (to employ a phrase of
Jacobi's) come to bed and board.'
' Obviously therefore you enunciate not the judgment of a
single observation, but you embrace and " posit " the sheer infini-
tude and totality of all possible observations :— an infinity which
is not at all compounded out of finites, but out of which, con-
versely, the finites themselves issue, and of which finite things
are the mere always-uncompleted analysis. This — how shall
I call it, procedure, positing, or whatever you prefer — this " mani-
festation " of the absolute totality, I call intellectual vision
(Sluf^auung). I regard it — ^just because I cannot in any way get
beyond intelligence — as immanent in intelligence, and name it
so far egoity (Sc^^eit), — not objectivity and not subjectivity, but
the absolute identity of the two : — an egoity, however, which it
was to be hoped would not be taken to mean individuality.
There lies in it, what you ' (he is addressing Reinhold, who here
follows Bardili) ' call a repetibility ad infinitum. For me, there-
fore, the essence of the finite is composed of an immediate vision
of the absolutely timeless infinite (with an absolute identity of
subjectivity and objectivity), and of a separation of the two latter,
and an analysis (continued ad infinitum) of the infinite. In that
analysis consists the temporal life : and the starting-point of
this temporal life is the separation into subject and object, which
throttgh. the intellectual vision (intuition) are still both held
together.'
P. 44, § 22, iAe mere fact of conviction. Cf. Rechtsphilosophie,
§ 140 {Werke, viii. 191): 'Finally the mere conviction which
holds something to be right is given out as what decides the
morality of an action. The good we will to do not yet having
any content, the principle of conviction adds the information
that the subsumption of an action under the category of good is
purely a personal matter. If this be so, the very pretence of an
ethical objectivity is utterly lost. A doctrine like this is closely
allied with the self-styled philosophy which denies that the true
is cognoscible : because for the Will, truth — i. e. the rationality
of the Will — lies in the moral laws. Giving out, as such a
system does, that the cognition of the true is an empty vanity,
far transcending the range of science (which recognises only
appearance), it must, in the matter of conduct, also find its
CHAPTER II, §§ 20-22. 389
principle in the apparent ; whereby moral distinctions are re-
duced to the peculiar theory of life held by the individual and
to his private conviction. At first no doubt the degradation
into which philosophy has thus sunk seems an affair of supreme
indifference, a mere incident in the futilities of the scholastic
world : but the view necessarily makes itself a home in ethics,
which is an essential part of philosophy ; and it is then in the
actual world that the world learns the true meaning of such
theories.
* As the view spreads that subjective conviction, and it c'one,
decides the morality of an action, it follows that the charge of
hypocrisy, once so frequent, is now rarely heard. You can only
qualify wickedness as hypocrisy on the assumption that certain
actions are inherently and actually misdeeds, vices, and crimes,
and that the defaulter necessarily is aware of them as such,
because he is aware of and recognises the principles and out-
ward acts of piety and honesty, even in the pretence to which
he misapplies them. In other words, it was generally assumed
as regards immorality that it is a duty to know the good, and
to be aware of 'ts distinction from the bad. In any case it
wrs an absolute injunction which torbade the commission of
vicious and criminal acts, and which insisted on such actions
being imputed to the agent, so far as he was a man, not a beast.
But if the good heart, the good intention, the subjective con-
viction, are set forth as the true sources of moral worth, then
there is no longer any hypocrisy, or ..nmorality at ull : for
..hatever one does, he can always justify it by the reflection
on it of good aims and motives ; and by the influence of that
conviction it is good. There is no longer anything inherently
vicious or criminal : instead of the frank ana free, hardened
and unperturbed sinner, comes the person whose mind is com-
pletely justified by intention and conviction. My good intention
in my act, and my conviction of its goodness, make it good.
We speak of judging and estimating an act. But on this prin-
ciple it is only the aim and conviction of the agent — his faith —
by which he ought to be judged. And that not in the sense in
which Christ requires faith in objective truth, so that for one
who has a bad faith, i.e. a conviction bad in its content, the
judgment to be pronounced must be bad, i. e. conformable to this
bad content. But faith here means only fidehty to conviction.
Has the man (we ask) in acting kept true to his conviction .-' It
39© NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
is formal subjective conviction on which alone the obligation of
duty is made to depend.
'A principle like this, where conviction is expressly made
something subjective, cannot but suggest the thought of pos-
sible error, with the further implied presupposition of an abso-
lutely-existing law. But the law is no agent : it is only the
actual human being who acts ; and in the aforesaid principle
the only question in estimating human actions is how far he has
received the law into his conviction.- If, therefore, it is not the
actions which are to be estimated and generally measured by
that law, it is impossible to see what the law is for, and what
end it can serve. Such a law is degraded to a mere outside
letter, in fact an empty word ; which is only made a law, /. e.
invested with obligatory force, by my conviction.
* Such a law may claim its authority from God or the State :
it may even have the authority of tens of centuries during which
it served as the bond that gave men, with all their deed and
destiny, subsistence and coherence. And these are authorities
in which are condensed the convictions of countless individuals.
And for me to set against that the authority of my single con-
viction—for as my subjective conviction its sole validity is
authority — that self-conceit, monstrous as it at first seems, is,
in virtue of the principle that subjective conviction is to be
the rule, pronounced to be no self-conceit at all.
' Even if reason and conscience— which shallow science and
bad sophistry can never altogether expel — admit, with a noble
illogicality, that error is possible, still by describing crime and
wickedness as only an error we minimise the fault. For to
err is human : — Who has not been mistaken on one point or
another, whether he had fresh or pickled cabbage for dinner,
and about innumerable things more or less important ? But the
diflference of more or less importance disappears if everything
turns on the subjectivity of conviction and on persistency in it.
But the said noble illogicality which admits error to be possible,
when it comes round to say that a wrong conviction is only an
error, really only falls into a further illogicality— the illogicality
of dishonesty. One time conviction is made the basis of morality
and of man's supreme value, and is thus pronounced the supreme
and holy. Another time all we have to do with is an error :
my conviction is something trivial and casual, strictly speaking
something outside, that may turn out this way or that. And,
CHAPTER II, §§ 22-23. 391
really, my being convinced is son^ething supremely trivial : if
I cannot know truth, it is indifferent how I think ; and all that
is left to my thinking is that empty good,— a mere abstraction
of generalisation.
' It follows further that, on this principle of justification by
conviction, logic requires me, in dealing with the way others
act against my action, to admit that, so far as they in their
belief and conviction hold my actions to be crimes, they are
quite in the right. On such logic not merely do I gain nothing,
1 am even deposed from the post of liberty and honour into
a situation of slavery and dishonour. Justice — which in the
abstract is mine as well as theirs— I feel only as a foreign sub-
jective conviction, and in the execution of justice I fancy myself
to be only treated by an external force.'
P. 44, § 23. ©elbflbenfen- to think and not merely to read or
listen is the recurrent cry of Fichte [e.g. Werke, ii. 329). Ac-
cording to the editors of Werke, xv. 582, the reference here is
to Schleiermacher and to his Monologues. Really it is to the
Komantic principle in general, especially F. Schlegel.
P. 45, § 23. Cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 404 : ' Philosophy (2Biffen-
f^aft0|e^rc), besides (for the reason above noted that it has no
auxiliary, no vehicle of the intuition at all, except the intuition
itself), elevates the human mind higher than any geometry can.
It gives the mind not only attentiveness, dexterity, stability, but
at the same time absolute independence, forcing it to be alone
with itself, and to live and manage by itself. Compared with
it, every other mental operation is infinitely easy ; and to one
who has been exercised in it nothing comes hard. Besides,
as it prosecutes all objects of human lore to the centre, it
accustoms the eye to hit the proper point at first glance in
everything presented to it, and to prosecute it undeviatingly.
For such a practical philosopher therefore there can be nothing
dark, complicated, and confused, if only he is acquainted with
the object of discussion. It comes always easiest to him to
construct everything afresh and ab initio, because he carries
within him plans for every scientific edifice. He finds his way
easily, therefore, in any complicated structure. Add to this
the security and confidence of glance which he has acquired in
philosophy,— the guide which conducts in all raisonnement, and
the imperturbability with which his eye meets every divergence
from the accustomed path and every paradox. It would be
392 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
quite different with all human concerns, if men could only
resolve to believe their eyes. At present they inquire at
their neighbours and at antiquity what they really see, and by
this distrust in themselves errors are eternalised. Against this
distrust the possessor of philosophy is for ever protected. In a
word, by philosophy the mind of man comes to itself, and from
henceforth rests on itself without foreign aid, and is completely
master of itself, as the dancer of his feet, or the boxer of his
hands.'
P. 45, § 23. Aristotle, Metaph. I 2, 1 9 (cf. Eth. x. 7). See
also IVerke, xiv. 280 seqq.
P. 46, § 24. Schelling's expression, 'petrified intelligence.'
The reference is to some verses of Schelling in IVerke, iv. 546
(first published in Zeitschriftfiir speculative Physik, 1800). We
have no reason to stand in awe of the world, he says, which is
a tame and quiet beast —
©tccft jwar ein OJiefengeifl barinncu,
%\i abcr »erfieinert mit alien ©innen;
3n tobten iinb (ebcnbigen S^ingcn
VcjOX jiac^ a3enjufitfet)n ntac^tig ringen.
In human shape he at length awakes from the iron sleep, from
the long dream : but as man he feels himself a stranger and
exile ; he would fain return to great Nature ; he fears what
surrounds him and imagines spectres, not knowing he might
say of Nature to himself —
3^ bin bet ®ott, ben fie im Sufen Iiegt,
JDcr @eifi, ber ftc^ in adetn behjtgt :
ffiom fnii)flen OJingen bunfler .ffrdfte
58i6 jum drguf bee tti^en fiebenefdfte,
^etauf ju bed ©ebanfens Sugenbfvaft
Scburd^ 9latur serfungt fid^ irteber fc^afft,
3fi eine ^raft, ein 3Bec^fetfviet unb SBeben,
6in Xrieb unb S)rang no^ immct l^of^enn 8cben.
Cf. Oken, Naiurphilosophie, § 2913: *A natural body is a
thought of the primal act, turned rigid and crystallised,— a word
of God.'
Phrases of like import are not infrequent in Schelling's works
(about 1800-1), e.g.- IVerke, i. Abth, iii. 341 : * The dead and
CHAPTER II, §§ 23-24. 393
unconscious products of nature are only unsuccessful attempts
to " reflect " itself ; so-called dead nature is in all cases an
immature intelligence' (unreife Sntelligeni), or iv. 77, 'Nature
itself is an intelligence, as it were, turned to rigidity (erflarrte)»
with all its sensations and perceptions ' ; and ii. 226 {Ideen
zu einer Philosophie der Natur, 1797), 'Hence nature is only
intelligence turned into the rigidity of being ; its qualities are
sensations extinguished to being ; bodies are its perceptions, so
to speak, killed.'
A close approach to the phrase quoted is found in the words
of another of the ' Romantic ' philosophers : * Nature is a petri-
fied mag^c-city ' (ccrjleinerte 3auberjiabt). (Novalis, Schriften,
ii. 149.)
P. 48, § 24. Cf. Fichte to Jacobi : (Jacobi's Briefwechsel, ii,
208) * My absolute Ego is obviously not the individual : that ex-
planation comes from injured snobs and peevish philosophers,
seeking to impute to me the disgraceful doctrine of practical
egoism. But the individual must be deduced from the absolute
ego. To that task my philosophy will proceed. in the "Natural
Law." A finite being— it may be deductively shown— can only
think itself as a sense-being in a sphere of sense-beings, — on one
part of which (that which has no power of origination) it has
causality, while with the other part (to which it attributes a sub-
jectivity like its own) it stands in reciprocal relations. In such
circumstances it is called an individual, and the conditions of
individuality are called rights. As surely as it affirms its indivi-
duality, so surely does it affirm such a sphere — the two concep-
tions indeed are convertible. So long as we look upon ourselves
as individuals — and we always so regard ourselves in life, though
not in philosophy and abstract imagination — we stand on what
I call the " practical " point of view in our reflections (while
to the standpoint of the absolute ego I give the name "specula-
tive "). From the former point of view there exists for us a world
independent of us,— a world we can only modify ; whilst the
pure ego (which even on this altitude does not altogether dis-
appear from us,) is put outside us and called God. How else
could we get the properties we ascribe to God and deny to our-
selves, did we not after all find them within us, and only refuse
them to ourselves in a certain respect, i.e. as individuals ? When
this " practical " point of view predominates in our reflections,
realism is supreme : when speculation itself deduces and re-
394 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
cognises that standpoint, there results a complete reconciliation
between philosophy and common sense as premised in my
system.
* For what good, then, is the speculative standpoint and the
whole of philosophy therewith, if it be not for life? Had
humanity not tasted of this forbidden fruit, it might dispense
with all philosophy. But in humanity there is a wish implanted
to behold that region lying beyond the individual ; and to be-
hold it not merely in a reflected light but face to face. The first
who raised a question about God's existence broke through the
barriers, he shook humanity in its main foundation pillars, and
threw it out of joint into an intestine strife which is not yet
settled, and which can only be settled by advancing boldly to
that supreme point from which the speculative and the prac-
tical appear to be at one. We began to philosophise from pride
of heart, and thus lost our innocence : we beheld our naked-
ness, and ever since we philosophise from the need of our
redemption,'
P. 50. Physics and Philosophy of Nature: cf. Werke, vii. i,
p. 18 : 'The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material, pre-
pared for it by physics out of experience, at the point to which
physics has brought it, and again transforms it, without basing
it ultimately on the authority of experience. Physics therefore
must work into the hands of philosophy, so that the latter may
translate into a true comprehension (Q3f9riff) the abstract uni-
versal transmitted to it, showing how it issues from that com-
prehension as an intrinsically necessary whole. The philosophic
way of putting the facts is no mere whim once in a way, by
way of change, to walk on the head, after walking a long while
on the legs, or once in a way to see our every-day face be-
smeared with paint. No ; it is because the method of physics
does not satisfy the comprehension, that we have to go on
further.'
P. 51, § 24. The distinction of ordinary and speculative
Logic is partly like that made by Fichte (i. 68) between Logic
and ffiiffcnfc^afteleljre. ' The former,' says Fichte, * is conditioned
and determined by the latter.' Logic deals only with form ;
epistomology with import as well.
P. 54, § 24. The Mosaic legend of the Fall ; cf. similar inter-
pretations in Kant : Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen
Vemun/t, !*«» Stuck ; and Schelling, Werke^ i. (i. Abth.) 34.
CHAPTER IT, § 24 — CHAPTER HI, § 3I. 395
CHAPTER III.
p. 61, § 28. Fichte — to emphasise the experiential truth of
his system — says {Werke, ii. 331): 'There was a philosophy
which professed to be able to expand by mere inference the
range thus indicated for philosophy. According to it, thinking
was— not, as we have described it, the analysis of what was
given and the recombining of it in other forms, but at the same
time — a production and creation of something quite new. In
this system the philosopher found himself in the exclusive f>os-
session of certain pieces of knowledge which the vulgar under-
standing had to do without. In it the philosopher could reason
out for himself a God and an immortality and talk himself into
the conclusion that he was wise and good.'
Wolfs definition of philosophy is ' the Science of the possible
in so far as it can be ' ; and the possible = the non-contra-
dictory.
P. 64, § 29. The oriental sage corresponds (cf. Hegel, Werke,
xii. 229) to the writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite {^De
Mystica Theologia, and De Divints Nominibus). — The same
problem as to the relation of the Infinite (God) to the Finite
(world) is discussed in Jewish speculation (by Saadia, Mamuni,
&c.) as the question of the divine names, — a dogma founded on
the thirteen names (or attributes) applied to God in Exodus
xxxiv. 6. (Cf. D. Kaufmann, Geschichte der Attributenlehre.)
The same spirit has led to the list of ninety-nine 'excellent
names ' of Allah in Islam, a list which tradition derives from
Mohammed.
P. 65, § 31. Cf. Werke, ii. 47 seqq.\ 'The nature of the
judgment or proposition— involving as it does a distinction of
subject and predicate— is destroyed by the " speculative " pro-
position. This conflict of the prepositional form with the unity
of comprehension which destroys it is like the antagonism in
rhythm between metre and accent. The rhythm results from
the floating " mean " and unification of the two. Hence even in
the " philosophical " proposition the identity of subject and pre-
dicate is not meant to annihilate their difference (expressed
by the prepositional fonn) : their unity is meant to issue as a
harmony. The propositional form lets appear the definite shade
or accent pointing to a distinction in its fulfilment : whereas in
396 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
the predicate giving expression to the substance, and the sub-
ject itself falling into the universal, we have the unity in which
that accent is heard no more. Thus in the proposition " God is
Being " the predicate is Being ; it represents the substance in
which the subject is dissolved away. Being is here meant not
to be predicate but essence : and in that way God seems to cease
to be what he is — by his place in the proposition — viz. the
permanent subject. The mind — far from getting further forward
in the passage from subject to predicate — feels itself rather
checked, through the loss of the subject, and thrown back, from
a sense of its loss, to the thought of the subject. Or,— since the
predicate itself is enunciated as a subject (as Being or as Es-
sence) which exhausts the nature of the subject, it again comes
face to face with the subject even in the predicate. — Thought
thus loses its solid objective ground which it had on the sub-
ject : yet at the same time in the predicate it is thrown back
upon it, and instead of getting to rest in itself it returns upon
the subject of the content. — To this unusual check and arrest
are in the main due the complaints as to the unintelligibility of
philosophical works, — supposing the individual to possess any
other conditions of education needed for understanding them.'
P. 66, § 32, On the relation of dogmatism and scepticism
see the introduction to Kant's Criticism of Pure Reason, and
compare Caird's Critical Philosophy of I. Kani, vol. i. chap. i.
P- 67, § 33. The subdivision of ' theoretical ' philosophy or
metaphysics into the four branches, Ontology, Cosmology, Psy-
chology (rational and empirical), and Natural Theology, is more
or less common to the whole Wolfian School. Wolf's special
addition to the preceding scholastic systems is found in the
conception of a general Cosmology. Metaphysics precedes
physics, and the departments of practical philosophy. In
front of all stands logic or rational philosophy. Empirical
psychology belongs properly to physics, but reasons of practical
convenience put it elsewhere.
P. 69, § 34. The question of the ' Seat of the Soul ' is well
known in the writings of Lotze {e.g. Meiaphysic, § 291).
Absolute actuosity. The Notio Dei according to Thomas
Aquinas, as well as the dogmatics of post-Reformation times, is
cuius purus (or actus purissimus). For God nihil potentiali-
tatis habet. Cf. Werke, xii. 228 : * Aristotle especially has con-
ceived God under the abstract category of activity. Pure acti-
CHAPTER III, §§ 31-36. 397
vity is knowledge (ffiiffen)— in the scholastic age, actus fiurus— :
but in order to be put as activity, it must be put in its
"moments." For knowledge we require another thing which is
known : and which, when knowledge knows it, is thereby appro-
priated. It is implied in this that God — the eternal and self-
subsistent— eternally begets himself as his Son,— distinguishes
himself from himself. But what he thus distinguishes from
himself, has not the shape of an otherness : but what is distin-
guished is ipso facto identical with what it is parted from. God
is spirit : no darkness, no colouring or mixture enters this pure
light. The relationship of father and son is taken from organic
life and used metaphorically— the natural relation is only pic-
torial and hence does not quite correspond to what is to be
expressed. We say, God eteiTially begets his Son, God distin-
guishes himself from himself: and thus we begin from God,
saying he does this, and in the other he creates is utterly with
himself (the form of Love) : but we must be well aware that
God is this whole action itself. God is the beginning ; he does
this : but equally is he only the end, the totality : and as such
totality he is spirit. God as merely the Father is not yet the
true (it is the Jewish religion where he is thus without the
Son) : He is rather beginning and end : He is his presupposi-
tion, makes himself a presupposition (this is only another form
of distinguishing) : He is the eternal process.'
Nicolaus Cusanus speaks of God {De iocta Ignorantia, ii. i)
as infinita actualiias quae est actu omnts essendi possibilitas.
The term ' actuosity ' seems doubtful.
P. 73, § 36. Sensus eminentior. Theology distinguishes
three modes in which the human intelligence can attain a
knowledge of God. By the via causalitatis it argues that God
is ; by the via negationis, what he is not ; by the via eminen-
tiae, it gets a glimpse of the relation in which he stands to us.
It regards God i.e. as the cause of the finite universe ; but as
God is infinite, all that is predicated of him must be taken as
merely approximative {sensu etninentioH) and there is left a
vast remainder which can only be filled up with negations
[Durandus de S. Porciano on the Sentent. i. 3. i]. The sensus .
etJiineniior is the subject of Spinoza's strictures, Ep. 6 (56 in
Opp. ii. 202) : while Leibniz adopts it in the preface to ThJodice'e,
' Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos ^mes, mais il les
poss^de sans bornes ; il est un ocean, dont nous n'avons requ
398 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
que les gouttes ; il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque con-
naissance, quelque bont6 ; mais elles sont toutes entiferes en Dieu.'
The via causalitatis infers e.g., from the existence of morality
and intelligence here, a Being whose will finds expression
therein : the via eminentiae infers that that will is good, and
that intelligence wise in the highest measure, and the via nega-
tionis sets aside in the conception of God all the limitations
and conditions to which human intelligence and will are subject.
CHAPTER IV.
P. 80, § 38. The verses (forming part of the advice which
Mephistopheles, personating Faust, gives to the recently-arrived
pupil) stand in the original in a different order: beginning
„35ann t^at er bie X^eile in feincr ^anb," &c. The meaning of these
and the two preceding lines is somewhat as follows, in versifica-
tion even laxer than Goethe's : —
If you want to describe life and gather its meaning,
To drive out its spirit must be your beginning,
Then though fast in your hand lie the parts one by one
The spirit that linked them, alas! is gone.
And ' Nature's Laboratory ' is only a name
That the chemist bestows on't to hide his own shame.
One may compare Wilhelm Meisfer's Wanderjahre, iii. 3, where
it is remarked, in reference to some anatomical exercises : ' You
will learn ere long that building-up is more instructive than
tearing-down, combining more than separating, animating the
dead more than killing again what was killed already. . . .
Combining means more than separating : reconstructing more
than onlooking.' The first part of Faust appeared 1808: the
Wanderjahre, 1828-9.
P. 82, § 39. The article on the ' Relation of scepticism to
philosophy, an exposition of its various modifications, and com-
parison of the latest with the ancient '—in form a review of G. E.
Schulze's Criticism of Theoretical Philosophy— ^2^% republished
in vol. xvi. of Hegel's Werke (vol. i. of the Vermischte Schriften).
P. 87, § 42. In an earlier review of Kant's work {Werke, \.
83) on (AJldubeu unb 3BiJTen (an article in Schelling and Hegel's
Journal) Hegel attaches more weight to a factor in the critical
theory of knowledge, here neglected. Kant, he says, has —
CHAPTER III, § 36 — CHAPTER IV, § 42. 399
within the limits allowed by his psychological terms of thought
— 'put (in an excellent way) the d priori of sensibility into the
original identity and multiplicity, and that as transcendental
imagination in the "higher power" of an immersion of unity in
multiplicity : whilst Understanding (33erfianb) he makes to con-
sist in the elevation to universality of this d priori synthetic
unity of sensibility,— whereby this identity is invested with a
comparative antithesis to the sensibility : and Reason (aJemunft)
is presented as a still higher power over the preceding compara-
tive antithesis, without however this universality and infinity
being allowed to go beyond the stereotyped formal pure in-
finity. This genuinely rational construction by which, though
the bad name " faculties " is left, there is in truth presented a
single identity of them all, is transformed by Jacobi into a
series of faculties, resting one upon another.'
P. 87, § 42. Fichte : cf. Werke, i. 420 : ' I have said before,
and say it here again, that my system is no other than the
Kantian. That means : it contains the same view of facts, but
in its method is quite independent of the Kantian exposition.'
* Kant, up to now, is a closed book.'— i. 442. There are two
ways of critical idealism. 'Either' (as Fichte) 'it actually de-
duces from the fundamental laws of intelligence, that system of
necessary modes of action, and with it, at the same time, the
objective conceptions thus arising, and thus lets the whole com-
pass of our conceptions gradually arise under the eyes of the
reader or hearer; or' (like Kant and his unprogressive dis-
ciples) ' it gets hold of these laws from anywhere and anyhow,
as they are immediately applied to objects, therefore on their
lowest grade (—on this grade they are called categories), and
then asseverates that it is by these that objects are determined
and arranged.' And i. 478 : ' I know that the categories which
Kant laid down are in no way pro%>ed by him to be conditions
of self-consciousness, but only said to be so : I know that space
and time and what in the original consciousness is inseparable
from them and fills them both, are still less deduced as such
conditions, for of them it is not even said expressly— as of the
categories— that they are so, but only inferentially. But I believe
quite as surely that I know that Kant had the thought of such
a system : that everything he actually propounds are fragments
and results of this system; and that his statements have meaning
and coherence only on this presupposition.' Cf. viii. 362.
400 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
P. 89, §42. Transcendental unity of self-consciousness. Kant's
Kritik der reinen Vernun/i, § 16 : * The / think must be able to
accompany all my ideas. . . . This idea is an act of spontaneity.
... I name it pure apperception ... or original apperception . . .
because it is that self-consciousness which can be accompanied
by none further. The unity of it I also call the transcendental
unity of self-consciousness, in order to denote the possibility of
cognition d priori from it.'
P. 92, § 44. Caput Mortuum : a term of the Alchemists to
denote the non-volatile precipitate left in the retort after the spirit
had been extracted : the fixed or dead remains, * quando spiritus
animam sursum vexit.'
P. 92, § 45, Reason and Understanding. In the Wolfian
School {e.g. in Baumgarten's Metaphysik, § 468) the term intel-
lect (33erflanb) is used of the general faculty of higher cognition,
while ratio (SScnmnft) specially denotes the power of seeing
distinctly the connexions of things. So Wolff ( VemUnftige
Gedanken von Gott, &c. § 277) defines 95er<^anb as 'the faculty
of distinctly representing the possible,' and QSernunft (§ 368) as
'the faculty of seeing into the connexion of truths.' It is on
this use of Reason as the faculty of inference that Kant's use of
the term is founded : though it soon widely departs from its
origin. For upon the ' formal ' use of reason as the faculty of
syllogising, Kant superinduces a transcendental use as a ' faculty
oi principles,^ while the understanding is only ' a faculty of rules'
' Reason,' in other words, ' itself begets conceptions,' and
' maxims, which it borrows neither from the senses nor from the
understanding.' {Kritik d. r. Vern., Dialektik, Einleit. ii. A.)
And the essential aim of Reason is to give unity to the various
cognitions of understanding. While the unity given by under-
standing is 'unity of a possible experience,' that sought by
reason is the discovery of an unconditioned which will com-
plete the unity of the former {Dial. Einleit. iv), or of 'the
totality of the conditions to a given conditioned.' {Dial, vii.)
It is this distinction of the terms which is dominant in Fichte
and Hegel, where SSevfianb is the more practical intellect which
seeks definite and restricted results and knowledges, while
33crnunft is a deeper and higher power which aims at complete-
ness. In Goethe's more reflective prose we see illustrations of
this usage : e.g. Wilh. Meister's Wanderjahre, i. it is said to be
the object of the 'reasonable' man ' bag entgcgcngcfclte ju ubcrf^auen
CHAPTER IV, §§ 42-45. 401
utib in Uebftcitnlimmung ^u bringen ' : or Bk, ii. Reasonable men
when they have devised something verfldnbig to get this or that
difficulty out of the way, &c. Goethe, in his SpHiche in Prosa
(896), Werke, iii. 281, says 'Reason has for its province the
thing in process (ba« aBcrbenbf), understanding the thing com-
pleted (bag ©etrcibene) : the former does not trouble itself about
the purpose, the latter asks not whence. Reason takes delight
in developing ; understanding wishes to keep everything as it
is, so as to use it.' (Similarly in Eckermann's Convers. Feb. 13,
1829.) Cf. Oken, 9iaturp^ilo[cp:^ie, § 2914. 93erfianb ifl aWicvocoemu3,
i^ernunft aJJacrocceimu^.
Kant's use of the term Reason, coupled with his special
view of Practical Reason and his use of the term Faith (®laiibe),
leads on to the terminology of Jacobi. In earlier writings
Jacobi had insisted on the contrast between the superior au-
thority of feeling and faith (which are in touch with truth) and
the mechanical method of intelligence and reasoning (33ev|ianb
and iJcrnuuft). At a later period however he changed and fixed
the nomenclature of his distinction. What he had first called
©laube he latterly called 9Sernuiift,— which is in brief a ' sense for
the supersensible ' — an intuition giving higher and complete or
total knowledge— an immediate apprehension of the real and the
true. As contrasted with this reasonable faith or feeling, he
regards '-Bertkiib as a mere faculty of inference or derivative
knowledge, referring one thing to another by the rule of identity.
This distinction which is substantially reproduced by Coleridge
(though with certain clauses that show traces of Schellingian
influence) has connexions — like so much else in Jacobi— with
the usage of Schopenhauer, ' Nobody,' says Jacobi, ' has ever
spoken of an animal 93cniunft : a mere animal 33eifianb however
we all know and speak of.' (Jacobi's Werke, iii. 8.) Schopen-
hauer repeats and enforces the remark. All animals possess,
says Schopenhauer, the power of apprehending causality, of cog-
nising objects : a power of immediate and intuitive knowledge
of real things : this is i>cifiaub. But ^crnunft, which is peculiar
to man, is the cognition of truth (not of reality) : it is an abstract
judgment with a sufficient reason ( Welt ah IV. i. § 6).
One is tempted to connect the modem distinction with an
older one which goes back in its origin to Plato and Aristotle,
but takes form in the Neo-Platonist School, and enters the Latin
world through Boethius. Consol. Phil. iv. 6 : Igitur uti est ad
VOL. II. D d
402 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
intellectum ratiocinatio, ad id quod est id quodgignitur, ad aeter-
nitatem tempus, and in v. 4 there is a full distinction of sensus,
imaginatio, ratio and intelligentia in ascending order. Ratio
is the discursive knowledge of the idea {imiversali consideratione
perpendit) : intelligentia apprehends it at once, and as a simple
forma (pura mentis acie contuetur) : [cf. Stob. Eel. i. 826-832 :
Porphyr. Sentent. 15]. Reasoning belongs to the human species,
just as intelligence to the divine alone. Yet it is assumed— in
an attempt to explain divine foreknowledge and defend freedom
- -that man may in some measure place himself on the divine
standpoint (v. 5).
This contrast between a higher mental faculty {mens) and a
lower {ratio) which even Aquinas adopts from the interpretation
of Aristotle {Summa Theol. i. 79, 9) is the favourite weapon in
the hands of mysticism. After the example of Dionysius Areop.,
Nicolaus of Cusa, Reuchlin, and other thinkers of the Renais-
sance depreciate mere discursive thought and logical reasoning.
It is the inner tnens — like a simple ray of light — penetrating by
an immediate and indivisible act to the divine — which gives us
access to the supreme science. This simplex intelligentia, —
superior to imagination or reasoning — as Gerson says, Consid.
de Th. 10, is sometimes named mens, sometimes spiritus, the light
of intelligence, the shadow of the angelical intellect, the divine
light. From Scotus Erigena to Nicolas of Cusa one tradition is
handed down : it is taken up by men like Everard Digby (in his
Theoria Analytica) and the group of Cambridge Platonists and
by Spinoza in t he seventeenth century, and it reappears, profoundly
modified, in the German idealism between 1790 and 1820.
P. 99, § 48. 'Science of Logic' ; Hegel's large work on the
subject, published between 1812-16. The discussions on the
Antinomies belong chiefly to the first part of it.
P. 102, § 50. ' Natural Theology,' here to be taken in a
narrower sense than in p. ^i, where it is equivalent to Rational
Theology in general. Here it means ' Physico-theology ' — the
argument from design in nature.
P. 103, § 50. Spinoza — defining God as * the union of thought
with extension.' This is not verbally accurate ; for according to
Ethica, i. pr. 11, God, or the substance, consists of infinite attri-
butes, each of which expresses the eternal and infinite essence,
liut Spinoza mentions of ' attributes ' only two : Ethica, ii. pr. i.
Thought is an attribute of God : pr. 2, Extension is an attribute,
CHAPTER IV, §§ 45-54. 403
of God. And he adds, Eihica, i. pr. 10, Schol. * All the attributes
substance has were always in it together, nor can one be pro-
duced by another.' And in Ethica, ii. 7. Sch. it is said : ' Think-
ing substance and extended substance is one and the same
substance which is comprehended now under this, now under
that attribute.'
P. 110, § 54. 'Practical in the true sense of the word.' Cf.
Kant, Werke, Ros. and Sch. i. 581 : 'A great misunderstanding,
exerting an injurious influence on scientific methods, prevails
with regard to what should be considered " practical " in such
sense as to justify its place in practical philosophy. Diplomacy
and finance, rules of economy no less than rules of social inter-
course, precepts of health and dietetic of the soul no less than the
body, have been classed as practical philosophy on the mere
ground that they all contain a collection of practical propositions.
But although such practical propositions differ in mode of state-
ment from the theoretical propositions which have for import
the possibility of things and the exposition of their nature, they
have the same content. " Practical," properly so called, are only
those propositions which relate to Liberty under laws. All
others whatever are nothing but the theory of what pertains to
the nature of things— only that theory is brought to bear on the
way in which the things may be produced by us in conformity
with a principle ; /. e. the possibility of the things is presented
as the result of a voluntary action which itself too may be
counted among physical causes.' And Kant, Werke, iv. 10.
* Hence a sum of practical precepts given by philosophy does
not form a special part of it (co-ordinate with the theoretical)
merely because they are practical. Practical they might be,
even though their principle were wholly derived f'-om the theo-
retical knowledge of nature,— as technico-practical rules. They
are practical in the true sense, when and because their principle
is not borrowed from the nature-conception (which is always
sensuously conditioned) and rests therefore on the supersensible,
which the conception of liberty alone makes knowable by formal
laws. They are therefore ethico-practical, i. e. not merely
precepts and rules with this or that intention, but laws without
antecedent reference to ends and intentions.*
P. Ill, § 54. Eudaemonism. But there is Eudaemonism and
Eudaemonism ; as Cf. Hegel, Werke, i. 8. ' The time had come
when the infinite longing away beyond the body and the world
D d 2
404 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
had reconciled itself with the reality of existence. Yet the
reality which the soul was reconciled to — the objective which
the subjectivity recognised — was actually only empirical exist-
ence, common world and actuality. . . . And though the recon-
ciliation was in its heart and ground sure and fast, it still needed
an objecti\ e form for this ground : the very necessity of nature
made the blind certitude of immersion in the reality of empirical
existence seek to provide itself with a justification and a good
conscience. This reconciliation for consciousness was found in
the Happiness-doctrine : the fixed point it started from being
the empirical subject, and what it was reconciled to, the vulgar
actuality, whereon it might now confide, and to which it might
surrender itself without sin. The profound coarseness and utter
vulgarity, which is at the basis of this happiness-doctrine, has
its only elevation in its striving after justification and a good
conscience, which however can get no further than the objec-
tivity of mere intellectualism.
* The dogmatism of eudaemonism and of popular philosophy
(3luftldrung) therefore did not consist in the fact that it made
happiness and enjoyment the supreme good. For if Happiness
be comprehended as an Idea, it ceases to be something empirical
and casual— as also to be anything sensuous. In the supreme
existence, reasonable act (X^un) and supreme enjoyment are
one. So long as supreme blessedness is supreme Idea it matters
not whether we try to apprehend the supreme existence on the
sideof its ideality, — which, as isolated may be first called reason-
able act— or on the side of its reality — which as isolated may be
first called enjoyment and feeling. For reasonable act and supreme
enjoyment, ideality and reality are both ahke in it and identical.
Every philosophy has only one problem — to construe, supreme
blessedness as supreme Idea. So long as it is by reason that
supreme enjoyment is ascertained, the distinguishability of the
two at once disappears : for this comprehension and the infinity
which is dominant in act, and the reality and finitude which is
dominant in enjoyment, are taken up into one another. The
controversy with happiness becomes a meaningless chatter,
when happiness is known as the blessed enjoyment of the eternal
intuition. But what was called eudaemonism meant — it must
be said— an empirical happiness, an enjoyment of sensation, not
the eternal intuition and blessedness.'
P. 112, § 55. Schiller. Ueber die aesthetische Erziehung des
CHAPTER IV, §§ 54-60. 405
Menschen (1795), l8th letter. 'Through beauty the sensuous
man is led to form and to thought ; through beauty the intel-
lectual man is led back to matter and restored to the sense-
world. Beauty combines two states which are opposed to one
another.' Letter 25. 'We need not then have any difficulty
about finding a way from sensuous dependence to moral
liberty, after beauty has given a case where liberty can com-
pletely co-exist with dependence, and where man in order to
show himself an intelligence need not make his escape from
matter. If— as the fact of beauty teaches — man is free even in
association with the senses, and if— as the conception necessarily
involves — liberty is something absolute and supersensible, there
can no longer be any question how he comes to elevate himself
from limitations to the absolute : for in beauty this has already
come to pass.' Cf. Ueber Anmuth und Wiirde (1793). 'It is
in a beautiful soul, then, that sense and reason, duty and inclina-
tion harmonize ; and grace is their expression in the appearance.
Only in the service of a beautiful soul can nature at the same
time possess liberty.' (See Bosanquet's History of Aesthetic.)
P. 115, § 60. The quotation in the note comes from § %"] of
the Kritik der Urtheilskraft [Werke, ed. Ros. and Sch. iv.
357).
P. 120, § 60. Fichte, Werke, i. 279. 'The principle of life
and consciousness, the ground of its possibility, is (as has been
shown) certainly contained in the Ego : yet by this means there
arises no actual life, no empirical life in time — and another life
is for us utterly unthinkable. If such an actual life is to be
possible, there is still needed for that a special impulse (9liiilop)
striking the Ego from the Non-ego. According to my system,
therefore, the ultimate ground of all actuality for the Ego is an
original action and re-action between the Ego and something
outside it, of which all that can be said is that it must be com-
pletely opposed to the Ego. In this reciprocal action nothing
is brought into the Ego, nothing foreign imported ; everything
that is developed from it ad infinitutn is developed from it
solely according to its own laws. The Ego is merely put in
motion by that opposite, so as to act ; and without such a first
mover it would never have acted ; and, as its existence consists
merely in action, it would not even have existed. But the
source of motion has no further attributes than to set in motion,
to be an opposing force which as such is only felt.
4o6 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
' My philosophy therefore is reahstic. It shows that the con-
sciousness of finite natures cannot at all be explained, unless we
assume a force existing independently of them, and completely
opposed to them ; — on which as regards their empirical exist-
ence they are dependent. But it asserts nothing further than
such an opposed force, which is merely felt, but not cognised,
by finite beings. All possible specifications of this force or
non-ego, which may present themselves ad infinitum in our
consciousness, my system engages to deduce from the specify-
ing faculty of the Ego. . . .
'That the finite mind must necessarily assume outside it some-
thing absolute (a 2)ing;aiufic^), and yet must on the other hand
acknowledge that this something only exists for the mind (is
a necessary noiimenon) : this is the circle which may be in-
finitely expanded, but from which the finite mind can never
issue.' Cf. Fichte's Werke, i. 248, ii. 478.
CHAPTER V.
P. 121, § 62. F. H, Jacobi {Werke, v. 82) in his Woldemar
(a romance contained in a series of letters, first published as
a whole in 1781) writes: 'The philosophical understanding
(SSerflaub) is jealous of everything unique, everything immediately
certain which makes itself true, without proofs, solely by its
existence. It persecutes this faith of reason even into our
inmost consciousness, where it tries to make us distrust the
feeling of our identity and personality.' 'What is absolutely
and intrinsically true,' he adds (v. 122), ' is not got by way of
reasoning and comparison : both our immediate consciousness
(QBiffen) — I am — and our conscience (©cnjiffcn) are the work of a
secret something in which heart, understanding, and sense
combine.' 'Notions (93e3riffe), far from embalming the living,
really turn it into a corpse ' (v. 380).
Cf. Fichte's words ( Werke, ii. 255), Slug bcm ®eh?iffen aflein flatnmt
bie aBatjrtjcit, &c.
P. 122, § 62, The Letters on the doctrine of Spinoza, pub-
lished in 1785, were re-issued in 1789 with eight supplements.
*A science,' says Jacobi in his latest utterance {Werke,
iv, pref. xxx.) ' is only a systematic register of cognitions
mutually referring to one another — the first and last point
in the series is wanting.'
CHAPTER IV, § 60 — CHAPTER V, § 63. 407
P. 123, § 62. Lalande's dictum is referred to by Fries
{Populdre Vorlesungen iiber Sternkunde, 1 813) quoted by Jacobi
in his Werke, ii. 55. What Lalande has actually written in the
preface to his work on astronomy is that the science as he
understands it has no relation to natural theology — in other
words, that he is not writing a Bridgewater treatise.
P. 123, § 63, Jacobi, Werke, ii. 222. ' For my part, I regard
the principle of reason as all one with the principle of life.* And
"• 343 • ' Evidently reason is the true and proper life of our
nature.' It is in virtue of our inner tendency and instinct towards
the eternal (iRic^tung unb Siticb auf bag (Swigc),— of our sense for the
supersensible— that we, human beings, really subsist (iv. 6. 152).
And this Dvgan bcr aiernel^mung beg Uebctrinnlic^cii is Reason (iii.
203, &c.).
The language of Jacobi fluctuates, not merely in words, but
in the intensity of his intuitionalism. Thus, e.g. iii. 32 : ' The
reason man has is no faculty giving the science of the true, but
only a presage ' (Sl^nbung beg SBai^ren). ' The belief in a God,' he
says, at one time (iii. 206) ' is as natural to man as his upright
position ' : but that belief is, he says elsewhere, only ' an inborn
devotion (Sliibac^t) before an unknown God.' Thus, if we have
an immediate awareness (ffiiJTen) of God, this is not knowledge
or science (SBiffenfc^aft). Such intuition of reason is described
(ii. 9) as ' the faculty of presupposing the intrinsically (an jii^)
true, good, and beautiful, with full confidence in the objective
validity of the presupposition.' But that object we are let see
only in feeling (ii. 61). ' Our philosophy,' he says (iii. 6) 'starts
from feeling— of course an objective and pure feeling.'
P. 124, § 63. Jacobi {Werke, iv. a, p. 211) : 'Through faith
(®laubc) we know that we have a body.' Such immediate know-
ledge of our own activity — 'the feeling of I am, I act' (iii. 411)
— the sense of ' absolute self-activity ' or freedom (of which the
' possibility cannot be cognised,' because logically a contradic-
tion) is what Jacobi calls 'Jlnfcf^auung (Intuition). He distinguishes
a sensuous, and a rational intuition (iii. 59).
P. 125, § 63. Jacobi expressly disclaims identification of his
©laubcwith the faith of Christian doctrine {Werke, iv. a, p. 210).
In defence he quotes from Hume, Inquiry V, and from Reid,
passages to illustrate his usage of the term 'belief— by the
distinction between which and faith certain ambiguities are no
doubt avoided.
4o8 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
P. 129, § 66. Kant had said ^Concepts without intuitions are
empty.' It is an exaggeration of this half-truth-(the other half
is Intuitions without concepts are blind) that is the basis of
these statements of Jacobi (and of Schopenhauer)— a view of
which the following passage from Schelling {Werke, ii. 125) is
representative. ' Concepts (SBeflriffe) are only silhouettes of reality.
They are projected by a serviceable faculty, the understanding,
which only comes into action when reality is already on the
scene,— which only comprehends, conceives, retains what it re-
quired a creative faculty to produce. . . . The mere concept is
a word without meaning. ... All reality that can attach to it is
lent to it merely by the intuition (9lnfcl}auung) which preceded it.
. . . Nothing is real for us except what is immediately given us,
without any mediation by concepts, without our feeling at
liberty. But nothing reaches us immediately except through
intuition.' He adds, however, * Intuition is due to the activity
of mind (®cif^) : it demands a disengaged sense (frcicr (Sinn) and
an intellectual organ (geijiigcg Organ).'
P. 134. Cicero: De Natura Deorum, i. 16; ii. 4, De quo
autem omnium natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est ; cf.
Seneca, Epist. cxvii. 6. The principle is common to Stoics
and Epicureans : it is the maxim of Catholic truth Quod semper,
quod ubique, quod ah omnibus credittan est — equivalent to
Aristotle's 6 Traa- ^oku, tovt dvai (})afMfv. — But as Aristotle remarks
(An. Post. i. 31) TO KadoXov Koi fVl naaip a8LvaToi> ala-QuviO-Qai.
Jacobi : Werke, vi. 145. ' The general opinion about what is
true and good must have an authority equal to reason.'
P. 136, § 72. Cf. Encyclop. § 400 : ' That the heart and the
feeling is not the form by which anything is justified as religious,
moral, true, and just, and that an appeal to heart and feeling
either "means nothing or means something bad, should hardly
need enforcing. Can any experience be more trite than that
hearts and feelings are also bad, evil, godless, mean, &c. ? Ay,
that the heart is the source of such feelings only, is directly said
in the words : Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, &c. In
times when the heart and the sentiment are, by scientific
theology and philosophy, made the criterion of goodness,
religion, and morality, it is necessary to recall these trivial
experiences.'
CHAPTER V, S 66 — CHAPTER VI, § 82. 409
CHAPTER VI.
p. 145, § 80. Goethe ; the reference is to Werke, ii. 268
(9iatur unb J?unfl) :
9Ber ®ro§cS rrifl, tjtu§ ftc^ jufammcnraffcn :
3n bet a3ef(^tdnhtn9 jcigt fic^ erfl bet aJJoijicr,
Unb bag @efe| nur fanu ini6 gteif^eit geben.
Such 'limitation' of aim and work is a frequent lesson in
Wilhelm Meistet^s Wanderjahre, e.g. i. ch. 4. * Manysidedness
prepares, properly speaking, only the element in which the one-
sided can act. . . . The best thing is to restrict oneself to a handi-
work.' And i. ch. 12 : 'To be acquainted with and to exercise
one thing rightly gives higher training than mere tolerableness
(halfness) in a hundred sorts of things.' And ii. ch. 12 : 'Your
general training and all establishments for the purpose are
fool's farces.'
P. 147, § 81. Cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 37. ' Yet it is not we who
analyse : but knowledge analyses itself, and can do so, because
in all its being it is a/<?r-.y^//"(gur;(t^),' &c.
P. 149, § 81. Plato, the inventor of Dialectic. Sometimes
(on the authority of Aristotle, as reported by Diog. Laert. ix. 25),
Zeno of Elea gets this title ; but Hegel refers to such statements
as Diog. Laeri. ii, 34 rpWov 5« YlXarmv npoa-idtjKt ror SiaXeKTiKov
Xoyovj Koi (Tf\((Tiovpyrj(T( ttjv ({)i\ocro(f)lav.
Protagoras. But it is rather in the dialogue Afeno, pp. 81-97,
that Plato exhibits this view of knowledge. Cf. Phaedo, 72 E,
and Phaedrus, 245.
Parmenides; especially see Plat. Parnien. pp. 142, 166; cf.
Hegel, Werke, xiv. 204.
With Aristotle dialectic is set in contrast to apodictic, and
treated as (in the modern sense) a quasi-inductive process (Ar.
Top. Lib. viii.) : with the Stoics, dialectic is the name of the
half-rhetorical logic which they, rather than Aristotle, handed
on to the schoolmen of the Middle Ages.
P. 150, § 81. The physical elements are fire, air, earth, and
water. Earthquakes, storms, &c., are examples of the ' meteoro-'
logical process.' Cf. Encyclop. §§ 281-289.
P. 152, § 82. Dialectic ; cf; Werke, v. 326 seqq.
P. 154, § 82. Mysticism; cf. Mill's Logic, bk. v, ch. 3, § 4:
* Mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing objective
4IO NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
existence to the subjective creations of the mind's own faculties,
to mere ideas of the intellect ; and believing that by watching
and contemplating these ideas of its own making, it can read in
them what takes place in the world without,' Mill thus takes
it as equivalent to an ontological mythology — probably a rare
use of the term.
CHAPTER VII.
P. 166, § 85. The Absolute. The term, in something like
its modem usage, is at least as old as Nicolaus Cusanus. God,
according to him, is the absoluta omnium quidditas {Apol. 406),
the esse absolutum, or tpsum esse in existentibus [Ue ludo Globi,
ii. 161 a), the unum absolutum, the vis absoluta, or possibilitas
absoluttty or valor absolutus ; absoluta vita, absoluta ratio : ab-
soluta essendi forma. On this term and its companion infinitus
he rings perpetual changes. But its distinct employment to
denote the ' metaphysical God ' is much more m.odern. In
Kant, e.g. the 'Unconditioned' (2)a3 Unbebingte) is the meta-
physical, corresponding to the religious, conception of deity ; and
the same is the case with Fichte, who however often makes use
of the adjective 'absolute.' It is with Schelling that the term is
naturalised in philosophy : it already appears in his works of
1793 and 1795: and from him apparently it finds its way into
Fichte's Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre of 1 801 {Werke, ii.
13) ' The absolute is neither knowing nor being ; nor is it iden-
tity, nor is it indifference of the two ; but it is throughout merely
and solely the absolute.'
The term comes into English philosophical language through
Coleridge and later borrowers from the German. See Ferrier's
Institutes of Metaphysic^ Prop, xx, and Mill's Examination of
Hamilton, chap. iv.
P. 158, § 86. Cf. Schelling, iii. 372: 1 = 1 expresses the
identity between the ' I,' in so far as it is the producing, and
the ' I ' as the produced ; the original synthetical and yet iden-
tical proposition : the cogito—sum of Schelling.
P. 159. Definition of God as Ens realissimum, e.g. Meier's
Baumgarten's Metaphysic, § 605.
Jacobi, Werke, iv. 6, thus describes Spinoza's God.
As to the beginning cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 14 (speaking of
' absolute knowing ') : 'It is not a knowing of something, nor is
CHAPTER VI, § 82 — CHAPTER VH, § 87. 41 1
it a knowing of nothing (so that it would be a knowing of some-
what, but this somewhat'be nothing) : it is not even a knowing
of itself, for it is no knowledge at all o/;—nor is it a knowing
(quantitatively and in relation), but it is (the) knowing (abso-
lutely qualitatively). It is no act, no event, or that somewhat
is in knowing ; but it is just the knowing, in which alone all
acts and all events, which are there set down, can be set
down.*
History of Philosophy ; cf. Hegel, IVerke, i. 165. ' If the Ab-
solute, like its phenomenon Reason, be (as it is) eternally one
and the same, then each reason, which has turned itself upon
and cognised itself, has produced a true philosophy and solved
the problem which, like its solution, is at all times the same.
The reason, which cognises itself, has in philosophy to do only
with itself: hence in itself too lies its whole work and its
activity ; and as regards the inward essence of philosophy
there are neither predecessors nor successors.
* Just as little, as of constant improvements, can there be talk
of " peculiar views " of philosophy. . . . The true peculiarity of
a philosophy is the interesting individuality, in which reason has
organised itself a form from the materials of a particular age ;
in it the particular speculative reason finds spirit of its spirit,
flesh of its flesh ; it beholds itself in it as one and the same, as
another living >eing. Each philosophy is perfect in itself, and
possesses totality, like a work of genuine art. As little as the
works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare
had known them, could have seemed to them mere preliminary
exercises for themselves — but as cognate spiritual powers;— so
little can reason in its own earlier formations perceive only useful
preparatory exercises.' Cf. Schelling, iv. 401.
P. 160, § 86. Parmenides (ap. Simplic. Phys.): of the two
ways of investigation the first is that it z's, and that not-to-be
is not.
17 fjifp OTTtos earn ft Koi a»j ovk eoTi fXTj ehai.
P. 161, § 87. The Buddhists. Cf. Hegel, IVerJte, xi. 387.
Modern histories of Buddhism insist upon the purely ethico-re-
ligious character of the teaching. Writers like von Hartmann
{Religionsphilosophie^ p. 320) on the contrary hold that Buddhism
carried out the esoteric theory of Brahmanism to the consequence
that the abstract one is nothing. According to Vassilief, Le
Bouddhisme, p. 318 seqq., one of the Buddhist metaphysical
412 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
schools, the Madhyamikas, founded by N&gardjuna 400 years
after Buddha, taught that All is Void. — Such metaphysics were
probably reactions of the underlying Brahmanist idea.
But generally Buddhism (as was not unnatural 60 years ago)
is hardly taken here in its characteristic historical features.
P. 167, § 88. Aristotle, Phys. i. 8 (191 a. 26) : ' Those philo-
sophers who first sought the truth and the real substance of
things got on a false track, like inexperienced travellers who fail
to discover the way, and declared that nothing can either come
into being or disappear, because it is necessary that what comes
into being should come into being either from what is or from
what is not, and that it is from both of these impossible : for
what is does not become (it already is), and nothing would
become from what is not.'
(5) is an addition of ed, 3 (1830) ; cf. Werke, xvii. 181.
P. 168, § 88. The view of HeracHtus here taken is founded
on the interpretation given by Plato (in the Theaetetus, 152;
Cratylus, 401) and by Aristotle, of a fundamental doctrine of
the Ephesian— which however is expressed in the fragments
by the name of the everliving fire. The other phrase (Ar. Met.
i, 4) is used by Aristotle to describe the position, not of Hera-
clitus, but of Leucippus and Democritus. Cf. Plutarch, adv.
Colotem, 4. 2 AT;/idx/3iT0k- Stopt'fcToi /^i) fj.a\\ov to 8ev fj to fiT]dev
fivai ; cf. Simplic. in Ar. PAys. fol. 7.
P. 169, § 89. !Dafel}n: Determinate being. Cf. Schelling, i.
209. * Being (©e^n) expresses the absolute, Determinate being
CSafcijn) a conditional, 'positing': Actuality, one conditioned in
a definite sort by a definite condition. The single phenomenon
in the whole system of the world has actuality ; the world of
phenomena in general has !^afet)n ; but the absglutely-posited,
the Ego, is. I am is all the Ego can say of itself
P. 171, § 91. Being-by-self: ^\\\'-^\i^-.\i\)\\.
Spinoza, Epist. 50, figura non aliud quatn determinatio et
determinatio negatio est.
P. 172, § 92. ©veiije (limit or boundary), and @c^ran!c (barrier
or check) are distinguished in Werke, iii. 128-139 (see Stirling's
Secret of Hegel, i. 377 seqq.). Cf. Kant's remark, Krit. d. r.
Vernunft, p. 795, that Hume only ciiifd^vanft our intellect, oJ}ne
if)n ju begvenjen.
P. 173, § 92. Plato, Timaeus, c. 35 (formation of the world-
soul) : ' From the individual and ever-identical essence {oldia)
CHAPTER VII, §§ 87-95. 413
and the divisible which is corporeal, he compounded a third
intermediate species of essence. . . . And taking these, being
three, he compounded them all into one form {Ibia), adjusting
perforce the unmixable nature of the other and the same, and
mingling them all with the essence, and making of three one
again, he again distributed this total into as many portions as
were fitting, but each of them mingled out of the same and the
other and the essence.'
P. 175, § 94. Philosophy. Cf. Schelling, Werke, ii. ^77. 'A
various experience has taught me that for most men the greatest
obstacle to the understanding and vital apprehension of philo-
sophy is their invincible opinion that its object is to be sought
at an infinite distance. The consequence is, that while they
should fix their eye on what is present (baS ©fgcniravtigc), every
effort of their mind is called out to get hold of an object which
is not in question through the whole inquiry.' ... * The aim of
the sublimest science can only be to show the actuality,— in the
strictest sense the actuality, the presence, the vital existence
(J)afct)n) — of a God in the whole of things and in each one. . . .
Here we deal no longer with an extra-natural or supernatural
thing, but with the immediately near, the alone-actual to which
we ourselves also belong, and in which we are.'
P. 177, § 95. Plato's Philebtts, ch. xii-xxiii (pp. 23-38) : cf.
Werke, xiv. 214 seqq. : ' The absolute is therefore what in one
unity is finite and infinite.'
P. 178. Idealism of Philosophy : cf. Schelling, ii. 67. 'Every
philosophy therefore is and remains Idealism ; and it is only
under itself that it embraces realism and idealism ; only that
the former Idealism should, not be confused with the latter,
which is of a merely relative kind.'
Hegel, Werke, iii. 163. 'The proposition that the finite is
" ideal " constitutes Idealism. In nothing else consists the Ideal-
ism of philosophy than in recognising that the finite has no
genuine being. . . . The contrast of idealistic and realistic
philosophy is therefore of no importance. A philosophy that
attributed to finite existences as such a genuine ultimate absolute
being would not deserve the name philosophy. . . . By "ideal"
is meant existing as a representation in consciousness : what-
ever is in a mental concept, idea or imagination is " ideal " :
" ideal " is just another word for " in imagination,"— something
not merely distinct from the real, but essentially not real. The
414 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
mind indeed is the great idealist : in the sensation, representa-
tion, thought of the mind the fact has not what is called real
existence ; in the simplicity of the Ego such external being is
only suppressed, existing /<?r me, and "ideally" in me. This
subjective idealism refers only to the representational form, by
which an import is mine.'
P. 180, § 96. The distinction of nature and mind as real and
ideal is especially Schelling's : See e.g. his Einleitung, &c. iii.
272. ' If it is the problem of Transcendental Philosophy to
subordinate the real to the ideal, it is on the contrary the problem
of the philosophy of nature to explain the ideal from the real.'
P. 183, § 98. Newton : see Scholium at the end of the Prin-
cipia, and cf. Optics, iii. qu. 28.
Modern Atomism, besides the conception of particles or
molecules, has that of mathematical centres of force.
Kant, IVerke, v. 379 (ed. Rosenk.). ' The general principle of
the dynamic of material nature is that all reality in the objects of
the external senses must be regarded as moving force : whereby
accordingly so-called solid or absolute impenetrability is banished
from natural science as a meaningless concept, and repellent
force put in its stead ; whereas true and immediate attraction
is defended against all the subtleties of a self-misconceiving
metaphysic and declared to be a fundamental force necessary
for the very possibility of the concept of matter.'
P. 184, § 98. Abraham GotthelfKastner (1719-180x3), professor
forty-four years at Gottingen, enjoyed in the latter half of
the eighteenth century a considerable repute, both in literature
and in mathematical science. Some of his epigrams are still
quoted.
P. 190, § 102. The two 'moments' of number Unity, and
Sum (3lnja^t), may be compared with the Greek distinction
between one and dpidfxos (cf. Arist. Phys. iv. 12 fAax'o"TOf dpidfios
f) bvai). According to Rosenkranz {Leben Hegels) the classifica-
tion of arithmetical operations often engaged Hegel's research.
Note the relation in Greek between XoytKoj/ and XoyuniKov. Cf.
Kant's view of the * synthesis ' in arithmetic.
P. 193, § 103. Intensive magnitude. Cf. Kant, Kritik der
reinen Vernunft, p. 207, on Anticipation of Perception (SfBatjrs
nel^mung), and p. 414, in application to the question of the soul's
persistence.
P. 195, § 104. Not Aristotle, but rather Simplicius on the
CHAPTER VII, §§ 95-104. 415
Physics of Aristotle, fol. 306 : giving Zeno's argument against
the alleged composition of the line from a series of points. What
you can say of one supposed smaU real unit, you can say of a
smaller, and so on ad infinitum. (Cf. Burnet's Early Greek
Philosophy, p. 329.)
P. 196, § 104. The distinction between imagination and
intellect made by Spinoza in Ep. xii. (olim xxix.) in 0pp. ed.
Land vol. ii. 40 seqq. is analogous to that already noted (p. 402)
between ratio and intellegentia, and is connected, as by Boethius,
with the distinction which Plato, Timaeus, yj, draws between
eternity {aiiav) and time.
The infinite {Eth. i. prop. 8. Schol. l) is the ' absolute affirma-
tion of a certain nature's existence,' as opposed to finitude
which is really ex parte negatio. ' The problem has always been
held extremely difficult, if not inextricable, because people did
not distinguish between what is concluded to be infinite by its
own nature and the force of its definition, and what has no ends,
not in virtue of its essence, but in virtue of its cause. It was
difficult also because they did not distinguish between what is
called infinite because it has no ends, and that whose parts
(though we may have a maximum and minimum of it) we
cannot equate or explicate by any number. Lastly because they
did not distinguish between what we can only understand
{intelligere), but not imagine, and what we can also imagine.'
To illustrate his meaning, Spinoza calls attention to the
distinction of substance from mode, of eternity from duration.
We can ' explicate ' the existence only of modes by duration :
that of substance, 'by eternity, i.e. by an infinite fruition of
existence or being ' [per aeternitatem, hoc est, infiniiam existendi,
sive, inviia latinitate, essendi fruitionem). The attempt there-
fore to show that extended substance is composed of parts is
an illusion, — which arises because we look at quantity ' ab-
stractly or superficially, as we have it in imagination by means
of the senses.' So looTcing at it, as we are liable to do, a
quantity will be found divisible, finite, composed of parts and
manifold. But if we look at it as it really is,— as a Substance
— as it is in the intellect alone — (which is a work of difficulty),
it will be found infinite, indivisible, and unique. * It is only
therefore when we abstract duration and quantity from sub-
stance, that we use time to determine duration and measure
to determine quantity, so as to be able to imagine them.
4l6 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
Eternity and substance, on the other hand, are no objects of
imagination but only of intellect ; and to try to explicate them
by such notions as measure, time, and number — which are only
modes of thinking or rather of imagining — is no better than
to fall into imaginative raving.' 'Nor will even the modes of
Substance ever be rightly understood, should they be con-
founded with this sort of enfia rationis ' (/. e. modi cogitandi
subserving the easier retention, explication and imagination
of things understood) ' or aids to imagination. For when we do
so, we separate them from substance, and from the mode in
which they flow from eternity, without which they cannot be
properly understood.' (Cf. Hegel's IVerke, i. 63.)
The verses from Albr. von Haller come from his poem on
Eternity (1736). Hegel seems to quote from an edition before
1776, when the fourth line was added in the stanza as it thus
finally stood : —
3d& ^ufe wnije^eure 3a!^(cn,
©cbiirge SDiidiotun auf,
Sd^ uicl^e 3eit auf Beit unb 2Bett auf SEBelten ^in,
llnb icenn i^ auf ber aWarc^ be« eubUd^cn nun bin,
Unb ijon bcr futd^terlid^cn ^c^t
STOit (Sd^itinbeln ftieber no^ bit fc^^e,
3fi alle 2Kac^t ber 3af)t, »etmct)rt mit taufenb SKaten,
9io(i) ui^t ein !£t)eil con bir.
3c^ tilge fie, unb bu liegfi ganj »or ntir.
Kant, Kritik d. r. Vernunft, p. 641. ' Even Eternity, however
eerily sublime may be its description by Haller,' &c.
P. 197, § 104. Pythagoras in order of time probably comes
between Anaximenes (of Ionia) and Xenophanes (of Elea). But
the mathematical and metaphysical doctrines attributed to the
Pythagorean are known to us only in the form in which they
are represented in Plato and Aristotle, i.e. in a later stage of
development. The Platonists (cf. Arist. Met. i. 6 ; xi. i. 12 ; xii.
1.7; cf. Plat. Rep. p. 510) treated mathematical fact as mid-way
between * sensibles ' and ' ideas ' ; and Aristotle himself places
mathematics as a science between physical and metaphysical
(theological) philosophy.
The tradition (referred to p. 198) about Pythagoras is given
by lamblichus. Vita Pyth. § 115 seqq. : it forms part of the later
Neo-Pythagorean legend, which entered literature in the first
centuries of the Christian era.
CHAPTER VII, § 104 — CHAPTER VW, § II9. 417
P. 201, § 107. Hebrew hymns: e.g. Psalms Ixxiv. and civ. ;
Proverbs viii. and Job xxxviii. Vetus verbum est, says Leibniz
(ed. Erdmann, p. 162), Deum omnia pondere, mensura,numero,
fecisse.
P. 202, § 108. The antinomy of measure. These logical
puzzles are the so-called fallacy of Sorites (a different thing from
the chain-syllogism of the logic-books) ; cf. Cic. Acad. ii. 28, 29 ;
De Divin. ii. 4— and the ^oKaKftoi \ cf. Horace, Epist. ii. 1-45.
CHAPTER VIII.
P. 211, § 113. Self- relation— (f!c^) auf fic^ bcjieljtn.
P. 213, § 115. The 'laws of thought' is the magniloquent
title given in the Formal Logic since Kant's day to the prin-
ciples or maxims {principia, ©runbfd^c) which Kant himself de-
scribed as ' general and formal criteria of truth.' They include
the so-called principle of contradiction, with its developments,
the principle of identity and excluded middle : to which, with
a desire for completeness, eclectic logicians have ,added the
Leibnitian principle of the reason. Hegel has probably an eye
to Krug and Fries in some of his remarks. The three laws
may be. compared and contrasted with the three principles,
— homogeneity, specification, and continuity of forms, in Kant's
Kritik d. r. Vern. p. 686.
P. 217, § 117. Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais, Liv. ii, ch. 27, § 3
(ed. Erdmann, p. 273 : cf. fourth Letter to Clarke). // ny a
point deux individus indiscernables. Un gentilhomme d esprit
de mes amis, en parlant avec moi en prdsence de Madame
VElectrice dans lejardin de Herrenhausen, crut qu'il irouverait
bien deux feuilles entierement semblables. Madame VElectrice
Pen ddfia, et il courut longtems en vain pour en chercher.
The principle of individuation or indiscemibility is : * If two
individuals were perfectly alike and equal and, in a word, indis-
tinguishable by themselves, there would be no principle of indivi-
duation : (Leibniz, ed. Erdm. p. 277) Poser deux choses indis-
cernables est poser la meme chose sous deux noms (p. 756). Prin-
cipiu7n individuationis idem est quod absolutae specijicationis
qud res iia sit determinata, ut ab aliis omnibus distingui possit.
P. 221, § 119. Polarity. Schelling, ii. 489. 'The law of
Polarity is a universal law of nature '; cf. ii. 459: 'It is a first
principle of a philosophic theory of nature to have a view (in
VOL. II. E e
4l8 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
the whole of nature), on polarity and dualism.' But he adds
(476), *It is time to define more accurately the concept of
polarity.* So Oken, Naturphilosophie : § 76 : 'A force consist-
ing of two principles is called Polarity.' % IT- '' Polarity is the
first force which makes its appearance in the world.' § 81 : ' The
original movement is a result of the original polarity.'
P. 223, § 119. Cf. Fichte, ii. 53. ' To everything but this the
logically trained thinker can rise. He is on his guard against
contradiction. But, in that case, how about the possibility of
the maxim of his own logic that we can think no contradic-
tion ? In some way he must have got hold of contradiction
and thought it, or he could make no communications about it.
Had such people only once regularly asked themselves how they
came to think the merely possible or contingent (the not-neces-
sary), and how they actually do so ! Evidently they here leap
through a not-being, not-thinking, &c., into the utterly un-
mediated, self-initiating, free,— into beent non-being, — in short,
the above contradiction, as it was laid down. With consistent
thinkers the result of this incapacity is nothing but the utter
abolition of freedom, — the most absolute fatalism and Spinozism.
P. 227, §121. Leibniz(ed. Erdmann,p. 515). ' The principle
of la raison diterminante is that nothing ever occurs without
there being a cause for it, or at least a determinant reason, /'. e.
something which may serve to render a reason h priori why
that is existent rather than in any other way. This great
principle holds good in all events.' Cf. p. 707. ' The principle
of " sufficient reason " is that in virtue of which we consider
that no fact could be found true or consistent, no enunciation
truthful, without there being a sufficient reason why it is so
and not otherwise. . . . When a truth is necessary, we can find
the reason of it by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and
truths, until we come to primitive ideas. . . . But the sufficient
reason ought also to be found in contingent truths or truths of
fact, /. e. in the series of things spread through the universe of
creatures, or the resolution into particular reasons might go
into a limitless detail : . . . and as all this detail embraces only
other antecedent, or more detailed contingencies, . . . the
sufficient or final {dernilre) reason must be outside the succes-
sion or series of this detail of contingencies, however infinite it
might be. And it is thus that the final reason of things must
be in a " necessary substance," in which the detail of the changes
CHAPTER VIII, §§ 1 19-126. 419
exists only emitunier, as in the source,— and it is what we call
God.' {Monadology, §§ 32-38.)
Hence the supremacy of final causes. Thj3 0pp. ed. Erd-
mann, p. 678 : Itafit ut efficientes causae pendeant a finalibus,
et spiritualia sint natura priora materialibus. Accordingly he
urges, p. 155, that final cause has not merely a moral and
religious value in ethics and theology, but is useful even in
physics for the detection of deep-laid truths. Cf. p. 106:
Cest sanctifier la Philosophic que de /aire couler ses ruisseaux
de la fontaine des attributs de Dieu. Bien loin d'exclure les
causes finales et la consideration d^un etre agissant avec sagesse^
^est de Id. qu'ilfaut tout ddduire en Physique. Cf. also Prin-
cipes de la Nature (Leibn. ed. Erdm. p. 716) : ' It is surprising
that by the sole consideration of efficient causes or of matter,
we could not render a reason for those laws of movement dis-
covered in our time. II y faut recourir aux causes finales.^
P. 228, § 121 Socrates. The antitheses between Socrates and
the Sophists belongs in the main to the Platonic dialogues, — not
to the historical Socrates. It is the litemry form in which the
philosophy of Plato works out its development through the
criticism of contemporary opinions and doctrines. And even in
Plato's writings the antagonism is very unlike what later inter-
pretations have made out of it.
P. 231, § 124. Thing by itself (thing in itself) the 2)ing;an=Tt(^.
P. 235, § 126. Cf. Encycl. § 334 ( Werke, viii. i. p. 41 1). * In
empirical chemistry the chief object is the particularity of the
matters and products, which are grouped by superficial abstract
features which make impossible any system in the special detail.
In these lists, metals, oxygen, hydrogen, &c. — metalloids, sulphur,
phosphorus appear side by side as simple chemical bodies on
the same level. The great physical variety c^ these bodies
must of itself create a prepossession against such coordina-
tion ; and their chemical origin, the process from which
they issue, is clearly no less various. But in an equally chaotic
way, more abstract and more real processes are put on the same
level. If all this is to get scientific form, every product ought to
be determined according to the grade of the concrete and com-
pletely developed process from which it essentially issues, and
which gives it its peculiar significance ; and for that purpose it
is not less essential to distinguish grades in abstractness or
reality of the process. Animal and vegetable substances in any
£62
420 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
case belong to a quite other order: so little can their nature be
understood from the chemical process, that they are rather
destroyed in it, and only the way of their death is apprehended.
These substances, however, ought above all to serve to counter-
act the metaphysic predominant in chemistry as in physics,— the
ideas or rather wild fancies of the unalterability of matters under
all circumstances, as well as the categories of the composition
and the consistence of bodies from such matters. We see it
generally admitted that chemical matters lose in combination
\^^ properties which they show in separation : and yet we find
the idea prevailing that they are the same things without the
properties as they are with them, — so that as things with these
properties they are not results of the process.' — Cf. Werke, vii.
a. 372 : * Air does not consist of oxygen and nitrogen : but these
are the forms under which air is put,' cf. ib. 403.
P. 241, § 131. Fichte's SonnenklarerBerichta-^^ezxtd in 1801.
P. 247, § 136. Herder's Gott : Gesprdche iiber Spinoza's
System, 1787, 2nd ed. 1800. ' God is, in the highest and unique
sense of the word, Force, /. e. the primal force of all forces, the
soul of all souls ' (p. 63), * All that we call matter, therefore,
is more or less animate : it is a realm of efficient forces. One
force predominates : otherwise there were no one, no whole '
(p. 207). * The supreme being (!Dafe^n) could give its creatures
nothing higher than being. {Theophron.) But, my friend,
being and being, however simple in the concept, are in their
estate very different ; and what do you suppose, Philolaus,
marks its grades and differences ? {Phil.) Nothing but forces.
In God himself we found no higher conception ; but all his forces
were only one. The supreme force could not be other than su-
preme goodness and wisdom, ever-living, ever-active. ( Theoph.)
Now you yourself see, Philolaus, that the supreme, or rather the
All (for God is not a supreme unit in a scale of beings like him-
self)^ could not reveal himself otherwise than in the universe
as active. In him nothing could slumber, and what he expressed
was himself. He is before everything, and everything subsists
in him : the whole world an expression, an appearance of his
ever-living, ever-acting forces ' (p. 200).
' It was the mistake of Spinoza,' says Herder, * to be unduly
influenced by the Cartesian phraseology. Had he chosen the
conception of force and effect, everything would have gone
easier, and his system become much more distinct and coherent.
CHAPTER VIII, §§ 126-140. 421
* Had he developed the conception of power, and the con-
ception of matter, he must in conformity with his system, neces-
sarily have come to the conception of forces, which work as
well in matter as in organs of thinking : he would in that case
have regarded power and thought as forces, /. e. as one.' (Cf. H.
Spencer, ' Force, the Ultimate of Ultimates.' First Princ. p. 169.)
According to Rosenkranz {Leben Hegeh, p. 223) there exists
in manuscript a criticism by Hegel on the second edition of
Herder's God. Herder's Dialogue belongs to the controversy
aroused by Jacobi's letters on Spinoza.
P. 250, § 136. Newton. Leibniz charges him with the view
that * God needs from time to time remonter sa Tnontre, other-
wise it would cease going : that his machine requires to be
cleaned {ddcrasser) by extraordinary aid ' (ed. Erdm. p. 746).
P. 252, § 140. The verses quoted occur in Goethe's Werke^
ii. 376, under the heading SlKevbingg. Originally the first four
lines appeared in Haller's poem Die menschlichen Tugenden,
thus—
3n« Snnre b«t 9ldtut bringt ftin erfni^affncr ®etji :
3u gtiirftic^, »t?enn fie notl^ bie dufre <S(^ale toetfi !
(To nature's heart there penetrates no mere created mind :
Too happy if she but display the outside of her rind.)
[Hegel— reading toti^t for teeiji — takes the second line as
Too happy, if he can but know the outside of her rind.]
Goethe's attack upon a vulgar misuse of the lines belongs to
his dispute with the scientists. His verses appeared in 1820
as Heiteres ReimstUck at the end of Heft 3 zur Morphologie,—oi
which the closing section is entitled Freundlicher Zuruf{Werke,
xxvii. 161), as follows :—
„3n^ 3nnte ber Ulatur,"
•D bu $^ia(!er!—
„JE)rinflt feiii erfc^affnet ©eiji."
^©liirffeltg! torat jie nnr
2)ie aufre ©(^ate rttif t.^"
3)05 I)6r' i(^ ffiiljig 3a^re hjtcber^olcn,
3d) pu(!^c brauf, abet »erflot)ten :
©age mir taufcnb taufenbmale:
SlKed giebt fu rei^lic^ unb gem;
iWahir :^at toeber .ffern
422 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
Sl((e« ifi fie mit einem fKale.
[The last seven lines may be thus paraphrased in con-
tinuation :
I swear — of course but to myself— as rings within my ears
That same old warning o'er and o'er again for sixty years,
And thus a thousand thousand times I answer in my mind : —
With gladsome and ungrudging hand metes nature from her store:
She keeps not back the core,
Nor separates the rind,
But all in each both rind and core has evermore combined.]
P. 254, § 140. Plato and Aristotle: cf. Plato, Phaedrus,
247 A {(f>d6i>os yap ?|a) Oeiov xopov torarai) ; Timaeus, 29 E ; and
Aristotle, Metaph. i. 2. 22.
P. 256, § 140. Goethe : SdmnitL Werke, iii, 203 {Maxime
und Refleononen). ©egen gro^e ^Sprjiige cines ^nbem giebt c8 fein
9?ettuJig«ntittet old bie Siebc. Cf. Schiller to Goethe, 2 July, 1796.
* How vividly I have felt on this occasion . . . that against surpas-
sing merit nothing but Love gives liberty ' (ba^ <i& bcm a3ovtrefflic^cn
Qegenuber fcinc grei^eit giebt ats tie 2 if be).
* Pragmatic' This word, denoting a meddlesome busybody in
older English and sometimes made a vague term of abuse, has
been in the present century used in English as it is here
employed in German.
According to Polybius, ix. I. 2, the npayfuiTtKos rponos r^y
iaropiai is that which has a directly utilitaiian aim. So Kant,
Foundation of Metaph. of Ethic {Werke, viii. 41, note): *A
history is pragmatically composed when it renders prudent, /. e.
instructs the world how it may secure its advantage better or at
least as well as the ages preceding.' Schelling (v. 308) quotes
in illustration of pragmatic history-writing the words of Faust
to Wagner (Goethe, xi. 26) :
SBa3 i^r bm ©eifl bet 3citen f>cipt,
!r)ag ift im ®runb ber J&errcn eignet ©eifl,
3n bent bie Sciten |t(!^ befpiegeln.
Cf. also Hegel, Werke, ix. 8. ' A second kind of reflectional
history is the pragmatic. When we have to do with the past
and are engaged with a distant world, the mind sees rising before
it a present, which it has from its own action as a reward for its
trouble. The events are different ; but their central and uni-
CHAPTER VIII, §§ 140-153. 423
versal fact, their structural plan is identical. This abolishes the
past and makes the event present. Pragmatic reflections, how-
ever abstract they be, are thus in reality the present, and vivify
the tales of the past with the life of to-day. — Here too a word
should specially be given to the moralising and the moral
instructions to be gained through history,— for which it was
often studied. . . . Rulers, statesmen, nations, are especially
bidden learn from the experience of history. But what experi-
ence and history teach is that nations and governments never
have learned anything from history, or acted upon teaching
which could have been drawn from it.*
Cf. Froude : Divorce of Catherine, p. 2. ' The student (of
history) looks for an explanation (of political conduct) in elements
which he thinks he understands — in pride, ambition, fear, avarice,
jealousy, or sensuality.'
P. 257, § 141, Cf. Goethe, xxiii, 298. 'What is the outside of
an organic nature but the ever-varied phenomenon of the inside?
This outside, this surface is so exactly adapted to a varied, com-
plex, delicate, inward structure that it thus itself becomes an
inside: both aspects, the outside and the inside, standing in
most direct correlation alike in the quietest existence and in the
most violent movement.'
P. 260, § 143. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunfi, 2nd ed.
p. 266.
P. 269, § 147. Cf. Schelling, IVerke, v. 290 (cf. iii. 603). ' There
are three periods of history, that of nature, of destiny, and of
providence. These three ideas express the same identity, but
in a different way. Destiny too is providence, but recognised in
the real, as providence, is also destiny, but beheld (angefc^aut)
in the ideal.'
P. 275, § 151. On the relation between Spinoza and Leibniz
cf. Hegel, IVerke, iv. 187-193. It would be a mistake, however,
to represent Leibniz as mainly engaged in a work of conscious
antagonism to Spinoza.
P. 277, § 153. Jacobi.— Jacobi (like Schopenhauer) insists
specially on the distinction between grounds (@riint»e) — which
are formal, logical, and verbal, and causes (Urfaci^cn) — which
carry us into reality and life and nature. To transform the
mere Because into the cause we must (he says) pass from
logic and the analytical understanding to experience and the
inner life. Instead of the timelessness of simultaneity which
424 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
characterises the logical relation of ground and consequent,
the nexus of cause and effect introduces the element of time,
— thereby acquiring reality (Jacobi, Werke, iii. 452). The con-
ception of Cause— meaningless as a mere category of abstract
thought — gets reality as a factor in experience, ein (Si-fa^runggbegriff,
and is immediately given to us in the consciousness of our own
causality (Jacobi, Werke, iv. 145-158). Cf. Kant, Kritik der
reinen Vern. p. 116.
P. 283, § 158. The Amor intellectualis Dei (Spinoza, Eth.
V. 32) is described as a consequence of the third grade of cogni-
tion, viz. the scientia intiiitiva which 'proceeds from an ade-
quate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to
the adequate cognition of the essence of things (ii. 40, Schol. 2).
From it arises (v. 27), the highest possible acquiescentia mentis,
in which the mind contemplates all things sub specie aeternitatis
(v. 29), knows itself to be in God and sees itself and all things
in their divine essence. But this intellectual love of mind
towards God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves
himself (v. 36) * From these things we clearly understand in
what our salvation or blessedness or liberty consists: to wit, in
the constant and eternal love towards God, or in the love of
God towards men ' (Schol. to v. 36).
CHAPTER IX.
Page 289, § 161. Evolution and development in the stricter
sense in which these terms were originally used in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries imply a theory of preformation,
according to which the growth of an organic being is simply
a process of enlarging and filling out a miniature organism,
actual but invisible, because too inconspicuous. Such was the
doctrine adopted by Leibniz {Considerations sur le principe
de vie; Systeme nouveau de la Nature \ &c.). According to
it development is no real generation of new parts, but only an
augmentation into bulk and visibility of parts already outlined.
This doctrine of preformation (as opposed to epigenesis) is
carried out by Charles Bonnet, who in his Considerations sur
tes corps organises (1762) propounds the further hypothesis
that the 'germs' from which living beings proceed contain,
enclosed one within another, the germs of all creatures yet to
be. This is the hypothesis of * Emboiiement.' 'The system
CHAPTER VIII, § 152--CHAPTER IX, § r6l. 425
which regards generations as mere educts' says Kant {Kritik
der Urtheilskraft, § 80; Werke, iv. 318) * is called that of
individual preformation or the evolution theory : the system
which regards them as products is called Epigenesis, — which
might also be called the theory of generic preformation, con-
sidering that the productive powers of the generants follow
the inherent tendencies belonging to the family characteristics,
and that the specific form is therefore a ' virtual * preformation.
In this way the opposing theory of individual preformation
might be better called the involution theory, or theory of
©infc^ac^tctung {Emboitemenf). Cf. Leibniz {Werke, Erdmann,
715). ' As animals generally are not entirely bom at conception
or generation, no more do they entirely perish at what we
call death ; for it is reasonable that what does not commence
naturally, does not finish either in the order of nature. Thus
quitting their mask or their rags, they only return to a
subtler theatre, where however they can be as sensible and
well regulated as in the greater. . . . Thus not only the souls,
but even the animals are neither generable nor perishable : they
are only developed, enveloped, re-clothed, unclothed,— trans-
formed. The souls never altogether quit their body, and do not
pass from one body into another body which is entirely new to
them. There is therefore no metempsychosis, but there is
metamorphosis. The animals change, take and quit only parts :
which takes place little by little and by small imperceptible
parcels, but continually, in nutrition : and takes place suddenly,
notably but rarely, at conception, or at death, which make them
gain or lose much all at once.'
The theory of Emboitement or Enveloppement, according to
Bonnet {Considerations, &c. ch. i) is that ' the germs of all the
organised bodies of one sp>ecies were inclosed {renfermds) one in
another, and have been developed successively.' So according
to Haller {Physiology, Tome vii. § 2) * it is evident that in plants
the mother-plant contains the germs of several generations ; and
there is therefore no inherent improbability in the view that
tous les enfans, excepti un, fussent renferm^s dans Povaire de
la pretniire Fills d'Eve.' Cf. Weismann's Continuity of the
"Germ-plasma. Yet Bonnet {Contemplation de la Nature, part
vii. ch. 9, note 2), says, ' The germs are not enclosed like boxes
or cases one in another, but a germ forms part of another germ,
as a grain forms part of the plant in which it is developed.'
426 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
P. 293, § 163. Rousseau, Contrat Social, liv. ii. ch. 3.
P. 296, § 165. The 'adequate' idea is a sub-species of the
'distinct.' When an idea does not merely distinguish a thing
from others (when it is clear), or in addition represent the
characteristic marks belonging to the object so distinguished
(when it is distinct), but also brings out the farther characteristics
of these characteristics, the idea is adequate. Thus adequate is
a sort of second power of distinct. (Cf. Baumeister's Instit.
Philos. Ration. 1765, §§ 64-94.) Hegel's description rather
agrees with the ' complete idea ' ' by which I put before my mind
singly marks sufficient to discern the thing represented from
all other things in every case, state, and time' (Baumeister, ib.
§ 88). But cf. Leibniz, ed. Erdm. p. 79 : notitia adaequata.
P. 298, § 166. Cf. Baumeister, Instit. Phil. Rat. § 185:
Judicium est idearum conjunctio vel separatio.
P. 299, § 166. Punctum saliens: ih& punctutn sanguineum
saliens of Harvey {de Generat. Animal, exercit. 17), or first
appearance of the heart : the (myfifi alfiaTivt] in the egg, of which
Aristotle {Hist. Anim. vi. 3) says rovro ro ar]\Li\.ov rrqda <cat Ktytirai
aanep tfiylruxov.
P. 301, § 169. Cf. Whately, Lo£^ic (Bk. ii. ch. i, § 2), 'Of
these terms that which is spoken of is called the subject ; that
which is said of it, ihe predicate.'
P. 303, § 171. Kant, Kritik d^r reinen Vemunft (p. 95, 2nd
ed.) § 9.
P. 304, § 172. Cf. Jevons, Principles of Science, ch. 3, 'on
limited identities ' and ' negative propositions.'
P. 309. Ear-lobes. The remark is due to Blumenbach : cf.
Hegel's Werke, v. 285.
P. 312. Colours, /. e. painters' colours ; cf. Werke, vii. i.
314 (lecture-note). * Painters are not such fools as to be
Newtonians : they have red, yellow, and blue, and out of these
they make their other colours.'
P. 315, § 181. For the genetic classification of judgments and
syllogisms and the passage from the former to the latter
compare especially Lotze's Logic, Book i. And for the compre-
hensive exhibition of the systematic process of judgment and
inference see B. Bosan quel's Logic, or the Morphology of Know-
ledge. The passage from Hegel's Werke, v. 139, quoted at the
hfead of that work is parallel to the sentence in p. 318, 'The
interest, therefore,' «S:c.
CHAPTER IX, §§ 163-193. 427
P. 320, § 186. The letters I-P-U of course, stand for
Individual, Particular, and Universal.
P. 321, § 187. Fourth figure. This so-called Galenian figure
was differentiated from the first figure by the separation of the
five moods, which (after Arist. An. pr. i. 7 and ii. i) Theo-
phrastus and the later pupils, down at least to Boethius, had
subjoined to the four recognised types of perfect syllogism. But
its Galenian origin is more than doubtful.
P. 325, § 190. Cf. Mill's Logic, Bk. ii. ch. 3. 'In every
syllogism considered as an argument to prove the conclusion
there is a petiiio principii'
H jel's Induction is that strictly so called or complete in-
duction, the argument from the sum of actual experiences — that
per enumerationem simplicem, and fiw ■navrav. Of course except
by accident or by artificial arrangement such completeness is
impossible in rerum tiatura.
P. 326, § 190. The ' philosophy of Nature ' referred to here is
probably that of Oken and the Schellingians ; but later critics
{e.g. Riehl, Philosoph. Criticismus, iii. 120) have accused Hegel
himself of even greater enormities in this department.
P. 328, § 192, Elementarlehre '. Theory of the Elements,
called by Hamilton {Lectures on Logic, i. 65) Stoicheiology as
opposed to methodology. Cf. the Port Royal Logic. Kant's
Kritik observes the same division of the subject.
P. 332, § 193. Anselm, Proslogium, c. 2. In the Monologium
Anselm expounds the usual argument from conditioned to un-
conditioned {Est igitur unum aliquid, quod solum maxime et
sufnme omnium est; per quod est quidquid est bonum vel
magnum, et omnino quidquid aliquid est. Monol. c. 3). But
in the Proslogium he seeks an argument quod nullo ad se pro-
bandum quam se solo tndigeret,—i.e. from the conception of
(God as) the highest and greatest that can be {aliquid quo
nihil majus cogitari potest) he infers its being {sic ergo vere
EST aliquid quo majus cogitari non potest, ut nee cogitari possit
non esse). The absolute would not be absolute if the idea of it
did not ipso facto imply existence.
Gaunilo of Marmoutier in the Liber pro insipiente m3.de the
objection that the fact of such argument being needed showed
that idea and reality were prima facie different. And in fact
the argument of Anselm deals with an Absolute which is object
rather than subject, thought rather than thinker ; in human
428 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
consciousness realised, but not essentially self-affirming — im-
plicit (an5J!(f>) only, as said in pp. 331, 333. And Anselm
admits c. 1 5 Domine, non solum es, quo majus cogitari neguit,
sed es quiddam majus quant cogitari potest (transcending our
thought).
P. 333, line 2. This sentence has been transposed in the
translation. In the original it occurs after the quotation- from
the Latin in p. 332.
P. 834, § 194. Leibniz : for a brief account of the Monads
see Caird's Crit. Philosophy of I. Kant, i. 86-95.
A monad is the simple substance or indivisible unity cor-
responding to a body. It is as simple what the world is as
a multiplicity: it 'represents,' i.e. concentrates into unity, the
variety of phenomena : is the expression of the material in the
immaterial, of the compound in the simple, of the extended
outward in the inward. Its unity and its representative capacity
go together (cf. Lotze, Mikrokosmus). It is the ' present which is
full of the future and laden with the past' (ed. Erdm. p. 197);
the point which is all-embracing, the totality of the universe.
And yet there are monads— in the plural.
P. 334, § 194. Fichte, IVerke, i. 430. * Every thorough-going
dogmatic philosopher is necessarily a fatalist.'
P. 338, § 195. Cf. Encyclop. § 463. 'This supreme inward-
ising of ideation (Sovjlettung) is the supreme self-divestment of
intelligence, reducing itself to the mere being, the general
space of mere names and meaningless words. The ego, which
is this abstract being, is, because subjectivity, at the same time
the power over the different names, the empty link which fixes
in itself series of them and keeps them in fixed order.'
Contemporaneously with Hegel, Herbart turned psychology
in the line of a ' statics and dynamics of the mind.' See (be-
sides earlier suggestions) his De Aitentionis mensura causisque
primariis (1822) and his Ueber die Moglichkeit und Nothiven-
digkeit, Mathematik auf Psychologie anzuwenden (1822).
P. 340, § 198. Civil society : distinguished as the social and
economical organisation of the bourgeoisie, with their particu-
larist-universal aims, from the true universal unity of citoyens
in the state or ethico-political organism.
P. 345, § 204. Inner design : see K^XiVs Kritik der Urtheils-
kraft, § 62.
Aristotle, De Anima, ii. 4 (415. b. 7) (}>avepbv 8' iy Koi ov
CHAPTER IX, §§ 193-230. 429
tviKa f) ^vxf) curia : ii. 2 fwijv Xtyo/uef rqu 5i' avroi Tpo(f>rjv re
Koi av$r](riv kqi (pOiaiv,
P. 347, § 206. Neutral first water, cf. Encyclop. § 284, ' with-
out independent individuality, without rigidity and intrinsic
determination, a thorough-going equilibrium.' Cf. Werke, vii.
6. 168. ' Water is absolute neutrality, not ]ike salt, an indi-
vidualised neutrality ; and hence it was at an early date called
the mother of everything particular.' 'As the neutral it is the
solvent of acids and alkalis.' Cf. Oken's Lehrbuch der Natur-
philosophie, §§ 294 and 432.
P. 348, § 206. Conclude = befd^tie^cn : Resolve = entfd^tiefcn.
Cf. Chr. Sigwart, Kleine Schri/ien, ii. 115, segq.
P. 359, § 216. Aristotle, De Anim. General, i. (726. b. 24)
i] \e\p av(v \//^v;(t»c^ff Bwdfittos ovk tort x^^^P aWa fiovov 6fi(i>irvfiOv.
Arist. Metaph. viii. 6 (1045. b. Il) ot 5« (Xeyovo-t) avvGarw
fj (rvvdeafiov ^vxrjs (Tufiari to ^c.
P. 360, § 218. Sensibility, &c. This triplicity (as partly
distinguished by Haller after Glisson) of the functions of organic
life is largely worked out in ScheUing, ii. 491.
P. 361, § 219. Cf. Schelling, ii. 540. As walking is a
constantly prevented falling, so life is a constantly prevented
extinction of the vital process.
P. 367, § 229. Spinoza (Eih. i. def. l) defines causa sui as
id cujus essentia ifivolvit existentiam, and (in def. 3) defines
substantia as id quod in se est et per se concipitur.
Schelling : <?. g. Darstelhmg tneines Systems der Philosophie
(1801), {Werke, iv. 114): 'I call reason the absolute reason,
or reason, in so far as it is thought as total indifference of sub-
jective and objective.'
P. 367, § 230. ' Mammals distinguish themselves ' : untev;
fd^eiben, instead of fc^eiben: cf. Werke, ii. 181. 'The dis-
tinctive marks of animals, e.g. are taken from the claws and
teeth : for in fact it is not merely cognition which by this
means distinguishes one animal from another : but the animal
thereby separates itself off: by these weapons it keeps itself to
itself and separate from the universal.' Cf. Werke, vii. a. 651
seqq. {Encycl. § 370) where reference is made to Cuvier, Re-.
cherches sur les ossements fossiles des quadrupides (18 12), &c.
P. 368, § 230. Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft : Einleitung,
§ 9 (note), ( Werke, ed. Ros. iv. 39) ; see Caird's Critical Philo-
sophy of I. Kant, Book i. ch. 5 ; also Hegel's Werke, ii. 3.
43© NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
P. 369, § 231. An example of Wolfs pedantry is given in
Hegel, Werke, v. 307, from Wolfs Rucuments of Architecture,
Theorem viii. ' A window must be broad enough for two persons
to recline c jmfortably in it, side by side. Proof. It is customary
to recline with another person on the window to look about. But
as the architect ought to satisfy the main views of the owner
(§ 1) he must make the window broad enough for two persons
to recline comfortably side by side.'
' Construction ' : cf. Werke, ii. 38. ' Instead of its own internal
life and spontaneous movement, such a simple mode (as subject,
object, cause, substance, &c.) has expression given to it by per-
ception (here = sense-consciousness)' on some superficial analogy :
and this external and empty application of the formula is called
" Construction." The procedure shares the qualities of all such
formalism. How stupid-headed must be the man, who could
not in a quarter of an hour master the theory of asthenic,
sthenic and indirectly asthenic diseases ' (this is pointed at
Schelling's Werke, iii. 236) ' and the three corresponding cura-
tive methods, and who, when, no long time since, such in-
struction was sufficient, could not in this short period be trans-
formed from a mere practitioner into a " scientific" physician ?
The formalism of Naturfhilosophie may teach e. g. that under-
standing is electricity, or that the animal is nitrogen, or even
that it is like the South or the North, or that it represents it, —
as baldly as is here expressed or with greater elaboration in
terminology. At such teachings the inexperienced may fall
into a rapture of admiration, may reverence the profound
genius it implies, — may take delight in the sprightliness of
language which instead of the abstract concept gives the more
pleasing perceptual image, and may congratulate itself en
feeling its soul akin to such splendid achievement. The trick
of such a wisdom is as soon learnt as it is easy to practice ; its
repetition, when it grows familiar, becomes as intolerable as the
repetition of juggling once detected. The instrument of this
mono^^onoas formalism is not harder to manipulate than a
painter's palette with two colours on it, say red and green, the
former to dye the surface if q historic piece, the latter if a land-
scape is asked for.'
Kant ( Werke, iii. 36) in the * Prolegomena to every future
Metaphysic,' § 7, says : ' We find, however, it is the peculiarity
of mathematical science tiiat it must first exhibit its concept in a
CHAPTER IX, §§ 231-244. 431
percept, and do so d priori, — hence in a pure percept. This
observation with regard to the nature of mathematics gives a
hint as to the first and supreme condition of its possibiHty : it
must be based on some pure percept in which it can exhibit all
its concepts in concreto and yet d, priori, or, as it is called,
construe them.'
The phrase, and the emphasis on the doctrine, that 'per-
ception must be taken as an auxiliary in mathematics,' belong
specially to the second edition of the Kritik, e.g. Pref. xii. To
learn the prop)erties of the isosceles triangle the mathematical
student must ' produce (by ' construction ') what he himself
thought into it and exhibited cL priori according to concepts.'
' Construction, in general,' says Schelling ( Werke, v. 252 ; cf.
iv. 407) ' is the exhibition of the universal and particular in
unity': — 'absolute unity of the ideal and the real.' v. 225.
!Darfte((ung in intcneftueller Slnfdjauung ijl pt)i(ofoji^if(f>c Sonfiruftion.
P. 372. ' Recollection ' = (Srtnnerung : /. e. the return from
differentiation and externality to simplicity and inwardness:
distinguished from ®bdc^tni§ = memory (specially of words).
P. 373, § 236. Cf. Schelling, Werke, iv. 405. 'Every
particular object is in its absoluteness the Idea; and accordingly
the Idea is also the absolute object (©cgcnfianb) itself,— as the
absolutely ideal also the absolutely real.'
P. 374, § 236. Aristotle, Metaphys. xi. 9 (1074. 6. 34) avrov
apa voel (6 vovs ^dfos), ftTrep (<rr\ to KparitTTOv, Kai e(mv f} vnrjiris
voTjo-tcos poTjaii. Cf. Arist. Metaph. xii. 7.
P. 377, §239. ' Supposes a correlative '=ifi fur (liiieg. On ©ci)n;
fiir^gitug, cf. Werke, iii. 168. DaS 3bec((e ift not^twnbig fur^Sincg,
aber eg ifl nit^t fuv cin 9tiibercs : bag (Sine fiir hjefc^eg fg ift, ifi nur eg fclbfl.
. . . God is therefore for-self (to himself) in so far as he himself
is that which is for him.
P. 379, § 244. The percipient idea (anfc^auenbe 3bee), of
course both object and subject of intuition, is opposed to the
Idea (as logical) in the element of Thought: but still as Idea
and not— to use Kant's phrase {Kritik der r. Vern. § 26)-:-as
natura materialiter spectata.
INDEX
A.
Absolute (the), 19, 50, 410 ; re-
lation to God, 156; absolute
idea, 374 (cf- 43i); definitions
of, 156, 161, 185, 206, 213,
288, 314. 352-
Abstract (and concrete), 295, 301.
Abstraction, 293.
Accidents (of substance), 273 seqq.
Activity (bringing condition to
fact), 267. .
Actuality, 257 se^q. ; its relations
to reason, 10, 258, 383.
Affinity (in chemism), 341.
Agnosticism, 250.
All (quasi-universal), 308.
Alteration, 172.
Analogy, 324 ^^^9- ^ ^
Analysis, 79; its dangers, Ko,
398 ; analytical method, 365.
Animals and men, 4, 47.
Anselm, 140, 331 se^g. (cf. 427).
Anthropomorphism, 122.
Antinomies (of reason), 97, 99,
189.
Apodictic judgment, 313.
Appearance, 93, 239 segq.
Apperception (pure), 88, 400.
Appetite, 345.
A priori {the), 83.
Aristotle, his idealism, 15, 75.
359, 364 ; as a logician, 39
seqq., 318, 32a; on the dignity
of philosophy, 45 ; compared
■vrith Plato, 359 ; on the Idea,
374 ; on life, 345, 359-
Arithmetic (logic of), 163.
VOL. II
Art, 146.
Assertory judgments, 312.
Atheism, what it implies, 135;
charged against Spinoza, 105,
275.
Atomic philosophy, 182.
Atoms, 193. . .
Attraction (as constructive prin-
ciple), 181.
Attribution (of predicates), 63,
298.
y4w/%<f*f«, explained, 180.
Axioms (mathematical), 323.
Becoming, 163.
Beginning, what it implies, 166.
Being (doctrine of), 156 segq.;
being and nothing, 161 ; con-
trasted with thought, 103, 107
segg.; determinate being, 167
segg. ; being in or by self, 171 ;
being- for-self, 176 segg.
Body (and soul), 360.
Boethius, 402.
Buddhist metaphysics, 161, 163,
411.
C.
Caput Mortuum, 400.
Cartesianism, 127.
Categorical judgment, 310; syl-
logism, 327.
Categories (the), 50, 57, 3991
their finitude, 58, lai ; criticism
of, 91.
Cause and effect, 276; efficient
and final, 828, 344.
Ff
434
INDEX.
Chance, 263 seqq.
Chaos, 237,
Chemism, 341 seqq. ; chemical
principles, 235, 419.
Christianity, a religion of reason,
74; its faith, 125; religion of
consolation, 270 ; of personality,
293 ; its philosophical precept,
25X.
Cognition, as analysed by Kant,
86 seqq. ; its nature and methods,
362.
Coleridge, 401, 410.
Common sense, 126,
Comparison, 216.
Conceivable (the), 260.
Concept : see Notion.
Conception ( = Representation) ,
37; preliminary to thought, i.
Condition, 266.
Conditioned (the), 121.
Conscience (rights of), 44, 388.
Consciousness (appeal to), 134.
Consensus gentium, 134, 408.
Consolation (Christian), 269.
Construction (method of), 368
(cf. 430).
Content (and form), 24a seqq.
Contingency, 263.
Continuous quantity, 188.
Contradiction (principle of), 221
seqq., 356, 418.
Contrariety, 223.
Conviction (right of): see Con-
science.
Copula (of a judgment), 298 seqq.
Correctness (and truth), 304 seqq.,
352.
Correlation, 245.
Cosmology, 70 ; cosmological
proof, 102.
Critical philosophy, its thesis,
17, 43 ; examined at length, 82
seqq.
D.
Deduction of categories, 87, 399
seqq.
Definiteness, its value, 1 70.
Definition, 366; criterion of, 186.
Degree, 192.
Deism, 72, 135, 136, aio.
Demonstration, 368 seqq.
Descartes, 127 seqq., 33a; com-
pared with Jacobi, 139.
Design (argument from), 347 (cf.
424).
Destiny, 269.
Determinate being, 169.
Development, 288 seqq. ; in rela-
tion to innate ideas, 130.
Dialectic, innate in thought, 18;
its operation explained, I47
seqq. ; in Plato and Kant, 149
(cf. 409) ; in Aristotle, 409 ; dis-
tinguished from Scepticism, 151 ;
and from Reflection, 147.
Difference, 215.
Discrete quantity, 189.
Disjunctive judgment, 311 ; syl-
logism, 337.
Diversity, 216.
Division (logical), 367 (cf. 429).
Dogmatic philosophy, 60, 66.
Dualism in theology, 72 ; in philo-
sophy, 113.
E.
Eden (Garden of), 54 seqq.
Education, its office, 100 ; mistake
in, 338-
Effect (and Cause), 276 seqq.
Ego (the absolute), 393.
Eleatic philosophy, 159 seqq., 198.
' Elements ' of logic, 329.
Eniboitement, 289, 425.
Empiricism, 14, 76 seqq. ; its rela-
tive value, 77.
Encyclopaedia of science, 25 ; of
philosophy, 38.
End ( = final cause), 113, 343 seqq.
Essence (opposed to Being), 302
seqq.
Eudaemonism (before Kant), iii,
403- . ,
Evil (Good and), 71 ; origm of,
54-
Evolution, old technical sense,
424.
Existence, 229 seqq.
Experience, principle of, 12, 31,
384; elements in, 81.
Explanation (limits of), 355.
INDEX.
435
F.
Faculties (in psycholog)-), 338.
Faith, as philosophic principle,
124 seqq.
Fall of man, interpreted, 54.
Fate, 269.
Feeling, as cognitive form, 136,
408.
Fichte, deduction of categories, 87,
387, 399 ; the Atistoss, 119, 405 ;
Sonnenklarer BcHcht, 241 ;
characteristics of, 176, 373 ; on
the Object, 334; the Ego, 393.
Figures of syllogism, 321.
Final cause, 343 j^^^., 419.
Finite (and infinite), 100, 173.
Force, 246 seqq.
Form (and content), 6, 242 seqq. ;
form of thought, 48 ; form and
matter, 236.
Fortuitous (the), 264.
Freedom, 44, 50, 283 ; as cha-
racter of all thought, 19, 118;
as Nihilism, 162; of will, 264.
Generality, 309.
Genius (defined by Kant), 113.
Geometrical method, 369.
Glaube, ^01, 407.
God, logical definition of, 156,
161, 206 ; how knowable, 65,
74, 125 ; proofs of his being ex-
amined, 6, 20, 72, 74, lo^seqq.,
115, 346; as activity, 69, 396;
as spirit, 107, 137; as creator,
337, 294; as force, 247, 250;
as trinity, 187, 262, 311; as ab-
solute cunning, 350; not jealous,
254; his goodness, 145, 240;
his power, 150,210; his names,
64, 395-
Goethe, 53, 80 (cf. 398), 145 (cf.
409), 253 (cf. 421), 256 (cf.
422), 400, 423.
Good (the), 71, 114.
Greek philosophers, 35 ; gods,
293-
Grenze and Schranke, 413.
Ground (and consequent), 224 j^^^.
H.
Haller (A. v.), quoted, 196, 352,
416.
Have (and be), 333, 298.
Heraclitus (and the Eleatics), 168,
412.
Herder, 347 (cf. 420).
History, pragmatic, 256 (cf. 433) ;
psychological, ib. ; history of
philosophy, 159.
Hume (on ideas of necessity), 82,
96, no.
Hypothetical judgment, 311; syl-
logism, 327.
I.
I (Ego), its universality, 38, 48 ;
source of the categories, 88 ;
as self- reference, 179 ; 1 = 1, 158,
410.
Idea (the), 92, 352 seqq. ; aesthetic
ideas, 113; innate ideas, 130;
clear and distinct, 296, 426.
Ideal, II ; of reason, 102.
Idealism, subjective, 90, 94; ab-
solute, 67, 386.
Ideality (of the finite), 178, 413.
Identity, philosophy of, 194, 219;
its meaning, 211; law of, 313.
Imagination (in Spinoza), 196,
415 ; in Kant, 399.
Immediacy (and mediation), 30 ;
immediate knowledge, 53, 129
seqq.
Indifference (absolute), 158, 161.
Individuality, 291 seqq.
Induction, 324, 427.
Infinite (and finite), 62 ; wrong
infinite, 174; infinite progress,
175,194,415.
Innate ideas, 1 30.
Intuition (and thought), 121, 386,
408.
Inward (and outward), 252 seqq.
J.
Jacobi (F. H.), 401, 406 seqq. ;
against demonstration, 105;
agnostic, 121 seqq.; on cause,
377 (cf. 423)-
436
INDEX.
Judaism, 210, 275.
Judgment, defined, 297 ; classi-
fication of, 303 seqq. (cf. 426) ;
Kant's criticism of the faculty,
K.
Kant: his standpoint, 17, 83; his
doctrine of categories, 83 seqq. ;
examination of his system, 81
seqq. ; theory of matter, 182 ; on
'construction' in mathematics,
369 (cf. 430) ; on teleology, 343 ;
on modality, 260; his ethics,
110, 372; defects of his system,
"9. 372,387,399-
Kastner (A. G,), 184, 414.
Kind (genus), 361.
Knowledge, 94; immediate, 123.
Lalande, 123, 407.
Law (of thought), 213 seqq. (cf.
417), 290; of a phenomenon, 242.
Leibniz : maxim of indiscernibles,
317 (cf. 417) ; of sufficient rea-
son, 327 (cf. 418); on final
cause, 228 (cf. 419); his mo-
nadology, 275, 334 (cf. 428).
Life (as a logical category), 358
seqq. ; example of becoming, 168.
Like (and unlike), 218.
Limit (barrier), 172.
Locke (as empiricist), 365.
Logic, defined, 30; its utility, 31,
34, 40 ; in Aristotle, 39 ; ap-
plied, 50 ; subdivided, 155 ;
formal, 214, 226, 288, 316.
M.
Magnitude, 185 ; intensive, 192,
415-
Man (as an universal), 293.
Many (and one), 181.
Marks (in concept), 296.
Materialism (as logical result of
empiricism), 81, 118; of a
mathematical system, 187.
Mathematics: place in science,
187 seqq.] mathematical syl-
logism, 323.
Matter (and form), 123, 235.
Mean ( = middle term), 318 seqq.
Means (and end), 347 seqq.
Measure (logical category), 199
seqq. ; its antinomy, 202.
Mechanism, 336 seqq. ; in ethics
and politics, 340.
Mediation (and immediacy), 133
seqq.
Memory (mechanical), 338.
Metaphysics, as logic, 45 ; pre-
Kantian, 61 ; pseudo-metaphy-
sics in science, 184; categories,
312.
Methods : different, 53 ; metaphy-
sical, 61, 75 ; analytic, 365 ;
synthetic, 366 ; speculative, 375;
methodology, 328.
Middle (law of excluded), 220;
middle term, 318 seqq.
Mind (and nature), 70 seqq,, 180,
188, 414.
Modality, 260.
Mohammedanism, 210, 275.
Monads, 334, 428.
Moods (of syllogism), 334,
Mysticism, 154, 410; mystic num-
bers, 198.
Nature (philosophy of), 50, 326,
394; and spirit, 180, 188, 263
■^cq^-t 377, 4'4» 431 ; nature and
the logical idea, 379.
Natural (or physico-) theology,
163 seqq., 402.
Naturalism, 118.
Necessity (and freedom), 71, 100,
282; and universality, 12, 15,
82 ; its nature analysed, 367
seqq.
Necessitarian, no.
Negation, 171, 219.
Nemesis (measure as), 201.
Neutralisation, 342.
Newton, 13, 183, 250, 414, 421.
Nicolaus Cusanus, 410.
Nodal lines, 204.
Nothing (and being), 161.
Notion: contrast^l with being,
102, 331 ; theory of, 286 seqq. ;
INDEX.
437
classifications of, 296 ; opposed
to representative concept, 3, 16,
165.
Novalis, quoted, 393.
Number, 1 90 seqq.
Object (andsubject),329J<r^^. ; ob-
jective (and subjective), 83 seqq. ;
objective thought, 45, 57, 145.
Oken, quoted, 392,401, 418.
One (and many), 1 79 seqq.
Ontology, 67; ontological proof
in theology, 107, 331.
Opposition (logical), 221.
Organism, 246, 281, 360 seqq.
Oriental theosophy, 64.
Ought (the), II, 115, 372.
Outward (and inward), 25a.
Positive (and negative), 219 seqq. ;
positive element in Science,
26.
Possibility, 259.
Practical Reason, no, 403.
Predication, 300 seqq.
Preformation, 289, 425.
Problematical judgment, 313.
Proclus, 386.
Progress : its meaning, 169.
Properties (of a thing), 233.
Proposition, 65, 300, 395.
Protagoras, 149 (cf. 409).
Proverbs quoted, 150.
Providence, 268.
Psychology, 6Sseqq., 95 seqq.jiiS
(cf. 428).
Punctum Saliens, 426.
Pure thought, 30, 49.
Pythagoras, 197, 416.
P.
Pantheism, 72 ; in Spinoza, 105,
275 ; its principle, 167.
Paralogism (in rational psycho-
logy). 95. 97-
Parmenides, 160, 411.
Particular, 291 seqq.
Parts (and whole), 245 ; distinct
from organs, 246.
Personality, 124, 274.
Phenomenalism (Kant's), 93, 240.
Phenomenology of Spirit : place in
Hegel's system, 58.
Philosophy : general definition, 4 ;
its scope and aim, 28, 38, 44,
73. 127. 164, 262, 354, 376,
391 ; history of, 22, 159, 385,
411 ; in England, 1 2 ; rise of,
18; its branches, 28, 322; me-
thod of, 375 ; philosophy and
life, 384, 393.
Physicists, 193.
Plato : reminiscence of ideas, 1 30,
289; his dialectic, 149; on the
Other, 173; Philebus, 177; com-
pared with Aristotle, 259.
Pneumatology, 68 seqq.
Polarity, 231 (cf. 418).
Porosity, 258.
Qualitative judgment, 304; syl-
logism, 317.
Quality, 158 seqq.., 170.
Quantity, 185.
Quantum, 190.
R.
Raisonnement, 229.
Ratio (quantitative), 199.
Reality : opposed to negation, 171;
to ideality, 1 80.
Reason : faculty of the imcondi-
tioned, 92, 400 seqq. ; as merely
critical, 109; practical, no;
negative, 152 seqq.; as syllogism,
314-
Reciprocity, 379.
Reflection, 5, 8, 41, 53, 308, 375 ;
distinct from dialectic, 147 ;
judgments of, 307.
Reinhold : his method, 17, 385.
Religion (and philosophy), 3, 43,,
64; its nature, 133 seqq.
Reminiscence (Platonic), 130, 389.
Repulsion, 181.
Roman religion, 335.
Rousseau, 293.
Rule, 202.
438
INDEX,
S.
Scepticism : ancient, 53 ; opposed
to dogmatism, 66 ; modem, 82 ;
its function in philosophy, 141,
151.
Schellmg, 46 (cf. 392,. 393), 367
(cf. 429).
Schiller, 1 12 (cf. 405).
Scholasticism, 40, 66, 75, 80 ; de-
finition of God, 69.
Schopenhauer, 401, 408, 424.
Sciences and philosophy, 19, 22 ;
science and religion, 250.
Scotch philosophers, 131.
Scotus Erigena, 387.
Self-determination, iii.
Self-identity, 212.
Sensation, 36 seqq.
Sensus eminentior, 73, 397.
Sex, 361.
Sin (original), 55.
Slavery (abolition of), 293.
Socrates, his dialectic, 149, 228.
Solon, 43.
Somewhat, 171.
Sophists : theory of education,
131 ; essence of sophistry, 148,
228; opposed to Socrates, 149,
419.
Sontes, 203, 417.
Soul : as object of psychology, 69,
77 ; (rationalist theory of,) cri-
ticised by Kant, 96 ; soul and
Spirit, 69.
Speculation, i6 ; as opposed to
dogmatism, 67 ; speculative rea-
son, 152 seqq.
Spinoza, his alleged atheism and
pantheism, 105 seqq., 375; causa
siii, 139, 277; his God, 159,
402 ; on determination, 171 ;
amor intellectualis , 283 (cf.
424); on imagination, 196 (cf.
415); his method, 367 j^^j'. (cf.
429).
Spirit, see Mtnd.
State (mechanical theories of the),
182, 340.
Subject (and predicate), 301, 395,
428.
Subjective (and objective), 85,
270.
Substance, 273 seqq.
Sufficient Reason (principle of),
224 seqq. (cf. 418).
Syllogism, 314 seqq. ; as a uni-
versal form of things, 314 ; in
mechanism, 340 ; in teleology,
348-
Synthetic method, 366.
System (in philosophy), 23 seqq.,
159-
Taste, defined by Kant, 113.
Teleology, 343 seqq.
Terms (of syllogism), 317.
Theology (natural), 71 seqq., lor
^eqq., 397-
Theorem, 368.
Theoretical Reason (Kant on), 86
seqq.
Thing, 69, 233 ; thing in or by it-
self, 91, 231.
Thought, its meaning and activity,
35 seqq. ; subjective, 36 ; ob-
jective, 45, 47 ; distinguished
from pictorial representation, 3,
37-
Transcendent, 89 ; transcendental,
87, 400.
Truth, object of philosophy, 3; and
of logic, 32 ; its meaning, 51,
387 ; distinguished from correct-
ness, 305, 352, 354.
U.
Unconditioned (the), 92, 410.
Understanding, as faculty of the
conditioned, 58, 92 ; as a prin-
ciple of limitation, 143 seqq.,
400.
Unessential, 211.
Universal (the), 35, 42, 143 ; ' mo-
ment'of the notion, 291 seqq.;
universality and necessity, 12,
16,82.
Untrue, 245.
Urtheil, 297.
Utilitarianism in Science, 346.
INDEX.
439
V.
Variety, 215.
Verstand and Vemunft, 400 seqq.
Volition, 364, 371 seqq.
W.
JVesen, 209.
Whole (and parts), 245.
Will, 371 ; as practical reason,
110; its freedom, 264.
Wolff (Christian), his philosophy,
60 seqq., 395, 396 ; method,
369-
World (the), as object of Cos-
mology, 97.
Z.
Zeno (of Elea), 169, 195,415.
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