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
outlines, are derived from a survey of the whole system, to which
accordingly they are subsequent. The same remark applies to all
prefatory notions whatever 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 distinctively 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 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 abc of everything else. They are also
what we are best acquainted with: such as, 'Is' and 'Is not': quality
and magnitude: being potential and being actual: one, many, 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 independent 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.
(1) 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 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
contradiction with the graces of lowliness and humility.--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 light of dawn: but the older generation lies 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 advance of the world and science. But these hopes are
set upon the young, only on the condition that, instead of remaining 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 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 temporal scene, as utterly poor as
when they left it. What coines 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 something 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 demean 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 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 thought
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 abstract
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 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 ordinances of life began
to be seriously affected by their conclusions. 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 philosophers, for
example, became antagonists of the old religion, and destroyed its
beliefs. Philosophers were accordingly banished or put to death, as
revolutionists who had subverted religion and the state, two things
which were inseparable. Thought, in short, made itself a power in the
real world, and exercised enormous influence. 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 _activity,_ may be accordingly
described as the _active_ universal, 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 preliminary 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
conceptions.
This introductory exposition has already alluded to the distinction
between Sense, Conception, and Thought. As the distinction is of
capital importance for understanding 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 certainly 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 essential
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,
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 conceptions constituted by materials emanating
from self-conscious 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 conceptions 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 universality, 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. Conception 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 never get beyond mere contiguity.
In this point Conception coincides with Understanding: the only
distinction 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 attributes 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 universal. 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, 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 sensations
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 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 received 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 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
contains 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 discover 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 remember 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 represents
the universal or governing principle: and we have means and instruments
whose action we regulate in conformity 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 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 individual 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, because 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 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 reverse 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 phenomenon 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 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 ourselves that this is the process of arriving
at the truth, and we think without hesitation, and in the firm belief
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 outward 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 light in
reflection; but it is no less true that this exertion 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 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 consciousness 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 philosophy. 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 limitations 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 circumstances 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 prejudices, 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 accredited 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, such as causality, is a matter for the
science itself. But this much is evident beforehand. If thought tries
to form a 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 universal
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
inconvenience 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.
(1) To speak of thought or objective thought as the heart [and soul
of the world, may seem to be ascribing consciousness 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 Schelling'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 categories, 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
'νοῧς 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 animal we say it is (an) animal. Now,
the animal, _quâ_ animal, cannot be shown; nothing can be pointed out
excepting some special animal. Animal, _quâ_ 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 animality, and it becomes
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
[greek: nous], 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 implication 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 its "νοῦς"
into consciousness: it is man who first makes himself 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 myself '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' 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 conception, 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 his attention
from other points, and takes it as abstract and universal, 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 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 form 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 sensuous 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
inspection; but either the content is sensuous and the form appertains
to thought, or _vice versâ._ In the first case the material is given to
us, and our thought supplies 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
thought-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-element 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
yourself. In the impulses or appetites the beginning is from something
else, from something which we feel to be external. 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 constituents of his
will and opinion are not his own, and his freedom is merely formal.
But when we _think,_ we renounce our selfish and particular being,
sink ourselves in the thing, allow thought to follow its own course,
and,--if we add anything 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 I 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 shapes 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. Physics 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 hierarchy. They
are the heart and centre of things: and yet at 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 main depository of these types of thought; and one use
of the grammatical instruction which children receive is unconsciously
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 about forms which are the
absolutely-real ground of everything. Everything else rather is an
'only' compared with 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-types 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 proceed
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 understand
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 conception must conform. In the philosophical sense of the
word, on the other hand, truth may be described, in general 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 notion
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 categories 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
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 knowledge, 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 apprehend 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 wickedness--the
original transgression. Apparently therefore they 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 philosophy must not allow
herself to be overawed by religion, or accept the position of existence
on sufferance, she cannot 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 circumstance
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 final concord then is spiritual; that is, the
principle of restoration 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 humanity, were placed in a garden, where grew a tree of
life and a tree of the knowledge 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 meditative 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. Childlike 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 naïve
and profound trait. 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 pronounced 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
knowledge 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 accidental 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 behaviour 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 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
when he behaves as such, and follows the cravings of appetite, he wills
to be so. The natural wickedness of man is therefore unlike the natural
life of animals. A mere natural life may be more exactly defined 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, reaching 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 _truth_--the truth
which is to be the absolute _object_ of philosophy, and not merely the
goal at which it aims. But the very expression cannot fail to suggest
an opposition, 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 I 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 objective permanently clings to
them. Secondly, they are always of restricted content, and so persist
in antithesis to one another and still more to the Absolute. 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, immediate consciousness, and to show how that stage gradually
of necessity worked onward to the philosophical 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 knowledge 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 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 rendered 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 Knowledge, 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.