LOGIC FURTHER DEFINED AND DIVIDED.
79.] In point of form Logical doctrine has three sides: (α) the
Abstract side, or that of understanding: (_ß_) the Dialectical, or that
of negative reason: (y) the Speculative, 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 statement of the dividing
lines and the characteristic aspects of logic is at this point no more
than historical and anticipatory.
80.] (α) Thought, as _Understanding,_ sticks to fixity of characters
and their distinctness from one another: every such limited abstract it
treats as having a subsistence 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 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 accuracy 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. 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 in 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 impressions, but grasps the objects in their
fixed character: whereas 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 understanding, 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
subsist. 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, 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 provided 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 particularly 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 outline, 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,' and keeps to the concrete.
81.] (ß) In the Dialectical stage these finite characterisations or
formulae supersede themselves, and pass into their opposites.
(1) 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 adventitious art, which
for very wantonness introduces confusion 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 belong 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,
Reflection 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 to
constitute the real and true, as opposed to the external, exaltation
above the finite.
(1) It is of the highest importance to ascertain and understand rightly
the nature of Dialectic. Wherever there is movement, wherever there is
life, 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 understanding
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 subjectively 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
wholly different; 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 predominantly
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 impressions
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 resuscitated the name of Dialectic, and
restored it to its post of honour. 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 if its existence
is peculiarly confined to the philosopher. It would be truer to say
that Dialectic gives expression to a 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 immediate or natural being to
turn suddenly into its opposite. We have before this (§ 80) identified
Understanding with what is implied in the popular idea of the goodness
of God; we may now remark of Dialectic, in the same objective
signification, 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 religious 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 morality, we have only to recollect how general
experience shows us the extreme of one state or action suddenly
shifting into its opposite: a Dialectic which is recognised in many
ways in common proverbs. Thus _summum 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
despotism naturally lead to one another. The perception of Dialectic
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
overflowing with joy seeks relief in tears, and the deepest melancholy
will at times betray its presence by 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 repose. 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
Epicurean. 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 positive knowledge. But in these
statements there is a misconception. It is only the finite thought
of abstract understanding which has to fear Scepticism, because
unable to withstand 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 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 positive 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.
(1) 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 nothing. (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
something infinite.
If we consider only what it contains, and not how it contains it,
the true reason-world, so far from being the exclusive property of
philosophy, is the right of every human being on whatever grade of
culture or mental growth he may stand; which would justify man's
ancient title of rational 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 individual will. And in the same
sense, the knowledge and will of the child is rational, when he knows
his parents' will, and wills it.
Now, to turn these rational (of course positively-rational) realities
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 matrimonial 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 'speculation': 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
understanding 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
enunciate 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 experience 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 proportion 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 superstition and deception.
On which we first of all remark that there is mystery in the mystical,
only however for the understanding 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
identification, and that in their opinion, therefore, truth can only be
won by renouncing thought, or as it is frequently expressed, 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.] 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 abiding 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 anticipatory: and the
justification, or proof of it, can only result from the detailed
treatment of thought itself. For in philosophy, 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 between 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.