196.] The want of stability in itself wh_The Logic of Hegel

violence, is possessed by it (see preceding §) 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 independence form a negative unity with self,--Centrality

(subjectivity). So conceived, the object itself has direction 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 Affinity (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 centre.) 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 one another. Similarly absolute centrality, as the

permanently-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-independent 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. (1) The Individual or person, through

his particularity or physical 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 intermediating force which

procures for these needs satisfaction 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 individuals 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 intermediation to coalesce with the other extreme, is brought

into union with itself and produces itself: which production is

self-preservation.--It is only by the nature of this triple coupling,

by this triad of syllogisms with the name _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 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-indifferent.

(b) _Chemism_.

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 mechanism are very

decidedly distinct. The object, in the form of mechanism, is primarily

only an indifferent 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 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 integration by and in one

another.

201.] The product of the chemical process consequently 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 objectivity, 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 extremes 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 animation 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 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

externalism and immediacy. In these circumstances it is the End (Final

Cause).

* * * * *

The passage from chemism to the teleological 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.

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 subjective, 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 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 subjectivity and

objectifies itself, thus cancelling the distinction 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 universal 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, blind, 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 speculatively apprehended as the notion, which itself in the

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 consciousness as a mode of mere mental

representation. By means of the notion of Inner Design Kant has

resuscitated 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 outward 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 subjectivity 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, _i.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 operations 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 objective 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 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

subjectivity 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 syllogisms, under which the so-called proofs of

the Being of a God presented this elevation.

205.] In its primary and immediate aspect the Teleological relation

is _external_ design, and the notion confronts a pre-supposed object.

The End is consequently finite, and that partly in its content,

partly in the circumstance 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 content--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 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 themselves. 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 discover 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

connexion 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

adequate.

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 third,

End 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 particularising

of this universal, by which it acquires a specific content. As this

specific content again is realised 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 something: 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.] (1) The first syllogism of the final cause represents the

Subjective End. The universal notion is brought to unite with

individuality by means of particularity, 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

indeterminate 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 subjectivity 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 content, 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 '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 subjugation 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 without 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 objectivity which is

pre-supposed. This relation is the sphere of chemism and mechanism,

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 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.

* * * * *

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 working out its own aims. With this explanation, Divine Providence

may be said to stand to the world and its process in the capacity of

absolute cunning. 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 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 objective 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 mechanical 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

absorption 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 objective

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 concealed. Within the range of the finite we can never see or

experience that the End has been really secured. The consummation of

the infinite End, therefore, consists merely in removing the illusion

which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. 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 supplies 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 conceptions, 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 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 something or other,

any more than the notion is to be taken as merely a specific notion.

The Absolute is the universal 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 d'appui,_

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 concrete, 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 negative 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 _is._ This

is truth, however, only in reference to consciousness; 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. Whatever

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

intellectual ascertainment of the Idea; and everything deserving the

name of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness

of an absolute unity where the understanding 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 supposed that the idea

is mediate only, _i.e._ mediated through something else than itself.

It is rather its own result, and being so, is no less immediate than

mediate. The stages hitherto considered, viz. those of Being and

Essence, as well as those of Notion and of Objectivity, are not, when

so distinguished, something permanent, resting upon themselves. 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 philosophical signification of reason);

subject-object; the unity of the ideal and the real, of the finite and

the infinite, 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 subjective 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 themselves, and pass over into their

opposites. Hence this transition, and the unity in which the extremes

are 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 _first_ 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 judgment, which affirms that the individual, or subject, is

after all not individual, but universal. But, in the _second_ place,

the understanding believes _its_ '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 understanding. 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 translates itself into the

abstract understanding, it for ever remains reason. The Idea is the

dialectic which again makes this mass of understanding and diversity

understand 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

understanding--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.

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 universal:

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 expression 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

expression 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 unity of the Idea, the infinite overlaps and includes

the finite, thought overlaps being, subjectivity overlaps objectivity.

The unity of the Idea is thought, infinity, and subjectivity, and

is in consequence to be essentially distinguished from the Idea as

_substance,_ just as this overlapping subjectivity, thought, or

infinity is to be distinguished 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

difference. 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

characterisations 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, conveying

them away from the semblance of independent subsistence back into

subjectivity, so that all the members are reciprocally momentary

means as well as momentary ends. Thus as life is the initial

particularisation, so it results in the negative self-asserting unity:

in the dialectic of its corporeity it only coalesces with 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 off from the body is,

as Aristotle has observed, a hand in name only, not in fact. From the

point of view of understanding, life is usually spoken of as a mystery,

and in general as incomprehensible. By giving it such a name, however,

the Understanding only confesses its own finitude and nullity. So far

is life from being incomprehensible, that in it the very notion is

presented to us, or rather the immediate 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 process, 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.] (1) The first is the process of the living being inside itself.

In that process it makes a split on its own self, and reduces its

corporeity to its object or its inorganic 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 retained 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 subject: 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 immediately 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 relation 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 assimilates to itself.

The result of the assimilation is not, as in the chemical process, a

neutral product in which the independence 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 objectivity 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 individuality, 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. Implicitly 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 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 objectivity 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 identical 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 reflection, seeing that the distinguishing of

the idea in its 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 ability to make the identity actual, and

to raise its certitude 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 regards both

the one-sidedness of subjectivity 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 infected 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 supersedes the one-sidedness of the

objective world, which is now, on the contrary, estimated as only a

mere semblance, 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

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.

(α) _Cognition proper._

226.] The universal finitude of Cognition, which 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 specialisation 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 the 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 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, (1) 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 universality. 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 Analytical 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 analytical. 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 consider 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 reasoning 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.

228.] This universality is (2) also a specific universality. In this

case the line of activity follows the three 'moments' 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 individual, 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 development of the 'moments' of the notion on

the object.

229.] (α) When the object has been in the first instance 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 have 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 say, that definitions

originate by way of analysis. This will explain how it

happens that people quarrel about the correctness of proposed

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

be defined is, that is, the more numerous are the aspects

which it offers to our notice, the more various are the definitions

we may frame of it. Thus there are quite a host of

definitions of life, of the state, &c. Geometry, on the contrary,

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 business

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 synthetical

method into philosophy. Thus Spinoza, in particular,

begins with definitions. He says, for instance, that

substance is the _causa sui._ 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.] (ß) 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 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

circumstance which Kant has the credit of bringing into notice.

231.] (γ) In the concrete individuality, where the mere unanalysed

quality of the definition is regarded as a correlation 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 mediation

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 consequences

the abstract propositions which formed the pre-suppositions and the

material for the proof. Thus, algebraical 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 behoof. 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 its empirical concreteness into the form of general

abstractions, which may then be set in the front of the synthetical

method as definitions.

That these methods, however indispensable and brilliantly successful

in their own province, are unserviceable 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 addicted 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 (_construing_)

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 background of all this, certainly,

there is a dim consciousness of the Idea, of the unity of the notion

and objectivity,--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 sensuous concreteness of perception is as little the

concreteness of reason and the idea.

Another point calls for notice. Geometry works with the sensuous but

abstract perception of space; and in space it experiences no difficulty

in isolating and defining 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 termed 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 inobservancy as to

the nature of its methods and their relativity 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 transgressed 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 accepting its content as given or found.

Necessity _quâ_ necessity is implicitly the self-relating notion. The

subjective 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 contingent 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 apprehended as subjectivity, as a notion

self-moving, active, and form-imposing.

(ß) _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 inconsistent terms applied to the

objective world the End of the Good is just as much not executed

as executed,--the end 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

contradiction vanishes when the action supersedes the subjectivity of

the purpose, and along with it the objectivity, with the contrast which

makes both finite; abolishing subjectivity as a whole and not merely

the one-sidedness of this form of it. (For another new subjectivity 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 bewildering 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, 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.

Generally 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 religious 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 doctrine 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.

236.] The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, is

the notion of the Idea,--a notion whose object (_Gegenstand_) is the

Idea as such, and for which the objective (_Objekt_) is Idea,--an

Object which embraces all characteristics in its unity. This unity

is consequently I 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 cognition 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

νόησις νοήσεως which Aristotle long ago termed the supreme form of the

idea.

237.] Seeing that there is in it no transition, or presupposition,

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 contemplates 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 vast amount of senseless

declamation about the idea absolute. 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 fullness 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 lies 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 movement. 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 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 such 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 end, however, there is required an effort 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 explicitly what was

involved in the immediate notion, this advance is Analytical; but

seeing that in this notion this distinction was not yet stated,--it 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 derivative, and

neither to have proper being nor proper immediacy. It is only for

the consciousness which is itself immediate, that Nature forms the

commencement or immediacy, 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 continues 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

development of the first is a transition into the second.

It is only by means of this double movement, that the 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 contradiction in its own nature. That

contradiction which is seen in the infinite progress is resolved

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 merely 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 extraneous 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; 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 external 'reflection,' invested with the one-sided characteristic

of immediacy, or of negation. Enjoying however 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 characterisation

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

CHAPTER I.

Page 5, § 2. After-thought = Nachdenken, _e.g._ 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 individual

(sensation) in what is called perception (Wahrnehmen) see _Encycl._ §§

420, 421.

P. 8, § 3. Cf. Fichte, _Werke_, ii. 454: 'Hence for the common 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 believe. The pleasure the reader takes in

the writer is a concealed pleasure in himself. What a great man! (he

says to himself); 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 reasonable) stands

every plain man, as well as the philosopher; and from it philosophy

starts in the study both of the spiritual and of the natural

universe----The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal

and the transient to recognise the substance 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 existence

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 (Wirklichkeit) 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 be 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_ 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 beginning

his _Attempt of a new theory of the human representative 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 _Contributions to an

easier survey of the condition of philosophy at the beginning of the

nineteenth century_ (Beiträge, 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 proposal (in his _Fundamental Philosophy,_ 1803)

to start with what he called 'philosophical problematics.'

P. 19, § 11. 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 applied 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--'philosophy without

surnames' (ohne Beinamen),--_i.e._ not a 'critical' 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, § 16. By 'anthropology' is meant not the anthropology of modern

writers, who use the name to denote mainly the history 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 physiological 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 architectonic

features of its picture, though the inter-connection of necessity 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 delineation, 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 appearance 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 (Bei:sich:sein) 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 (aσώματον) is to be πρὸς ἑαυτὸ ἐπιστρεπτικόν, _e.g._

to return upon itself, or to be a unity in and with difference,--to

be an original and spontaneous principle of movement (c. 15): or, as

in C 31: πὰν τὸ πρoῒὸν ἀπό τινος κατ' οὐσίαν ἐπιστρέφεται πρὸς ἐκεῖνο

ἀφ' οὗ πρόεισιν. Its movement, therefore, is circular κυκλικὴν ἔχει

τὴν ἐνέργειαν (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 (αὐθυπόςτατον),--is at once agent

(πάραγον) and patient (παραγόμενον). This 'mysticism' (of a trinity

which is also unity of motion which is also rest), with its πρόοδoς,

ἐπιστroφή, and μονή, 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 Vernunft:

Elementarlehre,_ § 16), was 'The _I think_ must be able to accompany

all my conceptions' (Vorstellungen). 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 consciousness of fact in

life, and of all demonstrative knowledge in science, is this: _In_ and

_with_ the single thing we affirm (setzen) (and whatever we affirm 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 individual who has comprehended it, to all individuals who

will comprehend it.... Without this absolute "positing" of the absolute

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 infinitude and

totality of all possible observations:--an infinity which is not at

all compounded out of finites, but out of which, conversely, 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 "manifestation" of the absolute

totality, I call intellectual vision (Anschauung). I regard it--just

because I cannot in any way get beyond intelligence--as immanent in

intelligence, and name it so far egoity (Ichheit),--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,

therefore, 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 through

the intellectual vision (intuition) are still both held together.'

P. 44, § 22, _the 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

principle in the apparent; whereby moral distinctions are reduced 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 alone, 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 outward 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 its distinction from the bad. In any case it

was an absolute injunction which forbade 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 conviction, are set forth as the

true sources of moral worth, then there is no longer any hypocrisy, or

immorality at all: for whatever 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 and free, hardened and

unperturbed sinner, comes the person whose mind is completely 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 principle 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, _e.g._ a conviction bad

in its content, the judgment to be pronounced must be bad, _e.g._

conformable to this bad content. But faith here means only fidelity to

conviction. Has the man (we ask) in acting kept true to his conviction?

It 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 possible error, with the

further implied presupposition of an absolutely-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, _i.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 conviction--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 difference 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, really, my being convinced

_is_ something 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, I 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 subjective conviction, and in the execution of justice I

fancy myself to be only treated by an external force.'

P. 44, § 23. Selbstdenken--to think and not merely to read or listen is

the recurrent cry of Fichte (_e.g. Werke,_ ii. 329). According to the

editors of _Werke,_ xv. 582, the reference here is to Schleiermacher

and to his Monologues. Really it is to the Romantic principle in

general, especially F. Schlegel.

196.] The want of stability in itself which allows the object to suffer