The antithesis between thought and being, between idea and actuality,

between notion and object, is almost a commonplace of criticism.

Between the ideas of the subject and objectivity a great gulf seems

to yawn fixed and impassable. Thinkers, like Anselm and Descartes,

have (it is asserted) attempted by a trick which cheated themselves

to get from the notion to the object. But--as Kant is supposed to

have for ever shown--these _decepti deceptores_ are now universally

discredited.[1] Yet the same Kant had shown that the 'things' of

ordinary experience are only ideas or appearances in consciousness.

These latter ideas, however, were verified by the necessity of

interdependence in which they stood, as given by sense. From the

notions which Anselm and Descartes proposed to invest with objectivity,

there was absent the feature of sense-perception. They were not limited

and real ideas, but synthetic laws, general and abstract aspects of

reality, modes of conception. They were not definite and individualised

things, but terms or conditions for all concepts and realities. They

were forms,--forms essential to the explication of reality--and never

mere parts of reality.

With such 'forms' or 'thought-terms,' such abstractions, Logic (_à

la mode de Hegel_) has to deal. And in dealing with them it has to

counteract this popular distinction (which Kant inclines toward) which

sets up an insuperable division between thought and being, between

reality and syllogism, between is and is known. Certain of these

denominators which thinking employs to describe reality the popular

mind wholly identifies with reality. That being is a thought, that

force and thing are only modes of conception, sounds to the untrained

intellect only a verbal quibble. Things, beings, are there_--out

there_, it says: force is 'ultimate reality.' It is perhaps ready

to allow that _substances_ are only mental figments: but it is more

doubtful about causes, and inclines to assume them to be in outside

nature, and to generate a real necessity in things. On the other hand,

it has little doubt that concepts and syllogism are only our ways of

looking at reality,--the reality of substances and phenomena, with

quality and quantity: that 'final cause' is a mere subjective principle

of explanation: and that ideas and knowledge are altogether additions

superinduced on a real world.

Now what the Logic shows is that, on one hand, all these terms are

ideal and regulative; and on the other that they are real, because

constitutive of reality. Showing--or shall we say, reminding us--that

being is after all a form of thought, it shows us that knowledge, at

the other end, contains or implies reality. It is the business of logic

as a fundamental philosophy to dispel the illusion that sensations are

fixed reality: that causes and effects are an absolutely real order;

whereas concepts and sciences and still more aesthetic and moral

principles are not. Its doctrine is that all Our thought-terms, the

most vulgar and the most delicate, are, as we may put it, symbolical of

reality: explications and manifestations of it. Absolutely real--if

that means utterly unideal--none of them are. On the other hand,

absolutely ideal,--if that means utterly unreal--none of them are

either. If you call them real, their reality is that of thought. If you

call them ideal, it is an ideality of a real. Being is not a fixed and

solid substratum, a hard rock of reality, on which we may build our

relations and further determinations. It also is a thought: it also

lives in relation, and becomes more real by further determination.[2]

But the habit comes natural to the majority to attribute essential

and independent reality (total reality) to the thought-modes it is

familiar with in practice: whereas the modes familiar to more advanced

intelligence are put aside as merely ideal.

Thus in proportion as Logic insists on the reality of idea, it insists

also on the ideality of being. Being is after all a thought: when

separate from the relations of experience, a very poor thought. A

'supreme being' even is a thought. And the question of questions for

Logic is what degree of reality, what amount of truth does each result

of unification express. Is it self-consistent and complete, or does it

imply further elements, and if so, in what direction does it suggest

and receive completion? But at the best the reality of a logical

term is an abstract or formal reality, and consists in its power to

interpret, to expound, to define the Absolute. Its more concrete and

material reality it has in Nature and in Mind. There however Philosophy

has in a further measure to repeat its earlier lesson and show that

Nature is not without its ideal aspect, and that Mind is founded on

physical reality.

All science tends to carry us over the hard lines of separation which

practical interests treat as if ultimate disruptions. The sciences of

Nature, for instance, in their completed circle must carry us from

the inorganic to the organic: must in some way make a path from the

lifeless to the alive. The science of thought has a corresponding task.

It has to show that the incommensurability between thought and being,

or between the idea and actuality, disappears on closer examination.

When we trace the development of thought sufficiently far, we see that

Being is an imperfect or inadequate thought,--certainly not adequate

to the Idea, but not for that reason generically differing from it.

The fixity of Being as more than, and superior to, mere Thought is a

habit of mind, due to the same worldly-minded immobility as leads us

all to believe (and, within the limited practical range, to believe

rightly) that the earth is solidly at rest, notwithstanding all the

demonstrations of the Copernicans. But Thought has not deposited all

its burden, or uttered all its meaning in Being. Being is the veriest

abstraction,--the very rudiment of thought--meagre as meagre can be.

It is on one side the bare position or affirmation of thought: on the

other hand it is the very negation of thought,--if thought be only

possible under difference. For a mere 'Is' is a mere indescribable

without-difference. There is no such thing as mere Being: or mere Being

is mere nothing: _mere_ Being is not.

The first category of Ontology is that of Being. It is the merest

simplicity and meagreness, with nothing definite in it at all: and

for that very reason constantly liable to be confused with categories

of more concrete burden. It denotes all things, and connotes next

to nothing. It does not however mean something which has being; it

does not mean definite being: still less does it mean permanent and

substantial being. Ordinary language certainly uses being in all these

senses. But if we are to be logical, we must not mix up categories with

one another: we must take terms at their precise value. Mere Being then

is the mere 'Is,' which can give no explanation or analysis of itself:

which indescribable in itself: which is an 'Is' and nothing more. The

simplest answer to those who invest Being with so much signification,

is to ask them to consider the logical _copula_. 'Every school-boy

knows' that the 'Is' of the copula disappears in several languages:

that it is far from indispensable in Latin: that in Greek e. g. the

demonstrative article serves the same purpose. In Hebrew too the

pronouns officiate for the so-called substantive verb: and the same

verb probably does not exist in the Polynesian family of languages,

where its place is supplied by what we call the demonstrative

pronoun.[3] In the copula, which according to M. Laromiguiere, as

quoted by Mr. Mill, expresses only '_un rapport spécial entre le sujet

et l'attribut_,' we encounter the mere undeveloped and unexplained

unifying of thought, the very abstraction of relativity[4].

In the beginning, then, there is nothing and yet that nothing is. Such

is the fundamental antithesis of thought: or the discrepancy which

makes itself felt between each several term of thought and the whole

Idea of which they are the expression. Being is the term emphasised

as absolute by understanding: then the dialectical power, or the

consciousness of the whole, steps in to counteract the one-sided

element. In other words, thought, the total thought, asks what is

Being, mere and simple; and answers mere nothing.[5] The one aspect

of the point is as justifiable as the other. In other words the two

aspects are indissoluble: they are in one. The term 'Unity,' applied to

the relation of Being and Not, may perhaps mislead: and it is therefore

better to say that the two points of view are (as Mr. Spencer puts

it) at once 'antithetical and inseparable,' An unrelated being, an

'absolute' (i. e. separate and transcendent) reality is an Unknowable,

i. e. an ineffable, an unspeakable of which we can legitimately

predicate a not- , leaving imagination to fill up the blank after the

hyphen. A mere Not, with no substratum which it negatives, is mere

Being: and a mere Being, which has no substratum, is a mere Not. The

movement upward and the movement downward are here illustrated: and

it is evident that they are the same movement[6],--the same unrest,

only differentiated as up and down by some _termini_ not yet explicitly

brought into view. Each--Is and Not--as it seeks to differentiate

itself, to make itself clear, passes into the other. In fact, the very

vocation, calling, or notion of Being and Nothing, is not Being and

Nothing, but the tendency of each to pass into the other. Their truth,

in short, is not in themselves, but in their process,--and that process

by which the one passes into the other is 'To become.' Try to get at

mere Being and you are left with Nought: of mere Nought you can only

say it is. The two abstractions have no truth except in the passage

into one another: and this passage or transition is 'To become.' Take

reality apart from what it leads on to, and from what it has come from,

apart from its end or purpose and from its cause, take it as mere

being: then this being in its supposed singleness and self-subsistence

is really annihilated: _stat magni nominis umbra_: but it is the name

of nothing. True being is always on the way to or from being: to stop

is fatal.

This unity or inseparability of opposite elements in a truth or

real notion is the stumbling-block to the incipient Hegelian. The

respectable citizens of Germany were amazed, says Heine, at the

shamelessness of J. G. Fichte, when he proclaimed that the Ego produced

the world, as if that had cast doubts on their reality; and the ladies

were curious to know whether Madame Fichte was included in the general

denial of substantial existence[7]. If easy-going critics treated

Fichte in this way, they had even better source for amusement in Hegel.

That Being and Nothing is the same was a perpetual fund for jokes,

too tempting to be missed. Now, in the baldness, and occasionally

paradoxical style, of Hegel's statements, there is some excuse for such

exaggerations. Being and Nothing are not merely the same: they are also

different: they at least tend to pass into each other. In the technical

language of logicians, the question is not what being denotes, but what

it connotes. The word 'is' had, it may be, originally a 'demonstrative'

meaning, a 'pronominal' force, which in course of time passed from

a local or sensuous meaning to express a thought. No doubt 'is' and

'is not' are wide enough apart in our application of them as copula

of a proposition: but if we subtract the two terms and leave only

the copula standing, the difference of the two becomes inexpressible

and unanalysable. In both there is the same statement of immediacy

or face-to-faceness: that two things are brought to confront each

other,--united, as it were, without producing any real or specific sort

of union. If Thought be unifying, Being is the minimum of unification:

if Thought be relating, Being is the most abstract of relations. So

abstract, indeed, that its relativity is completely lost sight of: so

utterly one, that it vanishes in a point. And just because it _is_

(as it seems) out of relations, it must be nothing. No doubt, between

the two terms Being and not-Being a difference is meant; when they

are employed, a difference is thrown into them; and then they are not

the same: but if we keep out of sight what is meant, and stick to the

ultimate point which is said, we shall find that mere being and mere

nothing are alike inapprehensible by themselves, and that to institute

a difference we must go out of and beyond them. Perhaps some approach

to the right point of comprehension may be made, if we note that when

two people quarrel and can give no reason or further development to

their opposite assertions, the one person's 'is' is exactly equal

(apart from subsequent explanations) to the other's 'is not.' The mere

'Is' and 'Is not' have precisely the same amount of content: a mere

affirmation or assertion, which is mere nothing,--because connecting,

where there is nothing to connect.

The truth of 'is' then turns out 'become': nothing _is_: all things are

coming to be and passing out of being. This illustrates the meaning of

the word 'truth' in Hegel. It is partly synonymous with 'concrete,'

partly with the 'notion.' With concrete: because to get at the truth,

we must take into account a new element, kept out of sight in the mere

affirmation of being. With notion: because if we wish to comprehend

being, we must grasp it as 'becoming.' For truth lies in transcending

the first or merely given. We have to go forward, and to go backward,

as it were: forward from being, backward to being: we look before and

after. The attempt to isolate the mere point of being is impossible

in thought: it would only lead to the 'representation' of being,--i.

e. the notion of being would be arrested in its development, and

identified probably with a sensible thing, i. e. with _something_, and

some concrete thing said to be.

If being, however, is truly apprehended as a passage from the unknown

to the known, or as emergence from bare vacuity, then it implies a

definiteness, which we missed before. Somewhat has become: or the

indeterminate being has been invested with definiteness and distinct

character. Mere being (mere _Is)_ is nothing: to be something is

must be not something else. The second step in the process to

self-realisation therefore is reached: Being has become Somewhat; which

is more, because it professes less. The fluid unity or movement from

'is' to 'is not,' and _vice versa_, has crystallised: and 'There is'

is the still imperfectly unified result precipitated. By this term we

imply the _finitude_ of being,--imply that a portion has been cut off

from the vague, and contrasted with something else. In the ordinary

application of the word, Being is especially employed to denote this

stage of definite being[8]. Thus we speak of bringing something into

being: by which we mean, not mere being, but a definite being, or,

in short, reality. Reality is determinateness, as opposite to mere

vagueness. To be real, it is necessary to be somewhat,--to limit and

define. Whatever is anything or is real, is _eo facto_ finite. Even an

infinite therefore to be real must submit to self-limitation. This is

the necessity of finitude: in order to be anything more and higher,

there must come, first of all, a determinate being and reality. But

reality, as we have seen, implies negation: it implies limiting,

distinction, and dependence. Everything finite, every 'somewhat,' has

somewhat else to counteract, narrow, and thwart it. To be somewhat

_(esse aliquid)_ is an object of ambition, as Juvenal implies: but it

is only an unsatisfactory goal after all. For somewhat always implies

something else, by which it is limited: whereas mere being, just

because it is nothing, is free from the check of an other.

This, then, is the price to be paid for rising into reality, and coming

to be somewhat: there is always somewhat else to be minded. The very

point which makes a 'somewhat,' as above a mere 'nothing,' is its

determinateness: and determinateness, as at first determinateness from

outside, a given and passive determinateness, is also a negation and

limit. Now the limit of a thing is that point where it begins to be

somewhat else: where it passes out of itself and yields to another.

Accordingly in the very act of being determined, somewhat is passing

over into another: it is altering, and becoming somewhat else. Thus a

some-thing' implies for its being the being of somewhat else: its being

is as it were only to be beside something else,--it is finite, and

alterable, a _this_ with a _that_ always in the neighbourhood. Such is

the character of determinate being. It leads to an endless series from

some to an other, and so on _ad infinitum:_ everything as a somewhat,

as a determinate being, in reality, presupposes a something else, and

that again has some third thing; and so the chain is extended with

its everlasting _And,_ And, And, (as in the children's way of telling

a story). Somewhat-ness is always vexed by the fact that it is not

somewhat else: and for that very reason, ceasing to be the primary

object, it becomes somewhat else itself; and the other term becomes the

somewhat. And so the same story is repeated in endless progression,

till one gets wearied with the repetition of finitude which is held out

as infinite.

Thus in determinate being as in mere being we see the apparent fixity

resolved into a double movement--the alteration from some to somewhat

else, and _vice versa._ But a movement like this implies after all

that there is a something which alters: which is alterable, but which

alters into somewhat. This somewhat which alters into somewhat, and

thus retains itself, is a being which has risen above alteration, which

is independent of it because including it: which is _for itself,_ and

not for somewhat else. Thus in order to advance a step further from

determinate and alterable being, we have only to keep a firm grasp

on both sides of the process, and not suffer the one to slip away

from the other. We must not merely _say,_ but energise the unity of

the two 'antithetical yet inseparable' elements we are naturally

disposed to take and leave only as One _and_ an Other. Something

becomes something else: in short, the one side passes on to the other

side of the antithesis, and the limitation is absorbed. The new result

is something _in_ something else: the limit is taken up within: and

this being which results is its own limit, i. e. no restrictive limit

at all, but self-imposed characteristic and definiteness. It is

Being-for-self:--the third step in the process of thought under the

general category of Being. The range of Being which began in a vague

nebula, and passed into a series of points, is now reduced to a single

point, self-complete and whole.

This Being-for-self is a kind of true infinite, which results by

absorption of the finite. The false infinite, which has already come

before us, is the endless range of finitude, passing from one finite

to another, from somewhat to somewhat else, until _satiety_ sets in

with weariness. The true infinite is _satisfaction_,--the inclusion

of the other being into self, so that it is no longer a limit, but a

constituent part in the being. Such inclusion in the unity of an idea,

of elements which are realistically separate, is termed 'ideality.' The

antithesis is reduced to become an organic and dependent part. It still

exists, but as no longer outside and independent. Thus in determinate

being the determinateness is found in somewhat else: in being-for-self

the determinateness is self-realisation. Being-for-self may be shortly

expressed by 'one' or 'each': as determinate being a, or an, or by

'some': and Being simple has no nominal equivalent. As 'some' is always

fractional or partial, 'each' is always a whole or unit. Mere Being has

not the consistency of any noun or pronoun: it is the bare (impersonal)

verb.

But 'each for self' expresses the sentiment of an armed neutrality

with implicit leanings to universal war,--the _bellum omnium contra

omnes._ Each is self-centred, independent, resting upon self, and not

minding anything else,--which is now thrown out as indifferent into the

background. Each is centripetal; anything else is for it a matter of no

moment. If determinate being was something to be explained by something

other, this is or professed to be self-explanatory, and rests upon

itself. It seems purely affirmative, and promises to give a definite

unity. But we cannot free thought from negation in this sphere, any

more than in the earlier. We may, if we like, assert the absolute

self-sufficingness, primariness, and unalterability of each; but a

very little reflection shows the opposite to be true. The very notion

of each is exclusiveness towards the rest: a negative and, as it were,

polemical attitude towards others is the very basis of Being-for-self.

One after one, they each rise to confront each, each excluding each,

until their self-importance is reduced to be a mere point in a

series of points, one amongst many. When that is clearly seen, their

qualitative character has disappeared: and there is left only their

quantity.[9] The negative attitude of each to each forms a sort of

bond connecting them. If to the reference which connects we give the

name of attraction, then we may say that the repulsion of each against

each is exactly equal to their mutual attraction. And thus, in the

language of Hobbes, the universal quarrel is only the other side of the

general union in the great Leviathan: repulsion, in the shape of mutual

fear, is the principle of attraction. Thus each for self is repeated

endlessly: instead of the atom or unit we have a multitude, utterly

indifferent to what each is for itself. The mere fact that it is,

entitles it to count, and so constitutes quantity. Here we may shortly

recapitulate the categories of Quality or Being Proper. It forms three

steps or grades: those of indeterminate being: determinate being:

self-determined being: or if we speak of them as processes, we have

becoming: alteration: attraction and repulsion[10]. From the extreme of

abstraction and concentration thought, under the form of Being, passes

on to greater determinateness and development. The fixity of mere

Being is seen to imply a distinction of elements, and a dependence of

one upon the other: where the 'is' and 'is not' part from each other

sufficiently to let us distinguish them. This is the stage of finitude:

when we say that there is somewhat, but there are others, and imply

that any one has an end, a limit, a negation in its nature. These

words describe the finite scene,--a fragmentary being which makes an

advance upon indeterminateness, but loses its wholeness and is always

and necessarily leading on to something else. It is the revulsion

from the vague and yet unspecified universal to definite and limited

particulars. In the third stage the limit is uplifted and included in

the particular, which now contains its negation in itself,--is (by

accepting its dependence) independent, is its own ground, and may be

called an individual. But an individual, again, implies an aggregate

of ones, or a multitude. This being-for-self is an individual or atom:

it is the basis of those higher developments known as subjectivity and

personality. These are, as it were, higher multiples of it.

This first sphere of thought, apparently so abstruse and unreal in its

abstractions, had to be thus narrowly discussed because it presents

all the difficulties and peculiarities of Hegel in their elementary

form. They are clearly the fundamental problems of ancient Greek

philosophy--of that first or fundamental philosophy which discusses

Being and its intrinsic attributes or accidents. Modern superficiality

has sometimes reproached these old thinkers (who, forsooth, 'knew no

language but their own') for their tiresome insistence on this problem

of Is and Is not. Compared, indeed, with what are called topics of

interest, e. g. the Soul and the Hereafter, or the origins of the

Cosmic process, tiresome such inquiry is. But it is the bitter lesson

of experience that till such fundamentals are at least critically

surveyed, the interesting topics will still (and in more than one

sense) belong to the Unknowable. Herbart not less than Hegel sees it is

the prime business of philosophical criticism (i. e. of philosophy) to

examine thoroughly those primary notions on which the whole structure

of thought rests. It is on the comprehension of the radical limitations

latent in the seemingly simplest terms of thought, that the profoundest

problems of human interest ultimately turn.

Thus, in the first place, the process of Being, as seen in the light

of the whole system of Logic, shows that reality is truly known only

as a trinity,--or perhaps rather as a duality in unity. This is the

'Notion' or 'Grasp' of Being. First, reality seems an unspecialised

and self-centred being,--and that by itself is mere nothing: a mere

_universal._ Second, it appears a specialised and differentiated being

of some and other: a mere _particular_, limited by other particulars,

and so finite. Third, as a combination of the two earlier stages:

as wholeness with determinateness, as unity; and so an _individual_

which is the _true_ or complete and authentic character of all being.

In the _metaphysics_ of Being these three elements follow, one after

another: but in the _logic_ of the notion they interpenetrate, and

each of them is the others and the total. The truth or the notion of

being takes it in Being-for-self as a universalised particular or

as an individual.--In the second place: the sphere of mere Being is

that of _mere_ identity: that of determinate being is the sphere of

otherness, difference: that of self-determined being is the sphere of

well-grounded existence.--Thirdly: the first sphere may be illustrated

by the freedom of indeterminateness, expressed by the word 'may': the

second by necessity or determinateness, expressed by the word 'must':

and the third, by the freedom which even in its determinateness

is self-determining, expressed by the word 'will.'--Fourthly:

these steps illustrate the meaning of the Hegelian technical terms

_setzen_: _aufheben: an sich_: _für sich_: _Idealität: Realität._

Thus Determinate Being or somewhat is _an sich_ or implicitly (by

implication) somewhat else: and the process of determinate being

is to lay it down or express (_setzen_) it as such. When this

explicitly-stated 'other' or limit is included in the Being, and

reduced into a unity with somewhat in each Being-for-self, it is said

to be '_aufgehoben_'--uplifted, as it were, so that it is no longer a

separate existent, but is still an efficient element. As being partly

_this,_ and partly _that,_ now _one,_ and now an _other,_ which limits

and is limited, determinate being is _Realität._ The characteristic

of reality is externality of its parts, which are thus left side by

side quasi-independent: that of ideality is unity and solidarity of

function. When the mutual dependence of elements is tightened till

it becomes equivalent to unity and totality, these elements are seen

in their Ideality (_Idealität_). Such a total has the others in it

as elements (_Momente_); they are there ideally (_ideëller Weise,_)

as it were (in the loose analogical use of that term) organically:

that is, they are denied the privilege, which their total has, of

being-for-themselves. They do not enjoy the benefit of their own being,

though their presence is felt.--Fifthly: Being-for-self is absolute

negativity; i.e. the negation of negation. Determinate being was a

negation of Being mere and simple: Being-for-self is the negation of

this, and so a return to true affirmation, as including the element of

negation.

Being seemed to describe a complete reality. But its latent limitation

has become explicit. It only retains itself by a self-assertion which

leaves it a mere abstract unit, or atom,--a unit with nothing in it

to be united,-and where it matters not whether it be somewhat or

other. The quality of Being, in which all qualitative attributes are

lost and sunk, is Quantity: the characteristic of which is to be a

matter of no importance to Being, as it originally presents itself.

In other words, whilst Quality is identical with Being,--while Being

means qualitativeness, and the Being of a thing means its quality, or

constitution; Quantity is external to Being, and a thing is, while its

quantity undergoes all sorts of variation. At least this is true within

certain limits: for quantity is not an ultimate category any more than

quality. But for the present the truth of quality is quantity; or, in

other words, if a thing is to be anything definite it must ultimately

rest on a solid atom: must be a unit and amenable to measurement. First

come qualities, such as sweet, green, and the like: these seem to be

truth and reality to the senses and the natural mind: and in their

universality are represented by the abstract terms of qualitative

being. The first step in the progress of knowledge consists in seeing

that quality presupposes quantity. Number, in short, is the proximate

truth to which the vague qualitative distinction of _a, some,_ and

_each_ is to be reduced. The qualitative differences of sounds are

reduced to relations or ratios of number: and so are the other data of

sensation. We see this truth recognised in the Atomic School, which

may be taken to represent the summing-up of that period of thought

which begins with the 'Being' of Parmenides, and the 'Becoming' of

Heraclitus. When Democritus says that, although bitter and sweet are

conventional distinctions, yet in reality there is only atoms and

void[11], he is introducing a distinction between real and apparent.

But again the irregular and sporadic appearances of species of quality

are replaced by a gradual and regular series of quantities. With mere

Being you have a conception quite unfit for describing the manifold

reality. But by breaking up the whole Being into a countless number of

atoms of being, you get the means of establishing an equation between

a given sensible and some multiple of the atomic unit. Thus Atomism,

with its many bits of being and its interfluent non-being in which they

can unite, replaces the total and complete universe of being and its

attendant shadow of unreality, the world of opinion. Still the _Is not_

clings to the _Is_: if each atom seems complete, they are subject to a

necessity which forces them by negation, i. e. by the void (as Atomism

figuratively calls the repulsion of the atoms) to meet each other and

form apparent unities. Before a step could be made to higher problems,

it was necessary to see that the proximate truth of the qualitative

world,--or world of sense proper (ἰδία αἴσθησις) is in its simplest

terms a quantitative world, or world of common sensibles (κοινὰ

αἴσθητα), universalised sensibles, number and quantity.

The sphere of quantity need only be briefly sketched. It has its three

heads: (1) quantity in general,--the universal and vague notion of

quantitativeness, the mere conception of reality as the Great and the

Little, or the More and Less[12]: (2) Quantum, or defined quantity,

expressed in the shape of a number: and (3) the quantitative ratio

or degree, which is the individualisation or self-determination of

numbers, or their application to one another,--which gives the real

meaning and value of numbers. The fundamental antithesis, which

we found in quality, comes before us here more definitely as the

opposition of many ones in one number. In every quantity there are the

two elements: the 'one,' unity or solidarity, which renders a total

number possible, and the 'many' or multiplicity, which gives it real

body and character. By this quantitative law, reality must always be

both Continuous and Discrete. Thus when I regard a line as consisting

of a number of points I treat it as a discrete quantity: as many in

one. When, on the other hand, I regard the line as the unity of these

points, it becomes a continuous quantity. These distinctions are not

so trivial as they may appear: they lie at the bases of paradoxes like

those by which Zeno disproved the ordinary representations of motion,

and when a M.P. informs the House of Commons that it is impossible

to divide 73l. 1s. 6d. by 1l. 2s. 6d., he is, like Zeno, and perhaps

more unconsciously, forgetting that these quantities are not merely

continuous but discrete.

The Pythagoreans, according to the tradition of antiquity,

philosophised number. In it they found the reality, or the principle

of things,--the characteristic feature which dominated existence, and

by which the world in all its multiplicity could be made coherent

and intelligible. They saw it composed of two elements: a limit or

limiting, and an unlimited: the latter as it were a dark ground,

measureless and endless, on which definiteness was gradually marked

out. Such a limiting principle would be e. g. the unit of number. But

the full definiteness of number only comes out when a numerical scale

is fixed on, in which each number bears a definite ratio to what goes

before and what comes after. Each number in such a scale is really a

multiple of its unit: a product of its unity into its multeity, of the

monad into the indefinite duad. It is this view of each number, as the

product of its prime unit with the ratio, which comes explicitly to

the fore in Degree, or quantitative ratio. Each so-called quantitative

statement is thus a ratio between a given quantity in the object and an

assumed standard or unit of number.

These implications latent in quantitative order or determination come

out in mensuration. If quantitative or numerical precision is to have

a real basis, it presupposes the existence of a qualitative atom or

unit which shall be the Measure. Measure is therefore the truth and the

unity of quantity and quality: each refers forward and backward to the

other, and both lead up to or imply a modulus, or standard unit. Such

a standard unit may seem, at first sight, to be a matter of arbitrary

choice and imposition. There seems to be no ultimate reason for taking

the foot or the cubit as unit of measurement: and if the original foot

or cubit be the king's limb, it is easy to say that the whole thing is

conventional and artificial. But it is evident on further reflection,

first that the foot or the pace is the natural and primitive measurer

of lengths of space for the human being, and secondly that the

particular foot which is imposed as the measure is taken as being

normal and typical. So too it is partly arbitrary choice which fixes

upon the starting-point for the scale of temperatures: but here also

the range from freezing-point to boiling-point of the commonest of

liquids affords a sufficient standard from which naturally to carry on

the scale above or below it.

What happens is therefore that what is the rule, the standard,--we

may also say, the test of being, is the natural mean or average. The

measure presents itself as the permanent and regular proportion of

quantity and quality. It is the amount or quantity at which things

settle down in equilibrium and produce the quality or characteristic

feature of the object. To say that Measure is the supreme category

or the truth of being--of that superficial being which merely is--of

the mere fact of perception--is to say that the prime or governing

feature of reality, its obviously dominant characteristic in this

sphere, is a self-imposing harmony and proportion. It naturally

arranges itself--defines and describes itself in rhythmic series, in

regular scales, in symmetrical schemes. All things are in geometrical

proportion, self-defined and uniformly graded. Such a conception and

category of reality may be said to be peculiarly Greek. The doctrine

of the Mean is well known as a principle of their popular Ethics. But

the Mean is an average which is regarded as a Normal,--a regular and

permanent mode of being which is equivalent to a standard. The rule is

given by the logic of facts and of nature. There is in it an apparent

optimism--a belief that what is predominant and fundamental is right:

a doctrine of immanent symmetry and order. The mere habitual custom

is as such held to be the right and good. It is true, no doubt, that

Protagoras came to point out that this Measure was not inherent in

things, but came from Man, the measure of all things: and that the

later philosophy had to show how the conception of reality should

be re-construed, if the objectivity of Measure and symmetry in the

universe were still to be maintained. Still even with this correction

the belief remained down to the Stoic School that being is essentially

self-ordering: that Nature is immanent proportion.

The Measure thus emerging as the Mean, which stands out as the

permanent background or recurrent same amidst varying extremes, is

set against these divergencies and used to measure them. It has to

serve as a denominator for all of these: or each of these differences

has a definite ratio to it. For that purpose it must be so graded or

present such a scale that the smallest difference from it that exists

may be measured, estimated and defined in terms of it. It is here out

of place to consider how this can be accomplished,--how mensuration in

any case is solved as a problem of scientific determination. What is

more important is to note the fact that appearances everywhere start up

to testify to the incompatibility of the two elements in measure,--to

their tendency to fly away from each other. It is only within certain

ranges that quantity and quality change proportionately to each other.

The colour spectrum, the scale of musical notes, the series of chemical

combination, the order of the planets, all are found in experience up

to some point to follow a symmetrical order, and exhibit a measure.

But after that point is reached, a sudden change or transition occurs.

There is a break in the continuity of being: without warning, a new

series of physical manifestation, having a new rule or measure, emerges

by a sort of catastrophe. So also, it is only to a certain portion of

the process of physical order in the human body that psychical changes

are found to correspond. Everywhere the correspondence or harmony or

proportion of immediate fact has its breaks,--its sudden emergencies

into a new range of being.

It is on the repeated evidence of this fact--the discontinuity of

immediate being, the inexplicable gulfs which separate its ordered

provinces from one another, that we rise to the distinction of two

orders or grades of being: a double aspect of reality. The primitive

consciousness is, we may suppose, confined to one level of being, one

world. And so long as the facts remain within limits there is no need

to go further. The measure is the rule. But the uniformity breaks

down abruptly[13]: the rule has its inevitable exceptions: it is no

law or principle, but only the factual majority within a fixed range.

Thus the measure, to fulfil all that is expected of it, and be a full

expression or definition of reality, must go beyond a mere measure:

must become the essence, or rather give place to the essence. In order

to explain the irregularity and want of measure which turns up if we

exceed the narrow provinces of being, we are forced on the conception

of a being, one permanent and the same, set in relation, antithetical

but inseparable, to an other being, manifold, changing, and different.

The undying rhythm, the ceaseless symmetry retreat into the further

region--the world beyond: while the older surface-being, as set against

it, comes to be a mere phenomenon or appearance, a derivative and

dependent something, which has its roots of being in the underlying

law and essential reality. But the two planes are still in intimate

connexion, in a correlation which becomes more and more palpable as its

implications are disclosed and realised.

This change from Measure to Essential Being is one which Greek

philosophy seems to exhibit in the step from Pythagoreanism to

Platonism. Plato himself has noted the passage from what have been

called the mathematical to the metaphysical categories, and insisted

on the essential and higher truth to which mathematics only point.

Mathematical terms give the supreme definiteness to the world of being;

they show it as in its several compartments a world immanently ordered

and measured. As in Greek Art, all seems to be fully brought to the

surface: as the image suggests no further and deeper meaning, but

affords an absolute identity of aspect and purport; so the natural and

semi-popular philosophy of Greece was satisfied for its ethics with the

proportionate, the becoming, the beautiful. Plato however passes beyond

the surface, and reflects the apparent fact on a deeper permanent

reality behind. That reality is still, in name, only the 'form' or

'shape'-- only the regular and permanent type--only the measure. But

it is called the really real, the _ὄντως ὄν_,--the being of being. In

it the truth is clear, transparent, one and systematic, which in the

sensible or immediate world is obscure, confused, multiple. It is the

key to explain the difficulties and irregularities of the first and

visible scene. Yet even Plato never for a moment forgets the essential

correspondence of the two realms, however he may insist upon their

separation, and however hard he may find it to explain how being can be

duplicated, how the one can be many and yet not cease to be one, how

appearance has part in reality.

This indeed is not a difficulty confined to Plato. It is, after all,

the same antithesis as we found in the beginning: the Is which lapses

into the Is not. It now becomes the play of positive and negative--of

perpetual relativity: of a known dependent on an unknown, and an

unknown interpreted by a known: an essence guaranteed by its show

or seeming and a _Schein_ which supposes permanent _Sein._ How can a

thing be, and yet not be true? How can pleasures seem and not be real?

Aristotle, taking up the Platonic antithesis of true and apparent

being, carries it on into greater detail. Matter and form: possibility

and actuality: are amongst his cardinal pairs of correlatives. But

he is anxious to maintain their essential relativity: to show that

reality only is and maintains itself as the unity of the two poles of

universal and particular, reason and sense, or as a syllogism and a

development. So far as he succeeds in doing this, Aristotle rises above

the correlational view of reality into the comprehension of it as a

unity, which carries itself through difference into self-realisation.

[Footnote 1: What he did show was that these Ideas were not objects in

the vulgar sense of reality, or things.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. the controversy between Schiller and Goethe as to idea

and observation, quoted by Whewell, _Scientific Ideas_, i. 36.]

[Footnote 3: The use of the substantival form _Being_ for the verbal

(participle, infinitive, or indicative) suggests an idea of permanence

and substance, or essence. So potentiality seems much more real than

_may_ or _can._ And yet the phrase He knows δυνάμει is only equivalent

to He can or may know (δύναται or ἐνδέχεται).]

[Footnote 4: When it is said that: 'It is strange that so profound a

thinker as Hegel should not have seen that the conception of definite

objects, such as a _dog_ and _cat_, is prior no less in nature than in

knowledge to the conception of abstract relations, such as _is_ and _is

not,'_ it is difficult to say what the writer meant. Had he ever heard

of geometry? Both in nature and in knowledge (i. e. in the natural

process from sense to thought) chairs and tables are prior to lines

and surface. The mathematical point and line are abstractions, i. e.

thoughts, and no image of sensuous reality. It is also true that the

ordinary conception of the sun's movements was 'prior no less in nature

than in knowledge' to the theory of the earth's rotation. And no doubt

Hegel, sedate though his boyhood was, had made the acquaintance of dog

and cat in his pre-logical days: as of balls and windows before he was

turned upon Euclid. See Mansel's _Letters_, _Lectures_, &c., p. 209.]

[Footnote 5: As _Being_ to ordinary unthinkingness seems to mean a

great deal it cannot expound, so the mind full of the mystic depths of

time and space is disgusted to find them turn so empty and shallow when

it would set forth its wealth. See Augustin. _Confess._ xi. 14.]

[Footnote 6: This may be illustrated by saying that to _affirm_ is the

same energy of thought as to _deny,_ and that the difference lies in

the terms related by the judgment. _In themselves,_ the one act is as

empty or meaningless as the other.]

[Footnote 7: Heine, _Ueber Deutschland (Werke),_ v. 213.]

[Footnote 8: πᾱσα οὐσία δοκεῑ τόδε τι σημαίνειν (Ar. _Cat._ 5).]

[Footnote 9: Hence the disparaging sense in which the term 'individual'

may be used.]

[Footnote 10: These latter terms being used in a metaphorical sense.]

[Footnote 11: νόμῳ γλυκὺ καὶ νόμῳ πικρόν ἐτεῇ δὲ ἃτομα καὶ κενόν.

Democritus ap. Sext. _Empir. adv. Math._ vii. 135.]

[Footnote 12: Aristotle's μᾱλλον καὶ ἦττον: see _Metaph._ i. 6 τὺ μέγα

κaὶ τὸ μικρον.]

[Footnote 13: Thus, the sharp break at death suggests the reference of

vital phenomena to a substantial soul.]

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE LOGIC OF EXPLANATION AND REALISTIC METAPHYSICS: ESSENCE.

The coherence and consistency of being was, it appeared in the last

chapter, only to be maintained by assuming it to fall into two planes,

or orders, always however relative to each other. The need of a measure

forced itself upon even the superficial student. In the ordinary

business of economical life one commodity of common use or of general

acceptability steps into the place of a common measure. At first it is

no more than one amongst many, a more suitable and convenient means of

discharging the task of mensuration. But gradually it draws away into

a world of its own, and acquires in common estimation a unique and

peculiar dignity. It becomes a commodity of a higher order than the

common, and is even treated as if it had intrinsic and inherent worth,

apart from all relations of exchange. In a further stage it rises to

rank as an invariable and almost supersensible standard, which amid all

the fluctuations of currency tends to remain unchanged. One loses sight

of the movement out of which it grew and in which it exists--the social

give and take, the interaction of individual needs and general opinion.

The characteristic feature of this sphere of thought is the perpetual

antithesis of terms. And its tragedy is the result of the tendency to

separate the terms, and treat them as independently real. It matters

not how often this error may be detected. Each side of the antithesis

no doubt reflects itself upon the other. But we as constantly fail to

note that reflection. Even the philosopher who most loudly preaches

relativity falls into the common trap, and speaks of relatives as

ultimate and absolute. He talks of an Unknowable, as if it could be

without a Known (or Knowable): whereas no such term fully manifests

itself. Each term owes its distinct existence to its correlative:

each gives itself over to the other, and invests it with meaning

and authority. Accordingly when even the ordinary mind, which takes

these categories as they are given, is asked what each means, it can

only reply by referring to the other. A cause is _that_ which has an

effect. The dialectic in the nature of thought,--its self-revising

self-conscious nature--which was concealed in the First Part of Logic,

where one term, when carried to its extreme, passed over into another,

is made obvious in the Second Part, where each term postulates and even

points to its correlative, and, however it may be contra-distinguished,

cannot be thought without it. Thus, force is a meaningless abstraction

without the correlative expression or utterance of force: and matter

means nothing except in its distinction from, and yet reflection on,

form. These, it may be said, are simple and tautological statements.

They are principles, however, which every day sees disregarded. Have

they, for example, been remembered by those theorists who tell us

that everything is ultimately reducible to matter, or who propose to

improve upon that theory by explaining that matter is after all only

another name for force? Forgetting how this reduction is made, they are

dealing with abstractions or mental figments, and losing their way in

an endless maze of metaphysics. Do those who speak so confidently of

laws of nature as something real and effective ever reflect that the

two terms are more or less relative to each other, and that there is

some latent metaphor in the phrase? Or if they prefer to speak of laws

of phenomena, on which word is the accent to be laid? Those who thus

speak of matter and force, really speak of a matter which is formed and

form-possessed, capable of determining its own form, and of a force

which can rule its own exertions: and for such conceptions the words in

question are scarcely adequate representatives. They use the language

of the Second, to express notions which properly belong to the Third

branch of Logic.

The whole range of Essence or Relativity exhibits a sort of see-saw:

while one term goes up in importance, the other term goes down. The

several antitheses, too, have their day of fashion, and give place to

others. Those inquirers who speak of the phenomena of nature shrug

their shoulders at the very mention of essences: and the practical

man, whose field is actuality, acquires a very pronounced contempt

for both abstractions. One class of investigators glories in the

perpetual discovery of differences, and stigmatises the seekers after

identity and similarity as dreamers: while the latter retort, and

name the specialisers empiricists. One intellect considers an action

almost solely by its grounds or motives: another almost solely by

its consequences. Some console themselves for their degradation by

piquing themselves on what they might have been: others despise these

'would-be' minds for what they practically are. What a wealth there

lies in each of us, which our nearest friends know nothing of, and

which has never been made outward! But in this mode of thought, it is

the persistent delusion, misleading science no less than metaphysics

and the reflective thinking of ordinary life, to suppose that either of

two relative terms has an existence and value of its own. In Germany

paper-money is sometimes known as 'Schein' or Show. That term marks its

relativity to the gold or silver currency of the realm: and it would

be as absurd to pay with Austrian paper-money in Persia, as to take

one term of Essence apart from its correlative. The disputes about

essences, about matters and forces, about substance, about freedom and

necessity, or cause and effect, are generally aggravated by a forced

abstraction of one term from another on which its meaning and existence

depend.

The essence may be roughly defined as that measure or standard which

corresponds to the variation of immediate being, and yet remains

identical in all variation. Or, if we like, we may say that this

immediate being, which, as derivative, may now be called existence[1],

has its ground in the essence. The essence is the ground of existence:

and essence which exists is a 'thing,' Such an existing essence or

thing subsists in its properties; and these properties are only found

in the thing. Thus the essence, when it comes into existence as a

thing, turns out to be a mere phenomenon or appearance.--Such briefly

stated is the development of essence proper into appearance.

With the idea of essential being--a permanent which yet changes, there

emerge the problems connected with the double aspect of relation as

identity and difference,--the favourite categories of reflection. These

terms indeed the popular logician would fain avoid as savouring of

pedantic accuracy, and prefers the psychological titles of similarity

and contrast. These, he tends to insinuate, are unique experiences,

direct feelings, beyond which it is impossible to go in analysis.

The logician, on the other hand, must insist on dealing with the

more radical phase of the terms. And he must note their essential

interdependence and their intrinsic contradictoriness. Abstract

sameness, or sameness which does not presuppose a tinge of difference,

is a fiction of weak thought, which wishes to simplify the subtlety

of nature. Identity is a relative term, and for that very reason

presupposes difference: and for the same reason difference presupposes

identity and is meaningless without it. The whole dispute about

'Personal Identity,' as it descends from one English psychologist to

another, is enveloped in the obscurity which springs from failure to

grasp the logical antinomy on which the question turns. When I feel

that my friend whom I have not met for years is still the same, should

I take the trouble to express myself in this manner, unless with

reference to the difference betwixt Then and Now? If I remark that

two men are different, would the remark be worth making or hearing

unless there was some identity which made that difference all the

more striking? The essence is, in short, the unity of sameness and

difference: and when so apprehended, it is the ground by which we

explain existence. The essence, ground, or possibility, is at once

itself and not itself: if it is self-identical, it is for the same

reason self-distinguishing. If it is to be itself, it can only be so

by negativing what in it is other than itself. The affirmation of self

implies the negation of the other of self,--the redintegration (though

not the blank absorption) of the other in it. This is the _crux_ which

lies in _Ex nihilo nihil fit:_ what exists must not be other than

the essence (the effect not more than the cause), and yet unless it

is other and different, there has been no passage from essence to

existence.

The tendency to identify, and the tendency to distinguish, alternate

both in scientific thought and in general culture. But whichever

prevail for the moment, it is only as a re-action and a protest against

the one-sided predominance of the other. And thus both ultimately

rest upon and presuppose a ground of existence which is neither mere

sameness nor mere difference. It is only when the two tendencies meet

and interpenetrate that science accomplishes its end, and discovers

the ground of existence. In the first instance the world presents to

incipient science the aspect of mere identity and of mere difference.

Likeness is confounded with sameness, and unlikeness with diversity.

The popular and the infant minds do not draw fine distinctions. Things

to them are either the same or different: one point of sameness may

in certain conditions obliterate whole breadths of difference; and

tiny divergence may make as nothing all the many points of agreement,

purely and simply, i. e. abstractly. But the process of comparison,

setting things beside each other, teaches us to refine a little, and

speak of things as Like or Unlike. One thing is like another when the

element of identity preponderates: it is unlike, when the difference

is uppermost. Thus while we distinguish things from one another, we

connect them. From mere variety, and mere sameness, we have risen,

secondly, to distinctions of like and unlike. But, thirdly, this

distinction of same and different is in the thing itself. Everything

includes an antithesis or contradiction in it: it is at once positive

and negative. One can only be virtuous, so long as one is not utterly

virtuous.[2] To be a philosopher, implies that you are not wholly or

merely a philosopher. The rational animal is so, because of an inherent

irrationality, and is so, only as rising upon and superseding it. Every

epithet, so to speak, by which you describe any reality, presupposes in

it the negative of the quality. Not only does every negation presuppose

an attempted or surmised affirmation, but an affirmation is always,

it may be said, a re-affirmation against an incipient doubt. Every

stage of reality involves the presence of antithetical but inseparable

elements: every light implies a shadow to set it forth. The epithet

of each real is only _a potiori._ While it retains itself, it must

lose itself. Its positivity is only secured by its self-negation and

its identity is based upon its self-distinction. Every proposition

which conveys real knowledge is a statement that self-sameness is

combined with difference. Every such proposition is synthetical: it

unites or identifies what is supposed to be implicitly different,

or differentiates what seemed only identical. Here we have that

_coincidentia oppositorum,_ which is the truth of essence. Thus, e. g.

the essence of the Self is the contradiction between its self-centred

unity and its existence by self-differentiation into elements.

Essence, thus comprehended as the unity of identity and difference,

as that which is and is not the same, is the Ground, from which an

Existence comes as the Consequent. Or, otherwise expressed, the ground

is the source of the differences,--the point where they converge into

unity, and whence they diverge into existence. Everything in existence

has such a ground: or, as it is somewhat tautologically stated in the

common formula, a sufficient ground. On that account, it is no great

matter to give reasons or grounds for a thing, and no amount of them

can render a thing either right or wrong, unless in reference to some

given and supposedly fixed point. For the ground only states the same

thing over again in a mediate or reflected form. It carries back the

actual fact to its antecedent: and thus deprives it of its abruptness

or inexplicability, by showing you it was there implicitly; and

therefore as you accepted the ground you cannot complain of what but

serves to continue it. To refer to the ground is to say there is really

nothing new: and as you raised no objection before, you need raise none

now.

The Existent world--a world of existents, each conditioning and

conditioned--is popularly described as a world of Things. These

Things are the solid hinges on which turns our ordinary conception of

change and action. They act, and exhibit properties. Being is partly

substantive, partly adjective. The Thing itself is the ground of

its properties: i. e. each thing is looked upon as a unity in which

different relations converge, or an identity which subsists through its

changing states. This is the side emphasised in ordinary life, when

a thing is regarded as the permanent and enduring subject, which has

certain properties. But a little science or a little reflection soon

turns the tables upon the thing, and shows that the properties are

independent matters, which, temporarily it may be, converge or combine

into a factitious unity which we term a thing. But these very matters

cannot be independent or whole, just because they interpenetrate each

other in the thing. The thing, which from one point of view seemed

permanent, and the properties, which from another point of view seemed

self-subsistent matters, are neither of them more than appearance. For

they must be at one, and at one they cannot be. And if we reduce the

various matters to one, and speak of Matter in general, we have a mere

abstraction--a something which only becomes real by being stamped with

a special form. _Mere_ Matter like _mere_ Thing (thing in itself) is a

knowable Unknowable.

In this way we pass from the talk about essence, things, and matter

into an other range of the sphere of relativity. We no longer have

one order of being behind or in the depth, and another referring back

to it. We now speak (as Mill does) of Phenomena:--not phenomena of

an unknown, but, simply disregarding the background, we find all we

want upon the surface. For neither is thing more real than property,

nor essence than existence. Each is exactly equal in reality to the

other, and that reality is its relation to the other. The thing and

the essence with their claim to truth disappear. Nothing truly is:

but only appears to be. The semblance (_Schein_) may refer to an

essential. But the appearance (_Erscheinung_) only refers to another

appearance, and so on. The phenomenal world is all on one level:--as

was the world of immediate being. But, there, each term of being

presented itself as independent: here, nothing is independent--nothing

ever really _is,_ but only represents something else, which is in its

turn representative. Yet even here there is a pretence of hierarchy

in existence. In the phenomenon a certain superiority is attributed

to its Law. But the conception of Law is hard to keep in its proper

place. Either it assumes a permanency--even were it but a permanent

possibility--as contrasted with the coming and passing phenomenon:

and then it is apt to be confounded with a real Essence. Or, on the

other hand, it comes to be looked on as a mere way of colligating

phenomena,--as a mere appearance in the variety of appearance (as it

were an iris in the rain-drops)--a phenomenon of a phenomenon. Such a

distinction between the phenomenon and its law; therefore, is and must

be illusory, or itself only an appearance. As such it is described as

the difference of Form and Content: two terms, which are incessantly

opposed, but which more than most antitheses reveal when pressed the

hollowness of their opposition. For true or developed Form is Content,

and _vice versa._

Instead however of this practical identification of the law of the

phenomenon with the duly-formulated phenomenon itself, it is more

natural to emphasise the discordance of the two aspects of reality,

and yet to acknowledge their essential relativity. This essential

relativity in the phenomenon has a threefold aspect: the relation of

whole and parts; of force and the exertion of force; of inward and

outward. The relation of whole and parts tends to explain by statical

composition: the relation of force and its exertion, by dynamical

construction. According to the former the parts are constituted by

their dependence upon and in the whole, and yet the whole is composed

by the addition of the several parts together. Each extreme is what

it is only through the other. Only those parts can make up a whole,

which somehow have the whole in them: and to become the whole, they

must contrive to wholly obliterate their partitional character. A

better exhibition of the inner unity and the difference between form

and contents is seen in the relation of a force to its exertion. Here

the contents appear under a double form: first, under the form of mere

identity, as force,--secondly, under the form of mere distinction,

as the manifestation of that force. Yet a force is only such in its

utterance or manifestation, while in that utterance, if abstracted

from the force it carries forth, all energy has been superseded.

This separation of content and form, or of content as developed in

two forms, appears still more clearly in the third relation: that

of outward and inward. This is a popular distinction of very wide

application in reference to phenomena. But neither outside nor inside

is anything apart from its correlative. If the elements implied in the

conception of phenomena are to have full justice done them, it must be

expanded so as to give expression to these two phases, to include the

outward and the inward. But at first only by reverting to something

like the old distinction of essence and existence,--an essence however

which is existent or phenomenal, and an existence which stands

independent, though in correlation. Such being is Actuality--being, i.

e. which is what it must be, and must be what it is.

Actuality, though it comes under the general head of Essence, tends

to pass away into another sphere. Here, as elsewhere, we see that

the general rubric of a sphere is only partially applicable to some

of its subordinate sections. In essence proper there were, or were

assumed to be, two grades of being--a real or essential, and an

unessential or seeming: or being was regarded (contradictorily) both

as ideal (as one thing) and real (as having several properties). In

Appearance or Manifestation the aspects of being are supposed to lie

on a level; but they are always a pair of aspects, one side of which

is entirely dependent for its explanation on a reflection from the

other, e. g. whole and parts, the favourite category for explaining

the larger unities. But in the category of actuality there is nothing

so merely potential, so unessential as mere essence recognised: and

each actual is something firm and self-supporting which does not,

like a phenomenon, merely borrow its reality from its antithesis or

correlative. Thus we have, in a way, got back to the characteristics

of immediate being: only, as we find it, we have this affirmation of

the self-subsistence of reals contradictorily accompanied with the

conviction of their necessary interdependence. It is a reflective (or

correlated), not an immediate reality. There is no other world of being

to have recourse to for explanation now: nor can we play back and

forward from aspect to aspect of a reality which never comes forward

itself, but only as a reflection on or from another. The world of

reality is a self-contained world: its parts and phases are each hard

realities: and for that reason they bear hard upon each other in the

bond of necessity.

The total actuality falls naturally in our conception into three

elements. We separate first the central fact--the nucleus of the

business, the concentrated reality in reality: the fact in its

mere identity and inner abstractness: the ultimate drift or inner

possibility of things. Then we turn to the rest of the concrete

fact--all without which the fact would not be itself--the detail

and particularity: this we treat as a sort of materials or passive

conditions from which the real fact is to be produced, on which it

is dependent and which precede it in time. Lastly, in order to get

back the unity of the fact from these two unconnected elements, we

refer to some agency which puts them together. The End--or thing to

be realised--(so to speak) has to be brought out by a motive agency

(efficient cause) which imposes the form (or general character) on

the matter and makes these one. By this analysis, however, we have

only put asunder what is one experience and introduced a mechanical

(external) unifier needlessly. The name of _conditions_ is given to the

particulars or details, considered apart from the rest of the fact,

and hypothetically invested with an existence anterior to it, with

the implication, first, that they are self-subsistent, and secondly,

that they to some extent involve the rest of it. Again, the general

fact, the fact in its mere nominal or abstract generality or essence,

its mere possibility, does not exist separately: every fact when in

thought completed has its so-called conditions not outside it, but as

constituent elements, aspects, or factors in it. Lastly, the so-called

agency is the active element itself in the act, an aspect or factor

in the totality: the aspect which keeps actuality together as a

self-energising fact--a _Thathandlung_ and not a mere _Thatsache_ (to

quote Fichte's phrase). Our practical and technical habits, where the

agent is other than his materials and aims, lead us to draw the same

distinctions in the realm of total Nature: they are aspects useful _in

ordine ad hominem_ which we, without due modification, apply _in ordine

ad Universum._

It is originally in our practical operations that the distinctions

of necessary and possible emerge,--with a view to the accomplishment

of our desires and purposes. That is necessary which is required and

needed if some bare plan is projected and is to be actualised: it is

the condition or conditions without which the end cannot be attained.

It is an epithet of the means. Possible, on the contrary, is an

epithet of the end or plan, and denotes that there are means for its

attainment, without however always specifying that this is known of the

present or given instance. It is clear that everything as regards the

application of these terms will depend on the definiteness with which

the plan is conceived, both in itself so to speak and in its relations

with the rest of the circumstances. On the other hand, when a result

emerges without being included in the purpose, and without any means

having been employed for attaining it, it is said to be a chance,

accident, or contingency.

These terms are applied by analogy to the uses of theoretical

explanation. Just as in will you have a general aim to begin with,

which becomes more and more determinate as it moves forward in the

volitional process to execution; so in the attempt to understand the

world you suppose it first of all the mere shadow or phantom of itself,

a promise and potentiality of things to come: a next-to-nothing,

which however you credit with a magic wealth of potential being. So

much indeed may this possibility be emphasised that nothing more

is needed: it is possible, and, without a thought of difficulties

and counteractives, you could swear that it is actual[3]. Being

removed above this solid land of actuality, cut off from the ties

and bonds of conditions, it fancies itself moving in its vacuum;

and being free from all bonds of actuality fancies itself actually

free, or self-disposing, whereas it can only claim this _liberum

arbitrium indifferentiae,_ so long as it remains bare and powerless

possibility--a mere may-be, which, apart from all conditions, would

exist only by a mere contingency, or freak of chance. This mere

potentiality--being only an ante-dated, presupposed, and hypothetical

actuality--being only a substance or substratum--must be raised out

of its supposititious existence into reality by means of appropriate

conditions. These conditions are necessary to its resuming its place

or reaching a place in actuality. Thus each object becomes actual or

real from a presupposed possibility by means of an external necessity.

As in the former case the possibility was identified with power,

and conditions were left out of sight as comparatively unimportant:

so here the possibility--taken to lie at the root of the thing--is

made a mere susceptibility, which would be nothing actual unless

stimulated and necessitated from outside. This necessity in the very

heart of actuality (which is its characteristic to the reflectional

mode of mind) thus arises from the separation and hypostatisation

of its elements into independent powers which are so far in stress

and opposition. This is the climax of metaphysics--if metaphysics

be the investiture of the dynamic factors of the notion with the

power and character of supposed agents or forces. It appears in

three phases, with the three categories of substance, cause, and

reciprocity. To the first, reality is regarded as dominated by its

mere underlying potentiality: the reality of the mere superficial

contingents is controlled by the necessity of its latent or substantial

being. To explain event or incident, here, is merely to bind it

to the generic nature or the intrinsic doom, which--unexplained

and inexplicable--manifests itself in an extrinsically fluctuating

appearance of facts: e. g. the single crime is explained as the product

of social conditions. Under the conception of Causality, each thing is

a mere might-be which owes all its actuality to a definite antecedent

or cause,--an antecedent termed for the moment unconditional, but anon

reduced to dependence on further conditions. The effect is as a fact:

but would not have been so unless for an earlier fact--i. e. unless the

effect in a supposed earlier stage of its growth had been helped on by

certain conditions or circumstances to acquire actual and full being in

the effect. And cause and conditions can change places, according to

what we happen to regard as the central nucleus or inner possibility

of the effect. Lastly, the conception of reciprocity recognises that

causality is rather an arbitrary simplification of reality into strands

of rectilinear event; it remembers that Substance emphasises the

dependence of each non-independent element on the supposed totality

which they grow from, and doing so, it lays down the reversibility

and essential elasticity of the causal relation. The cause in causing

re-acts upon itself, and the effect is itself a cause of the effect,

active as well as passive. The dependence in short is all-environing:

nowhere is there any loop-hole to escape from necessity. Motives act

on purpose, and purpose acts on motives: the stone hurls back the hand

that hurled it.

Explanation is thus baffled and thus forced to recognise its own

limitations. The simplest fact is beyond all the powers of explanatory

science to do full justice to: for to know fully the 'flower in the

crannied wall' after this method of explanation would involve endless

multiples of action and re-action. The antinomy between necessity

and contingency arose by following out the antithesis, so natural to

us, between selfsame and different, essence and existence, substance

and accidents, till they were invested with a right to independent

place and function. But the separation of the abstract receptacle

of possibility, self-same and essential, from the equally abstract

conditions which fill it up and make it actual, is only the great

human instrumentality of comprehension, which however is not reached

until each thing is realised and idealised as an individual, which

has universality and has particularity, but never either alone.

Its universality is possibility--its particularity the aspect of

contingency: but these aspects are in submission to an inclusive unity.

The real when ill known seems contingent; when somewhat better known

it seems necessary by external (physical) compulsion; in its truth

to intelligence, the real is a self-active, a _causa sui,_ or it is

necessary by that self-determination which is the freedom of autonomy.

The view of the world under the category of actuality (Reality), and

as dominated by the law of causality, is the culminating stand-point

of scientific or reflective realism. It began with a mere descriptive

science, naming and qualifying the successive aspects of being,--with

description which passed through numeration into the definiteness

of measurement. But all such determination was found to imply the

existence of a permanent reality, or at least to involve the reference

of one reality to another, outside of it, and yet not independent

of relations to it, which had to make part of its nature. To the

scientific realist the sum of fact presents itself independent of

consciousness, as a complicated mass of real elements governed by

laws and subject to necessities. Each thing or state of a thing is

explained by reference to something outside it, which is its cause, and

measured by something inside it which is its unit or atomic standard.

Alternately the reference, and the unit are designated arbitrary

(contingent) and necessary (essential): i. e. they are sometimes

considered as only a way of looking at reality[4]--and sometimes as

inevitable implications and conditions of reality.

All this is Objective Logic: or, so far as it does not realise

its implications, it is Metaphysics. Its terms of thought[5] are

in practice treated as elements of a reality which is what it is,

apart from thought-conditions, apart from consciousness. As Hegel

exhibits them in their interdependence, they hint their underlying

thought-nature, which in their empirical applications is hardly

apparent. For to the realistic stand-point mind and subjectivity are

left out of account as only passive onlookers. The realist may no

doubt speak of a Subject: but he means a real, a corporeal self, an

actual amongst other actuals. If he speaks of mind and will, such mind

and will are parts and ingredients in a general scheme of causes and

effects; they are points of transition through which passes the moving

stream of event. They also are things and substances. They are agents

and patients, always both, no doubt but the chief circumstance to note

is that they are actuals, and that even knowledge and will are regarded

as species of action and motion.

When Protagoras laid down his maxim that _Man is the measure of all

things_, he stated, apparently in an ambiguous manner, that the fact

of measure (and all that mensuration implies), and (we may add)

the existence of correlation in actuality, presupposed for their

explanation the assumption of Mind and subjectivity. Mind thus became

the basis of all actuality which claimed to be objective--claimed, in

short, to be actual. The truth and objectivity of the objective lies in

the subjective; Mind is its own measure, i. e. the absolute measure,

and it is self-relation. So Kant had taught and Fichte enforced. The

basis of objectivity is the subjective; but a subjective different

from that so-called by the plain man or by the naive psychologist. By

the subjective he does not, as the plain man, understand the compound

of body and soul, the living and breathing organism amid outer

objects--nor, as the psychological idealist does, a psychical process,

a series or bundle of states of consciousness, always contrasted

with a reality, _the_ reality outside consciousness. It is true that

his language resembles the language of psychology: as Herbart and

others have said, that is to be expected, for he talks of mind and

consciousness. But the consciousness he speaks of is a unity that

includes all space and all time: it is one and all-embracing, infinite,

because not as individual (psychological) consciousness set in

antithesis to reality, as the other half of the duality of existence.

It is consciousness generalised_--Bewusstsein überhaupt--_ an eternal,

i. e. a timeless consciousness, an universal i. e. not a localised,

mind:--a necessary Idea, but with an inward self-regulating necessity.

Such a consciousness Fichte called the Absolute Ego: but as we saw

before, the adjective transforms the substantive. Such a consciousness,

which is absolute self-consciousness, is the Idea:--no psychical event,

but the logical condition and explanation of reality whether physical

or psychical. The Idea is the presupposition of epistemology, but

of an epistemology which claims to occupy the place of old usurped

by metaphysics. Metaphysics has no higher category than actuality:

transcendental logic shows that actuality rests in the Idea,--reality

conceived and conception realised.

[Footnote 1: _Existence,_ as opposed to _Dasein_, should thus imply

the emergence into efficient being from a state of quietude or passive

latency (_Wesen_).]

[Footnote 2: As Aristotle says, The brave man stands his ground, yet

fearing: (cf. Tolstoi: _Siege of Sevastopol_). If he does not fear,

brave is not the word for him.]

[Footnote 3: Put into Greek, the mere ἐνδέχεται (_licet,_ or

_forsitan_) is taken as equivalent to δύναμαι (_possum_).]

[Footnote 4: Herbart's _Zufällige Ansicht_, or contingent aspect.]

[Footnote 5: 'Denkbestimmungen.']

CHAPTER XXXII.

LOGIC OF COMPREHENSION AND IDEALISM: THE NOTION.

The distinction between the psychical or psychological idea and the

logical concept has been more than once alluded to. The idea or

representation is under psychical form exactly equivalent to the

undigested and passively accepted thing to which we give the title of

physical or external. It is the ideal, in the sense of the psychical,

pendant to the real: and hangs up in the mental view in the same way as

the real object to the physical perception. It is in brief the crude

object, considered not as existing, but as a state of consciousness--it

is a reduplication in inner space of the thing in outer space. If we

cannot say it is altogether mythological, we must however note that

it is simply a psychical reflex, which has an existence only through

abstraction, and is neither more or less than the object apprehended

without comprehension.

The concept or notion is more than an image, and less than an image. An

idea-image is symbolical of the unanalysed totality of the thing. But

the notion is in the first instance due to an analysis, and secondly,

a reconstruction of the thing. It takes up the thing in its relations:

it thinks it, i. e. it abstracts and mutilates it, and artificially

recombines. It implies analysis and synthesis. It produces a sort of

manufactured thing: a mental construction. But the construction--as

contrasted with the passivity that says first A and then B and a

connexion of them--has the traces of subjective or mental violence

about it: for violence there is in the act of comprehension. We have

however got together in unity what actuality in the process of history

let fall asunder, and could only, at the best, show as independent

reals held against their will in ubiquitous relations of reciprocity.

But the unity in which the individual sets the universal and the

particular is an imported unity, which though it gives place and

explanation to the elements of reality, seems to impose its synthesis

upon reality. So far the concept is subjective only. It is an ample

explanation including the facts, but not quite self-explanatory. _We_

conceive, and judge, and reason: but all this is alien to the object.

But there is a counterpart almost in antagonism to this. There is

a concept, i. e. a grouping of existence into totals mediated by

necessary links, which presents itself as embodied in things: and

this embodied concept is the objective world. That world, apart from

our interpretation and conception, offers itself as a synthesis of

universal, particular and individual. It groups itself into systems,

mechanical, chemical, and teleological. But in all of these there

is lacking the evidence of the inward and subjective principle of

unification. The unity is external, the members are held in a vice:

their unity is given as a fact: it follows through certain laws and

does not reveal itself. There is a want of perspicuity of connexion:

logic--the need of inner explanation--in short, is not satisfied by

this logic of facts. It is rather a realm of necessity than of freedom.

It wants life; wants true self-activity. As in the subjective notion,

the facts resented the hand of the logician (for here is the sphere

of logic proper in the old Aristotelian sense), and refused to show

themselves in the simple and transparent transitions of his argument:

so the objective synthesis of the members of a mechanical system, or

of a kingdom of means and ends, lacks the freedom and lucidity of

inner movement which logical insight demands. Objectivity--the logic

of fact--is a syllogism of necessity, so hardened and fixed that the

necessity of the conclusion is more obvious than the self-determination

by the syllogism.

The third stage of the Notion shows the union of the pellucidity and

ideality of the syllogistic progress with the necessity and reality

of the objective order. Here actuality and the concept are at one. At

first as a mere fact--or more fact than idea. Life, organic life, is

no doubt development: a totality which is in all its parts, and where

parts have their being in the total. But life as such, the so-called

vital principle, does not emancipate itself to a true universal: it is

immersed in its particulars. Intellectual life, on the contrary,--the

form of consciousness--rises independent and distinct from the

totality of life. Psychology follows Biology. But as such--under the

form of intellect and will--it has an antithesis no less fatal to its

absoluteness than the opposite one-sidedness of life. There is--to

put it in language more familiar to the present day--there is an

analogue of life in all nature; and all reality, even the rock and the

crystal, has its life-history. There is, properly speaking, no mere

inorganic reality: organic life is universal. And then, going a step

further, we attribute to all reality something analogous to a soul, or

a consciousness. We talk, in rash moods, of mind-stuff and feelings,

even in molecules. But as Spinoza has reminded us, terms like Will

and Intellect have about them something finite, because they imply

an antagonism to an object: they are predominantly subjective. The

reality in its final truth must be a subject-object: the adequacy of

thought and being, the equation of real and ideal, the intellection

which is life. And this is called Absolute Idea. It is natural to

translate such an equation, when made a result, into a mere blank.

And a blank it would be, if we suppose all that has gone before

obliterated, and only the result left. Then, in the coincidence of

opposites, we have only a zero of a gulf of negation. A life which _is_

consciousness may seem to fade away like a vague ideal with no reality.

A consciousness which _is_ life can be no consciousness at all. The

_is_ and the _is known_ dare not coincide or they perish both.

A categorical proposition, says Hegel, can never express a speculative

truth. That is to say: the subject over-rides the predicate, or the

predicate makes you ignore the subject. The affirmation keeps out

of sight the negation. To say that life _is_ consciousness makes us

forget that the very assertion would not and could not be made, unless

also life were other than consciousness. In its full proportion of

meaning, therefore, the proposition must imply a return to unity

through difference, to identity through otherness. Affirmation,

fully realised, is re-affirmation through negation. Cognition is but

recognition deepened by contrast. This law which governs--or rather

which is--logic; the principle of identity through contradiction--must

not be lost sight of in the supreme struggle of thought. The Idea is

the unity of life and consciousness: but it is a unity in which they

are (_aufgehoben_)--not a zero in which they utterly collapse.

We may illustrate in two ways. In the first we may compare the

'Ενεργεια of Aristotle. That is his formula of reality. Nominally

it only means activity and actuality: and sums up the metaphysical

formula for what really is,--the hard fact of being. But through it

there glimmers the meaning of consciousness. It not merely is, but

it means what it is. Energy of Soul is the end of life--the supreme

fulfilling of desire, and consummation of tendency. As such it is, and

feels that it is. It is the virtuous deed, which is its own reward. But

Aristotle seems sometimes to fall from that identification of being and

consciousness. The world of _praxis_ parts from the world of _Theoria._

In that case the activity is a mere activity--the outward shell of

action: and then, as a supplement or complement to the abstract result

of the activity the consciousness of achievement gets a distinct

position as Pleasure: and the activity, now no consummation, but only

a means to an end, get its completion from this arbitrarily abstracted

shadow of reality.[1]

The second illustration may come from Mr. Spencer.

'We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can think of Mind

only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations of the

first to the uttermost limit we are referred to the second for a

final answer: and when we have got the final answer of the second we

are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it.' Beyond

this see-saw indeed we cannot go, so as to leave it behind: but in

reality we transcend it. The Mind that is in terms of Matter is partly

the region of psychic event, partly the world of science, art and

religion. And psychic event is always antithetical to physical reality.

But the spiritual world already includes the antithesis of psychical

and physical, and including it keeps it as a principle of life and

consciousness. The supreme or absolute mind does not indeed rise above

Physis and Psyche so as to have no antagonism: but it is the unity of

antitheses.

What those who crave for something higher than this rest in unrest,

this life in consciousness and consciousness in life, want, would

destroy the very condition of reality. Still philosophising, they would

be above philosophy. They want an objective reality in which they may

still their beating hearts,--a 'repose which ever is the same' and

yet is not annihilation:--to sink into the great sea of being, and

leave consciousness with its radical division behind. Such a craving

philosophy, in Hegers hands, has no power of satisfying. It cannot, in

the sense in which Jacobi and Schelling used the words, reveal Being.

It cannot get at the _That_ except by means of the _What,_ and is the

eternal antithesis and correlation of these two. It will always be

rational and logical--for it is its function to think being: and it

will re-affirm that an unthought and a-logical being is a mere name,

which in the language of humanity at least has no meaning, whatever

it may stand for in the Volapük of imagined gods. To go beyond this

correlation of Being and Thought is therefore no advance, but a relapse

into the _Natura Naturans_, which, in its abstract completeness, _is,_

but dare not be anything. Philosophy therefore in its supreme Idea is

still the 'Ενεργεια of θεωρία, and not bare Οὐσία. For it mere Being

is always Nothing. And to be actual it must live in antithesis and

live victorious over antithesis. It follows the law of humanity _(Und

das heisst ein Kämpfer sein_)--which can only exist in warfare as a

church militant, but for continuous existence must also be a church

triumphant. Like religion and art, it sometimes craves for utter union

in the fullness of Being. Such a fullness is the unspeakable and the

vain,--which we may picture as the apathy of Nirvana; but which is the

absorption of Art, Religion and Philosophy,--the cease of consciousness

and an abyss. We may call it--it matters not--Being.

These stages of the Notion must be examined in somewhat fuller detail.

The subjective notion is the effort at the comprehension (at first

subjective) of the two correlated elements into which actuality as

such has been seen to fall--and to fall again and again without

end. It brings out, or explicates (and with some opposition to the

divisions of reality) the unity which was presupposed by the antagonist

and inseparable reals. Hitherto we have had two things or aspects

in relation and move from one to the other by an act of reflection.

But to get two points in relation, they must belong to or exist in

a unity. The divided reality of cause and effect must, if it is to

be intelligible, submit to a unification of its elements. It is

comparatively easy to get on if we are always allowed to have one foot

on solid ground, and can move the other. Give us a standing-point, and

explanation is simplified. But to get a notion of things is, it may

seem, to transcend them, or get beneath them, and take a stand-point

outside actuality which shall unify them. If we added to immediate

being a further element to explain it, it may be said we now superadd

a third to explain the two others. Over and above the different and

related elements, there is assumed to be a unity. And at first it is

certainly such a superimposed element, added to the facts, and regarded

as our way of looking at them, as a subjective notion or grasp, holding

together what is in itself reluctant to be unified.

The three aspects or factors in a Concept are the Universal, the

Particular, and the Individual. These are what Hegel calls the

'moments' or 'vanishing factors' of the notion. They are 'vanishing,'

because in their logical mobility they form a pellucid union: if they

are distinct, yet they refuse to be independent of one another. Or, we

may say, each in its truth is the meeting-ground and unification of

the two others, thus forming a sort of cycle of perpetual movement.

And in this way we may see that the addition of the third has really

been a simplification: it has made two one. For the Unit which welds

together is not a _tertium quid_, but simply the explicit statement

and assertion of the truth implied in the antithesis, which was yet

inseparability, of the two others. And for the same reason, neither

mere universal nor mere particular nor mere individual are full

reality, when taken apart. One can understand how Hegel could speak of

the 'Bacchantelike intoxication' of the concept. It may be illustrated

by the following utterances in which a modern psychologist labours

to express the complex unity of mental fact. First we are told that

a 'nervous shock,' e. g. the awakening caused by a sudden blow, or a

simple sensation (so-called), is the ultimate unit of consciousness.

And if this were all, it would correspond to the qualities of immediate

being, which we can suppose measurable: we should get a science of

purely empirical psychology based on psychical atoms. But, immediately

after, it appears that the 'relational element' is never absent from

the lowest stage of consciousness. Accordingly, besides feelings, there

_must be_ relations between feelings. And that means a good deal:

especially if we also note the proposition that, in truth, 'neither a

feeling nor a relation is an independent element of consciousness,'

Evidently you cannot have either without both, and it seems difficult

to have both when neither is independent. Nor does it mend matters to

learn that 'a relation is a momentary feeling': for that only seems

a way of implying that it is, and yet is not, a feeling. Such are

the difficulties that beset the sincere attempt to comprehend. The

fixed points of explanation stagger under the burden of truth; and

their unsteadiness shows that they lack the full foundation. Yet that

foundation--it must be repeated--is not something extra: it is the

underlying unity which gives life to the relativity of the separates.

For the peculiarity of the Notional stand-point is that it insists on

thorough comprehension. The usual explanation refers us from a later to

an earlier, from a strange to a familiar, from a complex to a simple,

from compound to elements. It keeps analysis and synthesis, induction

and deduction apart. To comprehend is, on the other hand, to light up

earlier by later and later by earlier, and carry both into their unity.

It does not merely refer existence to its ground, phenomenon to law,

or effect to cause; because beyond these it has still to reveal the

unity of nature which carries on one of these into the other. Thus, the

explanatory method in Social Science may either refer us to the simple

elements or parts out of which the total is composed, or to an earlier

stage in the same institution's life. The analytical sociologist

does the former: the historical the latter. Neither really faces the

problem. For if the whole is made up of parts, it is made up of parts

which have been characterised by the whole. If the later has come

from the earlier, that only shows that the nature of the earlier was

inadequately ascertained. Development--which implies a permanent which

changes, an identity which is also different,--is thus more than mere

reference to an antecedent; because the antecedent must also figure as

a simultaneous. _Cessante causa, cessat et effectus._ But here, in the

concept (or λόγος) or syllogism, the permanent exists as the--may we

call it--consciousness which binds together the elements of reality,

as the life and the history, which is ideally continuous through real

changes, and is a real unity through the distinctions of appearance.

Such a comprehension e. g. of the State would show that though it

must have a universal aspect, a particular, and an individual, yet

these are not severally identifiable with the divisions of sovereign,

executive, and people, but that in each of the latter the three

moments of the notion must appear, and that e. g. the people is not

mere people, but also executive and sovereign, just as the sovereign

is no mere sovereign, but also executive and of the people. The same

may be illustrated in the so-called individual. A man in his special

department and sphere of action may very likely lose the sense of his

wholeness and his integrity,--perhaps in more senses than one! He

may reduce himself to the limits of his profession. But in so doing

he becomes untrue, or, in Hegelian parlance, abstract: he fails to

recognise the universality of his position. All work, however petty,

which is done in the right spirit, is holy.

'One place performs, like any other place,

The proper service every place on earth

Was framed to furnish man with: serves alike

To give him note, that through the place he sees

A place is signified he never saw.'

It is a false patriotism, for example, which is inconsistent with the

spirit of universal brotherhood: and there is something radically wrong

with the religion, on the other hand, which cannot be carried into act

amid the pettiness of ordinary practical interests. The universal,

again, is not a world beyond this world of sense and individuals: if it

were so, it would itself be a mere particular. It is rather the world

of sense unified, organised, and, if we may say so, spiritualised.

And an individual which is merely and simply individual is an utter

abstraction, which is quite meaningless, and in the real world

impossible. Or, if we prefer to express the same thing in connexion

with the mind, sensation apart from thought is an inconceivable

abstraction. Sensation is always alloyed with thought, and we can at

the most _suppose_ pure sensation to exist amongst the brutes. The mere

individual opens out and expands: and in that expansion we see the

universal: (sensation is thought in embryo). But, on the other hand,

the developed universal concentrates itself into a point: (thought

returns into the centre of feeling).

The same process of particular, individual and universal, which thus

goes on under the apparent point of the notion, is more distinctly

and explicitly seen, with due emphasis on the several members, in

the evolution of the notion into the Judgment and the Syllogism. The

judgment is the statement of what each individual notion implicitly is,

viz. a universal or inward nature in itself, or that it is a universal

which individualises itself. The judgment may, therefore, in its

simplest terms be formulated as: The Individual is the Universal. The

connective link,--the copula 'is,' expresses however at first no more

than a mere point-like contact of the two terms, not their complete

identity. By a graduated series of judgments this identity between the

two terms is drawn closer, until in the three terms and propositions of

a syllogism the unity of the three factors of the notion finds its most

adequate expression in (subjective) thought.

It may be a question how far syllogisms as they are ordinarily found

are calculated to impress this synthesis of the three elements upon the

observer. The three elements there tend to bid each other good-bye, and

are only kept together by the awkward means of the middle term, and

the conjunction 'therefore.' In these circumstances it becomes easy

to show, that the major premiss is a superfluity, not adding anything

to the cogency of the argument. But under the prominence of this

criticism of form, we are apt to let slip the real question touching

the nature of the syllogism. And that nature is to give their due place

to the three elements in the notion: which in the syllogism have each

a quasi-independence and difference as separate terms, while they are

also reduced to unity. The syllogism expresses in definite outlines

that everything which we think, or the comprehension which constitutes

an object, is a particular which is individualised by means of its

universal nature. As always, thought refers to reality; and a notion

has to be carried out into objectivity. But as Aristotle complained,

matter is recalcitrant to form. The objective appears at first only as

an opposite, and instead of revealing, it rather obscures and condenses

the features of subjectivity.

Objectivity, or the thought which has forgotten its origin and stands

out as a world, may be taken in three aspects: Mechanical, Chemical,

and Teleological. That is to say, the mode in which groups or systems

naturally present themselves in the objective world, is threefold. The

contradiction which stands in the way of comprehending objectivity

comes from the fact that it contains subjectivity absorbed in it. In

other words, the object is at once active and passive; as thought and

subjectivity it should be its own synthetiser, as objectivity it is

necessitated to interdependence, and the subjectivity, at this stage,

is in abeyance. Consequently, either the two attributes co-exist, or

they cancel each other, or they are in mutual connexion.

(1) In the first case the objects are independent, and yet are

connected with one another. Such connexion is an external one, due

to force, impulse, and outward authority. The principle of union is

implied: but the objects are mutually determined from without. The

more, for example, an object acts upon the imagination, the more

vehement is the reaction of the mind towards it.--(2) But if the

object is independent, as has been allowed, then the determination

from without must really come from within. Thus desire is a turning or

bent towards the object which draws it. The desiring soul leans out of

itself. It gravitates towards a centre: and it is its own nature to be

thus centripetal. The lesser objects of themselves draw closer around

the more prominent object.--(3) But if this gravitation were absolute,

the objects would lose their independence altogether, and sink into

their centre. Accordingly if the independence of these objects is

to remain, there must be, as it were, a double centre, the relative

centre of each object, and the absolute centre of the system to which

it belongs. In each of these three forms of mechanical combination,

the objects continue external and independent. A mechanical theory of

the state regards classes as independent, seeks to produce a balance

between them, separates individuals and associations from the state,

and, in short, conceives the state as one large centralising force with

a number of minor spheres depending upon it, but with a greater or less

amount of self-centred action in each of them.

The fact is that an object cannot really be thought as thus

independently subsistent. Its real nature is rather affinity,--a

tendency to combine with another: it requires to receive its

complement. Every object is naturally in a state of unstable

equilibrium, with a tendency to quit its isolation and form a union.

This theory, which is called the Chemical theory of an object,

regards it as the reverse of indifferent: as in a permanent state

of susceptibility. When objects thus open and eager for foreign

influences combine, there results a new product, in which both the

constituents are lost, so far as their qualities go. The qualities

of the constituents are neutralised. A man's mind, for example,

prepared by certain culture, meets a new stimulus in some strange

doctrine, and the result is a new form of intellectual life. But at

this point the process, which such a form of objectivity represents,

is closed: all that remains is for the product to break up one day

into its constituent factors. There is no provision made for carrying

it on further. Hence if we are to have a self-regulating system of

objectivity, we must rise above the Chemical theory of objects. And

to do that, the first course is to look at the objective world as

_regulated_ (though not immanently constituted) by the Notion.

The Notion as regulative of objectivity,--as independent and

self-subsistent, but as in necessary connexion with Objectivity,--is

the End, Aim, or Final Cause. According to this, the Teleological

and practical theory of the Universe[2], the object is considered as

bound to reproduce and carry out the notion, and the notion is looked

upon as meant to execute itself in reality. The two sides, subjective

and objective, are, in other words, in necessary connexion with each

other, but not identical. This is the contrast of the End and the

Means. By the 'Means' is meant an object _which is determined by an

End_, and which operates upon other objects.--(1) The End is originally

subjective: an instinct or desire after something-- a feeling of

want and the wish to remedy it. It is confronted by an objective

mass, which is indifferent to these wishes: and manifests itself as a

tendency outwards,--an appetite towards action. It seizes and uses up

the objective world.--(2) But the End in the second place reduces this

indifferent mass to be an instrument or Means: makes it the middle term

between itself and the object.--(3) But the means is only valuable as

a preparation to the End regarded as Realised, which thus counts as

the truth of the thing. These are the three terms of the Syllogism of

Teleology: the Subjective End, the Means, and the End Realised. It is

the process of adaptation by which each thing is conceived as the means

to some end, and which actively transforms the thing into something

by which that end is realised. In the last resort it presents us with

an objective world in which utility or design is the principle of

systematisation: and in which therefore there is an endless series of

ends which become means to other and higher ends. After all is done,

the object remains foreign to the notion, and is only subsumed under

it, and adapted to it. We want a notion which shall be identifiable

with objectivity--which shall permeate it through and through, as soul

does body. Such a unity of Subjective and Objective--the Motion in (and

not merely in relation to) Objectivity--is what Hegel terms the Idea.

The first form of the Idea is Life, taking that as a logical category,

or as equivalent to self-organisation. The living, as organisms, are

contrasted with mere mechanisms. The essential progress of modern

science lies in its emphasis on this aspect of the Idea: which includes

all that the teleological period taught about adaptation, and only sets

aside the externality of means to ends there found. The savant of the

last century and the beginning of the present dealt with the object

of his inquiries as a mechanical, chemical, or teleological object.

The modern theorist tends to see the world as one self-evolving Life.

According to the naturalist of last century, kinds of animals and

plants were viewed as convenient, and perhaps arbitrary arrangements:

according to the moderns, these kinds represent the grades or steps in

the life of the natural world.

What, then, is the nature of the process which we call Life? Is it

adequately or definitely defined as 'a continuous adjustment of

internal to external relations'? Or is it a good deal more than

anything the word 'correspondence' implies? According to Hegel it is

nothing so simple, but a syllogism with three terms, and a syllogism

moreover which permutates its terms and premisses. There is, in the

first place, the term, which is also a process, of self-production. The

living must articulate itself, create for itself limbs and members, and

keep up a perpetual re-creation of morphological and structural system

of parts. Secondly, there is the assimilation of what is external to

the living individual. If there is to be life, spiritual or bodily,

there must be a physiological intus-susception of foreign elements.

Without this the first term or process is impossible. Thirdly, there

must be a term or process of Reproduction or generation by which

the living being passes itself on as a new unit. All life, mental

or bodily, involves Reproduction.--These are the three terms of the

process of vitality.

But such a life, considered as merely organic, the life studied in

Biology, is only a fragment. The truer life is in the genus, not in the

individual: the consciousness, the sensation which inwardly unifies the

diversity of organic processes. The universal has become the medium

in which the Idea exists: it exists no longer in immediacy. The mere

natural life gives place to the life of the Spirit. The life of the

Spirit has the double form of Cognition and Will:--the theoretical and

the practical action of the Idea: or Truth and Goodness. In short, the

Idea divides into two halves, which yet remain the same at bottom:

Reason and the World: but yet there is reason in the world. The action

of the Idea, or its process at this stage, is to bring these two terms

into connexion, and show their ideal unity. Beginning with Reason, it

goes on to discover reason in the World. Truth consists in the adequacy

of object to notion. Such adequacy is the Idea: and an object which

thus corresponds with its notion is an ideal object. The ideal man is

the True Man. Truth is the revelation of rationality from the objective

world: and Cognition is the name for that process. On the other hand,

Goodness is the realisation of rationality in the objective world:

and the Will is the name for that process. Truth proceeds from the

Objectivity: Goodness from the Subjectivity. But truth can only proceed

(analytically) from the objective world, in so far as it is produced

(synthetically) by the subjectivity. And, on the other hand, when the

good is realised in objectivity, it is submitted to the process of

Cognition.

With the unity of Life and Consciousness, the Absolute Idea, we reach

the supreme effort of Logic. In Bacon's words, 'the truth of being and

the truth of knowing is all one' (cf. p. 224). That is the absolute

condition of comprehending reality: the principle of Absolute Idealism,

so far apart from its psychological wraith, and yet compelled to

employ the same language. But after all it is Logic, i. e., only the

supreme logical condition of the reality of the physical and psychical

world. And it gains reality at the cost of the disruption of its

elements: it lets the Is slip from the Is known-- the _est_ from the

_cogitatur_--Being from consciousness. Or, in less mysterious language,

fundamental philosophy, or Logic, gives place to the concreter system

of Philosophy--the Philosophy of the Outward and of the Inward

actuality,--of Nature and Mind.

The reader of the _Divina Commedia_ may hardly need to be reminded

that, at each of the grander changes of scene and grade in his

pilgrimage, Dante suddenly finds himself without obvious means

transported into a new region of experience. There are catastrophes

in the process of development: not unprepared, but summing up, as in

a flash of insight, the gradual and unperceived process of growth.

There is birth and death in the spiritual world: and such are moments

of sudden lapse, abrupt conversion, when the waters of Lethe close

around, and thereafter all things are new. There are such moments of

accumulated and abnormal intensity also in the Hegelian philosophy when

a new cycle of idea suddenly appears. Such are the epochs of change at

the great crises from Being to Essence, and from Essence to Notion.

There is a revulsion, a sharp turn of the path which dialectic can

enforce but cannot smooth away,--on that path which dialectic indeed,

as opposed to the old logic of identity, shows not to be a mere smooth

continuity. All development is by breaks, and yet makes for continuity.

This is again exemplified in the passage from Logic to Physics. The

reality which presents itself to the philosopher as Nature is a world

of reason--but, as it stands, it only lives as some speechless work

of art. It is, so to speak, the picture on the wall--the reflection

that is cast by the fuller reality of experience. Reason here is

in the garb of sense-perception. Nature is the silent image--the

_tableau vivant_--which becomes intelligent, speaking, and real, in

the observing and comprehending mind. It is the statue of Condillac,

not yet invested with the minimum of sensibility and consciousness.

Nature is or shows all that the Idea contained, but contained only

in possibility, as a logical condition of reality. It shows it in

reality--and that is a reality spread through endless times and spaces.

Its unity, its meaning, its continuity are broken up into fragments.

Yet as Nature, i. e. in its structural unity, and not in the dispersion

of things and elements, it is all a unity of development and has a

life-history written in its organism for intelligence to read and to

reconstitute, on the assumption that all its accident and irregularity

is but the inevitable imperfection of reality as given in parts and

successions.