CHAPTER I: THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE DIALECTIC
1. HEGEL'S primary object in his dialectic is to establish the existence of a
logical connection between the various categories which are involved in the
constitution of experience. He teaches that this connection is of such a kind
that any category, if scrutinised with sufficient care and attention, is found
to lead on to another, and to involve it, in such a manner that an attempt to
use the first of any subject while we refuse to use the second of the same
subject results in a contradiction. The category thus reached leads on in a
similar way to a third, and the process continues until at last we reach the
goal of the dialectic in a category which betrays no instability.
If we examine the process in more detail, we shall find that it advances,
not directly, but by moving from side to side, like a ship tacking against an
unfavourable wind. The simplest and best known form of this advance, as it is
to be found in the earlier transitions of the logic, is as follows. The
examination of a certain category leads us to the conclusion that, if we
predicate it of any subject, we are compelled by consistency to predicate of
the same subject the logical contrary of that category. This brings us to an
absurdity, since the predication of two contrary attributes of the same thing
at the same time violates the law of contradiction. On examining the two
contrary predicates further, they are seen to be capable of reconciliation in a
higher category, which combines the contents of both of them, not merely
placed side by side, but absorbed into a wider idea, as moments or aspects of
which they can exist without contradiction.
This idea of the synthesis of opposites is perhaps the most characteristic
in the whole of Hegel's system. It is certainly one of the most difficult to
explain. Indeed the only way of grasping what Hegel meant by it is to observe
in detail how he uses it, and in what manner the lower categories are partly
altered and partly preserved in the higher one, so that, while their
opposition vanishes, the significance of both is nevertheless to be found in
the unity which follows.
Since in this way, and in this way only so far as we can see, two contrary
categories can be simultaneously true of a subject, and since we must hold
these two to be simultaneously true, we arrive at the conclusion that
whenever we use the first category we shall be forced on to use the third,
since by it alone can the contradictions be removed, in which we should
otherwise be involved. This third category, however, when it in its turn is
viewed as a single unity, similarly discloses that its predication involves
that of its contrary, and the Thesis and Antithesis thus opposed have again to
be resolved in a Synthesis. Nor can we rest anywhere in this alternate
production and removal of contradictions until we reach the end of the ladder
of categories. It begins with the category of Pure Being, the simplest idea of
the human mind. It ends with the category which Hegel declares to be the
highest--the Idea which recognises itself in all things.
2. It must be remarked that the type of transition, which we have just
sketched, is one which is modified as the dialectic advances. It is only
natural, in a system in which matter and form are so closely connected, that
the gradual changes of the matter, which forms the content of the system,
should react on the nature of the movement by which the changes take place.
Even when we deal with physical action and reaction we find this true. All
tools are affected, each time they are used, so as to change, more or less,
their manner of working in the future. It is not surprising, therefore, that so
delicate a tool as that which is used by thought should not remain unchanged
among changing materials.
"The abstract form of the continuation or advance" says Hegel "is, in Being,
an other (or antithesis) and transition into another; in the Essence, showing
or reflection in its opposite; in the Notion, the distinction of the individual
from the universality, which continues itself as such into, and is as an
identity with, what is distinguished from it."<Note: Encyclopaedia, Section
240.> This indicates a gradual increase in the directness of the advance, and a
diminished importance of the movement from contrary to contrary. But this
point, which Hegel leaves undeveloped, will require further
consideration.<Note: Chap. IV.>
3. The ground of the necessity which the dialectic process claims cannot, it
is evident, lie merely in the category from which we start. For in that case
the conclusion of the process could, if it were valid, have no greater content
than was contained in the starting point. All that can be done with a single
premise is to analyse it, and the mere analysis of an idea could never lead us
necessarily onwards to any other idea incompatible with it, and therefore
could never lead us to its contrary. But the dialectic claims to proceed from
the lower to the higher, and it claims to add to our knowledge, and not merely
to expound it. At the same time it asserts that no premise other than the
validity of the lower category is requisite to enable us to affirm the validity
of the higher.
The solution of this difficulty, which has been the ground of many attacks
on Hegel, lies in the fact that the dialectic must be looked on as a process,
not of construction but of reconstruction. If the lower categories lead on to
the higher, and these to the highest, the reason is that the lower categories
have no independent existence, but are only abstractions from the highest. It
is this alone which is independent and real. In it all one-sidedness has been
destroyed by the successive reconciliation of opposites. It is thus the
completely concrete, and for Hegel the real is always the concrete. Moreover,
according to Hegel, the real is always the completely rational. ("The
consummation of the infinite aim . . . consists merely in removing the
illusion which makes it seem as yet unaccomplished."<Note: Enc. Section 212,
lecture note.>) Now no category except the highest can be completely rational,
since every lower one involves its contrary. The Absolute Idea is present to
us in all reality, in all the phenomena of experience, and in our own selves.
Everywhere it is the soul of all reality. But although it is always present to
us, it is not always explicitly present. In the content of consciousness it is
present implicitly. But we do not always attempt to unravel that content, nor
are our attempts always successful. Very often all that is explicitly before
our minds is some finite and incomplete category. When this is so, the
dialectic process can begin, and indeed must begin, if we are sufficiently acute
and attentive,--because the ideal which is latent in the nature of all
experience, and of the mind itself, forbids us to rest content with the
inadequate category. The incomplete reality before the mind is inevitably
measured against the complete reality of the mind itself, and it is in this
process that it betrays its incompleteness, and demands its contrary to
supplement its one-sidedness. "Before the mind there is a single conception,
but the whole mind itself, which does not appear, engages in the process,
operates on the datum, and produces the result."<Note: Bradley's Logic, Book
III. Part 1. Chap. 2, Section 20.>
4. The dialectic process is not a mere addition to the conception before us
of one casually selected moment after another, but obeys a definite law. The
reason of this is that at any point the finite category explicitly before us
stands in a definite relation to the complete and absolute idea which is
implicit in our consciousness. Any category, except the most abstract of all,
can be analysed, according to Hegel, into two others, which in the unity of the
higher truth were reconciled, but which, when separated, stand in opposition
to each other as contraries. If abstraction consists in this separation, then,
when we are using the most abstract of the categories, we fall short of the
truth, because one side of the completely concrete truth has been taken in
abstraction, and from that relatively concrete truth again one side has been
abstracted, and so on, until the greatest abstraction possible has been
reached. It must therefore cause unrest in the mind which implicitly contains
the concrete whole from which it was abstracted. And through this unrest the
imperfection will be removed in the manner described above, that is, by
affirming, in the first place, that contrary category, the removal of which had
been the last stage of the abstraction, then by restoring the whole in which
those two opposites had been reconciled, and so on.
Thus the first and deepest cause of the dialectic movement is the
instability of all finite categories, due to their imperfect nature. The
immediate result of this instability is the production of contradictions. For,
as we have already seen, since the imperfect category endeavours to return to
the more concrete unity of which it is one side, it is found to involve the
other side of that unity, which is its own contrary. And, again, to the
existence of the contradiction we owe the advance of the dialectic. For it is
the contradiction involved in the impossibility of predicating a category
without predicating its opposite which causes us to abandon that category as
inadequate. We are driven on first to its antithesis. And when we find that
this involves the predication of the thesis, as much as this latter had
involved the predication of the antithesis, the impossibility of escaping from
contradictions in either extreme drives us to remove them by combining both
extremes in a synthesis which transcends them.
5. It has been asserted that Hegel sometimes declares the contradictions to
be the cause of the dialectic movement, and sometimes to be the effect of
that movement. This is maintained by Hartmann.<Note: Ueber die dialektische
Methode, B. II. 3.> No doubt the contradictions are considered as the
immediate cause of the movement. But the only evidence which Hartmann gives
for supposing that they are also held to be the effect, is a quotation from
the second volume of the Logic. In this, speaking of that finite activity of
thought which he calls Vorstellung, Hegel says that it has the contradictions
as part of its content, but is not conscious of this, because it does not
contain "das Uebergehen, welches das Wesentliche ist, und den Widerspruch
enthält."<Note: Logic, Vol. II. p. 71.> Now all that this implies seems to be
that the contradictions first become manifest in the movement, which is not
at all identical with the assertion that they are caused by it, and is quite
compatible with the counter-assertion that it is caused by them.
Moreover, Hartmann also gives the same account of the origin of the
contradictions which I have suggested above. He says "Der (im Hegel'schen
Geiste) tiefer liegende Grund der Erscheinung ist aber die Flüssigkeit des
Begriffes selbst."<Note: Op. cit. B. II. 3.> Flüssigkeit is certainly not
equivalent to movement, and may fairly be translated instability. There is
then no inconsistency. It is quite possible that the instability of the notion
may be the cause of the contradictions, and that the contradictions again may
be the cause of the actual motion. Hartmann does not, apparently, see that
there is any change in his position when he gives first instability and then
motion as the cause of the contradictions, and it is this confusion on his own
part which causes him to accuse Hegel of inconsistency.
He endeavours to account for Hegel's supposed error by saying that the
contradictions were given as the cause of the dialectic movement when Hegel
desired to show the subjective action of the individual mind, while the
dialectic movement was given as the cause of the contradictions when he
wished to represent the process as objective. If, as I have endeavoured to
show, there is no reason for supposing that Hegel ever did hold the dialectic
movement to be the cause of the contradictions, there will be no further
necessity for this theory. But it may be well to remark that it involves a
false conception of the meaning in which it is possible to apply the term
objective to the dialectic at all.
6. There is a sense of the word objective in which it may be correctly said
that the dependence of the contradictions on the instability of the notion is
more objective than the dependence of the dialectic movement on the
contradictions. For the former is present in all thought, which is not the
case with the latter. A contradiction can be said to be present in thought,
when it is implied in it, even though it is not clearly seen. But it can only
cause the dialectic movement, when it is clearly seen. Whenever a finite
category is used it is abstract, and consequently unstable, and, implicitly at
least, involves its contrary, though this may not be perceived, and, indeed, in
ordinary thought is not perceived. On the other hand, the actual dialectic
movement does not take place whenever a category is used, for in that case
finite thought would not exist at all. It is only when the contradictions are
perceived, when they are recognised as incompatible, in their unreconciled
form, with truth, and when the synthesis which can reconcile them has been
discovered, that the dialectic process is before us.
The contradiction has therefore more objectivity, in one sense of the word,
because it is more inevitable and less dependent on particular and contingent
circumstances. But we are not entitled to draw the sort of distinction between
them which Hartmann makes, and to say that while the one is only an action
of the thinking subject, the other is based on the nature of things
independently of the subject who thinks them. Both relations are objective in
the sense that they are universal, and have validity as a description of the
nature of reality. Neither is objective in the sense that it takes place
otherwise than in thought. We shall have to consider this point in detail
later:<Note: Chap. V.> at present we can only say that, though the dialectic
process is a valid description of reality, reality itself is not, in its truest
nature, a process but a stable and timeless state. Hegel says indeed that
reason is to be found in actual existence, but it is reason in its complete and
concrete shape, under the highest and absolute form of the notion, and not
travelling up from category to category. Till the highest is reached, all the
results are expressly termed abstract, and do not, therefore, come up to the
level of reality. Moreover they contain unsynthesised contradictions, and that
which is contradictory, though it may have a certain relative truth, can never
exist independently, as would be the case if it existed in the world of fact.
The dialectic movement is indeed a guide to that world, since the highest
category, under which alone reality can be construed, contains all the lower
categories as moments, but the gradual passage from one stage of the notion
to another, during which the highest yet reached is for the moment regarded
as independent and substantial, is an inadequate expression of the truth.
7. This is not incompatible with the admission that various isolated
phenomena, considered as phenomena and as isolated, are imperfect, for in
considering them in this way we do not consider them as they really are.
Hegel speaks of the untruth of an external object as consisting in the
disagreement between the objective notion, and the object.<Note: Enc. Section
24, lecture note.> From this it might be inferred that even in the world of
real objects there existed imperfections and contradictions. But, on looking
more closely, we see that the imperfection and contradiction are really,
according to Hegel, due only to our manner of contemplating the object. A
particular thing may or may not correspond to the notion. But the universe is
not merely an aggregation of particular things, but a system in which they are
connected, and a thing which in itself is imperfect and irrational may be a
part of a perfect and rational universe. Its imperfection was artificial,
caused by our regarding it, in an artificial and unreal abstraction, as if it
could exist apart from other things.
A diseased body, for example, is in an untrue state, if we merely regard it
by itself, since it is obviously failing to fulfil the ideal of a body. But if we
look at it in connection with the intellectual and spiritual life of its
occupant, the bodily imperfection might in some cases be seen, without going
further, to be a part in a rational whole. And, taking the universe as a whole,
Hegel declares "God alone exhibits a real agreement of the notion and the
reality. All finite things involve an untruth." God, however, is held by Hegel
to be the reality which underlies all finite things. It is therefore only when
looked at as finite that they involve an untruth. Looked at sub specie Dei they
are true. The untruth is therefore in our manner of apprehending them only.
It would indeed, as Hartmann remarks, be senseless tautology for Hegel to talk
of the objective truth of the world. But this Hegel does not do. It is in the
nature of the world as a whole that it must be objectively true.<Note: Cp.
Enc. Section 212, quoted in section 3 above.> But isolated fragments of the
world, just because they are isolated, cannot fully agree with the notion, and
may or may not agree with a particular aspect of it. According as they do or
do not do this Hegel calls them true or false.
Hegel's theory that the world as a whole must be objectively true, so
rational, and therefore, as he would continue, perfect, comes no doubt in
rather rude contact with some of the facts of life. The consideration of this
must for the present be deferred.<Note: Chap. V.>
8. We have seen that the motive power of the dialectic lies in the relation
of the abstract idea explicitly before the mind to the concrete idea
implicitly before it in all experience and all consciousness. This will enable
us to determine the relation in which the ideas of contradiction and negation
stand to the dialectic.
It is sometimes supposed that the Hegelian logic rests on a defiance of the
law of contradiction. That law says that whatever is A can never at the same
time be not-A. But the dialectic asserts that, when A is any category, except
the Absolute Idea, whatever is A may be, and indeed must be, not-A also. Now
if the law of contradiction is rejected, argument becomes impossible. It is
impossible to refute any proposition without the help of this law. The
refutation can only take place by the establishment of another proposition
incompatible with the first. But if we are to regard the simultaneous
assertion of two contradictories, not as a mark of error, but as an indication
of truth, we shall find it impossible to disprove any proposition at all.
Nothing, however, can ever claim to be considered as true, which could never
be refuted, even if it were false. And indeed it is impossible, as Hegel himself
has pointed out to us, even to assert anything without involving the law of
contradiction, for every positive assertion has meaning only in so far as it is
defined, and therefore negative. If the statement All men are mortal, for
example, did not exclude the statement Some men are immortal, it would be
meaningless. And it only excludes it by virtue of the law of contradiction. If
then the dialectic rejected the law of contradiction, it would reduce itself to
an absurdity, by rendering all argument, and even all assertion, unmeaning.
The dialectic, however, does not reject that law. An unresolved
contradiction is, for Hegel as for every one else, a sign of error. The relation
of the thesis and antithesis derives its whole meaning from the synthesis,
which follows them, and in which the contradiction ceases to exist as such.
"Contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself."<Note: Enc.
Section 119, lecture note.> An unreconciled predication of two contrary
categories, for instance Being and not-Being, of the same thing, would lead in
the dialectic, as it would lead elsewhere, to scepticism, if it was not for the
reconciliation in Becoming. The synthesis alone has reality, and its elements
derive such importance as they have from being, in so far as their truth goes,
members of a unity in which their opposition is overcome.
In fact, so far is the dialectic from denying the law of contradiction, that
it is especially based on it. The contradictions are the cause of the dialectic
process. But they can only be this if they are received as marks of error. We
are obliged to say that we find the truth of Being and not-Being in Becoming,
and in Becoming only, because, if we endeavour to take them in their
independence, and not as synthesised, we find an unreconciled contradiction.
But why should we not find an unreconciled contradiction and acquiesce in it
without going further, except for the law that two contradictory propositions
about the same subject are a sign of error? Truth consists, not of
contradictions, but of moments which, if separated, would be contradictions,
but which in their synthesis are reconciled and consistent.
9. It follows also from this view of the paramount importance of the
synthesis in the dialectic process that the place of negation in that process
is only secondary. The really fundamental aspect of the dialectic is not the
tendency of the finite category to negate itself but to complete itself. Since
the various relatively perfect and concrete categories are, according to Hegel,
made up each of two moments or aspects which stand to one another in the
relation of contrary ideas, it follows that one characteristic of the process
will be the passage from an idea to its contrary. But this is not due, as has
occasionally been supposed, to an inherent tendency in all finite categories
to affirm their own negation as such. It is due to their inherent tendency to
affirm their own complement. It is indeed, according to Hegel, no empirical
and contingent fact, but an absolute and necessary law, that their complement
is in some degree their negation. But the one category passes into the other,
because the second completes the meaning of the first, not because it denies
it.
This, however, is one of the points at which the difficulty, always great, of
distinguishing what Hegel did say from that which he ought in consistency to
have said becomes almost insuperable. It may safely be asserted that the
motive force of the dialectic was clearly held by him to rest in the implicit
presence in us of its goal. This is admitted by his opponents as well as his
supporters. That he did to some extent recognise the consequence of this--the
subordinate importance which it assigned to the idea of negation--seems also
probable, especially when we consider the passage quoted above,<Note: Enc.
Section 240, quoted in section 2 above.> in which the element of negation
appears to enter into the dialectic process with very different degrees of
prominence in the three stages of which that process consists. On the other
hand, the absence of any detailed exposition of a principle so fundamental as
that of the gradually decreasing share taken by negation in the dialectic, and
the failure to follow out all its consequences, seem to indicate that he had
either not clearly realised it, or had not perceived its full importance. But
to this point it will be necessary to return.
10. What relation, we must now enquire, exists between thought as engaged
in the dialectic process, and thought as engaged in the ordinary affairs of
life? In these latter we continually employ the more abstract categories,
which, according to Hegel, are the more imperfect, as if they were satisfactory
and ultimate determinations of thought. So far as we do this we must contrive
to arrest for the time the dialectic movement. While a category is undergoing
the changes and transformations in which that movement consists, it is as
unfit to be used as an instrument of thought, as an expanding rod would be for
a yard measure. We may observe, and even argue about, the growth of the idea,
as we may observe the expansion of a rod under heat, but the argument must
be conducted with stable ideas, as the observation must be made with measures
of unaltering size. For if, for example, a notion, when employed as a middle
term, is capable of changing its meaning between the major and the minor
premises, it renders the whole syllogism invalid. And all reasoning depends
on the assumption that a term can be trusted to retain the same meaning on
different occasions. Otherwise, any inference would be impossible, since all
connection between propositions would be destroyed.
There are two ways in which we may treat the categories. The first is, in
the language of Hegel, the function of the Reason--to perform, namely, the
dialectic process, and when that culminates in the highest category, which
alone is without contradiction, to construe the world by its means. As this
category has no contradictions in it, it is stable and can be used without any
fear of its transforming itself under our hands. The second function is that
of the Understanding, whose characteristic it is to treat abstractions as if
they were independent realities. They are thus forced into an artificial
stability and permanence, and can be used for the work of ordinary thought. Of
course the attempt to use an imperfect and unbalanced category as if it were
perfect and self-subsistent leads to errors and contradictions--it is just
these errors and contradictions which are the proof that the category is
imperfect. But for many purposes the limit of error is so small, that the
work of the Understanding possesses practical use and validity. If we take an
arc three feet long of the circumference of a circle a mile in diameter, it
will be curved, and will show itself to be so, if examined with sufficient
accuracy. But in practice it would often produce no inconvenience to treat it
as a straight line. So, if an attempt is made to explain experience
exclusively by the category, for example, of causality, it will be found, if the
matter is considered with enough care, that any explanation, in which no
higher category is employed, involves a contradiction.<Note: Enc. Sections
153, 154.> Nevertheless, for many of the everyday occurrences on which we
exercise our thoughts, an explanation by the Understanding, by means of the
category of causality only, will be found to rationalise the event sufficiently
for the needs of the moment.
11. To this explanation an objection has been raised by Hartmann.<Note:
Op. cit. B. II. 6.> He "emphatically denies" our power to arrest the progress
of the Notion in this manner. It might, he admits, be possible to do so, if
the Notion were changed by us, but it is represented as changing itself. The
human thinker is thus only "the fifth wheel to the cart," and quite unable to
arrest a process which is entirely independent of him.
Now in one sense of the words it is perfectly true, that, if the Notion
changes at all, the change is caused by its own nature, and not by us. If the
arguments of the dialectic are true, they must appeal with irresistible force
to every one who looks into the question with sufficient ability and
attention, and thus the process may be said to be due to the Notion, and not
to the thinker. But this is no more than may be said of every argument. If it
is valid, it is not in the power of any man who has examined it, to deny its
validity. But when there is no logical alternative there may be a
psychological one. No intelligent man, who carefully examines the proofs, can
doubt that the earth goes round the sun. But any person who will not examine
them, or cannot understand them, may remain convinced all his life that the
sun goes round the earth. And any one, however clearly he understands the
truth, can, by diverting his attention from comparatively remote
astronomical arguments, and fixing it on the familiar and daily appearances,
speak of and picture the movement as that of the sun, as most men, I suppose,
generally do.
So with the dialectic. The arguments are, if Hegel is right, such as to leave
the man who examines them no option. But for those who have no time,
inclination, or ability to examine them, the categories will continue to be
quite separate and independent, while the contradictions which this view will
produce in experience will either be treated as ultimate, or, more probably,
will not be noticed at all. And even for the student of philosophy, the
arguments remain so comparatively abstruse and unfamiliar that he finds no
difficulty, when practical life requires it, in assuming for a time the point
of view of the Understanding, and regarding each category as unchanging and
self-supporting. This he does merely by diverting his attention from the
arguments by which their instability is proved.
Although therefore the change in the Notion is due to its nature, it does
not follow that it cannot be stopped by peculiarities in the nature of the
thinker, or by his arbitrary choice. The positive element in the change lies
wholly in the Notion, but that it should take place at all in any particular
case requires certain conditions in the individual mind in question, and by
changing these conditions we can at will arrest the process of the categories,
and use any one of them as fixed and unchanging.
Any other view of the dialectic process would require us to suppose that
the movement of the categories became obvious to us, not as the result of
much hard thinking, but spontaneously and involuntarily. It can scarcely be
asserted that Hegel held such a theory, which would lead to the conclusion
that everyone who ever used the category of Being--that is everyone who ever
thought at all, whether he reflected on thought or not,--had gone through all
the stages of the Hegelian logic, and arrived at all its conclusions.
12. Another difficulty which Hartmann brings forward in this connection
arises from a misapprehension of Hegel's meaning. He affirms<Note: Op. cit.
B. II. 6.> that, so far from stopping the dialectic process, we could not even
perceive it when it took place. For we can only become aware of the change by
comparing stage A with stage B, and how is it possible that we should do this,
if A turns into B, beyond our control, whenever it appears?
In the first place, we may answer, it is possible, as we have seen, to arrest
the dialectic movement, in any given case, at will, so that the development of
the categories is not beyond our control. In the second place the thesis is
not held by Hegel to turn into the antithesis in the simple and complete way
which this objection supposes. The one category leads up to and postulates
the other but does not become completely the same as its successor. The
thesis and antithesis are said no doubt to be the same, but the same with a
difference. If we predicate A, we are forced to predicate B, but there remains
nevertheless a distinction between A and B. It is just the coexistence of this
distinction with the necessary implication of the one category in the other,
which renders the synthesis necessary as a reconciliation. If the thesis and
antithesis were not different, the simultaneous predication of both of them
would involve no difficulty.
13. Such is the general nature of the dialectic as conceived by Hegel. How
does he attempt to prove its truth and necessity? The proof must be based on
something already understood and granted by those to whom it is addressed.
And since the proof should be one which must be accepted by all men, we must
base it on that which all men allow to be justifiable--the ordinary procedure,
that is, of thought in common sense and science, which Hegel calls the
Understanding as opposed to the Reason. We must show that if we grant, as we
cannot help granting, the validity of the ordinary exercise of our thought, we
must also grant the validity of the dialectic.
This necessity Hegel recognises. He says, it is true, that, since only the
Reason possesses the complete truth, up to which the merely partial truth of
the Understanding leads, the real explanation must be of the Understanding by
the Reason.<Note: Logic, Vol. I. p. 198.> But this is not inconsistent with a
recognition of the necessity of justifying the Reason to the Understanding.
The course of real explanation must always run from ground to consequent,
and, according to Hegel, from concrete to abstract. On the other hand, the
order of proof must run from whatever is known to whatever is unknown. When,
as we have seen is the case with the dialectic, we start from explicit
knowledge of the abstract only, and proceed to knowledge of the concrete,
which alone gives reality to that abstract, the order of explanation and the
order of proof must clearly be exactly opposite to one another.
The justification of the Reason at the bar of the Understanding, depends
upon two facts. The one is the search for the Absolute which is involved in
the Understanding, the other is the existence in the Understanding of
contradictions which render it impossible that it should succeed in the
search. The Understanding demands an answer to every question it can ask. But
every question which it succeeds in answering suggests fresh questions. Any
explanation requires some reference to surrounding phenomena, and these in
their turn must be explained by reference to others, and nothing can
therefore be fully explained unless everything else which is in direct or
indirect connection with it, unless, that is, the whole universe, be fully
explained also. And the explanation of a phenomenon requires, besides this,
the knowledge of its causes and effects, while these again require a knowledge
of their causes and effects, so that not only the whole present universe, but
the of the past and future must be known before any single fact can be really
understood. Again, since the knowledge of a phenomenon involves the knowledge
of its parts, and all phenomena, occurring as they do in space and time, are
infinitely divisible, our knowledge must not only be infinitely extended over
space and time, but also infinitely minute. The connection of the phenomenal
universe by the law of reciprocity has a double effect on knowledge. It is
true, as Tennyson tells us, that we could not know a single flower completely
without also knowing God and man. But it is also true that, till we know
everything about God and man, we cannot answer satisfactorily a single
question about the flower. In asking any question whatever, the Understanding
implicitly asks for a complete account of the whole Universe, throughout all
space and all time. It demands a solution which shall really solve the
question without raising fresh ones--a complete and symmetrical system of
knowledge.
This ideal it cannot, as Hegel maintains, reach by its own exertions,
because it is the nature of the Understanding to treat the various finite
categories as self-subsistent unities, and this attempt leads it into the
various contradictions pointed out throughout the dialectic, owing to the
inevitable connection of every finite category with its contrary. Since, then,
it postulates in all its actions an ideal which cannot be reached by itself, it
is obliged, unless it would deny its own validity, to admit the validity of the
Reason, since by the Reason alone can the contradictions be removed, and the
ideal be realised. And, when it has done this, it loses the false independence
which made it suppose itself to be something different from the Reason.
14. One of the most difficult and important points in determining the
nature of the Hegelian logic is to find its exact relation to experience.
Whatever theory we may adopt has to fall within certain limits. On the one
hand it is asserted by Hegel's critics, and generally admitted by his
followers, that, rightly or wrongly, there is some indispensable reference to
experience in the dialectic--so that, without the aid of experience it would be
impossible for the cogency of the dialectic process to display itself. On the
other hand it is impossible to deny that, in some sense, Hegel believed that
the dialectic process takes place in pure thought, that, however incomplete
the Logic might be without the Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of
Spirit, however much the existence of Nature and Spirit might be involved in
the existence of pure thought, yet nevertheless within the sphere of logic we
had arrived at pure thought, unconditioned in respect of its development as
thought.
And both these characteristics of the dialectic are, independently of
Hegel's assertion, clearly necessary for the validity of any possible dialectic.
The consideration of pure thought, without any reference to experience, would
be absolutely sterile, or rather impossible. For we are as unable to employ
"empty" pure thought (to borrow Kant's phrase) as to employ "blind"
intuition. Thought is a process of mediation and relation, and implies
something immediate to be related, which cannot be found in thought. Even if
a stage of thought could be conceived as existing, in which it was self-
subsistent, and in which it had no reference to any data--and it is impossible
to imagine such a state, or to give any reason for supposing thought thus to
change its essential nature--at any rate this is not the ordinary thought of
common life. And as the dialectic process professes to start from a basis
common to everyone, so as to enable it to claim universal validity for its
conclusions, it is certain that it will be necessary for thought, in the
dialectic process, to have some relation to data given immediately, and
independent of that thought itself. Even if the dialectic should finally
transcend this condition it would have at starting to take thought as we use
it in every-day life--as merely mediating, and not self-subsistent. And I shall
try to show later on that it never does transcend, or try to transcend that
limitation.<Note: Chap. II.>
On the other hand it is no less true that any argument would be incapable
of leading us to general conclusions relating to pure thought, which was based
on the nature of any particular piece of experience in its particularity, and
that, whatever reference to experience Hegel may or may not have admitted
into his system, his language is conclusive against the possibility that he
has admitted any empirical or contingent basis to the dialectic.
15. The two conditions can, however, be reconciled. There is a sense in
which conclusions relating to pure thought may properly be based on an
observation of experience, and in this sense, as I believe, we must take the
Logic in order to arrive at Hegel's true meaning. According to this view, what
is observed is the spontaneous and unconditioned movement of the pure
notion, which does not in any way depend on the matter of intuition for its
validity, which, on the contrary, is derived from the character of the pure
reason itself. But the process, although independent of the matter of
intuition, can only be perceived when the pure notion is taken in conjunction
with matter of intuition--that is to say when it is taken in experience--
because it is impossible for us to grasp thought in absolute purity, or except
as applied to an immediate datum. Since we cannot observe pure thought at
all, except in experience, it is clear that it is only in experience that we can
observe the change from the less to the more adequate form which thought
undergoes in the dialectic process. But this change of form is due to the
nature of thought alone, and not to the other element in experience--the
matter of intuition.<Note: Since I am here dealing only with the question of
epistemology, it will be allowable, I think, to assume that there is a matter
of intuition, distinct from thought, and not reducible to it, (though incapable
of existing apart from it,) since this is the position taken up within Hegel's
Logic. Whether the dialectic process has any relation to it or not, its
existence is, in the Logic, admitted, at least provisionally. If Hegel did make
any attempt to reduce the whole universe to a manifestation of pure thought,
without any other element, he certainly did not do so till the transition to
the world of Nature at the end of the Logic. Even there I believe no such
attempt is to be found.>
The presence of this other element in experience is thus a condition of our
perceiving the dialectical movement of pure thought. We may go further. It
does not follow, from the fact that the movement is due to the nature of pure
thought alone, that pure thought can ever exist, or ever be imagined to exist
by itself. We may regard pure thought as a mere abstraction of one side of
experience, which is the only concrete reality, while the matter of intuition
is an abstraction of the other side of the same reality--each, when considered
by itself, being false and misleading. This, as we shall see, is the position
which Hegel does take up. Even so, it will still remain true that, in
experience, the dialectic process was due exclusively to that element of
experience which we call pure thought, the other element--that of intuition--
being indeed an indispensable condition of the dialectic movement, but one
which remains passive throughout, and one by which the movement is not
determined. It is only necessary to the movement of the idea because it is
necessary to its existence. It is not itself a principle of change, which may
as fairly be said to be independent, as the changes in the pictures of a magic
lantern may be ascribed exclusively to the camera, and not at all to the
canvas on which they are reflected, although without the canvas, the pictures
themselves, and therefore the transition from one to another of them would
be impossible.
16. If this is the relation of the dialectic process to the medium in which
it works, what postulate does it require to start from? We must distinguish
its postulate from its basis. Its basis is the reality which it requires to
have presented to itself, in order that it may develop itself. Its postulate is
the proposition which it requires to have admitted, in order that from this
premise it may demonstrate its own logical validity as a consequence. The
basis of the dialectic is to be found in the nature of pure thought itself,
since the reason of the process being what it is, is due, as we have seen, to
the nature of the highest and most concrete form of the notion, implicit in
all experience. Since pure thought, as we have seen, even if it could exist at
all in any other manner, could only become evident to us in experience, the
basis which the dialectic method will require to work on, may be called the
nature of experience in general.
It is only the general nature of experience--those characteristics which are
common to all of it--which forms the basis of the process. For it is not the
only object of the dialectic to prove that the lower and subordinate
categories are unable to explain all parts of experience without resorting to
the higher categories, and finally to the Absolute Idea. It undertakes also to
show that the lower categories are inadequate, when considered with sufficient
intelligence and persistence, to explain any part of the world. What is
required, therefore, is not so much the collection of a large mass of
experience to work on, but the close and careful scrutiny of some part,
however small. The whole chain of categories is implied in any and every
phenomenon. Particular fragments of experience may no doubt place the
inadequacy of some finite category in a specially clear light, or may render
the transition to the next stage of the idea particularly obvious and easy, but
it is only greater convenience which is thus gained; with sufficient power any
part, however unpromising, would yield the same result.
17. The basis of the dialectic process, then, is the nature of experience, in
so far as the nature of pure thought is contained in it. If the other element
in experience has really a primary and essential nature of its own, it will
not concern us here, for, as it takes no part in the development of the idea,
its existence, and not its particular qualities, is the only thing with which
we are at present concerned. The nature of experience however, though it is
the basis of the dialectic, is not its logical postulate. For it is not assumed
but ascertained by the dialectic, whose whole object is the gradual discovery
and demonstration of the Absolute Idea, which is the fundamental principle
which makes the nature of experience. The general laws governing experience
are the causa essendi of the logic, but not its causa cognoscendi.
The only logical postulate which the dialectic requires is the admission
that experience really exists. The dialectic is derived from the nature of
experience, and therefore if it is to have any validity of real existence, if it
is to have, that is to say, any importance at all, we must be assured of the
existence of some experience--in other words, that something is.
The object of the dialectic is to discover the forms and laws of all
possible thought. For this purpose it starts from the idea of Being, in which
all others are shown to be involved. The application of the results of the
dialectic to experience thus depends on the application to experience of the
idea of Being, and the logical postulate of the dialectic is no more than that
something is, and that the category of Being is therefore valid.
It will be noticed that the basis and the postulate of the dialectic
correspond to the two aspects of the idea which we mentioned above as the
fundamental cause of the process. The basis--the nature of pure thought--is
the complete and concrete idea which is present in our minds, though only
implicitly, and which renders it impossible that we should stop short of it
by permanently acquiescing in any finite category. The postulate--the abstract
idea in its highest state of abstraction, which is admitted to be valid--is
that which is explicitly before the mind, and from which the start is made.
18. We are justified in assuming this postulate because it is involved in
every action and every thought, and its denial is therefore suicidal. All that
is required is the assertion that there is such a thing as reality--that
something is. Now the very denial of this involves the reality of the denial,
and so contradicts itself and affirms our postulate. And the denial also
implies the reality of the person who makes the denial. The same dilemma
meets us if we try to take refuge from dogmatic denial in mere doubt. If we
really doubt, then the doubt is real, and there is something of whose reality
we do not doubt; if on the other hand we do not really doubt the proposition
that there is something real, we admit its truth. And doubt, as well as denial,
places beyond doubt the existence of the doubter. This is, of course, the
Cartesian argument, which is never stated by Hegel precisely in this form, but
on which the justification of his use of the category of Being, as valid of
reality, appears to depend.
19. The dialectical process thus gains its validity and importance by means
of a transcendental argument. The higher categories are connected with the
lower in such a manner that the latter inevitably lead on to the former as
the only means by which they can be rescued from the contradictions involved
in their abstractness. If the lower categories be admitted, and, ultimately, if
the lowest of all, the category of Being, be admitted, the rest follows. But we
cannot by the most extreme scepticism deny that something is, and we are
therefore enabled to conclude that the dialectic process does apply to
something. And as whatever the category of Being did not apply to would not
exist, we are also able to conclude that there is nothing to which the
dialectic process does not apply.
It will be seen that this argument is strictly of a transcendental nature. A
proposition denied by the adversary--in this case the validity of the higher
categories--is shown to be involved in the truth of some other proposition,
which he is not prepared to attack--in this case the validity of the category
of Being. But the cogency of ordinary transcendental arguments is limited, and
they apply only to people who are prepared to yield the proposition which
forms the foundation of the argument, so that they could be outflanked by a
deeper scepticism. Now this is not the case with the dialectic. For the
proposition on which it is based is so fundamental, that it could be doubted
only at the expense of self-contradiction, and the necessity of considering
that proposition true is therefore universal, and not only valid in a specially
limited argument, or against a special opponent. It is doubtful indeed whether
a condition so essential as this is correctly termed a postulate, which seems
to denote more properly a proposition which it would be at least possible for
an adversary to challenge. At any rate the very peculiar nature of the
assumption should be carefully remembered, as it affords a clue for
interpreting various expressions of Hegel's, which might otherwise cause
serious difficulties.<Note: Cp. Chap. II. Section 46.>
20. Having thus endeavoured to explain the nature of the dialectic, we must
ask ourselves at what results we are entitled to arrive by means of that
process. These results will be, to begin with, epistemological. For the
conditions of the dialectic are, first, the concrete notion, which we are able
to examine because it is implicit in all our consciousness, and, second, the
category of Being, which we are entitled to postulate, because it is impossible
to avoid employing it in judging experience. Our conclusions will therefore
relate primarily to the general laws of experience, and will so far be, like
those of Kant's Aesthetic and Analytic, concerned with the general conditions
of human knowledge. And the result arrived at will be that no category will
satisfactorily explain the universe except the Absolute Idea. Any attempt to
employ for that purpose a lower category must either accept a gradual
transformation of the idea employed until the Absolute Idea is reached, or
acquiesce in unreconciled contradictions--which involves the rejection of a
fundamental law of reason.
21. This position has two results. In the first place it disproves the
efforts which are made from time to time to explain the whole universe by
means of the lower categories only. Such an attempt lay at the bottom of
Hume's scepticism, when he endeavoured to treat the notion of causality as
derived from that of sequence, and to consider all that was added as false and
illusive. For absolute scepticism is impossible, and his treatment of the
higher category as an unwarranted inference from the lower involves the
assertion of the validity of the latter. Such an attempt, again, has been made
by Mr Spencer, as well as by the large number of writers who adopt the
provisional assumptions of physical science as an ultimate position. They
endeavour to explain all phenomena in terms of matter and motion, and to
treat all special laws by which they may be governed as merely particular
cases of fundamental principles taken from physical science.
But if we agree with Hegel in thinking that the category of Being is
inadequate to explain the world which we know without the successive
introduction of the categories, among others, of Cause, Life, and Self-
Consciousness, and that each category inevitably requires its successor, all
such attempts must inevitably fail. Any attempt, for example, to reduce
causation to an unjustifiable inference from succession, to explain life
merely in terms of matter and motion, or knowledge merely in terms of life,
would involve a fatal confusion. For it would be an attempt at explanation by
that which is, in itself, incomplete, unreal, and contradictory, and which can
only be made rational by being viewed as an aspect of those very higher
categories, which were asserted to have been explained away by its means.
22. Even if this were all, the result of the dialectic would be of great
importance. It would have refuted all attempts to establish a complete and
consistent materialism, and would have demonstrated the claims of the
categories of spirit to a place in construing part at least of the universe.
But it has done more than this. For it does not content itself with showing
that the lower categories lead necessarily to the higher, when the question
relates to those portions of experience in which the higher categories are
naturally applied by the uncritical consciousness. It also demonstrates that
the lower categories, in themselves, and to whatever matter of intuition they
may be applied, involve the higher categories also. Not only is Being
inadequate to explain, without the aid of Becoming, those phenomena which we
all recognise in ordinary life as phenomena of change, but it is also unable
to explain those others which are commonly considered as merely cases of
unchanging existence. Not only is the idea of Substance inadequate to deal
with ordinary cases of scientific causation, but without the idea of Cause it
becomes involved in contradictions, even when keeping to the province which
the uncritical consciousness assigns to it. Not only is it impossible to
explain the phenomena of vegetable and animal life by the idea of mechanism,
but that idea is inadequate even to explain the phenomena of physics. Not
only can consciousness not be expressed merely in terms of life, but life is
an inadequate category even for biological phenomena. With such a system we
are able to admit, without any danger either to its consistency or to its
practical corollaries, all that science can possibly claim as to the
interrelation of all the phenomena of the universe, and as to the constant
determination of mind by purely physical causes. For not only have we
justified the categories of spirit, but we have subjected the whole world of
experience to their rule. We are entitled to assert, not only that spirit
cannot be reduced to matter, but also that matter must be reduced to spirit.
It is of no philosophical importance, therefore, though all things should,
from the scientific standpoint, be determined by material causes. For all
material determination is now known to be only spiritual determination in
disguise.
23. The conclusion thus reached is one which deals with pure thought, since
the argument has rested throughout on the nature of pure thought, and on that
only, and the conclusion itself is a statement as to the only form of pure
thought which we can use with complete correctness. But we have not found
anything which would enable us to discard sensation from its position as an
element of experience as necessary and fundamental as pure thought itself,
and if Hegel did draw such a consequence from it, we must hold that he has
taken an unjustifiable step forwards. All the thought which we know is in its
essential nature mediate, and requires something immediate to act on, if it is
to act at all. And this immediate element can be found--so far as our present
knowledge is concerned--only in sensation, the necessary background and
accompaniment of the dialectic process, which is equally essential at its end
as at its beginning. For an attempt to eliminate it would require that Hegel
should, in the first place, explain how we could ever conceive unmediated or
self-mediated thought, and that he should, in the second place, show that the
existence of this self-subsistent thought was implied in the existence of the
mediating and independent thought of every-day life. For since it is only the
validity of our every-day thought which we find it impossible to deny, it is
only that thought which we can take as the basis of the dialectic process.
Even if, in the goal of the dialectic, thought became self-subsistent in any
intelligible sense, it would be necessary to show that this self-subsistence
issued naturally from the finite categories, in which thought is
unquestionably recognised as mediate only.
I shall endeavour to prove later on<Note: Chap. II. Section 48.> that Hegel
made no attempt to take up this position. The conclusion of the Logic is
simply the assertion that the one category by which experience can be judged
with complete correctness is the Absolute Idea. It makes no attempt to
transcend the law which we find in all experience by which the categories
cannot be used of reality, nor indeed apprehended at all, without the presence
of immediate data to serve as materials for them.
24. To sum up, the general outline of the Hegelian Logic, from an
epistemological point of view, does not differ greatly, I believe, from that of
Kant. Both philosophers justify the application of certain categories to the
matter of experience, by proving that the validity of those categories is
implied in the validity of other ideas which the sceptical opponent cannot or
does not challenge. The systems differ largely in many points, particularly in
the extent to which they push their principles. And Hegel has secured a firmer
foundation for his theory than Kant did, by pushing back his deduction till it
rests on a category--the category of Being,--the validity of which with regard
to experience not only never had been denied, but could not be denied without
contradiction. It is true also that Kant's work was clearly analytic, while
Hegel's had also a synthetic side, and may even be said to have brought that
side into undue, or at any rate misleading, prominence. But the general
principle of the two systems was the same, and the critic who finds no
fundamental fallacy in Kant's criticism of knowledge, should have no
difficulty in admitting that the Hegelian Logic, if it keeps itself free from
errors of detail, forms a valid theory of epistemology.
25. But the Logic claims to be more than this, and we must now proceed to
examine what has been generally held to be at once the most characteristic
and the weakest part of Hegel's philosophy. How far does he apply the results
of his analysis of knowledge to actual reality, and how far is he justified in
doing so?
It is beyond doubt that Hegel regarded his Logic as possessing, in some
manner, ontological significance. But this may mean one of two very different
things. It may mean only that the system rejects the Kantian thing-in-itself,
and denies the existence of any reality except that which enters into
experience, so that the results of a criticism of knowledge are valid of
reality also. But it may mean that it endeavours to dispense with or
transcend all data except the nature of thought itself, and to deduce from
that nature the whole existing universe. The difference between these two
positions is considerable. The first maintains that nothing is real but the
reasonable, the second that reality is nothing but rationality. The first
maintains that we can explain the world of sense, the second that we can
explain it away. The first merely confirms and carries further the process of
rationalisation, of which all science and all finite knowledge consist; the
second differs entirely from science and finite knowledge, substituting a self-
sufficient and absolute thought for thought which is relative and
complementary to the data of sense.
It is, I maintain, in the first of these senses, and the first only, that
Hegel claims ontological validity for the results of the Logic, and that he
should do as much as this is inevitable. For to distinguish between
conclusions epistemologically valid and those which extend to ontology
implies a belief in the existence of something which does not enter into the
field of actual or possible knowledge. Such a belief is totally unwarranted.
The thing-in-itself as conceived by Kant, behind and apart from the phenomena
which alone enter into experience, is a contradiction. We cannot, we are told,
know what it is, but only that it is. But this is itself an important piece of
knowledge relating to the thing. It involves a judgment, and a judgment
involves categories, and we are thus forced to surrender the idea that we can
be aware of the existence of anything which is not subject to the laws
governing experience. Moreover, the only reason which can be given for our
belief in things-in-themselves is that they are the ground or substratum of
our sensuous intuitions. But this is a relation, and a relation involves a
category. Indeed every statement which can be made about the thing-in-itself
contradicts its alleged isolation.
26. It cannot be denied, however, that Hegel does more than is involved in
the rejection of a thing-in-itself outside the laws of experience. Not only are
his epistemological conclusions declared to have also ontological validity,
but he certainly goes further and holds that, from the consideration of the
existence of pure thought, we are able to deduce the existence of the worlds
of Nature and Spirit. Is this equivalent to an admission that the worlds of
Nature and Spirit can be reduced to, or explained away by, pure thought?
We shall see that this is not the case when we reflect that the dialectic
process is no less analytic of a given material than it is synthetic from a
given premise, and owes its impulse as much to the perfect and concrete idea
which is implicit in experience, as to the imperfect and abstract idea which
is explicitly before the student. For if the idea is, when met with in reality,
always perfect and concrete, it is no less true that it is, when met with in
reality, invariably, and of necessity, found in connection with sensuous
intuition, without which even the relatively concrete idea which ends the
Logic is itself an illegitimate abstraction. This being the case it follows
that, as each stage of the Logic insists on going forward to the next stage, so
the completed logical idea insists on going forward and asserting the
coexistence with itself of sensuous perception. It does not postulate any
particular sensuous perception, for the idea is equally implicit in all
experience, and one fragment is as good as another in which to perceive it. We
are thus unable to deduce any of the particulars of the world of sense from
the Logic. But we are able to deduce that there must be such a world, for
without it the idea would be still an abstraction and therefore still
contradictory. We are able to predicate of that world whatever is necessary to
make it the complement of the world of pure thought. It must be immediate,
that thought may have something to mediate, individual and isolated piece
from piece that thought may have something to relate. It must be, in short,
the abstract individual, which, together with the abstract universal of
thought, forms the concrete reality, alike individual and universal, which
alone is consistent and self-sustained.
27. If this is so, it follows that there is nothing mysterious or intricate
about the deduction of the world of Nature from the Logic, and of the world of
Spirit from the world of Nature. It is simply the final step in the self-
recovery of the spirit from the illegitimate abstractions of the
understanding--the recovery which we have seen to be the source of all
movement in the dialectic. Once granted a single category of the Logic, and
all the others follow, since in the world of reality each lower category only
exists as a moment of the Absolute Idea, and can therefore never by itself
satisfy the demands of the mind. And, in like manner, the world of pure
thought only exists as an abstraction from concrete reality, so that, granted
pure thought, we are compelled by the necessity of the dialectic to grant the
existence of some sensuous intuition also. It is perhaps conceivable that, in
some future state of knowledge, the completion of the dialectic process might
be seen to involve, not only the mere existence of Nature and Spirit, but
their existence with particular characteristics, and that this might be carried
so far that it amounted to a complete determination, in one way or another,
of every question which could be asked concerning them. If this should be the
case, we should be able to deduce à priori from the character of pure thought
the whole contents of science and history. Even then, however, we should not
have taken up the position that the immediate element in Nature and Spirit
could be reduced to pure thought. For we should not be endeavouring to deduce
the immediate merely from the mediate, but from the mediate compared with
the concrete reality of which they are both moments. The true force of the
proof would lie in the existence of this synthesis. At present, however, the
world of sense appears to us to contain a large number of particulars which
are quite indifferent to pure thought, so that it might be as well embodied in
one arrangement of them as in another. This may possibly be an inevitable
law of knowledge. It certainly expresses the state of our knowledge at
present. It follows that the Philosophy of Nature and Spirit will consist only
in observing the progress of the pure idea as it appears in the midst of
phenomena to a large extent contingent to it, and cannot hope to account for
all the particulars of experience. But this is all that Hegel attempts to do.
He endeavours to find the idea in everything, but not to reduce everything to a
manifestation of the idea. Thus he remarks in the Philosophy of Spirit, "This
development of reality or objectivity brings forward a row of forms which
must certainly be given empirically, but from an empirical point of view
should not be placed side by side and outside each other, but must be known as
the expression which corresponds to a necessary series of definite notions,
and only in so far as they express such a series of notions have interest for
philosophic thought."<Note: Enc. Section 387, lecture note, p. 42.>
28. If this explanation be correct, it will follow that Hegel never
endeavoured to claim ontological validity for his Logic in the second sense
mentioned above--by attempting, that is, to deduce all the contents of
experience from the nature of pure thought only. The deduction which does
take place is not dependent merely on the premise from which it starts, which
is certainly to be found in the nature of pure thought, but also on the whole
to which it is working up, and which is implicit in our thought. If we can
proceed in this way from Logic to Nature and Spirit, it proves that Logic
without the additional elements which occur in Nature and Spirit is a mere
abstraction. And an abstraction cannot possibly be the cause of the reality
from which it is an abstraction. There can be no place here, therefore, for
the attempt to construct the world out of abstract thought, of which Hegel's
philosophy is sometimes supposed to have consisted.
The importance of the ontological significance of the dialectic, even in
this limited extent, is, however, very great. We are now enabled to assert, not
only that, within our experience, actual or possible, everything can be
explained by the Absolute Idea, but also that all reality, in any sense in
which we can attach any intelligible meaning to the word, can also be
explained by that idea. I cannot have the least reason to believe in, or even
to imagine possible, anything which does not in the long run turn out to
contain and be constituted by the highest category. And since that category,
as was pointed out above, expresses the deepest nature of the human mind, we
are entitled to believe that the universe as a whole is in fundamental
agreement with our own nature, and that whatever can rightly be called
rational may be safely declared to be also real.
29. From this account of the Hegelian system it will appear that its main
result is the completion of the work which had been carried on by German
philosophy since the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason--the
establishment, by means of the transcendental method, of the rationality of
the Universe. There was much left for Hegel to do. For the Critique of Pure
Reason was a dualism, and had all the qualities of a dualism. Man's
aspirations after complete rationality and complete justice in life were
checked by the consideration of the phenomenal side of his own nature, which
delivered him over to the mercy of a world in one of whose elements--the
irrational manifold--he saw only what was alien to himself. And the defect of
the Critique of Pure Reason in this respect was not completely remedied by
the Critique of Practical Reason. The reconciliation was only external: the
alien element was not to be absorbed or transcended but conquered. It was
declared the weaker, but it kept its existence. And the whole of this argument
had a slighter basis than the earlier one, since it rested, not on the validity
of knowledge, but on the validity of the moral sense--the denial of which is
not as clearly a contradiction of itself. Moreover, it is not by any means
universally admitted that the obligation to seek the good is dependent on the
possibility of realising it in full. And if it is not so dependent then the
validity of the moral sense does not necessarily imply the validity of the
Ideas of Reason. Even in the Critique of Judgment the reconciliation of the
two sides was still external and incomplete.
Nor had spirit a much stronger position with Kant's immediate successors.
Fichte, indeed, reduced the Non-Ego to a shadow, but just for that reason, as
Dr Caird remarks, rendered it impossible to completely destroy it. And the
Absolute of Schelling, standing as it did midway between matter and spirit,
could be but slight comfort to spirit, whose most characteristic features and
most important interests had little chance of preservation in a merely
neutral basis.
Hegel on the other hand asserted the absolute supremacy of reason. For him
it is the key to the interpretation of the whole universe; it finds nothing
alien to itself wherever it goes. And the reason for which he thus claimed
unrestricted power was demonstrated to contain every category up to the
Absolute Idea. It is this demonstration--quite as much as the rejection of the
possibility that anything in the universe should be alien to reason--which
gives his philosophy its practical interest. For from the practical point of
view it is of little consequence that the world should be proved to be the
embodiment of reason, if we are to see in reason nothing higher than
reciprocity, and are compelled to regard the higher categories as mere
subjective delusions. Such a maimed reason as this is one in which we can
have scarcely more pleasure or acquiescence than in chaos. If the rational can
be identified with the good, it can only be in respect of the later categories,
such as End, Life, and Cognition.