STUDIES IN THE HEGELIAN DIALECTIC - Table of Contents
CHAPTER III: THE VALIDITY OF THE DIALECTIC
67. THE question now arises, whether the dialectic as sketched in the last two
chapters, is a valid system of philosophy. The consideration of this question
here must necessarily be extremely incomplete. Some seventy or eighty
transitions from one category to another may be found in the Logic, and we
should have to consider the correctness of each one of these, before we could
pronounce the dialectic, in its present form at least, to be correct. For a
chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if a single transition is
inconclusive, it must render all that comes beyond it uncertain. All we can do
here is to consider whether the starting point and the general method of the
dialectic are valid, without enquiring into its details.
We shall have in the first place to justify the dialectical procedure--so
different from that which the understanding uses in the affairs of every-day
life. To do this we must show, first, that the ordinary use of the
Understanding implies a demand for the complete explanation of the universe,
and then that such an explanation cannot be given by the Understanding, and
can be given by the Reason in its dialectical use, so that the Understanding
itself postulates in this way the validity of dialectic thought. In the second place
we must prove that the point from which the dialectic starts is one
which it may legitimately take for granted, and that the nature of the advance
and its relation to experience are such as will render the dialectic a valid
theory of knowledge. In this connection the relation of the idea of Movement
to the dialectic process must also be considered. And finally the question
will arise whether we are justified in applying this theory of knowledge as
also a theory of being, and in deducing the worlds of Nature and Spirit from
the world of Logic.
68. It is to be noticed that both the first and second arguments are of a
transcendental nature. We start respectively from the common thought of the
Understanding, and from the idea of Being, and we endeavour to prove the
validity of the speculative method and of the Absolute Idea, because they are
assumed in, and postulated by, the propositions from which we started. Before
going further, therefore, we ought to consider some general objections which
have been made against transcendental arguments as such.
They have been stated with great clearness by Mr Arthur Balfour in his
Defence of Philosophic Doubt. "When a man," he says, "is convinced by a
transcendental argument, it must be . . . because he perceives that a certain
relation or principle is necessary to constitute his admitted experience. This
is to him a fact, the truth of which he is obliged to recognise. But another
fact, which he may also find it hard to dispute, is that he himself, and, as it
would appear, the majority of mankind, have habitually had this experience
without ever thinking it under this relation; and this second fact is one which
it does not seem easy to interpret in a manner which shall harmonise with
the general theory. The transcendentalist would, no doubt, say at once that
the relation in question had always been thought implicitly, even if it had
not always come into clear consciousness; and having enunciated this dictum
he would trouble himself no further about a matter which belonged merely to
the `history of the individual.' But if an implicit thought means in this
connection what it means everywhere else, it is simply a thought which is
logically bound up in some other thought, and which for that reason may
always be called into existence by it. Now from this very definition, it is
plain that so long as a thought is implicit it does not exist. It is a mere
possibility, which may indeed at any moment become an actuality, and which,
when once an actuality, may be indestructible; but which so long as it is a
possibility can be said to have existence only by a figure of speech.
"If, therefore, this meaning of the word `implicit' be accepted, we find
ourselves in a difficulty. Either an object can exist and be a reality to an
intelligence which does not think of it under relations which, as I now see,
are involved in it, i.e. without which I cannot now think of it as an object;
or else I am in error, when I suppose myself and other people to have ignored
these relations in past times."<Note: Defence of Philosophic Doubt, p. 94.>
The second of these alternatives, as Mr Balfour points out, cannot be
adopted. It is certain that a large part of mankind have never embraced the
transcendental philosophy, and that even those who accept it did not do so
from their earliest childhood. It follows, he continues, that we must accept
the first alternative, in which case the whole transcendental system "vanishes
in smoke."
69. The dilemma, however, as it seems to me, rests upon a confusion of the
two different senses in which we may be said to be conscious of thought. We
may be said, in the first place, to be conscious of it whenever we are
conscious of a whole experience in which it is an element. In this sense we
must be conscious of all thought which exists at all. We must agree with Mr
Balfour that "if the consciousness vanishes, the thought must vanish too,
since, except on some crude materialistic hypothesis, they are the same
thing."<Note: op. cit. p. 100.> But in the second sense we are only conscious
of a particular thought when we have singled it out from the mass of
sensations and thoughts, into which experience may be analysed, when we have
distinguished it from the other constituents of experience, and know it to be
a thought, and know what thought it is. In this sense we may have thought
without being conscious of it. And indeed we must always have it, before we
can be conscious of it in this sense. For thought first comes before us as an
element in the whole of experience, and it is not till we have analysed that
whole, and separated thought from sensation, and one thought from another,
that we know we have a particular thought. Till then we have the thought
without being explicitly conscious that we have it. Now I submit that Mr Balfour's
argument depends on a paralogism. When he
asserts that we must always be conscious of any relation which is necessary to
constitute experience, he is using "to be conscious of" in the first sense.
When he asserts that all people are not always conscious of all the ideas of
the dialectic as necessary elements in experience, he is using "to be
conscious of" in the second sense. And if we remove this ambiguity the
difficulty vanishes.
We are only conscious of thought as an element in experience. Of thought
outside experience we could not be conscious in any sense of the word, for
thought except as relating and mediating data cannot even be conceived. But
thought of which we are not conscious at all is, as Mr Balfour remarks, a non-
entity. And no thought does exist outside experience. Both thought and the
immediate data which it mediates exist only as combined in the whole of
experience, which is what comes first into consciousness. In this lie the
various threads of thought and sensation, of which we may be said to be
conscious, in so far as we are conscious of the whole of which they are
indispensable elements. But we do not know how many, nor of what nature, the
threads are, until we have analysed the whole in which they are first presented
to us, nor, till then, do we clearly see that the whole is made up of separate
elements. Even to know this involves some thinking about thought. There is
no contradiction between declaring that certain relations must enter into all
conscious thought, and admitting that those relations are known as such only to
those who have endeavoured to divide the whole of experience into its
constituent parts, and have succeeded in the attempt.
The use of the word "implicit" to which Mr Balfour objects, can be
explained in the same way. If it means only what he supposes, so that an
implicit thought is nothing but one "which is logically bound up in some
other thought, and which for that reason may always be called into existence
by it"--then indeed to say that a thought is implicit is equivalent to saying
that it does not exist. But if we use the word--and there seems no reason why
we should not--in the sense suggested by its derivation, in which it means
that which is wrapped up in something else, then it is clear that a thing may
be implicit, and so not distinctly seen to be itself, while it nevertheless
exists and is perceived as part of the whole in which it is involved.
70. In speaking of such an answer to his criticisms, Mr Balfour objects that
it concedes more than transcendentalism can afford to allow. "If relations
can exist otherwise than as they are thought, why should not sensations do the
same? Why should not the `perpetual flux' of unrelated objects--the
metaphysical spectre which the modern transcendentalist labours so hard to
lay--why, I say, should this not have a real existence? We, indeed, cannot in
our reflective moments think of it except under relations which give it a kind
of unity; but once allow that an object may exist, but in such a manner as to
make it nothing for us as thinking beings, and this incapacity may be simply
due to the fact that thought is powerless to grasp the reality of things."<Note:
op. cit. p. 101.>
This, however, is not a fair statement of the position. The
transcendentalist does not assert that an object can exist in such a manner
as to be nothing for us as thinking beings, but only that it may exist, and be
something for us as thinking beings, although we do not recognise the
conditions on which its existence for us depends. Thus we are able to admit
that thought exists even for those people who have never made the slightest
reflection on its nature. And, in the same way, no doubt, we can be conscious
of related sensations without seeing that they are related, for we may never
have analysed experience as presented to us into its mutually dependent
elements of sensation and thought. But it does not follow that sensations
could exist unrelated. That would mean that something existed in
consciousness (for sensations exist nowhere else), which not only is not
perceived to comply with the laws of consciousness, but which actually does
not comply with them. And this is quite a different proposition, and an
impossible one.
71. Passing now to the peculiarities of the dialectic method, their
justification must be one which will commend itself to the Understanding--
that is to thought, when, as happens in ordinary life, it acts according to the
laws of formal logic, and treats the various categories as stable and
independent entities, which have no relation to one another, but that of
exclusion. For if speculative thought, or Reason, cannot be justified before the
Understanding, there will be an essential dualism in the nature of
thought, incompatible with any satisfactory philosophy. And since mankind
naturally, and until cause is shown to the contrary, takes up the position of
the Understanding, it will be impossible that we can have any logical right to
enter on the dialectic, unless we can justify it from that standpoint, from
which we must set out when we first begin to investigate metaphysical
questions.
The first step towards this proof is the recognition that the Understanding
necessarily demands an absolute and complete explanation of the universe. In
dealing with this point, Hartmann<Note: Ueber die dialektische Methode, B. II.
4.> identifies the longing for the Absolute, on which Hegel here relies, with
the longing to "smuggle back" into our beliefs the God whom Kant had
rejected from metaphysics. God, however, is an ideal whose reality may be
demanded on the part either of theoretical or of practical reason. It is
therefore not very easy to see whether Hartmann meant that the longing, as he
calls it, after the Absolute, is indulged only in the interest of religion and
ethics, or whether he admits that it is demanded, whether justifiably or not,
by the nature of knowledge. The use of the term "longing," (Sehnsucht),
however, and the expressions "mystisch-religiöses Bedürfnis," and
"unverständliche Gefühle," which he applies to it, seem rather to suggest the
former alternative.
In this case grave injustice is done to the Hegelian position. The
philosopher does not believe in the Absolute merely because he desires it
should exist. The postulate is not only an emotional or ethical one, nor is
the Absolute itself by any means primarily a religious ideal, whatever it may
subsequently become. If, for example, we take the definition given in the
Smaller Logic, "der Begriff der Idee, dem die Idee als solche der Gegenstand,
dem das Objekt sie ist,"<Note: Enc. Section 236.> it is manifest that what is
here chiefly regarded is not a need of religion, but of cognition. Indeed the
whole course of the Logic shows us that it is the desire for complete
knowledge, and the impatience of knowledge which is seen to be unsatisfactory,
which act as the motive power of the system. It is possible, no doubt, that
Hegel's object in devoting himself to philosophy at all was, as has often been
the case with philosophers, mainly practical, and that his interest in the
absolute was excited from the side of ethics and religion rather than of pure
thought. But so long as he did not use this interest as an argument, it does
not weaken his position. The ultimate aim which a philosopher has in his
studies is irrelevant to our criticism of his results, if the latter are valid
in themselves.
72. The need of the Absolute is thus a need of cognition. We must ask, then,
whether the Understanding, in its attempts to solve particular problems,
demands a complete explanation of the universe, and the attainment of the
ideal of knowledge? This question must be answered in the affirmative. For
although we start with particular problems, the answer to each of these will raise
fresh questions, which must be solved before the original difficulty can
be held to be really answered, and this process goes on indefinitely, till we
find that the whole universe is involved in a complete answer to even the
slightest question. As was pointed out above<Note: Section 13.> any
explanation of anything by means of the surrounding circumstances, of an
antecedent cause, or of its constituent parts, must necessarily raise fresh
questions as to the surroundings of those surroundings, the causes of those
causes, or the parts of those parts, and such series of questions, if once
started, cannot stop until they reach the knowledge of the whole surrounding
universe, of the whole of past time, or of the ultimate atoms, which it is
impossible to subdivide further.
In fact, to state the matter generally, any question which the Understanding
puts to itself must be either, What is the meaning of the universe? or, What
is the meaning of some part of the universe? The first is obviously only to
be answered by attaining the absolute ideal of knowledge. The second again can
only be answered by answering the first. For if a thing is part of a whole it
must stand in some relation to the other parts. The other parts must
therefore have some influence on it, and part of the explanation of its nature
must lie in these other parts. From the mere fact that they are parts of the
same universe, they must all be connected, directly or indirectly.
73. The Understanding, then, demands the ideal of knowledge, and postulates
it whenever it asks a question. Can it, we must now enquire, attain, by its own
exertions, to the ideal which it postulates? It has before it the same
categories as the Reason, but it differs from the Reason in not seeing that
the higher categories are the inevitable result of the lower, and in believing
that the lower are stable and independent. "Thought, as Understanding, sticks
to fixity of characters, and their distinctness from one another: every such
limited abstract it treats as having a subsistence and being of its
own."<Note: Enc. Section 80.> It can use the higher categories, then, but it
has no proof of their validity, which can only be demonstrated, as was
explained in Chap. I., by showing that they are involved in the lower ones, and
finally in the simplest of all. Nor does it see that an explanation by a
higher category relieves us from the necessity of finding a consistent
explanation by a lower one. For it does not know, as the Reason does, that the
lower categories are abstractions from the higher, and are unfit to be used
for the ultimate explanation of anything, except in so far as they are
moments in a higher unity.
It is this last defect which prevents the Understanding from ever attaining
a complete explanation of the universe. There is, as we have said, nothing to
prevent the Understanding from using the highest category, that of the
Absolute Idea. It contains indeed a synthesis of contradictions, which the
Understanding is bound to regard as a mark of error, but so does every
category above Being and Not-Being, and the Understanding nevertheless uses
these categories, not perceiving that they violate the law of contradiction, as
conceived by formal logic. It might therefore use the Absolute Idea as a
means of explaining the universe, if it happened to come across it (for the
perception of the necessary development of that idea from the lower
categories belongs only to the Reason) but it would not see that it summed up
all other categories.
And this would prevent the explanation from being completely satisfactory.
For the only way in which contradictions caused by the use of the lower
categories can be removed by the employment of the Absolute Idea lies in the
synthesis, by the Absolute Idea, of those lower categories. They must be seen
to be abstractions from it, to have truth only in so far as they are moments
in it, and to have no right to claim existence or validity as independent. This
can only be known by means of the Reason. For the Understanding each
category is independent and ultimate. And therefore any contradictions in
which the Understanding may be involved through the use of the lower
categories can have no solution for the Understanding itself. Till we can rise
above the lower categories, by seeing that they express only inadequate and
imperfect points of view, the contradictions into which they lead us must
remain to deface our system of knowledge. And for this deliverance we must
wait for the Reason.
74. If the lower categories do produce contradictions, then, we can only
extricate ourselves from our difficulty by aid of the Reason. But are such
contradictions produced, in fact, when we treat those categories as ultimate and
endeavour to completely explain anything by them? This question would be
most fitly answered by pointing out the actual contradictions in each case,
which is what Hegel undertakes throughout the Logic. To examine the
correctness of his argument in each separate case would be beyond the scope
of this work. We may however point out that this doctrine did not originate
with Hegel. In the early Greek philosophy we have demonstrations of the
contradictions inherent in the idea of Motion, and traces of a dialectic
process are found by Hegel in Plato. Kant, also, has shown in his Antinomies
that the attempt to use the lower categories as complete explanations of
existence leads with equal necessity to directly contradictory conclusions.
And we may say on general grounds that any category which involves an
infinite regress must lead to contradictions. Such are, for example, the
category of Force, which explains things as manifestations of a force, the
nature of which must be determined by previous manifestations, and the
category of Causality, which traces things to their causes, which causes again
are effects and must have other causes found for them. Such an infinite
regress can never be finished. And an unfinished regress, which we admit ought
to be continued, explains nothing, while to impose an arbitrary limit on it is
clearly unjustifiable.
Again, all categories having no ground of self-differentiation in themselves
may be pronounced to be in the long run unsatisfactory. For thought demands
an explanation which shall unify the data to be explained, and these data are in
themselves various. If the explanation, therefore, is to be complete, and
not to leave something unaccounted for, it must show that there is a
necessary connection between the unity of the principle and the plurality of
the manifestation.
Now many of the lower categories do involve an infinite regress, and are
wanting in any principle of self-differentiation. They cannot, therefore,
escape falling into contradictions, and as the Understanding cannot, as the
Reason can, remove the difficulties by regarding these categories as sides of a
higher truth in which the contradiction vanishes, the contradictions remain
permanent, and prevent the Understanding from reaching that ideal of
knowledge at which it aims.
75. On this subject Hartmann <Note: op. cit. B. II. 4.> reminds us that Hegel
confesses that the Understanding cannot think a contradiction--in the sense
of unifying it and explaining it. All, as he rightly points out, that the
Understanding can do is to be conscious of the existence of contradictions.
This, he contends, will not serve Hegel's purpose of justifying the Reason.
For, since the recognition of the existence of contradictions can never change
the incapacity of the Understanding to think them, the only result would be "a
heterogeneity or inconsequence" of being, which presents these contradictions,
and thought, which is unable to think them. This inconsequence might end, if
Hegel's assertion be correct that contradictions are everywhere, in a total
separation between thought and being, but could have no tendency to make
thought dissatisfied with the procedure of the Understanding, and willing to
embrace that of the Reason.
This, however, misrepresents Hegel's position. The contradictions are not
in being, as opposed to thought. They are in all finite thought, whenever it
attempts to work at all. The contradiction on which the dialectic relies is,
that, if we use one finite category of any subject-matter, we find ourselves
compelled, if we examine what is implied in using, to use also, of the same
subject-matter, its contrary. The Understanding recognises this contradiction,
while at the same time it cannot think it,--cannot, that is, look at it from
any point of view from which the contradiction should disappear. It cannot
therefore take refuge in the theory that there is a heterogeneity between
itself and being, for it is in its own working that it finds something wrong.
If the law of contradiction holds, thought must be wrong when it is inevitably
led to ascribe contrary predicates to the same subject, while if the law of
contradiction did not hold, no thought would be possible at all. And if, as the
dialectic maintains, such contradictions occur with every finite category--
that is, whenever the Understanding is used, the Understanding must itself
confess that there is always a contradiction in its operations, discoverable
when they are scrutinised with sufficient keenness. Either, then, there is no
valid thought at all--a supposition which contradicts itself,--or there must
be some form of thought which can harmonise the contradictions which the
Understanding can only recognise.
76. But if the Understanding is reduced to a confession of its own
insufficiency, is the Reason any better off? Does the solution offered by the
Reason supply that complete ideal of knowledge which all thought demands?
The answer to this question will depend in part on the actual success which
the Absolute Idea may have in explaining the problems before us so as to give
satisfaction to our own minds. But the difference between the indication in
general terms of the true explanation, and the working out of that
explanation in detail is so enormous, that we shall find but little guidance
here. It may be true that "the best proof that the universe is rational lies in
rationalising it," but, if so, it is a proof which is practically
unattainable.<Note: Cp. Chap. VII.>
The only general proof open to us is a negative one. The dialectic comes to
the conclusion that each of the lower categories cannot be regarded as
ultimate, because in each, on examination, it finds an inherent contradiction.
In proportion as careful consideration and scrutiny fail to reveal any
corresponding contradiction in the Absolute Idea, we may rely on the
conclusion of the dialectic that it is the ultimate and only really adequate
category.
It may, however, be worth while to point out that the Absolute Idea does
comply with several requirements which we should be disposed to regard à
priori as necessary for an idea which should prove itself adequate to the task
of offering a complete explanation of the universe. The explanation afforded by
the use of the Absolute Idea is that in all reality the idea, while it finds
an independent Other given to it, finally learns that in that Other there is
nothing alien to itself, so that it finds itself in everything. The key which is
applied is thus the idea of the human mind itself, as engaged in activity,
whether theoretical or practical. Such an explanation, if it can be proved to
be true, must, it would seem, be satisfactory to us. For we can reach no
standing point outside the human mind, from which we could pronounce that an
explanation which showed the intelligibility of the whole universe, and its
fundamental similarity to that mind, was unsatisfactory. Our object, in
pursuit of which we rejected the limitations of the Understanding and took to
the use of the Reason, was to explain, that is, to rationalise the universe.
And it would be impossible to rationalise it more than this category does,
which regards it as the manifestation and incarnation of reason.
77. What then should be the attitude of the Understanding towards the
Reason? We have shown that the Understanding at once postulates, and cannot
attain, a complete and harmonious ideal of knowledge. Supposing that the
Reason can, as it asserts, attain this ideal, is the Understanding therefore
bound to admit its validity?
It is no doubt perfectly true, as Hartmann points out,<Note: op. cit. II. B.
4.> that our power of seeking for anything, or even the necessity we may be
under of seeking it, is not in itself the least proof that we shall succeed in
our search. It does not then directly follow that, because there is no other way
than the Reason by which we could attain that which the Understanding
postulates, we can therefore attain it by means of the Reason. And this might
have been a decisive consideration if Hegel had attempted to prove the
validity of the Reason to the Understanding in a positive manner. But to do
this would have been unnecessary, and, indeed, self-destructive. For such a
proof would have gone too far. It would have proved that there was nothing in
the Reason which was not also in the Understanding--in other words, that
there was no difference between them. If there are two varieties of thought, of
which one is higher and more comprehensive than the other, it will be
impossible from the nature of the case for the lower and narrower to be
directly aware that the higher is valid. From the very fact that the higher
will have canons of thought not accepted by the lower, it must appear invalid
to the latter, which can only be forced to accept it by external and indirect
proof of its truth. And of this sort is the justification which the Reason does
offer to the Understanding. It proves that we have a need which the
Understanding must recognise, but cannot satisfy. This leaves the hearer with
two alternatives. He may admit the need and deny that it can be satisfied in
any way, which, in the case of a fundamental postulate of thought, would
involve complete scepticism. If he does not do this, he must accept the
validity of the Reason, as the only source by which the demand can be
satisfied.
The first alternative, however, in a case like this, is only nominal. If we have to
choose between a particular theory and complete scepticism, we have,
in fact, no choice at all. For complete scepticism is impossible, contradicted
as it would be by the very speech or thought which asserted it. If Hegel's
demonstrations are correct, there is to be found in every thought something
which for the Understanding is a contradiction. But to reject all thought as
incorrect is impossible. There must therefore be some mode of thought,
higher than the Understanding, and supplementary to it, by which we may be
justified in doing continually that which the Understanding will not allow us
to do at all. And this is the Reason.
78. We are thus enabled to reject Hartmann's criticism that the dialectic
violates all the tendencies of modern thought, by sundering the mind into two
parts, which have nothing in common with one another.<Note: op. cit. II. B.
3.> The Understanding and the Reason have this in common, that the Reason is
the only method of solving the problems which are raised by the
Understanding, and therefore can justify its existence on the principles which
the Understanding recognises. For the distinctive mark of the Reason is, as
Hegel says, that "it apprehends the unity of the categories in their
opposition," that it perceives that all concrete categories are made up of
reconciled contradictions, and that it is only in these syntheses that the
contradictory categories find their true meaning. Now this apprehension is
not needed in order to detect the contradictions which the finite categories
involve. This can be done by the Understanding. And when the Understanding has
done this, it has at any rate proved its own impotence, and therefore can
scarcely be said to be essentially opposed to Reason, since it has forfeited
its claim to any thorough or consistent use at all.
The whole justification of the Reason, as the necessary complement of the
Understanding, is repeated in each triad of the Logic. The fact that the thesis
leads of necessity to the antithesis, which is its contrary, is one of the
contradictions which prove the impotence of the Understanding. We are forced
either to admit the synthesis offered by the Reason, or to deny the
possibility of reconciling the thesis and antithesis. The thesis itself, again,
was a modified form of the synthesis of a lower thesis and antithesis. To deny
it will therefore involve the denial of them also, since it offers the only
means of removing their contradiction. And thus we should be driven lower and
lower, till we reach at last an impossible scepticism, the only escape from
which is to accept the union of opposites which we find in the Reason.
Thus the Reason, though it does something which the Understanding cannot
do, does not really do anything which the Understanding denies. What the
Understanding denies is the possibility of combining two contrary notions as
they stand, each independent and apparently self-complete. What the Reason
does, is to merge these ideas in a higher one, in which their opposition, while
in one sense preserved, is also transcended. This is not what is denied by the
Understanding, for the Understanding is incapable of realising the position.
Reason is not contrary to, but beyond the Understanding. It is true that whatever
is beyond the Understanding may be said to be in one sense contrary
to it, since a fresh principle is introduced. But as the Understanding has
proved that its employment by itself would result in chaos, it has given up
its assertion of independence and leads the way naturally to Reason. Thus
there are not two faculties in the mind with different laws, but two methods
of working, the lower of which, though it does not of course contain the
higher, yet leads up to it, postulates it, and is seen, in the light of the
higher method, only to exist as leading up to it, and to be false in so far as
it claims independence. The second appears as the completion of the first; it
is not merely an escape from the difficulties of the lower method, but it
explains and removes those difficulties; it does not merely succeed, where the
Understanding had failed, in rationalising the universe, but it rationalises
the Understanding itself. Taking all this into consideration the two methods
cannot properly be called two separate faculties, however great may be the
difference in their working.
79. We must now pass to the second of the three questions proposed at the
beginning of this chapter--namely, the internal consistency of the system.
And it will be necessary to consider in the first place what foundation is
assumed, upon which to base our argument, and whether we are entitled to this
assumption.
Now the idea from which the dialectic sets out, and in which it professes to
show that all the other categories are involved, is the idea of Being. Are we
justified in assuming the validity of this idea? The ground on which we can
answer this question in the affirmative is that the rejection of the idea as
invalid would be self-contradictory, as was pointed out above.<Note: Chap. I.
Section 18.> For it would be equivalent to a denial that anything whatever
existed. And in that case the denial itself could not exist, and the validity of
the idea of Being has not been denied. But, on the other hand, if the denial
does exist, then there is something whose existence we cannot deny. And the
same dilemma applies to doubt, as well as to positive denial. If the doubt
exists, then there is something of whose existence we are certain; if the
doubt does not exist, then we do not doubt the validity of the category. And
both denial and doubt involve the existence of the thinking subject.
We have thus as firm a base as possible for our transcendental argument. It
is not only a proposition which none of our opponents do in fact doubt, but
one which they cannot by any possibility doubt, one which is involved and
postulated in all thought and in all action. Whatever may be the nature of the
superstructure, the foundation is strong enough to carry it.
80. The next consideration must be the validity of the process by which we
conclude that further categories are involved in the one from which we start.
In this process there are three steps. We go from thesis to antithesis, from
thesis and antithesis to synthesis, and from synthesis again to a fresh thesis.
The distinctness of the separate steps becomes somewhat obscured towards the
end of the Logic, when the importance of negation, as the means by which the
imperfect truth advances towards perfection, is considerably diminished. It
will perhaps be most convenient to take the steps here in the form in which
they exist at the beginning of the Logic. The effect produced on the validity
of the process by the subsequent development of the method will be discussed
in the next chapter.
It is not necessary to say much of the transition from the synthesis to the
fresh thesis. It is, in fact, scarcely a transition at all. It is, as can be seen
when Becoming passes into Being Determinate, rather a contemplation of the
same truth from a fresh point of view--immediacy in the place of reconciling
mediation--than an advance to a fresh truth. Whether in fact this new category
is always the same as the previous synthesis, looked at from another point of
view, is a question of detail which must be examined independently for each
triad of the Logic, and which does not concern us here, as we are dealing only
with the general principles of the system. But if the old synthesis and the
new thesis are really only different expressions of the same truth, the
passage from the one to the other is valid even according to formal Logic.
Since nothing new is added at all, nothing can be added improperly.
81. Our general question must be put in a negative form to suit the
transition between thesis and antithesis. It would be misleading to ask
whether we were justified in assuming that, since the thesis is valid, the
antithesis is valid too. For the result of the transition from thesis to
antithesis is to produce, till the synthesis is perceived, a state of contradiction
and scepticism, in which it will be doubted if either category is
valid at all, since they lead to contradictions. Our question should rather be,
Are we justified in assuming that, unless the antithesis is valid, the thesis
cannot be valid?
The ground of this assumption is that the one category implies the other.
If we examine attentively what is meant by pure Being, we find that it cannot
be discriminated from Nothing. If we examine Being-for-self, we find that the
One can only be defined by its negation and repulsion, which involves the
category of the Many.
It is objected that these transitions cannot be justified, because they
profess to be acts of pure thought, and it is impossible to advance by pure
thought alone to anything new. To this an answer was indicated in the last
chapter, where we found that the motive to the whole advance is the presence
in experience, and in our minds as they become conscious of themselves in
experience, of the concrete reality, of which all categories are only
descriptions, and of which the lower categories are imperfect
descriptions.<Note: Section 32.> Since pure thought has a double ground from
which it may work--the abstract and imperfect explicit idea from which the
advance is to be made, and the concrete and perfect implicit idea towards
which the explicit idea gradually advances--real progress is quite compatible
with pure thought. Because it has before it a whole which is so far merely
implicit, and has not been analysed, it can arrive at propositions which were not
contained, according to the rules of formal logic, in the propositions
from which it starts, but are an advance upon the latter. On the other hand,
the process remains one of pure thought only, because this whole is not
empirically given. It is not empirically given, although it could not be given
if experience did not exist. For it is necessarily in all experience; and being
the essential nature of all reality, it can be deduced from any piece of
experience whatever. Our knowledge of it is dependent, not on experience being
thus and thus, but only on experience existing at all. And the existence of
experience cannot be called an empirical fact. It is the presupposition alike
of all empirical knowledge, and of all pure thought. We should not be aware
even of the existence of the laws of formal logic without the existence of
experience. Yet those laws are not empirical, because, although they have no
meaning apart from experience, they are not dependent on any one fact of
experience, but are the only conditions under which we can experience anything
at all. And for a similar reason, we need not suppose that dialectic thought
need be sterile because it claims to be pure.
82. From another point of view, it is sometimes said that the transitions
of the dialectic only exist because the connection between the two categories
has been demonstrated by means of facts taken from experience. In that case
the dialectic, whatever value it might have, could not possess the inherent
necessity, which characterises the movements of pure thought, and which its
author claimed for it. It could at most be an induction from experience, which
could never rise above probability, nor be safely applied beyond the
sphere in which it had been verified by experience. I have endeavoured to show
above that, since thought can be pure without being sterile, it does not
follow that an advance must be empirical because it is real. Whether it is in
fact empirical or not, is another matter. If we can conceive any change in the
nature of the manifold of sensations, as distinct from the categories by which
they are built up, which would invalidate any of the transitions of the
dialectic, then no doubt we should have to admit that the system had broken
down. It is of course impossible to prove generally and à priori that no such
flaw can be found in any part of the system. The question must be settled by
an investigation of each category independently, showing that the argument in
each depends upon the movement of the pure notion, and not on any
particulars of sense. To do this would be beyond the scope of my present
essay, but the special importance of the idea of Motion renders it necessary
to discuss Trendelenburg's theory that it has been illegitimately introduced
into the dialectic by the observation of empirical facts.<Note: Sections 91-94.>
83. The remaining transition is that from thesis and antithesis to
synthesis. We have seen above<Note: Section 78.> that if the synthesis does
reconcile the contradictions, we are bound to accept it as valid, unless we can
find some other means of reconciling them. For otherwise, since we cannot
accept unreconciled contradictions as true, we should have to deny the validity of
thesis and antithesis. And since the thesis itself was the only
reconciliation possible for a lower thesis and antithesis, we should have also
to deny the validity of the latter, and so on until, in the denial of Being, we
reached a reductio ad absurdum. All that remains, therefore, is to consider
whether the synthesis is a satisfactory reconciliation of contradictions.
With regard to the general possibility of transcending contradictions, we
must remember that the essence of the whole dialectic lies in the assertion
that the various pairs of contrary categories are only produced by abstraction
from the fuller category in which they are synthesised. We have not,
therefore, to find some idea which shall be capable of reconciling two ideas
which had originally no relation to it. We are merely restoring the unity
from which those ideas originally came. It is not, as we might be tempted to
think, the reconciliation of the contradiction which is an artificial expedient
of our minds in dealing with reality. It is rather the creation of the
contradiction which was artificial and subjective. The synthesis is the logical
prius of its moments. Bearing this in mind, we shall see that the possibility
of transcending contradictions is a simpler question than it appears to be.
For all that has to be overcome is a mistake about the nature of reality, due
to the incomplete insight of the Understanding. The contradiction has not so
much to be conquered as to be disproved.
84. Hartmann objects that the only result of the union of two contraries is
a blank, and not a richer truth.<Note: op. cit. II. B. 7.> This is certainly true of
the examples Hartmann takes, +y and -y, for these, treated as mathematical
terms, do not admit of synthesis, but merely of mechanical combination.
Hegel never maintained that two such terms as these, opposed in this way,
could ever produce anything but a blank. Hartmann appears to think that he
endeavoured to synthesise them in the passage in the Greater Logic,<Note:
Werke, Vol. IV. p. 53.> when he makes +y and -y equal to y and again to 2y. But
clearly neither y nor 2y could be a synthesis of +y and -y, for a synthesis
must introduce a new and higher idea. All Hegel meant here was that both +y
and -y are of the nature of y, and that they are also both quantities, so that
from one point of view they are both simply y (as a mile east and a mile west
are both a mile) and from another point of view they are 2y (as in going a
mile east, and then returning westwards for the same distance, we walk two
miles). This gives us no reason to suppose that Hegel did not see that if we
oppose +y to -y, taking the opposition of the signs into consideration, the
result will be 0.
But this tells us nothing about the possibility of synthesis. For Hegel does
not, to obtain a synthesis simply predicate the two opposite categories of the
same subject,--a course which he, like everyone else, would admit to be
impossible. He passes to another category, in which the two first are
contained, yet in such a way that the incompatibility ceases. The result here
is by no means an empty zero, because the synthesis is not a mere mechanical
junction of two contradictory categories, but is the real unity, of which the thesis
and antithesis are two aspects, which do not, however, exhaust its
meaning. Whether the attempt to find such syntheses has in fact been
successful all through the Logic, is, of course, another question. Such a
solution however would meet Hartmann's difficulty, and he has given no reason
why such a solution should be impossible. The nature of his example in itself
proves that he has failed to grasp the full meaning of the process. In algebra
there is no richer notion than that of quantity, in which +y and -y are
directly opposed. No synthesis is therefore possible, and the terms cannot be
brought together, except in that external unity which produces a mere blank.
But such a case, which can only be dealt with by the most abstract of all
sciences, cannot possibly be a fair example of a system whose whole life
consists in the gradual removal of abstractions.
85. We have seen that the cogency of the entire process rests mainly on the
fact that the system is analytic as well as synthetic, and that it does not
evolve an entirely new result, but only renders explicit what was previously
implicit in all experience. On the ground of this very characteristic of the
dialectic, Trendelenburg denies that it can have any objective validity. It may
be convenient to quote his account of the dialectic process, which Professor
Seth translates as follows:<Note: Hegelianism and Personality, p. 92.> "The
dialectic begins according to its own declaration with abstraction; for if
`pure being' is represented as equivalent to `nothing' thought has reduced the
fulness of the world to the merest emptiness. But it is the essence of abstraction
that the elements of thought which in their original form are
intimately united are violently held apart. What is thus isolated by
abstraction, however, cannot but strive to escape from this forced position.
Inasmuch as it is a part torn from a whole, it cannot but bear upon it the
traces that it is only a part; it must crave to be completed. When this
completion takes place, there will arise a conception which contains the
former in itself. But inasmuch as only one step of the original abstraction
has been retraced, the new conception will repeat the process; and this will
go on until the full reality of perception has been restored. . . . Plainly a
whole world may develop itself in this fashion, and, if we look more narrowly,
we have discovered here the secret of the dialectic method. That method is
simply the art by which we undo or retrace our original abstraction. The first
ideas, because they are the products of abstraction, are recognised on their
first appearance as mere parts or elements of a higher conception, and the
merit of the dialectic really lies in the comprehensive survey of these parts
from every side, and the thereby increased certainty we gain of their necessary
connection with one another."<Note: Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. I. p. 94.>
And he immediately continues, "What meanwhile happens in this progress is
only a history of subjective knowledge, no development of the reality itself
from its elements. For there is nothing corresponding in reality which
answers to the first abstraction of pure being. It is a strained image,
produced by the analysing mind, and no right appears anywhere to find in pure
being the first germ of an objective development."
In answer to this objection I may quote Mr F. H. Bradley, "you make no
answer to the claim of Dialectic, if you establish the fact that external
experience has already given it what it professes to evolve, and that no
synthesis comes out but what before has gone in. All this may be admitted,
for the question at issue is not, What can appear, and How comes it to appear?
The question is as to the manner of its appearing, when it is induced to
appear, and as to the special mode in which the mind recasts and regards the
matter it may have otherwise acquired. To use two technical terms which I
confess I regard with some aversion--the point in dispute is not whether the
product is à posteriori, but whether, being à posteriori, it is not à priori
also and as well."<Note: Logic, Book III, Part I. Chap. II. Section 20.> And in
the previous Section, speaking of the difference between common recognition
and the dialectic, he says "The content in one case, itself irrational, seems
to come to our reason from a world without, while in the other it appears as
that natural outcome of our inmost constitution, which satisfies us because it
is our own selves."
86. The process is more than is expressed by Trendelenburg's phrase "the
art by which we retrace or undo our original abstractions," ("die Kunst
wodurch die ursprüngliche Abstraction zurückgethan wird"). For the
abstractions are not passively retraced by us, but insist on retracing
themselves on pain of contradiction. Doubtless, as Trendelenburg says, to do this
belongs to the nature of abstractions from a concrete whole. But then
the significance of the dialectic might not unfairly be said to lie in the fact
that it proved that our more abstract thought-categories were abstractions in
this sense--a truth which without the dialectic we should not have known. All
analysis results, no doubt, in ideas more or less abstract, but not necessarily
in abstractions which spontaneously tend to return to the original idea
analysed. The idea of a living foot apart from the idea of a body does contain
a contradiction. We know that a living foot can only exist in connection with
a living body, and if we grant the first to exist at any given time and place
we know that we also admit, by implication, the other. Now the idea of a
steam flour-mill can in like manner be separated into two parts--that it is
moved by steam, and that its object is to grind corn. But to admit that one
of these ideas can be applied as a predicate to any given subject is not
equivalent to admitting that the other can be applied to it also, and that the
subject is a steam flour-mill. For a machine moved by steam can be used to
weave cotton, and water-power can be used to grind corn. We have formed from
our original idea two which are more abstract--the idea of a machine moved by
steam, and the idea of a machine which grinds corn. But neither of them shows
the least impulse to "retrace or undo our original abstraction."
The important question is, then, of which sort are the abstractions of
which Hegel treats in the dialectic? It would, probably, be generally admitted
that those which he ranks as the lower categories are more abstract, that is to
say have less content, than those which he considers higher. But they may
be, for anything that superficial observation can tell us, the real units, of
which the higher categories are mere combinations. No one will deny that the
idea of Causality includes the idea of Being. But it might contain it only as
the idea of a steam flour-mill contains the idea of steam-power, so that it
would not at all follow that the category of Causality is applicable to all
being, any more than that all steam-power is used for grinding corn. And we
should not be able, from this inclusion of the idea of Being in the idea of
Causality, to conclude that the law of Causality was applicable anywhere at
all, even if the validity of the idea of Being was admitted. For the particular
case in which Being was combined with Causality might be one which never
really occurred, just as there might be machines moved by steam-power
without any of them being flour-mills.
87. The dialectic, however, puts us in a different position. From that we
learn that Being is an abstraction, the truth of which can be found only in
Causality, and in the higher categories into which Causality in turn develops.
Being, therefore, inevitably leads us on to Causality, so that, to whatever
subject-matter we can apply the first as a predicate, to that we must
necessarily apply the other.
The same change takes place in the relations of all the other categories.
Without the dialectic we might suppose Life to be an effect of certain
chemical combinations; with it we find that Chemism is an abstraction from Life,
so that, wherever there is Chemism there must be Life also. Without the
dialectic, again, we might suppose self-consciousness to be a mere effect of
animal life; with it, we are compelled to regard all life as merely relative
to some self-consciousness.
The result of the dialectic is thus much more than "the increased certainty
we gain of the necessary connection" of parts of thought "with one another."
For it must be remembered that organic wholes are not to be explained by
their parts, but the reverse, while on the other hand merely composite wholes
can be best explained from the units of which they are made up. We cannot
explain a living body by putting together the ideas of the isolated limbs,
though we might, if our knowledge was sufficiently complete, explain a limb
by the idea of the body as a whole. But we cannot explain the sizes and shapes
of stones from the idea of the beach which they make up, while, on the other
hand, if we knew the sizes, shapes, and positions of all the stones, we should
have complete knowledge of the beach. And the dialectic professes to show
that the lower categories are contained in the higher in a manner more
resembling that in which a foot is related to a body, than that in which a
stone is related to a beach. The success of the dialectic, therefore, means no
less than this--that, for purposes of ultimate explanation, we reverse the
order of science and the understanding, and, instead of attempting to account
for the higher phenomena of nature (i.e. those which primâ facie exhibit the
higher categories) by means of the laws of the lower, we account for the lower by
means of the laws of the higher. The interest of this for the theoretical
reason is obvious, and its importance for the practical reason is no less,
since the lower categories are those of matter and the higher those of spirit.
88. So also it is not fair to say that the process is only one of subjective
thought. It is doubtless true that the various abstractions which form the
steps of the dialectic have no separate existence corresponding to them in
the world of reality, where only the concrete notion is to be found. But the
result is one which has validity for objective thought. For it is by that
result that we learn that the notion is really a concrete unity, and that there
is nothing corresponding in the outside world to the separated fragments of
the notion which form the stages of finite thought. This is the same
conclusion from another point of view as the one mentioned in the preceding
paragraph, and it is surely both objective and important.
Moreover the objective significance of the dialectic process is not confined
to this negative result. For the different imperfect categories, although they
have no separate objective existence, yet have an objective existence, as
elements in the concrete whole, which is made up of them. If we ask what is
the nature of the Absolute Idea, we must, from one side, answer that "its true
content is only the whole system, of which we have been hitherto studying the
development."<Note: Enc. Section 237, lecture note.> Since the one absolute
reality may be expressed as the synthesis of these categories, they have
reality in it. Besides this, in the sphere of our ordinary finite thought, in which we
use the imperfect categories as stable and permanent, the dialectic gives us
objective information as to the relative amounts of truth and error which
may be expected from the use of various categories, and as to the comparative
reality and significance of different ways of regarding the universe,--as, for
example, that the idea of Life goes more deeply into the nature of reality
than the idea of Mechanism.
89. We are now in a position to meet the dilemma with which Trendelenburg
challenges the dialectic. "Either" he says "the dialectic development is
independent, and only conditioned by itself, then in fact it must know
everything for itself. Or it assumes finite sciences and empirical knowledge,
but then the immanent process and the unbroken connection are broken
through by what is assumed from outside, and it relates itself to experience
quite uncritically. The dialectic can choose. We see no third
possibility."<Note: op. cit. Vol. I. pp. 91, 92.> And just before he gives a
further description of the second alternative. "It works then only in the same
way and with the same means as the other sciences, only differing from them
in its goal,--to unite the parts to the idea of the whole."
Neither of these two alternatives is valid. The dialectic development is
only so far "independent and only conditioned by itself," that it does not
depend on any particular sensuous content of experience, and would develop in
the same way, whatever that content might be. But it does not follow that it
knows everything for itself. All that part of knowledge which depends upon one
content rather than another--the whole, that is, of what is ordinarily called
science--certainly cannot be reached from the dialectic alone in the present
state of our knowledge, and perhaps never will be.<Note: Cp. Chap. II. Section
59.> Nor does the dialectic, as we have seen, assume finite sciences and
empirical knowledge. In one sense, indeed, their subject-matter is the
condition of its validity, for it endeavours to analyse the concrete idea which
is implicit in all our experience. The dialectic may be said therefore, in a
sense, to depend on the fact that we have empirical knowledge, without which
we should be conscious of nothing, not even of ourselves (since it is only in
experience that we become self-conscious), and in that case there would be no
chance of the complete and concrete idea being implicitly in our minds, which
is a necessary preliminary to our subsequently making it explicit in the
dialectic.
This however does not make it depend upon the finite sciences and
empirical knowledge. It is dependent for its existence on the existence of
empirical knowledge, but its nature does not at all depend on the nature of
our empirical knowledge. And it would only be this latter relation which
would "break through the immanent process by what is assumed from outside."
The process can be, and is, one of pure thought, although pure thought is only
given as one element in experience.
The dialectic retraces the steps of abstraction till it arrives at the concrete idea.
If the concrete idea were different, the dialectic process would
be different. The conditions of the dialectic are therefore that the concrete
idea should be what it is, and that there should be experience in which we may
become conscious of that idea. But it is not a condition of the dialectic that
all the contingent facts which are found in experience should be what they
are, and not otherwise. So far as we know, the relation of the categories to
one another might be the same, even if sugar, for example, was bitter to the
taste, and hare-bells had scarlet flowers. And if such particulars ever should
be deducible from the pure idea, so that they could not be otherwise than they
are without some alteration in the nature of the pure idea, then they would
cease to be merely empirical knowledge. In our present state the particulars
of sense are only empirically and contingently connected with the idea under
which they are brought. And although, if the dialectic is to exist, the idea
must be what it is, and must have some sensations to complement it, yet the
particular nature of those sensations is entirely indifferent to the dialectic,
which is not dependent upon it in any sense of the word.
90. It is no doubt the case that an advanced state of the finite sciences is
a considerable help to the discovery of the dialectic process, and this for
several reasons. In the first place the labour is easier because it is slighter.
To detect the necessary relation between two categories will be easier when
both are already explicitly before us in consciousness than when only one is
given in this way, and the other has to be constructed. The inadequacy, for
example, of the category of Teleology would be by itself logically sufficient
ground for discovering the category of Life. But it is much easier to see, when
that idea is necessarily before us in biological science, that it is the
necessary consequence of the idea of Teleology, than it would be to construct
it by the dialectic, although that would be possible for a sufficiently keen
observer. In the second place, the more frequently, and the more keenly, the
finite categories are used in finite science, the more probable it will be that
the contradiction involved in their use will have become evident, on some
occasion or the other, to some at least of those who use them, and the easier
will it be, therefore, to point out the various inadequacies of each category
in succession, which are the stepping stones of the dialectic. But all this
only shows that the appearance of the theory of the dialectic in a
philosophical system is partly determined by empirical causes, which surely
no one ever denied. It is possible that we might have had to wait for the
theory of gravitation for some time longer, if it had not been for the
traditional apple, and no one could go beyond a certain point in mathematical
calculation without the help of pens and paper. But the logical validity of
the theory of gravitation, when once discovered, does not come as a deduction
from the existence of the apple, or of writing materials. With sufficient
power, any of the calculations could have been made without the help of
writing. Any other case of gravitation would have done as well as the apple, if
it had happened to suggest to Newton the problem which lay in it as much as in
the other. And, in the same way, with sufficient mental acuteness the whole
dialectic process could have been discovered, by starting from any one piece
of experience, and without postulating any other empirical knowledge
whatever. For the whole concrete idea lies behind experience, and manifests
itself in every part of it. Any fragment of experience, therefore, would be
sufficient to present the idea to our minds, and thus give us implicitly the
concrete truth, whose presence in this manner is the real source of our
discontent with the lower categories, and consequently is the spring of the
dialectic process. In any single fact in experience, however trifling and
wherever selected, the dialectic could find all the basis of experience that it
needs. Doubtless it would have been a task beyond even Hegel's strength to
evolve the dialectic without a far larger basis, and without the aid of
specially suggestive portions of experience. But this, while it may have some
interest for empirical psychology, can have none for metaphysics.
91. I have thus endeavoured to show that the dialectic process is related to
experience in such a way as to avoid sterility, and at the same time not
necessarily to fall into empiricism. We have now to consider Trendelenburg's
contention<Note: op. cit. Vol. I. p. 38.> that at one point an idea of great
importance, the idea of Motion, has in fact been introduced from experience in
a merely empirical manner, thus destroying the value of the Logic as a theory
of the nature of pure thought.
He points out that Hegel endeavours to deduce the category of Becoming,
which involves the idea of Motion, from the two categories of Being and Not-
Being, which are ideas of rest. His inference is that the idea of Motion has
been uncritically imported from experience, and breaks the Connection of the
Logic. Certainly no flaw could be more fatal than this, for it occurs at the
second step in the dialectic, and, if it is really a flaw, must make everything
beyond this point useless.
It is certainly true that the category of Becoming involves the idea of
Motion, and that neither the category of Being, nor the category of Not-Being,
do so. There is something in the synthesis which is in neither the thesis nor
the antithesis, if each of these is taken alone and separately. This, however,
is the necessary result wherever the dialectic process is applied. That process
does not profess to be merely analytic of the premises we start from, but to
give us new truth. If it were not so, it could have no philosophical
importance whatever, but would be confined to the somewhat sterile
occupation of discovering what consequence could be drawn by formal logic
from the assertion of the simple notion of pure Being--the only premise from
which we start.
92. Whatever Hegel meant by his philosophy, he certainly meant more than
this. We must presume then that he had faced the fact that his conclusions
contained more than his premises. And there is nothing unjustifiable,
--nothing which necessitates the illegitimate introduction of an empirical
element--in this. For we must recollect that the dialectic process has not
merely as its basis the consciously accepted premises, from which it proceeds
synthetically, but also the implicit concrete and complete idea which it
analyses and brings into distinct consciousness. There is, therefore, nothing
unjustifiable in the synthesis having more in it than both the thesis and
antithesis, for this additional element is taken from the concrete idea which
is the real motive power of the dialectic advance. As this concrete idea is
pure thought, no introduction of an empirical element is necessary.
And, if we examine the process in detail, we shall find that no such
empirical element has been introduced. The first point at which Motion is
involved in the dialectic is not that at which the category of Becoming is
already recognised explicitly as a category, and as the synthesis of the
preceding thesis and antithesis. Before we have a category of motion, we
perceive a motion of the categories; we are forced into the admission that
Becoming is a fundamental idea of the universe because of the tendency we find
in the ideas already accepted as fundamental to become one another. There is
therefore no illegitimate step in the introduction of the synthesis, for the
idea of Motion is already involved in the relation of the two lower categories
to each other, and the synthesis only makes this explicit.
The introduction of empirical matter must come then, if it comes at all,
in the recognition of the fact that Being is just as much Nothing, and Nothing
is just as much Being. If we start by positing the first, we find ourselves
also positing the second. The one standpoint cannot be maintained alone, but
if we start from it, we find ourselves at the other. To account for this it is
not necessary to bring in any empirical element. For although neither of the
two categories has the idea of Motion explicitly in it, each of them is, of its
own nature, forced into the movement towards the other, by reason of its own
incompleteness and inadequacy. Now in this there is nothing that requires any
aid from empirical observation. For Trendelenburg remarks himself, in the
passage quoted above, that all abstractions "cannot but strive to escape from
this false position." It is thus simply as the result of the nature of pure
thought that we arrive at the conclusion that there is a motion of the
categories. And, having discovered this, we are only using the data fairly
before us when we recognise a category of motion, and so reconcile the
contradiction which arises from the fact that two categories, which profess,
as all terms must, to have a fixed and constant meaning, are nevertheless
themselves in continual motion.
Of course all this can only take place on the supposition that experience
does exist. For, in the first place, since pure thought is only an abstraction,
and never really exists except as an element in experience, it is impossible
to come across the ideas of Being and Not-Being at all, except in experience.
And, secondly, it is only in experience that the concrete idea is implicit,
which brings about the transition from category to category, and so first
introduces the idea of Motion. But this, as was pointed out above,<Note: Chap.
I. Section 15.> involves no dependence on empirical data. All that is required
for the purpose is that element in experience which is called pure thought,
and, although this cannot be present without the empirical element, the
argument does not in the least depend on the nature of the latter.
93. We are told also that Becoming involves time and space, which Hegel
admits not to be elements of pure thought, but to belong to the world of
nature. Now in the first place it does not seem necessary that the Becoming
referred to here should be only such as must take place in time or space. It
no doubt includes Becoming in time and space. But it would seem to include
also a purely logical Becoming--where the transition is not from one event in
time to a subsequent event, nor from one part of space to another, but from
one idea to another logically connected with it. The movement is here only
the movement of logic, such as may be said to take place from the premises
to the conclusion of a syllogism. This involves neither space nor time. It is,
of course, true that this process can only be perceived by us by means of a
process in time. We have first to think the premises and then the conclusion.
But this does not make the syllogism itself a process in time. The validity of
the argument does not depend upon the fact that we have perceived it; and the
movement of attention from one step to another of the process--a movement
which is certainly in time--must not be confounded with the logical movement
of the argument itself, which is not in time.
It is again, no doubt, true that if we wish to imagine the process of
Becoming, we cannot imagine it, except as taking place in time. But this is no
objection. Imagination is a sensuous process, and involves sensuous elements.
It does not follow that it is impossible to think Becoming except as in time.
If then the Becoming of the Logic includes a species of Becoming which does
not take place in time or space, it follows, of course, that the introduction
of that category does not involve the introduction of time and space into the
dialectic. But even if we leave out this point, and confine ourselves to those
species of Becoming which can only take place in time and space, it would not
follow that these notions have been introduced into the dialectic. For, even
on this hypothesis, Becoming only involves time and space in the sense that
it cannot be represented without them. It could still be distinguished from
them, and its nature as a pure category observed. If indeed the argument by
which we are led on from Becoming to the next category was based on anything
in the nature of time and space, Trendelenburg's objection would doubtless be
made good. But it is no more necessary that this should be the case, because
time and space are the necessary medium in which we perceive the idea of
Becoming, than that every step of the whole dialectic process should be
tainted with empiricism, because every category can only be perceived in the
whole of experience, in which it is bound up with empirical elements. And the
transition which Hegel gives to the category of Being-determinate does not
seem in any way to depend upon the nature of time and space, but rather on
the nature of Becoming, as a determination of thought.
And, again, is the connection, which pure thought has with time and space,
introduced for the first time in the category of Becoming? That category
surely does not require both time and space, for we are able to apply it to
the passage of our thoughts, when space is out of the question. And, on the
other hand, is it possible for pure Being to exist except either in time or
space? What sort of reality could be supposed to belong to immediate being
apart from both these determinations, I am unable to see. And if it does
require at least one of them, it would seem to follow that the transition to
Becoming involves no other connection with the matter of intuition than is
involved in the categories from which it is deduced. (I do not mean to suggest
that no reality can be conceived as existing except in time or space, but only
that it must be conceived as existing in time or space unless it is considered
under some higher category than pure Being.)
94. Again, it is said that Being and Not-Being are abstractions, while
Becoming is a "concrete intuition ruling life and death."<Note: Trendelenburg,
op. cit. Vol. I. p. 38.> It is no doubt true that we never encounter, and cannot
imagine, a case of Becoming without sensuous intuition. But the same might be
said of any other category. Thought can never exist without sensation. And the
quality of Becoming itself is not sensation, but thought. What becomes,
indeed, must be told us by sensation, but that it becomes is as much a
conception of pure thought as that it is, or is not. And the ideas of Being and
Not-Being are scarcely more abstractions than Becoming is. For they also
cannot come into consciousness without the presence of intuition. They are
doubtless abstractions in the sense that we feel at once their inadequacy to
any subject-matter. But this is the case to almost the same extent with
Becoming, if we take it strictly. As a general rule, when we talk in ordinary
discourse of Becoming, or of any other of the lower categories, we do not take
it by itself, but mix it up with higher categories, such as Being-determinate,
Substance, and Cause. If we do this, Being and Not-Being may pass as concrete.
If we do not do it, but confine ourselves to the strict meaning of the
category, Becoming shows itself to be almost as abstract and inadequate as
pure Being. The philosophy which corresponds to Becoming is the doctrine of
the eternal flux of all things, and it is difficult to see how this represents
reality much more adequately than the Eleatic Being, or the Buddhist Nothing.
Of course Becoming is to some extent more adequate than the categories that
precede it, but this is the natural and inevitable result of the fact that it is
a synthesis of them.
95. We must, in conclusion, consider the claims of the Hegelian system to
ontological validity. This subject divides itself into two parts. In the first
place Hegel denies the Kantian restriction of knowledge to mere phenomena,
behind which lie things in themselves which we cannot know, and he asserts
that the laws of thought traced in the logic, as applicable to all possible
knowledge, are applicable also to all reality. In the second place he deduces
from the Logic the philosophies of Nature and Spirit.
Now as to the first of these two points, I have already endeavoured to show
that any denial of it involves a contradiction.<Note: Chap. I. Section 25.> We
are told by those who attempt this denial that there are or may be things
which we cannot know. But to know of the actuality or possibility of such
things is to know them--to know that of which knowledge is impossible. Of
course to know only that things are possible, or even that they actually
exist, and to know nothing else about them, is very imperfect and inadequate
knowledge of them. But it is knowledge. It involves a judgment, and a
judgment involves a category. It is thus impossible to say that the existence
of anything which does not conform to the universal laws of knowledge is
either actual or possible. If the supporters of things-in-themselves were
asked for a defence of their doctrine, they would be compelled to relate these
things with our sensuous intuitions, through which alone data can be given to
our minds. And this relation would bring them in connection with the world of
knowledge, and destroy their asserted independence.
In fact the question whether there is any reality outside the world which we
know by experience is unmeaning. There is much reality which we do not know;
it is even possible that there is much reality which we never shall know. But
it must, if we are to have any right to speak of it at all, belong to the same
universe as the facts which we do know--that is, be connected with them by the
same fundamental laws as those by which they are connected with one another.
Otherwise we can have no justification for supposing that it exists, since all
such suppositions must rest on some connection with the world of reality. We
are not even entitled to say that it is possible that there may exist a world
unconnected with the world of experience. For possibility is a phrase which
derives all its meaning to us from its use in the world of experience, and
beyond that world we have no right to use it, since anything brought under
that, or any other predicate, is brought thereby into the world of the
knowable. And a mere empty possibility, not based on the known existence of
at least one of the necessary conditions, is too indefinite to possess any
significance. Anything, however impossible, may be pronounced possible, if we
are only ignorant enough of the subject-matter, for if our ignorance extends
to all the circumstances incompatible with the truth of the proposition, all
evidence of impossibility is obviously beyond our reach. But the more
ignorance is involved in such a conclusion, the less valuable it is, and when
it is based on complete ignorance, as any proposition relating to the
possibility of a world outside knowledge must inevitably be, the judgment
becomes entirely frivolous. It is merely negative and does not, as a real
judgment of possibility does, create the slightest expectation of reality, but
is devoid of all rational interest. Such a judgment, as Mr Bradley points out
"is absurd, because a privative judgment, where the subject is left entirely
undetermined in respect of the suggestion, has no kind of meaning. Privation
gets a meaning where the subject is determined by a quality or an environment
which we have reason to think would give either the acceptance or the
rejection of X. But if we keep entirely to the bare universal, we cannot
predicate absence, since the space we call empty has no existence."<Note:
Logic, Book I. Chap. VII. Section 30.> And as Hegel's theory, if valid at all,
covers the whole sphere of actual and possible knowledge, any speculations on
the nature of reality outside its sphere are meaningless, and the results of
the dialectic may be predicated of all reality.
96. The demand that the dialectic shall confine itself to a purely
subjective import, and not presume to limit reality by its results, has been
made from a fresh point of view by Mr F. C. S. Schiller. He says "It does not
follow that because all truth in the narrower sense is abstract, because all
philosophy must be couched in abstract terms, therefore the whole truth
about the universe in the wider sense, i.e. the ultimate account that can be
given of it, can be compressed into a single abstract formula, and that the
scheme of things is nothing more than, e.g., the self-development of the
Absolute Idea. To draw this inference would be to confuse the thought-symbol,
which is, and must be, the instrument of thought, with that which the symbol
expresses, often only very imperfectly, viz. the reality which is `known' only
in experience and can never be evoked by the incantations of any abstract
formula. If we avoid this confusion, we shall no longer be prone to think that
we have disposed of the thing symbolized when we have brought home
imperfection and contradiction to the formulas whereby we seek to express it
. . . to suppose, e.g., that Time and Change cannot really be characteristic of
the universe, because our thought, in attempting to represent them by
abstract symbols, often contradicts itself. For evidently the contradiction
may result as well from the inadequacy of our symbols to express realities of
whose existence we are directly assured by other factors in experience, and
which consequently are data rather than problems for thought, as from the
`merely apparent' character of their reality, and the moral to be drawn may
only be the old one, that it is the function of thought to mediate and not to
create."<Note: "The Metaphysics of the Time-Process," Mind, N.S. Vol. IV.
No. 14. p. 40.>
It is no doubt true that there is something else in our experience besides
pure thought--namely, the immediate data of sensation. And these are
independent of thought in the sense that they cannot be deduced from it, or
subordinated to it, but must be recognised as a correlative and indispensable
factor in experience. But it is not an independent element in the sense that
it can exist or express reality apart from thought. And it would have, it
seems to me, to be independent in this sense before we could accept Mr
Schiller's argument.
97. Sensation without thought could assure us of the existence of nothing.
Not of any objects outside the sentient being--for these objects are for us
clearly ideal constructions. Not of the self who feels sensation--for a self is
not itself a sensation, and the assurance of its reality must be an inference.
Nay, sensation cannot assure us of its own existence. For the very terms
existence, reality, assurance, are all terms of thought. To appeal (as Mr
Schiller wishes to do, if I have understood him rightly) from a dialectic
which shows, e.g. that Time cannot be real, to an experience which tells us
that it is real, is useless. For our assurance of reality is itself an act of
thought, and anything which the dialectic has proved about the nature of
thought would be applicable to that assurance.
It is difficult to see how sensations could even exist without thought. For
sensations certainly only exist for consciousness, and what could a
consciousness be which was nothing but a chaotic mass of sensations, with no
relations among them, and consequently no unity for itself? But, even if they
could exist without thought, they could tell us nothing of reality or
existence, for reality and existence are not themselves sensations, and all
analysis or inference, by which they might be reached from sensations, must
be the work of thought.
By the side of the truth that thought without data can never make us aware
of reality, we must place the corresponding truth that nothing can make us
aware of reality without thought. Any law therefore which can be laid down for
thought, must be a law which imposes itself on all reality which we can
either know or imagine--and a reality which we can neither know nor imagine
is, as I fancy Mr Schiller would admit, a meaningless abstraction.
To the demand then that we should admit the reality of anything although
"we have brought home imperfection and contradiction to the formulas
whereby we seek to express it," I should answer that it is only by the aid of
these formulas that we can pronounce it real. If we cannot think it, we have
no right to pronounce it real, for to pronounce it real is an act of thought.
We should not, therefore, by pronouncing it real, be appealing from thought to
some other means of knowledge. We should be thinking it, at the same time, to
be real and to be self-contradictory. To say that a thing whose notion is self-
contradictory is real, is to say that two or more contradictory propositions
are true--that is, to violate the law of contradiction. If we do this we put an
end to all possibility of coherent thought anywhere. If a contradiction is not
a sign of error it will be impossible to make any inference whatever.
And so it seems to me, in spite of Mr Schiller's arguments, that if we find
contradictions in our notion of a thing, we must give up its reality. This does
not mean, of course, that we are to say that there was nothing real behind the
contradictory appearance. Behind all appearance there is some reality. But
this reality, before we can know it, must be re-thought in terms which are
mutually coherent, and although we certainly have not "disposed of the thing
symbolized when we have brought home imperfection and contradiction to the
formulas whereby we seek to express it," we can only retain our belief in the
thing's existence by thinking it under some other formula, by which the
imperfection and the contradiction are removed.
98. There remains only the transition from Logic to Nature and Spirit.
From what has been said in Chapters I and II, it will be seen that the validity
of this transition must be determined by the same general considerations as
determine the validity of the transitions from one category to another within
the Logic. For the motive power of the transition was the same--the
impatience of its incompleteness felt by an abstraction, since the whole of
thought, even when it has attained the utmost completeness of which it is
capable, is only an abstraction from the fuller whole of reality. And the
method of the transition is also the same--the discovery of a contradiction
arising from the inadequacy of the single term, which leads us on to the
opposite extreme, which is also found to be contradictory, and so leaves us no
refuge but a synthesis which comprehends and reconciles both extremes. I have
endeavoured to show in the last Chapter that this was all that Hegel ever
intended to do, and that no other deduction of Nature and Spirit from pure
thought can be attributed to him. We have now to consider whether he was
justified in proceeding in this manner.
Is thought incomplete as compared with the whole of reality? This can
scarcely be denied. To admit it does not involve any scepticism as to the
adequacy of knowledge. Thought may be perfectly capable of expressing the
whole of reality, all that is real may be rational, but it will nevertheless
remain true that all that is real cannot be merely reasoning. For all
reasoning as such is merely mediate, and it is obvious that a mediation
without something which it mediates is a contradiction. This something must
be given immediately. It is true that thought itself, as an event in our
consciousness, may be given immediately, and may be perceived by inner sense,
in the same way that colours, sounds, and the like, may be perceived by outer
sense. But this means that thought, considered as it is in the Logic (i.e. not
as a datum, but as an activity), can never be self-subsistent, but must always
depend on something (even if that something is other thought), which presents
itself immediately. And thus the Logic, which only deals with the forms by
which we may mediate what is immediately given, does not by itself contain
the whole of reality.
99. This is obviously the case while, as at present, a large amount of
experience is concerned with physical data apparently entirely contingent to
the idea, and with mental data scarcely less contingent. It is quite clear that
the Logic does not as yet express the whole universe, while we still find
ultimate and unexplained such facts as that one particular number of
vibrations of ether in a second gives us the sensation of blue, and that
another particular number gives us the sensation of red. But even if the
process of rationalisation was carried as far as it could by any possibility
go, if all matter was reduced to spirit, and every quality of spirit was deduced
from the Logic, nevertheless to constitute experience something would have to
be immediately given, and the Logic contemplates nothing but thought as it
deals with something given already. The existence of thought requires the
existence of something given. It is undeniable that we think. But we could not
think unless there were something to think about. Therefore there must be
something. This is all of the world of Nature and Spirit which we can deduce
from the Logic. Logic must have its complement and correlative, and the two
must be united in one whole. This, as I have tried to show, is all Hegel did
attempt to deduce from the Logic. But whether this is so or not, we must
admit that it is all that he has a right to deduce from it. The concrete whole
towards which we are working is the universalised particular, the mediated
immediate, the rationalised datum. Logic is the universal, the mediating, the
rationalising element. There must therefore be a particular, immediate, given
element, and the two must be reconciled. So much we can deduce by pure
thought. But if this other element has any other qualities except those just
mentioned which make it correlative to Logic, we cannot deduce them. We must
treat them as contingent, and confine ourselves to pointing out the way in
which the Logic is incarnate in Nature and Spirit, piercing through these
contingent particulars. Philosophy can tell us à priori that Nature and Spirit
do exist, and that all the categories of the Logic must be realised in them,
but how they are realised in the midst of what seem, at any rate at present,
to be contingent particulars, must be a matter for empirical observation, and
not for deduction from Logic.
100. In what way does the transition from Logic take place? The suggestion
which most naturally occurs to us is that the element which supplements the
deficiency of Logic should be its antithesis, and the combination of the two
in a concrete whole should form the synthesis. In this case the antithesis
would be the mere abstract and unconnected particularity, which is really
unnameable, since all names imply that the matter of discourse has been
qualified by some judgment. With the very beginnings of Nature, on this view,
we pass to the synthesis, for in Nature we have already the idea as immediate,
as given, as realised in fact. Spirit and Nature together would thus form the
synthesis, Spirit being distinguished from Nature only as being a more
complete and closer reconciliation of the two elements. It makes explicit the
unity which in Nature is only implicit. But it does not add any aspect or
element which is not in Nature, it is more elaborated, but not more
comprehensive.
This, however, is not the course of the transition which is actually adopted
by Hegel. In this, while the Logic is the thesis, the antithesis is Nature, and
the synthesis is Spirit. The bond of connection here is that they are the
universal, the particular, and the individual, and that the individual is the
synthesis of the universal and the particular. If it should be objected to this
that there is more in Nature than mere particularity, since the idea is
realised, though imperfectly realised, in Nature, and the idea is the universal,
Hegel's reply, I suppose, would be that this is the case also with every
particular thing, since mere particularity is an abstraction. We can never
perceive anything without a judgment, and a judgment involves a category.
Indeed the very phrase "thing" implies this.
The difference between the two methods is thus very marked, not only
because of the different place assigned to Nature in them, but because in the
second the antithesis marks a distinct advance upon the thesis, as a concrete
reality, though an imperfect one, while in the first the thesis and antithesis
are both alike mere abstractions and aspects which require a reconciliation
before anything concrete is reached.
Here we have two examples of the dialectic process, each starting from the
same point--the Logic--and each arriving at the same point--Absolute Spirit--
but reaching that point in different ways. What are we to say about them? Is
one wrong and the other right? Or can we argue, from the fact that the
principles of the dialectic would seem to justify either of them, to the
conclusion that there must be some error in those principles, since they lead
to two inconsistent results? Or, finally, can we pronounce them both to be
correct? To these questions Hegel, as far as I can find, affords no definite
answer, but one may, I think, be found by following up some indications which
he gives. This I shall endeavour to do in the next chapter.<Note: Sections
131-138.>
101. Before leaving this part of the subject, we must consider some
criticisms which have been passed by Lotze on Idealism, the most important
and elaborate of which occurs in the Microcosmus.<Note: Book VIII. Chap. I.
towards the end.> In this he considers the assertion, which he attributes to
Idealism, that Thought and Being are identical. He does not mention Hegel by
name here, but it would seem, from the nature of the criticisms, and from
scattered remarks in other parts of his writings, that he held his criticisms
to apply to the Hegelian dialectic.
Now in what sense does Hegel say that Thought and Being are identical? In
the first place we must carefully distinguish, from such an assertion of
identity, another assertion which he does make,--namely, that Being is a
category, and therefore a determination of thought, and that, in consequence,
even the mere recognition that a thing is, can only be effected by thought. He
uses this undeniable truth as an argument against appeals from the results of
thought to immediate facts. For it means that we can only know that a thing
is a fact by means of thought, and that it is impossible to find any ground,
upon which we can base a proposition, which does not involve thought, and
which is not subject to all the general laws which we can obtain by analysing
what is involved in thinking.
This, however, is not what is meant by Lotze. That the predicate of Being
can only be applied by us to a subject by means of thought, is a statement
which Lotze could not have doubted, and which he had no reason to wish to
deny. He attacks a very different proposition--that everything which is
included under the predicate of Being, that is, everything in the universe, is
identical with thought.
This, again, may have two very different meanings. If we call the particular
reality, of which we are speaking, A, then we may mean, in the first place,
that A's being is identical with B's thought, when B is thinking about A,--or
would be so, if B's thought was in a state of ideal perfection. Or we may mean,
in the second place, that A's being is identical with his own thought, i.e. that
his only nature is to be a thinking being, and his only activity is to think.
The first view is that A is identical with what may be thought about him, the
second is that A is identical with what he thinks. These are clearly very
different.
102. It is the first of these meanings, it seems, which Lotze supposes his
Idealist to adopt. This appears from his considering that he has refuted it by
showing that there is always in our knowledge of anything an immediate datum,
which thought must accept as given, and without which it cannot act at all.
"Thought," he says, "is everywhere but a mediating activity moving hither and
thither, bringing into connection the original intuitions of external and
internal perception, which are predetermined by fundamental ideas and laws
the origin of which cannot be shown; it develops special and properly logical
forms peculiar to itself, only in the effort to apply the idea of truth (which
it finds in us) to the scattered multiplicity of perceptions, and of the
consequences developed from them. Hence nothing seems less justifiable than
the assertion that this Thinking is identical with Being, and that Being can be
resolved into it without leaving any residuum; on the contrary, everywhere in
the flux of thought there remain quite insoluble those individual nuclei which
represent the several aspects of that important content which we designate by
the name of Being."<Note: loc. cit. (English Translation, Vol. II. p. 354, 4th
ed.)> The fact that there are immediate elements in our knowledge of other
things could be no reason for doubting that our nature--and theirs also--lay
in thinking, as we shall see later on. But it would doubtless be an excellent
reason for denying that our thought of the object could ever be identical with
the object itself. And it is this last theory which Lotze must have had in
view.
103. No doubt Hegel would have been wrong if he had asserted that Thought
and Being were identical in this sense. But, as I have tried to show in the last
chapter,<Note: Sections 56, 57.> there is no reason to suppose that he failed
to appreciate the fact that there is an element of immediacy in all
knowledge, and that thought, without such data, would not only be inadequate,
but completely impotent. The passage which I then quoted from the
Philosophy of Spirit,<Note: Enc. Section 381, lecture note.> declares that
Spirit is the logical prius, not only of Nature but of Logic. Now Spirit differs
from Logic by reason of the element of immediacy, introduced in Nature, and
completely harmonised with Logic in Spirit. It seems clear then that Hegel
can never have imagined that pure thought could dispense with the element of
immediacy. And, if so, our pure thought by itself could never have been
identical with the content of its object.
104. The necessity of immediacy for thought, however, does not prevent the
identity of Thought and Being in the second sense mentioned above. If all
reality in the universe consisted simply of thinking beings there would be no
lack of immediate data for them to mediate. For thought itself can be
observed, and, when observed, forms itself a datum for thought. And a universe
of thinking beings, in connection with one another, would find their
immediate data, A in B, and B in A.
In this sense it seems that Hegel did hold the identity of Thought and
Being--though the phrase is not a very happy one. That is to say, he held that
all reality consisted of self-conscious beings; and it appears from the
Philosophy of Spirit that he also held that the highest--the only ultimate--
activity of Spirit, in which all others are transcended and swallowed up, is
that of pure thought.
In doing this, he ignored a fact which is made prominent by Lotze in many
parts of his system, though not in the chapter from which I have quoted. This
is, that Spirit has two other aspects besides thought--namely, volition and
feeling--which are as important as thought, and which cannot be deduced from
it, nor explained by it. I shall have to consider this point at greater length
in Chapter VI, and shall there endeavour to show that, while Hegel was
justified in identifying all Being with Spirit, he was not justified in taking
the further step of identifying the true nature of Spirit exclusively with pure
thought.
105. Such a conclusion, no doubt, would make a considerable change in the
Hegelian system. But it would not involve that Hegel had ignored the
immediate aspect of reality, nor would it prove that he was wrong in asserting
all being to be Spirit. Nor would it make his philosophy less thoroughly
Idealistic. For the essence of Idealism does not lie in the assertion of the
identity of Thought and Being, though it does lie very largely in the assertion
of a relation between them. That relation may be expressed by saying that
Thought is adequate to express Being, and Being adequate to embody Thought.
On the one hand, no reality exists beyond the sphere of actual or possible
knowledge, and no reality, when known as completely as possible, presents any
contradiction or irrationality. On the other hand, there is no postulate which
Thought demands in order to construct a harmonious and self-consistent
system of knowledge, which is not realised in Being.
Hegel, as we have seen, establishes this by demonstrating that the higher
categories are so involved in the lower that, if we say a thing exists at all,
we are obliged to bring it under predicates which ensure that it will answer
completely to the demands of our reason. In doing this, he arrives at the
conclusions that the true nature of all Being is Spirit, and that the true
nature of all Spirit is Thought. But important as these results,--true or
false--are, they are only subsidiary as compared with the more general result
that Thought and Being--whether identical or not--are yet in complete
harmony. From the point of view of theory, we thus know that reality is
rational. From the point of view of practice, we know that reality is
righteous, since the only view of reality which we can consider as completely
rational, is shown to be one which involves our own complete self-
realization. And it is this assertion that reality is both rational and
righteous which is the distinguishing mark of Idealism.