that you cannot understand its detail, and that throughout its structure constantly in particular you are unable to answer the question, Why or How. And that it is not in this sense intelligible I have clearly laid down. But as to its main character we must return a different reply. We start from the diversity in unity which is given in feeling, and we develop this internally by the principle of self-completion beyond self, until we reach the idea of an all-inclusive and supra-relational experience. This idea, it seems to me, is in the abstract intelligible and positive, and so once more is the principle by which it is reached; and the criticism which takes these as mere negations rests, I think, on misunderstanding. The criticism which really desires to be effective ought, I should say, to show that my view of the starting-point is untenable, and the principle of development, together with its result, unsound, and such criticism I have not yet seen. But with regard to what is unintelligible and inexplicable we must surely distinguish. A theory may contain what is unintelligible, so long as it really contains it; and not to know how a thing can be is no disproof of our knowing that it both must be and is. The whole question is whether we have a general principle under which the details can and must fall, or whether, on the other hand, the details fall outside or are negative instances which serve to upset the principle. Now I have argued in detail that there are no facts which fall outside the principle or really are negative instances; and hence, because the principle is undeniable, the facts both must and can comply with it, and therefore they do so. And given a knowledge of ‘how’ in general, a mere ignorance of ‘how’ in detail is permissible and harmless.[1] This argument in its general character is, I presume, quite familiar even to those critics who seem to have been surprised by it; and the application of it here is, so far as I see, legitimate and necessary. And for that application I must refer to the body of the work.
VI. With regard to the unity of the Absolute we know that the Absolute must be one, because anything experienced is experienced in or as a whole, and because anything like independent plurality or external relations cannot satisfy the intellect. And it fails to satisfy the intellect because it is a self-contradiction. Again for the same reason the Absolute is one system in the very highest sense of that term, any lower sense being unreal because in the end self-contradictory. The subjects of contradiction and of external relations are further dealt with in a later part of this Appendix, Notes A and B.
- ↑ In this connection I may quote a passage from Stricker, [Studien über die] Bewegungsvorstellungen, s. 35, Ein Lehrsatz wird nicht dadurch erschüttert, dass Jemand einherkommt, und uns von einer Beobachtung berichtet, die er mit Hilfe dieses Lehrsatzes nicht zu deuten vermag. Erschüttert wird ein Lehrsatz durch eine neue Beobachtung nur dann, wenn sich zeigen lässt, dass sie ihm geradezu widerspricht.
