The Secret of Hegel/Volume 1/Section 1/Chapter 4

by James Hutchison Stirling

 

CHAPTER IV.

THE NOTES OF THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED.

A.

It is very absurd of Haym, in the manner of a rhetorical expedient familiar to most, to name some of the early categories with a and so on, to describe the series of these as a long string, to assert their production by an illusory reference every now and then to the word of fact, and so to pronounce them worthless. This industry of Haym's is quite beside the point. This, in fact, is just to miss the categories, and their true nature. What if they should derive from reference to the concrete, actual world as it is? What if they did come thence? If Haym does not like to see them derived thence, whence else, even in the name of common sense, would he wish them? Is there something more veracious and veridic than nature, then—something more real than reality itself?

Is Hegel, then, likely to be very fell on this reproach of Haym's, that he has taken his categories from nature, from reality (which is here the sense of nature)? Ah, but Haym will say, the categories profess to be self-derived! In one sense the categories profess no such thing, and Hegel has again and again pointed out that the common basis for all, the most abstract as the most concrete, is—empirical fact, actual fact of nature veritably offered and presented to us. This, in truth, is the secret of Hegel's greatness,—that he has no traffic with any necromantic products of mere thought, but—even in his highest, even in his further, even in his most abstruse, recondite, and hard to understand—has ever the solid ground beneath his feet. So is it here: the categories do come from nature and the substantial quarry of actual fact. True also is it, however, that, considered in a generalised form, freed from application in the concrete—considered, as it were, in the element of thought alone, absolutely abstractly for and by themselves (and this just describes the everyday action of thought on any and every object, and why then should thought be ordered to suspend its ordinary procedure here?)—true it is that these categories are seen to constitute a system by themselves. But, a system, what does that imply, unless that they are all in mutual connexion, and with means of communication from the one to the other in such wise that if you shall truly think any one, you cannot help truly arriving at all the rest? Do you suppose that all that concrete, which you call natural universe, came there without thought, and without thoughts? Do you suppose that the constitution of each separate atom of that concrete does not involve thought and several thoughts? And then, the interconnexion of these atoms to this whole huge universe, is it all an affair without thought, then; or is there not rather an immense congeries of thoughts involved and implied in all these innumerable interconnexions? You seem to think that there is no necessity to take it so; you seem to think that it is enough just to take it as you find it. And how do you find it? Just a basis of so much soil, dirt, earth, out there around us, down there beneath us! You have found it so; it has so come to you, and so you take it, and you would put no questions to it!—Questions! you say; what do you mean? Why question the common mud? That wants no explaining, does it? There it is! As plain as mud, is a proverb: what thought or thoughts can be involved in mere mud? But just this is it: the categories are the thoughts of this mud—the thoughts it implies, the thoughts that presided at its creation, the thoughts that constituted and constitute it, the thoughts that are it.—What necessity for all that? you seem to say again. There it just is! If asked how it came there,—Why, we must just say—God!

Now, what do you mean here? Is it not just this: I live, I see, I feel, I think; and there is an innumerable plurality and variety in what I live, in what I see, in what I feel, in what I think. Now, I cannot live, &c. this innumerable plurality, without thinking it all up into a First and One. Is not this very much what you mean when you come to think what you mean? Has any man since the world began ever found it otherwise? Is not God the word, the key-word, for the clearing up to us, up and out of the way, of this innumerable variety? Prove the being of God—proof of the being of God: what absurdity! Prove the breath I breathe—prove the thought I think? That is it—prove the thought I think! I must think, must I not? But to think is—to think is—just in so many words—God! That is the ultimate and extreme goal; or it is the ultimate and all-including centre—the one punctum of stability, the one punctum of certainty in which all thought coils itself to satisfaction and rest. To the central fire and light of reality which is named consciousness, you acknowledge the presence of the one in, and the countless out: now as absolutely certain as their presence, is the presence to the same centre, of a first and one that is the reason of both—God. To think is God.

God, then, is a word standing for the explanation of the variety that is. But, standing so, there is no explanation assigned, there is only one indicated. Standing so, there is indicated a Being named God; but there is no Being assigned. Now, let us be in earnest with this natural fact—and it is a natural fact—as we are with all other natural facts; let us not simply name it, and know that it is there, and so leave it. Let us turn to it rather, and look at it. Once, when we heard thunder and saw lightning, we cried, God! God! and ran into our caves to hide ourselves; but by-and-by we took courage, and stood our ground, and waited for thunder and lightning, till now we have made them, as it were, even our domestic servants. So was a natural fact, so is it. As in this case, so in a thousand others, God was the exclamation that summed to us variety; and as in it, so in them, it was not allowed to remain a mere exclamation, a mere word, but had to transmute itself from word to thing, or, better, had to transform itself from the Vorstellung, the crude figurate conception, into the Begriff, the intellectually seen notion. Now, such varieties as these of thunder and lightning were but examples of variety in general, were but examples of the main fact, the variety of this universe. Now, it is not as regards any particular variety, but as regards the universal variety, that the word God is used now-a-days for the First and One; and this is what we have now to consider. (Of course, Religion is a concrete of certain doctrines, and God, as the centre of these, is a word having many meanings—a word designative of a thought subject of many predicates besides First and One. It is only the natural fact that man must think God, and must think God as First and One, and not the developed predication of Religion, which is sought to be considered here, however.)

The cry that rises spontaneously to the lips on sight of this living variety, is God; and the necessity of the cry is, a First and One, a meaning to the All! Now this First and One, which we must think, let us take courage and stand to see. But, let us observe well, it is as yet just a First and One,—not some vast Grandeur—some huge, formed, or unformed, Awe of the imagination, which we merely mean, but know not; it is just a First and One, the fact before thought, not the phantom before imagination: in a word, it is the Begriff, and not the Vorstellung, which we seek to take courage before, and stand to see.

So far as thought is concerned, then, the word God for us as yet indicates a First and One, or an explanation of the variety. Explanation, indeed, is preferable to First and One—for it implies not only a First and One, but also a transition to the many, to the variety, from the First and One.^[1] Let us take it so, then. God, in what the word indicates as yet to thought, amounts to no more than the explanation. God is the explanation. But how must an explanation, or the explanation, be thought? For this explanation must belong to an element of necessity; it can be no matter of contingency and chance; it must be something in its nature absolutely fixed and certain. How, then, must it be thought? for very certainly only in one way can it be thought. This is the question of questions; this is the beginning of thought; this is the first of Hegel; this is Alpha: how must we think the explanation? Can we, for example, think the explanation a thing, a stone perhaps? Can we think it water, or fire, or earth, or air?^[2] Can we think the explanation the sun or the moon? Can we think it Space? can we think it Time? To all we shake the head. But we have science now, and great groups of things have received explanations of their own: can any of these explanations be extended to the case before us?

Is Magnetism an explanation for us? Can we think the First and One, that has power of transition to the Many, Electricity? Can we think a first of Electricity, and a succession out of its identity of All? Can Electricity make an opaque atom? You have read the 'Vestiges,' and you have very great confidence in the Electric brush. That the brush should become a nebula is quite conceivable to you; nor less conceivable is it that the nebula should opacify in foci, and so give birth to an opaque atom. To the question, Can Electricity make an opaque atom, you answer then, Perhaps!—Can this atom take life? The electric brush is still powerful within you, and you answer again, Perhaps!—Can this life develop and develop, and rise and rise? you still say, Perhaps. Can this life become in the end man and thought? you still say, Perhaps. Now this is the present material theory of creation; this is the Explanation, this is the First and One with transition to the Many, this is the God of the Materialists. The Materialists are to themselves practical men; they depreciate the Imagination, and they cry up the Understanding: it is a remarkable fact, however, that the bulk of self-named practical men are the slaves of phantasy merely. Consider how it is here! Electricity, as yet, is but a name used as indicating the common principle of certain separate facts. The facts remain still of an interrupted, scattered, ill-connected nature, and the common principle, in its vagueness, remoteness, shadowiness, is as unsatisfactory as the facts: neither the One nor the Many cohere well to each other; neither the One nor the Many cohere well to themselves, or, in other words, the relative science is yet very imperfect. Electricity, thus, being something unknown, and, as we say, mysterious, is in famous fettle for the use of Imagination, who can easily apply it, in her dreaming way, in explanation of anything unknown, seeing that being unknown itself, it is capable of all. It is Imagination, then, and not Understanding, which, in the case before us, takes up Electricity as a phantom which is dreamed a First and One with transition, &c., but which is no known One and of no known series. But an idol of the phantasy, where explanation is the quest, is empty and inexplicable. A mere name will not suffice here. If you want my conviction, you must get me to understand Electricity as a First and One; you must somehow contrive to place it before me in transition to the Many. Has electricity as yet really effected a single transition? Electricity is the power of the water-drop, you say. But even as you take it, electricity is not the water-drop: no, even according to you, it is Hydrogen and Oxygen that are the water-drop. You make experiments, you demonstrate the power of electricity in the water-drop to be equal to I know not what immensity of horse-power. But what is that to HO.? What does your electricity do there? Why is it necessary? Your explanation has infinitely complicated the explanation, infinitely deepened the mystery. Besides, is it so sure that this power is actually in the water-drop? Your experiment was a process, your experiment was not the water-drop. The electricity was a product—a product of your energy, of your operation, of your process, of your experiment. The water-drop was left on one side. Is it not to be suspected that Chemistry now-a-days is largely synthetic where it is thought analytic, multiplicative where it is thought divisive, involvative where it is thought evolvative? Show me a single transition of electricity from A to B, where B is richer and more various than A, yet still A. Show me a single opaque atom which is electricity and only electricity. Show this single atom becoming another. Show me this atom taking life. Show me this life becoming another, becoming a higher. Show me life becoming thought. To suppose electricity thus augmenting itself, is it not mere superfetation of imagination, mere poverty of thought? In practical men, too, to whom spades are spades! Can the understanding be every asked to look on at such a process—at electricity as the unal first, that passes into another, an atom, an infinity of atoms, an infinite variety of atoms—that passes again into another, life and an infinity of lives,—that passes yet again into another, thought and an infinity of thoughts? But suppose this: electricity made matter, matter organisation, organisation thought! What all this time have you been doing with Space and Time? Has electricity made these also? If not, then it is not a first and one. The God of the Materialist, then, has had a God before him who made Space and Time;—rather, perhaps, the Materialist was so lost in his evolution of electricity, that he forgot all about Space and Time. But let us suppose electricity adequate to Space and Time also—what is the result then? Why, then we have—certainly what is wanted—a First and One with power of transition to the Many, a single material principle whose own duplication and reduplication have produced the All. But what is this? A simple—in a manner, unsensuous, too, as invisible, intangible, &c., in itself—that holds virtually in it—that holds virtually within its own unity and simplicity—Matter and Time and Space, and Man and Thought and the Universe,—why this is—Idealism! Between the electricity of the Materialist and the thought of the Idealist, where is the difference? Each is a simple that virtually is the congeries, a unity that virtually is the Many. Ex hypothesi, electricity in its very first germ involved the capacity to become all the rest, that is, virtually was all the rest—that is, all the rest is virtually, that is, ideally, in it. The rest, in the first instance, was not actually, but only virtually or ideally in it. The Materialist must, then, to this extent admit himself an Idealist, and that there is no difference between himself and his former opposite save in the first principle. The one says Thought, the other Electricity, but both mean the First and One which contains all the rest, which implies all the rest;—the First and One in which all the rest ideally are or were. We have only now to consider the principles; and if any preference can be detected in either, it will be sound reasoning to adopt the preferable. In this way, either the Materialist must, seeing its superiority, adopt Thought and become wholly an Idealist; or the Idealist must, seeing its superiority, adopt Electricity and become partially a Materialist, that is, so far as his first principle is concerned. But the first principle which is to contain all the rest, being supposed material and outward, evidently presupposes Space and Time. It must be granted, then, that Electricity, if adequate to all the rest, is inadequate to Space and Time, and leaves them there absolutely unexplained, absolutely foreign to its own self. Here, then, the advantage is with the other principle, Thought, which is not outward, but inward—which is independent of Space and Time, which involves Space and Time. You can never pack Space and Time into an outward, but you may, and very readily, into an inward. Thought has an advantage over Electricity here, then. Again, a second advantage possessed by the former over the latter is, that an inward is still nearer to me—certainly to myself, the centre of all certainty—than any outward. Again, an inward is liker myself, is more homogeneous than an outward. And again, let is be said at last, Thought, as an infinitely more powerful principle than Electricity, is also an infinitely preferable one. But you object here—Thought is conditional on man, Electricity is independent. The answer is easy: It is not certain that Electricity is independent, and it is quite certain that Thought is as independently present in the universe as Electricity. The world is but a congeries of means to ends, and every example of such involves a thought. The wing that beats the air is a thought; an eye that sees, a sense that feels, an articulation that moves, a pipe that runs, a scale that protects,—all these, and myriads such—and they are thoughts—are as independent in nature as Electricity. There is not an atom of dust but exhibits quantity and quality; Electricity itself exhibits power, force, causality—and these are thoughts. The Idealist may now say to the Materialist, then,—Idealism, in the end, being common to both, and my rationale of the same being infinitely preferable to yours, you are bound, on all laws of good reasoning, to abandon your own and adopt mine.

How must the explanation be thought? We name— and even the Materialist will not say no—the explanation God, and, as we have seen, these predicates must be thought in his regard: that he is First, that he is One, and that in him is transition to the Many. Now, it is by necessity of thought that we attach these predicates, and the question is, does not the necessity of thought go further? We say, it will be observed, transition, and not creation; and the reason is, that creation is an hypothesis of imagination, and not a necessity of thought as thought. Creation is but a clumsy rationale: it is what Kant would call a synthetic addition; it is a mere addition of a pictured something to a pictured nothing; it is a metaphor of imagination, and not a thought of thought proper: in a word, it is a Vorstellung, not a Begriff; a crude, current, figurate conception, and not a notion. Creation is but the metaphor of transition; the former is the Vorstellung, the latter is the notion. The predicates we have hitherto found are certain, then: they must be allowed. We think, and to think is that. To think is to seek an explanation, and an explanation is a First and One with capability of transition to all actual examples of the Many. But this principle evidently of First and One becomes the many, and becomes the various, even by virtue of its capability of transition. As many, as various, it is endless, it is unlimited; it is now, was, and ever will be; and, however various, it is still at bottom one and the same. This is to be granted: the Materialist calling it a principle, the Spiritualist and the Idealist calling it God, a Spirit, Thought, agree in this, that the principle (call it as you will) must be thought as One, as First, as capable of transition (say creation, if you will), as unlimited whether in Time or Space, and yet as at bottom always self-identical. But a self-identity that can become other, both in number and in kind, is an identity with itself that becomes different from itself. The principle (the principium) contains in it, involves, implies both identity and difference. This is plain: granted identity alone, and you have identity, identity—perdrix, toujours perdrix—till the end of time, which is never. For progress, then, for a single step, it is absolutely necessary that your receipt should contain not identity alone, but difference also. Have paper and the colour of paper only, and all the painting in the word will never make a mark. To suppose God creator of this universe by act of his will, alters not the matter one jot: in that case, he has thought difference, he has willed difference, he has made difference. The difference is still derived from his identity. Without his identity, the poised universe of difference shakes, sinks, vanishes, disappears like smoke. In short, God as thought, and not merely imagined, involves a coexistence of identity and difference, of unity and plurality, of first and last.

The predicates which we have at this moment in characterisation of the principle or principium are: Firstness, unity, plurality, identity, difference, illimitation, and limitation. Why, here are quite a succession of categories from a single necessary thought. All of these are themselves necessary thoughts. No thinker that lives and thinks, but must think one and many, identity and difference, limitation and illimitation, &c. The misfortune is, indeed, that while he must think both of the members of each of these pairs, he conceives it his duty somehow to think only one, and that to think both would be self-stultification, and a contradiction of the laws of thought themselves. He will see—at least he ought to see—now, however, that he has been practising a cheat on himself, and that he must think both.

Now these are thoughts, and absolutely necessary thoughts, for these thoughts are actually in the universe, and on them the universe actually is made. Even were there no man in the world, and were the world supposed still to exist, there would be in the world unity and plurality, and difference and identity, and limitation, &c. Nay, there are single things that are at once all these. Space is unity, and space is plurality; space is identity, and space is difference; space is limitation, and space is illimitation. And as it is with space, so it is with time. But neither space nor time, nor both, can be the principle, the principium themselves: let them exist for ever and everywhere, let them coexist for ever and everywhere, still they are barren—still from such clasps as theirs not one atom of thought shall spring, not one atom of matter shall drop.

There are categories, then; and, like water from a sponge, they exude from the very nature of things. It is no objection, then, this of Haym's, that we have Nature at our back when we state these categories. That such is the case, is beyond a doubt. Still, these categories, exuding from the concrete, do come together into a common element or system, and they are the thoughts which the nature of things involves, whether there be a human thinker or not, and which are capable of being discerned directly a human or any other thinker comes upon the scene.

The first thought, of course, is simply that of First. Before there was a first—if that be possible—there was the thought of it. The first is the first, and that is the thought even prior to the thing. Suppose it was a grain of sand that was first, why that grain of sand involves thought: it is there in quantity and quality, it is alone, it virtually contains all, &c. All these are thoughts, and first itself is a thought. But what is first? Why, just God, the principle, just what is. What is, is the first that is. But what is, is. What is involves Being. Ah, there we have it: Being is the absolutely first, the absolutely universal predicate in thinking this universe, figure the subject of predication as you may. Being, that what is, is, this is the first, and this also is the immediate or the inderivative. It is what is, and we do not ask for anything higher as producer of it; it is what is, and it is consequently the first. Now, as Being is the necessary first, it will suffice for the present to assert that what Haym calls the long string of the categories just necessarily ravels out of it, and simply assures itself of its own truth by that occasional glimpse at the concrete actual to which Haym would wholly attribute it. And such we think a legitimate mode of illustrating the possible or probable incubant thoughts of Hegel.

Hegel's general undertaking, indeed, seems to be, to restore the evolution immanent to thought itself (which evolution has only presented itself concretely and chronologically in the particular thinkers preserved in history)—to restore this evolution to universal consciousness, in abstract purity, and in such wise that the whole movement and every moment of the movement should be understood as each veritably is, with Idealism, or rather the Idée-Monad, as the result, and thereby infinitude retrieved for man in union and communion with God—what we may call, 'Recovered Paradise to all mankind.'

It is no mere process of the generalisation of particular historical facts, however, that we are to see in Hegel. History, no doubt, lies decidedly behind the system, but the connexion between them is probably of a subtler nature than the usual generalisation. We are not to suppose that Hegel has taken the exact concrete facts of the history of philosophical thought as it has manifested itself in time, and so to speak, broken, and trod, and pressed them down into an ultimate lymph which is thought itself in its own nature and in its own life—not to suppose that he has grasped the solid masses themselves, and compressed and kneaded them till they became the transparent and plastic essence which is his Logic,—but rather that, along the long range of solid rocks from Thales to Kant—at the foot of these—he has laid himself down as the pure and harmonising mirror into which their pure reflexions fall. Till the reader, then, has acquired a certain ease of traffic, as it were, not with the bodies, but with the souls of facts, the reference to history in Hegel may as readily—to use a foreign expression—disorient as orient him.

 

B.

Hegel acts on the dictum of Aristotle, ἡ γὰρ λύσις τἧς ἀπορίας εὔρεσίς ἐστιν, in the sense that the finding of the knot is the loosening of it, for we may name a main object with him to be the elimination of the antithesis by demonstration of the antithesis; which said antithesis is at first Being, and Non-being and at last the absolute Subject-Object, the Spirit, that which is in itself and by itself and for itself, the Absolute, the concrete reciprocal of all reciprocals. It is also to be seen that this reciprocity or reciprocation is in its nature notional, is identical with that which Kant discovered to constitute perception, which to him was, shortly, the subsumption of the particular under the universal to the development of the conjunctive singular. Kant, too, perceived that Sensation and Perception were but externally what thought, or the categories, were internally. Kant, however, did not bring his thoughts together. This was done by Hegel to the production—and by no other means—of the Hegelian system. He saw, first of all, in a perfection of consciousness which Kant lacked, this reciprocity of inner and outer, of thought and sense. He saw also that these elements related themselves to each other as universal and particular; and, seeing as much as that at the same time that the whole reach of Kant's theory of perception was clear before him, a theory in which all the three moments of the notion have place, it was not difficult for him to complement and complete them by the addition of the singular. Quite generally, then, he was able to state to himself that the ultimate truth of the universe was just this: Notional reciprocation pervades the whole, and is the whole; and, more particularly, in this movement the ultimate point of repose is the production of the singular by its subsuming the particular (which is as matter, that is, negation, or simply difference) under the universal (which is form, or affirmation, or identity).

Seeing this, the next step or question would be, how put together all the details in completeness and perfection—how interconnect, how systematise them? Having come to that which is most general as the ground unit, or rather as the ground form, it would be natural to make it the first, and endeavour to find a transition from it to the rest. Hegel's first step, then, in this light, would be, in the first instance, to exclude sense and perception as the mere other or copy of the more important intellect. In such restriction, his element evidently were the purely Logical. Now, the categories lying before him, he had in them logical elements not due to the merely subjective movement of Notion, Judgment, and Syllogism; and he could not possibly escape the thought of an objective logic as a necessary addition to the usual subjective one.

Now, how begin? What category was the most general objective one? It was manifestly not Relation or Modality; for both Relation and Modality concern a foregone conclusion—presuppose, that is, their own substrate. It must either be Quantity or Quality. But the latter is evidently prior to the former. The quantity of any what is a secondary consideration to the what^{[errata 1]} itself; and we see Kant himself succumbing to the necessity of this priority in his 'Kritik of Judgment.' Let us begin with Quality, then. But what is the most universal Quality, so far as all particular qualities are abstracted form, and there is question only of quality as it is thought, question only of the thought of Quality? Why, Being! Being is a qualitative thought, and it is, at the same time, the most abstract, the most universal of all thoughts. But should we commence with this thought, transition from it, movement is no longer possible by process of logical generalisation: such possibility can be attained only through the reverse process of logical determination or specification. But a specification, beginning with such first, would, if ended, especially if ended in a circle of return—be a complete system; and a specification, again, can be effected only through the addition of the necessary differentiæ. But just such power possessed the formula derived from Kant. For the genus was the same as Kant's general notion, the difference the same as his particular notion (we may call it so, for, though to Kant it was only materials of sense, we know now that even so it is only the other of thought, it still is in itself thought), and the species stood to the genus and differentia just as the singular stood to the universal and the particular.^[3]

Seyn, Being, would be a beginning, then; but how find a differentia by which to convert it into a species, which species, too, should be the absolute species proxima? We have found the universal genus, but how find the universal differentia? Why, if the one is Being, if the one is the universal identity—and manifestly the ultimate genus must be the universal identity, and, looking at it in that way, Being is easily seen to be just this—the other must be, as already named indeed, the universal difference, the universal source of distinction and separation, which just is negation, not, or nothing. The universal difference, then, is but the contrary of the universal genus; and our very first step has brought us to the antithesis at its sheerest and abruptest.

But, subsuming not or nought under Being, which is precisely what we have to do in a process of logical specification or determination, what species results? To subsume not under Being, or to incorporate not with Being, is to give not the character of Being—is, so to speak, to being-ate not—is to give Being to not: and what does that amount to but a Becoming? Nought passing into Being (Being passing into Nought, if you will) is surely Becoming. Now, this as first reciprocation is type of all the rest. Take Hegel's widest or most general division of Logic, Nature, Spirit: the last subsumes the second under the first; Spirit logicises Nature; Spirit is the conjunctive Singular of the Universal Logic and of the Particular Nature; Spirit is the concrete One of identity and difference. Again, Spirit is the ultimate sublimation or concretion of the form Becoming, as Logic is of Being (identity) and Nature of Non-being (difference).

Of other Hegelian divisions, Begriff subsumes Wesen under Seyn, or Begriff, Notion, gives Being to what is called Wesen, or essential principle; Maass subsumes Quantity under Quality, or Measure qualifies Quantity. Fürsichseyn, singular Being, subjective Being, subsumes Daseyn, particular Being, objective Being, natural Being, under Seyn, universal Being, subjective and objective Being, logical Being, &c. &c. In the Philosophy of Nature, as in that of Spirit, the triplicity is certainly not so formally exact as it is in these examples; but it still aims at the same pattern, and throughout the Logic it remains almost always perfectly true to itself. This is obvious in such examples, for instance, as Daseyn, Quality, Something; Identity, Difference, Ground; Substantiality, Causality, Reciprocity, &c.; where the third member is the product of the subsumption of the second under the first, or results, so to speak by infecting the second with the nature of the first. In fact, the object is to be serious with the notion of reciprocity and its resolution in a relation. The antithesis constituted by reciprocity is taken in its abstractest form as Being and Nothing, and it is gradually raised to its ultimate concretion of subject and object. The first resolutive relation, too, Becoming, is contained in the last, the Absolute Spirit. We are to suppose the threads of the antithesis gradually thickening from the lowest to the highest, and the relation, or the crossing of the threads, gradually thickening likewise. Throughout, then, we have but the antithesis in its series of stages.

This explication goes pretty deep into the nature of the Hegelian industry; but Hegelian writing is not thereby at once made current, readable at sight. No; Hegelian difficulty largely remains: not that it is because, as Goethe thought, Hegel wanted lightness, or because, as Humboldt thought, speech had never come to a thorough breaking-through with him. No: the reason of the difficulty lies partly in the fact that Hegel will give no sign of the origin of his system, nor of the concretes that lie under his abstract characterisation; partly in the fact, too, that this characterisation is abstract, and the most abstract that has ever yet been exemplified in this world: partly again in this, that he has sought to make the abstract evolution of his Logic parallel with the concrete evolution of philosophical thought in history; and partly, finally, that each sphere demands for its characterisation its own words, which words remain ever afterwards intelligible only when referred to the sphere where they, as it were naturally, took birth and presented themselves. No reader, however intelligent, will ever be at ease with Hegel till he has gone through the whole system of Logic with such diligence and completeness as to have ever all the technical words present to his consciousness in the exact sense in which they were employed by Hegel. Even so, Hegel himself is often in such an agony of difficulty with the refractoriness of his own materials, and what he sees is so hard to be learned from the abstraction of the language, that there is little hope of ready reading in such an element ever for anyone.

One other source of difficulty lies in the artificiality and formalism which are everywhere present in the construction. With each new product a new differentia is necessitated to be derived from this product, which reunited to the product gives rise to a third and higher. Such a method entails outside effort, and the appearance of artificial straining. Still, Hegel is to be considered as genuine. He might certainly have made himself perfectly easy to be understood, had he explained his connexion to Kant, and described what he would be at both in principle, method, and result; and so far suspicion and ill-will will always follow him. Nevertheless, Hegel is the historical continuator of Kant, and he has really carried forward the interest of philosophy as received from the hands of Kant. Nay, with all its artifice, his method is the true one—that is, if Kant was right, and a science of Metaphysics is now founded and begun—and the elevation of the antithesis must henceforth be the business of philosophy, as it is of experience probably, and life itself.

 

C.

Few things more tantalising, after all, than Hegel's constant reference to the Notion, the Begriff. What, of course, is meant, is the logical notion, or the notion as notion. It will not do, however, to have recourse here to merely technical Logic, to merely technical definition, and content ourselves with a mere phrase, a mere abstract expression. Any mere technicality of any mere book is something very different from what Hegel aims at. The Notion, in fact, is the concrete notion; the notion is the notion that was taken up by Kant, and which, passing through the hands of Fichte and Schelling, reached finally those of Hegel himself. The Notion, then, is simply Kant's notion; and the transformation of Kant's notion into Hegel's Idea, is the one business of the Hegelian Logic. The Notion, in short, is Reciprocity. For this is the true name for the purpose that impelled Kant in a similar direction in Metaphysic to that of Copernicus in Astronomy. Kant sought to invert the relation; sought rather more than this—to reciprocate the relation—to prove objects not only affecting, but affected; that is, not only influencing us, but influenced by us. The notion, then, passing from Hume to Kant in the form of Causality, was converted by the latter—virtually—into that of Reciprocity. Reciprocity—this is the ultimate abstraction for, the ultimate generalisation of, the work of Kant; this is the work's true appellation. Most wonderful is the penetrating, rending, irresistible force of Hegel. Thought becomes reduced before him to its ultimate nerve: the volumes of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Hume, are transformed to sentences in a paragraph; and the vast Kant has become a single word. Substance becomes Causality, Causality becomes Reciprocity, and Reciprocity becomes the Notion. In Kant, however, it was only the notion an sich, the notion in itself; it had the immediacy, the identity, the instinctivity, the unconsciousness of Nature. In Kant it only appeared, but it knew not its own self in him; or Kant was quite unconscious that the one notion which moved in his whole industry was Reciprocity. From Kant and the stage of immediacy, it soon passed, however, to Fichte and Schelling, or the stage of reflexion, the stage of the difference, the stage of negation, the stage of particularisation, and as soon, finally, to Hegel, or the stage of complete and total reconciliation and insight—the stage of singularisation, which is the stage also of the restoration of immediacy by the sublation of mediacy (the negation of the negation, or, what is the same thing, commediation with self). Reciprocity on this last stage, being developed to its issues, is now the Idea, which one word expresses the resolution of objectivity in reciprocity with subjectivity and of subjectivity in reciprocity with objectivity into the concrete reciprocity of the notion, the logical notion, the notion as notion, which is itself a reciprocity, and the ultimate reciprocity of universality, particularity, and singularity. All this, of course, is very hard to realise to understanding; but, after a due analysis both of Kant and Hegel, the desired 'light' will always 'go up' to honest labour.

All this can be said differently; it is all capable of being expressed in the Aristotelian formula that relates to Form, Matter, and perfect Actualisation. The ὸύναμις, ὔλη, and ὲντελέχεια^[4] of Aristotle amount precisely to the Begriff, Urtheil, and Scluss of Hegel. In fact, all that is said in Hegel is but the single principle involved in this formula, in one or other of its innumerable forms: always and everywhere with him and in him we have to do wholly and solely with the resultant unity of a triple reciprocity. And in this, it may be, Hegel has hit an essential, or the essential secret of the universe. 'Omne trinum perfectum rotundum; all good things are three: three is the sacred number, the fundamental figure, the foot that scans the rhythmus of the Universe.' This is the ultimate cell, the multiplication and accumulation of which has built the All. The universal becomes particular, and both are resolved or combined into singularity, which, indeed, only realises each. Any cell in its material, structure, and function, will be found to illustrate this. Such, indeed, is the inner nature, the inner movement, the rhythm of self-consciousness itself; and self-consciousness is the prius of All. It is the first and centre, and all else are but reduplications, inspissations, crassations of it outwards. This simplicity constitutes a great difficulty in Hegel; for with whatever he may be occupied, he can always only see in it the same form, and speak of it in the same dialect. Hegel's so frequent utterance in regard to immediacy which has made itself such by resolution of mediacy attaches itself to the same principle. It hangs with this, too, that what is to explain, account for, or act as ground in any reference, is always with Hegel the stage which is named Schluss, Entelechy, Singularisation, Reconciliation, &c., the nature of which just is that it is an Immediate resultant from Mediacy, the inner nerve being always reciprocity.

Hegel just modified and developed the stand-point of Kant. In his hands, for example, the categories must become the category or the notion; and this again, freed from subjectivity, and looked at objectively as what is, must become the Absolute or the Idea in its first, or simplest, or most abstract form or principle. When, indeed, 'the light went up' to him from Kant, his object would be to complete these categories, these substantial creative notions,—to complete them, to found them, and to derive them from a principle—from a something first, simple, and certain. But, with such abstract generalised notions or universals before him, the inquest or request would naturally be the abstract generalised universal notion as notion. From this he could begin: this should be the life of all the other generalised notions (as being their universal), and through them of all existence generally. What is this ultimate notion, then? What is the notion as such? Where find it?—how conceive it? These presumably were Hegel's first thoughts, and we are here certainly on his real trail, which Haym, with all his laborious investigation of the Hegelian steps in the writings themselves both published and manuscript of Hegel, has unquestionably missed. This, indeed, could only manifest itself (as in our case it did only) to one who stood at last on an exhaustive analysis of the 'deduction of the categories.' From such coigne of vantage, there is a sudden glimpse at last into the initial secret of Hegel, his junction to the world of his predecessors, the one broad bridge that at once made him and them, a one and identical common country.

With all effort, Hegel could not expect to attain what he sought immediately. But as regards where he ought to search, he would find himself naturally referred to Logic. But what is Logic? what is the foundation of Logic? How came Logic to birth? What is so named, is seen at first sight to imply, at all events, that all other concretes are left out of view, presumably, perhaps, as considered to their ultimate, and that thought abstractly, thought as thought, is what is now examined. Historically, then, all objective elements and interests are behind Logic; or, historically, so situated is the genesis of Logic. In other words, Logic is the historical outcome of the investigation of all particular concretes which present themselves. So it is that Logic becomes, as it were, the biographic ghost of history in its element of abstract or generalised thought. Nay, the steps of generalisation which present themselves, so to speak, historically in the life of the public individual, may be seen to repeat themselves—in the progress from instinct to reason, from brutality to morality, &c. &c.—biographically in the life of the private individual. In this manner there is the glimpse of a concrete Logic obtained. But Hegel must be conceived as returning from such general view to the particular question, What is the notion as notion? And in the answer to this question it is that the origin, the principle, the form, and even, in a certain light, the matter of the Hegelian system lie. But we may come to the same point from other directions.

There is in the brain of Hegel a dominant metaphor. This metaphor relates to a peculiar evolution which is characterised thus: It begins, of course, with a first; but this first is presently seen to imply its opposite, which opposite, developed in its turn, coalesces with the former to the production of a third, a new form, constituted by and containing, but only impliciter the two former as moments. This third, this new form, develops itself now up to the full of its unity, and is presently seen to imply its opposite—with the same results. Now, we have to conceive this process repeated again and again till an end is reached; which end, we have further to conceive, passes back into the first, and thus the whole movement constitutes a simple circle. Each link in this circular chain, too, is seen to be a kind of triple unity. Ever, indeed, there seems somehow a flight of three, the last of which is always a return to the first, but changed, as if it were richer, heavier, more complete—more completely developed, in fact. Each of the three terms concerned must be conceived to begin, to fill, to reach its full; and when full, to show, as it were, the germ of its opposite, which rising up into its full, seeks union and coalescence with its former to a new production. This is the one metaphor of the thought of Hegel; and even here we can see that we have never moved from the spot; for this metaphor is but another way of expressing the one movement or principle already characterised in so many ways as δύναμις, ὕλη, ἐντελέχεια; Begriff, Urtheil, Schluss; Universality, Particularity, Singularity; Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis; Being, Essence, Notion, &c. &c. Wherever we are, in Hegel indeed we have ever the same triplet before us in one or other of its innumerable forms. Always there are the two opposites or reciprocals which coalesce like acid and alkali to a base—a base in which they still implicitly are, but only as moments. This base, again, if the result of its moments, is really their base, their ground, their foundation, their Grundlage. If they found it, it founds them. It is the mother-liquor into which they have passed: it is a living base out of which they can arise and show themselves, and into which they can again disappearingly return. This is the Hegelian metaphor: a ground, a base, from which arise members, which again withdraw themselves—a differentiated Common or One. And what is this but the disjunctive or reciprocal whole of Kant, suggested to him by the disjunctive judgment, and discussed by him at so much length, and with such fresh, new, and creative vigour? A sphere of reciprocity: this is the whole. This is the Hegelian Idée-Monad. The reciprocity still must be understood as notional reciprocity—the triple reciprocity of universal, particular, and singular, each of which, as reciprocal of the others, holds the others in its own way, and is in fact the others. It is Identity gone into its differences indeed, but still even in these identical with itself. Differentiated identity, or identified difference, constitutes the one reciprocal sphere of Hegel—a sphere which is the whole universe—a sphere which is each and every atom in the universe—a sphere which, as self-consciousness, or rather as the Notion (self-consciousness in its simplest statement), is the one soul, the one spirit—which is life, vitality itself—and the only life, the only vitality. Thus it is—which is so curiously characteristic of the Hegelian philosophy—that every attempt to understand or explain any the least considerable of its terms becomes a flight into the system itself. So, for particular example, is it that the third is always the base and the truth of the first and second. We see this corroborated by fact; for it is simply the progress of thought to give itself the new as the reason or explanation or ground of the old, or of what preceded it. Thus it is that the modern world is the truth of the ancient, Spinoza the truth of Descartes, Hume the truth of Locke, and Kant the truth of Hume, as Hegel is of Kant. On this last particular ground, and in harmony with the whole system, Begriff is third where Seyn and Wesen are first and second. The Hegelian Logic even outwardly presents these three stadia, and the reason lies in the Hegelian notion, or is just another side of the Hegelian metaphor There is opposed to Perception this world of outer images: these constitute the Seyn, the Immediacy. But now Understanding takes what Perception offers— will not content itself with what Perception offers as it is offered, will treat this in its way, and insists on demanding the inner nature of this outer nature, the inner being of this outer being; it insists on satisfaction to its own Reflexion, and demands the Wesen of this Seyn, the inner essentity of this outer appearance, the Noumenon of the Phænomenon. But all this can be said in the two words, Begriff and Urtheil. The act of Perception may be named the immediate Begriff, the Begriff in itself: in itself as being yet only virtual, that is, existent and factual, but object of consciousness as yet neither to itself nor anything else; in itself, too, as really in itself, for every particular into which the whole sphere (or notion) goes asunder, constitutes, each with each, just what the sphere or notion is in itself; and in itself as really in itself in this sense, that to whatever yet it may develop itself, that development depends on, is conditioned by, the first natural germ as it was in itself when first manifested. In particular explanation of the third or last phase, it may be stated that self-will is the notion in itself of the whole developed notion of morality. At the same time, it will be as well to enter a caveat against this statement being supposed to favour what is called the selfish system. Self-will is the notion of morality in itself; but it is only through its negative of humiliation and submission that it reaches its own consummation; and this can hardly be a dogma of the Selfish System.

But if the act of Perception be the notion in itself, the act of Understanding is the notion for itself. Perception is content to hold its matter just as it is, and asks no further. Understanding is not so content; Understanding will not so hold its matter, Understanding must peep and pry and spy into, Understanding must separate, its matter—separate it for its own passage into it: Understanding, too, having once effected this separation, keeps it up; it regards this separation as the truth; it holds each part to be in its truth only when separated from the whole, and in isolation by itself: Understanding, that is, puts faith only in its own abstractions. Perception holds what we may call its matter—Perception itself being only relatively as form—immediately; whereas Understanding will hold and must hold this matter (the same matter) only mediately. But the object or matter immediately is the object or matter in itself, and the object or matter mediately is just the object or matter for itself. Understanding, then, will not have the object otherwise than as it is mediately, as it is in reflexion, as it is for and by itself. Understanding, that is, scouts outer nature, and will have inner nature. Though it has it there as in Perception, it still asks what is it? It demands the Wesen of this Seyn. Seyn, then, is the intent, ingest, or matter of all Perception; and Wesen is the intent, ingest, or matter of all Understanding: and this matter in Perception is only unmittelbar or an sich, while in Understanding it is mittelbar or für sich. In Perception, that is, it is just the undeveloped Begriff, just what is apprehended or begrasped in its first direct unity; but in Understanding it is the judgment—(a judgment has been passed on the matter in regard to what it is)—and the judgment is the Ur-theil, the primal or primitive parting, the dis-cernment. But now is the opportunity of the third branch of Logic, of Reason, to reunite in the Schluss, what has been separated by Understanding in the Urtheil, and restore it to the unity of perception in the higher form of reason: in which form it is the notion, the logical notion, the true and complete notion, and Seyn and Wesen are now complemented by their third.

But here now, then, we have a new triad for the principle of Hegel: Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Reasoning! The three stadia of common Logic are, after all, representative of what Hegel would be at! The three stadia of common Logic constitute but a stage of the Hegelian evolution—constitute between them but the Hegelian Notion—and in very perfect form! Hegel too, then, has seen into the depths of the meaning of the common Logic; and he cooperates with Kant to restore it from death and inanity to life and wealth. How striking this placing parallel with each other the forms—Perception and Simple Apprehension; and the matters—Seyn and Begriff! What vision this of Understanding as that which separates and remains fixed by what it separates—the judgment, the Urtheil, which is the primitive parting! What new truth in the function of Reason as reconciliant speculation, which restores the notion, the first product as it came to us, but now in its very truth! What wonderful sagacity to regard all—Begriff, Urtheil, Schluss—as but the turns of a single movement, which movement is the one essential secret of all that is!

But this—the psychological triad of Perception, Understanding, and Reason, or the logical one of Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Reasoning—is capable of being applied both historically and biographically. Historically—Seyn, the intent of Perception, sufficed the earliest men. The Notion, the Begriff, what was simply begrasped and begriped of Simple Apprehension, was enough for them. They asked no questions, they simply lived; it was an era of Faith. How many times the Notion, meaning thereby the whole logical movement—and that is tantamount to the whole vital movement—has passed through its own phases historically, cannot be said. There seems good reason for supposing the philosophy of Aristotle to have been in some sort an Absolute Idealism; and in that case, the Greeks at all events represent one complete cycle of the Notion. We see the stage of Perception and Seyn, or of Simple Apprehension and Begriff, the age of faith, in Homer. Then the first appearance of the Urtheil, of the separating and dis-cerning Understanding, the first appearance of the Negation, is the turning of such thinkers as Thales and the other Ionics on the Seyn, outer being, and the questioning of it, the demanding the Wesen, the inner principle of it, the resolution of it by reflexion into its differences, water, fire, earth, and what not. Then the separation, the reflexion, the abstraction, the generalisation so begun—a beginning of Idealism it is, for even Water when proposed as the principle by Thales is, as Hegel tells us, but a beginning of Idealism; if it is the principle, it is a unity which ideally holds, which ideally is, the total variety—waxed more and more perfect, more and more pure, in the succeeding philosophers. We have Pythagoras, for example, seeking an explanation in the numerical difference, which is so far abstracting from outer solidity. Then we have the first absolutely abstract thought, the Eleatic being. In fact, Heraclitus, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, can be all used as types of certain stages of the movement of the notion and applied in explanation of the system of Hegel. Of this movement, we may conceive the modern world to constitute another cycle. In the Middle Ages, there was simple apprehension—the reign of Faith. Then came Reflexion to break into this unity, and set up the differences as principles. This Reflexion, as in Greece so here, culminated in an age of Aufklärung. People conceived themselves fully enlightened as to their ancient folly, and hastened to rid themselves of it at the shortest—in some cases, as Carlyle has it, by setting fire to it. But, looking at this Reflexion only in the philosophical element, and omitting Descartes, Spinoza, and the rest, we remark that the Aufklärung culminated in David Hume, and passing from him to Kant, received from this latter its first turn into the final form, completed by Hegel, of the universal reconciliant Idea or Schluss of Speculation of Reason. This last form is what we have now to welcome: the doubts, despairs, despondencies of mere reflexion are ended; we have to quit the penal fire of the negative, and emerge into the sunshine of the new and higher positive—of the positive which restores to us, and in richer form, all that understanding, all that reflexion, all that scepticism and the enlightenment of the eighteenth century had bereft us of. Thus does the Notion describe its cycles; and it may be remarked of these, that each, though full, is a rise on its predecessor. The Greek, though a complete cycle, is still, as it were, in the form of the first moment, Seyn; it is a cycle an sich. The modern world again is dominated by Wesen, and may be named a cycle für sich. To believe the analogy, we shall be followed then by a cycle an und für sich, in which Reason shall predominate! How strangely this coheres with prophecy and the utterances of Scripture!

What is said historically, may be said biographically: Seyn, Wesen, Begriff, or Begriff, Urtheil, Schluss, are the three stages in the life of every thinker.

Why the Notion, Begriff, is third to Being and Essence, will have now made itself apparent in a variety of ways. The directest is simply that of what is: Seyn is the first form, Wesen the second, and Begriff the third. This explains itself at once by reference to the faith of the religious era, the unrest of the reflective era (Hume), and the restored repose of the rational era effected by the Notion of Kant and Hegel. The third form can be easily seen, too, though preceded by the others, to be at the same time the ground, Grundlage, or containing base of these. We may remark here, too, that we have now the necessary light whereby to place and appreciate Comte. The constitution of the Notion really gives him a show of truth as regards an age of Religion and an age of Metaphysic; but it is a fatal error to suppose them past only, and not still operant, now and always: Comte, too, knows nothing of the how or why, or real nature of his ages, and it is amusing to compare his third and final (the Aufklärung) with that (Reason, Faith) of Kant and Hegel. Comte, with the smirking, self-complacent sufficiency of the shallow, orders us to return to Seyn (Perception), Phenomena; and knows not, that he brings to the examination of the same, all the categories of reflexion, full-formed, and in that he drifts a prey to these categories, thinks himself by their means (whose nature is hid from him) master of the Phenomena!

 

D.

The third paragraph of the opening of the third volume of the Logic of Hegel, entitled 'Vom Begriff im Allgemeinen,' may be translated thus:—

'Objective Logic, which considers Being (Seyn) and Inbeing or Essentity (Wesen), constitutes properly the genetic exposition of the Notion. More particularly, Substance is the real Inbeing, or Inbeing so far as it is united with Outbeing (Seyn) and gone over into Actuality. The Notion has, therefore, Substance as its immediate presupposition; or Substance is that in itself which the Notion is as in manifestation. The dialectic movement of Substance through Causality and Reciprocity onwards, is therefore the immediate genesis of the Notion, and by this genesis its Becoming is represented. But its Becoming, like Becoming everywhere, implies that it (the Becoming) is the reflexion of what becomes into its Ground, and that the next presentant other into which the former (that which is engaged becoming) has passed, constitutes the truth of this former. Thus the Notion is the truth of Substance; and while the particular mode of relation in Substance is Necessity, Freedom manifests itself as the truth of Necessity, and as the mode of relation in the Notion.'

It was in reading this passage that the historic 'light went up to us' as to what the Begriff really meant. Of course, it was known, we may say, all along previously, that, as stated by Schwegler and Haym, it was a tenet of Hegel that the history of philosophy was, in outward concretion and contingency, what the development of the Notion was in the inward concretion and necessity of Logic. But still, on the whole, the tenet was looked loosely at, in the manner of Haym and Schwegler themselves, as a mere analogy and ideal, as a mere Regulative, and not by any means as a Constitutive. Schwegler expresses this thus:—'History is no sum in arithmetic to be exactly cast up. Nor anywhere in the history of philosophy, either, can there be talk of an à priori construction; what is factual cannot be applied as the illustrative exemplication of a ready-made notional schema: but the data of experience, so far as capable of a critical inquest, are to be taken as ready-furnished to us, and their rational connexion is to be analytically exposed; only for the arrangement and scientific articulation of this historical material can the Speculative idea supply a Regulative.' As said, however, in reading the above passage from Hegel, 'a light went up,' and Hegel was seen to be much more in earnest with his peculiar tenet than it seemed to have occurred to anyone even to surmise. It was seen, in fact, that the Notion was Kant's notion, and that its genesis lay in the thinking of the philosophers who had preceded him,—in the thinking, that is, of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Hume, to whom Substance really presented itself—though each named it otherwise, perhaps—as what was the whole object of inquiry and research. Concrete facts do undoubtedly lie behind the abstraction of Hegel; and if this abstraction can, on one side, be viewed as the development of thought as thought, apart from any other consideration, it can also be viewed, on the other side, as being but the counter-part of the actual particular facts of history. To him, indeed, who is well read in history in general, and in that of philosophy in particular, the light now offered will shine into meaning many tracts of Hegel which might have appeared previously quite impervious.

In further reference to the exposition of Substance being the genesis of the Notion, we remark, that what is in and for itself, is to itself at once its own ground and its own manifestation, its own identity and its own difference, its own affirmation and its own negation, &c. &c. Now Substance is all this: the notion conveyed by this word is just that it is its own Wesen and its own Seyn, its own Inbeing and its own Outbeing, its own ground and its own manifestation, &c. It is evident that the sort of movement involved here in this species of play between inside and outside, ground and manifestation, identity and difference, may be appropriately termed reflexion: for neither factor is, in itself, absolute, independent, isolated, &c.; neither factor has an independent existence—both have only a relative existence, either is quite as much in its other as in itself. The ground is ground just because of the manifestation, and the manifestation is manifestation just because of the ground. Thus they are reciprocals, and reciprocals in unity. Again, the Notion—that is, our notion, Kant's notion, or rather now Hegel's notion—is the unity of Being and Reflexion, or Seyn and Wesen. The categories, or in their universal, the category, let us say, is as much outward as inward; it is what is, whether we look outwards or inwards; that is, it is Seyn, Being. And again, inasmuch as in it we can look both outwards and inwards, it involves or is Reflexion; that is, the Notion is the Unity of Being and Reflexion. In fact, all that is wished to be said here (beginning of fourth paragraph of 'Vom Begriff im Allgemeinen'), is that the movement of Substance is manifestation of what it is in itself, and this manifestation is identical with what it is in itself, and Substance and Manifestation are just identical together and in general: further, that this movement of Substance is evidently identical with the movement of Notion, and the former constitutes thus the genesis of the latter. In other words, the evolution of Substance through Causality, Reciprocity, &c., in the heads of Spinoza, Hume, and Kant terminated in the genesis of the Idea in the brain of Hegel. In short, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, &c. are simply abstracted from, and the development which these and others gave to Substance (for the object then was an inner principle or truth that should explain phenomena—and such is Substance) may be considered as the development of Substance itself, or as the dialectic movement of the plastic All of thought which was then in the form of Substance.

Substance unites in its own self both of the correlative sides: it is that which as Inbeing is also Outbeing; it is both inner ground and outer manifestation; that is, it is Actuality, or what actually is. There can be no doubt but the thoughts of Descartes, and the rest, circled around the poles which these simple ideas represent. 'Substance is that in itself which the Notion is in manifestation.' This means, Kant's Notion which is now in actual manifestation—is but a development from Substance; and Substance, therefore, was in itself what Kant has actually developed it into. The dialectic movement of Substance through Causality and Reciprocity onwards is therefore the immediate genesis of the Notion; and by this genesis its Becoming is represented. Till the present moment, however, this literal truth to history on the part of Hegel, especially as concerns the characteristic tenets both of Kant and himself, has remained invisible. Categories, Dialectic, Method, have all been regarded as appurtenances of the system, and of nothing but the system: close literal generalisation, though in ultimate abstraction, of actual outer facts seems never to have been suspected; and Hegel's claim on actual history has simply given rise—so far as precise fact was concerned—to incredulous shakings of the head. The truth in general, however, is what was said a short way back, of Hegel being a pure mirror into which fell the pure reflexions of the long line from Thales to Kant; and in particular the truth is, that the text of the Logic may in this place be regarded as a direct allegory of the actual origin of the Idea of Hegel in his studies of his immediate predecessors, especially Kant.

Hegel does not stop at reciprocity, and it may appear wrong, therefore, to assert that the notion is reciprocity. It is to be admitted that the notion is beyond and more than simple reciprocity: still it preserves the colour and lineaments of its parent; and the notion is a reciprocity, the Notion, in fact, is the notional reciprocity represented by any one of the many triads we have already seen. This, we may just point out in passing, has escaped Rosenkranz, who mistakes the genesis of the Notion so absolutely, that he proposes a reform of the Hegelian Logic, the main item of which is—the stultification of actual history, first of all—the insertion of Teleology between Reciprocity and the Notion! It wants but a very slight glance at the system to discern that it is a triple sphere of triple spheres endlessly within one another almost in the fashion of a Chinese toy, and that the essential principle of each triplicity is reciprocity. Compare Logic and Nature, for example, as they appear in the system: is it not as if there were an inner congeries hanging down side by side with an outer congeries, without direct transition from the one to the other, but each perfectly parallel to the other—parallel, that is, in reciprocity? Is not the Hegelian method but an evolution or development—an expansion through all that is, of the Notion? Is it not simply an exhibition or demonstration of the Notion in all that is in existence, or an arrangement of all that is in existence on the Notion? What is the precise meaning, for example, now, of Hegel's rejection of what he calls raisonnement? Why, raisonnement is the method that existed while causality was the notion; but that method it is proper to withdraw and change, now that reciprocity (in a notional form certainly) is the notion. This is a true insight into the most characteristic and obscure of all the very extraordinary procédés of Hegel. While causality reigned, explanation consisted in assigned a reason for a consequent; that is, raisonnement was the method. Now, however, that reciprocity reigns, it is reciprocity that must guide, and constitute henceforth (till a new principle) the method of all theorising, and of all explanation. And this is simply what Hegel has performed: instead of accounting for this universe by a series of causes and effects, or reasons and consequents, he has simply carried his notional reciprocity, orderingly, arrangingly, into it, and presented it to us as a sphere of spheres, all of which follow notional reciprocity as their law and principle.

What is said in regard to the relativity, or mode of relation which obtains in Substance as opposed to that which obtains in the Notion, is very important, and displays a most deep and unmistakable historical dye. On the stage of Substance, man, as his thought could only then show to him, was under Necessity; and Necessity constituted then the great subject of discussion: but here, on the stage of notional reciprocity, the prius of which exhibits itself as subjective or of the nature of thought, we are in an element of Freedom, that element being thought or reason, which is but our inmost selves, and which to obey, then, is but to obey ourselves—is but Self-obedience, and that is Liberty. It is historical also, that he who first announced the notion of reciprocity, and in its subjective or notional form, was the same Kant who was the first to demonstrate, as if by exact proof, this fact of our Moral Liberty or Freedom. Is it not wonderful concentration on the part of Hegel, then, to shut up such enormous masses as the discussions of Kant in single and brief phrases?

Still, there is difficulty enough: this (the fourth paragraph of 'Vom Begriff im Allgemeinen') is, on the whole, one of those hopeless passages which so often bring the reader of Hegel into the gall of vexation and the bitterness of despair. One can fancy that the dogged German student—to whom at least the language is vernacular, and to whom, consequently, there is nothing extraordinary, nothing actually maddening in the mere sound—passes steadily on right through all this, and arrives at the very end, not only of the passage, but of the volume, with all in his memory. One can understand, too, that so arrived, and so endowed with and by memory, the solid German student will be able henceforth to philosophise like the rest—will be able to gloze and prose, and pose his Begriffe as sagely and as solemnly as any of them. One feels hardly as well satisfied as the German student with this state of the case, however: it is one thing to maunder eruditely in the chair of a Professor, but quite another to see clearly on the fect of a man. To get Hegel by heart may content a Rosenkranz; but the necessity of the Briton is to see. In the Egyptian fog of the first sentence of the above paragraph, howeve,r is it possible to any man, Briton or other, to see? How hopeless the British student of Hegel finds himself in such a quandry as this! Of course, he is at a full stop. If he has not yet tried the second book of the objective Logic, winged by hope from the reference, he tries it now, but speedily shuts it again to begin at the first which is but too evidently the preliminary necessity. The first, however, is no less obdurate than the others; and the baffled reader finds himself impotent, imbecile, flushed, on the outside of a vast block, inaccessible, impenetrable, hopeless as the flank of Atlas. But is Hegel always then to remain this intemerate height? Not so: the historical and other clues which we are here engaged on will be found, in the end (as we have largely seen already), adequate to a successful ascent here and everywhere.

Philosophy has reached in Kant an entire new position. Kant may be named that position an sich; Fichte and Schelling, the same für sich; and Hegel is its an und für sich—the absolute power, the pure negativity, that, as absolute power, renects itself with itself, and so is an und für sich. Hegel thus indicates that he has consummated the whole task of the ages by bringing the All to the last orb and drop and point of unity in the negative für sich; that is, the All both in the one whole and the infinite details; and this, too, for itself or consciously, the fully objectivised or filled subjectivity, and the fully subjectivised or vitalised objectivity—which latter result indicates a life that, as it were, eats up all objects into its own self, into its own unity, so that all that is remains at last the reine Negativität; negative in that it has negated all into itself; but negative, too, in that it can negate itself into All, the One into the Many as well as the Many into One, Unity into Variety as well as Variety into Unity, Identity into Difference as well as Difference into Identity.

But just this is the Notion, or the Notion is just the pure negativity that negates its One (the Universal) into Many (the Particular), and negates this Many again into the One which is the concrete Singular and Unity of both. This is but the general expression of the Notion; but no notion is different. No object in the outer world even but is so constituted: a grain of sand even is a universal which has passed into a particular, and has again cohered into a singular. Nay, apart from this constitution, what is the sand? Can any one tell this? Is it sayable? Anything else, in truth, is but abstract reference to itself, and is what the Germans call a Gemeintes—a thing meant, a thing opined merely. In fact, we are to track and trace the Notion everywhere. Everything runs through its moments. These moments constitute the universal movement. Consider these moments in the form of the three historical periods, of the three physological acts, or best of all, of the three logical functions! As Seyn (Simple Apprehension), for example, we have the first reflexion of the Notion, as Nichts (Judgment) the second, and as Werden (Reason) the third, which last is the negation of the negation, or the restoration of the first in higher form.

Hegel, then, completed Kant by ascending to the category of the categories—the category as such, the Notion. This, without doubt, he was enabled to effect by a careful analysis of the source from which Kant himself had supplied himself—Formal Logic. The result of this analysis was discernment of the notion, and consequently of the fact, that all Philosophy (Ontology included) had gone into Logic, which fact he henceforth proclaimed. He saw, moreover, that the entire of philosophic thought which had preceded the new position inaugurated by Kant, constituted what might be named an Objective Logic. The realisation of this Objective Logic, he was gradually enabled to accomplish by a profound study of the history of philosophy, but always in the company of the Kantian categories and his own generalisation of the same. He found, for example, that a beginning was almost indifferent (the beginning of all philosophy that preceded Kant viewed as an Objective Logic, which is the true beginning, being unconsidered), inasmuch as what was everywhere, and repeated itself everywhere, was simply the Notion. Quantity, for instance, (as seen in Kant,) formally expresses the notion in universality, particularity, and singularity. Nay, Quantity in its notion is but the Notion. Quality is equally so, for its third member, Limitation, is very inadequately represented by this word. Relation exhibits the same nature. Other assonances, but essentially of the same character, present themselves. Thus, Immediate is the unparticularised Universal, Reflexion is the Particular, and the commediated result or notion is the Singular. In short, these and other triads represent the Notion. With this mode of viewing all things, it is not difficult to see that Seyn is just the beginning that would occur to thought; and the history of philosophy demonstrates it to have so occurred, and as such. It is the universality as such, the ultimate generality or abstraction; it is the Immediate—it is formal, it is identical; as it was the first stage of historical thought, so it is the first stage of biographical thought—it is the absolutely first and simple, that is, it is the first of everything and the base of everything. How else can one begin than by saying it is? The is must be simply accepted; what we have to do is to understand it. It is stupid abstraction to seek to start before is, is. The beginning as beginning is just it is; till you can say that, you can say nothing; and it is the first thing you can say: indeed, should you go back into an ultimate analysis of what is, it is the first thing you must just simply say. It is just the beginning of Descartes (in a way) generalised from I am to it is, or simply is, or simply to-be or being. In fact, it is to say no more than this—to say, with eighteenth-century enlightenment, God is: for the three letters there are (as used) a bare word, and wholly undetermined. The beginning of Fichte, the Ego, so also the Identity of Schelling: these are at bottom just the same thought as Being.

It is, besides, the fundamental base: every particular feels—granting it power to feel—that Being is its first and centre and secret and life. Nay, it is the one absolutely inextinguishable entity. Conceive all life withdrawn—endeavour to conceive the annihilation of even Space and Time; still you will find you cannot get rid of Being, of the notion is. Do all you can to reduce the universe to nothing, to conceive that it is an accident that there should be existence at all; endeavour your utmost to conceive that all this is superfluous, and that there might just be nothing; do this and endeavour this, and you will find even Nothing turns up, ever somehow, the thought is, the thought there is—the thought of Being, of Existence. That there should be nothing at all is an inconceivable empty abstraction. We are bound, then, to admit a centre of existence, of being, independent even of Space and Time; and what is this but Idealism? Where can this centre be, which will be, even if you destroy Space, where but in thought? He that will in his solitary walks occupy himself earnestly with such reflexions, will at last find 'a light go up' to him, a light in which he will see space shrinking into disappearance, and yet being, existence, solid and immovable as the centre and the core of thought itself. We cannot annihilate being, we must just begin with it and say, there is. But this being is a notion, and will take on the forms of the notion. It comes to us in the first form of the Notion, which is the universal, the affirmative, the immediate, the identical, the formal, the abstract, the ansich. But just because it is a notion, a true notion, its universal will part into the particular, its affirmative pass into the negative, its ansich free itself through opposition to fürsich, &c. &c.; and in similar terms the third step to concreter unity may also be described. Thus, then, the whole progress will be a flight ever of three stages, each new flight being always stronger and stronger, till, by guidance of the notion itself and its own native rhythm, we exhaust the universe, and reach the totality—articulated into itself—absolute truth, the Absolute.

Hegel had convinced himself well that this was the method, by historical study, by biographical thought, and by reference to outward nature and the concrete everywhere. Deep examination of Kant gave him the notion, the form, while universal study, of the most enormous, exhaustive, and penetrative character, gave him the material. The result is still human; but it is, perhaps, the most stupendous human result which has ever been witnessed.

1. Consider what perfection of abstraction the philosophy of the Greeks had reached, to whom the two simple words One and Many embraced all the meaning we here indicate.
2. It is thus, as we see from the Ancients, that abstract thought begins: so after mythology (the mythological explanation) philosophy arises.
3. It is Kant's theory of perception that underlies this.
4. Dr. Thomas Brown was talking of the 'mystic Entelecheia' of Aristotle as something unfathomable at a time when it had been familiar to Hegel at least for some years. Later English lexicons profess to convey it perfectly by the word 'Actuality;' but it is ,perhaps, doubtful whether they yet understand it in this way—that the acorn is Form, the elements it absorbs are Matter, and the consummation of both in the perfect oak is the Entelechy.