BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 1. The Secret of Hegel. New Edition, i6s. 2. Sir William Hamilton, &c. Out of print. 3. Address on Materialism. Out of print. 4. Schwegler's History of Philosophy. Translated and Annotated, 12th Edition, 6s. 5. As Regards Protoplasm. Improved Edition, as. 6. Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay, with other Critical Essays, 6s. 7. Lectures on the Philosophy of Law, with Whewell and Hegel, and Hegel and Prof. Robertson Smith, 6s. 8. Burns in Drama, and Saved Leaves, 6s. 9. Text- book to Kant, 14s. 10. Philosophy in the Poets, is. n. The Community of Property, is. 12. Thomas Carlyle's Counsels, is. 13. Philosophy and Religion. (The Gifford Lectures), os. 6d. 14. Darwinianism ; Workmen and Work, 10s. 6d. THE SECRET OF HEGEL BEING THE HEGELIAN SYSTEM IN ORIGIN, PRINCIPLE, FORM AND MATTER BY JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING LL.D. Edin. Foreign Member of the Philosophical Society of Berlin First-Appointed Gifford Lecturer {Edinburgh University, 1888-90) ,V£Vr EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED EDINBURGH: OLIVER & BOYD LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO.,. LTD. NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM^ SONS MDCCCXCVIII /&. iy. &tj/wm REPRINT LIBRARY 135 SOUTH LOCUST STRICT • DUBUQUE IOWA MAR 1 5 1974 \ % i, SlTY OF TO' 6 REFERENCES TO THIS WORK In La Dottrina Dello Stato (pp. 8, 25, 30, 111, 125), by Dr G. Levi, Professore nella R. Universita di Catania, Delle opere, che abbiamo avuto occasione di citare nel corso del nostro ragionamento ricordiamo qui semplicemente il nome degli autori, cioe : lo Stirling, lo Spaventa, il Miraglia, il Kostlin, il Rosenkranz, il Micbelet, lo Zeller, il Noak, il Krug, il Chalybaus, il Haym, lo Schubart, il Lewes, il Vacberot, il Willm, il Carle. Stirling, uno di quelli che piu hanno approfondito il pensiero di Hegel. Pareccbi fra i piu illustri seguaci o diremo meglio illustratori e fecondatori dei principi di Hegel, come un Gans, un Michelet, un Rosenkranz, un Stirling. Stirling, in qualche parte del suo bellissimo lavoro. Lo Stirling, il quale, quando pure non si voglia mettere innanzi a tutti i com- mentatori e illustratori di Hegel, certissimatnente a niuno e secondo, nell' occasione che ribatte le obbiezioni del Haym, a pag. 490, II. vol. della sua limpidissima e penetratissima esposizione della dottrina hegeliana, alia qual opera egli diede il titolo " the Secret of Hegel " cita— e seg. In Hegel als Deutscher Nationalphilosoph (p. 296), by Professor Rosenkranz:— Mit Welcher Tiefe und Selbstandigkeit der englische Geist sich der speculation Hegels zu vermachtigen im Stande sein wird, ersehen wir jetzt schon aus schriftcn, wie die von Stirling: "The Secret of Hegel," die ein wahrhaft erstaunliches Phanomen ist. In AusFruherer Zeit (pp. 11, 149), by Arnold Ruge :— Das Buch des Schotten Stirling uber Hegel ist ein grosser Fortschritt in der englischen Philosophischen Literatur— ein Buch, welches Hegel's Philosophie wirklich verdaut hat. FEOM EMERSON AND CARLYLE. EMERSON. ' I have never seen any modern British book (refers to " Secret of Hegel "\ which appears to me to show such competence to analyse the most abstruse problems of the science, and, much more, such singular vigour and breadth of view in treating the matter in relation to literature and humanity. It exhibits a general power of dealing with the subject, which, I think, must compel the attention of readers in proportion to their strength and subtlety. One of the high merits of the book is its healthy moral perceptions. ... If there can be any question when such an incumbent can be found, I shall be glad to believe that Intellectual and Moral Science is richer in masters than I have had opportunity to know. . . . Schwegler came at last. I found on trial that I too could read it, and with growing appetite. I could at least appreciate well enough the insight and sovereignty of the annotations, and the consummate address with which the contemporary critics and contestants are disposed of with perfect comity, yet with effect. . . . The essays I have carefully read. The analysis of Macaulay is excellent. The "Coleridge" painful, though, I fear, irrefutable. . . . The " Tennyson " is a magnificent . statue — the first adequate work of its kind — his real traits and superiorities rightly shown. . . . I never lose the hope that you will come to us at no distant day, and be our king in philosophy.' CARLYLE. ' To whatever I have said of you already, therefore, I now volunteer to add, that I think you not only the one man in Britain capable of bringing Meta- physical Philosophy, in the ultimate, German or European, and highest actual form of it, distinctly home to the understanding of British men who wish to understand it, but that I notice in you further, on the moral side, a sound strength of intellectual discernment,.a noble valour and reverence of mind, which seems to me to mark you out as the man capable of doing us the highest service in ethical science too ; that of restoring, or of decisively beginning to restore, the Doctrine of Morals to what I must ever reckon its one true and everlasting basis (namely, the divine or supra-sensual one), and thus of vic- toriously reconciling and rendering identical the latest dictates of modern science with the earliest dawnings of wisdom among the race of men. This is truly my opinion.' CONTENTS. PREFACE TO NEW EDITION PRELIMINARY NOTICE. Mode of Perusal ..... The 'Secret' Kant and Hegel not the ' German Party ' PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. Prepossessions and Prejudices . German Philosophy obsolete and bad Schelling in judgment of Hegel Friends and Foes of German Philosophy Dilemma of opposing View Scepticism an Anachronism Schelling's sentence not accepted Evidence of Friends and Foes invalid Materialism and ' Advanced Thinkers ' The intellectual lead of Germany Advantages of the Study Difficulties Terms .... Vorstellung Abstractions of Understanding Kant and Hegel generally The Illumination and its Correction German Politics Principles and the Pabulum The three partial Reactions The present Revulsion . Conclusion PAGE xvii xxi xxii xxii XXlll xxiii XXV xxvii xxviii xxviii xxix xxxiv xxxv xxxvii xxxix xl xl xli xlv xlix liii lix lxi lxii lxii lxii PROLEGOMENA.— THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL. CHAPTER I. Preliminaries of the Struggle to Hegel Difficulty of Hegel .... CONTENTS. Those that succumh and those that triumph in regard to it These Notes on occasion of this difficulty .... First Impressions of the System, and of German Philosophy in general The Encyclopaedia Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel Kant .... Reinhold and other Commentators The Literature of the Subject Zymoses .... History, Principles, and Outcome of these Relative Places of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel Elimination of Fichte and Schelling Hegel and Schelling at Jena Coleridge .... What Works of Kant and Hegel are specially studied CHAPTER II. A. 1. A Beginning, &c. 2. Plato's rairrbv and darepov . , B. Purpose of the Logic, and a Summary of its early Portions C. 1. A Beginning again . 2. The Strangeness of the System 3. Wesen .... 4. Objections to Kant and the rest D. 1. Objections to Hegel continued 2. The Process of Self-consciousness, &c. 3. The General Idea, &c. 4. Knowledge and the All 5. Kant and the rest Origin of Hegel 6. Objections to Hegel . E. 1. Explanations 2. A Hegelian Dictum historically put Remark general on these Notes and the Value of Hegel . CHAPTER III. A. The Secret of Hegel . B. Affirmation C. Difficulty and Suspicion Causality The System of Kant Hegel on Causality, and Hegel's System D. The Rationale of Generalisation E. Hegel in earnest with Kant F. The Notion in itself and for itself G. Finite Things and their Notion H. The absolute Affirmation, &c. . CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER IV. A. Idealism and Materialism B. Reciprocity 0. The Notion D. Genesis of the Notion . CHAPTER V. A. Special Origin and peculiar Nature of the Hegelian Principle B. Same Subject . C. More particular Derivation D. A short Formula E. Further Explanations . F. Additional Illustration . Remark PAGE 124 134 138 147 156 174 180 204 205 210 214 II. A TRANSLATION FROM THE COMPLETE LOGIC OF THE WHOLE FIRST SECTION, QUALITY. CHAPTER I. Being ..... . 218 A. Being ...... . 218 B. Nothing ...... . 218 C. Becoming ..... . 219 1. Unity of Being and Nothing . 219 Remark 1. The Antithesis of Being and Nothing in Conception . 219 2. Defectiveness of the Expression — Un ity, Identity of Being and Nothing . . 226 3. The isolating of these Abstractions . 229 4. The Incomprehensibleness of the Begii ming . 240 2. Moments of Becoming . 241 3. Sublation of Becoming . 242 Remark. The Expression — Sublation . 243 CHAPTER II. There-being ..... . 245 A. There-being as such . 245 a. There-being in general . 246 b. Quality .... . 247 Remark. Reality and Negation . . 248 c. Something .... . 251 B. Finitude .... . 253 a. Something and Another . 253 xii CONTENTS. PAGE b. Qualification, Talification, and Limit .... 259 c. Finitude .... 265 (a) The Immediacy of Finitude 266 (/3) Limitation and To-be-to 268 Remark. To-be-to 270 (7) Transition of Finitude into Infinitude 273 C. Infinitude .... 273 a. The Infinite in general 274 b. Alternation of Finite and Infinite . 275 c. Affirmative Infinitude 280 Transition ..... 287 Remark 1. The Infinite Progress . 287 2. Idealism 291 CHAPTER III. Being-for-self ........ 294 A. Being-for-self as such . . 295 a. There -being and Being-for-self . 296 b. Being-for-One . 296 Remark. The Expression — Was fur eines 1 . 297 c. One ..... . 300 B. One and Many ..... . 301 a. The One in itself .... . 302 b. The One and the Void . 302 Remark. Atomistic . 303 c. Many Ones. Repulsion . 304 Remark. The Leibnitzian Monad . 306 C. Repulsion and Attraction . 307 a. Exclusion of the One . 307 Remark. The Unity of the One and the Many . . 309 b. The one One of Attraction . 310 c. The Reference of Repulsion and Attraction . 312 Remark. The Kantian Construction of Matter from Forces of Attraction and Repulsion. 316 III. THE SECTION, QUALITY, AS TRANSLATED IN II., HERE COMMENTED AND INTERPRETED. Definiteness (Quality) ....... 322 (Bestimmen, Seyn, Daseyn, and other terms explained — a general expression given) ....... 323 CHAPTER I. Being A. Being . B. Nothing. . 328 . 328 . 328 CONTENTS. Xll C. Becoming ........ (Detailed explanations of what has led Hegel to begin thus) 1. Unity of Being and Nothing ..... Remark 1. The Antithesis of Being and Nothing in Conception . 2. Defectiveness of the Expression — Unity, Identity of Being and Nothing 3. The isolating of these Abstractions 4. The Incomprehensibleness of the Beginning 2. Moments of Becoming .... 3. Sublation of Becoming .... Remark. The Expression — Sublation CHAPTER II. There-being A. There-being as such a. There-being in general b. Quality Remark, Reality and Negation c. Something B. Finitude a. Something and Another b. Qualification, Talification, and Limit c. Finitude. (a) The Immediacy of Finitude (/3) Limitation and To-be-to . Remark, To-be-to (7) Transition of Finitude into Infinitude C. Infinitude a. The Infinite in General b. Alternation of Finite and Infinite c. Affirmative Infinitude Remark 1. The Infinite Progress 2. Idealism . Transition .... CHAPTER III. Being-for-self A. Being-for-self as such . a. There-being and Being-for-self b. Being-for-One Remark. The Expression — Was fur eines c. One .... B. One and Many . a. The One in itself b. The One and the Void Remark. Atomistic c. Many Ones. Repulsion Remark. The Leibnitzian Monad PAOI 328 328 328 365 XIV CONTENTS. Repulsion and Attraction a. Exclusion of the One Remark. The Unity of the One and the Many b. The one One of Attraction . c. The Reference of Repulsion and Attraction Remark. The Kantian Construction of Matter from Forces of Attraction and Repulsion ...... IV. TRANSITION FROM QUALITY TO QUANTITY. PAOK 474 474 476 478 479 482 485 A SUMMARY OR TRANSLATION, COMMENTED AND IN- TERPRETED, OF THE SECOND SECTION OF THE COMPLETE LOGIC, QUANTITY . . . .503 CHAPTER I. Quantity ........ A. Pure Quantity ....... Remark 1. Conception of Pure Quantity 2. Kantian Antinomy of the Indivisibility and of Infinite Divisibility of Time, of Space, of Matter B. Continuous and Discrete Magnitude .... Remark. The usual Separation of these Magnitudes . C. Limitation of Quantity ...... tin 505 505 506 507 510 513 514 CHAPTER II. Quantum ......... 519 A. Number ........ 519 Remark 1. The Arithmetical Operations, &c. .... 525 2. Application of Numerical Distinctions in expression of Philosophical Notions ..... 528 B. Extensive and Intensive Quantum ..... 532 a. Difference of these ....... 532 b. Identity of Extensive and Intensive Magnitude . . 535 Remark 1. Examples of this Identity .... 537 2. Kant's Application of Degree to the Being of the Soul . . . . . . .539 c. Alteration of the Quantum ...... 540 C. The Quantitative Infinite ...... 541 a. Notion of the same ....... 541 b. The Quantitative Infinite Progress ..... 542 Remark 1. The High Repute of the Progressus in Infinitum . . 544 CONTENTS. XV PAGE c. The Infinitude of Quantum ...... 549 Remark 1. The precise Nature of the Notion of the Mathematical Infinite ...... 557 B. Quantity a. Pure Quantity . . . 595 h. Quantum ........ 596 c. Degree ........ 597 Explanatory Remarks ...... 597 Quantity from the Encyclopaedie ..... 597 VI. THE COMMENTATORS OF HEGEL— SCHWEGLER, ROSEN- KRANZ, HAYM 599 Schwegler ........ 600 Rosenkranz . . . . 608 Haym ...... 624 VII. CONCLUSION: LAST WORD ON 'THE SECRET,' &c. 676 THE HEGELIAN SYSTEM ' yiivrtv, 7} irfTTJpa koikQv OOtoi y&p kXtjtoI ye fipor&v iw airdpova yaiav.' ' The Hidden Secret of the Universe is powerless to resist the might of thought ; it must unclose itself before it, revealing to sight and bringing to enjoyment its riches and its depths.' Hegel. PEEFACE TO NEW EDITION. There has been a desire expressed that this book should not be altered — in the fear that alteration would spoil it ! My regret is that, in the way of alteration, where so much was required, so little was possible. There certainly has been the attempt — a most anxious and painful one — to mitigate for the reader, in translation and commentary, the uncouth unintelligibleness of that extraordinary new German which it has been my fate to deal in. The melancholy fact remains, however, that all these Beings — Being-for-self, Being-for-other, Being-for-one, Being-for-a, &c. — are hopeless: like a child that first reads, one has been obliged to syllabify. Still there have been explanations — altera- tions, for meaning or in taste, there have been freely put to use many. Nevertheless, with all the foot-notes and all the modifications in text, it is to be acknowledged or professed, that, be it a good or be it not so good, the pile itself — characteristic faults and all— remains essentially the same, if only, as a pile, it may be hoped, somewhat sharper-edged or clearer-surfaced. It may seem in place now to say a word or two as to the origin of the book itself. Of my nine years' consecutive university winter sessions, the five in Arts left such deep and decided mark on me that I was glad to return to the relative studies when I could ; and for this purpose I was for six years in France and Germany. Then, again, if in Classics and Mathematics, it could hardly be said that I was not distinguished, it was certainly in philosophy that I was most so ; and in that connexion I could 2 XV1H PREFACE TO NEW EDITION. not but vividly recollect these, till then academically unheard of, instantaneous three rounds of unrestrainable and unrestrained applause, that crowned the reading of that essay of mine, and filled the old class-room to the roof with dust — the sweetest that, ever in life, I did taste, or shall ! No wonder, then, that my literary leisure went all but wholly to philosophy, and, in the end, specially to that philosophy to which in Germany, as it were, the eyes of all Europe seemed turned. As for Hegel, it was somewhat strange that seeing the name — while still at home and even without a dream of Germany — with surprise, for the first time, in a Eeview, I was some- how very peculiarly impressed by it. But the special magic lay for me in this, — that, supping with two students of German before I was in German as deep as they, I heard this Hegel talked of with awe as, by universal repute, the deepest of all philosophers, but as equally, also, the darkest. The one had been asked to translate bits of him for the press ; and the other had come to the belief that there was something beyond usual remarkable in him: it was understood that he had not only completed philosophy, but, above all, reconciled to philosophy Christianity itself. That struck ! Probably this will suffice as to the rationale of the appearance of the Secret of Hegel, but, perhaps, the reader would like to know the main biographical facts of Hegel himself. Hegel was born at Stuttgart on the 27th of August 1770. His father was a government Bureaucrat, and the family one of upper middle-rank. An industrious and zealous student, he was long and variously trained in private and in the Gym- nasium at Stuttgart. For five years at the University of Tubin- gen he was an eminently good student, and of a recognised unofficious, but markedly genial and solid bearing. Thereafter for some years a family-tutor, he habilitated himself at Jena, in 1801, as a Docent in Philosophy. There he was appointed to a Professorship shortly before the political catastrophe ousted him from it again. For two years he edited at Bamberg a political journal. He was then Rector of the Academy at Niirnberg till PREFACE TO NEW EDITION. XIX called in 1816 to a Professorship at Heidelberg. In 1818 he was translated to Berlin, and speedily became there the master of a widely influential school that was not unfavoured by the Gov- ernment. He died of cholera on the 14th November 1830. He had been thoroughly educated. He knew French and English, and something of Italian. He was a passed master in Classics, and in knowledge of Aristotle, for example, even led the way. Grounded to the full in Mathematics and the Physical sciences, it was wonderful what he gained for himself by industry outside as it were — say in Art, Painting, Music. His works, as they appear on the shelves, are in a score of volumes. His char- acter was integrity, judgment, and goodwill themselves as husband, father, teacher, man. He was plain, unpretentious, real ; as it was said, Biederlceit characterised him, but not less Lustigkeit : he enjoyed society and very much the excursion of remission, whether lengthened or short. His life has been ad- mirably written by Rosenkranz, himself a most accomplished man of an attractive and susceptible endowment, and of Philosophy an illustrious and most popular Professor. PKELIMINARY NOTICE This is the last fruit, though first published, of a long and earnest labour devoted, in the main, to two men only — Kant and Hegel, and more closely, in the main also, to the three principal works (the Kritiken) of the one, and the two principal works (the Logic and the Encyclopaedia) of the other. This study has been the writer's chief — not just to say sole — occupation during a greater number of years, and for a greater number of hours in each day of these years, than it is perhaps prudent to avow at present. The reader, then, has a good right to expect something mature from so long, unintermitted, and concentrated an endeavour ; it is to be feared, however, that the irregularity of the very first look of the thing will lead him to believe, on the contrary, that he is only deceived. The truth is, that, after a considerable amount of time and trouble had been employed on an exposition of Kant and a general introduction to the whole subject of German Philosophy, it was suddenly perceived that, perhaps, the most peculiar and important elements to which the study had led, were those that concerned Hegel, while, at the same time, the reflection arose that it was to Hegel the public probably looked with the greatest amount of expectant interest, if also of baffled irritation. This indi- cates the considerations which led to the hope that the importance of the matter might, in such a case, obtain excuse for a certain extemporaneousness that lay in the form — that, in short, the matter of years might compensate the manner of months. I do not think it worth while to make any observations on the different sections or parts contained in these pages ; I remark XXI 1 PRELIMINARY NOTICE. only that if the reader — who probably, nevertheless, will take his own way — would read this book in the order and manner its own composer would prescribe, he will begin with the part marked ' II., A Translation from the Complete Logic of the whole First Section, Quality' and force himself to dwell there the very longest that he can. Only so will he realise at the vividest the incredulity with which one first meets the strangeness and unin- telligibleness of Hegel. Again, in reading the chapters of the ' Struggle to Hegel,' which he will take next, he ought to retain this translation still in his hands. The various portions of this struggle will, in fact, be fully intelligible only to him who endea- vours, repeatedly, to advance as far as ' Limit,' either in the trans- lation or in Hegel's own Logic. Finally, after such preliminaries, the translation II., or the correspondent original, should, in com- pany with the commentary and interpretation III., be rigorously, radically, completely studied, and then the rest taken as it stands.* The secret of Hegel may be indicated at shortest thus : As Aristotle — with considerable assistance from Plato — made explicit the abstract Universal that was implicit in Socrates, so Hegel — with less considerable assistance from Fichte and Schelling — made explicit the concrete Universal that was implicit in Kant. Further, to preclude at once an entire sphere of objections, I remark that Kant and Hegel are the very reverse of the so-called ' German Party ' with which in England they are very generally confounded. It is the express mission of Kant and Hegel, in effect, to replace the negative of that party, by an affirma- tive : or Kant and Hegel — all but wholly directly both, and one of them quite wholly directly — have no object but to restore Faith — Faith in God — Faith in the immortality of the Soul and the Freedom of the Will — nay, Faith in Christianity as the Eevealed Religion — and that, too, in perfect harmony with the Right of Private Judgment, and the Eights, or Lights, or Mights of Intelli- gence in general. * This need not alarm the most perfunctory reader, however, who will find three- fourths of the work — as Preface, Conclusion, Commentators, Struggle, and much of the Commentary — sufficiently exoteric and easy. PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. In intruding on the Public with a work on Hegel, the first duty that seems to offer, is, to come to an understanding with it (the public) as regards the prepossessions which commonly obtain, it is to be feared, not only as against the particular writer named, but as against the whole body of what is called German Philosophy. It will be readily admitted, to be sure, by all from whom the admis- sion is of any value, that just in proportion to the relative know- ledge of the individual is his perception as well of the relative ignorance of the community. But this — general ignorance, to wit — were no dispensation from the duty indicated : for just in such circumstances is it that there are prepossessions, that there are — in the strict sense of the word— prejudices ; and prejudices consti- tute, here as everywhere else, that preliminary obstacle of natural error which requires removal before any settlement of rational truth can possibly be effected. We cannot pretend, however, to reach all the prejudices concerned ; for, thought in this connexion being still so incomplete, the variety of opinion, as usual, passes into the indefinite; night reigns— a night peopled by our own fancies — and distinct enumeration becomes impossible. Nevertheless, restricting ourselves to what is either actually or virtually prominent — in the one case by public rumour, and in the other by private validity — perhaps we shall accomplish a sufficiently exhaustive discussion by considering the whole ques- tion of objections as reduced to the two main assertions, that German Philosophy is, firstly, obsolete and, secondly, bad. The latter category, indeed, is so comprehensive, that there is little reason to fear but that we shall be able to include under it (with its fellow) all of any consequence that has been anywhere said on the subject. — Of these two assertions in their order, then. Of the First, certain proceedings of Schelling constitute the angle ; but to understand these proceedings, and the influence they XXIV PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. exerted, a word is first of all necessary in regard to what, at the date in question, was universally held to be the historical progress of German Philosophy. The sum of general opinion in that regard we may state at once, in fact, to have been this : Kant was sup- planted by Fichte, Fichte by Schelling, and Schelling by Hegel. Any dissension, indeed, as to the sequent signification of this series was, as is natural, only to be found among the terms or members to it themselves. Kant, for example, publicly declined the affilia- tion which Fichte claimed from him. But then this was still settled by the remark of Reinhold, that, though Kant's belief could no longer be doubted, it yet by no means followed that Fichte was wrong. As for Fichte and Schelling, they had had their differences certainly, the master and the pupil, for the latter had gone to school to other masters, and had insisted on the addition to the original common property of a considerable amount of materials from with- out : nevertheless, it may be taken for granted that they themselves, though not without reluctance on the part of one of them perhaps, acquiesced in the universal understanding of their mutual relations. Hegel again, who had at first fought for Schelling, who had pro- duced the bulk of that Critical Journal which had on the face of it no origin and no object but polemically to stand by Schelling — who, in particular, had written that Dissertatio which demonstrated the advance of Schelling over all his predecessors, and the conse- quent truth of the Identitatssystem — who, in a word, seemed to have publicly adopted this system and openly declared himself an adherent of Schelling, — Hegel, it is true, had afterwards declared off, or, as the Germans have it, said himself loose, from Schelling. But here, too, it was not necessary to take Hegel at his own word ; for who does not know what every such mere declaration, such mere saying, is worth ? Every man, in view of the special nick which he himself seems to have effected in the end, would fain see elimi- nated before it all the nicks of his predecessors, but not the less on that account is that former but the product of these latter. On the whole, then, despite some little natural interior dissension, it was certain that Fichte was the outcome of Kant — more certain, perhaps, that Schelling was the outcome of Fichte, and even on the whole more certain still that Hegel was the outcome of Schelling. Such we may assume to have been the universal belief at the death of Hegel in 1831. But now it was the fortune of Schelling to survive Hegel, and for a period of no less than twenty-three SCHELLING IN JUDGMENT OF HEGEL. XXV years, during part of which it became his cue to overbid Hegel, and pass him in his turn. During what we may call the reign of Hegel, which may be taken to have commenced, though at first feebly, with the appearance of the Phaenomenologie in 1807, Schelling had preserved an almost unbroken and very remarkable silence. No sooner was Hegel dead, however, than Schelling let hints escape him — this was as early as 1832— of the speedy appearance on his part of yet another Philosophy, and, this time, of transcendent and unimagined import. No publication followed these hints, nevertheless, till 1834, when, in reference to a certain translation of Cousin, he gave vent to 'a very sharp and depreciatory estimate of the Hegelian Philosophy,' and on grounds that were equally hostile to his own, from which that of Hegel was supposed to have sprung. Lastly, at Berlin in 1841, he publicly declared his previous Philosophy — and, of course, the Philosophy of Hegel seemed no less involved — to have been a poem, ' a mere poem,' and he now offered in its place his ' Philosophy of Eevelation.' Now, with these facts before it, at the same time that all Germany united to reject this last Philosophy as certainly for its part a poem whatever its predecessor might have been, how could the general public be expected to feel ? Worn out with the two generations of fever that had followed the Kritik of Kant, would not the natural impulse be to take the remaining philosopher of the series at his word, and believe with him that the whole matter had been in truth a poem, a futile striving of mere imagination in the empty air of an unreal and false abstraction ? This same public, moreover, found itself, on trial, compelled to forego the hope of judging Hegel for itself, and, while the very difficulty that produced this result would seem to it to throw an anterior probability on the judgment of Schelling, it had every reason to feel convinced that he, of all men, was the one who, in a super- eminent degree, was the best qualified to judge for it. He, by uni- versal acknowledgment, had thoroughly understood and thoroughly summed both Kant and Fichte ; by an acknowledgment equally universal, it was his system that had given origin to the system of Hegel : moreover, he had lived longer than Hegel, and had enjoyed, counting from the Critical Journal, the ample advantage of more than fifty years of the study of the works of Hegel. If any man, then, possessed the necessary ability, the necessary acquirements, the necessary presuppositions every way, to enable him to understand Hegel, that man was Schelling, and there could, therefore, be no XXVI PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. hesitation whatever in accepting the judgment of Schelling as what, in reference to the Philosophy of Hegel, was to be universally- considered the absolutely definitive conclusion, the absolutely definitive sentence. If Schelling were inadequate to understand Hegel, what other German could hope success ? — and, the door being shut on Germany, was it possible to expect an ' open sesame ' from the lips of any foreigner ? Eosenkranz remarks of the Times, that ' it ridiculed the attention which we devoted to the conflict of Schel- ling with the School of Hegel, and opined that we were abstrus'e enthusiasts, for the whole difference between Hegel and Schelling came at last to this, that the first was very obscure, and the second obscurer still.' But surely, in the circumstances described, the Times was not only entitled to say as much as that, but, more still, that the whole thing had been but an intellectual fever, and was now at an end, self-stultified by the admission of its own dream. In fact, as has been said, the declaration of Schelling amounted to a sentence. And so the general public took it — we may say — not only in Germany, but throughout Europe. Thence- forth, accordingly, stronger natures turned themselves to more hopeful issues, and German Philosophy was universally aban- doned, unless, as it were, for the accidental studies of a few ex- ceptional spirits. Since then, indeed, and especially since the failure of political hopes in 1848, Germany on the whole has, by a complete reaction, devoted to the crass concretes of empirical science the same ardour which she previously exhibited in the abstract atmosphere of the pure Idea. This will probably be allowed to suffice as regards the case of the affirmative in reference to the first assertion that German Philo- sophy is obsolete. What may be said for the negative, will be considered later. Meanwhile, we shall proceed to state the case of the affirmative of the second assertion that German Philosophy is bad. The proof of this assertion, current opinion usually rests, firstly, on the indirect evidence of the reputed friends of German Philosophy, and, secondly, on the direct findings of its intelligent foes. Are not the friends of the German Philosophers, we are asked, for example, just all these people who occupy themselves nowa- days with Feuerbach and with Strauss ; and do not they belong, almost all of them, to an inferior Atheistico-Materialistic set, or, at all events, to those remnants of the Aufklarung, of Eighteenth TESTIMONY AGAINST GERMAN PHILOSOPHY XXV11 Century Illumination, which still exist among us ? Then, are not Essayists and Eeviewers, with Bishop Colenso, generally spoken of as ' the German Party ' ; while, as for Strauss and Eenan, are they not, by universal assertion and express name, the pupils of Hegel ; and is not the one aim of the whole of these writers to establish a negative as regards the special inspiration of the Chris- tian Scriptures, and shake Faith ? There was Mr Buckle, too, who, as is very clearly to be seen, though, to be sure, his mind was not very well made up, and he vacillated curiously between the Deism with an Immortality (say) of Hume and the Atheism without an Immortality of Comte — there was Mr Buckle, who still knew nothing and would know nothing but the Illumination, and did not he round his tumid but vacant periods with allusions to the German Philosophers as ' advanced thinkers ' of the most exemplary type ? By their fruits you shall know them, and shall we not judge of Kant and Hegel by these their self-proclaimed friends, which are the fruits they produced ? Nor so judging, and in view of the very superfluous extension — in an age like the present — of scepticism and misery (which is the sole vocation of such friends), shall we hesitate to declare the whole movement bad? But, besides this indirect evidence of the reputed friends, there is the direct testimony of the intelligent foes of the philosophy and philosophers in question : we possess writers of the highest ability in themselves, and of consummate accomplishment as to all learning requisite — Sir William Hamilton, Coleridge, De Quincey, for example — who have instituted each of them his own special inquest into the matter, and who all agree in assuring us of the Atheistic, Pantheistic, and, for the rest, self-contradictory, and indeed nugatory, nature of the entire industry, from Kant, who began it, to Hegel and Schelling, who terminated it. Surely, then, a clear case here, if ever anywhere, has been made out against the whole body of German Philosophy, which really, besides, directly refutes itself, even in the eyes of the simplest, by its own uncouth, outre, bizarre, and unintelligible jargon. Beyond a doubt the thing is bad, radically bad, and deservedly at an end. ■ Advanced thinkers ' come themselves to see, more and more clearly daily, the nullity of its idealism, as well as its obstructiveness generally to the legitimate progress of all sensible speculation, and Mr Lockhart (if we mistake not) had perfect reason, if not in the words, at least in the thoughts, when he XXVlll PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. exclaimed to a would-be translator of German Philosophy, ' What ! would you introduce that d d nonsense into this country ? ' It would seem, then, that the affirmative possesses an exceed- ingly strong case as regards both assertions, and that the negative has imposed on it a very awkward dilemma in each. Either grant German Philosophy obsolete, or prefer yourself to Schelling : this is the dilemma on one side. Then on the other it cries : Either grant German Philosophy bad, or justify Scepticism. Now, to take the latter alternative of the first dilemma would be ridiculous. To take that of the second, again, would be to advance in the teeth of our own deepest convictions. Scepticism has done its work, and it were an anachronism on our part, should we, like Mr Buckle, pat Scepticism on the back and urge it still farther forward. Scepticism is the necessary servant of Illuminations, — and Illuminations are themselves very necessary things ; but Scepticism and Illuminations are no longer to be continued when Scepticism and Illuminations have accom- plished their mission, fulfilled their function. It is all very well, when the new light breaks in on us, to take delight in it, and to doubt every nook and corner of our old darkness. It is very exhilarating then, too, though it breed but wind and conceit, to crow over our neighbours, and to be eager to convince them of the excellence of our position and of the wretchedness of theirs. But when, in Schelling's phrase, Aufklarung has passed into Aus- klarung — when the Light-up has become a Light-out, the Clear- ing-up a Clearing-out — when we are cleared, that is, of every article of our stowage, of our Inhalt, of our Substance — things are very different. As we shiver then for hunger and cold in a crank bark that will not sail, all the clearing and clearness, all the light and lightness in the world, will not recompense or console us. The vanity of being better informed, of being superior to the pre- judices of the vulgar, even of being superior to the ' superstition ' of the vulgar, will no longer support us. We too have souls to be saved. We too would believe in God. We too have an interest in the freedom of the will. We too would wish to share the assurance of the humble pious Christian who takes all thank- fully, carrying it in perfect trust of the future to the other side. To maintain the negative, then, as regards the two assertions at issue, will demand on our part some care. Would we main- tain, as regards the first, that German Philosophy is not obsolete, we must so present what we maintain as not in any way offen- schelling's sentence not accepted. xxix sively to derogate from the dignity and authority of the intellect and position of Schelling. On the other hand, would we maintain, as regards the second, that German Philosophy is not bad, this too must be so managed that Scepticism, or, more accurately, the con- tinuance of Scepticism, shall not be justified — rather so that German Philosophy shall appear not bad just for this reason, that it demonstrates a necessary end to Scepticism — and this, too, with- out being untrue to the Aufklarung, without being untrue to the one principle of the Aufklarung, its single outcome — the Right of Private Judgment. With reference to the first assertion, then, that German Philo- sophy is obsolete, we hold the negative, and we rest our position simply on the present historical truth, that the sentence of Schel- ling, however infallible its apparent authority, has not, in point of fact, been accepted. The several considerations which go to prove this follow here together. Many other Germans, for example, of good ability, of great accomplishment, and thoroughly versed in Schelling himself, have, despite the ban of the latter, continued to study Hegel, and have even claimed for him a superior significance, not only as regards Schelling or Fichte, but even as regards Kant. As concerns other countries, the same state of the case has been attested by the trans- lations which have appeared. Translations are public matters, and call for no express enumeration ; and as regards the German writers to whom we allude, perhaps general statement will suffice as well. We shall appeal only, by way of instance, to one friend and to one foe of Hegel. The former is Schwegler, whose premature death has been universally deplored, and whom we have to thank, as well for a most exhaustive and laborious investigation of the Metaphysic of Aristotle, as for what it is, perhaps, not rash to name the most perfect epitome of general philosophy at present in existence.* This latter work is easily accessible, and the summaries it contains are of such a nature generally, and as respects Schel- ling and Hegel in particular, — though drawbacks are not wanting, — as to relieve us of the fear that its authority in the question will be readily impugned. The foe {i.e. of Hegel) whom we would adduce here is Haym, who applies to Schelling's estimate of Hegel such epithets as ' spiteful ' and ' envious,' and asserts it to contain ' ran- cour,' ' misintelligence,' and ' a good deal of distortion.'^ The same * Englished, three years later, by the author. + Vide Haym : Hegel und seine Zeit, p. 23. XXX PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. evidence, both of friend and foe, is illustrated and made good by the present state, not only in Germany, but everywhere in Europe, of the study of the four writers who represent the philosophy in question. As regards Schelling himself, for example, that study may be almost named null, and his writings are probably never read now unless for purposes of an historic and business nature. Reading, indeed, seems unnecessary in the case of what was life-long incon- sistency, stained too by the malice, and infected by the ineptitude, of the end. Of Fichte, much of the philosophical framework has fallen to the ground, and what works of his are still current, at the same time that they are in their nature exoteric, interest rather by their literary merits and the intrinsic nobleness of the man. But the hopes that were founded on Kant and Hegel have not yet withered down, and the works of both are still fondled in the hands with however longing a sigh over the strange spell of diffi- culty that clasps them from the sight. With reference to the former, Germany, at this very moment, loudly declares that with him is a beginning again to be made, and openly confesses that she has been too fast — that aspiration and enthusiasm have out- stripped intelligence. As for Hegel, the case is thus put by an accomplished English metaphysician:* ' Who has ever yet uttered one intelligible word about Hegel ? Not any of his countrymen — not any foreigner — seldom even himself. With peaks here and there more lucent than the sun, his intervals are filled with a sea of darkness, unnavigable by the aid of any compass, and an atmo- sphere, or rather vacuum, in which no human intellect can breathe. . . . Hegel is impenetrable, almost throughout, as a mountain of adamant.' This is the truth, and it would have been well had other writers but manifested an equal courage of honest avowal. But it is with very mixed feelings that one watches the allures of those who decorate their pages with long passages from the Delian German of this modern Heraclitus, as if these passages were perti- nent to their pages and intelligible to themselves — this at the very moment that they declare the utter impossibility of extracting any meaning from what they quote — unless by a process of distillation ! Hegelian iron, Hegelianly tempered into Hegelian steel — the absolute adamant — this is to be distilled ! Bah ! take heart, hang out, sew on your panni purpurei all the same ! The verdict of Schelling, then, seems practically set aside by the mere progress of time ; and there appears to lie no wish nearer to * Professor Ferrier, whose recent death (1864) we are now mourning. KANT AND HEGEL — HOW ACTUALLY REGARDED. XXXI the hearts of all honest students nowadays, than that Hegel (and with him Kant is usually united) should be made permeable. And justification of this wish, on the part of students who are con- fessedly only on the outside, is to be found in this — that, even from this position, the works of both these writers, however impenetrable in the main, afford intimations of the richest promise on all the deeper interests of man. The Kritik of Pure Reason and the Kritik of Judgment remain still vast blocks of immovable opacity; and even the Kritik of Practical Reason has not yet (1864) been represented with any approach to entirety in England : never- theless, from this last work there have shone, even on British breasts, some of those rays which filled the soul of Eichter with divine joy — with divine tranquillity as regards the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. Hegel is more impervious than Kant ; yet still, despite the exasperation, the positive offence which attends the reading of such exoteric works of his as have been attempted to be conveyed to the public in French or English, we see cropping occasionally to the surface in these, a meaningness of speech, a facility of manipulating, and of reducing into ready proportion, a vast number of interests which to the bulk of readers are as yet only in a state of instinctive chaos, and, just on every subject that is approached, a general over- mastering grasp of thought to which no other writer exhibits a parallel. In short, we may say that, as regards these great Ger- mans, the general public carries in its heart a strange secret conviction, and that it seems even to its own self to wait on them with a dumb but fixed expectation of infinite and essential result. On this head, then, the conclusion forced upon us seems to be, that German Philosophy is indeed not understood, but not, on that account, by any means obsolete. We come now to the negative of the second assertion, that German Philosophy is bad, and have to consider, first of all, what, on the opposite side, has been said for the affirmative, and under the two heads of the indirect evidence of reputed friends, and the direct testimony of intelligent foes. Under the first head, the plea began by alluding to a certain small Atheistico-Materialistic Party; but to this it is sufficient reply to point out that the adherents of a Strauss and a Feuerbach must be widely discrimi- nated from those of a Kant and a Hegel. Further, what the plea states next, that Strauss and Renan are par excellence named the pupils of Hegel, is, as mere ascription, of small moment before the XXX11 PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. fact that their supposed master would have found the industry of both, in view of what he had done himself, not only superfluous, but obstructive, contradictory, and even, in a certain point of view, contemptible. Much the same thing can be said as regards the English writers who seem to follow a similar bent : whatever may be the inner motives of these writers (Essayists and Reviewers, &c), their activity belongs to that sphere of Rationalism against which Hegel directly opposed himself. Still to spread the negative — a negative the spreading of which has long reached ultimate tenuity — and in those days when it is not the negative but the affirmative we need — this would have seemed to a Hegel of all things the most unnecessary, of all things the most absurd. Mr Buckle — who comes next — certainly praises Kant as, per- haps, the greatest thinker of his century; and, though he does not name Hegel, he seems to speak of the philosophers of Ger- many in general as something very exalted. But, observe, there is always in all this the air of a man who is speaking by antici- pation, and who only counts on verifying the same. Nor — beyond anticipation — can any broader basis of support be extended to those generous promises he so kindly advanced, of supplying us with definitive light at length on German Philosophy, and on the causes of the special accumulation of Thought and Knowledge — in that great country ! It is, indeed, to be feared that those promises rested only on faith in his own invincible intellect, and not on any knowledge as yet of the subject itself. He had a theory, had Mr Buckle, or, rather, a theory had him — a theory, it is true, small rather, but still a theory that to him loomed huge as the universe, at the same time that it was the single drop of vitality in his whole soul. — Now, that such redoubted thinkers as Kant and Hegel, who, in especial, had been suspected or accused of Deism, Atheism, Pantheism, and all manner of isms dear to Enlightenment, but hateful to Prejudice — (or vice versa) — that these should be found not to fit his theory — such doubt never for a moment crossed even the most casual dream of Buckle ! We hold, then, that Mr Buckle spoke in undoubted anticipa- tion, and in absence of any actual knowledge. His book, at all events, would argue absolute destitution of any such knowledge, despite a certain amount of the usual tumid pretension ; and it was just when he found himself brought by his own programme face to face with the Germans, that, it appears, he felt induced MR BUCKLE AS A REPUTED FRIEND. XXX111 to take that voyage of recreation, the melancholy result of which we still deplore. The dilemma is this : once arrived at the actual study of the Germans, either Mr Buckle penetrated the Germans, or he did not. Now, on the one horn, if he did, he surely found, to his amazement, consternation, horror — a spirit, a thought the very reverse of his theory — the very reverse of that superiority to established prejudice and constituted superstition which his own unhesitating conviction had led him so innocently to expect. In other words, if Mr Buckle did penetrate the Germans, he found that there was nothing left him but to burn every vestige of that shallow Enlightenment which, supported on such semi-information, on such weak personal vanity, amid such hollow raisonnement, and with such contradictory results, he had been tempted, so boyishly ardent, so vaingloriously pompous, to communicate — to a world in many of its members so ignorant, that it hailed a crude, con- ceited boy (of formal ability, quick conscientiousness, and the pang of Illumination — inherited probably from antecedents somewhere) as a • Vast Genius,' and his work — a bundle of excerpts of mere Illumination, from a bundle of books of mere Illumination, dis- posed around a ready-made presupposition of mere Illumination — as a ' Magnificent Contribution,' fruit of ' Vast Learning,' and even ' Philosophy.' * Such would have been the case if Mr Buckle had penetrated the Germans : he would have been in haste to hide out of the way all traces of the blunder (and of the blundering manner of the blunder) which had pretentiously brought forward as new and great what had received its coup de grdce at the hands — and there- after been duly ticketed and shelved as Aufklarung by the in- dustry— of an entire generation of Germans, and at least not less than half a century previously. On the other horn, if Mr Buckle had not penetrated and could not penetrate the Germans — a supposition not incompatible with the formal ability of even Mr Buckle — vexation the most intense * The theory entertained in explanation of Mr Buckle here, has not his particular age in regard when he wrote his work, but a youthful ideal, whose burthen was Aufklarung, which had been kindled in him probably from early communication with some — to him — hero or heroes of Aufklarung, and which was filled up by what quotations he was able to make from a miscellaneous and mere reading in the direc- tion of the Aufklarung. In a certain way, there is not much said here as against Mr Buckle : while his talent and love of truth are both acknowledged, his matter is identified with the Aufklarung, and this last consideration is not likely to be taken ill by the friends of the Aufklarung. XXXIV PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. would replace the boyish anticipations, the conceited promises, which had been with so much confidence announced. A certain amount of matter was here indispensable ; mere hollow, swash- buckler peroration about superstition, fanaticism, and the like, would no longer serve : his own programme forced him to shoio some of the knowledge which had been here — as he had himself declared — so pre-eminently accumulated, as well as to demon- strate something of the peculiar means and influences which had brought about so remarkable a result. The Theme was Civilisa- tion, and to him civilisation was knowledge, — the accumulation of knowledge, therefore, was necessarily to him the very first and fundamental condition, and of this condition Germany had been publicly proclaimed by himself the type and the exemplar. Mere generalities would no longer suffice, then — the type itself would require to be produced — the Germans must be penetrated ! — But how if they could not be penetrated ? Thus, choosing for Mr Buckle which horn we may, the dilemma is such as to truncate or reverse any influence of his praise on the German Philosophers. Mr Buckle's sanguine expectations, in- deed, to find there but mirrors of the same small Enlightenment and Illumination which he himself worshipped, are to be applied, not in determination of Kant and Hegel, but of Mr Buckle himself. On the general consideration at present before us, then, we are left with the conclusion that the German Philosophers are un- affected by the indirect evidence of their reputed friends. On the other issue, as regards what weight is to be attached to the verdict of the supposed intelligent foes of the Germans, there were required a special analysis at least of the relative acquire- ments of each of these ; and this would lead to an inquest and discussion of greater length than to adapt it for insertion here. This, then, though on our part an actual accomplishment, will be carried over to another work. We remark only, that if Sir William Hamilton, Coleridge, and others have averred this and that of the Germans, whatever they aver is something quite in- different, for the ignorance of all such, in the field before us, is utter, and considering the pretensions which accompany it, dis- graceful.* As for Mr Lockhart, it will be presently seen, per- * The pretensions of Coleridge have been already made notorious by Professor Ferrier in Blackwood's Magazine for March, 1840. Those of others, though less simple, are equally demonstrable. EVIDENCE INVALID. — ' ADVANCED THINKERS. XXXV haps, that he only made a mistake when he anathematised German Philosophy as 'nonsense,' and that it is to that 'nonsense' we have probably to attribute some very important results. As regards the unl riendly * advanced thinkers ' who denounce the idealism and jargon of German Philosophy, this is as it should be : for German Philosophy, while it considers the general movement concerned as the one evil of the present, cannot but feel amused with the simple ways of this odd thing which calls itself an ' advanced thinker ' nowadays. ' There was a time,' says Hegel, ' when a man who did not believe in Ghosts or the Devil was named a Philosopher ! ' But an ' advanced thinker,' to these distinctions negative of the unseen, adds — what is positive of the seen — an enlightened pride in his father the monkey ! He may enjoy, perhaps, a well-informed satisfaction in contemplating mere material phenomena that vary to conditions as the all of this universe — or he may even experience an elevation into the moral sublime when he points to his future in the rock in the form of those bones and other remains of a Pithecus Intelligens, which, in all probability (he reflects), no subsequent intelligence will ever handle — but monkey is the pass- word! Sink your pedigree as man, and adopt for family-tree a procession of the skeletons of monkeys — then superior enlightenment radiates from your very person, and your place is fixed — a place of honour in the accla- mant brotherhood that names itself ' advanced ! ' So it (still) is in England at present; this is the acknowledged pinnacle of English thought and English science now. Just point in these days to the picture of some huge baboon, and — suddenly — before such enlightenment — superstition is disarmed, priests confess their imposture, and the Church sinks — beneath the Hippocampus of a Gorilla! And this is but "me example of the present general truth, that Spiritualism seems dying out in England, and that more and more numerous voices daily cry hail to the new God, Matter — matter, too, independent of any law — (even law-loving Mr Buckle left behind !) — matter, even when organised, pliant only to the moulding influence of contingent conditions ! This, surely, may be legitimately named the beginning of the end ! In Germany, indeed, despite a general apathy as under stun of expectations shocked, matters are not yet quite so bad ; and that they are not yet quite so bad may, perhaps, be attributed to some glimmering influence, or to some glimmering hope of its philo- XX XVI PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. sophy yet. Germany is certainly not without Materialism at present; but still even now, perhaps, it cannot be said to be so widely spread there as in either France or England. This we may ascribe to the ' nonsense ' anathematised by Mr Lockhart. Be this as it may, we shall take leave to ascribe to this ' non- sense ' another difference between England and Germany which, let it be ascribed to what it may, will as a fact be denied by none. This difference or this fact is, that this country is at this present moment far outstripped by Germany in regard to everything that holds of the intellect — with the sole exception, perhaps, of Poetry and Fiction. Even as regards these, Germany has it still in her power to say a strong word for herself; but, these apart, in what department of literature are we not now surpassed by the Germans ? From whom have we received that ' more penetra- tive spirit ' of criticism and biography that obtains at present ? Who sets us an example of completed research, of thorough accuracy, of absolutely impartial representation ? Who reads the Classics for us, and corrects and makes them plain to us — plain in the minutest allusion to the concrete life from which they sprang ? Who gathers information for us, and refers us to the sources of the same, on every subject in which it may occur to us to take an interest ? But literature is not the strong point here : what of science ? — and no one will dispute the value of that — is there any department of science in which at this moment the Germans are not far in advance of the rest of Europe ? Now, all this activity which gives to Germany the intellectual lead in Europe is subsequent to her philosophies, and is, in all probability, just to be attributed to her philosophies. — It is quite possible, at the same time, that the scientific men of Germany are no students of what is called the philosophy of their country — nay, it appears to the present writer a matter of certainty that that philosophy is not yet essentially understood anywhere : it by no means follows, on that account, however, that this philosophy is not the motive spring to that science. If the essential secret of philosophy has not been won, still much of the mass has been invaded from without, has been broken up externally, and has fallen down and resolved itself into the general current. Its language, its distinctions have passed into the vernacular, and work there with their own life. Hence it is that Germany seems to possess at present, not only a language of its own, but, as it were, a system of thought-counters of its own for which no other THE INTELLECTUAL LEAD OF GERMANY — TO WHAT OWING. XXXV11 language can find equivalents. Let anyone take up the Anzeige der Vorlesungen, the notice of lectures at any German University, and he will find much matter of speculation presented to him ; for everything will seem there to him sui generis, and quite dis- similar to anything of which he may have experience in Great Britain or in France. Haym * remarks, as regards this vast difference between the spirit of Germany and that of England, that to compare the books that issue from the press of the one country with those that issue from that of the other, one is tempted to suppose that the two nations move on wholly different courses. — Now, mere difference would be a matter of no moment ; but what if the difference point to retrogression on one side, and progression on the other ? It is very certain that we are behind the Germans now, and it is also certain that these latter continue to rush forward with a speed in every branch of science which threatens to leave us in the end completely in the lee. Associating this difference of progress with that difference of the language used for the purposes of thought, it does seem not unreasonable to conclude that the former is but a corollary of the latter. In other words, it appears probable that that ' nonsense ' of Mr Lockhart has been the means of introducing into the German mind such series of new and marvellously penetrant terms and distinctions as has carried it with ease into the solution of a variety of problems impossible to the English, despite the in- duction of Bacon, the good sense of Locke, and even Adam Smith's politico-economical revelations. The denunciations of German Philosophy, then, emitted by ' advanced thinkers,' would seem powerless beside the superiority of German Science to that of the rest of Europe when collated with the terms and distinctions of the Philosophy which preceded it. These advanced thinkers, in fact, are the logical contradictory of German Philosophy, and, if they denounce it, it in turn — not denounces, but, lifting the drapery, simply names them. It is, perhaps, now justifiable to conclude on the whole, then, * • Let us compare, to go no further, the scientific works of the English with those of our own country, and we shall very soon perceive that the type of English thought is essentially different from that of the German ; that the scientific faculty of the countrymen of Bacon and Locke moves in quite other paths, and makes quite other stadia ; that its combinations proceed by quite other notions, both principal and accessory, than is the case, in the same respect, with the countrymen of Kant and Hegel.' — Haym : Hegel und seine Zeit, p. 309. XXXV111 PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. that, as regards the negative of the assertions that German Philo- sophy is obsolete or bad, a case has been led of sufficient validity to set aside the opposing plea of the affirmative. It is not to be in- ferred, however, that the case is now closed, and all said that can be said in support of the Germans. We have spoken of the benefits which seem to have been derived from the very terms ; but these surely are not restricted to the mere words, and others, both greater in number and more important in kind, may be expected to flow from the thoughts which these words or terms only represent. It were desirable, then, to know these latter benefits, which, if they really exist, ought to prove infinitely more recommendatory of the study we advocate than any interest which has yet been adduced. It is this consideration which shall form the theme, on the whole, of what we think it right yet prefatorily to add. The misfortune is, however, that, as regards the benefits in ques- tion, they — as yet — only ' may be expected : ' it cannot be said that, from German Philosophy, so far as the thoughts are con- cerned, any adequate harvest has yet been reaped. Nevertheless, this harvest is still potentially there, and, perhaps, it is not quite impossible to find a word or two that shall prefigure something of its general nature and extent. It is evident, however, that, if it is true, be it as it may with the terms, that the thoughts of German Philosophy are not yet adequately turned to account, but remain as yet almost, as it were, beyond the reach whether of friend or foe, there must exist some unusual difficulty of intelligence in the case ; and it may be worth while to look to this first. For the duty of a Preface — though necessarily for the most part in a merely cursory manner — is no less to relieve difficulty than to meet objections, explain connexions, and induce a hearing. The diffi- culty we have at present before us, however, must be supposed to concern Hegel only ; what concerns Kant must be placed else- where. Nor, even as regards Hegel, is it to be considered possible to enumerate at present all the sources of his difficulty, and for this reason, that a certain knowledge of the matter involved must be presupposed before any adequate understanding can be expected to result. The great source of difficulty, for example, if our in- most conviction be correct, is that an exhaustive study of Kant has been universally neglected — a neglect, as Hegel himself (we may say) chuckles, 'not unrevenged,' — and the key-note of this same Hegel has thus remained inaccessible. Now this plainly concerns a point for which a preface can offer no sufficient ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY. XXXIX breadth. We shall confine ourselves, therefore, to one or two sources of difficulty which may contain auxiliary matter in themselves, and may prove, on the whole, not quite insusceptible of intelligible discussion at once. What is called the Jargon of German Philosophy, for example, and has been denounced as Barbarisch by a multitude of Germans themselves (Haym among them), though, under the name of terms and distinctions, it has just been defended, may not unprofitably receive another word. Now, we may say at once, that if on one side this Jargon is to be admitted, it is to be denied on the other. The truth is, that if on one side it looks like jargon and sounds like jargon, on the other it is not jargon, but a philosophical nomenclature and express system of terms. The scandal of philo- sophy hitherto has been its logomachies, its mere verbal disputes. Now, with terms that float loosely on the lips of the public, and vary daily, misunderstandings and disputes in consequence of a multiplicity of meanings were hardly to be avoided ; but here it is that we have one of the most peculiar and admirable of the excellences of Hegel : his words are such and so that they must be understood as he understands them, and difference there can be none. In Hegel, thing and word arise together, and must be com- prehended together. A true definition, as we know, is that which predicates both the proximum genus and the differentia : now the peculiarity of the Hegelian terms is just this — that their very birth is nothing but the reflexion of the differentia into the proximum genus — that at their very birth, then, they arise in a perfect definition. This is why we find no dictionary and so little explanation of terms in Hegel ; for the book itself is that diction- ary ; and how each term comes, that is the explanation; — each comes forward, indeed, as it is wanted, and where it is wanted, and just so, in short, that it is no mere term, but the thought itself. It is useless to offer examples of this, for every paragraph of the Logic is an example in point. If the words, then, were an absolutely new coinage, this would be their justification, and the nickname of jargon would fall to the ground. But what we have here is no new coinage, — Hegel has carefully chosen for his terms those words which are the known and familiar names of the current Vorstellungen, of the current figurate conceptions which correspond to his Begriffe, to his pure notions, and are as the metaphors and externalisations of these Begriffe, of these pure notions. They have thus no mere arbitrary and artificial sense, Xl PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. but a living and natural one, and their attachment through the Vorstellung to the Begriff, through the figurate conception to the pure notion, converts an instinctive and blind, into a con- scious and perceptive use, — to the infinite improvement both of thought and speech even in their commonest daily applications. The reproach of jargon, then, concerns one of the greatest merits of Hegel — a merit which distinguishes him above all other philo- sophers, and which, while it extends to us means of the most assured movement, secures himself from those misunderstandings which have hitherto sapped philosophy, and rendered it univer- sally suspect. — Jargon is an objection, then, which will indeed remove itself, so soon as the objector shall have given himself the trouble to understand it. Another difficulty turns on this word Vorstellung which we have just used. A Vorstellung is a sort of sensuous thought; it is a symbol, a metaphor, as it were an externalisation of thought: or Vorstellung, as a whole, is what we commonly mean by Conception, Imagination, the Association of IdeasK &c. Hegel pointedly declares of this Association of Ideas, that it is not astrict to the three ordinary laws only which, since Hume, have been named Contiguity, Similitude, and Contrast, but that it floats on a prey to a thousand-fold contingency. Now, it is this Association of Ideas that constitutes thought to most of us, — a blind, instinctive secution of a miscellaneous multitude of un- verified individuals. These individuals are Vorstellungen, figurate conceptions — ideas — crass, emblematic bodies of thoughts rather than thoughts themselves. Then, the process itself, as a whole, is also nameable Vorstellung in general. An example, perhaps, will illustrate this — an example which by anticipation may be used here, though it will be found elsewhere. — ' God might have thrown into space a single gerjn-cell from which all that we see now might have developed itself.' We take these words from a periodical which presumes itself — and justly — to be in the van at present: the particular writer also to whom they are due, speaks with the tone of a man who knows — and justly — that he is at least not behind his fellows. What is involved in this writing, however, is not thought, but Vorstellung. In the quo- tation, indeed, there are mainly three Vorstellungen — God, Space, and a Germ-cell. Now, with these elements the writer of this particular sentence conceives himself to think a beginning. To take all back to God, Space, and a single Germ-cell, that is VORSTELLUNG. xli enough for him and his necessities of thought; that to him is to look at the thought beginning, sufficiently closely. But all these three elements are already complete and self-dependent. — God, one Vorstellung, finished, ready-made, complete by itself, takes up a Germ-cell, another Vorstellung, finished, ready-made, complete by itself, and drops it into Space, a third Vorstellung, finished, ready-made, complete by itself. This done — without transition, without explanation, the rest (by the way, another Vorstellung) follows; and thus we have three elements with no beginning — at the same time that we have four with no transition — but the fiat of the writer. This, then, is not thought, but an idle mis-spending of the time with empty pictures which, while they infect the mind of the reader only with other pictures equally empty, tend to infect that of the writer also with wind — the wind of vanity. — ' Yes ; I looked into Spinoza some time ago, and it was a clear ether, but there was no God : ' this, the remark of a distin- guished man in conversation, is another excellent example of Vor- stellung, figutate conception, imagination — in lieu of thought. If one wants to think God, one has no business to set the eye a-roving through an infinite clear ether in hopes of — seeing him at length ! ' I have swept space with my telescope,' says Lalande, ' and found no God.' To the expectation of this illuminated Astronomer, then, God was an optical object ; and as he could find with his glass no such optical object — rather no optical object to correspond to his Vorstellung, which Vorstellung he had got he knew not where and never asked to know, which Vorstellung, in fact, it had never occurred to him in any way to question — God there was none ! These, then, are examples of Vorstellungen, and not of thought ; and we may say that the Vorstellung of the Materialist as to space constitutes a rebuke to the Vorstellung of the Spiritualist as to a clear ether in which it was a disappointment that no God was to be seen! God, whether as revealed to us by Scripture, or as demon- strated by philosophy, is a Spirit; and a Spirit is to be found and known by thought only, and neither by the sensuous eye of the body nor the imaginative eye of the mind. Unfortunately, it can hardly be said that there is thought proper anywhere at present; and circumstances universally exist which have substituted figurate conception in its stead. In England, for example, the literature with which the century began was a sort of poetical reaction against the Aufkliirung, and the element of that literature is Vorstellung, Imagination merely. Acquired xlii PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. stores, experience, thought, — these were not, but, instead of these, emotions enough, images enough, cries enough! Nature was beautiful, and Love was divine : this was enough — with Genius ! — to produce the loftiest works, pictures, poems, even alchemy ! An empty belly, when it is active, is adequate to the production of — gripes : and when an empty head is similarly active, what can you expect but gripes to correspond — convulsions namely, contortions of conceit, attitudinisings, eccentric gesticulations in a wind of our own raising ? It were easy to name names and bring the criticism home ; but it will be prudent at present to stop here. It is enough to say that the literature of England during the present century largely consists of those Genieschwiinge, those fervours, those swings or springs or flights of genius, which were so suspicious and dis- tasteful both to Kant and Hegel. Formal personal ability, which is only that, if it would produce, can only lash itself into efforts and energies that are idle — that have absolutely no filling what- ever but one's own subjective vanity. Or formal personal ability which is only that, has nothfng to develop from itself but reflexes of its own longing, self-inflicted convulsions ; it has no thoughts — only Vorstellungen, figurate conceptions, emotional images, — mostly big, haughty ones enough, too. One result of all this, is what we may call the Photographic writing which alone obtains at present. For a long time back, writers have desired to write only to our eyes, not to our thoughts. History now is as a picture-gallery, or as a puppet-show ; men with particular legs and particular noses, street-processions, battle-scenes — these — images — all images ! — mow and mop and grin on us from every canvass now. We are never asked to think — only to look — as into a peep-show, where, on the right, we see that, and on the left this! Now, this it is which constitutes an immense source of difficulty in the study of Hegel. Lord Macaulay remarks on ' the slovenly way in which most people are content to think ; ' and we would extend the remark to the slovenly way in which nowadays most people are content to read. Everything, indeed, has been done by our recent writers to relieve us even of that duty, and a book has become but a succession of optical presentments followed easily by the eye. Eeading is thus, now, a sort of sensuous entertainment: it costs only a mechanical effort, and no greater than that of smok- ing or of chewing. The consequence of this reading is, that the habit of Vorstellungen, and without effort of our own, has become so inveterate, that not only are we unable to move in Begriffe, in VORSTELLUNG. — ILLUSTRATION S. xliii pure notions, but we are shut out from all Begriffe by impervious clouds of ready-made Vorstellungen. Thus it is that writers like Kant and Hegel are sealed books to us, or books that have to be shut by the most of us — after five minutes — in very weariness of the flesh — in very oppression of the eyes. We must bear in mind, on the other hand, that Vorstellungen are always the beginning, and constitute the express conditions, of thought. We are not to remain by them, nevertheless, as what is ultimate. When Kant says that the Greeks were the first to think in dbstracto, and that there are nations, even nowadays, who still think in concreto, he has the same theme before him, though from another side. The concrete Vorstellung is the preliminary condi- I v tion, but it must be purified into the abstract Begriff ; else we never attain to mastery over ourselves, but float about a helpless prey to our own pictures. (We shall see a side again where our abstractions are to be re-dipped in the concrete, in order to be restored to truth; but the contradiction is only apparent.) So much, indeed, is Vorstellung the condition of the Begriff, that we should attribute Hegel's success in the latter to his immense power in the former. No man had ever clearer, firmer Vorstel- lungen than he ; but he had the mastery over them — he made them at will tenaciously remain before him, or equally tenaciously draw themselves the one after the other. Vorstellung, in fact, is for the most part the key to mental power ; and if you know a man's Vorstellungen, you know himself. If, on one side, then, the habit of Vorstellungen, and previous formation of Vorstellungen without attempt to reduce them to Begriffe, constitute the greatest obstacle to the understanding of Hegel, power of Vorstellung is, on the other side, absolutely necessary to this understanding itself. So it is that, of all our later literary men, we are accustomed to think of Shelley and Keats as those the best adapted by nature for the understanding of a Hegel. These young men had a real power of Vorstellung ; and their Vorstellungen were not mere crass, external pictures, but fine images analytic and expressive of original thought. ' By such dread words from Earth to Heaven My still realm was never riven. When its wound was closed, there stood Darkness o'er the day like blood.' ' Driving sweet buds, like flocks, to feed in air.' xliv PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. 'Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea- blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves : Oh hear ! ' These are Vorstellungen from Shelley (whose every line, we may say, teems with such) ; and if they are Vorstellungen, they are also thoughts. Keats is, perhaps, subtler and not less rich, though more sensual, less grand, less ethereally pure, than Shelley ; Vor- stellungen in him are such as these : — ' She, like a moon in wane, Faded before him, cowered, nor could restrain Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower That faints into itself at evening hour : But the God fostering her chilled hand, She felt the warmth, her eyelids opened bland, And, like new flowers at morning song of bees, Bloomed, and gave up her honey to the lees.' How much these images are thoughts, how they are but analytic and expressive of thought, will escape no one. Compare with these this : — ' And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand.' This, too, is a Vorstellung ; but, in comparison with the preceding, it is external and thought-less, it is analytic of nothing, it is expres- sive of nothing ; it is a bar to thought, and not a help. Yet there is so much in it of the mere picture, there is so much in it of that unexpectedness that makes one stare, that it has been cited a thousand times, and is familiar to everybody ; while those of Keats and Shelley are probably known to those only who have been specially trained to judge. By as much, nevertheless, as the Vorstellungen of Keats and Shelley are, so far, it may be, superior to this Vorstellung of Wordsworth's, (Coleridge gives it to him,) inferences may be drawn, perhaps, as to an equal original greater fineness of quality on the part of both the former relatively to the latter. Neither will Coleridge stand this test any better than Wordsworth; and even the maturer products, however exquisite, of Tennyson (whose genius seems bodily to rise ABSTRACTIONS OF UNDERSTANDING. xlv out of these his predecessors) display not Vorstellungen equally gold-new, possibly, with those of Keats and Shelley.* — Intensely vivid Vorstellung, this, we may say, almost constitutes Mr Carlyle: in him, however, it is reproductive mainly ; in him, too, it very frequently occurs in an element of feeling : and feeling is usually an element hot and one-sided, so that the Vorstellung glares. The test applied here is not restricted to writers — it can be extended to men of action ; and Alexander and Caesar, Wellington, Napoleon, Cromwell, will readily respond to it. Cromwell here, however, is almost to be included as an exception ; for he can hardly be said to have had any traffic with Vorstellung at all ; or what of that faculty he shows is very confused, very incompetent, and almost to be named incapable. Cromwell, in fact, had direct being in his categories, and his expression accordingly was direct action. We have here, however, a seductive subject, and of end- less reach ; we will do well to return. There is a distinction, then, between those who move in Vorstellungen wholly as such, and those who use them as living bodies with a soul of thought consciously within them ; and the classes separated by this distinction will be differently placed as regards Hegel: while the former, in all probability, will never get near him, the latter, on the other hand, will possess the power to succeed ; but success even to them, as habits now are, will demand immense effort, and will arrive when they have contrived to see, not with their Vorstellungen, but without them, or at least through them. As regards the difficulty which we have just considered, the division between Hegel and his reader is so, that the former appears on the abstract, the latter on the concrete side ; but we have now to refer to a difficulty where this position is reversed — where, Hegel being concrete, the reader cannot get at him, just for this, that he himself cannot help remaining obstinately abstract. The abstractions of the understanding, this is the word which is the cue to what we have in mind at present. It is impossible to enter here into any full exposition of how Hegel, in the end, regarded understanding, or of how his particular * Still there is no wish here to do injustice to the perfectly rich imaginations of both Coleridge and "Wordsworth. Nay, the image itself, the "ribbed sea-sand," though a little in excess, is not inapplicable, if only the eye, in looking along it, will stop in time I xlvi PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. regards were in the first case introduced. It must suffice to say at once, that understanding was to Hegel as the god Horos, it was the principle and agent of the definite everywhere; but, as such, it necessarily separated and distinguished into isolated, self- dependent individuals. Now this which has been indicated is our (the readers') element ; we live and move among wholly different, self-identical entities which — each of them as regards the other — are abstractly held. This, however, is not the element of Hegel ; his element is the one concrete, where no entity is, so to speak, its own self, but quite as much its other ; and he holds the key of this concrete in that he has been enabled, through Kant, to per- , ceive that the conditions of a concrete and of every concrete are two opposites : in other words, Hegel has come to see that there exists no concrete which consists not of two antagonistic characters, where, at the same time, strangely, somehow, the one is not only through the other, but actually is this other. Now it is this condition of actual things which the abstractions of the under- standing interfere to shut out from us ; and it is our life in these abstractions of the understanding which is the chief source of our inability to enter and take up the concrete element of Hegel. The Logic of Hegel is an exemplification of this Cosmical fact, from the very beginning even to the very end ; but it will sufficiently illustrate what we have said, perhaps, to take the single example of Quantity. To us, as regards quantity, continuity is one thing, and dis- cretion quite another : we see a line unbroken in the one case, and but so many different dots in the other. Not so Hegel, however : to him continuity is not only impossible without discretion, and discretion is not only impossible without continuity, but dis- cretion is continuity, and continuity is discretion. We see them, abstractly, apart — the one independent of, different from, the other : he sees them, concretely, together — the one dependent on, identical with, the other. To Hegel it is obvious that continuity, and discretion, not either singly, but both together, constitute quantity — that, in short, these are the constitutive moments or elements of the single pure, abstract, yet in itself concrete, notion, quantity. If a continuum were not in itself discrete, it were no quantity ; and nowhere in rerum natura can there be found any continuum that is not in itself discrete. Similarly, if a discretum were not in itself continuous, it were no quantity, and so on. In INFINITE DIVISIBILITY AND OTHER PARADOXES. xlvii fact, to the single notion, quantity, these two sub-notions are always necessary: it is impossible to conceive, it is impossible that there should be, a How much that were not as well con- tinuous as discrete : it is the discretion that makes the continuity, and it is the continuity of discretion that makes quantity ; or it is the continuity that makes the discretion, and it is the discretion of continuity that makes quantity. Quantity is a concrete of the two ; they are indivisibly, inseparably together in it. Now every notion — truly such — is just such disjunctive conjunct or con- junctive disjunct. Hence it is that dialectic arises: false in us as we cannot bring the opposing characters together, because of the abstractions of the understanding ; true in Hegel, because he has attained to the power of seeing these together, that is, in their truth, their concrete, actually existent truth. For example, it is on the notion, quantity as such, on the dissociation and antagonism of its warp and woof — of its two constituent moments, that all those supposed insoluble puzzles concerning the infinite divisibility of time, space, matter, &c, depend ; and all disputes in this connexion are kept up by simply neglecting to see both sides, or to bring both of the necessary moments together. My friend tells me, for instance, that matter is not infinitely divisible, that that table — to take an actual case — can be passed over, can both factually and mathematically be proved to be passed over, and hence is not infinite, but finite. I, again, point out that division takes nothing away from what it divides ; that that table, consequently, (and every part of the table is similarly situated,) is divisible, and again divisible usque ad infinitum, or so long as there is a quantity left, and, as for that, that there must always be a quantity left — -for, as said, division takes nothing away. Or I too can bring my Mathematics, and certainly with equal evidence. — In this way, he persisting on his side, I persisting on my side, we never come together. But we effect this, or we readily come together, when we perceive that both sides are necessary to the single One (Quantity), or that each, in fact, is necessary to the other. In short, quantity as continuous is infinitely divisible ; as discrete, it consists of parts which are as ultimate and further indivisible. These are the two points of view, under either of which quantity can be set ; and, more than that, these two points of view are, each of them, equally essential to the single thing, quantity, and are the moments xlviii PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. which together constitute the single thing (correctly notion), quantity. This is not the place to point out the entire significance of the single fact that is suggested here, nor of how Hegel was led to it, and what he effected with it: this which we so suggest were a complete exposition of the one secret and of the entire system of Hegel. Such exposition is the business of the general work which we here introduce ; but it will be found brought in some sense to a point — though necessarily imperfectly, as the reader arrived there will readily understand — in the ' last word ' at the end of the volume. Our sole object at present is to illustrate the difficulty we labour under relatively to Hegel from the abstrac- tions of the understanding, and to render these themselves, to some preliminary extent, intelligible. "We may add, that the above is the true solution to those difficulties which have at different times been brought forward as paradoxes of Zeno, or as antinomies of Kant. The case, as summed by Hegel, (see under Quantity,) will be found to be particularly disastrous not only to the German, but even to the Grecian — not only to the Hegelian, but even to the Aristotelian — pretensions, of such men as Sir William Hamilton, Coleridge, and De Quincey. The two last, indeed, with that 'voice across the ages,' between them, are even ludicrous. It is to be feared that the view given here of the difficulties of Hegel will prove disappointing to many. As was natural to a public so prepared by the passions, the interjections, the gesticula- tions of those whom we regard as our recent men of genius, the general belief, in all probability, was, and still is, that Kant and Hegel are difficult because they ' soar so high,' because they have so very much of the ' fervid ' in them, and especially because they are ' mystic' To be disabused of these big figurate conceptions on which we rise so haughtily may prove a pain. Indeed, as by a sudden dash on the solid ground, it may be a rather rude shaking out of us of these same bignesses, to be brought to understand that the difficulties of Hegel are simply technical, and that his Logic is to be read only by such means as will enable us to read the Principia of Newton — industry, tenacity, perseverance ! In England, ever since these same fervid men of genius, a vast number of people, when they are going to write, think it neces- sary, first of all, to put their mouths askew, and blow the bellows KANT AND HEGEL GENERALLY. xlix of their breasts up : only so, they hope, on the strong bias of their breath, to ' soar ' — to blow themselves and us, that is — ' into the Empyrean ! ' But Hegel, alas ! never puts his mouth askew, never thinks of Massing his breath, never lays himself out at all for the luxury of a soar. Here are no ardours — fervours ; here is an air so cool, so clear, that all such tropical luxuriances wither in it. Hegel, no more than Kant, will attempt anything by a Genieschwung : all in both is thought, and thought that rises, slowly, laboriously, only by unremitting step after step. Apart from thought qua thought, Kant and Hegel are both very plain fellows : Kant, a very plain little old man, whose only obstacle to us is, after all, just his endless garrulity, his iterating, and again iterating, and always iterating Geschw'dtz ; Hegel, a dry Scotsman who speaks at, rather than to us, and would seem to seek to en- lighten by provoking us ! It is not at all rhetoric, eloquence, poetry, that we are to expect in them, then; in fact, they are never in the air, but always on the ground, and this is their strength. Many people, doubtless, from what they hear of Hegel, his Idealism, his Absolute Idealism", &c, will not be prepared for this. They have been told by men who pretended to know, that Hegel, like some common conjuror, would prove the chair they sat on not a chair, &c. &c. This is a very vulgar conception, and must be abandoned, together with that other which would con- sider Hegel as impracticable, unreal, visionary, a dreamer of dreams, ' a man with too many bees in his bonnet.' Hegel is just the reverse of this ; he is wholly down on the solid floor of sub- stantial fact, and will not allow himself to quit it — no, not for a moment's indulgence to his subjective vanity — a moment's re- creation on a gust — broom-stick — of genius. Hegel is a Suabian. There are Suabian licks as well as Lockerby licks. Hegel is as a son of the border, home-spun, rustic-real, blunt : as in part already said, there are always the sagacious ways about him of some plain, honest, deep-seen, old Scotsman. Here, from the Aesthetic, is a little illustrative specimen of him. ' Romances, in the modern sense of the word, follow those of Knight-errantry and those named Pastoral. In them we have Knight-errantry become again earnest and substantially real. The previous lawlessness and precariousness of outward existence have become transformed into the fixed and safe arrangements of civilised life ; so that Police, Law, the Army, Government, now 1 PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. replace the chimerical duties which the Knight-errant set himself. Accordingly, the Knight-errantry of the modern Hero is corre- spondently changed. As an individual with his subjective ends of ambition, love, honour, or with his ideals of a world reformed, he stands in antagonism to this established order and prosa of actuality, which thwarts him on all hands. In this antagonism, his subjective desires and demands are worked up into tremendous intensity ; for he finds before him a world spell-bound, a world alien to him, a world which he must fight, as it bears itself against him, and in its cold indifference yields not to his passions, but interposes, as an obstacle to them, the will of a father, of an aunt, societary arrangements, &c. It is especially our youths who are these new Knights-errant that have to fight their way through that actual career which realises itself in place of their ideals, and to whom it can only appear a misery that there are such things at all as Family, Conventional Eules, Laws, a State, Professions, &c, because these substantial ties of human existence place their barriers cruelly in the way of the Ideals and infinite Rights of the heart. The thing to be done now, then, is for the hero to strike a breach into this arrangement of things — to alter the world, to reform it, or, in its despite, to carve out for himself a heaven on earth, to seek out for himself the maiden that is as a maiden should be — to find her, to woo her, and win her and carry her off in triumph, maugre all wicked relations and every other obstruction. These stampings and strugglings, nevertheless, are, in our modern world, nothing else than the apprenticeship, the schooling of the individual in actual existence, and receive thus their true meaning. For the end of such apprenticeship is, that the subject gets his oats sown and his horns rubbed off — accom- modates himself, with all his wishes and opinions, to existent relations and reasonableness ; enters into the concatenation of the world, and earns for himself* there his due position. One may have ever so recalcitrantly laid about him in the world, or been ever so much shoved and shouldered in it, in the end, for the most part, one finds one's maiden and some place or other for all that, marries, and becomes a slow-coach, a Philistine, just like the rest : the wife looks after the house ; children thicken ; the adored wife that was at first just the one, an angel, comes to look, on the whole, something like all the rest : one's business is attended with its toils and its troubles, wedlock with household cross ; and so there are KANT AND HEGEL GENERALLY. li the reflective Cat-dumps (Katzen-jamnier) of all the rest over again.' — If the reader will but take the trouble to read this Scotice', the illustration will be complete. It is a mistake, then, to conceive Hegel as other than the most practical of men, with no object that is not itself of the most practical nature. To the right of private judgment he remains unhesitatingly true, and every interest that comes before him must, to be accepted, demonstrate its revelancy to imperical fact. With all this, however, his function here is that of a philosopher ; and his philosophy, while the hardest to penetrate, is at once the deepest and the widest that has been yet proposed. If the deepest and the widest, it is probably at this moment also the most required. It has been said already that our own day is one — a pretty late one, it is to be hoped — in that general movement which has been named Aufklarung, Free-thinking, the principle of which we acknowledged to be the Right of Private Judgment. Now Kant, who participated deeply in the spirit of this movement, and who with his whole heart accepted this principle, became, nevertheless, the closer of the one and the guide of the other — by this, that he saw the necessity of a positive complement to the peculiar negative industry to which, up to his day, both movement and principle had alone seemed adequate. The subtle suggestions of Hume seemed to have loosened every joint of the Existent, and there seemed no conclusion but universal scepticism. Against this the conscientious purity of Kant revolted, and he set himself to seek some other outlet. We may have seen in some other country the elaborate structure of a baby dressed. The board-like stiffness in which it was carried, the manifest incapacity of the little thing to move a finger, the enormous amount and extraordinary nature of the various appliances — swathes, folders, belts, cloths, bandages, &c, points and trusses innumerable — all this may have struck us with astonishment, and we may have figured ourselves addressing the parents, and, by dint of invincible reason, persuading them to give up the board, then the folder, then the swathe, then the bandage, &c. ; but, in this negative action of taking off, we should have stopped somewhere; even when insisting on free air and free movement, we should have found it necessary to leave to the infant what should keep it warm. Nay, the question of clothes as a whole were thus once for all generalised, and debate, once Ill PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION. initiated, would cease never till universal reason were satisfied — till the infant were at length fairly rationally dressed. As the function of the Aufklarung (for it is nothing less) must stop somewhere, then, when it applies itself to the undressing of the wrong-dressed baby, so must the same function stop somewhere when it applies itself to the similar undressing of the similarly wrong-dressed (feudally-dressed) State. A naked State would just be as little likely to thrive as a naked infant : and how far — it is worth while considering — is a State removed from absolute nudity, when it is reduced to the self-will of the individual con- trolled only by the mechanical force of a Police ? No free-thinking partisan of the Illumination has ever gone further than that ; no partisan of the Illumination has ever said, Let the self-will of each be absolutely all : the control of a Police (Protec- tion of Person and Property) has been a universal postulate, insisted on by even the extremest left of the movement. Yet there are those who say this — there are those who say, Remove your meddlesome protection of the police ; by the aid of free competition we can parson and doctor ourselves, and by the aid of free competition, therefore, we can also police ourselves: remove, then, here also your vicious system of checks, as all your no less vicious system of bounties and benefits; let humanity be absolutely free — let there be nothing left but self-will, individual self-will pur et simple ! There are those who say this : they are our Criminals ! Like the cruel mother whose interest is not in its growth, but in its decease, our criminals would have the naked baby. But if self-will is to be proclaimed the principle, if self-will is the principle, our criminals are more consistent than our ' advanced thinkers,' who, while they assert this principle, and believe this principle, and think they observe this principle, open the door to the Police, and find themselves unable to shut it again, till it is driven to the wall before the whole of reason, before Eeason herself who enters with the announcement that self-will is not the principle, and the direct reverse of the principle. Now, Kant saw a great deal of this — Kant saw that the naked baby would not do ; that, if it were even necessary to strip off every rag of the old, still a new would have to be procured, or life would be impossible. So it was that, though unconsciously to himself, he was led to seek his Principles. These, Kant came to see, were the one want ; and surely, if they were the one want in THE ILLUMINATION AND ITS CORRECTION. liii his day, they are no less the want now. Self-will, individual commodity, this has been made the principle, and accordingly we have turned to it, that we might enjoy ourselves alone, that we might live to ourselves alone, that the I might be wholly the I unmixed and unobstructed ; and, for result, the I in each of us is dying of inanition — even though we make (it is even because we make) the seclusion to self complete — even though we drive off from us our very children, and leave them to corrupt at Boarding- schools into the one common model that is stock there. We all live now, in fact, divorced from Substance, forlorn each of us, isolated to himself — an absolutely abstract unit in a universal, unsympathising, unparticipant Atomism. Hence the universal rush at present, as of maddened animals, to material possession ; and, this obtained, to material ostentation, with the hope of at least buying sympathy and bribing respect. Sympathy ! Oh no ! it is the hate of envy. Eespect ! say rather the sneer of malice that disparages and makes light. Till even in the midst of material possession and material ostentation, the heart within us has sunk into weary, weary, hopeless, hopeless ashes. And of this the Aufklarung is the cause. The Aufklarung has left us Lothing but our animality, nothing but our relationship to the monkey ! It has emptied us of all essential humanity — of Philo- sophy, Morality, Eeligion. So it is that we are divorced from Substance. But the animality that is left in the midst of such immense material appliance becomes disease ; while the Spirit that has been emptied feels, knows that it has been only robbed, and, by very necessity of nature, is a craving, craving, ever-restless void. These days, therefore, are no improvement on the days of Kant ; and what to him appeared necessary then, is still more necessary now. Nay, as we see, the Illumination itself does not leave self- will absolutely independent, absolutely free. Even the Illumina- tion demands for self-will clothing and control. At lowest it demands Police ; for the most part, it adds to Police a School and a Post-office ; and it sometimes thinks, though reluctantly, hesi- tatingly, that there is necessary also a Church. It sees not that it has thus opened the whole question, and cannot any longer, by its will, close it. When Enlightenment admits at all the necessity of control, the what and how far of this control can be argued out from this necessity — and self-will is abandoned. For it is Reason llV PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. that finds the necessity, it is Eeason that prescribes the control ; and Eeason is not an affair of one or two Civic Eegulations, but the absolute round of its own perfect and entire System. In one word, the principle must not be Subjective Will, but Objective Will ; not your will or my will or his will, and yet your will and my will and his will — Universal Will — Eeason ! Individual will is self-will or caprice ; and that is precisely the one Evil, or the evil One — the Bad. And is it to be thought that Police alone will ever suffice for the correction of the single will into the universal will — for the extirpation of the Bad ? To this there are wanting — Principles. And with this want Kant began ; nor had he any other object throughout his long life than the discovery of Principles — Principles for the whole substance of man — Principles Theoretical, Practical, and Aesthetic : and this Eubric, in that it is absolutely comprehensive, will include plainly Politics, Eeligion, &c, in their respective places. This is the sole object of the three great works of Kant ; and they respectively correspond, as is easily seen, to the three divisions just named. This, too, is the sole object of Hegel ; for Hegel is but the continuator, and, perhaps, in a sort the completer, of the whole business inaugurated by Kant. The central principle of Kant was Freiheit, Free-will ; and when this word was articulated by the lips of Kant, the Illumin- ation was virtually at an end. The single sound Freiheit was the death-sentence of the Aufklarung. The principle of the Aufklarung, the Eight of Private Judgment, is a perfectly true one. But it is not true as used by the Aufklarung, or it is used only one-sidedly by the Aufklarung. Of the two words, Private Judgment, the Aufklarung accentuates and sees only the former. The Aufklarung asks only that the Private man, the individual, be satisfied. Its principle is Subjectivity, pure and simple. But its own words imply more than subjectivity — its own words imply objectivity as well ; for the accent on Private ought not to have blinded it to the fact that there is equally question of Judgment. Now, I as a subject, you as a subject, he as a subject, there is so no guarantee of agreement : I may say A, you B, and he C. But all this is changed the instant we have said Judgment. Judgment is not subjectively mine, or subjectively yours, or subjectively his : it. is objectively mine, yours, his, &c; it is a common possession; it is a thing in which we all meet and agree. Or, it is not sub- THE ILLUMINATION AND ITS CORRECTION. lv jective, and so incapable of comparison, — but objective, capable of comparison, and consequently such that in its regard we virtually do all agree and, in the end, actually shall all agree. Now, Private Judgment with the accent on Private is self-will ; but with the accent on Judgment, it is Freiheit, Freedom Proper, Free-will, Objective Will, Universal Will. This is the Beginning: this is the first stone of the new world which is to be the sole work of at least several succeeding generations. — Formally subjective, I am empty ; exercising my will alone, I am mere formalism, I am only formally a man; and what is formal merely is a pain and an obstacle to all the other units of the concrete — it is a pain and an obstacle to itself — it is a false abstraction in the concrete, and must, one way or other, be expunged.* The subject, then, must not remain Formal— he must obtain Filling, the Filling of the Object. This subject is not my true Me; my true Me is the Object— .Reason— the Universal Thought, Will, Purpose of Man as Man. So it is that Private Judgment is not enough : what is enough is Judgment. My right is only to share it, only to be there, present to it, with my conviction, my subjective conviction. This is the only Right of the Subject. In exercising the Right of Private Judgment, then, there is more required than what attaches to the word Private ; there must be some guarantee of the Judg- ment as well. The Rights of the Object are above the Rights of the Subject ; or, to say it better, the Rights of the Object are— the true Rights of the Subject. That the Subject should not be empty, then — that he should be filled up and out to his true size, shape, strength, by having absorbed the Object, — this is a necessity ; only so can the Private Judgment be Judgment, and as such valid. — If, then, the Aufklarung said, Self-will shall work out the Universal Will by following Self-will, Kant and Hegel put an end to this by reversing the phrase, and by declaring, Self-will shall work out, shall realise Self-will— that is, effect a true will of any kind— by following the Universal Will. The two positions are diametrically opposed : the Aufklarung, with whatever belongs to it, is virtually superseded. The Aufklarung is not superseded, however, in the sense of being destroyed ; it is superseded only in that, as it were, it has been absorbed, used as food, and assimilated into a higher form. The Right of Private Judgment, the Rights of Intelligence * Let the reader recall to mind any abstract person he may know, and think how deranging and unbearable he is. lvi PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. — these, the interests of the Aufklarung, are not by any means lost, or pushed out of the way : they are only carried forward into their truth. Nay, LxberU — EgaliU — Fraternity themselves are not yet lost; they, too, will be carried forward into their truth: to that, however, they must be saved from certain merely empty, formal subjectivities, blind remnants of the Aufklarung, furious sometimes from mistaken conscientiousness ; furious, it is to be feared, some- times also from personal self-seeking. But what is the Object ? — what is Eeason ? — what is objective Judgment ? So we may put the questions which the Aufklarung itself might put with sneers and jeers. Lord Macaulay, a true child of the Aufklarung, has already jeeringly asked, 'Who are wisest and best, and whose opinion is to decide that ? ' — Perhaps an answer is not so hopeless as it appeared to this distinguished Aufgeklarter. Let us see It was not without meaning that we spoke of Reason as entering with the announcement that Self-will was not the principle, and we seek firstly to draw attention to this, that Reason does not enter thus only for the first time now ; there is at least another occasion in the world's history when she so entered. The age into which Socrates was born was one of Aufklarung, even as that of Kant and Hegel. Man had awoke then to the light of thought, and had turned to see by it the place he lived in, all the things that had fallen to his lot, — his whole inheritance of Tradition. Few things that are old can stand the test of day, and the sophists had it speedily all their own way in Greece. There seemed nothing fit any longer to be believed in, all was unfixed; truth there seemed none but the subjective experience of the moment; and the only wisdom, therefore, was to see that that experience should be one of enjoyment. Thus in Greece, too, man was emptied of his Substance and reduced to his senses, his animality, his relation- ship to the monkey — and, for that part, to the rat. Now it was, then, that Socrates appeared and demanded Principles, Objective Standards, that should be absolutely independent of the good-will and pleasure of any particular subject. Of this quest of Socrates, the industries of Plato and Aristotle were but Systematisations. It was to Thought as Thought that Socrates was led as likely to contain the Principles he wanted, and on that side which is now named Generalisation. Socrates, in fact, seems to have been his- torically the first man who expressly and consciously generalised, THE ILLUMINATION AND ITS CORRECTION. lvii and for him, therefore, we must vindicate the title of the True Father of Practical Induction. A, he said, is valour, and B is valour, and C is valour ; but what is valour universally ? So the inquiry went forward also as regards other virtues, for the ground that Socrates occupied was mainly moral. Plato absolutely generalised the Socratic act, and sought the universal of everything, even that of a Table, till all such became hypostasised, presences to him, and the only true presences, the Ideas. Aristotle substituted for this Hypostasis of the Ideas the theory of the abstract universal (Logic), and a collection of abstract generalised Sciences (Ethics, Politics, Poetics, &c). Thus in Greece, too, Eeason, in the person of Socrates, entered with the announcement that the principle is not self-will, but a universal. But were such principles actually found in Greece ? And, if so, why did Greece perish, and why have we been allowed to undergo another Aufklarung? It will be but a small matter that Socrates saw the want, if he did not supply it : and that he did not supply it, both the fate of Greece and we ourselves are here to prove ! It must be admitted at once that Socrates and his followers cannot have truly succeeded, for in that case surely the course of history would have been far otherwise. The first corollary for us to draw, however, is — Look at the warning! Aufklarung, Illumination, Enlightenment, destroyed Greece ; it lowered man from Spirit to Animal; and the Greek became, as now, the serf of every con- queror. In Kome we have the same warning, but — material appli- ances being there so infinitely greater, and the height from which the descent was made being there, perhaps, so much higher — in colours infinitely more glaring, forms infinitely more hideous, and with a breadth and depth of wallowing misery and sin that would revolt the most abandoned. It is to be noted, too, that for Socrates, Rome had only Cicero — (the vain, subjective, logosophic Cicero* who, however, as pre-eminently a master of words, will always be pre-eminent with scholarly men). In presence of such warnings, then, the necessity of a success in the quest of objective standards greater on our part than that on the part of Socrates, becomes of even terrible import. Nevertheless, again, the unsuccess of the latter and his followers was by no means absolute. Such principles as are in question were set up by all of them. By way of single example, take the position, ' That it is better to suffer than to do injustice,' where, as it were, the subject lviii PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. gains himself by yielding himself. We shall afterwards see, too, that Aristotle had at least reached terms of the concrete notion about as good as any that can be given yet. Nevertheless, it is to be said that, on the whole, the inquest in their hands proved un- successful: their principles remained a loose, miscellaneous, un- certiorated many; the concrete notion was probably blindly toucned only ; unity and system were never attained to ; and, in the main, the ground occupied at last was but that of formal generalisation and the abstract universal. But now at last have we succeeded better? — do we know Reason ? — have we the Object ? Or, in the phrase of Macaulay, can we tell who are wisest and best, and whose opinion is to decide that? — In the first place, we may say that the question of wisest and best is pertinent only to the position of Hero-worship ; a position not occupied by us — a position which sets up only the untenable principle of subjectivity as subjectivity. A man is not wisest and best by chance only, or caprice of nature ; we were but badly off, had we always only to wait for our guidance so — we were but badly off, were it left to each of us, as it were, to taste our wisest and best by subjective feeling. A man is wisest and best by that which is in him, his Inhalt, his Filling — his absorbed, assimi- lated, and incorporated matter : it is the Filling, then, which is the main point; and in view of that Filling, abstraction can be made altogether from the great man it fills. Lord Macaulay's questions, then, (and those of Hero-worship itself,) are seen, abstraction being made from the form, to be identical with our own — do we know Reason, have we the Object ? Now, if it were question of an Algebra, a Geometry, an Astronomy, a Chemistry, &c, I suppose it would never occur to anyone to ask about the wisest and best, &c. ; I suppose, in these cases, it is a matter of little moment whether we say Euler, Bourdon, or Peacock ; Euclid, Legendre, or Hutton ; Berzelius, Liebig, or Reid, &c. : I suppose the main thing is to have the object (otherwise called the subject) itself, and that then there would be no interest in any wisest and best, or in opinion at all. In the matter of Will, Reason, Judgment, then, did we but know the Object, the Universal, and could we but assign it, in the same way as we know and assign the Object, the Universal, in the case of Algebra, Chemistry, &c, the problem, we presume, would, by universal acknowledgment, be pretty well solved. But just GERMAN POLITICS. lix this is what Hegel asserts of Philosophy. We hear much in these days of Metaphysic, Philosophy having crumbled down definitely into ruins — this, by an unworthy misapplication and perversion, on the authority of Kant himself — this, at the very moment that Hegel claims for himself the completion of the Kantian Philosophy into a Science, an exact Science, and its establishment for ever — this, from men more ignorant of what they speak about than any Mandarin in China ! — Nay, if we are to believe Hegel — and no man alive is at this moment com- petent to gainsay him — the exploit is infinitely greater still, the science accomplished infinitely more perfect and complete than any Algebra, Astronomy, Chemistry, or other science we possess. This perfection and completion we may illustrate thus : Geometry is an exact science ; it rests on demonstration, it is thoroughly objective, it is utterly independent of any subjective authority whatever. But Geometry is just a side-by-side of particulars ; it is just a crate of miscellaneous goods ; it properly begins not, ends not; it is no whole, and no whole — product of a single principle. Now, let us conceive Geometry perfected into this — a perfectly-rounded whole of organically-articulated elements which out of a single principle arise and into a single principle retract, — let us conceive this, and we have before us an image of the Hegelian System. This science, too, is to be conceived as the Science of Science — the Scientia of Scientia ; it is to be conceived to contain the ultimate principles of all things and of all thoughts — to be, in a word, the essential diamond of the universe. These pretensions have, of course, yet to be verified. Nevertheless, the Concrete Notion, which is the secret of Hegel, will be found a principle of such rare virtue that it recommends itself almost irresistibly. The unity and systematic wholeness, too, attract powerfully, and not less the inexpugnable position which seems, at length, extended to all the higher interests of man. And at last we can say this, — should the path be but a vista of the imagination and conduct us nowhere, it yields at every step the choicest aliment of humanity — such aliment as nourishes us strongly into our true stature. To such claims of this new Science of Philosophy, there lies a very close objection in Germany itself. ' In all practical matters,' the German is said to be 'slow/ and, indeed, 'quite behind ;' and such quality and such position are held to comport but ill with lxii PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. the generations have not yet eaten. — This is the whole. — Europe (Germany as Germany is itself no exception) has continued to nourish itself from the vessel of Hume, notwithstanding that the Historic Pabulum has long since abandoned it for another and others. Hence all that we see. Hume is our Politics, Hume is our Trade, Hume is our Philosophy, Hume is our Eeligion, — it wants little but that Hume were even our Taste. A broad subject is here indicated, and we cannot be expected at present to point out the retrogression or the beside-the-point of all philosophy else, as in the case of Reid, Stewart, &c. Neither can we be expected to dwell on the partial re-actions against the Aufklarung which we have witnessed in this country ; as, firstly, the Prudential Re-action that was conditioned, in some cases, by Public considerations, and in others by only Private ones ; secondly, the Re-action of Poetry and Nature, as in Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, &c. ; and thirdly, the Germanico-Literary Re- action, as in Carlyle and Emerson. The great point here is to see that all these re-actions have been partial and, so far as Thought qua Thought is concerned, incomplete, resting for their advance- ment, for the most part, on subjective conceit (calling itself to itself genius, it may be), that has sought aliment, inspiration, or what was to it prophecy, in contingent crumbs. Hence it is that what we have now, is a retrograde re-action — a Revulsion — and of the shallowest order, back to the Aufklarung again; a re-action the members of which call themselves 'advanced thinkers,' although at bottom they are but friends of the monkey, and would drain us to our Senses. In this Revulsion — in this perverted or inverted re-action, we must even reckon Essayists and Reviewers, Strauss, Renan, Colenso, Feuerbach, Buckle, and others. It is this retrogressive re-action, this revulsion to the Aufklarung, that demonstrates the insufficiency of the previous progressive re-actions against the Aufklarung, Prudential, Poetical, and Germanico- Literary. In short, the only true means of progress have not been brought into service. The Historic Pabulum, however greedily it has been devoured out of Hume, has been left untouched in the vessel of Hegel, who alone of all mankind has succeeded in eating it all up out of the vessel of Kant. This is the true nature of the case, and these generations, therefore, have no duty but to turn from their blunder — a blunder, it is to be admitted, at the same time, not quite voluntary, but necessitated by certain PRINCIPLE AND THE PABULUM. lxiii difficulties — and apply themselves to the inhaustion of the only food on which, it will be found, Humanity will thrive.* * " Aufklarung, a word which, meaning in its ordinary use simply enlightenment — up-lighting or lighting-up — may be translated, with reference at once to the special up-lighting implied, and a certain notorious exposition of it, the Age of Reason." This, from Essay on Lord Macaulay in 1860, was, at least as known to me, the first British mention of a German word that is now somewhat current. When enlightenment is said in England, the hearer has no call to think of infidelity ; but liis own word to a German suggests at once a whole historic movement (of 18th century) which issued in an opening of the eyes to the Biblical lacunae. This has had a shallow result in many or most — a salutary only in a few, who regret to hear or see, on every new step of science, the constant repetition of a supposed quite enlightened, 'You see?' which is now utterly irrelevant. Men of science may bo right in their negative ; but that is no reason why they should fail to recognise the positive. Educated people ought really to be ashamed of a raid that is now out of date, and only blocks 'advance.' After all, it is simply vulgar. The Secret of Hegel, i. PKOLEGOMENA.-THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL CHAPTER I. Preliminaries of the Struggle to Hegel. One approaches Hegel for the first time— such is the voice of rumour and such the subjects he involves— as one might approach some enchanted palace of Arabian story. New powers— imagina- tion is assured (were but the entrance gained)— await one there — secrets— as it were, the ring of Solomon and the passkeys of the universe. But, very truly, if thus magical is the promise, no less magical is the difficulty; and one wanders round the book— as Aboulfaouaris round the palace — irrito, without success, but not without a sufficiency of vexation. Book— palace — is absolutely inaccessible, for the known can show no bridge to it ; or if acces- sible, then it is absolutely impenetrable, for it begins not, it enters not, what seems the doorway receives but to reject, and every attempt at a window is baffled by a fall. This is the universal experience ; and one is almost justified to add, that— whether in England, or in France, or in Germany itself —this, the experience of the beginning, is, also, — all but equally universally — the experience of the end. And yet how one cloaks the hurt, how one dat verba dolori, how one extenuates defeat — nay rather, perhaps, how one rises in triumph over the worthless, which is, however, only the sour / ' It is but scholasticism,' one is happy enough to see at last ;'ora play upon words ; " at all events there is no advance in it on Plato,' ' or on Aristotle,' ' or on Plotinus,' ■ or on Thomas Aquinas ; ' ' at least that Being and A 2 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. I. Nothing " is " the same, is but a litise of good, heavy, innocent Teutschland ; ' ' and then there cannot be a doubt but everyone must recoil at the reconciliation of contraries,' ' aye, and shudder at Pantheism ! ' But not thus is it that Hegel will be laid, and not thus is it that — in the end — our own ignorance shall be hailed as knowledge. But, if it be thus with those who admit defeat — with those, that is, who actually acknowledge their inability to construe (though for the most part, at the same time, with the consistency of an ostrich, they comically assume to confute), it must be confessed that one's satisfaction is not perfect, either, with those who arrogate a victory and display the spoils. A victory ! one is apt to mutter, yes, a victory of the outside — a victory, as it were, of the table of con- tents— a victory of these contents themselves, perhaps, but so that it looks like a licking of them all up dry — a victory then which has been, not chemically or vitally, but only mechanically effected ; effected in such wise, indeed, that the displayed spoils (the books they write) consist but of a sort of logical Petrefactenkunde, but of a grammatical fluency of mere forms, which, however useful to a professor as a professor, affect others like the nomenclature of Selenography ; whose Mare Magnum and Lacus Niger and Monies Lucis (if these be the names) are names only — names, that is, of seas and lakes and mountains in the Moon, which can possess correspondent substance, consequently, for him only who reaches it — a consummation plainly that must be renounced by a Seleno- grapher. It is in view of this difficulty of Hegel that the chapters bearing in their titles to refer to the struggle to Hegel have been, though with considerable hesitation, submitted to the reader. They con- sist, for the most part, of certain members of a series of notes which, as it were, fell by the way — exclamation is natural to pain — during the writer's own struggle to the Logik and the Encyclo- paedic Originating thus, these notes (though sometimes written as if referring to a reader) brought with them no thought of publi- cation so far as they themselves were concerned ; many of them, indeed, were destroyed before any such thought occurred ; and as the rest remained, they remain still, for to change them now would be but to anachronise and stultify them. Imperfections, then, of all sorts are what is to be looked for in them ; but still the hope is entertained that they may assist, or that, should they fail to assist, they may succeed to encourage ; for, representing various hegel's difficulty. 3 stages of success, or unsuccess, in the study of Hegel, they may be allowably expected to have peculiar meaning for more than one student, who, finding his own difficulties reflected in what claims to have passed them, may feel himself stimulated afresh to a renewed attempt. In the circumstances of the case too, I am sure the reader will not deem it unreasonable that he should be warned that the opinions expressed in these notes — both as interimistic and pro- visional in themselves, and as always referring to another, whether from the point of view of Hegel or from that of his commentator — must not be regarded as deliberate products of either, but must be viewed only as a preparatory scaffolding to be afterwards removed. I shall always recollect the first time I opened the Encyclopaedia of Hegel. It was the re-edition by Rosenkranz (Berlin, 1845) of Hegel's own third edition, a compact, substantial, but not bulky volume, with clear and well-sized type, that seemed to offer a ready and satisfactory access to the whole of this extraordinary system. Surely, was the thought, there will be no difficulty in making one's way through that ! What a promise the very con- tents seemed to offer, if floating strangely in such an air of novelty! First of all, three grand Parts : the Science of Logic, tire Philosophy of Nature, the Philosophy of Spirit ! Evidently, something very comprehensive and exhaustive was %bout to be given us ! For Logic, Nature, Spirit — which last of course could only refer to intelligence, or to thinking, willing, feeling self-consciousness in general — being all three explained to us, there manifestly could remain nothing else to ask after. Then the Sub-parts/ As the Parts were three, so under each of the three the Sub-parts were also three. Under Logic : the doctrine of Being, the doctrine of Essence, the doctrine of the Notion. Under Nature : Mechanic, Physic, Organic. Under Spirit: Subjective Spirit, Objective Spirit, Absolute Spirit. Nor did two trichotomies suffice ; there was a third into the majuscules A, B, C, a fourth into the minus- cules a, b, c, a fifth into the grammata a, ft y, and lastly (not to mention an occasional excursion to the Hebrew Aleph, Beth, Gim- mel), the discussion in the body of the work was seen — a sixth. (seventh) trichotomy — to proceed by the numbers 1, 2, 3. The outer look at least was attractive ; there was balance, there was symmetry, and the energy of a beginner could at lowest hope that it was in presence, not of artifice and formality, but of nature and 4 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. I. reality. At all events, be it as it might with the form, the matter was unexceptionable, and promised knowledge of the most com- plete, interesting, and important nature. For under Logic, there were not only Propositions, Syllogisms, &c, to be discussed, but all the great questions of Ontology also, as Being, and Existence, and Noumenon, and Phenomenon, and Substance, and Cause and Effect, and Reciprocity, &c. &c. Then the treatment of Nature seemed an extremely full one ; for Static, and Dynamic, and Mechanic, and Chemistry (Chemism rather), and Geology, and Botany, and Physiology, and much else, seemed all to have place in it. Lastly, at once how pregnant and how new the matter of the Philosophy of Spirit appeared ! Psychology, Morals, Religion, Law, Politics, Society, Art, and Philosophy : these were the sub- jects discussed, but all in a new order, and under new categories, and with strange new associates at their sides. What was Being- for-self, for example, and what was Phenomenology, and the World of Appearance, and, above all, what was the Absolute Idea ? But let us cease to wonder — let us begin to read. Well, we have read the Fore-word of Rosenkranz. We have found in it, certainly, a considerable sprinking of — to us — new words ; some of them, too, of endless syllable, Mongolic, merely stuck together on the agglutinative principle, such as Sichinsichselb- strefiectiren (which does not occur here, however), or Ineinander- greifen (which does) ; but we have gone through with it — we seem to ourselves to have understood it — there is no hidden difficulty in it, so far as we can judge. Though we have heard in it, too, that there is a split in the school, and that Hegelianism is not in Germany what it was ; we have been told as well that this Encyclopaedia is a national treasure, the estimation of which will only grow with time ; that other sciences are obliged to conform themselves to the notions it coptains, and that it presents a preg- nant concentration beside which the Manuels de Philosophie of the French and others are but shallow maunderings, empty and antiquated. For our own part, moreover, we have felt ourselves, throughout the reading, in presence of what is evidently both a highly developed, and a wholly new, method of general thought. Altogether the Fore-word of Rosenkranz is a word of encourage- ment and hope. We go further now — we enter upon Hegel himself. Alas ! Hegel is not Rosenkranz, and the Fore-word — after a thousand efforts, with surprise, with incredulity, with astonishment, with FIRST IMPRESSIONS. O vexation, with gall, with sweat — seems destined for ever to remain the Hind-word also. Even if a ray of light seems suddenly to leap to you, most probably your position is not one whit the better for it ; for the gleam of the beginning proves, for the most part, but a meteor of the marsh ; a meteor with express appointment, it may be even, to mislead your vanity into the pitfall of the ridiculous. You shall have advanced, let us assume, for example, to the words : 'The Idea, however, demonstrates itself as Thought directly identical with itself, and this at the same time as the power to set itself over against itself, in order to be for itself, and in this Other only to be by itself.' You shall have seen into these words, let us say, so far ; and you shall have smirkingly pointed them out to friends, and smiled complacently over the hopeless blankness that fell upon their features; but in the smirk, and in the smile, and in the delusion that underlies them, you shall have, like Dogberry, to be ' written down an ass ' the while. These words but abstractly state the position of Idealism — do they ? And so, hugging yourself as on a secret gained, you relax pleasedly into the cloudland of the Vorstelluny, to see there, far off across the blue, the whole huge universe iridescently collapse into the crystal of the Idea. You will yet see reason to be ashamed of your cloudland, to be disappointed with your secret, how true soever, and to find in every case that you have not yet accomplished a single step in advance. The Encyclopaedia proves utterly refractory then. With resolute concentration we have set ourselves, again and again, to begin with the beginning, or, more desperately, with the end, perhaps with the middle — now with this section, now with that — in vain ! Deliberate effort, desultory dip — 'tis all the same thing ! We shut the book ; we look around for explanation aud assistance. We are in Germany itself at the moment (say); and very naturally, in the first instance, we address ourselves to our own late teacher of the language, ' Other writers', he replies, ' may be this, may be that ; but Hegel I — one has to stop ! and think 1 and think ! — Hegel ! Ach Gott ! ' Such a weary look of exhausted effort lengthens the jaw ! and it is our last chance of a word with our late teacher; for henceforth he always unaccountably vanishes at the very first glimpse of our person, though caught a mile off! But here is a friend of ours, an Englishman, of infinite ability, 6 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. I. of infinite acquirement, conversant with many languages, but especially conversant with German, for he has held for years a German appointment, and rejoiced for years in a German wife. He will assist us. With what a curious smile he looks up, and shakes his head, after having read the two or three first sen- tences of the first preface to the Encyclopaedia ! This preface is Hegelian iron certainly, and with the tang of Hegelian iron in every word of it ; but, looking at it now, it is difficult to under- stand that it should ever have seemed hard. Nor do I suppose that it really was hard to the friend alluded to. Only, the closely wrought concentration must have seemed exceedingly peculiar; and it must have been felt that in such words — common and current as they are — as Inhalt, Vorstellung, Begriff, and even dusserliche Zweckmassigkeit, dusserliche Ordnung, Manier, Ueber- gdnge, Vermittelung , &c, there lay a meaning quite other than the ordinary one ; a meaning depending on some general system of thought, and intelligible consequently only to the initiated. "We are driven back on books again then ; and we have recourse to the Life of Hegel as written by Eosenkranz. This writer possesses at once a facile and a lucid pen, beneath which, too, there rise up ever and anon the most expressive images, the most picturesque metaphors. Image, metaphor, facility, lucidity, all seem ineffectual, however, the instant they come to be applied to what alone concerns us — the philosophy of Hegel. The per- spicuity and transparency which give light everywhere else, here suddenly — so far as we are concerned — vanish ; and there is an incontinent relapse, on our part, into the ancient gall. Let the reader look, for example, at these, the first two sentences of what appears in the work referred to as a formal statement of the system of Hegel ! • Philosophy was to him the self-cognition of the process of the Absolute, which, as pure Ideality, is not affected by the vicissitude of the quantitative difference of the Becoming which attaches to the Finite. The distinction of the Pure Idea, of Nature, and of the Spirit as personification of history, is eliminated in the total totality of the Absolute Spirit that is present in them.' The reader will do well to refer to the original, and to examine from time to time the succeeding page, or page and a half, in test of his own proficiency. Insight into Hegel will have begun, when the passage referred to has become sun-clear. Not more than begun, however, for the glance into the system involved here THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA, ROSENKUANZ. 7 extends only to the 'totality,' and, compared with a knowledge which were truly knowledge, is altogether inadequate. In the case of Hegel, there is nothing more deceptive than what are called general views. It is extreme injustice to all interests concerned, to sum up his system in a paragraph ; and still worse to fancy that it is understood, and finished off, and done with in the single word Pantheism. He who would know Hegel, must know what Hegel himself would call das Einzelne, and even das Einzelne des Einzelnen ; that is, he must not content himself with some mere fraudulent or illusory general conception of the whole ; but he must know 'the particular' (strictly, 'the singular'), and ' the particular of the particular.' The System of Hegel is this : not a mere theory or intellectual view, or collection of theories or intellectual views, but an Organon through which— &s system of drill, instruction, discipline — passed, the individual soul finds itself on a new elevation, and with new 'powers. A general view that shall shortly name and give shortly to understand — a single statement that shall explain — this were a demand not one whit more absurd as regards the Principia of Newton than as regards the Logic of Hegel. Of the latter, as of the former, he only knows anything who has effected actual permeation. Fancy the smile into which the iron of Hegel broke when the never-doubting M. Cousin requested a succinct statement of The System ! ' Mon- sieur? said he, ' ces choses ne se disent pas succinctement, surtout en frangais ! ' The Life of Hegel by Eosenkranz, then, however interesting, however satisfactory otherwise, failed there — at least for us — where only we wished it to succeed. It extended no light for perception of the System. There it was dark and impervious— as dark and impervious as the Encyclopaedie itself. The opening sentences of the relative statement and the succeeding passages already referred to were flung, in the wonder they excited, to more than one correspondent, and the ' total totality ' remained an occasion of endless smile. From all this it was evident, then, that the System of flegel was something eminently peculiar, and that, if it were to be understood at all, the only course that remained was to take it in its place as part and parcel of what is called German Philo- sophy in general ; and, with that object, to institute, necessarily, a systematic study of the entire subject from the commencement. Now that commencement was Kant; in regard to whom, so far, 8 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. I. at least, as Hume and the philosophy of Great Britain generally were concerned, we might assume ourselves to possess what preliminary preparation was specially required. With Kant, then, without carrying the regression further, and with reasonable hope of success, we might begin at once. The Kritik of Pure Reason was accordingly taken up, and an assiduous study of the same duly set forward. The Introduction and the Aesthetik necessitated, indeed, the closest attention and the most earnest thought in consequence of the newness of the matter and the imperfections of the form, but offered on the whole no serious impediment. It was otherwise, however, with the Transcendental Analytik, the burthen of which is the Deduc- tion of the Categories, pronounced by Hegel what is hardest in Kant — even pronounced by Kant what is hardest in himself. Here there was pause ; here the eyes wandered ; here they looked up in quest of aid from without. The translations that offered themselves to hand were most of them to be regarded but as psychological curiosities. They seemed on the whole, in fact, to have been executed as it were with the eyes shut, or as if in the dark ; and consequently they fell on the eyes of the reader like a very ' blanket of the night,' against the overpowering weight of which no human lid could stir. Reinhold,* Schwegleiyf not were procured, but fell in the way, scarcely with the required profit. The former was one of those nervously clear, nervously distinct individuals who blind with excess of light and deafen with excess of accent; while the latter, excellent, admirable, afforded only a summary that was scarcely of any avail to the interest concerned — the Deduc- tion of the Categories. Saintes* extended a thin varnish of the ' Literature of the Subject ; ' but, as regarded the main object of a full perception of what that really was that the Kritik of Pure Eeason strove to, he was as far from throwing any satis- factory light on Kant, as afterwards Vera,§ on the whole, to * Reinhold : Versuch einer neuen Theorie des Menschlichen Vorstellungs- vermbgens. t Schwegler : Geschichte der Philosophie ira Umriss. X Saintes : Vie et Philosophie de Kant. # Vera : Introduction a la Philosophie de Hegel. It must be understood that these censures come from one whose desire was thoroughly to see into the whole connexion and details of the systems in question, and that consequently another who should only aim at a 'general conception' may feel very differently towards some of the works mentioned. Rosenkranz and Sibree, KANT THE BEGINNING. 9 me — at least in the one little volume — was from throwing a sufficient one on what I really wanted to know of Hegel. Three Vortrage (just to complete the digression here which the refer- ence to Vera has begun) of Kuno Fischer, besides that they came years too late, were not done justice to by acquisition and perusal of the two volumes on Kant which were announced to follow. Haym (Hegel und seine Zeit) was a man of genius, but all his admirable writing, all his brilliantly-pointed expression, failed to convince me that there was nothing in Hegel. The prefatory notice to the extracts of Frantz and Hillert, a slender pamphlet on Hegel's subjective Logic published by Chapman, Gruppe — 'Gegenwart, &c, der Philosophie,' Fortlage — 'die Liicken des Hegelschen Systems ' (I may also mention Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy) — these and the other works already named constitute what in my case is the Literature of the subject; and, though very readily allowing each its own peculiar merits — (Schwegler's book is indispensable) — it is not too much to say that a single satisfactory idea on the main thing wanted by a struggling student who would be thorough, is not to be got from the whole of them. He who after such reading supposes himself to possess an adequate conception of Kant and Hegel simply deludes himself.* On the whole, the conclusion at this stage was, that we must return to the principals. If we really desired to come to any knowledge of Kant and Hegel, or, for that part, of Fichte and Schelling either, it was with Kant and Hegel, with Fichte and Schelling, that we had alone to do. Accordingly, Tennemann, Chalybaeus, Michelet, though heard of, were not consulted. Neither were the Elucidations to Hegel by Eosenkranz inquired for; and the same author's suggestive Preformation of the Hegelian Logic only came to hand when it was no longer required. The pertinent articles in the Conversations-Lexicon for example, speak alike highly of the work of Vera ; and they are both authorities of weight. Rosenkranz, as is well known, is the Hcgeliaiier par excellence. And I have no hesitation in characterising Mr Sibree's translation of Hegel's Philosophy of History as by far the best contribution to German philosophy that has as yet (1864) appeared in England. The one work is no test : Vera has written many works on Hegel, all excellent. He himself, besides, was one of the most amiable, accom- plished, and delightful of men. * The reader will remember that the reference above to Schwegler's book pre- ceded by some years any thought of its translation by the author. (New note.) 10 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. I. were too short to be of much service as regards the ' Philosophies ' themselves ; but useful light was obtained here and. there on the technical meanings of German philosophical terms. It was a consolation to learn from another such encyclopaedic work, whose name I forget, that Hegel had been a shut book both to Goethe and Schiller, and that, as regards Jean Paul, it was in a manner an expression wrung from him, that Hegel was 'the subtlest of all metaphysical heads, but a very vampire of the living man.' In a like reference, it was not unpleasing to know that the Kritik of Pure Eeason had remained opaque to Goethe, and to perceive from the words conveying it, that the claim of the same great man to an understanding of the Kritik of Judgment was perhaps not less susceptible of a negative than of an affirmative. Such evidences of the difficulty, then, were a consolation to the suffering individual student, at the same time that everything seemed to confirm the truth of his conclusion, that, in this case, as in most others, the true policy was to pass by the subordinates, and hold perseveringly by the principals. But again, if we may neglect what is named the ' Literature of the subject,' as but a parasitic consequent, how far, it may be asked, are we justified in assuming this or any movement to lie in its principals alone, and — what is the same thing on another side — how far is it possible to separate the consideration of any such movement from the consideration of its literature ? These questions probably enable us to open at best what we would proceed to say. The movement, of which there is question at present, is an intellectual movement of such a nature as is not rare in history. The Germans commonly distinguish such movements by the word Gdhrung, which signifies zymosis, fer- mentatio, ferment. Now the dramatic zymosis of England, at the end of the sixteenth and .the beginning of the seventeenth century, presents a considerable analogy to the philosophical zymosis of Germany at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century ; while neither of them, perhaps, can well be surpassed, as an example of the class, by any other which has occurred in history. In both, the same passionate enthusiasm, the same eager haste, the same burning rush, the same swift alternation of io triumphe, the same pre- cipitation and superfetation of production. Man, strung to his utmost, vies his utmost; and each new day brings forth its portent; which portent, again, in its place and season, is as THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT. 11 temporary centre and feeding fuel to the growing, glowing, and inflaming hubbub. Germany, for its part, however, was luckily free, as indeed behoved philosophy, from an element of sense which deformed and disgraced the English ferment. For such pure white flames as Kant and Fichte, the substance proper of the spirit was oil enough ; the natural speed of their own life sufficed them ; they required not, like Marlow, the fierce combustible of wine, as it were to give them edge upon themselves, that so they might eat into themselves, and devour up their own sweetness in an instant's rush. Yet Fichte, absolutely without a fear— absolutely without a misgiving in the intensity of his sincerity, in the intensity of his honesty, in the intensity of his conviction, was as swift and precipitate as even Marlow. Of this, his every act, his every word is proof. He kindles to Kant, he writes his « Kritik of All Eevelation' in four weeks, he rushes to Konigsberg, he extends to Kant this same 'Kritik' by way of introductory letter. He becomes professor at Jena; his lectures are as inflaming fire, and his works — Wissenschaftslehre, Kechtslehre, Sittenlehre — leap from him like consecutive lightnings. The Journal he edits is, for its plainness of speech, confiscated by the Government: he rises up, he rushes to the front, he defends, he appeals, he listens to no private Hush, man! hold your tongue, we are going to look over it; he will have 'lawful conviction' or 'signal satisfaction.' Submit to be threatened! it is he will threaten, he will quit— quit and take his people with him ; he and they will found a university for themselves ! So single, so entire in his conviction of his first philosophy, this is no impediment to equal singleness, to equal entirety in his conviction of his second. Then, when the political horizon darkens over his country, he calls his compatriots to arms — calls to them through the very roulades of the French drums, calls to them in the very hearing of the French governor ! Nor when, as if in answer to his call, the war arises, does the student slink into his study as if his work were done. No ! the word is but exchanged for the deed; and in the doing of the deed, both he and his brave wife fall a sacrifice to their own nobleness! * The eagle Fichte ! whose flight was arrow- straight, whose speed the lightning's ! Or take him in less serious and more amusing circumstances. The enthusiasm in the days of Marlow, the drunkenness of intellection could not be greater than * But she recovered, while he died. (New.) 12 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. I. this. Fichte visits Baggesen, whom as yet he has not seen ; Baggesen has a child at the point of death, and cannot receive Fichte. They cannot part thus, however: Baggesen comes to Fichte in the stair ; and there the two of them, Fichte and Baggesen, find Consciousness a subject so interesting, that, in such position, in such circumstances, they remain discussing it an hour and a half, turning away, the one from the other, at last, each, we may suppose, as in the dream of a seraph. It must be admitted, indeed, that the excitement in Germany took on, in some respects, larger proportions than that in England. The numbers of the affected, for example, were much greater in the former country than in the latter. The former country, indeed, would probably count by hundreds as the other by tens. Schulze, Kraus, Maimon, Krug, Kiesewetter, Erhard, Eberhard, Heyden- reich, Bouterweck, Bendavid, Fries, Eeinhold, Bardili, Beck, Hulsen, Koppen, Suabedissen — these really are but a tithe of the names that turn up in the German fluctuation, and each of them is to be conceived as but a seething froth-point in the immeasurable yeast. In these zymoses, then, whether in Germany or in England, we may say that those who took part in them were stirred to their very depths; that they stood up, as it were, convulsed; that they emulously agonised themselves mutually, to the production of results, in both countries, on the whole transcendent, almost superhuman. Now, however wide was the seething sea in England, we all know, in these days, that it has subsided round a single, matchless island, Shakspeare, the delight, the glory, the wonder of the world ; beside which, it is, on the whole, only by a species of indulgent indifference on our parts that we allow certain virtuosi to point out the existence of some ancillary islets. But just as it is in England as regards the dramatic zymosis, it is, or will be, in Germany as regards the philosophic ; only, the latter country, perhaps, will distinguish its single island by a double name. We have arrived now at the point where an answer to the questions which we have left a short way behind us is easy, is self-evident. The seething thing, named English Drama, or German Philosophy, is one thing ; and the practical outcome of the seething, another. Thus different, each, then, may be con- sidered apart and by itself ; and two diverse branches of human industry are seen to become hereby possible. He who shall make it his business to watch the gathering of the materials for the ZYMOSES, ETC. 13 seething — the first bells or bubbles of the same — the further progress, all the consecutive phases as they appear in time — will be the Phenomenologist or Historian of the Seething. By this historian, plainly, no detail is to be neglected, nor is any name to be omitted. A very different task, however, is his who would take the other branch, and discuss only the settled outcome of the ferment : and this is the task in special reference to German Philosophy which we here would desire to attempt; a task which is, probably, insusceptible as yet of the form of art — which as yet cannot be effected, as it were, by a picture, by a statue, or even by a homo- geneous essay, but which must content itself with the ground in its regard being simply broken into. For us then, with such object, the majority of the names tossed over in the turmoil will have no interest ; for us, in short, the principals will suffice. And thus, by another road, we are brought to the same conclusion as before — to neglect, namely, the ' Literature of the subject ; ' and this, not only so far as it follows, but also so far as — so to speak — it accompanies the ferment. But again the terms principals and outcome are not necessarily coincident. In the ferment of the English Drama, Marlow, Ben Jonson, and others may, even beside Shakspeare, be correctly enough named principals; yet it is the last alone whom we properly term outcome. As it is, then, in the English movement, so probably will it be in the German also ; and in this light, perhaps, there awaits us a closer circum- scription yet than that which we had already reached. In other words, there may be principals here, too, whom, in part or in whole, it is not necessary to regard as outcome. The reader, indeed, may have already perceived a tendency on our part to talk somewhat exclusively of Kant and Hegel ; and may already, perhaps, resent the slight thereby implied to Fichte and Schelling, as to men who have hitherto ranked on the same platform as equals themselves, and no less equals of the others also. No man, for instance, will subordinate Fichte to Schelling ; yet, as there has been assigned to Kant the relative place of Socrates, and to Hegel that of Aristotle, so there has always been reserved for Schelling no less proud a place — the place of Plato. It may well be asked, then, why should Fichte and Schelling give way to Hegel ? Is it possible to take up the works of either of the former without perpetually coming on Anklange — on assonances to Hegel for which this latter seems the debtor ? 14 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. I. Do not sources apparently of special inspiration to Hegel crop out all through the ' Ideen ' and the ' Transcendentale Idealismus ' — all through the ' Wissenschaftslehre,' and the ' Eechtslehre,' and the ' Sittenlehre ? ' Are not the considerations contained in these works largely the material on which at least Hegel turns ? Whence else could there have been extended to him the ruts or the rails whereby his waggon was enabled to roll forward with filling to the inane ? In what respect is the single quest of Schelling or of Fichte to be distinguished from that of Hegel or of Kant ? Is it not true that there is but one quest common to all the four of them ? Is not, after all, this quest with each but, in one word, the a priori ? Do not they all aim at an a priori deduction of the all of things — a deduction which shall extend to man the pillars of his universe, and the principles as well by which he may find support and guidance in all his ways and wishes ? If, then, they are thus successive attempts at the same result, why should they not all of them be equally studied ? To this we may answer, that, so far as there is a succession, there is no wish to deny the right of any of them to be studied. We seek a practical concentration only, and, in the interest of that concentration, we would eliminate everything that is extraneous, everything that is superfluous — but nothing more. Now, as regards Kant, there is no room for doubt ; his place is fixed, not only by common consent, but by the very nature of the case. It was he who originated the whole movement, and without him not a step in it can be understood. As regards Hegel, not so much to common consent is it that he owes his place, as to the inexorable sentence of history ; for there has been no step since his death which is not to be characterised as dissolution and demise. But if Hegel be the historical culmination and end, both Fichte and Schelling must submit to be historical only so far as they lead to him — only so far as they approve themselves in his regard as nexus of mediation to Kant. Now, at a glance, there is much in both of them that is extraneous, and incapable of being regarded as historically connective in any respect. Fichte, for example, had two philosophical epochs; and if both belong to biography, only one belongs to history. The epochs of Schelling were, I suppose, three times more numerous ; but, of them all, only the second and third are historical ; those, namely, which, following the first, the initiatory identification with Fichte, sought to vindicate for Nature an independent place beside the Ego, and RELATIVE PLACES OF KANT AND THE REST. 15 then resumption for both into an indefinite Absolute. Nay, of the two epochs just named, it is even possible that we ought to strike off the latter ; for there are not wanting good reasons to maintain that the work of this epoch — the resumption, namely, of both Nature and the Ego into the Absolute — belongs, not to Schelling but to Hegel. Some of these reasons we shall see presently. Meantime, we shall assume the philosophical majority of Hegel to commence with the publication of the ' Phaeno- menologie des Geistes,' in 1807. On this assumption, the historical works of Fichte are the ' Wissenschaftslehre ' in its various forms, the ' Grundlage des Naturrechts,' and the ' System der Sittenlehre ; ' while the ' Ideen zu einer Philosophic der Natur,' the ' Von der Weltseele/ the ' Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie,' the ' System des Transcendentaleu Idealismus,' and the ' Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophic,' shall represent the historical works of Schelling. It is very probable, however, that even these conclusions will become to the student, as he advances, doubtful. With Fichte and with Schelling, his satisfaction will not always be unmixed ; and reasons will begin to show themselves for believing Hegel — however apparently their debtor, both for stimulation and suggestion — to have, after all, in the end, dispensed with both, and taken a fresh departure from Kant for himself. In such circumstances, he will incline to think still further concen- tration both justifiable and feasible. No doubt it is interesting, he will say, to see the consecutive forms which the theme of Kant assumes now in the hands of Fichte, and now in the hands of Schelling. No doubt this is not only interesting, but also, for Hegel, in some sort adjuvant. Still, if it is true that all culminates in Hegel, and that Hegel himself has made good his attachment to Kant, with practical elimination of all that is intermediate, then, evidently, for him whose object is the outcome only, Fichte and Schelling are no longer indispensably necessary. Then the dissatisfaction with these writers themselves ! As writers — this, at least, is the experience of the present student — Fichte and Schelling were incomparably the most accomplished of all the four, and offered by far the least impedi- ment to the progress of a current intelligence. Schelling, however (his vindication of nature as in opposition to Fichte, and such like, being neglected), seemed to have little to offer as stepping- stone to Hegel besides what we may call, perhaps, his Neutrum 16 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL— CHAP. I. of Eeason — his generalised Universal of Reasons — which neutrum again coalesces in effect with the absolute neutrum, which resumes into itself both nature and the ego, both objectivity and subjectivity. And even as regards this, probably by far the most important element nameable Schellingian in Hegel, there were considerations which might just reverse the received relation of its origin. The facts on which the considerations alluded to rest are these : — Hegel, when his time was come and his system — at least in its first form — lay complete in his desk, wrote to Schelling disclosing his intention to enter the career of Letters, or rather Philosophy, and asking his advice as to where to settle. He feared the literary revel ,and riot of Jena, he said : would not Bamberg, with opportunities to study Roman Catholicism, be a judicious pre- liminary residence ? Hegel wrote this letter in November 1800, and his arrival in Jena the following January was the result of the correspondence. Now Schelling, who had but just summed and completed himself — and had but just given himself to the world as summed and completed — in his ' System des Transcendentalen Idealismus,' is found, immediately after his first meetings with Hegel, and with signs of haste and precipitation about him, offering himself to the world again, new summed, new completed — this time, indeed, as he professed, finally summed, finally completed, in — what was at least partially antagonistic of the immediately previous sum — his < Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie.' These facts are few, but they probably cover a whole busy beehive of human interests both as regards Schelling and as regards Hegel. Haym, for example, a writer of brilliant genius, whom we have already mentioned, scarcely hesitates to insinuate that this haste of Schelling was probably not unconnected with the new-comer Hegel — this, as thinking, perhaps, of the proverbial communicativeness of first meetings. If, then, Hegel, on these occasions communicated anything to Schelling, the burthen of such communication would be most probably the Neutrum or Absolute ; for, while it is the most prominent element in Hegel that can be called Schellingian, it is precisely in the last-named work of Schelling's that it emerges on the whole fully formed and fully overt. In this way, this same neutrum or absolute may be viewed as the honorarium or hush-money paid by the Unknown to the Known for the privilege of standing on the latter's shoulders and in the light of the latter's fame. For possibly the application of Hegel to Schelling was not without its calculations. It broke HEGEL AND SC HELLING. 17 a long silence, and it concerned correspondents very differently- placed. Hegel was by four years and five months the senior of Schelling: as yet, nevertheless, he had done nothing ; he was but an obscure tutor, and his existence was to be wholly ignored. Schelling, on the contrary, though so much his junior, was already an old celebrity, a placed professor, an established author, a philosopher the rival of Fichte, the rival of Kant. To Hegel, unknown, obscure, of no account, nothing, but who would rank precisely among these highest of the high — who would, in fact, as the paper in his desk prophesied to him, be all — the immense advantages that would lie in Schelling's introduction, in Schelling's association of him with himself as philosophical teacher, as literary writer, could not be hid. Why, it would be the saving to him of whole years of labour, perhaps of a whole world of heart- breaks. There is, quite accordingly, a peculiar tone, a peculiar batedness of breath in the letter of Hegel: admiration of Schelling's career, almost amounting to awe, is hinted ; he looks to Schelling with full confidence for a recognition of his disinterested labour (the paper in his desk), even though its sphere be lower ; before trusting himself to the literary intoxication of Jena, he would like preliminarily to strengthen himself somewhere else, say at Bamberg, &c. &c. It is difficult to avoid distrusting all this, for we feel it is precisely Jena he wants to get at, and we know that he was not slow to come to Jena when Schelling bade him. Then, we seem to see, Bamberg had served its turn ; it and its opportunities for the study of Catholicism might now go hang ! what was wanted had been got. In their first meetings at Jena, then, such being the relative positions of the two former fellow-students, Hegel, it may be supposed, would naturally desire to conciliate Schelling — would naturally desire indirectly to show him that the advantages of a partnership would not, after all, be so very wholly on one side, — would naturally desire to make him feel that he (Schelling) had not done so ill in giving the stranger the benefit of his intro- duction and the prestige of his fame. Very probably, then, Hegel would not hesitate, in such circumstances, to show Schelling, if he could, that in his (Schelling's) own doctrines there lay an element which, if developed, would extend to the System the last touch of comprehensiveness, simplicity, and symmetry.* * Certainly in the eyes of all this is what Hegel, in his 'Differenz des Fichteschen B 18 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL— CHAP. I. But this Neutrum or Absolute will be found to be very fairly expressed, and more than once too, in the ' Transcendentale Idealismus ! ' An 'absolut Identisehes' in which the 'Objective' and 'Sub- jective' shall coalesce is talked of in various places. We may instance these : — At page 29, we hear of ' ein Absolutes, das von sich selbst die Ursache und die Wirkung — Subject und Object — ist;' at pages iv. and v. of Preface, an ' Allgemeinheit ' is talked of, in which 'das Einzelne vollig verschwindet;' again, at page 29, the ' Selbstbewusstseyn ' is identified with Nature, and both with the absolute identity of Subjective and Objective ; lastly, pp. 4, 5, we have the following : ' Nature reaches the highest goal, to become wholly object to its own self, only through the highest and last reflexion, which is nothing else than Man, or, more generally, that which we name Reason, through which (reflexion) nature first returns completely into its own self, and whereby it becomes manifest that nature is originally identical with that which is recognised in us as what is intelligent and conscious.' This would seem to dispose definitively of any pretensions of Hegel. But again, it is a curious thing that, once a doctrine has become historically established, we are often startled by expres- sions in the works of previous writers which seem accurately to describe it ; yet these previous writers shall have no more insight into the doctrine concerned than any Indian in his woods ; and we ourselves should have found something quite else in the expressions, had we read them before the doctrine itself was become historically overt. Small individuals there are in the world, however, who ferret out such ex post facto coincidences, and assume to denounce thereby some veritable historical founder as but a cheat and a thief and a plagiarist ! Now, this might have happened here, and Schelling, .for all his expressions in the Tran- scendental Idealism, might have been quite blind to their real reach till he had had his eyes opened by the communications of Hegel; in which circumstances, too, it would be ill-natured to blame him for showing haste to make good his own in the eyes of the public. It is certain that a Universal of Eeason lies much more in the way of the notions of Hegel than in that of those of Schelling, who, in the duality of reality here and ideality there, and Schellingischen Systems, ' did for Schelling. Schelling, as everybody knew, sank both sides of his philosophy into an Indifferenzpunkt. If this punkt was implicitly an absolute for Schelling, perhaps Hegel made it for him even explicitly such. (New. ) COLERIDGE. 19 seems to leap to a neutrum which, as indifference, is a neutrum, which is zero (the Null !) rather than an absolute, rather than reason. Be all this as it may, we are compelled, as it comes to us, to attribute this tenet to Schelling; and the Hegelian may still take to himself the consolation which, indeed, lay open to his master — he may sardonically look on at the little use Schelling made of it — at the little use Schelling could make of it, as it wanted to him that connexion with Kant which enabled Hegel, by giving body to the form, to realise his system. For the rest, the balanced magnet of an absolute, and more, the subordination of all to Art as highest outcome of this absolute itself — the restlessness and inconstancy of his faith whether as regards others or himself, — his silence during the life of Hegel, his malicious breaking of silence after the death of Hegel, and the little intelligence he seemed to show of the very system he broke silence on, — all this dissatisfied with Schelling, and left an impres- sion as of the too ebullient ardour that o'erleaps itself. Schelling has been said to resemble Coleridge, and not without reason so far as the latter's similarly ebullient youth is concerned. Doubtless, too, some will see in both a like versatility of opinion, and a like unsatisfactoriness of close: but, in these respects, any likeness that can be imputed is not more than skin-deep ; and otherwise, surely, not many points of comparison can be offered. Coleridge, exquisite poet, was, with all his logosophy, no philosopher ; and it is difficult to believe even that there is any single philosopher in the world whom he had either thoroughly studied or thoroughly understood. Schelling had both studied and originated philo- sophy. Than Coleridge, consequently in that regard, he was infinitely profounder in acquisition, infinitely profounder in medi- tation of the same ; he was infinitely clearer also, infinitely more vigorous, infinitely richer, and more elastic in the spontaneity of original suggestion and thought. As for Fichte, having overcome the difficulty of his second proposition, which is that of Entgegensetzung, all seemed easy so far as study was concerned ; and undoubtedly there lay in certain of his political findings — in his method of movement by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and in that his undeniable and most valuable contribution, the unconditionedness of the notion of the ego— elements to which Hegel owed much ; but — notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding the impetuous nobleness of the man, whose unhesitating headlong singleness, if to be viewed with 20 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. I. Mr Carlyle as a rock at all, must be viewed as a rock, not at rest, but in motion, irresistible from without, nor yet quite resistible from within, — the general aspect of the system is, on the whole, unsubstantial and unreal ; the in and in of the development wearies and awakens doubt, and one finds oneself easily sympa- thising with the aged and somewhat chagrined Kant, when, in a letter to Tieftrunk, he characterises it as a ' sort of ghost,' a mere 'thought-form,' 'without stuff,' which is incapable of being 'clutched,' and which accordingly 'makes a wonderful impression on the reader.' On the whole, then, — for us, — but very little material could be pointed to as separating Hegel from Kant; nay, this material itself could be derived quite as well at first hand from the original quarry, as at second hand from the trucks of the quarry-men ; and generally, in all respects, it was Hegel who specially continued and developed into full and final form all the issues which Kant had ever properly begun. The true principals, then, were Kant and Hegel ; and, they being won, all others might be cheerfully neglected. Neither as regards their difficulty, surely, was there any reason to dread eventual despair, were but the due labour instituted. What they understood, another might understand ; and for no other purpose than to be understood, had these their works been written, had these their works been published. Let us confine ourselves to Kant and Hegel, then ; nay, for the start, let us confine ourselves in them to those works of theirs which are specially occupied with the express scientific statement of their respective systems. In a word, let us at first confine ourselves to three works of each : as regards Kant, to the ' Kritik of Pure Eeason,' ' the Kritik of Practical Reason,' and the ' Kritik of Judgment;' as regards Hegel, to the ' Phaenomenologie des Geistes,' the ' Logik,' and the ' Encyclopaedie.' This, then, is what has been done — indeed, to the production of greater restriction still, from the above enumeration, 'the Phaenomenologie des Geistes ' is, on the whole, to be eliminated.* The present work relates to Hegel alone ; and the immediately succeeding chapters present a series of notes which, as products of an actual struggle to this author, may prove, perhaps, not unadapted to assist, or at least encourage, others in a like undertaking. The reader, meantime, is not to suppose that by confining our- * Of course this does not mean that the student is not, eventually, to know all the works of the Masters. (New. ) WHAT WORKS SPECIALLY STUDIED. 21 selves to Kant and Hegel, we wish it to be inferred that we consider these writers beyond the reach of some of the same objections already stated as regards Fichte and Schelling. The restriction in question is not due to any such motive, but depends only on considerations of what really constitutes the thing called German Philosophy; in regard to which, at least in the first instance, every restriction seemed necessarily a boon, if at once productive of simplification, and not incompatible with a suffi- ciently full statement of the essential truth of the subject. By such motives is it that we have been actuated : and be it further understood that our present business is not with objections, not with judgment of the systems at all, but only as yet — and if possible — with their statement and exposition. THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., A. 1. CHAPTER II. Notes of the Struggle to Hegel. A. 1. The Idea is thought ) thought consists of ideas — to think is to follow ideas. Thought, then, as whole of ideas, is an element sui generis, and will possess its own organic order ; ideas will follow an order native to and inherent in them : but the general, the universal of all ideas may be called the idea. The idea, then, is self-identical thinking; self-identical because in its own nature the idea is two-sided — an objective side is, as it were, exposed and offered to a subjective side, and the result is the return, so to speak, of the idea from its other, which is its objective side, into , itself, or subjective side, as satisfied, gratified, and contented know- ledge. We are not required to think of existent nature in all this, but only of the nature of a general idea — of the idea in its own self. Besides being self-identical thinking, it is thus also seen to be, as defined by Hegel, the capability of opposing or exposing itself to itself, and that for the purpose of being in its own -self and for its own self — just its own self, in fact. In this process the objective side can evidently be very properly called its state of otherness or hetereity ; and it is only when it arrives at this state of otherness or hetereity, and has identified it with itself, that it can be said to be by itself — that is, at home and reconciled with itself. The notion of a general idea — idea as a general, as a universal — the idea is taken and looked at by the mind, and is seen to possess this immanent process or nature. But idea follows idea — or the idea is in constant process : to show the order and train of these, or the moments of this process, may be called the system of thought, that is, of Logic, then. Now, what is concerned here, is not the succession of ideas as they occur subjectively on what is called the association of ideas, but it is that succession which occurs in real thinking, in thought as thought — in objective A BEGINNING. 23 thought, in the performance of the Idea's own immanent process and function. Now, how then will the Idea, the speculative Idea, arise and develop itself in any subject ? The first question that will naturally suggest itself will relate to Being. The idea will be first asked, or will first ask itself, to exercise its function, to do its spiriting on the fact of existence, for the nearest and first character of the Idea is that it is. The idea, then, first of all, holds itself as a mirror to the general thought of existence — to Being i^ its abstract generality, to the mere essence of the word is. Now, it cannot do so without the opposite notion of nothing also arising. It is implies or involves it is not, or, at all events, it was not; it cannot help saying to itself, the moment it looks at it is, it was not Not and is, then, is and not, must arise together, and cannot help arising together. Neither can they help flowing into the kindred notions, origin and decease, or coming to be and ceasing to be. The instant we think of Being, Existence, just as Being, Existence, in general, without a single property or quality, the notions of not, of coming to be, and of ceasing to be (which are both included in Becoming), must follow and do follow. So is. it with us when we think, so is it with our speculative ideas — that is, so is it with the speculative idea — the Idea then ; and so was it also in History. The first philosophical systems must have revolved around these simple notions, and Hegel is quite in earnest when he maintains the coincidence of History and of Logic. What is this Seyn, this Being ? Whence comes it ? Whither goes it ? What is change ? What is the influence of number, quantity, proportion ? Why is it ? These are the simple questions that circle round Being, Origin, Decease, Becoming. What is it particularly to be — individually to be (Daseyn, Fursichseyn) ? These really are the questions of the Ionics, of the Eleatics, of Heraclitus, of Pythagoras, of Democritus, &c. Now these notions are all capable of being included under the / designation Quality, for they are all replies to Qualis ? Mere exis- tence as an idea soon passes into that of special or actual existence that really is and continues to be in the middle of that coming to be and ceasing to be. It is next also seen to be not only existent in the middle of this process, but individually existent, as it were personally existent. The whole progress of Hegel through Seyn, Nichts, Werden, Entstehen, Vergehen, Daseyn, Eeality, Negation, Something, Other, Being-in-itself, Being-for-other, Precise Nature, 24 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., A. 1. manifested Property, Limit, &c. ; these may be viewed as adum- brations of stages of infantile consciousness : Dim thought that there is, that there is nothing, that there comes to be, that there ceases to be, that there is a middle state that is in the coming to being and the going from being ; that this is marked-off being, defined being ; that there is a definite and an indefinite ; that there was negation, that there is reality ; that this reality thickens itself under reflexion and reference on reality and on negation, and from reality to negation, and from negation to reality, into a something that is what it is to be in itself, in which distinction disappears and it remains a familiar Unity. When a blind man recovers sight, all is a blur, an indistinct formless blur that seems to touch him, that is not distinguished from himself, or that conceivably he could not have distinguished from himself, had he not learned from the other senses that there was another than himself. Now, a child is in the position of the blind man who recovers sight, but without ever having learned a single item from any other sense, or in any other manner. Naturally, then, that there is, &c, abstract Seyn, &c, will be the sequence of unrecorded consciousness. Distinctions of quality will certainly precede those of quantity — the differences of kind will be seen before the fact of the repetition of an individual. This Logic, then, may be viewed as the way we came to think — the way in which thought grew, till there was a world for Reflexion, for Understanding to turn upon. Even this, then, is an othering of its own self to see its own self, and it is the mode in which it did other itself. It is quite apart from nature or from mind raised into spirit ; it is the unconscious product of thought ; and it follows its own laws, and deposits itself accord- ing to its own laws. Hegel, as it were, swoons himself back into infancy — trances himself .through all childhood, and awakes when the child awakes, that is, with reflexion, but retaining a consciousness of the process, which the child does not. It is a realisation of the wish that we could know the series of develop- ment in the mind of the child. His meaning of Reflexion, of Understanding, of Reason, comes out very plain now, for the process is a transcending of the Understanding, and a demon- stration of the work of pure Reason. Then, again, it is common to us all — it is an impersonal subject. To repeat — conceivably there is first a sense of being — or the vague, wide idea Being ; there is no /in it : I is the product of A BEGINNING. 25 reflexion ; it is just a general there is; it is the vast vague infinite of Being; it has its circumference everywhere, and its centre no- where. That is plain — that Being is at once such centre and circumference; for though it is vast, and everything and every- where— and, at the same time indefinite, and vague and nowhere — still, as Being, as a vast that is, there is a principle of punctual stop in it — of fixture, of definiteness ; it is indefinite and in- determinate, but, as is, it is also definite and determinate. This is conceivably the first sense of Being. But evidently in what has been already said there is a sense of Nothing involved. It is the boundless blank, that is, and no more ; it is the roofless, wall-less, bottomless gulf of all and of nothing : senses or ideas of Being and Nothing, like vast and infinite confronting vapours — the infinite vaporous warp and infinite vaporous woof, confront- ing, meeting, interpenetrating, wave and weave together, waft and waver apart, to wave and weave together again. Then, as the only conceivably true existence — the only thing conceivably worth existence — is mind, thought, intelligence, spirit, — this must have been the first, if not as man, then as God. And the first of the first was such process. The sense of the indistinguishable — the necessity, the besoin of the distinguish- able ! No, then, is the principle that creates distinction. There is no use to explain this ; we can go back no further : it is the universe — it is what is. Understanding begins, so to speak, when Reason ceases. The Logic, then, is the deposit and crystallisation in Reason previous to Reflexion. It is the structure that comes ready constructed to Understanding. The detection of its process is the analysis or resolution of what the understanding looks upon as something simply and directly there — something ready to its hand, something simply and directly given, and which is as it is given. It is what each of us has done for himself during infancy and childhood, in darkness and unconsciousness ; or it is the work of Reason before Reflexion. We see, then, that under- standing, which transcends so much, as in astronomy, &c, must itself be transcended, and speculative reason adopted instead. Carlyle's unfathomdbleness of the universe must be seen to rest on understanding. After all, too, there may be Jacob Bohmic cosmogonic ideas at bottom: no saying how far he allows these notions of Being and Nothing to take the form of forces, and build up the All. If 26 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., A. 1. there be no Jenseits — only a here and this — which supposition does not, in Hegel's way, infringe in the slightest the truth of Immortality — then his theory is as good as any. How otherwise are we to conceive a beginning ? A beginning is what is begun, and is not what is begun. The beginning of all beginnings cannot differ. Being, too, is the basal thought and fact of all. Nothing, the principle of distinction and difference, is equally basal. It is very difficult to conceive objective thought, however, and to conceive it gradually developing itself into this actual concrete me, with these five fingers, which now write on paper, with pen and ink, &c. Something seems always to lie in the actual present, the actual immediate, that says such a genesis from abstract thought is impossible. Yet again, a genesis of thought from mere matter — that is equally impossible ; thought must be the prius : then how conceive a beginning and progress with reference to that prius ? Our system of reconciliation (English Idealism) is a deus ex machina: I — the thinking principle — am so made that such a series presents itself! Which just amounts to — I am tired thinking it; I just give it up to another, and say he cuts the knot — believing my own saying with much innocence and simplicity, and resting quite content therein, as if I really had got rid of the whole difficulty and solved the whole matter. English Idealism, in its one series, is certainly a simpler theory than the ordinary one, that there are two series — that first it (the object) and that then I (the subject) are so made. Stone-masonry and wood-carpentry are thus spared the Prius. Yet, again, there is nothing spared the Prius; all has been thrust into it, out of the way, as into a drawer, which is then shut, but it is all still in the drawer. Whether it (the object) is so made and / (the subject) am so made, or only / am so made, the so is in the Prius ; whatever else be in the Prius, the Prius is responsible to that extent : the so is ; and since the so is, the Prius must be so. We are still in presence, then, of the whole problem, which is simply the So. All this is plain to a Hegel, and all this he would meet by his absolute idealism. Hegel has a particular dislike to the deus of modern enlightenment, which he names an empty abstraction. An abstract summum — an abstract prius — and nothing more, seems indeed to constitute what goes to make up the idea, when we examine it closely. But if Hegel ridicules the deus of deism, it must be allowed he is sincere in his devotion before PLATO'S rai/TOV, ETC. 27 God — who, as every man's own heart — as tradition, as Scripture tells us, is a Spirit. Nor does he believe that he contradicts either Eeason or Scripture when he endeavours 'to know God.' Hegel is probably right in opening his eyes to a deus ex machina, and in desiring to draw close to God, the Spirit, in that he endeavours to deduce from this universe, the universal Subject of this universe. Nevertheless, his principle has much more the look of a mere regulative than of a constitutive — and it is a constitutive that we must have. A. 2. Plato discovers a boyish delight in the exercise of the new- found power of conscious generalisation extended to him by Socrates. Hegel seems to have learned a lesson in this art from Plato, for ravrov and ddrepov, or identity and otherness, which are the instruments or moments of the generalisation of the latter, seem to perform a like function in the dialectic of the former. The Socratic evolution of the idea — through elimination of the accidental from the concrete example — presents analogies (when transferred from mere ethical ideas to ideas in general) to both the Heraclitic and the Eleatic modes of thought. The accidental which is eliminated, is analogous to the fluent and changeable of Heraclitus ; while the idea that remains is analogous to the permanent and abiding One of the Eleatics. As if what is were an absolute Being, but also a relative — yet really existent — Non- being. In the relations of the Ideas, the principle of Identity is Eleatic, that of Difference is Heraclitic. The Ideas are the Universal and Necessary in the Particular and Contingent : the latter is only by reason of them; still the former come forward or appear only in it. How very analogous the categories, the dialectic, &c. &c, of Hegel to all this ! B. One, single, empirical man cannot be taken, but he and what he embodies are universalised, as it were, into a universal subject. The Logic is the immanent process of the Reason of this subject. The logical values are, as it were, depositions from the great sea of reason; and yet, by a turn, the great sea takes all up again into its own transparent simplicity and unity. "We are admitted 28 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., B. to the ultimate and elementary fibres of the All. Being and Nothing interweave to Becoming. Coming to be and Ceasing to be interweave to So-to-be, to So-being, or Here-being — to sublunary existentiality, to mortal state, which again is just Quality. Reality and Negation interweave to Something and Other. In Something and Other, the subtle delicacy of the thought-manipulation comes well to light, and displays the nature of the whole work, which is the construction of the Thing-in-itself from materials of thought only. So it is that the understanding succeeds reason, and. turns on the work of reason as on its material. Let us rapidly sketch the development in a single wave. There is a tree, a horse, a man — there is a feeling, there is a passion, there is a thought. All these phrases are, without doubt, universally intelligible. Now, in the whole six of them, there is presents itself as a common element; and it suffers no change in any, but is absolutely the same in all. There is a tree, &c. — there is a thought, &c. — however different a thought may be from a tree, or a feeling from a house, the phrase there is has precisely the same meaning when attached to tree or house that it has when attached to thought or feeling. Let us abstract, then, from these subjects, from these words, and repeat the phrase there is, there is, till the special element which these two words contribute begins to dawn on our consciousness. Let us repeat to ourselves there is with reference to matters not only outward, but inward ; and let us repeat it, and again repeat it, till it acquires, so to speak, some body as a distinct thought. If we succeed well with the two words there is, we shall find no difficulty in making one other step in advance, and in realising to ourselves a conception of what is meant by the bare word is. But the reader must understand that he is to do this. He is now to cease reading, and to occupy himself a good half-hour with the rumination of what he has just read. If he contents himself with simple perusal, he will find himself very soon stopped by insurmountable obstacles, and most probably very soon compelled to give up in disgust. But if he will devote one half-hour in the manner we have indicated, the result will be a perfect conception of the meaning of is, that is, of Abstract or Pure Being, of Abstract or Pure Existentiality, of the Hegelian Seyn. And most appro- priately is it named abstract; for it is the ultimate and absolute Abstract. It is that which may be abstracted or extracted from every fact and form of existence, whether celestial or terrestrial, SUMMARY OF THE EAKLY CATEGORIES. 29 material or spiritual. Rather it is the residue when we abstract from all these. It is the absolutely terminal calx — the absolutely final residuum that continues and must continue for our thought when abstraction is made from the whole world. Let there be no stone, no plant, no sea, no earth, no sun, no star in all the firma- ment— let there be no mind, no thought, no idea, no space, no time, no God — let the universe disappear — we have not yet got rid of is: is will not, cannot disappear. Let us do our best to conceive the universe abolished — let us do our best to conceive what we call existence abolished — still we shall find that we cannot escape from the abstract shadow is which we have indicated. Being is absolutely necessary to thought; to thought, that is, it is abso- lutely necessary that there be Being. Ask yourself, What would there be, if there were just nothing at all, and if there never had been anything — neither a God, nor a world, nor an existence at all ? Ask yourself this and listen ! Then just look at the ques- tion itself, and observe how it contains its own dialectic and contradiction in ^presupposing the Being it is actually supposing not to be ! It may appear to the reader a very simple thought, this, and a very unnecessary one: still, if he will consider that it is the universal element — that there is nothing in the heaven above nor in the earth beneath where it is not present, and that it is as essential a constituent of thought as of matter, it will probably appear not unnatural that it should be begun with in a system of Universal Logic, of Universal Thought. Without it there is no thought, and without it there is no thing. Take it even as a matter of conception, it is that which is absolutely first — that which, without us or within us, is absolutely over-against us, absolutely immediate, absolutely and directly present to us. The Eleatics had a perfect right to exclaim, 'Being only is, and nothing is just nothing at all ! ' Look at it again, now ; call up the shadow is — let us once more realise to ourselves all that we think when we say there is with any reference or with no reference — let us place before us the conception of abstract existence, of abstract Seyn.. and we shall perceive that it is characterised by a total and complete absence of any possible predicate. It is the absolute void, the absolute inane. Like the mathematical point, it is position without magnitude ; and again, it is magnitude without position — it is everything in general, and nothing in particular : it is, in fact, nothing. 30 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., B. If this prove repugnant to the reader, let him ask himself, what then is it, if it is not nothing ? or let him ask himself, what then is nothing? and the result of his deepest pondering will be that, after all, the shadow nothing is the shadow is — that abstract nothing and abstract being, or the abstract not and the abstract is, contain precisely the same thought, and that the one, quite as much as the other, is the absolute void, the absolute inane — that the one quite as much as the other is position without magnitude, and magnitude without position — that each involves and implies the other, and that both are all in general, and nothing in particular. It is absolutely indifferent, then, which we take first, / as either only leads to the other. Nothing — the conception con- tained in the absolutely abstract Nothing, involves the position implied in abstract Being, and the latter is as absolutely predi- cateless as the former. The shadow is, abstract existentiality, will, if the endeavour to think it be continued long enough, be seen in the end to be the absolute nothing, the absolute void. There is no object whatever suspended in it ; nay, there is not even space to admit of either object or suspension. For the reader is required to realise the conception there is in reference not only to material things, but in reference also to immaterial things — ideas, thoughts, passions, &c, where already qualities of space are excluded. And then, again, nothing or not similarly perseveringly pondered and realised to thought, will be seen in the end to imply is ox Being, and to possess an absolutely identical characterisation, or an absolutely identical want of characterisation, as is or Being. The reader may possibly feel it absurd, unreasonable, even unnatural, to be asked to occupy himself with such thoughts ; but we pray him not to be disheartened, but in simple and good faith to believe that the call is made on him for his best endeavours to co-operate with us, not without hopes of a solid and satisfactory result. That Being should be Nothing, and Nothing Being, is not A absurd, if only that Being and that Nothing be thought which we have done our best to indicate. We are not fools, and we discern as perfectly as another the difference of house and no house, dinner and no dinner, a hundred dollars and no dollar. The reader must have the goodness to recollect that our Nothing is the abstract Nothing — the thoroughly indeterminate, and not the, so to speak, concrete and determinate Nothing implied in that word when used as the contrary of some concrete and determinate Something. No dinner is nothing certainly, but then it is a quali- THE EARLY CATEGORIES. 31 fied nothing: it is a nothing that refers to a special something, dinner ; it contains in itself, so to speak, this reference, and so is distinguished from other analogous terms. We hope, then — and, however apparently unmeaning our language may be, we hope also that the reader will lend us his faith yet awhile longer — that it is now plain to everyone that, in our sense of the terms, Pure Being and Pure Nothing are the same. They are both absolute blanks, and each is the same blank ; still it must be understood that our sense is the true sense of Pure Being and Pure Nothing — the true sense of Being and Nothing taken strictly as such, taken in ultimate analysis. Again, it is still true that Being is not Nothing and Nothing is not Being. We feel that though each term formulates the absolute blank, and the absolutely same blank, there is somehow and somewhere a difference between them. They point to and designate the absolutely same thought, yet still a distinction is felt to exist between them. Being and Nothing are the same, then, and they are not the same. Each formulates and implies the same elements ; but one formulates what the other only implies, which latter, in turn, formulates what the former only implies. Being formulates, so to speak, Being and implies Nothing; while Nothing implies Being but formulates Nothing. Being implies negation but accentuates position ; while Nothing implies position but accentuates negation. But this is just another way of saying they are the same. The two conceptions, as point- ing to absolutely the same thought, are still essentially the same. Their difference, however, when the two are steadily looked at in thought, is seen to generate a species of movement in which they alternately mutually interchange their own identity. Being, looked at isolatedly, vanishes of its own accord, and disappears in its own opposite ; while Nothing again, similarly looked at, refuses to remain Nothing, and transforms itself to Being. The thought Being leads irresistibly to the thought Nothing, and the thought Nothing leads as irresistibly to the thought Being : that is, they disappear mutually into each other. The real truth of the whole thought, therefore, is represented by neither the one expression nor the other : this truth is seen to lie rather in the movement we have indicated, or the immediate passage of the one — no matter which we make the first — into the other. The truth of the thought, then, is that they mutually pass, or, rather, that they mutually have passed, the one into the other. But what is this process ? If Being pass into Nothing, is not that 32 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., B. the process that we name decease ? and if Nothing pass into Being, is not that the process that we name birtli, or origin, or coming to be ? Are not both processes a coming to be — in the one case, Nothing coming to be Being, and in the other Being coming to be Nothing ? Are they not both, then, but forms of Becoming, and does not the general process Becoming contain and express the whole truth of Being and of Nothing ? The abstract thoughts, then, that we name Pure Being and Pure Nothing are so mutually related that they are the same, and yet not the same ; in other words, they are susceptible of distinction, but not of separation. Again, the abstract process of which birth, growth, decay, death, &c, are concrete examples, and which we name pure or abstract Becoming, is so constituted that it presents itself as the truth of both Being and Nothing ; it is seen to contain both as in their own nature inseparate and inseparable, and yet distinguishable, but only by a distinctivity which immediately resolves and suppresses itself. Their truth, in fact, is this mutual disappearance of the one into the other, this mutual interchange ; and that is precisely the process that we name Becoming. The truth of the matter is that the one passes into the other — and not that they are — but this is Becoming. There may, to the general reader, appear something unsatisfac- tory in all this, as though it were a mere playing upon words. It is not what he has been accustomed to ; he is not at home in it ; he feels himself in doubt and embarrassment. He has been led, in a manner new and strange to him, from one thought to another ; he is not sure that the process is a legitimate one ; and he is in considerable apprehension as to the results. Still we beg a little further attention on his part, and we shall not hurry him. He may suspect us of having practised on him a mere tour de force ; but as yet he has not gone very far, and we entreat him to retrace his steps and examine the road he has already beaten. Let him realise to himself again the thought is, pure being, and he will find himself impelled by the very nature of the thing, and not by any external influence of ours, to the thought not, nought, or pure nothing. Having then realised these thoughts, he will find again that they, in their own peculiar mutual influences, imply the process, and impel him involuntarily to the thought, of pure Becoming. If we consider now the process or thought expressed by the term Becoming, we shall see that in it Being and Nothing are elements, THE EARLY CATEGORIES. 33 or, rather — to borrow a word from mechanical science — Moments. Becoming is the unity of both ; neither is self-dependent, each is distinct, yet each disappears into the other, and Becoming is the result of the mutual eclipse of both. They are thus, then, moments of Becoming, and, though transformed and — so to speak — van- ished, they are still there present, and still operative and active. Becoming has two forms according as we begin with Being and refer to Nothing, or begin with Nothing and refer to Being. It is evident, too, that Coming to be, and Ceasing to be, involve a middle ground of reality, that is : nay, Becoming itself, as based on the diversity of its moments, and yet as constituting their disappear- ance, involves a neutral point, a period as it were of rest, where Becoming is become. This neutral point, this period of rest, in the process of Becoming where Becoming is become, this middle point of reality between Coming to be and Ceasing to be, we name There-being or So-being, that is the being distinguishably there, or the being distinguishably so, what we might also call state — Daseyn, ordinary existency, finite existency. The reader, probably, will not have much difficulty in realising to himself this further step which, not we, but the thing itself, the idea itself, has taken. Pure Being leads irresistibly to Pure Nothing, and both together lead irresistibly to pure Becoming, the forms or moments of which are Coming to be and Ceasing to be : now, between these moments, or in the mutual interpenetration of these moments — that is to say, in Becoming itself — there is involved or implied an intermediate punctum that is, a middle point of unity, of repose — this point, this stable moment, or quasi- stable moment, in which Becoming is as it were Become, is There- being or So-being. Becoming indicates absolutely a become, and that become — as such and in perfect generality — is mortal state, sublunariness, in every reference, but in no special. So-being, then, as being no longer becoming but become, is eminently in the form of being ; or, in other words, So-being emphatically is. The one-sidedness, however, does not in reality exclude the other element, the not, the nothing ; Becoming lies behind it — it is but product of Becoming, and both elements must appear. The other element, indeed, the not, will manifest itself as the distinctive element. (We are now, let us remark, following Hegel almost literally, as the reader will see for himself by referring to the original or to the actual translation which he will find elsewhere.) c 34 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. If., B. So-being, or There-being, is being, but it is now predicable being. It is not like pure being, wholly unlimited, wholly indeterminate ; it is now, on the contrary, limited and determinate. But limita- tion is negation. So-being, in fact, is Being qualified by a Non- being ; but both present themselves in a condition of intimate and perfect interpenetration and union. The resultant unity is, as it were, no compound, but a simple. Neither element preponderates over the other. As far as So-being is being, so far is it non-being, so far is it definite, determinate, limited. The defining element appears in absolute unity with the element of being, and neither is distinguished from the other. Again, the determinating prin- ciple, viewed as what gives definiteness, as itself definiteness, as definiteness that is, is quality. Quality is the characteristic and distinctive principle of So-being. But as So-being is constituted, so is Quality. Quality, with special reference to the positive element of So-being, quality viewed as being, is Reality, while, on the other hand, with reference to the negative element, viewed as determinatingness, it is Negation. "We see, then, the presence of distinction, difference in So-being ; we see in it two moments, one of reality and one of negation. Still it is easy to see also that these distinctions are null ; in fact, that quality is inseparable from So-being, and that these moments are inseparable from quality ; that is, that they subsist — or consist — there in absolute unity. Each, in fact, can be readily seen to imply and constitute the other ; or each is reflexion from and to the other. But the resolution or suppression of distinction is a most important step here, for from it results the next determination, one of the most important of all. For this perception yet withdrawal of distinction involves a reflexion, a return from the limit or differ- ence back to the reality. But this reflexion, this doubling back to and on itself — implying at the same time absorption or assimilation of the limit, the difference — is the special constitutive nature of So-being. But a further thought springs up to consciousness here. In saying all this, we are manifestly saying of So-being, that it is in itself or within itself (for reflexion from, with absorption of, the limit into the reality itself is nothing else) — that it is a somewhat , that is, or just that it is Something. Something, then, as Self-reference, as simple reference to self, is the first negation of the negation. Arriving at the negation, reflexion took place back on itself with resolution of the negation. Something, then, as negation of the negation is the restoration of THE EARLY CATEGORIES. 35 simple reference to self, but just thus is it mediation, or corn- mediation of itself with itself. This principle manifests itself, but quite abstractly, even in Becoming] and it will be found in the sequel a determination of the greatest importance. But if reflexion back to and on itself in So-being gives birth to Some- thing, a similar reflexion in regard to negation gives birth to the conception or determination of otherness, or other in general. So- being, then, appears again in these moments as Becoming, but of this Becoming the moments are no longer abstract Being and Nothing, but — themselves in the form of So-being — Something and Other. Here the reader will do well once again to retrace his steps, and ascertain accurately the method which has determined results so important and striking. The results Something and Other are the most important we have yet obtained, and it is absolutely neces- sary to be decided as to the legitimacy or non-legitimacy of their acquisition. We started then with Being, in which, as abstract, the decisive point is its indefiniteness, through which indefiniteness it passes into Nothing. Being and Nothing, in their mutual interchange of identity, led directly to Becoming, which, in its own nature, and in the opposition of its moments, manifested a quasi-permanent middle point of There-being or So-being. So-being, then, mani- fested itself as Being with a limit, with a restriction. The element being was its proximate geHus, while the limit was its differentia. The proximate genus appears, then, as Reality, while the differentia appears as negation. Between being and limit, proximate genus and differentia, reality and negation, a process of reflexion, as between reciprocally reflex centres, takes place, rather has taken place. This reflexion, on the side of reality, elicits the conception of simple reference to self, which involves a being in or within self, of somewhat within itself or Something. On the side of negation, reflexion elicited the conception of other- ness, of another, of other in general. And it is these determina- tions of Something and Other which we have now to examine. Something and Other readily show themselves as interchange- able. Each is Something, and each is relatively Other. True, the Other is constituted by this reference to Something, but it manifests itself as external to this Something. It may thus be isolated and considered by itself. But thus considered, it presents itself as the abstract other, the other as other, the other 36 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., C. 1. in itself, the other of itself, the other of the other. Physical nature is such other. It is the other of Spirit. Its nature, then, is a mere relativity, by which not an inherent quality, but a mere outer relation is expressed. Spirit, then, is the true Something, and Nature is what it is only as opposed to Spirit. The quality of Nature, then, isolated and viewed apart, is just that it is the other as other, that it is that which exists externally to its own self (in space and time, &c). C. 1. That there is, is thought only in itself. Thought in itself — come to itself — come to be — constitutes is. Thought in its very commencement and absolute beginning — the very first reference of thought — the very first act of thought — could only be is — i.e. the feeling, sentiment, or sense of Being. This is the Gogito-Sum of Descartes, and this is the lch-Ich of Fichte. In fact, the Ich- Ich of Fichte having passed through the alembic of Schelling and become a neutrum, an impersonatiwcm, receives from Hegel the expression of est — Seyn — which single word conveys to him the whole burthen of the phrase, ' Seyn ist der Begriffnur an sick,' or 4 Being is the Notion only in itself.' To Hegel, a commencement, a beginning, is not, as it is to us, a creature of time, an occurrence, a thing that took place ; it is a mere thought — a thought that possesses in itself its own nature, and in the sphere of thoughts its own place. And just thus is it again for Hegel a creature of time, an event, an occurrence, a thing that took place. To Hegel, then, the idea of a commence- ment is unavoidable; but still it is only an idea so and so constituted and so and so placed in respect of others. To us it is more than an idea — it is an event, an actuality. To Hegel it is also, in one sense, more than an idea. To Hegel also it is an event, an actuality; but still to him it remains in its essence ideal — it remains an idea so placed and so constituted that we name it event, actuality, &c. To us, too, the notion of a beginning is an unavoidable and absolutely necessary pre- supposition; but this beginning we attribute to the act of an agent — God. In the system of Hegel, God, too, is present; and without God it were difficult to see what the system would be; but to Hegel, when used as a word that contains in it a dispen- sation from the necessity of a beginning, this word amounts only A BEGINNING AGAIN. 37 to a deus ex machina ; or the idea which it is supposed to imply, being but an ultimate abstraction, void, empty (in fact, idea-less), is slighted by him as the le dieu-philosophe, the deus of the Aufklarung — for by such phrases we may at least allow ourselves to translate his thought. To Hegel the introduction of this deus is only a postponement of the question, only a removal of the difficulty, and that by a single step ; it is but the Indian elephant, which, if it supports the world, demands for its own feet the tortoise. To Hegel, in his way, too, God is a Subject, a Person, a Spirit ; but as that he is the sphere of spheres and circle of circles, in whose dialectic evolution the notion of a beginning is a constitutive point, element, or moment, but at the same time not participating in that material and sensuous nature which we attribute to the character of a beginning. Still, when our object is a beginning in relation to thought as thought — to thought perfectly universally, whether the reference of our view be to the thought of God, or to the thought of man, we must all of us admit that a beginning of thought is to thought a presupposition absolutely necessary. Such necessity exists for my thought, for your thought, for all thought — let us say, then, for thought in general. But the beginning of thought as thought could only be that it was. All that thought beginning could say for itself would be is, or, if you like, am ; both words referring simply, so to speak, to the felt thought of existence in general. The absolutely first as regards thought just is — thought is, or rather the possibility of thought, is, for as yet it is only un- developed and unformed. We look at thought as it was necessarily constituted at the moment of its supposed birth, and entirely apart from involution in any material organ or set of organs — with that or these we have nothing to do, our whole business is with thought, and with thought as it in its own self unfolded and expanded itself. We have nothing to do with any physiological process — we watch only thought, the evolution of thought, the process of thought. Taking thought, then, supposi- titiously at its moment of birth, we can only say of it, it is. Nay, as already remarked, it could only say is, or am, of itself, or to itself; for thought is reflex, thought speaks to itself, thought is conscious, and the very first act of thought — though in blindness, dumbness, and, in a certain sense, in unconsciousness — would, of necessity, be a sense of Being. Thought, then, begins with the single predicate is (or am), and its further progress or process will 38 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., C. 2. evidently consist of an evolution or multiplication of predicates ; thought will simply go on naming to itself what it finds itself to be ; — and this is just the history of the world. It is at this system of predication, then — at this evolution of predicates — that here, in logic, we are invited to assist. The meaning of the phrase, « Being is the Notion only in itself,' will probably now be beginning to show itself. The Begriff, the Notion, has just come to be ; Der Begriff ist, or cogito-sum ; for Begriff is cogito, and sum is is. Thought now is, thought is in itself, it has come to itself so far; it refers to itself, to its being; it has come to be, it simply is — as yet, however, only in itself. There is, as yet, only blank self-identity. It will not be too much to say further, here also, that as thought grows, the characteristics, the predicates that will add themselves, will all possess as well the form of Being — they will all be — we shall be able to say of each of them, it is. Further, we shall be able to say that they are distinguishable, that is that they are different, that is that they are other to other. The very process of the growth — the progression — will be from one to the other, a constant transition, that is, to other, others, or otherness. The reason common to all this is just that as yet the Notion is only in itself, the form as yet is only that of a Seyn, of a Being, of an Is, of simple self-identity. The process is predication merely — a substrate or subject is excluded, and there can be no form of proposition or judgment. It is a progression from predicate to predicate — because the progress of Eeason before consciousness — the Seyn — is rather a process of deposition and concretion, and implies neither subject nor proposition. "C. 2. Shall I be able to conduct you through this vast Cyclopean edifice — this huge structure — this enormous pile — this vast mass — that resembles nothing which has ever yet appeared in France or England or the world? One of those vast palaces, it is, of Oriental dream, gigantic, endless, — court upon court, chamber on chamber, terrace on terrace, — built of materials from the east and the west and the north and the south — marble and gold and jasper and amethyst and ruby, — old prophets asleep with signet rings — guarded by monsters winged and unwinged, footed and STRANGENESS OF THE SYSTEM. 39 footless, — there out in the void desert, separated from the world of man by endless days and nights, and eternally recurrent and repeating solitudes, — lonely, mysterious, inexplicable, — a giant dreamland, but still barbaric, incoherent, barren ! After all, the omnium gatherum of infinite laboriousness, — a Chinese puzzle, a mighty ball (in snow-ball fashion) of picked-up pieces of broken crystal — reflexions of Heraclitus, and Parmenides, and Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Plotinus, and Proclus, and Descartes, and Spinoza, and Kant, and Fichte, and Jacob Bohm, and a thousand others ! No growth after all, but a thing of infinite meddle and make — a mass of infinite joinings, of endless seams and sutures, whose opposing edges no cunning of gum, or glue, or paste, or paint can ever hide from us ! Like Goethe, Hegel is a proof of the simple open susceptibility and ready impressibility of the Germans. Contrary to general supposition, they are really inoriginative. Nothing in Germany grows. Everything is made : all is a Gemachtes. It is an endless recurrence to the beginning, and a perpetual refingering of the old, with hardly the addition of a single new original grain. Hegel coolly accepts the new position — demands no proof, supplies no proof — only sets to work new-arranging and new- labelling. All is ideal, and all is substance, but all must have the schema of subject. Nature is but the other of Spirit, and the Logical Idea unites them both. This is parallel to the scheme of Spinoza — Extension, Thought, and Substance. The general schema is to be considered applicable also as particular, or as method. All are ideas; they must be classified, then — thrown into spheres, objective, subjective, and so on. The logical are the common categories — the secret machinery of the whole — the latent, internal, invisible skeleton. Say a pool of water reflects the world above. Now, let there be no above, but let the pool still reflect as before. The pool, then, becomes in itself reflector and reflexion, subject and object — Man. Restore now again the above which we withdrew, the above that was reflected in the pool — the mighty blue gulf of the universe ; and call that the reflexion of a mightier — to us invisible — pool, which is thus also reflector and reflexion, subject and object, but, as pool of all pools, God. This is an image of Hegel's world. He will have no Jenseits, no Yonder and Again ; all shall be Diesseits, a perpetual Here and Now. God shall be no mystery ; he will know God. He will apply the predicates and name the 40 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., C. 2. subject. The logical formulae are the real predicates of God. God is that real and concrete — not that unreal and abstract, not that nonentity and nowhere that is understood as the dieu of the Philosophes, the infidel god. Being and Non-being are the ultimate secrets of the universe, the ultimate and essential predicates of God. He blinks no consequences ; each individual as only finite, as only Daseyn, as only quasi-permanent moment must be resolved into the Werden, which alone is the truth of Being and Non- being. He will pack all into the form he has got — he will not see that anything sticks out of it — he will not allow himself to think that either he or we see that it is a packing. Again, the system is like the three legs which are the symbol of the Isle of Man. Throw it as you will, it keeps its feet. Turn it, toss it, it is ever the same, and triune. There is a magical toy just like it — consisting of three plates or so — seize any one of them, and all clatters down into the same original form. The Thing-in-itself is a mere abstraction, a surface of reflexion, a regulative. Is, taken immediately, that is, without reflexion, is a pure abstraction. It is a pure thought — a mere thought. Hegel sees thus an immense magical hollow universe construct itself around from a few very simple elementary principles in the centre. He has completely wrested himself from mere mortal place — on the outside — groping into a concrete delusion. He sees himself like a planet circling round a centre ; he sees that his own nature mirrors that centre ; then he forcibly places himself in the centre, to take up, as it were, the position of God, the Maker, and sees himself — as mere man — as concrete delusion — circle round himself. How small must all other men appear to him — that trip over his Seyn and his Nichts — what fearful laughter is in this man ! Does he not come out from the centre of that world, that den, that secret chamber of his, begrimed with powder, smelling of sulphur — like some conjuror, — hard and haggard, his voice sepulchral and his accents foreign, but his laugh the laugh of demons ? Contrast this with the simple pious soul, on the green earth, in the bright fresh air, patiently industrious, patiently loving, piously penitent, piously hopeful, sure of a new world and a new life — a better world and a better life — united to his loved ones ; there for ever in the realms of God, through the merits of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. WESEN. 41 C. 3. la Wesen Hegel has to exhibit the metaphysical nature of Essence ; the peculiarity of which is assumed by us to lie in this, that it alone constitutes the reality, while the manifestation con- stitutes the unreality; nevertheless, at the same time, also, the manifestation depends on the essence, and yet, no less, the essence depends on the manifestation. This is a simple idea ; but with this, and this only, Hegel contrives to wash over page after page. Such a conception quite suits the nature of the man ; his delight is endless in it. He looks at it incessantly, finding ever some new figure, some new phrase for the extraordinary inter-relations of essence and manifestation. And never were such words written — selcouth, uncouth, bizarre, baroque — pertinent and valuable only to a Hegel. Style and terminology how clumsy, inelegant, obscure ! Then the figures, like ' life in excrement,' an endless sprawl — an endless twist and twine — endless vermiculation, like an anthill. We will not remain content with the manifestation, we must pierce through it to the centre verity, he says ; it is the back- ground that contains the true, the immediate outside and surface is untrue. Then this knowledge is a reflexive knowledge — it •does not take place by or in the essence — it begins in another, it has a preliminary path to travel — a path that transcends the ■directly next to us, or, rather, that enters into this. Thought must take hints from the immediate, and thus through inter- agency attain to essence. Then — and so on ! Strange, meaning- less, stupid as all this may seem, it is still the same thing that is spoken of — the mutual relations that result from a thing considered at once as essence and manifestation. The manifestation exhibits itself as real and unreal, as separable from essence and inseparable, and the whole idea is the product of a process of reflexion between the two parts — between the sort of negative abstraction or interior that is viewed as what is eminently real and that corresponds to essence, and the affirmative manifestation or exterior, that is yet viewed as relatively negative and unreal. Essence, in short, is an idea resulting from reflexes between an outer manifestation and an inner centre or verity. Such is the whole metaphysic of the matter, and to this we have page after page applied.* * This just shows, however, that we must verify our categories— our distinctions — our common terms of thought and speech. 42 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., C. i. C. 4. Kant ideally constructed all as far as the Thing-in-itself, God, Immortality, &c. Fichte transmuted the Thing-in-itself into the Anstoss, the Appulse, and summed up the others under the Ego. Schelling got rid of Ego, Anstoss, &c, in his neutrum of the Absolute. Hegel only mediated what Kant had left immediate, up to the stand-point of Schelling; that is, he deduced by a process of evolution the Thing-in-itself, &c. The means he adopted consisted of his expedients of abstraction and reflexion. Through these he succeeds in showing the mediate nature of these Bestimmungen, values, previously looked on as immediate. There is much that is suggestive in Kant, much that is sound and pregnant; but there is again even in him, mainly Britannic as he is, the German tendency to ride an idea to death — to be carried on one's hobbyhorse, nothing doubting, far into the inane. The non-reality of his categories, the inconceivableness of their application, the unsatisfactoriness of his conclusions on time and space, the insufficiency of his schema of time in regard to causality (bunglingly borrowed, though it be, and in a crumb-like fashion, by Sir W. Hamilton) — all this, and much more, must be held as evident. Then Fichte develops a most pregnant con- ception in that of the pure Ego, but he stops there ; or, rather, everyone instinctively refuses to follow him further on his hobby- horse of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and wonders at the simple, futile laboriousness of the noble, honest man. Schelling and his neutrum must content themselves with their temporary or contemporary influence. He was ever, as it were, a susceptible, ardent stripling — a creature of books and the air of chambers : his transcendence of the Ego anly misled Hegel, and his neutrum is untenable. If ever man dropped into the grave an ' exasperated stripling ' of fourscore, it was Schelling. He longed to be great ; but neither Fichte, nor Spinoza, nor Jacob Bohm, nor Plotinus, nor Hegel could supply him with a bridge to what he coveted. Hegel has a brassier and tougher determination to be original at all costs than Schelling. He attacks all, and he reconciles all. He is as resolute a Cheap-John, as cunning and unscrupulous and unhesitating a hawker, as ever held up wares in market. Here, too, we have the same credulity in the sufficiency of his hobby- horse, the same tendency to superfetation and monstrosity. Strange OBJECTIONS TO KANT AND THE REST. 43 how such a tough, shrewd, worldly man should have so egregiously deceived himself ! Because he could new-classify and new-name, he actually thinks that he new-knows and new-understands ! He actually believes himself to say something that explains the mystery, when he says materiature has no truth as against Spirit, and when he talks of the monstrous power of contingency in nature I No ; the current belief (as shown in Kossuth) that the Germans have got deeper into the infinite than other people is an out-and-out mistake. They have generated much monstrosity both in literature and philosophy, through the longing to be great and new; to equal the bull, they have blown themselves out like the frog, and burst — that's all ! A few grains of sound thinking can be gathered out of them, but with what infinite labour ! From Fichte, the Ego ; from Schelling, Nil ; from Hegel, amid infinite false, some true classification and distinction ; from old Kant, certainly the most, and with him the study of metaphysic must in Great Britain recommence. In regard to Hegel, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are seldom far from each other, but the latter predominates. If, for a moment, the words light up, and a view be granted, as it were, into the inner mysteries, they presently quench themselves again in the appearance of mere arbitrary classification and artificial nomenclature. The turns are so quick and thorough ! one moment we are north, the next south, and, in fact, we are required to be in both poles at once ! An art that so deftly and so swiftly turns this into that, and that into this, rouses suspicion : we fear it is but the trick of speech ; we fear we have to do with a fencer but all too cunning ; we are jealous of the hot and cold blowing, and, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, we exclaim, ' An I thought he had been so cunning in fence,' &c. We cannot help seeing an attempt to knead together all the peculiarities of his predecessors: the categories, freedom, and antinomies of Kant, the Ego, and the method of Fichte, the substance and the neutrum of Schelling. It is thus he would make his Absolute Subject, to whom we can see no bridge ! — who is either ourselves, or we cannot get at him. If he is not ourselves, he refuses to cohere ; we cannot articulate the bones of this Universal, nor breathe into him individual life ! He will not cohere, indeed ; like the great image in Daniel, he breaks in pieces of his own accord, and falls down futile. The sense is often multiform, like a gipsy's prophecy or the scrolls of the alchemists. 44 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., D. 1. The singular is being constantly hypostasised, but not as singular — as transformed rather into his huge, vast, self-contradictory, untenable Universal ! D. 1. The transition from Seyn (Being) to Daseyn (There-being, That- being) is a faulty one. The contradiction latent in Werden (Becoming) itself, and made obvious to thought by alternate consideration of its two antagonistic forms, moments, or elements, is inadequately expressed by Daseyn. The inadequacy is one of excess : Daseyn means more than the idea to which it is applied. Fixedness in the flux, or quasi-permanence in the flux, is the sole notion arrived at by consideration of the contradiction in question. Now Daseyn, it must be admitted, implies, so far as its etymology is concerned, but little more than this. While Seyn is Being, Daseyn is There-hemg or Here-being ; while the former is is, the latter is there or here is; and the there or here, though in itself an appellative of space, and though as yet space and its concerns have no place among these abstract thoughts, involves an error so completely of the infinitely small kind, that it may justifiably be neglected. But an appellative of space is not the only foreign element, the interpolation of which we have here to complain of, and it is not the etymological use of the word which we are here inclined to blame. It is in the ordinary and everyday use of the word that the source of the error lurks. Daseyn, in fact, not by virtue of the step it indicates in the process, but by virtue of its own signification, introduces us at once to a general insphering universe, and particular insphered unities. Nay, Hegel himself tacitly accepts all this new material so con- veniently extended to him, for*he says at once Daseyn is Quality; that is, having arrived at the one particular quality, fixedness, he hesitates not to sublime it into the type of all quality, or into quality in general. This, however, is just what the Germans themselves call Erschleichung ; there is here the semblance only of exact science, the reality, however, of interpolation and sur- reptitious adoption. Seyn, Nichts, Werden, Entstehen, Vergehen (Being, Nothing, Becoming, Origin, Decease), have been turned and tossed, rattled and clattered before us, till the sort of in- voluntary voluntary admission is abstracted, * Oh, yes, we see ; Daseyn is the next step.' But after this admission the logical OBJECTIONS TO HEGEL. 45 juggler has it all his own way: Daseyn being conceded him in one sense, the line rogue uses it henceforth freely in all. It may be objected that we do not sufficiently consider the nature of the fixedness — that we do not sufficiently realise what fixedness it is. This fixedness, it may be said, is the fixedness in the flux, the fixedness between coming to be and ceasing to be ; and fixedness, so placed, indicates a very peculiar quality — the quality, in fact, of all quality. It is the abstract expression of every existent unity, whether bodily or mental; just such fixed- ness is the abstract absolute constitution of every existent particular entity ; and it is no subreption to call it quality, for every entity that bodily or mentally is there, is there by virtue of this fixedness in the coming and going — that is, by virtue of its quality. To this, the only reply is, You admit the objection, you drag in the empirical world. Then they say, Why, we have never excluded it. We admit the presence of Anschauen (percep- tion) behind all our reasoning ; but we contend that all our reasoning is absolutely free from it, that there is no materiature whatever in it, that it consists of absolutely pure abstract thought. Our Werden is the pure thought of all actual Werdens ; our Daseyn is just what of pure thought all actual Daseyns contain. Daseyn is nothing but that abstract fixedness. Then we conclude with — It is all very well to say so, but the presence of actual perception is constantly throwing in prismatic colours, and the whole process, if it is to be conceived as a rigorous one, is a self-delusion. This (of ' Bestimmung, Beschaffenheit, und Grenze,' in the full Logic) is the most intricate and the least satisfactory discussion we have yet been offered. There is no continuous deduction : the deduction, in fact, seems to derive its matter from without, and so to be no deduction at all. The distinctions are wire-drawn t equivocal, shadowy, evanescent. The turns and contradictions are so numerous, that suspicion lowers over the whole subject. It is an imbroglio and confusion that no patience, no skill can satisfac- torily disentangle. The greater the study, the more do weak points come to light. For what purpose, for example, has Eigenschaft, a word involving the same matter, been treated several pages pre- viously in an exoteric fashion, if not to prepare the way for the esoteric fashion here ? Then will this hocus pocus with Bestimm- theit, Bestimmung, Beschaffenheit, An sich, An ihm, &c, really stand the test of anything like genuine inspection ? We are first told that, &c. — He then describes, &c. A very pretty imbroglio, 46 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., D. 1. truly ! and one that results from the same thoughts being con- torted through all manner of different terms. But this is the least of the confusion, the greatest is behind, &c. — We are next told,&c. Suppose we apply his own illustration to his own words, we shall find that in man his Bestimmung is Denken, his Bestimmtheit ditto, his An sich ditto, and his An ihm ditto. His Seyn-fiir- Anderes is called his Natiirlichkeit, but might easily be shown to be just Denken too. The confusion, in fact, becomes everywhere worse confounded. All seems a mere arbitrary play of words, the player perpetually shifting his point of view without giving notice of the shift. But what, then, can be the truth here ? The truth is, we have just to do with a brassy adventurer who passes himself off as a philosopher, but presents as his credentials only an involved, intricate, and inextricable reformation of the industry of Kant; and this, in the middle of adventurer-like perpetual abuse, correc- tion, and condemnation of this same Kant. The object he seems to have here before his eyes, is the special constitutive quality of Something, which is a compound of outer manifestation and inner capability. Then, that there is sometimes an outer manifestation that does not seem directly to depend on the inner force, but to be mere outside. Then, that accidental and essential manifestations are really the same. Then, that a thing changed by influence of something, reacts on that something, contributes elements to its own change and maintains itself against the Other. "Water liquid, and water frozen, are the same yet different, for example, — two somethings and one something ; the negation seems immanent, it is the development of the Within-itself of the Something. Other- ness appears as own moment of Something — as belonging to its Within-itself. Then, that the identity and diversity of the two Somethings lead to Limit, &c. &c. The whole business of Hegel is here to reduce these empirical observations into abstract terms, and to treat them as if they were results of thought alone, and as if they were legitimately and duly deduced from his abstract com- mencement with pure Being. The confusion of language, the interpolation of foreign elements, the failure of exact deduction, the puzzle-headed fraudulence of the whole process, can escape no one. He draws first his great lines of Being and Nothing. Then, over the cross of these two lines, he sets himself, like a painter, to lay on coat after coat of verbal metaphysic with the extravagant expectation that the real world will at length emerge. The first coat to the cross is Werden ; again it is Daseyn ; and again it is OBJECTIONS TO HEGEL. 47 Fursichseyn. It also becomes manifest that he alternately paints with two colours and with one : Being and Nothing two, Becoming one, Origin and Decease two, Daseyn one, Reality and Negation two, Something one, An sich and Seyn-fur-Anderes two, and so on. It will be found, in fact, that the whole process is but a repeated coating of Being and Nothing, now as diverse and again as identical till the end of the entire three volumes. Nor is it a bit better with his exoteric works — not a bit with the ' Philosophy of History,' the most exoteric of all ! Second chapter, second section, second part, it has a strange effect to hear Hesel talk of the Greek and Christian Gods in the same breath : ' Man, as what is spiritual, constitutes what is true in the Grecian gods, that by which they come to stand above all Nature-gods, and above all abstractions of a One and Supreme Being. On the other side, it is also stated as an advantage in the Grecian gods, that they are conceived as human, whereas this is supposed to be wanting in the Christian God. Schiller says, " Men were more Godlike when gods were more menlike." But the Grecian gods are not to be regarded as more human than the Christian God. Christ is much more Man : he lives, dies, suffers death on the Cross ; and this is infinitely more human than the man of beauti- ful nature among the Greeks!' Was there ever any really divine sense of the All awakened in him ? What curious maundering dreaming, or dreaming maundering, is all that flaying at philoso- phising over the Greek gods ! He talks much of abstract and con- crete ; but, after all, did the concrete ever shine into him but through the abstractions of books ? Of the origin of these gods in common human nature, do we get a single glimpse in all his maundering ? They come from other nations and they did not, they are local and not local, they are spiritual and they are natural ; and it is black and white, and red and green, and look here and look there, and this is so and so, and that is so and so : and so all is satisfactorily explained, clear and intelligible ! How could he ever get anyone to listen to such childish theorising — disconnected theorising, and silly, aimless maundering — the thought of his substance, that develops itself from An sich to Fur sich, recurring to him only at rare intervals, and prompting then a sudden spasmodic but vain sprattle at concatenation and reconciliation ? The fact is, it is all maundering, but with the most audacious usurpation of authorita- tive speech on the mysteries that must remain mysteries. * God must take form, for nothing is essential that does not take form ; ' 48 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., D. 1. • but if God is to appear in an appropriate expression, this can only be the human form : ' — what is this maundering — does Hegel see anything ? What is God to Hegel ? Does he figure a universal thought, conscience, will, emotion, — a universal spirit? Has that spirit the sense of ' I ? ' — can there be thought, conscience, emotion, will, without ' I ? ' How am I to figure myself beside this Hegelian universal ? How comes my thought to be mine, egoised into my ' I ? ' How am I specialised out of the Universal ? Is it not a vain wrestling to better name the All in characteristics of mind ? Is there any deduction — any explanation ? The exasperating sensation in attempting to construe all this into ordinary words or forms of thought ! It is just that there is no Jenseits, no Yonder, only a Here and Now of Spirit running through its moments ! What relief to the understanding on such premises, but the Materialism of Feuerbach or the Singleism of Stirner, which seem indeed to have so originated ? Language contains so many words, distinguished by so very slight, subtle, and delicate meanings, that it gives vast oppor- tunities to a genius such as that of Hegel ; who delights to avail himself of them all, to join them, disjoin them, play with them like an adept, arriving finally to be able to play a dozen games at once of this sort of chess, blindfold. His whole talk seems to be a peculiar way of naming the common, — a simply Hegel's way of speaking of naturalism. What is, is, and I give such and such names to it and its process, — but I do not fathom or explain it and its process — I merely mention it in other than the usual words. The ' Vestiges ' transcend the actual only in a physical interest ; but here the physical is translated into the metaphysical. The final aim of all is consciousness ; and said consciousness is figured, not as subjective, as possessed .by some individual, but as objective and general, as substantive and universal. The realised freedom of spirit viewed as substantive reason, this is the process we are to see taking place, and it is in the form of the State we are to recog- nise its closest approximation to realisation ! The State is the nidus in which are deposited all the successive gains of the world- spirit. The State is the grand pupa of existence, surrounded by the necessary elements of nourishment, &c. Mankind are seen, then, like coral insects, subjectively secreting intelligence, and depositing the same objectively in the rock of the State ! Is, then, a Constitution the great good, as it were the fruit and OBJECTIONS TO HEGEL. 49 outcome of the whole universe ? In spite of all changes in ideals and reals, is there an objective spiritual gain handed down from generation to generation ? Can this be exhibited ? Out of the human real, reposing on and arising from the human ideal, is there a universal real or ideal gained ? Can it be characterised ? Carlyle, ' as witness Paris-city,' admits that much has been realised ; but is not his standpoint chiefly rejection of the objective and assertion of the subjective ? Is not that the nucleus of Hero-worship, — which looks for weal from living individuals, not from the objective depositions of reason (in the shape of institutions) in time ? Is, then, the great practical question that of Hegel, not what was he or what was another, but what are the objective gains of the world- spirit ? Hegel alludes to an ' element in man that elevates him above the place of a mere tool and identifies him with the Universal itself; there is the divine in him, freedom, &c. — the brute is not, &c. — but/ he says, ' we enter not at present on proof ; it would demand an extensive analysis, &c. &c. ! ! ' Fancy the audacious cheek of the Professor, beating down his hearers by mere words — giving other names to common categories — as if they were all thereby explained and in his waistcoat pocket ! Where is his justification — where is the basis of all those fine airs of superi- ority ? Does he believe more than a Divine government of the world — does he see aught else than the hard lot of much that is good and true ? Is the one explained or only named by the word Eeason, and the other by Contingency? — 'which latter has received from the former, the Idea, authority to exercise its monstrous influence ! ' Must we not repeat — dedit verba ? It is intelligible how the State looms so large in Hegel's eyes. It is a type of the step in philosophy named the transcending of the Ego. The will and the idea here are not expressions of what is individual, but of what is general. This is true, too, to the aim of the Socratic generalisation which raised up the universal and necessary out of the particular and accidental. But does all one's worth come from the State ? Since the State grows in worth, must not a portion of worth come from the individual? Is not the individual always higher than the State4 — Christ than Jewry, Socrates than Athens, Confucius than China ? Hegel is always pedagogue-like — with him naming is explaining. D 50 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., D. I. Nor is it true that we are more subjective, the Greeks more objec- tive. Xenophon (the murmurs of the individual Ten Thousand), as well as Homer (Thersites), shows subjectivity to have had greater influence then than now. How definitively conclusive Hegel is to himself on all these matters in this ' Philosophy of History ! ' Whether he is in Africa or Europe, America or Asia, he dictates his views equally imperially — his findings are infallible, never doubt it, sir! — Ah me ! these sentences on all and everything in the world are quite irreversible ! ' In Ashantee, the solemn ceremony begins with an ablution of the bones of the mother of the king in the blood of men,' why does Absolute Wisdom omit to ask itself, What, if she still live ? The statesman shows his son how very little wisdom is required in the governing of the world; and Hegel makes plain here that Absolute Knowledge has only to assert and again assert, and always assert. How unscrupulous that sniff of condemnation ! How unhesitating that decisiveness of sentence in the midst of so little certainty ! — bless you ! he does not fear ! An impure spirit, with impure motives, takes to an ethereal subject, will take rank with the best, will speak as authoritatively as they, and pours out indiscriminately slag and ore: Germany here, too, true to its character of external inten- tional effort according to the receipt in its hands. But in that leaden head of his, what strange shapes his thoughts take, and how strangely he names them ! In the preface to the ' Phaenomenologie,' observe the dry, sap- less, wooden characterisation, in strange, abstract, prosaic figures, of the hapless plight of the unfortunate Schellingian ! Hegel it is, rather than Schelling, who has put in place of reasoning, a curious species of inward vision — applied it is to strange things of wire in an element of sawdust, dull, dead, half-opaque, sound- less, fleshless, inelastic — a motion as of worms in a skull of wood — not the rich shapes in the blue heaven of the true poet's phantasy! How he continues throwing the same abstract, abstruse, confused prose figures at Schelling ! Verily, as Hum- boldt says of him, language here has not got to the Durchbrech: that is, we may say, perhaps, language remains ever underground here, muffled, and never gets to break through, as flowers elsewhere do, or as other people's teeth do ! Really, Hegel's rhetoric is absolutely his own. There is something unlefangenes — simple- tonish — in him : he is still the Suabian lout ! THE PROCESS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 51 D. 2. This — referring to a passage in the same preface — is just a description in abstracto of self-consciousness. The Ego is first unal simplicity, — that is, unal or simple negativity ; but just, as it were, for this very reason (that is, to know itself and be no longer negative, or because it finds itself in a state of negativity) it becomes self-separated into duality — it becomes a duplication, a duad, the units of which confront each other, in the forms of Ego-subject and Ego-object; and then, again, this very self- separation, this very self-duplication, becomes its own negation — the negation of the duality, inasmuch as its confronting units are seen to be identical, and the antithesis is reduced, the antagonism vanishes. This process of self-consciousness has just to be trans- ferred to the All, the Absolute, the Substance, to enable us to form a conception of unal negativity of Spirit passing into the hetereity of external nature, finally to return reconciled, har- monious, and free into its own self. Surely, too, that process of self-consciousness strikes the key-note of the whole method and matter of Hegel ! An sich may be illustrated by an ill-fitting shoe. First, con- sciousness is only in itself — or, as the German seems to have it, only at itself, only in its own proximity : there is malaise quite general, indefinite, and indistinct; it is everywhere in general, and nowhere in particular. But, by degrees, the mist and blur, the nebula, resolves itself into foci and shape; Ansichseyu becomes Fiirsichseyn, and it is seen — that the shoe is too wide in the heel — that and nothing else. The intermedium is the first step in the divine process (the phase of universality, latent potentiality being first assumed) ; it is reflexion into its own self, and as such only, and no more, it is the awakening of consciousness, the kindling, the lighting, the flashing up of the Ego, which is pure negativity as yet. First, the Ego was only in or at itself, everywhere in general and nowhere in particular, — that is, latent only, potential only (the formless infinite, indefinite nebula) ; then comes reflexion of this into itself or on to itself, and this reflexion is a sort of medium, an element of union, a principle of connection between self and self. In this stage, the previously indefinite comes to be for itself; that is to say, in the physical world, it is a finite, 52 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. II., D. 2. circumscribed, individual entity, and in the metaphysical a self- consciousness. Eeduced to its most abstract form, it is nothing but a Becoming — a becoming something — a focus in the nebula, an Ego in consciousness. Ego is immediate to Ego, focus to focus ; the mediacy then leads only to a condition of immediacy. Process is no prejudice to unity, nor mediacy to immediacy ; it is a one, a whole, an absolute, all the same. The same reason — the same forms, processes, peculiar experi- ences and characters, exist in the outer world which exist in the inner: analogy passes into its very depths — the outer is just the inner, but in the form of outerness or hetereity, alienation. Thus Hegel, horsed on his idea, penetrates and permeates the whole universe both of mind and matter, and construes all into a one individuality — which is Substance, the True, the Absolute, God. The idea is evidently substance, for it is common to all ; it is the common element ; it is the net into which all is wrought, whether physical or metaphysical. Behind the logical categories, there lie side by side the physical and the spiritual. Hegel really meant it — and Eosenkranz is wrong to take it as mere figurative exaggera- tion— when he says that what is here is 'the demonstration of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite spirit.' Much is Aristotelian in the above. There are reflexes of the 8vva/j.i so it is philosophy in nuce.' It is impossible for words to say in any more direct fashion that the philosophy of Hegel is the history of philosophy. Still, it is to be asserted here that the connexion of the system of Hegel with history is under- stood in a very different sense by Haym from that which we suppose ourselves at present to entertain. Haym, after all, has not attained to the truth as regards Hegel. Haym represents the system of Hegel as something quite arbitrary and artificial, which has arisen in obedience to a desire to make the Ileal harmonise with the Ideal, and according to conceptions of Grecian symmetry. This, the result of Haym, is a complete and total mistake : Haym makes Hegel act on an external motive, whereas Hegel really acted on one internal ; Haym makes Hegel to labour consciously towards an ideal object, whereas Hegel worked consciously towards a real object. Hegel, in fact, takes philosophy, actual philosophy, as it comes to him from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, and remoulds it onwards on its own objective principles, and not on his own sub- jective ones — just as Kant receiving philosophy from Hume, attempted honestly to mould it onwards thence. The proof of the truth of what lies here will consist in this, — that, after all explanations, Hegel has remained obscure and SPECIAL ORIGIN, ETC. OF THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE. 179 unintelligible ; whereas now — as we hope, that is — the Hegelian system will be found at least open. It is a curious thing, this contrast between words and the meaning of words. Haym's words are perfect ; they seem to state the case quite as directly as those of Hegel: yet Haym, in all probability, never said to himself: why, that abstract characterisation means Kant, this again Fichte and Schelling, and that other Hegel himself; in fact, it just expresses the development of the Begriff; there it is An sich with Kant, here Fur sich with Fichte and Schelling, and there, finally, it is An und fur sich with Hegel : that so abstract paragraph, in short, is the history in nuce of philosophy in Germany ! ! Now here the key was complete, and a realisation effected of the words of Hegel in a field and with a literality of which Haym had never dreamed. In this there lies a correction for those who are perpetually finding the historical views of the great masters perfectly antici- pated in crumbs of their predecessors : for in the light of a subsequent idea words may readily seem to convey that of which, as written and when written, they had not the remotest glimpse. The industry that would attribute the merit of the new light to the preceding perfectly dark words is mean-: it is false and fraudulent to the great historical name in its injustice ; and it is false and fraudulent in that it seeks to procure for itself the credit of research and the glory of originality. Thus, here, words may be found in many writers directly enunciative of the connexion of Hegel's philosophy with the history of philosophy — such words are perfectly direct there in his own works — at the same time that these writers themselves had no perception of the close and literal application which really obtained. How striking the course of thought : Substance, Causality, Reciprocity, Begriff, Idee ! Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, are all there. The reciprocity lay in Kant, who altered the relative positions of subject and object, and thus was the notion, the notion of recip- rocity, an sich. In Fichte and Schelling, the notion of reciprocity passes into its differences of subjectivity and objectivity, and becomes fur sich. Kant is the notion in immediate or universal form ; Fichte and Schelling, the notion in particular form. But it is Hegel who takes the notion of reciprocity as such, who converts it into the an und fur sich, the concrete singular, and exhibits it 180 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL— CHAP. V., C. everywhere as the substantial, original creative cell, and as the substantial, original, universal system of cells — the Idee. C. The opening determinations of the system present themselves so abruptly, that one is apt to ask : How did Hegel come upon them ? Cannot they be connected in some ordinary way with ordinary thought ? Is there no means of bridging over the chasm between ourselves here and Hegel there? Hegel very rightly asserts that all this is discoverable just in what the notion of a beginning brings with it, and it may be recommended to everyone to think out the matter from this point of view for himself : still, what the above questions indicate as the want of the inexperi- enced reader is to be found in the genesis of Hegel from Kant, and in the successive notions which arose to the former in the progress of that genesis. The categories in Kant had a burthen, a manifold, an ingest, a matter of their own. They and this matter, though subjective in origin, though in us, projected themselves out there into the objects, and came back to us (in sensation) with the objects and in the objects, forming in fact, though unconsciously to us, a most important, or the most important, portion of the objects. This is the first thought that, conceivably, rose to Hegel in the genesis in question ; and he may be supposed to express it to himself thus : The object is formed by me, wholly by me ; for the thing-in-itself which has been left as an unknown noumenon by Kant, is but an abstraction, and exists not. What is, is my Sensation, in my Space and Time, in my Categories, and in my Ego. But each Ego as Ego is identical with my Ego as Ego. What substantially is, then, what necessarily is, what universally is — what, apart from all consideration of particular Subjects or Egos, objectively is, is — Sensation in the net of Space and Time ganglionised into the Categories. All is ideal, then ; but this ideal element (the com- mon element that remains to every subject on elimination of the individual subject) can only be named an objective one. Now in this objective element there are two parts — one capable of being described as sensuous, and the other as intellectual. But these two parts are not wholly discrepant and heterogeneous. The sensuous part, for example, is but a copy, but an externalisation of the intellectual part. The former is but the other of the latter. MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 181 The latter, then, is the more important, and contains all that, essentially and substantially, its other is. In such relation, indeed, its other is to it as nothing. Neglecting the other, or the copy, then, let us confine our attention to the categories, to the intellectual part, to the inner part, of which the other is but the other, or, what is the same thing, a repetition sensuously and outwardly. Well, these categories declare themselves at once as objective thoughts. So far as there is an out, they are out there objectively in the world ; or the world is made on these categories, on these thoughts. This, then, is the first Hegelian thought : the category is objective, is in the object or forms the object. To know all the categories, then, would be to know all the thoughts which formed the universe — to know all the thoughts, indeed, which are the universe. But such knowledge, concerning as it does the thoughts of God, would be tantamount to a knowledge of God himself. From this scheme it will be evident, how completely all that is peculiarly Hegelian lay already in the findings of Kant. But to look more closely, we may say that directly this ' light went up' to Hegel, it would naturally and necessarily be the categories that would engross all his attention — the categories of Kant. What were they ? Where had Kant got them ? How had Kant manipulated them ? Could nothing more be made of them ? Here, surely, was a most promising field for an aspirant to the honours of philosophy ; and most thoroughly, it must be said, was it ransacked, and turned over, and re-modelled, and re- made, and re-presented by Hegel. Ke-presented indeed, so that even any trace of the original, would scarcely with any readiness suggest itself. The same work, however, which established Hegel, serves also to discover him ; and this is the thorough investiga- tion of that which is the essential part, the essential and central secret indeed of the whole system, of Kant — the Deduction of the Categories. It is curious to watch the manoeuvres of Hegel here, the manner in which, when led to the subject, he speaks of these categories of Kant. By way of example, let us refer to a very remarkable Note which occurs in the ' Allgemeine Eintheilung ' of his Logic (Berlin, 1833, pp. 52, 53). The correlative text runs thus : — 'Kant has, in latter times, set opposite to what has been usually named logic, another logic, a transcendental logic namely. That which has been here named objective logic would correspond in part to that which with him is the 182 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. transcendental logic. He distinguishes it from what he names universal logic in such wise that it (a) considers the notions which refer themselves a priori to objects, and consequently does not abstract from the whole matter of objective knowledge, or that it contains the rules of the pure thinking of an object, and (j3) at the same time relates to the origin of our perception so far as it (our perception) cannot be ascribed to the objects. It is to this second side that the philosophical interest of Kant is exclusively directed. His main thought is, to vindicate the categories for self-consciousness, as the subjective ego. In consequence of the direction thus imposed, the view remains standing fast within consciousness and its antithesis [of an object and subject, to wit] ; and besides the empirical element given by sensation and perception, it has some- thing else left over which is not entailed and determined by thinking self- consciousness, a thing-in-itself, a something foreign and external to thought ; though it is easy to see that such an abstractum, as thing-in-itself, is itself only a product of thought, and that, too, only abstracting thought.' The Note itself runs thus : — ' I may mention that I take frequent notice in this work of the Kantian philosophy (which to many may seem superfluous), because this philosophy — its more particular character as well as the individual parts of the execution may be considered as they may in this work or elsewhere — constitutes the base and starting point of later German Philosophy, and this its merit remains undetracted from by what may be excepted to in its regard. In the objective logic frequent reference requires to be made to it for this reason also, that it enters into particular consideration of important, more special sides of the logical element, while later discussions Of philosophy have, on the contrary, paid little heed to this (the logical element), have partly indeed exhibited in its regard often only a barbarous — but not unrevenged — contempt. The philosophising which is the most widely extended among us, passes not beyond the Kantian results, that reason can come to know no true material content, and as regards absolute truth that we are to be directed to Belief. In this philosophising, however, the beginning is immediately made with that which in Kant is the result, and consequently the preceding executive development, which is itself a philosophical cognition, and from which the result issues, is cut off beforehand. The Kantian philosophy serves thus as a bolster for indolence of thought, which comforts itself with this, that all is already proved and done with. For actual knowledge, and a definite real something of thought which is not to be found in such sterile and arid self- comforting, recourse ought, therefore, to be had to the mentioned preceding executive development.' Now, in the passage from the text, the Hegelian objective logic is said to correspond partly to the Kantian transcendental logic. This, then, in one point of view, may be considered as an admission of the one system being partly derived from the other. The remark, however, is casual and general, and, taking into its scope, as it does, the whole of the transcendental logic without MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 183 restriction to the deduction of the categories, it really gives no hint that would lead anyone to put any stress on the connexion, or expect anything further from its development than what lay on the surface, viz., that the categories of Hegel included, among others, those of Kant. The two points which are stated in characterisa- tion of the position of Kant, are in reality identical. They are given quite in the language of Kant, and not a trace of that turn which made them Hegel's can be found in them. Hegel passes lightly over them, indeed, to state that Kant's leading thought is to vindicate the categories for the subjective ego (that is, as functions of the subjective ego), and he concludes by alluding to the defective and inconsistent nature of the Kantian theory. No one from such writing could believe that Hegel was aware that any particular advantage had accrued to him from the Kantian system ; and when one reads the unrespecting criticism with which we find Kant perpetually assailed throughout the whole course of Hegel's unabridged Logic, the very last idea that would occur to anyone would be that the system of Hegel is contained all but ready-formed in the system of Kant — that it emerged, indeed, from the same almost at a scratch of the nail. Nay, it is Kant's treatment of these very categories that Hegel, nevertheless, censures the oftenest and the most unexceptively. A page further on than the last just quoted, for example, we find Hegel expressing himself as follows : — ' Inasmuch now as the interest of the Kantian philosophy was directed to the so-called transcendentality of the categories, the result of their treatment issued void ; what they are in themselves, without the abstract relation to Ego common to all, what their nature as against and their relation as towards one another, that has not been made an object of consideration ; the knowledge of their nature, therefore, has not found itself in the smallest furthered by this philosophy : what alone is interesting in this connexion presents itself in the critique of the Ideas.' How very misleading all this writing is ! We know that the Ideas are universally considered less satisfactory than the Cate- gories ; yet Hegel, when blaming the latter, can bestow a word of praise on the former ! Impossible to think, then, that Hegel lies so very completely in these very categories ! Again, Hegel is perpetually telling us that all his divisions into Books, Sections, Chapters, &c, are only something external, something added as mere convenient rubric for reference after the system itself has of itself run through all its own moments. Who can think other- 184 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. wise, then, than that this system is a peculiar life, a life of its own, and a life apart? Who for a single moment would be tempted to suspect that in Kant, too, lay the principle and principles of these divisions, which must have all presented them- selves to Hegel not after the system, but wholly beforehand? But let us look at the Note now. Here he acknowledges the philosophy of Kant to be the basis and the starting-point of the later German philosophy. But cela va sans dire — who does not know that ? Is it not common-place that Fichte rose out of Kant, and so on ? Does the acknowledg- ment lead in the slightest to a perception of the peculiar obliga- tions of Hegel to Kant ? Not by any means : he apologises for his frequent notice of Kant, 'which may appear to many quite super- fluous' and the award he extends to the philosophy of Kant is made magnanimous by allusion to the defects of its execution and particular details ! In fact, not any particular derivation of Hegel from Kant, but just the trivially current derivation of Fichte and of German philosophy in vague generality from Kant, is what Hegel's words would naturally call up to any reader here. Again, he admits that Kant enters more particularly into the considera- tion of logic than later philosophers. But we recollect that transcendental logic is on the very outside of the book of Kant ; the admission, too, is quite slight and general; and so Hegel's observation here passes as one quite superfluous and of no import- ance. He points out then, that later philosophers have begun with the Kantian result — which result again is summed up so far truly but inadequately, and as in terms of censure so far mislead- ingly — and have dispensed with any knowledge of the preceding execution. But this execution is philosophical cognition, and the advantage of a return to it is hinted. There is nothing in all this to prompt any inference of the particular truth of the case relatively to Hegel. Observe, however, the three words which are isolated from the rest by dashes, — ' but not unrevenged ; ' — they refer to the contempt of later German philosophers with respect to logic. It is not logic in general that is in Hegel's head at this moment, however. No ; what is really there is the deduc- tion of the categories, and ' not unrevenged ' is a chuckle aside over what he (Hegel) has gained and they (Fichte and Schelling) have lost in that regard. This seems very clear as soon as the real nature of the relation subsisting between Kant and Hegel is seen into. But none of these words, whether in the text or the MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 185 Note, would have given the slightest intimation of their home meaning to anyone as yet ignorant of that relation : and much less would they have revealed that relation. They are of such a nature, however, that they seem to shelter Hegel from the possible charge of injustice to Kant, and of having meanly concealed the true nature of his vast obligations to Kant — when these obligations shall have otherwise become known. They certainly contain the truth implicitly ; they are very far, however, from expressing the truth explicitly; and Hegel must for ever bear the brand of having grudged the light. These words, it is true, are not the only ones used by Hegel when he has his own relation to Kant in his mind : there occur here and there others — especially in ' Vom Begriff im Allgemeinen ' — which, like these, amount to admissions, but act the part neither of revelation nor acknowledgment till he who reads them has contrived to obtain for himself the necessary light from elsewhere. The scheme of the Kantian categories we have already presented in such form, that no one who has any knowledge of Hegel can possibly help exclaiming, Why, Hegel is all there ! Hegel certainly owes to Kant his main principles in every way, and his leading views in general. Hegel, to be sure, is an intellect of irresistible force, and, in the course of his exposition, there occur infinite originalities, infinite new lights, which are of the greatest import to the development of thought and even perhaps history. The looking at apperception, the categories, the intellectual manifold of these and the sensuous one of space and time, sensation, free- will, the antinomies, the ideas, the notions of reflexion — the looking at these and other such, the materials of the inexhaustibly rich Kant, in an objective manner, was a most happy ' light ' that ' went up ' to Hegel, and quite comparable to that light which went up to Kant out of the materials of Hume. And how inter- esting these lights are ! * The light that went up to Hume out of Locke, is as historically visible as those two others ; and the true nature of philosophy and the history of philosophy will never be understood as it is, by the student of philosophy, till these lights go up to him in the same way they went up to their first possessors. As regards Hegel, too, some rays of the light that rose up to him apparently all out of Kant, must be attributed, as we have said already, to Fichte and Schelling. The objectivising of the cate- * Dem ersten, der, etc., . . . dem ging ein Licht auf, ... so ging alien Natur- forechern ein Licht auf. (Kant, K. of P. K, Pref.).— New. 186 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. gories and their system constituted probably, in the main, the light that made Hegel. Such implicit admissions, as we have seen, then, cannot screen Hegel from the reproach at least of ingratitude to Kant, or from the macula of peculiarly equivocal concealment — a macula not one whit lightened or lessened by this, that the concealment was calculated to become, if need were, a grudging and equivocal revealment. That utter insulation of Hegel, that absolute inaccessibility which has remained so long obdurate, that impenetrable hardness of form and speech — we may regard all this — though a peculiar dialect was inevitable — as to some extent matter of intention. It is certain Hegel saw that he was not understood ; and it is now equally certain that, with a word about his derivation from Kant, he might have made all easy at once. He was surprised by sudden death, however, at a time of life when he might reasonably have expected to have lived, say, at least some ten years longer ; and it is quite possible that, had he been spared, he might have condescended to explain the enigma and have kindly vouchsafed us some mitigation of the hardness of his forms and dialect. It is not to be unconsidered, either, that the German polemical tone is of a ruder nature generally than would be tolerable in England. Hegel, in one of his papers and in so many words, calls some one ' a liar ! ' Hegel, indeed, is, in this respect, always con- sistent with himself, and Kant and the individual just alluded to are by no means exceptions. Hegel's polemical tone everywhere is always of the hardest, of the most unsparing — always, if we may say so, of the most unmincing and butt-end description. One has but to think of all occasions on which his biographer allows us to see Hegel in conflict, to become aware of a general bearing quite correspondent to the burthen of what has been already said. We hear of him, for example, apropos of one of his most friendly fellow- professors, who, in the programme of the session, had presumed to recommend to his students — out of love — a work of Hegel : we hear of him when in conflict with a Eoman Catholic priest who had taken umbrage at the manner in which Hegel, in his public lectures, had expressed himself in respect to a mouse which was supposed to have nibbled the Host : we hear of him in his literary or philosophic societies : and on all such occasions, we cannot help getting to think of Hegel as of a man of an audacious stomach — as of a man of a bold and unhesitating self-will. His attitude to Schelling bears this well out also. We saw already, how he broke MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 187 ground, when his time had come, by writing to Schelling — in what calculated manner, and with what probable views. Well, once in Jena, we have to see him a declared Schellingian. He starts forward at once to the front, indeed, as the most zealous and pugnacious of disciples, and he fights for his master with all the unhesitating brass of an advocate by special retainer. In a few years, however, when Hegel can dispense with prominence on another man's height, the manner in which he 'says' himself 1 loose ' from Schelling is as cruel and determined as is well con- ceivable. This is to be seen in the preface to the Phaenomenologie, a work which, previous to its publication, Schelling told its author he looked forward to as the deepest work of the age ! That hard heart of Hegel, that relented not, at such words, to mitigate his preface ! and to Schelling what bitter commentary on his own expectations that preface must have seemed ! It is to be borne in mind, too, that when Hegel was exhibiting open zeal for Schelling, and demonstrating with an air of perfect conviction the advance which Schelling's position constituted, as compared not only with that of Fichte, but with that of Kant also — at that very moment he had in his desk the first sketch of his own system, a system that lay directly in that of Kant, a system that proved the con- tempt entertained by Schelling for the execution and details of Kant, and for logic in general, to have been, as we have seen, 'not unrevenged.' It lay in the nature of the Hegelian iron, then, to kick out of sight the ladders of his rise, to provide for self, to take measures afar off, and to set deep plans for the realisation and particularisation of self. His attitude in later years to Govern- ment coheres with the same view. It certainly lay in the nature of his philosophy to profess constitutional conservatism and jper- horresce the usually inconsiderate and shallow innovator of pre- judice and passion ; but to connect himself so closely, as he did, with the Ministers of the day, and to become, as it were, their fee'd and recognised fighting-man, their retained gladiator, their staunch bull-dog of philosophy on hire — it was in the nature of his own self-seeking that this lay. Let us study and appreciate Hegel, indeed, as long and deeply as we may, a tone will cling to him that still brings somehow involuntarily to the palate ' savour of poisonous brass.' * The insulation of Hegel, then, the rubbing out of his own footsteps, the removal of all preliminary and auxiliary scaffolding, * Certainly that 'poisonous fo-ass' here is quite all too much ! (New.) 188 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. the concealment generally — despite a certain equivocal revealment — of his relation to Kant, must be pronounced, in great part at least, an operation of prepense calculation and intentional design. This operation it is our present business here to render abortive ; and the means to this lie in a statement of the general nature of the Kantian Categories, of the special light that went up to Hegel in their regard, and of his probable steps and mode of transit from this light to his complete system. It was with this statement we were engaged, when called off to animadvert on the blame which, dashed somewhat by certain considerations must attach to Hegel, of an interested disownment of Kant and concealment of the first steps of his own operations. What they were — where they had been got — these categories, then, — this was not difficult to perceive. They were derived from the various classes of propositions, as these propositions presented themselves in the ordinary text-books of technical or Aristotelian Logic. The various kinds of propositions (or judgments) Kant conceived must relate to the various kinds of the act of the faculty of Judgment itself, or to the various functions of this faculty. The functions of this faculty, then, in such case, were either Quantitative, Qualitative, Eelative, or Modal. As Quan- titative, again, they were either Universal, Particular, or Singular ; as Qualitative, either Affirmative, Negative, or Limitative; as Eelative, either Categoric, Hypothetic, or Disjunctive; and as Modal, either Problematic, Assertoric, or Apodictic. Further here, it is sufficient to state now that Kant transformed the technical classes of propositions into functions of judgment, and into certain h priori ground-notions of synthesis, correspondent to these functions, and resultant from them. Here, then, we see what the categories are and where they were got. But Kant similarly transformed the technical classes of Syl- logisms into certain & priori ground-notions of Synthesis which he named the Ideas. The function of these Ideas was only Regulative, whereas that of the Categories was Constitutive. But, what is the important point for us at present, the former are a vitalisation of Beason, while the latter perform the same service for Judgment. It was, plainly, to technical or formal logic, then, that Hegel was referred, when he sought to investigate the categories, and endeavour, by the completion of their system, to complete the system also of ground-thoughts, which not only permeated and arranged the universe, but which actually con- MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 189 stituted and created it, all that held of Sense being but a copy and repetition of all that held of Intellect. In this search Hegel found himself, even as regards the Cate- gories and Ideas, to make many modifications. Still in Judgment and Reason he had, on the whole, been forestalled by Kant. There was one division of logic, however, which still lay virgin and untouched by Kant, the first namely, or that which has been inscribed Simple Apprehension. Well, as Kant had been so successful with Judgment and Reason, it was at least possible that a like success might attend an investigation of Simple Appre- hension also, if conducted on the same principles and directed by the same view. But Kant's categories were notions and, as notions, ought to belong to simple apprehension. There was thus a con- nexion between Simple Apprehension and Judgment ; they were not wholly isolated and incommunicable; the forms of the one might pass into the forms of the other ; the one, indeed, might be but a gradation of the other. Here we have in perfection one of the most special and peculiar of all the Hegelian levers. Kant himself blindly expressed this in relating the categories to Apperception or Self-consciousness : he failed to perceive that, as notions, they might have been set down as ground-acts of Apprehension, and that Apprehension then might be set identical with Apperception or Self-consciousness. Had Kant seen this, he would probably have utilised in his peculiar way, and adopted into his system, the whole body of Technical Logic. But again, the categories are generalisations, and the question in that light is spontaneous : Can they not be generalised further ? As the original functions of Apperception itself, this at first sight seems impossible, and they themselves ultimate. Still they are notions, and the universal of them is the Notion. But the Notion as the Notion is just the Faculty as the Faculty, Apprehension as Apprehension, or Apperception as Apperception. Here is another example of gradation in the same matter, another coalescence of differences into identity: the faculty and the function were both seen to constitute, so to speak, the same stuff and to possess the same life. There is involved here another of the great Hegelian levers — the elimination, that is, of faculties ; the elimination, indeed, of all substrata of functions, qualities, thoughts, &c. — the reduction of all to Gesetztseyn, which we may translate, perhaps, reflexion, or adjectitiousness. Again, the one function of all the categories is, the conversion 190 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. of the Universal, through the Particular, into the Singular. Such is the absolutely generalised function of the categories as they are understood by Kant. This, then, is the Notion,. and this is the inner movement of the Notion. Nay, such is the inner movement of Apprehension, such is the inner movement of Apperception itself. This is the pulse of Self-consciousness ; this is the nerve of the Ego. This movement, this pulse, this nerve, is what is ultimate — rather what is first — in the constitution of this universe. This is the First and One (throb) which has expanded into the All : this is Vitality : this is the Infinite Form and the Infinite Matter ; this is the Absolute ; this is What is.* The conception of the notion as notion, then, was not for Hegel far to seek ; and this notion, with such views, and so instructed by Kant, he could not very well have missed. The categories were but generalisations ; it was but natural to demand a generalisation of them. This was imposed on him, too, by his very necessity to attain a First and One. Nay, consideration of Kant's Apperception itself would lead him to Simple Apprehension, and to the same thought. He was in search of a principle by which he might obtain a beginning, secure a method of progression, and complete a system : such quest as this lay at once to hand, the instant he perceived the reach of the notion of Kant as expressed in the categories, especially when these were objectivised. Hegel knew from Kant that in every notion there was matter and form ; and it was not difficult for him to perceive that what Kant called the intellectual schema, was the multiple contained in the notion and tantamount to its matter. In regard to the Notion as Notion, it would be with joy he would perceive that there Matter and Form — as was a particular want of Schelling — coalesced and were identical; that the movement which constituted the Form of the Notion, constituted also its Matter. Kant himself defines a pure notion to be such as arises out of the understanding, ' auch dem Inhalte nach ' (also as regards matter). Logik in Kant's Works, p. 270. At page 271 of the same work, these words might have proved suggestive to Hegel : — ' The Idea does not admit of being obtained by Composition (Aggregation) ; for the Whole is here sooner than the part.' At all events, this is a main tenet of Hegel on the question of the original tortoise of the universe. There cannot be a doubt that Hegel had examined with great attention the Logic * This, we may add also, is how A priori Synthetic Judgments are possible, or the Notion is the & prion Synthetic Judgment. MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 191 of Kant; and there is much matter there capable of proving richly suggestive. At page 274, we have the following, after an admirable account of Abstraction in general which we can recognise as the source of Hegel's incessant word abstract : — ' The abstractest notion is that which has with none that is different from it anything in common. This is the notion of Something ; for what is different from it is Nothing, and has therefore with Something nothing in common.' Again, from page 279, these words might be very significant for Hegel : — ' By means of con- tinued logical abstraction there arise always higher, as, on the contrary, by means of continued logical determination always lower notions. The greatest possible abstraction yields the highest or abstractest notion — that from which there cannot be any further predicate (or significate) thought- off. The highest completed determination would yield a thoroughly determinate notion, or such a one that no further significate could be thought to it' Altogether, it was not difficult for Hegel, once possessed of that glimpse by which Ego was seen to be externalised by the Category, the Category by Time and Space, and these by Sensation, to perceive that Apprehension itself (or Apperception or the Ego) perfectly generally expressed, would constitute the Notion, and that a thorough completion and articulation of a system of Categories from the Notion would constitute, in the strictest language, a consummate philosophy, or the entirety of those universal principles according to which the universe was organised, and of which the whole outward was but a repetition. As regards his method, too, it was plain that if he was to begin with what was most general, he must proceed to what was most particular (the Singular), and thus his progress would be, not a generalisation, but a specification or individualisation — logical determination, in short. The passages just cited from the Logic of Kant, then, may perhaps not be without bearing on the beginning, progress, and termination of Hegel. For his beginning is that which is abstractest of all, his progress logical determination, and his termination that which is concretest of all. In this, what is last supports and is ground to all that precedes ; for it is verily that which is ; and all that has been done, has been to begin with the simplest link of the complicated chain that constitutes the interior of the ultimate principle, and to let all manifest itself in development towards this ultimate concrete whole. This whole, 192 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. again, is with Hegel 'sooner than the part;' the Seyn is just the Seyn, or What is, is ; and Hegel conceived that, as a philosopher, he had nought to do but demonstrate this Seyn in its intellectual principles and constitution ; — and thus Hegel was an empiricist. Hegel has clung very closely to Kant, then, and his special guide seems to have been frequently the latter's special Logic itself. There are additional proofs of this. The work in question begins thus : — ' Everything in Nature, as well as in the lifeless as in the living world, takes place according to rules.' Now, one may say that Hegel's single industry has been to carry out this into all and every : his one idea has been to exhibit all as an organism, and every as a necessary member of the same. Then, again, Kant follows this up by observing that at the bottom of the crude, un- conscious concrete that, in the first instance, every and each human interest is seen to constitute, there lies an intellectual pure system which acts, as it were, as the supporting skeleton and as more. For instance, under Speech, which, as it first shows, is so very crude a concrete, something so very unconscious and uninvestigated, there lies a very decided pure intellectual system, on and round which all the rest gathers as so many motes on and round a system of pure rays — Grammar (a Grammatik). ' Thus,' says Kant, ' for example, Universal Grammar is the form of language in general : some, however, speak, without knowing grammar ; and he who speaks without knowing it, really has a grammar and speaks according to rules, of which, however, he is unconscious.' . . . ' Just as all our faculties in general, understanding in especial, is in its acts astrict to rules, which may be investigated by us. Understanding, indeed, is to be regarded as the source and as the faculty of rules. ... It is eager to seek rules, and satisfied when it has found them. The question occurs, then, as understand- ing is the source of rules, on what rules does it itself proceed 1 . . . These rules we may think for themselves, that is, in abstracto, or without their application [which is accurately the moment of understanding, judgment, Ur-theil, abstraction, or fiir sich in Hegel]. ... If we now, however, set aside all ingredients of knowledge [it would be more intelligible to an Englishman or a Frenchman to say perception], which derive only from the objects, and reflect solely on the operation of understanding in general, we discover those rules which in every respect, and quite irrespective of any and every particular object of thought, are absolutely necessary, just because without them we should not be able to think [or perceive] at all. These rules, therefore, can be seen, and seen into, & priori, that is, independently of all experience, because they concern merely the conditions of the operation of understanding in general, be it pure or empirical, without distinction, indeed, of the objects at all. . . . Thus the science which consists of these universal and necessary rules, is merely a science of the Form of our cognition through understanding, MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 193 or of thought. And we may form for ourselves, therefore, an idea of the possibility of such a science, in the same way as of a universal Grammatik (or Grammar), which shall regard nothing further than the mere form of Speech in general, apart from words, which constitute only the matter of speech. This science of the necessary laws of understanding and reason in general, or— what is the same thing — of the mere form of thought in general, is called Logic. Thus as a science which considers all thought in general, irrespective of the objects, which are only as the matter of thought, Logic will constitute the foundation of all the other sciences, and must necessarily be re- garded as the Propaedeutic of all exercise of the understanding.' Most readers read such sentences without realising the thought of their writer ; they seem to them to allude only to what is called formal Logic, which, everybody knows, abstracts from all matter of thought ; and they pass on without any consideration further. Not so Hegel: he enters into the very mind of Kant, and sees what he sees. But what Kant sees is not the Aristotelian Logic, but a pure Form, which, subjective in that it is of intellectual or mental origin, is yet veritably objective, a pure objective shape, to which every actual material object must congrue. Kant sees, in fact, a diamond net of intellect — pure form — which the matter of special sense (as it were, falling and condensing on the net) crassifies into actual outer objects. This is in rude outline Kant's new theory of perception, and Hegel, whether he called it per- ception or not, saw perfectly well what it was, and spent his life in the realisation of it. He saw Kant's notion here— which he could afterwards identify with the notion as notion — he saw that of which Kant said ' we might form an Idea,' and of this he just — by infinite labour — formed (or realised) the Idea : Hegel's Idee is nothing but Kant's Idea (but, as here in Kant, the Idea is but notion, but an sich) of the possible science suggested. Kant ideates an & priori diamond objective net of perception : Hegel realises the same as a systematic articulately-detailed whole — his Logic ; which, viewed as an objective whole, he names (probably with reference to the word as used here by Kant) — the Idea. Kant's transcendental Idea, thenris now to be conceived as simply developed into the Logical Idea of Hegel. Or, to say it otherwise, the Logic of Hegel is intended to be in absolute truth all that Kant pictures ; it would be the diaphanous skeleton, the inner, necessary, pure, abstract system, pure as a Grammatik, pure as a Mathematic, pure as an Algebra — pure as an ultimate, perfectly generalised Calculus — on and round which the innumerable opaque motes of outer matter should gather, group, and dispose themselves into the concrete world of thought and N 194 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. sense. Hegel set himself in earnest to realise the idea of Kant, and sought to find a pure Noetic of Knowledge (Logic) as others seek to find the pure Grammatik of Speech (Grammar). If Hegel's Logic, indeed, is not this, it is nothing. But it is this — perhaps not perfectly — it is this, and has discovered those pure essentities of thought which are the spring and levers of the whole. For example, a whole universe of concrete sorrow, whole lifetimes of concrete anxiety, concentrate themselves in those simple essen- tities Finite and Infinite — concentrate themselves, and demonstrate themselves, and answer themselves, resolving and clearing them- selves into insight and peace. Our most earnest English writers now-a-days — to confine ourselves to writers — may be conceived as just staggering blindly back at present caught in the last draught of the receding Aufklarung. ' To be blown about the desert dust,' or ' sealed within the iron hills,' a particle of matter: this they ponder, all of them. To them, ' time has become a maniac scattering dust,' ' life a fury slinging flame,' ' and men but flies, that sting, lay eggs, and die.' The great bulk of earnest men, now-a-days, in short, longing for Eeligion, yearning for God and Immortality, weeping towards Christ, longing, yearning, weeping towards all those essential truths of humanity which the light of the understanding, brought to the fierce focus of the Aufklarung, has shrivelled into ashes within their hearts — such men may all be conceived as at certain seasons sitting hour after hour in gloom and silence ponder- ing these things, and rising at length with a sigh, and the mournful refrain, No hope, no hope ! But these two words, Finite and Infinite, being discussed in ultimate abstraction (which is their truth), in Logic proper — at once the knot resolves itself and the cloud lifts. Kant, in the same sense, characterises this conceived Logic as the ' Universal art of Eeason, the Canonica Fpicuri,' and that, as such, ' it borrows no principles from any other science.' And again, he says — ' In Psychology we consider how thought is seen and known usually to proceed, not how it must or ought to pro- ceed ; ' but ' in Logic we do not want to know how the under- standing is, and how it thinks, and how it has hitherto proceeded in thinking — but how in thinking it must and ought to proceed : Logic is to teach us the correct use of the understanding, that is, that use of understanding that agrees with its own self.' And here we are not to deceive ourselves that the burthen of the ordinary definition of Logic, the right use of Eeason, is what is aimed at. No ; what is aimed at is something very different : MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 195 it is the intellectual objectivity of knowledge as opposed to the sensuous objectivity of the same; for even of the latter, the former is the essential antecedent, or there is no sensuous objectivity in which the intellectual elements do not constitute the essence. How very earnest Hegel has been with all this, and how completely he has assimilated it, is, on accurate acquaint- ance, very plain. 'The question,' says Kant, 'is not what and how much does understanding know, or how far does that know- ledge extend ; but in Logic the question is only, how will the understanding know its own self,' that is, its own pure form, and forms, that lie in abstracto under the crass and opaque concrete. Again, he defines his transcendental Logic to be that ' in which the object itself is conceived as an object of mere understanding,' which surely is tantamount to calling said Logic an objective Logic. And he winds up with the following express definition in small capitals: — 'Logic is a rational science not as regards mere form only, but as regards matter also ; a science & priori of the necessary laws of thought, but not in respect of any particular objects, but in respect of all objects in general; — a science, therefore, of the correct exercise of understanding and reason in general, but not subjectively, that is, not with reference to empirical (psychological) principles as the understanding does think, but objectively, that is, with reference to d, priori principles as it must and should think.' What study Hegel has made of all this, his Logic demonstrates. Here, again, Hegel's idea is well seen: — 'Technical or Scientific Logic is a science of the necessary and universal rules of thought, which can and must be known & priori, independently of the natural exercise of under- standing and reason in concreto, although they can be first of all discovered only by means of the observation of said natural exercise.' Here, too, is something very Hegelian : — In this Logic 'not the smallest regard is to be entertained whether of the objects or^ of the subject of thought' This is accurately the Hegelian Logical Idea, which is (though in abstracto) the concrete thought of all that is, elimination being made of all reference to any actual empirical object or any actual empirical subject.* Kant, to be sure, declares that Logic 'can be no science of speculative understanding,' for so it were an 'organon' for dis- covery, acquisition, and a ddition, and no mere ' Propaedeutic ' or 'canon* for regulation and 'dijudication;' while Hegel, on * For perfect light on this Idea, see p. 96, Note — New. 196 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. his side, seems to have converted Logic just into this speculative organon. Nevertheless, this very act of Hegel may be not uncon- nected with this very remark of Kant. As regards method, again, Kant says : — ' By Method is to be understood the mode and manner in which a certain object, to whose cognition this method is to be applied, may be rendered capable of being completely understood : it must be taken from the nature of the science itself, and, as a necessary order of thought thereby determined, it does not admit of alteration.' Again, he accurately distinguishes Philosophy from Mathematic, and points out the absurdity of applying the method of the latter to the former. Many passages, both in the Kritik of Pure Eeason and in the Logic, can easily be found to prove this, and we need not quote. In reference to philosophy, he says there belongs to it, ' firstly, an adequate complement of rational facts ; secondly, a systematic articulation of these facts, or a synthesis of the same in the Idea of a whole.' Again : — ' Every philo- sophical thinker builds, so to speak, his own work on the ruins of another; none has ever been realised, that was complete in all its parts.' Then we have much about wisdom as opposed to knowledge, which repeats itself in the practical sections of Hegel (' Misologie,' found here too in the Logic of Kant — but that is Plato's), and then there occurs this eminently Hegelian sentence : ' Philosophy is the only science which is capable of procuring us this inner satisfaction [of wisdom, that is, in act as well as knowledge] ; for it closes, as it were, the scientific circle, and through it then only do the other sciences first acquire order and connexion.' Hegel's historical idea seems here too: 'He who would learn philosophy, must regard all the systems of philosophy only as the history of Eeason in its exer- cise,'— of Eeason, that is, as it has historically manifested itself in actual operation. Schelling also has this thought at full in the 'Transcendental Idealism;' yet it is to be observed that though Kant's words, or Schelling's words, name noiv the Hegelian Idea, neither Kant nor Schelling saw the Hegelian Idea then. We are not to lose sight, meantime, of the bearing which Logical Determination has on the method and system of Hegel. The common secret of all these philosophisings, Kantian, Fichtian, Schellingian, was generalisation or abstraction. It lay at hand then, that the most abstract notion would, in a system, be the natural commencement. But, this accomplished, the question would then arise, how are we to proceed, in what manner advance MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 197 from this beginning? It cannot be by further abstraction or generalisation, for we suppose ourselves at the abstractest and most general already: determination, then, specification, is the only principle of transition left us. But, supposing this to be the method we must adopt, how put it into operation, and where end it ? are the next questions. As regards putting it into operation, that is possible by finding for every genus the differentia by addi- tion of which it (the genus) will be transformed into the im- mediately subordinate species ; and as regards an end, that will take place, when we have reached the most concrete conception that belongs to this universe. The beginning, then, will probably not be difficult, inasmuch as it is just the genus summum, or the last product of abstraction: neither presumably will the end be difficult, as, if we find the true method, it will come of itself. The whole difficulty now, then, relates to this method : how, being in possession of a genus, can we find, without addition of any other element, the differentia which will convert it into its first species ? This seems impossible; for logic holds that the genus is the common element, while the differentia is that which is peculiar to the species, — just that, in short, which distinguishes the species from the genus. "We are at once at a stop here, then ; and it seems that even if we had the beginning, the summum genus, any advance from it would be impossible, as it is a differentia that is the necessary instrument of movement, and a differentia lies not in the genus, least of all in the summum genus, but is to be found only in the species. Now, in what has been said lies the germ and motive of all Hegel's reasoning as regards a beginning, and of that principle as well which is named the Hegelian principle kclt *iox>1v> an(i which has always been objected to Hegel as his absurd contradiction of all the laws of logic, of thought, and of common sense — objected to him, too, invariably with that shallow exulta- tion and exaltation peculiar to the opponent who is utterly ignorant of the man he fights, as if the mere objection were an absolutely unanswerable and utterly annihilative refutation and reply. But that Hegel is right, there is the universe for proof : God himself could not have created the world, had the summum genus been only summum genus, and had a differentia required to be waited for, from an elsewhere that existed not. It all lies there. The beginning and the movement of Hegel ought to be now per- fectly intelligible, and so far, likewise, reasonable. There are truths absolute — incapable of being changed even by absolute 198 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. power, and this is one of them : the three angles of a triangle are not more absolutely equal to two right angles than the unity of difference and identity is absolutely true — since the world is. Logically expressed, what has been said amounts to this : logical determination is only possible if the genus really contains and implies the differentia of the immediately following species. Now let us try this in actual working ; let us find the summum genus, and let us see whether the differentia be not held in it at least impliciter. But here we are just again saying, though in another form, what we have already so often repeated. The Genus is the Begriff, the Differentia is the Ur-theil, and the Species is the Schluss : we have not yet got beyond An sich, Fur sich, and An und fur sich ! The same movement, the same form press ever in upon us ; and they are those of the Notion. But to apply. Seyn, Being, is the most abstract notion of all. Everyone will find this the case on trial : Kant directly states this both in the conclusion of his Transcendental Analytic, and in his Logic ; and Hegel repeatedly points out that it is equivalent to the sum of all realities. Seyn is the beginning, then — Seyn is the summum genus : does it contain impliciter the Differentia ? Or Being is the Begriff, what is the first Ur-theil both as parting and judgment ? But this was identified but lately as the moment of abstraction or fur sich : what, then, is Being in absolute abstraction, or fiir sich ? Why, Nothing. At first glance, then, it seems wholly hopeless to search for any differentia here, where all is vague and indeter- minate, and Being itself has but the value of Nothing. But what is to come after ? or what is the first species under Being ? Why, in Being as Being, there is as yet nothing ; it is a sea from which not a scale of distinction can be landed. The first step in such a sea towards a distinction must be a Becoming. Becoming, then, is more particular than Being : by what is it more particular ? Being implies that there is ; but Becoming implies both that there is, and that there is not. Is not, then, or simply not, is what it- contains more than Being. But if, by any means, we could have found this not first of all, though implicitly, in Being we should have found the differentia necessary for its conversion into the species Becoming. But we found this: absolutely abstract Being was just at the same time Nothing ; Being as Being was predicateless, &c. &c. The same process applied to Becoming will detect there, im- plicitly contained, the differentia that converts it into Daseyn; MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 199 and Daseyn conveys that there not only is, but that there is actually there, or here, or now. Quality is found impliciter in Daseyn, and Daseyn is thereby converted into Etwas, Something. This, in short, seems the course of the march of Hegel from beginning to end. Of course, it is easy for us, with Hegel's scheme before us, to state the examples; while for Hegel the construction of his scheme, with all that he had to assist him in the general concep- tion of Determination through the addition of differentiae, would prove very difficult. Still, though he must have had great trouble, the receipt being so very plain, the accomplishment of the process would plainly be very possible to patient trial. It is to be understood that Hegel did not look at the process as altogether external, artificial, technical form. He had come upon it, doubtless, when endeavouring to accomplish for the matter of Simple Apprehension what Kant had accomplished for that of Judgment and Eeason, &c. No doubt, Hegel vitalised logical determination into the process of the concrete ; and, no doubt, Hegel was perfectly correct in this. The concrete, and the ulti- mate principle of the concrete — let us even name it God — must contain identity, and it must also contain diversity. Progress is possible only from this to that ; but these very words imply other and others, diversity. But God is not to be viewed as twofold — in God's unity, then, identity and diversity must both cohere, without prejudice the one to the other. This is a deep subject: Hegel, however, has probably thought it out; his result being that difference is as essential to the Absolute — that is, to this universe and the principle and principles of this universe — as identity itself. So long, indeed, as we remain by identity, by that which is always self-identical, and nothing but self-identical, march there is none ; but in that God created the world, he demon- strated that self-identity was not alone what constituted him. Negation is as necessary as affirmation, then; — nay, Spinoza asserts omnis determinatio to be negatio, implying thereby that the particular arises only by particularisation, that is, by differentiating by differencing the conceived original identity. In all philosophy, then, negativity is an essential constituent, as it is an essential constituent of the eternal frame of things. Kant had his negative in the form of a Thing-in-itself, and Fichte could not move with- out the same principle, but rarified into the Anstoss, the appulse. or reflecting plane of impact. Hegel, for his part, like the royal thinker he was, resolves these negatives into the ultimate negative 200 THE STEUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. of nothing ; nought, or not, negation as such. In fact, the ultimate principle is to him the pure Negativity ; and even such is Ego as Ego, or Self-consciousness as Self-consciousness : even such is the Notion ; for, like Ego, on the one side in every case it negates all difference into its own identity ; while, on the other side (like ego also in the case of idealism, or as God), it negates its own identity into all difference. Here is a glance into the very depths of being. Hegel, very probably, made progress easy to himself by the ready formula, Find your differentia (always irnpliciter in the genus), and add it expli titer to the genus for the formation of the species : still, he had in his mind concrete truth in the shape of the necessity of difference to identity and of all the consequences of the same. The Ur-theil, the difference, is quite as necessary as the Begriff, the identity. What is in itself must become for itself; and unity stepping asunder into differents, that is Ur-theil, that is dis-cernment. We are not content with the immediate identity of sense, for example ; we demand the mediacy, the explanation of understanding, which is a movement between differents. Hegel's •principle, then, is more than mere formula : what, in fact, we here refer to under the series genus, differentia, and species, is identical with that expression of his principle which Hegel generally uses — namely, That everything passes into its opposite, but again re- sumes the same to production of a higher form : for what else in logical language is this, but just that the genus contains the differentia, and, by manifesting and resuming the same, it passes into the species ? This logical language, then, is no mere dead formula not a mere form in a book ; it is a form that pervades and animates the universe itself. The identity of the seed passes into its differ- ences and becomes the tree. As Hegel's own illustration has it, bud, blossom, fruit, follow each other, refute each other; yet the last still contains the others, and it is only identity which has passed into its differences. Hegel, face to face with nature, saw that this principle was true ; face to face with history, he found it true ; face to face with thought in his own soul, it still showed true ; and face to face with the history of philosophy, it was no less true. Everywhere he tried it, and everywhere the answer was tne same. Still, it is to be understood that even a Hegel cannot escape the appearance of formalism and mechanism which the application of a formula always entails. There is a certain formal mechanism in the very initial questions, What is the absolutely abstract genus ? what is the absolutely abstract differentia ? and in MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATION. 201 the answers, The absolutely abstract genus is the absolutely abstract identity — the absolutely abstract sum of all realities, which is just Being as Being; the absolutely abstract difference can only be Nothing ; the absolutely abstract species, from the addition of such difference to such identity, can only be the absolutely abstract Becoming. These, perhaps, are the bottom thoughts ; but absolutely abstract thoughts look very formal beside these material things, sky and earth and air, and bird and beast and man. It is but formalism, it is but a dry gulp to us to take down Logic as creating principle of this Nature — yet still what help ? Thus, then, at all events, tracing Hegel from Kant, we have gone deep into the former, and have well-nigh surprised, perhaps, his whole secret. We can throw yet another light, however, which of course coheres with what has been already said. Hegel con- sistently sought in the history of philosophy for the thought which had immediately preceded his own, in the belief that the nexus between them would prove the differentia of the latter. Or we may say this otherwise. The results reached can be conceived as accruing to Hegel from an examination of the subjective side, as it were, of the industry of Kant. There is yet another side of the same industry, the objective. It, doubtless, occurred to Hegel spontaneously, that differentiation was the principle of the objective and historical progress of thought in outward manifestation as a succession of thinkers. Still this also, so far as* the expression is concerned, lies in Kant. We have seen already the sentence, • He who would learn philosophy must regard all the systems of philosophy only as the history of the exercise of Reason,' — that is, the systems of philosophy are the history of Reason itself. Scbelling also has the same thought, and, we may add, that thought also which Hegel realised in the ' Phaenomenologie.' Both thoughts cohere, indeed, and belong to the same fact. Indeed, the vitalisation of logic was itself sufficient to suggest such historical expectations, for it showed that these dead linguistic formulae had formerly been alive in actual historical thought. Objectively, then, the thought of Hegel was preceded by that of Kant, as that of Kant was preceded by those of Hume, Locke, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Descartes. That is to say, the thought of Sub- stance was the objective thought that immediately preceded the thought of Kant ; and, more closely still, it was Substance gone into Causality which was the immediate foregoer of the Notion of 202 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., C. Kant. Now, Kant, so far as Substance was concerned, had completed the series appertaining to the relation involved by adding Reciprocity. Reciprocity, indeed, is the name that not inaptly describes the peculiar view with which Kant followed up the suggestions of Hume. Kant, for example, referred all to the reciprocity of Noumena. "What constituted knowledge was Phenomena derived from the reciprocal action of the Nou- menon within and the Noumenon without. Rather, Kant in- verted the previous relative positions of these two Noumena by subordinating the object (which had previously been the principal) to the subject (which had previously been secondary), and thus by such inversion generated a certain virtual reciprocity. At all events, from reciprocity the Notion of Hegel directly takes life : it is just with reciprocity that Hegel has seriously occupied himself. He has concentrated his attention on the peculiar manner in which Kant derives this notion of reciprocity from the logical function of the disjunctive judgment, and has thus gradually created his own Notion or Idea, which just is, that What is, is a concrete unity, the life of which lies in the principle of reciprocity, and more particularly in the notional form of that principle as it exhibits itself even in Kant himself. For in Kant, we find the singular to be but a sort of reciprocal result from the reciprocal interaction of the particular and the universal. This is best seen in the Kantian rationale of a perceptive act. This (any) concrete unity (perceived), the disjunctive sphere — a single cell, say — is to be conceived possessed of the reflex life of consciousness. An illustration suggests itself. In a letter written to a literary veteran, some twenty years ago, by a stricken youth, — in one of those intrusions which are, to buddw^ letters, in the light of love, so natural, but to budded letters, in the light of experience, so unendurable, — there occurs the following passage : — ' I lie in the centre of this me, this dew- drop, round which the rays of Deity, interpenetrating and passing through it, paint the spectrum of the universe.' This may be allowed to be a fair symbol for idealism in general; and the same youth, separated by many years from any knowledge of German, stumbled in his thoughts on what may perhaps be allowed to be a fair symbol for the phase of idealism which now occupies us. It is this : Conceive a magician, a man of mighty power, a Prospero, so to place before the eyes of a Miranda a scale of fish, a plume of bird, a tooth of beast, a MORE PARTICULAR DERIVATTON. 203 leaf of branch, a pebble from the rock, a grain of sand, &c., so, and so strangely, that they should liquidly collapse somehow before her eyes — taking her with them — into the aforesaid dew- drop ! Now this is a Vorstellung of the Begriff of Hegel, — or better, perhaps, of his Idea. The All, What is, is, so far as Logic is concerned, the Idea. Now, this Idea is but a dew-drop which, by a triplicity of reciprocity in itself, develops itself, or rather at any time can develop itself, into the universe. As it is, in the first instance — that is, as simple unity or identity, knowledge (or particularity), there can be none in it : it is just What is an sich, in itself. But let it, by virtue of its own inner negativity, negate, isolate a single point of its yet undisturbed periphery, and there result immediately a particular and a universal which collapse into a singular. The dew-drop, the lucid vesicle, is conceived capable of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness as act may be conceived as the form, the embracing element, the jprehens ; while the object of self-consciousness may be conceived as the matter, the Inhalt, the mtent or ingest, or the prehensum : lastly, the realisation of the prehensum to the 'prehens may be conceived as a singular act of knowledge, a union of Form and Matter, an Entelecheia. The applicability of several of the Hegelian triplets must at once suggest itself: the moments of the move- ment, for example, are all respectively susceptible of the names, Begriff, Urtheil, Schluss ; Immediacy, Mediacy, and Both ; Identity, Difference, restoration of Identity, &e. &c. Again, in further explanation, it is to be considered that the 1 Phaenomenologie ' precedes the ' Logic,' and that the latter work consists, in a measure, but of the abstract conclusions of the former work; which conclusions being placed together, are seen to form a system apart by themselves. There is possible yet another glimpse of the industry of Kant which will greatly assist to an adequate conception of the industry of Hegel. Looked at in a large and generalised fashion, the industry of Kant was, in ultimate instance, to reduce all the concreter interests of man to the three cognitive faculties. The result of the ' Kritik of Pure Eeason,' for example, is to reduce the whole theoretic world, the whole world of knowledge (for the thing-in-itself=o) to Understanding ( = Simple Apprehension here) ; the result, again, of the ' Kritik of Judgment ' is to reduce the whole aesthetic world, the world of feeling or emotion, under Judgment ; and, lastly, the ' Kritik of Practical Reason ' refers 204 THE STEUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., D. the Practical world, the world of Will, to Eeason. This is sufficiently singular in itself; and, no doubt, it was sufficiently singular to attract the special attention of Hegel. What a light it must have proved to this latter indeed ! The whole universe brought back into cognition, just as if all the light ever shed by the sun were arrested, and compressed, and brought back into his single focus ! That the thing thought was but the faculty thinking, or that known and knowing were one ! That the forms of thought, which collectively might be named logic, were the real secrets and souls of the whole immeasurable external chaos ! Such thoughts as these might entrance anyone ; such thoughts as these even spring to meet us from this side of Kant as from others ; and such thoughts as these are the main and master thoughts of Hegel. Of the realisation of such thoughts, indeed, it is that his whole laborious work and works consist. If Kant reduced all to the three cognitive faculties, Hegel but performed the same feat under another form when he reduced all to the Notion ; for the three cognitive faculties are but the three moments of the Notion. One can readily see now how it is that considerations of logic dominate everywhere in Hegel ; and one can now readily understand, also, his contempt of nature as something no more real than our ordinary trains of ideas that float at random. One can now understand, too, how it is that there is a greater difficulty in Hegel, and that is the transition to God. In the meantime, we may quiet ourselves by remembering that Hegel enters on the consideration of God on a much higher sphere, where it is not Logic, but the concreter interest of Eeligion, that is concerned. In this way, probably, we may have accomplished something not altogether unsatisfactory towards some explanation of the origin, principle, form, and matter— generally — of Hegel. D. A short but luminous formula for Hegel — perhaps as good as any that can be devised — is this : — The Substantive is What is ; But the Adjective is the Substantive : Therefore, the Adjective is What is. Or the Whole is Adjectivo-substantive. If it be objected that these are but objective moments, and A SHORT FORMULA. 205 that the subjective moment is absent, the latter may be added by considering the adjective as now pronominally, as it were, reflected into the verb. Thus the Notion manifests itself in Grammar also. It is strange, this pertinacity of the Notion ! How striking as regards Christi- anity, the Eeligion of Truth, that its moments correspond accurately, as we have seen, to those of the Notion ! It is the religion of Vision (as through the lily into the inner glory, the glory of God), of Love, of Submission : and these correspond to the trefoil of man, Cognition, Emotion, Volition, and so to the trefoil of the Notion. E. The last word of the secret of Hegel that is probably now required, is contained in the last paragraph of ' ^Reciprocity,' and constitutes the conclusion of the objective and the commencement of the subjective Logic. This last word is the Begriff of the Begriff; a phrase often enough used by followers of Hegel, in the sense of totality, probably, but it is doubtful if ever by any of them in the sense meant by Hegel himself, who, however, has, in his own way, explained his meaning — tolerably exoterically, too, to him who has the true nature of the industry of Kant fairly before his mind — in the sections ' Vom Begriff im Allgemeinen,' and 'Die Absolute Idee.' The original German must here be thoroughly studied, for an English translation would be so uncouth as absolutely to repulse approach. Some notion of what is in- tended may perhaps be caught from this : Conceive the particular — and that just amounts to, Take the organic series of particulars as the middle — then the negative reflexion of these as to themselves collectively as an organic whole, is the universal ; while this same negative reflexion of themselves to themselves as a unit, is the moment of singularity. Conceive your thirty-two teeth negatively reflected into themselves as a case, and also negatively reflected into themselves as a bite (their own functional act), and, through the rough Vorstellung, something of the Begriff may shine ! This conception being properly understood — at the same time that it is borne in mind that the whole and all is self-conscious thought — universality and singularity are thus seen to be identical, while the particular is also identical with each, and is held between them as in a transparent distinction, so that all three coalesce — and the result is a triune transparent distinction. 206 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., E. Why is it after Eecipjrocity ? Because such is the truth of actual history : it came to birth so — after Substantiality, Causality, and Eeciprocity — or after Spinoza, Hume, and Kant. Its relation to reciprocity appears in this — that, as it comes forward here (in the Logik), it is in the form of Schluss, and — in Seyn and Wesen respec- tively— has already been Begriff and Urtheil: though itself the Begriff, then, it, as in the form of Schluss, resumes the others and completes the reciprocity. Here in the form of Schluss, it con- stituted elsewhere in the form of Begriff the beginning of the whole. Under Seyn, then, where the Begriff was im Begriffe, or as Begriff, all was An sich, — all the distinctions also. Hence the particular form there of other to other. In the same way we perceive that, the Begriff under Wesen being im Urtheile, the form becomes that of separation into Eeflexions. We have now to understand that the Begriff being im Schluss, has reached the perfection of its form and terminates in the Idea. The special movement under each division is always the same, however : 1, Simple Apprehension ; 2, Judgment ; 3, Eeason ; — for Hegel is always in earnest with the realisation of the living pulse of Logic. Matter, indeed, cannot be his business here. That business is — not surejy with a first artificer, and what he made and how he made it — but with thought and the demonstration of thought as the absolute organ or organism, and the organic all or absolute. Thus it is that he always bears it with him, that thought, though it is itself the object — looks on this object as another, in such wise that its knowledge of the same is of a negative nature intelligible, perhaps, from this illustration — that, in the movement of the sun, what is seen, is just the negative of what is. Hegel would convert the new principle into Science ; but such science — of the Notion — can only be Logic. Verstandige Vernunft, or vernunftiger Verstand, we may remark here, amounts to plurality in unity, or unity in plurality; just what Kant meant — but only as it were An sich, or implicitly and virtually — by his Einheit and Mannigfaltiges ; and this is the reciprocity which Hegel has in view. Verstand here is taken so that its strict etymology falls into and modifies its ordinary mean- ing. There is an idiomatic use of Verstehen which illustrates the Hegelian sense : Verstehen, that is, sometimes means, to become stale, to be injured by long standing, as it were to stand itself away. The relation this meaning bears to the fixed isolation, the sundered identity, which Hegel would have us perceive to be FURTHER EXPLANATION. 207 implied by understanding, is tolerably obvious. Hegel always regards the particle Ver as equivalent to trans, and as referent to .a process of transition or transformation the nature of which is characterised by the root. So Allgemein, Besondern, and all the Hegelian terms. Kant's phrase Anschauender Verstand is equiva- lent to the Hegelian Verstandige Vernunft. In Bestimmen, too, see the etymological look — it is a giving voice (Stimme) to What is ; or Logical Determination (Bestimmung), the whole process of Hegel, is but a sort of naming of Adam. Geist, similarly, is an excellent word for the ultimate, absolute, and positive Unity : the living Spirit of the moment is always the co-including and realis- ing point of the All. As regards both Understanding and Eeason (in its dialectic part), it is not difficult to understand the word negative as applied to their function. We may just say generally, indeed, that thought has no purpose and no act but to negate Seyn taken as what sensuously is. But, more particularly, Understanding negates the unal self — thus effecting an intercem or interpart. Reason negates the negation, not into nothing, but into the restored unal self. Here we see : 1, Unal Self — Simple Appre- hension, or Begriff; 2, Intercem — Judgment, or Ur-theil; 3, Resolution of Difference into a Unal Self of differents — Reason and Schluss. Everywhere the Notion is a Negativitat: the Particular is negative — part negating part, &c. ; the Universal, as negating the parts, is negative ; and the Singular, as negating all into the absolutely self-identical unit of Self, is eminently negative and eminently the reine Negativitat. In fact, what we have everywhere is division in the indivisible, separation in the in- separable, difference in the identical ; so that identity is abstrac- tion and the form of abstraction. Such sentences as the following will be now intelligible, and may prove illustrative: 'This spiritual movement, which in its unity [i.e. im Begriff] gives itself its characteristicity [i.e. its determinate and determinating variety, as im Urtheil], and in its characteristicity its equality with itself [resumption of All- gemeines and Be-sonderes, into Ein-zelnes im Schluss], which is thus the immanent evolution of the Notion, is the absolute method of cognition, and, at the same time, the immanent soul of the import itself ' — import here amounting to that which the All, both substantially and formally, is. ' The nature, the peculiar inner being, the veritably eternal and substantial element in the 208 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., E. multiplicity and contingency of the phenomenal and passing out- ward, is the notion.' ' Only in its notion has anything actuality ; so far as it is diverse from its notion, it ceases to be actual, and is null ; the side of tangibility, palpability (Handgreiflichkeit), and of sensuous out-of-selfness (Aussersichseyn) belongs to this null side.' The sensuous never is, but always is not; the notion, then, is its truth ; what it is apart from that notion is evidently a nothing : take the page before us, for example. In illustration of the life of the Notion, we must bear in mind the progress of history, in all departments, from, 1, Instinctive life, through, 2, Eequirements of Reflexion into, 3, Reason. This, in the concrete, is not to be looked for in the exactitude of a formula : often we see retrocessions of the individual, a fall-back from understanding to sense, as in Reid. On the whole, in the Begriff of the Begriff we see that Hegel has returned to substantiality, fact, life, while Kant, in his categories, was still in distinctions of mere formal logic. Kant thus may be said to have had only a regulative, while Hegel has a constitutive, force. Before such merits one relents to conceive Hegel as absorbed in creation, and never sufficiently on his own outside, as it were, to explain his origin from Kant. But this origin and the debt to Kant are not to be forgotten. Thus, then, we see plainly how actual fact of life and history coheres with general logic. Being, Nothing, Becoming, through all the intermediate steps, are just finally hammered into, and correspond respectively to, the closing triunity — Logic, Nature, Spirit. Legends of all peoples exemplify the same. Eden is but Simple Apprehension passing into Judgment. Then the Good Principle is Being, the Bad, the Negative. Faust, again, is the latter stage of the era of Judgment, the stage named by Hegel, 'Das ungluckliche Bewusstseyn ; ' the Understanding has done its work, Reason has not yet begun, and all around is but empty abstraction, without a single rest for Faith (or Hope) of any kind : and the result is but a precipitation into the senses ; more com- monly now-a-days the end is but vague despair and an impotent sighing for all that has been lost. The categories we may conceive as an internal web invisible to us, and of which, so long as they are uninvestigated, we are but the prey. Still, to most individuals, certain categories become enlarged — isolated thickenings occur in our inner web — which as thickened come before consciousness — and from which as ganglia FURTHER EXPLANATION. 209 our single spirit issues. In this manner, we may conceive our- selves enabled to analyse and pass judgment on the characters of men — by exhibiting, that is, their ganglionised or hypertrophied and ossified categories, of which they were the slaves. The thin man acts from a single category; the rich man is a rich spirit resultant from many categories mutually related in a healthy common system. Cromwell, though so inarticulate, drew breath from a vast bulk of categories; and from the weight of the universal it was that he possessed his irresistible mass and moment; nor was the universal that led him, in the slightest hollowed out, as is so common everywhere at present, by the wind of the vanity of the singular. The bad effects of such wind are very apparent in Napoleon. "Wellington is otherwise ; but his universal was simply the red tape of England. Hegel's work is this : the spider of thought — a point — spinning its web of thought around itself: the bombyx of eternity, the cocoon of eternity, and their unity in eternity itself! Hegel takes Kant's notion as the secret, the key, of the universe. It is at once the absolute form and the absolute import. And it is this form and this import which only involve themselves throughout the whole system, from the lowest, simplest, and abstractest of abstractions up to the highest, most complex, and concretest of concretes. Once possessed of the Kantian notion, nis way was successively to discharge its concretion till it reached an ultimate tenuity, and thence to let it remake itself again. Or we may say that Hegel lies in a consideration of the absolute adversatives — negation, position, &c. He saw that thought was but as a football from inner to outer, and from outer to inner, &c. ; and he resolved to make shuttle what had previously been but shuttlecock ; that is, he wove together into indissoluble unity by relation what hitherto had been irreconcilably disunited by this very same relation. This is another synonym for his work, as that of reason, repairing and restoring what had been injured and destroyed by the eighteenth century, in the work of understanding. If the reflexion of Spinoza and Hume has unfixed and unsettled all, the reflexion of Kant and Hegel will again restore all to place and to peace. Hegel's one object, indeed, has been a demonstration of the absolute intussusception. The result is a crystal sphere — per- fectly transparent — but covered with infinite tracery of intussus- cipient lines — opaque, yet transparent — which appear and disappear — in the own movement of the sphere's own inner. o 210 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., F. F. A tempting way to state the main notion of Hegel is this : "What is, says Spinoza, is Thought and Extension, which again are but modifications (even as attributes they amount to this) of one and the same — God. Hegel says of this that there is no transi- tion in it, no deduction, no mutual connexion. Now Hegel's secret is just to add the missing element ; or it is the introduction of intermediation and connexion into the divided and disunited trinity of Spinoza. This, of course, is said roughly and generally to give a general and rough idea; for in reality the Nature of Hegel is not derived and is something very different from the Extension of Spinoza : at all to compare, indeed, such vast organic wholes as the Logic, Nature, and Spirit of Hegel with the mere phraseologies of Spinoza in reference to Thought, Extension, and God, is possible only in a wide manner on the mere outside. Still, to assist us to an understanding of Hegel, let us say that what he did was to introduce nexus and connexus into the three of Spinoza. Following this out, then (but as mere illustration), Hegel says, Extension, that is the Particular ; Thought, that is the negative reflexion of this Particular into itself as the Universal ; God, that is the negative reflexion of this same Particular into itself as the Singular, which is thus seen to be a union of both, and each, indeed, is but the other. Now this revolts; for God, at first sight, is in this way lost to us. God in this way appears a mere crea- tion of our own thought — in its barest form, indeed, a mere human reflexion. This conclusion is not quite legitimate, how- ever. We assign to God a variety of attributes ; or God cannot be conceived without a variety of attributes : in a word, then, there is God's unity, and there is God's variety. Now, if we can suppose Extension adequately to collect and represent all God's variety, then assuredly we "shall not be very far wrong if we assume God's unity to be the negative reflexion into itself of God's variety, that is, of Extension. This reflexion, moreover, does not belong to us ; it must be conceived as objective fact independent of us. Besides, we are not at all occupied at present with the truth, but only with the fact of Hegel. This huge box has long lain shut — we open it — we lay out the contents : this is our work. By and by probably, — a separate work, — the appraiser will follow with his work, and tell us the value. One thing, it is absurd to think of God as an entity somewhere in space, visible and ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATION. 211 palpable, could we but get there. ' I have swept space with my telescope,' says Lalande, ' and found no God.' The absurdity of the atheist is seen in that, but there is no less also reflected in it the absurdity of crude theism which as yet has not reached thought proper, but only figurate conception (Vorstellung). But since Hegel, however it be with the God of Hegel, we must cer- tainly always substitute now Begriff for Vorstellung, intellectually thought notion for sensuously seen image. God is no longer to be pictured in space ; he is not locally, topically in nature ; God is a Spirit, and can be only in the spiritual world, only in the absolute world, which is thought. Logic has always appeared under the three rubrics of Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Keason. In this respect, Hegel's Logic does not differ from any other, or, if it differs, it differs only in being truer to the rubric. Hegel's Logic is, from first to last, in matter and method, in form and substance, in book and chapter, in section and paragraph, in sentence and even word, nothing but Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Eeason. Simple Appre- hension, Judgment, and Reason, this itself is but one of the sacred names, — just one of the synonymes of the whole. Judgment is but the negative reflexion of Simple Apprehension into itself, and Reason is but the negative reflexion that sums both. Nay, each is so much the other, all is so dialectic, that, it may be, Hegel himself sometimes mistakes the cue and places as Particular what is Universal, &c. This is but the Notion ; — that is, in one of its forms. Everywhere in Hegel we have before us only the Notion. Being, Nothing, Becoming: Being is but Simple Apprehension (Perception, if you will) at its abstractest ; Nothing is the act of Judgment on Being; it is the negative reflexion of pure Being into itself; Becoming is the act of Reason on Being, and is both Being and Nothing in concrete unity, the truth of both, the Singular that is. It is just as if we said : Everything that is, is ; Everything that is, is not ; Everything that is, is Both — that is, it becomes. Each of these averments, too, is true — only the last is the concrete truth, the others are but abstractly true. Reason, in fact, is always to be assumed as the concrete moment that is base or mother-liquor to the two abstract moments of Simple Apprehension and Judg- ment. How natural is all this in the circumstances ! The Idealist can only look to Logic when in search of those principles which are the prius of all : the Idealist, too, as in the moment of Reason, is but the natural third, and the concrete truth, to the 212 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., F. Perceptive animal whose object is Seyn, and the abstracting Critic (or Judge) whose object is "Wesen. "We are to understand, then, that Hegel, from first to last, is but touching or tapping, into its various successive forms, the primitive or original cell of the Notion — or the triune Reflexion. There is the crystal sphere — tap it — lines of reflexion glance in it by which there are seen two in one or a triple unity, Becoming, in which both Being and Nothing nestle. Another touch and Becoming is Become — Here-being, There-being, or So-being. Again, a tap, and reflexions glance of Reality and Negation which collapse to Something, and thence again expand into Being- for-other and Being-in-self. These collapse, in their turn, to Determination. Determination sunders into the duplicity of Beschaffenheit and shuts again into the Unity of Limit. Limit, sundering into the duplicity of the spurious Infinite, clasps together again in the unity of the genuine Infinite, and so on. Perhaps, in the above statement, from Being-for-other and Being-in-self onwards, the movement of the series appears in simpler and more consistent general form. Now, all these changes take place, so to speak, without moving from the spot — Hegel never abandons the notion with which he starts, and all change is from reflexion on it, or, rather, in it. Even when, in the true Infinite, he has reached the verge of Being, and has passed into Quantity, Hegel has not yet moved from the spot: Quantity but resumes what precedes, though in another, that is, as another sphere. Again, Quantity returns to Quality, and both collapse into Measure. In this way, through an extraordinary alternation of Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Reason, repeated in an extraordinary alternation of their own forms, we reach, at last, the Absolute Spirit. Now Hegel's hypothetical addition to Spinoza, taken as described above, gives the general nature of this Absolute Spirit at the shortest. The Particular, Nature, is negatively reflected into the Begriff (Thought, Logic), which is the Universal, and, through this also, into the Singular of the Spirit. In the very statement, there glitters the hem of truth in such a variety of directions, that it seems to bring with it its own authentication. When the objec- tion— it is only human reflexion — occurs, let it occur, also, that human reflexion is thought. Let it occur, too, that it is to be con- ceived as an objective reflexion, not something formal, but some- thing intensely concrete. If it is but a reflexion, it is a reflexion from, and contains the absolute wealth of, both thought as thought ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATION. 213 and nature as nature. It is not the mere abstraction of Spinoza ; it is, on the contrary, the concrete of concretes. In fact, it can- not be otherwise ; Nature, Thought, each alone, both together, necessitate the reflexion of God ; God is their truth, and, though a necessity of formal thought, is also a necessity of concrete existence. But, perhaps, it will be objected again, is it not very general this, very thin, abstract, and bodiless — this outcome of a universal spirit, the highest expression of which is not as in you and me, but in societies, institutions, literatures, arts, philosophies, &c. ? Is this abstract and generalised result of the human race as human race all that we are to get as God ? Call it idealism if you will, what is it better than materialism? Is that abstract result — institutions, laws, arts, &c. — aught better than a matter into which, even as we form it, we perish, as the coral insect lives only that he may die into the coral rock ? Is this, then, the end of all the hopes of man ? God is but an abstract generalisation of thought ! and for the carrying forward of this abstract generalisation is it only that we emerge ! — emerge but to cease ! This we are to call our true selves, and to this we are to sacrifice ourselves ! It is but natural to think thus. It is one-sided, however, to speak of the result of thought as an abstraction and generalisation ; there is neither abstraction nor generalisation — as usually understood — here present; what we have here is a life. What we have here is the organised universe and its organised outcome. Spirit is the word. Hegel has always meaning in his words, and by spirit he means not a ghost, not an airy vaporous body, but the essential concrete of all, which is a Spirit. In what Spirit do you live, and think, and act ? Ever, in every age, the essential, organic, vital drop of the whole is its Spirit; and with each new age, the Spirit is ever richer — intellectually, morally, emotionally. Nature, then, and Man — Nature and Thought- all that is here, just taken together as an organised body — what can the soul of this body be but even such a Spirit as is here indicated ? Such Spirit is the Thought, the Emotion, the Will of such a body — such Spirit is the Spirit of God. Leave Vorstellung, pass to Begriff — shut not only your Byron and open your Goethe (in every way a very finite step) — but take the infinite step even from poetry as poetry — call it genius — to philosophy as philosophy. In such abstractions, you say, there is no hope for you ! But why so ? Are not man and nature and all things thought, and 214 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., F. where is thought, if not in you, who are to yourself the Ego, the I, in which all meet ? You are but Modus — not the Absolute ; finite — not the Infinite : you must perish ! Consult Hegel and see the necessity of the Modus. And what is perishing ? What is Death ? Where are these, when, What is, is Thought ? Modus — finite ! — is it not true that you at the same time are ? What is, is Thought : and are not you Thought ? Absurd that you should be continued ! Why so ? On the contrary, it is no more absurd that you should be continued than that you are. That you are is the guarantee of your necessity. G-od is a concrete Spirit — God is the living Universal — not an abstract unit — why should not the death of the body be the birth of Spirit ? — and why should not you continue united to the Universal Spirit then, even as you are so united here, in natural form, now and what is the relation to that Universal Spirit ? — is not the One Many, and the Many One ? — But all this is premature ! As yet we only seek to understand and express: as yet we have not attempted to think and judge: as yet we have had enough to do to find our way; as yet we have not had time to think. The general conclusion, thus far, is that the Secret of Hegel is the tautological reciprocity of the Logical Notion, which is a concrete in itself; and this is to be found expressed in the last paragraph of the Section ' Keciprocity.' Eemark. These Notes of the Struggle to Hegel are now concluded. Their general nature and burthen are — effort to understand and express Hegel ; and a certain adoption of the side of Hegel will be granted as allowable to the effort to express for the sake even of efficiency, especially in the case of a student only speaking to himself in preparation for the public. The state of the fact is accurately depicted here. These Notes it was proposed to follow up by a general chapter on the Origin, Principle, Form, and Matter of the System, which should methodically bring to a focus all the findings in these respects which are, in a necessarily irregular and imperfect manner, indicated in the Notes themselves. This chapter, how- ever, is reserved for the present, as its composition is likely to be more efficient later.* * The function of this contemplated chapter, however, will be found to a certain extent fulfilled by the answers to the four general questions with which the Inter- pretation ' III ' almost opens. REMARK. 215 Meantime, we may say this: The Principle is the Notion as expressed at the end of ' Eeciprocity ' ; the Form (or Method) is the movement of this Notion ; and the Matter is the development, or simply the introduction, of this Notion into the entire wealth of the outer and inner Universe. As regards Origin again, that lies in Kant ; and in this respect we may name six special refer- ences : There is the light derived from — 1, The externalisation of the Categories ; 2, The generalisation of the same ; 3, The utilisa- tion of the branch of Logic (S. Apprehension) left vacant by Kant ; 4, The realisation of Logic in general ; 5, The Kantian theory of Perception ; and, 6, The reduction of what we may call the concrete faculties of man, Cognition, Emotion, Will, under his abstract ones, as named in Logic, S. Apprehension, Judgment, and Eeason. Lastly, as regards Kant, not only did he breathe the precise tendency, exhibited and perhaps perfected by Hegel, to- wards a philosophy which should be a complete and co-articulated system in explanation of the All, but there lie scattered over the whole field of his labours a thousand hints, which must have proved of the greatest service to Hegel. Some of these we have already seen ; but there lie a multitude more both for the seeing and the seeking. By way of example, here is a small one : — Metaphysic has, as the special aim of its inquiry, only three Ideas : God, Freedom, and Immortality, and so that the second united with the first shall lead to the third as a necessary conclusion (Schlusssatz). Indeed, we may quote further : — All else, with which this science is occupied, serves merely as means to attain to these Ideas and their reality. These Ideas are not required in aid of natural science but to transcend nature. The attainment of them would render Theology, Morals, and, through the union of both, Religion, conse- quently the highest ends of our existence, dependent on speculative Reason alone and on nothing else. In a systematic exposition of these Ideas, the order given, would, as the synthetic, be the most appropriate ; but in the labours, which must necessarily precede any such exposition, the analytic, or reverse, arrangement will be better adapted to the end proposed : for here, in fulfilment of our great design, we proceed from what experience offers us immediately to hand — psychology, to cosmology, and thence to the cognition of God* Particular points of derivation as regards both Fichte and Schelling have been already alluded to. But, on the whole, what- ever suggestions may have proceeded from others, Kant, the * Kant, Krit. d. R. V. Trans. Dialec. Book. I. Section 3, Note. 216 THE STRUGGLE TO HEGEL — CHAP. V., F. original quarry, was alone adequate to stimulate Hegel to the accomplishment of what he did accomplish ; and these two writers may be directly connected as cause and consequence. I may add to the six special references above, that the point in which Kant and Hegel are, perhaps, seen closest, is the fact that the a 'priori Synthetic Judgment of the one, and which was set up as the single angle of inquiry, is simply an sick what the Notion of Hegel is an und fur sich. It is to be considered also that, in what follows, much will occur adapted to bring into the true ultimate focus all that we have already seen as regards the explanation of the opera- tions and general industry of Hegel.* * It was said, p. 178 : ' Hegel takes philosophy, actual philosophy, as it comes to him from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling ; and remoulds it onwards on its own objective principles, and not on his own subjective ones, — just as Kant, receiving philosophy from Hume, attempted honestly to mould it onwards thence.' This, in wide generality, is the literal state of the case ; and it may seem super-ingenious, super- exhibitive of memory, super-laboriose, painfully to collect, as possibly suggestive to Hegel, all these mere sporadic crumbs from Kant. Now, no doubt, Hegel knew perfectly well all the works up to his own date both of Fichte and Schelling ; and, no doubt also, both preceded him. Of all this there is no want of acknowledgment in Hegel himself. * Still there, in what is the immediate reference for either, at all sensibly — neither appears. If for Fichte it is dialectic that is spoken of, then it is to be said that Hegel's dialectic is his own, that no man shares it with him, and that it is even opposed to that of Fichte, and, again, if Nalurwissenschaft be the word in Schelling's regard, then this, too, must be said that even here the principle at work with Hegel is not that at work with Schelling, but one that has not been as much as surmised by the latter. That is, it is perfectly just to affirm that it was Kant Hegel studied — studied to his depths — that it is to Kant Hegel owes infinitely the burthen, and that it is from Kant he comes. * As regards Fichte, for example, there is the declaration of Hegel that Fichte was the first man in this world who ever set Reason on evolving from itself its own constitutive involution — see Hegel, WW. xv. 308, 310, 328, and iii. 32. Named in the others, it is still Fichte that is meant in the last, where also Schelling comes to be meant, and if here, on a particular point, with a negative, there is no lack of general acknowledgments elsewhere. (New Notes.) QUALITY TRANSLATED. 217 II. A TRANSLATION FROM THE COMPLETE LOGIC OF THE WHOLE FIRST SECTION, QUALITY. FIRST SECTION. Determinateness or Definiteness (Quality). Being is the indefinite Immediate ; it is devoid of definiteness as in reference to Esspitity [i.e., any inner principle to which it were to be supposed due], as also of any which it might possibly have within itself. This reflexion-less Being is Being directly as it is only in its own self. As it is indefinite, it is quality-less being; but, in itself, the character of indefiniteness attaches to it, only as in contraposition to the definite, to the qualitative. Definite being as such, then, contraposing itself to being in general, the very indefiniteness of the latter constitutes its Quality. It will be found, therefore, that First being is in itself definite, and consequently, Secondly, that it goes over into There-being, is There-being [JDaseyn — particular existency] ; but that this latter as finite being sublates itself, and goes over into the infinite reference of being to its own self, i.e., Thirdly, into Being-for-self [individuality, singularity; and so we are to have Being successively Universal, Particular, and Singular]. 218 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. CHAPTER I. Being. Being, pure Being, — without any further definition. In its in- definite immediacy, it is only equal to itself, and neither is it unequal as regards other; it has no diversity within itself, and none in any reference outwards. Should any determination or intent [Form or Matter] be supposed in its regard, which might be distinguished in it, or by which it might be distin- guished from another, it would not be held fast in its purity. It is pure indefiniteness and vacancy. There is nothing to be perceived in it, — so far as it is at all allowable to speak of perceiving at present, — or it is only this pure void perceiving itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this void thought, this void thinking. Being, the indefinite immediate, is, in fact, Nothing, and neither more nor less than Nothing. B. Nothing. Nothing, pure Nothing ; it is simple equality with itself, perfect vacancy, determination-lessness and mtent-lessness [form-lessness and matter-lessness] ; undistinguishedness in itself. So far as it is allowable to mention perception or thought here, the distinction [we may remark] is admitted, of whether something or nothing is perceived or thought. The perceiving or the thinking nothing has therefore a meaning ; both [perceiving nothing and perceiving something] are distinguished, thus Nothing is (exists) in our perception or thought; or rather it is emp*ty perception and thought themselves ; and the same empty perception or thought as pure Being. Nothing, therefore, is the same form, or rather QUALITY TRANSLATED. 219 formlessness, — and so in general the same, — as what pure Being is. 0. | Becoming. 1. Unity of Being and Nothing. Pube Being and pure Nothing is, therefore, the same. What is the truth, is neither Being nor Nothing, but that Being, — does not pass over, — but has passed over into Nothing, and Nothing into Being. But the truth is just as much not their undistinguished- ness, but that they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinguished, but still, nevertheless, unseparated and inseparable, and either immediately disappears in its opposite. Their truth is, therefore, this movement of the immediate disappearance of the one in the other; Becoming; a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a distinction which has equally immediately resolved itself. Remark 1. The Antithesis of Being and Nothing in common conception. Nothing is usually opposed to Something ; Something, however, is already a definite Beent [Existent], which distinguishes itself from [anjother Something; and so also, therefore, the Nothing opposed to the Something, is the Nothing of a given Something, — a definite Nothing. Here, however, Nothing is to be taken in its simple indefiniteness. Should it be considered more accurate that Non-being, instead of Nothing, be opposed to Being, there were nothing to object to this as respects the result, for in Non-being the reference to being is implied ; both, being and the negation of being, are enunciated in one, Nothing, as it is in Becoming. But we are concerned here, first of all, not with the form of the opposi- tion (form, also, at the same time, of the co-reference), but with the abstract, immediate negation, nothing purely for itself, reference- less negation, — what might be expressed also, were it wished, by the mere word not. The Eleatics first of all, especially Parmenides, enunciated the simple thought of pure being as the absolute, and as the one truth : only Being is, and Nothing is altogether wo£,— enunciated this (in 220 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. the fragments of Parmenides which remain) with the pure intoxi- cation of thought when for the first time it has apprehended itself in its absolute abstraction. In the Oriental systems, in Buddhism essentially, Nothing, as is well known, the Void, is the Absolute Principle. The deep-thinking Heraclitus brought forward, against the former simple and one-sided abstraction, the higher total notion of Becoming, and said : Being is as little as Nothing is, or all flows, that is, all is Becoming. The popular, particularly Oriental proverbs, that all that is has the germ of its death even in its birth, while death, on the other hand, is entrance into new life, express at bottom the same union of Being and Nothing. But these expressions have a substrate, on, or in, or by which the transition takes place ; Being and Nothing are held asunder in time, are represented as alternating in it, but are not thought in their abstraction, and therefore not so that they are in, by, and for themselves the same. Ex nihilo nihil Jit — is one of the positions to which in meta- physic great importance was ascribed. There is to be seen in it either only the empty tautology, Nothing is Nothing ; or if the Becoming {fit) is to have actual meaning in it, then, inasmuch as only nothing comes out of nothing, there is rather in fact no Becoming present in it, for Nothing remains in it Nothing. Becoming implies, that Nothing does not remain Nothing, but passes over into its other, into Being. If later, especially Chris- tian, metaphy sic rejected the position, From nothing comes nothing, it maintained necessarily a transition from nothing into being: however synthetically or merely conceptively it took this position, still there is, even in the most imperfect union, a point in which Being and Nothing coincide, and their distinguishedness disappears. The proposition, From nothing comes nothing, nothing is just nothing, has its special significance in its contrariety to Becoming in general, and consequently also to the creation of the world out of nothing. Those who, waxing even wrathful in its defence, maintain the position nothing is just nothing, are unaware that they thereby express adhesion to the abstract pantheism of the Eleatics ; essentially, too, to that of Spinoza. The philosophical opinion which holds, Being is only Being, Nothing is only Nothing, as valid principle, merits the name of Identitatssystem : this abstract identity is the essence of pantheism. If the result, that Being and Nothing are the same, seems startling or paradoxical in itself, there is just nothing further to QUALITY TRANSLATED. 221 be said ; it were more reasonable to wonder at this wondering, which shows itself so new in philosophy, and forgets that there present themselves in this science quite other determinations than in ordinary consciousness and in the so-called Common Sense of mankind, which is not just exactly sound sense or sound under- standing, but understanding grown up and hardened into abstrac- tions, and in the belief or rather the superstition of abstractions. It would not be difficult to demonstrate this unity of Being and Nothing, in every example, in everything actual, in every thought. What was said above of Immediacy and Mediacy (which latter implies a reference to smother, and so Negation), the same thing must be said of Being and Nothing, That nowhere in heaven or on earth is there anything that in itself contains not both, Being and Nothing. As, in such reference, truly, the question is of a certain actual Something, those elements are in it no longer in the perfect untruth, in which they are as Being and Nothing, but in a further developed form, and have become (conceived, for example, as Positive and Negative), the former posited, reflected Being — the latter posited, reflected Nothing ; but Positive and Negative imply, the one Being and the other Nothing as their abstract ground-principle. Thus in God himself, Quality (Energy, Creation, Power, &c), involves essentially the element of negativity, — these are a bringing into existence of an other. But an empirical illustration by means of examples of the position maintained would be here quite superfluous. As now, indeed, this unity of Being and Nothing lies once for all established as first truth and basis, and constitutes the element of all that follows, all further logical determinations — There-being, Quality, in general all notions of philosophy — are examples of this unity quite as much as Becoming. But so-called common (or sound) sense may be invited, so far as it rejects the undividedness of Being and Nothing, to try to discover a single example where the one is separated from the other (Something from Limitation, or the Infinite, God, as has been just mentioned, from energy in act). Only these empty things of thought, Being and Nothing, them- selves, are such separated things, and it is they which by said common sense are preferred to the truth, the undividedness of both, which is everywhere before us. We cannot be supposed to seek to meet on all sides the per- plexities into which an ordinary consciousness, in the case of such a logical proposition, misleads itself, for they are inexhaustible. 222 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. It is possible only to mention a few of them. One source of such perplexity, among others, is that such a consciousness brings with it to the consideration of such abstract logical position, concep- tions of a concrete Something, and forgets that there is no question of any such here, but only of the pure abstractions of Being and Nothing, and that it is these alone which are to be held fast. Being and Non-being are the same thing ; it is, therefore, the same thing, whether I am or am not, whether this house is or is not, whether these hundred dollars are or are not in my possession. Such inference or such application of the proposition alters its sense completely. The proposition contains the pure abstractions of Being and Nothing ; the application, on the other hand, makes of these a determinate Being and determinate Nothing. But, as has been said, the question here is not of determinate being. A determinate, a finite being (entity), is such as connects itself with others; it is a complex which stands in the relation of necessity with many other such, with the whole world. As regards the reciprocating system of the whole, raetaphysic might advance the — at bottom tautological — allegation, that were a single dust-atom destroyed, the whole universe would collapse. In the instances opposed to the position in question, something appears as not indifferent, whether it is or is not, not for the sake of being or non-being, but for the sake of its concrete relations, which relations connect it with others such. If a determinate complex, any determinate object be presupposed, this object because it is determinate, is in manifold relation to other objects ; it is not indifferent to it, then, whether a certain other object, with which it stands in relation, is or is not ; for only through such relation is it essentially that which it is. The same thing is the case with conception (non-being being taken in the more determinate sense of conception as against actuality), in the context of which the being Or non-being of an object, which is conceived as determinately in relation with some other, is not indifferent. This consideration involves what constitutes a main moment in the Kantian criticism of the ontological argument for the existence of God, which is regarded here, however, only in reference to the distinction of Being and Nothing in general and of determinate being or non-being, which there presents itself. There was presupposed, as is well known in said so-called proof or argument, the notion of a Being, to whom all realities accrue, and conse- QUALITY TRANSLATED. 223 quently also existence, which was likewise assumed as one of the realities. The Kantian criticism took stand specially by this, that existence or being (these taken as synonymous) is no quality, or no real predicate ; that is, it is not a notion of something which can be added to the notion of a thing.* Kant means to say here, that, being is no element of comprehension. Thus, he proceeds, the possible contains no more than the actual ; a hundred actual dollars contain not in the least more than a hundred possible ones; that is, the former have no other logical comprehension than the latter. For this comprehension, considered as isolated, it is in fact indifferent to be or not to be; there lies in it no difference of being or non-being — this difference on the whole affects it not at all ; the hundred dollars become no less if they are not, and no more if they are. A difference must come only from elsewhere. 'On the other hand,' suggests Kant, 'there is more in my means in the case of a hundred actual dollars, than in that of the mere notion of the same, or their possibility. For the object in the case of actuality is not merely analytically con- tained in my notion, but adds itself synthetically to my notion (which is a determination of my condition), without these said hundred dollars themselves being in the least increased by this existence besides my notion.' There are presupposed here two kinds of conditions, to use the Kantian expressions (which are not without confusion and awkwardness) : the one, which Kant names notion, but by which ordinary conception is to be understood ; and another, the state of means. For the one as for the other, for one's means as for one's conception, a hundred dollars are a complex of comprehension, or, as Kant expresses himself, 'they add themselves synthetically thereto ; ' I as possessor of a hundred dollars, or as non-possessor of the same, or again, I as conceiving a hundred dollars, or not conceiving them, — here, certainly, are cases of a different com- prehension. Stated more generally: The abstractions of Being and Nothing cease both to be abstractions, when they receive a determinate comprehension (or import) : Being is then reality, the determinate being of a hundred dollars ; Nothing, negation, the determinate negation of the same. This element of com- prehension itself, the hundred dollars, when taken abstractly by itself, is in the one unchanged, the same that it is in the other. But now that Being further is taken as state of one's means, the * Kant's Kritik of P. R., 2nd edn., p. 628 sqq. 224 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. hundred dollars come into relation to a state ; and for this state, the determinatum which they are is not indifferent : their being or non-being is only Alteration [of state] ; they are transferred to the sphere of existence. "When, therefore, it is urged against the unity of Being and Nothing, that it is nevertheless not indifferent, whether this and that (the hundred dollars) be or be not, it is a mistake to transfer to mere being and non-being the difference of whether I have or have not the hundred dollars — a mistake which, as has been shown, rests on the one-sided abstraction which leaves out of view the determinate existence present in such examples, and holds fast mere being and non-being ; as, on the other hand, it (the mistake) transforms the abstract Being and Nothing, that [here, in this Logic] should alone be apprehended, into a deter- minate Being and Nothing — into a There-being [a finite existence]. Only There-being contains the real difference of Being and Nothing, namely, a Something and an Other. This real difference, instead of abstract Being and pure Nothing and their only opined difference, is what floats before conception. As Kant expresses himself, there comes 'through the fact of existence something into the context of collective experience;' 'we obtain thereby an additional object of perception, but our notion of the object is thereby not increased.' That, as appears from the preceding illustration, is as much as this — through the fact of existence, essentially just because something is a deter- minate existence, it is in connexion with others, and among such also with a perceiving agent. ' The notion of the hundred dollars,' says Kant, ' is not increased by perception.' The notion here is the already-noticed isolatedly-conceived hundred dollars. In this isolated form, they are indeed an empirical matter, but cut off, without connexion and determinateness towards other (others): the form of identity with themselves takes from them the reference to another, and makes them indifferent whether they are perceived or not. But this so-called notion of a hundred dollars is a false notion : the form of simple reference to self [as in a notion strictly such] does not belong to such limited, finite matter ; it is a form put on it and lent to it by subjective under- standing : a hundred dollars are not referent of self to self, but changeable and perishable. The thought or conception, before which only a determinate being, existence, floats, is to be referred to the previously-mentioned beginning of science made by Parmenides, who purified and QUALITY TRANSLATED. 225 elevated his own conception, and thereby that of all following times, into the pure thought, Being as such, and in that manner created the element of science. That which is first in science has of necessity to show itself historically as first. And we have to regard the Eleatic One or Being as the first hint of the {true) thought. Water and such material principles are hypothetically to be considered to be, or would be the universal [or All-common] principle ; but they are as material things not pure thoughts : Numbers are neither the first simple unal thought, nor that which is permanent in itself, but the thought which [as a thought] is quite external to itself. The reference back from particular finite being to being as such in its completely abstract universality, is to be regarded not only as the very first theoretical, but as even also the very first practical postulate. When, for example, there is a cry raised, — as about the hundred dollars, that it makes a difference in the state of my means, whether I have them or not, or that it makes a still greater difference to me whether I am or not, whether an other be or not, — the reminder may be held up — without mentioning that there doubtless are actual means, to which such possession of a hundred dollars is indifferent — that Man, in his moral thought, ought to raise himself to such abstract universality as would render it in truth indifferent to him whether the hundred dollars, let them have whatever quantitative relation they may to the actual state of his means, are or whether they are not — indifferent to him even whether he himself be or not (in finite life, that is, for a state, determinate being is meant), &c. — even ' si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae,' was the utterance of a Koman, and much more the Christian ought to find himself in this indifference. There is still to be noticed the immediate connexion in which the elevation over the hundred dollars, and all finite things in general, stands with the ontological proof and the said Kantian criticism of the same. This criticism has by its popular example made itself universally plausible: who does not know that a hundred actual dollars are different from a hundred merely possible ones — that they make a sensible difference in my state of means ? Because, therefore, in the case of the hundred dollars this difference manifests itself, the notion — that is, the deter- minatum of comprehension as mere possibility — and the being are different from each other : and so, therefore, also God's Notion is p THE SECRET OF HEGEL. different from his Being ; and just as little as I can educe from the possibility of a hundred dollars the fact of their actuality, so little can I ' claw out ' of the notion of God his existence : and the ontological proof is nothing but this ' clawing out ' of the exist- ence of God from his notion. Now, if certainly it is not without its own truth that Notion is different from Being, God is still more different from the hundred dollars arid other finite things. It is the Definition of Finite Things, that in them notion and being are different, notion and reality, soul and body are separable, and they themselves consequently perishable and mortal: the abstract definition of God, on the other hand, is just this — that his Notion and his Being are unseparated and inseparable. The true criticism of the Categories and of Reason is exactly this — to give thought an understanding of this difference, and to prevent it from applying to God the distinguishing characters and relations of the Finite. Remark 2. Defects of the Expression Unity, Identity, of Being and Nothing. There is another reason to be mentioned contributive to the repugnance against the proposition relative to Being and Nothing : this reason is, that the expression of the result, furnished by the consideration of Being and Nothing, in the proposition, Being and Nothing is one and the same, is incomplete. The accent is laid mainly on their being one and the same, as is the case in the pro- position of a judgment in general, where the predicate it is, which alone enunciates what the subject is. The sense seems, therefore, to be, that the difference is denied — which difference, at the same time, nevertheless, is immediately presentant in the proposition ; for it names both terms, Being and Nothing, and implies them as things different. It cannot, however, be meant that abstraction is to be made from them, and only their unity is to be held fast. This sense would of itself manifest its own one-sidedness, inasmuch as that from which abstraction is to be made, is, nevertheless, actually present and expressly named in the proposition. So far now as the proposition, Being and Nothing is the same, enunciates the identity of these terms, but in effect just as much implies their difference, it contradicts itself in itself and eliminates itself. Looking at this still closer, we have here a proposition, which, considered strictly, involves the movement to disappear through QUALITY TRANSLATED. 227 its own self. But just thus there happens in its own self that which is to constitute its special purport — namely, Becoming. The proposition contains thus the result — it is that in itself. The point, however, which is to be noticed here, is the difficulty, that the result is not itself expressed in the proposition ; it is an external reflexion which discerns it in it. Here, then, in the beginning this universal remark must at once be made, that a proposition, in the form of a judgment, is not competent to express speculative truths : a knowledge of this circumstance is sufficient to obviate much misunderstanding of speculative truths. A judg- ment is an identical reference between subject and predicate : abstraction is made thereby from this, that the subject has still more characters than those of the predicate ; as well as from this, that the predicate has more extension than the subject. Now, if the matter in hand is speculative, the non-identity of subject and predicate is also an essential moment ; but in a judgment this is not expressed. The paradoxical and bizarre light in which much of later philosophy appears to those who are not familiar with speculative thought, arises frequently from the form of the simple judgment, when applied in expression of speculative results. In order to express the speculative truth, the difficulty may, in the first place, be attempted to be met by the addition of the contrary proposition, as above, Being and Nothing is not the same. But thus the further difficulty arises that these propositions are then unconnected, and so exhibit the matter in hand only in the state of antinomy, while it (this matter) refers only to a one and same thing. The terms, too, which are expressed in the two pro- positions are to be supposed directly in union, at the same time that this union can be expressed only as a movement, an unrest of incompatibles. The most common injustice which is done to speculative matter, is to make it one-sided — to hold up, namely, only one of the propositions into which it can be resolved. It cannot, then, be denied that this allegation is held to — As true as is the statement, so false it is; for if ever the one proposition of a speculative nature be taken, the other must, at least, be equally considered and assigned. There is here yet to be specially mentioned that, to say so, unfortunate word unity. Unity designates still more than identity a subjective reflexion ; it is especially taken as the relation which arises from comparison, from external reflexion. So far as such reflexion finds the same thing in two different objects, there is a unity present to it in such 228 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. wise that there is presupposed, as regards this unity, the perfect indifference of the objects themselves which are compared, so that this comparing and unity nowise concern these objects themselves, and are a finding and determining external to them. Unity expresses, therefore, the quite abstract self-sameness, and sounds the harder and the harsher, the more those things of which it is enunciated show themselves to be directly different. For unity it would be, therefore, so far, better to say only, unseparatedness or tnseparableness : but thus, again, the affirmative of the relation of the whole were not expressed. Thus the whole veritable result which has here yielded itself is Becoming. And this is not merely the one-sided or abstract unity of Being and Nothing ; but this movement implies : that pure Being is directly and simply such ; that it is, therefore, equally pure Nothing ; that the difference of these is, but just as much that it eliminates itself and is not. The result, then, really asserts quite as much the difference of Being and of Nothing, but only as meant, supposed. We think that Being is rather something quite other than what Nothing is; that there is nothing clearer than their absolute difference ; and that there seems nothing easier than to show it. It is, however, just as easy to convince oneself that this is im- possible, that it is unsayable. Those who would persist in the difference of Being and Nothing, let them challenge themselves to assign in what it consists. Had Being and Nothing each any determinateness by which they might be distinguished the one from the other, they would be, as has been observed, determinate Being and determinate Nothing — not pure Being and pure Nothing, as they still are here. Their difference, therefore, is entirely blank; each of the two is in the same way indeterminate : the difference, therefore, lies not in them, but in a tertium quid, in a mere supposition. But supposition is a mere subjective state which does not belong to this course of exposition. The tertium quid, however, in which Being and Nothing have their support, must also present itself here, and it has already so presented itself : it is Becoming. In it they are as different ; Becoming is only so far as they are different. This tertium quid is another than they : they consist only in another ; that is to say as well, they consist (or subsist) not independently each. Becoming is the maintainment or maintaining medium of Being as well as of Non- being; or their maintainment is only their being in a one; QUALITY TRANSLATED. 229 precisely this their maintainment it is that equally eliminates their difference. The challenge to assign the difference of Being and Nothing includes this other also, to say, what then is Being and what is Nothing ? Let those who strive against perceiving that the one as well as the other is only a transition, the one into the other — and who maintain of Being and of Nothing this and that — just say what it is they speak of, that is, produce a definition of Being and Nothing, and demonstrate that it is correct. "Without having complied with this first requisition of ancient science, the logical rules of which they accept and apply in other cases, all that they maintain in regard to Being and Nothing are but assertions, scientific nullities. Should it be said, Existence, so far as, in the first place, existence can be held synonymous with Being, is the complement to possibility, then we have thus another character presupposed, possibility, and Being is not enunciated in its im- mediacy, not just as simple per se, but as conditioned. For being which is mediated, a result, we shall reserve the expression existence. But one represents to oneself Being — perhaps under the figure of pure light, as the clearness of untroubled seeing — Nothing again as absolute night, and one illustrates their distinc- tion by this well-known empirical difference. In truth, however, if one will realise to oneself more exactly this very seeing, one will easily perceive that there will be seen in absolute light just as much and as little as in the absolute dark ; that the one seeing as much as the other is pure seeing — seeing of Nothing. Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same. Only in determinate light — and light becomes determinate through darkness — in troubled light, therefore, just as only in determinate darkness — and darkness becomes determinate by light — in illu- minated darkness, can anything be distinguished, because only troubled light and illuminated darkness possess in themselves distinction, and are thereby determinate Being — There-being, or So-being [Daseyn — particular existence]. Kemabk 3. The Isolating of the Abstractions, Being and Nothing. The unity, whose moments are Being and Nothing as insepar- able the one from the other, is itself, at the same time, different from them, and thus to them a third something, which in its own 230 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. most strictly proper form is Becoming. Transition is the same as Becoming; only that in the former, the two, from the one of which to the other of which the movement is made, have more the appearance of being independently apart from each other, and the movement is rather conceived as taken place between them. "Wherever and however Being or Nothing is in question, there this third [something] must be present also ; for these subsist not by themselves, but are only in Becoming, in this,- so to speak, third. This third, indeed, has numerous empirical forms ; but these are put out of view by abstraction, in order to hold fast these its own products, Being and Nothing, each per se, and show them inde- pendent of movement. In reply to such simple procedure of abstraction, we have merely just equally simply, to point to the empirical existence in which said abstraction itself is only some- thing, has a Daseyn. Through whatever reflexional forms, indeed, the separation of the inseparable is sought to be attained, there is independently present in every such attempt the opposite of its own self, and so, without recurring or appealing to the nature of the facts themselves, we may always confound every such attempt out of its own self, just by taking it as it gives itself, and demon- strating in it its own other. It would be lost trouble to seek, as it were, to arrest all the sallies and windings of reflexion and its reasonment, in order to cut off and render impossible to it all the shifts and shuffles by which it conceals its own contradiction from its own self. For this reason, also, I refrain from noticing numer- ous self-called refutations and objections which have been brought forward against the doctrine that neither Being nor Nothing is anything true, and that only Becoming is their truth ; the mental training calculated to give insight into the nullity of such refuta- tions— or rather, quite to banish all such weak suggestions from oneself — is to be effected only by a critical knowledge of the forms of the understanding ; but those who are the most fertile in such objec- tions fall on at once with their reflexions against the very first propositions, without — by an enlarged study of logic — helping or having helped themselves to a consciousness of the nature of these crude reflexions. "We shall consider, however, a few of the results which manifest themselves when Being and Nothing are isolated from each other, and the one placed out of touch with the other, so that their transition is negated. Parmenides held fast by Being, and was but consistent with QUALITY TRANSLATED. 231 himself, in affirming at the same time of Nothing, that it in nowise is ; only Being is. Being, thus complete by itself, is indeterminate, and has, therefore, no reference to any other : it seems, therefore, that from this beginning there can be no further progress made — from it itself, that is — and any progress can only be accomplished by the joining on to it of something alien, something from without and elsewhere. The step forward, that Being is the same as Nothing, appears, then, as a second absolute beginning — a transi- tion that is fur sich (per se), and adds itself externally to Being. Being would be not at all possibly the absolute beginning, if it had a determinateness ; it would then depend on another, and would not be immediate, would not be the beginning. If it be, however, indeterminate, and so a true beginning, neither has it anything by which to lead itself over into another ; it is at once the end. There can just as little anything break or dawn out of it, as anything break or dawn into it ; in Parmenides, as in Spinoza, there is no transition from Being or Substance to the Negative, the Finite. But if transition nevertheless is to be made — which, as has been remarked, in the case of reference-less and so progress-less Being, can only take place in an external fashion, — such transition or progress were a second, a new beginning. Thus Fichte's absolutely first, unconditioned axiom, A=A, is position, Thesis ; the second is opposition, Antithesis ; this latter is now to be considered partly conditioned, partly unconditioned (and so contradiction in itself). Now tjiis is a progress of outer reflexion, which just as well again negates what it started with as an absolute, — the opposition, the antithesis is negation of the first identity,— as it, at the same time, immediately, expressly reduces its second unconditioned to a conditioned. If, however, on the whole, there were any right to proceed, i.e. to sublate the first beginning, such right must have been of this nature, that it lay in this first itself that another could connect itself with it ; that is, the first must have been determinate. But the Being [of Par- menides]— or, again, the Substance [of Spinoza] does not enunciate itself as such. On the contrary, it is the immediate, the still absolutely indeterminate such. The most eloquent, perhaps forgotten, delineations of the im- possibility to come from an abstract to a further and to a union of both are made by Jacobi in the interest of his polemic against the Kantian synthesis a priori of self-consciousness, in his Essay on the attempt of Criticismus to bring Reason to Understanding 232 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. (Jac. Works, iii. vol.). He states (p. 113) the problem thus: That there be demonstrated the occurrence or the production of a synthesis in a pure [blank unity], whether of consciousness, of space, or of time. ' Space is one, Time is one, Consciousness is one; — tell me now, how any one of these three ones shall — purely — multiply itself in itself: each is only one, and no other; an identical one sort, a the- this- that self sameness / without the-ness, this-ness, that-neas ; for these slumber with the the, this, that, still in the infinite = o of the indeterminateness, from which each and every determinate has yet to expect its birth. What brings into these three infinitudes, finitude; what impregnates space and time k priori with number and measure, and converts them into a pure multiple; what brings the pure spontaneity (I) into oscilla- tion ? How gets its pure vowel to a consonant — or rather, its soundless uninterrupted sounding — how, interrupting itself, breaks it off, in order at least to gain a sort of self-sound [literally vowel], an accent?' One sees from this that Jacobi has very sharply recognised the non-ens of abstraction, whether a so-called absolute (i.e., only abstract) space, or a so-characterised time, or a so- characterised pure consciousness, ego ; he takes stand immovably in it for the purpose of maintaining the impossibility of a transition to an other, the condition of a synthesis, and to a synthesis itself. The synthesis, which is meant, must not be taken as a conjunction of characters already there externally; the question is partly of the genesis of a second to a first, of a determinate to a beginning indeterminate, — partly, again, of immanent synthesis, synthesis d, priori, a unity of differents that is absolutely (or that in and for itself is). Becoming is such immanent synthesis of Being and Nothing ; but because synthesis mostly suggests the sense of an external bringing together of things full-formed, ready-present, externally confronting each other, the name synthesis (synthetic unity) has been justly left out- of use. Jacobi asks, how does the pure vowel of the ego get to its consonant, what brings deter- minateness into indeterminateness? The what were easily answered, and in his own fashion has been already answered by Kant; but the question of how amounts to, in what mode and manner, in what relation, and so on, and demands thus the statement of a particular category; but of mode and manner, of categories of the understanding, there cannot be any question here. The question of how belongs itself to the erroneous ways of reflexion, which demands comprehensibleness, but at the same QUALITY TRANSLATED. 233 time presupposes its own fixed categories, and consequently feels itself armed in advance against the reply to its own question. Neither has it with Jacobi the higher sense of a question con- cerning the necessity of synthesis; for he remains, as has been said, fixed in the abstractions, in order to maintain the impos- sibility of a synthesis. He describes (p. 147) with particular vivacity the procedure in order to reach the abstraction of space. * I must for so long strive clean to forget that I ever saw, heard, touched, or handled anything at all, my own self expressly not excepted. Clean, clean, clean must I forget all motion; and precisely this forgetting, because it is hardest, I must make my greatest concern. I must get everything in general, as I have got it thought away — also completely and entirely shot away, and leave nothing whatever over but only the forcibly kept per- ception of infinite immutable space. I may not therefore again think into it my own self as something distinct from it, but at the same time connected with it ; I may not allow myself to be simply surrounded and pervaded by it : but I must wholly pass over into it, become one with it, transmute myself into it; I must leave nothing over of myself, but this my perception itself, in order to contemplate it as a veritably self-subsistent, independent, single and sole manifestation.' In this quite abstract purity of continuity, — that is, indefinite- ness and void of conception, — it is indifferent to name this abstraction space, or pure perception, -pure thought; — it is quite the same thing as what the Indian names Brahma, when, externally motionless and no less internally emotionless, looking years long only to the tip of his own nose, he says within himself just Om, Om, Om, or perhaps just nothing at all. This dull, void consciousness, conceived as consciousness, is Being (das Seyn). In this vacuum, says Jacobi further, he experiences the opposite of what he is assured by Kant he ought to experience : he finds himself, not as a plurality and manifold, but rather as a unit without any plurality and variety; nay, ' I am the very impossibility, am the annihilation of all variety and plurality, — can,out of my pure, absolutely simple, unalterable nature, restore again, or " spook " into myself, not the smallest atom of any such ; — thus all out-of and near-one-another-ness, all thereon founded variety and plurality, reveals itself in this purity as purely impossible.' This impossibility is nothing else than the tautology — I hold fast by the abstract unity, and exclude all plurality and variety ; 234 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. hold myself in the difference-less and indeterminate, and look away from all that is distinguished and determinate. The Kantian synthesis & priori of self-consciousness — that is, the function of this unity to sunder itself, and in this diremption or sundering to maintain itself — is attenuated by Jacobi into the same abstraction. This ' synthesis in itself,' the ' original ordeal, * is one-sidedly reduced by him into 'the copula in itself; — an Is, Is, Is, without beginning and end, and without What, Who, and Which : this repetition of the repetition continued ad infinitum is the sole business, function, and production of the all-purest synthesis ; it itself is the mere, pure, absolute repetition itself.' Or, indeed, we might say, rather, as there is in it no remission, — that is, no nega- tion, distinction, — it is not a repetition, but only undistinguished simple being. But is it then still synthesis, when Jacobi omit& precisely that by which the unity is synthetic unity ? In the first place, when Jacobi plants himself thus fast in the absolute (i.e., abstract) space, time, and consciousness, — it is to be said that he, in this manner, misplaces himself into, and holds himself fast in, something empirically false; there empirically exist no space and time, which were not limited, not in their continuity filled with variously-limited existence and vicissitude,, so that these limits and alterations belong unseparated and inseparably to space and time : in like manner, consciousness is filled with determinate sensation, conception, desire, &c; it does not exist separated from a particular matter of some sort. The empirical transition, moreover, is self-evident : consciousness can make, indeed, void space, void time, and void consciousness itself, or pure being, its object and matter ; but it remains not with such, it presses forward out of such void to a better, — i.e., in some manner or other, a more concrete matter, and however bad such a matter may be otherwise, it is so far better and truer: just any such matter is a synthetic one in general ; synthetic taken in the more universal sense. Thus Parmenides with his illusion and his opinion must consent to own an opposite of being and of truth; as, similarly situated, is Spinoza with his attributes, modes, extension, motion, understanding, will, &c. The synthesis involves and shows the untruth of those abstractions ; in it they are in unity with their other — not, therefore, as self-subsistent — not as absolute, but directly as relative. * Das ' urspriinghliche Urtheilen ' — at once the ' original judging ' and the 'original disparting.' (New note.) QUALITY TRANSLATED. 235 The demonstration of the empiHcal nullity of empty space, &c., *is not, however, that with which we have to do. Consciousness certainly can abstract, can fill itself with the indeterminate also ; and the abstractions it then holds fast are the thoughts of pure space, time, pure consciousness, pure being. Now, it is the thought of pure space, &c. — i.e., pure space, &c. — which is in itself to be demonstrated as null : i.e., that it as such is already its own contrary ; that as it is there in its self, its contrary has already penetrated into it ; it is already of itself gone forward out of itself — is determinateness. But this manifests itself immediately in their regard [that is, as regards pure space, time, &c.]. They are, as Jacobi profusely describes them, results of abstraction ; they are expressly deter- mined as undetermined ; and this — to go back to its simplest form, amounts to being — is being. Just this indeterminateness of being, however, is what constitutes its determinateness ; for indeter- minateness is opposed to determinateness : it is itself consequently, as so opposed, the determinate or negative, and the pure, quite abstract negative. This indefiniteness or abstract negation, which Being in this manner has in its own self, is what outer as well as inner reflexion enunciates when it takes it as equal to nothing, and declares it an empty thing of thought, Nothing. Or it may be expressed thus : Since Being is determinationless, it is not the (affirmative) determinateness, which it is, not Being but Nothing. In the pure reflexion of the Beginnipg, as it has been taken in this Logic with Being as such, transition is still concealed : since Being is taken only as immediate, Nothing breaks by it only immediately forth. But all following findings, as at once Daseyn, are more concrete ; in it, that is already explicit which involves and produces the contradiction of those abstractions, and therefore their transition. With respect to Being as said simple, immediate, the recollection that it is the result of perfect abstraction, and so for that very reason but abstract negativity, Nothing, becomes lost from view behind the science which within its own self, expressly from Essence onwards, will present said one-sided immediate as a mediate, in which Being is explicated as Existence, and the mediating agency of this Being as the Ground. In the light of said recollection, the transition from Being into Nothing may be represented (or, as the phrase goes, explained and made intelligible) as something even light and trivial. It may be said for example, that without doubt Being which has been made 236 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. the beginning of the science (and of science) is Nothing ; for we can abstract from everything ; and when one has abstracted from everything, there remains, of course, nothing over. But, it may be continued, the beginning is thus not an affirmative, not Being, but just Nothing ; and Nothing is then also the end, at least as much so as immediate Being, and even still more. The shortest way is to let such reasoning take its own course, and look on to see how the results it vaunts are characterised. Taking it for granted, then, that Nothing were the result of said raisonnement, and that now, consequently, the Beginning must be made with Nothing (as in Chinese philosophy), there were no necessity on that account to stir a hand ; for before one could stir a hand, this Nothing would have just as much converted itself into Being (see above, B., Nothing). But, further, said abstraction from all and everything (which all then, nevertheless, is) being presupposed, it is still to be more exactly understood ; the result of the abstraction from all that is, is first of all abstract being, being in general ; as in the cosmological proof of the existence of God from the contingent being of the world (over which being the ascent or advance con- tained in the proof is made), being is still brought up along with us, being is determined as Infinite Being. But abstraction can certainly again be made from this pure being also ; Being, too, can be thrown into the all from which abstraction has been already made ; then there remains Nothing. It is still possible for us, would we but forget the thinking of Nothing — i.e., its striking round into Being — or did we know nothing of this, to continue in the style of one may this, one may that : we may, for example (God be praised !), abstract also from the Nothing (as, for that part, the creation of the world itself is but an abstraction from nothing), and then there remains not Nothing, for it is just from it we have abstracted, and we are once more landed in Being. This one can, one may, gives an external play of abstrac- tion, in which the abstracting itself is only the one-sided activity of the negative. Directly at hand, it lies in this very one can, one may, itself, that to it Being is as indifferent as Nothing, and that just as much as each of the two disappears, each of them equally also arises : again, it is equally indifferent whether we start from the act of the Nothing, or from the Nothing ; the act of Nothing — i.e., the mere abstracting — is no more and no less anything true than the mere Nothing. The dialectic, according to which Plato handles the One in the QUALITY TRANSLATED. 237 Parmenides, is also to be regarded rather as a dialectic of external reflexion. Being and the One are both Eleatic forms, which are the same thing. But they are also capable of being distinguished : it is thus Plato takes them in the dialogue mentioned. Having removed from the One the various characters of whole and parts — of being in itself, of being in another, &c. — of figure, time, &c, — the result is that Being does not belong to the One, for only in one or other of these modes does Being attach to any one Some- thing (p. 141, E.). Plato then proceeds to handle the position, the One is ; and we have to see how, from this proposition, the transi- tion to the Non-is of the One is accomplished. It takes place by comparing the two members of the proposition advanced, the One is. This proposition contains the One and Being ; and the One is contains more than when we say only, the One. In this that they are different, then, is demonstrated the moment of negation which the proposition holds within it. It is obvious that this path (method) has a presupposition, and is an external reflexion. In like manner as the One is here placed in connexion with Being, may that Being which is supposed capable of being held fast abstractly by itself, be demonstrated — in the simplest fashion, without calling in thought at all — to be in a union which implies the contrary of that which is supposed to be maintained. Being, taken as it is immediately, belongs to a subject, is a thing enun- ciated, has an empirical being, and stands, therefore, on the level of limitation and the negative. In whatever phrases or flexions the understanding may express itself, when it sets itself against the unity of Being and Nothing, and appeals to what is immedi- ately before us, it will find just in this very experience nothing but determined being, defined being, Being with a limit or nega- tion [a term, an end], — that very unity which it rejects. The maintaining of immediate being reduces itself thus to an empiri- cal existence, the holding up of which cannot be rejected, and just because it is to an immediacy outside of thought, that its own appeal is made. The case is the same with Nothing, only reversewise, and this reflexion is familiarly known and has often enough been made in its regard. Nothing, taking in its immediacy, shows itself as Be-ing or Be-ent (as a thing that is) ; for it is in its nature the same as Being. Nothing is thought, nothing is mentally con- ceived, it is spoken of ; it is therefore. Nothing has in thought, mind, speech, &c, its Being. This Being again is, furthermore as 238 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. well, distinguished from it: it is therefore said, that nothing is indeed in thought, mind ; but that on that account not it is, not to it as such does being attach, that only thought or mental con- ception is this Being. Notwithstanding this distinction, it is just as much not to be denied that nothing stands in connexion with a being, but in connexion, though it implies difference also, there is a unity with being. In whatever manner nothing may be enunciated or exhibited, still it shows itself in conjunction, or if you will contact, with a being, unseparated from a being, or just in a Daseyn. But in that nothing is thus demonstrated in a Daseyn, usually still this distinction of it from being (Seyn) is wont to float before the mind, — namely, that the Daseyn of nothing [its actual exist- ence] is entirely nothing appertinent to it itself; that it does not possess being for and by its own self, that it is not being as such. Nothing is only absence of being, as darkness is only absence of light, cold only absence of heat, &c. Darkness [the strain con- tinues] has only meaning in reference to the eye, in external comparison with the positive, light ; and just so is cold only something in our sensation. On the other hand, light, heat, like being, are per se, are themselves, the objective, the real, the actuose, of absolutely quite another quality and dignity than those negatives — than nothing. We find it frequently adduced as a very weighty reflexion and important cognition, that darkness is only absence of light, cold only absence of heat. But in this field of empirical matters it may be empirically remarked, in reference to said acute reflexion, that in light darkness certainly shows itself actuose, inasmuch as it determines it to colour, and only thereby imparts to it visibility indeed ; for, as formerly observed, in pure light vision is just as little possible as in pure darkness. But visibility is actuality in the eye, and in that actuality the negative has just as much share as the light itself, which passes for the real and positive. In like manner, cold makes itself perceivable enough in water, in our sensation, &c. &c; and when we refuse to it a so-called objective reality, we have with that won altogether nothing as against it. But it might further be objected, that here too, as above, it is a negative of definite import that is spoken of, and that we have not steadily remained by nothing itself, to which being is, as regards empty abstraction, not inferior — nor, indeed, superior. But it were well to take by themselves cold, darkness, and the like definite negations, in order QUALITY TRANSLATED, 239 to see what is involved in this common constitution which they exhibit. They are not then to be considered as nothing in general, but as the nothing of light, heat, &c. — of something definite, of an import, a content [an actuality] : they are thus determinate, and, if we may say so, mtaining nothings. But a definedness, determinedness, is, as comes again further on, itself a negation: they are thus negative nothings. But a negative nothing is something affirmative. The striking round of nothing, by reason of its definiteness (which definiteness manifested itself a little while ago as a Daseyn — a particular state of being — in a subject, in water, or whatever else), into an affirmative, appears to a consciousness which remains fixed in the abstraction of the understanding as the greatest of paradoxes, however simple it is to perceive that the negation of a negation is a positive. To be sure, on the other hand, the perception of this simple truth may appear to a like consciousness — and just because of its simplicity — as something trivial, on which therefore high and mighty understanding need bestow no attention. The matter meanwhile has, with all this, its own correctness : nay, not only has this correctness, but possesses, because of the universality of such forms or determinations, an infinite extension and universal application. It were not amiss, as regards these things, then, to pay a little attention after all. [Original curiously tangled : see p. 105, WW., vol. iii, ed. 1833.] It may be still remarked, as regards the transition of Being and Nothing into one another, that it ought to be taken up into the mind — just so — without any further operation of reflexion. It is immediate and quite abstract because of the abstraction of the transient moments ; i.e., because in either of these moments the determinateness of the other moment is not yet set (manifested as implied), and so as means by which the transition were to be effected. Nothing is not yet set (manifested as implied) in Being, though certainly Being is essentially [in itself] Nothing, and vice versd. It is, therefore, inadmissible to bring in here what are further determinations, and to treat Being and Nothing as in any relation : said transition is not yet a relation. It is, therefore, not allowable to say, Nothing is the ground of Being ; or, Being is the ground of Nothing ; Nothing cause of Being, &c; or, transition is possible into Nothing only under the condition that something is, or into Being only under the condition of Non-being. The sort of inter-reference between them cannot be further defined, unless the 240 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. co-referred sides themselves were at the same time further deter- mined. The connexion of Ground and Consequent, &c, has no longer mere Being and Nothing as the sides which it unites, but expressly Being which is Ground and a something — something which, to be sure, is only a reflex, and not self-subsistent, but still not the abstract Nothing. Remark 4. Incomprehensibleness of the Beginning. We may perceive from the preceding, what is the nature of the dialectic against a beginning of the world, and also its end, by which the eternity of matter should be supposed proved; i.e., of the dialectic against becoming, origin or decease, in general. The Kantian antinomy respecting the finitude or infinitude of the world in space and time receives more particular consideration further on, under the notion of quantitative infinitude. Said simple ordinary dialectic rests on the holding fast of the antithesis of being and nothing. It is proved in the following manner, that there is no beginning of the world, or of anything else, possible : There cannot anything begin, neither so far as it is, nor so far as it is not : for so far as it is, it does not just begin ; and so far as it 'is not, neither does it begin. Should the world or anything else be supposed to have begun, it must have begun in nothing. But nothing is no beginning, or there is no beginning in nothing : for a beginning includes in it a being ; but nothing contains no being. Nothing is only nothing. In a ground, cause, &c, when the nothing is so determined or defined, an affirmation, being, is contained. For the same reason there cannot anything cease. For in that case being would require to contain nothing. But being is only being, not the contrary of itself. It is obvious that there is nothing brought forward here against Becoming, or beginning and ending, this unity of Being and Nothing, but their assertoric denial and the ascription of truth to Being and Nothing, each in division from the other. This dialectic is, nevertheless, at least more consistent than reflective conception. To this latter, that Being and Nothing are only in separation, passes for perfect truth ; but, on the other hand, it holds beginning and ending as equally true characterisations : in these latter, QUALITY TRANSLATED. 241 however, it de facto assumes the undividedness of Being and Nothing. On the presupposition of the absolute partedness of Being from Nothing, the beginning — as we so often hear — or Becoming, is certainly something incomprehensible; for we make a pre- supposition which sublates the beginning or the becoming, which nevertheless we again grant; and this contradiction, which we produce ourselves, and whose resolution we make impossible, is what is incomprehensible. What has been stated is also the same dialectic which under- standing uses against the notion contained in the higher analysis of infinitesimal magnitudes. This notion is treated more in detail further on. These magnitudes have been defined as such, that they are in their disappearance, not before their disappearance, for they were then finite magnitudes ; — not after their disappearance, for they were then nothing. Against this pure notion it has been objected, and perpetually repeated, that such magnitudes are either something or nothing ; that there is no middle state (state is an inappropriate, barbarous expression) between being and non-being. There is here, too, assumed the absolute separation of being and nothing. But, on the other hand, it has been shown, that being and nothing are in effect the same, or, to speak the above dialect, that there is nothing whatever which is not a middle state between being and nothing. Mathematic has to thank the adoption of said notion, which understanding resists, for its most brilliant results. The adduced raisonnement, which arrives at the false assumption of the absolute separatedness of being and non-being, and remains fixed in it, is to be named, not dialectic, but sophistry. For sophistry is raisonnement from a groundless presupposition, which is accepted without examination and inconsiderately ; but we call dialectic the higher rational movement, in which such seemingly absolutely separated things pass over into one another — through themselves — through that which they are — and the presupposition negates itself. It is the dialectic immanent nature of Being and Nothing themselves to manifest their unity — Becoming — as their truth. 2. Moments of Becoming. Becoming, Coming-to-be and Ceasing-to-be, is the unseparated- ness of Being and Nothing ; not the unity which abstracts from Being and Nothing ; but as unity of Being and Nothing, it is this Q 242 THE SECRET OF HEGtiL. definite, determinate [concrete] unity, that in which as well Being as Nothing is. But thus as each is, only unseparated from its other, each also is not. They are, therefore, in this unity, but as evanescents, but as sublated. They sink down from their previously-conceived self-subsistency into moments, distinguished and distinguishable, but at the same time resolved. Considered as in reference to their distinguishedness, each is in it as unity with the other. Becoming, then, contains Being and Nothing as two unities such that each of them is itself unity of Being and Nothing. The one is Being as immediate and as reference to Nothing; the other, Nothing as immediate and as reference to Being : the moments are in disparate determination in these unities. Becoming is thus in a double form. In the one, Nothing is as immediate : this form is as beginning from Nothing which refers itself to Being, or, what is the same thing, passes over into Being. In the other, Being is as immediate : this form is as beginning from Being which passes over into Nothing. The former is Origin or Coming-to-be ; the latter, Decease, Ceasing, or Ceasing-to-be. Both are the same, Becoming, but, as these so diverse directions, they mutually interpenetrate and paralyse themselves. The one is Ceasing-to-be ; Being passes over into Nothing, but Nothing is equally the contrary of itself, a passing over into Being, Coming-to-be. This Coming-to-be is the other direction ; Nothing passes over into Being, but Being equally sublates itself, and is a passing over into Nothing, Ceasing-to-be. They sublate not themselves antagonistically, not the one the other externally ; but each sublates itself in itself, and is in its own self the contrary of itself. 3. Sublation (resolution) of Becoming. The equilibrium into which Coming-to-be and Ceasing-to-be reflect themselves, is, at first hand, Becoming itself. But Becom- ing equally goes together into peaceful unity. Being and Nothing are in it only as disappearing; but Becoming as such is only through their distinguishedness. Their disappearing, therefore, is the disappearing of Becoming, or the disappearing of the dis- appearing itself. Becoming is an untenable unrest, which sinks together into a peaceful result. Or it might be expressed thus : Becoming is the disappearing of Being in Nothing and of Nothing in Being, and the disappearing QUALITY TRANSLATED. 243 of Being and Nothing generally ; but it rests, at the same time, on the distinguished ness of these. It contradicts itself, therefore, within itself, because it unites such within itself as is opposed to its own self, but such a union destroys itself. This result is a disappearedness, but not as Nothing ; — as Nothing it were only a relapse into one of the distinctions already sublated, not a result of Nothing and of Being. It is the unity of Being and Nothing which has settled into unbroken one- ness. But unbroken oneness is Being, — nevertheless, even so, no longer as individually a whole, but as form of the whole. Becoming, thus as transition into the unity of Being and Nothing, which unity is as beent (existent), or has the form of the one-sided immediate unity of these moments, is Daseyn [actual finite, definite existence, taken quite generally]. Remark. The expression, Sublation. Aufheben und das Aufgehobene (das Ideelle), sublation and what is sublated (and so only idSellement, not reellement is), this is one of the most important notions of philosophy, a ground-form which repeats itself always and everywhere, the sense of which is to be exactly apprehended and particularly distinguished from the Nothing (negation). What sublates itself, does not, on that account, become nothing. Nothing is the immediate [directly present to us] ; what is sublated, on the other hand, is a mediate, it is a non -beent — but as result — which set out from a being : it has, therefore, the definite particularity from which it derives still in itself [impliciter; what anything has in itself, it implies or involves]. Aufheben, To sublate, has two senses, now signifying as much as to preserve, maintain, and again as much as to cause to cease, to make an end of Even preserving includes the negative in it — this negative, that something, in order to be conserved is removed or withdrawn from its immediacy, from an existency open to external influences. What is sublated or resolved is thus, at the same time, preserved ; it has only lost its immediacy, but it is not pn that account annihilated. The two characters of sub- lation just stated, may be described lexikalisch as two significa- tions of the word. It is striking to find language using the same word for two contradictory predicables. To speculative thought, 244 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. it is gratifying to find words which have a speculative meaning in themselves. The German language has a considerable number of these. The double meaning of the Latin tollere -(which the Ciceronian wit — tollendum esse Octavium — has made notorious) is more circumscribed, its affirmative character amounting only to a lif ting-up. A thing is sublated, resolved, only so far as it has gone into unity with its opposite ; in this more particular sense, as what is reflected, it may be fitly named moment. Weight, and distance from a point, are called, with reference to the Lever, its mechanical moments, because of the identity of their effect, not- withstanding their diversity otherwise ; the one being, as it were, the real of a weight, and the other the ideal or ideel of a line, a mere character of space (S. Encycl. Hegel, 3d edn., § 261, Bern). The remark must often occur to be made, that philosophy uses Latin expressions for reflected characters, either because the mother-tongue has not such as are required, or if having them, as here, because they remind more of what is immediate, while the foreign tongue suggests rather what is reflected. The more particular sense and expression which — now that they are moments — Being and Nothing receive, come out in the discussion of Daseyn, the unity in which they are kept ox put by. Being is Being, and Nothing is Nothing, only as contradistin- guished from each other ; in their truth again, in their unity, they have disappeared as these characters, and are now something else. Being and Nothing are the same ; therefore, because they are the same, they are no longer being and nothing, and possess now a different significance : in Becoming, they were origin and decease ; in Daseyn, as a differently-determined unity, they are again differently-determined moments. This unity remains now their base [the ground, the mother-liquor that holds them], from which they do not again issue in the abstract sense of Being and Nothing. QUALITY TRANSLATED. 245 CHAPTER II. There-being (Daseyn*). There-being is definite, determinate Being ; its determinateness, definiteness, is beent determinateness, beent definiteness, Quality. Through its quality, is it, that Something is, — and as in opposition to an Other. Through its quality, likewise, is it a^erable and finite. Through its quality is it negatively determined ; and not only so as opposed to an Other, but directly in itself. This its negation as, primarily, opposed to the Finite Something, is the Infinite ; the abstract antithesis in which these distinctions [Finite and Infinite] appear, resolves itself into the Infinitude which is without antithesis, into Being-for-self — (Filrsichseyn). The discussion of There-being has thus the three divisions — A. There-being as such ; B. Something and Other, Finitude ; C. Qualitative Infinitude. A. There-being as such. In There-being a. as such, its determinateness, first of all, is b. to be distinguished as Quality. This (quality), however, is to be taken as well in the one as in the other moment of There- being, — as Reality and as Negation. But so determined, There- being is at the same time reflected within itself ; and set as such, it is c. Something, There-beent-ity. * Whereness and ubiety being in the dictionary, perhaps it might be allowable to coin Thereness and ibUty. There-being, though the literal rendering of Da-Seyn, is so irredeemably ugly, and Daseyn itself must now be so well understood, that per* haps the latter term may be the preferable one to use generally. — N. 246 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. a. There-being in general. There-being issues from Becoming. There-being is the simple oneness of Being and Nothing. Because of this simplicity (singleness), it has the form of an immediate. Its mediation, Becoming, lies behind it ; it (this mediating process) has fixed itself, and There-being therefore appears as a prime from which one might begin. It is at first hand in the one-sided character (determination) of Being ; the other character which is also in it, Nothing, will likewise manifest itself in it as in contraposition to the former. It is not mere Being, but There-being ; etymologically taken, Being in a certain place ; but the idea of space is not relevant here. According to its Becoming, There-being is, in general, Being with a Non-being, in such wise that this Non-being is taken up into simple unity with [the other moment] Being. Non-being taken up into Being in such wise that the concrete [resultant] whole is in the form of Being, of Immediacy, con- stitutes Determinateness as such [i.e., detiniteness, particularity, peculiarity, speciality, specific force, virtue, vitality, value, — say specificity]. The Whole is likewise in the form, i.e., determinateness of Being, for Being has in Becoming shown itself likewise to be only a moment, — a sublated, negatively-determined one. It is such as yet, however, only for us in our reflexion ; it is not yet thus evolved in its own self. But the determinateness as such (the specificity) of There-being will be the evolved and overt one, which is also implied in the expression There-being (Da-seyn). The two distinctions are always to be kept well in view ; only what is evolved, explicit (set) in a notion, belongs in the course of its development to its content ; while any determinateness that is not yet evolved in its own self belongs to our reflexion, whether employed on the nature of the notion itself, or only on external comparison. To call attention to a determinateness of the latter sort can only serve to illustrate or pre-indicate the course which will exhibit itself in the evolution. That the Whole, the oneness of Being and Nothing, is in the one-sided determinateness of Being, is an external reflexion ; but in the Negation, in Some- thing and Other, &c, it will come to be posited, evolved, set. To notice the distinction referred to was in place here ; but to review all the observations which reflexion may allow itself, would lead QUALITY TRANSLATED. 247 to the unnecessary anticipation of what must yield itself in the matter in hand. Such reflexions may, perhaps, serve to facilitate a collective view and understanding generally; but they are attended by the disadvantage of being possibly regarded as unauthorised statements, grounds, and ground-layings for the further development. They are to be taken, therefore, for no more than they really are, and must be distinctly separated from what is a moment in the progress of the thing itself. There-being corresponds to the Being of the previous sphere. Being, however, is the Indefinite ; there present themselves on this account no significates in it. But There-being is a definite being, a concrete ; there manifest themselves, therefore, directly in its regard a number of significates, distinguishable relations of its moments. b. Quality. Because of the immediacy in which in There-being, Being and Nothing are one, they do not exceed each other, they do not go beyond each other ; as far as There-being is Being, so far is it Non-being, so far is it determined, defined. Being is not the genus, determinateness not the species. The determinateness has not yet detached itself from the being ; indeed, it will not again detach itself from it ; for the truth which is now established as ground and base is the unity of Non-being with Being; on it as around appear all further determinations. But the reference, in which determinateness stands here to being, is the imme- diate unity of both, so that there is no distinction of them as yet set. Determinateness thus isolated to itself, as beent determinate- ness, is Quality; — a determination wholly single and direct. {Determinateness in general is the more universal term ; it may be Quantitative as well [as Qualitative], and also still further deter- mined.) Because of this simplicity (and singleness) there is nothing further to be said of Quality as such. But There-being, in which Nothing quite as well as Being is contained, is itself the standard for the one-sidedness of Quality as only immediate or beent determinateness. Quality is to be exhibited quite as much in the character of Nothing, in which case then the immediate or beent determinateness appears as one such distinguished against other such, and so as a reflected one : Nothing thus as the determinate of a determinateness, is equally 248 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. a something reflected, it is a negation. Quality distinguished as beent is Reality ; Quality as fraught with a negative, is Negation generally, also a Quality, but which has the value of "a restriction, and which further on is determined as limit, Limitation. Both are a There-being, but in the Reality as Quality with the accent that it is a Beent, it is concealed that it contains deter- minateness, therefore also negation : the Eeality passes therefore only for something positive, from which negation, limitation, restriction, is excluded. The negation taken as mere restriction would be what nothing is ; but it is a There-being, a Quality only determined with a Non-being. Remark. Reality may seem a word of much ambiguity, because it is used of various and even opposed interests. In a philosophical sense, we may speak, perhaps, of merely empirical reality as a worthless existency. But when it is said of thoughts, notions, theories, they have no reality, this means that no actuality attaches to them : in itself or in the notion, the idea of a Platonic Eepublic, for example, may very well be true. Its worth is here not denied to the idea, and it is allowed to keep its place, as it were, beside Reality. But opposed to so-called mere ideas, mere notions, the real has the value of the alone true. The sense in which in the one case the decision as regards the truth of a matter is assigned to external existency, is just as one-sided as when the idea, the essential principle, or even the inner feeling, is represented as indifferent towards outer fact, or is, perhaps, considered indeed just so much the more excellent, the further it is removed from reality. In reference to the expression Reality, we may make mention of the former metaphysical notion of God which, in especial, constituted the basis of the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God. God was defined as the sum of all realities ; and of this sum it was said that it included no contradiction, that the realities neutralised not the one the other ; for a Reality is to be taken only as a perfection, as an affirmative that contains no negation. The realities are thus not opposed to each other, do not contradict each other. It is assumed in the case of this notion of reality, that this latter still remains when all negation is thought out of it ; but QUALITY TRANSLATED. 249 just thus all its deternrinateness were cancelled. Eeality is Quality, There-being ; on that account, it implies the moment of the negative, and by it only is it the determinate which it is. In the so-called eminent sense, or as — in the usual understanding — infinite (and so, namely, it is expected of us to take it), it (reality) is extended into the indefinite, and loses its meaning. God's goodness is not to be goodness in the usual, but in the eminent sense; not different from his justice, but tempered by it (a Leib- nitzian term of accommodation, reconciliation); just as, on the other hand, his Justice is to be tempered by his goodness : thus neither goodness is any longer goodness, nor justice any longer justice. Power is to be tempered by wisdom ; but in this way it would not be power as such, for it were in subjection to the other: Wisdom is to be enlarged to power, but in this manner it dis- appears as the end and means determining wisdom. The true notion of the Infinite and its absolute unity, which will present itself later, is not to be conceived as a tempering, mutual limitation or mixture, which is but a superficial relation, held, too, in an in- determinate mist, with which only notionless conception can con- tent itself. Eeality, which in the above definition of God is taken as determinate quality, when extended beyond its determinateness ceases to be reality ; it is converted into, or has gone back to, abstract Being ; God as pure reality in all reality, or as sum of all realities, is the same formlessness and matterlessness as the empty absolute in which all is one. Again, Eeality being taken in its determinateness, then, as it, reality, includes essentially the moment of the negative, the sum of all realities becomes just as much a sum of all negations — the sum, then, of all contradictions, — directly, as it were, the absolute power in which all that is determinate is absorbed. But as this absolute all-absorbing power is itself only so far as there still remains opposed to it a not yet absorbed, it becomes, when thought as extended into realised, unlimited power, only the abstract nothing. Said reality in all reality, the being in all There-being, which is to express the notion of God, is nothing else than abstract Being, the same thing as Nothing. Determinateness is Negation put affirmatively; Omnis deter- minatio est negatio — this is the proposition of Spinoza. It is a proposition of infinite importance ; only the negation as such is formless abstraction ; it is not, however, to be imputed to specula- tive philosophy, that it views negation, or nothing, as an ultimum: 250 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Negation is such to speculative philosophy just as little as reality [as such] is to it truth. Of this proposition, that determinateness is negation, the unity of the Spinozistic Substance, or that there is only one Substance, is — the necessary consequence. Thought and Being (or Exten- sion), the two attributes, namely, which Spinoza has before him, he could not but, in this unity [of substance] consider one, for as determinate realities they are negations, the infinitude of which is their unity : according to Spinoza's definition, of which more again, the infinitude of anything is its affirmation. He took them, therefore, as attributes — that is, as such that they have not an individuality proper, an independent being of their own, but are only as in another, as moments ; or rather they are to him not even moments, for his substance is what is quite determinationless in its own self, and the attributes are, as the modi are, distinctions which an external understanding forms. In like manner, the sub- stantiality of individuals cannot subsist in the face of said proposi- tion. The individual is reference to himself by this, that he sets limits to everything else ; but these limits are just so limits to himself also, references to all else — he has his being not in him- self [alone]. The individual is certainly more than only what is on all sides limited ; but this more belongs to another sphere of the Notion : in the Metaphysic of Being it is a directly determin- ate ; and that what is such, that the Finite as such should in and of itself be — against this, determinateness asserts itself essentially as negation, and drags it [the individual, the finite] into the same negative movement of the understanding, which makes all dis- appear into abstract unity, into Substance. Negation stands immediately opposed to Eeality : further on, in the special sphere of the reflected determinations, it becomes opposed to the Positive, which is a reality reflecting to Negation, — a reality, in which the negative seems (shines, shows), — the negative, i.e., which is as yet concealed in reality as such. Quality is then specially property, when in an external reference it manifests itself as immanent determination. By properties of herbs, for example, we understand determinations [manifested powers] which are not only proper to a Something, but imply also that it by them, in reference to others, maintains itself in a peculiar manner [its own proper], and allows not the foreign influences set in it to take their own course, but makes good its own determinations in these, — although, indeed, it excludes them QUALITY TRANSLATED. 251 not. The more quiescent definitenesses, as figure, shape, are, on on the other hand, not always called properties, possibly not even qualities, inasmuch and so far as they are conceived as arable, not identical with the Being or Beingness itself. The Qualirung or Inqualirung (the agonising or inagonising, inward pain-ing, pang-ing, throe-ing), — an expression of Jacob Bohme — of a philosophy that goes into the deep, but a troubled deep, — signifies the movement of a quality (the sour, bitter, fiery, &c.) in its own self, so far as it in its negative nature (in its Qual, its pang) expresses and affirms itself through another — signifies in general the Unrest of the Quality in itself, by which it produces and maintains itself only in conflict. c. Something. In There-being, its determinateness has been distinguished as Quality ; in Quality as there-beent is distinction — of the reality and of the negation. By as much now as these distinctions are present in There-being, by so much are they also null and withdrawn. The reality contains itself negation; it is There- being — not indeterminate, abstract Being. No less is Negation There-being — not the nothing that is to be supposed abstract, but express here as it is in itself, as beent, as constitutively in There- being. Quality in general is thus not divided from There-being, which is only definite, determinate, qualitative Being. This sublation of the distinction is more than a mere withdrawal and external leaving out again of the same, or than a simple turning back to the simple beginning, to There-being as such. The distinction cannot be left out ; for it is. The factum — what is present — therefore, is There-being, distinction in it, and resolu- tion of this distinction ; There-being not distinctionless, as in the beginning, but as again equal to itself through resolution of the distinction, the simplicity (unality) of There-being mediated through this resolution. This sublatedness of the distinction is the deter- minateness proper of There-being [as it were, its special speci- ficity]"; it is thus Insichseyn, Being- within-self : There-being is There-Beent-ity — a Something. The Something is the first negation of the negation, as simple beent reference to self. There-being, or living, thinking, and so further, determines itself essentially [that is, in and from its own nature] as a There being-one, a living-one, thinking-one (Ego), &c. 252 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. This determination is of the highest importance, in order not to stop by There-being, living, thinking, &c., as generalities — for the same reason, not by the Godhead instead of God. Something rightly passes with conception for a Real. Nevertheless, Some- thing is still a very superficial determination ; just as Eeality and Negation, There-being and its Determinateness, though no longer the blank Being and Nothing, remain, all the same, quite abstract determinations. For this reason they are also the most current expressions, and the understanding, that is philosophically un- formed, uses them most, casts its distinctions in their mould, and opines to possess thus something veritably good, and firmly fixed and definite. The Negative of the Negative is as Something only the beginning of the Subject ; — the Being- within-self only first of all quite indefinite. It determines itself further on first as Beent- for-self and so on, till only first in the notion it attains the con- crete intensity of the Subject. As basis of all these determinations, there lies at bottom the negative unity with self. But there- withal the negation as first negation, as negation in general, is to be firmly distinguished from the second, the negation of the negation, which is the concrete absolute negativity, just as the first, on the contrary, is only the abstract negativity. Something is Beent as the negation of the negation ; for this negation is the restoring again of the simple reference to self; — but just thus is Something withal the mediation of itself with itself Here in the Simple of Something, then still more definitely in Being-for-self, in the Subject, &c, is there present — mediation of self with self ; even already in Becoming is mediation present, but only the quite abstract mediation; Mediation with self has reached position (is set, express) in Something, so far as Something is deter- mined as a simple Identical (Einfaches). Attention may be directed to the presence of mediation in general, as opposed to the principle of the asserted mere immediacy of knowledge from which (according to it) mediacy is to be excluded; but no particular attention need be called to this moment of mediacy in the sequel, for it is to be found throughout, and everywhere, in every notion. This mediation with itself which Something is in itself, taken only as negation of the negation, has no concrete determinations as its sides ; so it collapses into the simple unity which Being is. Something is, and is also a There-beent ; it is in itself further also Becoming, which, however, has no longer only Being and Nothing as its moments. The one of these, Being, is now There-being, and, QUALITY TRANSLATED. 253 further, a There-beent. The second is equally a There-beent, but determined as negative of the Something — an Other. The Some- thing as Becoming is a transition, whose moments are themselves Somethings, and which itself, therefore, is aeration ; — a Becoming already become concrete. Something, however, alters (others) itself first of all only in its notion ; it is not yet in position {express) as thus mediating and mediated ; it is set, first of all, only as simply (unally) maintaining itself in its reference to self, and its negative is set as equally qualitative, as only an Other in general. B. FlNITUDK. a. Something and Other; they are, first of all, indifferent as regards each other; an Other is also an immediately There-beent, a Something ; the negation falls thus outside of both. Something is in itself as against its Being-for-other [its relativity to all else]. But the determinateness [the specificity] belongs also to its In- itself, and is b. its qualification, determination (purpose) which equally passes into So-constitutedness, Talification, which, identical with the former, constitutes the immanent and, at the same time, negated Being-for-other [relativity], the Limit of the Something, which is c. the immanent determination of the Something itself, and this latter is thus finite. In the first division, in which There-being in general was con- sidered, this had, as first taken up, the character of Beent. The moments of its development, Quality and Something, are, therefore, equally of affirmative nature. In this division, on the other hand, there develops itself the negative element which lies in There- being, which there (in the first division) was only first of all nega- tion, first negation, but now has determined (or developed) itself up to the point of the Being-within-itself of the Something, to the negation of the negation. a. Something and an Other. 1. Something and Other are both, in the first place, There-beent, or Something. Secondly, each is equally an Other. It is indifferent which is 254 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. first named Something ; and just because it is first named is it Something (in Latin, when they present themselves both in one proposition, they are both called aliud, or the one the other, alius alium ; in the case of a mutual reciprocity, the expression alter alterum is analogous). If we call one There-being A, and the other B, B is, in the first instance, determined as the Other. But A is just as much the other of B. Both are, in the same manner, Others. The expression This serves to fix the distinction and the Something which is to be taken as affirmative. But This just expresses that this distinguishing and picking out of the one Something is a subjective designating falling without the Some- thing itself. Into this external monstration falls the entire deter- minateness ; even the expression This contains no distinction ; all Somethings are just as much These as they are also Others. One opines or means by This to express Something perfectly deter- mined : it escapes notice that Speech, as work of understanding, enunciates only what is general, except in the name of a single object : the individual name, however, is meaningless in the sense, that it does not express a universal, and seems, therefore, as merely posititious and arbitrary, for the same reason, single names can also be arbitrarily assumed, given, or also changed. Thus, then, otherwiseness appears as a determination foreign to the There-being that is so distinguished, or the Other appears out of the single There-being ; partly, because a There-being is determined as Other, only through the comparing of a Third [you or me] ; partly, because it is other only by reason of the Other that is out of it, — but is not as of or for itself so determined. At the same time, as has been remarked, even for conception, every There-being is distinguishable as an other There-being, and there remains not any one There-being that were distinguishable only as a There-being, that were not without or on the outside of a There-being, and, therefore, that were not itself an Other. Both are equally determined as Something and as Other, con- sequently as the same thing, and there is so far no distinction of them. This self-sameness of the determinations, however, falls only into outer reflexion, into the comparing of both ; but as the Other is at present determined, it is per se the Other, in reference indeed to the Something, but it is per se the Other also outside of, apart from the Something. Thirdly, therefore, the Other may be taken as isolated, in reference to its own self ; abstractly as the Other ; the to erepov QUALITY TRANSLATED. 255 of Plato, who opposes it to the One as one of the moments of totality, and in this manner ascribes to the Other a special nature. But thus the Other taken as such is not the Other of Something, but the Other in itself, that is, the Other of itself. Such Other in its own determination is Physical Nature ; it is the Other of the Spirit : this its definition is thus at first a mere relativity, by which there is expressed, not a quality of nature itself, but only a reference external to it. But in that the Spirit is the true Some- thing, and Nature therefore in itself is only what it is as against (Gegen) the Spirit, its quality, so far as it (nature) is taken per se, is just this, — to be the Other in itself, the out-of-itself-be-entity (in the forms of space, of time, of matter). The Other by itself is the Other in itself, so the Other of itself, so again the Other of the Other ; so, therefore, that which within itself is unequal simpliciter, that which negates itself, that which alters itself. But just thus it remains identical with itself, for that into which it alters itself is the Other, which any further has no determination else ; what alters itself is, in no different way but in the same, determined as an Other: in this latter, therefore, it goes together only with its own self. It is thus posited as reflected into self with sublation of the Otherness ; as self-identical Some- thing from which, consequently, the Otherness, which is at the same time moment of it, is merely a distinguishedness, not as some- thing itself which is appertinent to it. 2. Something maintains itself in its non-there-being; it is essentially one with it, and essentially not one with it. It stands, therefore, as though referring to its Otherwiseness ; it is not purely its Otherwiseness. Otherwiseness is at once contained in it, and separated from it ; it is Being-for-other. There-being as such is immediate, reference-less ; or it is in the determination of Being. But There-being as containing within itself Non-being, is determinate Being, Being negated within itself, and then nextly Other, — but because at the same time it also maintains itself in its negation, only Being-for-other. It maintains itself in its non-there-being, and is Being ; but not Being in general, but as reference to self opposed to its reference to Other, as equality with itself opposed to its inequality. Such Being is Being-m-itself. Being-for-other and Being-iN-ite^/* constitute the two moments of the Something. There are two pairs of determinations present here : 1, Something and Other ; 2, Being-for-other and Being-in- 256 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. itself. The former pair contain the reference-lessness of their determinateness ; Something and other fall asunder from each other. But their truth is their co-reference ; the Being-for-other and the Being-in-self are, therefore, the former determinations express as moments of one and the same, — as determinations, which are co-references, and in their unity remain in the unity of There- being. Each of them itself, therefore, contains in it at the same time also its other moment, the moment that is distinguished from it. Being and Nothing in their unity, which is There-being, are no longer as Being and Nothing; — they are this only out of their unity. Thus, too, in their fluent unity, in Becoming, they are Origin and Decease. — Being in the Something is Being-in-self. Being, the reference to self, the equality with self, is now no longer immediate, but reference to self only as Non-being of the Otherwiseness (as There-being reflected within itself). Just so Non-being as moment of the Something is, in this unity of Being and Non-being, not non-there-being as such, but Other, and, more determinately, viewed at the same time in reference to the distinguishing of Being from it, reference to its non-there-being, Being-for-other. Thus Being-in-self is firstly negative reference to the non- there-being ; it has the otherwiseness out of it, and is opposed to it: so far as something is in itself, it is withdrawn from otherwise- ness and from Being-for-other. But, secondly, it has non-being itself also in it ; for it is itself the Non-being of the Being-for- other. The Being-for-other, again, is firstly negation of the simple reference of the Being to itself which is to be first of all There- being and Something ; so far as Something is in another or for another is it without its own Being. But, secondly, it is not the non-There-being as pure Nothing ; it is non-There-being that points or refers to its Being-in-self, as to its Being reflected within its own self, just as on the other hand the Being-in-self points or refers to the Being-for-other. 3. Both moments are determinations of that which is one and the same, namely, the Something. Something is in itself, so far as it is returned into its own self out of the Being-for-other. Something has again also a determination or circumstance in itself (the accent falls here on in) or in it, so far as this circumstance is outwardly in it, a Being-for-other. QUALITY TRANSLATED. 257 This leads to a further determination. Being-in-self and Being-for-other are in the first place different ; but that Something has in it the same thing which it is in itself, and contrariwise what it is as Being-for-other, the same thing is it also in itself — this is the identity of the Being-in-self and the Being-for-other, in accord- ance with the determination, that the Something itself is one and the same of both moments, and therefore they are in it undivided. This identity yields itself formally, as we see, in the sphere of There-being, but more expressly in the consideration of Essentity, and then of the relation of Inwardness and Outwardness, and in the precisest degree in the consideration of the Idea as the unity of the Notion and of Actuality. One opines to say something lofty with the In-itself as with the Inner ; but what Something is only in itself, that also is only in it ; in itself is only an abstract, and so even external determination. The expressions, there is nothing in it, or there is something in that, imply, though some- what obscurely, that that which is in one, belongs also to one's Being-in-self, to one's inner genuine worth. It may be observed, that the sense of the Thing-in-itself yields itself here, which is a very simple abstraction, but which for long was a very important determination, something distinguished as it were, just as the proposition, that we do not know what the things are in themselves, was a much-importing wisdom. Things are in themselves so far as all Being-for-other is abstracted from, that is as much as to say in general, so far as they are thought without any determination whatever ; as nothings. In this sense truly one cannot know what the thing in itself is. For the question what requires that determinations be assigned ; inasmuch, however, as the things, of which they are to be assigned, are to be at the same time things in themselves — that is to say, just without determination — there is thoughtless-wise introduced into the ques- tion the impossibility of an answer, or there is made only an absurd answer. The thing in itself is the same as that absolute, of which nothing is known but that all is one in it. One knows then perfectly well what is in these things in themselves ; they are as such nothing but truthless, empty abstractions. What, how- ever, the thing in itself is in truth, what is truly in itself, of this (or that) Logic is the exposition, in which, however, something better is understood by In itself than an abstraction — namely, what something is in its Notion : this latter, however, is concrete B 258 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. in itself, comprehensible (notion-able, knowable) as notion in general, and cognisable as determined within itself and as con- nected system of its determinations within itself. Being-in-self has at nearest the Being-for-other as its counter- standing moment ; but there is also opposed to it — Positedness or Explicitness (Gesetztseyn) ; in this expression there lies also the Being-for-other, indeed, but it implies markedly the already- accomplished bending back (reflexion) of that which is not in itself into that which is its Being-for-self, into that in which it is positively. The Being-in-self is usually to be taken as an abstract manner of expressing the notion ; Position (Setzeri) falls specially only into the sphere of Essentity, of objective reflexion ; the Ground (ratio) posits (setzt — exinvolves, eximplies) that which is grounded by it ; the Cause still more brings an Effect forth, a There-being (a Daseyn, an entity) whose self-subsistence is im- mediately negated, and which has the sense in it, to have its affair, its Being in another. In the sphere of Being, There-being comes only forward from Becoming, or there is implied with the Some- thing, an Other, with the Finite the Infinite; but the Finite produces not the Infinite, posits, sets the Infinite not. In the sphere of Being, the self-determining of the notion is only first of all in itself; thus is it only transition — a passing over ; even the reflecting determinations of Being, as Something and Other, or the Finite and Infinite, though they essentially refer to each other, or are as Being-for-other, have the value of what is qualitative and subsistent per se ; the Other is, the Finite, like the Infinite, appears equally as immediately be'ent, and standing firm per se ; their sense seems complete even without the other. The Positive and Negative, on the other hand, Cause and Effect, how- ever much they are also taken as isolatedly beent, have at the same time no meaning without the one the other; there is in themselves their seeming (showing) the one into the other, the seeming of its other in each. In the various spheres of deter- mination, and especially in the progress of the exposition, or more accurately, in the progress of the notion to its exposition, it is a main matter always well to distinguish this, what is yet in itself and what is posited (gesetzt — set, realised), likewise the determina- tions as in the notion and as posited, Beent-for-other. This is a distinction which belongs only to the dialectic development, and which the metaphysical philosophy, as also the critical, knows not ; the definitions of [former] metaphysic, as its presuppositions, QUALITY TRANSLATED. 259 distinguishings, and concludings, seek only to maintain and pro- duce what is Beent — and that, too, Beent-in-itself The Being-for-other is, in the unity of the Something with itself, identical with its In-itself; the Being-for-other is thus in the Something. The determinateness thus reflected into itself is by this again simply beent, and so again a quality — the Determina- tion, the Qualification. b. Qualification, Talification, and Limit. ■The In-itself into which the Something is reflected out of its Being-for-other into itself is no longer abstract In-itself, but as negation of its Being-for-other it is mediated through the latter, which is thus its moment. It is not only the immediate identity of the Something with itself, but the identity through which the Something is what it is in itself also in it ; the Being-for-other is in it, because the In-itself is the sublation of the same, is out of the same into itself; but quite as much also, be it observed, because it is abstract, and therefore essentially affected with negation, with Being-for-other. There is here present not only Quality and Reality, beent determinateness, but determinateness that is beent in itself, and the development is to posit it [set, state, exhibit, express it] as this determinateness reflected into itself. 1. The quality which the In-itself in the simple Something essentially in unity with its other moment, the Being-in-ii, is, can be named its Determination (qualification), so far as this word in exact signification is distinguished from determinateness in general. The Determination (qualification) is the affirmative determinateness, as the Being-in-itself, with which the Some- thing in its There-being remains congruous against its involution with other by which it might be determined — remains congruous, maintains itself in its equality with itself, and makes it good (its equality) in its Being-for-other. It fulfils its determination (qualification, vocation) so far as the further determinateness, which manifoldly grows through its relation to Other, becomes — in subjection to, or agreement with, its Being-in-itself — its filling. The Determination implies this, that what Something is in itself, is also in it. The Determination of Man is thinking reason: Thought in general is his simple Determinateness, by it he is distinguished from the lower animals. He is thought in himself (an sich), so 260 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. far as it (thought) is at the same time distinguished from his Being-for-other, his special naturality and sensuous nature by which it is that he is immediately connected with Other. But thought is also in him ; Man himself is thought, he is there as thinking, it is his existence and actuality ; and further in that it is in his There-being (There-ness) and his There-ness (Existence) is in thought, it is concrete, it is to be taken with Implement and Complement, it is thinking reason, and thus is it Determination of Man. But this determination is again only in itself (only an sich) as an Is-to-be (a Sollen, a Devoir) ; that is, it, together with the complement, which is incorporated into its In-itself, is in the form of In-itself in general against the There-being not incor- porated into it, which complement is thus at the same time still as externally opposing, immediate sense and nature. 2. The filling of the Being-in-itself [the In-itself simply] with determinateness is also distinguished from the determinateness which is only Being-for-other and remains out of the determina- tion. For, in the field of the Qualitative, there remains to the differences or distinctions even in their sublation [alluding to the various moments of the Daseyn or the ffiwas] immediate quali- tative being as opposed the one to the other. What the Some- thing has in it divides, then, and is, on this side, external There- being of the Something, which is also its There-being, but belongs not to its In-itself The Determinateness is thus Talification [So- constitutedness, and that amounts to Property, or, indeed, Accident], So or otherwise constituted is Something as engaged in external influence and relations. This external reference on which the Talification depends, and the becoming determined by another, appears as something contingent. But it is quality of the Some- thing to be given over to this externality, and to have a Tali- fication. So far as Something alters itself, the alteration falls into the Talification ; it is that in the Something which becomes another. It [Something] itself maintains itself in the alteration which touches only this unsteady superficies of its Otherwise-being, not its Determination (definition, qualification). Qualification and Talification are thus distinguished from each other ; Something is in its qualification indifferent to its talification. What, however, the Something has in it, is the middle term of this syllogism that connects both. The being in the Something, rather, showed itself to fall into these two extremes. The simple QUALITY TRANSLATED. 261 middle is the determinateness as such ; to its identity belongs as well qualification as talification. But the qualification passes over per se into talification, and the latter into the former. This lies in the preceding ; the connexion is more particularly this : So far as what Something is in itself, is also in it, it is affected with Being- for-other ; the qualification is thus as such open to the relation to Other. The determinateness is at the same time moment, but contains at the same time the qualitative distinction to be different from the In-itself, to be the negative of the Something, or to be another There-being. The determinateness, which thus includes within itself the other, being united with the In-itself brings Other- wise-being into the In-itself, or into the qualification, which is thereby reduced to talification. Contrariwise, the Being-for-other, isolated as talification and taken per se, is in it the same thing as what the Other as such is, the Other in itself, that is, of itself ; but thus it is self-to-self-referent There-being, thus Being-in-itself with a determinateness, and therefore Qualification. Thus, so far as both are to be held apart from each other, on the qualification depends the talification, which appears grounded in what is external, in another in general, and the foreign determining is determined also at the same time by the special immanent qualification of the Something. But further, the talification belongs to what the Something is in itself: with its talification Something alters itself. This alteration of the Something is jio longer the first alteration of the Something merely as regards its Being-for-other ; this first one was only the alteration appertinent to the inner notion, was the in-itself-beent one ; the alteration now is alteration posited (set) in the Something. The Something itself is further determined, and the negation appears as immanent to it, as its developed Being-within-itself. In the first place, the transition of the qualification and the talification into one another is the sublation of their difference ; but thus is There-being or Something in general replaced ; and, inasmuch as it is a result out of that difference, which still com- prehends in itself the qualitative Otherwise-being, there are two Somethings, but not only as others opposed to one another in general, in such wise that this negation were still abstract and fell into the comparison only, but it is now rather as immanent to the Somethings. They are as there-beent indifferent to each other ; but this their affirmation is no longer immediate, each refers itself to 262 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. itself by means of the sublation of the Otherwise-being, which in the qualification is reflected into the In-itself. Something relates itself thus out of its own self to the Other, be- cause Otherwise-being is contained within it as its own moment ; its Being- within-self comprehends negation within itself — the negation by means of which in any case it has now its affirmative There- being. But from this (its affirmative There-being) the other is also qualitatively distinguished ; it is thus set down as out of the Something. The negation of its other is only the quality of Some- thing, for as this sublation of its other is it Something. Therewith redoes the Other first properly oppose itself to a There-being itself : to the first Something, then, the Other is only externally opposed ; or again as they, in effect, directly cohere, that is, in their notion, their connexion is this, that There-being has gone over into Other- wise-being, Something into another — Something, as much as the Other, is another. So far now as the Being-within-self is the Non-being of the Otherwise-being which is contained in it, but at the same time distinguished as beent, the Something itself is, the negation, the ceasing of another in it ; it is determined as com- porting itself negatively against it, and as at the same time main- taining itself thereby ; — this Other, the Being-within-itself of the Something as Negation of the Negation, is its In-itself, and this sublation is at the same time in it as simple negation, namely, as its negation of the other Something external to it. There is one determinateness of these negations or Somethings which is as well identical with the Being-within-itself of the Somethings, as Negation of the Negation, as it also, in that these Negations are as other Somethings mutually opposed, joins them together out of themselves and equally disjoins them from one another (the one negating the other) — the Limit* 3. Being-for-Other is indefinite, affirmative community of Something with its Other; in Limit, the Non-being-for-Other comes forward, the qualitative negation of the Other, which latter is thereby excluded from the Something reflected into its own self. The development of this notion is to be observed, which manifests itself, however, rather as iwvelopment and contradiction. This contradictory character shows at once in this, that the Limit as negation of the Something, negation reflected into itself, contains ideally in it the moments of the Something and of the Other, and * The power of A on B means as well the power of B on A — that power is the limit.— N. QUALITY TRANSLATED. 263 these are at the same time, as distinguished moments in the sphere of There-being, set down as really, qualitatively diverse. a. Something, then, is immediate, self-to-self-referent There- being, and has a limit in the first instance as against Other. The Limit is the non-being of the Other, not of the Something itself ; the Something limits in its limit its Other. But the Other is itself a Something; the Limit, then, which the Something has against the Other, is likewise Limit of the Other as a Something — Limit of this latter so that by it it excludes from itself the first Something as its Other, — or is a non-being of said Something. The Limit, thus, is not only non-being of the Other, but non-being as well of the one as of the other Something — non-being, conse- quently, of the Something as such. But Limit is essentially the non-being of the Other — Something at the same time, then, is through its Limit. Something, in that it is limiting, must submit to be limited; but its Limit, as a ceasing of the Other in it, is at the same time itself only the being of the Something ; this latter is through it that which it is, has in it its quality. This relation is the external manifestation of the fact that the Limit is simple, or the first, negation, at the same time also that it is the other relation, the negation of the negation, the Within-itself of the Something. Something, therefore, is, as immediate There-being, Limit to other Something ; but it has this Limit in it, itself, and is Some- thing through agency of it, which is just as much its non-being. Limit is the mediating means or agency, the medium, whereby Something and Other each as well is as is not. £. So far now as Something in its Limit is and is not, and these moments are immediately, qualitatively separated, the non-There- being and the There-being of the Something fall asunder, apart from each other. Something has its There-being (its existence) out from (or as it is otherwise also conceived in from) its Limit ; but just so the Other also, because it is Something, is outside of its Limit. - It (the Limit) is the middle between both, and in it they cease. They have their There-being on the other side, the one from the other, of their Limit ; the Limit as the non-being of each is the Other of both. It is in respect to this diversity of Something from its Limit, that the Line appears as Line only outside of its limit, the Point ; the Plane as Plane outside of the Line ; the Body as Body only outside of its limiting Plane. This is how the Limit specially is 264 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. for conception, which is out-of-its-selfness of notion, — and hence its manifestation by preference in things of space. y. But, further, Something, as it is outside of the Limit, is unlimited Something, — only There-being as such. Thus, then, it is not distinguished from its Other ; it is only There-being, has therefore the same determination as its Other — each is only Some- thing as such, or each is Other; both are thus the same thing. But, again, this their directly immediate There-being implies the determinateness as Limit, in which both are what they are, dis- tinguishably from each other. But this determinateness as Limit is equally their common distinguishableness, at once their unity and diversity — unity and diversity of the same things, just like There-being. This double identity of both (There-being and Limit) contains this, that the Something has its There-being only in the Limit, and that, inasmuch also as the Limit and the immediate There-being are at the same time each the negative, the one of the other, the Something, which is established as only in its Limit, just as much sunders itself from itself, and points away over and beyond itself to its non-being, pronouncing this its being, and so passing over into the same. To apply this to the preceding example, and as regards the finding that Something is what it is only in its Limit, — the Point is not limit of the Line, only in such wise that the latter just ends in the former, and is as existent outside of the former ; neither is the Line similarly limit of the Plane, nor the Plane similarly limit of the Solid — with line and plane similarly so ending: but in the Point the Line also begins; the Point is the absolute beginning of the Line; even when it (the line) is conceived as on both sides unlimited, or, as it is called, infinitely produced, the point still constitutes the element of the line, as the line of the plane, and the plane of the solid. These limits are the principles (principia) of that which they limit ; just as unity, for example, as the hundredth, is the limit indeed, but also the element of the whole hundred. The other finding is the unrest of the Something in its Limit, in which, nevertheless, it is immanent — its restlessness as the contradiction which impels it out beyond its own self. Thus the point~ls~tEis dialectic of its own self — to become line, the line the dialectic to become plane, the plane universal space. Of these there occurs the other definition, that the line originates in the motion of the point, the plane in that of the line, &c. This move- ment, however, is considered then as something incidental, or as QUALITY TRANSLATED. 265 something just so thought. This consideration, however, is annulled specially by this, that the determinations from which the Line, &c, should be supposed to originate are, as regards the Line, &c, their elements and principles, and at the same time also nothing but their Limits : accordingly the origin cannot be con- sidered as incidental, or only so-conceived. That point, line, surface, per se, contradicting themselves, are beginnings, which repel themselves from themselves, that the Point, for its part, passes over through its notion out of itself into the Line, moves itself in its own self, and gives origin to the Line, &c. &c. — this lies in the notion of limit as immanent in the something. The application itself, however, belongs to the consideration of space ; but to indicate it here — it is thus that the point is the absolutely abstract limit, but in an existent entity ; this latter (a thereness) is taken still quite indefinitely, it is the so-called absolute, i.e. abstract space, the absolutely continuous Out-of-one-another-ness [succession]. From this, that the limit is not abstract negation, but is in this there-ness, is spatial determinateness, it results that the point occupies space, has space, is spatial, is the contradiction, that is, which unites in itself at once abstract negation and con- tinuity, and so is the going-over and the gone-over into the Line, &c, just as also for the same reason it results that there is no such thing as a Point, or a Line, or a Surface. Something, with its immanent Limit, established as the contra- diction of its ownself, by which contradiction it is directed and impelled beyond itself, is the Finite as such. c. Finitude. There-being is determinate ; Something has a Quality, and is in it not only determined, but limited ; its quality is its limit, pos- sessing which, it remains at first hand affirmative quiescent There-being. But this negation developed — in such wise that the antithesis of its There-being and of Negation as its immanent Limit is itself the Within-itself of the Something, and this latter consequently is in itself only Becoming — constitutes its Finitude. When we say of things, they are finite, we understand by that, that they not only have a determinateness, Quality not only as Reality and beent-in-self distinctive nature, that they are not merely limited — for as such they have still There-being without 266 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. their limit — but rather that non-being constitutes their nature, their being. Finite things are, but their reference to self is, that they refer themselves to themselves negatively, even in this refer- ence to themselves dispatch themselves beyond themselves, beyond their being. They are, but the truth of this Being is their End. The finite thing alters itself not only like Something in general, but it passes away and it is not merely possible for it to pass away — as if it could he without passing away : but the being as such of finite things is to have the germ of their passing away as their Within ; the hour of their birth is the hour of their death. a. The Immediacy of Finitude. The thought of the finitude of things brings this sadness with it, because it is the qualitative negation pushed to its point ; in the singleness of such determination, there is no longer left them an affirmative being distinguished from their destination to perish. Finitude is, because of this qualitative simple directness of nega- tion (which has gone back to the abstract antithesis of nothing and ceasing to be as opposed to being), the most stiff-necked category of understanding ; negation as such, tality, limit, recon- cile themselves with their Other, the There-being; even the abstract nothing, per se, is given up as an abstraction ; but finitude is negation as in itself fixed, and stands therefore up abrupt over against its affirmative. What is finite admits readily indeed of being brought to flux — it is itself this, to be determined to its endy but only to its end ; it is the unwillingness rather to let itself be affirmatively brought to its affirmative, the Infinite, to let itself be united with it ; it is given as inseparable from its nothing, and all reconciliation with its other, the affirmative, is thereby truncated. The destination of finite things is not further than their end. Understanding remains immovable in this hopelessness of Finitude, in that, regarding non-being as the true nature of things, it makes it at the same time imperishable and absolute. Only in their other, the affirmative, were it possible for their perishableness to perish ; but thus their finitude would divorce itself from them, and it is, on the contrary, their unalterable Quality, i.e. their Quality that passes not over into its other, into its affirmative ; it is thus eternal. This is a very important consideration ; that, however, the Finite is absolute — this stand-point truly will not readily be taken QUALITY TRANSLATED. 267 to itself by any philosophy, or opinion, or by understanding (common Sense). The opposite rather is expressly present in the maintaining of the finite ; the Finite is the limited, the transitory ; the finite is only the finite, not the intransient; this lies immediately in its definition and expression. But the question is, whether in the mode of looking, the being of finitude is stuck by, whether the perishableness remains, or whether the perishableness and the perishing perishes, whether the passing-away passes away ? That this latter, however, is not the case, is the fact even in that view of the finite which regards the perishing or passing -away as the ultimum of the finite. It is the express averment that the finite is irreconcilable and inconsistent with the infinite, that the finite is absolutely opposed to the infinite. To the infinite, being, absolute being is ascribed; the finite thus remains opposite it, held fast as its negative ; incapable of union with the infinite, it remains absolute on its own side ; affirmation could come to it only from the affirmative, the infinite, and it would perish so ; but a union with the infinite is that which is declared impossible. If it is not to remain opposed to the infinite, but to pass or perish, then, as has been already said, just its passing is the ultimum, not the affirmative, which would be only the passing of the passing. If, however, the finite is not to pass away in the affirmative, but its end is to be conceived as the nothing, then we are again back to that first abstract nothing which is long since passed. In the case of this nothing, however, which is to be only nothing, and to which at the same time an existence is attributed in thought, conception, or speech, there presents itself the same contradiction as has just been signalised in the case of the Finite, only that it only presents itself there, while in Finitude it expressly is. There it appears as subjective, here it is maintained — the Finite stands opposed in perpetuity to the Infinite, what is in itself null is, and it is as in itself null. This is to be brought intel- ligibly to consciousness ; and the development of the finite shows that it in it (suo Marte), as this contradiction, falls together in itself, and actually resolves this contradiction by this — not that it is only perishable and perishes, but that the perishing, the pass- ing, the nothing, is not the last, the ultimum, but that it perishes and passes. 268 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. /& To-be-to, or OMigation-to, and Limitation. This contradiction, indeed, is directly abstractly present in this, that the Something is finite, or that the finite is. But Something or Being is no longer abstract, but reflected into self, and developed as Being-within-self which has in it a Qualification and a Talifica- tion, and still more definitely, a Limit, which as what is Immanent in the Something, and constitutive of the quality of its Being- within-self, is finitude. We have now to see what moments are contained in this notion of the finite Something. Qualification and Talification manifested themselves as sides for external reflexion ; the first, indeed, itself implied Otherwise- being as belonging to the In-itself of the Something; the externality of the Otherwise-being is on one side in the proper internality of the Something, on the other side, it remains as externality distinguished therefrom — it is still externality as such, but in the Something. But in that, further, the Otherwise- being is determined as Limit, or just as negation of the negation, the Otherwise-being immanent to the Something is demonstrated or is stated as the reference of the two sides, and the unity with itself of the Something now (to which Something as well the Qualification as the Talification attaches) is its reference as turned to its ownself, the reference of its beent-in-self Qualification to its immanent Limit, which reference at the same time negates in it this its immanent Limit. The self-identical Within-Itself refers itself thus to itself as its own non-being, but as negation of the negation, as negating the same thing in it which at the same time preserves in it There-being, for that is the Quality of its Within- Itself. The proper limit of the Something taken thus by it as a negative, that at the same is essential and intrinsic, is not only Limit as such, but Limitation. But the Limitation here is not alone what is expressed as* negated (not alone the-as-negated- posited) ; the negation is double-edged, seeing that what is the posited negated is the limit; for this (Limit) in general is what is common to the Something and the Other, and also determinate- ness of the Being-in-self-ness of the qualification or determination as such. This Being-in-self, as the negative reference to its Limit (this latter being at the same time distinguishable from it), is thus to itself as Limitation — the To-be-to, or OUigation-to {Devoir, Sollen). That the limit, which is in the Something, prove itself as only QUALITY TRANSLATED. 269 Limitation, the Something must at the same time within its own self transcend it (the Limit), must refer itself in itself to it as to a non-beent. The There-being of the Something lies quiescently indifferent, as it were beside its limit. Something, however, transcends its limit, only so far as it is its sublatedness, the In-itself which is negative to it (the limit). And in that it (the limit) is in the determination [manifestible peculiar nature] itself as Limitation, Something transcends so its own self. The To-be-to (Sollen) contains therefore the double distinction, now determination as beent-in-self determination against the negation, and again determination as a non-being that is dis- tinguished as limitation from it, but at the same time that is beent-in-self determination. The Finite thing has thus determined itself as the reference of its determination to its limit ; the former is in this reference To- be-to (Sollen), the latter is Limitation. Both are thus moments of the Finite — both consequently themselves finite, as well the To-be-to as the Limitation. But only the Limitation is expressed as the Finite ; the To-be-to is only limited in itself, or for us. Through its reference to its own immanent limit, has it limita- tion ; but this its be-limitation is concealed in the in-itself, for in its There-being, that is, in its determinateness as against limita- tion, it is expressed as the in-itself. What is to be, or is under obligation to be, is and at the same time is not. If it were, it were not merely to be. The To-be-to has therefore essentially a limitation. This limitation is not some- thing foreign ; that which only is to be, is the determination (destination) which is now expressed as it is in fact, namely, at the same time only a determinateness. The Being-in -itself of the Something remits itself in its deter- mination therefore into the Is-to-be, or the Ought-to-be, in this way, that the same thing which constitutes its Being-in-itself is in one and the same respect as non-being ; and that, too, in this wise, that in the Being-within-self, the negation of the negation, said Being-in-itself is as the one negation (the negating one) unity with the other, which is at the same time as the qualitatively other, limit, through which said unity is as reference to it (limit). The Limitation of the finite is not something external, but its own determination is also its limitation ; and this (limitation) is as well its own self, as also the To-be-to ; it is what is common to both, or rather that in which both are identical. 270 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. As To-be-to, now again further, the finite thing passes beyond its limitation; the same determinateness which is its negation, is also sublated, and is thus its Being-in-itself ; its limit is also not its limit. As To-be-to, consequently, Something is raised above its limita- tion, again contrariwise only as To-be-to has it its limitation. Both are inseparable. Something has a limitation, so far as in its determination or destination it has the negation, and the determination or destination is also the sublatedness of the Limitation. Kemark. The Ought-to, Is-to, Obligation-to, the To-have-to, or To-be-to, (Sollen, Devoir), has played recently un grand rdle in philosophy, especially in reference to morality, and likewise metaphysically as the last and absolute notion of the identity of the Being-in- self, or of the reference to self, and of the determinateness or limit. You can, for you ought — this expression, which was supposed to say a great deal, lies in the notion of the To-be-to. For the To- be-to is the being beyond the limitation ; limit is sublated in it, the Being-in-itself of the To-be-to is thus identical reference to self, and so the abstraction of the being able to. But, conversely, it is equally true, you can not just because you ought. For in the To-be-to there equally lies the limitation as a limitation; said formalism of the possibility to has in it a reality, a qualitative Otherwise-being, over against itself, and the mutual reference of both is the contradiction, consequently the not being able to, or rather the impossibility-to. In the To-be-to, begins the transcendence of Finitude, Infini- tude. The To-be-to is what, further on in the development, exhibits itself, with reference to said Impossibility-to, as the Progressus in infinitum. As regards the Form of the To-be-to and the Limitation, two prejudices may be more particularly animadverted on. In the first place, great stress is usually laid on the limitations of thought, of reason, &c, and it is maintained that the limitation cannot be gone beyond. There lies in this averment the failure to see that just in the very determining of Something as limita- tion, the limitation is already left. For a determinateness, limit, is only determined as limitation in antithesis to its other, or as QUALITY TRANSLATED. 271 against its unlimitated part ; the other of a limitation is just the beyond of the same. The stone, the metal, is not beyond its limitation, just because the latter is not limitation for it. If, however, as regards such general propositions of mere under- standing, that the limitation cannot be transcended, thought will not take the trouble to endeavour to see what lies in the notion, attention may be directed to the actuality, where such positions will be found to manifest themselves as what is most unactual. Just by this, too, that thought is-to-be something higher than the actual, is to keep itself apart from it in higher regions — that is, in that it is itself determined as a To-be-to — on one side it reaches not as far as to the notion, and, on the other side, it is its lot to comport itself just as untruly towards the actual as towards the notion. Because the stone thinks not, not even feels, its limi- tatedness is not limitation for it, that is, is not in it a negation for the thought, feeling, &c, which it does not possess. But even the stone is as Something distinguished into its determination or in-itself and into its There-being, and to that extent even it transcends its limitation; the notion which it is in itself implies identity with its other. If it is an acidifiable base, it is oxidis- able, neutralisable, &c. In the oxidation, neutralisation, &c, its limitation to be only as base sublates itself; it transcends its limitation, just as the acid sublates its limitation to be as acid ; and the To-be-to, the obligation to transcend its limitation, is (in the acid as well as in the caustic base) so much present, that it is only by dint of force that these can be kept fixed as — waterless, that is, purely non-neutral — acid and caustic base. Should an existence, however, contain the notion, not merely as abstract In-itselfness, but as beent-for-self totality, as instinct, as life, feeling, conception, &c, it effects out of itself this — to be, and to pass out, over and beyond the limitation. The plant transcends the limitation to be as germ, and just as much the limitation to be as blossom* as fruit, as leaf ; the germ becomes a developed plant, the blossom fades away into, &c. &c. A sentient existence in the limitation of hunger, of thirst, &c, is the impulse to pass out beyond this limitation, and it effects this transcendence. It feels pain, and the privilege of sentient nature is to feel pain ; there is a negation in its self, and this negation is determined in its feeling as a limitation, just because Sentient existence has the feeling of its self, which self is the totality that is out and beyond said determinateness (of hunger). Were it not out and beyond it, it 272 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. would not feel it as its negation, and would have no pain. But it is reason, thought, which we are required to suppose incapable of transcending limitation — reason, which is the universal, which, per se, is out and beyond the, i.e. all particularity, which is nothing but transcendence of limitation. It is true that not every going- beyond or being-beyond the limitation is a veritable emancipation from this latter, a genuine affirmation ; the To-be-to itself is already such imperfect transcendence, and wholly an abstraction. But the pointing to the wholly abstract universal suffices as against the equally abstract assurance that the limitation cannot be tran- scended, or, indeed, the pointing to the infinite in general against the assurance, that the finite cannot be transcended. A seemingly ingenious fancy of Leibnitz may here be mentioned : if a magnet had consciousness, it would regard its direction to the north as a determination of its own will, a law of its freedom. Bather, if it had consciousness, and so will and free choice, it would possess thought, and so space would be for it as universal space, implying all directions, and thus the one direction to the north would be rather as a limitation of its freedom, just as it would be a limitation to be kept fixed in one spot, for man, but not for a plant. The To-be-to on the other side is transcendence of the limitation, but only a finite transcendence. It has therefore its place and its value in the field of the finite, where it holds fast its Being-in- itselfness as opposed to its limitatedness, and maintains it (the Ansich-seyn) as the rule and the essential, opposed to what, in comparison, is the null. Duty is a To-be-to, an obligation-to, directed against the particular will, against self-seeking greed and self-willed interest ; it is enjoined as a To-be-to, an obligation-to, on the will so far as it, in its capability of movement, can deviate from the true. Those who estimate the To-be-to of morals so high, and opine that morality is to be destroyed, if the To-be-to is not recognised as ultimum and as truth, just as the raisonneurs, whose understanding gives itself the endless satisfaction to be able to adduce a To-be-to, an Ought-to, and so a knowing better, against everything that presently is — who therefore will as little allow themselves to be deprived of the ought- to — perceive not that for the finitude of their circle, the ought-to is perfectly recognised. But in actuality itself it stands not so hopeless with reason and law, that they only ought to be, — it is only the abstractum of the Being-in-itself that maintains this — just as little QUALITY TRANSLATED. 273 so, as that the ought-to is in itself perennial, and, what is the same thing, the finite absolute. The Kantian and Fichtian philosophy assigns the ought-to, the to-be-to, as the highest point of the solution of the contradictions of reason ; it is, however, rather only the stand-point of fixture in finitude, and so in contradiction. y. Transition of the Finite into the Infinite. The Ought-to, per se, implies the Limitation, and the Limitation the Ought-to. Their reference to each other is the Finite entity itself, which contains them both in its Being-within-itself. These moments of its determination are qualitatively opposed to each other ; the Limitation is determined as the negative of the Ought- to, and the Ought-to equally as the negative of the Limitation. The Finite entity is thus the contradiction of itself within itself ; it sublates itself, passes away. But this its result, the negative in general, is (a) its very determination [Qualification or its In-itself] ; for it (the result) is the negative of the negative. The Finite is thus in passing away not passed away ; it has in the first instance become only another Finite, which however is equally a passing away as transition into another Finite, and so on ad infinitum. But (/3) this result being considered closer, the Finite has in its passing away, this negation of itself, attained its Being-in-itself, it has gone together with itself in it. Each of its moments contains just this result : the Ought-to passes over the Limitation, i.e., over its own self ; but over it, or as its other, there is only the Limitation itself. The Limitation, however, points immediately out over itself to its other, which is the Ought-to ; but this again is the same disunion of Being in itself {Ansichseyn) and of Being there (Daseyn) as the Limitation, that is, it is the same thing ; out over itself then it goes together equally only with its own self. This identity with itself, the negation of the negation, is affirmative being, and so the other of the Finite — the Finite as that which is to have the First negation as its determinateness — that other is the Infinite. The Infinite. The Infinite in its simple notion may in the first instance be regarded as a new definition of the absolute ; it is as the deter- s 274 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. minationless reference to self, put as Being and Becoming. The forms of There-being fail or fall out in the series of the deter- minations which can be regarded as definitions of the absolute, because the forms of its sphere are, per se, immediately expressed or put only as determinatenesses, as finite in general. The Infinite, however, appears directly as absolute, being expressly determined as negation of the Finite, and thus there is reference expressly made in the Infinite to the limitatedness of which Being and Becoming (though in themselves neither showing nor having any limitatedness) might yet, perhaps, be not unsusceptible — and any such limitatedness is negated in it's, the Infinite's, regard. Even thus, however, the Infinite is not yet in effect excepted from limitatedness and finitude ; the main point is to distinguish the true notion of the Infinite from the bastard or spurious Infinite, the Infinite of Eeason from the Infinite of Understanding. The latter, indeed, is the finitised Infinite, and it will be found that just in the attempt to keep the Infinite pure and apart from the Finite, the former is only finitised. The Infinite is a. in simple determination the affirmative as negation of the Finite : b. it is thus, however, in alternating determination with the Finite, and is the abstract, one-sided Infinite : c. the self-sublation of this Infinite with that of the Finite as a single process — is the veritable Infinite. a. The Infinite in general. The Infinite is the negation of the negation, the affirmative, the being, which out of the limitatedness has again restored itself. The Infinite is, and in a more intense sense than the first immedi- ate Being ; it is the veritable Being, the rising out over the Limi- tation. At the name of ther Infinite there arises to spirit its own light, for spirit is not herein only abstractly with itself, but raises itself to its own self, to the light of its thinking, of its universality, of its freedom. First of all as regards the notion of the Infinite, it has been found that There-being {Daseyn) in its Being-in-itself (Ansichseyn) determines itself as Finite (Endliches), and transcends the Limita- tion (Schranke). It is the nature of the Finite itself, to transcend its own self, to negate its negation, and to become infinite. The Infinite thus does not stand as something ready-made and com- QUALITY TRANSLATED. 275 plete, per se, over the Finite, in such wise that the Finite shall have and shall hold its permanence out of or under the former. Nor do we only as a subjective reason pass over the Finite into the Infinite. As, for instance, when it is said that the Infinite is the notion of reason, and through reason we raise ourselves over the things of time, this takes place nevertheless without prejudice to the finite, which is nowise concerned in said elevation — an elevation which remains external to it. So far, however, as the Finite itself is raised into the Infinite, it is just as little any foreign force which effects this on it, but its nature is this, — to refer itself to itself as limitation, limitation as such, and also as To-be-to, and to transcend the same (limitation), or rather as refer- ence to self to have negated it and to be beyond it. Not in the sublation of the Finite is it that there arises the Infinite, but the Finite is only this, through its very nature to become (rise) to the Infinite. Infinitude is its affirmative determination, that which in itself it truly is. Thus the Finite has disappeared in the Infinite, and what is, is only the Infinite. b. Alternating Determination of the Finite and the Infinite. The Infinite is ; in this immediacy it is at the same time the negation of another, the Finite. Thus as beent, and at the same time as non-being of another, it has fallen back into the category of the Something as a determinate in general, — or more accurately, because it is There-being reflected into self and resulting through sublation of the determinateness expressed or set consequently as There-being that is distinguished from its determinateness, it has fallen back into the category of Something with a Limit. The Finite in view of this determinateness stands opposed to the Infinite, as real There-being; they stand thus in qualitative reference as constant or permanent out of each other; the imme- diate being of the Infinite awakes the being of its negation, the Finite again, which primarily seemed lost in the Infinite. But the Infinite and Finite are not in these categories of reference only; both sides are further determined as merely others mutually. That is to say, the finite is the limitation expressed as the limitation, it is There-being with the determina- tion (nature) to go over into its Being-in-itself, or infinitely to become. Infinitude is the nothing of the Finite, its Being-in-itself 276 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. (Ansichseyn) and its To-be-to, but this at the same time as reflected into self, the To-be-to carried out, or only self-to-self-referent quite affirmative being. In Infinitude there is the satisfaction present that all determinateness, change, all limitation, and with it the To-be-to itself, have disappeared — determinateness is expressed as sublated, the nothing of the finite. As this negation of the finite is the Being-in-self determined, which (Being-in-self) thus as negation of the negation is affirmatively within itself. This affirmation, however, is as qualitative immediate reference to self, Being ; and thus the Infinite is reduced to the category that it has the Finite as another opposed to it; its negative nature is expressed as the beent, and so first and immediate, negation. The Infinite is in this manner burdened with the antithesis to the Finite, which, as Other, remains at the same time determinate real There-being, though it is expressed as — in its Being-in-itself, the Infinite — at the same time sublated ; this (Infinite) is the non- finite ; a being in the determinateness (form) of negation. Opposed to the finite, the sphere of beent determinatenesses, of realities, is the Infinite, the indeterminate void, the other side (the beyond) of the Finite, which (Finite) has its Being-in-self not in its There- being, which (There-being) is a determinate one. The Infinite counter the Finite thus expressed or put in quali- tative reference of other to each other, is to be named the spurious Infinite, the Infinite of the Understanding, to which it has the value of the highest, of absolute truth ; to bring understanding to a consciousness of this, that, in that it opines to have reached its satisfaction in the reconciliation of the truth, it, on the contrary, is landed in unreconciled, unresolved, absolute contradiction — this must be effected by the contradictions into which it falls on all sides, as soon as it attempts application and explication of these its categories. This contradiction is immediately present in this, that the Finite as There-being remains counter the Infinite ; there are thus two determinatenesses ; there are two worlds to hand, one infinite and one finite ; and in their reference the Infinite is only limit of the Finite, and is thus only a determinate, even finite Infinite. This contradiction develops its mtent into more express forms. The Finite is the real There-being which thus dialectically remains, even in that transition is made to its non -being, the Infinite ; — this latter has, as has been shown, only the first, immediate negation as its determinateness counter the Finite, just as the Finite as QUALITY TRANSLATED. 277 regards said negation has, as negated, only the value of an Other, and therefore is still Something. When, consequently, under- standing, elevating itself out of this finite world, mounts to its highest, the Infinite, this finite world remains stationary for it as a this side, so that the Infinite appears only beyond the Finite, separated from the Finite, and just thus the Finite separated from the Infinite ; both assigned distinct places, — the Finite as There- being, Being on this side, and the Infinite again, the In-itself indeed of the Finite, but a Yonder away into the dim, inaccessible distance, out of which the Finite finds itself and remains here. Sundered thus, they are just as essentially referred to each other by the very negation which separates them. This negation, co- referent of them, the self-reflected Somethings, is the mutual limit of the one counter the other ; and that, too, in such wise that each of them has in it the limit not merely counter the other, but the negation is their Being-in-self ; each has thus the limit, even per se or independently in it, in its separation from the other. The limit, however, is as the first negation ; both are thus limited, finite in themselves. Still, each is also as affirmatively referent of self to self the negation of its limit ; it thus immediately repels it from itself as its non-being, and, qualitatively separated there- from, it sets it as another being apart from itself, the Finite its Non-being as this Infinite, this latter just so the Finite. That from the Finite to the Infinite necessarily, i.e. through the deter- mination of the Finite, transition must be made, and the Finite raised as into its Being-in-self, is easily granted, seeing that the Finite is determined, as persistent There-being indeed, but, at the same time, also as what is in itself null, and therefore what in its own determination (nature) resolves itself; while the Infinite again is indeed determined as attended by negation and limit ; but, at the same time also as what is beent in itself in such wise that this abstraction of the self to self referent affirmation constitutes its determination, and with such determination consequently the Finite There-being lies not in it. But it has been shown that the Infinite itself reaches its affirmative Being as result only by means of the negation, as negation of the negation, and that this its affir- mation taken as only simple, qualitative Being, brings down the negation it contains to simple immediate negation, and so conse- quently to determinateness and limit, and this [qualitative being again] then as in the same way contradictory to its Being-in-itself is excluded from it as not its, rather is put as what is opposed to its 278 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Being-in-itself, the Finite. In that thus each, just in it and from its own determination, is implication of its other, they are insepar- able. But this their unity is concealed in their qualitative other- ness ; it is the internal one, which only lies at bottom. Hereby is the manner of the manifestation of this unity deter- mined ; expressed in the There-being it is as a striking round or transition of the^ Finite into the Infinite, and vice versd ; so that the Infinite only stands forward in or by the Finite, and the Finite in or by the Infinite, the other in or by the other, that is to say, each is an own proper immediate existence in or by the other, and their reference is only an external one. The process of their transition takes the following complete shape. Transcendence is made beyond the Finite into the Infinite. This transcendence appears as an external act. In this void beyond the Finite what arises? What is the positive element therein? Because of the inseparableness of the Infinite and Finite (or because this Infinite, thus standing on its own side, is itself limitated), Limit arises; the Infinite has disappeared — its other, the Finite, has put itself in place. But this on the part of the Finite appears as an event external to the Infinite, and the new limit as such a one as arises not out of the Infinite itself, but, still, is just there. There is thus present a relapse into the pre- vious determination which has been sublated to no purpose. But this new limit is itself only such as is to be sublated, or transcended. So there has thus again arisen the void, the nothing, in which, just in the same manner, again determinateness, a new limit, is met with — and so on, ad infinitum. There is present the alternation of the Finite and the Infinite ; the Finite is finite only in reference to the To-be-to or the Infinite, and the Infinite is only infinite in reference to the Finite. They are inseparable, and at the same time absolutely others to one another ; each has itself the other of it in it ; thus each is unity of it and of its other, and is in its determinateness There-being — There-being not to be that which it itself is, and which its other is. It is this reciprocal determination which, negating its own self and its own negation, presents itself as the Progresses ad Infinitum, which in so many forms and applications has the value of an ultimate, beyond which there cannot be any further transition, but thought, arrived at this, And so on, ad infinitum, supposes itself to have reached its end. This Progress appears always when relative QUALITY TRANSLATED. 279 determinations are pushed to their antithesis, so that they are in inseparable unity, and yet to each counter the other a self-sub- sistent There-being is ascribed. This Progress is therefore the contradiction which is not resolved, but is always only enunciated as present. There is an abstract transcendence present, which remains imperfect, in that this transcendence is not itself transcended. The Infinite is there before us; it is, to be sure, transcended, for a new limit is assumed, but just thus rather we are only back in the Finite. This bastard Infinite is in itself the same thing as the perpetual To-be-to ; it is indeed the negation of the Finite, but it cannot in truth free itself therefrom ; this comes forward in itself again as its other, because this Infinite only is as in reference to the Finite which is other to it. The Progress in infinitum is therefore only the self-repeating sameness, one and the same wearisome alternation of this Finite and Infinite. The Infinitude of the infinite Progress remains burdened with the Finite as such, is limited thereby and itself finite. But thus, consequently, it were assumed in effect as Unity of the Finite and Infinite. But this unity is not reflected on. This unity, however, is that alone which in the Finite evokes the Infinite, and in the Infinite the Finite: it is, so to speak, the mainspring of the Infinite Progress. This Progress is the externale of said Unity and Conception remains standing by this externale — by the per- petual repetition of one and the same reciprocation, an empty unrest to advance further out over the limit into the Infinite, which advance finds in this Infinite a new limit, by which, however, it is just as little able to call a halt as in the Infinite. This Infinite has the fixed determination of a Further side which cannot be reached, just for this very reason, that it is not to be reached, — just because there is no leaving off from the determining of it, as the Further side, as the beent negation. In consequence of this its nature, it has the Finite as a Hither side opposed to it, which can as little raise itself into the Infinite, just for this reason, that it has this determination of a There-being generative of Another, generative consequently of a perpetual repetition — generative of itself in its beyond itself again, and yet, at the same time, as different therefrom. 280 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. c. The Affirmative Infinite. In this hither and thither of an alternating conclusion, now of the Finite, and again of the Infinite, the truth of these is already in itself present, and all that is necessary is simply to take up what is present. This movement hither and thither constitutes the external realisation of the notion ; what the notion contains impliciter is expliciter, formally expressed, in this (outer realisa- tion), but externally, as falling asunder ; the comparison of these diverse moments is all that is required to yield the unity which gives the notion itself ; — the unity of the Infinite and Finite is, as has been often remarked already, and as deserves now specially to be remembered, a one-sided expression for this unity as it is in truth ; but the elimination of this one-sided statement must also lie in the externalisation of the notion which is now before us. Taken in its first, simply immediate statement, the Infinite is only as transcendence of the Finite ; it is in its determination [definition, express nature] the negation of the Finite ; thus the Finite, as only that which is to be transcended, is the negation of itself just in it — just that negation which the Infinite is. There lies thus in each, the determinateness of the other, — yet, according to the infinite Progress, they are to be mutually excluded, and only reciprocally to follow each other ; neither can be stated and comprehended without the other, the Infinite not without the Finite, the Finite not without the Infinite. When what the Infinite is, is said, the negation, namely, of the Finite, the Finite itself, is co-enunciated ; for the definition or determination of the Infinite, it cannot be dispensed with. People require only to know what they say to find the Finite in the Infinite. Of the Finite, for its part, it is at once granted, that it is what is null, but just its nullity is the Infinitude, from which it is thus inseparable. In this way of regarding them? they may seem to be taken with reference to their other [or only in their reference]. Now should they be supposed reference-less, in such wise that they are con- nected only by an And, they will stand as if mutually opposed, self-subsistent, each only in itself. Let us see now, how in such shape they are constituted. So placed, the Infinite is one of the two ; but as only one of the two it is itself finite — it is not the whole, but only one side ; it has in its Opposite its limit ; it is thus the finite Infinite. Or there are only two Finites before us. Just in this, that it is thus placed as sundered from the Finite, QUALITY TRANSLATED. 281 and therefore as one-sided, lies its Finitude, and therefore its unity with the Finite. The Finite, for its part, placed as per se apart from the Infinite, is this reference to self, in which its relativity, dependency, its passingness is removed ; it is the same self- substantiality and affirmation of itself which the Infinite is taken to be. Both modes of consideration, though seeming at first to have a different determinate for their start — so far as the former is supposed to view them only as reference of the Infinite and Finite to each other, of each to its other ; and the latter is supposed to hold them apart from each other in their complete isolation, — give one and the same result; the Infinite and Finite, viewed according to the reference of both to one another, which reference were to be external to them, but which is essential to them, neither being what it is without it, contain thus each its other in its own determination, just as much as each taken per se, regarded in itself, has its other lying in it as its own moment. This yields, then, the — decried — unity of the Finite and Infinite — the unity, which is itself the Infinite, which comprehends in itself its own self and the Finite — and therefore is the Infinite in another sense than in that, according to which the Finite is separated from it and placed on the other side. In that they must be as well distinguished, each, as already shown, is also itself in it the unity of both ; and thus there are two such unities. The common element, the unity of both determinates, as unity, expresses both in the first place as negated, seeing that each is supposed to be that which it is in their distinguishedness ; in their unity they lose, therefore, their qualitative nature; — an important reflexion against conception, which will not emancipate itself from this — to hold fast, in the unity of the Infinite and Finite, these according to the quality which they are supposed to have as taken apart, and therefore to see in said unity only the contradiction, not also the resolution of the same by the negation of the qualitative determinateness of both; thus the directly simple all-common unity of the Infinite and Finite is falsified. But further, in that now also they are to be taken as different, the unity of the Infinite, which each of these moments is, is differently determined in each of them. The Infinite, so deter- mined, has in it the Finitude which is distinguished from it ; the former is in this unity the In-itself, and the latter is only deter- minateness, limit in it ; but it is a limit which is the directly 282 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. other of it (the Infinite), its antithesis ; its determination, which is the In-itself as such, becomes by the falsifying addition of a quality of such a nature vitiated ; it is thus a finitised Infinite. In like manner, in that the Finite as such is only the Non-iw- itself but by reason of the unity in question has likewise its opposite in it, it becomes raised above its value, and that too, so to speak, infinitely ; it is expressed (set) as the Infinitised Finite. In the same manner, as previously the simple, is the double unity of the Infinite and Finite falsified by understanding. This takes place here also by this, that in the one of the two unities the Infinite is taken as not negated, rather as the In-itself, in which therefore there is not to be determinateness and limitation ; the In-itself were by this depreciated and vitiated. Contrariwise, the Finite is likewise held fast as the non-negated, though in itself null, so that in its connexion with the Infinite it is raised to that which it is not, and is thereby — not disappearing but rather perpetually continuing — unfinitised against its own dis- tinctive determination. The falsification, which, with the Finite and the Infinite, under- standing commits in holding fast their mutual reference as qualitative diversity, in maintaining them as in their nature separated and indeed absolutely separated, is occasioned by for- getting that which for understanding itself the notion of these moments is. According to this notion, the unity of the Finite and Infinite is not an external bringing together of them, nor a combination alien and repugnant to their distinctive nature, in which combination there would be conjoined what were in themselves separated and opposed, mutually self-substantial and existent, and consequently incompatible; but each is just in it this unity, and that only as sublation of itself, in which neither shall have any advantage over the other as regards In-itself-ness and affirmative There-being. * As already shown, the Finite is only as transcendence of itself; there is contained therefore in it, the Infinite, the other of itself. Just so is the Infinite only as transcendence of the Finite ; it implies, therefore, essentially its other, and is, consequently, in it the other of itself. The Finite is not sublated by the Infinite as by an independent power existing apart from it ; but it is its Infinitude, to sublate itself. This sublation is, consequently, not alteration or otherness in general, not sublation of Something. That in which the Finite sublates itself, is the Infinite as the negating of the Finite ; but QUALITY TRANSLATED. 283 this latter is long ago itself only There-being determined as a Non- being. It is, therefore, only the negation which in the negation sublates itself. Thus for its part Infinitude is determined as the negative of Finitude, and, consequently, of determinateness in general, as the void Further side ; its self-sublation in the Finite is a turning back from empty flight, a negation of the Further side, which Further side is a negative in itself. What is present, then, is in both the same negation of the nega- tion. But this is in itself reference to itself, affirmation but as return to itself, i.e. through the mediation, which the negation of the negation is. These determinations are what is to be essen- tially kept in view : the second point, however, is, that they are also express in the infinite progress, but, as they are so in it, not yet in their ultimate truth. In the first place, in it, both, as well the Infinite as the Finite, are negated — both are, and in the same manner, transcended; secondly, they are expressed as distinct and different, each after the other, as per se positive. We take thus these two determina- tions comparingly apart, as in the comparison, an outer comparison, we have separated the two modes of consideration, that of the Finite and Infinite in their reference, and that of the same each taken per se. But the Infinite Progress expresses more ; there is present in it, also, the connexion of what is likewise distinguished, directly nevertheless only as transition and alternation. Let us see now in a simple reflexion what in effect is present. First, the negation of the Finite and Infinite, which is expressed in the infinite Progress, may be taken as simple, consequently as separate, and only successive. Starting with the Finite, the Limit is transcended, the Finite is negated. Now, then, we have the Further side, the beyond of the same, the Infinite : but in this latter the Limit again arises, and thus we have the transcendence of the Infinite. This twofold sublation nevertheless is expressed partly in general only as an external traffic and alternation of the moments, partly not yet as a unity ; each of these transcendings is a special apposition, a new act, so that they fall thus asunder from one another. There is, however, also further present in the infinite progress their reference. There is, firstly, the Finite ; then it is transcended — this negative or beyond of the Finite is the Infinite; thirdly, this negation is again transcended — there arises a new Limit, again a Finite. This is the complete, self- closing movement, which has arrived at that which constituted 284 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. the beginning ; the same thing from which we started arises, i.e. the Finite is restored ; the same thing has therefore gone together with itself, has in its beyond only found itself again. The same is the case as regards the Infinite. In the Infinite, the beyond of the limit, there arises only a new limit, which has the same fate, as Finite to be necessarily negated. What we have thus again is the same Infinite, which disappeared previously in the new limit: the Infinite, therefore, through its sublation, across through the new limit, is not farther advanced, neither has it been removed from the Finite, for this latter is only this, to go over into the Infinite, — nor from itself, for it has arrived by itself Thus both, the Finite and the Infinite, are this movement, to return to themselves through their negation ; they are only as mediation- within themselves, and the affirmative of both contains the negation of both, and is the negation of the negation. They are thus result, and not, consequently, what they are in the deter- mination of their beginning ; — not the Finite, a There-being on its side, and the Infinite, a There-being or In-itself-being beyond the There-being, i.e. beyond that which was determined as finite. The unity of the Finite and Infinite is so very repugnant to under- standing only on this account, that it presupposes as perennial or persistent the Limitation and the Finite as well as the In-itself ; thus it fails to see the negation of both, which is factually present in the infinite Progress, as well as that they therein only present themselves as Moments of a Whole, and that they arise only by means of their contrary, but essentially also just as much by means of the sublation of their contrary. If, in the first instance, the return to self was regarded as the return as well of the Finite as of the Infinite to itself, there mani- fests itself now in this result an incorrectness which is connected with the one-sidedness just commented on ; now the Finite and now the Infinite is taken as starting-point, and by this only is it that there arise two results. But it is absolutely indifferent which is taken as beginning; and so the difference which pro- duced the duplicity of the results, disappears of itself. This is likewise expressed in the both ways unlimited line of the infinite Progress, wherein each of the moments appears with like alternate presentation, and it is quite external, where we catch on, and with what begin. They are in it distinguished, but in like manner the one as only moment of the other. In that both of them, the Finite and the Infinite, are themselves moments of the QUALITY TRANSLATED. 285 process, they are, in community, the Finite ; and in that they are equally also in community negated in it and in the result, this result as negation of said Finitude of both is with truth regarded as the Infinite. Their distinction is thus the double sense which both have. The Finite has the double sense firstly to be only the Finite counter the Infinite, that stands opposed to it ; and, secondly, to be at once the Finite and its opposing Infinite. The Infinite also has the double sense, to be one of said two moments — when it is the spurious Infinite — and then to be the Infinite in which said both, it itself and its other, are only moments. How, therefore, the Infinite is in effect before us, is, to be the process, in which it submits to be only one of its determinations counter the Finite, and so only one of the Finites, and to sublate this difference of itself from itself into the affirmation of itself, and to be through this mediation as true Infinite. This distinctive determination of the true Infinite cannot be contained in the formula, already animadverted on, of a unity of the Finite and Infinite ; unity is abstract motionless equality with self, and the moments are just thus as unmoved beents: the Infinite, however, is, like both of its moments, rather essentially only as Becoming, but becoming now further determined in its moments. Becoming has first abstract being and nothing for its determinations ; next, as Alteration, it has There-beents, — Some- thing and Other ; now, as the Infinite, it has Finite and Infinite, themselves as Becoments. This Infinite, as a returned-ness into self, reference of itself to itself, is Being, but not Determination-less, abstract Being, for it is formally set as negating the negation ; it is consequently also There-being, for it contains the negation in general, and conse- quently Determinateness. It is and is there, present, now. Only the spurious Infinite is the Beyond, because it is only the negation of the Finite that is given as Keal, — thus it is the abstract, first Negation ; only as negatively determined, it has not the affirma- tion of There-being in it ; held fast as only negative, it is supposed to be even not there, it is to be supposed unreachable. But this unreachableness is not its worth, but its want, which has its ultimate ground in this, that the Finite as such is held fast as be'ent. The Untrue is the Unreachable ; and it must be seen, that such Infinite is the Untrue. The image of the Progressus ad infinitum is the straight line, only in the two limits of which is the Infinite, and always only where the line — and it is There-being — is not, 286 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. and which (line) proceeds out beyond to this its non-There-being, i.e. to the Indeterminate ; as true Infinitude, bent back into itself, the image is the circle, the line which has reached itself, which is closed and completely present, without beginning and end. The true Infinite thus as There-being, which is put as affirma- tively counter the abstract negation, is reality in a higher sense than the former one, which was determined as simple reality ; it has here obtained a concrete mtent. The Finite is not the real, but the Infinite. Thus, too, reality becomes further on deter- mined as Essentity, Notion, Idea, &c. It is superfluous, however, to repeat such earlier, abstracter, categories, as reality, on occasion of the concreter, and to apply them in the place of determinations more concrete than they are in themselves. Such repetition, as to say that the Essentity or that the Idea is the Eeal, has its occasion in this, that to unformed thought, the abstractest categories, as Being, There-being, Keality, Finitude, are the currentest. The recalling of the category of Reality has here its preciser occasion, in that the negation, against which it is the affirmative, is here the negation of the negation, and so it (Reality itself) is put as opposed to that Reality, which finite There-being is. — The negation is thus determined as identity ; the Ideel * is the Finite as it is in the true Infinite, — that is, as a determination, mtent, which is distinguished, but not self-subsistently beent, only as moment. Ideality has this concreter sense, which by a negation of finite There-being is not completely expressed. As regards reality and ideality, however, the antithesis of finite and infinite is understood so that the finite passes for the real ; the infinite, on the other hand, for the ideel : in the same way as further on the notion is regarded as an ideel, and as only ideel, There-being on the contrary as the real. Thus it avails nothing to have the special expression of the ideel for the assigned concrete deter- mination of the negation ; in said antithesis, the one-sidedness of * The Ideal has a preciser meaning (of the Beautiful and what bears on it) than the Ideel ; the former has not yet any application here ; for this reason the expres- sion Ideel is here used. As regards Reality there is no such distinction ; the Reel and the Real are well-nigh synonymous ; the shading of the two expressions, as it were, counter each other, has no interest. (This is Hegel's note, and valuable for the meaning of * Ideel ' as against • Ideal.' The latter is of aesthetic application only : the former ot metaphysical ; it means what is, but what has gone in, what is taken up, what is only held (as in solution), what is aufgehoben, sublated, withdrawn, put past. This may countenance the suggestion that formaZ may be regarded as rather metaphorical, while forme? is quite literal — in accentuation of form.) — New. QUALITY TRANSLATED. 287 the abstract negative which attaches to the spurious Infinite is returned to, and the affirmative There-being of the Finite per- sisted in. Transition. Ideality may be named the Quality of Infinitude ; but it is essentially the Process of Becoming, and consequently a transition (as was that of Becoming into There-being), which is now to be assigned. As sublation of Finitude, i.e. of Finitude as such, and just as much of its only opposing, only negative Infinitude, this return into self is reference to its own self — Being. As in this Being there is negation, it is There-heing ; but as this negation is further essentially negation of the negation, self to self-referent negation, it is that There-being which is named Being-for-self. Eemark 1. The Infinite — in the usual sense of the spurious Infinite — and the Progress into the Infinite, like the To-be-to, are the expression of a contradiction, which gives itself out as resolution and as ultimum. This Infinite is a first elevation of sensuous conception over the Finite into the thought, which, however, has only the mtent of nothing, of that which is expressly given and taken as non-beent — a flight beyond the limitated, which flight collects itself not into itself, and knows not how to bring back the negative into the positive. This uncompleted reflexion has both of the determinations of the true Infinite — the antithesis of the Finite and Infinite, and the unity of the Finite and Infinite — perfectly before it, but brings not these two thoughts together; the one conveys along with it the other inseparably, but it (the reflexion) lets them only alternate. The fact of this alternation, the infinite progress, is always then present whenever the contradiction of the unity of two determinations and of their antithesis is persisted in. The Finite is the sublation of itself ; it includes in itself its nega- tion, Infinitude, — the unity of both ; Process is made out beyond over the Finite to the Infinite as its Further side, — separation of both ; but beyond the Infinite there is another Finite — the beyond, the Infinite, contains the Finite, — unity of both ; but this Finite is also a negative of the Infinite, — separation of both, and so on. Thus in the relation of causality, cause and effect are inseparable ; a cause which should have no effect is not a cause, as an effect 288 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. which should have no cause were no longer an effect. This relation gives therefore the infinite progress of causes and effects ; something is determined as cause, but it has, as a finite ( — and it is finite just specially because of its separation from the effect) itself, a cause, i.e. it is also effect ; consequently, the same thing which was determined as cause, is also determined as effect — unity of cause and effect ; — what is now determined as effect has again a cause, i.e. the cause is to be separated from its effect and taken as a different something ; — this new cause is again itself only an effect — unity of cause and effect ; — it has another for its cause — separation of both determinations, and so on ad infinitum. A more special form can be given the progressus in this way ; it is asserted that the Finite and the Infinite are one unity ; this false assertion requires now to be corrected by the opposite one, that they are directly different and mutually opposed ; this again is to be corrected, into the assertion that they are inseparable, that the one determination lies in the other, through the averment of their unity, and so on ad infinitum. In order to understand the nature of the Infinite, it is no difficult request, that we should have a consciousness that the infinite progress, the developed infinite of understanding, is so constituted as to be the alternation of the two determinations, of the unity and of the separation of both moments, and then again that we should also have a conscious- ness, that this unity and this separation are themselves inseparable. The resolution of this contradiction is not the recognition of the equal correctness and of the equal incorrectness of the two statements ; — this were only another form of the persistent con- tradiction ; but the Ideality of the two, as in which they, in their difference as mutual negations, are only moments ; said monotonous alternation is factually as well the negation of their unity as of their separation. In it (the Ideality) is just as factually present what has been shown above, that the Finite passes beyond itself into the Infinite, but just so beyond the same again it finds itself spring up anew, and consequently therein it only goes together with its own self, as the Infinite similarly ; so that the same negation of the negation becomes the affirmative result, which result demonstrates itself consequently as their truth and their prime. In this Being consequently as the Ideality of both of the characters distinguished, the contradiction is not abstractly vanished, but resolved and reconciled, and the thoughts are not only complete, but they are also brought together. The nature of QUALITY TRANSLATED. 289 speculative thought shows itself in this detailed example in its special form, it consists alone in the taking up of the opposed moments in their unity. In that each shows itself factually to have in it its contrary as such, and in it to go together with itself, the affirmative truth is this unity that gives movement to itself within itself, the taking together of both thoughts, their infinity, — the reference to self — not the immediate, but the infinite one. The test of philosophy, by such as are already in some degree familiarised with thought, has been frequently placed in the problem, — to answer, How the Infinite comes out of itself, and into Finitude ? This, it is usually supposed, cannot possibly be made comprehensible. The Infinite, by the notion of which we have arrived, will in progress of the present development further deter- mine itself, and show in it, in all the multiplicity of the forms, what is here demanded, or How it, if we are to express ourselves thus, comes to Finitude. At present we consider this question only in its immediacy, and in regard to the previously considered sense which the Infinite is wont to have. On the answering of this question it is supposed in general to depend whether a philosophy exist ; and in that people give out that they will be content to let it rest on this, they believe them- selves to possess in the question itself, a sort of gucestio vexata, an unconquerable Talisman, through which they are firmly secured against any answer, and consequently against philosophy and the establishment of philosophy. But even in other objects a certain education is presupposed, in order to understand how to put questions, and still more in philosophical objects is such education to be presupposed necessary in order to attain a better answer than only that the question is worth nothing. As regards such questions, it is usually fair to point out, that the matter does not depend on the words, but that it is intelligible from one or other of the phrases of the expression, what it is it depends on ? Ex- pressions of sensuous conception as going and coming out, and the like, which are used in the question concerned, awake the suspicion, that it (the question) belongs to the position of ordinary conception, and that for the answer also there are expected just such sensuous conceptions, as are current in common life and have the shape of a sensuous similitude or metaphor. When, instead of the Infinite, Being in general is taken, then the determining of Being, that is, a negation or finitude in it, T 290 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. seems more readily intelligible. Being, to be sure, is itself the undetermined, but it is not immediately expressed in it that it is the contrary of the determined. Whereas the Infinite has this expressed; it is the ?wm-Finite. The unity of the Finite and Infinite seems thus immediately excluded ; it is on this account that uncompleted reflexion is at its stubbornest against this unity. It has been shown, however, and, without entering further into the determination of the Finite and Infinite, it is immediately evident, that the Infinite in the sense in which it is taken by the reflexion alluded to, — that is, as contraposed to the Finite, — has in it its other, just because it is contraposed to it, and is therefore already limited, and even finite, the spurious Infinite. The answer to the question, How the Infinite becomes Finite, is con- sequently this, that there is no such thing as an Infinite that is first of all Infinite and which is afterwards under a necessity to become finite, to go out into the Finite; but that it is per se — by and for its own self — already just as much finite as infinite. In that the question assumes that the Infinite is on one side per se, and that the Finite — which has gone out into separation from it, or which may have come whencesoever it may — is, separated from it, truly real : here rather it were to be said, that this separation is incomprehensible. Neither such Finite nor such Infinite has truth ; the untrue, however, is unintelligible. But it must just as much be said, they are intelligible ; the consideration of them, even as they are in conception, that in the one the distinctive nature of the other lies — to have simple insight into this their inseparable- ness, is to comprehend them ; this inseparableness is their notion. In the self- substantiality of said Infinite and Finite, on the other hand, said question sets up an untrue Intent, and implies at once an untrue reference of the same. On this account it is not to be answered, but rather are the false presuppositions it implies — i.e., the question itself — to be negated. Through the questioning of the truth of said Infinite and Finite, the position is altered, and this alteration retaliates on the first question the perplexity which it sought to inflict; this question of ours is to the reflexion from which the first question issues, new, as such reflexion possesses not the speculative interest which, by and for its own self, and before it co-refers determinations, seeks to ascertain whether these same determinations are, in the manner in which they are presupposed, anywise true. So far, however, as the untruth of said abstract Infinite, and of the similar Finite which is to remain QUALITY TRANSLATED. 291 standing on its side, is recognised, there is to be said as regards the exit of the Finite out of the Finite, that the Infinite goes out into the Finite, just because, in the manner in which it is taken as abstract unity, it has no truth, and no principle of subsistence or consistence in it ; and conversely, for the same reason of its nullity, the Finite goes in into the Infinite. Or rather it is to be said, that the Infinite is eternally gone out into the Finite, that, no more than pure Being, is it absolutely alone per se, without having its other in it itself. Said question, How the Infinite goes out into the Finite, may mean the still further presupposition, that the Infinite in itself includes the Finite, and consequently is in itself the unity of itself and of its other, so that the difficulty refers itself essentially to the separating, which as such is opposed to the presupposed unity of both. In this presupposition, the antithesis which is held fast, has only another form ; the unity and the distinction are separated and isolated from each other. Said unity, however, being taken not as the abstract indeterminate unity, but as the determinate unity of the Finite and Infinite, as it already is in said presup- position, the distinction also of both is already present in it, — a distinction which, at the same time, is not a letting-loose of these into separated self-dependency, but retains them in the unity as ideel. This unity of the Infinite and Finite and their distinction are the same inseparabild as Finitude and Infinitude themselves. Remark 2. The position, that the Finite is ideel, constitutes Idealism. The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in recognising the Finite as not a veritable Beent. All philosophy is essentially Idealism, or at least possesses it as its principle, and the question is only how far has it carried out this principle ? Philosophy is this as much as religion; for religion just as little recognises the Finite as a veritable Being, as an ultimate, absolute, or as non- posititious, uncreated, eternal. The contrast of idealistic and realistic philosophy is therefore without import. A philosophy which should ascribe to the finite There-being as such, genuine, ultimate, absolute Being, would not deserve the name of philo- sophy ; the principles of earlier or of later philosophies, water, or matter, or atoms, are thoughts, universals, ideels, not things, as they directly find themselves before us, i.e.^ in sensuous singleness ; 292 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. even the Thaletic water is not such thing, for, though certainly empirical water is meant, it is also conceived at the same time as the In-itself or Essentity of all the other things ; and these are not self-substantial entities, grounded in themselves, but they are expressed (resultant) from (of) another [the Water], i.e., they are ideel. The principle, the universal, being named the ideel, — (as still more the notion, the idea, the spirit, are to be named ideel), and then again single sensuous things being to be conceived as sublated, as ideel in the principle, in the notion, or still more, in the spirit, — attention may be directed, in passing, to the same double side, which showed itself in the Infinite; that is to say, that at one time, the Ideel is the concrete, the veritably Beent, but at another time again, just as much its moments are what is ideel, namely what is sublated in it, — in effect, there is only the One concrete Whole, from which the moments are inseparable. By the Ideel, as commonly opined, is especially meant the form of conception ; and what is in my conception in general, or what is in the notion, the idea, in the imagination, &c, is called ideel, so that ideel applies even to fancies — conceptions, which are not only diverse from the real, but are to be supposed essentially not real. In effect the Spirit is the Idealist proper ; in it, as it is when feeling, conceiving, still more when thinking and comprehending, the mtent or object is not as the so-called real There-being; in the singleness of the ego, such external Being is only sublated — it is for me, it is ideel in me. This subjective idealism, be it the un- witting idealism of consciousness in general, or be it consciously enunciated and upheld as principle, regards only the conceptive form according to which an intent (an object) is mine ; this form is upheld in systematic subjective idealism, as the only true one, to the exclusion of the form of objectivity or reality, or of the external There-being of the mtent. Such an idealism is formell, inasmuch as in its attention to the form it neglects the content of conception or thought, which — whether conceived or thought — may still remain quite in its finitude. With such idealism, there is nothing lost, as well because the reality of such finite matter — There-being and its finite complement — is retained, as because (inasmuch as it is abstracted from) said matter is to be regarded as of no consequence in itself; and again there is nothing won with it, just because there is nothing lost, for the ego, the concep- tion, the spirit, remains filled with the same finite matter. The antithesis of the form of subjectivity and objectivity is certainly QUALITY TRANSLATED. 293 one of the Finities; but the matter, how it appears in sensation, perception, or even in the more abstract element of conception, of thought itself, contains finities in abunda nee, which (finities), by exclusion of the single mode of finitude alluded to, the form, namely, of subjective and objective, are not yet by any means got rid of, and have still less disappeared of themselves. 294 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. CHAPTEE III. Being-foe-self. In Being-for-self qualitative Being is completed; it is infinite Being. The Being of the beginning is determination-less. There- being is sublated (negated), but only immediately sublated (negated) Being ; it thus, in the first case, contains only the first, just immediate negation ; Being is indeed equally retained, and in There-being both are united in simple unity ; but just on that account they are in themselves mutually unequal ; their unity is not yet in position. There-being is, therefore, the sphere of differ- ence, of dualism, the field of finitude. The determinateness is determinateness as such — a relative, not absolute determinateness. In Being-for-self, the difference between the being and the deter- minateness or the negation is posited and equated ; Quality, Otherwise-ness, Limit, as also Beality, Being-in-itself, To-be-to, &c, are the imperfect infigurations of the negation into the Being, so that in them the difference of both still lies at bottom. In that in the Finitude, nevertheless, the negation has gone over into the Infinitude, into the posited negation of the negation, it (the nega- tion) is simple reference to self, and, therefore, in itself the equa- tion with the Being, absolute determinate Being. Being-for-self, is, firstly, immediate Being-for-self -ity, One. Secondly, the One .goes over -into the plurality (many) of Ones, — Repulsion; which otherwise-ness of the One resolves itself in the ideality of the same, Attraction. Thirdly, the reciprocal determination of Bepulsion and Attrac- tion, in which they sink together (collapse) into equilibrium, passes over (and so also Quality, which in Being-for-self reached its point) into Quantity. QUALITY TRANSLATED. 295 A. Being-for-self as such. The total notion of Being-for-self has yielded itself. It were only now necessary to point out that the conception corresponds to the notion, — the conception which we attach to the expression, Being-for-self, — in order to be authorised to use said expression for said notion. And so, indeed, it seems ; we say that something is for itself, so far as it negates the otherwiseness, its reference to and communion with other, so far as it has repelled these, abstracted from them. The other is in it only as sublated, as its moment ; Being-for-self consists in this, that it has so gone beyond the limitation, its otherwiseness, that, as this negation, it is the infinite return into itself. Consciousness contains as such in itself the determination of Being-for-self, in that it represents to itself an object which it feels, perceives, &c, that is, in that it has within it the mtent of this object, which mtent is thus in the manner of an ideel; consciousness is, in its very perception, in general in its involution with its negative, with its other, by its own self. Being- for-self is the polemical negative attitude towards the limiting Other, and through this negation of it, it is a being reflected within itself, although too beside this return of consciousness into itself and the ideality of the object, the reality of this latter is also preserved in that it is, at the same time, known as an external object. Consciousness is thus appearand* or it is the Dualism on one side to know of an object outer and other to it, and on the other side to be for itself, to have the object ideel in it — to be not only by such other, but in it also by its own self. /S'eZ/'-conscious- ness, on the other hand, is Being-for-self as completed and set ; the side of reference to another, an outer object, is eliminated. Self-consciousness is thus the nearest example of the presence of infinitude, — always of an infinitude abstract, truly, but which, at the same time, nevertheless, is of a quite other concrete nature than Being-for-self in general, the infinitude of which latter has still only a quite qualitative determinateness. * That ■ consciousness is thus erscheinend ' surely can only mean that it is thus consciousness (not seJ/-consciousness) presents itself as an object to itself. — (New.) 296 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. a. There-being and Being-for-seif. Being-for-self, as already intimated, is Infinitude sunk together into simple Being ; it is There-being (has eocistency), so far as the negative nature of infinitude, which is the negation of the nega- tion, in the now, once for all, explicit form of the immediacy of Being, is only as negation in general, as simple qualitative determinateness. Being, in a determinateness such that it is There-being, is, however, directly also diverse from Being-for-self, which is only Being-for-self so far as its determinateness is said infinite one ; still There-being is, at the same time, moment of the Being-for-self ; for this latter contains certainly also Being that has been subjected to negation. Thus the determinateness, which in There-being as such is another, and Being-for-other, is bent back into the infinite unity of the Being-for-self, and in Being-for-self the moment of There-being is present as — Being-for-One (or just Being-for-a). b. Being-for-One. This moment expresses how the Finite is in its unity with the Infinite, or is as Idee'l. The Being-for-self has not negation in it as a determinateness or limit, and not therefore as reference to a There-being other from it. Though this moment has been designated as Being-for-One, there is still not yet anything present for which it were, — the One not, whose moment it were. In effect such is not yet fixed in Being-for-self; that for which Something ( — and there is here no Something — ) were, what the other side should at all be, is in like manner moment, just only Being-for-One, not yet One. There is thus as yet an indistinguish- ableness of the two sides, which two sides may flit before the mind in the Being-for-One ; there is only a Being-for-Other, and because it is only a Being-for-Other, this Being-for-Other is also only Being-for-One ; there is only the one ideality — of that for which or in which there should be a determination as moment — and of that which should be moment in it. Thus Being-for-one and Being-for-self form no veritable determinatenesses counter each other. So far as the difference is assumed for a moment and a Being-for-self-ity is spoken of here, this latter is the Being- for-self-ity as sublatedness of the Otherwiseness, and this (Being-for-self-ity) again refers itself to itself as to the sublated other, and is therefore for-one (for a) ; it refers itself in its other QUALITY TKAN SLATED. 297 only to itself. The Ideel is necessarily for-one, but it is not for another; the one (the a), for which it is, is only itself. — Ego, therefore, the Spirit, or God, are Ideels, because they are infinite ; but they are not ideel, as beents-for-self, diverse from that that is for-one (for a). For so they were only immediate, or, nearer, There-being and a Being-for-other ; because that which were for them, were not themselves but another, if the moment of being for-one attached not to them. God is therefore for himself, so far as he is himself that that is for him. Being-for-Self and Being-for-One are therefore not different imports of Ideality, but are essential, inseparable moments of it. Remark. The Expression Was fiir eines ? The apparently, at first sight, singular expression of our language for the question of quality, what for a thing (was fur ein Ding) something is, gives prominence, in its reflexion-into-self, to the moment considered here. This expression is in its origin idealistic, seeing that it asks not, what this thing A is for another thing B, not what this man is for another man ; — but what this is for a thing, for a man ? so that this Being-for-one [say for a, or for a one] has, at the same time, come back into this thing itself, into this man himself ; that that which is and that for which it is, is one and the same thing,— an identity, such as the ideality must also be considered to be. The ideality attaches in the first instance to the sublated determinations, as diverse from that in which they are sublated, which again may be taken as the Real. In this way, however, the Ideel is again one of the moments and the Real the other ; but the Ideality is this, that both determinations are equally only for-one, and pass valid only for-one, which one ideality is just thus undistinguished Reality. In this sense, Self-consciousness, the Spirit, God, is the Ideel, as infinite reference purely to self, — Ego is for Ego, both are the «ame thing ; Ego is twice named, but of such a two, each is only for-one, ideel ; the Spirit is only for the Spirit, God only for God, and only this unity is God, God as Spirit. Self-consciousness, however, as consciousness passes into the difference of itself and of another, or of its, ideality in which it is perceptive, and of its reality in that its perception has a deter- 298 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. minate intent, which intent has still the side to be known as the unresolved negative, as There-being (an object). Nevertheless, to call Thought, Spirit, God, only an Ideel, presupposes the position on which finite There-being passes for the Eeal, and the Ideel or the Being-for-one has only a one-sided sense. In assigning the principle of Idealism, in a preceding Remark, it was said that the decisive question in the case of any philosophy was, how far has this principle been carried out in it ? As regards the mode of carrying this out, a further remark may be made in connexion with the category by which we stand. On this point the question is, — whether, beside the Being-for-self, finite existence is not still left independently standing, — moreover, again, whether there be set in the Infinite itself the moment fw*-one, a bearing of the ideel to its own self as ideel. Thus the Eleatic Being, or the Spinozistic Substance, is only the abstract negation of all deter- minateness, without ideality being set in it itself ; — with Spinoza, as will be considered again further on, infinitude is only the absolute affirmation of a thing, and thus only unmoved unity ; his substance, therefore, comes not even to the determination of Being-for-self, much less to that of subject and Spirit. The Idealism of the pure and lofty Malebranche is in itself more explicit ; it contains the following ground-thoughts : — As God comprehends within himself all the eternal verities, the Ideas, and Perfections of all things, in such wise that they are only his, we for our part see them only in him ; God awakes in us our sensations of objects through an action which has nothing sensuous irn it, in consequence of which we imagine that we obtain not only the idea of the object, which idea represents its truth, but the sensation also of its existence (' De la recherche de la Verity, Eclairc. sur la nature des ide'es,' &c). As then the eternal verities and ideas (essentities) of things are in God, so also is their Daseyn in God, ideel, and not an actual Daseyn ; though as our objects, they are only for-one. This moment of explicit and concrete idealism, which is wanting in Spinozism, is present here, inasmuch as the absolute ideality is determined as knowing. However deep and pure this idealism is, nevertheless the above relations partly contain much that is indeterminate for thought, while, again, their intent (the matter they concern) is partly quite immediately concrete (Sin, Redemption, &c, appear in them just directly so) ; the logical character of infinitude, which should of necessity be its basal element is not completely carried out, and QUALITY TRANSLATED. 299 so this lofty and genuine idealism, though certainly the product of a pure speculative spirit, is not yet that of a pure speculative, or veritably foundation-seeing and seeking, thought. The Leibnitzian Idealism lies more within the limit of the abstract notion. The Leibnitzian ideating principle, the Monad, is essentially ideel. Ideation is a Being- for-self in which the determinatenesses are not limits, and consequently not a There- being, but only moments. Ideation is also, indeed, a more con- crete determination [ Vorstellen comprehends in it Perception, &c], but has here no wider meaning than that of Ideality ; for with Leibnitz even what is without any consciousness is a concipient, a percipient. In this system, then, otherwise-ness is eliminated ; spirit and body, or the monads in general, are not others for one another, they limit not each other, have no influence on one another; all relations in general fall away, which depend on a Daseyn as ground and source. Any plurality in it is only an ideel and inner one ; the monad in it (the plurality) remains referred only to its own self ; the particulars develop themselves within it, and are no references of it to others. What on the real side is taken as there-beent reference of the monads to one another, is an independent only simultaneous Becoming, shut in to the inner being of each of them. That there is a plurality of monads, that consequently they are also designated as others, nowise affects the monads themselves ; this is the reflexion of a third (party) that falls outside of them ; they are not in themselves others to one another; the Being-for-self [the In-being] is kept pure, without the side-by-side- there of a There-being [an Out-being, a finite existence]. But just here lies the uncompletedness of this system. The Monads are such concipients only in themselves (an sich), or in God as the Monad of Monads, or just in the System. Otherwiseness is still present ; let it fall into what it likes, into the ideation (the reflexion) itself, or however the third be char- acterised, which considers them as others, as a plurality. Their plurality as existences is only excluded, and that only for the moment, the monads are only set by abstraction as such that they are non-others. If it is a third party that sets their otherness, it is also a third party that withdraws the same ; this whole move- ment, indeed, which makes them ideel, falls on the outside of them. Should one remind us that this movement of thought falls nevertheless itself only within an ideating monad, one must be reminded as well that the very intent of such thought is 300 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. within its own self external to itself. Transition is made from the unity of the absolute ideality (the monad of monads) immediately, without understanding how ( — through the figurate conception of creation) to the category of the abstract (reference-less) plurality of a finite existency, and from this equally abstractly back again to the same unity. The ideality, the ideation in general, remains something formell, as much so, even when elevated into or as consciousness. As in the already adduced fancy of Leibnitz about the magnetic needle, if it had consciousness, considering its direction to the north as a determination of its own free will, consciousness is only thought as one-sided form, which is indifferent to its determination and mtent, so the ideality in the monads is a form that remains external to the plurality. Ideality is to be immanent to them, their nature is to be ideation ; but their relation is on one side their harmony, which falls not into their existence itself, and so is a pre-appointed one (a pre-established one) ; on the other side, this their Daseyn is not conceived as Seyn-fiir-Anderes, nor further as ideality, but is determined only as abstract plurality ; the ideality of the plurality, and the further determination of the units into harmony, is not immanent and proper to this plurality itself. Other idealism, as, for example, the Kantian and Fichtian, gets not further than the To-be-to (Sollen) or the infinite progress, and remains in the dualism of There-being and Being-for-self. In these systems the thing-in-itself, or the infinite appulse, enters immediately indeed into the Ego, and becomes only &for-it ; but still departure is thus made from a free other- wise-ness, which perpetually abides elsewhere as a negative Ansichseyn [as what is independent in itself and negative to it (the Ego)]. The Ego, therefore, may be characterised as Ideel, as Beent-for-self, as infinite reference to self; but the Being-for-one is not completed to the disappearance of said unknown whereabouts of a thing-in-itself, or of said direction towards such unknown. c. One. Being-for-self is the simple unity of itself and of its moment, the Being-for-one. There is only one determination present, the reference-to-itself of the sublation. The moments of Being-for-self have collapsed into indistinguishableness, which is immediacy or being, but an immediacy which founds itself on the negating QUALITY TRANSLATED. 301 which is set or posited as its determination. The Being-for-self is thus Being-for-self-*^ / and in that in this immediacy its inner import disappears, it is the quite abstract limit of itself, — One, or the One. We may remark beforehand on the difficulty which lies in the following exposition of the development of the One, and on the reason of it. The moments which constitute the notion of the One as Being-for-self go asunder in it ; they are, 1, Negation in general ; 2, two negations ; 3, and so of a Two that are the same thing ; 4, that are directly opposed ; 5, reference to self, identity as such ; 6, negative reference and yet to self. These moments go asunder here by this, that the form of Immediacy, of Being, comes in in the case of Being-for-self as Being-for-self-ity ; through this im- mediacy, each moment becomes set as a special beent determination; and nevertheless they are equally inseparable. Of each determina- tion thus its contrary must be equally said ; it is this contradic- tion which, by the abstract tality of the moments, constitutes the difficulty. B. One and Many. The One is the simple reference of Being-for-self to itself, in which reference its moments have collapsed into themselves, in which therefore it has the form of immediacy, and its moments therefore are now There-beents. As reference of the negative to itself the One is a Determining, — and as reference to itself it is infinite ^(/-determining. But because of the immediacy now again present, these differences are no longer only as moments of one and the same self-determination, but they are set at the same time as beent. The Ideality of the Being-for-self as totality thus strikes round, firstly, into Reality, and that, too, into the most fixed and abstract, as One. Being-for- self is in the One the set unity of Being and There-being, as the absolute union of the reference to other and of the reference to self; but now there enters also the determinateness of Being counter the determination of the infinite negation, counter the Self- determination, so that, what One is in itself, it is now only in it, and consequently the negative is another as distinguished from it. What shows itself as there before it distinct from it, is its own Self- determining ; its unity with itself thus as distinguished from itself THE SECRET OF HEGEL. has sunk into Reference, and as negative unity is negation of itself as of another, exclusion of the One as of another from itself, the One. a. The One in its own self. In its own self is the One on the whole ; this its Being is no There-being, no determinateness as reference to other, not talifica- tion ; it is this, that it has negated this circle of categories. The One is consequently incapable of any becoming-otherwise; it is un-other&hle, unalterable. It is undetermined, no longer so, however, as Being is so ; its indeterminateness is the determinateness which reference to itself is, an absolute determined-being, or absolute determinedness ; set (settled) Being-within-self. As from its notion self-to-self-referent negation it has the difference within it, — a direction from itself away out to other, which direction, however, is immediately turned round, because from the moment of $eZ/-determining there is no other to which to go, and so has gone back into itself. In this simple immediation, the mediation of There-being and Ideality even has disappeared, and so consequently also all diversity and multiplicity. There is nothing in it (within it) ; this nothing, the abstraction of the reference to self, is here distinguished from the Being-within-self itself, it is a set issue (an eximplicatum), because this Being-within-self is no longer the Simple (unit) of the Something, but has the determination, that, as mediation, it is concrete ; as abstract, however, it is indeed identical with One, but diverse from its determination (qualification). This nothing so-determined and as in a one (in one or just in a) is the nothing as vacuum, as void. The void is thus the Quality of the One in its immediacy. b. The One and the Void. The One is the Void as the abstract reference of the negation to itself. But from the simple immediacy, the affirmative Being of the One which is still present, the void as the Nothing is directly different, and in that they stand in one reference, of the One itself namely, their difference is express or explicit ; but different from what is Beent (the Beent), the nothing as void is out of (outside of) the beent One. The Being-for-self, in that in this manner it determines itself as the One and the Void, has again reached a state of There-being QUALITY TRANSLATED. 303 (existency). The One and the Empty have, as their common simple basis, the negative reference to self. The moments of the Being-for-self come out of this unity, become mutually external ; in that the quality of Being comes in through the simple unity of the moments, it [this quality of Being] sets itself to one side, and so down to There-being [mere finite existency], and therein its other quality, the negation in general, places itself opposite, similarly as There-being [an existency] of the Nothing, as the Void. Kemark. The One in this form of There-being is the stage of the category, which with the Ancients presented itself as the Atomistic principle, according to which the Essentity of Things is, the Atom and the Void (to oltoiaov or tol arojua /cat to kcvov). Abstraction, advanced to this form, has acquired a greater determinateness than the Being of Parmenides and the Becoming of Heraclitus. However high it places itself in that it makes this simple determinateness of the One and the Void the principle of all things, reduces the infinite variety of the world to this simple antithesis, and makes bold out of this latter to know the former, no less easy is it for crude figurate conception to set up for itself, in its reflexion, here Atoms, and there, just alongside, an Empty. It is no wonder, therefore, that the atomistic principle has at all times maintained itself ; the equally trivial and external relation of Composition, that requires to be added in order to attain the semblance of a Con- crete and of a variety, is equally popular with the atoms them- selves and the void. The One and the Void is Being-for-self, the highest qualitative Being-within-self, fallen into complete exter- nality ; the immediacy or the being of the One, because it is the negation of all otherwiseness, is set as no longer determinable and alterable ; in view of its absolute reserve and repulsiveness, there- fore, all determination, variety, connexion, remains for it but a directly external reference. The atomistic .principle nevertheless, remained not in this externality with its first thinkers, but besides its abstraction it had also a speculative burden in this, that the vacuum was recognised as the source of motion ; which is quite another relation of the atom and the void than the mere side by side of these, and their indifference mutually. That the void is the source of movement, has not the unimportant sense that some- 304 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. thing can only move itself in a void and not in a space already filled, as in this latter there would be found no more place ; in which sense the void would be only the presupposition or condi- tion, not the ground (ratio) of motion ; just as here also movement itself is presupposed as already existent, and the essential, a ground of it, is forgotten. The view, that the void is the ground of motion, contains the deeper thought that in the negative generally there lies the ground of the Becoming, of the unrest of self-movement; in which sense, however, the negative is to be taken as the veritable negativity of the infinite. The void is ground of movement only as the negative reference of the One to its negative, to the One, i.e., to its own self, which, nevertheless, is set as a There-beent (as a Daseyn). In other respects, however, further determinations of the ancients respecting the shape and position of the atoms, the direction of their movement, are arbitrary and external enough, and stand withal in direct contradiction to the fundamental determination of the atom. With the atom, this principle of the hightest externality, and consequently also of the highest notion- lessness, physical science suffers [is at fault] in its molecules, its particles; as is also the case with that political science which starts from the single will of the individuals. c. Many Ones. Eepulsion. The One and the Void constitutes Being-for-self in its nearest or first There-being. Each of these moments has negation for its determination, and is at the same time set as a There-being. As regards the former, the one and the void is the reference of the negation to the negation as of another to its other ; the one is the negation in the form of Being, the empty the negation in the form of non-being. But the one is essentially only reference to itself as referent negation, i.e., is itself what the empty out of it is supposed to be. Both, however, are also set. as an affirmative There-being, the one as the Being-for-self as such, the other as indeterminate There-being generally, and each as referent to the other as to another There-being. The Being-for-self of the One is, nevertheless, essentially the Ideality of the There-being and of the Other; it refers itself not as to another, but only to itself. But in that the Being-for-self is fixed as One (an a), as a Beent for QUALITY TRANSLATED. 305 self, as immediately existent, its negative reference to self is at the same time reference to a Beent ; and as this reference is at the same time negative, that, to which it refers itself, remains deter- mined as a There-being and another ; as essentially reference to its own self, the other is not the indeterminate negation as a void, but is similarly one. The One is thus a Becoming of (rather to) a plurality of Ones. Properly, however, this is not quite a Becoming ; for Becoming is a going over from Being into Nothing ; One, here on the con- trary, becomes only One. One, as referred, implies the negative as reference, has the negative therefore itself in it. Instead of Becoming, there is therefore, firstly, present the proper immanent reference of the One ; and, secondly, so far as this reference is negative and the One at the same time beent, it is itself that the one drives off from itself. The negative reference of the One to itself is Repulsion. This Repulsion, thus as position of a plurality of Ones but through One itself, is the special coming out of itself of the One, but to such ones out of it as are themselves only One. This is the repulsion in accordance with the notion, that repulsion which is in itself. The second repulsion is different from this one, and is that which floats, in the first instance, before the conception of outer reflexion, as not the production of the Ones, but only as a mutual distance of presupposed Ones already there. It is to be seen now, then, how said in-itself-beent repulsion determines itself into the second, the external one. First of all, we have to fix for certain, what characters the many Ones as such possess. The Becoming to the Many, or the becoming-produced of the Many, disappears immediately, as a becoming-se£ (implied) ; the produced Ones are Ones, not for other, but refer themselves infinitely to themselves. The one repels only itself from itself, therefore becomes not, but already is ; what is conceived as the repelled one is likewise a One, a Beent ; repel- ling and being-repelled attaches in the same manner to both, and constitutes no difference. The Ones are thus prae-set (presupposed) as counter one another; — set (implied) through the repulsion of the One from itself ; prae (of the pre-supposed), set as not set ; their being-set is sublated, they are Beents counter one another, as referent of themselves only to themselves. The plurality appears thus not as an Otherwiseness, but as a u 306 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. determination perfectly external to the One. One, in that it repels itself, remains reference to itself; as so also that one that is taken at first as repelled. That the Ones are other counter each other, are held together in the determinateness of plurality, nowise concerns, therefore, the Ones. If the plurality were a reference of the Ones themselves to one another, they would limit each other, and would have a Being-for-other affirmatively in them. Their reference — and this they have through their virtual unity — as it is here set, is determined as none ; it is again the previously- determined Void. This void is their limit, but a limit external to them, in which they are not to be for one another. The limit is that in which what are limited as well are as are not ; but the void is determined as the pure non-being, and only this constitutes their limit. The repulsion of the One from itself is the Explication of that which — in itself — the One is ; but Infinitude, as laid asunder (out- of-one-another, explicated) is here Infinitude come out of itself, but it is come out of itself through the immediacy of the Infinite, of the One. This Infinitude is quite as much a simple reference of the One to One, as rather the absolute referencelessness of the One ; the former as according to the simple affirmative reference of the One to itself, the latter as according to the same reference as negative. Or the plurality of the One is the own proper setting of the One ; the One is nothing but the negative reference of the One to itself, and this reference, therefore the One itself, is the Many Ones. But just thus the plurality is directly external to the One; for the One is just the sublation of the Other wiseness, the repulsion is its reference to self, and simple equality with itself. The plurality of the Ones is Infinitude as unconcerned, self-producent Contradiction. * Remark. The Leibnitzian Idealism has been already noticed. We may add here, that, from the ideating monad onwards, which monad is determined as beent-for-self, it advanced only to Repulsion as just considered, and indeed only to plurality as such that in it the ones are each only for itself, indifferent to the There-being and Being-for-self of any others, or as such that in it in general others are not in any way for the one. The monad is per se the com- pletely isolated world; it requires none of the others; but this QUALITY TRANSLATED. 307 inner variety which it has in its ideation alters nothing in its determination as beent only for itself. The Leibnitzian idealism takes up plurality immediately as one given, and comprehends it not as a repulsion of the monad ; it has plurality, therefore, only on the side of its abstract externality. The atomistic has not the notion of ideality ; it takes the one not as such that it compre- hends ivithin itself both moments, the Being-for-self and the Being- for-it, not therefore as an ideel, but only as simple, dry Being-for- self-ity. But it goes beyond the mere indifferent plurality ; the atoms come into further mutual determination, though properly only in an inconsequent manner ; whereas, on the contrary, in the indifferent independency of the monads, plurality remains as fixed and immovable ground-determination, so that their reference falls only into the Monad of Monads, or into the reflecting Philosopher. Repulsion and Attraction. a. Exclusion of the One. The many ones are beents; their There-being or reference to one another is non-reference, it is external to them ; — the abstract void. But they themselves are now this negative reference to themselves (to one another), as to beent others; — the exhibited contradiction, infinitude set (expressed) in immediacy of being. Thus now the repulsion finds that immediately before it, which is repelled by it. It is in this determination Exclusion; the one repels from itself the many ones only as unproduced by it, as non- set by it. This repelling is, reciprocally and universally, relatively limited by the Being of the Ones. The plurality is in the first instance not set otherwiseness (not expressly so determined) ; the limit is only the void, only that in which the ones are not. But they also are in the limit ; they are in the void, or their Repulsion is their common Reference. This reciprocal repulsion is the set (express) Thzre-being of the many ones ; it is not their Being-for-self, so that they were only distinguished in a third something as a many or a much, but it is their own distinguishing, and preservative of them. They negate themselves (each other) mutually, set one another as such that 308 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. they are only for-one. But they negate just as much, at the same time, this, that they are only for-one; they repel this their ideality and are. Thus the moments are sundered, which are directly united in the ideality. The one is in its Being-for-self also for- one, but this one, for which it is, is itself; its distinction from itself is immediately sublated. But in the plurality the distin- guished one has a being ; the Being-for-One, as it is determined in the exclusion, is therefore a Being-for-other. Each becomes thus repelled by another, sublated and made a one that is not for itself, but for-one, and that another one. The Being-for-self of the many ones shows itself, therefore, as their self-preservation, through the mediation of their mutual repulsion, in which they mutually sublate themselves, and set the others as a mere Being-for-other ; but, at the same time, this self- preservation consists in this, to repel this ideality, and to set the ones not to be for another. This self-preservation of the ones through their negative reference to one another is, however, rather their dissolution. The ones not only are, but they conserve themselves through their reciprocal exclusion. Firstly, now, that by which they should keep firm hold of their diversity counter their becoming negated is their Being, and that, too, their ~Being-in-self counter their refer- ence to other ; this Being-in-self is, that they are ones. But all are this; they are in their Being-in-self the same thing, instead of having therein the fixed point of their diversity. Secondly, their There-being and their mutual relation, i.e., their setting themselves as ones, is a reciprocal negating; this, however, is likewise one and the same determination of them all, through which then they rather set themselves as identical ; as by this, that they are in themselves the same thing, their ideality which was to be as resultant through others is their own, and they therefore just as little repel it. They are thus in their being and in their setting only one affir- mative unity. This consideration of the ones — that (in both of their determina- tions, as well so far as they are, as so far as they mutually refer), they show themselves as only one and the same thing and indis- tinguishable— is our comparison. It is, however, to be seen what, in their mutual reference itself, is set (express) in them. They are, this is in this reference presupposed, — and are only so far as they mutually negate themselves, and repel at the same time from themselves this their ideality, their negatedness, i.e., so far as they QUALITY TRANSLATED. 309 negate this mutual negating. But they are only so far as they negate, and so, in that this their negating is negated, their being is negated. It is true, in that they are, they were not negated by this negating, it is only an externality for them ; this negating of the other rebounds off from them and reaches only touchingly their surface. But again only through the negating of the others do they turn back into themselves ; they are only as this media- tion, this their return is their self-preservation and their Being- for-self. In that again their negating effectuates nothing, through the resistance which these beents, as such or as negating, offer, they return not back into themselves, maintain themselves not and are not. The consideration was previously made that the ones are the same thing; that each of them is one, just like the other. This is not only our reference, an external bringing together, but the repul- sion is itself reference, the one excluding the ones refers itself to them, the ones, i.e., to its own self. The negative relation of the ones to one another is thus only a going together with self. This identity into which their repulsion goes over is the sublation of their diversity and externality, which, as excludents, they were rather mutually to maintain. This setting of themselves on the part of the many ones into a single One is Attraction. Remark. The Unity of the One and the Many. Self-dependency pushed to the point of the beent-for-self unit is that abstract formell self-dependence which is self-destructive ; the extremest, stubbornest error which takes itself for the most perfect truth ; — ajopearant in concreter forms as abstract freewill, as pure Ego, and then further as the Bad. It is that freewill which so misunderstands itself, as to set its substantial being in this ab- straction, and in this Being-by-self flatters itself purely to win itself. This self-dependency is more definitely the error to regard that as negative, and to maintain oneself against that as negative, which on the contrary is one's very being. It is thus the negative bearing to one's own self which, in that it would win its own very being, destroys the same, and this its act is only the manifestation of the nullity of this act. Reconciliation is the recognition of 310 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. that against which the negative bearing goes as rather one's true being, and is only as a leaving-off from the negativity of one's Being-for-self instead of persisting in it. It is an ancient saying, that the One is Many, and in especial that the Many is One. As regards this the observation may be repeated, that the truth of the One and the Many expressed in propositions appears in an inadequate form, that this truth is to be understood and expressed only as a Becoming, as a process, repulsion and attraction, not as Being, in the way in which in a proposition it is set as "quiescent unity. The dialectic of Plato in the Parmenides concerning the deduction of the Many from the One, namely from the proposition, One is, has been already noticed and remarked upon. The inner dialectic of the notion has been assigned ; the easiest way is to take the dialectic of the proposition, that the Many is One, as external reflexion ; and external it may well be here, seeing that the object also, the Many, is what is mutually external. This comparison of the Many with one another gives at once the fact that the one is ab- solutely characterised just as the other is ; each is one, each is one of the many, is excluding the others ; — so that they are absolutely only the same thing, or absolutely there is only one determination present. This is the fact, and there needs only to take up this simple fact. The obstinacy of the understanding stubborns itself against taking this up, because before it, and rightly too, there flits also the difference ; but this difference is as little excluded because of said fact, as certainly said fact despite said difference exists. One might, as it were, console understanding as regards its simple apprehension of the fact of the difference by assuring it that the difference will presently come in again. b. The one One of Attraction. Kepulsion is the self-severing of the One firstly into Many, the negative bearing of which is powerless, because they mutually presuppose one another as Beents: it (Bepulsion) is only the To-be-to (Sollen) of Ideality : this latter, however, is realised in Attraction. Bepulsion goes over into Attraction, the many Ones into one One. Both, repulsion and attraction, are at first hand different, the former as the reality of the Ones, the latter as their set ideality. Attraction refers itself thus to repulsion, so that it has this latter as its presupposition. Bepulsion furnishes the QUALITY TRANSLATED. 311 material for attraction. "Were there no Ones, there would be nothing to attract ; the conception of lasting attraction, of the consumption of the Ones, presupposes an equally lasting production of the Ones ; the sensuous conception of attraction in space holds the stream of the attracted Ones to last ; in place of the atoms which disappear in the attracting punctum, there comes forward another Many out of the void, and on, if it is desired, ad infinitum. If attraction were conceived as accomplished, i.e., the Many brought to the point of a single One, there would only be an inert One, there would no longer be any attraction present. The ideality there-beent in attraction has still in it the character of the negation of itself — the many Ones to which it is the reference, and attraction is inseparable from repulsion. Attraction attaches, in the first instance, equally to each of the many Ones as immediately present Ones ; none has a preference over the other : there seems thus an equilibrium in the attraction present, properly an equilibrium of attraction and of repulsion, and a dull repose without there-beent ideality. But there can be no speaking here of a preference of any such one over another, which would be to presuppose a determinate difference between them — the attraction rather is the setting of a present indis- tinguishableness of the Ones. Only attraction itself is the setting of a One different from the rest; they are only the immediate Ones which through repulsion are to conserve themselves; but through their set negation there arises the One of attraction which therefore is determined as the mediated One ; the One that is set as One. The first Ones, as immediate Ones, turn not in their ideality back into themselves, but have this (ideality) in another. The one One, however, is the realised ideality that is set in the One ; it is attractive through the mediation of repulsion ; it implies this mediation within itself as its determination. It absorbs thus the attracted Ones not into itself as into a point, i.e., it does not abstractly sublate them. In that it implies repulsion in its deter- mination, this latter retains the Ones as Many at the same time in it ; it brings, so to speak, by its attracting, something for (before) itself, it gains an extension or a filling. There is thus in it unity of repulsion and attraction in general. 312 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. c. The reference (relation) of Repulsion and Attraction. The difference of One and Many has determined itself as the difference of their mutual Reference, which has divided itself into two references, Repulsion and Attraction, of which each, in the first instance, stands self-dependently out of the other, still so that they essentially cohere. The as yet indeterminate unity of these has to yield itself more closely. Repulsion, as the ground-determination of the One, appears first, and as immediate, like its Ones which, produced by it, are still at the same time set as immediate. The repulsion appears, thus, indifferent to the attraction, which adds itself externally to it as thus presupposed. On the other hand, attraction is not presup- posed by repulsion ; so that in the setting and being of this latter the former appears to have no share, i.e., so that repulsion is not already in it the negation of itself, the Ones are not already in them negated. In this way, we have repulsion abstractly per se; as similarly attraction has, counter the Ones as Beents, the side of an immediate There-being, and comes to them quite as another. If we take accordingly bare repulsion thus per se, it is the dissipation of the many ones into the indefinite, beyond the sphere of repulsion itself; for it is this, to negate the reference of the many to one another ; referencelessness is their — they being abstractly taken — determination. Repulsion, however, is not simply the Void ; the Ones as referenceless are not repellent, not excludent, as their determination requires. Repulsion is, though negative, still essentially reference; the mutual repulsion and flight is not the freeing from that which is repelled and fled from, the excludent stands still in connexion with that which is excluded by it. This moment of reference, however, is attraction, and so consequently in repulsion itself ; it is the negating of that abstract repulsion according to which the Ones were only self-to- self referent Beents, non-excludent. In that, however, departure is taken from the repulsion of the there-beent Ones, and so also attraction is set as coming externally to them, both are — with their inseparableness — still kept asunder as diverse determinations ; it has yielded itself, however, that not merely repulsion is presupposed by attraction, but just as much also there takes place the counterreference (coup) of repulsion to QUALITY TRANSLATED. 313 attraction , and the former has just as much its presupposition in the latter. By this determination they are inseparable, and at the same time they are determined as To-be-to and Limitation, each counter the other. Their To-be-to is their abstract determinateness as of Beents-in-themselves, which determinateness, however, is withal positively directed beyond itself, and refers itself to the other deter- minateness, and thus by means of the other as other each is ; their self-dependency consists in this, that in this mediacy of being they are set as another determining for one another : Repulsion as setting of the Many, Attraction as setting of the One, the latter at the same time as negation of the Many, and the former as negation of their ideality in the One, so that only by means of repulsion attraction is attraction; and only by means of attraction, repulsion is repulsion. That therein, however, the mediation with self through other is rather in effect negated, and each of these determinations is mediation of itself with itself, this yields itself from their nearer consideration, and takes them back to the unity of their notion. In the first place, that each presupposes itself, refers itself in its presupposition only to itself, this is already present in the mutual bearing of Repulsion and Attraction while still only relative. The relative repulsion is the reciprocal repulsion of the many ones which are conceived as finding themselves immediate, and already in existence there. But that there are many ones, is repul- sion itself; the presupposition which it was supposed to have is only its own setting. Further, the determination of being which, in addition to their being set, was supposed to attach to the Ones — by which they were prae or there beforehand — belongs likewise to the repulsion. The repelling is that whereby the ones manifest and maintain themselves as ones, whereby they as such are. Their being is the repulsion itself ; it is thus not a There-being relative to another, but relates itself entirely only to its own self. The attraction is the setting of the One as such, of the real One, against which the many in There-being are determined as only ideel and disappearant. Attraction thus at once presupposes itself — sets itself as out before — to be ideellement in the form, that is, of the other ones, which otherwise are to be Beent-for-Self and Repellent-for-0£Aers, and so also therefore for an attracting some- thing. Against this determination of repulsion they attain ideality not only through relation to attraction, but it is presupposed, it is THE SECRET OF HEGEL. the in-itself-heent ideality of the Ones, in that they as Ones — that conceived as attracting included — are one and the same thing and undistinguished from one another. This its-own-self-prae-Setting (its own presupposition) of both elements, each per se, is further this, that each contains in itself the other as moment. The Self-presupposing generally is in one the setting itself as the negative of itself; — Repulsion, and what is so presupposed is the same thing as what presupposes — Attraction. That each in itself is only moment, is the transition of each out of itself into the other, is to negate itself in itself, and to set itself as the other of itself. In that the One as such is the coming-asunder- from-itself, it is itself only this, to set itself as its other, as the Many, and the Many are only equally this, to fall together into them- selves and to set themselves as their other, as the One, and just in it only to refer themselves to themselves, each in its other just to continue itself — there are thus also present, but virtually and unseparated, the coming-asunder-from-self (Repulsion) and the setting-of-self-as-one (Attraction). It is set, however, in respect of the relative repulsion and attraction, i.e., those whereby immediate there-beent ones are presupposed, that each itself is this negation of it in it, and so also consequently the continuity of it into its other. The repulsion of there-beent Ones is the self-conservation of the one by means of the mutual repulsion of the others, so that (1) the other ones are negated in it, the side of its There-being or of its Being-for-other, but this side is just thus attraction as the Ideality of the Ones — and that (2) the One is in itself without reference to the Others ; but not only is the In-itself as such long since gone over into the Being-for-self, but in itself, by very deter- mination, the one is said Becoming of Many. The Attraction of there-beent Ones is the ideality of the same and the setting of the One, in which thus it (attraction), as negation and as production of the One, sublates itself — as setting of the one is in it the nega- tive of itself, Repulsion. With this the evolution of Being-for-self is completed, and arrived at its result. The One as referring itself infinitely, i.e., as set negation of the negation to its own self, is the mediation or process, that it repels from itself itself as its absolute (i.e., abstract) otherwiseness (the Many), and, in that it refers itself to this its non-being, negatively, as sublating it, is just therein only the reference to its own self ; and One is only this Becoming, or such that in it the determination — that it begins, i.e., that it is set as QUALITY TRANSLATED. 315 Immediate, as Beent — and that likewise as result it has restored itself as One, i.e., the equally immediate, excludent One : this deter- mination has disappeared ; the process which it [the One] is, sets and implies it always only as a thing sublated. The sublating, determined at first only as relative sublating, reference to other There-beent-ity, which reference is thus itself a different repulsion and attraction, demonstrates itself just thus to go over into the infinite reference of mediation through negation of the external references of Immediates and There-beents, and to have as result just that Becoming which in the retentionlessness of its moments is the collapse, or rather the going together with itself into simple immediacy. This Being, in the form which it has now attained, is Quantity. To review shortly the moments of this Transition of Quality into Quantity : The Qualitative has for its ground-determination being and immediacy, in which immediacy the limit and the determinateness is so identical with the being of the something that the something itself with its alteration (that of the determin- ateness) disappears ; thus set it is determined as finity. Because of the immediacy of this unity, in which the difference has disappeared, which difference, however, is still in itself there (in the unity of Being and Nothing), this difference falls as otherwiseness in general out o/said unity. This reference to other contradicts the immediacy in which the qualitative determinateness is reference to self. This otherwiseness sublates itself in the infinitude of Being-for-self, which realises the difference (which, in the negation of the nega- tion, it has in it and within itself) as one and many and as their references, and has raised the Qualitative into its veritable unity, i.e., into the unity that is set as no longer immediate but as self- commediating unity. This unity is thus (a) Being, only as affirmative, i.e., immediacy mediated with itself through the negation of the negation, Being is set as the unity that interpenetrates and pervades its own Determinatenesses, Limit, &c, which are set as sublated in it : (/8) There-being ; it is in this determination negation or determinate- ness as moment of the affirmative Being, no longer immediate, nevertheless, but reflected into itself, referent of self, not to other, but to self ; what is simpliciter — what is determined in itself — the One; the otherwiseness as such is itself Being-for-self: (y) Being- for-self, as that Being that continues itself all through the deter- minateness, and in which the One and In-itself-determined- 316 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. ness is itself set as sublated. The One is at the same time as gone out beyond itself and determined as Unity, the One conse- quently, the directly determined Limit, set as the Limit, which is none, which is in or by Being, but to which Being is indifferent, or which is indifferent to Being. Remark. The Kantian construction of matter by means of forces attracting and repelling. Attraction and Repulsion, as is well known, are usually regarded as forces. It will be proper to compare this definition of them, and the dependent relations, with the notions which have come out in their regard. In the conception alluded to (of forces) they are considered as self-dependent, so that they refer themselves not through their nature to each other ; i.e., that each is not to be considered only a moment transient into its contrary, but as immovably and persistently opposed to the other. They are further conceived as coalescing in a Third, Matter ; so, however, that this Becoming into One [the coalescence] is not considered as their truth, but each is rather a First [a prime], and a Beent-in-and- for-self [a self-dependent], while matter or affections of it are set and produced by them. When it is said, that Matter has within itself the forces, there is understood by this unity of them a con- nexion, but such that in it still they are at the same time presup- posed as existent in themselves and free from each other. Kant, as is known, constructed matter out of the repulsive and attractive forces, or at least, as he expresses himself, brought forward the metaphysical elements of this construction. It will not be without interest to view this construction more closely. This metaphysical exposition of an object which seemed not only itself, but in its properties to belong only to experience, is for one part worthy of notice in this, that it, as an essay of (experiment with) the Notion, has at least given the impulse to the more recent philosophy of Nature, — that philosophy which makes Nature its scientific ground, not as it is only sensibly given to be seen, but which construes its principles from the absolute Notion ; for another part also because stand has been frequently taken by said Kantian construction, and it has been considered a philosophical begin- ning and foundation of physics. Such an existence as sensuous matter, is, indeed, no object of QUALITY TRANSLATED. 317 logic, just as little so as space and the forms of space. But there underlie the repulsive and attractive forces, so far as they are regarded as forces of sensuous matter, these same pure determina- tions of the One and the Many and their mutual references, which have been just considered, and which I have named Repulsion and Attraction because these names present themselves at nearest. Kant's procedure in the deduction of matter from these forces, named by him a construction, deserves not, when considered close, this name, unless every kind of reflexion, even the analytic, be name- able construction, as indeed for that matter later Nature-philosophers have given the name of construction to the most vapid raisonnement and the most groundless mSlange of an arbitrary imagination and a thought-less reflexion, — which specially employed and everywhere applied the so-called Factors of Attraction and Repulsion. Kant's procedure is at bottom analytic, and not constructive. He presupposes the conception of matter, and then asks what forces are necessary to produce its presupposed properties. Thus, therefore, on one side, he requires an Attractive force, because through Repulsion alone without Attraction no matter could properly exist. (' Anfangsgr. der Naturwissensch,' S. 53, f.) On the other side he derives Repulsion equally from matter, and alleges as ground of this, because we conceive of matter as impenetrable, and this because matter presents itself to the sense of touch, through which seuse it manifests itself to us, in such a determination. Repulsion therefore is, further, at once thought in the very notion of matter, because it is just immediately given with it; but Attrac- tion, on the contrary, is annexed to it through inferences. There underlies these inferences, however, what has just been said, namely, that a matter which had only repulsive force would not exhaust what we conceive by matter. This, as is plain, is the procedure of a cognition, reflective of experience, — a procedure which first of all perceives peculiarities in the phenomena, places these as basis, and for the so-called explanation of them, assumes correspondent elements or forces which are to be supposed to pro- duce said peculiarities of the phenomena. In regard to the difference spoken of as to how the repulsive force and as to how the attractive force is found by cognition in matter, Kant observes, further, that the attractive force belongs quite as much to the notion of Matter although it is not contained in it. Kant italicises this last expression. It is impossible to see, however, what is the distinction which is intended to be 318 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. conveyed here ; for what belongs to the notion of a thing must veritably be contained in this thing. What makes the difficulty, and gives occasion to this empty expedient, consists in this, that Kant one-sidedly, and quite beforehand, reckons in the notion of matter only that property of Impenetrability, which we are supposed to perceive by feeling, on which account the repulsive force, as the holding-off of another from itself, is to be supposed as immediately given. But again, if matter is to be considered as incapable of being there, of existing, without attraction, the ground for the assertion of this must be a conception of matter derived from sensible experience ; attraction, therefore, must equally be findable in such experience. It is indeed easy to perceive that Matter, besides its Being-for-self, which sublates the Being-for-other (offers resistance), has also a connectedness of what is for itself [of its parts, that is, identified with itself], extension and retention in space — in solidity a very fast retention. Explanatory physical science demands for the tearing asunder, &c, of a body a force which shall be stronger than the mutual attraction of its particles. From this fact, reflexion may quite as directly deduce the force of attraction, or assume it to be given, as it did in the case of repulsion. In effect, when the Kantian reasonings from which attraction is to be deduced are looked at (' The proof of the theorem that the possibility of matter requires a force of attraction as second fundamental force,' loc. cit.), they are found to contain nothing but that, with mere Eepulsion, matter would not exist in space. Matter being pre- supposed as occupying space, continuity is ascribed to it, as ground of which continuity there is assumed an attracting force. Granting now, then, to such so-called construction of matter, at most an analytic merit — detracted from, nevertheless, by the imperfect exposition — the fundamental thought is still highly to be prized — the cognising of matter out of these two opposed char- acters as its producing forces. Kant's special industry here is the banishment of the vulgar mechanical mode of conception, which takes its stand by the single character, the impenetrability, the Beent-for-self punctuality, and reduces the opposed character, the connexion of matter within itself, or of several matters mutually (these again being regarded as particular ones), to something merely external ; — the mode of conception which, as Kant says, will not admit any moving forces but by Pressure and Push, i.e., but by influence from without. This externality of cognition QUALITY TRANSLATED. 319 always presupposes motion as already externally existent in matter, and has no thought of considering it something internal, and of comprehending it itself in matter, which latter is just thus assumed per se as motionless and inert. This position has only before it common mechanics, and not immanent and free motion. Although Kant removes this exernality in that he converts attraction, the mutual reference of material parts, so far as these are taken as mutually separated, or just of matter generally in its Out-of-its-self-ness, into a force of matter itself, still on the other side his two fundamental forces, within matter, remain external and self-dependent, each per se opposite the other. However null was the independent difference of these two forces attributed to them from this standpoint of cognition, equally null must every other difference show itself, which in regard to their specific nature is taken as something which is to pass for firmness and solidity, because they, when regarded in their truth as above, are only moments which go over into one another. I shall con- sider these further differentiations as Kant states them. He defines, for example, attraction as a pervading force by which one matter is enabled to affect the particles of another even beyond the surface of contact — im-mediately ; repulsion, on the contrary, as a surface-force by which matters are enabled to affect each other only in the plane of contact common to them. The reason adduced for the latter being only a surface^force is as follows: — 'The parts in mutual contact limit the sphere of in- fluence the one of the other, and the repelling force can affect no remoter part, unless through those that lie between ; an immediate influence of one matter on another, that should be supposed to go right through the parts or particles in consequence of an extensive force (so is the repulsive force called here) is impossible.' (' S. ebendas. Erklar. u. Zusatze,' S. 67.) It occurs at once to remark that, nearer or remoter particles of matter being assumed, there must arise, in the case of attraction also, the distinction that one atom would, indeed, act on another, but a third remoter one, between which and the first, or the attract- ing one, the second should be placed, would enter directly, and in the first instance, the sphere of the interposed one next to it, and the first consequently could not exercise an immediate simple influence on the third one ; and thus we have a mediated influence as much for attraction as for repulsion. It is seen, further, that the true pene- tration of an attracting force must consist in this alone, that all the 320 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. particles of matter in and for themselves should attract, and not that a certain number should be passive while only one were active. As regards repulsion, it is to be remarked, that in the adduced passage, particles are represented in mutual contact^ that is, we have at once the solidity and continuity of a ready-made matter which allows not any repulsion to take place through it. This solidity of matter, however, in which particles touch each other, that is, are no longer separated by any vacuum, already presupposes the remotion of repulsion ; particles in mutual contact are, following the sensuous conception of repulsion that is dominant here, to be taken as such that they do not repel each other. It follows quite tautologically, then, that there where the non-being of repulsion is assumed, there cannot be repulsion. But this yields no additional descriptive character as regards the repulsive force. If it be reflected on, however, that particles touching each other touch only so far as they still keep themselves out of each other, the repulsive force will be seen necessarily to exist, not merely on the surface of matter, but within the sphere which is to be supposed a sphere of attraction only. Further, Kant assumes that 'through attraction matter only occupies a space without filling it ' (loc. cit.) ; ' because matter does not by its attraction fill space, this attraction is able to act through the empty space, as no matter intervenes to set bounds to it.' This conclusion is about of the same nature as that which supposed above something to belong to the notion of a thing, but not to be contained in the thing itself : only so can matter occupy yet not Jill a space. Then it was through repulsion, as it was first considered, that the ones mutually repelled each other, and mutu- ally referred to one another only negatively — that is, just through an empty space. But here it is attraction which preserves space empty ; through its connecting of the atoms it does not Jill space, that is as much as to say, it maintains the atoms in a negative reference to one another. We see that Kant unconsciously encoun- ters here what lies in the nature of the thing — that he ascribes to attraction precisely the same thing that he, at the first view, ascribed to repulsion. In the very effort to establish and make fixed the difference of the two forces, it had already occurred, that the one was gone over into the other. Thus through repulsion matter was to fill a space, and consequently through it the empty space to disappear which attraction leaves. In effect, in that it eliminates empty space, it eliminates the negative reference of the QUALITY TRANSLATED. 321 atoms or ones, i.e., their repulsion ; i.e., repulsion is determined as the contrary of itself. To this obliteration of the differences there adds itself, still further, the confusion that, as was remarked in the beginning, the Kantian exposition of the opposed forces is analytic, and through- out the whole investigation, matter, which was to have been derived only from these its elements, appears from the first ready-formed and fully constituted. In the definition of the surface-force and of the pervading force, both are assumed as moving forces, whereby matters are to be supposed capable of acting the one way or the other. They are enunciated thus, then, as forces not such that only through them should matter exist, but such that through them matter, already formed, should only be moved. So far, however, as there is question of forces by means of which various matters might act on each other and impart movement, this is quite another thing than the determination and connexion which they should have as the moments of matter as such. The same antithesis, as here between Eepulsion and Attraction, presents itself further on as regards the centripetal and centrifugal forces. These seem to display an essential difference, in that in their sphere there stands fast a one, a centre, towards which the other ones comport themselves as not beent-for-self ; the difference of the forces, therefore, can be supported on or by this presupposed difference of a central one and of others as, relatively to it, not self-subsistent. So far, however, as they are applied in explana- tion— for which purpose, as in the case also of repulsion and attraction, they are assumed in an opposed quantitative relation, so that the one increases as the other decreases — it is the movement which they are to explain, and it is its inequality which they are to account for. One has only to take up, however, any ordinary relative explanation — as of the unequal velocity of a planet in its course round its primary — to discern the confusion which pre- vails in it and the impossibility of keeping the quantities distinct ; and so the one; which in the explanation is taken as decreasing, may be always equally taken as increasing, and vice versd. To make this evident, however, would require a more detailed exposition than can be here given ; all the necessary particulars, nevertheless, are to be found again in the discussion of the Inverted Relation. 322 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. III. THE SECTION, QUALITY, AS TEANSLATED IN II., HEEE COMMENTED AND INTEEPEETED. Definiteness (quality). The language he has encountered must appear very strange to the uninitiated English reader, and, perhaps, he may be inclined to attribute the circumstance to imperfection of translation. Let him be assured, however, that in German, and to the German student who approaches Hegel for the first time, the strangeness of the initiatory reception is hardly less repulsive than it has but even now proved to himself. There is no valid reason for despair, then, as regards intelligence here, because it is a trans- lation that is before one, and not the original. To due endeavour, the Hegelian thought will gather round these English terms quite as perfectly, or nearly so, as round their German equivalents. Comment nevertheless is wanted, and will facilitate progress. Bestimmen and its immediate derivatives constitute much the largest portion of the speech of Hegel. The reader, indeed, feels for long that with Bestimmung and Bestimmung he is bestimmt (or verstimmt) into UnbestimmtJieit ; and even finds himself, perhaps, actually execrating this said Bestimmung of Hegel as heartily as ever Aristotle denounced or renounced the Idea of Plato. Stimme means voice, and the action of Bestimmen is to supply voice to what previously had none. As already said, then, Hegel's Bestimmung is a sort of naming of Adam : it is a process of logical determina- tion— a process in which concrete determinateness, or determinate concretion, grows and grows in organised complexity up from absolute abstract indeterminateness or from absolutely indeter- minate abstraction to a consummate absolute. To Hegel what is, QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 323 is thought ; and the life of thought can only be logical determina- tion, or the distinguishing {differentiating) of indefinite abstraction (the beginning of thought) into ultimate concrete definiteness (the end of thought) by means of the operation of the faculties of thought (Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Reason), to the resolution of the Begriff (the An sich, the indefinite Universal) through the Ur-theil (the Fur sich, the separation into Particulars, into Many, as against One), and the production of the Schluss (the concrete Singular), which is the All of Thought, Thought elevated into its ultimate and complete concretion as the absolute Subject (which again is the ultimate An und fur sich). — This is a very complete expression for the industry of Hegel. — Bestimmen, then, is to develop in abstract thought all its own constitutive, consecu- tive, and co-articulated members, or elements, or principles. Bestimmen attaches or develops a Bestimmung, and produces Bestimmtheit. Bestimmen is to he-voice, to vocify, voculate, render articulate, to define, determine, or distinguish into the implied con- stitutive variety: even to accentuate will be seen to involve the same function; or we may say modulate, then modify — that is, dis-cern into modi — the native constituent modi. Bestimmen is the reverse of generalisation ; instead of evolving a summum genus, it involves a species infima, or rather an individuum — not indeed infimum, but summum. Generalisation throws out differ- entia, Bestimmung (specification, particularisation) adds them. The one abstracts from difference and holds by identity ; the other abstracts from identity and holds by difference. Bestimmen, then, is to produce, not logical extension, but logical comprehension (Inhalt), logical determination ; it adds differentiae or significates ; it means to specify, to differentiate, to distinguish, to qualify, characterise, &c, or more generally, just to define or determine. Bestimmtheit has the sense in it of the past participle: it is a differentia-tum, specificatum, qualificatum — a determinate, a definite in general, or the quality of determinateness and definiteness ; hence the meanings attached by Hegel himself to it of form, product, &c, and of element when that word signifies, not a constituting, but a constituted element. Bestimmung may refer to the process as a whole, but it generally applies to a resultant member of this process: it is what corresponds to a predicate; it is a significate, a specificate, a differentia, &c. ; it is an attribute, a property, a peculiarity, a speciality, a particularity, a quality ; it is a principle, a sign, an exponent, a constituent, and, in that THE SECRET OF HEGEL. , an element also. It may be translated character, char- acteristic, article, member, modus, determination, definition, trait, feature. Then looking to the use of the trait, the senses vocation, destination, &c, are brought in. Qualification is another very useful word for it, and so likewise are form, function, factor, term, specification, expression, value, even affection, state. Bestimmtheit, then, here (in the text before us), is determinateness, the char- acteristicity, the specificity, the definitivity of a thing, the one single vis or virtue that makes it what it is — and that is always due to Quality. Being, Seyn, — to understand this word, abstract from all par- ticular being, and think of being in general, or of the absolute generality of being. There must be no sense of personality attached to it, as is so common in England ; nor, indeed, any sense of anything positive. The common element in the whole infinite chaos of all and everything that is, is being. Seyn, in Germany, often in Hegel himself, means the abstraction of sensuous Isness : but here it is more general than that ; it is the quality of Isness pur et simple; it brings with it a sense of comprehensive universality. Carlyle ('Frederick the Great/ vol. iii. p. 408) says, ' " Without Being," as my friend Oliver was wont to say, "Well-being" is not possible."' Cromwell had soldiers and other concrete materiel in his eye, when he said being here ; still put as being, these are abstractly put. In like manner, we have here to put, not soldiers, &c. only, but all that is, abstractly as being. It refers, in fact, to the absolutely abstract, to the absolutely generalised thought of being. In short, being as being must be seen to be a solid simple without inside or outside, centre or sides : it is simply to be taken an ihm selber, absolutely abstractly ; it is the unit into which all variety, being reflected, has disappeared : it is the an sick of such variety. The meaning of Immediate, Unmittelbar, will be got by practice : what is abstractly, directly present. Anything seen, felt, &c, is im- mediate. Being, then, is simply what is indefinitely immediate to us. It (the term immediate) is derived from the logical use of it as in Immediate Inferences, i.e., inferences without inter- mediate proposition. Essentity or Essence, Wesen, is inner or true, or noumenal being as opposed to outer, apparent, sensuous, or phenomenal being. It is the principle of what is or shows. It may be translated also inbeing, or principial being. By practice, however, the Hegelian Wesen will attach itself even to Essence QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 325 once the thought is seen. It is evident that, the thought of pure or abstract Seyn being realised, there is no call for any reference to the thought of Wesen. Absolutely abstract being seems self- substantial, and awakens no question of a whence or what ; it is thus free from any determination which it might receive by being related to Essence : in this absolute generalisation, indeed, Seyn and Wesen have coalesced and become indistinguishable. But it is as opposed to Wesen that Seyn acquires the sensuous shade already spoken of. In that contraposition, Seyn is phenomenal show ; it is the Seyn of Wesen, and so outer, and very outer — a palpable crust, as it were, which very tangibly is. As yet, as we have said, our Seyn is the abstraction from all that is, and so the common element of all that is. It is to be said and seen, also, that the two shades of Seyn tend to run together, for, after all, each at last only implies immediacy to consciousness. In itself (An sich), italicised, means in itself as virtually, im- pliciter, or potentially in itself: it is the 8vvafj.i<; of Aristotle. At the end of the first paragraph, we have also an ' in its own self ' which is not italicised: this is a translation of the peculiarly Hegelian German, an ihm selber, — an innovation on his own tongue to which Hegel was compelled in order to distinguish another and current shade of meaning which might confuse the sense he wished to attach to an sick. An ihm selber, in fact, implies, not the mere latent potentiality of an sich, but a certain overt potentiality, a certain manifestation, a certain propria persona actuality, formal presence, a certain assonance to the Aristotelian ivreXexeia. Hegel intimates, as we saw above (pp. 256-7), that an sich, with the accent not on sich, but on an, may be viewed as equiva- lent to an ihm. But an sich, on the whole, in the passage referred to, has taken on a shade of meaning quite peculiar to the place (Lk. i. pp. 126-7). In this latter case what is an ihm is to be regarded as Seyn-fiir-Anderes, and so outwardly an ihm (in it). Hegel illustrates the meaning here by the common expressions, there is nothing in him or in it, or there is something in that, and seems to see implied in these a certain parallelism or identity between what is latent in itself and what is overt in it. The addition of the selbst or selber introduces another shade, and renders the task of a translation still more difficult ; for in English an ihm selber is in itself quite as much as an sich. To separate the words, as in the first Grerman phrase, and say in it self would be hardly allowable. Perhaps the plan actually adopted is as good as any : 326 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. that is, to italicise in itself when it stands for an sick, and to leave it without such distinction, or write it, as here, 'in its own self (also without italics), when it represents an ihin selbst or seller. What is intended to be conveyed by the text Seyn an ihm seller, Being in its own self, is not hard to make out : it means being as (when abstractly thought) it is there before us overtly in its own self, and without reference to another or any other. An sich, then, implies potential latency ; An ihm seller, irrespective selfness, or irrespective, self-dependent overtness; and An ihm, such overtness connected with and equivalent to such latency. Again, these terms will occur in Hegel, not always in their technical senses, but sometimes with various shades, and very much as they occur in other writers. It must be confessed, indeed, that it is these little phrases which constitute the torment of everyone who attempts to translate Hegel. An, for example, in the phrase an ihm, is often best rendered by the preposition ly. An, in fact, is not always coincident with the English in. An denotes proximity, and is often best translated by at or ly : nay, in all of the three phrases above, the substitution of at or ly for in will help to illustrate the contained meaning. Consider the phrase 'Das Seyn scheint am Wesen,' which we may translate, the phenomenon shows in the noumenon ; would not the sense seem to be more accurately conveyed by, the phenomenon shows ly the noumenon, or even by, the phenomenon shows at the noumenon ? When an refers to overtness or manifestation, then, we may trans- late it by* There-leing or Here-leing is the translation of Daseyn, and is an unfortunate necessity. Existence might have answered here ; but Existence, being reserved by Hegel to name a much later finding, is taken out of our hands. What a German means by Daseyn is, this mortal sojourn, this sublunary life, this being here below ; and what Hegel means by it, is the scientific abstract thought implied in such phrases. It is thus mortal state, or the quality of sublunariness ; it is existential definiteness, or definite existen- tiality, and implies reference thus to another or others. It is determinate being, — Here-being, There-being, Now-being, or, best perhaps, /So-being or That-being; it is the quasi -permament moment of being that manifests itself between Coming to le, and Ceasing to le; it is the to-be (Seyn) common to both phrases : and * It is to be borne in mind, too, that the Ansich of a thing is the special inner being of it, the essential truth of it. — N. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 327 this constitutes the perfectly correct abstract description, or thought (the notion), of every single Daseyn or Here-being, or So-being, and consequently of Daseyn, Here-being, So-being, as such.* Being-for-self is the literal rendering of Fursichseyn ; which, indeed, cannot be translated otherwise. It means the reference of all the constituents of an individuality, of a personality, of a self, to the punctual unity of that individuality, or personality, or self : it is the focus in the draught of the whole huge whirlpool, — that whereby its Many are One. For, however, does not com- pletely render Flir. The German, when much intruded on, exclaims, 'One can never be Fur sich here!' Vowels also are described as letters which fur sich sound, consonants not so. Fur sich, then, is the Latin per se and a little more : it expresses not only independence of others, but occupation for oneself. Were a Voter, when asked, ' Whom are you for ? ' to reply, ' For myself,' he would convey the German fur mich. That is fur sich which is on its own account. By Fursichseyn, Being-for-self, then, we are to understand a being by one's own self and for one's own self. Generally, in reading Hegel, let us bear both the current and the etymological meanings in mind. That finite, for example, is literally ended or limited, infinite unended or unlimited, must not be lost sight of. Finally, I will add this, that almost all the tech- nical terms of Hegel appear in Kant also, especially in his ' Logic,' where much light is thrown upon them as used, not by the latter only, but by the former as well. * When your servant announces to you, The Postman ist da, that is Da-Seyn. This environment of miscellaneousness is Daseyn ; and every item of it is a Dasey- aides — your pen, ink, chair, table, &c. These are all finites — items of finite exist- ence, Daseyn. Schelling (WW. i. 309) has this : ' It is sufficiently striking that the language has so exactly distinguished between the Dasyenden (that is in space and time) and the Seyenden (that is independent of any such condition '). A Da- seyendcs — what is un-mediatedly, as though by direct sense, face to face with us — is also an immediate. I may add here what has its cue, p. 385. To call the categories 'functions of apperception ' is quite common ; but then Ego to Kant is only a logical point and wholly empty, where is there room for functions ? But again, if (ii. 733 n.) dieses Vermogen ist der Verstand selbst, and understanding is judgment, &c. ! Kant, in the Deduction of the Categories, if even with no thought of functions, certainly gives an objective rdle to apperception. — N. 328 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. CHAPTER I. Being. A. Pure Being. — B. Nothing, — C. Becoming: 1. Unity of Being and Nothing. The explanation of terms already given seems sufficient for the above sections also ; and we may now apply ourselves to some interpretation of the particular matter, confining our attention for the present to what of text precedes Remark 1. We shall rely upon the reader perusing and re-perusing, and making himself thoroughly familiar with all he finds written in the paragraphs indicated. All that they present has remained hitherto a universal stum- bling-block, and a matter of hissing, we may say at once, to the whole world. Probably, indeed, no student has ever entered here without finding himself spell-bound and bewildered, spell-bound and bewildered at once, spell-bound and bewildered — if he has had the pertinacity to keep at them and hold by them — perhaps for years. When the bewilderment yields, however, he will find himself, it is most likely, we shall say, putting some such questions as the following: — 1. What has led Hegel to begin thus ? 2. What does he mean by these very strange, novel, and apparently senseless statements ? 3. What can be intended by these seemingly silly and absurd transitions of Being into Nothing, and again of both into Becoming? 4. What does the whole thing amount to; or what is the value of the whole business ? These questions being satisfactorily answered, perhaps Hegel will at last be found accessible. 1. What has led Hegel to begin thus ? — To this question, the answer is brief and certain : Hegel was led to begin as he did in consequence of a profound consideration of all that was implied in the Categories, and other relative portions of the philosophy, of QUALITY INTERPRETED, BTC. 329 Kant. But in order to awaken intelligence and carry conviction here, it is obviously incumbent upon us to do what we can to reproduce the probable course of Hegel's thinking when engaged in the consideration alluded to. No doubt, for a full explanation, there were necessary some preliminary exposition of the industry of Kant ; but, simply assuming such, we hope still to be able to describe at present Hegel's operations, so far as Kant is concerned, not unintelligibly.* The speculations peculiar to Hume generally, and more especi- ally those which bear on Causality, constitute the Grundlage, the fundamen, the mother-matter of the products of Kant. Now in this relation (of Causality) there are two terms or factors, the one antecedent and the other consequent ; the former the cause, and the latter the effect. But if we take any cause by itself and examine it d priori, we shall not find any hint in it of its corre- sponding effect : let us consider it ever so long, it remains self- identical only, and any mean of transition to another — to aught else — is undiscoverable. But again, we are no wiser, should we investigate the matter & posteriori: that the effect follows the cause, we see ; but why it follows — the reason of the following — the precise mean of the nexus — the exact and single copula — this we see not at all. The source of the nexus being thus undiscover- able, then, whether & priori or a posteriori, it is evident that causality is on the same level as what are called Matters of Fact, and that it cannot pretend to the same authority as what again are called Relations of Ideas. Did it belong to these latter — examples of which are the axioms and other determinations of Mathematic — it would be both necessary and intelligibly necessary ; but as it belongs only to the former class, the weight of its testimony — its validity — can amount to probability only. That a straight line is the shortest possible from any here to any there, I see to be uni- versally and necessarily true — from Eelations of Ideas ; but that wood burns and ice melts, I see to be true only as — Matters of Fact, which are so, but might, so far as any reason for the state of the fact is concerned, be otherwise : they are, in truth, just matters of fact, and relations of ideas do not exist in them. Matters of Fact, then, are probable ; but Eelations of Ideas are apodictic, at once necessary and universal. Causality now belonging to the former, it is evident that the nexus between the fire and the burn- * The Text-Book to Kant has been already referred to as realising a contemplated preliminary exposition. — N. 330 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. ing of wood (say) is but of a probable nature. The fire burns the wood, I perceive ; but it might not : the affair concerns contingent matter only, and no examination of the relation, either & priori or & posteriori, can detect any reason of necessity. Causality, then, as presenting itself always in matters of fact, and as exhibiting neither & priori nor a posteriori any relation of ideas, cannot claim any authority of necessity. Why, then, when I see a cause, do I always anticipate the effect ; and why, when I see an effect, do I always refer to a cause ? Shut out, for an answer here, from the relations of ideas, and restricted to matters of fact, I can find, after the longest and best consideration, no ground for my antici- pation but custom, habit, or the association (on what is called the law of the Association of Ideas) of things in expectation which I have found once or oftener associated in fact ; for so habitual becomes the association, that even once may be found at times to suffice. — Thus far Hume. But now Kant — who has been much struck by the curious new views so ingeniously signalised by Hume, and who will look into the matter and not shut his eyes, nor exclaim (as simply Eeid did, in the panic of an alarmed, though very worthy and intelligent, divine), ' God has just put all that into our souls, so be off with your sceptical perplexings and perplexities.' — (Neither will he pragmatically assert, like Brown, Causality is a relation of an invariable antecedent and an invariable consequent, and absurdly think that by the use and not the explanation of this term invari- able, which is the whole problem, he has satisfactorily settled all !) — now Kant, who is neither a Beid nor a Brown, but a man as able as Hume himself, steps in and says, this nexus suggested by you (Hume) between a cause and its effect, is of a subjective nature only ; that is, it is a nexus in me, and not in them (the cause and the effect) ; but such nexus is inadequate to the facts. That this unsupported paper falls to the ground — the reason of that is not in me surely, but in the objects themselves ; and the reason of my expectation to find the same connexion of events (as between unsupported paper and the ground) is not due to something I find in myself, but to something I find in them. I cannot intercalate any custom or habit of my own as the reason of that connexion. True, as you say, neither & priori nor a posteriori can I detect the objective copula ; and true it is also that we have before us only contingent matter or Matters of Fact : nevertheless, the nexus is such that mere custom is inadequate to explain it. The nexus is QUALITY INTEKPKETED, ETC. 331 such, indeed, that (as Brown saw *) it introduces an element of invariability, and custom evidently cannot reach as far as that ; so that the question remains, why are the objects invariably con- nected in our expectation — why, in short, is the relation of causal- ity as necessary and as universal in its validity as any axiom of Mathematic, as any one of those very Relations of Ideas from which it has but this moment been expressly excluded ? Every change {effect) has its cause: this is a truth of no probable nature ; we say, we see that cork floats, but it might not; but we cannot say we see that change has its cause, but it might not : on the contrary, we feel, we know, that change must — and always — have its cause. Now, the source of this Necessity and Universality — that is the question, and lie where it may, it very plainly can- not be an effect of any mere subjective condition of ourselves, of any mere anticipation through habit. Hume certainly has shut us out — though very oddly he himself (in custom) had recourse to such — from all & posteriori sources; for whatever is known d, posteriori, or by experience, is but a Matter of Fact, and therefore probable only, or contingent only. But, if the source cannot be & posteriori, it must be & priori. Hume, to be sure, talks of an a priori consideration in this very reference (causality) ; but there must be another and truer A priori than the o\ priori of Hume. Now, first of all, what is it that we name the a posteriori ? That is & posteriori, the knowledge of which is due to experience alone ; and the organ of experience is percep- tion, sensation, inner or outer ; inner for affections from within, and outer for affections from without. But Locke traces all our knowledge to affection either of outer or of inner sense, therefore all our knowledge must be & posteriori. But this is manifestly erroneous ; for in that case, there could be no apodictic, no neces- sary and universal knowledge at all : but there is such knowledge — universally admitted, too — in what are called relations of ideas ; and causality seems itself — though with a difference — another instance of the same kind. This latter knowledge, then (the apodictic), cannot be & posteriori, and, consequently, it must be a priori. But besides sensuous affection, we possess only intel- * It is sufficiently curious, in the end, to perceive that Brown, when he said ' invariable connexion is Causality, and we know all the cases of such connexion by the will of the Divine Being,' fancied himself to be saying something against Reid, or something for or against Hume — or just fancied himself to be philosophising indeed ! 332 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. lectual function : if the former be the source and seat of the a posteriori, then the latter may be the source and seat of the & priori. But that being so, the necessity of causality must still have its seat in the mind, in us ; or, in other words, its source must be subjective — and we have just declared a subjective source impossible ! Again, we have just said also that causality concerns contingent matter : change itself is only known b, pos- teriori or by experience ! Here seem great difficulties. How can what is only h posteriori obey what can only be h priori ? And how can an d, priori or necessary truth have a subjective source, or belong to the mind only ? As has been seen already also and just said, this necessity of causality is not the only truth that cannot be d, posteriori ; we are led to enlarge the problem to the admission of the whole sphere named Relations of Ideas. Eelations of Ideas ! The phrase belongs to Hume himself, and he admits the necessity involved : did Hume, then, never ask whence are they ? and did he unthinkingly fancy that, though Ideas themselves — as but derivative from Matters of Fact — were con- tingent and probable, the Eelations that subsisted among them might be apodictic and necessary ? Had Hume stumbled on such considerations as these, he would have been led into a new inquiry ; he would have been forced to abandon his theory of all our knowledge being limited to Impressions of Sense and resultant Ideas of Reflexion ; he would have been forced to see that, as there are apodictic truths, there must be a source of knowledge & priori as well as & posteriori, and that all our ideas are not neces- sarily copies of our impressions. Stimulated by the example of causality, too, he might have been led to see that the element of necessity did not restrict itself to Relations of Ideas only, but associated itself with contingent matter, with Matters of Fact as well; and might have asked, therefore, are there not, besides causality, other such examples of an apodictic force in & posteriori or contingent matter ? — what is the whole sphere of necessary knowledge, as well pure as mixed? — and what is the peculiar source of all such knowledge ? In this way, he might have been led to perceive that apodictic matter, impossibly & posteriori, must be d, priori, and an d, priori which had attained new reaches. He had talked, for example, of examining a cause & priori in search of its effect, as has been already remarked: but, after all, this & priori is it, priori only as regards the effect ; after all, any know- ledge gained by the examination would be of an & posteriori QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 333 nature. The true & priori, then, must be anterior, not to this and that experience, but to all experience ; it must concern a know- ledge that is not empirical, that reaches us not from elsewhere through a channel of sense. Plainly, then, it must be an element confined to the mind itself ; and plainly also, lie where it may, it must lie elsewhere than in sensation. Now, it is this elsewhere than in sensation that gives the cue and clue to the possibility of an element of necessity subjective as in us, but of an objective VALIDITY and of an objective r6le. Sensation being excluded, there remains for us the understanding only; and it is not so difficult to surmise that principles of the understanding — a faculty that concerns insight, discernment, evidence — may bring with them their own authority. The contributions of sensation, for example, are wholly subjective in this sense, that they are mine only, or yours only, or his only — that they are incapable of com- munication, and, consequently, incapable likewise of comparison. An odour, a savour, a touch, a sound, a colour, affects me, affects you, affects him ; but the affection of each is peculiar and proper to himself; we cannot show each other our affections; that is, they are incommunicable and incapable of comparison. But it is different with the contributions of understanding: these bring their own evidence ; this evidence is the same to all of us ; it can be universally communicated, and universally compared. Now, a validity of this nature may be correctly named objective, for it is independent of every subject. An objective rdle, again, implies that the possessor of such rdle presents itself with and in objects. A priori principles, then, will be principles peculiar to the understanding only ; subjective in that they have their source in the mind, in us, but objective in that they possess a universal and necessary validity independent of every subject ; and objective, perhaps, also in this, that though subjective in origin, they present themselves with and in objects in every event of actual experience. In this manner, we can see the possibility of an apodictic element both pure and mixed. In fact, we see that the whole business was opened, when we opposed sensuous affection to intellectual function, and assigned the d, posteriori to the one and the & priori to the other. This very sentence, indeed, is the key to German Philosophy ; it is a single general expression for the operations as well of Hegel as of Kant. German Philosophy, as we all know, begins with the question : How are Synthetic Judgments d, priori possible ? Now to this question, the answer of Kant — and the answer is his THE SECRET OF HEGEL. system — is, Intellectual Function with the apriori seusuous forms, or sensuous species — Space and Time ; while the answer of Hegel — implying in his case a system also — is, Intellectual Function alone.* But to apply this to Causality — how find in the mind a principle correspondent to something so very outward and a posteriori, and yet so apodictic and necessary ? Now the intellect, or the under- standing, is just Judgment ; and Judgment has functions, of which functions the various classes of propositions (which are but decisions or judgments of Judgment) are the correspondent Acts. Now the hypothetical class of propositions points to a function of Judgment which we may name Reason and Consequent. Evi- dently at once here is a function of Judgment, the sequence of the elements of which is exactly analogous to the sequence of the elements of Causality. The state of the case, however, is not yet free from great difficulty. Assuming the function of Reason and Consequent to be the mental archetype of Causality, how are we to connect it with contingent matter, and reduce it into a relation which — within us as Reason and Consequent — comes to us actually from without in the shape of innumerable real causes and innumerable real effects ? This very important portion — so suggestive as it proved to Hegel — of Kant's industry is wholly unknown in England, and seems to have been universally neglected (unless by Hegel) in Germany. If the reader will take the trouble to turn up the works of Sir William ^Hamilton, he will find Kant's theory relegated to that class which names Causality only a special and peculiar mental principle, and nothing more. Of the deduction of the principle — and in a System of such — from the very structure of the mind itself, and of the laborious succession of links whereby it is demonstrated to add itself to outward facts and come back to us with the same, there is not one word in Hamilton. He knows only that Kant opines Causality to be a peculiar mental principle ! In short, no Ahnung, not even a boding of the true state of the case, seems ever * The antithesis of matters of fact and relations of ideas is virtually identical with that of sensuous affection and intellectual function. Unnamed, it underlies the whole thing. Hume shut himself out from relations of ideas by erroneously seeing (in Causality, &c. ) matters of fact only. Kant was driven by the evidence or peculiar validity of causality to what was in effect relations of ideas. Hegel, in effect, has only cleared relations of ideas into their system — that crystal skeleton which, the whole truth of the concrete, of sensuous affection, of matters of faet, underlies and supports the same. Of this, so to speak, invisible skeleton Causality is but one of the bones.— The above answer put to Kant is to Hegel the ' What' that is asked for by Jacobi — «ee back, p. 232. — N. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 335 to have dawned on this great German scholar, who knew the Germans just so well and intimately that he annihilated them all ! It is amusing to observe the self-assured Sir William fooling himself to the top of his bent with his sharp distinctions and well-poised divisions about Kant violating the law of parsimony, postulating a new and express principle, while he, for his own vast part, on the contrary, &c. &c. ! ! ! Hamilton, however, introduces into his own theory (!) a certain relativity of time ; and relativity of time — but with something of a claim to coherency and sense, the while — belongs the theory of Kant also. — Now, one can believe that Hamilton was at least an ardent manipulator of the leaves of books. Time it was that became in the hands of Kant the medium of effecting the reduction in question, or that connexion between the inner and the outer which was manifestly so necessary. It will not be required of us at present, however, to track the probable heuristic course of Kant any further in this direction. Suffice it to say, that the desire to incorporate an inner law with outer bodies — especially in such a reference as Causality — necessarily led Kant to a consideration of Space and Time. The result of this consideration was, that space and time, though perceptive objects and so far sensuous, were a priori and so far intellectual, so far appertinent to the mind itself. In this way, there was d priori or native to the mind, not only function, but affection : both being side by side in the mind, then, function had affection in its clutch, or Unity had a Many on which it might exercise its energy. A schema, an & priori schema was thus formed, into which matter from without — that is, empirical or a posteriori matter — had to fit itself — to the eventual production of the formed, of the rational, of the ruled and regulated — universal context of Experience. Indeed, thought Kant, how can it be otherwise ? The a posteriori is but affection : we are, of course, acted on from without, but we know only the resultant affections set up. These are within us : they have no system in themselves, they are wholly contingent : this system which they so much require, they can only obtain within us, and the understanding alone is what is adequate to the want. In the end, the affections of sense were found to be con- strued into the formed universe, through the a priori perceptive spectra, Space and Time, and under the synthetic energy of the various functions of Apperception.* Lastly, the various syntheses * See Note, p. 327 at end. 336 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. of these functions were named Categories. — Causality, then, is but a function of Apperception, externalised into, and coming back to us from, or with, actual outer objects, through the media, sensuous but a priori, or a priori but sensuous, of Space and Time. Now, observe what the world has become ! It is now wholly in us ; but we to it are quite formal ; we are but the subjectivity that actualises it, as it were, into life ; it is function and affection — it is the matter within us: abstracting from ourselves then, that matter of function and affection remains, and the world is this : There are intellectual Syntheses (Categories), there are Space and Time, there are Empirical Affections. But, narrowly looked at — and this is a consequence of Kant's own industry, though it never occurred to Kant — empirical affections, as well as space and time, are but externalisations of the categories, are but outwardly what the categories are inwardly. The categories, then, are truly what is; the categories are the true essence of the universe : in the categories we have to look for the ultimate prin- ciples, and the ultimate principle of everything that is. This is what occurred to Hegel ; and it is here that he receives the torch from the hands of Kant, and proceeds to carry it further. Intellec- tual Function is the secret, then : almost it would seem as if the work of Kant and Hegel were but a new analysis of the human mind, a new statement of its constituent elements, an identification of this mind and these elements with, an enlargement of this mind and these elements to, the mind and elements of God — and all so that creation should be seen to be but the other of this mind and these elements — to be but the external counterpart of these, its internal archetype and archetypes. Now this is probably the shortest and clearest general view we have yet attained to; but we cannot stop here — the uninitiated reader must be carried more deeply into the details still, before he can be dismissed as competently informed. Nevertheless, it will always be of use to bear in mind that the ultimate proposition of Hegel seems to be this: To know all the Functions which Affections obey, and to demonstrate the presence of the former everywhere in the latter, would be at once to know the Absolute, and to complete Philosophy. Let us look well at these categories, then, says Hegel, and consider them in their own absolute truth. First of all, then, there are the four capital Titles, as Kant names them, Quantity, Quality, Kelation, and Modality. Now, of these the first three are evi- dently objective and material, while the last is only subjective QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 337 and formal : the first three concern the constitution and construc- tion of objects themselves, the last only their relation to us. But to the development of the absolute world, we abstract from our- selves, and it would seem, therefore, as if we must abstract also from this modality of Kant. Things exist in Quantity, Quality, and Eelation ; and this division seems complete in itself. As for Subjectivity — and it is subjectivity that modality involves — it is a sphere apart ; Subjectivity, in short, implies Things and something more. Things have their own laws ; but Subjectivity appears in an element which, while implying laws of its own, involves sub- jection to those of things also. Subjectivity, then, appears a higher stage, and it seems necessary to complete things or objec- tivity first. The first glance of Hegel, then, eliminates for the nonce mod- ality, and we have to see him now employed on Quantity, Quality, and Relation. Now, are these the most universal of all objective categories, and are they complete ? Again, this being so, are they deducible the one from the other, and all from a common principle which is obviously the First and the Fundament ? The categories being the Absolute, being fcr ".'*• What is, it is evident that their completion — and in a system — would constitute, at last, Philo- sophy. They cannot, thei be left standing as we receive them from Kant. Notwithstanding that Kant derives them from the functions of Judgment, actual analysis fails; they have not in him the architectonic oneness and fullness which he himself desiderates, but rather that rhapsodic appearance of undeduced- ness and incompleteness which he himself abhors. They look meagre, disconnected, arbitrary : we instinctively refuse to accept them as the inner and genetic archetypes of all that is. We must be better satisfied in their regard : they must be larger and fuller somehow : we must trace them both up to their necessary source, and down into all the rami- fications of their completed system. In this way, we shall have the crystal of the universe, the diamond net into which the whole is wrought, God and the thoughts of God before the birth of time or a single finite intelligence, or even entity. Idealism thus would be finished and complete. Thought would constitute the universe: the universe would simply be thought, thought in* its two reciprocal sides, thought inner and thought outer. The proper name for Philosophy in this case would be Logic ; for, indeed, the all of things would simply be reduced to Y 338 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Logic. Nay, Logic would be the Absolute — Logic would supplant and replace Theology itself. The chaos of this universe, in fact, that stands before ordinary intelligence, would shapingly collapse into the law and order and unity of a single life — a life which we should understand — a life which each of us should participate — modally. The Substance, Attribute, and Modus of Spinoza would thus be realised, would thus have flesh on their bones, and be alive and actual. These are grand thoughts, suggestive of a close at last to the inquest of man : we must complete them : we must take up the lead that Kant has given us : we must strike boldly through the gate which he — led up to it by Hume — has been the first to open to us ! Let us look well to what he has done, then ; let us follow all his steps ; above all, let us look again into all the materials he has collected as categories. What we have to do is to complete their Many, and to find their One : what we have to do is to demonstrate the All, and in co-articulation with the Principium — with that which is first and one and inderivative ! As regards their One, that in Kant is Apperception, Judgment ; * but Judgment is only a single moment of Logic: there remain two others — Simple Apprehension and Season. The last, cer- tainly, Kant has drawn into consideration, but perhaps imper- fectly ; and, as regards the second (the first in the rubric), he has not thought of it at all. But, if Logic is to be considered the principle of the whole — (and why should not Logic constitute the principle of the whole ? — what God has created must be but an emanation of his own thought, of his own nature ; and do we not know that man, so far as he is a Spirit, is created in the likeness of God ? — why, then, should not Logic, which is the crystal of man's thought, be the crystal also of God's thought, and the crystal as well of God's universe — of that universe which, as God's universe, must be but the realisation, the other side, of God's thought ?) — if Logic, then, is to be the principle of the whole, we must be serious with Logic, and take it together in all its parts. Simple Apprehension, then, is a moment no more to be omitted than any of the rest. But, possessing the light of system and unity which Kant's demand for an architectonic principle has kindled in us, we cannot be content with Logic itself in these mere chapters and * Kant (WW. ii. 69, 70, 79, 733) identifies consciousness with understanding, understanding with judgment, and judgment with thought or thinking itself. See also Text-Book to Kant, p. 389. — New. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 339 headings, in this mere side-by-side of Simple Apprehension Judgment, and Eeason : they, too, must be organically fused into a concrete unit, which unit were evidently the ultimate or basal unit, the absolutely primordial cell — in other words, the Absolute itself. But is this possible ? — can we view these as but elements of a single pulse, moments of a single movement? Yet, again, what we are contemplating is a principle too subjective for our objects as yet, and we seem to be tending too much to the stand- point of Kant. Kant held by Apperception and a subjective idealism : Kant postulated an elsewhere which, received into our organs, only so and so affected us, only so and so appeared to us in consequence of the constitution peculiar, not to it (the else- where, the thing-in-itself), but to them (the organs). In this way, knowledge could only be phenomenal and provisional. But it is not so that we would view the problem : we eliminate sub- jectivity in the first instance ; we stretch out the threads of the categories as the primordial and essential filaments ; on these we lay the particularised universe of things; — and then we say, Behold the world, behold what is ! With such design before us, then, we cannot begin with Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Eeason : these, as named, concern subjectivity ; and even if they are the ultimate moments of the All, we must have them in another form before we can lay them down as objective categories of foundation and support. We can talk of Quantity, Quality, and Eelation, for these are objective, and all things sub- mit to their forms. But the moments of Logic in the form of the moments of Logic are too subjective to serve a similar purpose : in such form, they seem alien to things. The moments of Logic in such form, then, will not answer as a beginning, however much they may constitute the true rhythm of all things. In other words, the Logical movement is the ultimate principle — but we do not find it in the beginning in that form ; it has a preliminary path to describe before reaching the same. — But let us look again at the categories as we find them in Kant. Well, we look at them — and it is to be seen, without difficulty, that they are but results of generalisation. The question occurs, then, has this process reached completion, or is it sus- ceptible of being carried further? Again, in the latter event, might not, in ultimate generalisation, a category be anticipated which should be the category of categories, or the notion of notions; for Kant himself calls the categories notions, Stamm- 340 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. begriffe, root-notions. The notion of notions ! — well, but we have just seen that the logical movement must be the fundamental principle ; if, in another way, therefore, a notion of notions is to emerge with a claim to the like authority and place, the two results must coincide and be identical. In other words, this ultimate generalisation, this last abstraction, which is the notion of notions, will constitute the first form of the logical pulse — and, in general, just the beginning that we want. This logical pulse, too, being coincident with the ultimate category or notion of notions, is capable of being regarded as tear e£oxhv the Notion. But the categories are, so to speak, concrete abstractions : they possess a filling, content, matter, an implement, a complement, an -ingest, an intent, a tenor, a purport, an import (Inhalt) : Quantity possesses universality, particularity, singularity ; Quality, affirma- tion, negation, limit; Relation, substance, causality, reciprocity. The ultimate Category, or the Notion, then, being also a concrete abstraction like the rest, will possess a filling of its own ; and this filling or matter must be the universal of all these fillings or matters. Each of these matters, again, must be but a particular of it (the matter of the notion), as universal. They, then, thus particulars of the same universal, must be mutually related and affiliated as congruent differences of the same identity. — But in this last phrase we have a hint given us as to how we should regard the matter of the notion. These words identity and difference can be used in description of the first two moments of the matter of all the Titles. Under Quantity, Universality, not only in its notion, but in its very name, points to unity or identity; while Particularity, again, is but difference — the particulars are but the differences of the universal, the species but the differences of the genus. Under Quality, Affirmation is plainly identity — but the identity, so to speak, of common concurrence ; and as plainly Negation is difference, for it implies a No to a Yes, or difference is at twain, and* two contain difference. Under Re- lation, Substance is but the supporting identity of the All of things, while Causality is but the difference in this identity — implying, as it does always, the first and the second, the one and the other. The fourth Title of Kant we have eliminated for the present as it refers to subjectivity: nevertheless, the fourth title is equally illustrative of the same facts — Nay, in the Titles themselves, let alone their moments, cannot a like relation be detected ? Is not the Quality of anything just its own identity? — and is not QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 341 Quantity just anything's own difference ? Increase or decrease of Quantity (within limits) does not alter Quality (you and I would be much the same were we some pounds heavier : the cabbage is its own identity (and this lies in its quality), but its growth from day to day (Quantity) constitutes its difference) — And this is a lesson to us — Kant is wrong to place Quantity before Quality — now that attention is called to this, we seem to see, just in a general way indeed, that Quality ought to precede Quantity: Quality is indeed the inner reality or identity, while Quantity is but the outer difference. — In identity and difference, then, we seem to have obtained wider universals for the two first moments of all the Kantian triads. But they are triads; what, then, of a third moment in this our own new triad? — may we hope to find a similar wider universal for it also ? Now this will not be difficult, if we observe in each triad the relation which the third term or moment bears to the first and second. The third moment, in fact, always seems to participate in both of those which precede ; — we can see it, in a manner, to conjoin and sum these. The singular, for example, contains in it both the universal and the particular ; limitation implies both affirmation and negation ; while, in the last place, reciprocity or community seems to contain in its one virtue both that of substantiality and that of causality. But these triads of Kant have been derived from certain Logical triads which also manifest the same property. To convince himself of this, let the reader but glance at the Table in Kant that sums the various judgments : Disjunctive, for example, does it not involve a virtue at once Categoric and Hypothetic ? Nay, does not the third Title, Kelation (we have eliminated the fourth), manifest itself, as but, in a manner, a uniting medium of both Quantity and Quality — though, to be sure, it is a relation — proportion of quantity, with quality as a result — rather than Relation in general, which accurately accomplishes this ? (By-the-bye, let us not forget this exact new third just discovered for Quantity and Quality — Proportion, Measure, Maass !) But if the third moment is always related to the first and second, they, too, probably will be mutually related ? — It really is so. This, indeed, we have already said : in every case, it is the relation of identity and difference. On looking quite close, indeed, the second moment (difference) is seen to be just the opposite, the contrary, the negative of the first (identity). Nega- tion is the opposite of affirmation ; particularity is the opposite of 342 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. universality ; and the same relation does in fact obtain between substantiality and causality, for the latter involves reference to dependence or derivation, and that is the opposite of substan- tiality. Nay, looking to the Titles themselves, there is virtually the same relation between Quality and Quantity ; for if the one is inner, the other is outer. The three moments, then, are always interconnected, as Yes, No, and Both. This is sufficiently singular, and suggests very clearly the possibility of ranging all in a common system. The movement plainly is one of identity, opposition, and reconciliation of both in a new identity. This movement, accordingly, name it as we may (in the terms of Aristotle as formerly, if it is thought fit), is the notion of notions, or the notion. This movement will be the logical movement also. Yes ; the same relation but repeats itself in the triad Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Eeason (Begriff, Urtheil, Schluss) : Judgment always says no to the awards of Sense, and Eeason reconciles them in a new and higher truth. Such is but the history of the world ! — What we see everywhere is but the logical movement repeating itself in a variety of forms and under a variety of names. We have certainly discovered the principle, then, and the proper pulse of this principle : but how are we to set it in action to the production of a system ? The categories have presented themselves as triads, the moments of which collapse, in the case of each triad, into a trinity (tri-unity). Now, let us but find the first trinity, and the sequence of trinities ought to flow of itself, according to the movement, up to the ultimate trinity, which is the consummation of the whole : in this way, the thing would be done — our aim accomplished ! The course of Hegel's thoughts and the nature of his whole industry — dialectic and all — can now have no difficulty to any reader. A glance at the contents of the ' Logik ' or ' Encyclopaedic' will — from the mere outside — amply suffice to confirm all. Consider this one point : it occurred "to ourselves, a moment ago, that it was difficult to find and name a proper third to identity and differ- ence as identity and difference ; and we were tempted to say, com- munity or reciprocity itself. On turning to the contents of the works named (the ' Logik ' and the ' Encyclopaedic '), we found Hegel had experienced the same difficulty ; for in the one work, the third to identity and difference is the Contradiction, while in the other it is the Ground. This last term approaches, it will be QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 343 observed, the one which had occurred to ourselves, Community; for the Ground is the Community of the Differences. Hegel now, then, has realised Logic. He has discovered the principle of the Categories, and of their concatenation as well — a principle which is true in fact, and which is capable of being made the principle of the universe. What he has to do now, then, is to complete the categorical trinities, and, at the same time, con- duct them all up to, or derive them all down from, a similar simple multiple, or multiple simple, which were the First and inderivative. But to this he possesses a clue in perceiving that the process is one of logical determination, where, necessarily, the first is the absolute abstraction, and the last the absolute concre- tion. Again, both of these will be but forms of the absolute principle, which is the notion; and the notion — quantitatively named, but with a qualitative force — is the reciprocal unity, or the tautological reciprocity of universality, particularity, and singu- larity. Here, in fact, is the type of the system itself : the absolute universal will be the First, while the absolute singular will be the Last, and the absolute particular — or the ultimate categories which represent all the ground-thoughts descriptive and constructive of the universe — will be the Middle, or the matter comprehended between the first and last. For a First, then, Hegel sees that he must find the most abstract universal, or the most universal abstract ; or that he must find that trinity which shall exhibit the notion in its most abstract or universal form. In a word, he must find the most abstract universal identity (the genus), the most abstract universal difference (the differentia), and the most abstract universal community of identity and difference (the species), or however else we may name — and the names are legion — the several constituent moments of the notion. But Hegel has actually before him other categories and many remarks of Kant for his express guidance and direction in this whole industry. Some of these, as in relation to Something and Nothing, &c, we have seen already ; and here, from the ' Kritik of Pure Reason,' are a few more, which the reader will now see must have contained much matter eminently suggestive to Hegel : — It is to be observed that the Categories, as the true Stammbegriffe (root- notions) of pure understanding, possess their equally pure derivatives, which can by no means be omitted in a complete system of Transcendental Philosophy, but with whose mere mention I may be content in a mere critical preliminary inquest 344 THE SECRET OF HEGKL. Hegel, then, could see what he had to do for the construction of a system. Poor Kant, like a hen that had hatched ducks, was never done with cluck-clucks of consternation over the mad fashion in which his rash brood — Fichte and the rest — dashed into the bottomless water of speculation, — never done with cluck-clucks of consternation and of fervid warning to return to the solid land of kritical procedure, for which he pathetically assured them their excellent ■ Darstellungsgabe ' (say style) could do so much. It is questionable if he could have recognised in Hegel that return to his own results which he so ardently longed for and so unweariedly called for. It is quite certain now, however, that the whole work of Hegel was simply to furnish that 'complete system of the Transcendental Philosophy ' indicated by Kant. Let me be permitted (the veteran proceeds) to name these pure but deriva- tive notions, the predicables of pure understanding (in contrast to the predica- ments). If we have the original and primitive notions, the derivative and subaltern may be easily added, and the family-tree of pure understanding completely delineated. As I have here to do, not with the completion of the system, but only with that of the principles towards it, I may be allowed to postpone the addition of such a complement to another work. This object, however, may be pretty correctly reached, if any one but take in hand the ordinary ontological text-books, and set, for example, under the category of Causality, the predicables of power, action, passion, &c. ; under Reciprocity, those of the present, resistance, &c. ; and under Modality, origin, disease, &c. &c. The categories combined with the modi of pure sense [Time and Space], or with one another, furnish a great number of derivative d priori notions, &c. Hegel was thus directly referred to the very manner in which he should set about his task ; and his task was comparatively easy, for, as Kant himself points out — The great compartments (Facher) are once for all there — it is only neces- sary to fill them up ; and a systematic Topik, like the present, does not readily permit us to miss the places to which each notion properly belongs, at the same time that it causes us readily to remark those which are still empty.* Kant proceeds : — As regards the Table of the Categories, some curious remarks may be made which may have, perhaps, advantageous results as respects the scientific form of all rational truths. For that this Table, in the theoretic part of philosophy, is Uncommonly serviceable, nay indispensable, in order completely to project * The above quotations are from the K. of P. K. £ 10 ; those that follow, from § 11, same work. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 345 a plan towards the Whole of a Science, so far as this science is to rest on a priori notions, as well as mathematically to distribute the same according to definite principles, appears directly of itself from this, that said Table contains at full all the elementary notions of understanding, and even the form of a system of the same in the human understanding, and consequently furnishes direction and guidance to all the moments of any contemplated speculative science, and even to their order, as indeed I have already given elsewhere an example in proof (s. ' Metaphys. Anfangsgr. der Naturwissensch '). Here now are some of these remarks : — The first is : that this Table, which contains four classes of Categories, parts first of all into two Divisions, the first of which is directed to objects of Per- ception (pure as well as empirical) ; the second, again, to the Existence of these objects (whether as referred to one another or to the understanding) [Quantity ' pure,' Quality ' empirical,' Relation ' mutual reference,' Modality ' reference to the understanding ']. The first class I would name that of the mathematical, the second that of the dynamical, Categories. The first class, as is evident, has no correlates, which are found only in the second. This difference must have its reason [as Hegel has well investigated] in the nature of the understanding. 2nd Remark. — That in every case there is a like number — three — of the categories of every class, which summons to reflection [and Hegel reflected and pondered this to some effect], as all a priori distribution elsewhere through notions is necessarily a Dichotomy [Black or not-Black, &c.]. Moreover, that the third category in every case [Hegel is all here] arises from the union of the second with the first of its class. Thus Allness (Totality) is nothing else than Plurality [a Many] considered as Unity ; Limitation is nothing else than Reality united to Negation ; Com- munity is one Substance Causally determining another Reciprocally ; lastly, Necessity is nothing else than Existence given by Possibility itself. Let it not be thought, however, that the third category is for this reason a merely derivative one, and not a root-notion of pure understanding. For the union of the first and second in order to produce the third notion demands a special act of understanding, which is not identical with that which is exerted in the case of the first and second. Thus the notion of a Number (which belongs to the category of Totality) is not always possible where there are the notions of Plurality and Unity (as, for example, in the conception of the Infinite) ; nor out of this, that I unite the notion of a cause and that of a substance, is Influ- ence— that is, how one substance can be the cause of something in another substance — directly and without more ado to be understood. From this it is obvious that a special act of understanding is necessary to this ; and so as regards the rest. 3rd Remark.— In the case of a single category, that, namely, of Community, which occurs under the third Title, is the agreement with the corresponding form in the Table of the Logical Functions here the disjunctive judgment) not so self-evident as in that of the others. In order to assure oneself of this agreement, it is to be observed : that in all disjunctive judgments the sphere (the Many of all that is contained under the judgment) is conceived as a whole distributed into parts (the subordinate notions), and, as these parts cannot be contained the one under the other, 346 THK HSUiUGC OF HEGEL. they are thought as mutually co-ordiuated, not subordinated, in such wise that they, act on each other, not one-sidely as in a series, but reciprocally as in an aggregate (if one member of the distribution is established, all the rest are excluded, and vice versa). Now what we have to think is a similar conjunction in a Whole of Things, where the one is not subordinated as effect to the other as cause, but co- ordinated as at the same time and reciprocally cause in reference to the other (for example, the case of a body, the parts of which at once reciprocally attract and resist each other), which is quite another sort of conjunction than that met with in the simple relation of the cause to the effect (of reason to conse- quent), in which the consequent does not reciprocally in its turn determine the antecedent, and does not therefore constitute a whole with it (like the Creator with the world). The same process which understanding observes when it represents to itself the sphere of a distributed notion, it observes also when it thinks a thing as capable of distribution ; and as the members of distribution in the former mutually exclude each other, and nevertheless are united to- gether in a single sphere, so it conceives the parts of the latter as such that existence attaches to each of them as substances independently of the rest, and yet that they are united together in a single whole. In these remarks the reader will readily observe many germs which it was the business of Hegel only to mature. That, under each class, the third category, for example, should be a concrete of the two former — this an sich, virtually, is the dialectic of Hegel. Once, indeed, that Hegel had observed this peculiarity, and that lie had also generalised the categories into the category, his system, we may say, and in all its possibilities, was fairly born. Kant observes,* ' that there are two stocks or stems of human knowledge, which arise perhaps ffom a single common root, as yet unknown to us, namely, ' Sense and Understanding, through the former of which objects are given, and through the latter thought' Now, to see that this bringing together of sensation and intellect amounted to the percipient Understanding (intuitus originarius, intellectuelle An- schauung, anschauender Verstand) of Kant — to see moreover that Kant's own industry had no other tendency than to realise such reduction and identification,* — this also may be named the be- ginning of Hegel ; for, in a word, Hegel's system is a demonstra- tion that Sensation and Understanding are virtually one, the former being but outwardly what the other is inwardly, and each the necessary reciprocal counterpart of the other. This, too, is evidently the effect of the speculations of Kant in reference to the Categories and the Schemata resultant from the conjunction of these with Time and Space. To co-ordinate and reduce to one, * K. of P. R., Introduction, subfinem. QUALITY 1NTEKPKETED, ETC. 347 Sense and Intellect, or Sensations and Ideas (Notions), this is another of those curt statements of the whole which may conduce not only to the understanding, but to the judging, of the Hegelian system. Hegel himself has remarked, that to reproduce a system is the true way critically to judge it : he intimates even that he who faithfully reproduces a system is already beyond it. Now, no doubt, these curt statements are calculated to bring one's know- ledge up to the very apex of insight; but they only mislead, deceive, ruin, when they themselves are taken as knowledge, and when it escapes notice that their function is not to constitute knowledge, but only to give focus to knowledge. A general statement is but gas — and of a very dangerous kind — in the mouth of him who is empty of the particulars. In these curt words, tending though they do to carry us beyond what they concern, there is this danger, then, to all parties in humanity ; and there is yet in them another danger to a single party. To the Materialist, for example, such words as above are so glaringly absurd, and the enterprise they indicate so glaringly stupid, that he feels justified, from the mere outside, to neglect and reject all industries (as those of Kant and Hegel) which are capable of being characterised by them. It is the former danger which is the important one, however, and the latter we may neglect, for, as the idealist views man as Spirit, the materialist views him only as Animal, however acute he (the materialist) may be, then, as regards mundane commodity, he is wholly opaque to what alone is human — Religion, Philosophy, and even Poetry — and is mani- festly of no account to men who can interest themselves in such subjects as the present. To possess a curt formula for the whole of Hegel, does not dispense us from the labour of the particular, then ; and we have yet much of this to achieve. It is now to be seen, nevertheless, that a complete answer to our first question as to what led Hegel to begin as he did, is rapidly rising on us. We see what was the One of his system, and how he found it ; we see also what his Many are to be, and how he is to find them. Of a clue to the First of his Many we have also some perception now, though this First itself has not yet exactly announced itself. Suppose Hegel, in quest of this First, &c, to adopt the hint of Kant and take the text-books of Ontology in his hand, or suppose him to inspect the derivative categories — all the categories, indeed, — mentioned by Kant him- 348 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. self, it will not be difficult to discern how it was he was enabled to succeed. Kant expressly states as categories, Daseyn and Nichtseyn, or Being and Non-being ; and he also elsewhere sug- gestively speculates in regard to Something and Nothing, an ulti- mate Abstract, &c. : it could not be difficult, then, for Hegel — with his eyes opened as they now were to the general issue, by the realisation of the Logical Movement itself — to see that Seyn and Nichtseyn were categories to be ranked under Quality, — that Quality, as we have ourselves so very clearly seen, must precede Quantity, and that this very sub-category Seyn was itself the most abstract quality conceivable. But Seyn being this ab- stractest notion of all, his beginning was found. Though the notion constituted the principle, he could not make the notion in the form of notion the beginning. The notion itself must have a beginning, and this beginning might be constituted by Seyn. The notion itself in its own development must submit to the law of its own rhythm, and could not appear on the scene in any Minerva-like completeness as at once the full-formed notion. The notion itself must begin, and must begin by appearing under the form of its own first moment — universality \ identity, or an sich, &c. But appearing as the absolutely first universality, or the ab- solutely first identity, it could only appear as the primal indefinite- ness that is — and that is pure being. What is — call it the world, call it God, call it the notion — if it began, could only begin in ab- solute indefiniteness. In fact, it is not necessary that this in- definiteness should ever have been — it is enough that, if we want what we call a beginning, we must begin with indefiniteness. — What is a beginning ? A beginning implies that there at once is and is not — and how can that be named otherwise than as pure .being, indefinite being ? — that what is, is — but as yet absolutely indefinitely ? This is the true Begriffoi the Vorstellung — primor- dial chaos. Afundamen, a/pmes, a v\tj, a rudimentum, a Grundlage, a groundwork, a mother-matter is always postulated by the Vors- tellung ; but this postulate translated into the language of thought proper, amounts to the indefiniteness that is, or pure being. But if pure being be the first, according to the law of the notion, its own opposite, or non-being, must be the second, and the third must be a new simple that concretely contains both; or the third must be a species of which the first is the genus, and the second the differentia : but this here is just Werden; every becoming at once is and is not, or is at once being and non-being Here, then, is QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 349 the absolutely first triad, the absolutely first form of the always, tri-une notion ; or here is the absolutely germinal cell : it is impos- sible to go further back than to the absolute indetiniteness that at once is and is not, but becomes. It is an error on our part to have a difficulty here, and to stultify ourselves with the Vorstel- lung of a substrate, of a something that was this indefiniteness. In one sense that is not requisite, as it is here Logic that we have before us — as it is here with thoughts only, and not with things that we have to do. But if we want a substrate, that we possess in thought. Thought is and thought is all that is (or the notion), and the first form was indefiniteness, but an indefiniteness that still was. Or take it otherwise, there actually is, there really is, there can be no doubt of that ; there really is this variegated uni- verse— Jupiters, and belts of Saturn, and double stars, and the sun and the earth ; Barclay's porter, Hook's patent coffee-roaster, and what not : well, the beginning of all that — if ever there was a be- ginning— must have been in an indefinite One, the only name for which could be pure being. Let any one turn and twist it as he may, he will find no other issue. Hegel's beginning, then, is true, not only to the principles of Kant, not only to the requirements of Logic, or to those of this new logical notion generalised by Hegel out of Kant, but it is true also to the nature of facts such as we see and know them. Surely, this was an immense success for Hegel. Having realised Logic, and seen it to be the essential all — having dis- covered the notion itself — to have also discovered the absolutely initial form, not only of that notion, but just of the facts around us as any peasant may see them ! Being, Non-being, Becoming ! Here is the trinity as it must have been — in its beginning ! Again, from the realisation of Logic, it followed that Logic would be the vital pulse in every sphere — that every sphere, in short, would be but a form, but a metaphor, but a Vorstellung of Logic : but, this being so, history itself would have to submit to the same truth, history itself would present in its process only a development of Logic. But limiting ourselves in history to the history of Logic itself, we should expect to find even this special history following the same laws. The first special logicians, then, would in this case be found historically to be engaged with Seyn, Nichtseyn, Werden, &c. On inquiry, Hegel found all this true to fact: all this is represented in the Greek thinkers that precede THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Socrates. Nay, all this is true up to the present instant : for the notion itself only emerged an sich (the moment of Simple Appre- hension) in Kant, became fur sich or agnised into its differences (the moment of Ur-theil) in Fichte and Schelling, and transformed itself to an undfiir sich (the moment of Schluss) in Hegel. This is another reason why, though the notion was the bottom truth, no beginning could be made with it in that form : to have attempted this, would have been to stultify history. It is in history that we have series which demand beginnings; and as regards Logic, it is in history that we must find its beginning also. Thus is it that Hegel was driven to a profound study of thought as it has historically appeared, and the result of this study was to confirm him in the sequence of the logical series which he con- templated. "We may safely hold now, then, that the first question — How it was that Hegel was led to begin as he did — is fairly answered. We see at once the nature of his one — the nature of his many — the nature of his first — and where and how he got them. 2. What does Hegel mean by these very strange, novel, and appar- ently senseless statements ? — This presents now no difficulty. So much of the answer, however, has passed into what precedes, or must be reserved for what follows, that very little is left us to say under the present head. The indefinite immediate seems a strange phrase ; but what else can be said of pure being, but that it is the indefinite immediate ? There is an immediate to us — we are — there is something present to us : now, if we take no note of any particularity in this that is present to us, but generalise all particularities into their common one) — what we reach is indefinite, but it is still immediate. Being is not annihilated by the abstraction, there still is ; and what is, when we absolutely abstract from all particularity, is just the indefinite immediate. The result of such abstraction is but the void self-identical faculty ; or it is just thought gone into its own indefinite blank where it will see none and have none of its own constituent distinctions. But anything like a personal reference — any thought of any individual's special faculty — destroys the abstraction. Being is what is when everything is abstracted from — the absolute universal of all particulars : and being, surely, is simply that one thing in which all particulars concur. Whatever is, is, or is being ; that is, being is common to everything. In this abstraction, it is evident that we are quite freed from any question QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 351 of an inner principle whence this being might arise. Indefinite being brings with it no such want; or indefinite being, as the materia communis, is felt to be this principle itself. Being is simply indefinitely What is ; and, as we know that there is a — definitely What is, — we know that what indefinitely is, is just the fundamen and tout-ensemble of all that definitely is. All that requires to be understood in the paragraph that regards Seyn will now be perfectly intelligible. Other terms not as yet noticed, have their places elsewhere. We may add only that An sich is perhaps the best term for the initial identity, the initial indefinite potentiality, which, if a beginning is required at all, must be attached as beginning to the notion. The notion as indefinite identity is in the moment of simple apprehension ; though simple apprehension, as form, is itself much later in the series of developments ; and as indefinite identity the notion may be correctly described as simply an sich, simply in itself, simply virtual, or potential, or impliciter. But this is just pure Seyn : pure being is nothing more and nothing less than simply the notion an sich, or, if you like, the notion of an sich. But, in obedience to the laws of What is, identity must pass into difference, Simple Apprehension must become Judgment, the Begriff must sunder its be - griped -n ess into the part-ing which is the Urtheil ; the An sich must awake into Fur sich. Thus is it that we see how Fur sich becomes applicable to the second step : Fur sich refers to a certain amount of consciousness; recognition is implied ; and recognition is a result of distinction, of difference. — Against this appropriation of Fur sich for the second moment of the universal pulse, we know that many objections may be urged from the usage of Hegel himself. Even in the table of contents, for example, we see Fiirsichseyn placed as the resum- ing moment of Reason. Nor is it an affair of place only ; for we know that Fiirsichseyn denotes the collapse of all particularity into singularity. Neither is this the only example of a similar usage. Nevertheless, we believe that we are right in the main, and that even the exceptions will give little pause to the student who is anything instruit. The very chapter in Hegel which is specially entitled Fiirsichseyn is devoted to the evolution of the One and the Many with a view to the transition of Quality into Quantity.* * So far as the Ur-theil gives unity to its own dif-ference, it has the action of Filrsich ; but to give that name to the moment of Unterschied is, as a matter of mere naming, of no moment. — N. 352 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. The third step now is readily intelligible as the stage of an and fur sich. 3. What can be intended by these seemingly silly and absurd transitions of Being into Nothing, and again of both into Becoming ? — Well now, there is, after all, no great difficulty here. Suppose we define Nothing, how otherwise can we define it than as the absence of all distinguishableness, that is, of every discrimen whatever? But the absence of every recognisable discrimen whatever is just the absence of all particularity, and the absence of all particularity is but the abstraction from all particularity — pure being! Pure being and pure nothing, then, are therefore identical. Pure Seyn can be no otherwise defined than pure Nichts: Seyn like Nichts, and Nichts like Seyn — each is the absence of all distinguishableness, or of every recognisable discrimen whatever. Did you take up anything, and call it pure Seyn, and yet point to a discrimen in it, you would only be deceiving yourself, and speaking erroneously ; for in pure Seyn there can be no discrimen. Seyn must be universal, and any discrimen would at once particularise it. Thus, then, Pure Being and Pure Nothing are absolutely identical — they are absolutely indistinguishable. It is useless to say nothing is nothing, but being is something : being is not more something than nothing is. We admit Nothing to exist ; nothing is an intelligible distinction ; we talk of thinking nothing and of perceiving nothing : in other words, nothing is the abstraction from every discrimen or particularity. But an abstraction from every discrimen, does not involve the destruction of every or any discrimen : all discrimina still exist; in nothing we have simply withdrawn into indefiniteness. This nothing, then, of ours still implies the formed or definite world. Precisely this is the value of Pure Being : when we have realised the notion pure being, we have simply retired into the abstraction from all discrimina, but these — for all our abstraction and retirement — still are. Pure Being and Pure Nothing, then, point each to the absolutely same abstraction, the absolutely same retirement. In both, in fact, thought, for the nonce, has turned its back on all its own discrimina ; for thought is all that is, and all discrimina are but its own. In fact, both being and nothing are abstractions, void abstractions, and the voidest of all abstrac- tions, for they are just the ultimate abstractions. Neither is a concrete ; neither is, if we may say so, a reale. What, then, is — What actu is — in point of fact is — is neither the one nor the other ; QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 353 but everything that is, is a trvvoXov, a composite, of both. This is remarkable — that the formed world should hang between the hooks of two invisible abstractions, and, at the same time, that every item of the formed world should be but a 7 and /Jiopcpri are aufgehoben in the ei/TeAe'x«a. I drop this gold into that aqua regia, and it disappears ; it is aufgehoben, but it is not destroyed — it still idSellement is, it is now a moment. In Hegel, however, the moments are more than synthetic differents collapsing to a simple one ; each is very much the other, and in consequence of the other, or each, while itself reflected into the other, holds the other reflected into itself, and so is the other. The moments in reference to the lever are very illustrative. All through Hegel, indeed, this reciprocation or mutuation of the moments is the great fact : • each sublates itself in itself, and is in itself the contrary of itself.' Sublation, resolution, elimination, &c. will be now intelligible as translations of Aufhebung. If it be considered that the one moment has the nature of matter in it, and the other that of form (one sees that the Aristotelian characterisation of themoments is about the most general of all), it will be easily understood that the one, as in the case of the lever, is always relatively real and the other relatively ideal. As regards interpretation here, it is difficult to see that any ^76 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. words can be used more light-giving than those of Hegel himself. In fact, nothing can surpass the accuracy of eye with which he sees, or the distinctness of lip with which he names. No doubt, what is here must appear very strange to a beginner ; but, after all, it is employed on what is around us, and is an attempt to observe and (in a way) generalise ultimate facts. What we mean by being, if we will but look closely enough, is only indefinite immediacy, as nothing in the same way is immediate indefiniteness. Being and nothing are thus the same; or being has gone into nothing, and nothing has gone into being. But such movement is a process, and is named becoming. This process unites both distinctions, but so that they are alternately direct and indirect, and in such fashion that the one has concreted or thickened itself into origin, and the other similarly into decease : but these again, as but different directions of the same process, arrest themselves and sist process into proceed or product ; or being and nothing, now origin and decease, as but opposing directions of becoming, arrest themselves, and sist becoming into become — and that is Daseyn, Here-being, There-being, $o-being. In the directest fashion, this is but the generalisation of what is before our eyes and between our fingers : in other words, this is the thinking of the same; these are the thoughts which the commonest things involve : this, then, is Logic ; why, then, should we not be content to take it thus ? The generalisation of Aristotle, in regard to the abstract ultimates of ordinary reasoning, was not, we should say, one whit less strange, or one whit more satisfactory, when it emerged, than is now the generalisation of Hegel in regard to the ultimates of things. Things, in truth, have ultimate forms, as well as thoughts, and it is good to know them all ; nor is it to be supposed that less good will result from the ultimate thinking of things than from the ultimate thinking of thoughts. Nay, observe, in both cases, it is ultimate thinking ; and as thoughts and things are all, this ultimate thinking will not con- stitute only all ultimate thinking, but it may go together systema- tically as a whole, and so constitute the ultimate and essential truth of the universe, or — philosophy at length! Again, Hegel is no less qualified for this abstraction here, than Aristotle was for that abstraction there; and these laconic paragraphs in regard to nothing, being, becoming, and their process, may at once be held up in proof thereof. In every particular, the characterisation is consummate — the identification QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 377 of the distinction we use as Being with the distinction we use as Nothing, the exhibition of each as process, the pointing out that process as becoming, the demonstrating becoming to unite the distinctions at once as identical and as different in the opposing forms of origin and decease, and lastly, the precipitation of becoming — by its own contradiction — into become — all is masterly, and there is present a dialectic which, as mere process, must wonderfully sharpen our wits. But it is not for a moment to be thought that it is alone as subjective discipline, and not also as objective thinking, that this dialectic is valuable: on the contrary, the thoughts themselves must be seen to be the ultimate and essential thoughts that found, or ground, or beground the universe. Or so only can a beginning be thought ; and so only, therefore, can a beginning be constituted. A beginning, in truth, or the beginning, is what constitutes the bottom consideration here. To Hegel it is, no doubt, evident that it is utterly impossible to start with a single unit and conditions. Such a start were in its own crude presuppositions its own refuta- tion. No material unit is competent to a material many ; while to presuppose conditions for the production of this many, is just to presuppose this many itself. Before trying to find a beginning, we should have asked, what is a beginning ? What is the cate- gory ? this is the first question. It is absurd to talk of conditions before we know what conditions are. It is futile to explain the beginning, unless we have first of all fairly seen into all that the category, beginning, implies. An outward of any kind, for example, and a beginning will be found absolutely incommensur- able. In this way, as regards the object of our quest, we are shut in to the inward — we are shut in to thought as thought, and the only possible conclusion is, that the thought of the beginning is just the beginning of thought. To postulate a single substance exposed to a variety of conditions in a ready-made time and space* is simply to take things as we see them — simply to trip over crude figurate conceptions of the bottom categories, identity and difference, which should have been examined first. To talk of a primitive matter and conditions in explanation of transition, is to stultify oneself — is to begin with the very variety which requires to be explained. Again, it seems very difficult to think of a beginning as only inward ; we cannot think an inward without an outward as sub- strate and basis. We cannot conceive of thought as in the first instance merely in the air. 378 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. This is perfectly just. Thought is not thought literally like so much water, held somewhere in the bag of the universe : thought implies a thinking subject. It may be that this subject is not at first in ei/TeXe'x«a, or even in evepyeia or p.op^ ; it may be that, at first, it is only in the stage Svva/xi$, or that it is only potentially. Beginning, in fact, applied to such subject must find it only poten- tially there, or only as indefinite immediacy, that is, the subject itself, in the beginning, must find itself only in indefinite im- mediacy. Being is the first dim thought, which, when sought to be looked at closer, is only nothing ; but from this nothing there is a return again to the sense of being, which now, increased by the reflexion nothing, can be conceived very intelligibly to contain the thoughts becoming and become. But this become is so far definite, it definitely is, and it becomes the something of reflexion, and so on. In short, the whole process of the Logical Idea can have the universal Subject assigned to it as substrate. The reader is likely to find all this strange ; but it is not a whit more strange than that pebble from the brook, or this pen in my hand : we cannot blink the fact that there is existence, and that man's life has been to understand it. Very truly also that pebble from the brook is not an object just because it is a material something : all that constitutes what it essentially is to me, are categories, and what it is apart from these categories is as nothing : no object, even the most material, but is in very truth a congeries of thoughts. There is no absurdity, then, in the thought of the beginning as the begin- ning ; for we must have confidence in thoughts and know them as the only verities when opposed to things. It is on such universal and absolute considerations, then, that Hegel would rest his beginning and all his other proce'dds ; and he does not for a moment think it necessary to allude to the manner in which he gradually worked himself into light on the stand- point and with the materials of Kant. One word in reference to that the actual and concrete -origin will not be out of place, if only to reassure ourselves of the mundane connexions and really external nature of Hegel's operations, however esoteric be their issue, and however absolute their truth. It is hardly necessary, probably, to remind the reader that Hegel, adopting the hint of Kant, and taking in his hands both the ontological manuals and Kant's own materials, could hardly fail to observe that Seyn was the genus summum, Nichts the differentia summa, and Werden the species summa. As little reason either is there for reminder that QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 379 Hegel, realising Logic, recognised in the three steps named but three forms of the three moments of the single logical heart-beat common to the universe, or that, vitalising history, his attention was specially directed to that notion of reciprocity which connected him with Kant. Let us point out in passing, however, that the three numbers under Werden refer to the same considerations. Thus, No. 1 is 'the unity of being and nothing,' which is the Begriff, or the moment of simple apprehension ; No. 2 is ' the moments of becoming ' — or manifestly the Ur-theil ; and No. 3, the ' Sublation of Becoming,' is a movement of Schluss or an act of Eeason. The reciprocity of opposing moments with mutual eclipse in a common sphere (in analogy with Kant's mode of viewing the disjunctive judgment) is also obvious. We are not for a moment to suppose, then, that the logical series of Hegel, whatever it involves, really rests for its start on absolute considera- tions, or really flows alone and absolutely from nothing but an internal pulse : the veritably genetic considerations and pulse of Hegel are certainly, for the most part, relative and external. I know not whether the problem ever presented itself to Hegel in the brief propos, We have to identify Affection with Function ; but what that phrase implies lies not obscurely at the centre of his whole industry. If the reader will but take the trouble to reflect on the problem as thus expressed, he will realise to himself the nature and course of the necessarily first thoughts of Hegel. His first difficulty, for example, will be the formality of the pro- blem as announced, and the necessity for matter. What is Func- tion— what is Affection ? Thinking is function — yes — and feeling is affection ; but how get them together — where shall we begin — how shall we begin ? The logical movement is function ; but simple apprehension and the rest are quite formal — how are we to realise them ? There seems no possibility of a transition from the one to the other. In the midst of such thoughts as these, it certainly would be a relief to recur to the Categories, and to observe in these a sort of middle-ground between affection and function — media, as it were, which united both ; for the categories involve an intellectual schema, which schema, in that it possesses matter, is to a certain extent sensuous. To complete these cate- gories, then, from the confines of the object up to those of the subject, would seem a very hopeful portion of work towards solu- tion of the general problem. But before the categories presented themselves thus to Hegel, I think there is evidence that he had 380 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. attempted the question from another side : to name it at once, I think the ' Phaenomenologie ' proves Hegel to have been led to begin first of all with Affection, in the hope of being able -to work wp to Function. In this work, as is seen at a glance, he starts with crude sensation, passes on to intelligent perception, and again to understanding, &c. ; and the general object throughout is to resolve these forms into notions, or into forms of reason. All is sought to be pointed out as an affair of reflexion ; ever there is reflexion behind reflexion. Under perception, for example, observe how in every such act he points out a variety of moments which are necessarily notional, and not perceptional at all : — In that the qualities (the reference is to a thing and its qualities) are ex- pressed in the simple oneness of the universal [as the common unity — the thing itself], they refer themselves to themselves, are indifferent to one another ; each is on its own account, free from the rest. The simple, self equal universality itself again is distinct and free from these its determinate- nesses ; it is pure reference of self to self, or the medium in which these deter- minatenesses all are, and interpenetrate each other therefore in it as in a simple unit without touching each other ; for just through their participation in this universality, are they indifferently per se. This abstract universal medium, which may be named Thingness in general or the pure Essentity, is nothing else than the Here and Now (which were the results of crude Sensation) as they have exhibited themselves, namely as a Simple Together of Many ; but the Many are in their determinateness themselves simply Universal. This salt is a simple Here, and at the same time plural ; it is white and also sharp, cubical also, and also of a certain weight, and so on. All these many qualities are in a simple Here, in which therefore they interpenetrate and pervade each other ; none has another Here than the other, but each is everywhere in the same Here in which the others are; and at the same time, without being separated by separate Heres, they do not in this interpenetration affect each other : the white does not affect or alter the cubical, neither of them nor both together the sharp, and so on ; but as each is itself simple reference of self to self, it lets the others alone, and refers itself to them only through the neutral or indifferent Also. This Also is therefore the pure Universal itself, or the Medium, the Thingness which thus holds them together. That in this way perception is attempted to be exhibited as an affair of thought, is plain ; and certainly the statement has its own subtlety of analytic and metaphysical truth : it may prove, indeed, a useful illustration of the manner of Hegel. In the celebrated preface to this work, the industry, an example of which we have just seen, is expressly referred to : — By this in general, that, as was expressed above, substance is in itself subject, is every object (Inhalt, literally, implex, or whole of comprehension) QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 381 its own reflexion into itself. The subsisting, or the substance of a finite object, is its equality with its own self; for its inequality with itself were its dis- solution. But self-equality, or equality with self, is pure abstraction ; and thia is thought. When I say Quality, I say the simple determinateness : by quality is one object distinguished from another, or by quality is it an object -r it is for its own self, or it consists through this simplicity with itself. But by this is it essentially thought. Herein is it understood, that das Seyn (being) is thought, &c. . . . Thought is the immanent Self of the Object, &c* By these quotations, it will be intelligible that Hegel in his earlier stages was employed in an endeavour to lead the notion directly into the object by an analysis of the successive phases of this latter, or of the successive faculties to which it was submitted. That is, Hegel at first sought to reduce Affection to Function by an analysis of the former. Transition from the one to the other, however, is not in this manner perfectly satisfactory, and Hegel was enabled to perceive later that to complete one side first, and to allow it, when completed, to pass over bodily, as it were, into its other in obedience to the general rhythm, would constitute, on the whole (ridiculed as it has been universally, and by Schelling particularly), a much more satisfactory transition. In short, it occurred in time to Hegel to identify the first form of the notion with the most abstract category, to develop category after category risingly towards the notion itself, to exhibit it itself, describing its own subjective forms, passing over into the notion of the object and terminating in the Idea, and thus to complete Logic, or the whole of those inner forms which were the souls of everything without. Logic completed, or the Logical Idea appearing summed and full-formed as an organic whole, he exhibited the same as- passing over, and falling asunder now into externality and particularity — as Nature. The next step was the conjunction of both into Spirit. But enough has now been said by way of reminder of the external operations of Hegel : we return now to- our commentary of the text where necessary. * Pref. Phaenom., pp. 41, 42; Berlin, 1841. The preceding, op. cit. p. 84. 382 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. CHAPTER II. There-being. And, first of all, we have to see the moment of the Begriff, or of Simple Apprehension, in A. There-being as such. The general distributions or divisions which precede ' a. There- being in general,' though to be perused, need not be allowed to arrest the reader for their full understanding, which, indeed, is impossible in the first instance. Nowhere, in truth, can any reader hope to read with the same perfect intelligence and open sense with which Hegel wrote, till after a repeated return from the united whole to the separated parts. As moment of simple apprehension, with but identity before us, the identity of There-being as such, or of There-being in general, there is not much to be said here. Accordingly, what is said is more of the nature of general remark. The construction or con- stitution of every There-being is accurately named, however ; and that is the main point. Everything that definitely is, is product of becoming, and as such it is a avvoKov, a com- posite— but in perfect unity singleness, and simpleness — of being and nothing. Now, everything that is, definitely is : we have, therefore, in the characterisations here reached, the principles of the universal structure of the all of things. The distinction is certainly subtle and difficult to realise ; still it is very certain that it is a not which gives the qualifying force — the edge of in- dividuality and self-identity to being itself. Without that not, being itself indeed is not, or nought ; for it is an absolute ab- straction, and there shows not a sign in it. In the value assigned to Daseyn, then, there is more than mere thought : we cannot say, only, according to these thoughts all things are; but we can say also, according to this very constitution all things are. When QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 383 the ingredients of certain medicinal juleps, &c, are sent dry, they are called the species of these medicaments. Now, similarly, we may say, that Daseyn is the universal species of every- thing that is. It is not necessary, then, that we should call up before us the idea of the originating subject in order to put ourselves at home with the meaning of Daseyn; this assignation is sufficient by itself ; we see at once its truth and value as the basal form. Again, it is important to know that being and nothing are not, each apart and by itself, anywhere denizens of this universe. What is, is an inseparable one of both ; neither being as being, nor nothing as nothing, anywhere actually is. Both are abstractions, and utterly void abstractions. It is saying very little for God, then, to say He is pure Being, or, what is the same thing, the Sum of all Realities ; yet no mode of characterising God is thought — very generally, at least — more appropriate or solemn. As Hegel points out, there is the same warrant for, and the same honour in, the designation for God of Sum of all Negations. The caution as regards the intercalations of reflexion is of value in its general scope, but its particular relevancy is not clear. Daseyn, There-being, is a simple one, therefore in the form of immediacy, therefore also in the form of being : this seems result of the objec- tive evolution, and not of the reader's subjective reflexion. Neither is it to this that Hegel's remark applies, but to our seeing, also, that it is only one-sidedly in the determination of Being, and that in point of fact the other determination, Nothing, is present also. Now it is this part that has been anticipated by reflexion, and not yet expressly evolved. The first sentence of the relative para- graph exhibits a peculiar grammatical construction. Up to the semicolon there are three clauses, of which the second is separated from the first by a comma, and the third by a comma and a dash from the second : now the function of this dash is to connect the third clause (ein aufgehobenes, negativ-bestimmtes) as well to the nominative (Das Ganze) of the first clause as to that (das Seyn) of the second. The peculiarity has been attempted to be con- veyed in the translation. Such longi -referent, multi-referent con- struction is not unusual in Hegel, and brings its own difficulties.* * There may be something of fancy in this same longi reference here ; but, taking nothing from, it perhaps even improves, the sense. Aufgehobenes, Negativ- bestimmtes : printed so as substantives, these words are right : they are adjectives in the text, and wrong — as such directly agreeing only with ' Moment.' My first translation may be fully the better one ! — N. 384 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. As regards the terms, there is not much occasion to add any remark. For Daseyn, perhaps, There-ness, So-ness, as well as Ness-ness would be more eligible than There-being, &c. For setzen we have used the term evolution ; but we shall have a better opportunity for the further discussion of this word. Vermittelung is an awkward term to convey in English: it is that process, mediation, or intervention of means, which brings about a result ; in fact, it is always a bringing about. Inhalt, as usual, is a com- plexus notarum, a complement of the significates of logical com- prehension. b. Quality. The difficulty here is to conceive — picture — negation as There- being, or Thereness, and Quality : it is hard to inspissate Nothing with Substance ; we must fix our eye, however, on the substantial negation in all quality as steadily as we can. The moment of objective reflexion must be well looked at here. The one element is distinguished from the other, and so, therefore, it is now a reflected entity, or it contains a reflexion from the other in it, at the same time that, by distinction, it is in a manner shed off or reflected on to its own self. The effect of the bestimmen of being by nothing may be illustrated. 'Daseyn ist bestimmtes Seyn:' one might almost translate this, There-being is curdled being ; or There-ness is curdled-ness. Something of a real negation may be so seen. — Again, throw into that clear air so much cold, and it is opacified, curdled into a cloud. In these examples, one might figure that negation had been added to the being that was, and so this opaque, curdled, determined There-being resulted. Being, in short, is determined ; there is a terminus put to it, a negation ; and so it is There-being, so much there-ness. Eemark. Reality and Negation. This observation is full of the most excellent matter, and opens striking vistas into several very unexpected directions. This applies to the sum of all realities, to that of all Negations — to the notions of God's Goodness, Justice, Wisdom, Power — to that of Absolute Power, &c. &c. The allusion to Bdhme is very interest- ing; and as regards Spinoza, the critique of Hegel is always QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 385 absolutely irresistible and masterly. There is a hint, too, very well worth observing, that though the individual belongs to other spheres than that of Seyn, he must, so far as he holds of Seyn, submit to the characterisations of Seyn. The writing here is so exoteric, that comment is unnecessary. As regards terms, in the beginning of the Remark, as we see, Hegel himself sets an sich as equal to im Begriffe. For the hopelessness of solution which some may feel in regard to Goodness, Power, &c, let me suggest that vital reciprocity which is the root of the whole : right is right only because there is a left; up, up, only because there is a down; and each is quite as much in the other — or simply other — as it is in itself, or itself. With a general remark or two, we shall pass on. If we sup- pose what Daseyn is, to have been thought before Daseyn was, we shall come to see, on due consideration, that it could not have been thought otherwise than Hegel indicates. It is to this strict think- ing of Hegel that we are to refer his tendency to keep in view the etymological meaning of his terms. In fact, this alone ought to be a guarantee of his sincerity, and earnestness, and good faith with us. He is not contented with a vague sign; he does not move in tropes ; he must have a word that accurately and pre- cisely and exactly cuts out his thought; and he never uses a word without distinctly seeing what it amounts to, or perfectly satisfying himself that it is adequate to his purpose. This, how- ever, makes the difficulty of Hegel ; because in him, if we attempt, as the sensuous modern literature has taught us, to float on with words in their ordinary and current sense, we find ourselves pres- ently lost. It is a severe task, then, to him who would follow Hegel, to keep by the thought of Hegel, and, in spite of the cloud of current sense, recognise distinctly in each word, and even in each fraction of a word, what that precisely is which Hegel means it to convey. Take the word endlich, finite, for example : if we commit ourselves to the vague and phantasy-exciting signification in com- mon use, we shall never see into the notion ; while, on the contrary, how different, how clear it becomes when we tame phantasy into thought, and correct loose opinion by etymology ! That is finite which is ended or endable in space, in time, or in thought ; that is infinite which is neither ended or endable in space, in time, or in thought: rather, anything in time and space is superfluous, everything in these being limited by other, and thought with the pure forms of sense themselves is alone what is infinite. Consider Ego, for example : it is wholly infinite — unended, unendable. 2b 386 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. It is this same close restricting of himself to reality which has procured Hegel the reproach of Haym, that perception is always behind him. The reproach is a compliment : Hegel would deal with facts of existence, and not with fictions of conception. It does not follow, indeed, that thought is less pure thought because perception is behind it ; rather, in an opposite supposition, thought would be but empty idle subjectivity : function and affection are necessary complementary reciprocals. Still the development from Seyn to Daseyn which we have witnessed, though true to percep- tion, has always found its materials within its own self. (The divisions are, of course, from their very nature, anticipations.) What is said of a category is always to be understood by reference to the world of facts ; but this is the point which must not be overlooked, that it is also universally and necessarily true and applicable in that world. In reading Daseyn, for example, it just gains in sense and truth, the more real and energetic and entire the reference is which we make to the concrete : the thing is, that the characterisation is unexceptive. Besides, we have not to occupy ourselves with the concomitant reflexions in such manner as to hide from ourselves the progressively extricated differentiae which are again re-incorporated to increase and progress. The homogeneousness with which being and nothing are one in There-being is the important consideration. We have not being here, and nothing there: they are perfectly incorporated into a one. Light and darkness are, as it were, perfectly commingled into the resultant colour. Again, the colour is directly a light, as There-being is directly being; but the other moment, dark- ness, nothing, is equally there, and will manifest itself on its own side. Colour is not partly light, and partly dark; it is a uniform simple immediate : still it is the Grundlage, the neutral base, in which light and darkness both are — id^ellement, that is — ideally — moments, but sublated. The illustration corresponds not inexactly. The definiteness, then, seems mainly due to the negative element : it is the dark gives colour and distinction in colour. Not very different is it in the case of a flavour; the peculiarity of it, the difference of it, is the edge, and seems apart from the body of the flavour : when it is all peculiarity or edge, it is thin, worthless, or passes into nothing. (One meets characters who are all edge, distinction, emphasis, accent ; they cut, but they do not move: the fair union makes the great man, as Homer, Sophocles, Epaminondas, Cervantes, &c). Sound is much the QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 387 same ; it is determination by silence that produces musical notes : possibly, varying proportions of vibration and non- vibration con- stitute much of the difference in sounds. Colour, in like manner, may result, not, as in the coarse theory of Goethe, from a mecha- nical mixture of light and darkness, but from variety in the alternation of vibration and non-vibration (undulation offers no difference to make a difficulty). It is remarkable, too, that there are seven musical notes and seven colours ; and if the latter be really reducible to three, is such reduction applicable to the former ? Are colours but music to the eye — music but colours to the ear ? Perhaps, variety in odours and flavours similarly arises, and all difference is but alternation of vibration and non-vibration. Thus, too, may neutral effects be accounted for, as the black of the union of iron and gallic acid in ink. Non-being, then, is the seat of determination, the edge of difference — how else is edge conceivable but as cessation ? Edge here, too, is but another word for the smack, the pitch, the feel. In this way we can see differ- ence in identity almost as a matter of fact. We can conceive what is as the one identical, infinitesimal spore whose vibration is its difference — and that is the all of thought as exhibited. Hegel's general view must be capable of being so stated. What is the universe to him, if not the one absolute vox inflecting itself into its involved voculations ? Bestimmung is but articulation, and the absolute Bestimmung is but the absolute articulation of the absolute one — and that one is just thought : Thought's own native articulations constitute the all of things. — The above remarks, it is to be understood, however, are not to be regarded materially, or in themselves, but only formally and relatively, as illustrative of the union of being and nothing in every There-being. c. Something. The reader ought to pay particular attention to this section, for it is the most important we have yet seen, both in itself and as illustrative of the thinking peculiar to Hegel. — We may notice, in the first place, what is spoken of as the Unterschied, the inter-shed, the distinction, the dif-ference, which in There-being appears as reality and negation. It is the same difference which was first named being and nothing, then origin and decease, and now as here. Being and nothing collapsed, or were eclipsed, into the concrete neutral base, becoming ; There-being assumed a like rela- 388 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. tion to origin and decease ; and now we see Something similarly to resume reality and negation. Thus, then, we see logical determination verily in process : the moments have successively thickened themselves, and the base (which is just also a moment) has likewise successively thickened itself. Now, the means pro- ductive of this thickening has been simply reflexion, or indeed just — thinking : the one moment of the single logical rhy thmus passes into its opposite, and with it collapses into a higher third: this is Hegel's dialectic; but it is also simple apprehension, judgment, and reason ; or it is Begriff, Urtheil, Schluss ; or, again, it is vXtj, fiopy, evreXexeta, an sich, fur sich, &c. &c * "What we have to see here, however, is, that the difference exists, and that it is always, in whatever form, still the difference, — an antithesis and at the same time synthesis of two such, that the one is only because the other is, and both collapse into a third. The reader must bear in mind the inter-shed, then, as the primordial, but ever-present and vital, diaeresis or diaphora of the world : Yes— No— Both 1 The single pivot of this section, however, finds itself in the phrases first and second negation, the negation of the negation, the concrete absolute negation, resolution of difference, sublation of dis- tinction, the negative reference of self to self, the negative unity of self with self, the, Mediation of self with self, Being-within Self, &c. ; all of which just mean the same thing, and that is, the negation of the constitutwi# variety, or many into the constituted unit or one, or the absorption of the parts into the whole, said whole being further regarded as simply singular. In Something, in short, There-being sublates its own difference, or it returns to itself from its own difference, and is thus gone into itself. If any one will consider what a Subject is, he will readily understand this : an Ego or I is the unity of an infinitude of details, but as Ego it is wholly negative, as Ego all its details have disappeared ; Ego is, therefore, the negative unity of itself with itself, or the media- tion of itself with itself; and thus is it the negation of the negation, for its details are in the first instance as negative to it (the abstract negative is here involved, productive of variety or difference), but it as return to itself is the negation of * Perhaps it is confusing to call this movement Reflexion, as Hegel is known — at least in strictness at first — usually to reserve that term for only one of its contained moments — that of the separating and abstracting understanding or judgment : an instance of this occurs in this very paragraph, in an allusion to unformed Reflexion. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 389 the negation, and the resumption of concrete unity. The two negatives or negations are thus, then, very clear ; and Something as negation of the negation is seen to be the beginning of the Subject. The words in the text, ' There-being in general, distinc- tion in it, and resolution of this distinction,' contain the whole business. In these words, too, the moments come completely to the surface: 'There-being in general' is the immediacy of the Begriff, the An sich, or the moment of simple apprehension; ' distinction in it ' is the mediacy of the Ur-theil, or the moment of judgment ; and ' resolution of this distinction ' is, as Schluss or resuming totality, the moment of reason. In him who shall under- stand this section, the lesson of Hegel has fairly begun. Every way the thinking here is admirable : consider the pointing out, though that is an anticipation, and Something has first of all to other itself in itself, — that Something, as in itself Becoming, goes asunder into the concrete Werden that has Something and Other as its sides, both of which are Somethings. The reader will get a glimpse of the negative reference to self, if he will conceive his finger running questioningly over an unknown surface, and suddenly returning from the edge of the same back, as it were, to its centre with the word wood, or stone, or glass, &c, as the case may be. Let him suppose himself to be blindfolded, and successive surfaces to be tentatively offered to one finger, and he will find that he is in.contact for some time simply with an unknown blur of difference, which blur suddenly collapses to a unity — and to a unity of self-reference — when what it is — and that is its notion — suddenly strikes him. Then only when it attains self-reference is the blur — Something. Hegel's uieta- physic of Something, then, — and it is perfect, for no Something in the universe but will be found to be accurately constituted so, — is but a concrete act of perception as perception was determined by Kant. Consider what an unknown blur the Santa Maria must have proved to the Indians who watched with appalled astonish- ment those bright shapes, Columbus and the harnessed Spaniards, descending from it ; and consider, again, the easy unity of self- reference in which it would have all gone together as ' ship ' to the eyes of any European sailor, had any such, by shipwreck or otherwise, found himself among them ! All this refers to Kant's theory of perception — a theory which, as stated at full elsewhere* in its own place, shall only be alluded to here. This theory, we • (In the Text-Book to Kant.) 390 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. may observe, Hegel has undoubtedly made his own. In Kant's theory of Perception, then, there are three moments : there is, first, the manifold of Sense; second, the synthetic unity of the Category ; and third, the Apperception of the individual subject. This, again, is but the Notion of Hegel: the Category is the Universal; the Manifold, the Particular; and subjective Apper- ception, the Singular. Now, we have seen manifolds united into the self -referent Singles, wood, stone, glass, ship, &c, and it appears as if this self -reference were the result of the single category Something. But this is not the case: in an act of perception there are generally a vast number of categories involved. The Indians who saw the Santa Maria, thoTigh they had no form 4 ship ' to apply, were, nevertheless, not idle with their categories, but had soon stuck it full with many characterisations of their own. It was a thing, and had qualities ; it was a force ; perhaps it was an animal and had life : it was certainly there in Quantity and Quality ; it was Something, it had definite being, it involved becoming, it implied pure being. This is to try and convey to the reader that all perceptions — that is, all objects — are but congeries of categories, of notions. Take any object you like, and throw out of it one after the other the categories you have thought into it (Kant), or which are in it (Hegel) — then ask yourself what remains ? To the common mind what remains is still the object, the wood, stone, glass, ship, in absolute, isolated, free independence, after as before. To Kant what remains is the manifold of sense — affection set up in us by the unknown thing in itself or things in themselves without us, disposed into the really internal, but apparently external, forms of space and time : this, then, is what remains to Kant — an unperceived, incoherent manifold of affection. To Hegel, again, what remains must be otherwise characterised. For him, the Kantian Thing-in-itself, as a mere void characterless assumption, exists not. To him, again, the sensuous element, affection, as but the externalisation or mere other of the intel- lectual element, function, exists only in this latter. To Hegel, consequently, withdrawal of the categories is the total eclipse at once of an inner and an outer ; or sense, as but the reflexion of thought, must disappear with thought. If you discharge, indeed, all categories from any object — a stone, say — what is there then that does remain ? Can you name it ? can you find in it a single character whereby you can say it ? No ; it is unsayable, an Unsagbares, a characterless void, like the Kantian Thing-in-itself ! QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 391 At least, it is as nothing to the other element, which has just been discharged, or at best it is only the other of that element. To Hegel, then, the object of thought is thought, and anything else opined in it is but its other as other. But Hegel is not satisfied with saying as much ; he wishes to show as much, and he exhibits the object of thought — just the object — in gradual growth from the nothing of pure being up to the All and the One of the Absolute Spirit. The Logic of Hegel, then, is but the genetic exposition of the true Thing-in-itself as opposed to the inane Thing-in-itself of Kant. Nay, the reader must feel this himself now — after the metaphysic of Something. Has not 'a light gone up' to him thence? lias he not felt that the solidity of every Something was, after all, thought ? Has he not been made to see that even his ordinary perceptions imply thoughts, are impossible without thoughts, and that these thoughts constitute the all-important moments of these perceptions ? Even to him, then, now, in this Logic, is it not the formation of the Thing-in-itself he sees before him ? If we refer now to a passage quoted from the ' Phaenomenologie,' a little way back, we shall see how much the ' Logik ' is a rise as regards the same. What was to Hegel in the one work the vague, inarticulate, as it were dreaming, Sichselbstgleichheit, or equality with self, is here the precise, fully-developed, perfectly self-conscious negative reference to self. Kant is, in every way, the materia of Hegel ; but if any one will realise to himself what thinking lay in Hegel between those determinations of the * Phaenomenologie ' and these of the ' Logik,' he will get a glimpse into — well — profundity. Hegel is a royal thinker, tenacious, deeply-incisive, long-breathed. The necessity of the one of a notion to the many of sense before we can even perceive: this, a determination of Kant, is another way of exhibiting the germ-cell of Hegel. Hegel saw this to be necessarily, in every case, a negative reference to self ; and so he made it his object to find all the cases, and in their sequence and system. How much, then, deep consideration of what constitutes Kant's theory of perception, and also the Thing-in-itself, had to do with the origin of the system of Hegel, ought now to be tolerably clear, and we may conclude here with a word on two or three of the terms. Real and Reality must always be understood by reference to the place in the development where the latter word emerges; indeed, this is a remark universally applicable as regards the terms of Hegel : to understand them we have only to refer to the 392 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. moment out of which their notion rose. Opine, as usual, concerns crude subjective mein-xmg, as it were the mere mine-mg, ray-ing, or me-ing of thought. Being-within-self, or Insichseyn : the effect of In here, as contradistinguished from An, must be seen into ; it is attempted to be conveyed by loithin. In Something, indeed, a within begins. ' In Something Mediation with Self has reached position : ' these last three words translate ist gesetzt. The meaning plainly is, that, in the one notion, the other is explicit or fairly overt, and expressed, that is, it is in logical position. This setzen, especially in its de- rivatives Gesetztseyn and Gesetztes, is always particularly trouble- some to an English translator. What it means here, however, is happily particularly plain. The would-be abstract nothing, of course, refers to the common understanding, and its ' it is the same thing, therefore, whether I have a house or nothing, a hundred dollars or nothing, &c.' This nothing plainly would be abstract, or is supposed to be abstract; but, on the contrary, it is evidently concrete, as it refers to a concrete — house, dollars, &c. That the most abstract determinations 'are also the most current expressions of unformed reflexion/ (and it is hoped the manner, 'the reflexion,' &c, will not prove too foreign here,) might have been suggested to Hegel by a remark of Kant's at page 280 of the Logic in his collected works, which points out that abstract notions are ' sehr brauchbar,' very useful and useable, ' as they may be applied to many things.' Some forty-three pages further on, Hegel says the same thing again thus : ' to unformed thought, the abstractest categories, being, there-being, reality, finitude, &c, are the most current.' Hegel's own thought is evidently here, even were it on occasion of Kant, which, however, — the whole matter is of little moment, — is not certain. Never- theless, one cannot read the Logic of Kant — seemingly meagre as it is — without thinking perpetually how much this and that must have done for Hegel. Here is a passage which well illustrates the Vorstellung of Hegel, as well as the production of a pure universal ' Logik ' as parallel to a pure universal ' Grammatik : ' — Knowledge of the universal in abstracto is speculative knowledge ; know- ledge of the universal in concreto, common knowledge. Philosophical know- ledge is speculative knowledge of reason, and it begins therefore there where the common exercise of reason commences to make attempts in the cognition of the universal in abstracto. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 393 From this determination of the difference between the common and the speculative use of reason, we may infer what people the beginning of philosophising must date from. Of all nations the Greeks, then, first began to philosophise. For they first attempted to cultivate cognitions of reason, not by aid of the leading-string of images (figures, pictures), but in abstracto ; while, other nations, on the contrary, sought to make notions intelligible to themselves always only by means of images in concrete. Thus even at the present day there are nations, as the Chinese and certain Indians, who treat indeed of things which are derived solely from reason, as of God, the Im- mortality of the Soul, &c, but seek not, nevertheless, to explore the nature of these objects according to notions and rules in abstracto.* Kant goes on to say, that what philosophy appears among Persians and Arabians comes from Aristotle, that the Zendavesta displays no trace of the same, and that the ' gepriesene ' Egyptian wisdom was, in comparison with Greek philosophy, mere child's- play. The antithesis of the Hegelian conception to the Hegelian notion is precisely that of an image in concrete and a thought in abstracto. It is as images or pictures, one sees, that conceptions are just representations of notions. The hint to Hegel's whole process is also plain. Here from the ' Soul's Tragedy ' of that wonderfully analytic and subtle character-reproducing poet, Browning, is a passage which may illustrate the same subject of conceptions and notions : — As when a child comes in breathlessly and relates a strange story, you try to conjecture from the very falsities in it, what the reality was, — do not con- clude that he saw nothing in the sky, because he assuredly did not see a flying horse there, as he says, — so, through the contradictory expression, do you see, men should look painfully for, and trust to arrive eventually at, what you call the true principle at bottom. This suggests another Hegelian characteristic : we, like dupes, are led daily, and blindfolded, by ' what you call the true principle at bottom,' without the slightest notion of what it is ; but he, for his part, must see and know and settle it all as Wesen. B. FlNITUDE. The reader will find elements of difficulty here. Let him re- member, first of all, the exact point of the development at which he has arrived. He has seen There-being sublate its own deter- * Op. cit, p. 189. 394 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. minateness, distinction, or difference by reflexion into its own self as a Something. The sublation has not destroyed the difference, however, which still, as it were, remains outside the reflexion into self, and thus distinguished from the self of the Something is, in that relation, Other. The reader must see that the other is not im- ported from elsewhere, but that the Something others itself in itself. This is the first point to be observed, and it is one of the greatest importance : we must never part company with what we have before us, and always see clearly whither we are arrived. At present we have reached Something and Other, which, as such, have, in the first instance, the air of being indifferent in regard to each other. Now, it is important to see that, each being equally a Something and only other because of the other, the element of negation is not in them themselves, but falls out or outside of both. But this involves a reflexion the one from the other, with the result that Something is in itself against its Being-for-Other. To understand this, we must see that we have not introduced a foreign other, that the other spoken of is the other which reflected itself in the Something itself, and which still is the Something, but so that the Something there is as Other, or is its own Being- as-Other. This is the true development of the notion implied in the Hegelian Seyn-fiir-Anderes. The reflexion by which the negation was identified with There-being, and restored to, or incor- porated with, the reality — and these were the moments of There- being — gave birth to the Something, which Something again, as negative reflexion into self, involved another from which the re- flexion took place. But this other was still its own ; and it is the peculiar constitution of every Something in this universe, that it involves, or implies, or contains its own other. There, however, in this region of other, the Something is as Being-as-other, or, as Hegel prefers it, Being-for-other. The peculiar force of the German fur, as already seen in the illustrations relative to fur mieh and fur sich, is here to be recalled and reconsidered. We say in English, it passes for genuine, it passes for gold, &c. : this is the same for as that in the Being-for-other. Something in the deter- mination so designated, is every way other; it is there where it is as other, and there where it is in every direction for other. Now this the region of otherness, is the region also of recognis- ableness determinateness. And again the determinateness is the Something's own. But the Something's determinateness reflected into the Something, becomes that Something's qualification or QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 395 precise determination; meaning thereby its vocation, destination, purpose, chief end, or how else you may name its one manifestible peculiar nature. Then, again, the peculiar manifesting nature passes plainly into the peculiar manifested nature; and that is Beschaffenheit, or so-constitutedness, which we may translate, in opposition to qualification (from qualis) by talification (from talis). Talification, then, alludes to Something being constituted such, that when involved with Other it asserts itself thus and thus ; or talis (such sort) is just the answer to qualis (what sort). Now this actual manifestation, identical also (as we have seen) with the potential manifestibility, must, without difficulty, be perceived to constitute, as Hegel says, the immanent and, at the same time, negated Being-for-other, or the Limit of the Some- thing. That it is the immanent Being-for-other is plain ; and that, manifesting itself only as or when involved with other, it is also negated, is likewise plain. Not less easy is it to see that its assertion against or on other is its Limit ; or that where it at once affirmatively or immanently and negatedly or with other is, there is its Limit, or there is it in its Limit. But just such constitution (of assertion with or against other) as characterises Limit, is what we name the immanent determina- tion, proper nature, of any Something. Lastly, if Limit (End) is the proper nature of Something, Some- thing is evidently the Finite, or that which is of an ended nature — ended and enddble, inasmuch as -there is reference in it to a negating Other. The remark that follows is prompted by this — that Hegel in the second chapter has passed into the moment of the Ur-theil, and he excuses the affirmative nature of the findings under the first division A — affirmative though the moment is negative — by pointing out that, if in the first instance we had a positive verdict, and the Urtheil almost in the form of the Begriff, we shall now, under the second division, find all as negative as can be wished, and the Urtheil fairly as Urtheil. Terms here are thus explained. Bestimmung emerging from the development as the Qualification or what sort which it is, is accurately defined ; and Beschaffenheit no less so. Immanent is in every English dictionary. a. Something and an Other. This is certainly very difficult thinking ; but it is, at the same 396 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. time, singularly deep, penetrating, and comprehensive. Under the first moment, marked 1, there are three sub-moments : Firstly, to Simple Apprehension, both (Something and Other) are Some- thing ; secondly, to Judgment, both are Other ; thirdly, to Eeason, the Other is the Other for itself, and just so also is it, at the same time, Something, or the Something. That both are Something, and that both are relatively Other, we may take this as quite plain, without more explanation ; but the Other isolated and for itself is more difficult. Yet this is not so very difficult when the true point of view is attained to. The Other belongs not to the Somethings themselves ; it is quite external to them ; it is some- thing else than they, then; something independent, sui generis, and on its own account : it may be isolated, then, and considered for itself, and so on. Then the Other as Other must just be this externality as such of Nature : it is always to Spirit its Other, and nothing but its Other, at the same time that it is in its own nature simply the Other as such. Then this other by self-reflexion sublates itself, and otherness remains simply a distinguishedness — a relativity, not a substantiality and positivity. — These are great thoughts : they are the truth of Idealism, or, rather, they are that idealistic Eealism which is the only true, and which extends to each moment of the antithesis its own rights, in such manner that each is seen to be but the necessary complementary reciprocal of the other. Under number 2, we are to expect a moment of distinction ; and that it proves to be, for the poles of the single antithesis, which were at first being and nothing, are now distinguished as Being-in-self and Being-for-other. So far as words are concerned, Hegel's own seem sufficient; but we may point out in passing, that a firm view of Non-there-being may be procured by consider- ing the constitution of There-being, in which the element of negation, which was still, however, There-being, is what is now referred to as the Non-there-*being. Again, we may remark that we have all our materials still before us, and need not move from the spot, neither to please Haym, who will have it that we do move, nor Rosenkranz, who certainly, in all conscience, moves enough, and never thinks, indeed, of staying by the spot. The phrase ' their truth is their reference/ or ' their reference is their truth,' is understood at once when the Something is thought as othering itself in itself; for the other and the reflexion to self are very plainly mutual complements, true only in their sum. Again, QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 397 it is well worthy the reader's deepest consideration, how it is that being is just reference to self: there is a little corner in these paragraphs whence there is a good glimpse into this. Certainly, we are not limited to our own materials, but the findings will be found true for all materials : it is true, for instance, of all Some- things, and of all Others, that their truth is their reference. Under number 3, as is natural to expect now, we shall find the moments which have been but just disjoined re-united again. There is no difficulty here, indeed, to those who have followed what precedes ; the most of the space, in fact, is taken up with certain explanations. What we see first is, that the Other is still in the Something, though this latter has gone into itself. Circumstance has been chosen expressly to translate Umstand, which is here the Being-for-other. The sense of In-itself is made very plain here. We have spoken of it as implying latent potentiality ; but this we see now is a secondary nuance. The In-itself is, first of all, just the counter-reflexion to Being-for-other; but then, In-itself without Being-for-other is only abstract — is only potential. The Being-for-other, in fact, as regards the constitution of any Some- thing, is in the In-itself, or just is in it, and is truly the Some- thing, is truly the In-itself, or is just truly it. This is all amply illustrated in the text ; — especially striking is it that In-itself as a characterisation simply abstract is simply also external. There is no allowance to be made, then, for what we are in ourselves, unless in relation to what we are — or have manifested ourselves — for others. The Thing-in-itself is here made plain ; and the simple trick reflexion plays itself in such distinctions is very simply and happily exposed. The true In-itself is the notion, whether as totality or individual detail : this, however, we see, requires Setzen, requires position; for the an sich is just at first the abstract Begriff. That suggests the special meaning of Gesetztseyn, which is so difficult to render in English. We are here in Seyn, being ; but being is the reference to self, and each of its moments, there- fore, will be as beent or self-referent. A character of self- substantiality will attach to each, and movement among them will be but a passing from one to the other. But the result of self-reference is Being-in-self, or the In-itself; and so it is that being is so much or so wholly Ansichseyn. The moments, then here are rather set or posited, than that they set or posit each other; which latter movement is that peculiar to Wesen or 398 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Essence. This Hegel illustrates by examples from both spheres. If it is difficult to translate, we are not allowed, then, neverthe- less, to fail to understand. Under Being, the action of Setzen is to explicate, or to make the implicit explicit. This is a process of evolution, expression, realisation, statement, and it is usually named logical position. Under Essence or Wesen, the moments of evolution become overtly reciprocal, or the one posits, sets, or stakes the other. As we have seen, right sets left, left right, &c. Anything thus set, then, is not independent and self-subsistent ; it is derivative, representative, vicarious, subdititious, surrogative, pronominal; it is a reaction, a recoil, a rebound or redound, a replication, a reflexion, a reciprocation, — it is an exinvolute, an eximplicate, an occasionate. In this way, one can see the meaning of ein Gesetztes. Again, Gesetztseyn just expresses the abstract quality of all this : it is posititiousness, adjectitiousness, ascripti- tiousness, attributiveness, assertiveness, &c. &c. In short, we are to see the universal presence of reflexion and reciprocation, of relativity and correlativity, or of the relative inference already spoken of. No doubt, Hegel sees in Setzen, to set, or stake, or put in place of, and from this the rest derives. In reference to the Metaphysical methods that preceded his own, he has good right to say that this element of mutuation and reflexion never entered, and that the whole effort was to maintain something positive. We may fancy Hegel teasing out substantial unity into a whole world of reflexion ; and then, in that case, one might say, What is, is Gesetztseyn, mere reflexion, mutuation, mutua- titiousness. b. Qualification, Talijication, and Limit. We have seen the Being-for-other declared in the Something, in it, rather than in its in-itself. This is a dredging or deepening of abstract In-itself, into a capability of the Being-for-other. Or the Being-for-other being reflected into the In-itself, this In-itself is now he-mediated (concretely furnished) thereby. It is no longer abstract latent potentiality which is before us as the In-itself ; the Being-for-other seems now reflected into its depths, and to lie within it, mediating it, or giving it a concrete interior. Never- theless, the In-itself is still abstract in that it holds in it a mere reflexion of the Being-for-other, and is still provided with nega- tion or with Being-for-other. But what is mirrored here is QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 399 just inner qualification, inner determination proper, or peculiar inner nature. One can understand this, and how the notion of capacity or capafo7^y is brought about ; and one can see also that this is a deter minateness not only beent, but an sich beent, or beent in itself. From In-itself to In it, there is a rise of manifes- tation, still the abstractness of the In-itself is a necessary moment ; without abstractness, the inner nature would simply be Being-for- Other, which it is not. There is a peculiarity of grammar in the phrase ' into which it is reflected into itself : ' it is Hegel's, however, and intentional. That to which the Something is adequate, is evidently the force of Bestimmung here, which is thus, as it were, equal to the defini- tion, and more than the differentia. No. 1 further illustrates this sense of Bestimmung ; and the reader has simply to see that this sense has fairly risen, as well as that nothing has been taken in from elsewhere. Well con- sidered, what is said about ' determinateness manifoldly growing through involution with Other,' &c, does not impugn this state- ment : we are still in presence only of our original materials. The next paragraph contains excellent illustration, but is diffi- cult, and requires intimate initiation before one can find oneself at home in it. In the first place, we must understand Reason to be Vernunft (Ver-nommenes) ; and that implies what is taken together and trans, which again is the concrete All and the resuming One, or simply the living Totality that is. In this light, then, Man is the thinking totality of all that is, or of the universe. This is his deter- mination, but thought as such is his determinateness; or the one is his qualification, the other his qualificatedness. Then, again, all that Man is, even what in him has not the form of thought (as the element of nature or of sense), is in itself thought. But Man is thought not only in himself, but in him ; that is, we cannot say ' there is nothing in him,' but we must say there is thought in him : it is recognised as his manifestible peculiar nature — as his Bestimmung, and throughout his whole actuality and existence. Thought is thus concrete, not the abstract form as which we gener- ally regard it, but endowed with the Inhalt and Erfullung, the implement and complement of actual objectivity and life. Such is man's nature, life, or living purpose ; but this nature is only in itself, it is not a completed realisation and statement, not actu full explication and expansion ; it — together with this filling which is 400 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. veritably in it — is in the form of In-itself in general — it is only an Is-to-be — its filling appears as external to it, as over-against it, as what still is to be brought into it. In this way, this paragraph will be found intelligible. I have attempted to help a little the last sentence in the translation. The construction of this sentence is peculiar ; for the last die in it, referring to the Erfiillung, has awkwardly to skip clauses to make good its reference. Implement is used in its etymological sense for filling, &c. No. 2 has seven paragraphs, and we shall remark on them separately. The first is easy in itself, but is received with hesita- tion and suspicion by the reader. Hegel appears here to play so very clearly fast and loose just as it suits him, that the hocus- pocus of the whole business must just be held patent. It is to be said, however, that the nature of the case really is so; that, for all appearances to the contrary, we have still before us the original one or fundamen, and the original two or momenta; and that it is not our fault, nor, indeed, virtue, if reflexion now on this side and now on that, or now in this moment and now in that, should seem double and contradictory. This doubleness is in truth not ours, but that of the thing itself, of what is. It is quite fair, then, to return to the Being-for-other, and the result of its independence now : in C fact, we must see that its independence now, or outside of the deter - \ mination as the determination, can only be what Hegel calls it — 1 the Beschaffenheit ; — for the Beschaffenheit of anything is just that Being-for-other in it which remains apart from its function proper, its defining and characterising business as such. The next paragraph is explanatory, and its general reference outwards is perfectly allowable. It is to be seen as a^result of its very metaphysical or logical constitution, too, that Something is a prey to influence from without : Something has negation, other, in it. Change in Something {i.e., anything) will be found to be seated, not where the Something is in itself, but where it is indif- ferent outer other, or where it is indifferent outer Being-for-other ; and that, as apart from the determination^(or qualification) as such, is the region of what we name Talification. Change, too, is legitimately introduced, for change is implied in being ' a prey to influence from without.' The fourth paragraph contains the reciprocal transition of Quali- fication into Talification, and of the latter into the former, and is of some length and difficulty. The burthen is this: Qualifi- l\ QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 401 cation arises from the reflexion of the Being-for-other of the Some- thing into the In-itself of the same, and is analogous to what we name special function. But though the reflexion has sublated the Being-for-other, it has not cancelled it — the constitutive moments of the Something still remain other to other. But the Being-for- other that remains outside of the Qualification (special function) is Talification— concomitant, collateral, secondary, or, as it were, contingent function. The Qualification seems indifferent, then, to the Talification ; yet as regards the Something both are in it, or both belong to the one determinateness of the Something, or both, then, by implication pass into one another mutually. What Some- thing is in itself is also in it; but that implies a Being-for-other — or just another to which the qualification is open : but qualifi- cation in involution with other is talification. Or the determin- ateness as such implies a negative, and thus introduces an element of otherness into the qualification which is thus again talification. These steps are certainly difficult, and the original is not easy. Perhaps it is after the words ' the connexion is more particularly this,' that the reader finds the longest pause ; for the copula of thought that unites the immediately next sentence, relating to the 1 qualification as such being open to the relation to other,' with the sentence which follows, bearing on the ' determinateness being at the same time moment,' is, we should say, very hard to hit. Indeed, what the precise ' determinateness ' alluded to is, is not at all readily seen. The sentence or two of comment immediately above declare the determinateness in question to be the first and original determinateness as such, while they make the one sentence (of the two whose copula is difficult to see), though corroborative, yet independent of the other. The former of them may also be con- ceived as preliminarily demonstrating the ' openness to other ; ' but that, as the comment holds, amounts at once to talification. In short, the differentia is at bottom a prqprium ; and a proprium is always a possible differentia. The conversion of Talification into Qualification occurs thus: the element of talification is that by which the Something is open to the accidentally of involution with other. Now, this element per se is just what was called the Other as such. It is thus the other of itself, and so again self-referent There-being : but that is just an In-itielf together with a determinateness or— qualification. Thus, talification which appeared outer is identified with the inner, and thus the determining of the other is met by the 2c 402 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. immanent determining of the Something itself. To illustrate — the Something is a chair, the Bestimmung or qualification is human support in a certain posture, its Being-for-other is solidity, its determinateness is wood, its Beschaffenheit or talification is in- flammability. This Being-for-other of wood expressed by its inflammability does not concern that which is reflected into the Something as chair (solidity) and fulfils the Bestimmung support ; they seem indifferent to each other : it is the solidity in the wood, ] and not its inflammability, which concerns the chair in its functional as chair. Nevertheless, the inflammability as regards the chair is in it ; and this involves a Being-for-other, or another to which the special function of the chair is open and exposed. Or the determinateness, wood, is at the same time moment, and contains at the same time the qualitative difference, to be different from the In-itself, to be the negative of the Something (the chair), or another There-being, another Thereness, /Sbness, Nessness, or just entity than the chair. In this way, it is evident that the function special of the chair is involved with whatever Being-for-other (quality) the determinateness, the wood, possesses, and is thus talification. The inflammability of the chair is held over, and in terrorem of, the qualification or function of the chair. Another Being-for-otberof the chair that rejmains outsideof ita qualification oiLspeciaJLfunction is, that the wood is food to a certain tick or worm ; this Being-for-other is thus talification ; and how dependent the function proper or the qualification is on this talification is too obvious to require extension: the chair, in short, may fall into powder, and qualification vanish into talification. Again, the Being-for-other which does not enter into the qualification of the chair, but is separated from it as talification, evidently per se just amounts to what has been named the Other as such. Take it as the inflammability of wood — that is other to its solidity ; in the chair, it is just the other as such, the other of itself, so self to self-referent There-being, or a self to self- referent entity — inflammable wood. It is so, too, we see that the talification belongs to what the Something is in itself, or that the Something alters with the talification. The chair falls to powder under its eatableness, or into charcoal under its inflammability. For the determinateness of the chair, the wood, is at once the chair and the other of the chair. Here we can see how the other of the something is the other per se, the other in itself, the other of itself, the other of the other, &c. ; for the wood as other of the QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 403 chair is the other of itself, and so an entity referent of self to self, or wood as such. Any number of similar illustrations will not now be difficult to the reader, and the passage of qualification into talification, or of quality into tality, and vice versd, as well as how it is true that Something always involves an Other which is itself Something, will not now probably be hard to see. We are not confined either to such finite things as chairs, &c, for examples, — we may similarly use men. The quality of Napoleon was to lead armies, and to reach thus his zenith ; but it was his tality to he vulgarly ambitious, to seek aristocratic connexions, and to reach thus his nadir and extinction. It was the quality of Burns to sing; but it was his tality to be greedy of the moment: as high, then, as he rose by quality, so low did he sink by tality. — The theme is new and endless; but surely it is enough to show the vein, without exhausting it — by an easy process of rhetoric or simple prosiness which will, perhaps, prove irresistible to others. — It is important to see that the Something always still expresses its own inner self in the tality, and that it is with the tality that Some- thing alters itself. This is well seen in all the illustrations — chair, Napoleon, Burns. The fifth paragraph tells us, what we see perfectly, that the change now alluded to is not that which concerned the traffic in its own self of the Something with the Other brought to it by its own Determinateness, but a change fairly expressed and overtly explicated as regards the Something. The first change was wholly of the nature of In-itself ; but this is one determined : it also appears to be connected with a development of the potential interior or within-itself of the Something. Or, we may say, the first othering of Something was implicit, while the present is, on the contrary, explicit : negation is now explicitly determined as im- manent to Something, or as its evolved within-itself, whereas pre- viously negation was discerned in Something only by implication. The identification of quality and tality replaces the Something. Still, in view of the qualitative difference subsisting between qualification and talification there appear two Somethings. These two Somethings, then, are in the one Something ; they are not separated by mere abstract difference, by difference as such, a difference having place in their comparison only ; their difference is now rather immanent to them, inherent in them. The affirmation of neither is direct, the affirmation of both is indirect; it is a result of the elimination of the otherness 404 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. introduced by the quality or qualification, whether of the one or of the other, into the common In-itself. This can be illustrated by the chair and the wood, which are two Somethings in their qualitative difference, and one only after sublation of the same. Or we may say, water is Something ; its quality is that it is the universal menstruum that flows, or just, par excellence, the Vehicle ; its tality is capability of becoming ice. Well, H~0 is in each (the water and the ice), or each is HO. This is the one something, but they themselves again are two. Yet the negation, or difference between them, is an inherent one ; it belongs to the within-itself of the H O. Each, too, affirmatively is, not directly as either water or ice, but — indirectly through elimination of all determined difference — as H O. As water and ice, nevertheless, they are mutually indifferent. ' Something relates itself thus out of its own self to the other : ' it is important here to see the etymological force of verhalt sich. Ver, as we have seen, implies transition to and with, or both trans anct cum : the Something relates itself to the other, then, in the sense that it holds itself away (transformingly) to and with the other. This we see (as in the relation of water to ice) to occur, too, out of its own self. The ice is set in the water as its own moment, and the ice is here the otherwise-being. The Being- within-self, or just the within of the water, includes in it this negation, this ice, and it is by means of it that the water continues to have its affirmative being. The ice is just the developed within-itself of the water. But ice and water are qualitatively different, the ice is apart from or out of the water : this must be allowed, for Some- thing is Something only by negation or sublation of the other. (This we saw when engaged on Something and Other as such.) Only by such sublation is it that the Something presents itself as over-against the Other, which here for the first time is itself a There-being, or a separate entity; it is thus external to it, or, seeing that they still cohere in their notion, it is otherness in general that results — each is something and each is other. Of the Somethings we have here, then, though coherent in their notion (H 0), the one (the water) is qualitatively distinct from the other (the ice). But, inasmuch as the Being-within-itself (of the water) is the non-being of the otherwise-being (the ice) which is implied in it (the water), but at the same time distinguished or dis-cerned as beent, the Something itself (the water) is the negation, the ceasing of another in it ; it is explicitly put — it is in position — it QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 405 is set as negatively preserving itself against the other, and as maintaining itself by the other. The ice is at once the negation and the affirmation of the water. The within-itself of the water is the negation of the negation (the ice) — or this is its in-itself, or what it is in itself. But negation of the ice is as simple negation in it. But this amounts to Limit: the negations are at once mutually excluded and mutually implied. As regards technical terms, almost all has been already said that is required. It is not difficult to see that the Ansich becomes vermittelt (be-middled, be-mediated), and no longer abstract when the Seyn-fiir-Anderes is reflected into it. Still it remains relatively abstract ; the chair regarded as the reflexion into itself is relatively abstract as regards its determinateness, its Being-for- other, the wood, &c. The eye as the eye is a reflexion into itself, and relatively abstract compared with its coats, &c. Further on, / abstract is seen in the sense of formal self-identity as regards the difference of the Somethings when involved in aeration, or change. Concrete is seen to imply implement, or filling. Sollen will come to be explained again : it always refers to a being to be, or an owing (or ought-mg) to be. If the reader looks deeply at the phrase ' the other of itself,' he will see that this is an exact expression of the con- stitution of Something, as it is found developed in its own place. We have now achieved a most important stage in the study of Hegel. This matter of qualification, &c, and the transition into Limit, I have always regarded as the pons asinorum over which most students have hitherto been unable to cross. (That it has been passed, I know.) The present writer, for his part, must confess that he lay in leaguer here for years, and that the para- graph in especial in which the transition to Limit formally occurs was a thousand times abandoned as utterly and wholly hopeless. As regards this particular paragraph, what is said in allusion to the first Something is an endless stumbling-block till the true point of view is obtained ; and then, indeed, it is suddenly seen to be very simple. The opposition relating here ' first properly to a There-being itself ' demonstrates the 'first Something ' to be the first of the two considered here, and not the first something as treated in the book itself. But future students will never know what they owe to those who have preceded them. The point of view; however, that removes the great difficulty of the para- graph will be got, perhaps, from the following : if, as regards the Something and the Other of Change, the student insist on seeing 406 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. J in his conception the Other only as immanent in, and not — as / other — separated from, the Something, he will never succeed in realising Limit : let him eject it as other (simple negation) and then negate it as other (negation of the negation), and limit is at once visible. Water and ice are qualitatively other — separation ; they are at bottom the same — communion : limit is between both and both; as negation of the negation, it unites both, as negation simply it divides both. The Something first claims and then denies — first drags in and then ejects — and this is the function of the character in question (Limit). In short, assumption of the other, rejection of the other — these are the fulcra of the move- ment from Beschaffenheit to Grenze. It will not have escaped the reader, probably, that the portion of Hegel's Logic which we have just discussed concerns that matter which mainly appears in Ancient Logic as the Predicables : the Genus, the Species, the Differentia, or Differentia specifica, Sia flung out from the English and becomes 432 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. fur sick ; what was at first only potentially implicit in the English, is now gesetzt, explicit, realised to tongue and ear, but still abstractly; — the two first moments, indeed, are, as they ought to be, abstract. But now comes the concrete moment, in which the second moment is reflected into the first to the development of a concrete living actuality ; or, as it is here, French is reflected into English, so that the composite is equally both, An English which is at will French, and a French which is at will English — a faculty or power which is an und fiir sick. A similar illustration we pointed out already in the tenets of Comte. Comte himself completes the two first moments of the notion, in the forms of Eeligion and Metaphysic, by what we may call his Empirical Kealism. Empirical Eealism, however, is not a moment of Reason, but of the renunciation of Reason ; it is a falling back into one of the abstractions — and the coarser one too — into one of the sides of the antithesis of understanding : instead of an advance to the moment of reason, it is a retrogression to a single one of the differences of judgment. — Of course, it is un- necessary to notice that Comte did not, and could not, bring thus together his own expressions, whose origin was but empirical casuality ; neither is it necessary to point out that the two former moments do not belong exclusively to past times, but are neces- sary flexions of the Notion itself in all time. Not Comte, but Hegel, then, shall complete for us the triad by adding to religion and metaphysic his own ideal realism, or real idealism — which very plainly is a moment of reason, and a concluding moment of reason in that sphere. Excellent illustration to a like effect might be obtained from Political Economy, a branch of science which awaits entire trans- formation from the introduction into it of the notion. So far as I know, apart the Rechtsphilosophie, there is but one allusion to Political Economy in Hegel, occurring in his contemptuous remark that the English call Staatswirthschaft Philosophy. The subject involving a certain amplitude of detail, is inadmissible at present, however. We may say this, nevertheless, that Political Economy is but one of the moments in the general movement of the Aufklarung, and that, consequently, it must just share the limits and conditions and characterisation in general of that movement. This observation, short as it is, we believe to throw a flood of light on, or rather quite to determine, the particular nature and authority of the branch of science in question. At QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 433 present, Political Economy is in its hour of strength, and also in its hour of weakness ; that is, it has reached the moment of Judgment and gone asunder into idle abstractions. The whole movement belongs, indeed, to a moment of Judgment historically presentant ; but at its dawn in Hume — for it is absurd to extend isolated and individual expressions into an ex post facto scope beyond their merely contemporary application, and to see this science (viewed strictly as such) rise, whether in the Mercantile system of Colbert, or in the Physiocratic system of Quesnay (' Tableau Economique/ 1758), — at its dawn in Hume (1752), a dawn mainly widened by Adam Smith (1776), a plain, honest, solid, faithful, and excellent faculty, but without the penetrative, fertile, and various originality of Hume — it occupied relatively a sub-moment of simple apprehension, and possessed much more concrete truth than it manifests now in its complete efflorescence of abstraction. Consider, for example, the thin starched ruffles that rise now into the moral sublime over such empty abstractions as ' Demand and Supply,' ' Capital will find its own channels/ &c. &c. ! — Is not this enough ? The business of National Economy is to secure our material supplies, or to realise stewardship over our material necessities — an indispensably necessary, a first or the first function in every community — well, said ruffles reach the moral sublime here, too, with — This function, the Stewardship of the Nation, must be carefully guarded from the Eational, Universal, or True Will, as it is in the conjunct, and must be as carefully committed to the Irrational, Particular, and Sensuous Will (otherwise named Self-will), as it is in the disjunct: in a word, the Stewardship of the Nation must be saved from Eeason and intrusted to Caprice ! A very pretty abstraction of Judgment this ! — just that abstraction which expressly constitutes what Hegel calls Das Bose, and what we call wrong, evil, sin, crime ! — In short, no interest more imperatively demands the moment of Eeason — con- crete Eeason — nowadays, than that of Political Economy, which, through the extreme of abstraction, threatens to fall bodily ' on the other' at present, and dismember universal society. Yet we have come to such a pass with our ' advanced thinkers/ that it is just proper prudence for all of us nowadays to give-in a grave adhesion to Demand and Supply, and all the rest of them, not trusting the enemy with, the slightest opening through the very hint of a doubt. I wonder if the Jupiter ever suffered for its indiscretion at the commencement of the cotton dearth, in exclaiming that the law 2 E 434 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. of supply and demand, though now evidently false in the concrete, was still true in the abstract ! Did the Jupiter fail to consider, then, that Political Economy concerning the concrete only, truth in the abstract would be to it but a small set-off against the ruin of the science in its concrete falsehood ? — But verily the remnants of the Aufklarung, if we but look at Political Economy, pelt us so unmercifully — as shallowness and conceit always do — with ' ignor- ance,' that, as we said, a proper prudence orders us to cry as loudly as the rest, ' Long live the conqueror ! ' and we do our best to stifle our laughter even when we see the unique Mr Buckle, without the qualm of the scruple of a doubt, but with ruffled crop well swelled, and outblown cheeks, magnificently advancing to mediate between mind and matter through what he calls the laws, and we the abstractions, of Political Economy ! The reader, we hope, will understand, nevertheless, that we believe in a science of Political Economy, that we consider the interest involved to be a primary necessity, and that we call as loudly as any for the emancipation of industry from the fetters of feudalism, rejoicing also as sincerely as any in the immense and splendid success with which that process of emancipation has been already rewarded. The abstract vacuum that names itself, or mis-names itself, Political Economy, nowadays, is, it is only fair to remark, not without its reply to the above objection to the substitution of individual caprice for general reason in this, or any other interest of humanity. It has been found — this is the burthen of the answer — that free individual self-interest is the best steward of the State, and that ordinary provisions of Police suffice to effect the necessary control. If the and which we have italicised be correct, then it is no longer the Particular but the Universal Will with which we have to do; and, again, if the it has been found is correct, then there is an end of any objection whatever. It is to be remarked, however, that belief in sounding abstractions is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the Aufklarung: ever, when at any time self-convicted of a blunder, it recovers itself again by clutching to some big platitude — 'a wise man always/ — ' a good man never,' — ' the vulgar and the ignorant,' — 'but a well-regulated understanding,' &c. &c; just as it is the sublime of wisdom in Dr Hugh Blair to repeat and re-repeat over a thousand pages, 'practise all virtue, avoid all vice — practise all virtue, avoid all vice ! ' * This it has been found, * Empedocles {v7jovl(TTavTat ai Tu>v a-ODfiarayv ypafifxai, axrTrep eKiriTTTovcrai. Which translated, as if it were the Absolute spoke, might run thus : — And my speculating (seeing) creates what is speculated (seen), just as Geometricians speculating draw lines (in thought) : but I not drawing lines, but speculating (seeing), there rise up the lineaments of the corporeal objects as if falling in projection out of me. The nature of the Neo-Platonic teaching, and its analogy to the philosophy of Hegel, may be seen in almost every the usual ex- pression of Thomas Taylor, who so perseveringly kept company with Plotinus, Proclus, and the rest. In the Introduction and Notes to his translation of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, we have the following : — Wisely, therefore (p. xv.), does Plato assert that the philosopher ought not to descend below species, and that he should be solely employed in the con- templation of wholes and universale. For he who descends below these, descends into Cimmerian realms, and Hades itself — wanders among spectres devoid of mind, and exposes himself to the danger of beholding the real Gorgon, or the dire face of Matter, and of thus becoming petrified by a satiety of stupid passions. Again (p. xvii.) — Objects of sense rather resemble the delusions of sleep than the realities of vigilant perception. Once more (p. 400) — I shall rejoice if I have been able to add anything of my own which may contribute to elucidate the conceptions of these divine men, and induce the reader to abandon with generous ardour the grovelling contemplation of sensible objects, profoundly dark and incessantly flowing, for the exalted survey of the all-splendid and ever-permanent forms in the world of mind. Lastly (p. 428)— Every Idea is not only the paradigm, but likewise the producing cause, of Sensibles : for something else would be requisite by which sensibles are generated and assimilated to ideas, if these divine forms remained sluggish and immovable, and without any efficacious power, similar to impressions in wax : for it is absurd to admit that the reasons in nature possess a certain fabricative energy, but that intelligible forms should be deprived of productive power. Every divine form, therefore, is not only paradigmatic, but paternal, and is by its very essence the generative cause of the Many. Thomas Taylor lived probably in a thick element of confused 2f 450 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. splendour, and is not by any means (who is ?) an immaculate translator; but the sufferings, the persecutions, the patient poverty, the dauntless perseverance, the uncheered but assiduous labour of the noble, ardent man, entitle him at least to our respect ; and not this only, but the successful outcome of that enormous labour compels the gratitude of every earnest and true Student. Sir William Hamilton errs, as not unusual, then, when he turns his sharp nail on the good Taylor ; and (so far as my poor judg- ment may have any right to speak in the case) we are still much safer with this latter than with his critic, as a translator of Greek philosophy. We will be thankful, then, for what Hamilton calls his ' mere rubbish.' It would be easy to adduce, both from Aristotle and from Plato, many passages (which we had marked for the purpose, indeed) breathing the same spirit as those already cited from Proclus and Plotinus ; but we shall leave this to the reader's own activity. At p. 356 of Franz and Hillert, Hegel will be found translating from Plato thus : — The empirical manner of thinking found in geometry and the kindred sciences, thou seemest to me to name raisonnement ; and, consequently, reasoning (Schliessen, reflectirende Erkennen) finds itself between the »»o0s and what we name 56£a. — Thou hast apprehended perfectly correctly. In accordance with these four distinctions, I shall name the four relative bear- ings of the soul : o, vdyvis (Begreifen), comprehension, a thinking of what is highest ; /3, Siivoia, the second ; y, the third, is belief or true opinio (Meinung); 8, and the last, is the Vorstellung or figurate knowledge (das bildliche Wissen) : these are the degrees of truth, of clearness. Hegel, commenting on this, proceeds : — Plato defines thus the senses as the first mode ; as second mode he defines reflexion, so far as it introduces thinking into a consciousness otherwise sensuous. And here, he says, is the place where science makes its appear- ance ; science rests on thought, the determination of general principles, first sources, hypotheses. These hypotheses are not manipulated by the senses themselves, are not sensuous in themselves ; they certainly belong to thought. But this still is not genuine science which consists in considering the universal per se, the spiritual universal. Plato has comprehended under the term 86£a sensuous consciousness, properly sensuous conception, opinio, immediate knowledge. In the middle between opinio and science proper, there lies ratiocinating cognition, inferential reflexion, reflecting cognition, that forms for itself general laws, definite genera. The highest, however, is thought in and for itself, which is directed to the highest* * Neither of these two passages appears quite so in Hegel's collected works ; the latter, indeed, looks rather like a bringing together in sum ; still, if a little mixed in a place or two, they are to be considered quotations as referred. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 451 The reader will have no difficulty, then, in view of such utter- ances,— (8vvafxt$, evepyeia, evrekexeia, k.t.X., will be fresh in his memory as well) — in perceiving the analogy which Hegel bears to the most important Greek philosophers, both early and late. There is a passage in Keid* which describes the Neo-Platonic philosophers in the usual conventional, vague terms, as mystically adoring and seeking union with the One ; still, nevertheless, the description is so couched, that to a stndent of Hegel there is involuntarily suggested by it, that this mystic One is but the Logical Idea. We may suppose said student to be pleasantly surprised with this, and to be still more pleasantly surprised when he afterwards finds Hegel himself saying somewhere precisely the same thing.-f* On these grounds, however, should he, or any one else, infer the philosophy of Hegel to have derived from either new or old Platonics, or from either new or old Aristotelians, he will only fall into a very serious mistake. The philosophy of Hegel derives directly only from the generalised categories of Kant in themselves and in their realisation or externalisation in the things of sense : Hegel's philosophy, in short, in the notion, coils itself in nucem, and the notion, or this nut, came straight to him from Kant. We are to suppose, however, that — once his philosophy was formed — Hegel was nothing loath to make as prominent as might be every analogy whatever which tended to associate him with the great masters of the ancient world : the one longing is almost overt in him, indeed, that he should be placed now as Aristotle was placed then. It will tend to strengthen the view just expressed to point out that there are descriptions in existence intended to refer exclu- sively to the philosophy of Plato, which, nevertheless, can be applied almost line by line to the philosophy of Kant — a philosophy which we know and see owed nothing to Plato, but which was the result of a very natural train of inferences — a train * Reid, p. 264, Hamilton's edition, says, in reference to the Alexandrians, ' By a proper purification and abstraction from the objects of sense, we may be in some measure united to the Deity, and, in the eternal light, be enabled to discern the most sublime intellectual truths.' — The italics will strike the key of Hegel. t ' If at times the excellence of the philosophy of Plato is placed in his — scientifi- cally valueless — Myths, there are also times, named even times of enthusiasm, when the Aristotelian philosophy is prized because of its speculative depth, and the Parmenides of Plato, certainly the greatest art-work of the Ancient Dialectic, is honoured as the veritable unveiling and the positive expression of the divine life, and even, amid much impurity of that which gave rise to it, the misunderstood Ecstasis is in reality nothing else than the Pure Notion. '— Phaenom. , ed. 2nd, p. 55. 452 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. which we may say we also actually see — from certain main positions of David Hume. Descriptions of this nature will be found at pages 262 and 263 of Hamilton's Eeid, where the describer (Hamilton) has not the slightest thought of Kant at that moment in his mind. The analogy lies very obvious in this, however, that mental forms, which awakened by, mingle with, the contributions of sense, are in reality not one whit more Platonic than that they are Kantian. The verses of Boethius at p. 263 contain distinctive features which might have been copied quite as easily and correctly from Kant as from Plato.* No doubt, Hegel, by his reference to the ancients, was enabled to bring the determinations he had arrived at in connexion with Kant into more magistral place, as dominant centres, as it were, in definitively vital, absolute, and infinite spheres ; no doubt, he was enabled thus to cover, as it were, the whole field : neverthe- less, he owed not this to any direct action of either Plato or Aristotle, but rather to a reaction on these through the findings of Kant. Rather, we may express it thus : To Hegel, the light of Kant lit Aristotle ; and to the same Hegel, by such reciprocity as he loved, the re-lighting of Aristotle re-lit Kant. Thus, if the findings of modern philosophy have been very much moved into place by the previous findings of the ancient, it must also be said that only through the former were these latter themselves re-found. Indirectly to Kant, directly to Hegel, then, is it that we owe at present that revival of the study of early philosophy which has expanded in Germany to such enormous dimensions, * These verses are the following : — 1 Mens est efficiens magis Longe causa potentior, Quam quae materise modo Impressas patitur notas. Prascedit tamen excitans Ac vires animi movens Viro in corpore passio, Cum vel lux oculos ferit Vel vox auribus instrepit : Turn mentis vigor excitus Quas intus species tenet, Ad motus similes vocans, Notis applicat exteris, Introrsumque reconditis Formis miscet imagines.' Stuff from without, Form from within, — the whole description may be predicated of the Kantian theory quite as truly .as of the Platonic. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 453 which has exhibited itself in no contemptible form in France, and which even in England has been adequate at least to — some first approaches. From Hegel specially is it that we derive the ability now to recognise in Aristotle, not the sensual materialist that controverted, but the absolute idealist that completed Plato. This is much, and the proof of it is certain : to that the single pas- sage from Aristotle's 'Metaphysic' which closes the Encyclopaedic of Hegel would alone suffice ; from it we know, as also from elsewhere, that Aristotle, even as much as his mighty modern compeer, con- cluded— TavTdv vous koi vorjTOV — koi €vXfull. As we have seen, too, this verbal care of Hegel extends itself into a syllabic one : in Vergleichung, for example, we are perpetually made to see that it is a comparison. Then the ter- minations haft, ig, lich, sam, are never lost sight of; and, as QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 457 regards the verbs, such prefixes as er, ver, zer, are his very instruments. As respects these, the student of Hegel ought to consult the more advanced grammars. I Being-for-self as such. Here the notion Being-for-self is completely prescinded. — The distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness, which is wholly German, ought to be well borne in mind. The expression appearant is a translation of erscheinend which seems forced on us : we are to see that a certain duality is always implied in this word ; there is an outer show or shine or seeming or appearance which appears other and independent, but which is still only a moment, only ideel in another and inner. Self-consciousness, though further advanced and more concrete than Being-for-self, is still abstract when compared with the Absolute Spirit. a. Here-being (There-being), and Being-for-self. — b. Being-for-One. The distinctions here are subtle, but they are simple, and they are intelligibly put. In Being-for-self the real and the ideal sides, or the Finite and the Infinite ; that is to say, the Notes and the Voice, as it were, (Daseyn and Seyn), have fallen equal, have fallen identical. So far as there is notification, there is voice ; and so far as there is voice, there is notification ; or so far as there is definite Being, there is infinite Being, &c. There is present but a single ideality, which, at the same time, is rather a single many than a single one. We have before us, so to speak, a sentient material breadth ; so far as there is sentiency there is matter, and so far as there is matter there is sentiency; the diffusion and the concentration, the extension and the intension, are coincident ; but there is not properly a one on either side — there is only a Being- for-One. We have, in fact, only a simple solution, in which solvent and solvend are co-extensive : but such solution cannot be viewed as yet quite One ; it is rather a self-identical breadth than a self-identical One. From this there will now be little difficulty in reading (b.) the Being-for-One. — ' There is only a Being-for-Other ; ' the notification (to say so) reflected into the voice is but a single system, a single 458 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Being-for-other, and so a Being-for-one. The notification is the sublated other ; the voice is at once sublatedness of this other, and referent of itself to itself as to this sublated other: the voice, then, like the sublated notification, is also only for-One. The conclusion, ' God is, therefore, for himself, so far as he is himself that that is for him,' is not only of vast importance, but of simple intelligibleness. Remark. What is said about the expression peculiar to the Germans when inquiring into the what sort or the quality of any man or thing, What for a man is he ? — What for a thing is it ? — sheds a quite decisive light on the distinction in question, the Being-for-One. The applicability of the phrase refiexion-into-self here comes out very clear. The general sense of this passage enables us to see that Hegel's fur is for, and not as ; Seyn-fur-Anderes, therefore, is Being-for-another, not as another. Nevertheless, what is for another is as that other ; what is for consciousness is as conscious- ness, is in the form of consciousness, is consciousness ; — there is a small dialectic here that would have pleased Hegel. The sub- stitution of as instead of for in the relative expressions of the paragraph that follows will contribute towards the general light. This light is Idealism, and there is that in the second paragraph here — as also in the first — to render it irresistibly intelligible if not irresistibly convincing. One here can as little resist believing, as resist seeing, the object eclipsed into the subject, and both constitutive only of a single ideal Being-for-One. In this Remark there follow further words of the most pene- trative lucidity as regards idealism in general, and the idealisms of Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Kant, and Fichte, in particular. In these critiques the strokes are few and single, but each is a creation, or each is a destruction. Philosophy is complete or incomplete only as it is complete or incomplete Idealism. This is plain, for the only quest of philosophy is principles, unities; and it ought to be plain to us, as it has been very plain to Hegel, that such quest — to be complete — can only terminate in the principle, the unity, — a result which, as expressing all eclipsed into one, is and can be only Idealism. But has any philosophy hitherto either seen this or done this ? Of any philosophy yet has the principle been anything else than an abstract conception, or just an abstract utterance, in the face of which the actual still QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 459 smiled unconjured ? By here a stroke and there a stroke, Hegel demonstrates this to be the state of the case both with Spinoza and the Eleatics. Justice is done to the character and to the greater perfection of the scheme of Malebranche, at the same time that this latter is reluctantly undermined and respectfully removed. It is impossible to praise too highly the extraordinarily pregnant, lucid, and comprehensive summary here, or the equally extraordinary dexterity with which, a support or two being un- done, the whole structure is made to crumble and vanish before our eyes. It is as if art wonderfully lit up a sudden universe, — as wonderfully, as suddenly, to withdraw it again. The critique of Leibnitz is equally masterly. The incongruities, the gaping edges, the incoherences, the general gratuitousness of the entire scheme, are all touched into such intensity of light that the whole vanishes. Such episodes as these assist us greatly as regards an understanding, as well of the painful abstractions of the text, as of the aims and objects of Hegel in general. By this Idealism ' lying more within the limit of the abstract notion/ is probably meant that it is more an affair of abstract notions, and just of subjective imagination in general, than the Idealism of Malebranche, which followed nearer the stream of the actual. ' Should one remind us that this movement of thought falls itself within an ideating monad, &c. : ' — the ideating monad alluded to is, of course, Leibnitz himself — Leibnitz, too, conceiving other monads the same as himself. The remark ends with a single but effective word as regards the Thing-in-itself of Kant, and the Anstoss of Fichte, the appulse, the unimaginable stone of offence, the reflecting plane from which the Ego's own energy returns to itself as the object. To Kant all that is in the subject is his own, whether in the shape of sensations or in that of categories : Kant, however, postulated still Things-in- themselves as sources of the sensations. Fichte again placed these Things-in-themselves also in the subject under the name of an Anstoss, a source of reflexion, which was in the subject and out of the subject, and performed for the subject all the functions of Things-in-themselves. Manifestly either expedient can only be said to be the Ego's ; it is not traced to, it is not resolved into, the Ego ; it remains a free other or otherwiseness, a negative and in- dependent Ansichseyn ; it is assumed in, but it stays out, and is never sublated by process of proof. To the last, then, there remains dualism, for which there is no cure but Sollen and the 460 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Progressus in Infinitum. — Where we translate ' departure is thus made, &c.,' the er of the original may seem to be evaded : the antecedent of this er was to Hegel most probably the Anstoss ; but if we go higher for it and assume it to be Anderer Idealismus, we shall get a meaning that includes the expedient of Kant as well. c. One. The moments collapsing into indistinguishableness, immediacy (Being) results for the Being- for-self — a negative immediacy ; Being -for -self is thus Being -for- self- ity, the One. — The transi- tion here is very delicate, and the defining phrase, ' the abstract limit of itself,' infinitely subtle. We saw this phrase before in the case of the point, and it will be useful to look back and see that the point differs from the One now arrived at. The point, too, is the abstract limit, but in einem Daseyn; as point, there is a There-being at its side ; here There-being has disappeared. The reason for the externalisation or distribution of the moments is also extremely fine : they must appear as separate independent units, seeing that they refer to a one so absolute and negative : it is in the form of negative independent immediacy, and so must they be as its. We have here the umbra of a Thing and its Qualities, and more than that. As regards the six moments them- selves, they will all be found to lie in the one, by reflecting on what its development has brought along with it, and what it now implies. ' Of each determination thus its contrary must be equally said/ This because the six moments will be found to be so paired, and each is as independent as the other, at the same time that each, is inseparable from the other. Tality is appropriately used here, as it is a quality dependent on involution with other ; and the determination results in every case here from involution with other, which other must also be equally said. Looking back, the phrase, 'There is only one. determination present, the reference to itself of the sublation,' is an exceedingly happy one : the result can only be Immediacy, Being ; Fiirsichseyn is Fursichseyendes, or Being-for-self is Being-for-self-ity ; and again, as this Immediacy is the result of a Negating, from such a negated Being-for-self-ity, ' all its inner import has disappeared,' — ' it is the absolutely abstract limit of itself — the One.' The reader may still illustrate all this for himself by a reference to the illustration we have ventured to propose of Voice and its Notification. The Voice, as unity of its QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 461 own self and its notification (which stands for the Seyn-fur-Eines, the Being-for-One), is Fursichseyn, Being-for-self. But there is only one determination present now — the reference to itself of the sublation, indistinguishable one-ness, immediacy, Being, a beent immediate one-ness that has resulted from negation ; the voice thus is an absolutely abstract One, and, conceived as Thought or all that is, evidently the One. The voice so placed, say, manifestly implies negation in general ; then two negations, i.e. the negation of itself by the notification which is the first negation, and the negation of this negation back into itself, which is the second. The two things negated, voice and notification, are, thirdly, the same ; fourthly, they are directly opposed ; fifthly, there is refer- ence to self-identity as such in the voice ; and sixthly, it refers negatively to its notification, but still to itself. The voice being thrown down into an absolutely abstract One, these its moments seem thrown off from it, to stand around it externally, independently, but still inseparably. B. One and Many. The One being immediate, its moments are as There-beent The One still contains the negative (which was lately the Being- for-One), and so, though One, it has still determination. In its reference to Self the One is still ^{/-determination, and without end, entirely, infinitely. These differences, the determination and the Self-determination, are now, in the immediacy that has come in, beent. Ideality is transformed into Eeality, the hardest and abstractest, — One. But the determinateness of the Beingness is as opposed to the infinite negation of the Self-determination ; or what the One is in itself, that it is now in it. The negative, that is, is distinguished as other. The unity is now a reference, and as negative unity it is negation of itself as of another. We are to conceive the negative as One and identical with the One. We are to conceive also, nevertheless, that within the One there is a traffic of the One with its own negative, so that also within the One a certain diremption takes place — a certain rise of an sich into an ihm, of in itself into in it — to the distinction of the One from the One. The One is as One, but it is a negative One : this it is in itself; this it is also in it ; that is, this it is 462 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. distinguishably to its own self; but if it is this distinguishably to its own self, it sets itself as another, ' it is the negation of itself as of another, exclusion of the One as another out of itself.' The determination of an absolute One — the notification of the voice, as it were — is evidently its negative. The immediacy introduces the form of Being, and the moments become external to each other. Even shrunk into its abstraction, the One is intensely beent, and its moments are independently There-beent. Ideality i3 Reality. The development here is so abstract and subtle, that there is great difficulty in getting the true Vorstellung for the Begriff, the true conception for the notion. A plural outer world is not, how- ever, to be too soon disengaged : the One is to be left in simple traffic with the negative as negative. What puzzles the reader, and even an attentive one, is that, the moments being reciprocal, there is a difficulty of perceiving, which Hegel intends the One to be in as excluding, and which as excluded. But the metaphor of the voice is still applicable. Notification and voice are identified in the one unity, the voice — but this is immediacy, Being ; notifi- cation and voice both are ; the determinateness of Being stands opposed to the infinite negation ; that is, the notes are opposed to the infinite negation of them — the one voice which is negative in that it absorbs them, and infinite in that it is entire, totum et rotundum. What the voice is in itself, it is now in it, or the notes (the negative) rise in it and show, and so on. It just comes to this, the moments re-assert anew their difference ; the determina- tion (the negative) separates from its recipient negation, and fresh distinctions arise. The poles, real and ideal, or material and formal, which have just collapsed, re-extricate themselves for a further collapse on a higher stage. And this is the case universally with Hegel : detach anywhere the smallest particle of his mass, and it will be found magnetic like the mass itself; it will throw itself in poles, one of reality and one of ideality, but neither of which is less real or more ideal than the other ; so that the whole is an absolute ideality that is at the same time an absolute reality. This we see in the very first form, Being, Nothing, and Becoming. At first sight, one thinks of artifice ; one says to oneself, Give me what is at once affirmative and negative, identical and non-identical, and I will make anything you like of it ; but one calms oneself when one looks to the actual and sees what is there — above all, when one reflects that these, after all, are but expressions of the one living notion itself which contracts QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 463 to an atom and expands to a world. The an ihm must be viewed as a certain rise of the an sich into visibility ; the abstract barren bottom of the vase becomes the pregnant middle. What has been just said, too, must be seen to be only preliminary to what follows under the minuscules, a, b, c. a. The One in its own self. It appears contradictory, after what we have just read, to find the One unalterable ; and the whole industry may seem a mere trifling, a mere playing with words. But what we have just read (immediately under B) is only preliminary, and if we but look close, we shall really find this one sentence that ends in unalter- able to be genuine metaphysic : the Absolute, God, is really so determined when thought contemplates him as the One in its own self, i.e., in its irrespective absoluteness. This may be a hint to the reader that it depends on himself all through, whether the words of Hegel shall remain abstract and words only, or shall become concrete and alive — things. The notion, followed only in its naked nerve, is thin to invisibility; and the words that cannot seize it, or rather that do not seize it, for the reader, break asunder into an externality, as idle and contemptible, as trodden nutshells : with him it rests, however, to [look till these broken nutshells cohere into a transparent, plastic menstruum which, not shows, but is the notion: -with him it rests to expand the same into Vorstellungen which are the universe ; for all here is sub specie ozternitatis. This section (a) is very important in several respects. In the first place, the development is sufficiently simple, and requires not the assistance of repetition in another form, but only the touch of a word here and there. The conclusion drawn of the unchangeableness of the One, contains yet another lesson for us ; it may teach us to remain true to our thoughts, and not to inter- rupt them by the contradictions of a divided reference, the end of which is but foolish wonder, perplexity, doubt, ignorance. An ihm selbst ist das Eins uberhaupt — there is here in the very position of the words the usual Hegelian occult fullness of thought ; to translate it, ' In its self ' means any ' one ' on the whole, will show this. Perception of this must have been in Hegel's head, otherwise it would have been natural to begin, The one in its own self is the one on the whole, &c. 464 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. The Seyn, Being, that is referred to as indeterminate, but not in the same way as the One, is, of course, that we began with. We have here three very instructive specimens of that troublesome word Setzen, which even mutuation does not yet seem to have laid : these are gesetztes Insichseyn, set (settled) Being- within-self ; diess Nichts ist ein Gesetztes, this Nothing is a set issue ; and So diess Nichts gesetzt als in Einem, this Nothing so-deter- mined and as in a. The French constater would very perfectly render Setzen in all these expressions, and the French constater means to ascertain, to determine, to settle, to establish, to fix, &c. Of these English words, the word determine is the best in the sense of to make out and establish, a sense somewhat different from that contained in it when used to translate bestimmen, in which case it means to specificate, notify, characterise, &c. In the first of the three examples, we have the absolute before us, One, but full ; its circle of determination complete within it, absolutes Bestimmtseyn, Absolute Determined-Ness — what is this but con- summate Insichseyn, Insichseyn, Being- within-Self, just as such ? In this sense it is gesetztes, a certain somewhat just definitely established and determined as that certain somewhat. The Being- within-self, here, therefore, is just the Being-within-self itself — Arthur, * not Lancelot nor another.' Thus it is gesetztes Insichseyn, set (settled) Being-within-self, Being- within-self in actual position, formally posited, Being-within-self as such, Beiug-within-self explicit. In the second instance, it results from the simple incom- posite immediacy of the One that there is Nothing in it, and this nothing is called ein Gesetztes, a set issue. Now the meaning is that, a concrete having gone away before us into an abstract (the concrete Being-within-self into the abstract oneness Nothing), it is for this reason that Nothing here is a Gesetztes ; it is put as an Explicit here for another ; the concrete has set or settled into this abstract ; it is a set issue, a settled (together) Explicit, a settled consequent or resultant, a ^consequent or resultant settled-ity : the water in a wink is ice, Being- within-self in a wink is Nothing ; — this Nothing is a Gesetztes — it results from, it replaces another, it is an Explicit. It may also be named a Determined or a Deter- minate, this having determined into that. From all this, it is evident that the common meaning of the words will not suffice us here, unless we can contrive to immerse them ever and anon in the secret light of Hegel's own thinking. Ein Gesetztes, then, is the exponent consequent or the resultant Explicit of a transition, QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 465 almost as if it were an ex-occultate. The third gesetzt simply means constituted : so constituted a Nothing in a or in a one is just the void. The reader will observe, however, that the very same pro- cess is pictured in this constituted as in the other words. The word mutuate, too, the process of transition or mediation it involves being considered, will convey the meaning of every one of the three expressions : in the first, we have mutuated Being- within-self, in the sense of something formally mutuated, formally expressed or stated after process — in a word, it is Being-within- self express (and the direct or derivative sense must here be seen to coquet with the ordinary one) ; in the second, the Nothing is very evidently a mutuate, an overt representative of another after process — here, too, in a word, an expression (in the double sense — and of another) ; and in the third, ' this nothing so mutuated or expressed' conveys the same meaning on the same terms. Again the meaning of setzen has grown on us. It will scarcely be necessary to make any remark on the ex- quisite felicity of the extrication of the void or vacuum. Only the inexperienced reader, always struggling painfully against the feeling of being lost, may once again in his bewilderment cry out, But what is this — what does it all mean ? One thing it does not mean, and that is creation — what is commonly meant by creation. Creation, in this sense, does not exist to a Hegel. It is not to be supposed, then, that Hegel has the slightest desire here to make the vacuum — to create empty space. This is Logic ; we have to do here only with thoughts ; there is no question here of a single dust-atom, nor even of the space it might occupy. But we have here, nevertheless, the genetic thought of a void. There is evidently progress in this world ; but progress is a thought, and cannot exist in outward matter. This alone is a guarantee of the ideal fundamen, of the intellectual, of the spiritual nature of the absolute of the world. Let us assume it so, then. Thought is the absolute, or — to use the common parlance — the nature of things (natura rerum) is thought. But thought being this, and the life of thought being progress, a beginning is postulated. But this beginning is only — thought is; — that is, the beginning is Being, Seyn. Thought now starting thus with itself and with this as beginning evolves out of its own necessity by virtue — and that is necessity — of its own triple flexions (which flexions on a certain considerably advanced stage of the evolution name themselves simple apprehension, judgment, and reason) the whole 2g 466 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. articulation of its own innate constitution. Now through Hegel we have got so far on with this series of articulation or articulate series ; so far that we have reached the thought of the vacuum — the development of an actual There-beent vacuum is another affair, and has yet to be waited for. Let the reader, then, see that as yet we have to do only with thoughts, and as they evolve themselves out of each other by their own necessity (which means, in obedience to the native flexions of the concrete notion); — but let him see as well that these thoughts are the thoughts of things and that they constitute what is essential in things, that without which things were not, or that without which it would be im- possible to say what these things were. This ought to assist the reader to orient himself. b. The One and the Void. ' The One is the Void as the abstract reference of the negation to itself:' here the reader ought to see that this 'negation' is thought itself. Thought is the One, but the reference of a One to itself can only be abstract ; that is, this reference is the reference of a negation to itself ; — thought in self- reference as only One has, so to speak, the sentiment of negation, though sentiment as sentiment belongs to another sphere. The mechanism by which the dif-ference is express, explicit, patent, or simply understood and accepted, is very fine, and gesetzt is again illustrated. • Has again reached a state of There-being ; ' the original is simply ' has reached a There-being,' and Hegel would probably not have liked the addition ' state of ; ' but, perhaps, it will assist realisation of the position, and not, on the whole, injure the development; for • to reach a There-being ' is veritably to reach a palpable Here- ness or There-ness, a definitely relative, actual, existential state, though most of these words present themselves only later in the development. • The One and the Empty (Void, Vacuum) have as their common sinple basis, the negative reference to self ; ' this is exquisitely simple, but it is a flash that lights up at once — what was impossible to Sir William Hamilton, who could never con- trive to struggle out of the hole of this abyss — the very infini- tude of space. Here-being and There-being are of course both for Daseyn, and though neither can absolutely represent that word, the opposition of the two phrases may picturesquely assist here. Daseyn is always a definite — a palpable Being-ness in QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 467 relation to other. The advantage of Daseyn is, that Hegel gets out his usual irony in it — a sense that coquets between its ordin- ary meaning of this Being here below, this sublunary life, this mortal state, and its literal meaning of being-there. Here- being were to be preferred in English, perhaps, because it seems best to preserve the equivoque. Eemark. The Atomistic. We shall in the first place supplement this Eemark by trans- lating the form in which it appears in the third edition of the ' Encyclopaedic.' There it runs thus : — The Atomistic Philosophy is that in which the Absolute is determined as Being-for-self, as One, and as plurality of Ones. The Repulsion which, mani- fests itself in the notion of the One, has been also assumed by it as the primary and original force ; not Attraction, however, but — what is simply the Thought- less— Chance, it is, which is to bring the resultant plurality together again. The One being fixed as One, its combination with any others is certainly to be regarded as something quite external. The Vacuum, which is assumed as other principle to the atoms, is Repulsion itself conceived as the beent nothing between the atoms. The modern Atomistic — and Physical Science still retains this principle — has given up atoms in so far as it takes to diminutive particles, molecules ; in this way it certainly assists sensuous conception, but has wholly abandoned the determination of thought. Further, a force of Attraction being added to that of Repulsion, the antithesis has been certainly made complete, and we have given ourselves much credit for the discovery of these so-called forces of nature. But their mutual connection — the concrete and true interest here — requires to be rescued from the obscurity and con- fusion, in which it has been still left even in Kant's Metaphysical Elements of a Science of Nature. In recent times, the atomistic view has become in Politics still more important than in Physics. According to it, the Will of the Individuals as such is the Principle of the State, the source of Attraction (Association) is the Particularity of our Needs and Greeds, and the Universal, the State itself, is the external relation of Contract. These episodes, which the Remarks constitute, are always both agreeable and auxiliary. Here, for example, this searching critique of atomism reflects a light both of meaning and import- ance back on the few abstract words which we have just read in the preceding paragraph. Such original incisiveness of eye extends of itself a warrant of truth to the Hegelian products, however trifling they may sometimes seem when externally looked at. There is matter in the Remark as extracted from the 468 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Encyclopaedia of later development than the position on which we as yet stand in the Logic ; and the reader will do well to return to it when he shall have completed Quality. The greater fullness of the Political allusion is the reason which has placed it here. Hegel is always content to say the least possible, and here he says no word but simply places the Political Confession (Profession) of the day side by side with Atomism. This side-by-side is quite sufficient to justify the general attitude of the present Germans, whose slowness of political movement depends on quite other reasons than that cumbrousness and unwieldiness which our own scribblers — lofty in their constitutionahxxipeiAoritj — compassionately ascribe to them. What Hegel's mere indication suggests is con- crete wisdom, not the idle abstractions of the conceit to know better than its neighbour and than all its neighbours. The (main) Eemark contains no point of difficulty, unless that bearing on the Ground of Motion. This ground is placed in the negative reference of the One to its Negative. Now we have already said that the voice, as absorbing the notification, could be named the negation of the latter, as also that this same latter constituted, as determination, the negative of the former. Where we are in the development, then, the voice is One, and its determination it& notification, is its; but in this abstract oneness — (we do not stop for the particular development) — the One refers negatively to it& own negative (which is at bottom itself, though now presentant as there). But negative reference to another is Repulsion, and Repulsion of another is Motion. c. More or Many Ones. Repulsion. The first paragraph accomplishes at full, what we have sketched in one or two of the preceding sentences, — the extrication of the determination, the negative of the One from the One as an Other ; — and this amounts to more Ones. We may remark that this extrication is pretty much the secret of Hegel. There is an original duality which is also not two, but one ; this is the original antithesis, the original reciprocity, the absolute, the notion, the single necessity, or rather this is the Protoplast of Necessity itself : the one and its determination are two ; but the one is the determination, and the determination is QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 469 the one. What is then, is God, the Absolute Spirit that in itself is thought. But thought is just the notion, the reciprocal unity, the necessity which we have just seen : it distinguishes itself from itself ; it is, and its determination also is ; but it is the infinite negation that absorbs its determination, and its determination is the negative, the finite negative of it ; it then is the negation of the negation, that in which each side is the negative of the other : in one word, this is the pure negativity. The One sets itself: this is the whole secret. Or we may say, it sets or settles into itself. We may conceive thought as a successive congealment into another. Water congeals into ice. The ice is seen — and may be supposed to be explicit, expressed up out of the now occult other, the water. The water seems to have gone together into the ice, or to have set or settled into the ice. This settled, viewed in its double meaning, the one from without and the other from within, is pretty much Hegel's gesetzt, which bears literally the force of set or settled together into, and, applied to thought, that of determined, estab- lished, decided, &c. It is this life of the one, then, an explication, exposition, or even an extrusion and ejection, which has led Hegel to the use of this peculiar word Setzen. All is a Gesetztseyn, a mutuation or promutuation of the infinite One that ever is. There is (to say so) but the voice and its notification. The voice is the absolute Seyn ; and the notification is its infinite Werden. The universe is but the glory of God ; existence, but the sport, the play of himself with himself. In an extract from Kant, we saw creation, Schopfung, alluded to in its original sense of scooping or drawing-up. This may have proved suggestive to Hegel, who views creation as but this sublation of God up out of himself, this voluntary involuntary scooping or drawing-up of God himself out of himself. To say, then, that creation, or that existence, is but Gesetztseyn, settlement, has its own picturesque truth of meaning, whether we view the process as taking place in the physical or in the intellectual world. The process of the Logic, then, is to be conceived as the process of God ; and Hegel meant no metaphor, but literal truth, when he named this process ' the demonstration of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a single finite spirit/ Now of this whole process, the one secret is the secerning of the One's determination out of the One — in the end, indeed, to restore it again, leaving but the Absolute Spirit and his eternal and infinite life. The negation turns on its 470 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. negative ; that is, settles into its Seyn, its Being, which is at first necessarily indefinite — Hence, the whole ! As regards the expression, ' as they stand in a, or in one refer- ence, their difference is gesetzt,' the meaning may be, as the Two are in One, their difference is express (expressed) ; the sense being an equivoque of physical or direct expression, and of intellectual or reflected expression. The difference is settled, inferred, under- stood, taken for granted, accepted, &c. A and B are married people, but they have separated : when it is said the cause of this separation is not A, then B may be said to have settled or to be settled, or to be ex-pressed as the cause. An effect may be viewed as the ex-pression of its cause. Ice is an expression of water. In manipulating mathematical formulae, we get new expressions. Whether physically or metaphysically, then, the overt mutuate of another after process is the expression of this other which is now occult — occult in the ex-pression. What A implies is express or explicit when overtly set, settled, or determined as B: A, then, ex-presses or determines B, and vice versd. The process always is a settling, setting, or congealment of A to the ex-pression of B — this whether in nature or in thought ; it is a reciprocal occultation into appearance, a reciprocal sun-setting into a reciprocal sun- rise. The reference of the negation to the negation as of another to its other, this may be put, the reference of the One in its negation to its negation as, &c. — ' The Being-for-self of the One is essentially the Ideality of the There-being and of the Other ; ' the Voice is essentially the Ideality of the Notification, which in the develop- ment is now ex-pressed as There-being and another; 'it refers itself not as to another, but only to itself ; ' the general reference of the voice, though its notification is now distinguished and ex- pressed as so-and-so, is still — and even in that regard — to itself. Still the voice is fixed as one, as one that is per se, a direct existence ; consequently, its negative reference — as to its notifica- tion— is as to a beent, and, the negativity of the reference con- sidered, to a There-beent and another. But this other, the notifi- cation, is still essentially reference of the one, the voice, to its own self : it is not then indeterminate negation, not the mere void ; it is itself one — a plurality of ones. The next paragraph is easy. It (this last step) is not quite a Becoming ; a relative Becoming, proceeding, that is, from Being, ought to come to Nothing, but here it is One coming to Ones. QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 471 The one that is referred, the notification, has the negative in its reference to the voice, and vice versd. "What we have, then, is only the one's own inherent reference — the inherent reference of the voice itself. But this inner reference implies duality ; that is, the one, the voice, repels itself in the shape of the notification, from itself in the shape of the voice, or — the One's own negative Self-reference is Eepulsion. (Evidently Self-reference must always be of this nature where there is a One possessing a Determination, an articulate circle of manifestations.) ' This repulsion thus as position : ' position is, of course, here for Setzen, and may be varied by settlement, ex-pression, ex-position, explicit-ment, or any other similar expedient that may be calculated to convey a notion which now ought, at least, to be tolerably familiar. This repulsion is evidently that belonging to, or inherent in, the notion itself ; it occurs within the notion, it is an sich or ansichseyend, in itself, or in-itself -beent. The difference of the repulsion of outer reflexion is plain ; this latter presents itself as an already existent mutual holdihg-off of Ones just so found. 'Schon vorhanden,' — there is a great temptation to translate this, already to the fore ; this Scotch phrase accurately conveys the equivoque of the Vor, which is before both in space and time — not that there is any question as yet of actual space and time. The becoming of the plurality cannot be called as yet so much a being produced as a being set, or as a becoming set, where of course set is the usual expressed, explicit, &c. The fulcrum here is still the independence or absoluteness of the One and of each One : it is only its own self it repels, and this is vice versd. Each is an equal beent in independent reciprocity. They are thus mutually 'prae-set,' as it were expressed or ex-plicit, or so settled-prae, i.e., settled so beforehand, — and that amounts to pre-(sup)-posed : set, (sup)-posed, ex-pressed by the inherent repulsion of the One in its own self ; prae (or pre), that is, that this was an affair of beforehand, or already there, and so an arrangement 'set as not set,' which phrase for curt incisive vigour cannot be surpassed. Their origin through ex-pression is sublated; they are equally beent, equally self-referent, or just equally self-referent beents. In such entire isolation, they are not other to other, not for one another. Any reference between them is but the void — determined too not as limit, but simply as non-being. — Virtually the thing is 472 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. different, but this is the way in which it is now set. It is competent to some one to object here, ' Ay, just so ; it is always a mere juggle, never absolute truth; to accomplish what you want, you hide something and show something ; and then, again, when you change your mind and want to go on to something else, you show what you have hidden, and hide what you have shown.' The objection has its own plausibility, but it must fall to the ground, if the whole advance of civilisation, the whole progress of society, the whole life of thought itself can be shown to depend on, and consist of, nothing but this onwards and onwards of settlement after settlement, expression after expression, determination after determination, position after position ; in which each new apparent not only replaces but implies its predecessor and all its predecessors. There is but a single life in the universe, and that from bubble on the beach to the sun in the centre, or from this dead sun itself to the Spirit that lives, is a perpetual Setting. (It is curious that this word, directly to us a going down, should be now, indirectly to us, through Hegel, a rising up: this is but again the infinite exchange, an ebb and flow that has still an onward, the Systole-Diastole of the Living One.) The repulsion of the One from itself (the repulsion on the part of the voice of its own notification from itself), is the explication (the oc-pression) of that which — in itself — the One (the voice) is. But Infinitude (the one absolute infinite voice), as explicated or laid asunder (auseinander), is here a-come-out-of-itself infinitude (the endless units of the endless notification of the endless or absolute voice) ; but it is come out of itself through the immediacy of the infinite, of the One — (the voice becoming immediate to itself just as a One has withdrawn itself to itself from its notifica- tion, which is just thrown off from it as an endlessly Different and External). This infinitude (the original is simply Sie, and may refer to repulsion, but we prefer to refer to the come-out-of- itself infinitude ; the repulsion, indeed, would involve the same reference) is quite as much a simple reference of the One to One (the endless notification is still the one voice), as rather the absolute referencelessness of the One (this the independence of the endless notification as in the negative reference, i.e. as distinguished from the voice); the former as according to the simple affirmative reference of the One to itself (even in its notification), the latter as according to the same reference as negative (voice and notification being distinguished and separated). QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 473 Or the plurality of the Ones is the own proper setting (&r-pression) of the One (this in its repulsion, as negative reference to its own determination, which as regards our ' voice ' is the notification) ; the One is nothing but the negative reference of the One to itself (this both as regards the universal, the voice, and the par- ticular, the notification — this single phrase, indeed, is a statement adequate to the whole case, and takes in both aspects), and this reference, therefore, the One itself, is the many ones (this is plain from the last parenthetic comment — the voice is the noti- fication, the notification the voice, or the negative self-reference of the voice implies what it negates, &c). But just thus the plurality is directly external to the One (the units of the notifica- tion are external to the voice) ; for the One is but the sublation of the Otherwiseness (the one voice brings its endless brood of notification under its own identity), the repulsion {i.e. of its determination, the notification) is its reference to self (is the voice) and (so) simple equality with itself. The plurality of the ones (the endless units of the notification) is infinitude as uncon- cernedly self-producing contradiction {i.e. of the one voice, and of the endless many of the notification, which, viewed here sub specie ceternitatis, or as the absolute, can only be named a contradiction which infinitely and unconcernedly reproduces itself : this para- graph is as a mirror of the absolute and actual which may be looked into — infinitely. Kemark. The Leibnitzian Monad. Leibnitz, in his Monad, seemed to have reached the conception of an ideating absolute ; but he immediately fell into gross inconsistencies and gratuitous incumbrances. For instance, after assuming such absolute, he unnecessarily assumed a plurality of such. This plurality involves the repulsion which we have just considered ; but Leibnitz, without thought of this repulsion, con- ceived it only as an external, abstract, indifferent plurality. In it the Ones were without relation, and it itself, wholly undeduced, was simply assumed as there and given. The Monad has indeed an inner plurality, but this affects not its character as indifferent One, for which any others are as good as non-existent. There is no thought in Leibnitz of deriving an outer many from an inner repulsion. The Atomistic again possesses not any thought of 474 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. ideality at all. Its atom is but dry individuality, wholly outer, without a within, which might unite the genetic twain of form and matter. Its plurality, indeed, is supposed to possess mutual connexion ; but this connexion is not wrought out consistently and satisfactorily. The plurality of Leibnitz is so simply by prim* ordial decree, so that any mutual connexion in it falls into the monad of monads, or just — into the reflecting philosopher. The last touch is quite Hegelianly caustic, and the whole critique smacks of the usual iron, austere exhaustiveness. C. Eepulsion and Attraction. a. Exclusion of the One. We spoke of the ' genetic Twain of Form and Matter,' — never- theless prematurely be it understood, for the Twain have yet a considerable road to travel before they assume these names. Still, it is true that the One before us (the voice) stands for form, as the many (the notification) stand for matter. We note this as well to indicate this prematureness, as to warn the reader not to understand by matter, as is usually done, mere earth, mere in- organic stuffing. The notification stands in no such relation to the voice ; indeed, there is a mode of looking to which the notifi- cation would appear the form of the voice, its native form and circle of forms : still the voice has no other matter than that form; that form is what it contains or holds in it; but it does not simply contain it, or hold it in it — it is identified with it ; if it is matter, it is matter absorbed and assimilated, matter organised and incorporated into the voice ; it is the voice itself, but so viewed as contained or held in ; it is its intent, its Inhalt ; — and this is the proper name for matter when, as above, opposed to form. All this, as has been said, however, is premature. The first paragraph transforms active repulsion into neutral exclusion. The One (the voice) self-referent, the for-One (the notification) self-referent, — both are simply mutually exclusive. This is the manifest contradiction, that the infinite One (the infinite voice relatively to its notification — the latter also, indeed, relatively to the former) is set or expressed in an immediacy of Being. From this immediacy the repulsion ceases to find itself QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 475 repulsion ; it just finds what it repels there before it. This is exclusion. The plurality, though determined as mere plurality and not relatively others, have still in the repulsion their common con- nexion. The amber at once disjoins and conjoins the flies. The repulsion, then, is the means of establishing them in a Daseyn, in a definite relative There-being or Here-being mutually. This is plain by a reference to the voice and its notification, but in the form to which both are now reduced — infinitude in immediacy* an infinitude of Ones. Their repulsion is their common reference ; for each is what the other is ; or this mutual repulsion is the ex- pressed Daseyn, relative finite existence, of the many Ones, for their mutual There-being amounts to that — it is a iTere-being that is also There. 'They negate themselves (each other mutually),' &c. : this duplicity of translation is necessary in order to convey fully Sie negiren sich gegenseitig. ' They set each other as such that they are only for-One,' — each takes the other to be no absolute but a relative that has its affair in a One ; they, then, in a body are the Being-for-One of the Being-for-Self. ' But they negate just as much at the same time this, that they are only for One ; they repel this their Ideality and are.' All now is Infinitude out of itself, voice and notification an infinitude of notes mutually There-beent — an infinitude of There-beent voices, then — each would be for itself — would negate its only Being-for-One, would repel its Ideality and simply be. The One is Being-for-self and Being-for-One indistinguishably — a thoroughly independent voice. But each note is beent in the many notes; the Being-for-One, then, as it is determined in the exclusion, is therefore a Being- for-Other. That is, the single note, after all, is not independent, but relative ; its Being is not, as it was seen at first in the Being- for-Self, a simple Being-for-One, but in very truth a Being-for- Other. This is really what the exclusion brings us to in the development. But observe the full force of such words as Explication and Exclusion : they must be taken at once in reflected sense as they are, and in direct sense as a folding out and a closing, which closing is at the same time a closing out. The contradiction which the word involves in itself — a closing, a movement inwards, which is a closing out, a movement outwards and so of the others — is put to full account. The voice counter the notification, a many which it is, but which it also sublates, is ' Wider-spruch, contradiction unconcernedly producing itself:' we 476 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. see here the same verbal equivoque. But to return — each note then is relative, is not for itself, but for One, and that another one. We can carry the image to the mutual relations of finite spirits, Men; — in fact, what is here is the One Spirit, and the Many Spirits which are, or which, indeed, is What is. The double side in the repulsion or mutual negation, at once of self-preservation and of dissolution, is plainly brought out. The next paragraph has the same theme. The dialectic seems too trenchant ; but its effect is mitigated by the explanation of the next again paragraph that it was our comparison. The many notes are, this their mutual reference presupposes ; and they are so far as they at once negate and negate the negating. The double edge all through is subtle but not difficult to an attention that will apply itself. The double edge is this : in that each is negated, it is implied as ideal ; but in that it negates it is real : now both characters come to each here ; — no note of the many but negates, no note of the many but is negated. The paragraph that effects the transition into Attraction is sufficiently intelligible. Eemark. The Unity of the One and the Many. This is in every way a deep and admirable Remark. The nature of self-will, of the bad, is most luminously indicated ; and a most important lesson is thus read to us. In our selfishness, we lose ourselves, at the very moment that we hug ourselves in the thought that it is but ourselves we gain. Even in that we would turn only to our own selves, it is only on our own selves that we have absolutely turned the back. The one is the many, the many is the one. Reconciliation, then, is to abandon the One, which is but the negativity of self; or rather not to abandon it, but to turn it towards the many, identifying that which it assumes to be only its negative, as its own genuine and true self. — What we have here, placed in connexion with that atomism, political and other, which has been already mentioned, yields a moral or a social atomism ; and such is the historical attitude of humanity at this very instant of time. Each man nowadays seeks but himself : everywhere it is but one universal rivalry of individuality, and that only an external one. Self-interest, in the form of one's own individual self-interest, in the form of self-will — that is, of QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 477 caprice, — has been proclaimed the only wisdom, and has all but received even legal enactment. No wonder, then, that at this moment the whole social fabric should be felt to totter. No article of material existence but is sapped by self-will: we are poisoned when we would be fed ; we are in rags when we would be clothed. Our houses smother us, our bridges break into chasms that devour us, even our very roads rise up as moDsters to extir- pate us — and all this because we have called to self-interest to brand its consuming mark into them. Nor is it otherwise with the spiritual side: self-interest, being allowed the right, has seized it too, and made it material. Whatever is spiritual nowadays is, just as whatever is material, — a commodity. But look to the result — a universal revolt of the will of the unit against the will of the One ! The best proof of this state of the fact lies in this — that each one sees and censures this condition of things in others, and is absolutely blind to it in himself. The very mistress, for example, who shall this moment be loud against the revolt of domestic servants, shall, the next, be equally loud for the revolt of the sex. ' The injustice to woman commences at her birth : the parents regret to find her not a boy ! ' — Are we always, then, to separate the difference and turn against it ? Nay, at the very moment that we turn against the difference, as but a relative, as not the absolute — at that very moment is it not the longing of our whole soul actually to make absolute this very difference? This we, this atom we call we, is a very good atom and the very best of atoms, make it immortal and absolute by all means ; but the difference ! is our atom but the difference, and is it only against our atom we turn when we turn against the difference ? Yes, it is even so ; we do but separate our own difference and turn upon it ; and another Menenius were very acceptable now to persuade us again into the identity — but the differentiated identity— of the concrete. The social atomism which sapped and dissipated Rome, the mightiest empire that time had ever seen, was animal enough ; but what we witness now is baser. The coldest, shallowest, meanest, every way the most miserable atomism of which universal history can speak, is commercial atomism, politico-economical atomism, — the atomism of Manchester. And in this atomism, the very arrangement which it demands as best, is it, let us say even the superior atom, so very much at its ease ? Rebuked — however superior it may be — by yet a superior superiority, on 'change, in the street, at church, in its newspaper, it retires from 478 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. the misery of the day to that solitary evening hour — solitary, but alone the rose of life to it — when, gnawing at still a difficulty, and not yet enough, and comparing the ash of the present with the live-coal of the past, it once again admires the vanity of vanities, and bitterly mellows itself towards the oblivion and the elysium of an eight hours' sleep ! * But there is more here than an exposure of atomism — immor- tality itself is here ! The pure notion has — in purity — followed its own movement, its own native dialectic : the One is Many, and the Many One ; the Differences are in Identity, and Identity is in the Differences. — It is impossible fully to expose to a reader all the burthen of these wonderful paragraphs : each is but a water- drop, that and nothing more; but to him that looks into it, it radiates into — that which is. * Each is excluding the others,' sounds not quite satisfactorily ; still it is literal and intelligible. b. The one One of Attraction. This section is sufficiently exoteric to require no comment. Towards the end, the German word which is translated extension is Umfang : now Umfang is opposed to Inhalt, as logical extension to logical comprehension ; but here, nevertheless, something of its literal meaning, its fang um, its grasp about, is also to be seen. The reader ought not to fail to see here, however, the divine sense, how all is sub specie atemitatis ; and, indeed, it ought to be matter of wonder to him, how a simple prosecution of the pure notion should be able to lead to such concrete wisdom — the peace of reconciliation, the establishment of all those great religious truths which, at least lately, have had the character rather of aspirations than of known facts. Clues to the attitude indicated may be attempted to be conveyed thus : In the first paragraph of the preceding section (a), what is the full force of that 'exhibited contradiction, Infinitude ex-pressed into Immediacy of Being;' or in the last paragraph, same section, what is the full force of that ' going-together- with-self ? ' The reflexion must be seen to be double : if a consciousness goes together with its own self, it has certainly its own self inwardly ; but in going together with its own self, it has also gone together with its own self outwardly ; * One asks oneself in 1897, was, then, that somewhat cold and thin bogie now really so warm and stout in 1864 ? QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 479 the contracting inwardly into its own abstract negativity is a proportional dilating outwardly into its own self as the differences, its differences, the objects, the seen outward concrete. Thus doubly is it a going together with its own self; and thus is it the dis-played contra-diction — Infinitude unfolded into the Im- mediacy of Being. Here again, under (b), the full force of the one One that is the realised Ideality must not be missed. In a word, he who has an eye to see may know how to discern himself henceforth secure in the finite infinite, the relative absolute, with God assured to him, immortality assured to him, free-will assured to him, — and all this by virtue of the simple notion. c. The Reference of Repulsion and Attraction, Beziehung, the German word for reference, has a stronger sense than its English counterpart, amounting to a he-drawing, as it were a drawing together, and almost equivalent to connexion What we have here, then, are repulsion and attraction in mutual connexion ; and by these words we are to understand, not a merely physical repulsion and attraction, but a metaphysical also, — a repulsion and attraction sub specie osternitatis, in the realm of thought, in the world of Spirits. The apparent immediacy of the repulsion, to the foundation of the self-dependent Ones, with the apparent — in the first instance — externality of the attraction, is the first point ; and to what all this in rerum natura is directed must now be evident. Both, then, appear, in the first instance, as abstract, as per se. Eepulsion, thus alone, would be simply the irretrievable dissipa- tion of the Ones. But thus, again, the Ones were not, as they are determined to be, repellent, excludent. The repulsion still implies reference; what excludes is still in liaison with that which is excluded. But this is attraction ; repulsion itself implies attrac- tion. Abstract repulsion, and beents only se//-referent, are thus negated. Repulsion and attraction, then, at first view independent, are, in effect, mutually presuppositious, the one of the other. Each has precisely the same constitution; each is the other* and each is so, not through the other, but through itself. They are so while merely relative. The implication of repulsion and the Ones is again made prominent. 480 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Attraction is similarly gone into ; and its implication of Many, even while it would set ideality or the One, made equally evident. This, in fact, is the true metaphysic of the necessity of thought, i.e. of existence, that there should be at once and both One and Many : so some of the weightiest of human interests are thus brought to a settlement. Each negates itself and sets itself as the other, and the other of itself. The attraction of the There-beent units is their ideality, the setting of the One. But in the One, attraction simply sublates itself. To set a One is to be the negative of itself, that is, repulsion. — The thoughts here are sufficiently fine ; but they are also sufficiently obvious, and sufficiently fact. The words are few and abstract ; but if they be gazed into, and in the proper mood of mind, they will expand to the concrete — and that, too, with resolution of the most fundamental problems. ' But not only is the In itself as such long since gone over into the Being-for-self : ' we are to consider that the development has advanced, and, moreover, that this development is actuality, and not mere expression of a book. For this concluding paragraph of Being-for-self, in which Quality, completed, passes over into its opposite, Quantity, let us avail ourselves again of our metaphor, the Voice ; but let us conceive this time that it is a conscious voice. Well, this voice is a One that repels from itself its own self (in its determination, its notification) as its absolute {i.e. abstract) other wiseness (the Many). Its series of notes is just its absolute otherwiseness ; but also its abstract otherwiseness, in that it is abstractly looked at, and not, in that reference, identified with itself. But in that it refers itself to this sequent notification, negatively, or as to its non-being, it sublates it, it refers itself in it only to itself. The voice is thus but a mediation of repulsion and attrac- tion, of a negative reference to itself as setting the notification, and of an affirmative (yet negative) reference to itself as svhlating it. The voice, then, is just this becoming, in which its form as im- mediate, as beent, as beginning, as catching-on (dass es anfangt), as note in the notification, and equally its form as result — as the one, immediate, excludent voice — have disappeared. The process, then, which the voice is, assumes the voice itself always as sublated : in the reference outwards, it encounters not itself, but its other- wiseness, its notification, — there then it is sublated ; and in its reference inwards it is again sublated, in that it sublates into itself QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 481 that really which it is — its notification. The sublation as con- sciousness is a relative sublation, a reference which is a different repulsion and attraction at once ; or it repels its note (object) as note, and attracts its note (object) as its. But consciousness becomes self- consciousness, or the conscious voice becomes the self-conscious voice ; — that is, through negation of the mutual externality, the mutual immediacy and There-beingness, it goes over into the infinite (the unended, the endless) reference of mediation, or re-mediation. Again as result, then, the self-con- scious voice (notification included, notification just it) is that becoming that in the retentionlessness of its moments (its notes) is a collapse, a precipitation, a going together with itself into sim- ple immediacy — a simple immediacy at once as absolute and infinite— or a simple immediacy at once of its own absoluteness as voice, and of its own infiniteness as notification. But voice and notification gone together into this mutual indifference — an indif- ference both of One and Many — an indifference in which any reference to being is sublated, or in which any particular being- ness is just indifferent — have gone together into simple Quantity. Read in a similar mood, as it were, of pictorial reflexion, the two remaining paragraphs, which briefly sum together the moments we have gone through, will yield a similar captivating felicity and marvellous far-reachingness. The qualitativeness of the voice and its notes is readily seen to be founded on what is meant by being or by immediacy. Again, the qualitative im- mediacy of any one note is seen to have limit, determinateness, so identified with its very being, that with its alteration the note itself disappears : the notification presents itself thus as finitude. If one conceive to oneself a wandering light or reflexion, one will be able to realise to oneself, how with the slightest shift, — with the alteration, that is, — the objects themselves change, and that is — disappear. The qualitative unity is so immediate, so without mediation, or intervention of other, in any one note, that difference, so far as it is concerned, seems to have disappeared. The note, however, is in itself at once being and negation, or being and nothing; but this difference being only in itself and concealed from it by its own immediacy, falls as otherwiseness in general, out of it. To the voice, its single note is so immediate, or the voice in its single note is to itself so immediate, that the difference just falls out of it as the otherwiseness of the various notes. This other- wiseness is sublated into the Being-for-self of the one voce ; and 2h 482 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. all settles into the one unity — that is, a determined or differenti- ated unity — but a unity seZ/-determined. Thus the voice, even in its negation, the notes, is but consonant with its own self. This unity is thus being, affirmative, negation of negation, remediated immediacy : the voice can be readily seen to be all this ; and so, consequently, as the unity that passes through and continues through its own determinatenesses or limits (the notes), which are set as sublated within it. It is also There-being, relative distinctivity, no longer, however, in the form of the abstract notes, but in these, as now identified with the one voice, with that which simpliciter is. In this self-continuity of being, the one itself has in a manner vanished ; one has gone over and beyond itself, as it were, into unity, — limit determined as limit simpliciter, but a limit which is none — a limit which, as regards the voice, is in it and within it, but indifferent to it ; but the indifferent limit is again Quantity. Eemaek. The Kantian Construction of Matter by means of Forces Attracting and Repelling. Into any explanation of this Eemark it will be unnecessary to enter, the reader being now already amply supplied with all that is required to enable him to comprehend it. It will constitute another sample of Hegel's irresistible incisiveness, and of his exhaustive and utterly overwhelming argumentation. It is worth while pointing out that repulsion and attraction, centrifugal and centripetal forces, discretion and continuity, intension and extension, &c, are but the same elements which we have seen from the beginning, but in new and higher forms. This of itself is a proof of the truth of the notion. Thought thus in its own movement assuming by due degrees all the forms of the concrete, — thisin itself is irresistible demonstration, — irresistible demonstration that what "is is thought, or that thought is substance. These forms themselves, in fact, by-and-by convert themselves of themselves into the reciprocals of simple apprehension and judgment, which coalesce in reason, and constitute the notion itself in direct logical manifestation. It is worth while adding, also, that this word Setzen literally finds its explanation in the peculiar organic reciprocity that is the pulse and life of the whole move- ment. "What is Gesetzt, is the momentarily overt, apparent, ex- QUALITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 483 press, ex-plicit moment — an outcome of process, which process has now disappeared and is only implicit. But the process of im- plication and explication involved here must be seen to be directly reciprocal: if there be a movement down, there is equally a. movement up ; if in, then equally out. The currents meet as in two inverted cones ; as the one current rushes out into one cone, the other rushes out equally into the cone it meets: but these currents are one ; draught and back-draught are identical ; there is present, in reality, but a single movement. Perhaps, the best illustration is what we have seen already as the going-together- with-itself: that which is, consciousness, the voice, the one, in going together with its own self inwardly, equally expands into its own self outwardly ; the infinitude of its out-of-its-self-ness, its constituent notes, lighten up or out to the voice at the very instant that it would darken itself down or inwardly into its abstract One.* * This chapter of Fiirsichseyn, occupying some thirty-six pages in the ' Logik, is satisfied with little more than one in the first edition of the Encyclopaedic, and can- not be produced, even by the Zusatze, to more than eight in the last. With its extraordinary contents before us, does this indicate that Hegel came to think that he had been unnecessarily prolix in the beginning ? In writing Hinrichs, Hegel inti- mates in regard to the latter's ' Logik,' ' es wiirde mich grosse Anstrengung kosten (it would cost me great labour) to go into the particular.' That, too, in his case costs us great labour ! Should we, too, follow his own example by that most difficult ' Fiirsichseyn,' and even fight shy of all strict dialectic thought given by himself ? That Seyn-fur-Eines, Being-for-One, Being-for-a, what, for instance, in the world is that ? Even there the interest must be supreme, or why should Hegel think proper to discuss there what in Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibnitz, precisely concerns — litre suprime 1 The fact is that it is supreme, and he that will but enter into the business will assuredly find it so. The text, however, strikes even me, after so many years of absence from it ; and I see with astonishment my own explanations. Here, indeed, I myself can but remind myself of the cricketer once seen at practice, who, after a lucky hit to leg, marched round his wicket, triumphantly ejaculant, with a hand in his coat-tail. My hit to leg is, particularly, the ' voice. ' Were philosophers rich, and did they understand the value of the hit, 1 should almost feign modestly to decree myself a small fortune in reward ! This, too, is true, that Hegel, in this, the first of his feat, and in view of what ' Quality ' is, has been prompted to open his whole magazine of means (say), so that, almost already instruit, he that will is very fairly in a case to proceed. — New. 484 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. IV. TRANSITION FROM QUALITY TO QUANTITY. Bkfore passing to Quantity, it may be well to seek to perfect our general view of Quality by adding to the detailed exposition of the Complete Logic which the preceding has attempted to convey, the condensed summary of the subject which presents itself in the Encyclopaedic But, in taking up this latter work, we cannot resist extracting certain preliminary passages (generally from the first edition as the shortest statement) which seem calculated to assist the student. And first from the Introduction, on which we shall spend a very few words only, in order to give prominence to such eminently Hegelian characteristics as are useful or indispensable to what follows as regards the System itself. The commencement may be paraphrased thus : — 'The objects (subject-matter) of the sciences in general are granted as presupposed, — as there without more ado ; that is, they are already given in conception, or they are allowed to pass as ad- mitted common possessions, awakening no question and demanding no justification. It is thus, too, as regards the method of these sciences : this, too, is granted as a matter of course ; and we are permitted to begin and prosecute our investigation according to a current and conventional manner which every one accepts as right and natural — so right and natural, that any doubt of its legitimacy never occurs. What forms a striking portion of this manner, too, is this — that the very terms and notions which are applied in characterisation of the objects discussed, are themselves just taken up — out of conception, as it were — in the same loose and uninquiring fashion. As regards the facilities of a beginning, of a method, and — in a large sense as applying to a general mediating TRANSITION. 485 element of decision and discussion — of a terminology, the sciences in general, then, have a great advantage over the science of philosophy, which, widely different from the rest, is seen at once to be under an obligation to demonstrate the necessity of its object, the necessity of its method, and the necessity of its characterising means or medium, or machinery of terms. In geometry, arithmetic, jurisprudence, medicine, zoology, botany, &c, for example, we have just to begin with the familiar name of the respective objects, magnitude, space, number, justice, disease, animal, plant, &c. ; and that suffices — without it ever occurring to us to doubt of the existence of any such objects, or to demand — at the hands of thought as thought — a demonstration of the necessity of the same. But, beginning thus, it is evident that we begin with the mere crude instinctive conception or Vorstellung of that into which we inquire; and, as regards progress, it is evident also that all considerations which we apply in description or characterisation of the same arise in like manner out of an element of current conception, and that the whole business is just an empirical appeal from the Vorstellung of the writer to the Vorstellung of the reader concerning a Vorstellung — not, however, without the frequent emergence of an inconvenience, which, indeed, were only to be expected — namely, that Vorstellung differs from Vorstellung to the production, possibly, of a blind debate which protracts itself endlessly. The movement of cog- nition in the ordinary sciences, then, is one of mere conception ; there is no necessary first, and no necessary transition thence to another and another, and an end : the line of movement, too, lies across a field that is blindly given, among much on both sides of it that is blindly granted, and which the movement itself constantly blindly uses up for its own progress and advance. 1 With philosophy it is otherwise : neither its method nor its medium of characterisation and determination can refer themselves to conception (Vorstellung); and, for its object or objects, these belong as little to conception as to sense. Conceptions, certainly, in the order of time precede notions ; but it is by turning on the former, and through and by means of these, that thought attains to the latter — attains, that is, to cognition and comprehension. Necessity is the element of philosophy ; and object, method, and determining media are alike inadmissible, unless stamped by its ineffaceable impress. In such field, proofs, demonstrations, are the requirements ; and presuppositions and assertions are idle and 486 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. inapplicable. In short, it is within philosophy itself that a beginning — which as such must be inderivative and incomposite, and which yet even so seems necessarily a presupposition — that the object, that the method, that the characterising terms must exhibit and demonstrate themselves; and anything that is said now by way of what is named introduction can be only of the nature of an anticipation. Eeligion, it is true, has the same objects as philosophy : both regard the true, and that, too, in the highest sense — that God is the true, and alone the true. Again, both would understand the finite, and nature and man ; as also the relation of these both to each other, and to God as their truth. Philosophy must really therefore, then, presuppose a certain acquaintance with its objects, as well as an interest in them : but the element of religion is sentiment, feeling, while that of philo- sophy is the notion, thought. But as regards the objects of philosophy, we are not restricted to religion for illustration ; there justifies itself a preliminary appeal to common, crude, current conception itself: for it is matter of universal acknowledgment, that the man who commences with the perceptions and the greeds of mere sense is speedily impelled beyond these to the presage and presentiment of an Infinite and Eternal, both as regards knowledge and will — a presage and presentiment which prompt the questions : "What can I know — of God — nature — my own soul ? What ought I to do ? What dare I hope ? True ; there are those who, unable to deny this natural human tendency, still utterly reject these the objects at which it aims. There are those, indeed, who suppose themselves to possess philosophy, not- withstanding that they profess to know only what immediate sense gives them to know : but for the refutation of these, while conception (common sense) can point at once to its own presage, thought brings forward just philosophy itself.' After these pregnant deliverances so paraphrased, appears a paragraph (§ 5 in the first edition) which we do not recollect to be represented anywhere in the subsequent editions, and which, for that reason and for its own importance, we translate pretty closely thus : — • Philosophy, then, is the Science of Eeason, and of reason conscious of its own self as all that is. Engaged in any cognition but the philosophical, reason, as a subjective element on the one side, presupposes given to it on the other an object, in which, con- sequently, it recognises not its own self : such cognition, therefore, TRANSITION. 487 is but cognition of what is finite, or it is a finite cognition. Sup- pose the objects of such cognition to belong even to self-conscious- ness, as Eight (Justice), Duty, &c, they are still particular objects, beside and apart from which, as apart from, or without of, self- consciousness itself, the remaining riches of the universe are to be found. The object of religion is, indeed, in itself the infinite object which is to comprehend all others : but these conceptions of religion remain not true to themselves, for, in spite of them, the world in the eyes of religion still remains without, apart from, the Infinite, — self-substantial by itself; and what it (religion) proposes as the highest truth is still, for the consciousness that would discriminate and distinguish, inexplicable, incomprehen- sible, a secret, a something given, and just in the form of a some- thing given and external. To religion, truth is as feeling, vision, aspiration, figurate conception, devotion generally, — not, it is true, uninterwoven with thoughts, but still truth not in the form of truth. Its mood, indeed, is all-embracing, but, compared with other forms of consciousness, religion constitutes but a region apart, but a region of its own. Philosophy may be regarded also as the science of Freedom, because in it the foreignness, the otherness of the objects, the finitude of consciousness vanishes, while contingency, physical necessity, relation to an outward, dependency, longing, and fear perish ; only in philosophy is reason perfectly at home, shut into its own self. It is from the same grounds that in this science reason is freed from the onesidedness of a merely subjective reason, which were regarded as property of a peculiar talent, perhaps, or as gift (like art with the artist) of a special divine good — or it may be bad — fortune : here, on the contrary, reason being but reason in the consciousness of its own self, this science is capable in its own nature of constituting universal science. Neither is this science that idealism in which the objects of cognition have only the value of a something set up by the ege, of a subjective production confined within self-con- sciousness. Because reason is conscious of itself as that which is, subjectivity — the ego that conceives itself as a separate individual beside the objects, and its own modi as in it and as diverse from those of everything else out of it or over it — this subjectivity is taken up and resolved into the rational universality.' In this paragraph the declarations of Hegel are both valuable and clear: in particular, the relation of the individual to the universe — a point always of great interest to the student of Hegel 488 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. — is remarkably plainly characterised. The relative doctrine taught may seem to be the absorption of the individual into the absolute. It is fair to remark, however, that such inference, especially in the naked manner in which it is thus and generally stated, is not by any means necessary ; and that Hegel's ortho- doxy were still safe, even had he not, by withdrawing the passage, involved the opinions it contains so far in doubt — But the One is Many, &c. From §§ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (1st Edit.) we translate as follows:— ' Philosophy, in so far as it exhibits the entire range of the philo- sophical sciences, but at the same time with definite indication of the parts, is — Encyclopaedia ; and in so far as it exhibits at once the distinction and the connexion of the parts as due to the necessity of the notion, it is — Philosophical Encyclopaedia. ' Philosophy being throughout rational cognition, each of its parts constitutes a philosophical whole, a self-inclusive sphere of the general totality ; but in every such part the philosophical idea is, as it were, in a particular specificatum or element. Each single sphere, just because it is a totality in itself, breaks through the limitation of its element and founds a higher sphere. The whole presents itself, then, as a sphere of spheres, of which latter each is a necessary moment of the whole; and the system of its own proper elements constitutes the complete idea, which again just appears (as a single manifestation) in each individual. • Philosophy is also by very nature Encyclopaedia, inasmuch as the true can only exist as totality, and through discrimination and assignment of its distinctive differences, the necessity of these, and the freedom of the whole : that is, philosophy is necessarily — System. ' A philosophising without system cannot be anything scientific ; for such philosophising, besides that it expressly offers itself as rather a mere subjective manner of looking or thinking, is con- tingent in its matter (its objects), inasmuch as this matter can receive its authorisation only as a moment of the whole, and apart from this whole must remain an ungrounded presupposition or mere subjective certainty. ' By a system of philosophy, there is erroneously understood only a philosophy of a certain one principle that is contradis- tinguished from others: the principle of veritable philosophy, on the contrary, is to include in itself all particular principles. Philosophy exhibits this in its own self, while its history also manifests partly TRANSITION. 489 that the various philosophies but constituted a single philosophy in various stages of development, and partly that the special prin- ciples of these — one underlying one system, another another — were but branches of one and the same whole. ' The Universal and the Particular [the Common and the Various] must be accurately distinguished, each in its special con- stitution. The Universal, formally taken, and placed beside the Particular, becomes itself particular. Were such position imposed on objects of ordinary life, the impropriety and ineptitude would strike at once. Suppose, for example, that a person in want of fruit should decline cherries, pears, grapes, &c, on the plea that they were cherries, pears, grapes, &c, and not fruit ! — In the case of philosophy, nevertheless, people think themselves free as well to justify their contempt of it by the objection that there are so many philosophies, and each is only a, not the philosophy, — as if the cherries were not also fruit, — as to set a philosophy whose principle is the universal side by side with those whose principle is a particular — nay, side by side with doctrines asserting that there is no philosophy or bestowing this name on a mere to and fro of thoughts, which assumes the true as something given and directly there, and only applies reflexions to the same. ' As Encyclopaedia, nevertheless, the science is necessarily not exhibited in the complete evolution of its particular details, but only as limited to the beginnings (prineipia) and rudimentary notions of the individual sciences. The whole of philosophy, though capable of being regarded as a whole of many particular sciences, constitutes truly but one science ; while each particular science is at once a moment of the whole and a whole in itself. ' Whatever is true in any science, is so through and by virtue of philosophy, whose encyclopaedia therefore comprehends within it every veritable science. 1 Ordinary encyclopaedias, unlike the philosophical, are only aggregates of sciences empirically and contingently fallen on; many of which, too, as mere bundles of facts, are but sciences in name. The unity to which, in any such aggregate, the sciences are reduced, is, as it was but externally that they themselves were fallen on or taken up, equally an external one, — an order, an arrangement (a ranking). This order must always, for the same reason and because the materials are of contingent nature, remain an attempt, and exhibit incongruent edges. Besides, then, that the philosophical encyclopaedia excludes (1) such mere aggregates of 490 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. facts as, for example, philology is, it excludes also (2) such sciences as are founded in mere arbitrariness, like heraldry : sciences of this nature are out-and-out positive. (3) Other sciences are also called positive, which possess, however, a rational foundation and principle : this latter element in them belongs to philosophy ; the positive side, again, remains special to them. This positive element, too, is of various kinds. (1) In the ordinary non-philosophical sciences, their principle (beginning), that which is the veritably true in them, has the contingent as its end, because they have to introduce and reduce the universal into the empirical unit and actual. In this field of mutability and contingency, not the notion, but only grounds or reasons can be made available. For example, Jurisprudence, the System of direct and indirect Taxation, &c, require final exact determinations which lie without and apart from the determination proper of the notion, and leave for deci- sion, therefore, a certain latitude or margin which may be disposed in one manner on one reason and in another on another, and is insusceptible of any certain and definitive last. In the same manner, the Idea of Nature in its singularisation (or endless separa- tion into units) runs out into contingencies, and Natural History, Geography, and Medicine fall into distinctions of fact, into species and differences which are determined by external accident or the sport of caprice, and not by reason. History, too, falls to be in- cluded here, inasmuch as, though the Idea be its true nature and substance, its manifestation or appearancy is in contingency and the field of self-will. (2) Such sciences are also in so far positive, as they do not recognise their determinations as finite, nor demon- strate the transition of these and of their whole sphere into a higher one, but assume them as valid simpliciter. With this finite- ness of the form, as the first was the finiteness of the matter, there connects itself (3) the finiteness of the cognitive ground, which is sometimes raisonnement, sometimes feeling, belief, the authority of others, in general the authority of inner or outer perception. That philosophy also which seeks to found itself on Anthropology — facts of consciousness, inner perception, or outer experience — belongs to the same class. (4) It is still possible that it is merely the form of the scientific statement that is empirical and notion- less, while in other respects thoughtful observation arranges what are only outer appearances in a like manner to the inner sequence of the notion. There is added, perhaps, that through the antagon- ism and multiplicity of the appearances (phenomena) which are TRANSITION. 491 brought together, the external, contingent circumstances of the conditions are removed, and the universal steps before us. A thoughtful experimental physic, history, &c, would in this manner present the rational science of nature and of human eventualities and deeds in an external image which should mirror the notion. ' The whole of science (scientia) is the exposition of the Idea ; the division (distribution) of the former, therefore, can be under- stood only by reference to the latter, and, like this preliminary conception of philosophy itself, can be something only anticipated. The Idea, however, demonstrates itself as Keason directly identical with its own self, and this at the same time as the capability to set itself — in order to be for itself — over-against itself, and in this other to be only by itself. Thus science falls divisively into three parts : — I. Logic, the Science of the Idea in and for itself. II. Philosophy of Nature, or the Science of the Idea in its Otherness. III. Philosophy of Spirit, as of the Idea which from its Other- ness returns into itself. ' It has been already remarked, that the differences of the various philosophical sciences are only characteristics of the Idea itself, which latter alone is what exhibits itself in these various elements. In Nature it is not an other than the Idea which is to be recognised, but it is in the form of externalisation, just as in Spirit it is the same Idea as beent for itself and in-and-f or -itself becoment. Such a form in which the Idea appears is at the same time a fluent moment ; therefore, any particular science is just as much this — to recognise its matter (object) as beent object, as also this — to recognise immediately in the same its transition into a higher sphere. The conception of the Division, therefore, is an external reflexion, an anticipation of what the Idea's own necessity produces, and shows this inaccuracy — that it sets up the various parts or sciences beside each other as if they were stable and substantial in their mutual contradistinction, like species or sorts.' To a reader who has advanced this length, the above passages will be readily intelligible without comment; and they will serve to strengthen any conception already formed of Hegelian pene- 492 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. trativeness, comprehensiveness, and systematic wholeness. We proceed now to make a few extracts from THE PRE-NOTION which precedes the Logic ; using specially for this purpose, §§ 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 35, 36, and 37 (First Edition). 1 Logic is the science of the pure Idea, — that is, of the Idea in the abstract element of Thought. 'It may, without doubt, be said that Logic is the science of Thought, its forms and its laws ; but thought is at strictest the pure identity of cognition with itself, and constitutes, therefore, only the universal determinatum, determinateness, or the element in which the Idea is as logical. Thought is truly the Idea, but not as thought formal ; on the contrary, as the Totality of its own forms which it itself gives to itself. Logic is the hardest science, in so far as it has to do, not with perceptions — not even with abstract ones, as in Geometry — or other sensuous forms, but with pure abstractions, and demands, on the part of its student, a power of retiring into pure thoughts, of holding such fast, and of moving in them. On the other side, again, it may be regarded as the easiest science, inasmuch as its import is nothing but one's proper thought and its current notions, and these are, at the same time, the simplest. The utility of Logic concerns its relation to the particular subject or individual so far as he would give himself a certain training and formation for other objects. The training of Logic consists in this — that in it we are exercised in thinking, for this science is the thinking of thinking. So far, however, as the element of Logic is the absolute form of the true, and even more than this — the pure true itself, — it is something quite other than what is merely useful. • In form, Logic has three sides : (a) that of understanding, or the abstract side [the dianoetic] ; (/3) the negative-rational or the dialectic side; and (y) the positive-rational or the speculative side [say the noetic]. ' These three sides do not make three parts of Logic, but are moments of every logical real, — that is, of every notion, or of every true in general. They may be set under the first or dianoetic moment, and thereby held asunder from each other; but, so held, they are not considered in their truth. ' (a) Thought as understanding holds fast the fixed individual TRANSITION. 493 and its difference from others ; and such limitated abstract has the value to it of what is independent and self-subsistent. ' ($) The dialectic moment is the self-sublation of such individuals, and their transition into their opposites. '(1) Dialectic, isolated by understanding and taken by itself, constitutes, especially when manifesting itself in scientific notions, Scepticism, which views mere negation as the dialectic result. (2) Dialectic is usually regarded as an external art which arbitrarily produces confusion in accepted notions and a mere show of contradiction, the decisions of the understanding and the accepted notions being still supposed the true, while the show itself is to be considered but a nullity. Dialectic, however, is rather to be regarded as the true and proper nature of the decern- ments of the understanding, of things, and of the finite in general. Reflexion is properly a going out over and beyond the isolated individual, and a referring, whereby the individual is placed in relation, but for the rest remains still in its isolated validity. Dialectic, on the contrary, is that immanent going-out which exhibits the onesidedness and limitation of the decernments of the understanding as that which it is, — the negation, namely, of this and these. Dialectic constitutes, therefore, the motive soul of progress, and is the principle by which alone there comes immanent connexion and necessity into the matter of science, just as it is in it that the true, and not the external, elevation over the finite lies. ' (y) The positive-rational or speculative side recognises the unity of the distinctions even in their antithesis, the positive element which is retained and preserved in their resolution and transition. ' (1) Dialectic has a positive result, because it has a determinate import or matter ; or because its result is really not the empty, abstract nothing, but the negation of certain distinctions which are retained and preserved in the result — because it is a result, and not a simple nothing. (2) This rational act is, therefore, though abstract and of thought, still at the same time a concrete, because it is not simple formal unity, but unity of distinguished dis- tinctions. Philosophy, therefore, has nothing whatever to do with mere abstractions and formal thoughts, but only with concrete notions. 'As regards matter, the determinations of thought are con- sidered in Logic in and for themselves. In this way they present 494 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. themselves as the concrete pure thoughts, that is, as the notions, with the force and import of that which constitutes the absolute ground and foundation of all that is. Logic, therefore, is essen- tially speculative philosophy. 'Under the speculative moment, form and matter are not sundered and severed, and held apart, as under the two preceding. The forms of the Idea are its distinctions [say its native inflexions or intonations], and it were impossible to say where it should get any other or truer matter than these its own forms themselves. The forms of the mere Logic of understanding are, on the contrary, not only not something true per se, but they cannot be even only forms of the true. Eather, since, as merely formal or formell, they are affected with the essential antithesis to the matter, they are nothing more than forms of the finite, of the untrue. — Because, however, Logic, as pure speculative philosophy, is the Idea in the element or form of thought, or the absolute still shut in to its eternity, it is the subjective or first science, and there fails it still the side of the completed objectivity of the Idea. It not only remains, however, as the absolute ground of the real, but, in manifesting itself as this, it demonstrates itself as the real, universal, and objective science. In the first universality of its notions, it appears per se, and as a subjective special activity, without and apart from which the entire wealth of the sensuous, as of the more concrete intellectual, world is still supposed to live its own life. But when this wealth is taken up in the philosophy of the real part of the science, and has there manifested itself as returning into the pure Idea, and possessing in it its ultimate ground and truth, — then the logical universality takes stand no longer as a separate entity counter said wealth of the real, but rather as comprehending this wealth, and as veritable universality. It acquires thus the force of speculative theology. ' Logic, with the value of speculative philosophy, takes up the place of what was called ^Metaphy sic and treated separately. The nature of Logic and the stand-point of scientific cognition now receive their more particular preliminary elucidation in the nature of this Metaphysic, and of the Critical Philosophy which ended it. — Metaphysic, besides, is a thing of the past only in reference to the history of philosophy ; in itself, as lately manifested especially, it is the mere understanding's view of the objects of reason. ' In order to place oneself on the stand-point of science, it is TRANSITION. 495 requisite to renounce the presuppositions which are involved in the subjective and finite modes of philosophical cognition, viz. : (1) that of the fixed validity of limited and opposed distinctions of understanding generally ; (2) that of a given substrate, conceived as already finished and ready there before us, which is to be taken as standard decisive of whether any of those distinctions are com- mensurate with it or not ; (3) that of cognition as a mere referring of such ready-formed and fixed predicates to some given substrate^ (4) that of the antithesis of a cognising subject and a cognised object, which latter is not to be identified with the former; and of this antithesis each side, as in the preceding, is to be equally taken per se as a something fixed and true. 'To abandon these presuppositions cannot be demanded so much for the reason that they are false — for science, in which these forms present themselves, has to show this in their own case — as for the reason that they are figurate conceptions and belong to immediate thought — thought imprisoned in the given, opinion (Meynung), — for this reason in general, indeed, that they are given and presuppositions whereas science presupposes nothing but that it would be pure thought. In effect, we have to begin in complete emancipation from every presupposition ; and, in the resolution to will to think purely, that is accomplished by the freedom which abstracts from everything, and holds steadily its pure abstraction, the simplicity (uniplicity) of thought. 'Pure science (scientia), or Logic, falls divisively into three parts : — I. The doctrine of Being. II. The doctrine of Essence (inner nature). III. The doctrine of the Notion and the Idea. Or into the doctrine of Thought, or the Thought : I. In its immediacy — the Notion in itself. II. In its Eeflexion and Be-mediation — the Being-for-self and the Shine of the Notion. III. In its return into itself, and in its developed Being-by- self — the Notion in and for itself.' All the above terms have been already commented on, with the exception of Shine (Schein) and Being-by-self (Bey-sich-seyn). Schein is just the Shine or show of a thing — not the thin<* in itself, but just its shining, showing, or seeming: it may thus be mere seeming, or it may be true seeming which amounts to 496 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. manifestation. Could we give the English word seem the sense of shine, or shine the sense of seem, a translation would have no difficulty. To be by self is to be chez soi, at home, or contented in seclusion to, and identification with, oneself. We come now to ' The First Part of Logic, or The Doctrine of Being, and there to QUALITY, and a. Being. — b. There-being. — c. Being -for -self. ' Under Quality, then, we have a. Being. 'Pure Being constitutes the beginning, because it is as well pure thought as the indefinite simple immediate, and the first beginning cannot be anything mediated (a product of means) or further determined. 'But this pure Being is the pure abstraction, consequently absolutely negative, and, taken also immediately, just Nothing. 1 Nothing, as this self-equal immediate, is conversely the same thing that Being is. The truth of Being as of Nothing is, there- fore, the unity of both : this unity is Becoming. b. There-being. ' Being in Becoming as one with Nothing, and so Nothing as one with Being, are only disappearant ; Becoming, through its contradiction in itself, falls together into the unity in which both are sublated : its result is, consequently, There-being. ' (a) There-being is Being with a Determinateness, which is, as immediate or beent deterniinateness — Quality. There-being as in this its determinateness reflected into itself, is There-beent-ity, Something. The categories that yield themselves in There-being are now to be summarily stated. ' Quality, as beent determinateness counter the negation that is contained in it but distinguished from it, is Reality. The negation no longer the abstract Nothing, but as a There-being and Some- thing, is only form in this latter — it is as Otherwise-being. Quality, TRANSITION. 497 in that this Otherwise-being is its own determination, but firstly distinguished from it, is Being-for-Other, — a breadth (latitude) of the There-being, of the Something. The Being of Quality as Being, counter this reference to Other, is the Being-in-itself (or just the In-itself). [The distinguishableness of anything is evidently an otherwise- being, an otherwise-ness, in it, while as evidently its distinguish- ablenesses constitute a breadth.] 1 ($) The Being, held fast as distinct from the Determinateness, or the Being-in-itself, were only the empty abstraction of Being. In There-being, the determinateness is one with the Being; which determinateness, set as Negation, is at the same time Limit, Limitation. The otherwise-ness is, therefore, a moment, not in- different out of There-being, but its own. Something is through its Quality, firstly, ^nite (mdlich), and secondly, alterable (verandeT- lich) ; so that Finitude and Otherableness belong to its being (it is at once end-ed and end-able). 'Something becomes another; but the other is itself a some- thing : it becomes, therefore, equally another, and so on ad infinitum. ' This Infinite is the spurious, bastard, negative, false, or Pseudo- Infinite, inasmuch as it is nothing but the negation of the finite, which, however, just so arises again, and consequently is just as much not sublated — or this Infinite expresses only the To-be-to (Sollen) of the sublation of the finite. The Progress into the Infinite keeps standing by the enunciation of the contradiction which the finite involves ; namely, that it is as well something as its other, and is the perpetual continuation of the alternation of these determinations, mutually introductive of each other. ' (y) What is here in fact is, that Something becomes another, and the Other another, just generally. Something in relation to another is already another in its regard; consequently, as that into which it passes is quite the same thing as that which passes — both have one and the same and no further determination than that each is another, — Something thus in its passing into Other goes together only with its own self ; and this reference, in the passing and in the other to its own self, is the True Infinite. Or, looked at negatively : what is othered is the Other — it becomes the Other of the Other. Thus Being, but as negation of the nega- tion, is again restored, and is the Being-for-self In translating the paragraphs immediately above, certain supple- 2i 498 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. mentary passages have been omitted. Before proceeding to Being-for-self, however, it may be well to spend a word on any points in these omitted passages which may seem calculated to embarrass the student. With reference to § 84 (Encyclo- paedic, Bosenkranz', or Hegel's 3rd, Edition), that 'Being is the Notion in itself is not difficult; for Being (Seyn) applies to everything of which we say is, or it is; and everything of which we say is, is just the Logical Notion in itself, that is, materi- aliter, not formaliter. The Bestimmungen, the determinations (and the reference in this word is always to the logical moments of the logical notion, which, of course, vary with the sphere), the distinguishable forms in the sphere of Seyn (Being), are evidently he'ent, other to other, while their progressive determination (the dialectic movement in that field) is plainly a passing into other. This, of course, is an attempt to express Being and its peculiarities in terms of the Notion ; and certainly Hegel will be at least allowed to have brought before us an ingenious analogy. That this progress is ' a setting out of the Notion as it is in itself is also plain : anything running through the circle of its qualities or powers sets out the Notion that in itself it is, and this at the same time can be seen to be 'a going into its own self,' ' a deepening of Being into itself.' Hegel then asserts that his doctrine of Being is at once representative and resolvative of the whole of the Seyn or Being ; and thus we are led to under- stand what his object is in this doctrine. The next paragraph declares the determinations of Logic to constitute the definitions of the Absolute, the metaphysical defini- tions of God; but that this is more especially the case with spheres that are First and Third, while those that are Second refer to the "Finite. To define God is to think God, or to express God in thoughts ; and Logic ought to comprehend all thoughts as such. It is a defect in the form of Definition in general, however, that in such operation there floats ever before the conception of the Definer a Substrate which is to be the receptacle of the defining predicates. For example, the Absolute, which we may suppose to stand for God as thought, is, in reference to its predicates, quite void, and only supposititious — a substrate ; but the thought of the substrate — and that is the whole thing — is in the predicate. The predicate, then, is alone substantial, and the substrate, or even the form of a proposition, appears superfluous. From § 86, we learn that all difficulties in regard to the com- TRANSITION. 499 mencement with pure Being may be removed by simply discern- ing what a beginning in general implies. We are told, too, that the Fichtian Ego-Ego and the Schellingian absolute Indifference or Identity are not so very discrepant from the Hegelian Seyn or pure Being. The former, however, are objectionable as involving process, that is, as being products of means : in fact, properly put as a beginning requires, both of them just become Seyn or Being, while Being again just implies them. Being is the first predicate then ; and so the first definition is, the Absolute is Being. This is the Eleatic definition, and also the common one, that God is the sum of all Eealities ; the limitation that is in everything being abstracted from, there remains for God only the reality that is in all reality. In § 88, there are several points of considerable interest. In the first place, we see that the whole Hegelian business is the Setzen of the An sich — the exposition, or simply the position, of the In-itself, the explication of the implication, that formaliter expressed which materialiter is (and that just amounts to the Aristotelian moments which we have already so often seen). We see also that the manner of philosophical cognition is different from that which is usually employed, that of common sense, or of figurate conception ; for, as Kant has already told us, the former is a knowing in abstracto, while the latter is a knowing in concreto. From this we see how much Hegel has simply been in earnest with the relative teaching of Kant. We have also the Metaphysic of a Beginning alluded to : the thing (what- ever may be put in question) is not yet in its beginning, but still its beginning is not just the nothing of the thing, but the being of this latter is certainly also in its beginning. This must be referred to, and collated with, what has been already said in regard to a beginning, being, becoming, &c. Lastly, we are made to see very clearly how the proposition Ex nihilo nihil fit is tantamount to a proposition of the eternity of matter, of pantheism. ' The ancients have made a simple reflexion that the proposition, From some- thing comes something, or From nothing comes nothing, just in effect annihilates a Becoming ; for that from which there comes, and that which comes, are one and the same thing ; what we have before us is only the proposition of the abstract identity of the understanding. It must, however, strike us as surprising to see the propositions, From nothing comes nothing, or From something comes something, even in our days quite unsuspectingly main- 500 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. tained, without consciousness that they are the ground-principle of pantheism, as without any knowledge of the fact that the ancients have exhausted the consideration of these propositions.' From § 89, we learn — and with conviction — that every one concrete consists of opposing notae or significates ; that it is the province of the abstraction of understanding, as understanding, to see only one of these, to lighten this one up to the darkening out of the other, and the fallacious appearance of a part as a fixed, isolated, individual whole. Hence also it is manifest that the demonstration of antithesis is not necessarily productive of a simple negation, is not necessarily reductive of the subject of antithesis to a simple nothing. In § 95, the terminal remark in reference to the true relation of Finite and Infinite is a perfectly successful Hegelian statement, and a full compensation for the confusing tediousness and length which we have already animadverted on as the fault of the similar discussion in the detailed Logic. Our explanations in that reference, however, shall be allowed to dispense us from translat- ing this remark, however admirable, here. If in § 86 we found that the Absolute is Being, we see from § 87 that it is equally true that the Absolute is the Nothing. This not only because the Absolute is Difference as well as Identity, but because, all Difference being reflected into the one of this Identity, that one is as good as Nothing. This is illus- trated by the nature of the Thing-in-itself, which is to be all sub- stance, all being, but just emerges as an absolute void — Nothing. Both considerations, in fact, are the same. It is curious, I may remark by way of conclusion here, that the ultimate generalisation of all generalisation should be Being, and quite as much Nothing. Of that there can be no doubt. This Nothing, too, is the only Nothing possible — in effect it is the Nothing, just what we mean by Nothing. Thrown back from these generalisations as quite abstract, as quite untrue, as nothing, one looks once more at the concrete ; but what is it, again, in ultimate abstraction but a Becoming ? — it never is. These are really the initial generalised abstractions : if we want to think purely of what is — of the laws, forms, or principles of all things in general, apart from each thing in particular — it is so we must begin. But, in spite of the Becoming, there is a Become, a Distinguishable, a Here-being, a There-being, — what we call mortal state. This has Reality ; this has also Negation ; it is so Something. As its TRANSITION. 501 Reality against its Negation, it is Something in itself; and, vice versd, it is Something for other. Its Something-/or-o^Aer identified with what it is in itself, is its Qualification. But its Qualification is its Talification, and both coalesce in Limit. In its Limit, Something is not only ended, but endable ; that is, it is Finite. But its end, the finis of the Finite, is the Infinite; and that is the One into which all variety is reflected. But this reflexion of variety into the One is the negative reflexion of this one into its own self ; and, again, this negativeness of the Reflexion implies other than the One — more ones — (or, it is allowable by anticipa- tion to say more I's, more Egos). — But thus we are fully in the field of Fursichseyn, or of c. Being-for-self. ' (a) Being-for-Self, as Reference to itself, is Immediacy ; and, as Reference of the Negative to itself, it is Being-for-self-ity, One, the One, — what is within itself distinction-less, and so excludent of the Other out of itself. 1 ()3) The Reference of the Negative to itself is negative refer- ence, so distinguish-ment of the One from itself, the Repulsion of the One, — i.e., the setting of many or simply more Ones. By reason of the Immediacy of the Being-for-self-ity, these Many or More are Be'ent, and the Repulsion of the Beent Ones becomes so far their Repulsion the one of the other as of entities already to the fore, or Mutual Exclusion. ' (y) The Many, however, are, the one what the other is ; each is one, or one of the Many ; they are, therefore, one and the same. Or the Repulsion regarded in itself is, even as negative comport- ment of the Many Ones mutually, equally essentially their Refer- ence mutually; and as those to which in its repulsion the One refers itself are One, it refers itself in them to itself. The Repul- sion is thus quite as essentially Attraction; and the excludent One or the Being-for-Self sublates itself. Qualitative Determinateness, which in the One has reached its absolute determinedness (ihr An-und-fiirsich-Bestimmtseyn), is with this gone over into Deter- minateness that is as sublated Determinateness, — i.e., into Being as Quantity.' These are translations of §§ 96, 97, 98 in the third edition of the Encyclopaedic, (for the future we shall chiefly follow this edition), and they constitute the entire Encyclopaedic summary 502 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. of the whole subject of Being-for-Self. This alone, even independ- ently of the similar summaries of Being and There-being, would suffice to demonstrate as well the inadequacy of the Encyclopaedie to convey the System, as the fact that it is nothing but a handy leading-string, or useful synopsis to the student who has already penetrated, or is engaged penetrating, into the business itself — the complete Logic. — Further comment, after what has been so fully extended already, will be here unnecessary: 'the Eeference of the Negative to itself,' the ' Excludent of the Other out of itself,' 'already to the fore,' 'in it itself,' 'comportment italicised for the equally-italicised Verhalten,' &c, may now be trusted to the in- telligence of the reader. Perhaps it may be worth while remarking that Hegel displays in what we have just read certain Gnostic analogies. Of the systems so named, we learn that it was a leading idea that ' God, the sum of all veritable Being, reveals himself in this way, that he hypostasises his Qualities, or allows them to pass out of himself into existence as Substances ; but still directly from God their issues only one substance, the vovs, Reason ; and it is from this latter that the rest follow, but always so that the one is suc- cessively out of the other, the divine substance being extenuated in proportion to the remotion from the centre.' Speculative Philosophy is not unrepresented in the definition of Gnosis as 'Higher Wisdom, a Religious Wisdom, that by aid of foreign philosophemes would lay deeper the foundations of the Positive and Traditional.' We know, too; that in Alexandria, the seat of Gnosticism, there was a desire and an effort to reconcile and unite ' opposing philosophemes ; ' there, ' when the fair blossom of Greece which the bland heaven had evoked, was faded and withered up Art sought to replace what Nature no longer spontaneously offered.' These are certainly Anklange, assonances ; but it is not to be supposed that they were suggestive to Hegel ; rather they ought to be suggestive to us only — suggestive of the analogy of the Historical Occasions : and, for the rest, we have to be thankful that Hegel has probably effected, by tenacious dogging of the pure notion, what the Gnostics, soaring into the figurate concep- tion, were only able to convert into the monstrosities of dream. We pass now from What sort to How much ; nor is it difficult to see that How much is indifferent to What sort, or that it is just the indifferent limit. QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 503 V. A SUMMARY OR TRANSLATION, COMMENTED AND INTERPRETED, OF THE SECOND SECTION OF THE COMPLETE LOGIC, QUANTITY. We have seen the collapse of the entire round of the constituents of Quality into a simple identity from the qualitative indifference of which, its own opposite, a wholly new sphere, Quantity, emerges. This emergence, what Hegel names the Unterschied, the se-cern- ment, the se-cession, the dif-ference, we have now more closely to consider. This section opens in a strain of singularly rich and beautiful reflexion, which is also always somehow of a double aspect. On one aspect, it is still Qualitative Being-for-Self which we have before us — (the voice, say), — thoroughly identified with, and in- different to, its own determinateness — (the notes then); and on the other aspect we suddenly find that this is Quantity. The life, as it were, of the voice, now, then, is but indifferent continuity of one or ones; and what is that but Quantity? This reference being kept steady, the expressions of Hegel, however coy and elusive, will become intelligible. Quality — (a note) — will be readily granted to be ' the first, the immediate, or the direct deter- minateness ; ' whereas Quantity is a determinateness which is indifferent, so to speak, to what it is — indifferent to the being it conveys : ' it is a Limit which is none ; it is Being-for-Self directly identical with the Being-for-Other ; — the Repulsion of the many ones [the notes], which is immediately their non-repulsion, their continuity' — or the voice which is in the notes and through the notes, at once Being-for-Self and Being-for-Other. The dupli- city of this description is very evident : inwardly it applies to our latest qualitative values, but outwardly it just names Quantity, which is now then explicit. Again, — to put it so — the notes appear no longer to have their 504 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. affair in themselves, but in another, the voice, while at the same time both they and it are reflected into themselves as indifferent limits : that is, * the determinateness in general is out of itself a something directly external to itself and to the Something ; such a Limit, its indifference in its own self, and the indifference of the Something to it, constitutes the quantitative determinateness of a Something.' It must be regarded as a great triumph of the method of Hegel, that a mere dogging of the pure notion as it trends away off in its own self before us, should lead to such an exhaustive statement of the idea of Quantity — a statement, too, as will be found in the end, no less exhaustive of the complete theory than of the mere initiatory idea. The general division which follows now will be more intelligible after the discussion; and as for the Remark, it contains some slight illustrative matter. A corn-field, for example, is still a corn-field, though its quantitative limit be altered ; but by altera- tion of its qualitative limit, it becomes meadow, wood, &c. A red, whether more or less intense, is still red; but its quality being changed, it ceases to be red, and becomes blue, &c. Thus, from every example, we may see that Quantity always concerns a Beingness, which is indifferent to the very determinateness which it now, or at any time, has. Quantity is usually defined ' anything that will admit of increase or decrease.' To increase is to make more — to decrease, less — in quantity. The definition is thus tautological and faulty. Still, the true notion is implied : we see the distinction of Quantity to be its own indifference to becoming other ; which othering or alteration, too, is always external. QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 505 CHAPTER I. Quantity. A. Pore Quantity. 'Quantity is sublated Being-for-Self ;' the voice (to call in again our illustration) is identified away out into the notes and on with thera ; ' or, the repelling One has become the referring One, relates itself to its Other as in identity, and has gone over into Attraction. The absolute denyingness of the repelling One is melted out into this Unity ; but still this Unity as containing the One is influenced by the immanent repulsion — it is unity with itself as unity of the Being-out-qf itself. Attraction is in this way the moment of Continuity in Quantity.' But this unity is, so to speak, no dry unity ; it is the unity of Somewhat, of the Many, of the units. Continuity, then, implies Discretion. The one unit is what the other is; and it is this sameness which the Repulsion extends into the Continuity. Discre- tion for its part is confluent ; the discretes are the same thing, one then, — and so continuous. Quantity is the unity of continuity and discretion, but firstly in the form of continuity, inasmuch as it has just issued from the self-identically determinate Being-for-Self. Quantity is now the truth, the Wahrheit, the wareness, the perceived factuality of the absolute, which in the last value of the Being-for-Self was left as the self-sublating self-reference, the self-perpetuating Coming-out- of-itself. 'But what is repelled is its own self; the Repulsion, therefore, is the genetic profluence of its own self. Because of the self-sameness of what is repelled and driven off, this very dis-cerning is uninterrupted continuity; and because of the Coming-out-of-itself, this continuity, without being interrupted, 506 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. is at the same time plurality, which just as much abides in its equality with itself.' These last sentences very tolerably convey Hegel's central conception of the Divine Life, which is always a perpetual One in a perpetual Many — a perpetual Self in a perpetual Other. What is, is the One flicker of a Two; what is, is nictitation. — Again, one sees very clearly into the moments here : they are continuity and discretion, quantity, the same but different. That continuity will become extension, discretion intension, one can readily anticipate : one can see, indeed, that continuity will become by-and-by the outer, and discretion the inner. Nor is it to be forgotten that Continuity and Discretion, Repulsion and Attraction, One and Many, Being-for-Self and Being-for-One, Finite and Infinite, Something and Other, &c, were originally Being and Nothing — the first abstract truths, as Becoming was the first concrete one, though but in naked abstraction all the same. Two very important Remarks are here now intercalated. In the first, the first point noticed is, that Quantity is every- where the real possibility of the One, the Unit ; but that, vice versd, the One, the Unit, is no less directly continuous. The tendency of conception to confound continuity with com- position is then remarked on — composition as a mere ex- ternal putting together of the units ; each of these — as we saw in atomism — being all the while self-identically inde- pendent. This idea-less externality of view is to be exchanged for the living internality of the concrete notion. Even mathematic rejects such composition of indifferent discretes — what at any time it regards as Sum is but for the occasion so, and even in its discre- tion is an infinite Many. — A quotation from Spinoza next occurs, which maintains two modes of conceiving Quantity, — one through imagination, and one through intellect; the former finite, divisible, composite, — the latter infinite, indivisible, single. It is interest- ing to see in Spinoza the Hegelian distinction between imagination (Vorstellung) and intellect (Begriff), at the same time that it is not for a moment to be supposed that it was derived from him : as well might we assert — inasmuch as it is quite capable of being regarded as potential germ in that direction — that to this passage in Spinoza Kant owes — what mainly constitutes him — his manifold of Sense and his unity of the Notion. There is here a further parallelism, indeed : Spinoza characterises the view of imagination QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 507 as abstract or superficial, and that of intellect as substantial ; now this, again, concerns the many of sense and the one of intellect ; — Imagination (Sense) sees abstract superficiality, Intellect concrete substance. We may understand from this how it is that Hegel regards the operation of the first moment, simple apprehension (identified with Verstand), as of an abstract nature. The object of this faculty, indeed, is always abstract identity, surface-sameness, Seyn ; it is another faculty that seeks substance, the Wesen, the notion.* It is not only interesting, but corroborative, to come thus on thoughts in different great writers, which thoughts, though with very different lookings in each, involve at bottom the same truths: at the same time, it is not the competent student, but only the feverishly ambitious and feverishly imbecile (and so exasperated) dipper, who will talk in such cases of plagiarism.^ Time, space, matter, light, the ego, are then characterised as examples of pure Quantity, and in those penetrating terms peculiar to Hegel : space, an absolutely continuous out-of-itself-ness, a self- identical otherwiseness and again otherwiseness ; time, an absolute out-of-itself-coming-ness, a production of the one, the instant, the now, which is the immediate disappearance of the same, and always, again, the disappearance of this disappearance ; so that this self-production of non-being is no less simple self-equality and self-identity. As for matter, Leibnitz remarks, ' It is not at all improbable that matter and quantity are really the same thing '; and Hegel adds, ' in effect these notions differ only in this — that quantity is the pure notion, while matter is the same thing in out- ward existence.' Lastly, the Ego is, as pure Quantity, an absolute Becoming-otherwise, an infinite removal or omni-lateral repulsion into the negative freedom of the Being-for-Self, which remains still, however, directly simple continuity — the continuity of uni- versality, or of Being-by-Self — which is uninterrupted by the infinitely varied limits, the matter of sensations, perceptions, &c. The second remark is a critique on Kant in regard to his Antinomies, and its consideration will have fitter place elsewhere. We cannot pass it, however, without observing that it is an analysis of such annihilative penetration and resistless force as is in that kind without a rival. It will assist the reader here to know * The Remark to the ' Relation of Outer and Inner' (Log. ii. 180) explicitly states this : ' In every natural, scientific, and spiritual development, this offers itself, and this essentially is to be recognised — that the First, in that Something is only first of all inwardly or in its Notion, is just on that account only its immediate, passive, external, particular identity as there-bent.' But see the whole Remark. 508 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. that the difficulty concerning the infinite divisibility of matter rests simply on the opposing of continuity to discretion, at the same time that both are one and the same thing ; and that the solution, consequently, is effected by pointing out the onesidedness of the opposition, and the necessity of both moments coalescing in the identity of Quantity. The remark ends with some exceedingly interesting references to the Eleatics and to Heraclitus — to Diogenes, who, by walking, supposed himself to refute the sophism (falsely so named) of Zeno in regard to motion — to Aristotle, to Bayle, &c. Hegel bestows great commendation on the Aristotelian solution of the contradictions of Zeno in regard to the Infinite Divisibility, and is evidently convinced of its satisfactoriness. This solution would seem, indeed, — though, of course, far from being accompanied by the ultimate definiteness of the Hegelian vision, — to have been at bottom the same as Hegel's, and to have consisted in the opposing of the concrete whole and real to the opposition of the abstract moments — in the opposing, that is, of the concrete real quantities time, space, matter, motion, &c, to the abstractions continuity and discretion. Hegel observes here — 1 Bayle, who, in his Dictionary, art. Zenon, finds Aristotle's solu- tion of Zeno's dialectic " pitoyable," understands not the meaning of, Matter is only in possibility infinitely divisible : he replies, If matter is infinitely divisible, then it actually contains an infinite number of parts ; and so what we have is not an infinite en puis- sance, but an infinite that really and actually exists. Eather, the divisibility is itself only a possibility, not an existing so of the parts, and multiplicity is at all attributed to the continuity only as moment, as what is sublated. — Sharp-sighted understanding, — in which, too, Aristotle is very certainly unsurpassed, — is not adequate to comprehend and decide on the speculative notions of this latter, just as little so as the coarseness of sensuous concep- tion already mentioned (Diogenes) is adequate to refute the argumentations of Zeno :. said understanding errs in this, that it takes for something — for something true and actual — such mere thought-things, such mere abstractions as an infinite number of parts; while said sensuous conception, on its side, will not let itself be brought beyond what is empirical and up to thoughts.' — The conclusion here in reference to Diogenes is very clever, for it is made in perception of the possible objection that, after all, the reply of Diogenes to Zeno's argument against the possibility of motion was the same as that of Aristotle, — the opposition, that is, QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 509 of the concrete fact to the abstract thought; and that, if there were any difference between the two, it was but one of expression, Aristotle's reply being couched in terms of the tongue (writing), and that of Diogenes in terras of the legs (walking). Hegel has certainly correctly enough prevented this objection. This on Aristotle here is not without a light of its own for Coleridge, De Quincey, and Sir William Hamilton. At page 102 of his own edition of Eeid's Works, the last-named very distin- guished writer will be found averring, in a note, that ' the fallacy of Zeno's exposition of the contradictions involved in our notion of motion has not yet been detected ' ! Within sight of his enor- mous reputation at once in mastery of the Greek (Aristotle), and in refutation of the German (Hegel and the rest), we may not have been prepared to see Hamilton, either explicitly or implicitly, so commit himself. Coleridge, for his part, will be found saying somewhere that Zeno, in the matter of his contradiction in regard to Infinite Divisibility had forgot to bring Time into account ; and De Quincey again exhibits himself somewhere, in commentary on Coleridge, firing up, as usual, into the figurate conception with loud exclamation, that here at last was a voice across the ages solving the mystery ! Coleridge's explanation here may very possibly have been, or very probably was, but a vague mention of Time, a schoolboy's guess, without sight of what it meant or of what was to be done with it ; — Coleridge, in fact, would in all probability have been quite powerless before the rejoinder — Why, Time itself is an example of the same contradiction. Greek and German were not weak points with either Coleridge or De Quincey ! It is just possible that Coleridge's remark and De Quincey's comment (though with less probability in the case of the latter) preceded 1812 and the Logic of Hegel ; but what of Aristotle ? — and why should such Grecians not have directly consulted him, well known (Bayle) to have written on the point in question, when they had their attention expressly directed to the Zenonic problem ? — Take it as one may, the reality of Hegel stands up at least somewhat in contrast here.* * Abraham Tucker (' Light of Nature,' i. 309) will be found far in advance of De Quincey or Coleridge either, in regard to a relative mention of Time (he knows Zenonin Bayle). Nay, it is all even in Aristotle first of all. In his Physics, B. 6, c. 2, he distinctly says that Time opposes to Space an exactly similar infinitude (al y&p afrral diaipiaeis taovTOt tov xpo^ov ko.1 tov fieylQovt — 233a 11-16) ; and therefore (263a 14), tl iv iwebpv XP°VV 4*fV* Stipxeral rts — ovSev Utoitov. See more on this under the Eleatics on the annotations to the translation of Schwegler. Still I may remark at this late day that, put a finite inch, infinitely divisible, into my hand, it would not be possibly infinitely divisible were there not infinite possible parts conceived .' — New. 510 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. B. CONTINUOUS AND DISCRETE QUANTITY. * 1. Quantity contains the two moments of continuity and discretion. It is to be set in both as its significates. It is imme- diate unity of these, already at first hand ; i.e., it is itself set at first hand only in one of its significates, continuity, and is thus Continuous Quantity. ' Or continuity is, indeed, one of the moments of Quantity, which (Quantity) is completed only with the other moment, dis- cretion. But Quantity is concrete unity only so far as it is unity of distinguished moments. These, therefore, are to be taken as distinct and different, certainly — not, nevertheless, to be resolved again into attraction and repulsion, but in their truth each as remaining in its unity with the other, i.e., as the whole. Continuity is only coherent solid unity as unity of the discrete ; thus ex- pressed it is no longer only moment, but entire Quantity — continuous Magnitude. '2. Immediate Quantity is continuous magnitude. But Quantity, on the whole, is not an Immediate ; Immediacy is a determinate- ness (a Quality) of which Quantity is the very sublation. It is, therefore, to be set or expressed in the determinateness which is immanent to it:, this is the one or unit. Quantity is discrete magnitude. 1 Discretion is, like continuity, a moment of Quantity ; but it is itself also entire Quantity, just because it is a moment in it, in the whole, and, therefore, even as distinguished, steps not out of this whole, not out of its unity with the other moment. Quantity is Aussereinanderseyn, asunderness, out-of-one-another-ness in itself, and continuous magnitude is this asunder-ness as setting itself forward without negation, as a coherence that is equal and alike within itself. But discrete magnitude is this asunder-ness as incontinuous, as interrupted. With this many of ones there are not again present, however, the many of the atom and the void — repulsion in general. Because discrete magnitude is Quantity, its discretion is itself continuous. This continuity of the discrete consists in this, that the ones or units are alike, are equal to one another, or that they have the same unity, the same oneness (i.e., of QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 511 being the like of one another). Discrete magnitude is therefore the asunder-ness of the many or repeated One, as of the like (as of this like of one another, or of the sameness), not the many One as such, but expressed as the many or much of one unity.' The above is an exact translation ; and translation is necessitated here by the impossibility of accomplishing any closer summary than the text itself. This is a constant quantity in Hegel, who seldom offers any loose tissue of raisonnement to give a chance of distillation or compression into summary. (The true state of the case, then, is, not the impossibility of extracting any sense from Hegel without distillation, but this impossibility with distillation, or rather the impossibility of distillation simply.) But little comment seems necessary. The immediacy of the continuity of Quantity at first hand depends, it will be remembered, on the qualitative indifference, the value, from which it issued. Indeed, this value, the indifferent For-itself-beent One, should never be left out of mind here, as it is precisely from this One that Quantity is, or that Quantity derives its peculiar character. The One is but the prototype of the discrete, as the Oneness is but the prototype of the continuous. The indifference of the For-itself- beent One, is just the continuance of this One ; there is nothing but One, One, One, onwards in infinitum : what is this but Quantity in both of its moments ? The reader, in short, must never forget ever and anon to orient himself by a reference to the — sub specie mternitatis. — ' Immediacy is a determinateness of which Quantity is the very sublation:' we saw this to be the case when Quality passed into Quantity ; that transition was simply oneness, immediacy passing into indifference ; but still in the indifference there is the immanent One, which is the discrete of Quantity: Quantity, then, may be expressed, may be set as explicit, as overt in this its moment of discretion, or it may be so stated. Again, this One that is the discrete, is also the One, One, One, the One-ness that is the continuous ; and either moment is Quantity and the same Quantity, the discrete as the One at all, the continuous as the one One of, or through, all the Ones. This will suffice also to supply the necessary commentary to what follows as regards ' the like of one another,' &c. The derivation of our asunder from the German auseinander will also be obvious.. The reader must be struck with the marvellous truth to the nature of Quantity contained in language that is meant in the first instance to apply only to the indifferent 512 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. absolute One we had reached in Quality. This is the true nature, then, of the Hegelian progress, as it is of thought, and just of the universe in general, — Setzen, explicitation ; whatever at any time we have before us suddenly ' becomes explicit as another, a new. The phrase many One has been necessitated by the corresponding phrase of the original; it will be found not to shock if the reader read with his mind thoroughly addressed to the self-equal, self-like (discrete) One, that is also the many (continuous) One, of the one, but continued, For-itself-beent One. The indifference is the many One, — the continuum; but the one One that is persistently immanent all this time in the indifference, in the continuance, is the like One, the One of the Oneness, — the discretum. Both are the same, both are quantity ; or quantity is only at once through their sameness and their distinction : without immanent difference or distinction there is no such thing as recognition of an Inhalt, an object, a concrete, in any case ; and in every case the question is which moment is the set one, the express or explicit one, and which is the implicit one that is for the time only in itself? — Bestimmung, it will be seen, has been translated significate ; it might have been translated function; but, indeed, Bestimmung always refers to signification, denotation. As regards the im- mediacy, in which Quantity appears as continuous, it is to be remarked that the first moment of the Notion in all its forms is one of immediacy : it is always the moment of identity, of under- standing or simple apprehension, and that is immediacy. The three moments may be respectively named, then, immediacy, mediacy, and mediated, or re-mediated, immediacy: Apprehen- sion (understanding) takes up just what is before it; Judgment refuses it as it is, and asks for it in another ; Eeason resumes. Ee-extrication of the moments from each new whole, and in the form, or with the peculiar nature, of this new whole, is the spring and the means of the movement, or just the movement : thus Being acting on Nothing, but in Becoming, arose as Origin, while Nothing acting on Being, but in Becoming, arose as Decease ; Being acting on Nothing, but in There-being, re-appeared as Keality, and Nothing acting on Being, but in There-being, re-appeared as Negation ; Being acting on Nothing, but in Something, manifested itself as Ansichseyn, In-itself-ness, the Something's own being, and Nothing acting on Being, but in the Something, manifested itself as the Being- for-other, the Being of the Something when QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 513 under the negation of another, that is, relatively to another, and so on. Remark. The usual separation of these Quantities. ' In the ordinary figurate conceptions of continuous and discrete magnitude, it escapes notice that each of these magnitudes has in it both moments, as well continuity as discretion, and that their difference depends only on which is the explicit determinateness, and which that that is only in itself. Time, space, matter, &c, are continuous magnitudes in that they are repulsions from them- selves, a fluent Coming-out-of-self, that is at the same time not a going over or a relation to a qualitative other. They possess an absolute possibility of One being set anywhere and everywhere in them ; this not as the empty possibility of a mere otherwiseness (as if one should say, it were possible that in place of this stone there were a tree) ; but they possess the principle of the One in themselves, it is the One of the factors which compose them. ' Conversely in the case of discrete quantity the presence of continuity is not to be overlooked ; this moment, as has been shown, is One as oneness. ' Continuous and discrete magnitudes are capable of being re- garded as species of Quantity only if the magnitude is not set under any external determinateness (as a certain So-much), but under the peculiar distinctions or determinatenesses of its own moments ; the ordinary transition from genus to species is such as to render the former liable to the ascription of external distinctions dependent on some distributive principle external to it. Withal, continuous and discrete magnitudes are not quanta ; they are only Quantity itself in each of its two forms. They may be named magnitudes so far, perhaps, as they have this in common with the Quantum, that they are a peculiar determinateness in Quantity.' This Remark is also an exact translation, and little comment seems necessary. The One as Oneness is continuity ; Oneness as One is discretion. The distinctions will not remain in dry self- identity : the Geometrical point is potential space, Attraction is Repulsion, Repulsion is Motion, &c, and the question always is, which elementary distinction is overt, express, explicit, ostensive, and which latent, implicit, indicated, indirect, &c. ? Setzen contains the whole mystery : the Moon here is always either full 2k 514 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. or new. A concrete must have difference and identity ; mere difference were dissolution, and mere identity were equally extinction. Space has both principles ; so also time ; and these, though both pure quantities, are still different. The one and the many of space are at once and together. The one of time never is and always is; its one is its many, its many its one: time is thus a symbol of the absolute. C. Limitation of Quantity. ' The discrete magnitude has firstly the One as its principle, and is secondly multiplicity of the Ones; thirdly, it is essentially continuous, it is the One at the same time as a sublated One, as Oneness, self-continuation as such in the discretion of the Ones. It is set, therefore, as a magnitude, and the peculiar determinate- ness of such magnitude is the One which in this position and particular being is excludent One — limit in the unity. The discrete magnitude as such is supposed to be immediately not limited ; but as distinguished from the continuous magnitude it is as a There-being (a special Beingness) and a Something, the determinateness of which is the One which One as in a There- being is also first Negation and Limit. 'This limit, besides being referred to the unity, and besides being negation in this unity, is as One also referred to itself, and thus it is encompassing and containing limit. The limit dis- tinguishes itself not in the first instance here from the Something of its There-being, but is as One immediately this negative point itself. But the being that is here limited is essentially as con- tinuity, by virtue of which it is beyond the limit and this One, and is in that regard indifferent. The real discrete Quantity is thus a Quantity, or Quantum, — Quantity as a There-being and Something. 1 In that the One which is limit, contains the many Ones of the discrete quantity within itself, it sets these no less as sublated within it ; it is thus limit in the continuity as such, and so the difference between continuous and discrete magnitude is here indifferent; or more correctly, it is limit in the continuity of the one, as much as in that of the other ; in it loth undergo transition into Quanta.1 These three paragraphs (of C.) are exactly translated, but QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 515 sufficiently difficult. Intelligence must be sought sub specie cetemitatis in the first instance — we must return to look again at the indifferent absolute One with which we entered Quantity. The One, the many Ones, the one One: all lies there; these are the 1, 2, 3 with which Hegel starts. In the indifferent life of the absolute One now, the One, the Unit, is still as the principle, but it continues, or is the many Ones, and also when it refers back to these and the series of these, it is one One and a Quantity, or Quantum. In its indifference it is certainly ' essentially continuous ; ' ' it is the One as sublated One, as Unity ; ' it is its own ' self-continuation in the discretion of the Ones.' It is thus a quantity, and the peculiar specificity of this quantity depends on the One that is its limit A ten depends on the tenth. This One (the tenth) is seen also to be the excludent One. The quantity to which this One is limit is characterised as Daseyn, as Etwas, and as dieses Gesetztseyn. Etwas is, of course, translated only Something ; Daseyn now as There-being (special Beingness), and again as particular being. As for Gesetztseyn, it will be found translated on this occasion, and not infelicitously, by 'in this -position.' But why these words are used in this place requires a word of explanation. The key to the whole lies in what has taken place : the one is One, as continued it is many Ones, but as continued it is also one One. Now this last step is as a reflexion from other or others into self ; but that is precisely the constitution, of Something. Again, the continuance through the series of the Ones is a Werden, a Becom- ing, while its suspension (by the reflexion alluded to) gives rise to a Daseyn, a There-being, a definite relative So-ness. Lastly, the reflexion is a Setzen, and the result is a Gesetztseyn ; the reflexion is only an explidfatvm of what was before implicit, and the result is a new eocplicitness, a new position, where this last word may be considered an equivoque of and between its ordinary and its logical senses. It will not be difficult to see now, then, that dis- crete magnitude, passing through these reflexions, has become a magnitude, the precise value or determinateness of which depends on the One from which the reflexion back was made ; this One is the limit or the excludent One in the new position, or special There-ness which has been just effected through the reflexion. The tenth One in a ten will readily illustrate all this. The tenth One is the limit, the excludent One, the barrier that stops entrance to all other Ones ; but it is the reflexion of this tenth One into the other Ones that gives birth to the particular and peculiar 516 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. and every way unique and special quantity Ten or a Ten ; the whole acquires the edge the specificity of this One; each of the other Ones is as it — a tenth; each of the other Ones is it; from it is the new explicitdXion, the new 'position, the new There-ness, the new Something — Ten. The Ten is at first as ten units — discrete — without any definite boundary line — but these ten as distinguished from the possible continuation or continuity onwards into and through other units, are a special definite There-ness and So-ness, a special definite Something of which the One (the tenth) is at once the specificity, and also — as in a There-being (negated, suspended Becoming) — the first negation and limit. Thus far the first paragraph ; which being thoroughly understood, the two remaining ones will not be diffi- cult. The reader, however, may object here — why the digression ? — why leap from the very absolute of absolutes to a thing so very everyday and common as the number ten ? We answer, there is no necessity for the digression ; all must still be conceived as sub specie osternitatis ; the number ten is but an empirical illustration. The life, so to speak, of the qualitative One, now a quantitative One, is still to be pursued by the clue and the virtue of the pure notion. What is, is now pure Quantity, sublated Quality, Determinateness external to its own self, an indefinitely continu- ous owtering or uttering of itself of the One as One, One, One ; hut it is the pure notion that is so characterised, and whatever is implicit in this characterisation, that notion shall duly set or make explicit for us. Now One, — and One, One, One, — and again One that, referring back, resumes these One-One-Ones, is very fairly the movement of the notion in such an element. Not only is such movement characteristic of the element as element, but on the other side, it is the characteristic movement of the notion itself ; — it is again apprehension, judgment, and reason ; it is again identity, difference, and identified difference, or differ- entiated identity; it is again immediacy, mediacy, and re- mediated immediacy, or *just immediate mediacy. This being seen, another deep glance into Hegel has been effected with realisation of the distinction that Hegel is not only true to the principle, the notion, but true to the element also ; and so only is it that what he says is the exhaustive metaphysic, even in an external sense, of whatever sphere he enters. A great deal has been written about cause and effect, for example, but it will be found that Hegel alone, with vigilant eye immovably fixed on QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 517 the pure notion, has been enabled to speak the ultimate word, even as external explanation, on this subject also. The number ten, then, illustrates, but it does not create the present phase of the absolute or of the notion; that phase is one of pure Quantity, and is applicable not to numbers only, but to extension as welL There are many readers to whom all this prosecution of a One, One, One, &c, will appear but trifling — a trifling wholly unworthy of grown men : even so, to an external eye, a bearded Archimedes scratching lines, triangles, squares, circles, &c, might seem but a great boy very unworthily employing himself. Archi- medes, however, through these scratches brought no less a power than that of Rome to bay ; through these scratches Archimedes and the like enabled us to move mountains and to change seas, enabled us to seize Space and Time themselves : these scratches, indeed, have been to us the express successive steps heaven- wards. So Hegel, following these soap-bubbles of One, One, One, &c, has made us freemen of the absolute itself. The tenth of the ten will be found to illustrate the first sentence of the second paragraph also ; it is ' referred to the unity ' — Ten ; it is * negation in this unity ; ' it stops Ten there, and it stops others off from Ten ; it is also ' referred to itself,' — it is the Tenth, and so each of the others is a Tenth, and the Ten itself has in it (the Tenth) its own particular value or virtue ; and thus is it ' encompassing and containing limit.' The Ten — to follow the next sentence — are thus in the Tenth, the limit, ' this negative point itself ' ; the Tenth, then, is thus not distinguished from the Something, the Ten. Still the ten are a ' Being — essen- tially continuity — a Ten — beyond this limit,' this single One, the Tenth, and in that respect 'indifferent to it/ It is thus a Quantity, and a Something with a specific There-ness or peculiar nature. The last paragraph opens with renewed consideration of the tenth unit of the ten ; as it is it which gives the whole peculiar character of the number — a ten — it is the qualitative and quantitative limit; quantitatively it limits the continuity; qualitatively it absorbs into itself all the other units — each is a tenth, but only through it; it is thus limit in the con- tinuity generally, limit to the continuity as such, and limit also, as it were, to the continuity of the discretes themselves (in that it sums and absorbs them). Thus is it that — (the tenth unit sublating, absorbing, or taking up into itself both) — 'con- 518 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. tinuous and discrete magnitude is here indifferent,' or that ' both undergo transition into Quanta,' the discretes becoming each a tenth and so in continuity ten — through the limiting tenth. The reader will find the illustration here a very perfect key to a very blank door indeed of indefinite abstraction. Nevertheless, it is always to the absolute that the reader must first address himself ; only so will he find himself at home also, if we may speak thus, with soap, soda, and pearl-ash. What is explicit now is Quantity as such — whether discrete or continuous — reduced to Limit, — let us well observe this. QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 519 CHAPTER II. Quantum. ' The Quantum, first of all Quantity with a Determinateness or Limit in general, — is in its perfect Determinateness the Number (the Digit or Cipher). The Quantum distinguishes itself — 1 secondly, in the first instance, into the extensive Quantum, in which the limit is as limitation of the there-beent multiplex (or many) ; in the second instance, (this There-being passing into Being-for-self) — into intensive Quantum, Degree, which, as for- itself and even so no less immediately out of itself, seeing that it is as indifferent limit even when for-itself, — has its determinateness in another. As this express contradiction, to be thus simply determined within itself and at the same time to have its determin- ateness out of itself, and to point for this determinateness out of itself, the Quantum passes over — ' thirdly, as what is expressly in itself external to itself, into the Quantitative Infinite.' If not intelligible now, this division will become intelligible by the end of the chapter. The many, the multiplex, the ones, or units of extensive Quanta, are evidently there-beent ; they are not ansich; they are distinguishably there; they are relative distinc- tivity there; they are palpably there — sensibly there; and they are what they are through negation of Becoming, Limit. A. The Number or Digit. ' Quantity is Quantum, or has a limit ; both as continuous and as discrete magnitude. The difference of these kinds has here at first hand no import.' This has just been seen : the limit of the continuum is the limit also of, or affects with its own virtue, the discreta. ' As sublated Being-for-self, Quantity is already in and for itself 520 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. indifferent to its limit. But withal the limit, or to be a Quantum, is just so not indifferent to it; for it contains the One, absolute determinedness, within itself as its own moment, which One, there- fore, as explicit in its continuity or unity, is its limit, which, how- ever, remains as One, as which One it (the Quantity) now on the whole is.' This is intelligible when viewed sub specie ceternitatis, and also when illustrated as before by ten, &c. Sublated Being-for-self is, as it were, punctuality gone over out of itself into its own opposite, and that is Quantity. ' This One is, therefore, the principle and principium of the Quantum, but as one of Quantity. So it is, firstly, continuous, it is oneness or unity; secondly, it is discrete, implicit (as in con- tinuous) or (as in discrete magnitude) explicit multiplicity of Ones, which have equality, likeness, sameness, continuity, the same one- ness or unity with one another ; thirdly, this One is also the nega- tion of the many Ones as simple limit, an exclusion of its other- wiseness out of itself, a determination of itself counter other Quanta. The One is so far, (a) limit referent of self to self, (/3) self-compre- hensive limit, and (y) other-excluding limit.' All this is pretty much what we saw already under (C), ' Limi- tation of Quantity,' and it is quite susceptible of the same illustra- tion : the tenth unit may be seen — or has been seen — to take up each of these three attitudes towards itself, towards the other units, and in sublation of these. This is so easy of application now, that no more need be said. ' An exclusion of its otherwise- ness out of itself : ' in the ten there are 1, 2, 3, &c. ; now these, as 1, 2, 3, &c, are the otherwiseness, but they are excluded as other- wiseness by the tenth, and have become equally tenth, converted, that is, into the one identity. ' The Quantum in these forms completely explicit is the Number (the Cipher, the Digit). The complete position or explicitation lies in the special nature of the limit as multiplicity, and so in its dis- tinction as well from the unity. The Number appears on this account as a discrete magnitude, but it has in the unity equally continuity. It is therefore, thus, the Quantum in perfect deter- minateness (specificity) ; this, inasmuch as the limit in the digit is as determinate multiplicity, which has for principle the One, the directly determinate. Continuity (as that in which the One is only in itself, or as sublated), expressed as unity, is the form of indeterminateness, indefiniteness.' QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 521 To return to the paragraph of the text immediately preceding the last, for a moment — we would observe that the division or distribution with which it ends is exceedingly instructive, inas- much as the general principle of such movement comes very clearly to the surface. Number, meaning any number or digit, is a limit, firstly, Self-referent ; secondly, Self-comprehensive ; thirdly, Excludent of other. The self-reference is identity, immediacy, simple apprehension, but in the element before us — unity. The comprehendingness, embracingness, clipping or shutting about-ness (Umschliessend) of the Second is dif- ference, mediacy, reference to other, judgment, but, in the pre- sent element, many. Under the third head we have what Hegel may be described as always specially bringing us, the Remedy, the Ee-mediacy, identity through difference, that is, differentiated identity or identified difference, reference to self through reference to other, an other ed self, or a selfed other, a concrete determinate definite One, the moment of reason, but here, in this element, a numerical whole, a Number. That is (with special regard to the element), unity and amount (amount of constitutive unities, that is, — Einheit und Anzahl) are the moments of the number, the cipher, the digit. The concrete, then, is the number, and the moments can be seen in its regard to be, the one, identity, and the other, difference, and both, so far, relatively abstract. Quantity, as a whole, might be more simply divided into the universal — Quantity, the particular — Tantity, and the singular — Quantified Tantity or Tantified Quantity (which last is just Quantitative Relation). In the same way, Quality might have been divided into Quality, Tality, and Qualified Tality, or Talified Quality (Being-for-self). The parallelism of the other triplets which we now know, will readily suggest itself. As regards the general division of the whole, Logic, Nature, Spirit, it can be seen to be quite parallel with Quality, Quantity, and Measure, — with Universal, Particular, and Singular, &c. &c. As for the division of Logic into Seyn (Being), Wesen (Essence), and Begriff (Notion), it is strikingly parallel with Kant's Categories of Relation, as if Hegel had said to himself, Logic is the Subject inquiring into the Object, that is, into its own relations. Now Kant's Categories of Relation are — Substance, Cause, and Recip- rocity. Seyn (Being) is analogous to Substance; historically, it is the logic or philosophy of the Greeks, whose constant inquiry 522 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. was, What is this Seyn, this Being ? A question to which there were such answers as, water, air, fire, the one, becoming, number, the atom, intelligence, and lastly, that of Socrates, which, though in a particular element, was an sich or in itself, the abstract generalised notion afterwards perfected by Aristotle through Plato into Formal Logic. We may say, then, here that the Subject (among the Greeks, that is) had not as yet got beyond Simple Apprehension, Understanding; at the same time, it is to be admitted that Aristotle names, and occupies himself to some extent with, the concrete generalised, or universal, notion. Wesen, Essentity, is the platform of the modern world, which, up to Kant, had demanded, in regard to the Object, What is its cause ? or, what is the same thing, What is it in another ? And what is this but Judgment declaring the Object nothing as per se ? Kant for his part inaugurated the reign of Eeason : his industry was Reason an sich, in itself; he declared the Wesen, the essential principle and nature, to be the Notion — or Notional Reciprocity. Into this final form at least, into the absolute or concrete Universal, the conception of Kant has been perfected by Hegel. Socrates reached the abstract Notion, then, and Aristotle completed it into the abstract Logic; but Kant dis- covered the concrete Notion, and Hegel completed it into the concrete Logic. This single sentence tells the whole tale. The concrete Notion, as it manifests itself in Hegel, is per- haps, at shortest, this — The Absolute is relative. Sufficient re- flection, indeed, will soon disclose the fact, that an abso- lute implies relativity, — that an absolute is an absolute just because of its relativity, or just because of the relativity it contains. The general method of Hegel, then, is, in accordance with this constitution of the nature of things, always to extricate from any absolute — any self-identical whole may be considered an absolute — its own necessary relativity, the opposition of which latter to the former, the absoluteness, results in the collapse of both into a concrete and new identity. All this has been already said in a variety of forms : it is simply the Being-in-itself-ness and the Being-for-other-ness, — in ultimate abstraction it is just Being and Nothing. The generalisation of Socrates, then, which issued in abstract induction and abstract deduction, has, in the hands of Hegel, been, as it were, doubled, and doubled into a concrete: at any time that advance is made to a generalised identity, note must be made of the other side, also, of the generalised difference QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 523 or relativity, which will be found necessarily to constitute and give its peculiar filling to that identity. The perception of this double constitution of the nature of thought, and consequently of things, it is, that has enabled Hegel to reverse the process of Socrates ; that is, instead of ascending from the immediate object to universal notions, to descend from these last according to their truth, and that is to say, by their own necessary self-genetic chain, which ends not but in the system of the whole — a system that comprises and gives meaning and place even to the contingency and isolated singleness of the external immediate.* Passing to the last paragraph translated, it is not difficult to see that the number qua number is the Quantum completely explicit in the forms mentioned. 'This complete position or explicitation lies, &c.,' — that is, the principle or reason of this process expressed by these forms lies, &c. The definition that occurs at the end, of the ' Form of Indefiniteness,' is exceedingly happy. ' The Quantum only as such has a limit ; its limit is its abstract, simple determinateness. But the Quantum being a number, this limit is expressly as manifold within itself. It (the number) contains the many ones which constitute its distinctive being; contains them, however, not in an indefinite manner, but the determinateness of the limit falls into them ; the limit excludes other units, other distinctive being, and the units included by it are a determinate number — the amount, to which, as the discretion in the way in which it is in the number, the other is the unity, the continuity of the same number. Amount and unity constitute the moments of number. ' As regards amount, we must see more closely how the many ones of which it consists are in the limit ; the expression is correct that the amount consists of the many, for the ones are in it not as sublated, but they are in it, only expressed with the excluding limit, to which they, however, are indifferent. But it is not so to them. In the case of There-being (distinctive being), the relation of the limit to it had firstly expressed itself so, that the There-being remained standing as the affirmative on this side of its limit, and it (the limit), the negation, found itself without by the border ; in like manner as regards the many ones, the breaking- off with them and the exclusion of any others appears as a circumstance which falls outside of the included ones. But we saw * That external immediate is Nature. — New. 524 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. there that the limit pervades the There-being, reaches as far as it, and that the Something is thereby, as regards its determination, limited, i.e. finite. Thus, in the quantitativity of number, we conceive a hundred — say — so that the hundredth one, or unit, alone appears to limit the many in such wise that they are a hundred. This is right on one side ; but then, again, among the hundred ones no one has any preference, for they are only equal ; each is equally the hundredth ; they belong all of them, therefore, to the limit, by which limit the number is a hundred : this number cannot want any one of them for its special determinateness ; the others make up thus apart from the hundredth one no There- being (distinctivity) that were without the limit or within the limit, or in general different from it. The amount is not therefore a many as against the including, limiting one or unit, but constitutes itself this limitation, which is a determinate Quantum ; the many form a number, a Two, a Ten, a Hundred, &c. ' The limiting one, now, is determinedness counter other, dis- tinction of the number from others. But this distinction is not qualitative determinateness, but remains quantitative, falls only into the external reflexion that compares ; a number remains as a one turned back into itself, and indifferent to others. This indiffer- ence of a number to others is an essential characteristic of it ; this it is that constitutes the In-itself-ness (the independent self-sub- sistence) of its nature, but at the same time its peculiar externality. It is such numerical one, as the absolutely determined one that has at the same time the form of simple immediacy, to which, therefore, any reference to other is perfectly external. The one that is a number has further its determinateness, so far as that de- terminateness is reference-to-other, as its moments within itself, in its distinction of unity and amount, and the amount is itself a many of ones, i.e., there is within itself this absolute externality. This contradiction of Number or of Quantum in general within itself is the quality of quantum, and this contradiction will de- velop itself as the characterisation of this quality proceeds.' There-being, as used in this connexion, refers to the special values of the various numbers ; a Two, a Ten, a Hundred, &c, can be seen to have a Daseyn, a There-being of its own, a peculiar distinctivity which belongs to it and to nothing else. This throws light on Daseyn itself, which is always thus, as it were, the peculiar and differentiating sensibleness or palpableness of any- thing whatever; it is distinctive relativity. That it and its QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 525 peculiarity arise, too, from a negated Werden — here a counting forward, one, two, three, &c. — is also well seen in this example. The irrespective independent apathy, neutrality, and externality of number are well touched. Bestimmtheit, determinateness, is also well seen here to convey absolute peculiarity, specificity, &c. — anything's express and constitutive point. The reader has, in regard to these passages, already sufficient illustration at com- mand, and we may pass to Eemark I. The Arithmetical Operations. An important critique on Kant contained here also we shall reserve for notice elsewhere; the remaining matter we shall endeavour to summarise — a process, as regards Hegel, possible only at rare intervals, and, for the most part, as here, only in the Remarks. 'Magnitude as in space (geometrical) and magnitude as in number (arithmetical), though bearing the one on continuity and the other on discretion, and so far different, are usually regarded as equally kinds of the same thing, as equally Quanta, and as equally determinate. But what holds of continuity cannot have the same keenness of limit, determinateness, as what holds of discretion. Geometrical limitation is limitation quite generally ; for precision of determinateness it requires number. Geometry measures not, is not mensuration, — it compares, it likens together. Its distinctions proceed by like and unlike. It is thus the circle — its nature being absolute likeness of distance on the part of every circumferential point as regards the single central one — has no need of number. Like and unlike are characters, then, veritably geometrical ; but they are insufficient, and number is called in, as we see in, triangle, quadrangle, &c. Number has in its principle — the one — complete ^/-determinateness, and not determinate- ness, as in comparison, through another. There is the geometrical point, a one certainly, but in the line, &c, the point is no longer the point, it is out of itself into continuity — another ; as essentially a one of space, it becomes, when in reference {i.e., in connexion), a continuity, in which punctuality, self-determinateness, the one, is sublated. To maintain the self-determinateness of the one in the Out-of-self-ness of the continuity, the line must be taken as a 526 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. many or multiple of ones, and must receive within itself the limit, the determinateness, the conjunct virtue, of the many or multi- plicity ; i.e., the magnitude of the line — and so of the rest — must be taken as number. ' Arithmetic considers, rather operates with, number, for number is indifferent determinateness, inert, to be brought into action and reference only from without. The arithmetical rules concern the modes of reference or connexion. They are rehearsed in succession, and seem to depend on one another, but no principle of mutual connexion is exhibited. From the nature of the notion of number, however, such principle of systematic co-reference may be deduced. 'From its principle, the One, number is but an externally united compound, a purely analytic figure, without internal connexion. As thus externally generated, all counting is a production of numbers, a numbering, or, more definitely, a number- ing together. Difference in this external operation, which is always the same, can come only from the mutual difference of the numbers operated on, and must always depend on an external consideration. 1 Numbers as Quanta are externally distinguished by external identity and external difference, or by likeness and unlikeness, characters which fall to be considered elsewhere. But the nature of number depending on the qualitative distinction of unity and amount, it is from that distinction that all others will follow. 'Again, external composition plainly infers external decom- position ; so that a traffic with numbers in general must either, as composing, he positive, or, as decomposing, negative, and the particular species of this traffic, though following, will remain independent of, this antithesis. ' The first production of number is the composing of many ones just as many ones, — Numeration. Such externality is only ex- ternally exhibited by help of the fingers, points, counters, &c. ; what Three is, or Four is, can only be pointed out. Cessation, the limit of the operation being so completely external, can only be contingent or at will. A system of numbers, dyadic, decadic, &c, turns on the distinction of unity and amount, and more precisely on what amount is to be considered as unity. 'Numbers, produced by numeration, are again numbered — Addition ; and here from their origin the numbers are evidently mutually independent, mutually indifferent to likeness or unlike- ness, mutually contingent — hence unlike in general. That 7+5 QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 527 = 12 we learn from actual counting in the first instance, and know afterwards from memory. It is the same thing with 7x5 = 35. The ready-made tables of addition and multiplication save us the trouble of always repeating such external counting ; but there is no process of internal reasoning or special intuition in the whole matter. Subtraction is the negative complement of the same operation that obtains in Addition ; — a decomposition, equally analytic, of numbers equally characterised as unlike in general. 'The next step is that the numbers which enter into the numeration are equal or like, and no longer unequal or unlike. They form thus a unity, and are subject to amount. This is Multiplication — the counting up of an amount of unities, the unities being themselves pluralities or amounts. Of the two numbers, either may be indifferently viewed as unity or as amount : 4 times 3 is not different from 3 times 4. Immediate assignment, in such cases, has been already shown to result from previous process and the intervention of memory. Division is the negative side of the same operation, and rests on the same distinction. How often (the amount) is a number (the unity) contained in another number ? This is the same question as, A number being divided into a given amount of equal parts, what is the magnitude of this part (the unity) ? Divisor and quotient are thus indifferently unity or amount. 1 The final step in the equalisation is, that the unity and the amount, which in the first instance (as opposed to each other simply as numbers generally) are to be considered as on the whole unlike or unequal, become now like or equal. Numeration, the equality that lies in number being thus completed, is now involu- tion, the negative complement of which is evolution. Of this process, the Square is the perfect type, further involution being but a formal continuation, with repetition of equality as result, or with divergence into inequality. No other distinctions and no other equalisations of such are to be found in the notion of the number or cipher. So is the notion constituted in this sphere ; and thus by a going back into itself is the going out of itself balanced. The imperfection of solution in the case of higher equations, or the necessary reduction of these to Quadratics, receives light from the principles enunciated. The square in arithmetic, like the right-angled triangle, as explicated by the theorem of Pythagoras, in geometry, is the pure self-complete 528 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. determinateness of its sphere, and to the one as to the other the remaining particularities of the respective spheres reduce them- selves. ' Number in relation, is no longer immediate Quantum, and proportion finds its place in the following section on Maass or Measure. 1 The externality of the matter of number leaves no room for philo- sophy proper, or the exposition of the notion as such, which depends ever on immanent development. Here, nevertheless, the moments of the notion manifest themselves, as in external fashion, in equality and inequality ; and the subject is exhibited in its true understanding. Distinction of sphere is in philosophy a general necessity : what is external and contingent is in its peculiarity not to be disturbed by ideas, and these are not to be deformed or reduced to mere formality by the incommensurableness of the matter.' It is easy to object to these Hegelian classifications, that there are really only two operations in Arithmetic, addition and subtraction, and that devotion to the notion is here too obviously, too betray - ingly external. It is to be said, however, that multiplication and quadration really are these qualitative ascents. As regards the Square in especial, the qualitativeness which it seems to introduce will be found afterwards to have taken a strong hold of Hegel. Kemark 2. Application of Numerical Distinctions in Expression of Philosophical Notions. This is a very admirable Note, both important and character- istic : without losing matter we shall endeavour as much as possible to compress, however. 1 Numbers, as is well known, have been applied by the Pytha- goreans, and — especially in the form of powers — by certain moderns in indication or expression of relations of thought ; and they have also appeared to possess such purity of form as to con- stitute them a most appropriate element in the interest of education — an element closest to the thinking spirit, and closest also to the fundamental relations of the universe. ' We have seen Number to be the absolute determinateness (as it were, point) of Quantity, determinateness in itself, and at the same time quite external ; its element is the difference become QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 529 indifferent. Arithmetic is analytic ; difference and connexion in its object are not internal to it, but come from without. It has no concrete object with latent inner relations to be made explicit by express effort of thought. It holds not the notion, nor does its problem concern comprehending (notional) thought ; it is rather the opposite of that. What is connected is indifferent to the connexion, which itself is without necessity ; thought, then, in such an element finds the effort required of it an utter outering of itself — an effort in which it must do itself the violence to move without thinking and connect what is insusceptible of necessity. The object is the abstract thought of Externality itself. ' As such thought of externality, Number is at the same time an abstraction from the sensuous multiplex ; of this it has retained nothing but the abstract form of externality : sense thus in it is brought closest to thought ; it is the pure thought of the precise externalisation of thought. ' The thinking spirit that would raise itself above the sensuous world and recognise its substance may, in the quest of an element for its pure conception, for the expression of its essential substance, and before it apprehends thought itself as this element and wins for its exhibition a pure spiritual expression, stumble on the choice of number, this internal, abstract externality. So is it that early in the history of philosophy we find number applied in expression of philosophemes. It constitutes the latest stage in that imperfection which contemplates the universal unpurged from sense. The ancients, and specially Plato, as reported by Aristotle, placed the concerns of mathematic between the Ideas and Sense ; as invisible and unmoved (eternal) different from the latter, and as a Many and a Like different from the Ideas which are such as are purely self-identical and one in them- selves. Moderatus of Cadiz remarks that the Pythagoreans had recourse to numbers because they were not yet in a position to apprehend distinctly in reason fundamental ideas and first principles, which are hard to think and hard to enunciate ; but numbers were to them as figures to Geometers — signs merely, and it is superfluous to remark that these philosophers had really advanced to the more express categories, as is recorded by Photius. These ancients, then, were, in fact, much in advance of those moderns who have returned to numbers and put a per- verted mathematical formalism in the place of thought and thoughts — regarding, indeed, this return to an incapable infancy 2L 530 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. as something praiseworthy, and even fundamental and pro- found. 'Number has been characterised as between the Ideas and Sense, and as holding of the latter by this that it is in it a many, an asunder or out-of-one-another ; but it is to be said also that this many itself, this remainder of Sense taken up into thought, is thought's own category of the External as such. The further, concrete, true thoughts, what is quickest and most living, what is comprehended only in co-reference, connexion, — this transplanted to such element of outwardness is converted into something motion- less and dead. The richer thoughts become in determinateness, and consequently in reference, so much the more confused on one side and so much the more arbitrary and empty on the other side becomes their statement in such forms as numbers are. 1 To designate the movement of the notion by one, two, three, &c, this to thought is a task the hardest ; for it is to expect it to move in the element of its own contrary, of reference-lessness ; its employment is to be the work of sheer derangement To comprehend, e.g., that three are one and one three, this is a hard imposition, because the one, the unit, is what is reference-less, what shows not therefore in itself any character that might mediate transition, but rather, on the contrary, excludes and rejects any such reference. Conversely mere understanding uses this as against Speculative truth (as, e.g., in the case of the doctrine of the Trinity), and counts the terms which are to con- stitute a single unity as if in demonstration of a self-evident absurdity, — i.e., it itself commits the absurdity of reducing that which is reference pure and simple into what is precisely refer- ence-less. By the name Trinity, it is never expected that the unit and the digit are to be regarded by understanding as the essential burthen of the object. This name expresses on the part of reason contempt of understanding, which again, for its part, stubborns itself against reason, and fixes itself in its conceit of holding to the unit and to number as such.* ' To employ mathematical characters as symbols is, so far as that goes, harmless ; but it is silly to suppose that in this way more is expressed than what thought itself is able to hold and express. If in such meagre symbols as those of mathematic, or in those richer * Connexion and connexionless were here, perhaps, better for Beziehung, &c, than reference, &c. Still a button, a hook or an eye, a hat-pin, each by itself shows reference in it: it can but mean connexion. — N. QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 531 ones of mythology and poetry, any deep sense is to be supposed, then it is for thought alone to summon into day the wisdom that lies only in them, and not only as in symbols, but as in Nature and the living Spirit. In symbols the truth is only troubled and enveloped by the sensuous element ; only in the form of thought is it thoroughly revealed to consciousness : the meaning, the import, is only the thought itself. 1 To apply the forms of mathematic in explication of philosophy, has this of preposterous, that only in the latter can the ultimate import of the former be expected to yield itself. It is to logic, and not to mathematic, that the other sciences must apply for that logical element in which they move and to which they re- duce themselves; that philosophy should seek its logic in the forms (but omens or sophistications of it)* it assumes in other sciences, is but an expedient of philosophical incapacity. The application of such borrowed forms is but external ; inquiry into their worth and import must precede the application; such inquiry belongs to abstract thought, and cannot be superseded by any mathematical or other such authority. The result of such pure logical inquiry is to strip off the particularity (mathematical or other) of the form, and to render it superfluous and unneces- sary : in short, it is logic that clears and rectifies all such forms, and alone provides them with verification, sense, and worth. ' As for the value of Number in the element of education, that is contained in the preceding. Number is a non-sensuous object, and occupation with it and its combinations a non-sensuous em- ployment ; thought is drawn in thus to reflexion within itself and an inward and abstract labour — a matter of great but one-sided import. For number involving the difference as only external and thought-less, such employment is but a thought-less and mechanical one. The endeavour consists, for the most part, in holding fast the notion-less and in notion-less-ly combining it. The object is the void unit ; the solid burthen of the moral and spiritual universe, with which, as the noblest aliment, Education should fill full the young, is to be supplanted by the import-less unit ; with no possible result, such exercise being what is main and chief, but to deaden and stupify the mind, emptying it, at the same time, both of form and substance. Numerical calcula- tion being a business so very mechanical and external, it has been * Shadowings (or foreshadowings) for Ahnungen, as scotchings for Verkiimmer- ungon, would hit the meaning better here ! ! — N. 532 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. possible to construct machines capable of performing all the operations of arithmetic, and that most perfectly. This alone were decisive of calculation as principal mean of educatio.n — and of the propriety of stretching the thinking spirit on the wheel in order to be perfected into a machine.' B. Extensive and Intensive Quantum. a. Their Difference. The paragraphs under this head are again eligible for exact translation, the metaphysic being at once eminently characteristic and eminently intelligible. ' 1. The Quantum has, as the result showed, its determinateness as limit in the amount. It is discrete within itself, a many which has not a being (an esse) that were different from its limit, or that might have this latter out of it. The Quantum thus constituted with its limit, which is a multiple in itself, is extensive magnitude. 1 Extensive is to be distinguished from Continuous magnitude ; to the former there stands directly opposed, not discrete, but inten- sive magnitude. Extensive and intensive magnitudes are peculiari- ties of the quantitative limit, but the Quantum is identical with its limit; continuous and discrete magnitudes, again, are forms of Quantity in itself, i.e., of quantity as such, so far as in regard to the Quantum, the limit is abstracted from. Extensive magnitude has the moment of continuity in itself and in its limit, in that its many in general is continuous; the limit as negation appears so far in this equality of the many as limitation of the unity. Continuous magnitude is quantity setting itself forward without respect to a limit ; and so far as it is already conceived with one, this is a limitation generally, without discretion being explicit in it. The Quantum, only as continuous magnitude, is not yet veritably determined per se, because it wants the one, the unit, in which self-determinateness lies, and number. In like manner discrete magnitude is immediately only distinguished plurality in general, which, so far as it as such is to have a limit, is only a multiplicity (eine Menge), that is to say, it is what is indefinitely limited. To be a definite Quantum, to that there is necessary the taking together of the many into one, by which this many were set identical with the limit. Each of them, continuous and discrete QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 533 magnitude, as Quantum in general, has only one of the two sides explicit in it, whereby it is perfectly determined and as number. This (the number) is immediately extensive Quantum, — the simple determinateness which is essentially as amount, but as amount of one and the same unity ; the extensive Quantum is distinguished from the number only by this, that the determinate- ness is expressly set in the latter as multiplicity. ' 2. The determinateness, nevertheless, how much something is, by number, is not in want of distinction from any other magnitude, so that this magnitude itself and some other magnitude should belong to the determinateness, inasmuch as the (numerical) determinateness of magnitude in general is self- determined, indifferent, and simply self-referred limit; and in number it (the limit) is explicitly set as contained in the self- dependent one, and has its externality, the reference to other, within itself. This many of the limit itself, further, is as the many in general, not unequal within itself, but continues : each of the many is what the other is ; as discrete many it constitutes not, therefore, the determinateness as such. This many, therefore, collapses per se into its continuity and becomes simple unity. Amount is only moment of number; but constitutes not as a multiplicity of numerical ones the determinateness of number, but these ones as indifferent, external to themselves, are sublated in the returnedness of number within itself; the externality which constituted the ones of the multiplicity, disappears in the one as reference of number to itself. 'The limit of the Quantum, that as extensive had its there- beent determinateness as the self-external amount, passes, there- fore, into simple determinateness. In this simple determination of limit it is intensive magnitude, and the limit or determinateness, which is identical with the Quantum, is thus now also explicitly set as simple oneness, — Degree. 1 The degree is, therefore, determinate magnitude, Quantum, but not, at the same time, multiplicity, or several within itself ; it is only a severality (not a Mehreres, but a Mehrheit) ; the severality is the several taken together into the simple quality, There-being gone together into Being-for-self. Its determinateness must, indeed, be expressed by a number as for perfect determinateness of the Quantum, but is not as amount, but simple, only a degree. When 10, 20 degrees are spoken of, the Quantum that has so many degrees, is the 10th, the 20th degree, not the amount and 534 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. sum of these ; in that case it were extensive ; but it is only one single one, the 10th, the 20th degree. It contains the determinate- ness which lies in the amount ten, twenty ; contains it, however, not as a plurality, but is number as sublated amount, as simple determin- ateness. 1 3. In Number the Quantum is explicit in its perfect determinate- ness ; as intensive Quantum, however, as in its Being-for-self, it is explicitly set as it is according to its notion, as it is in itself. The form, namely, of self-reference, which it has in degree, is, at the same time, the being in externality to itself of this same degree. Number is as extensive Quantum numerical multiplicity, and so has the externality within it. This externality, as multiplicity in general, collapses into the undistinguishedness of, and sublates itself so in, the one of the number, of its self-reference. The Quantum has, however, its determinateness as amount; as before shown, it contains it, although it is no longer explicitly in it. The degree, therefore, as within itself simple, having no longer this external otherwiseness within it, has it out of it, and refers itself thereto as to its determinateness. A many external to it constitutes the determinateness of the simple limit which it is per se. That the amount, so far as it was supposed to find itself within the number in the extensive Quantum, sublated itself therein — in this it is determined, consequently, further, as set out of it (the number). Number being explicitly set as a one, self-reflected self-reference, it excludes from itself the indifference and externality of the amount, and is reference to itself as reference through its own self to an External. ' In this, Quantum reaches the reality adequate to its notion. The indifference of the determinateness constitutes its quality ; i.e., the determinateness is the determinateness which is in itself self- external determinateness. Accordingly degree, or the degree, is simple quantitative determinateness under a severality of such intensities as are diverse, each only simple self -reference, but, at the same time, in essential reference to one another in such wise that each has in this continuity with the others its own deter- minateness. This reference of degree through itself to its other renders ascent and descent in the scale of degrees, a continuous process, a flux, that is an uninterrupted indivisible alteration; each of the severals, which are distinguished in it, is not divided from the others, but has its determinedness only in these. As self-referent quantitative determination, each of the degrees is QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 535 indifferent to the others ; but it is no less in itself referred to this externality, it is only through this externality what it is; its reference to itself is at the same time the non-indifferent reference to the External, has in this (latter) reference its quality.' The majority of readers will find all this very super-subtle and very superfluous. Eeflexion, however, will convince some that it is necessary to bring to account all these myriad distinctions which pass current daily without inquiry. The Hegelian exposition is not only an explanation in the ordinary sense ; but it lifts into sunlight all the secret maggots of our very brains — those hidden powers whose we are, rather than that they are ours. b. Identity of Extensive and Intensive Magnitude. 1 Degree, the degree, is not within itself a something external to itself. But it is not the indeterminate one, the principle of number in general, which is no amount, unless only the negative amount to be no amount. The intensive magnitude is, in the first place, a simple unit of the several; there are several degrees; determined, however, they are not, neither as simple unit nor as several, but only in the co-reference of this self-externalness, or in the identity of the unit and the several. If, then, the several as such are indeed out of the simple degree, the determinateness of each simple degree consists still, in its reference to them, the several ; the simple degree, therefore, implies amount. Just as twenty, as extensive magnitude, implies the twenty ones as discrete within itself, so such particular degree contains the ones as continuity, which continuity this particular severality simply is; it is the 20th degree ; and is the 20th degree only by means of this amount, which as such is external to it. 'The determinateness of intensive magnitude is, therefore, to be considered on two sides. It is determined through other intensive Quanta, and is in continuity with its otherwiseness, so that in this reference to that (or them) consists its determinate- ness. So far now as it is, firstly, simple determinateness, it is determined counter other degrees ; it excludes them out of itself, and has its determinateness in this exclusion. But, secondly, it is determined in itself; it is this in the amount as its amount, not in it as what is excluded, or as amount of other degrees. The twentieth degree contains the twenty in itself ; it is not only determined as distinguished from the nineteenth, the twenty- first, &c, but its determinateness is its amount. But so far as 536 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. the amount is its, and the determinateness is, at the same time, essentially as amount, degree has the nature of extensive Quan- tity, is extensive Quantity. 'Extensive and intensive magnitude are thus one and the same determinateness (characterisedness, specificity) of the Quan- tum ; they are only distinguished by this, that the one has the amount as within it, the other as without it. The extensive magnitude passes over into the intensive because its many in and for itself collapses into the unity, out of which the many stands. But conversely this unity has its determinateness only in the amount, and that too as its ; as indifferent to the other intensities, it has the externality of the amount in itself ; intensive magni- tude is thus equally essentially extensive magnitude. ' "With this identity, qualitative Something re-appears ; for this identity is self — through the negation of its differences — to self- referent unity, and it is these differences that compose the there- beent quantitative determinateness ; this negative identity is, therefore, Something, indifferent, too, to its quantitative deter- minateness. Something is a Quantum, but now the qualitative There-being as it is in itself is explicit as indifferent to this con- sideration of Quantum. It was possible to speak of Quantum, of Number as such, &c, without a Something that were their substrate. But now there steps in Something opposite these its determinations, — through their negation he-mediated with itself, and as there-beent for itself — and, in that it has a Quantum, as that which has an extensive and intensive Quantum. Its one determinateness, which it as Quantum has, is explicit in the diverse moments of the unity and the amount ; this determinate- ness is not only in itself one and the same, but its explicitation or expression in these differences, as extensive and intensive Quantum is return into this unity, which unity as negative is the explicitly set Something indifferent to them (the differences).' The interpretation of the above rests so evidently on principles which we have so often stated at full length already, that it may here be dispensed with, especially as something of resume' will be necessary again. The super-subtlety will still appear to most readers the objectionable element ; and it is to be confessed that, in very weariness of the flesh, one is again and again tempted to turn away eyes of irritation from these quick and evanescent needle-points, this ceaseless to-and-fro of an all but invisible shuttle from identity into difference, and from difference into QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 537 identity again, and throw one's exhausted body and vexed heart on the kindly breadth of the ready concrete : but again, and in- dubitably, this is subtlety, but not super-subtlety, what we are asked to look at is the veritable inner fibres of the very essence of things. Remark 1. Examples of this Identity. ' The distinction of extension and intension is generally taken so, that it is supposed there are objects only extensive and others only intensive. Then we have in physics the new dynamical view which, to the contrary mechanical one that would fill space, &c, by extension or a more, opposes an intension that would reach the same end through degree. The mechanical theory assumes inde- pendent parts subsistent out of each other, and only externally combined into a whole ; while opposed to this, the notion of Force is the core of the dynamical theory. What — as in the occupation of space — results under the former theory from a multiplicity of mutually external atoms, is produced under the latter by the manifestation of a single force. In the one instance, then, we have the relation of Whole and Parts ; in the other, that of Force and its Realisation ; and the consideration of both finds special place further on. Force and realisation, it may be said here, however, are certainly a nearer truth than whole and parts ; but still force is no less one-sided than intension itself : its realisation, manifestation, utterance, or outer&nce, is but as the outwardness of extension, and is inseparable from the force ; one and the same In- tent is common to both forms, to that that is as Extensive, as to that that is as Intensive.' One gets a striking view here of the fundamental Hegelian truth; element succeeds element in gradual ascent towards the ultimate unity, but in each element precisely the same moments reappear as constitutive : continuity and discretion, extension and intension, whole and parts, force and its realisation, outer and inner — running through the whole of these, we can see the same moments and the same idea. 1 The extensive Quantum sublates itself into Degree, which in turn is wholly dependent on the former ; the one form is essential to the other, and the quantitative constitution of every existence is as well extensive as intensive. 1 Take number as the example : it is amount, and so extensive ; 538 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. but it is also one, a twenty, a hundred, &c, and the many gone into this unality is of the nature of intension. One is extensive in itself, it can be conceived as any number of parts. The tenth, &c, is this one that has its virtue in an outward several different to it ; or the intension comes from the extension. Number is ten, twenty, &c. ; but it is at the same time the tenth, the twentieth in the numerical system : both are the same determinateness, the same constitutedness. ' The unit of the circle is named degree, because any one part of the circle has its determinateness in the others out of it, is characterised as one only of a shut (definite) amount of such ones. The degree of the circle is as mere space-magnitude only a usual number ; regarded as degree, it -is an intensive magnitude which has a sense only as' determined through the amount of degrees into which the circle is divided, as the number in general has its sense only in the numerical series. ' Concrete objects show the double side, extension and intension, in the externality and internality of the manifestation of their magnitude. A mass, as amount of pounds, hundredweights, &c, is extensive ; as exerting pressure, intensive. The Quantity of the pressure is a oneness, a degree, which has its determinateness in a scale of degrees of pressure. As pressing, the mass appears as a Being-within-itself, as Subject, to which accrues intensive dis- tinction. Conversely, what exercises this degree of pressure is able to move from the spot a certain amount of pounds, &c, and in this way measures its magnitude. 'Or warmth has a degree; the degree of temperature, the 10th, 20th, &c, is a simple sensation, a something subjective. But this degree shows equally as extensive, e.g., as the extension of a fluid, of the quicksilver in the thermometer, of air, of clay, &c. A higher degree of temperature expresses itself as a longer column of mercury, or as a smaller cylinder of clay ; it warms a greater space, as a less degree onty a less space. ' The higher tone is, as the intenser, at the same time a greater number of vibrations ; or a louder tone — that is, one to which a higher degree is ascribed — makes itself audible in a greater space. An intenser colour suffices a greater surface than a less intense ; or what is clearer, another sort of intensity, is further visible than what is less clear, &c. ' In like manner in the spiritual world, high intensity of char- acter, talent, genius, is of a correspondingly -wide-grasping There- QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 539 being, extended influence, and many-sided contact. The deepest notion has the most universal significance and application.' In illustration on the same side as these examples, we may observe that the death of the Eedeemer is not only the most intense event in history, but just what is intensest in an absolute point of view and in the very possibility of things ; hence it is, or will be, what is most extensive also both as regards time and space.* On the other side, it may be said that intension will not always supply the place of extension, or vice versd. The wooden mallet and the iron hammer, though absolutely of the same weight, are not always interchangeable. In the galvanic battery, breadth is not found exactly to replace number of plates. Lastly, we are apt to see in characters an excess of intensity that leads to vacillation and lubricity, to flightiness, and in general feebleness : we are accustomed to desire for such characters a mitigation of intensity by increase, as it were, of extension in the nervous system and the general frame. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that these seemingly intense characters are only formally so, and that the depth of their capability is no greater than the breadth of their performance. In galvanism, implements, &c, it is quite possible also to find such facts or considerations as would again reduce both sides to a balance and an identity. Eemark 2. This is a critique in relation to Kant, and is reserved for con- sideration elsewhere. I cannot help pointing out, however, that we have here a considerable light on Hegel's attitude to the doctrine of the Immortality. In reference to the usual argument that the soul being one and simple, is indestructible by dissolution of parts, Kant observes that the soul, though extensively simple, may still vanish by process of remission as regards its intensity. To this Hegel rejoins : the usual argument treats the soul as a Thing, and applies in its characterisation the category of extensive Quantum; Kant, therefore, has an equal right to apply that of intensive Quantum: the soul, however, is not Ding (thing) but Geist (Spirit), and ' to the Spirit,' these are Hegel's own words, ' there belongs certainly Being, but of a quite other intensity than that of intensive Quantum, rather of such an intensity that in it the form of immediate Being and every category of the same are * There is a similar remark in Rosenkranz : Wissenschaft der Logik, p. 486. 540 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. as sublated; not only, then, was remotion of the category of extensive Quantum to be conceded, but that of Quantum in general was to be withdrawn : it is something further yet, how- ever, to perceive how, in the eternal nature of the Spirit, there- being, consciousness, finitude, is, and arises therefrom, without this Spirit becoming thereby a thing.' c. The alteration of the Quantum. 'The distinction of extensive and intensive Quantum is in- different to the determinateness (specific nature) of Quantum as such. But in general Quantum is the determinateness which is explicitly set as sublated, the indifferent limit, the determinate- ness which is just as much the negation of itself (as always in another). This distinction is developed in extensive magnitude, but intensive magnitude is the There-being (the actual existent specialty) of this externality which Quantum is within itself; (it is the appearance as it were, the realisation in a kind of outward mortal state of the notion). This distinction (of Quantum as negation of its own determinateness) is set as its (Quantum's) contradiction within itself — the contradiction to be simple self to self-referent determinateness which is the negation of itself — the contradiction to have its determinateness not in it, but in another Quantum. ' A Quantum, therefore, is explicitly set as, in its Quality, in absolute continuity with its externality, with its other wiseness. Every quantitative determinateness, therefore, not only can be exceeded, it not only can be altered, but it is explicitly, expressly this, that it must alter itself. * Quantitative determinateness con- tinues itself so into its otherwiseness, that it has its Being only in this continuity with another; it is not a beent, but a becoment limit. 1 The One is infinite, or the self to self-referent negation, there- fore the repulsion of itself from itself. (This is very fine, and not hard to see.) The Quantum is equally infinite, explicitly set as the self to self-referent negativity ; it repels itself from itself. But it is a determinate one, the one which has gone over into There-being and into the limit; therefore the repulsion of the determinateness from itself, not the production of its own Idkey of what is like and equal to its own self, as the repulsion of the One, but of its otherwiseness ; it is now explicit in itself to dispatch itself beyond itself and become another. It consists in this, to QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 541 increase or decrease itself ; it is the externality of determinateness in itself. 'The Quantum, therefore, dispatches itself beyond itself; this other which it becomes is firstly itself a Quantum ; but equally as a limit non-beent, that drives itself beyond itself. The limit which in this transition has again arisen is, therefore, directly only such a one as again sublates itself and passes into another, and so on into the infinite. a Quantitative Infinitude. a. Its Notion. * The Quantum alters itself and becomes another Quantum ; the further determination of this alteration, that it proceeds in infinitum, lies in this, that the Quantum is constituted as con- tradicting itself in itself. The Quantum becomes another; it continues itself, however, into its otherwiseness : the other, there- fore, is also a Quantum. But this is the other not only of a, but of the Quantum itself, the negative of it as of a limited some- thing; consequently, its unlimitedness, , infinitude. The Quantum is a Sollen, a To-be-to ; it implies to-be-determined-for-itself, and such self-determinedness is rather determinedness in another ; and conversely it is sublated determinedness in another, it is indifferent self-subsistence. ' Finitude and Infinitude receive thus at once each in itself a double, and that an opposed import. The Quantum is finite, firstly, as limited in general; secondly, as self-dispatch beyond itself, as determinedness in another. Its Infinitude, again, is, firstly, non-limitedness ; secondly, its return into itself, indifferent Being-for-self. If we directly compare these moments, there results, that the determination of the Finitude of the Quantum, the self-dispatch into another, in which its determination is supposed to lie (and lies), is equally determination of the Infinite ; the negation of the limit is the same Beyond over the determinate- ness, in such wise that the Quantum has in this negation, the Infinite, its ultimate determinateness. The other moment of the Infinitude is the Being-for-self that is indifferent to the limit; the Quantum itself, however, is just so limited, that it is what is for itself indifferent to its limit, and so to other Quanta and its Beyond. The Finite and the Infinite (that Infinite which is to be 542 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. separated from the Finite, — the spurious Infinite) have, in Quantum, each already in it the moment of the other. 'The qualitative and the quantitative Infinites distinguish themselves by this, that in the former the antithesis of Finite and Infinite is qualitative, and the transition of the Finite into the Infinite, or the reference of both to each other, lies only in the notion, only in the In itself. The qualitative determinateness is as immediate, and refers itself to the otherwiseness essentially as to a something that is other to it ; it is not explicit as having in itself its negation, its other. Quantity, on the contrary, is, as such, suJblated determinateness ; it is explicit as being unequal with itself and indifferent to itself, and so as alterable. The qualitative Finite and Infinite stand, therefore, absolutely, i.e., abstractly opposed to each other ; their unity is the internal reference that is implied at bottom : the Finite continues itself, therefore, only in itself, and not in it, into its other. On the contrary, the quantitative Finite refers itself in itself into its infinite, in which it has its absolute determinateness. This their reference is set out at first hand in the Quantitative Infinite Progress. b. The Quantitative Infinite Progress. * The Progress into the Infinite is in general the expression of contradiction, here of that contradiction which the quantitative Finite or Quantum in general implies. It is that alternation of Finite and Infinite which was considered in the qualitative sphere, with the difference that, as just remarked above, in the quanti- tative sphere, the limit dispatches itself and continues itself in itself into its Beyond ; consequently, conversely also the quanti- tative Infinite is explicit as having the Quantum in itself, for the Quantum is in its Being-out-of-self at the same time itself ; its externality belongs to its determination. ' The infinite Progress is indeed only the expression of this contradiction, not its solution ; but because of the continuity of the one determinateness* into its other, it brings forward an ap- parent solution in a union of both. As this progress is first expressed, it is the Aufgabe of the Infinite (i.e., at once the giving up and the problem proposed ; both sides of the English puzzle or riddle are, as it were, glanced at), not the attainment of the same, — its recurrent production, without getting beyond the Quantum itself, and without the Infinite becoming positive and present. The Quantum has it in its notion to have a B eyond of QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 543 itself. This Beyond is, firstly, the abstract moment of the non- being of the Quantum ; this latter eliminates itself in itself; thus it refers itself to its Beyond as to its Infinitude, as in the quali- tative moment of the antithesis. But, secondly, the Quantum stands in continuity with this Beyond; the Quantum consists just in this, to be the other of itself, to be external to its own self : this, that is external, therefore, is just so not another than the Quantum ; the Beyond or the Infinite is therefore itself a Quan- tum. The Beyond is in this way recalled from its flight, and the Infinite reached. But because this — now become a here from a Beyond, a cis or citra from an ultra — is again a Quantum, only a new limit has been made again explicit; this new limit, as Quantum, is again fled from by itself, is as Quantum' beyond itself, and has repelled itself into its non-being, into its Beyond of or from its own self, which Beyond equally recurrently becomes Quantum, and as that repels itself from itself into the Beyond again. 'The continuity of the Quantum into its other occasions the union of both in the expression of an infinitely great or infinitely small. As both have the determination of Quantum still in them, they remain alterable, and the absolute determinateness, which were a Being-for-self, is therefore not reached. This Being-out-of- itself of the determination is explicit in the double Infinite, which is self-opposed according to a more or a less, the infinitely great and the infinitely small. In each of them Quantum is maintained in constantly-recurring antithesis to its Beyond. The great, how- ever much extended, vanishes together into inconsiderableness ; in that it refers itself to the Infinite as to its non-being, the antithesis is qualitative: the extended Quantum has, therefore, won from the Infinite nothing; the latter, after as before, is the non-being of the former. Or, the aggrandisement of the Quantum is no nearing to the Infinite, for the difference of the Quantum and of its Infinite has essentially also this moment, that it is not a quantitative difference. It is only the expression of the contra- diction driven closer into the straits ; it is to be at once great, i.e., a Quantum, and infinite, i.e., no Quantum. In the same manner, the infinitely small is as small a Quantum, and remains therefore absolutely, that is to say, qualitatively, too great for the Infinite, and is opposed to it. The contradiction of the infinite progress, which was to have found its goal in them, remains preserved in both. ' This Infinite, which is persistently determined as the Beyond of the Finite, is to be described as the spurious quantitative infinite. 544 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. It is, like the qualitative spurious Infinite, the perpetual crossing hence and thence from the one member of the persisting contra- diction to the other, from the limit to its non-being, and frojn the latter anew back to the limit. In the quantitative progress, what is advanced to is indeed not an abstract other, but a Quantum that is expressed as different ; but it remains equally in antithesis to its negation. The Progress, therefore, is equally not a progress, but a repetition of one and the same, — position, sublation, — re- position and re-sublation ; (the equating setzend with ponens and aufhebend with tollens is conspicuously plain here) — an impotence of the negative to which what it sublates returns through its very sublation as a constant. There are two so connected that they directly mutually flee themselves ; and even in fleeing cannot separate, but are in their mutual flight conjoined.' Eemark 1. The High Repute of the Progressus in Infinitum. This Remark turns largely on certain declarations of Kant ; but it is not of such a nature as to suggest reservation, as is usual where Kant is in question. ' The bastard Infinite — especially in its quantitative form, this perpetual transcendence of the limit and perpetual impotent relapse into the same — is generally contemplated as something sublime, a kind of Divine Service, — just as in philosophy it has been regarded as an ultimate. This progress has manifoldly con- tributed to tirades, which have been admired as sublime produc- tions. In point of fact, however, this modern sublimity enlarges, not the object, which rather flees, but only the Subject, that absorbs into itself such huge quantities. The indigence of this mere sub- jective elevation, that would scale the ladder of the Quantitative, declares itself directly in the admission of the futility of all its toil to get any closer to the infinite End, which to be reached indeed, must be quite otherwise griped to. ' In the following tirades of this nature there is at the same time expressed, what such elevation passes into and ends in. Kant, e.g., speaks of it as sublime (Kr. d. pract. V. Schl.), When the Subject lifts himself in thought above the place he occupies in the world of sense and extends the synthesis of his existence into infinite magni- tude— a synthesis with stars upon stars, worlds upon worlds, systems upon QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ET C. 545 systems, and again also into the immeasurable times of their periodic movement, into their beginning, and incalculable duration. — Conception sinks under this advance into the immeasurable Far, where the farthest world has still a farther — the past, however far referred, a farther still behind it — the future, however far anticipated, always another still before it; Thought sinks under this conception of the immeasurable ; as a dream, that we travel a long road ever farther and perpetually farther without apparent end, ceases at length with Falling or with Fainting (swimming of the head).* ' This description, besides compressing the matter of contents of the quantitative elevation into a wealth of delineation, deserves especial praise for the honesty with which it relates how, in the end, it fares with this elevation : thought succumbs, the end is falling and a swimming of the head. What makes thought give in and produces the fall and the faint is nothing else than the weari- ness of the repetition that lets a limit disappear only to reappear, but again disappear ; and so ever the one after the other, and the one in the other, — in the thither the hither, and in the hither the thither, — perpetually arise and perpetually depart; and there remains only a feeling of the impotence of this infinite or of this To-be-to, that would be master of the finite, but is without the power. ' What Kant names the awful description of Eternity by Haller is usually also specially admired, but often just not for the reason which constitutes its veritable merit : — I multiply enormous numbers, I pile to millions up, I gather time on time and world on world still up, And when I from the giddy height Seek thee once more with reeling sight, Is every power of count, increased a thousand number Not yet a part of thee. I drag them, down and thou liest there by me.\ 1 When this massing and piling up of numbers and worlds is considered what is valuable as in a description of eternity, it escapes notice that the poet himself declares this so-called awful transcendence to be something futile and hollow, and that his own conclusion is, that only by giving up this empty infinite progress, is it, that the veritable Infinite itself becomes present to him. 'There have been Astronomers who pleased themselves in making a merit of the sublimity of their science, because it has to do with an immeasurable number of stars, with such immeasurable * The latter half of this citation is not found at the place cited, t The original is but a similar doggerel ! 2 M 546 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. spaces and times that in them distances and periods, in themselves never so vast, are but as units that, never so many times taken, abbreviate themselves again into insignificance. The shallow astonishment to which they then surrender themselves, the absurd hopes some time yet in another life to wander from star to star, and for ever to acquire such new facts, they alleged as chief moments of the excellence of their science — which science deserves admiration, not because of such quantitative infinitude, but, on the contrary, because of the relations and the laws which reason recog- nises in these objects, and which are the rational infinite as against said irrational infinite. 'To the Infinite which refers itself to outward sensuous per- ception, Kant opposes the other Infinite, when the individual returns into his invisible ego, and opposes the absolute freedom of his will as a pure ego to all the terrors of destiny and of tyranny, beginning with his nearest circumstances, sees them disappear in themselves, and even that which seems eternal, worlds upon worlds, collapse in ruins, and recognises singly himself as equal to himself. 'Ego, in this singleness with itself, is indeed the attained Beyond ; it has come to itself, is by itself, here ; in pure self- consciousness the absolute negativity is brought into the affirma- tion and presence which, in that progress beyond the sensuous Quantum, only flee. But in that this pure ego has fixed itself in its abstraction and emptiness, it has the There-being in general, the fullness of the natural and spiritual universe, over against it as a Beyond. There manifests itself the same contradiction which is implied in the infinite progress ; namely, a returnedness into itself which is immediately at the same time out-of-itself-ness, reference to its other as to its non-being; which reference re- mains a longing, because ego has fixed for itself its intent-less and untenable void on one side, and as its Beyond the fullness which in the negation still remains present. 'To both Sublimes Kant adds the remark, "that admiration (of the former, external) and awe (before the second, internal) sublime, may stimulate, indeed, to inquiry, but cannot compensate for the deficiency of the same." — He thus declares said elevations insufficient for reason, which cannot rest by them and the feelings connected with them, nor accept the Beyond and the Void for what is ultimate. ' The infinite progress has been taken as an ultimate, especially in its moral application. The just-enunciated second antithesis QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 547 of the finite and the infinite, as of the complex world and of the ego raised into its freedom, is properly qualitative. The self- determination of the ego aims, at the same time, at the determina- tion of nature, and the emancipation of itself from her ; it thus refers itself through itself to its other which is, as external There-being, a manifold and quantitative. Reference to what is quantitative becomes itself quantitative; the negative reference of the ego thereon, the power of the ego over the non-ego, over sense and external nature, comes therefore to be conceived in this way, that morality can and shall become ever greater — the power of sense, on the other hand, always less. The complete adequacy, however, of the will to the moral law becomes mislaid, into the infinite progress, that is to say, it is represented as an absolutely unreachable beyond, and just this is to be the true anchor and the legitimate consolation, that it is unreachable ; for morality is to be as conflict ; this conflict, again, is only from the inadequacy of the will to the law, and the law, therefore, is absolutely a beyond for the will. 1 In this antagonism, ego and non-ego, or the pure will and the moral law on the one hand, and the sensuousness and mere nature of the will on the other, are presupposed as completely independent and mutually indifferent. This pure will has its peculiar law which stands in essential connexion with sense ; and nature, or sense, has on its side laws which are neither derived from the will nor correspondent to it, nor can have even only, however different from it, in themselves an essential connexion with it, but they are in general determined for themselves, full and complete within themselves. But both, at the same time, are moments of one and the same single being, the ego; the will is determined as the negative against nature, so that it (the will) is only so far as there is such an element different from it that shall become sublated by it, with which, however, it (the will) comes thus in contact, and by which it is even affected. To nature and to nature as human sense, limitation through another is indifferent, as to an independent system of laws; she maintains herself in this limitation, enters independently into the relation, and limits the will of the law quite as much as it limits her. It is one act, the self-determina- tion of the will with the sublation of the otherwiseness of a nature, and the assumption of this otherwiseness as there-beent, as continuing itself in its sublation and as not sublated. The contradiction that lies in this is not eliminated in the infinite 548 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. progress, but, on the contrary, is expressed and maintained as not eliminated and as incapable of elimination ; the conflict of Morality and Sense is represented as the absolute relation that in and for itself is. 1 The incapacity to become master of the qualitative antithesis of the finite and infinite, and to comprehend the Idea of the true will, substantial freedom, has recourse to Quantity, in order to use it as mediatrix, because it is the sublated Qualitative, the differ- ence become indifferent. But in that both members of the antithesis remain implied as qualitatively different, each rather becomes manifest at once as indifferent to this alteration, and just by this that in their mutual reference it is as Quanta that they now relate themselves. Nature is determined by ego, Sense by the will of the good ; the change produced by the will in Sense is only a quantitative difference, such a difference as allows it (Sense) to remain what it is. ' In the abstracter statement of the Kantian philosophy, or at least of its principles, that is, in the Wissenschaftslehre of Fichte, the infinite progress constitutes in the same manner the funda- mental principle and the ultimate. The first axiom of this statement, ego = ego, is followed by a second independent of the first, the opposition of the non-ego ; the connexion of both is taken at once also as quantitative difference, that non-ego is partly determined by ego, partly also not. The non-ego continues itself in this way into its non-being, so that in its non-being, it remains opposed, as what is not sublated. When, therefore, the contra- dictions thus involved have been developed in the system, the concluding result is the same relation that was the commencement ; the non-ego remains an infinite appulse, an absolutely other ; the ultimate mutual connexion of it and of the ego is the infinite progress, longing and struggle, seeking and searching, — the same contradiction which was begun with. 1 Because the quantitative element is the determinateness that is express as sublated, it was believed that much, or rather all, had been won for the unity of the absolute, for the one sub- stantiality, when the antithesis in general was set down to a difference only quantitative. Every antithesis is only quanti- tative, was for a time a main position of the later philosophy ; the opposed determinations have the same nature, the same substance ; they are real sides of the antithesis, so far as each of them has within it both values, both factors of the antithesis, QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 549 only that on the one side the one factor, on the other the other, is preponderant; on the one side the one factor, a matter or power, is present in greater quantity or in stronger degree than on the other. So far as different matters or powers are presupposed, the quantitative difference rather confirms and completes their externality and indifference to each other and to their unity. The difference of the absolute unity is to be only quantitative ; Quantitativity is indeed the sublated immediate determinateness, but it is only the uncompleted, only the first negation, not the infinite, not the negation of the negation. In that being and thought are represented as quantitative determinations of the absolute substance, even they, as Quanta, become, just like carbon, azote, &c, in a subordinate sphere, perfectly external to each other and void of connexion. It is a third (party), an external reflexion, which abstracts from their difference and perceives their inner unity, that is only in itself and not equally for itself This unity, consequently, is represented in effect only as first immediate unity, or only as being, which, in its quanti- tative difference, remains equal to itself, but does not set itself equal to itself through itself; it is thus not comprehended as negation of negation, as infinite unity. Only in the qualitative antithesis arises the explicit Infinite, the Being-for-self, and the quantitative determination itself passes over, as will presently more particularly yield itself, into the Qualitative.' Remark 2. Which occurs here, concerns Kant, and is reserved for the present. It is again one of those marvels of analysis peculiar to Hegel. c. The Infinitude of the Quantum. 1 1. The infinite Quantum, as infinitely great or infinitely little, is itself an sich the infinite progress ; it is Quantum as great or small, and it is at the same time non-being of Quantum. The infinitely great and infinitely little are therefore images of figurate conception, which, on closer consideration, show themselves as idle mist and shadow. But in the infinite progress this contradic- tion is explicitly present, and withal that also that is the nature of the Quantum — which as intensive magnitude has reached its 550 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. reality, and in its There-being is now explicitly set as it is in its notion. This identity is what we have to consider. * The Quantum as degree is simple, unal, referred to itself and as determined in itself. In that through this unality the other- wiseness and the determinateness in it are sublated, this determin- ateness is external to it, it has its determinateness out of it. This its out-of-itself-ness is at first hand the abstract non-being of the Quantum in general, the spurious Infinite. But further this non- being is also a magnitude, the Quanfum continues itself into its non-being, for it has just its determinateness in its externality ; this its externality is itself therefore equally Quantum ; that, its non-being, the Infinitude, becomes thus limited, that is to say, this beyond is sublated, is itself determined as Quantum, which is thus in its negation by its own self. * This, however, is what the Quantum as such is an sich. For it is just itself (es selbst) through its outerliness ; the externality constitutes that whereby it is Quantum, is by its own self. In the infinite progress, therefore, the notion of the Quantum is express, explicit. * Let us take it (the progress) at first hand in its abstract dis- tinctive features as they lie before us, then there is present in it the sublation of the Quantum, but equally also of its beyond, therefore the negation of the Quantum as well as the negation of this negation. Its (the progress') truth is their unity, in which they are but as moments. This unity is the solution of the contradiction of which the progress is the expression, and its (this unity's) closest mean- ing consequently is the restoration of the notion of Quantity, — that it is indifferent or external limit. In the infinite progress as such, it is usually only considered, that each Quantum, however great or small, must be capable of disappearing, that it must be capable of being transcended ; but it is not considered, that this its subla- tion, the beyond, the downright Infinite itself disappears also. Even the first sublation, the negation of Quality in general, whereby Quantum becomes explicit, is an sich the sublation of the negation, — the Quantum is sublated qualitative limit, consequently sublated negation, — but it is at the same time only an sich this ; it is set as a There-being, and then its negation is fixed as the Infinite, as the Beyond of Quantum which stands as a Here, a This side, as an immediate ; thus the infinite is determined only as first negation, and so it appears in the infinite progress. It has been shown that there is, however, more present in this last, — the QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 551 negation of the negation, or that which the infinite is in truth. This was before regarded as that the notion of the Quantum is thus again restored; this restoration means, in direct reference, that its There-being has received its closer determination ; there has arisen, namely, the Quantum determined according to Us notion, which is different from the immediate Quantum — the externality is now the contrary of itself, explicitly set as moment of the magnitude itself, — the Quantum so that by means of its non- being, the infinite, it has in another Quantum its determinateness, i.e., qualitatively is that which it is. Nevertheless, this com- parison of the notion with the There-being of the Quantum belongs more to our reflexion, to a relation that is not yet present here. The immediately next determination is, that the Quantum has returned into Quality, is now once again qualitatively determined. For its peculiarity, its quality, is the externality, indifference of the determinateness ; and it is now explicitly set, as being in its externality rather itself, as therein referring itself to itself, as in simplicity with itself, i.e., as being qualitatively determined. This Qualitativity is more particularly determined, namely, as Being- for-self ; for the reference to itself to which it has come, arises out of mediation, the negation of the negation. The Quantum has the Infinite, the For-self-determinedness no longer out of it, but in itself. ' The Infinite, which in the infinite progress has only the empty sense of a non-being, of an unreached, but sought beyond, is in effect nothing else than Quality. The Quantum as indifferent limit passes out beyond itself into the infinite ; it seeks so nothing else than the for-self-determinedness, the qualitative moment, that, however, in this way, is only a To-be-to. Its indifference to the limit, consequently its defect of beent-for-self-determinateness and its going out beyond itself, is what makes the Quantum Quantum ; that, its going-out, is to be negated, and to find for itself in the infinite its absolute determinateness. ' Quite generally : the Quantum is sublated Quality ; but the Quantum is infinite, transcends itself, is the negation of itself; this its transcendence is, therefore, an sich the negation of the negated Quality, the restoration of Quality ; and this is explicitly set, that the externality which appeared as beyond, is determined as the own moment of the Quantum. ' The Quantum is thus set as repelled from itself, whereby there are therefore two Quanta, which, nevertheless, are sublated, only 552 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. are as moments of one unity, and this unity is the determinateness of the Quantum. This (Quantum) thus referred to itself in its externality as indifferent limit, and consequently qualitatively set, is the Quantitative Relation. In relation the Quantum is external to itself, different from itself ; this its externality is the referring of one Quantum to another Quantum, of which each is only valid in this its reference to its other ; and this reference constitutes the determinateness (the special virtue) of the Quantum which is as such unity. It has in this reference not an indifferent, but a qualitative determination ; is in this its externality returned into itself, is in the same that which it is.' There is the possibility here of some very auxiliary remarks. — First of all, the contradiction in the notion of an infinitesimal, an infinitely great, or an infinitely little, is accomplished with the usual Hegelian masterliness in a very clear, and, as things are, very necessary exposition. It is to be at once Quantum and no Quantum, that is, it is an sich the infinite progress : now it is the reduction of this contradiction to the unity of relation which is the relative merit of Hegel. The limitless externality which lies in the notion of Quantum or Quantity is qualitative ; and there- fore it is a cheap wonder that falls prostrate before the infinite quantities that can be conjured up in the quantitative progress ; for with such quality such quantity is the turn of a hand. The bearing which intensive magnitude — as that, as it were, qualita- tive One, which has nevertheless its affair in an external Many — has on the subsequent determination. of Eelation must not be lost sight of. Degree, quite generally as degree, has what constitutes its determinateness external to itself ; but there is no end to the possibility of degree, therefore this its own constitutive externality is endless ; or vice versd, the constitutive externality being end- less, degree is endless; and we have thus in perfectly explicit expression the quantitative spurious infinite. In this infinite, the externality, the many, can.be seen to be relatively to the one, the degree, this degree's abstract non-being as such ; or this abstract non-being, the possibility of degree, is just the spurious infinite. Now all this is the very notion of Quantum in general : Quantum is itself, is what it is, through its own outwardness. We may even intensify the outwardness implied in the notion here; for we may say, the Quantum is what it is through that outwardness which it is, and also through that outwardness which it is not — any quantitative assignment being absolutely relative. This QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 553 relativity, the notion of a One from Two, is well before the mind of Hegel. As always relative, the assignment — Quantum — can be seen, then, always to flee — in infinitum. From this flight it is Hegel's business, by virtue of the notion, to recall it. I have translated Schlecht- C/wendliche, downright infinite. The sense assigned is an old idiomatic use of Schlecht as seen in Schlechthin, Schlechtweg, &c. ; and again, looking close, the Un of Unendliche seems italicised, which somehow plays very much into the hands of Schlecht in the sense of downright. Beyond all doubt, however, we have here the usual Hegelian irony ; what here is downright to figurate conception or ordinary reflexion is spurious to Hegel. The reader will assist himself greatly here if he will recall the sub specie ceternitatis, and reflect that it is the pure notion, the absolute, which lies under all these forms. It was the sublation of Finite There-being, for example, that led through the absolute Being-for- self into the form of Quantity at all : all then was One, One, One, — that is, Quantity ; but in that Quantity, the One, Quality, still is. ' Quantity, then, is an sick the sublation of the negation ' — of what negation ? — why, of the qualitative negation, of qualitative limit, of the fact that the Voice — again to use the Voice — had a Notification different from itself : Quantity is the negation of this qualitative limit ; what is, is One, but even so it must be One, One, One : Quantity is the condition of its life, of its very one-ness. All this is very plainly present, especially in the last four paragraphs, which have been just translated. The One is always One, the immediate ; so the non-immediate is its non-being, the negation of itself : thus it is caught (befangen) in the spurious Infinite, the Sollen of all kinds, and is ' das ungluckliche Bewusstseyn,' the unhappy con- sciousness that cannot find itself, but is for ever lost in its other. All this disappears before the simple consideration that the other is just the condition, the presupposition of itself ; that the other is for it ; that it is through the other ; that it is One just because it is One, One, One ; that it is the other, and the other is it. This is return of the Quantum into Quality: its determinateness as Quantum is its own externality ; but its own externality was the determinateness of Quality also : sublation of the externality pro- duces a like qualitative Being-for-self in both. In fact, read by this absolute light, these paragraphs will yield a perfectly mar- vellous meaning. While on one side all the assignments of Quantity are placed before us in a rigorous exactitude of form 554 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. that is now for the first time witnessed, on the other side we have the absolute itself demonstrated to us, and in those necessities which are the purest outcomes of its own reason, of its own pulse, that is, of its own self. Here, for example, we see that Quantity is not a thing apart and by itself, not something peculiar, inde- pendent and isolated, but absolutely one with quality, absolutely one with what is : it is part and parcel of the One All, and it is not part and parcel, but is that One All ; for in no other way could there be One, One, One, a life, Quality : Quantity, in truth, is but the abstract expression of that concrete fact. To generalise and abstract may be necessary, but it is more necessary now- adays to conduct our abstractions back into the life from which they have been sundered. This life is one and many: these many are not to be fixed as dead immovable solids (bits of ice) taken up from the One, the life ; they are to be taken back, re-dis- solved and seen as they are in the living One. That Quality is Quality, then, is just that Quantity is Quantity, or that there is Quantity : there is an absolutely necessary nexus between the two entities ; they are but sides of one and the same. How were an internality possible without an externality to extend it ? There is not here internality then, and there externality ; but what is, is at once external and internal, and such constitution is an absolute necessity of thought or of the notion. He that would see rightly, then, must always see in connexion, in co-reference. The Absol- ute Negativity, the negation of the negation, this is the key-note : what is, is a fire that feeds itself ; the fire and its fuel are one ; the former is through the latter, but the former always is, there- fore the latter always is, and the one is the other. Such is the nature of the Divine Life : it is infinite, for that through which it is, the aliment, is infinite and itself. Thus is it the pure negativity or the negation of the negation, for it is through its other, its negation, which at the same time it negates : the Attraction that is explicit is for ever fed by the Repulsion that is implicit. In this way it is that Hegel has taken firm hold' of the formula of the absolute ; and this negation of the negation, this necessary duplicity in the character of every actual concrete existence, by which it has two abstract or relatively abstract sides, he has followed out through the entire circle of the universe, up from the abstractest determination to the concretest, and this too by an absolutely necessary method, and with an absolutely necessary beginning and end. The duplicity which we see here in regard to Quality and Quantity is QUANTITY INTEKPRETED, ETC. 555 the single regulative truth of things, and, the element of thought being it and it nothing but thought, it is not more regulative than constitutive ; it is what is, it is the absolute, it is the pulse of God himself — at least as expressed in this universe. Quantity is a necessary position — it is but Quality, completed Quality. Quality, when full-summed, consummated in itself, is Quantity, by virtue of its own life, its own continuance. Quantity, which is the life of Quality, its continuance, without which Quality were not, which is required to extend Quality, returns by virtue of its own notion and veritable constitution into the Quality which it was supposed to have left. We need not say, indeed, Quantity without which Quality were not ; for that is simply tautological, Quantity being very evidently just the same thing as Quality, though on the other side. That Quality be, Quantity is a necessary condition, and so is it a necessary ingredient of Quality itself. Without the Quantity that extends it, Quality is inconceivable and impossible; but conversely without the Quality that, so to speak here, intends it, Quantity is inconceivable and impossible. What were Quantum and Quanta if only Quantitative Quantum and Quanta ? Quantum and Quanta must contract into the ultimate virtue, into the essential drop of Quality, — the ones are the One: Quantum and Quanta are only for Quality; they are only Qualitative. Time, Space, Matter, the Ego, — these we have already seen cited as examples of pure quantity ; but they are all of them qualitative, and there only because they are qualitative, they are necessary positions of the absolute in the way in which we have seen such necessity as regards Quantity when referred to Quality. That they are qualitative is evident from this, that each has its own peculiarity ; that is, they are not absolutely the same pure Quantity, and so not absolutely pure Quantity at all : pure Quantity as such is just the out-of-itself of Quality, or, what is the same thing, its continuance but in discretion, discretion and continuance being but another example of the absolute duplicity by which neither is possible without the other, or either is the other. Quality is the One ; but to be the One, it must be One, One, One endlessly, or Quantity : but the One refers these Ones to its own oneness — Quantitative Eelation. However it may be with the absolute, it must be admitted, at least, that Hegel in pursuit of his absolute has absolutely worked out and perfected, and for the first time in universal history, the Metaphysic or Theory of Quantity. Whether, then, what we may assign as the 556 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. ultimate dictum of Hegel — thought is the one avdyxtj, and the avdyKtj of thought gives this universe — be true or not, we must be thankful for the vast light his metaphysic has thrown on the particular and on all particulars. This brings us to say that before entering on the important enunciations of Hegel in refer- ence to the Calculus and the higher analysis in general, which form the subject-matter of the three very long and laborious Eemarks by the first of which we now stand, it will be advan- tageous to renew the values of Quantity we have just obtained, especially those which bear on what is called the Quantitative Infinite, True or False, Genuine or Spurious, Legitimate or Bastard. The Qualitative Infinite we probably understand thoroughly, and on both aspects, from our illustration of the absolute Voice and its Notification. The Notification as finite Note after finite Note endlessly, is that alternation of endedness and unendedness that but replace each other and repeat themselves, which is the spurious infinite of Hegel. The absolute Voice itself, which is through these notes and these notes, typifies the true Infinite. In effect, Finite and Infinite are but a certain stage of the Notion, of the one double single, or of the single duplicity. An Infinite without a Finite were null, as a Finite without an Infinite is incon- ceivable and impossible: neither, then, is possible without the other ; each implies the other ; — either is the other : the one truth is the single duplicity that is both. When we see Finite by itself, and Infinite by itself, we see a concrete Notion, or a phase of the concrete Notion, in each of its two abstract sides alternately. The truth (say) is the absolute Voice which is through its other, which other it also negates or sublates ; and so it is the negation of the negation, the pure negativity, the veritable Infinite. This Infinite as One passed through what we may call Mona- dology or the Metaphysic of the Monad into the indifferent con- tinuous oneness which emerged as Quantity. Quantity showed itself immediately as Continuous or Discrete ; both of which went together again in the notion of limit, which was found to be not only the common, but the entire truth of each. Limit next manifested itself as Quantum or Number, which went asunder into Extensive and Intensive Quanta, but collapsed again into the quantitative Something which, as the very quality or notion of Quantum, is endless self-externality, or the quantitative Infinite. The quantitative Infinite is first the spurious Infinite of Quantum QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 557 fleeing ever into its indifferent limit. But this flight or trans- cendence is in its truth a transcendence of the one Quantum as well as of the other : this is a reference of Quantum to Quantum, is qualitative, and the true Quantitative Infinite of Quantitative Relation. Simple consideration sub specie cetemitatis of the One that issued from Quality and emerged in Quantity leads readily to all these forms. But, not to go too far back — as limitless one, one, one that is always away over into another one, it is the spurious infinite, while as return to its own oneness in all these ones it is the true Infinite and a return to Quality. This can be characterised, too, as the true reflexion for us here. Lastly, in an objective mode of looking, the oneness that results from the reflexion of one to one is — Quantitative Relation, and is here the true Quantitative Infinite, as it is Qualitative, or as it is the return of Quality to itself from Quantity. I may add, that once having the absolute as One, or just the form, character, determination, or term of One, the whole of Quantity, and of all that holds of it, is potentially given. Remark 1. Tlie Precise Nature of the Notion of the Mathematical Infinite. ' The Infinite which the higher analysis has introduced into mathematical science, while it has led to vast results in pmctice, has been always attended with great difficulties in theory. The latter, indeed, has never been able to justify the former ; confirma- tion has been required for the results, as it were, from without ; and the operation itself has been rather granted as incorrect. This is a false position in itself — unscientific — and no science so situated can be either sure of its application or certain of its extent. ' What is interesting to philosophy here is, that while this, the Mathematical Infinite, is at bottom the True Infinite, it is the False or Metaphysical Infinite before which it is summoned and required to justify itself. The former, indeed (mathematic), defends itself by rejecting the competence of the latter (metaphysic), and by professing to own no authority but that of its own consistency on its own field. But while, on the one hand, metaphysic cannot deny the value of the splendid results achieved by mathematic in consequence of the Infinite in question, it must be admitted that this latter science, on the other hand, is unable to procure for its own self a clear conscience as regards the notion it has introduced and the dependent processes. 558 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. ' So far as the difficulty concerns the notion alone, that is a matter of no moment to any science which has rightly possessed itself of an element, and truly distributed it. But here in the science concerned there is a contradiction in the very method on which, as a science, it rests. It permits itself, for example, to handle Infinite Quanta as if they were Finite Quanta, and yet to apply, in determination of the former, expedients which it absol- utely rejects in the case of the latter. Justification, it is true, is sought for the application of these expedients, in the fact, that their results can be proved from elsewhere. But while, on one side, all results have not been so proved, it is, on the other side, the very object of the new method, not only to shorten, but in certain respects to supersede the old, and obtain results impossible to the old. Again, a result cannot justify a manner per se ; and the manner here has this inexactitude in it, that it now introduces as the very essential of the operation, what it presently rejects as too small to be of any account. Nay, what is more extraordinary still, the results obtained from this process, the inexactitude of which is admitted, are, as Carnot says, " not merely free ' from sensible error,' but rigorously exact." And we know all the while that something actually was omitted — something not quite zero. This is not truth as such — correctness as such — neither of which admits of a less or a more. Again, be it with the result as it may, proof as such is an interest, and in mathematical science the interest proper. 'It will be interesting, then, to examine closer the various modes in which the general notion involved has been viewed, as well as the various expedients which have been adopted to justify it. ' The usual definition of the mathematical Infinite is, that it is a magnitude beyond which — when it is infinitely great — there is no greater, or — when it is infinitely small — no smaller, or which, in the one case, is greater, and, in the other, smaller, than any assign- able magnitude. This definition does not express the true notion involved, but only that contradiction which is the spurious pro- gressus ; and again if Quanta are, as mathematic elsewhere avows, what can be lessened or increased, then plainly it is not Quanta as such that we have now before us. ' This is already something gained, and this is what usually just fails to be seen : the Quantum as such is sublated, its character is now of an infinite nature, and yet its quantitative determinateness QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 559 is to be conceived as still somehow persisting. It is in continuing to regard what is infinite as finite, as Quantum, that more or less becomes capable of being falsely attributed to what is infinite. The infinite of a unity that is 2, or 3, or 4, &c, for example, may be regarded as greater than an infinite of a unity that is only 1, &c. How this depends on an infinite being still regarded as Quantum is evident. Kant — (but, as usual, this is reserved). 'We have seen that the true Infinite Quantum is infinite in itself {an ihm selbst) ; it is this inasmuch as both the Quantum as such and its beyond of externality, through which beyond it has its constitutive determinateness, are equally sublated. The Quantum is thus gone into unal self-reference. It itself and its externality, however, are still there as moments : it is the infinite Quantum as containing and being its own negated externality. But this is Quality: it is not any particular assignable Quantum: it is the constitution of Quantum as such universally, and so Quality. [' One can readily sublate the infinite series of Notes, through which the Voice is, into the one infinite voice *] ; but, though the one infinite Quantum can be conceived as only through the series of finite Quanta, it is not so easy to conceive a qualitative infinite Quantum by sublation into its unity of the whole infinite variety or externality of the finite series. This, however, is what is required to be done : the relativity of Quantity is to be conceived in its own infinite qualitative form. Its infinitude is that it is a qualitative determinateness. The relativity, once firmly caught, can be seen to be but moment, Quantitative determinateness in Qualitative form. As moment it depends on its other ; it has its determination from this other ; it has a meaning only in relation to what stands in relation with it. Apart from this relation it is nothing ; and is, in this respect, unlike Quantum as such, which as such seems wholly passive, indifferent as regards relation, and even in relation to possess its own immediate, settled form. But as moment in relation, its passivity and indifference disappear ; its immediacy is sublated ; it is what it is through another. Quite generally now, then, the Quantum that has taken up this attitude to its own externality (quite generally) can be seen to have sub- lated itself into a Qualitative Unity ; it is infinite Being-for-self, but possesses and is quantitative Being-for-One. Or we may say that quantitatively it is a Fur-Eines, a Being-for-One, while qualitatively it is a Being-for-self. Or again we might almost say * See next note. 560 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. that it is quantitative matter (the For-One) idealised into qualita- tive form (the For-self). This distinction is very difficult to realise. Though something has here been added in elucidation, the reader will do well to re-read — *c. The Infinitude of the Quantum,' together with the relative comments — for this notion is evidently intended to be the key-note of all that follows. The moments are simply these : there is Quantum and its Beyond ; so put they flee each other and we have the spurious Infinite through their alternate repetition ; but they are not to be repeated : the Quantum is to be seen to depend on the beyond ; the beyond is to be seen to constitute it: the beyond, then, is to be taken up into it to the formation of a single notion, a one infinite qualitative whole, — the quality being the peculiarity of its constitution.* ' This notion will be found to constitute at bottom the mathe- matical Infinite ; and it itself will become clearer in the progress of a consideration of the various stages of the expression of the Quantum as a moment of relation, from the lowest, where it is yet at the same time Quantum as such, up to the higher, where it obtains the signification (value) and the expression of special infinite magnitude. ' The first example, then, will be Quantum in relation as ex- hibited in fractions. The fraction -f , for instance, is quite a finite expression, and possessed of a quite finite value, the exponent or quotient ; nevertheless it is different from the whole numbers, 1, 2, 3, &c. It is not immediate as they are, but mediate ; the virtue it possesses is neither 2 nor 7, but as it were that virtue which depends on the relativity of these two virtues mutually. The sublation of immediacy has introduced quite a change, then : the immediacy is no longer the essential, but the mediacy; and so long as the latter is retained, the former may be as it likes. Thus a certain infinitude emerges : 2 may become 4, 6, &c. ; and for 7 we may substitute 14, 21, &c. In this way we see more plainly that it is not an immediate 2 or 7 with which we have to do ; for both the 2 and the 7 may be changed infinitely, provided only their relativity be preserved : -f- has now, then, taken on a certain qualitative character, inasmuch as its quantitative character — its composing Quanta — manifest a certain indifference, in having * Exact translation was not at first intended in this Remark — hence the ad- mission of additions (the 'voice,' &c.) as above, though compression was the general object. QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 561 become susceptible of infinite change. The 2 and 7 together, then, are very different from what they are apart : the passive, inert, quantitative limit which each, as 2 or as 7, has, is sublated into a certain infinitude ; their value seems no longer merely quantitative and of the nature of 2 and 7 ; this value, or their virtue, seems to have gone over into a qualitative drop, the qualitative Being-for- self, while at the same time quantitative determinateness seems still to be preserved, to enter as moment, as the Being-for-One. The 2 and the 7 are moments in fact ; they are no longer 2 and 7, but each is what it is as in the relation, and so endlessly variable. That the virtue here is qualitative will readily appear, when it is recollected that Quality is but seyende Bestimmtheit, beent determinateness. The beent determinateness which is here again may be considered of an infinite nature, as it rests on an infinite relation, or on Quanta which are of an infinite character. The Quantitativity of 2 as of 7 remains, but as in itself qualitative, seeing that each is what it is only in relation to another. ' Such fraction, however, is no perfect expression of Infinitude : the finite and quantitative character of divisor, dividend, and quotient — their mutual indifference and externality as Quanta — are too obvious. Its value as an illustration depends wholly on the infinitude which comes upon its Quanta when they cease to function as direct or immediate Quanta, — on the fact that Quantity seems to become indifferent, if the Quality but remain. ' The more general form -r- might appear, so far, more eligible as an expression for the Infinite; nevertheless, as valueless in itself, as altogether symbolical and dependent on another, it is quite indifferent and external, and so inapplicable as illustration here. 1 The relation as we have seen it in the fraction, then, implies these two characters : firstly, that it is Quantum ; secondly, that it is not immediate but mediate Quantum, or that it implies the qualitative antithesis (i.e., a one of two, a reflexion into self from reflexion to other). The single virtue of the relation is the determinate but indifferent thing it is, because it has returned out of its otherwiseness (the contraposed numbers) into itself, and is so far an infinite. In other words, it is the secret quality that 2 has to 7, or 7 to 2, that is the thing, no matter what quantitative amount this secret quality may assume. The two 2n 562 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. characters are more distinct when developed in the following familiar form : — 'The fraction f- can be expressed as '285714 . . ., ^ — '- as l+a+a2+a3+, &c. In this form, the fraction is as an infinite series ; the fraction itself is called the Sum or the finite expression of the series. These terms were, perhaps, more correct, however, if converted. Comparing the two expressions, f- on the one side of the equation and its decimal expansion on the other, and so with the other fraction, we find that the side which is the expansion or infinite series expresses the fraction no longer as relation, but as Quantum, as an Amount, as a number of Quanta which add them- selves to each other. That the amount consists of decimal frac- tions, and so again of relations, is not a consideration here ; for the question refers wholly to the amount and not to the nature of the unity concerned. A number consisting of several places of figures is still an amount ; and the unities of the amount are not required to be considered in their peculiarity as units of the general decimal system. Nor is it to be objected that all fractions do not, like \, yield an infinite decimal series ; for every fraction may be expressed as a numerical system of another unity than the decimal one. ' In the expansion, the infinitude of relation has disappeared, then, and has now the form of an endless series. ' But this series is evidently the spurious Infinite. It is the contradiction to state what is a relation and of qualitative nature as relation-less and mere Quantum. Thus, carried out to what extent it may, there is always a minus: such series is but a Sollen, a To-be-to ; a Beyond that is ever beyond is here inevit- able. This is the permanent contradiction that ensues from the attempt to express what is qualitative as a quantitative amount. • The inexactitude is here in actuality, which is only in appear- ance in the true mathematical Infinite. Both in mathematic and in philosophy the true Infinites, True and False, are to be carefully discriminated. In spite both of some early and of some recent attempts, infinite series is no legitimate or necessary expression of the true Infinite. Such series is inferior as an expression even to the fraction. ' The infinite series remains a Sollen, a To-be-to ; it expresses not what it is to express. "What it expresses is burthened with a beyond, and is different from what it is to express. It is QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 563 infinite as incomplete, and reaches not the other which is to com- plete it. What is properly there is a Finite, and stated as a Finite : it is — not that — which it is to be. The finite expression, on the other hand, the sum, is without deficiency. It has what the other only seeks. The beyond is recalled from flight. What it is and is to be are unseparated and the same. ' The distinction is closer this : — In the infinite series the nega- tive is outside of what is stated, as that is only a part of the amount. In the finite expression, on the contrary, a relation, the negative is immanent as the determinedness of the sides of the relation through one another ; it is thus as returned to within itself, a self-referent unity, negation of the negation (both sides being but moments) ; it has thus the character of infinitude within itself. The finite expression is thus the infinite expression ; the sum is a relation. The infinite series is in truth sum, no relation, but an aggregate. The series, then, is what is finite ; it is an imperfect aggregate, and remains defective; it is determinate Quantum, but less than it should be. What fails again is also a determinate Quantum, and it is this deficiency that constitutes what is mfinite in the series — this in the formal point of view that it is what fails, what is not, a non-being ; in real meaning and value it is a determinate Quantum. What is, only with what is not, constitutes what is to be but is not able to be. This word infinite, even in the case of the series so called, is to common opinion something high and holy; such opinion is but superstition, the superstition of understanding ; that depends, however, only on a want. (Negative, as used above, has reference to the necessary negation, the necessary other, required for qualitative distinctivity or determinateness. " Formal point of view " — it is only as regards form that the series is infinite, that what fails is always not, &c). 1 It may be remarked that there are infinite series incapable of being summed ; but this is an external and contingent circumstance with reference to the form of series as such. These involve an incommensurability, or the impossibility of representing the implied quantitative relation as a Quantum. The infinitude of such series is of a higher order than in those that may be summed ; but the form of series as such is still, even in these cases, the spurious Infinite. 1 The usual metaphysical Infinite, and not the true mathematical Infinite, it is, then, which ought to be called, not the absolute, but the relative Infinite. There must be a conversion of dignity in 564 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. these references. What cannot sublate its other is Finite ; what has sublated this other and united it to itself is Infinite.* * For the sake only of the illustration it contains, it may be worth while noticing the curious attempt of Thomas Taylor, in his • Dissertation on Nullities,' to prove, through expedients which are at bottom only the spurious Infinite, that there exist ' Nullities,' ' not Nothings,' but ' infinitely small quantities ' that ' belong to, with- out being quantity,' and 'have a subsistence prior to number and even to the monad itself.' Such Nullities are 1—1, 2—2, 3 — 3, &c; and these, in order, are stated by Taylor to be infinitely small quantities of 1, of 2, of 3, &c. Of 1 — 1, he says, it ' is not the same with 0, or, in other words, 1 — 1 considered collectively, or as one thing, is not the same with 1 considered as taken from one, so as to leave nothing.' The key-note of this Thomas 'Taylor's Theorem' is, that ^ is equal to L-^pr, which, when expanded, becomes 1— 1+1 — 1, + &c, ad infinitum. Taylor, while he accepts the summation of this series at the hands of the Mathematicians, seems — for he is by no means explicit — to object to these gentlemen that they are 1 very far from suspecting ' that they have accomplished at the same time the sum- mation of the 'infinite Nullities.' He, for his part, however, evidently sees very clearly that, 1 — 1 being 0, (1—1) + (1 — 1), which is the single characteristic and constitutive act of the series, must be but a summation of 0 to 0 all through ; and consequently that, as this summation issues, not in nothing, but in \, 1 — 1 is, after all, not a Nothing, but a ' Nullity,' — a quantity infinitely small. Taylor then pro- ceeds to point out — what ' it is singular that neither Euler, nor any other Mathe- matician, should have considered' — 'that -=■,,' 4=iZETZTjZT' an<*> *n short, all fractions, whose numerators are Unity, and whose denominators are dis- tributed into Unities, will, when resolved into infinite series, be equal to this same 1—1+1 — 1, &c, infinitely.' He does not on that account, however, alter his original conclusion that ' the sum of the infinite nullities is £.' Surely, neverthe- less, he has now an equal title to infer that this same sum is J, J, £, &c. Nay, J, i> h h &c-> Qd infinitum, being all equal to the same thing and consequently to one another, surely he has now an equal title to infer that 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and in general all number or numbers whatever, are similarly equal ! Another instance of a like confusion is this : ' If 1 — 5, in whatever way it may be considered, was always the same as —4, and 1 — 2 the same as — 1, then, since — 1 divided by — 4 is equal to J, 1—2 divided by 1 — 5 would also be equal to J ; but on the contrary, it is equal to the infinite series 1+3+15+ &c.' Taylor's error is the omission to perceive that all his Infinites are ' spurious ' : had he but completed them by what Hegel names the 'defect,' the 'failing determinate Quantum,' and Euler — a few pages before the one cited by Taylor himself — the ' remainder ' (which remainder is, in the cases mentioned, +r—> +....> fin mm1 1^5' e1ua^ resPec* 75 tively, +i, +J, +£, — -or— 18£), he would have found them instantly converted into the original relations, \, \, \, and \. These two one-fourths suggest that, on similar reasoning, Taylor might have declared 1 — 1+1 — 1, &c.= 1+3+15+75, &c. ; but in this and in the other cases, absurdity and confusion disappear directly the spurious un-ended is ended by what it wants — the relative remainder. Elsewhere Taylor — possibly, in similar cases, Mathematicians generally — might reflect with profit on the Hegelian distinction between operating (through ' increase ' and QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 565 * It is in the sense of these findings, that Spinoza opposes the notion of the true to that of the false Infinite, and illustrates the same by examples. ' Spinoza defines the Infinite as the absolute affirmation of the existence of a nature of any kind ; the Finite, on the contrary, as determinateness, as negation. The absolute affirmation of an existence is to be taken, namely, as self-reference, not as what is because another is : the finite, on the contrary, is the negation, a ceasing as mere referentiality to another that out of it begins. Absolute affirmation is inadequate, however, to the notion of the Infinite ; which is not immediate affirmation, but as what is restored through reflexion of the other into itself, or as negation of the negative. But the substance of Spinoza and its absolute unity are fixed and immovable : they have not the form of the self with self-mediating unity ; they possess not the notion of the negative unity of the self, subjectivity. ■ Spinoza's example of the Infinite is the space between two circles, one of which, without touching, and without being con- centric, is contained within the other. ' The mathematicians,' he says, ' demonstrate that the inequalities, which are possible in such a space, are infinite, not from the infinite number of the parts, for its magnitude is fixed and limited, and I can assume such spaces as greater and smaller, but because the nature of the thing itself exceeds every determinateness.' This infinite of_Spinoza, then, is present and complete, not any unended number or series; the space, in his example, is limited, but it is infinite because 'the nature of the thing itself exceeds every determinateness,' because the magnitude contained in it cannot be expressed as a Quantum. The infinite of a series he names the infinite of the imagination ; that again which is self- referent, the infinite of thought, or infinitum actu. The latter is actually infinite, because it is complete within itself and present. The other has no actuality, something fails The \ or * is, like Spinoza's space, so far finite, and can be 4 diminution ') on what is Quantity, and on what is no longer Quantity. School- boys, with a single string, produce, by passing loop through loop and tightening loop on loop, a very sufficient whip-cord, which seems to consist of a series of sufficiently solid-looking knots : one pull at the tail of the last one, however, and the whole series vanishes into its first One, the single string. Thus Taylor's series remained solid to him because he forgot to pull the tail, the remainder. This at least illustrates what Hegel is so anxious to make clear, the spuriousness of unended progressus regarded as an Infinite, and will, perhaps, be excused by the reader. 566 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. assumed as greater or smaller ; but it admits not of the absurdity of a greater or less Infinite ; for this Quantum of the whole affects not the relation of its moments, " the nature of the thing," that is, the qualitative determination of the magnitude. What in the infinite series is there is not only a finite Quantum, but, moreover, a defective one. Imagination clings to the Quantum as such, and reflects not on the qualitative peculiarity which constitutes the reason of the existent incommensurability. 4 This incommensurability — that of Spinoza's example — compre- hends within it the functions of curved lines, and brings us nearer to the true mathematical infinite which is connected with such functions and with the functions of variable magnitudes in general. ' In f- both numerator and denominator, as we have seen, are, in a certain manner, infinitely variable ; ^ again is infinitely vari- able in a still more unrestricted sense: if in the functions of variable quantities, then, x and y are to be distinguished from such quantities as 2, 7, a, b, &c, the principle of distinction must rest on something else than variableness as such or in general. Variable quantity, then, as an expression that is to be specifically distinctive, is extremely vague, and, at the same time, very badly chosen for characters of quantity which have their interest and their principle of operation in something quite else than their mere variableness. * In f- the 2 and the 7 are, each of them, a fixed independent Quantum, and any co-reference or connexion is not essential to them. In ? too, both a and b are such quanta as are supposed to remain the quanta which they are apart from, and independent of, the relation. Moreover, -f and r have fixed quotients; the relation constitutes an amount of unities, the denominator corresponding to the latter and the numerator to the former. To express it otherwise, whatever change is made on the 2 and the 7 (as into 4 and 14, &c), the relation as Quantum remains V2 the same. This is all changed, however, in the function — =p, for example. Here x and y represent variable Quanta capable of receiving determinate values ; but it is not on x and y, but on x and y*, that the quotient depends. That is, x and y are not only variable, but their relation is no fixed quantum but as a quantum QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 567 also absolutely variable. The reason of this peculiar variableness of the quotient is, that the relation is not of one quantity to another, but of one quantity to the square of another. This introduction of a power into the relation is the circumstance to be regarded as the fundamental determination: the relation of a magnitude to a power is no quantum, but essentially a qualitative relation. — Now in such functions as that of the straight line, the relation does not concern a power; -=a contains a fraction quite similar to -r ; the fraction is an ordinary one, the quotient an ordinary one : such functions, therefore, are only formally functions of variable quantities, and have not that character to which the principle of the Calculus applies. In view of the specific difference which we have here so strongly before us, it would have been proper to have introduced for the functions named variable not only a specific name, but specific signs also, and different from those of the usual unknown quantities in algebra. It is to fail to see the peculiarity of the Calculus and the need from which it sprung, that there should be included within its matter such functions as those of the first degree. It is right to complete the generalisation of a method, but it is a misunderstanding here so to leave the specific difference out of view that the interest of the science seems to concern variable quantities in general. Much formalism of consideration and of operation would have been spared, had it been seen that what was in question was not quantitative variableness as such, but relations to Powers. 1 But, in addition to this, there is another peculiarity that dis- V2 tinguishes the mathematical Infinite. In the relation — , the 00 y and the x have still the force and the value of Quanta ; but this force and value disappear in the infinitely small differences, dx, dy are no longer Quanta, nor do they represent Quanta ; they have meaning only in connexion, a sense only as moments. They are no longer Something in the sense of a Quantum, they are not finite differences; but they are not nothing, not indeterminate zero. Apart from their relation they are zeros, but they are to be taken only as moments of the relation, as determinations of the differential coefficient -?-, dy 568 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. ' In this notion of the Infinite, Quantum is veritably perfected into a qualitative There-being (specific existence) : it is in explicit position as actually infinite; it is sublated not only as this or that Quantum, but as Quantum in general. Quantitative speci- ficity remains, however, as element of Quanta, as principle ; it is Quanta, as some one has also said, in their first notion. 1 Against this notion is it that all attacks, bearing on the funda- mental principle of the Calculus, have been directed. The mis- apprehensions of mathematicians themselves in this connexion occasioned these. Generally they have been unable to justify their object as notion ; but this notion cannot be evaded ; for here it is not finite determinateness that is concerned ; rather on this field such determinatenesses are converted into identity with their opposites, curved lines into straight, the circle into the polygon, &c. The operations of the Calculus, then, are entirely contradictory to the nature of finite values and their connexions, and should have their justification only in the notion. 1 That, as vanishing, these infinite differences should have been conceived as a middle-state between Something and Nothing, was an error. This has been already discussed on occasion of the Category of Becoming in Eemark 4. A state is a contingent and external affection; it is the disappearing, the Becoming, — that is, the truth. 'What is infinite, it has been further said, is incapable of comparison as a greater or a less ; a relation of infinite to infinite, orders or dignities of the infinite — distinctions which are spoken of in the science itself — are therefore not legitimate. The con- ception of Quanta and of the comparison of Quanta in relation still underlies this objection. But rather, it should be said, what is only in relation is no Quantum. A Quantum is what can have its own indifferent, independent existence apart from the relation — what, therefore, is indifferent to its distinction from another. What is qualitative, again, is that which it is only in its dis- tinction from another. In this sense, these infinite magnitudes are not only capable of comparison, but they are only as moments of comparison, of relation. 1 If we examine now the chief mathematical views of this Infinite, we shall find that they all imply the same thought of the thing itself (which we have just expressed), but not fully expiscated as notion, and that they are driven to expedients in the application at variance with their better element QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 569 ' The thought cannot be more correctly determined than Newton has given it ; that is, the conceptions of movement and velocity (whence fluxion) being withdrawn as burthening the thought with inessential forms and interfering with its due abstraction. Newton says of these fluxions (Princ. Mathem. Phil. Nat., lib. i. lemma xi. Schol.) that he understands by them disappearing divisibles, not indivisibles — a form belonging to Cavalleri and others, and implying the notion of a Quantum determined in itself ; further not sums and relations of definite parts, but the limits of sums and relations. It may be objected that vanishing quantities have no last relation, because what is before their disappearance is not a last, and after, there is nothiug. But under the relation of such magnitudes the relation is to be understood not before they disappear and not after ; it is the relation with which they disappear (quacum evanescunt). So of magnitudes that become, the first relation is that with which they become. 1 Newton here bears to explain what is to be understood by such and such an expression : this belongs to the scientific method of the time, and has no foundation in the truth of things. The notion, which is in itself necessary, being demonstrated, any explanation of what is to be understood becomes superfluous as mere historical demand or subjective presumption. But Newton's words apply plainly to the notion as here demonstrated. "We have quantities which disappear or are no longer Quanta ; and we have relations, not of definite parts, but relations which are limits of relation. Not only the Quanta or sides of the relation disappear, but the relation itself so far as it is Quantum. The limit of a quantitative relation is that in which it both is and is not, or, more accurately, that in which the Quantum has disappeared, and there remains the relation only as qualitative relation of quantity, and its sides similarly as qualitative moments of quantity. Ultimate magni- tudes, Indivisibles, however, are not to be inferred from an ultimate relation of vanishing magnitudes. This were to deviate again from the abstract relation to such sides of it as should be supposed to possess a value apart from their co-reference, per se, as indi- visibles— as something that were a one, relation-less. ' The last relations, he urges, are not relations of last magnitudes, but limits, to which the relations of the infinitely decreasing magnitudes are nearer than any given, that is to say, finite, differ- ence: the limit moreover is not exceeded, to the production of nothing. Last magnitudes were indeed Indivisibles, or Ones. In 570 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. the last relation, however, any indifferent one that were without relation, as well as finite Quantum, disappears. Here, however, conceptions of infinite decrease (which is only the infinite pro- gressus) as well as of divisibility, have no longer any immediate sense, if the notion of a quantitative element, which is only moment of a relation, be held fast in its purity. ' As regards the continuance of the relation in the disappearance of the Quanta, there is to be found (elsewhere as in Carnot, "E^flexions sur la M^tapbysique du Calcul Infinitesimal") the expression that by virtue of the law of continuity the vanishing magnitudes still retain the relation (or ratio) from which they spring, before they vanish. This conception expresses the true nature of the thing, so far as not that continuity of Quantum is understood which it has in the infinite progress, that is, so to con- tinue itself in its disappearance that in the Beyond of itself there arises again only a finite Quantum, only a new term of the series ; a continuous progress is always so conceived, that the values are gone through, which then are still finite Quanta. In the con- tinuity of the true infinite, on the contrary, it is the relation that is continuous; it is so continuous that it rather wholly consists in this, to isolate the relation alone, and to abolish any element that is not the relation, any Quantum which as side of the relation were to be supposed to remain Quantum apart from the relation. This purification of the quantitative relation is the same thing as what is meant by an empirical existence of any kind being comprehended in its notion (begriffen). Such existence in such case is raised beyond its own self in such wise that its notion contains the same characterising constituents as it itself, but taken up in their essentiality and into the unity of the notion, in which they have lost their indifferent, notionless subsistence. ' These, Newton's generative magnitudes or principles, are not more interesting than the generated magnitudes. A generated magnitude (genita) is a product or quotient, rectangles, squares, or sides of these, — in general a finite magnitude. " Such magni- tude being considered as variable, as in continual movement and flux, increasing and decreasing, he understands by the name of moments its momentary Increments or Decrements. These, however, are not to be taken as particles of a definite magnitude (particulse finitae). Such were not themselves moments, but magnitudes generated out of moments ; what is to be understood is rather the Principles or Beginnings of finite magnitudes in QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 571 process of becoming." Here the Quantum is distinguished from itself, or how it is as product or there-beent, and how in its Becoming, in its Beginning and Principle, that is to say, in its notion, or what is here the same thing, in its qualitative characterisation: in the latter the quantitative differences, the infinite increments or decrements, are only moments ; only what is become is that which has gone over into the externality and indifference of There-being, the Quantum. If, on the one side, such conceptions are to be acknowledged to imply the true notion, on the other side these forms of increments, &c, are to be seen to fall within the category of the immediate Quantum and of the progress us, and to constitute the fundamental vice in the method — the permanent obstacle to the isolation into its purity of the qualitative moment in quantity in contradistinction to the usual Quantum. * The conception of infinitely small magnitudes, which, however, is contained imjpliciter in the increments and decrements them- selves, is very inferior to the above determinations. They are described as such, that not only they themselves in comparison with finite magnitudes, but their higher orders in comparison with their lower, and even the products of several in comparison with a single one, may be neglected. This call to neglect is more strikingly prominent with Leibnitz than with others who preceded him. This call it is which, if it has won facility for the Calculus, has also given to its operations an appearance of inexactitude and express inaccuracy. Wolf, in his way of making things popular, that is to say, of making turbid the notion and of setting in its place incorrect sensuous conceptions, has sought to render this neglect intelligible by such examples as, in taking the height of a mountain the calculation is not affected, if a particle of sand be blown away the while ; nor does the neglect of the height of the house or tower interfere with the accuracy of the calculations of lunar eclipses. ' If the fair play of Common Sense accept such inexactitude, all geometricians unite to reject the conception. In such a science us Mathematic there can be no question of empirical exactitude ; its mensuration, whether by operations of the Calculus or by con- structions in Geometry, is quite different from that of empirical lines and figures, as in Land-surveying. Proofs from elsewhere, besides, establish that there is no question of a less or more of accuracy, while it is self-evident at the same time that an absol- 572 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. utely exact result cannot issue from a process that were incorrect. Then, on the other side, the process itself cannot do without this neglect — despite its protestations that what it neglects is of no account. And this is the difficulty, this is what requires to be made intelligible, and any appearance of absurdity in it removed. ' Euler, in adopting Newton's general definition, would, in con- sidering the relations of the increments, regard the infinite difference as zero. (Institut. Calc. Different., P. I., c. iii). How we are to understand 'this, lies in the foregoing: the difference, if zero quantitatively, is not so qualitatively ; it is no zero, but a pure moment in the relation. It is no difference by so much ; yet again, it seems strange to characterise what is infinitely small, as increment or decrement or difference ; and such external arith- metical operation really seems performed, addition or subtraction, in that, as regards the finite magnitude present from the first, something is added to it, or taken from it. It is to be said, however, that the transition from the function of the variable to its differential, must be regarded as of quite a different nature, namely (as already determined), as a reduction of the finite func- tion to the qualitative relation of its quantitative elements. Again the difficulty reappears when the increments are called zeros ; for a zero has no determinateness, and seems insusceptible of the relation still attributed. Conception here has correctly reached the negative of the Quantum, but does not hold it fast, nevertheless, in its positive value of qualitative determinations of quantity, which, isolated from the relation and taken as Quanta, are zeros. — Lagrange (The'orie des Fonct. Analyt., In trod.) remarks of Limits or ultimate Ratios, that though we can very well con- ceive the ratio of two magnitudes so long as they remain finite, we can form no clear or distinct notion of this ratio so soon as its terms have become zero. In effect, the understanding must transcend this merely negative side with respect to the terms of the ratio being null as Quanta, and take them up positively as qualitative moments. * What Euler says further as regards zeros that are yet relations, and so to be otherwise expressed than zeros, cannot be considered satisfactory. He seeks to support this on the difference between arithmetical and geometrical ratios. In the arithmetical there is no difference between 0 and 0 ; in the geometrical, however, if 2 : 1 = 0 : 0, then proportion is such, that the first 0 is twice the second. In common arithmetic, too, n.0 = 0, i.e. n : 1 :: 0:0. But just by this that 2:1 or n : 1 is QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 573 a relation of Quanta, there cannot correspond to it any relation or expression of 0 : 0. ' In the instances given, the veritable notion of the Infinite is really implied then, but it is not stamped out and taken up in its specific determinateness. It is not to be expected, then, that the operation can prove satisfactory. The true notion is not there kept in view ; finite Quantum intrudes ; and the conception of a merely relatively small cannot be dispensed with. What is infinite has still to submit to, and is susceptible of, the usual arithmetical operations, addition, &c. ; and is thus so far finite. Justification, then, is required for such duplicity of view which would consider infinite magnitudes now as increments or differences, and again neglect them as Quanta, immediately after having applied to them the forms and laws of Quanta, of what is finite. • There have been many attempts to remove these difficulties ; I adduce the most important. • It has been sought to procure for the Calculus the evidence of the Geometrical method proper and the rigour of the ancient demonstration — expressions of Lagrange. But the principle of the one being higher than that of the other, renunciation must be made of that sort of evidence, just as philosophy has no pretensions to that plainness which the sciences of what is sensuous (Natural History, &c.) possess, and as eating and drinking are a much more intelligible business than thinking and comprehending. As for the rigour of demonstration — ' Some have endeavoured altogether to dispense with the notion of the Infinite. Lagrange mentions Landen's method as a pure analytic process that, without any infinitely small differences, assumes, first of all, various values of the variables, and sets them equal in the sequel. He decides that the advantages proper of the Calculus — simplicity of method and ease of operation — are thus lost. There is something here corresponding to that, from which Descartes' method of Tangents proceeds. This process, on the whole, belongs to another sphere of mathematical treatment than the method of the Calculus; and the peculiarity of the simple relation to which the actual concrete interest reduces itself — that is, the simple relation of the derived to the original function — is not made sufficiently prominent. 1 Many, as Fermat, Barrow, Leibnitz, Euler, and others, have always openly believed themselves warranted to omit the products of infinite differences, as well as their higher powers, only on the 574 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. ground that they disappear relatively to the lower order. On this alone rests with them the fundamental position, that is, the de- termination of what is the differential of a product or a power; for to this the ivhole theoretical doctrine reduces itself What remains is partly mechanism of development, but partly again application ; which latter, as will appear again, constitutes in effect the higher, or rather only interest. As regards what is before us, the elemen- tary consideration may be worth mentioning, that, for the same reason of unimportance, it is assumed that the Elements of Curves, namely, the increments of the Absciss and of the Ordinate, have to one another the relation of the Subtangent and of the Ordinate ; with the view of obtaining similar triangles, the arc, which forms to the two increments the third side of a triangle, formerly rightly named the characteristic triangle, is regarded as a straight line, as part of the Tangent, and withal the increment extending to the Tangent. These assumptions raise these forms, on the one hand, above the nature of finite magnitudes ; on the other hand, again, there is applied to the moments named infinite a process that is valid only of finite magnitudes, and in which nothing can be neglected because of its unimportance. The difficulty under which the method labours appears in such procedure in its full force. ' An ingenious artifice of Newton to get rid of the unnecessary terms in finding the differentials, may here be mentioned. He (Princ. Math. Phil. Nat., lib. ii. lemma ii. post propos. vii.) finds the differential of the product in the following way. The product, when x, y are taken each of them smaller by the half of its . « -, -,.«. • L %dy ydx , dxdy , , infinite difference, passes into xy -— — ^- + ■ . - ; and when ocdu vdx; x, y are taken greater by the same amount, into xy + —£- + ~- + — j&. The first product now, being taken from the second, there remains over xdy-\-ydx, "and this remainder Newton wishes us to regard as the excess of the increase by a whole dx and dy, for this excess is the difference of the two products ; it is therefore the differential of xy. In this process we see that the troublesome term, the product of the two infinite differences, dxdy, neutralises itself. But, the name of Newton notwithstanding, we must venture to say that this — certainly very elementary — operation is QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 575 nevertheless incorrect ; it is incorrect that (# + -«) (y+7r) — \ ~" 2/ V~ j) = (x+dx) (y + dy)—xy- It can only be the pressing necessity of establishing an interest of such importance as the Calculus of Fluxions, which could bring a Newton to palm on himself the deception of such a proof.' Arithmetically or algebraically (at least to Newton algebra was, by his 'Arithmetica Universalis' of 1707, still arithmetic) the only true result of subtracting the original product from the increased product in order to find their difference is xdy+ydx-\- dxdy. No arithmetical or algebraical statement of the same problem, but with a different result, can be correct. Hegel, consequently, in what he relatively says, is absolutely correct — if Newton only arithmetically or algebraically stated his problem, and only arithmetically or algebraically solved it.* 'Other forms employed by Newton in the derivation of the differential are rendered impure by the concrete adjuncts of motion, &c. The introduction of the serial form, too, brings a temptation to speak of attaining what accuracy we please and to neglect what is relatively unimportant, &c, not always to be resisted : it is thus that, in his method of resolving equations of the higher degrees by approximation, he leaves out of consideration the higher powers which arise by the substitution into the equation of each new-found but still inexact value, for the clumsy reason of their smallness; {vide Lagrange, Equations Numeriques p. 125). 'The blunder into which Newton, in the resolution of a problem, by the omission of higher powers which were essential, fell, which blunder gave his enemies the opportunity of a triumph of their method over his, and of which Lagrange (The'orie des Fonct. Analyt., 3eme P., ch. iv.) has demonstrated the true origin, proves the formality and uncertainty which still existed in the employment of said instrument. Lagrange shows that Newton threw out the very term which — for the problem in hand — was wanted. Newton had erred from adhering to the formal and superficial principle of omission because of relative smallness. It is known, namely, that in Mechanic a particular import is attached to the terms of the series in which the function of a motion is developed, so that the first term or the first function * See further on this in the ' Lectures on Law.* 576 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. relates to the moment of velocity, the second to the accelerating force, and the third to the resistance of forces. The terms of this series are thus not to be regarded as only parts of a sum, but as qualitative moments of a whole of the notion. The omission of the remaining terms which belong to the pseudo- infinite series acquires here a wholly different sense from the omission because of their relative smallness * Newton's error arose, then, from not attending to that term which possessed the qualitative value sought. ' In this example, it is the qualitative sense on which the process is made to depend. In agreement herewith the general declara- tion may at once be made, that the whole difficulty of the principle would be at once removed if — instead of the formalism which places the determination of the differential only in — what gives it its name — the problem to find the difference of a function from the alteration it undergoes when its variable magnitude has received an increase — the qualitative import of the principle were assigned, and the operation made dependent thereon. In this * 'Both considerations (i.e., the qualitative and the quantitative) are found very simply beside each other in the application by Lagrange of the Theory of Functions to Mechanic (Theorie des Fonc, 3enie P., ch. i., art. 4). The space described con- sidered as function of the time elapsed gives the equation x=ft ; this developed as f(t+§) gives ft+3ft-\-—f't-\-, &c. The space, then, appears in the formula, a 3ft -\ — f't-\- K^f"t -f, &c. The motion by means of which this space is described is, it is said, therefore, that is to say, because the analytic development gives several — rather an infinite number of terms, — composed, of several partial motions, of 33 3.3 which the spaces, correspondent to the time, will be 3ft, -z-ft, o^f"% &c-> The first partial motion is, in known motion, the formally uniform one with a velo- city designated by/% the second the uniformly accelerated one which derives from an accelerating force proportioned toft. "As now the remaining terms relate to no simple known motion, it is unnecessary to take them specially into consideration, and we will show that they may be abstracted from in the determination of the motion at the beginning of the time-point. " This is now shown, but shown only by the comparison of this said series (all the terms, of which should belong to the determination of the magnitude of the space described in the time given) with the equation given, Art. 3, for the motion of a falling body, x=at-\-bt2, in which equation only these two terms are to be supposed contained. But this equation has itself obtained this form only by presupposition of the explanation which is given to the terms that arise through analytic development ; this presupposition is, that the uniformly accelerated motion is composed of a formally uniform motion proceeding with the velocity acquired in the foregoing time, and of an increase (the a in s=ata, i.e., the empirical co-efficient), which is ascribed to the force of gravitation, — a distinction which has noways any existence or ground in the nature of the thing itself, but is only the expression — falsely made physical — of what results in the case of an assumed analytic operation.' QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 577 sense the differential of xn manifests itself to be completely exhausted by the first term of the series which results from the expansion of (x+dx)n. That the remaining terms are not to be considered, does not depend on their relative smallness ; — there is no presupposition in this case of an inaccuracy, a blunder, an error which is to be balanced and amended by another ; a point of view from which Carnot mainly justifies the usual method of the Infinitesimal Calculus. In that the question is not of a Sum, but of a Eelation or Katio, the Differential is completely found by the first term ; and where further terms, differentials of higher degrees, are required, their determination is not to be considered as the continuation of a series as Sum, but the repetition of one and the same ratio, which ratio is all that is wanted, and which consequently is already complete in the first term. The necessity of the form of a series, its summation, and of what depends thereon, must then be wholly separated from this Interest of the Eelation. ' The elucidations which Carnot gives on the method of infinite magnitudes are of the purest and clearest. But in passing to the operation itself there enter, more or less, the usual conceptions of the infinite smallness of the omitted terms relatively to the others. He justifies the method by the fact that the results are correct, and by the utility which the introduction of imperfect equations, as he calls them, that is to say, of such as exhibit such arith- metically incorrect omission, has for the simplification and abbre- viation of calculation, rather than by the nature of the thing itself. * Lagrange, as is well known, has taken up again the original serial method of Newton, in order to be relieved of the difficulties which attend the conception of the infinitely little as well as the method of first and last ratios and limits. His Calculus of func- tions, its merits of precision, abstraction, and universality being justly acknowledged, rests on the fundamental proposition, that the Difference, without becoming nothing, may be taken so small, that each term of the series shall exceed in magnitude the sum of all that follow. Even in this method a beginning is made with the categories of the increase and of the difference of the function whose variable magnitude receives the increase (by which increase the troublesome series comes in) from the original function ; just as in the sequel the terms to be omitted are viewed only as sum, and the reason of omission is placed in the relativity of their Quantum. Partly the omission is not, as universal principle, reduced to the qualitative consideration, which we saw exemplifying itself in 2o 578 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. some applications (where the terms neglected were exhibited not as quantitatively but as qualitatively insignificant) ; partly, again, the omission itself is omitted in the very principle which, as regards the so-called differential co-efficient, characteristically distinguishes the so-named application of the Calculus with Lagrange, as will be discussed more at full in the Eemark that follows the present one. ' The qualitative character which has been pointed out, is to be found in its directest form in the category, limit of the ratio, which has been above mentioned, and the carrying out of which in the Calculus has given rise to a special method. Lagrange decides that this method wants ease of application, and that the expression Limit is without definite idea. We, then, shall take up Limit in the latter reference, and see closer what has been stated as regards its analytic import. In the conception of Limit there certainly lies the adduced veritable category of the qualitative relational character of the variable magnitudes ; for the forms here which come in from the latter, dx and dy, are held to be only as moments of -f. and -jr- itself is viewed as a single indivisible sign. That dx dx o o the advantage is thus lost which may be derived from the separa- tion of the sides of the differential co-efficient, for the mechanism of the Calculus in its application, — this we may pass by. The limit is now, then, to be limit of a given function ; — it is to assign in reference to this function a certain value, determined by the mode of the derivation. With the mere category of limit, how- ever, we were no further than with what has been the object of this Eemark, to show, namely, that the infinitely little, which presents itself in the Calculus as dx and dy, has not merely the empty, negative sense of a non-finite, a non-given magnitude, as in the expressions, an infinite number, in infinitum, &c, but the definite sense of the qualitative determinateness of the quantitative elements, of a moment of relation as such. This category (limit) has even so, however, no relation to what a given function is, and enters not in its own character into the treatment of such a func- tion, and into any application which, in reference to said function, were to be made of it (the limit) ; and so the conception of limit, confined to such r61e, leads to nothing. But limit at once means more. Limit is limit of something; it expresses a certain value which lies in the function of variable magnitude ; and we have to see the nature of this concrete rdle. It is to be the limit of the ratio of the two increments mutually which increases two variables QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 579 conjoined in an equation, and the one a function of the other ; — the increase here is quite indefinite, and there is no use, so far, of the infinitely little. But the manner of finding this limit leads directly to the same inconsequences as in the other methods. This manner, namely, is the following: If y=fx become increased by k, then fx alters itself into fx +ph + qh2 + rh3, &c, and so k =ph + qh2, &c, k I and j-=p + qh + rh2, &c. Now, let k and h vanish, and all vanishes except p, which p is now to be considered the limit of the k ratio of the two increments. Though h=0, then T, is not to be h at once = = , but is to be supposed still to remain a ratio. The conception of limit now is to be supposed to extend the advantage of warding off the inconsequence which appears here ; p is, at the same time, not to be the actual ratio that were = ^, but only that particular value to which the ratio infinitely approximates, so that the difference may be taken smaller than any given one. The preciser sense of this approximation in regard to what approximate will be considered again. That, however, a quantitative difference which may be taken smaller than any given one (and must be so taken), is no longer quantitative at all — this is self-evident; but there is no advance even so, as regards j- — -k If, on the other hand, -^- = p, i.e., if it be assumed as a definite quantitative ratio, as is in effect the case, then the presupposition which has set h = 0 k is in a dilemma — a presupposition by which alone-, = p is found. k But if it be granted that tt = 0, and with h = 0, k of itself becomes = 0 ; for the increment k to y is, only if the increment h is, — then it were necessary to say what p is to be, which as p is a quite definite quantitative value. To this there is at once the simple dry answer that it is a co-efficient and so-and-so derived, — the first function of an original function, and determined in a certain definite manner. If we content ourselves with this — and in point of fact Lagrange has virtually contented himself with this — then the universal or general part of the Calculus, and directly this form of it, which is named the Theory of Limits, are quit of increments and their 580 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. infinite or discretionary smallness — quit of the difficulty of getting out of the way all the terms of the inevitable series except the first, or, rather, except only the co-efficient of the first — quit of the formal categories of the infinite, of infinite approximation, of continuous magnitude,* and of all others the like, as effort, becoming, occasion of an alteration, to which men have been driven in the exigency of the case. But then it would be still necessary to show — besides the mere dry definition (sufficient for the theory), that it is nothing but a function derived from the expansion of a Binomial — what meaning and value, i.e., what connexion and application this same p still has for further mathematical re- quirements : this will be the subject of Bemark 2. "We proceed to discuss at present the confusion which the so current use of the conception approximation has occasioned in the understanding of the specific qualitative determinateness of the relation, which was the proper interest to be considered. 'It has been shown that the so-called infinite differences express the disappearance of the sides of the relation as Quanta, and that what remains is their quantitative relation, pure so far as it is determined in qualitative form ; the qualitative relation is here so little lost, that it is rather that which just results from the transformation of finite into infinite magnitudes. In this, as we have seen, consists the whole nature of the thing itself. So disappear in the ultimate ratio, for example, the Quanta of the absciss and ordinate ; but the sides of this relation in principle remain, the one the element of the ordinate, the other the element of the absciss. Now, in resorting to figurate conception, and assuming the one ordinate infinitely to approximate to the other, the previously distinguished ordinate passes into the other ordinate, and the previously distinguished absciss into the other absciss ; but essentially the ordinate passes not into the absciss, nor the absciss into the ordinate. The element of the ordinate, to remain by this example of variable magnitudes, is not to be taken * ' The category of continuous or fluent magnitude comes in with the consideration of the external and empirical increase effected on the variables ; but, the scientific object of the Calculus being a certain Melation (usually expressed by the differential co-efficient), which specific peculiarity may be also named Law, to this peculiarity the mere continuity is partly heterogeneous, partly mere abstract empty category, seeing that as regards the law of continuity it determines nothing. What formal definitions one may be misled into, the following will exemplify : — " A continuous magnitude, Continuum, is every magnitude considered in a state of genesis such that the progress is not saltuatim, but uninterrupted.'' This definition is tauto- logically the same as the definitum. ' QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 581 as the difference of one ordinate from another ordinate, but is rather as the difference or qualitativo-quantitative value relatively to the element of the absciss ; the principle of the one variable magnitude stands in relation to the principle of the other. The difference, in ceasing to concern finite magnitudes, has ceased to be a plurality within its own self; it has collapsed into the simple intensity, into the specificity, of one qualitative relational moment opposed to the other. ' This state of the case is obscured, however, by conceiving what has just been named element — say of the ordinate, so as difference or increment that it is only the difference between the Quantum of one ordinate and the Quantum of another ordinate. The Limit has here thus not the sense of the Relation or Eatio ; it is regarded but as the last value to which another magnitude of the same kind constantly approximates, and in such a manner that it may be as little different from it as we please, and that the ultimate relation or ratio may be a relation of equality. Thus the infinite difference is the libration of the difference of a Quantum from a Quantum, and the qualitative nature by reason of which dx is essentially not a relational character with reference to x, but with reference to dy becomes lost from view, dx2 is allowed to disappear with reference to dx, but still more does dx disappear with reference to x ; and that truly is as much as to say, it has only a relation to dy. The endeavour of geometricians has been specially directed to the rendering intelligible of the approximation of a magnitude to its limit, and how as regards the difference of Quantum from Quantum, it is no difference and yet a difference. But besides this the approximation is in itself a category that says nothing and makes nothing intelligible ; dx has the approximation already behind it — it is not near, nor yet a nearer ; and infinitely near were itself the negation of the being near and of the drawing near (approximation). 1 Since it has happened that the increments or infinite differ- ences have been considered only on the side of the Quantum that disappears in them and only as its limits, they are moments quite without mutual relation. We might infer from this the inad- missible conception that it is allowable in ultimate relation to set, say, absciss and ordinate, or even sine, cosine, tangent, versed sine, and whatever else, all equal to each other. This conception seems at first hand to be motive, when an arc is treated as a tangent; for the arc is for its part incommensurable with the 582 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. straight line, and its element is directly of an other quality than the element of the straight line. It seems still more absurd and inadmissible than the interchange of absciss, ordinate, versed sine, cosine, &c, when quadrata rotundis — when a part however in- finitely small of the arc is taken as a portion of the tangent, and treated consequently as a straight line. But this operation is to be essentially distinguished from the interchange censured ; it is justified by pointing out that in the triangle constituted by the elements of arc, absciss, and ordinate, there is the same relation as if the element of the arc were the element of a straight line, the tangent ; the angles are the same, and these constitute the essential Belation — that, namely, which remains for these elements when the finite magnitudes belonging to them are abstracted from. We might even say, straight lines, as infinitely small, have become curved lines, and the relation of them in their infinitude is a curve relation. In its definition, the straight line being the shortest distance between two points, its distinction from the curve would seem to rest on number (Menge), on the smaller number of what is distinguishable in this distance, which is therefore a considera- tion of Quantum. But this consideration disappears in the line when it is taken as intensive magnitude, as infinite moment, as element; but so also disappears its distinction from the curve which rested only on the difference of Quantum. Thus, as infinite, straight line and arc retain no quantitative relation, and consequently also — by reason of the assumed definition — no qualitative diversity any longer relatively to each other, and the former passes into the latter. 'Analogous to the equating of heterogeneous forms, is the assumption that infinitely small parts of the same whole are equal to one another ; an assumption in itself indefinite and completely indifferent, but which, applied to an object that is heterogeneous in itself — an object, that is, which possesses essential irregularity of quantitative character— may produce a peculiar inversion. This we see in the proposition of the higher Mechanic, that, in equal infinitely small times, infinitely small parts of a curve are described, in uniform movement, inasmuch as this is said of a movement in which, in equal finite, that is, existent times, finite, that is, existent unequal parts of the curve are described — a movement, then, which as existing is irregular and is so assumed. This proposition is the expression in words of what is to be supposed as represented by an analytic term that yields itself in QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 583 the development we saw of the formula respecting a motion irregular but subject to a certain law (Note on Lagrange and relative text, p. 576). Earlier mathematicians sought, so, to give their own meanings to terms and results of the newly-invented Calculus (which was itself, however, just conditioned by concrete objects), and to apply them in geometrical delineations, essentially as established theorems capable of being used as principles of proof generally. The terms of a mathematical formula into whicli the analytic method sundered the magnitude of an object, e.g. of motion, took on, in consequence of such views, a real import, e.g. of velocity, accelerating force, &c. They were held to furnish, in agreement with such import, true positions, physical laws ; and their real connexions and relations were supposed to be determined in accordance with the analytic combination. An example of this is the statement that in a uniformly accelerated motion, there exists a particular velocity proportional to the times, but that there constantly accrues to this pseudo-uniform velocity an increment from the force of gravity. Such propositions we find now, in the modern analytic form of Mechanic, absolutely as products of the Calculus, without any one troubling himself as to whether they have per se and in themselves a real sense — one, that is, to which there is a correspondent existence, and whether this sense can be proved. The difficulty of rendering intelligible the connexion of such forms when they are taken in the real sense alluded to — e.g. the difficulty of rendering intelligible the transition from the downright or pseudo-uniform velocity to a uniformly accelerated one — is held to be quite removed by the analytic manipulation as a manipulation in which such connexion is a simple consequence of the now once for all established authority of the operations of the Calculus. It is given out as a triumph of science, nowadays, to discover by the mere Calculus laws beyond experience, i.e., expressions of existence which have no existence.* But in the earlier still naive period of the Calculus, the endeavour was that, as regards said terms and propositions — presented, namely, in Geometrical delineations — a real sense per se should be assigned and made plausible, and they themselves applied in such sense in proof of the main positions that might be concerned. See the Newtonian proof of the fundamental pro- position in the Theory of Gravitation, Princ. Math. Phil. Nat., * Kant, too, says (WW xi. 259): 'The mathematician takes his data from else- where. Mathematic informs, it does not create, existence. — New. 584 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. lib. i. sect. ii. prop. 1, compared with Schubert's Astronomy (1st ed., iii. B. § 20), where it is admitted that the truth is not exactly so (i.e. that in the point which is the nerve of the proof, the truth is not as Newton assumes it). ' It will not be possibly denied that in this field much has been accepted as proof, especially with the help of the mist of the infinitely little, for no other reason than that what came out was always already known before, and that the proof, which was so constituted that it came out, brought forward at least the show of a scaffolding of proof; — a show which was always still preferred to mere belief or to mere knowledge from experience. I have no hesitation, however, in regarding this mannerism as a mere jugglery and charlatanery of proof, and in including under this category even Newtonian proofs, particularly those bearing on what has just been referred to, on account of which Newton was raised to the skies and above Kepler, as having mathematically demonstrated what the latter had merely found from experience. ' The vacant scaffolding of such proofs was set up for the demonstration of physical laws. But Mathematic is not at all competent to demonstrate quantitative determinations of Physic, so far as they are Laws which rest on the qualitative nature of the moments ; this for the simple reason that Mathematic is not Philosophy, proceeds not from the Notion, and has, therefore, what is Qualitative, unless taken lemmatically from experience, lying beyond its sphere. The desire to uphold the honour of Mathe- matic, that all in it is rigorously proved, has tempted it to forget its limits ; thus it appeared against its honour simply to acknow- ledge experience as source and as only proof of propositions of experience ; consciousness (opinion) has become of late better formed for the appreciation of this : so long, however, as con- sciousness (opinion) has not clearly before it the distinction between what is mathematically demonstrable and what can be only got elsewhere, between what are only terms of analytic expansion and what are physical existences, the interest of science cannot raise itself into rigorous and pure form. Without doubt, however, the same justice will yet overtake that scaffolding of Newtonian proof, which has been fulfilled on another baseless and artificial Newtonian structure of optical experiments combined with reflexion (inference). Applied Mathematic is yet full of a similar melange of experience and reflexion, but, as of said Optic, since a considerable time, already one part after the other has QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 585 begun in point of fact to be ignored in science, with the inconse- quence, however, of leaving alone the contradictory remainder, — so is it also fact that already a part of those illusory proofs has fallen of itself into oblivion or been replaced by others.' It was, in the first instance, intended, not strictly to translate, but to convey this Remark by compression of the words through change of phrase or otherwise, without, however, omission, but rather with addition, of matter where it might seem necessary. Examples both of compression and of addition (the latter especi- ally, where the notion of the quantitative infinite is concerned, as the ' voice,' &c.,* ) will be found ; but in such a writer as Hegel, always compressed to the necessity of the notion, but, at the same time, to the same necessity equally full, attempts of either kind will almost always prove abortive. So it has been here, and I am disposed to believe now that an exact translation, while infinitely less troublesome to myself, would have been less motley and more satisfactory to the reader. As it is, however, I venture to say that there is given, on the whole, at once a correct and intelligible statement of the relative thought of Hegel. This is something ; for, to the best of my belief, this most important note has remained hitherto absolutely sealed. Eosenkranz, indeed, mentions three writers who have followed Hegel on the subject. The first of these, C. Frantz, as in opposi- tion to, is to be assumed ignorant of, the views of Hegel, which plainly, so far as they go, are inexpugnable.-^ As regards the other two, E. Huhn and H. Schwarz, Eosenkranz quoting nothing from either (which surely he would have done, had he found they made plain such statements as these of Hegel, the importance of which no one with even the slightest tincture of mathematic, or through whatever rust of time and desuetude, can miss seeing, once they are made plain), and nothing seeming to have reached this country on the subject at all, I am disposed to believe that they have both failed to see, or evolve, the light which was necessary. In fact, what is wanting to intelligence here is not mathematic, but nieta- * The reader may be amused by the persistence of our claim to the illustration of the ' Voice ' ! The truth is, however, that perhaps the very best reader of the S. of H. known to us did take said voice not to be ours but Hegel's. — New. t So far as the allusion to 'Optic' means Gothe on Light — that may be excepted. — New. 586 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. physic : the Remark, indeed, must remain quite unintelligible to any one not long acquainted with the language of Hegel, and per- fectly at home with his one vital thought — the notion. My belief, therefore, is, that — on the whole — the entire Remark has remained unintelligible. My belief, moreover, also is, that, despite the im- perfection of form, of which I am very sensible, and for which I sincerely apologise, it is now, as I have already said, perfectly in- telligible— if taken after, and in full understanding of, all that precedes it There may seem, in the first instance, no positive material gain for mathematic here, and accordingly the mathe- matical reader may be expected to rise from his first reading not only disappointed, but hostile. Feelings both of disappointment and of hostility will vanish, however, if he but persevere. Hegel approaches the subject, it must be reflected, not as a mathe- matician, but as a metaphysician, and all that he wishes to be made clear in this remark is the simple notion. There is only one question, then, to put : is the notion, obscure before, now clear ? Besides this, we may ask also, by the way, are these numerous particular critiques of his just ? Indeed, we may ask, thirdly, is not the general result a new, clearer, and distincter power of vision, taken quite universally, and here specially in regard to all that holds of mathematic ? As regards the last of these questions, it can hardly escape any one that, with reference to the Calculus in general, as well as its various forms in particular and the chief subordinate conceptions in both respects, never has the determination of the negative been more sharply, more specifically and absolutely stamped out. Quanta, by very definition no longer Quanta, yet treated as Quanta ; Quanta, as named or as believed, yet treated as it is impossible to treat Quanta ; omission because of insignificance, but omission obligatory and indispensable in spite of insignificance ; proof necessary from elsewhere, yet pretensions above any else- where ; great results of the operation, but the operation itself granted incorrect ; an incorrect operation, but absolutely correct results ; a specific nature claimed from variableness of Quantity, but variableness of Quantity equally elsewhere; a specific nature really so-and-so characterised, yet matter not of this specific nature admitted; a science par excellence the science of exactitude and proof, yet expressly inexact and confessedly oppressed with difficulty as to proof: these are some of the examples by which this determination of the negative is QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 587 accompanied. Again, the concluding observations in regard to the show of mathematical proof in matters known from experi- ence alone, are extremely striking, and no less instructive ; as the notices of Newton, Leibnitz, Euler, Lagrange, the method of Limits, &c, &c, are hits so instantaneously and felicitously home, that the conviction from the reason, is hardly more than the delight from the irresistible skill, of the thing. The great merit of Hegel here, however, is the notion. You utterly stumble and uselessly lose yourselves in an irrelevant wood, he says, when you insist on seeing the thing in increments and decrements, the omission of the insignificant, approximations, continuations, nisus, &c. &c. The question of Quantity ought to be no difficulty to you, for you are simply to abstract from it and take up what is positive enough and seizable enough as Quality : what is present is only the qualitative relation of quantitative prin- cipia, which as principia are elements, but not Quanta. Seize but the relation, he says, and you may give it what quantity you like. To understand Hegel aright, then, here, we must put ourselves perfectly at home in the first place with the notions of Quality and Quantity. You think of salt and of sugar, of pepper and of pap, of heat and cold, of wet and dry, of soft and hard, of light and heavy — of stick, stone, metal, glass, and what not, and you think to yourself, you sufficiently understand what Quality is. But this that you have so before" understanding, is only the Vor- stellung, only the figurate conception, only the metaphor, the hypotypose, the representation of the thing. What you want is the thing itself, and that is — the notion. But Quality is the pre- cipitation of the Werden, the Becoming; Quality is the One of Being and of Non-being ; it is not more through what it is, than through what it is not ; it owes as much to its difference as to its identity : quality thus has — unlike the unended series — 'its nega- tive within itself/ It is complete, or infinite, that is, not ended; or it has sublated its other, and thus it is infinite. The series, on the contrary, has its other out of it, — so it is indeterminate ; when it attains to this other, this negative, this that fails it, it will be at once through that negative a determined Something, it will have attained a qualitative character. Quality is beent determinate- ness, and as a one of two, always of the nature of relation, or of the negation of the negation. Quality, universally taken, is what is; but Quality as What is, is, is, is; that is, it is Quantity. 588 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Quantity is the out of itself of Quality ; or it is Quality's necessity to be. In this way, the Qualitative and the Quantitative Infinite are alike and equal. Quality as What is, is ' the nature of the thing itself which exceeds all determinateness,' and Quantity is indifferent to it : it remains the same in all Quantity. The infinite discretion of is, is, is, — this is What is, is. The Being-for-self is for itself only because at the same time what it is, is for it : the Being-for-self and the Being-for-One are identical. Now the Being-for-One as the What is, is this endless discretion, or it is the quantitative form of Quality. But this referred to the pure quantitative sphere is the quantitative infinite. Or, simply the notion of Quantity itself, a notion necessitated by the notion of Quality, is the Quantitative Infinite. Quantum, taken not as any particular Quantum, but quite generally, is at once external non-being quite generally, and its negation; it is the one that is boundlessly many, and yet one ; it is quantitativity ; its infinitude is this, its one qualitative nature, or specific con- stitution. Quantity is the relation that Quality has to itself in that it is : Quantity is thus One and Many and Infinite. Being, were it only Being, would at once decease ; Being is Being only by reason of a Non-being through which it is, is, is ; to be it must not be. All this again refers to Quantity as taken sub specie ceternitatis. That I should live, requires a to-morrow when I do not live. This is a negation to me as finite existence; but sub specie ozternitatis that negation is taken up into, is made one of, is made one with, the absolute life. What has been said here as absolutely sub specie osternitatis, is equally susceptible of being said with reference only to pure Quantity. The Quantum quite generally is through its other, and so the negation of the negation : it is through the out, and the out through it, for the out is it. Eepulsion in Quantum is but self-reference; thaj; repulsion is its what ; it is through its repulsion that which it is. The one is the what, and the what is the one ; there is a look out and a look in. The one's what is just all these ones ; and that is just the one Quantum endlessly, but one. It is the one continuity of all that multiplied discretion. Quantum's own wing ever stretches and includes its other: there is no occasion either to conceive it always stretching, stretching ad infinitum, but the two may be seen together and in potentia. Quantum is the Fiirsichseyn of all that Fiireines. Hegel now sees the true Mathematical Infinite to represent all this. The relation of Quantum to itself is as to QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 589 a power, is as to its own square; this is its own self-reference where unity and amount are alike, equal, and the same. Quality in Quantity indeed, as out of its in, may be said to square itself. I cannot help thinking Hegel to have even directly had such thoughts as these. I think also he must have seen, and intends us to see, that any qualitative One is similarly situated (as Quality in general) to Quantity. Quantity is but its Power, its Square ; and the Quantity is quite indifferent to it, so long as it, Quality, or the qualitative One, is there. Now ~ is to any one so thinking the perfectly abstract general expression of a quali- tative one in quantitative reference. The relation of Power is involved in it, the relation itself, and its sides or moments are no longer Quanta, but they have retreated into their principle, their element. Retreated here is a bad word if it recalls decrement, for in ~ there is no question of increment or decrement, of Quantum ; all that is 'at its back' (im Rucken). To Hegel, then, the whole problem now is very simple : the consideration before us is qualitative, not quantitative ; it is a relation ; and this relation is expressed in the differential co -efficient; and so it is that all questions of other terms, of increments and decrements, &c. &c, does not enter, and ought not to enter. Quality in relation to its own self is Quantity, and so relatively to it,* or as it, Quantity is the in- finitely little. Quality is the limit which Quantity ever approaches and never is, or always is. It is the same thing with any quality in particular as with Quality in general. The relation of ordinate to absciss is qualitative and, as such relation, independent of any Quantum that may be assigned to it. ~ is the ultimate quantitative potentiality of any quality whatever; it is quantitative potentiality as such. The one thing necessary for intelligence here, as always, is to see both of the moments and be able to re-nect them into their concrete one. What mistakes are rampant nowadays because of a neglect of this one precaution, or rather because of entire ignorance of all ele- ments that belong here ! The world is deeply disappointed ; its heart is broken ; all the hopes which its own beauty has made grow in it wither rapidly down ; religion fails from its grasp, and philosophy, which promised so much, is unintelligible or seems 590 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. but babblement : hark now how loud the cry of Materialism, that knows but, and cares but for, the carcase ! Eminent men of science see a matter-mote rise up by an easy flux of development into a man, but (with an involuntary grin) through the monkey ! The brain secretes thought, as the liver bile : this whole product of some strange chance, which need not be inquired into — take your dinner rather — will just go together in the centre as a vast mass some day — in the centre of infinite space I* Is there not an echo of self-contradiction in your own words, startling even to your- selves, Messieurs les Materialistes ? To say nothing of infinite time, of infinite space, which alone are always adequate to absorb any and every amount of matter the materialists may bring in explanation of them, does not the mere sight of matter uselessly heaped together there in the centre through all time suggest a glance back to all time and the easy question, time being infinite in the direction back as well as in the direction forward, and gravitation, moreover, being the only power, why has a whole back infinitude failed to bring this gravitation to its hearth in the centre — why is a future infinitude still necessary? It is not thought, then, it is but thoughtlessness which sees the whole universe reduced in course of time to a single central mass ; it is but figurate conception amusing itself with very idle and very unsubstantial bubbles. That gravitation, loss of heat, &c, have not already effected what we are assured they will effect, or simply that they have to effect this consummation, is a demonstra- tion rigorously exact of heat not always being directed outwards, as of gravitation not always being directed inwards. If thought, not thoughtlessness, would inspect the problem, it would find that Attraction is only possible through Eepulsion ; that were there no Eepulsion, there were no Attraction, and vice versd. There is but the one concrete Eeciprocity. It is perfectly certain that Action and Eeaction are not more necessary recipro- cals than Attraction and Eepulsion. A like one-sidedness it is which leads the friends of the monkey, in comparing him with man, to abstract from the Difference and regard the Identity alone. But what is this identity ? It is hardly worth while modern philosophers making such a fuss about our identity with monkeys, were it only for what Sallust tells us, that we have our bodies in common ceteris animations. That man is an animal and that monkey is the caricature of him, has been known for thousands * Where can this centre — in an infinite space — be ? QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 591 of years ; * and the modern philosophers who live by the cry (strange, is it not ?) know it not one single whit better than it was known at first, nor have they deposited one single stone of the bridge from the Difference to the Identity, nor yet will they — in their way — should they take an infinite time to the task. A strange metier this, then, that would enlighten us by telling us we were monkeys originally, though it has nothing to show for itself but the worn-out triteness of thousands of years ! Yet we are expected to admire, applaud, and — per Jovem — even pay ! It is the same abstraction from the difference which misleads other eminent men to mis-spend whole laborious lives in twisting the idle sand-rope of Transformation. The Difference is there not one whit less than the Identity, and though you fly in your researches utterly round all space and utterly throughout all time, you will never eliminate it : it is impossible for you ever to take up an Identity unaccompanied by its Difference. Your quest is thus at once absolutely certain and utterly impossible : and this simply because What is is at once identical and different. The power of metamorphosis lies with thought only ; it is not in nature. Never shall we see a first Natural Identity — which all mankind will accept as such — gradually giving itself difference and difference up to the present, as we might see ice become water and water steam. Such transformations are possible to the notion only. Nay, these very thinkers acknowledge this same truth : they do not accept what is as it is — they 'seek it in its principle. What is this but accepting the metamorphosis of thought ? Thought is nothing but metamorphosis — the metamorphosis of the isolated singular many into the one universal. It is inconsistent, then, in these writers to accept thought only a certain way, and not follow it out into the ultimate universal, the element of thought itself. They may say, 'Though we generalise, we still leave the in- dividuals, and know always that our generalisations are but abstractions.' We too can say that we still leave the individuals ; but we cannot say that our generalisations end as idle abstractions which have only formal application to what is, but, on the con- trary, as truth itself and as the truth, and that the material and constitutive truth of the whole of things. This is a difference. Thought is the secretion of matter, as the bile of the liver, you say: on the contrary, it is matter that is but the secretion of thought. Show me your first atom, show me it become time, * Ut Ennius, Simla quam similis turpissima bestia nobis. Cicero, N. p. i. xxxv. 592 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. space, matter, organisation, thought ; then I ask you, was not this first atom all these virtually at first ? Could it have become these, had it not been so virtually at first ? But that it should imply such virtue — that is thought — these are thoughts. Or even to say it was at first virtually thought, is to say that thought was the veritable prius. Your path, then, ends in mine. But you have not this path ; you have not made a single step on it ; you have only talked of it ; and you can only talk of it for ever : for your first problem, a deduction of time and space, is utterly impossible to you with matter only. We, on the contrary, have a path; We, thanks to Kant and Hegel, can prove thought to be the prius and the principle ; We can prove all to be but the notion an sich. Once possessed of the concrete notion, We can re-live its life up to the fullness of the universe. The two positions, then, are widely different. Yet, since 1781, when the ' Kritik of Pure Reason,' and since 1812-16, when the 'Logik' was published, what innumerable writers have preferred obeying the impatience of their own vanity to patient assimilation, first of all, of the Historical Pabulum that at these dates was issued to them, and without which they could be nothing ! Formal attitudinists on the gas of genius, men of fervour, men who could evolve — Systems, Poems, Pictures, Religions, Alchemy, anything — these we have had by the thousand ; but how many men who knew that, in them- selves, mere form only, they required the rock of another to which clinging they might, absorbing and assimilating matter into form, arow into their own complete entelechie ? These men would be matter and form unto themselves, so they consumed themselves in futile subjective pulses, and died so. He only who knows how to connect himself to his historical other, will ever attain to an actuality of manhood. Be a man's formal ability what it may, unless he attain to this, his products, however blatant, are but vacant idiocy. So only even is it, that he can be original. Thomas Carlyle found his other in German Literature — but the germs of what he found lay first of all in himself; it was his own hunger that made the food ; and if Thomas Carlyle is not original, what English writer is ? But for its Difference, abstract Identity dies of inanition then. So it is as regards the nisus of genius. So it is as regards the nisus nowadays of a materialistic pseudo- science. In every concrete there are two abstract moments which are not seen truly unless together. So it is as regards the Attraction and Repulsion which are still before us in Quantity, QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 593 and whose union only is adequate to that quantitative infinite which Hegel finds represented in the mathematical infinite. Quantum, even in that it repels its other, flees into it ; and even in that it flees into it, it flees into its own self : no flight expliciter without but is a flight impliciter within: Quantum, then, is this one infinite relation, this boundless relativity, this without of itself that is the within of itself, this negation of the negation. And such is the mathematical infinite: Quantity as such has disappeared, there remains only the Qualitative element and in relation of potentiation. The thought is abstract ; but it is not more difficult than the abstract Something or any other pure notion. It may be objected that Hegel does not sufficiently illustrate and, on the whole, bring out the fact that the relation implied is one of powers. That it is really so, we know now to be certain, for he has himself eliminated all variables of the first degree, but to know the fact is not necessarily to know the reason of the fact. Again, . having asserted the first peculiarity of the mathematical infinite to depend on a relation of potentiation, he equally asserts the second peculiarity, and in complete isolation from the first. We can easily conceive -j- to be qualitative relation only; but these are not squares, and Hegel has not been careful to bring the two peculiarities together. That the relation of one quantity to the square of another is qualitative, is also but an assertion ; intelligence and conviction are not secured by eitherreasoning or illustration. We know that Hegel regards the square, where Unity and Amount are equal, as of a qualitative nature ; but this knowledge seems to throw but little light here. As regards this last point, it may be worth while suggesting that the relation of the sides to the hypotenuse, being a relation that concerns the square of the hypotenuse, the result is qualitative, the triangle is always right-angled. But such illustrations must be left to the mathematician by profession. As regards objections, it is to be borne in mind, too, that the subject is not exhausted ; and that we have the promise of seeing in the second Remark, how the abstract notion takes meaning in actual application, which applica- tion, too, is termed the important part of the whole subject. It is with great regret, then, that I find myself (by the Number at the head of the page) obliged for the present to stop here, seeing that my matter already amounts to more than it is perhaps prudent to intrude on the public as a first venture on a 2p 594 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. subject so difficult, and, at least to superficial observation, so equivocal, as the Philosophy of Hegel. Enough, how- ever, has been done to enable the mathematician or the meta- physician to complete the rest for himself. The judgment of a pure mathematician has really been so peculiarly trained, that, perhaps, any such will never prove decisive as regards any Hegelian element. Still, it is much to be desired that such a vast mathematical genius as Sir William Hamilton, of Dublin, could be induced to verify the findings of Hegel so far as they bear on the concrete science. As they appear abstractly expressed in the present Remark, they seem perfectly safe from assault; but there are others (alluded to also here), such as the earnestness with which Hegel seeks to vindicate for Kepler his own law as in view of Newton's assumed mathematical demonstration, on which one would be well pleased to possess a thoroughly-skilled opinion. There is at least something grand in the way in which Hegel would set up time and space themselves as the co-ordinates that to the divination of Kepler and to the necessity of the notion of S* A3 Hegel yielded and yield the law -^ or -~2. Hegel may be wrong ; but he possesses such keenness of distinction, that it is difficult to conceive any intellect — as the epoch is — too high to gain from it. It lies, too, on the surface to say that these Vectors, Tensors, Scalers, &c, of Sir William Hamilton are but forms of continuity and discretion in application to the concrete Quantity, Space. By way of giving at least a formal close to the subject, I add here the whole of Quantity as it appears in the fourth edition of the Encyclopaedic* The reader will be thus enabled to see as well Hegel's immense power of summary as the insufficiency of any such to a student who but learns, however advantageous it may prove to the student who has completed his course. He will also see that, besides the mathematical notes, which are two in number, what has yet to be completed of the general subject as it appears in the Logik is small, and that the bulk of it is already given in these pages. Some amount of change in the divisions he will also be able to discern ; and the very fact of change on the part of Hegel it is important to know. * That of Rosenkranz, which— intentionally — is without the Zutaize. QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 595 B. Quantity. a. Pure Quantity. ' Quantity is pure being, in which the characteristic determinate- ness is no longer explicit as one (identical) with the being itself, but as subletted or indifferent. (1) The expression magnitude (Grosse) is not pertinent to Quantity, so far as it specially designates some particular quantity. (2) Mathematic usually defines magnitude as that which may be increased or diminished. However objectionable this definition may be (as again implying the definitum itself), it involves this, that the nature of Quantity is such that it is explicitly alterable and indifferent, and so that, notwithstanding an alteration, an increased Extension or Intension, the thing itself, a house, red, &c, ceases not to be a house, red, &c. (3) The Absolute is pure Quantity, — this position coincides in general with this, that the character Matter is attributed to the Absolute, in which (Matter) Form is present indeed, but as indifferent. Quantity also constitutes the fundamental determination of the Absolute, when it is taken so that in it, the absolutely Indifferent, all difference is only quantitative. For the rest, pure time, space, &c, may be regarded as examples of Quantity, so far as the Real (or what is real) is to be conceived as indifferent filling of space or time. ' Quantity, firstly, in its immediate reference to itself, or in the form of equality with itself as explicit, or set, in it in conse- quence of the Attraction, is continuous ; in the other term con- tained in it, the one (unit), it is discrete magnitude. The former, however, is equally discrete, for it is only continuity of the many; the latter equally continuous — its continuity is the one as the same of the many ones, the unity. (1) Continuous and discrete magnitude must not, therefore, be regarded as hinds or species, as if the nature of the one did not attach to the other, but as if they contradistinguish themselves only by this, that the same whole is now explicit under the one, and again under the other of its discrimina. (2) The Antinomy of Time*, of Space, or of Matter, as regards its infinite Divisibility, or again, its consisting of Indivisibles, is nothing else than the assertion of Quantity now as continuous, and again as discrete. 596 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Time, Space, &c, being explicit only as continuous Quantity, are infinitely divisible ; in their other term, again, as discrete magni- tude, they are an sich {in themselves) divided, and consist. of in- divisible ones : the one term is as one-sided as the other. b. Quantum. 1 Quantity essentially explicit with the excludent determinate- ness which is contained in it, is Quantum, limited Quantity. 4 The Quantum has its evolution and perfect determinateness in the Digit (Number), which contains within itself (implies), as its Element, the One, in the moment of Discretion the Amount, in that of Continuity the Unity, both as its qualitative moments. 1 In Arithmetic, what are called the arithmetical operations are usually stated as contingent modes of treating numbers. If a necessity and withal an understanding is to lie in them, the latter must lie in a principle, and this only in the moments which are contained in the notion of the Digit itself ; this principle shall be here briefly exhibited. The moments of the notion of Number are the Amount and the Unity, and the Number itself is the Unity of both. But Unity applied to empirical numbers is only their Equality ; thus the principle of arithmetic must be, to range numbers into the relation of Unity and Amount, and bring about the Equality of these moments. ' The Ones or the Numbers themselves being mutually indif- ferent, the Unity into which they become explicitly transposed appears in general as an external putting together (collection). To count is, therefore, in general to number, and the difference of the kinds of counting lies alone in the qualitative nature (tality) of the Numbers which are numbered together ; and, for the tality, the determination of Unity and Amount is the principle. ' Numeration is the first, to make Number at all, a putting together of as many Ones as is wished. A kind of counting (an arithmetical operation), however, is the numbering together of such as are already numbers, and no longer the mere unit. Numbers are immediately and at first quite indefinitely Numbers in general — unequal, therefore, in general: the putting together or numbering of such is Addition. ' The next determination is, that the Numbers are equal in general,' they constitute thus one Unity, and there is present an Amount of such unities : to number such numbers is to Multiply ; — and here it is indifferent how the moments of Amount and QUANTITY INTERPRETED, ETC. 597 Unity are apportioned in the two numbers, the Factors, indifferent which is taken as Amount, and which again as Unity. ' The third characteristic determinateness is finally the Equality of Amount and Unity. The numbering together of numbers so characterised, is the raising into powers, and first of all into the square. Further potentiation is the formal repetition of the multiplication of the number with itself which runs out again into the indefinite Amount. As in this third form, the complete equality of the sole present difference, of Amount and Unity, is attained, there cannot be more than these three operations in Arithmetic. There corresponds to the numbering together, a resolution of the Numbers according to the same determinateness. With the three operations mentioned, which may be so far named positive, there are, therefore, also three negative. c. Degree. ' The limit is identical with the whole of the Quantum itself ; as multiple in itself, it is extensive — as simple in itself, intensive magnitude : the latter is also named Degree. ' The difference of continuous and discrete from extensive and intensive magnitudes consists, therefore, in this, that the former concern Quantity in general — the latter, on the other hand, the limit, or the determinateness of Quantity as such. Extensive and intensive magnitudes are, in like manner, not two sorts of which the one should possess a distinction which the other wanted ; what is extensive is equally intensive, and vice versd. ' In degree the notion of Quantum is in explicit position. It is magnitude as indifferently independent and simple, but so that it has the determinateness by which it is Quantum directly out of it in other magnitudes. In this contradiction, viz., that the beent- for-self indifferent limit is absolute Externality, the infinite quan- titative Progress is expressly explicit, — an immediacy which immediately strikes round into its counterpart, mediatedness (a going over and beyond the Quantum that has just been posited), and vice versd. 1 A Number is thought, but thought as a beingness completely external to its own self. It belongs not to perception because it is thought, but it is the thought which has for its characterisation the externality of perception. The Quantum not only may there- fore be increased or diminished ad infinitum ; it itself is through 598 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. its notion this dispatch of itself beyond itself. The infinite quan- titative progress is just the th/mghtlesa repetition of one and the same contradiction which the Quantum in general is, and Quan- tum as Degree, or expressly set in its determinateness. As regards the superfluousness of enunciating this contradiction in the form of the infinite progress, Zeno in Aristotle says justly : it is the same thing to say something once, and to say it always. * This outerliness of Quantum to its own self in its beent-for- self determinateness constitutes its Quality ; in it it is just itself and referred to itself. In it are united, Externality, i.e. Quantita- tiveness, and Being-for-self, i.e. Qualitativeness. Quantum thus put is in itself the Quantitative Belation, — determinateness which is no less immediate Quantum, the Exponent, than mediatedness, namely, the reference of some one Quantum to another, — the two sides of the relation, which at the same time are not valid in their immediate value, but have their value only in this reference. ' The sides of the relation are still immediate Quanta, the qualitative and the quantitative moments still external to each other. Their truth, however, viz., that the Quantitativeness itself is in its externality reference to itself, or that the Being-for-self and the indifference of the determinateness are united, is Measure!* * In these mathematical references see further ' Whewell and Hegel, and Hegel and Smith,' as published with ' Lectures on the Philosophy of Law.' — New. VI. THE COMMENTATORS OF HEGEL— SCHWEGLER, ROSENKRANZ, HAYM. In the interest of one's own self-seeking to demonstrate the shortcomings of one's predecessors, is a procedure now so vulgar that it would, perhaps, have been better taste to have left to others the task which is here begun. Any plea in excuse can found only on the important aid which may be so afforded to a general understanding of the single theme, and is only to be made good by the result. There are many other Commentators of Hegel, but we have selected these — examples, too, of feelings impartial, partial, and hostile — as the latest and most generally-acknowledged best. How, each of the three has devoted a vast amount of labour and time to the study of Hegel, and all of them have, more or less, attained to a very considerable relative knowledge. It is not, then, what is in general meant by ignorance that we would object here, but only a peculiar and insufficient state of knowledge in this way, that the path of this knowledge has been ever on the outside, from particular to particular, with darkness and inco- herences between, and without perception of the single light in which the whole should show — without attainment to the single Ruck, the single turn, stir, touch by which the painful and unreachable Many should kaleidoscopically collapse into the held and intelligible One. In a word, whatever general connexion these three Commentators may have perceived between Hegel and Kant, and however often they may have used, each of them, the word Begriff, they have not signalised that literal one connexion and that literal one signification which are prominent in the preceding pages. Hegel was literal with idealism ; the whole is thought, and the whole life of it is thought ; and, therefore, what is called the history of philosophy will be in externality and contingency, but a Gesetztseyn of Thought, but an explicitment, a setting of one thought the other. So it was that Spinoza was 600 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Substance, Hume Causality, Kant Eeciprocity, and Hegel the Notion — the Notion as set by Kant, and as now to be developed subjectively by Hegel into the Subjective Logic which ends.in the Idea. So it was that he, as it were, anallegorised actual history, even contemporary history, even his own position, into the plastic dialectic of his abstract Logic. Hegel was literal with Idealism up to the last invisible negation of the negation — up to the ultimate pure Negativity within which even the triple muscle of the Notion lay a hidden Nisus, retracted into transparency. To Hegel even the very way which had led to this was, so lax, false; it was but the chain of the finite categories ; and their whole truth was this negative One. Thus it was that Hegel completed the whole movement of which Kant, Fichte, and Schelling had been successive vital knots ; but still this completion he reached only by making good his attachment directly to the first of them. This was effected by the entire realisation and vitalisation of Logic, even scholastic Logic (which operations Kant had begun), through reduction simply of the All into the simply technical moments of Logic as named Simple Apprehension, &c, and this through substitution of his own conscious concrete notion (which, in a word, is but the one existent, and the only existent, Entelechie of Difference and Identity), for the unconscious abstract notion of Kant that lay in the question: 'How are it priori Synthetic Judgments possible V It is this literality which we suspect to have been generally missed, and we have attempted to make plain the notion which Hegel meant, what we call the concrete universal, as well as to elucidate the precise nature of the genesis of this notion with special reference to Kant.* SCHWEGLER. We have already spoken with sincere respect of this most accomplished man and admirable writer ; and it is to be acknow- * Of course one is never safe from these fallacious (and vexatious) ex post facto coincidences of which Kant himself may have had his own experience when he wrote (Proleg. § 3) as follows : — ' For such principles are not readily learned from others, before whom they have merely obscurely floated. We must, first of all, through our own reflexion, have ourselves come upon them, and then it is we easily find them elsewhere, where otherwise we certainly never should have seen them beforehand for the simple reason that the authors themselves never for a moment suspected that any such idea lay in their own remarks. Those who never think themselves have sharpness enough, all the same, to detect all and everything in anything that has been ever anywhere said, though never seen before by anybody else — directly it has been once shown to them.' — New. hegel's commentators. 601 ledged at once that he has not only perfectly availed himself of many of the main lessons both of Kant and Hegel, but that he possesses also an accurate acquaintance with the bulk of their details. Nevertheless, we incline to think that, not having quite penetrated into the innermost articulation of Kant's h priori elements, he in a way missed the key without which it was im- possible but that Hegel must have remained for him more or less an outer assemblage and, on the whole, but very strictly speaking, impervious. The few considerations on which this opinion rests we shall mention in the order in which they occurred to us in perusing his book, the ' History of Philosophy in Epitome.' * The first point to which we shall advert is contained in the earliest pages of the excellent little work alluded to, and concerns, on the part of Schwegler, objections to, or rather a rejection of, the Hegelian equation of Philosophy and its History. In passing to this we may remark, that for a Hegelian he unduly accentuates the relation between philosophy proper and the empirical sciences: 'Philosophy (as the thought totality of empirical things) stands in reciprocity with the empirical sciences; as it on one side conditions them, it is itself again, on the other side, conditioned by them. There is just as little, therefore, an absolute or completed philosophy (in time, that is to say, generally in the course of history) as there is a completed empirie ' (or science of all that reaches us by experience). There is here, on the whole, and for the position, too much stress laid on the empirical sciences, and too little on the fact of an independent logic, which is above contingency, which is a necessary and objective crystal of all that is empirical, and which, if it changes at least fluctuates not at will of the mere vicissitude of the latter. — The identification of the historical with the logical evolution Schwegler combats from the position of the contingency of the former. He says, ' This view is neither to be justified in its prin- ciple, nor made good historically.' But he who were thoroughly on the standpoint of Hegel, would see that, while the con- tingency (even that of those who appear on the stage of history) is not denied, but, on the contrary, its relative necessity demon- strated, the principle, all being at bottom but an evolution of thought, must be true, and must be capable of being actually discerned across the fluctuation of externality. Schwegler's im- * The 'Handbook,' afterwards translated and annotated by the present author, and now in many editions. THE SECRET OF HEGEL. perfect discrimination of the elements concerned is seen also in his particular objections as to the notions of Heraclitus and the Eleatics (with reference to a place for them in logic) that they are • impure and materially coloured,' or as to the Ionic Philosophy that it began ' not with Seyn (being) as abstract notion, but with what is concretest and crassest, the material notion of water, air, &c. ; ' and that, accordingly, ' Hegel would have more consistently quite rejected the Ionic Philosophy.' It is rather eminently Hegelian quite to acknowledge the impurity and crassitude of all commencements ; though it is equally Hegelian that this impurity and crassitude should, under pouring on of the menstruum of thought, clear into the lineaments of the notion which, despite the clouding opacity, was never absent. Schwegler admits him- self that the function of philosophy is to find in vicissitude a something fixed, that philosophy begins ' there where an ultimate ground of the beent, of what is, is philosophically sought ; ' and this is precisely the position he opposes. 1 History is not a sum to be exactly cast up : there must be no talk of an fcpriori construction of history.' But do such expressions really affect Hegel ? Would Hegel & priori construct history, or even count it up like a column in arithmetic ? The concrete is a hither and thither of contingency ; there are difficulties and checks of all kinds, chronological and other : Hegel denies them not ; he would only with masterful hands rive them from before the face of the notion. ' The datum of Experience is to be taken as a datum, a something given over to us just so, and the rational system of this datum is to be analytically set out ; the speculative idea will for the arrangement and scientific connexion of this historical datum furnish the regulative : Almost everywhere the historical develop- ment is different from the notional : While the logical progress is an ascent from the abstract to the concrete, the historical develop- ment is almost always a descent from the concrete to the abstract : Philosophy is synthetic, the history of philosophy analytic: We may maintain, therefore, with more justice exactly the opposite of the Hegelian thesis and say what is an sich the first is fur uns just the last.' It will not be difficult to perceive that there is the same incomplete con- sciousness of Hegel's true position in these extracts also, the burthen of which Hegel would partly accept and partly reject, as what has been said already will enable the reader to see. It is worth while, perhaps, remarking that the evolution of thought HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 603 being Gesetztseyn, is at once of an analytic and a synthetic nature. Schwegler's reversal of the Hegelian ' an sich oder fiir uns ' is also worth pointing out. We have another instance of it at pages 82, 83, where he says, ' Virtue is to be defined as the keeping of the due middle in practice — not the arithmetical middle, the middle an sich, but the middle fiir uns.' Schwegler is, of course, at liberty to use these terms as he pleases ; but, as we have seen, the distinction implied in them by Hegel is one eminently subtle and difficult, and may accordingly have escaped Schwegler. Hegel's use of them as synonymes is beyond a doubt. Under 'Die Schranke und das Sollen,' 'the Limitation and the To-be-to,' we have already seen and come to understand 'das Sollen ist nur an sich, somit fiir uns ; ' it has been pointed out also that this distinction, while it probably begins in the ' Intro- duction ' to the ' Phaenomenologie,' is to be found in the ' Preface ' as well; and here are some more examples to the same effect: Encyc. § 162, and Logik, vol. ii. pp. 20 and 73, we have, ' Begriffe an sich, oder was dasselbe ist, fiir uns,' — ' nicht nur an sich, das hiesse fiir uns oder in der ausseren Eeflexion,' — and ' so ist es an sich oder fiir uns bestirnmt.' Hegel's intention with the phrase is beyond a question, then, and the synonyme of ' outer reflexion ' in the last example but one not only confirms the signification already attached to it, but considerably lessens the difficulty with which it seemed burthened. He, then, who reverses this dis- tinction, though of course free to do so, risks his reputation as a student of Hegel.* From pages 45 and 67, I adduce now two passages; which — the former as regards the notion and the latter as regards the idea — show that, even in writing on philosophy, a German may say the notion and the idea when he means thereby neither the Notion nor the Idea of Hegel, but simply the abstract universals of generalisation : ' That all human action reposes on knowledge, all thought on the notion, to this result Plato was already able to arrive through the generalisation of the Socratic teaching itself : ' ' If Plato had taken his station in the Idea in order to interpret * Thcso two other examples from the Phaenomenologie, where there are still more, we give as excellent : Fiir uns oder an sich ist das Allgemeine als Princip das "Wesen der Wahrnehmung (p. 82) — So, dass der umgekehrte Satz nicht an sich oder fur uns die Substanz zum Subjecte macht (p. 543). See back, at p. 420 for more on this. Encyc. i. 70, fur den Gedanken means no more than for ' outer JieAexion.' At p. 55 there, Ansichteyn is the potential as opposed to fiir sich, the actual. 604 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. and explain the Given and Empirical, Aristotle takes his place in the Given in order to find and demonstrate in it the Idea.' With reference to Aristotle, Schwegler has occasion to speak of what must have suggested the notion of Hegel to him had he known it ; but (pp. 73, 74, 75, &c.) even in talking of ' Zweck ' and ' Entelechie ' as ' vollendetes Wesen,' and in reducing the four Aristotelian Causes to Matter and Form, he is not tempted to remark on the striking essential analogy to the Concrete Notion, but, on the contrary, concludes in this absolutely anti-Hegelian fashion : ' There remains to us, therefore, the two ground- principles which pass not into each other, Matter and Form.' There is a certain defence to Schwegler here in this, that it is from the position of Aristotle he speaks, and not from that of Hegel : but then the irresistible temptation to correlate Aristotle's notions with the notion of Hegel, had he known this latter, — if not here, at least elsewhere ? Schwegler's summary of Kant is a very excellent one, and perhaps the very best that, in a general literary point of view, has been yet given. When compared, however, with the skeleton which on this subject Hegel bore in his head, and which he allows us to see in his various critiques, and especially in that which occurs at the commencement of the Encyclopaedic, we see how much this summary of Schwegler is in its kind external. Light here with him is always in proportion to the easiness and not to the difficulty of what is summarised ; and thus the discussion of the Keligious and the Practical parts is much more satisfactory than that of the strictly Metaphysical. We just touch on a par- ticular point or two : — At page 154, we find : ' The Kritik of Pure Reason, says Kant, is the Inventarium of all our possessions through pure reason systematically arranged.' * This strikes strangely on one at home with Kant ; for every one who is really so, has been so much accustomed to hear the Kritik, however complete as ground-plan and system of inchoative principles, always spoken of as but proposdeutical to the science of metaphysic itself, or to the trans- cendental philosophy as such, that it grates at once. And this is really the truth, and these words of Schwegler's are never used by Kant in any such connexion: on examination they will be found to be taken from the preface, and to be used there, not in reference to Kritik, but to metaphysic. It was only in the future that Kant * The translation substitutes for Inventarium, ' ground-plan ' — rightly. hegel's commentators. 605 contemplated such complete Inventarium as a completed system of philosophy. The matter may seem small, but it points at least to a certain slovenliness of information on the part of Schwegler. At page 150, again, we have : ' The question, therefore, which Kant set at the head of his whole Kritik, How are o\ priori synthetic judgments possible ? . . . . must be answered with an unconditional No.' This, too, grates ; for we know the contrary : we know that Kant has pointed to whole spheres of such judg- ments, and has demonstrated in his way the rationale of them ; nay, we know that that is the express one object of his whole Kritik and Kritiken. It may be said that Schwegler must have had in his mind, that to every fact of actual knowledge Kant postulated elements of sense as well as those of intellect. But such defence were null, and from more points of view than one ; for, in the first place, the knowledge of these a priori principles, though abstract, were still a knowledge, and would not be denied by Kant ; in the second place, there are, in Kant's system, & priori elements of sense, as well as of intellect, which give occasion to the conjunction necessary for such d, priori synthetic judgments, and have been expressly anatomised by Kant for this very purpose ; and, in the third place, Kant actually details classes of such a priori synthetic judgments. Nay, at page 159, Schwegler himself says : ' These are the only possible and authenticated synthetic judgments a priori, the ground-lines of all and every metaphysic.' Thus, then, Schwegler categorically contradicts himself, and declares that there are such judgments — this in spite of his ' unconditional No ! ' Again, though it is true that the judgments mentioned are to be viewed as metaphysical ground- lines, it is not true that these are the only synthetic judgments & priori ; for does not Kant regard all the propositions of pure mathematic as a priori synthetics, and are not these a goodly number ? These things belong to that special central domain of Kant which came to him straight from Hume, which was his own principal and principial industry, and which passed straight from his hands into those of Hegel, to constitute there the central domain of this last also. — Here, then, we conceive Schwegler not only open to the charge of slovenliness, but of insufficient information, and that, too, in regard to a main — or rather the main topic* * Kant himself (WW. ii. 107) says: — 'Here, now, is a synthetic unity of con- sciousness, which is cognised d priori, and supplies ground for synthetic proposi- tions d priori bearing on pure thinking, exactly in the same way as space and time supply ground for such propositions as concern the form of mere sense-perception. ' — N. 606 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Then to Schwegler the Hegelian system arises directly out of that of Schelling, and he has no perception of that whole field of considerations the issue of which is the partial elimination of Fichte and Schelling, and the attachment of Hegel directly to Kant : in short, he knows only the common and stereotyped view of what is called the literature of the subject ! He says, p. 222, ' From reflexion on this one-sidedness (of Schelling) the Hegelian philosophy arose ; it holds fast, as against Fichte, with the then Schellingian philosophy, that not a singular, the ego, is the prius of all reality, but a universal, which comprehends in itself every singular.' We may point out, in passing, that the phrase ■ a universal which comprehends in itself every singular,' were correct language if applied to what we name the concrete notion. It has no such application, nevertheless, but refers only to the common consciousness on this subject — that Hegel, namely, leads all up at last into the ' Absolute Spirit.' We find him, indeed, a line or two further down speaking of the ' Idea as the Absolute,' without mention anywhere of the relation of the Notion to the Idea. At pages 223, 227, 228, his perception of the method and general industry of Hegel will be found to be wholly from without, wholly as of a process and endeavour external and mechanical; there seems not even a dream of the one living force which is the creative pulse of the whole. ' The absolute,' he says, ' is, according to Hegel, not being, but development ; explication of differences and antithesis which, however, are not self-dependent, or at all opposed to the absolute, but each singly as all together form only moments within the self-development of the absolute.' ' The Hegelian Logic is the scientific exposition and development of the pure reason-notions, of those notions or categories which underlie all thought and being, which are as much the ground-principles of subjective cognition, as the immanent soul of objective reality, of those ideas in which the spiritual and the natural have their coincidence -point. The realm of logic is, says Hegel, truth as it is without veil fur sich. It is, as Hegel also figuratively expresses himself, the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of the world and any finite spirit.' ' Hegel has endeavoured, 1, completely to collect the pure reason-notions ; 2, critically to purge them (that is to say, to exclude all that were not pure perception-less thought); and 3, — what is the most characteristic peculiarity of the Hegelian Logic, — to derive them dialectically from one another, and complete them into an inter- hegel's commentators. 607 nally articulated system of pure reason.' • The lever for this development is the dialectic method that advances by negation from one notion to another.' ' Negation is the vehicle of the dialectic march. Every previously established notion is negated, and out of its negation a higher, richer notion is won. This method, which is at once analytic and synthetic, Hegel has carried out throughout the whole system of the Science.' This language is not incorrect ; it is largely Hegel's own. But this is its defect; Hegel's indirect ways have not been penetrated, and the one secret found. What sense, for instance, is there in this negation of which Schwegler speaks ? How different it would have been could he but have explained it ! We have objected already to an expression above being considered figurative. In short, what we have here are but external views and, on the whole, the literature of the subject ! Nor does Schwegler, when arrived at the notion of the notion, manifest any consciousness of what is truly before him. Speak- ing (p. 231) of reciprocity, which we know now to be the very nidus where the notion is born, he says, ' We have, therefore, again a Seyn (a being) that disjoins itself into several self-depen- dents, which are, however, immediately identical with it: this unity of the immediacy of Being with the self-disjunction of Essence is the Notion.' And this is all : there is not one word of that marvellous dialectic in which we get sight of the particular as in a transparent distinction which is none, between the universal and the singular, each of which is but negative reflexion into self and the same negative reflexion, and thus come at length actually to see the notion, actually to realise at length the notion of the notion. After the sentence just quoted, Schwegler proceeds' to define the notion, and he begins thus : ' Notion is that in the other,' &c. He says notion is so and so, not the notion is so and so ; the notion, therefore, is to him just notion, just notion in general, the abstract universal of thinking as opposed to sense. In fact, when a German begins a sentence with a noun thus with- out article, the idiomatic English translation would require us to begin with the indefinite article, — to say here, then, a notion is so and so. But let us give the whole definition : ' Notion is that in the other which is identical with itself ; it is substantial totality, the moments of which (singular, particular) are themselves the whole (the universal), totality which as well allows the difference free play as it embraces it into unity within itself.' When a man 608 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. once knows the notion, it is not difficult for him to see assonances to it in this definition ; but would he ever have learnt it thence ? These are but vague words, vaguely and imperfectly conied from others ; and what their own author is determined only to see in them is a notion in general, the Socratic universal, Plato's idea, as the idea of a man, a table, &c. This is evident from the words, ' it is that in the other.' ' The spiritual substance (p. 241) of the Revealed Eeligion or of Christianity is consequently the same as that of Speculative Philosophy, only that it is expressed there in the wise of the Vorstellung, in the form of a history, here in the wise of the notion.' There is no reason to suppose here either, that the notion is meant ; the particular words are just Hegel's own ; Hegel him- self uses Begriff in some three senses ; and there is no reason to suppose, from anything in the whole book, that Schwegler ever saw more in the notion that Plato's abstract universal, as now specialised and particularised, at most, by Kant and Hegel under the name of Categories, and as opposed to Vorstellung. It is to be said, too, that the whole statement of Hegel's system in Schwegler is external, and reads to every one at first — to every one at first, at least, who is not already an adept — just like a caricature, for which conviction can be expected from no sane human being. On the whole, we believe ourselves right, then, how- ever willing we may be to ascribe to Schwegler participation in the spirit and extensive external knowledge both of Kant and Hegel, in denying him to have entered a certain internal adytum of either, which, nevertheless, is absolutely essential to knowledge. ROSENKRANZ. Though not superior to Schwegler so far as participation in the spirit of Kant and Hegel is concerned, Rosenkranz has, probably seen more clearly into the intimate connexion between these two, studied more closely the particular of the latter of them, and brought himself just generally into more intimate relations with the dialectic whole. Nevertheless, with all our consequent respect for Rosenkranz, and all our so far admiration for him in himself, we cannot make sure that Rosenkranz has ever certainly discerned either the literal attachment of Hegel to Kant, or the one thing that unites both and constitutes the single principle of the former — the concrete universal. In support of this opinion we shall take hegel's commentators. 609 our evidence from the ' Wissenschaft der Logischen Idee/ which, as published so lately, and as expressly devoted to a review and reformation of the Hegelian Logic, promises to be amply sufficient as relative authority. It is to be admitted at once that Kosenkranz has again and again perfectly expressed the process of the Absolute, as that which is as well First as Last, Beginning as Eesult, that which returns into itself, the movement which from itself determines itself, &c. Nor less is it to be admitted that he has a hundred times accentuated the ' unity of opposites,' as well as (at least once) directly mentioned the triplicity, identity, difference, and reduction of difference into identity. Nay, Kosenkranz has actually told us foreigners that the first thing we had to do was to understand Kant's question, ' How are a priori synthetic judg- ments possible ? ' and this idea of an a priori synthetic judgment he has further identified with the more abstract statement, ■ a unity of opposites.'* Nevertheless, we cannot help believing Kosenkranz, like all the rest of us, in fact, as yet to • know only in part/ We cannot make out this avowal as his — this avowal of our preface — that, ' as Aristotle made explicit the abstract univer- sal implicit in Socrates, Hegel made explicit the concrete universal implicit in Kant.' Neither are we quite sure that to him this concrete universal is the one logical nisus (nameable Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Keason), of which this world, with all that is subjective in it, and with all that is objective in it, is but the congeries. Yet sincerity with idealism means, that the matter (objects) of Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Reason, is identical with these its forms. The ' Science of the Logical Idea ' opens in this manner : — ' Every man is flung unasked into a together of circumstances to which he must accommodate himself as conditions of his development. Thus in my youth I encountered the Hegelian Philosophy as one of those powers, in struggle with which my destiny has shaped itself. Years long alternately attracted and repelled, my relation to this philosophy has assumed finally this issue, that I have devoted my life to its critical correction and systematic perfection. I should like to complete it from within out, in order to promote the enjoyment of its veritahle worth, as well as the fruitfulness of its applica- tion to all the sciences, &c.' Now, what have we indicated here? — A life of struggle — of * Hegel himself (Encyc. § 40) says, 'Synthetic Judgments d priori (<«., original co-references of Opposites).' — New. 2q 610 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. never-ending — and yet unended — struggle ! Veritably Kant and Hegel are as those deserts of fable which lead to palaces of prophecy, but, meanwhile, whiten only with dead men's bones ! Eosenkranz, a man of unbounded acquirement, of rich endowment, of keen susceptibility, of quick talent, has now a life behind him, and its one object — Hegel — is it this he would have us to under- stand ? — is unconquered still ! Surely at least such interpretation of the quoted words were not unjust. Alternately attracted and repelled during long years: this is not success, this is not the language of possession; these are but the words of the baffled but still passionate wooer. There is bitterness as he looks back, too, on the length of the struggle, and thinks of what has been gained ; he sees a together of circumstances accommodation to which was but necessity; and he cannot help dwelling on his having been committed to them unasked. The task is not yet complete either : he would only like to complete it. These considerations are strengthened by the avowals of the next paragraph, which records his experience as Professor of Philosophy. He had begun with Hegel simpliciter ; doubts arose ; for ten years he threw himself on Aristotle, but alternated him with Hegel; he separated Metaphysic from Logic; he takes Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel together and compares them, &c. This is not the repose, the oneness, of an intellect convinced, of a mind assured. If Hegel is right, his Logic supersedes all that has gone before it ; for in it he professes to have brought the science down through all these two thousand years which separate us from Aristotle, and to have perfected it up to the highest level of the present day. Seclusion to Hegel, accordingly, would be intelligible if Hegel has succeeded, as regression to Aristotle if Hegel has failed : but what are we to say of an alternation of both ? — and why formally explain and compare Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel as three interests apart, independent, each for itself ? If Hegel is right, his Logic is the only one that requires to be taught, and the contributions of Aristotle and Kant can be duly exhibited as they present themselves in their respective places there. The critique of various later Logics that follows, confirms the same inference of doubt, hesitation, vacillation on the part of Rosenkranz. Hegel's Logic being what it pretends to be, there is but short work needed as regards these others. Eosenkranz seeks to classify these Logics, too, from the notion of thinking in general, HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 611 and, being a sworn enemy of all abstraction unverified by the concrete, he would like to correlate each theoretical stage of the classification with an actual historical stage. As regards this latter particular, he knows no treatise but his own 'where a similar attempt is made!' Now, Hegel's Logic is simply the development of the Notion qua Notion — that is, of Thought qua Thought; Hegel's Logic ought, then, at once to have supplied what Eosenkranz wanted, a topic and criteria, namely, for all the various presentant Logics. Hegel's Logic, too, is supposed to be correlative to historical fact, though it could not by anticipation of, so to speak, posthumous Logics, prevent Eosenkranz from ranging these too in subjection to the pure tree, were he so minded. In fact, to analyse the notion of thought and develop thus new classifications of Logic, is simply to put the Hegelian Logical classifications to the rout. That such analyses and classi- fications should be considered still necessary — does it not lead to the fear that Hegel is not yet perhaps thoroughly understood? Hegel is, of course, not absolutely the last, and, it is to be hoped, there is progress still.* We come now to his proposed Eeform of Hegel, to his actual objections to the master, and specially to his system of Logic. ' In the first place,' says Rosenkranz, ' its collective form oscillates between a dichotomy, namely, of Objective and Subjective Logic, and a trichotomy, namely, of the doctrine of Being, Essentity, and Notion. The former division repeats the old one of theoretical philosophy into metaphysic and logic, but with an expression which is derived from the sphere of consciousness, and is consequently inappropriate and deranging. The antithesis of object and subject belongs only to the spirit, not to impersonal reason. The trichotomy repeats the Kantian distinction of understanding, judgment, and reason. This distinction of simple, reflexive, and speculative characters is one, however, which pervades all the moments of the whole science, and is, therefore, not competent to afford an actual principle of division.' Now, not one of these objections can altogether hold. The first two divisions of logic may together be considered objective, for they are both stages of consciousness only, not of self-con- sciousness, the beginning of which constitutes the transition * One of Rosenkranz's sentences in the above runs thus : ' I wanted to show proof that the abstract genealogy of the notion makes good its necessity in living fact' The notion here is that of thought as made out by Rosenkranz, with special reference to his critique of the various recent Logics. This illustrates the general speech of the notion in German writers. It is just short for the abstraction and generalisation of thought in general : it is the abstract universal of thought as any such ; not as the Universal, Hegel's Universal, the concrete Notion — the Notion. 612 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. from the second to the third. This is seen whether we consider that, in the first two stages, we have but Apprehension and Judgment in act, or that what is acted on is but outer, as Quality, Quantity, Substantiality, Causality, &c, while in the third stage it is Eeason acts, and consciously on its own forms. Besides, it is Hegel (through Kant) who is the subjective logic, while Hume, Spinoza, and so backwards, are the objective logic. Up to reciprocity the progress was not Hegel's; after reciprocity the advance is due to his conscious subject. This last consideration is only ancillary, however. Metaphysic is rightly taken into Logic ; for Idealism being the truth, all the principles of things must be logical. The trichotomy is ' competent to afford an actual principle of division,' and for the reason which is supposed to prove it 'not.' Indeed, it is interesting to observe Rosenkranz here naming some of the nearest forms of the notion and talking of one distinction pervading the whole, without at least referring to the connexion and living unity into which he might throw all. The triads of Being, Essentity, Notion, — Understanding, Judg- ment, Reason, — Simple, Reflex, Speculative, — are named together ; but, instead of being correlated, the general division under one of them is declared incompetent because another of them pervades all the moments of the whole ! The reason really pro is to Rosenkranz the reason con. The ' going up of the light,' however, that Kant speaks of in reference to Thales and the equilateral triangle, Galilei and his inclined plane, Torricelli and the weighing of the air, Stahl and his chemical transformations, &c, is a curious thing ! A man shall read over the right passages scores of times ; he shall even have executed a translation of the Encyclopaedic (edn. 1) say ; yet the light of the notion shall only rise to him when occupied on some other ! This was my case ; and it may have been similarly so with Rosenkranz, who names individuals, but brings not together into the One. Logic as Logic, then, is its own element, and knows not a psychological distinction ;* but Logic, regarded as a History, was immersed in the object, till through Kant and Hegel it rose to the subject. Hume's causality is outward, but Kant's categories are inward, and from Kant the principle that moulds is sub- jectivity. The second objection brought forward is to the transition of the subjective notion into objectivity, as mechanical, chemical, and teleological ; and also to the admission of Life, the Good, &c, into hegel's commentators. 613 Logic ; as if Logic ' were that total science which includes in it even reality itself.' To this we may add, that Eosenkranz objects also to the transition of the Logical Idea into Nature, as ' the crux of the Hegelianic,' and that, so far as the Teleological notion is concerned, he here offers us a Logic re-distributed in its interest, and so that it (the Teleological notion) appears intercalated between Essentity and the Notion. It must be borne in mind, in the first place, here, that our present object is not to answer objections to Hegel, but to apply these in test of the relative knowledge of the objector. It is not for a moment to be pretended that Hegel is perfect, that there are not sins in him both of omission and commission, or that he may not be amended by certain of the suggestions of Eosenkranz. But surely it is inconsistent to seek to force upon Hegel matter which, it can be shown, he himself refused. The following passage (op. cit. p. 530), will, perhaps, sufficiently explain the grounds generally of these objections of Eosenkranz : — The transition of the Ideel causality of the notion into the reality fulfilled by it is the transition of the end (intended) out of its possibility into actuality, its effectuation or realisation. This connexion is presented by Hegel as a syllogism ; the notion of the end is through the Means to clasp itself in its Realisation together with itself, so that there is to be assumed in the result no other content than was already present in the beginning. We have already admitted that a formal syllogism may be certainly as well pointed out here as in the process of mechanism or of chemism ; but we have also noticed that a syllogism in the sense of the logical notion of the unity of the universal, particular, and singular is still not to be found in it.* A detailed critique of the logical incongruities into which here Hegel has fallen, has been given by Trendelenburg in his ' Logische Untersuchungen.' We fully agree with him when he says of the teleological notion — ' If, in the manner of Hegel in the application stated, the syllogism be looked for in actual existence, the three terms are then arbitrarily distributed to three different realities in the relation of universal, particular, and singular, without holding fast the reciprocal relation of logical subordination. In the teleological reference, the subjective thought of End is in and for itself universal ; but it is not the universal genus of its means and of its realisation : the means are in themselves the particular and different, but still not the species of the former thought ; they are really subjected to it and are ruled by it, but still not logically subordinated as its species ; the realisation of the end is a singular, but neither the individual of the heterogeneous mean, nor of the thought that projects the end. If it be said that the mean is subordinated to the design and the result to both, then this real dependence is to be duly distinguished from the logical one, which arises from the relation of the comprehension and extension of notions, and alone conditions the Syllogism.' * As though Hegel had not himself said that! See Encyc § 162, 3rd paragraph. — New. 614 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. What Trendelenburg, as quoted, says here is simply that Hegel when he is in the third chapter of his second section, is not at the same time back in the like chapter of his first* This considera- tion, had it occurred to Rosenkranz, might have strengthened his amiability to resist the authority of the somewhat imposing Trendelenburg, who only commits here, as is but the ordinary habit of all professed Logicians, an Ignoratio Elenchi.-f* That is, Hegel would have admitted the objection, but maintained that his position was untouched. Hegel, in fact, knows all that already, and he just expressly does what he is reproached with. It is the same objection that lies against the admission into Logic of the notion of Life, &c. ; and at page 244 of the third volume of his Logik, Hegel will be found formally explaining the grounds of his action. These grounds, however, concern the intimate struc- ture of his whole philosophy ; and as that has been missed, they themselves have not been regarded. The reader will do well to refer for himself here. The transition of the notion into objec- tivity is equally clear before the consciousness of Hegel, and equally necessary from the very nature of his system. From page 121 of the second volume of his Logik we see that he expressly contemplates three orders of Seyn (Being). He says there : ' It is to be remembered beforehand that, besides immediate Seyn firstly, and secondly Existence — the Seyn that springs out of Wesen (Essentity), there is a further Seyn — the Objectivity that springs out of the Notion.' Hegel manifests an equally express consciousness as regards Teleology ; ' Where design is perceived,' he says (Log. vol. iii. p. 209), ' there is assumed en Understanding as its originator ; for the Teleological notion there is re- quired, therefore, the proper, free existence of the notion.' At page 77 of the second volume we have also this other distinct statement : ' This correlation, the whole as essential unity, lies only in the notion, in the designful end. . . . The teleological ground is property of the notion, and of be-mediation through the same, which is reason.' * See Encyc. § 162 subfinem. — New. t Compare the somewhat laboriose Latin of Trendelenburg with the pithy verna- cular of Hegel. The former (El. Log. Arist, Adnotata, § 40) says: 'Ejusmodi igitur refutatio justa conclusione sive inductione sive syllogismo instituta elenchus vocatur, cui quidem primitus id adhaeret, ut in eadem aliquis disputatione argumen- tando cogatur aut quod affirmavit negare aut quod negavit confiteri.' Hegel, again (Log. i. 406), says : ' Elenchen d. i. nach des Aristoteles Erklarung Weisen, wodurch man genothigt wird das Gegentheil von dem zu sagen, was man vorher behauptet hatte.' To the neatness here the Italics are not the least contribution. It will be difficult to find the same neatness in Aristotle, and possibly Trendelenburg who too is neat, follows not Aristotle but Hegel here. — A definition so good is of general interest. hegel's commentators. 615 Of the designful, clear eye, with which Hegel worked, then, we are not allowed to doubt ; nor ought it to be difficult for us to be convinced that there could be no Zweck, no purpose, no design in existence before subjectivity, and that it would have been absurd in Hegel to develop a consequent in anticipation of its antecedent. Besides, we know now that the change proposed by Kosenkranz would be historically false ; for the Begriff, Kant's Begriff, Hegel's Begriff, was the notional Beciprocity that rose out of Hume's Causality. Yet Kosenkranz ' wants to maintain the right of the historical development!' Not only does he contradict this development, however, but, even by his own showing, that of the notion also ; for he himself observes (p. 17) that ' the forms of Seyn are categorical, those of Wesen hypothetical, and those of the Begriff disjunctive;' which alone might have suggested to him Reciprocity as the immediate foregoer of the Notion. That Mechanism and Chemism should be forms of Causality, is no objection to their being treated where they are; for they are evidently concreter forms than abstract causality, — forms of the Begriff in objectivity itself. To Hegel, Logic is the prius of all ; and in it, first of all, there appears in the abstract form of the notion whatever is afterwards found in the more concrete spheres of Nature and Spirit. It belongs, indeed, to the depth of Hegel's discernment that the Good should be regarded by him as a cognitive element, and should constitute to him the transition from Understanding to Beason. Why Beauty should not be included (another objection of Kosenkranz) may depend on this, that its abstract elements — as Kant also seems to have thought — are not discrepant from those of Teleology, and that its own place is, like that of Religion, only in a very concrete sphere. But what has been said above is of no moment in comparison with this : the objection that Teleology, &c, are not technically exact syllogisms, is alone crucially decisive as regards the secret or principle of Hegel in its scope. Admit this objection, and the whole fabric o? Hegel lies in pieces at our feet — perhaps not even with the exception of the doctrine of the syllogism itself. The principle which has given birth to Being, Nothing, Becoming, — to Being, There -being, Being -for -Self, — to Quality, Quantity, Measure, — to Ground, Phenomenon, Actuality, — to Substance, Cause, Reciprocity, — to Being, Essentity, Notion, — is absolutely the same as that which gives birth to Mechanism, Chemism, Teleology ; and if the objection of being but formal syllogisms 616 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. is fatal to these three last, it must be considered equally fatal to all the others, for they also are in precisely the same manner but formal syllogisms. A man who uses the language of Hegel cannot help naming the principle of Hegel ; but to name is not necessarily to see. And this we hold to be the case with Eosen- kranz. Had he been perfectly awake to what was in hand, he would have hesitated before contradicting the express, deliberate, perfectly conscious action of Hegel; and the last thing that would have occurred to him would have been to say, these forms — whether later or earlier than the syllogism — not being exactly the syllogism proper, must be rejected. How could they be the syllogism proper, if either later or earlier ? — and to this syllogism proper is the whole system of Hegel required to shrink ? Nay, observe this perfectly conclusive point : Eosenkranz actually denies the presence of the notion in any triad but (as we may say) its own, that, namely, where it is explicit : ' a syllogism,' he says, 'in the sense of the logical notion of the unity of the universal, particular, and singular is still not to be found in them,' (i.e., the various triads which together constitute the entire Logic). To yield to Trendelenburg here was to admit essential misunder- standing. These same views — and something more — he expresses, at pages 504-5, thus : — But now there was yet another revolution in linguistic usage introduced by Hegel ; namely, as regards the word Notion. He declared that substance and subject were to be taken, not as if the subject were to be subordinated to substance, but, on the contrary, as if the latter were to be subordinated to the former, and maintained that essentially for the notion of truth the thing was to recognise Substance as Subject. He sought here, as the eternally memor- able preface to the ' Phaenomenologie of the Spirit ' exhibits in the grandest struggle of enduring effort to bring to an end the blind necessity attaching to the causa immanens of the Spinosism which, under the form of the Absolute, was now dominant, and to say that the self-determination of Substance ( Wesen) it was which was ground of necessity. With this thought he stood to the Schellingianism of the day in. the same relation that the monadology of Leibnitz bore to the immobility and indifference of the one Substance of Spinoza. Schelling's tractate on Free-will was, some years later, an express testimony to the truth of Hegel here, and sought (on a hint caught from him), to leap from the position of mere Reason to that of Spirit, though of Hegel's suggestion and instigation mention there was none. Now, when some time later Hegel in his 'Logik' advanced, in reference to the Reciprocity of Substance with itself, from Necessity to Free Will, he grasped together the whole sphere of the Ideas under the name of the Subjective Begriff, and for the first time caused thereby an indescribable confusion ; for this word had hegel's commentators. 617 had till then the signification of a subjective Vorstellung, reprcesentatio, or of a subjective thought, conceptus, or of an abstract determination of understand- ing, notio. Certainly it was not unusual to say in German • Begriff,' too for the necessity of the thing itself ; for, It all comes to the notion of the thing, is as much as to say, It all comes to the necessity of the essential being of the thing. But now Notion was required to mean the subjective unity of the universal, the particular, and the singular. There were little to be said against this, since Aristotle applies \6yos in the same manner, but subjective was to express here not only our subjective thinking of a notion, but the self-deter- mination to its differences which lies in Substance (im Wesen), wherein we have unconditionally to acknowledge a great progress, an emancipation of logical forms from all improper psychological admixtures and adulterations. Thus far, then, therefore we should be considered to agree with Hegel. But now he had collocated the Kantian Categories as those of Being and Essentity under the name of the Objective Logic, and so made — from the notion of Substance out — the transition from the objective to the subjective logic ; and now, then, again in the subjective logic, the subjective notion was to set itself anew as the objective notion ; which objective notion, however, was only to extend to the forms of the objectivisation of the notion ; which forms are its realisation, for the complete notion, the unity of the sub- and ob-jective notion, was to be only the Idea. Among these forms Hegel reckons now the teleological notion, and presents it thereby properly only as a mean of the subjective notion for its realisation. This would be for him completely to fall out with Aristotle, who subordinates matter and form to the notion of design, were it not perceivable, partly that what Hegel calls the subjective notion coincides with the teleological notion as the First, from which the movement issues ; partly that he has carried over the objective notion of End into the notion of the Idea as Self -End. Only by means of this confusion of the logical notion with the notion of the Idea are many utterances of Hegel to be justified ; he talks of the notion, of the divine, creative, free, self-dependent notion, and means thereby the Idea. If the objective notion is to be product of the subjective notion, it must possess also the articulation of this latter in the distinctions of universal, particular, and singular. Hegel in effect has endeavoured, in harmony with his method, to demonstrate this, but, as we believe, with a double error ; firstly, that is, through the presence of a formal syllogism in the mechanical, chemical, and teleological processes which are to constitute the forms of the objective notion ; and, secondly, by this, that these processes in the sphere of the idea are able to develop themselves into systematic unities. But the former determination is too little, and the latter too much. The former is too little, for a formal syllogism presents itself as early as the categories of Being and of Essentity ; the latter is too much, because the objectivity in it has no longer the sense of mediation to, but even that of the adequate statement of, the notion. In the mechanical, chemical, and teleological processes as such, there fails the middle term of the particular, in the manner in which, as the distinction proper of the universal, it forms the transition to the singular, &c. Eosenkranz continues in this way to censure the transition of the notion iuto mechanical, chemical, &c, objectivity through 618 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. syllogisms which are merely formal, and possess not the veritable universal, particular, and singular of the technical syllogism proper. He alludes, as we see, to the presence of a formal syllogism in the earlier categories; but this is no advance in insight. He seems to say only that, as a formal syllogism was present then, a formal syllogism is not enough, is ' too little ' now ; and he shows not a trace of the true principles involved. But the above passage has been principally quoted as bearing on this last question. "We have here Rosenkranz expressly declaring what he knows about the notion. It is, however, not worth while entering into any special analysis : with the double, triple, and variously multiple confusion of notion and notions which exists in the above, it will be sufficient to contrast the simplicity of the Notion, Kant's notion, Kant's Copernican notion raised into the Hegelian, Kant's Reciprocity raised into the Hegelian Begriff — that Begriff of which Hegel himself gives us the Begriff, and which we have no excuse in failing to understand, — the one simple and single concrete notion. What does the Begriff of the Begriff, the Notion of the Notion, mean ? It means that the Begriff, the one Notion which had been each and every one of all these mani- fold Forms from Being up to Reciprocity, is now formally the Begriff, has now reached its own appropriate form as Begriff, and this is true both Historically and Logically. This, then, is the divine, the creative, the free, the self-subsistent Begriff, and Hegel means it — expressly it — and not ' the Idea,' when he uses all such expressions : for if the Idea is its ultimate Logical stage, it itself is still the heart and soul and spirit of the Idea. In his preface to the second edition of his Logic, Hegel tells us with a pen of power that the categories are the substantial content of all natural and spiritual things, but even in them, pure as they are, there obtains the distinction of a soul and of a body. Now this soul is the Notion : not any general notion, subjective or objective or whatever other as Rosenkranz may be content to view it, but the one special Notion which Has been already demonstrated. Hegel's words are these : — * But these thoughts of all natural and spiritual things, the substantial con- tent itself, are yet such a content as possesses manifold potentialities, and has even still the distinction in it of a soul and of a body, of the notion and of a relative reality ; the deeper base is the soul per se, the pure Notion, which is * Log. vol. i. p. 18. HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 619 the inmost of objects, their single pulse of life, as also of the subjective think- ing of the same. ' Vom Begriff im Algemeinen,' with which the third volume of Hegel's Logic opens, is an extended explanation of the notion, is an extended notion exoterically (almost) of the notion : here is what Eosenkranz makes of it (pp. 22, 23) : — I The full introduction which Hegel has given to the subjective Logic turns on this — to show how Substance determines itself as Subject, how necessity sublates itself into Freedom. This is the proposition which, with full con- sciousness of its infinite significance, he had first enunciated in the preface to the ' Phaenomenologie,' 1807, and which, rightly understood, lies at the bottom of his whole philosophy. This is the proposition out of which Schel- ling constructed his second philosophy, a scholastically confused imitation of Hegel's Philosophy of the Spirit, &c. It is impossible to say that this is not true ; still it falls short of the truth. The section in question turns on something deeper and more universal than is here assigned to it, on a more penetrat- ing and exhaustive principle than ' the Absolute is Subject ' of the preface to the Phaenomenologie, however much the one may involve the other : what lies at the bottom of the Hegelian system, too, is something infinitely more definite and simple than that, and Schelling may have constructed his philosophia secunda out of whatever he may, but it was certainly not out of the Notion. In short, we oppose to the generalities, to the this and the other, to the vague hither and thither of Eosenkranz, the Notion, that which once seen the whole Hegelian system becomes seen — in Origin, Principle, Form, and Matter. As we have said, however, he who uses the language of Hegel must a thousand and a thousand times state phrases which are perceived to tell the secret of Hegel, once that secret is itself perceived from elsewhere. Such utterances are to be found passim in Eosenkranz, and here is the very strongest that I have yet come upon : — The admirable power of science becomes particularly obvious at particular stages. However unsatisfactory it may frequently appear to us, however great much that is doubtful it may leave behind, at such stages we are obliged to admit that science has already done much, and that it gives us pledges of a harmony of the universe capable of filling us with trust in the reason of the same. With immense velocity there rushes through infinite space a nowise particularly great ball. On this ball there move to and fro millions of nowise particularly great individuals, apparently given up to absolute chance, struggling with an existence ephemeral in its duration, often breaking loose into mutual enmity, or even murdering each other. But these feeble creatures have come gradually to learn that they live on a ball which moves round 620 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. another in an exactly-measured path. They have come gradually to learn that they are capable of mastery over the nature of their supporting planet ; that with growing insight into the laws of nature there grows as well the might of their mastery, and that it is the same reason which they find in themselves as law of their actions and their thoughts, and which they meet without themselves in the phenomena of nature. And amongst these absolute laws of reason, they have come to know one that is, as it were, the law of laws, the key to all phenomena, the hidden-manifest Archeus of all being and becoming. This law they name in variously manifold wise, according to the particular regions in which it manifests itself. In logic they name it on the side of subjective thought, abstraction, reflexion, speculation ; or understand- ing, judgment, reason ; or notion, judgment, syllogism ; or thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Whatever names may be used, however, it is always the same trias, in whose magic bands all lies bound : for what we enunciate as a law of our subjective thought, has, if it is really a law, objective existence as well. We use, therefore, these same names in order to designate objective relations. We say, for example, a work of art is abstract when it wants the develop- ment into harmony of an inner antithesis. We say that one existence reflects itself into another. Relations of the Idea we designate as speculative. We do not call digestion, for example, an abstract, nor yet a reflected, but a speculative process, because it involves an assimilation of the inorganic, a transition from what is dead to what is alive. Such positive unity of opposed characters is speculative or dialectic* In what he says of a one law, Kosenkranz seems to have got very near here : perhaps, nevertheless, it may be but an external ray merely. It is not difficult from the very outside to perceive the never-failing three of Hegel, and it is not more difficult to see or divine that in all these threes unity of system is aimed at. This is the external form of Hegel — a form with which we become acquainted from the first, and in which we can very soon become expert, so far as speech is concerned, while, at the same time, we are still stone-blind to the principle, and know of origin and matter only what we can catch up, by an all-insufficient good luck, in those desperate and desultory rambles on the surface with which the most of us begin and with which the most of us end. In the beginning of what has been named ' the struggle to Hegel,' there will be found a variety of passages in which the writer seems perfectly at home with an sich, ausser sich, fur sich, with difference and identity, &c, and even with the notion, at the very moment that he is divided from this last by years. Similarly, in the case of Kosenkranz, it is difficult to believe a perfect success, despite such passages as we have quoted above — it is difficult to believe this when we find him complaining that ' the * Op. cit., pp. 73, 74. hegel's commentators. 621 trichotomy of being, essentity, and notion allows the notion of the idea to be too much in the background behind that of the subjective notion ! ' and adopting in preference to this trichotomy an early and imperfect one of Hegel, in which ' the first is the system of the pure notions of the Beent, the second that of the pure notions of the universal, and the third contains the notion of science.' It is difficult to believe this when we find him, in spite of Hegel, and of what he has accomplished and how he accomplished it, disjoining once again logic and metaphysic, designating design as ontological, and proposing classifications in the interest of an only external balance without regard to history or the life of the principle. It does not consist with such success even to hear that Hegel, • despite the height of his standpoint,' ' took into the Idea concrete existential forms,' because he was ' still entangled in the form of science which he found to precede him,' or that it was 'indisputably the Schellingian definition of the notion of reason as of the absolute unity of subject and object which still forced itself on him here,' or that the passage from the Metaphysic of Aristotle ' with which Hegel has closed the second edition of his Encyclopaedic represents an unaccomplished Science,' a projected ' reintegration of all the moments of his system in a speculative philosophy ! ' It is difficult to believe in success when we ponder these and the other objections advanced : and it is impossible, so to believe, when we find Rosenkranz lamenting, ' the obscurities and incongruities which the Hegelian Logic has generated THROUGH ITS DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION ! ! ' Neither can we think Rosenkranz, though he defends it to a certain extent and would only remove misunderstandings from it, quite on the level of Hegel as regards the transition of the Idea into Nature. This transition is a perfect parallel to that of the subjective notion into objectivity, and both belong to the very life of the principle of Hegel. On that principle these transitions could not fail to be ; and being, they could be no other. Reciprocity alone admits of no other transition ; there they just are — reciprocals by the grace of God, the one out what the other is in. As regards the subjective notion passing into objectivity, we may say specially that this is historical, that a new determination of the object did in actual truth follow the subjective notion of Kant. When one read3 the transition of the notion into objectivity whether in the Xogik or the Encyclopaedic, and the express explanations by which Hegel, in elucidating, formally acknowledges the doctrine and 622 THE SECKET OF HEGEL. every step of the same, one feels much difficulty in believing that any one could object to this transition and yet still suppose that he really understood. The Begriff that as negative unity necessarily became Urtheil could only come together in the Schluss. (Observe both the etymological and the common meanings.) Once together, unity was restored, an immediacy, a vollstandiges Selbststandiges, a completed Self-substantial, — the Object. So with the transition of the Logical Idea into Nature. This, too, is but an act of the living Eeciprocity that is — that is the Notion, or that the Notion is. The Notion is now perfected into the Idea — the inner is full ; it must fall over and asunder into the outer — Nature. The Entschluss and the Entlassung, the resolution and the release, are again the Hegelian equivoque that is the one triple of the direct and the indirect, the simple and the reflex, the literal and the figurative: what remarkable consistency, that Hegel should have sought to be true to the triplicity of the notion even in his single words ! But how otherwise can any one state the fact ? Or how otherwise can any one think the relation of God to Nature ? The transition of God to Nature, which as his creation is still himself, how otherwise explain? It must be said, however, that Eosenkranz brings himself at last to be much more at home with the latter transi- tion than with the former. Eeminding himself of the Johan- neische Logoslehre, and putting ' in place of the word Eeason the expression Logos,' he finds that it ' clinks already not so strange, when it is said of the latter that through its regard it produces nature — that, in the assurance of itself, it releases nature from itself.' It is just this alternation of agreement and disagreement, with- out motive from anything in the thing itself to warrant the one now if the other then, that leads one to believe in the unsatisfactori- ness of the catch that Eosenkranz exhibits as regards Hegel. Ac- cordingly, in conclusion, it is perhaps permitted to infer without serious injustice that Eosenkranz has scarcely come to see that single principle which was an sich in Kant, fur sich in Fichte and Schelling, and an und fur sich in Hegel. This principle is notional reciprocity : this is the manifest Archeus which Eosen- kranz assumes. Only Hegel clearly saw the peculiarity of the notion of Kant (as in his latent theory of perception) — the necessity, that is, of a union of the universal with the particular to the production of the singular, which concrete singular HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 623 alone is any reality, whether as notion or thing. Once arrived here, Hegel was able to see further, that a system on this principle was the next requisite ; and that the means to this was determination, a progressus from the first abstract to the last con- crete, or, what is the same thing, from the last abstract to the first concrete. This determination was but a general realisa- tion and vitalisation of logic as a whole ; of which simple appre- hension is the first act, its truth being the universal; judgment the second, its truth the particular (otherwise nameable the difference, the other) ; and reason the third, its truth the singular, — which is the final truth, expressing that the actual is just a single concrete, the nature of which may be conceived to be a particular universalised into a singular, which again is the one logical nisus, the one logical vis ; and a logical vis and the logical vis is what is, and all that is. Logic is the completed rhythmus of thought : Seyn, what it is ; Wesen, what it was ; Begriff (in that it be-gripes), what it is, was, and will be. These, too, are the three epochs both of philosophy and of history. So it was that Hegel spoke of history being near its term. If, as is probable, each epoch, however, be a triple of all the three moments, reason, which is now at last happily in germ — but only in germ — has still the whole of her own proper path to tread, and the term of history is still comparatively remote. This concrete power, then, to which Hegel remained true everywhere, and which alone gave*him his Logic and his Nature, his Aesthetic and his Politic, his Eeligion and his History ; nay, which alone is the one subject, the one matter in all these elements, — Eosenkranz has scarcely succeeded fairly, clearly, firmly, and once for all to see, whether in its own distinct individual self- identity, or in the perfectly articulate cohesion and connexion of all its multiplex forms. His work on logic, indeed, which professes to reform and complete Hegel, reads and rattles like an amorphous heap of dry and disarticulated bones which a merely subjective breath turns over. Here dialectic, which is the very ghost of Hegel, has fled, and unity we have none. For the plastic demonstration of a scientific progress more strict and rigid than that of even a Laplace or a Newton, we have but a hither and thither of philological remark — not even common raisonnement — as in a dictionary. Hegel, in the Introduction to his Logik (pp. 44, 45), speaks of how ' unfree ' thought finds itself when for the first time in presence of the ■ Speculative,' and tells us that, would 624 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. it free itself, the first thing it has to do, is to accustom itself to the notions and distributions without entering on the dialectic. The logical statement that might so result, he says further, would give ' the picture of a methodically-arranged whole, although the soul of the structure, the method, which lives in the dialectic, appear not itself therein.' Is it possible to say even as much as this for the 'Wissenschaft der Logik,' the culminating, Hegel- amending work, of Eosenkranz ? * Haym. Eosenkranz, whom Haym denominates, with the universal agree- ment of Germany in general, ' the friend and pupil of Hegel, the warmest and truest of his apologists,' published the work with refer- ence to which we have just spoken, 'Die Wissenschaft der Logischen Idee,' in 1858, while the work of Haym with reference to which we are now going to speak appeared in 1857, a year earlier : why, then, do we take Haym after and not before Eosenkranz ? The answer is, because the opinions of Eosenkranz were before the Public in many works previously to 1857, and because, in especial, the matter of his work on the Logical Idea — very certainly the matter criticised — had already appeared in the 'System der Wissenschaft,' 1850, and in 'Meine Eeform der Hegelschen Philosophic,' 1852. Haym, then, has been selected to ' close the debate,' because, so far as is known to me, he is the latest writer who has instituted a special inquest and come forward thereafter with a special and deliberate judgment on the general question of the worth of Hegel. Haym remarks -f* of the preface to the Phaenomenologie, that • it is not saying too much to maintain that he understands the Hegelian Philosophy who is completely master of the sense of this preface.' Now, while, on the one hand, it is impossible to over- rate the value of the exposition involved, it is to be said, on the * If the reader turn up in Rosenkranz what corresponds to ' Bestimmung, Be- schaffenheit, und Grenze' in HegeJ and in the relative commentary, he will realise probably what has just been said. Take the following sentence, where the Latin words are his own equivalents of the corresponding German ones (op. cit. p. 136) : ' Determinatio is the Qualitas of Something by virtue of which it is able to maintain its own Existence in the circle of its Destinatio only through its Aptitudo, Indoles, sive Natura ; ' and a style of explanation of things dialectic will manifest itself such, that of six of its main terms any one may be indiscriminately substituted for the other with the result of a very large number of quite identical sentences. This, then, is quite external. — In the translation, we may add, the pages correspondent to Schwegler's are in order : 118, 64, 97, 105-109,217,213, 325,315,316,323,324, 329, and 343.— New. t Hegel und seine Zeit, p. 215. hegel's commentators. 625 other, that this preface may be very fairly understood, and yet he who understands it shall fail to understand — just anything of the Hegelian system proper — just anything, that is, of the origin, principle (the form, in a certain sense, lies on the surface), and matter of this system. Nevertheless, what Haym says here may be very allowably considered critical so far as he himself is con- cerned. The preface to the Phaenomenologie contains — at least — all that Haym knows of the principle of Hegel : the preface to the Phaenomenologie contains within it the germ of all that Haym says of the principle of Hegel. His book, to be sure, does not confine itself to the preface to the Phaenomenologie, nor to the Phaenomenologie itself, but passes through hands, as if under formal judicial inspection, the whole series of the works of Hegel. It never gets higher than this preface, however, and from its height it is that what is said of the rest is seen. What is now so familiar to us as the Substance-subject, or just in general the Spirit (Geist) of Hegel : this, in fact, constitutes the entire key which Haym offers us, and, as everybody knows, the preface to the Phaenomenologie is the easiest quarry for that. This, then, is all that Haym knows of Hegel, or, at least, all that for his book he need know. But again to him the movement alluded to, the schema implied in this key, is all too plainly facti- tious— a thing got up, a pattern cut out. This to him — who is very much of a politician — is but too clearly only Hegel's ideal resource against the horrors of the German political reality. Gothe and Schiller, he tells us, hied them to Greece, and brought thence the veil of poesy wherewith to shut out from themselves the painful hideousness of this same political reality. So to Greece Hegel too betook himself in order to be able to cover over the Eeal of modern German ugliness with an Ideal of beautiful Classical totality, the instrument of which is this same wonder- fully artificial Spirit with its wonderfully artificial movement. The philosophy of Hegel is but a side-piece to the poetry of Gothe and Schiller, and of both poetry and philosophy the inspira- tion is — as against our ugly German Political Eeal — an Ideal of Hellenic Cosmos ! This is really no exaggeration : I know nothing else in Haym : and from Haym of Hegel nothing else will anybody else ever come to know. The following quotations will probably more than suffice, not only to confirm our sentence, but to illustrate as well the literary 2r 626 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. abundance of Haym — the extraordinary rhetorical tenacity with which he accomplishes the extension and expansion of a single scanty formula over hundreds of pages : — The universe, according to this system, is a Cosmos, or beautiful Totality ; but it is at the same time Spirit, and describes, consequently, in whole and in part, the reflexive process which is the essence of Spirit. The universe is a living whole : all parts of the universe must, therefore, in constant mutual self-reference, be conceived as, dialectically fluent, rounding themselves into the whole (p. 221). Unable to transmute his ideal into the actual, he transforms the actual into his ideal (p. 86). It (the system) is not so much a great, unconscious creation of time — not so much a jet, an invention of genius, as rather a product of talent — something, with reflexion and design, essentially factitious (p. 10). He found that the Gothes and Schillers had opened to the German people the treasure of its own inner and therewith the genuine treasure of spiritual life in general, that they for this people had brought to view its ideals and sentiments in a like manner as Sophocles and Aristophanes had brought for the Athenians theirs. He resolved in the same path to climb higher ; he resolved to do the same thing in reference to the general notions and categories of the German nation — to put into its hand, as it were, a Lexicon and a Grammatic of its pure thought (p. 310). True ; the poetry of Gothe and Schiller sets before us a world of beauty and the ideal, which brings into repose and reconciliation the disunion of German spiritual life. But this reconciliation comes not into existence on the basis of a beautiful and self-satisfied actuality ; these works take not nutriment from the marrow of the historical and actual life of the nation. That reconciliation comes into existence in contrast to, and in defiance of, an unbeautiful actuality ; only by flight out of the present into the past of Hellenic life does it succeed with our two great poets to realise perfected beauty. Theirs, therefore, is an artificial poetry which terminates at last in an overcharged Idealistic and Typic. The end, then, again, is, with Gothe, resignation ; with Schiller, the unfulfilled and abstract ideal. In the enjoy- ment of this fair picture-world, our nation must needs delude itself a moment with the dream of Greek felicity and Greek repose to awaken directly poorer and more restless than before. To Poetry such a delusion was indeed natural, and who would dispute it with her after she had offered to our enjoyment what was sweetest and most perfect 1 But we see now all at once Metaphysic seized with the same illusion. t Turning aside from the strait path of sober inquiry and from the labour of deliverance through the most conscientious criticism, Hegel begins to expand over our spiritual world his ideal that was found in Hellas, that was strengthened by exhaustive penetration into the ultimate grounds of all religion. A dreamed-of and yearned-for future is treated as present. A system tricked out with the entire dignity of the science of truth raises itself beside our poetry, and with diamond net spins us into an idea with which the want, the incompleteness, and the unbeauty of our political and historical actuality is at every point in contradiction. With the Hellenising picture of nature and of fate through poets, we receive a HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 627 Hellenising metaphysic which, in spite of our necessity, lures us to believe that all the limitations and contradictions of our knowledge, of our faith, of our life, reconcile themselves in the continuity of a beautiful whole (pp. 91, 92). Halt we a moment ; for we have put hand on the second decisive word for the composite enigma of the Hegelian Philosophy, the second key to the understanding of its inner texture. The first word [or key] was : the beautiful Cosmos is in whole the reflexive process of the Spirit : the Absolute is Spirit. The second more important word [or key] is : the beautiful Cosmos is just on this account in each particular part the same perpetually self-renewing process, a transition, a compulsion forward from moment to moment, a dialectic that returns into itself and gradually completes itself up to the whole : the Absolute is infinitely dialectic. And with this last word I signalise the strangely peculiar character and at the same time the pervading reason of the deep and enduring influence of this philosophy. An aestheticising and vivifying of logic that concealed itself under an abstract schema, that procured itself authority and systematised itself under premiss of a metaphysical formula for the universe, that pushed itself into everything : on this mostly is that influence based. This philosophy is an out-and-out revolution of the treat- ment of the notion. It proclaims that • the determinate as such has no other essential nature than this absolute unrest, not to be that which it is,' that ' all that is is a be-mediate ' * (a result). It brings through its dialectic into flux and movement the elements which were previously held as fixed and immovable. It tears up thus the whole floor of thought, and brings forth thereby, beside the noble fruit of a marvellous mastery of intellect that breathes life into cognition and the objects of cognition, the poisonous product as well of an unscrupulous and indefensible sophistic (pp. 106-7). And greater still than the difficulty of the outer, is that of the inner form. I mean that finishedness-from-the-first, that at-once-into-existence of the whole of this world of thought. Here there is not a word of any gradual introduction into an investigation, of any joining on to ordinary views, of any previous setting- up of the question whereby one might know where one was, of any critical statement of the case where one might of himself be able to take his stand. With the first step we find ourselves as through stroke of magic in a peculiar new world. Like the prince in Andersen's tale, we seem in sleep to have fallen on the back of the winged spirit who carries us off through the air in order to let us see deep beneath us the world from which we have been snatched. In other words, the System, as it is there, appears to bid defiance to every analysis, to all research. It shows there like a smooth ball more ready to roll than easy to catch. Broken down is the scaffolding over which the arch was built. Filled up are all the inlets and outlets to this edifice of thought. One and only one possibility is there to penetrate here. We possess the key to this edifice only by this, that we have followed the philosopher in the course of his studies and the progress of his training, that we have stolen be- hind him into the innermost of his still resorts of thought and feeling. What is not in actuality — [this is the key as before] — shall exist in the ether of the Idea. The unreal notions of the Germans, divorced from the truth of things, shall * Be-mediate is an ugly mongrel for ein Vermitteltes ; but it seems to me to convey the peculiar Hegelian sense somehow. 628 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. through the native energy and force of thought shape themselves into real notions, and, through this their realisation, into a world of notions. Eeflexion shall bring into reality the ideal which the praxis of German life denies. A deed of reflexion shall be set on whereby the gulf which by the political action of the German state is perpetually created and maintained between the universal and the particular, between formality and reality, shall be filled up. Through thought shall the fair concord between inner and outer, between the parts and the whole, be restored to that reality which it possessed in the poetry and art, in the State and customs of antiquity. Through thought shall that contradiction-annihilating life, shall that truth of love, and that truth of religion, be set into existence. The same sharp-sighted and matter-of-fact, penetrating and history-sifting thought which discovered in antiquity and the tenets of Christianity the ideal, but in the German present the negation of this ideal — the same thought moves now from the hem of the Hegelian spirit to the centre of the same ; it throws itself once for all on this ideal itself in order to raise its burthen into an absolute form for every interest, for the collective world of being and of consciousness. Leagued with the spirit of a better future, in silent agreement with the genius of German poesy, borne on the wave of a new world-epoch, it soars beyond the immediate level of the actual life at its feet — nay, beyond the self-acknowledged limits of all reflexion, in order to construct a world which is a reality only under the heaven of Hellas, a truth only in the deeps of the God -adoring soul. Only the boldness and the breadth of the conception can conceal the inner contradiction and the impossi- bility of the enterprise. Only the intensest exertion of the thinking faculty will enable the unwilling medium of reflexion to allow to rise from it an aesthetic product of cognition. Only the universe, on the other hand, will be wide enough to render inappreciable the dimensions within which every particular existence may be able to show as correlative part of a fair and living Cosmos. This is the history and this the character of the Hegelian system. I name it an aesthetic work of cognition. It will not, as it were, critically decompose the world of being and of consciousness, but construct it into the unity of a beauti- ful whole. It will not expose the aporias of cognition — not make clear to itself the limits, the contradictions, and antinomies in the world of spirit, but, on the contrary, it will strike down these difficulties and level out these contra- dictions. It is, I say, the exposition of the universe as of a beautiful living Cosmos. After the manner of the old Greek philosophy, it will show how in the world as in a whole all the parts conjoin to service of one harmonious order. It will make present to us the universal all as a vast organism in which each particular ceases to be dead and receives the significance of a living organ. It will show that the w«hole is an infinite all of life ; to this end it will in everything finite expose its finiteness, and just with this and on account of this demonstrate its necessary completion into an infinite life. . . . Such main idea on which lies the conception of the whole system, will require now in the first place to be suppleted by the imagination of the systematiser. (Pp. 94-97.) This theory of Haym, so enormous in word if so scanty in thought, must be allowed to possess it own correctness so far. The system of Hegel certainly aims at totality — (as for aesthetic HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 629 beauty, Hellenic Cosmos, Greek Ideals, German Keals, Gothe and Schiller, and Poetry and all that, it may be viewed for the moment as simply literary importation) — and the Self-reflexion of Spirit is as certainly somehow present in it. An attempt at totality, and an attempt at dialectic articulation, no one can deny in Hegel. But did we want Haym's five hundred brilliant pages to make us aware of this ? Which of us did not see this for himself the very first moment he looked into Hegel ? A whole, and, in dialectic symmetry, what else lies on the surface, on the very outside of the system? Is not this just what the table of contents at once makes plain to us? Is not this just the whole of the information we all of us get — and we get it at once — when we look at Hegel the first day, and perhaps the thousandth ? And is not this the single grievance we would have removed ? Is not this the single difficulty we long to have explained ? Yes, it is a whole, ' finished-from-the-first,' ' at-ouce- in-existence ' — Why ? Yes, it is dialectically articulate — but Hoiv f « Beautiful Totality ! ' ' Self-reflexion of Spirit ! '—with such hollow assumption you but mock us by an exclamatory echo in return for an interrogatory call. Nay, nay ! hide it not in rhetoric, cover it not with flowers and flourishes of literature — Hellenic Cosmos and what not: we see it perfectly clearly all the time — you see totality, you see self-reflexion; but as for anything else, you see it no more than we ourselves. How it is totality, and what is the totality, how it is dialectically articulate, and what it is that is dialectically articulate — just in general what is all this about — what are the thoughts here — till yau can tell us something about that, till we can tell you something about that, both of us had better hold our tongues, however literary we be. Haym's rhetoric and literature we blow into space, then, — rhetoric and literature being no substitutes for ideas, no substitutes for information, and we see the so-called key which was supposed to lie in their midst to be no key — no key, but a juggle practised on us, as it were, by means of our own admissions. The probability, then, is that Haym knows not the literal historical derivation from Kant — the probability, then, is that Haym knows not the literal Hegelian Begriff? Just so; this is the truth, and in the above extracts there are proofs to this effect; but before commenting upon these, we shall add others. It (the Hegelian Philosophy) is the history of philosophy itself projected on a plane (p. 1). 630 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. As it is the history of philosophy in nuce, so it is philosophy in nuce (p. 2). The Logic, to say it briefly, has a course like history ; and this, because history as such has been made the material and guide, the concrete agent of the dialectic (p. 320). Critique and refutation of Kantianism pervade the ' science of logic ' from one end to the other. This (' science of logic ') relates itself to Kant as Kant's first great work related itself to Wolff and Hume. In Kant, Hegel sees his predecessor, as Kant his in Hume And further. As the science of logic has its explanation with Criticismus (Kant's) behind it, so it has its explanation with the philosophy of the Romantic (Schelling's) behind it. Rather, it is nothing but the systematising of this latter explanation (p. 298). However strange the articulation of this system may seem, however forced the development of moment from moment, we should be extremely blind, did we not see the clue by means of which the pretended necessity of the dialectic progress receives an authorisation of fact. It receives such author- isation by means of the history of the Pre-Hegelian philosophy. Our dialectician expressly turns himself in special polemical excursus now against Kant and Hume, now against Fichte and Schelling. Even this express polemic, however, always leans quite closely on his positive developments, and almost blends with the dialectic of the categories. Nay, more. Just in the last- stated parts does this logical dialectic directly take nutriment from the factual dialectic of the historical eourse and matter of the latest philosophy. It is self-evident — not the less self-evident because it is not spoken out — that it is the matter and context of the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy which is criticised in the 'System of Grundsatze' (axioms, principles) and in the ' Metaphysic of Objectivity.' It is the Fichtian Wissenschaftslehre, that, as in its Theoretical and Practical parts, we recognise under the title of the ' Metaphysic of Subjectivity.' Kant, as is well known, had no metaphysic of his own : he rejoined the Wolffian metaphysic into a metaphysic of Problems. He had, on the other hand, a Logic of his own, and different from the usual one, a so-called transcendental logic. In this transcendental logic he deduced the categories of Quantity and Quality, the relational notions of Substantiality, Causality, and Reciprocity ; the modal ones of Possibility, Actuality, and Necessity. In the Critique of Pure Reason, too, a 1 system of Grundsatze ' followed the deduction of the Categories ; and the dialectic critique of the previous Metaphysic followed the system of Grundsatze. Here we have the outlines, much modified, it is true, of the Hegelian Logic and Metaphysic In his system Hegel realised the notions in truth in the most varied manner. He realised them neither least nor least successfully in this way, that he modified their colourless abstract nature by the dye of their historical value. In the most varied way, also, he made them fluent and capable of movement. One of these ways, and not the least successful, consisted in immersing them in the stream of the historical evolution. Notions, he might in this reference have said, are in truth just as in a particular time they were understood, and they develop in truth into what, in the historical transition from system to system, they developed into. Much more certainly than this historical background of the notion-' realising ' dialectic, behind the formalism of the same, do the various other ways, as just HEGEL'S COMMENTATOES. 631 so many other concrete supports of the progress of the reflexion from moment to moment, conceal themselves.' (Pp. 113-115.) These are the strongest expressions we can find anywhere in Haym in regard to his sense of the connexion of the Hegelian system with Kant and with history in general. And one is apt to exclaim at first, And what would you have more ? Are they not strong enough ? Is it not clear from them that Haym knows all about Hegel and Kant, and Hegel and History ? We say, No : if the literal connexion with Kant and History on the part of Hegel which has been developed in these pages is to be inter- polated by the reader into these words of Haym as uttered by Haym, we have again an instance of those fallacious ex post facto significations of which we have already spoken. Hegel tells us himself that his Logic is the History of Philosophy itself, not 'projected on a plane' indeed, but freed from the con- crete contingency of the historical form. In this way, the Logic may be very well spoken of as the ' History of Philosophy in nuce ; ' but how can we ever call the Hegelian System itself — whether with reference to the score of volumes of the ' Works,' or to the three parts of the Encyclopaedic ' — Philosophy in nuce ? Hegel's philosophy is philosophy in nuce: how shall we obtain any sense for this phrase, unless by simply explaining again that Hegel's philosophy is the History of Philosophy in nuce ? There is something here of seductive literary jingle merely. Then, Haym says that Hegel's Logic has a course like History, not of its own pulse, not of any internal principle in itself, but be- cause of the simple and intelligible outside reason that Hegel has constructed his Logic out of History. But this is not to under- stand the Hegelian connexion of Logic and History. To Hegel, thought — Logic — is all ; it has developed itself — it is a progres- sive alternating Gesetztseyn, according to its own laws, its own necessity, its own life ; and the History of Logic in concrete natural actuality is but the same process, the same life, in the mode of externality. In Logic, Substance by its own notional dialectic becomes Causality, which in turn and similarly becomes Reciprocity, and then the Notion. In the History of Logic (or of Philosophy, if you will), this series is externally represented or realised by the actual thinkings of the men — Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke ; then Hume, then Kant, and then Hegel himself. It is this literal connexion which neither Haym, nor, if we are right, anybody else as yet has understood ; and it is a veritable inversion 632 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. of the truth to assert the Logic of Hegel to have been formed from without by a consideration of actual history. In this assertion, even, it is not for a moment contemplated that the transition of Reciprocity into the Notion is the abstract expression of the con- crete history of thought from Kant to Hegel ; and the last-named (Hegel), instead of being enabled by History to construe Logic, was, on the contrary, enabled by Logic to construe History. We do not mean to say that Logic was throughout the first ; but we do mean to say that a generalisation of Logic on hint of Kant was the first ; that the concrete connexion between Substantiality, Causality, Reciprocity, &c, and actual modern history, was a dis- covery that constituted the second ; and that, after these, by means of a variety of labours and investigations now of history and now of philosophy, there arose as result — the Hegelian System. Now it is this literal statement which we think the right one as regards the connexion between the Hegelian Logic and actual History. Haym plainly has not even attained to the tinge of a dream of it. That there was some connexion, it was not difficult for Haym to know, for Hegel tells us again and again the fact ; and a very simple comparing of their respective tables of contents sufficed to show that if Quantity, Quality, Substance, Cause, Reciprocity, &c, had been discussed by Kant, they had also been discussed by Hegel. Haym's know- ledge amounts to no more than this ; he simply points to this community of contents : he knows nothing and says nothing of the inner articulations : what we name the unknown and hidden heuristic life of Hegel when constructing his system, to this he has attained no access, with whatever closeness he has followed the oilier history and appearances of Hegel. He sees some relation between the Logic and Kant, but immediately thereafter he sees some relation also between the Logic and Schelling, and this latter relation he decides to be the dominant one. ' Rather,' says he, ' it (i.e., the Logic) is nothing but the systematising of this latter explanation ' (that come to with the Romantic of Schelling, namely). Haym, in fact, has to say a great many things, and this is one of them. The preface to the Phaenomenologie had very plainly a great deal to do with Schelling and his intellectual per- ception ; it is to gain breadth to say the Logic is occupied with the same business, and we need not fear to blunder, for beyond doubt there is question of Schelling in the Logic as well. In fact, never getting the clue into his hand, Haym cannot simply hegel's commentators. 633 and satisfactorily just wind ; he is obliged to grasp at a thousand scattered expedients as they float by. So it is that the Logic is this instant from end to end a refutation of Kant, and the next nothing but an explanation come to with Schelling: the simple original unit is never caught, and then developed into its necessary many. In default of this unit with its necessary many, he is compelled to see and to say that Hegel realises his notions, that is, constructs his system, 'in the most varied manner ; ' and just after the stress which he lays on the ' historical background,' as the main genetic source from which Hegel drew his materials, he speaks of ' the various other ways ' which are the ' other concrete supports ' of the dialectic evolution, and which ' conceal them- selves certainly much more behind the formalism ' of the dialectic than even this historical background. But let us see what Haym himself says of what Hegel himself says about the historical supports of the Logic, — perhaps we shall gain thus more light : — Hegel maintained — if, as regards the main notions of the successive historical systems of philosophy, we strip off that which belongs to their external circumstances of origin, their particular applications, &c, we obtain the various stages of the determination of the Idea itself in its logical notion ; conversely, we have in the logical progress, the progress of historical phenomena in its main moments. This, so far as I see, is more than a mere hint ; it is a naive admission of the source from which the Logic drew partly its matter, and more than partly the form of its movement. What in the Frankfort sketch of the Logic and Metaphysic became visible only in individual passages, that becomes evident now with reference to the entire Logic. The Categories obtain their universal dialectic flux by the reality of nature and the mind being filled into them through the fine channel of abstraction. (P. 322.) Here Haym quotes from Hegel himself an assertion of the existence of a much closer connexion between Logic and History than even he (Haym) seemed to seek to exhibit. Hegel says, History is Logic in concreto, and, conversely, Logic is History in abstracto. Haym's allusions to the Pre-Hegelian philosophy, to explanations come to with Kant, Schelling, &c, are thus by no means revelations, and not by any means discoveries: Hegel speaks much more plainly, much more unexceptively than Haym. Nay, Hegel, as we have seen, has not been taken at his own word ; it is here in these pages that what is the real significance (when concretely translated into history) of the transition of Reciprocity into the Notion, has been for the first 634 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. time pointed out ; and Haym, for his part, still believes himself to throw a light of detection on Hegel, when he makes prominent some relation or other (he cannot say particularly what relation) to history in the Logic. Nay, more ; Haym flatly refuses to take Hegel's own word, and insists on calling it ' a naive admission ! ' An admission, above all, a naive admission, and on the part of a Hegel ! Did the Sphinx, then, naively babble her own secret, and was it so that (Edipus overthrew her ? Hegel says, in such and such wise, History is Logic and Logic is History : Haym says, Don't believe him — that just means, he took outside facts and reduced them to his Logic by the fine channel of abstraction, — that just means, his Logic is but an artificial distillation, by means of a concealed process, of the concrete facts of nature, history, and consciousness, which are open, which are common to all of us. Haym will not take the hint that what is, is Thought ; and that every particular of what is, must be but a particular of Thought. An outer world that comes one knows not whence, that is the prius of Haym, and Hegel's work is to him but a cunning and external metamorphosing of it. Hegel gets thence, he says, partly his matter and more than partly his form. This seems an inversion ; surely Haym means to say that all the matter came from without ! Whence else, in Haym's way of looking, could it come ? Perhaps Haym has it in mind, however, that Hegel's matter is partly pure invention, pure fiction. But then, that the form is more than partly derived from the realms of fact ! We thought the form was the dialectic, that it was an artificial and mechanical process got up somehow in imitation of the movement of Spirit, that it was a poisonous Sophistic, &c. &c. : but no ; the form comes ' more than partly ' from the realms of fact ! To account for this Hegel, then, it is quite enough to be always brilliantly in speech ? But, to Haym, with these realistic tendencies in him as we see, ought anything in this world to be more valuable than the categories, if, as he says, ' the reality of nature and the mind ' has been ' filled into them ' ? Haym's observations in regard to history and the Hegelian Logic are very far, then, from possessing that weight and apposite- ness which they may at first seem to possess. We may say, he names a historical connexion, but sees not the historical connexion. In fact, to him the whole truth here is, that certain historical materials have been taken up by Hegel — aesthetically — for completeness' sake — into his beautiful totality. The following hegel's commentators. 635 extracts will extend evidence in this reference of a directer nature : — How does this apocrypha, this system which has grown in concealment, relate itself to the philosophy of the day ; how first of all, and before all, does it relate itself to the then Philosophy of Schelling ? (P. 143.) Both had exchanged Kant's critical tendency in philosophy for a dogmati- cal one. Both had burst the thread with which Fichte had bound the whole of truth to the infinite self-certainty of the ego. Both had ceased to regard human freedom (free-will) as the highest form and the highest law under which cognition had to subordinate the entire universe. ... In contrast to the Fichtian method of reflexion and deduction, both had come to develop the matter of their theory of the universe in a representative and descriptive manner. . . . Both saw in the sensuous universe no longer the mere reflex of ' the light immanent in the ego,' but the realisation and manifestation of a third (party), of a metaphysical absolute that grasped up both subjectivity and objectivity. The philosophy of both was, again, what neither the Kantian nor the Fichtian had been, a System. Both systems finally — and this one point is far and away the most important, to this one point all the rest may be reduced, from it all the rest may be explained — both systems rested ultimately on the same common principle, were dominated by the one, now more and now less distinctly enunciated thought : the whole of being is like a work of art, the whole — thought as action, nature as history — stands under the aesthetic schema and bears the type of absolute harmony. (P. 144.) But nothing of such a struggle, of such a groping, of such a vacillating irresolution, shows itself in the genesis of the Hegelian convictions. From the moment he enters philosophy independently there hangs before him an ideal of a view of the world and of life that only late indeed realised itself in the form of a philosophical system, the physiognomy of which, however, was already visible in firm traits in those early paraphrases of the evangelical history and the theological dogmas. Heart and soul immovably directed to this ideal, he advances with firm step to his system ; neither the Reason- Kritik nor the Wissenschaftslehre can impose upon him, perplex him, divert him, shake him. Unsteady, irregular, and eccentric, advancing by zig-zag, is the line which Schelling describes before he throws himself into the point of Identity : continuous, uninterrupted, straightly, surely drawn the path along which the convictions of Hegel proceed till they establish themselves in the system. (P. 145.) What Schelling had got at second-hand, that Hegel had got at first. The aesthetic world-theory of the forner had the modern, that of the latter Hellenic, classicism and humanism as its foundation. . . . Hegel's philosophy in its original form, on the contrary, is an independent fruit of philological studies ; it is a side-piece to the poetry of Gothe and Schiller, and grown on the same soil — a philosophical attempt to restore the antique, as this poetry was a poetical attempt. ... He has, as it were, unconsciously converted into moments of his system both Kantianism and Fichtianism, and in the con- struction of this system these modes of thought have themselves received the colour of his ideal. . . . Schelling, because he has passed so directly from the school of the preceding systems to his new position, has the advantage over 636 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Hegel of being able more sharply and fundamentally to point this position. His system has a name, and we know distinctly what it wants. In its genesis from the preceding systems, and in its own principle, it is perfectly transparent. (Pp. 146, 147, 148, 149.) The more we consider the f System of Ethics,' the more do we miss specific Hegelian features, the more do we discover in it Schellingian features (p. 171). The Schellingian mannerism of construction extends itself on the surface. (P. 174.) The metal was Hegel's, the stamp was Schelling's. It completes — I repeat it — the proof that the former, not only accommodated himself to the latter, but that, up to a certain degree, he was dominated and carried away by the peculiarity of the latter. (P. 179.) When he describes Speculation as ' Synthesis of Reflexion with the Absolute Perception,' the true method as 'Self-destruction of Reflexion;' when he says that ' the Self-sublating Contradiction is the highest formal expression of knowledge and truth ; ' or when he characterises the 1 absolute notion ' as the ' absolute direct contrary of itself : ' when he demands that every part of philosophy be presented in the shape of an independent, complete formation, and this formation be 'united with the logical element,' — all this amounts to expressions which do not indeed cancel his Schellingianism, but, &c. . . . The dialectic is his peculiar difference from Schelling (p. 212). He adapted himself in the first three and a half years of his Jena residence to the Identitats-philosophie : the consequence was, that he threw himself with greater stress on the aesthetic side of his world-picture (p. 221). Much deeper than the modern had the ancient spirit acted on him. Despite all acquaintance with later literary and philosophical endeavours, he was still a special intimate only of the genius of Hellenic Antiquity. The pith and marrow of bis system had just for this reason — of this we have convinced ourselves — grown up out of antique root ; almost perfectly foreign and isolated it stood beside those creations of the German Spirit which were even then in bloom, and had arrested the interest of contemporaries (p. 126). The origin and character of this system were totally different from those of the systems of Kant and Fichte. The object of Kant was, first of all, before a single step was taken in philosophy, with the most self-denying and im- partial accuracy to buoy out the terrain of possible cognition. It was his object to discover a fixed and immovable point of truth to which to attach with infallible certainly the whole of knowledge, and he discovered this point — grasping deep down into the undermost grounds of human nature — in the conscience. Quite otherwise lay the matter with Hegel. It is not in first rank the necessity of scientific conscientiousness and truth that impels him to philosophy, but it is the necessity to represent to himself the whole of the world and of life in a form fulljr ordered and arranged. It is not a fixed, marked-off point out from which he prosecutes the discovery of truth, but it is an ideal grown out of history and the mind itself — a concrete image, a broad and full idea, an idea of the authority of which beforehand he gives himself no abstract critical account, but which out of the full energy of his being he has appropriated to himself and lived for himself, which, he knows not himself how, has filled and penetrated him to the full, and into which he now longs to carry over the entire wealth of the being of nature and of man. hegel's commentators. 637 The Hegelian philosophy, accordingly, arises, as it were, from a poetic im- pulse— from the impulse to project a figure of the world according to an ideal type lying ready in the mind of the systematiser. He is beyond Kant and Fichte, without having and before he has expressly exercised any inquest into their leading principles. In Frankfort, indeed, he studied the Kantian moral and political theories which had just appeared ; but even in the detailed study of these writings, as he plies it for himself pen in hand, he enters not properly into any critical analysis of the Kantian principles, but he opposes to the rigorous consequences which Kant had developed from his ground-notions, quite simply his own notions which had grown up from the soil of religious sentiment and historical idea. . . . The question is the authorisation of Hegel to translate that ideal into the form of reflexion and thought. ... Be it as it may with the truth of the Kantian and Fichtian philosophy, this is certain : they were pure and natural products of the factual situation of our nation (pp. 88-89). It is an ideal grown up in a foreign soil and in an alien time by which Hegel is out and out actuated (p. 91). This labour stood visibly, quite independently of its being only a Torso, all too isolated and special, all too apart from the consequent, connected, manifest course which philosophy had taken in the hands of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling (p. 122). All here is and happens quite otherwise than in what has been elsewhere and ever called Logic and Metaphysic. We have here partly other notions than those we know from Aristotle, from Kant, or from the metaphysic of Wolff. Quite otherwise is the nature of these notions, quite otherwise are their cognition and mutual relations conceived. The Hegelian restoration of Logic and Metaphysic is a total revolution of them (p. 313). The apriorism of Hegel, because it did not, like the Kantian, derive from the concrete inner, was what broke the point off all the apparent liberality of the political views of Hegel. .... These were furthest from true freedom where they spoke biggest of reason and the notion (p. 355). Since Kant we have had again an ethical, but no longer any speculative metaphysic : now (after Hegel) we have again a speculative but no ethical metaphysic (p. 367). The defect with which morality remains affected in Hegel arises from his inability to appreciate the Kantian conception of it (p. 376). The word free-will is a coin whose currency finds itself in constant oscillation. The inner intention alone determines the sense of this word. The construction which Hegel puts upon it, is the means of betraying the fundamental defects of his philosophy. What falls at once into the eye, is the preponderance of the theoretic over the practical, or, to say it more correctly, the absorption of the willing into the thinking Spirit. Will and free-will evaporate with Hegel into thinlcing and knowing. The will, so runs the psychological definition which forms the basis of his whole system of free- will, is 'a particular form of thought.' .... The will, he says, 'is only as thinking intelligence true free-will ; ' free-will in that way is identical with reason Sharply to say it, this is a will, then, which wills not (p. 370). If we saw from previous quotations that Haym ascribed the development of the Hegelian Logic to the actual use of the historical materials of Kant &c, and from others that he would 638 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. not, at the same time, accept Hegel's own admission of this his- torical connexion as on internal principles, but would insist on a mere external, though covered, mechanism being the only agent at work, we see from these last quotations that Haym has not attained to the slightest conception of the veritable historical connexion which affiliates Hegel to his predecessors. The truth of the matter is, that Hegel, by means of the most laborious, con- tinuous, and frequently-repeated analyses, especially of Kant, but very certainly and very particularly of Fichte and Schelling also, arrived at an accurate perception of the true nature and real reach of the principles that constituted the foci in the meditations of Kant, and of the respective influences of the further operations of Fichte and Schelling thereupon. Not till this was accomplished, did he discern the remarkable light which the new results reflected on the Philosophy of the Greeks and the History of Philosophy in general. The new interpretations thus obtained as regards these latter interests were more adapted, in the first place, to conceal than reveal his relations to Kant ; but in this last he rooted, and the stiff, wooden, insecure enthusiasm for Sophocles which Holderlin had awakened in him had no influence on his philo- sophy as such. We have it again and again under the hand of Hegel, though he was certainly not at all loud about it to his con- temporaries, that he knew perfectly well that he worked only on a thing called the Kantian Philosophy, which was a genuine pro- duct of human history and human consciousness, and which he himself, as genuinely, endeavoured to advance to the place and function it promised to fill and fulfil as the Science of Philosophy at length. To Hegel it was perfectly evident that, do what he might, and let Fichte and Schelling have done whatever they may, this thing would be known in time as, and would be named only, the Kantian Philosophy. Nor one whit less evident was it, that it was a true interest and carried in its womb all the germs of the future. So runs the story with us and in truth ; but the reader need only glance superficially back on the extracts we have made, to become at once aware that with Haym the whole matter runs in precisely the contrary direction. To Haym, despite certain borrowed articles he sees in it, the house of Hegel is absolutely peculiar and absolutely isolated. It has no connexion whatever with the houses over-the-way. In origin, motive, plan, structure, it is wholly different from these. The very articles borrowed are but to fill his house ; nay, they HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 639 are just such household articles as all such houses cannot be without. Hegel tells him, indeed, that in raising his house, he laid others under contribution : but Haym will not believe him — not at all in his own way of it. The principle was modern and genuine, and its treatment was through thought, thought the sincerest and the truest ; but Haym would have it that the principle was ancient, and its treatment through art, imagination, invention. To fill up this principle, accordingly, Haym has no natural clue of its own to wind into it : he is compelled to stop and to stuff it with a thousand miscellaneous expedients which his own great native ingenuity enables him to intercept on every side — but not, however, without falling on the face ever and anon over his own contradictions. These matters are so plain that it is not worth while spending time on them, and we shall offer to guide the reader in interpret- ing the above extracts by only a word or two. In the quotations (pages 626-633), which were made for another purpose, we shall find several expressions which militate against the truth of the case (the ' Secret of Hegel ' ) as it has yielded itself in the present work, and demonstrate the blindness of Haym to the real origin of the System from Kant. From these it is clear that to Haym the work of Hegel is but a factitious and illusory attempt to transform, not his Ideal into the Actual, but ' the Actual into his Ideal.' For the accomplishment of this work, Hegel, in his opinion, ' turns aside from the strait path of sober inquiry, from the labour of deliverance through con- scientious criticism ' (such as Kant's), to set up a ' composite enigma,' ' tricked out with the appearance of a science of truth,' that merely seeks to be in relation with ' a dreamed-of and yearned-for future.' It stands in absolute isolation, absolutely without any connexion that might be a bridge to it. It is realised in • the most varied manner ' by a variety of expedients, and in general by a transcendence of 'the self-acknowledged limits of all reflexion.' It is no result of criticism and analysis ; it has no examination of the nature and limits of concrete thought behind it ; it does not thinkingly decompose, but aesthetically construct. It will not have things as they are : it will have things as it would, &c. Though the description of the isolation of the system is exceedingly happy and exhaustively representative of the feelings of every man who approaches it for the first time, it is out of place in one who pretends to have attained to initiation, and 640 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. gives not a hint of the true state of the case — the close and literal derivation from Kant. The whole conception which the words show Haym to entertain — the very phrase 'composite enigma ' points to a conclusion the very opposite of that which has been here maintained. In relation to the extracts which occur specially in this par- ticular reference, we cannot speak differently. What concerns Schelling, for example, is an enunciation in many of its con- stituents completely wide of the truth. It is to follow quite a wrong scent to seek, ' first of all and before all/ to track Hegel in this reference. Haym himself acknowledges the incommunicable disjunctions which, as regards Schelling, the Frankfort sketch of the Hegelian System displays — it was 'a quite other world' — and that 'it (the system) never receded from these its funda- mental articulations' as contained in this sketch. And this is the truth : in that sketch Hegel had reached to the secret of Kant ; he had attained to the Begriff, and stood but in small need of Schelling — unless for the lift which the shoulders of the Schel- lingian fame were able to extend to the then Hegelian obscurity. The whole affiliation, then, of Hegel to Schelling is full of items quite at variance with the veritable origin, with the veritable conditions. The Frankfort sketch is evidently ' a Torso,' and beyond a doubt it required a licking into shape ; but how absurd to say it stood in need ' of an understanding being come to with the general course of German philosophy,' inasmuch as it was nothing but this 'explanation,' nothing but the result of this ' course,' and how infinitely more absurd it is to opine as follows : ' that this in both respects (the ' licking ' and the ' explanation ') really took place, we have to thank the removal of Hegel from Frankfort to Jena'! Why, after such success as the Frankfort sketch demonstrates Hegel to have obtained, the System would have been eventually licked into shape though its author had been consigned to Timbuctoo, — had he been but left the necessary means otherwise. The well-balanced affinities of Hegel and Schelling, then, and their equally well-counterbalanced differences, are, for the most part, but words, words, words. Hegel had not exchanged 'criticism' for mere 'dogmatism;' he had not abandoned 'the infinite self -certainty of the ego;' he had not 'ceased to regard human free-will as the highest form and the highest law, &c. ;' he had not adopted, 'in contrast to the Fichtian,' ' a representative method ' (at least, this is no correct bkgel's commentators. 641 account of the matter) ; lastly, he had not — with a great many- other things — viewed all as under an ' aesthetic schema.' Again, it is speaking very wide to talk of the 'physiognomy' of the system being 'already visible in firm traits' in his early theo- logical studies. 'Neither the Eeason-Kritik nor the Wissen- schaftslehre can impose upon him, perplex him, divert him, shake him ! ' ' Hegel had taken good care of that ; he knew better than that : he knew that out of these works only was it that he could build, and he took good care to appropriate all he could for that purpose out of both. "We may almost say, indeed, that in these two works, when they are rightly understood, will be seen the beginning, the middle, and the end of Hegel. Then all that about 'first hand,' 'second hand,' 'modern,' 'ancient,' &c, is but mere literary verbiage, so far as the special issue is concerned. The Hegelian System is not ' an independent fruit of -philological studies.' He has not ' unconsciously >' taken up into it 'both Kantianism and Fichtianism.' The position of Hegel, when it is understood, is as ' sharply pointed ' as that of Schelling, and his derivation from predecessors, not less, but more close, literal, and, in the end, 'transparent.' Hegel could not get his Ethics from Schelling, but only from Kant. Hegel did ' accommodate ' him- self to Schelling, but he was not ' carried away ' by him ; he did not allow himself to be affected by his 'manier'; and both 'metal' and 'stamp' are in Hegel's works Hegel's own, all conditions of genesis being duly allowed for. When Hegel talks of 'the self - sublating contradiction being the highest formal expression of knowledge and truth,' &c, these expressions not only do cancel his Schellingianism, but exhibit him — as in possession of the Begriff — infinitely beyond Schelling. ' The pith and marrow of his system' — we may have convinced ourselves of whatever we please — was not ancient but modern, and this system did not stand ' almost perfectly foreign and isolated ' beside its predecessors, ' which were even then in bloom,' but rose bodily a literal birth out of them. ' The origin and character of this system ' were not ' totally different from those of Kant and Fichte.' Hegel, as much as Kant, and more open-eyed, sought the ' terrain of possible cognition ; ' Hegel, as much as Kant, strove to a fixed point (or principle) of truth ; Hegel, as much as Kant, is distinguished by 'the most self-denying and impartial accuracy.' ' The necessity of scientific conscientiousness ' is primal with Hegel ; and he was not one whit keener in his longing towards 2s 642 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. totality and a system than Kant himself. It is ft * fixed point ' {the notion) from which he proceeds, and not ' an ideal ' which possesses him ■ he knows not how/ of which he can give ' no critical account beforehand ' ! No man that ever lived was ever less so possessed ; no man that ever lived was ever abler just to give such an account. The system of Hegel does not arise from ' a poetic impulse.' He is not ' beyond Kant and Fichte before he has exercised any inquest into their leading principles.' He did enter — and vastly, infinitely, incalculably more thoroughly than ever student into any matter yet — 'into a critical analysis of the Kantian principles.' Haym does not know Hegel's 'authorisa- tion,' certainly ; but not the less on that account is this authori- sation good, — though, of course, the whole thing still wants confirmation. The Hegelian, quite as certainly as ' the Kantian and Fichtian philosophy,' was a ' pure product ' of the 'factual situation ' in Germany. Hegel is not out-and-out actuated by an ' ideal ' merely, and that by which he is actuated is neither of ' alien soil ' nor of ' an alien time.' ' The apriorism of Hegel ' did, ' like the Kantian, derive from the concrete inner.' The ' isolation ' of the system and the ' difference of the Logic from any other have had comment enough ; but it is necessary to say a word as regards the relation of Hegel to morality and free-will. It must suffice at present, however, just to assert, without state- ment of proof, that Hegel, while he is nowhere greater in himself, is nowhere truer to Kant, than in all that appertains to Ethics. I know not that there is any lesson in any mere human book that can at all approach in value the lesson that comes to us from the words Subjective and Objective (Form and Inhalt) as used by Hegel in a practical or Ethical connexion. It is quite plain, then, from a thousand tracks, that Haym knows nothing of the true and literal derivation of Hegel from Kant. His deliverances in regard to the ' Frankfort Sketch ' are to the same effect. This sketch is named of Frankfort because it seems to have been written there ; it dates thus not later than 1800 ; and it is still in manuscript — a manuscript ' consisting of 102 sheets in 4to, of which, however, the three first and the seventh are wanting.' As a specimen of the contents of this remarkable paper, I translate a passage contained in the notes to Haym's book (p. 493): What is united in a Judgment, the Subject and Predicate, the former the Particular, the latter the Universal, contradict themselves through their hegel's commentators. 643 antithesis in themselves and through the opposed subsumption which they mutually exercise ; each is for itself, and each refers itself in its For-self- ity (Fiirsichseyn), to the other, and sets [assumes, infers, implies, or eximplies] reciprocally the same as a Sublated (-ity). The one as much as the other must exhibit itself as setting this ideality in the other. In the way in which they refer themselves to one another in the notion of a Judgment, the con- tradictory Fiirsichseyn (individuality) of each of them is set : each, however, is only for itself in that the other is not for itself ; as they are in the Judgment each is for itself ; the individuality of the one must therefore make the other something other than it is immediately set in the Judgment : this self- preservation through subjection of the other under itself is therefore im- mediately an othering of this other ; but the nature of Judgment must at the same time equally assert itself in this alteration and sublate at the same time this otherwiseness. The way, therefore, is reflexion of this other into itself. The realising of the terms of the Judgment is thus a double one, and both together complete the realising of the Judgment which in this its totality has itself become another ; in that the peculiarity of the terms — which peculiarity is essential to the Judgment — has through the reflexions sublated itself for itself, and rather fulfilled for itself the empty nexus (co-reference). This extract will probably appear only so much ' clotted non- sense.' Still, what Hegel is employed on here, tangled as it may be, is, so to speak, the essential act of the logical judgment as such — the terms of it now as disjunct and again as conjunct. The various extracts, however, concern the whole subject, root of the System, in cognition by perception, cate- gory (notion), and idea, as suggested by Kant. The quotations of Haym, in truth, surprise one with the light they throw on the true nature of the genesis and operations of Hegel. Indeed, the perfection to which this latter has already brought the inquiry is alone fitted to surprise. The triplicity is full-formed, and the various divisions and subdivisions, if with differences and different names, are well advanced towards the form they were afterwards to assume. In short, reciprocity, the disjunctive syllogism, the generalisation of the generalisation of Kant into its ultimate principle, the realisation of the tri-une logical nisus, named in its separate or abstract moments simple apprehension, judgment, and reason — this realisation carried into everything, — these are the creative motives apparently throughout the whole sketch. To Haym, however, on the whole, this, the sincerest striving after the inner dialectic of the Notion can only show as a bare- faced and external escamoterie. Had Haym truly seen what was at work, had he truly seen the exhaustive study of Kant and the carrying forward of the principles so found ; — had he known the veritable nature of what Hegel carried in his pocket at the moment 644 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. that he — in appearance — gave in his adhesion to Schelling, — we should have had some very different remarks from him on all these points. But to all this Haym is simply external. Of the transition of the notions, the einfache Beziehung, our reflexion, and that of the thing itself, — of such things, he remarks (p. 109) : — ' It is clear, however, that it would be a false subtlety, would we see here more than one of the many formalistic turns and expedients of the system at present in its commencement.' Haym can only see sophistic here ; he does not know ' from what point as first our dialectician took his departure, and how he con- ditioned this departure,' but supposes so and so ; he speaks of ' the designations in themselves quite unintelligible of Eeference, Eela- tion, and Proportion, &c.' This last graduated triplet ought not to have been so unintelligible, for it exhibits very clearly its relation to the Notion — it exhibits very clearly the struggles of Hegel towards his System. Failing to perceive his departure from Kant, it is no wonder that the differences of Hegel from Schelling prove so puzzling to Haym. But turn we now to his mode of using the term Begriff,and let us see if it ever stood up to him — the Begriff. This Philosophy is an out-and-out revolution of the treatment of the Notion (p. 107). He forgets, in the necessity to see his Ideal in representa- tion before him, fixe impotence of the mere Notion, of which he himself had spoken (p. 86). With both there unites itself the necessity to represent the inner, and to find what were so represented, as an actual. The organ of such representation is to him, such is the nature of his spirit, the understanding, the sole medium in which said actualisation can accomplish itself, the Notion. It is not enough to him to have begriffen Religion ; he will at the same time possess it, represent it, realise it in the Begriff (p. 87). When he characterises ' the absolute notion ' as ' the absolute immediate contrary of itself ' . . . this is a declaration which does not do away with his Schellingianism, &c. (p. 212). It were endless to pursue everywhere — especially where only an ingenious association of ideas is at work — the trail of this dialectic. Take, however, by way of example, the transition from the 'Relation of Being' to the • Relation of Thinking.' The relation of reciprocity is assumed as the most highly developed form of the one, the definite notion as the most original form of the other. Transition is to be accomplished from the former to the latter. This transition then is to be conceived as a transition of the one into the other as its • reabty.' This making real is to be considered to take place according to the form of the process of the absolute spirit ; according to the form, that is, of ' the othering and of the return from the othering.' How runs the deduction? In the relation of reciprocity opposites are — exist together. Each of the opposed substances now is in relation to the other at once active and passive. The double effect of both only goes to this, that in the same way each of the two is in the same way neutralised, that both are reduced into the quiescence of equipoise. With the completest reality is this hegel's commentators. 645 process described by Hegel and shown to have its part in the operations of nature. We see depicted, how here the line of coming and going moves forwards and backwards in infinitum; how there are here infinitely many points equally of rise and division ; how through this infinite intricacy and intercrossing of coming and going, the actuality becomes the coming and at the same time also the ceasing being of the substances. Directly, however, the limning of this living fact becomes compressed into an abstract sum. Only so namely by means of the espial of an ingenious analogy, can the reciprocal interaction and interpassion of the opposed substances be converted into their • truth,' into the notion of the notion, that is to say, into the relation of universal and particular. The truth of the relation of reciprocity is to be assumed now to be a realised oneness of the opposed entities, and in this neutralisedness at the same time a manifestation of them as so neutralised. There has thus become, however, a self-contrary ; for in the original notion the opposites were as existent. It is thus, negatively, the dropping of the characteristic peculiarity of reciprocity to be a relation of existent entities, and, positively, the advertence to the oneness of opposites, it is the one-sided reflecting on the abstractest trait of similarity between this relation and that in which universal and particular stand to each other in the definite notion, — it is by this that dialectic here turns to nought the upright doctrine of Kant, that the notion enters indeed into existence, but never wholly assumes it. The notion, then, is the ' self-equal unity of opposites,' the manifestation of what is latent in the process of reciprocity : — on this thin thread hangs the transition from the ontological to the logical forms ! (Pp. 116-17.) It is hardly necessary, in regard to these extracts, to show that Haym does not know the notion ; — this has been indirectly shown already ; — but our purpose at present is only to show that when Haym says the notion and the notion and the notion, he does not mean the notion. We are not called upon at present even to take note of what Haym says of reciprocity. In this reference we shall say this, however, that, in what he has in view, Hegel has, properly, nothing immediately to do with existents as regards the reci- procity he contemplates. It may be true that, according to Kant, the notion ' enters into existence but never wholly assumes it : ' with this, Hegel here has no concern. But, if we withdraw from existence itself, or any existence, all the moments of the notion, it will very much puzzle Haym himself to tell us what then remains. (In a very simple sense, indeed, that of which there can be and is no notion, must be nothing). To Hegel the notion (not any thing, not any existence or existent) of Causality, which is but a form of the notion, has by its own dialectic movement passed into Reciprocity. What was Cause is now Effect as well, and what was Effect is now no less Cause. They were tautological before, and they are now only differently tautological ; and this difference 646 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. is the product of the thing itself. To Hegel the notion of Eeci- procity is a necessary result of the native movement of the element Thought itself. But Haym may illustrate the thing to himself otherwise. Haym, we may certainly say, for example, has now a crude or figurate conception, a Vorstellung, of Eeciprocity. Well, if he will but take the trouble narrowly to watch his Vorstellung, whether as in imagination or as in actual perception — if he will but take the trouble to throw out all foreign admixtures, if he will but take the trouble to purify and reduce his conception into its absolutely abstract notion, — he will obtain a result — something still appertinent to existence — so peculiar that even he will have some difficulty to prevent it passing into — the notion of the notion. What we have before us, then, are notions as notions, or the forms of the notion as such, and any sneer about existence and existents is quite irrelevant and beside the point. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and indeed any German writer since the first of these, have been in the habit of speaking of the notion just as they would speak of the perception. This is simply a German method of expressing what Englishmen express by notions in general, notions as such, perceptions in general, perceptions as such. The notion and the perception of such usage are just the universals of notions and perceptions. But the notion, as notion universally, as universal notion (though the meanings will in the end be found to come together), does not at all mean in this usage the notion, the notion singularly, the singular notion, which, though coming to him by natural genesis from Kant, is peculiar to Hegel. Now ' the notion,' and ' the mere notion,' &c, of Haym is the former notion, and not the latter. The perception is at this moment intelligible as perception taken universally ; but if ' the perception ' were used as Hegel uses ' the notion,' then the percep- tion would be one special, particular and peculiar — would be a certain single or singular perception. This has just to be pointed out, and now the Eeader, every time he opens his Hegel, will be astonished again and again in every page that he did not see before that Hegel meant by the notion, a notion, a certain particular and peculiar notion. It requires no minute inspection of the quotations from Haym to discern that all this has escaped him. To him to have begriffen something and to realise this something in the Begriff are two different things ; but to Hegel they are the same thing, for to him to begreifen and to have the Begriff have both the hegel's commentators. 647 peculiar and the same peculiar Hegelian meaning — (a meaning in the end, however, that coalesces with the ordinary one, though to the development of a higher and entirely new stage of thought). The mode in which Haym talks of the ' absolute notion ' is quite unconscious, quite blind, quite unwitting. Then the notion of the notion is not to Haym the notion of the notion: it is but the relation of universal and particular (which, of course, is true too in the new and higher, but to Haym unknown Hegelian sense). In fact, both the way in which he uses the term, and his perfectly unconscious commentary on the transition of reciprocity into the notion — the actual genesis of the latter — demonstrate Haym never to have even dreamed of regarding the notion as the notion — that single and singular entity which Hegel means, and which we here and elsewhere attempt to express and convey. What Haym sees is but the attempt at an organically articulated Whole, which attempt everybody else sees. What he would do now is, account for this attempt ; and the means he uses are an Ideal of Hellenic Cosmos which he holds Hegel to realise, and which he himself would in explanation realise, by ' various ways,' by 'many turns and expedients.' Haym accordingly follows Hegel step by step through his life and the series of his publica- tions. He is thus with Hegel and near Hegel, and can always allude to some fact of Hegel. But the boastful exclamation, every now and then, ' Ha ! you see I am on his traces ; I take you with me into the very den of the unknown and inexplicable monster at last,' is about the hollowest attempt to bawl oneself and others into a baseless conviction of success which, perhaps, any one has ever witnessed. In fact, it needs not directly to demonstrate the failure of Haym by reference to the historical connexion, the Frankfort Sketch, the Begriff, &c. : Haym's whole edifice cannot support itself on its own incessant self-contradictions, but tumbles through these into an untenable chaos ; and, for a conclusive and satisfactory refutation, it suffices to show this. Nor is this an operation 61 any difficulty, unless, indeed, the extreme abundance of the materials shall be thought such. The single Begriff is the genetic One of the Many and of the All of Hegel. Knowing this, Haym would have given us simplicity and consistency ; not knowing this, he has given us, instead, only multitude and incongruity. Not knowing this, he has exclaimed, That symmetrical totality is but an ideal, a Greek ideal, and Hegel has necessarily given it body through a variety of mis- 648 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. cellaneous expedients. Haym accordingly sets up this ideal as his own principle of explanation ; this is his facing, and behind it, to fill it out into a show of substance, he stuffs all manner of rags and rubbish. These, however, as only disconnectedly together, easily fall piecemeal. ^Esthetic fiction enunciated of a work in pure philosophy, of a work in logic, — that we feel at once is not likely. Involuntarily we expect the theory to prove insufficient, self -contradictory, and compelled to eke itself out ever and anon from elsewhere. A dream of beauty is to construct a logic ! That vast Hegel, whom we so long to know just something of, — that vast Hegel is but a dream, and as the smoke of a dream he shall be shut together into the shining, little, literary casket of Haym ! — No ; these things cohere not ! Statement is easy, and especially to so accomplished a rhetorician as Haym ; but how — just to say it at once — how are we to make intelligible a warp of reflexion and a woof of imagination weaving into a logic ? Even in the extracts which have been given already, many contradictions, on examination, show. Literature, in fact, oc- cupied with the satisfaction, with the applause of the moment, is, perhaps, in its own nature prone to contradiction. Consider this point alone : In the extract that occurs above at page 626, we are told that Gothe and Schiller ' had opened to the Germans their own inner,' 'had brought for this people its Ideals and Senti- ments to view' — 'even as Sophocles and Aristophanes (Thucy- dides and Plato are added elsewhere — p. 146 of Haym's book) had brought to the Greeks theirs ; ' and that Hegel, following in the same track, wanted to do the same thing by the categories and notions of the Germans — wanted to put into their hands ' a Lexicon,' 'a pure Grammatic' of such. Now, all the world is agreed that Sophocles, Aristophanes, Thucydides, and Plato did well in this matter, that they did in this a genuine work which is to reap the gratitude of the latest posterity. We are to suppose, then, that as these were to the Greeks, Gothe, Schiller, and Hegel are to the Germans, and similarly deserve well at the hands of posterity for an honest and glorious work done. But, in our very next extract, all this is strangely changed. It was not German Ideals and Sentiments, it seems, after all, that Gothe and Schiller, and Hegel brought, — it was Greek ones, and accord- ingly the Hellenising poetry of the former' is only 'artificial,' 'an over -charged Idealistic and Typic,' as the Hellenising philosophy of the last is but deception, delusion, and sophistic ! hegel's commentators. 649 This, as one sees, is but a kind of literary speaking in the air — for speaking's sake ! But there are other contradictions, and bearing more directly on the matter in hand. We see, for example, to begin with the earlier extracts, that the motive of Hegel is an ideal of beauty, ' a poetic impulse,' derived ? he knows not how,' and we feel that the result is not such as we should have expected, when we are told that it is ' no unconscious creation,' ' no jet,' ' not an invention of genius,' but 'a Gemachtes (an artefact) of talent' Then analysis is demonstrated to be the forte of Hegel; but towards his Logic it is not analysis of the aporias of thought, &c, which he has employed — no, his Logic, on the contrary, shall be a synthesis, an assthetic, an artificial synthesis ! It is from Schelling that Hegel shall derive too, at the same time, that his work is quite unlike that of Schelling, 'another world from the first!' One moment Hegel is to Haym in historical connexion with Kant, Fichte, and the rest ; and, the next, he is wholly isolated, discon- nected, cut off, — in short, totally unlike all other philosophers in origin, character, &c. History (and the same thing is said of perception) is the ' concrete agent of the dialectic,' ' natural and mental life its principle,' yet, 'because his apriorism ( = his dialectic), unlike the Kantian, did not derive from the concrete inner, &c. &c.' A multitude of extracts which are now in place, and which were translated directly for the purpose of demonstrating the numberless contradictions into which Haym's impossible theory leads him, must, out of considerations of space (which are now not unnatural), be passed over with but an occasional touch. "We find, from page 229, that the Greek Ideal stands in need of — among other supplementary expedients — a Protestant Real ! We are told, too, that in the Frankfort Sketch (p. 121) ' never has the Hegelian system receded from these, its fundamental articula- tions ; ' yet, ' when Hegel undertook the elaboration of a Logic,' we learn (p. 293) that • he did this from quite other points of view, with multiplied other objects ! ' We are led to suppose, then, that Haym is quite prepared for a difference here. But no : having said this — which would account for any difference — he seems immediately to forget what he has said, and suddenly to awake to the necessity of demonstrating — as in agreement with his theory — that we have still the old identity everywhere. This, indeed, is not effected without something of confusion. 650 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Though the crabbed opacity of the Frankfort Sketch has been made obvious to us by the most telling words, and though the grateful change of the Logic to perspicuity and symmetry, to aids and assistances of all kinds, has been by the same means made equally plain, we find that it is expected of us to believe, that there is no real difference between these works, but only the appearance of such, in consequence of 'the freshness, fullness, and colour of youth ' in the former having naturally contracted ' the wrinkles, ossifications, and callosities ' of age in the latter ! It does not surprise us that Haym should intimate here that it will tax ' all our powers of memory and discernment ' to see this — this, and any moderately satisfactory measure of human con- sistency and sense ! These metaphors, indeed, about ' wrinkles/ ' hulls,' ' kernels,' ' cores,' &c, only betray the contradiction they are intended to hide (see p. 302). At pages 173, 318, 323, are opportunities of inspecting the materials, ' the most multifarious sensuously realistic and spiritu- ally realistic, as well as historical motives,' out of which the beautiful Cosmos (!) is ' woven together ; ' and at pages 103-5, we have a detailed statement of how Haym believes Hegel to have gone to work in rearing his system generally. Positively the resultant edifice is not one whit stronger, not one whit less miscel- laneous than any school-girl shall build you of a holiday. To Haym it all depends on this, ' that the same combining imagina- tion which suppleted the schema of the whole, should perpetually conjoin and bring into play at once both of the faculties from the co-operation of which the problem as problem sprang.' The two faculties which imagination is here expected to unite, are under- standing and perception. Now the word for perception here (Anschauung) is very frequently used — by Haym himself among others — in a way that confounds it very much with imagination itself. It commonly indicates the apprehension of images whether outwardly by sense or inwardly by phantasy. It is not really, then, hair-splitting, to say that Haym here calls on imagination to conjoin two faculties one of which is itself. But no sooner has Haym made this call on imagination, than he makes the same call as strongly, and more strongly, on understanding : — The special strength of this intellect (he says) lies in the tenacity of its faculty of abstraction, in the indefatigableness of its reflection : the whole burthen and honour will fall, consequently, on the function of the understanding [what is imagination to be about now, then ?] : in fact, and in truth, it will be hegel's commentators. 651 the totality of the mind [Haym has got it at last] which acts in the execution of the world-picture ; in pretension and appearance, it will be a work of pure thought, or of abstract understanding. Haym, then, asks as regards the getting actually to work, — and, in view of such processes and tools, the question seems very natural, — How otherwise will this be possible but by a series of compromises 1 The logical element plainly (he continues) must be everywhere blunted and bent ; the living element, again, must everywhere up to a certain degree accommodate itself to the logical one : only with broken limbs, indeed, will the beautiful life of the all appear in the form of reflection ; but this reflection, on its part, will become [will become is not difficult to say] as much alive as possible, it will become elastic and dialectic reflection ! A perusal of the whole passage will bring out every mark that is set here, in infinitely stronger relief, in infinitely more glaring colours, and the reader will feel no surprise that all this should suggest itself to Haym as 'not unlike the quadrature of the circle ! ' He will probably raise his eyebrows, however, when he finds that to the same Haym, ' all these operations ' shall ' express the special secret of Hegel's treatment of the notion ' — only — ' they must conceal themselves under abstract forms ! ' The confusion, the inconsistency, the inconceivableness, the constant necessity of plausible shadings and additaments — all this is too clear here to require exposition. How imagination and understanding might co-operate to a fiction, one can see well enough; but that this fiction should be also a Logic and a Grammatic of pure German thought, and a Sophistic of Greek Ideals, and a beautiful Totality, and a broken-limbed beautiful Totality ! — ' compromises ' we do see, but they are compromises into which Haym himself flounders, in the bewildered defence of an altogether impossible theory ! Such is the wonderful double faculty, the sinniger* Verstand, with which Haym, for his own purposes, compliments Hegel. In this reference the following passage is worth quoting for additional illustration : — It is easy to see that this vacillation between the preference which is given now to the pure Spiritual and now to the Real has its foundation in the ambiguity of the Hegelian mood of mind generally. It is the same vacillation It is difficult to translate the sinniger of Haym. The dictionary senses are : sensible, judicious, thoughtful, circumspect, ingenious, well-devised, etc. Haym has probably both its etymological and ordinary senses in his mind. It seems to convey to him a sense at once of subtle (even crafty) and realistic. 652 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. that makes him declare at one time the reality of the state, at another the ideality of art, religion, and science, as the most consummate truth of the absolute spirit. It is the same vacillation that sends him to seek the greatest satisfaction now in the practical establishment of a vigorous and capable German State, and now in the philosophical construction of a harmonious Ideal State rounded into itself. It is the same vacillation that leads him to work the concrete into his Logic and Metaphysic, and then again in his Real philosophy to rarify the concrete into abstractions. It is the same vacillation that on every point of the system causes the tongue of the dialectic balance to swing now over to the actual, and now — though in the ever-identical tendency of the ' Realising ' of the moments — to swing back to the notional. On this ambiguity the whole system rests. From this ambiguity the whole dialectic feeds itself. It is the bottom and the root, the life and the movement — it constitutes the worth and the worthlessness, the strength as well as the weakness of this philosophy. The philosopher is quite the same as the pedagogue (Hegel is now at Nurnberg). The inconsequence of the latter is the inconse- quence of the former. Here as there, in fine, the preponderance in- clines periodically now to the one and again to the other of the two sides. It inclines at the present period to the side of the abstract and logical. At the same time at which the philosophy of the Spirit is, in the Encyclo- paedic, enriched by a new section in being carried up beyond the System of Ethics into the consideration of Art, Religion, and Science, at that same time it is declared that a philosophical education in public schools must apply itself to the abstract form — that the abstract is not merely in itself the earlier and the truer, but also the easier and to the pupil the more intelligible ! . . . The most essential result of his scholastic activity (at Nurnberg namely), the special memorial of this epoch of Hegel's life lies before us in the three volumes of the ' Science of Logic ' (pp. 289-91). The vacillation, the ambiguity dwelt on here is but misintel- ligence. The reason seems to lie in this, that the oscillation of the dialectic is altogether misunderstood and mis-named. Vacillation is in very truth the absolutely last word that it should occur to any one to attribute to Hegel, who, as much as any man that ever lived, is always consistent with himself. The reality of the state, of nature, &c, and the ideality of art, of logic, &c, have all of them their prescribed places — they interfere not with each other, and Hegel looks through all and over all from the beginning. How differently Haym would 3peak did he know the Begriff, did he truly know the origin, principle, and matter of Hegel ! It is the very essence of the science itself that there should be ever and everywhere a factor or moment of ideality and a factor or moment of reality, and that the latter in the end should always be subordinated to the former. We have seen already Hegel enunciate the advantage of abstract instruction at the commencement of study, and we feel that it really requires no very special know- HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 653 ledge of the man and his work to understand that the theoretic writing in the Encyclopaedic and the practical prescripts of the Niirnberg Gymnasium nowise clash, and that it is only externality of view that could possibly be tempted to make them clash. Haym himself, with acceptance, points out elsewhere that Hegel demonstrates * the abstract ' to be at present the nearest and most current to us. In fact, the extract is a very excellent specimen of the worth of mere literature. These words, in literary reference, are perfect : no general member of the public, hearing them, but must yield to the delight and the seeming instruction they convey. No trick, no air, no antithesis of such balanced characterisation fails. The very breadth is in keeping with the edge, the fullness with the paint. It seems decisive ; yet is it but words. Go and see Hegel handle a Kant, and know the difference between a thinker and a litterateur — between the solid aliment that fills and feeds, and the brilliant gas that but inflates and makes windily to reel. — Hegel's Logic the most essential result of his scholastic activity ! This is in one apex, the type of the entire business. Does any one believe that Hegel's Logic is the result of his tem- porary employment as schoolmaster at Niirnberg, when forced by Napoleon's Prussian campaign to degrade from his Professorship at Jena ? Does any one believe that we should not have had the Logik, and essentially the same Logik — its roots lying in quite another soil — though Hegel had never seen Niirnberg ? Why fill up paper with these emptinesses, then: — this mere playing at causa- tive relations, at connective articulations ? Is this aught else than a sort of customary Tarantula-dance of what is called Literature ? Will the slowest to believe this any longer doubt when he is told that Haym cannot restrain himself from deriving the Bau of the Logik from the Bau of the Niirnberg street-gables ? Haym accentuates elsewhere also, and at great length, the incongruity that seems to lie between the pretensions of the Logik as the pure^truth, and those of the Philosophies of Nature and the Spirit as also the pure truth, and asks where is the special seat of Hegel's Philosophy. This is from the outside and beside the point. The incongruity, however, is held up to reprobation by the same method of dexterous literature. Haym, however, would never have seen incongruity, had he been able through Hegel to see Reciprocity, the animating reciprocity of the undeniable actual. To Haym, then, ambiguity is the product, and sinniger Verstand 654 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. the instrument. It but suits the case that this instrument should, as we have seen, be itself an ambiguity — should be itself, even like the rest of the business, an ambiguity and a blur, — confusion which every new shift but worse confounds. Had Haym been but able to look from the •mside instead of the out, from the centre instead of the circumference, — had he been but able to see the one shuttle and the one thread of the Begriff, — the incoherent and untenable Many of a dead chaos would have collapsed before him into the One of a living organism : ... in other words, sinniger Verstand would have become anschauender Verstand ! And now we have touched the thing with a needle : it is impossible more glaringly to put the mistake of Haym ; it is impossible more glaringly to put the self-refutation of Haym. This even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips. Shall this suffice, or shall we spread — after the method of Literature — the burthen of these two simple adjectives over a score of pages ? Shall we form antitheses : the one is confusion, the other order \ the one falsehood, the other truth ; the one darkness, the other light ; the one death, the other life, &c. &c? — Well, it is impossible altogether to resist remark here, but we shall endeavour to be short. Haym speaks (p. 108) of the sinniger Verstand which is one of his compulsory shifts to explain Hegel, as an understanding that is ' at once accompanied and led by an instinct for the concrete, and for the concrete that lurks in the abstract: just so,' he says, * is Hegel enabled to disentangle those threads from the notions through which it is possible to spin them into other and further notions.' Look now not from the outside, like Haym who sees only the rising up of an artificial aggregate, but from the inside, to which the opposed adjectives have given entrance, and observe the wonderful, new, living,* and coherent sense which these words of Haym have at once assumed ! ' An instinct for the concrete ! ' Yes ! — but not such as Haym contemplated. • So he was enabled to disentangle the threads of the notions ! ' — Yes ! — but not by artifice, not by pretence, not by a sinniger Verstand that was merely glued together, — No ! — but by a living anschauender Verstand, an understanding which had come into possession of the Concrete Notion, and was filled and quickened by its life. That HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 655 broad-painted ambiguity, then, of which Haym, ambiguously to thought if antithetically to literature, speaks as 'the worth and the worthlessness, the strength as well as the weakness ' of the Hegelian philosophy, is an involuntary testimony to the success of this last. That Haym should think of a sinniger Verstand with reference to Hegel tends to point out that Hegel has succeeded in realising that anschauender Verstand of which Schelling made so much with reference to Kant. The presumption is thus ex- tended to us, that Hegel has found the single unity of the All, and from it and through it been enabled to develop the All. The lusus naturce of an impossible faculty, so far as Haym is con- cerned, is seen to indicate the very inmost secret of the very latest philosophy ! It is true that Hegel would conduct the universe into totality, into a single life, and Haym's error is in assuming the process to be only ambiguity. Hegel simply believes in God, believes that the universe is God's ; believes that in God, therefore, all rounds itself to totality. Totality, then, is the one fundamental truth, and Hegel has only sought the clue to it. When Haym talks of Spirit as this clue, he is nearer the truth than when he forgets it for his sinniger Verstand. God is a Spirit, and Man, made in the image of God, is a Spirit, and the life of a Spirit is Thought. The early notes, however, in what is called the Struggle to Hegel, show that knowledge to this extent comes from the surface and from the first ; and Haym cannot reaHy name the whence, the how, the what of this Spirit. He can only talk of its analogy ; he cannot realise, he cannot effect its fusion into the diversified material. Haym says of this movement: 'This dialectic, to believe Hegel, is nothing else than the principle of all natural and mental life : the reverse is the truth, — natural and mental life is the principle of that dialectic' (p. 320). To reverse, is to mis- understand, Hegel : but what, after all, does the reversal amount to ? Would it be wrong in Hegel to make natural and mental life the principle of his dialectic? Where else would Haym have Hegel look for the principle of his dialectic ? Again, if natural and mental life thus identify itself with the dialectic, shall we not prefer to regard the latter, or abstract element, as the principle, and the former, or concrete element, as the realisation of the principle? But, take it either way, let it be said with Hegel that the dialectic is the principle of reality, or let it be said with Haym that reality is the principle of the dialectic, we have in 656 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. both ways the same result — an identification of Logic and the Actual ! Are they, then, not to be identified ? Are Logic and the Actual for ever to confront each other divided by the impassable chasm of an irreconcilable difference ? What were Logic thus separated, thus inapplicable ? What were the good of Logic, if it is not to be conceived as the thought, the principle, of the Actual ? But this is just Hegel's attempt : he would realise and systematise the identification of Logic with the Actual. Why, then, should Haym stigmatise this attempt as ' self-contradictory in itself,' as *a confusion and corruption of the understanding and its con- science?' Idealism would result, but that need not scare us. That we are here to think, involves the virtual identity of think- ing with that which it thinks; for to think is to assimilate. Eeality and Ideality must be set equal; the breadth of the universe is the reciprocity of Eeality and Ideality ; but the single pivot of rotation is Ideality itself. Nevertheless, though, in this way, Thought and Perception are virtually identical ; there is no necessity to confound opposing spheres. Can it be else, then, here, than that Haym has just missed the matter in hand, and all the while been but beating the air ? It is the problem of problems that Hegel would solve, and not the contradiction of contradictions that he would only cloak: his crime to Haym is his virtue to the Absolute. Nay, Haym him- self means nothing else, though he does not see it, when he accen- tuates the Eeal and would have us seek wisdom in the Concrete. When the whole Concrete had disappeared, resolved into the Wisdom which Haym contemplates, what were this Wisdom but the Thought of the Concrete — Logic ? The aesthetic element and the logical element must, in the end, coincide ; and of the two ways of putting this, — dialectic is principle of life, life is principle of dialectic, — is not the alternative of Hegel the more legitimate and correct ? Haym, fchus^ would seem unable to bring his own thoughts together. Like a true litterateur, he riots in the infinite out of one another of Perception ; Ideas, Thoughts, Notions, are as casual and diverse organisms that delight him there ; but he is unable to bring the different of Perception into the unity of the Understanding. This purblindness seems strange in a spirit so vivid, but — (witness the German Ideals that were yet Greek Ideals) — it is a true trait and constant. Haym, in truth, is perhaps very nearly exclusively concerned HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 657 with the perfecting of his merely literary picture ; and that is largely accomplished by the liberal use of that peculiarly literary expedient, the supposititious es soil. That is, Haym gets within Hegel, and reports to us how Hegel sketches out his work before him by a 'this shall be done,' and 'that shall be done'; but Haym all the time is lapped only in his own dream. This soil and sollen (v. p. 316 and the volume passim), this ascription of plausible genetic motive, grows into a very happy literary structure, which, however, just builds the philosophy it would enclose — out. There are deliverances of Haym in reference to Being and Nothing, Finite and Infinite, Qualitative and Quantitative, &c, which might be used towards the same general conclusion here of contradiction and defective information ; but enough probably has in that respect been now said, and we may remind only of the wonderful and true metaphysic which we have seen these points really to contain. It throws light just to know that Haym (291) is surprised Hegel should speak of ' Philosophy being as docible as Geometry ' ; and there is a little mistake, on Haym's part, about Eeason, which it is perhaps worth the trouble to cite. One aspect of the duplicity which Haym sees in Hegel concerns the contrast which this latter exhibits of the remotest unreality in the extrava- gance of his speculation, and of the nearest reality in the sobriety of his understanding. Now the ' Reason ' of the following sentence (269) is supposed by Haym to stand for this said sobriety of understanding. • That " Eeason " which a reader of Hegel's philo- sophical writings,' says Haym, 'might easily mistake for an element wholly apart, is curtly defined as the capability of " being awake, of seeing in all, and of saying to all, what it is." ' Eeason here, however, is not simply vigilant common sense ; it is more than that, — it is transcendental reason, dialectic reason, speculative reason, Hegel's reason, Eeason Proper, which, when employed on one moment of a concrete, will not allow its own abstraction to blind it to the other : it will keep ' awake,' it will see ' all,' and it will say to all, ' what it is' In the obliquity of Haym towards Hegel there mingles, as we would now point out, a certain political bias. Political bias, indeed, what we may call a sort of Fichtian flame of Liberalism, is a chief characteristic of Haym; and he cannot view with patience the conservatism of Hegel, whom he seems almost to suspect of simple ratting. This comes forward in what he says of Hegel's inaugural address at Berlin. The address itself, we 2t 658 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. may remark, is very short and very plain, but in its matter peculiarly rich. Hegel begins in it by expressing pleasure at the wider sphere of usefulness extended to him by his new position, now and here : now that peace promises scope for philosophy ; and here in a centre of civilisation that has so distinguished itself. Now this last topic receives but a word — a word, too, perhaps tamer than is usual and conventional in all such circumstances — yet to Haym ' the sum of this address consists in the demonstra- tion of the mutual affinity and necessity of the Prussian Govern- ment and the Hegelian Theory ! ' (Page 357.) Something of the same spirit sharpens the chuckle : ' thus runs the naive self-confession of the Absolute Idealism that it is not absolute ' (p. 387). Hegel, in his works, stands so perfectly self- consistent as regards what is absolute and what is not absolute in his mode of looking, that both ' self-confession ' and • naive,' as words quite alien, simply surprise. We have but to read the Begriff der Natur with which the Naturphilosophie opens to obtain the necessary conviction here. There is an allusion to Jacobi which is not discrepant. ' This is the first instance,' says Haym, referring to a certain identification of himself, on the part of Hegel, with the philosopher just named, ' of that Geneigtheit des Concordirens und Paciscirens, that trick of making union and peace which, later in the philosophy of Religion, as in reference to the Dogmatic of the Church, reached its acme ' (p. 346). Now this is not the first example of the tendency in question, nor were it very easy to point out where that first example is contained, unless we just say that the first sentence written by Hegel, after he reached years of discretion, constitutes such example. From first to last Hegel has no object whatever but this Concordiren and Pacisciren. The Aufklarung, or Illumination, by the light of Private Judgment, has gutted humanity of its whole concrete substance: Hegel would restore this substance but — in this light. This is the whole — there is nothing but this in Hegel— -and this is a compromise. It is this compromise, however, which Haym does not understand — certainly not in its grounds — and which, therefore, he jeeringly names a 1 Concordiren and Pacisciren.' Now what else was the action of Jacobi than to take stand by this very substance, the enlightened gutting-out of which it was the precise object of Hegel to undo ? What wonder, then, if Hegel pointed out that what Jacobi sought to realise by the method of sentiment, and in a consequently HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 659 rhapsodic* form, he himself had realised by the method of knowledge, and in a consequently exact and necessary form ? Haym's dissatisfaction with certain of the Hegelian religious tenets is on the same platform. ' Only the long predominance,' he says, ' first of the Kantian and then of the Hegelian philosophy, has availed to obscure the simple truth, that religion, quite as much as speech or as art, is a specific mode of expression of the human spirit ' (p. 399) ; and, again, ' an offensive coquetting at once with orthodoxy and philosophy became the order of the day, perplexed the head and the conscience, and ate like a cancer into the sound reason of our nation as into its character for straight- forwardness ' (p. 431). If conclusions are to be drawn from these allegations as regards the tendency of the religious teaching of either Kant or Hegel, and as regards the nature of the religious belief especially of the latter, great injustice will be done both. While there is nothing in the teaching of Kant that could avail to obscure the ' simple truth ' spoken of, that ' simple truth ' is the special belief of Hegel. Again, the compromise sought by Hegel between religion and philosophy is frank, open, unconcealed ; and it is only the jaundiced or clouded eye of a Haym that, in a bearing so simple, could see the base and disreputable coquetting which he at least lays at the door of the system. But, as already hinted, it is Hegel's political teaching that Haym regards the most obliquely. He attacks, for example, with the greatest keenness the celebrated dictum, • what is rational that is real, and what is real that is rational.' We are spared, however, the trouble of any defence here ; for Hegel's own, in the beginning of the Encyclopaedic, is ample — such, indeed, that it is rather surprising to find Haym repeating what Hegel himself had already met. In fact, he who knows the Hegelian Philosophy at all, knows that ' the logical forms are the living spirit of the actual, and that only of the actual is true which, by virtue of these forms, is through them and in them true.' "f As belonging to the liberalism of Germany, to know the better and to will the better are two of Haym's presuppositions. We may fancy with what feelings, therefore, he watches the grim contempt with which Hegel casts an utterly extinguishing * Rhapsodic is here used in the Kantian sense which has reference to a process of contingent and disconnected snatch. This is an inversion or perversion of the original Greek use of the word : scholars think that fr&m-eiv ioidfy refers to a con- tinuous recitation. t Hegel's Encyclopaedie, § 162. The translation is exact. 660 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. thunderbolt or two at the shallowly conceited Besserwissen as at the shallowly sentimental Besserwollen of the modern — let us say revolutionist. Haym's astonishment is indescribable. So many things are all wrong, — it seems so natural to him that it should be thought right to know better and to will better. Especially to will better — why is not that virtue itself ? It is not wonderful, then, that Haym terms this portion of the system — though, surely, it is not difficult to see that Hegel founds his contempt on the mere empty subjectivity of the bulk of those who raise the cries — immoral, sophistical, and a tribute only to the quietism of the conservative re-action. He accuses it of neglecting the concrete inner of man, of degrading willing into knowing, and of ignoring individual subjectivity before a mere universal. Hegel's political system coheres with his theory of morals ; and, as not blind to this connexion, Haym dislikes the latter also, and for reasons that relate to this same subordination of the individual to the universal and of will to thought. Fortlage, in a work already cited, speaks of Hegel having ' rolled forward the foundation-stone of a more intelligent conception of the historical development of States, of positive law and political justice ; ' and this is the truth. Hegel is nowhere greater than in the practical sphere — in that sphere, namely, which relates to morality, politics, and what in general concerns action. Whatever may be imperfect in Hegel, not so is his theory of morals, which, as only behoved the following out of the ethical principles of Kant, has placed the whole subject in such solidity, breadth, and consummation of development as will yet, if we mistake not, lead to many most important changes in the social arrangements of Europe. Yes, it is true that subjectivity qua subjectivity is not the true practical principle, and that it must give way to a universal. In the practical field, subjectivity that would be subjectivity is simply Evil, the Bad, and all that can be called such; whereas subjectivity that would be the universal is really all that we possess as the Good. In the interests of the universal the individual must harness himself. In general, the probability is that — through Hegel — we are on the point of receiving political principles at last, and of attaining to the possibility at length of a nation governed. Is it, then, government — and this is not only what is practically done, but with much pomp even theoretically laid down nowadays — to wait for the voices of the governed, and then to move only with such calculated slowness HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 661 as shall just anticipate any outbreak of impatience on the part of the same governed? If Hegel is correct, there are objective principles which, by teaching us the right, render us independent of the shallow conceit and shallow sentimentality of the bulk of those vain subjectivities that so commonly know better and would better than their neighbours. But these objective principles require quite another knowledge and quite another will than these same subjectivities can extend to them. It were easy to dilate here; but enough has been said to suggest probably that the utterances of Haym in this reference have been singularly rash and inconsiderate, and countenance the assertion of his erroneous and external position to the Hegelian system generally. It cannot be denied, nevertheless, that Hegel, in his actual connexion with the Prussian State, seemed to play — at least weakly — into the hands of the aristocratic re-action. This was a grave error; this was, on the part of Hegel, to do vast injustice to himself. If the place of the philosopher was very certainly not at the side of insensate revolution, neither was it — and quite as certainly — at the back of selfish, brutal, and merely aristocratic obstruction. Hegel the staunch bull-dog of Prussian pigheaded- ness and pride, that honoured his inferior blood when it employed his talent — this is a position of all possible the most preposterous and pitiable ! It is not impossible, however, something to extenu- ate the blame of Hegel. Hegel's life had not been one of pros- perity, of uninterrupted advance. For six years an humble house-tutor, for an equal period Schelling's unknown second, and at the same time an unintelligible and almost unattended sub- professor (though holding any actual professorship only for a few months), for two years, being 'in want of all other means of subsistence,' editor of an inconsiderable journal, for eight years a mere schoolmaster in Niirnberg, and reaching his true place at length in Berlin only at the ripe age of 48, — pain, disappointment, difficulty, mortification — in a word, humble-pie had been his only nourishment from the moment he stepped out of sanguine student-life into the chilling world. At Berlin he was at last in full sunshine ; no wonder that he opened to the heat, that he chirruped to it, that in thought he truckled to the givers of it In thought to truckle to such benefactors is natural to universal mankind. But how is such truckling in thought to be translated into action by an awkward, inexperienced, unacquainted recluse of books? It is only the accomplished 662 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. world-man who knows what is his own, and, with that, when to speak and how to speak, when to act and how to act, when to take offence and how to take offence. Most book-men are in such matters — babies; apt, perhaps, to fall into convulsions if obliged to go and ask change of a shilling ; now pocketing with an insensate smile, what men of the world would throw off with a glance of the eyes, or receive on the edge of a still keener joke ; and now with hysterical eloquence, or maniacal violence, furibuud in demeaning positions, which these same men of the world never would, or never could, have entered, or which — if by some evil star they had been once for all flung into them — they would have been but too happy to be allowed to quit, in submissive silence and with their heads down. The natural truckling in thought to exalted benefactors is but too apt by such bookish innocents to be translated into a truckling in. fact, — and they cannot help it. Hegel was a vigorous piece of mother-spun Suabian manhood undoubtedly ; but he was a recluse of books, he had tasted the bitters of adversity, he had had to creep for his bread : place him now at once in the position and with the associates that, however far off, he had always by presentiment known as his own ! Would he not be innocently pleased to find that his book-theories were able to lend an even welcome aid to the great state-policies of those high and mighty names which had been familiar to him from the distance, and whose bearers were now in personal contact with him ? He was now one of them himself ! He was a power in the State ! It is in the same way we would reduce to ordinary human motives the action of Hegel with reference to Schelling. There was a certain cunning, a certain calculation in the approaches of Hegel to Schelling at Jena, and in the relative position he assumed there. He undoubtedly stood as Schelling's adherent, as Schelling's second, and he undoubtedly knew that he had voluntarily given himself something of this air in order to obtain the benefit of Schelling's introduction and support. Nevertheless to Hegel, in the unclear consciousness to all such matters of a mere book-man — shall we say of a mere pedant? — the whole thing was very differently named. He longed keenly for a certain advantage, he knew that he could identify Schelling's philosophical platform so far with his own. So far, then, said innocent book-cunning to him, propitiate Schelling, and obtain this thing you so long for. This cunning, equally with the HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 663 Berlin truckling, we believe to be a feature of the innocence and babiness incidental to a life of mere books, and the impressible, egoistic, inwardly-living men who usually adopt such. Cunning, too, it undoubtedly was, for, when Hegel appeared in Jena, he had brought with him the Frankfort Sketch of his System ; and that sketch proves him to have then penetrated to the ultimate generalisation of Kant — to the Begriff. The hysterical vehemence with which he called some one ' in so many words a liar,' who had given his relation to Schelling its coarsest name, throws light on Hegel's own feelings and on the theory of his general action now propounded. In the same way, the defence he sends up to the Prussian Government in reference to the Roman Catholic priest who had taken umbrage at his language as regards the mouse that nibbled the host, illustrates his frame of mind as man of books that knew himself a functionary of the State and — on the right side. It is always to be seen, however, that what Hegel did say as regards Schelling at Jena, did not compromise him as said, but as interpreted, — though, at the same time, it must be confessed that the unnecessary and cruel bitterness with which he afterwards threw off Schelling contrasts unfavourably with the calculated language of suppression and accommodation with which in the first instance he had taken him on. Similarly, the conservatism of his writings is a genuine result of his researches and convic- tions ; as there it is without motive from considerations of the State ; and he erred only in the too prominent pleasure with which he observed that it was capable of application to the interests of the day. Hegel manifests the same bookish simplicity of obsequiousness, together with a congruously innocent irrepres- sibleness of delight, in his relations with Gothe. When Gothe quotes him, he cannot help appending to the passage quoted a notice of the honour done it. In every correspondence that takes place between them, too, — seeing that there is on one side a — certainly not larger — sort of German Voltaire, and on the other the deeper Aristotle of a modern Europe, — the superiority of Gothe both as given and taken, is surely of a veritably bookish innocence on the part of both. Usage of the world seems requisite to make a book-man (Hegel) know where his own honour lies ; and certainly roughing of the world were not amiss where this same world's success may have stiffened a book-man (Gothe) into so much ridiculous starch. 664 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. It is in this manner we would attempt to scratch off some appearance of ambiguity from the action of Hegel ; but, be all this as it may, we hold with perfect conviction, as against Haym, that not only is he honest in his moral, political, and religious position, but that that position is the ripest outcome of his reflexion and the special sphere of promise to us. In the state of his belief, however, we cannot feel surprise at the sentence which Haym in the end has pronounced on Hegel. A few extracts will explain : — An intelligent contemporary of Hegel, a man of action, who, indeed, knew not how to speculate, but only so much the better how to judge, has compared the Hegelian Logic to the gardens of Semiramis ; for in it abstract notions are artfully twisted into Arabesques : these notions are only, alas ! without life and without root. With the practical philosophy of Hegel, it is not otherwise than with his metaphysic. Where he persuades himself that he is most and deepest in reality, he penetrates only superficially into its outside. His practi- cal notions have the withered look of plants that root only in the flat surface. In the entire depth of individual life, in the concrete inner, lie the mighty motive and matter of reality. Into this richest mine of living actuality the absolute idealism disdains to descend. It esteems subjectivity only so far as it has ceased to be subjectivity and clarified itself into the universal. Hence the superficialising of willing into knowing ; hence, moreover, the disregard manifested for what is subjectively spiritual in general, and with it for what is individual. (Pages 374-5.) The Logic, briefly to sum it, is the sus- tained attempt to intensify and concrete abstract thought as such by means of the fullness of the totality of the human spirit, and by means of the fullness of actuality. Contradictory in itself as is this attempt, it must be designated from the standpoint of living spirituality, from the standpoint of religious and aesthetic conception, a crude and tasteless barbarism ; while from the stand- point of pure rationality, it must be designated a confusion and corruption of the understanding, and of its conscience. ... In a dogmatic and uncritical, in a confused and barbarous form, the Hegelian Logic has been the first fraudulent attempt at such a Gnosology and Philosophy. . . . That was, I repeat it, a rude and coarse manoeuvre, resting on a palpable confusion and confound- ing of what is of the understanding, and of what is of the concrete spirit. (Pages 324-27.) This is plain. Whatever of external form may have been seen by Haym, it is evident that he has missed the origin, the principle, and the matter. Of these he has even said what must be held to be the exact reverse of the truth. It is impossible, indeed, to mistake the nature of this conclusion ; it is impossible to fail to see that in Haym's opinion the Hegelian Logic is an utter and — what is worse — a fraudulent failure. Nevertheless, as usual, contradictions perpetually turn up in Haym, as regards both failure and fraudulence ; and perhaps it is not impossible to adduce HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 665 himself in confutation of himself. Some such, indeed, we have already seen ; and, I dare say, the reader has been already puzzled to reconcile, on the one hand, that marvellous faculty of sober understanding, of which he has heard so much, with failure, and, on the other hand, that marvellous labour of research (for what, if not to see the thing, the truth ? ) with fraudulence. The sort of double faculty into which this sober understanding converted itself by an alliance with a so-called aesthetic faculty, was so much of a contradiction, that we could only name it a lusus natures ; but these new contrasts seem even worse — seem capable of being considered only irreconcilable contradictories. When we hear, for example (p. 328-9), that 'the allmachtige (almighty) understanding which Hegel lets operate, saw, in most cases, into the actual foundation and genuine sense of the notions, and behind this understanding there stood a solid knowledge, pure feeling on the whole, a sober sense, and a modest phantasy,' we feel that we have just received an express receipt against all possibility of failure — and quite as much an express receipt against all possibility of fraudulence. Failure and fraudulence, it must be said, are entirely unintelligible side by side with such endowments. But Haym is consistent with himself throughout — consistent, that is, in his inconsistency ; he does not content him- self with this antithesis in general or in reference to Logic only, — he carries it with him throughout the whole of his Critique. We have seen, for example, the unmitigated reprobation which he has heaped on the Eechtsphilosophie, yet we hear presently that even the Eechtsphilosophie ' possesses an imperishable Kern (core).' This too, he says, after having spoken thus : ' Only one step, indeed, but that a great one to this self-destruction, is the Hegelian Eechtsphilosophie : it essentially has the blame of the fate, that the highest science has sunk into contempt, and stands opposite the powers of the actual almost impotent ! ' It is in a similarly dubious mood that Haym finds himself in presence of the Eeligionsphilosophie ; but as regards the ^Esthetic and the Philosophy of History his satisfaction seems simple and unmixed. ' The German people,' he assures us, ' possesses in the former an aesthetic such as no other nation possesses ; ' and, as this aesthetic ' constitutes an atoning side-piece and a correction for the Eeligions- philosophie, the Philosophy of History constitutes a no less impor- tant complement to the Eechtsphilosophie.' As regards the 666 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Philosophy of History, indeed, Haym expresses himself at great length, and always almost rapturously : — An energy of concrete vision (he says) accompanied here the energy of abstraction, which must have surprised him to whom it was unknown that even the Logic and Metaphysic had sprung from the same combination of faculties. The capacity of thinking himself into a peculiar spiritual life, and of bringing it, out from the firmly-seized centre, into an expanded panorama, was in youth scarcely so special to him as now when in age he made a second voyage of discovery into the wide realm of the life of peoples. With this talent for generalisation stood that of compression into a single significant word, the talent of categorising and of bringing to a point, in the most admirable equipoise. Not but even the philosophy of history has a logical impress— [but] — these are thoughts of a metalline clang which cause us to forget the thin and soundless thoughts of metaphysic. (Page 451.) It is impossible, we say, to believe in such a mangled operation of so supreme a faculty : it is difficult to believe in failure ; it is impossible to believe in fraudulence. Compare thoughts of failure and fraudulence with the following : After talk of ' the bitter and unsparing thoroughness of Hegel's criticism,' his ' hard and stinging words, &c.,' Haym goes on: — Here again comes to the surface that power of an all-generalising char- acterisation which had condensed the entire compass of German thought into a system of sharply-limited, surely-signalised categories ; here again is manifest that talent of incisive critique — incisive into the flesh and life of the opponent — that skill to operate with knife and club at once. (Page 350.) Here, before all, Hegel appears in the entire mastery of his insight. Just as experienced age discourses of the worth of life, so discourses the philosopher of the worth of the intellectual and imaginative forms of his time. Com- pletely in it, he stands at the same time triumphant over it ; with every turn of opinion he is familiar ; he sees through every standpoint, and against all of them he makes good, with a superior air of quietude and urbanity, a definitive conclusion of the deepest and most matured conviction. (Page 393.) And, what is peculiar, the Hegelian delivery was most helpless there where the ordinary talent of declamation is just most at home. In narrative he foundered in an almost comical fashion. Just in what was easiest he became dull and tiresome. Just in what was deepest, on the con- trary, did he move with a grandly self-assured complacency and ease. Then, at last, 'the voice rose, the eye glanced sharp over the auditory, and the tide of speech forced its way with never-failing words to every height and depth of the soul.' And that, too, not merely when the question was of fleshless abstractions, but no less when he descended into the deeps of the material outward. Even to paint epochs, nations, events, individuals, suc- ceeded with him perfectly. Even the most special singularities and depths of the character withdrew themselves not from this gift of statement. (Page 396.) In quotation from Haym we are certainly peculiarly diffuse, but HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 667 there is an irresistible pleasure in dwelling on his vivid and per- fectly successful words at all times that he praises. Of this the reader may rest assured: however wide he may be when he censures, Haym is always absolutely home when he applauds. We may seem here to perpetrate the very contradiction on which it is our present business to animadvert ; we may seem here to expose ourselves to the retort : Are not the cases parallel ? — if Haym is so very right when he commends, is it not a contradiction that he should be so very wrong when he blames ? — in what respect is the contradiction greater to speak well of Hegel here, but to denounce him as a fraud and a failure there ? To this it is easy to answer : It is no contradiction to say, that though Haym has hit the form, he has missed the matter ; though he sees, that is, the subjective power, he is blind to the objective product, of Hegel. But it is a very great contradiction to allow a man all the attributes of success, and yet predicate failure of the very work special to these attributes ; and it is a vastly greater contradiction to portray a man, as in the last extract, who shall display every sign and token by which the true, by which the genuine shall be known and discriminated, and yet this man shall produce, nevertheless, only what is artificial, only what is fraudulent Here in a final extract surely this contradiction, as a general attribute of Haym, is palpable : — Quite undeniably, Hegel is excelled in purity and acribie of thought by one of his fellow-labourers for the philosophic palm — Herbart. That the under- standing and the actual, that pure thought and the other faculties cannot be alternately set equal in the manner of a Quiproquo, that between this setting equal the want of a transcendental critique of the living spirit of man remains to be filled up — this hint the disciples of Hegel may borrow from the doctrine of Herbart. Hegel, compared with Herbart, is an inexcusable confusionary. To the position of the former, that contradiction is the soul of things, Herbart — with his philosophy that is wholly of the understanding — opposes the principle, that only the method of the elimination of the contradiction leads to truth and the inner souL But not only that in power of abstraction, in penetration and tenacity of thought, Hegel may very well measure himself with his rival — his greatness just lies in his courage to bend and to break the law of the under- standing. That means : he alone has had the great instinct to bring to a halt the spiritual powers which awoke in our nation through our classical poetry, to train them into the service of philosophy, and in this manner to let them sink into the scientific mind of the age for further purification. He was, perhaps, not altogether the greater thinker : he was certainly the greater philosopher. ' Give up all hope,' one must call to those who even yet endeavour to avenge the fate of the neglected Herbart : the Hegelian Logic is a living term in the history of the development of the German Spirit, and will continue to 668 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. exercise its powerful influence even then when the name of a Hegelian shall have as completely ceased to be heard of as those of a Cartesian or a Wolffian. (Pages 330-31.) Here is what Hegel would name, after Kant, a complete nest of contradictions. Herbart undeniably excels Hegel * in purity and acribie of thought ; ' yet, * as regards power of abstraction, as well as penetration and tenacity of thought,' Hegel may ' very well measure himself with Herbart : ' Hegel of the two is ' the greater philosopher,' if not quite the greater thinker.' Of any difference that may exist between a thinker and a philosopher, as in refer- ence to two such men and so placed as Herbart and Hegel, we may give Haym the benefit ; but what is ' power of abstraction,' if not ' purity of thought ? ' — and what is ' acribie,' if not ' penetra- tion and tenacity of thought?' That is to say, in the same purity and acribie of thought in which Herbart ' quite undeniably ' excels Hegel, Hegel, nevertheless, may very well measure himself with Herbart! It may be pleasant to ring changes on literary phrases, and no doubt it is agreeable to have the credit of incisive antithesis ; but really some consistency of thought were, with all that, much to be wished. We are given to understand that Haym's preference of Herbart to Hegel turns on this — that while, on one side, the work of the latter, his Quiproqiio of faculties, is an untenable contradiction, the want so indicated has, on the other side, been filled up by the work of the former. Herbart shall be the express antidote, the exact counter-poison to Hegel. Or, the principle of Herbart shall be the honourable and true one of the elimination of contradiction, while that of Hegel shall be the sophistical and confusionary one of contradiction itself. Yet — despite this, and despite all that superior purity and acribie of thought — it is the true and genuine Herbart that is to succumb, that is, like the damned of Dante's hell, to abandon all hope ; and it is the sophistical and confusionary Hegel that shall be held the greater philosopher — it is this false man's influence that shall endure when, &c. &c. &c. ! * In presence of such things, one recurs involuntarily to the problem of a Providence. But, while we are lost in wonder at this extraordinary reversal of what is just and right — while we are engaged speculating on the possible secret reason of it, — we are suddenly quite dumbfounded to find that the precise source of the inferior virtue of Hegel is the precise source as well of his superior success, or that just for his righteousness' sake is it that Herbart has been condemned and consigned to the HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 669 place without hope ! The confounding of the understanding and the other faculties — the Quiproquo, — this it was that seemed to found the inferiority of Hegel to Herbart : but, if this were so, we find now that Hegel's greatness — his 'grandeur' — just rests on the very ' courage with which he bent and broke the law of the under- standing ! ' To bend and to break the law of the understanding, it appears, is synonymous with bringing • into harness to philo- sophy the spiritual powers which German classical poetry awoke, and so sinking these powers into the mind of the century for further purification ! ' Why, then, because of this bending and breaking, because of this Quiproquo, was Hegel denounced as a fraud and a failure ; and why is a fraud and a failure to continue, all the same, to exercise on the German Spirit, such a wonderful influence, when Cartesians, and Wolffians, and even Hegelians themselves, have so completely gone to the dogs, that their very names are lost ? It is quite possible — it is pretty certain, that Haym has here an idea in his head — an idea which we have already attempted to reduce to its true specification; this, namely — that we have to look for wisdom in the concrete, and not in abstractions. But surely the realisation of this idea does not necessitate a bending and breaking of the law of the understanding ! Surely Haym — to whom, we have been led to suppose, understanding is the highest faculty — by whom, just because of his supreme under- standing, now Herbart and now Hegel (did this latter bend and break, then, just what he was best in ? or is it possible to ex- haust the contradictions here?) was praised — must stand appalled before a bending and breaking of the law of the understanding ! Surely he does not mean to say now that the Hegelian Quiproquo is the means of the realisation of his idea ! Have we not been just given to understand that 'a transcendental critique of the living spirit of man ' is what is wanted for this realisation ; and has not this critique, as the work of Herbart, been opposed to the denounced antagonistic work of Hegel ? How, then, after all, is it Hegel's work that gets the credit of the realisation which Haym specially desires, and which, we were led to believe, he had actually found accomplished in Herbart — and in Herbart as exultingly opposed to Hegel ? But, after all, did the German poets do what Haym says here they did do ? Has he not told us himself, that it was to shut out German Eeals, that they brought Greek Ideals, and that so, consequently, their poetry was 670 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. an ' artificial Idealistic and Typic ? ' Has he not told us also, that just such was the industry of Hegel; that he, too, with similar objects, and for similar purposes, addressed himself to Greece? What, then, are these specially German Powers that are, nevertheless, awakened, and that are to do so much ? Here truly we have but confusion worse confounded ! Here we have but a rankness of literary phrase that usurps the appearance of philosophical thought! That is it! Haym demonstrates to the quick what difference there is between the careless abundance of the Litterateur, and the anxious parsimony of the Philosopher. Had Haym been but as familiar with philosophical distinctions as he is with literary images ! Images and again images, let them be brilliant — let them but dazzle, let them but interest, and be it as it may with the unity of thought! 'This,' says Lord Macaulay, ' may serve to show in how slovenly a way most people are content to think ; ' and it is certainly strange, ' the slovenly way ' in which so brilliant a writer as Haym ' is content to think ! ' Hellenic Cosmos, this is the conclusion to which we have been brought on Hegel ; a Cosmos, of which we do not very well know what to think, — a Cosmos, of which we do not very well know what to think Haym himself thinks. To this conclusion we have been borne along on an abounding and triumphant stream of the most brilliant and vivid rhetoric. Not but that we have become aware, from time to time, of how this stream has been indebted for its volume to contributions from without; for we have seen gliding into it the spirit of the Protestant present, facts of aesthetic perception, experiences of Hegel's own life, as Niirn- berg and his vocation of teacher, influences of Fichte, of Schelling, criticisms of Kant, and just, in general, as Haym says himself, ' the plunder of historical and natural actuality.' So it is that we have been borne in triumph to this conclusion of a Hellenic Cosmos which has been — artificially manufactured and put together, violently, coarsely, crudely, barbarously, sophistically, fraudulently, by aid of an unheard-of confusion and contradiction of facts or faculties, or both ! . . . . But in what condition are we when we arrive ? With much complacency we had remarked in the preface the singularly satisfactory previous advantages and preliminary preparations possessed and made by Haym for the important task he undertook. We heard, well pleased, that * he had repeatedly lectured at the University on the life, writings, HEGEL'S COMMENTATORS. 671 and tenets of Hegel ; ' that ' he had attained to the possession of a material that compelled him to enter into the details of the doctrines and individual development of Hegel ; ' that he had procured for study ' the whole abundant treasure of the manuscripts left by Hegel,' as well as other ' most desirable communications.' All this we heard with delight ; and it was even with the intensest interest that we listened to the magnificent scheme he pro- pounded— a scheme by which very plainly the Hegelian secret would be at length secured. How otherwise were it possible to feel when experiencing the promise of such words as these ? — I shall not supplant and subdue metaphysic by metaphysics, dialectic by dialectic — not system by system. Not this ; but I shall give, at first at least and before all, an objective history of this philosophy. Very certainly I propose to expound it, very certainly to criticise it : — but the ground to both, I shall win in the method of- history by an analysis of its origin and development. . . . Our purpose is to conduct the current of history into a well-enclosed and fast-shut edifice of thought. ... In the place of reason there steps up the entire man, in the place of the universal the historically determined human being. It was by an abstract critique that Kant, it is by a concrete historical critique that we, with the resolution of a metaphysic abandoned by the belief of the world, seek to furnish a contribution to the purification of the science of philosophy. . . . Our business is the historical cognition of this system. Our business is to resolve it into its special genesis and into its historical value, to follow into its very structure the power which history has exercised over it, and to discover the threads to which the progressing time could attach itself, through which this time could get power over it. Our endeavour shall it be to restore it to the departed or half-departed life in which it had its foundation. Something analogous it shall be ours to effect in its regard to what for his part Hegel effected as regards the systems of his predecessors. He set them altogether in his own system. He threw over their dead bodies the mighty pyramid of his absolute idealism. It is fit that to this idealism no less an honour fall. In a wider, more imperishable tomb we shall set it — in the huge structure of eternal history we shall preserve it ; a place and veritably a place of honour we shall assign it in the history of the development of the German Spirit. Unfiguratively to speak : we shall see this philosophy take birth and develop itself, we shall co-operate in its production. Step by step we shall follow the growth of its originator — shall bodily transport our- selves into the spiritual environment, into the historical relations out of which his mode of thought and his entire intellectual fabric rose — shall conceive to ourselves that the influences of development, the intellectual and the moral instigations which worked on Hegel, work also upon us, and shall then inquire whether we should have allowed ourselves to be determined by them, should have employed and formalised them, should have decided in their regard in the same manner as he. (Pages 2, 11, 14, 8.) Penetrated by the wonderful promise of these and other such words, we had listened breathlessly from the first, and never for 672 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. a moment flagged. As for that, indeed, we were never allowed to flag : perpetual incitement, rather, even goaded us into a pre- ternatural intensity of attention. ' Hold we a moment in ! ' ' Let us take it more objectively ! ' ' Turn we now the leaf, sharpen we our memory, strengthen we our attention!' 'We have reached the point to understand the universal articulation of the Hegelian system ! ' * Learn we it at last in its entire peculiarity ! ' Goaded by such prickles, how otherwise can we arrive than breathless, haggard, worn, and — at such a finale — after such promises, through such torments of disappointment and contradiction, with the echoes of such cries of excitation still in our ears — at such a finale — Hellenic Cosmos, still Hellenic Cosmos, nothing but Hellenic Cosmos ; how can we but stare and stagger, how can we but wanly, wildly smile and ask, as we choke, Hah ! is that it ? Ah ! we remember the pride with which we joined in the exclamation of Haym: 'No longer shall either the logical abstractness or the linguistic barbarism prove a hind- rance to our intelligence!' But we are ashamed now. We heard, with a smile, Haym declare of Hegelian formula?: 'No doubt that he who were so instructed, would find himself quite in the position of the student to whom Mephistopheles, dis- guised as Faust, holds the first prelection on the method of academic study ; no doubt that he would understand nothing of the whole of it, that these formula? would appear to him very strange, and their identification very confused.' With a smile of superiority and pity we heard this, for we believed what Haym assured us in regard to our own knowledge — we believed him when he said : ' They (these formulae) can no longer appear to us as a witch's rhyme ; they will appear to us only as an abbrevia- tion for a view of things which is now perfectly intelligible to us, not only in its meaning, but in its historical genesis and real value.' We smiled with pride, pity, and superiority then; but when we look back to the very occasion on which Haym made these declarations (p. 220), we find that, despite his protestations, he had given us no keys whatever, unless those very formulas at which he pretended to smile — Subtance is Subject, the Absolute is Spirit, the True is System ; — we find this, and by as much as we were proud then, by so much are we dejected now. It can seem, indeed, as if Haym had been but chaffing us. Where is the ' view of things ' which is to be ' perfectly intelligible to us ? ' Where is the Hegelian ' genesis ' which we are supposed hegel's commentators. 673 to be so much at home in ? What is, then, that ' real value,' of which the knowledge is so coolly attributed to us ? We know nothing of these things — with all the phrases we have learned. The article on Hegel in the ninth edition (1844) of the Con- versations-Lexicon contains the following : — The Hegelian System — through its connexion with the Identitatsphilo- sophie, through the original and (at cost of those logical laws on which all the sciences directly repose) dearly-hought novelty and seeming depth of ito method, through the semblance of a universal knowledge that equally em- braced God and the World, through the imposing confidence with which it presented itself as the sole possessor of ' rational ' thought, through the capti- vating symmetry of its arrangement, through the unremitting labour with which its originator, supported on a wealth of knowledge, continually applied himself to the following out of the fundamental thought of his system even into the most concrete phenomena, — finally, through the favour of external influences, which is not by any means to be considered of small account — had acquired a great and extensive influence. ... He saw the necessity of a thinking develop- ment of what 'the intellectual intuition' meant. This necessity, taken together with — what is common to every Identitatssystem — the proposition of Spinoza, that the order and connexion of our thoughts is the same as the order and connexion of things — may be regarded as the natural germ of the peculiar method which gives to the Hegelian system its specific character. There is nothing here that can be considered widely different from the external view of Hegel, which is common and current everywhere. Now, while it is quite certain that Haym adds nothing to this, it is not quite certain that he either says all this, or says as well this. In particular, we may instance the pro- position attributed to Spinoza, which is the same thing, but in an infinitely more penetrating form than the ' Spirit ' of Haym. To what end, then, has Haym written ? — to what end are his whole five hundred brilliant pages ? Are these aught alse than the glittering bubbles of mere literature, that, after the manner of bubbles presently die out, as with a murmur at their own inanity ? Is it that Haym, known to have been engaged on Hegel, felt him- self obliged, for his own credit, to say something of Hegel ? Is it that all this — all this brilliant rhetoric and all this perfect literature, all these adroit turns and all these expert antitheses, all that is unhesitatingly arrogated, and all that is unhesitatingly denied, — is it that all this — and we have taken every care, at least, to examine and inquire, — is it that all this is but Haym's way of saying, the grapes are sour ? 2u 674 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Of the three writers we have passed under review, Rosenkranz is the most at home with Hegel. He has evidently read him faithfully — most faithfully. Nor could he so read without attaining to a very satisfactory insight into the general spirit of his author. We have convinced ourselves, however, that, on the whole, he has remained outside of the single secret. Indeed, the failure of a spirit so vivid as Haym — coming after Rosenkranz — testifies to the failure of the latter as well. If these three have failed, then, we may rest assured that no other has succeeded; for — so far as general evidence of books can be depended on — these three, of all who have approached the subject, are the latest and the best, and ought to be amply representative of whatever has preceded them. The general failure of Germany and of Europe in this matter must seem extraordinary ; but when we think of the failure of a man so peculiarly endowed and so peculiarly placed as Schelling, we are left but small room for wonder at the failure of the rest. Schelling opined that the system was but ' Wolffianism,' and that Hegel himself was but the 'purest exemplar of inner and outer Prosa.' We take leave to think differently. Only a maker, only a faculty of the intensest poesy could move as Hegel moved. It is possible that what the imagination of a Homer or of a Shakespeare saw — compared with what the imagination of Hegel saw — will yet — so far as ultimate speculation is concerned — show but as a schoolboy's pictures on a schoolboy's books. Everything in existence — were it but a dry wall or a morsel of soap, a grain of sand, a drop of water, or the twig of a plant — is valid and valuable only by the amount of thought it contains ; and the imagination of Hegel holds in solution as deep, as pure, as comprehensive thought as any, the most philosophic imagination that has yet appeared. Yet to Haym this very thought has been ' more than refuted : it has been judged ! ' At the same time, it is declared — not quite without the usual contradiction — that ' this one great house has only failed because this whole branch of business lies on the ground;' 'we find ourselves at this moment in a great and almost universal shipwreck of the spirit, and of faith in spirit at all.' ' Of pretenders to the empty throne, it is true, there is no want ; we hear now this one and now that one wagered on as the philosopher of the future : now at last, timidly hope the disciples of Herbart, is the time come when posterity will do their master a tardy justice ; now many for the first time hear of the Schopen- hegel's commentators. 675 hauerian philosophy, &c, &c. The truth is — just this crowding up, this obtruding and intruding of the Dii minorum gentium is the proof of what we say — the truth is, that the realm of philosophy is in a state of complete masterlessness, in a state of break-up and demise.' Haym then tells us that the most rigid Hegelians themselves admit this; that, with a timidity unlike their ancient assurance, they only plead now, ' Hegel was " still not unfruitful" for the development of philosophy;' and that they do 'not trust themselves to decide whether the Hegelian system has yet found " its Keinhold and Beck " or not.' Haym also asks, as if with the hope of cure for these things, ' what if science now should have only to seek a broader and surer basis — for what Kant did ? ' * Now, we do not dispute what is so vividly described here — only we should prefer to say that, instead of Hegel having failed because philosophy is in ruins, it is philosophy that is in ruins because Hegel (who just sought said basis) has failed — to be understood ! Hence the want of successors — hence the shipwreck of philosophy — hence the judgment on Hegel himself — hence the necessity of a return to Kant — hence the inquiry after a Beck and a Eeinhold, who were still to seek, perhaps, not only for Hegel, but even possibly for Kant / "f* * Haym, pp. 6, 5, 3, 4, 5, 13. + This is said, however, if with direct and sufficient knowledge of Reinhold, only with indirect and insufficient knowledge of Beck. VII. CONCLUSION. In the course of his inquest, it probably occurred to Hegel, that the one common object of the search of all of them — Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel — was the concrete notion. Kant named what he wanted, an a priori synthetic judgment, which amounts to a principle the oneness of which were already multiple — the sameness already different, and this as determined independently of all experience by pure reason, or, what is the same thing, as self- determined. Fichte aimed at precisely the same thing in his synthesis, which was to be the one of thesis and antithesis, the last, too, being a process as spontaneous, a priori, and necessary, as the second. Schelling, again, gave direct name to the opera- tions of both Kant and Fichte, when he spoke of the identity of identity and non-identity. Lastly, Hegel, while he felt that what he himself had been striving after was no less and no other, perceived that this very principle was the principle as well of the concrete and the actual. There was this actual world ; consequently, the First had been no bare identity, no abstract identity : it must have at once and from the beginning contained difference, — it must have been from the very outset a concrete, i.e., a one at once of identity and difference. Nay, such was the actual constitution and nature of every single entity in this universe. How did I know that door, this window, or that shutter ? The difference of each was simply the identity of each : what each was for-other, that it was as reflected into self, or each was only and nothing but its for-other reflected into its in-itself, its difference reflected into its identity, or (as, in its way, even ancient logic holds of definition — Bestimmung ! ) its Differentia reflected into its Genus. This was the common character of the whole world, and of every denizen in the world. Again, and, as it were, on another side, to perceive was to think, and to think was to identify difference. There is a vast amount of material which can be all brought under this one point of view. A summum genus, for example, is CONCLUSION. 677 a necessity of thought ; but the true name and nature of a summum genus were only identity. That summum genus, too, if it were the summum genus of this actually varied universe, must have been not more the primitive and original identity than the primitive and original difference : in other words, that summum genus must have already held within it also the summa differentia. A union of opposites, then, was thus the one concrete fact; and it was no wonder that — as principle of explanation — it had been the one abstract quest of Kant and the rest. It was thus seen that what we ought to look for was not, as in common thought abstract identity, but pure negativity ; for a one that is through opposites, or an identity that is supported on differents, that lives, that is through these, can be named no otherwise. What is pointed at, in fact, is but the concrete reciprocity of a disjunctive sphere, where each term is no less itself than it is the other also. Nay, the reciprocity is such, that you cannot signalise the one without implicating the other ; or but for mvelopment, and to the extent required, envelopment is impossible : the current forward is equally the current backward — only the mtent makes the extent. You look before to attraction ; but could you look behind, you would equally see repulsion : if the one moment of the antithesis is explicit, the other of the two is always also at the same time correspondingly implicit. Reciprocity has been the bottom consideration of all modern philosophy, and it is remarkable that in just such reciprocity it began.* Hume closed his inquiry by concluding Causality not to be necessary because it was matter of fact; and Kant, with a sort of reciprocating reversal, opened his by inferring Causality not to be matter of fact because it was necessary. This perception on the part of Kant led to the important conclusion, that there must be inferences in us quite a priori and independent of any reference whatever to sensible facts. This single thought of Kant it was that Hegel gazed into its ultimate abstraction, or into its ultimate life, — the concrete notion, the primitive and original radical, the Roc's egg of the whole huge universe. Study of Kant, too, enabled Hegel to see that the content or matter of this notion was not confined to the intellect proper, but repeated itself in perception as well; for an act of perception was to Kant this, that only by the universal is the particular converted into the singular. This singular, further, a phenomenon to Kant as Cko(To ' Est lex continui in natura.' Each of these laws aims only at a ' Focus Imaginarius' for the use of our understanding, which, therefore, as a focus imaginarius, can only be asymptotically approached, nor ever reached, for it is underived from experience, and is indeed wholly beyond the limits of any possible experience. Into the proofs of Kant we have no room to enter, but it will probably be found, in the end, that they are so far, cogent. Variety, Affinity, and Unity are three neces- sities of Eeason, and they fall" on Nature from Reason, but, Kant being right, are not in Nature as such : they are but, as he phrases it, the source of three maxims of Reason, which Reason only seeks to realise. When, then, the supporters of the modern argument in question would refer all to a common genus, and would account for all variety by ' transmutation of species ' (accomplished by whatever expedients they may like), they are only, if we are to believe Kant, CONCLUSION. 746 repeating the schoolboy's chase after the rainbow ; they are pursu- ing only what is in themselves, and will move as they move. There is for him no single genus in nature, nor any infinitude of mutually-affined species : these are but spectra of the reasoner's own projection, illusions merely when their real quality is unde- tected. They have their indispensable use, they connect and give meaning to experience, but they are only snares and pitfalls when applied beyond the possibility of experience. One grand system, unity of type, all this must be postulated from the very constitu- tion of human reason ; but from the very constitution of experi- ence as well, it can never be realised in experience. It is ours to assume that there is such articulate chain in fact : we but stultify ourselves, however, would we attempt to see this chain in growth. This, nevertheless, is just what Darwinists would see ; and just so it is that Darwinianism is at once absolutely certain and utterly impossible. We would catch Nature in the fact, would we — actually come upon her with an individual half in and half out ! We would see identity end, and difference begin ; but so still that the one were the other ! But we may quote here Hegel also (as referred to p. 683 — Encyclo. § 249 and Eemark) : — Nature is to be regarded. as a System of Grades, of which, the one necessarily rises out of the other, and is the proximate truth of the one from which it results — but not so that the one were naturally generated out of the other, but only in the inner Idea which constitutes the ground of nature. Meta- morphosis accrues only to the notion as such, as only its alteration is develop- ment The notion, however, is in nature partly only inner, partly existent only as living individual : to this individual alone, then, is existent meta- morphosis confined. It has been an inept conception of earlier and later ' Naturphilosophie ' to regard the progression and transition of one natural form and sphere into a higher as an outwardly actual production which, however, to be made clearer, is relegated into the obscurity of the past. To nature externality — that is, to let the differences fall asunder and present themselves as neutral existences — is precisely proper : the dialectic notion which guides forward the stages, is the inner of the same. Thinking consideration must deny itself such nebulous, at bottom sensuous, conceptions, as in especial the so-called origin, for ex- ample, of plants and animals from water, and then the origin of the more highly developed animal organisations from the lower, &c This, written many years before the appearance of Mr Darwin's book, reads like a critique on nothing else. This, in fact, is the truth of the case and ends the business. Nature is the externality of the notion, and, as such, a prey to boundless contingency : the 746 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. metamorphosis, the development, the articulation, is due to the notion alone. Name it in the language of Kant, or name it in the language of Hegel, it is the same thing that is indicated. Kant himself says, • the principle of genera postulates identity,' that of species 'diversity.' In ultimate abstraction, indeed, the whole problem just concerns the metaphysic of identity and difference ; neither of which is without the other* The error, then, of the reasoners in question is patent. We may say, in general, too, that they have been precipitate and rash, that they have attempted to execute the realisation of their problem without having first thought this problem out. Not only is it utterly impossible for any material principle to be an adequate Beginning, an adequate First and One, but the whole problem they set themselves concerns at bottom abstract Quality, abstract Quantity, abstract Identity, abstract Difference, abstract Condition, and, in general, the whole body of Metaphysic with which — though they knew it not themselves — unexamined, simply presupposed, they set to manipulate their atom or their species, as if so any legitimate result could be possible. Consider their zoological infinite alone ! What is it but a blind presupposition that Difference, through its own infinitude, identifies itself at last ? So it is that the infinitude of Discretion eliminates itself and restores Continuity ; and thus, too, it is that we arrive at length at truth — the Kantian, the Hegelian, the Concrete Notion. Cuvier shall pursue Difference, and St. Hilaire Identity: but we shall take part exclusively with neither. There is a genus which holds under it all species, and all individuals ; there is a horizon which holds under it infinite horizons, as they others : but this genus, this horizon is not a material atom ; it is the Notion, it is Self- Consciousness, it is God. In passing, let us point out again the one-sidedness of the In- finite of Natural Philosophy at Present, the progress of which is to bring all material atoms into a cold mass, or a hot mass, * It is interesting to find Kant coming so often directly on the notion. At the end of this Appendix, he will be found saying, ' Thus, then, all human knowledge begins with Perceptions, proceeds to Notions, and ends with Ideas ' — the triplicity of the notion almost in its very logical name. Still, the reader will see that, while in Kant the Begriff is only subjective and only seems to act on nature (only acts on nature, as said elsewhere, with an ' as if,' an ' als ob '), it (the Begriff) in Hegel is objective, and actually in nature— only so, however, that it acts not, so to speak, from without on nature as externally conditioned, but rather only schema- tically, as it were, from within. — New. CONCLUSION. 747 in the centre ! Were there nothing in existence but the material forces of this Natural Philosophy, the past Infinite ought long ago to have achieved the result contemplated. That it has not done so depends on the duplicity of the Notion, to which Attraction were impossible, did it not possess, at the same time, just as much Kepulsion. We were badly enough off, then, with the mere brute law of Mr Buckle, but we are worse off still with the contingent lawless- ness of varying conditions ; for so, there were nothing left us but the atoms of Democritus, in the void of Democritus, under the Tv\n of Democritus. But even suppose it so — even suppose all the views of materialism accepted, one after the other, up to complete Darwinianism (necessarily, of course, Identity as Identity, but in material form — that is, as a Primitive Atom) — why, we have but to turn the back, and the world is as it was, the problem as it was. We shall admit all, we shall see the primitive atom, we shall see its gradual evolution into the formed universe. So admitting, so seeing, we shall lose ourselves in the despair of materialism; we shall lament to ourselves that material agency is all, that there is no hope. But just let us turn our backs on the atom a moment, just let us turn round to the formed universe, came it from whence it may, — Ah ! it is all still there the Apparition, in its wonder, in its beauty, with its innumerable ideas ! The majestic shape has been there all the while, in unmoved serenity, as if smiling on the tetchy infant, Man ! How came she there, that majestic shape, jewelled in ideas — jewelled in ideas, were they but shells of the shore, or simple heath-bells of the most savage moor ? — That is it, all has been duly de- veloped from an atom, but whence are the ideas — the ideas of the vast resultant organisation ? Meantime — how easy soever, how varied soever the refutation — men have given themselves up a prey to this materialism : they go down everywhere desperate at present in a wide welter of atheistic atomism. The end of the Aufklarung is material self-wilL But is it well so ? Is it really good to end as Schopen- hauer ? Are we prepared to bear such misery ? Is there no consciousness but the ' unhappy consciousness' — das Ungliickliche Bewusstseyn ? Must we believe ourselves but isolated atoms — unconnected with each other, unconnected with the universe — disjuncts — foam-bells, haply murmuring ourselves out on some plashy pebble of a forlorn shore ? 748 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. No : the triumph of superior enlightenment will not support the materialist himself long. It is in vain that the soul is burned out of us, that God is burned out of us ; even when reduced to a material calx, these, which might have been within us to our comfort and support, return to haunt us from without, as ghosts of vengeance. God is what is, and he will pain his creatures till they confess him. We live in the diastole of the universe, and our souls long for the season of systole. All is in the disjunct — cold, lonely, un- supported: fain would we have company once again, warmth, support, in the conjunct. Let us not be too miserable, neither ; judgment is now the moment at work, we must accept the element — we may enjoy the variety. There is a comique to amuse at present, even in the shallow, even in the triumphant worthless. We must not give all to tears; there is matter still' for laughter. Grisildis is, but not far off as well the wanton she of Bath. If there be the 'Cotter's Saturday Night,' there are likewise the 1 Jolly Beggars ' ; if we have Milton's ' Cathedral Music,' we have also an ode of Catullus — (to Furius if you will). So let us make the best of what is given us — Only, let us know rightly what that is, and of what whole it is but a part. We are shaken asunder from each other certainly, and the traditional substance in which we lived — a common cement — has fallen out ; but it is ours to see this, and it is ours to repair this. Systole must succeed diastole : it is now the time to fill the bucket. It is but another side of the same fact, that all weight, for some time back, has been put on feeling, conscience : not in our works, it has been said, is merit, but in the spirit which produced them. An eloquent utterance to this effect will be found in Carlyle's Hero-worship. This, rightly understood, is true ; other- wise, indeed, it may be also wrong. This, in one way, is but the empty bucket, and the bucket has value only in its filling. I, you, he, — we are not to be left, each to his own opinion of feeling, con- science, spirit ; there must be a guarantee that these are true and right. No one can be trusted in that respect to his own self-will. What is concerned is a rational object, which can be realised by the universal will alone. The feeling of the individual is amenable to the prescriptions of the rational object, nor possesses authority but in assent and consent to the universal. It is not in the power of a single female individual even to refuse a crinoline at present without a creak in the machinery of society — a creak that CONCLUSION. 749 falls with most pain on the ear of the recusant. This is an extreme case, and a temporary, unjustifiable too, certainly, to universal reason: but, in absolute fact, use and wont, observance, is the true morality. That is the meaning of the Hegelian distinction between (concrete) Sittlichkeit and (abstract) Moralitat. Moralitat is the conscience of the Aufklarung: it demands the right of private judgment — place for its own subjective feeling. Sittlich- keit is the deposit of objective reason realised by time in the practical ways of a people. Moralitat — despite the tolerance, the enlightened liberality it asserts for itself at present — is a sour and thin fanatic that burns its enemy alive. Sittlichkeit is a jolly Burgher that lives in Substance, with his family, with his neigh- bours, with his administrators, with his God. It ought to be ours then, as it were, to fatten our Moralitat with a filling of Sittlich- keit— to pasture, as it were, the one on the other. But — in direct antagonism to this — your thorough Uluminatus of the day shall laugh at the mass for wearing absurd round hats and absurd tailed-coats : he, for his part, shall be above the folly of the herd ; his wedding shall be surreptitious, and he shall skulk about it with the air of a thief in the sulks ; he shall not christen his children, neither, nor attend church ; he shall not ceremoniously exchange cards, and never for the life of him drop one with a P.P.C. on it. He shall write no letters of sympathy, none of con- gratulation, not any of condolence. He shall never send any kind messages to inquire, and never be seen at a funeral. He shall exist in Pure Reason ! — But what is this Pure Reason ? It is only his own reason ; it is uncorrected by the reason of others; it tyrannises over himself, it tyrannises over every one unfortunately submitted to him. Reason here, in fact, is simply tantamount to abstract self-will ; and the rule of self-will is the only tyranny, the rule of self-will is despotism proper.* This self-will feels itself, indeed, abstract — divorced from Sub- stance. But the whole bent of all theoretic teaching for a long time back — in abstract Political Science and the Aufklarung generally (compare Shelley on that ' Anarch,' ' Custom ') — has been to foster nothing but this self-will ; and so it is that we are all, more or less, infected — Society, more or less, disintegrated by it. To seek a cure, then, is not now an affair of a few individual * No doubt, even in common usage, while feeling, sentiment, is only subjective, spirit and especially conscience (like the German Gesinnung), are objective (guaran- teed— the bucket has its filling). 750 THE SECRET OF HEGEL. Illuminati, but that of the community at large, and it is to be accomplished by a return to Substance. But what is Substance ? Substance is the traditional observ- ances prescribed by objective Eeason, in the elements of State, Town, Church, Family, &c. And would you have this Substance in the authority and articulation of the Notion, it is there for every one in the pages of Hegel. On such a wrong course are we all nowadays, that — to take a homely example — people still entertain indeed, but there is no longer any hospitality. Rather entertainments at present are periodical mortifications : I mortify you by a display of my splendour in April and June ; you mortify me by exhibiting yours in May and July. And in the midst whether of mortification or triumph, we each sigh for the days when things were otherwise : we eat the diner a la Musse, but what is present to thought — what is actually fragrant in the nostril — is some plainer meal years since. We are disposed to prophesy, then, that the first symptom of a return to Substance will be a return to meals actually intended for enjoyment — and next, perhaps, the recall of the children from the Boarding- school ! In short, what we all long for, is the Christian simplicity, the Christian happiness of our forefathers. We have seen already in picture the subject of this simplicity, the subject of this happiness ; but it will do us good to see him once again, ' the simple pious soul, on the green earth, in the bright fresh air, — patiently in- dustrious, patiently loving, — piously penitent, piously hopeful, — sure of a new world and a new life, a better world and a better life, united to his loved ones, there for ever in the realms of God, through the merits of his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.' This is happiness — the thinnest Aufgeklarter, if he deny it with his lips, will confess it by his sighs ! This is happiness, and this is what must be restored to us, else History indeed draws nigh its term: a universe recognised to be material only were but Humanity's grave. But this happiness will be restored to us, and in this restoration the very most powerful instrument will, perhaps, be the identical Hegel as in contrast to whom — so con- tradictorily opposed the error was — the picture of this happiness first suggested itself. Hegel, indeed, has no object but — reconcil- ing and neutralising atomism — once again to restore to us — and in the new light of the new thought — Immortality and Free-will, Christianity and God. CONCLUSION. 751 With the quotation from Bacon with which Kant begins his Kritik, it seems fit that we should now, after Hegel, and the glimpse obtained into him, end. It runs thus : — De nobis ipsis silemus: de re autem, quae agitur, petimus : ut homines earn non opinionem, sed opus esse cogitent ; ac pro certo habeant, non Sectae nos alicujus, aut Placiti, sed utilitatis et amplitudinis humanac fundamenta moliri. Deinde ut suis commodis aequi ... in commune consulant . . . et ipsi in partem veniant. Praeterea ut bene sperent, neque Instaurationem nostram ut quiddam infinitum et ultra mortale fingant, et animo concipiant ; quum re vera sit infiniti erroris finis et terminus legitimus. Now, probably it will appear not presumptuous that Kant should have sought to prefigure his work so. Now, too, it may be, we are able to see not too dimly that the Kantian Philosophy concerns an opus, and not an opinio ; the foundations of human advantage and advancement, and not the interests of any dogma or sect ; and that it may, indeed, be the end and legitimate term of infinite error. And now, perhaps, we shall be willing to con- sult together, and, for our own profit, participate in the work — not without hope ; — at the same time that we shall assuredly not bind ourselves to the mere human letter whether of Kant or Hegel, as either infinite or more than mortal. Finally, if we may be allowed de nobis ipsis non silere, it will be only to say that we hope the imperfections of these pages may prove but as the irregularity of a ladder — but as the interruptedness of a series of stepping-stones which yet reach at least to the terra firma of a general desire — Hegel. THE END. Oliver and Boyd, Printers, Edinburgh. * »:■■' **- ».• ■ PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET UN.VERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY B 29M8 S885 1898 C.2 SIGS Stirling, James Hutchison The secret of Hegel Si g. Sam. SIGMUND SAMUEL LIBRARY