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ousness or purpose? Have we yet come to subject or spirit? Have we yet come to, or made the least approach to, a unity of self-consciousness which is identical with itself, or have we the slightest provision for conscious end or purpose in the development? What sort of freedom, moreover, is that which is compatible with fatal emanation, provided only the spring or source of that emanation be either substance or cause itself, and

the process of emanation necessary ? Is this the highest

kind of freedom, or the freedom which we are to attribute to Deity? It is infinitely short of the notion of freedom in our own experience. "In necessary emanation all is virtually predetermined, and freedom, though proclaimed the essence of spirit, is necessity for the individual." It is the freedom of which the material mass would be conscious, if it were conscious at all, when let loose from the tie which bound it to the height it descended to the earth. Or, as Trendelenburg has well put it: "Freedom, a grand word, has thus in this relation no other content than this comfort of the substance, that the upspringing are still substances, and the effects as working against are again causes. This relation is the most abstract reflection everywhere applicable, where anything moves. Who ever called it Freedom? Then were necessity even freedom, if the master strikes the slave; for therein are they identical that both are substances; and the slave who gives up his back is operating in this opposite action, as the master in the first cause."

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XII.-HEGELIAN CRITICISM-THE EGO AND THE INFINITE.

The attempt to Hegelianise Descartes seeks to correct him in what he said, and to bring out what he meant to say, or at least ought to have said. It refers, of course, particularly in the first instance, to his Cogito ergo sum. That has to get a new meaning, or at least aspect, be

1 Log. Unt., p. 63 (ed. 1870).

fore it can be accepted as final or sufficient. Let us see how the thing is to be managed. The scope, sense, and guarantee of the first principle have already been explained. What is the Hegelian view?

We are told, in Hegelian language, that the Cogito ergo sum is not a sufficiently deep or primary basis of philosophy. A mere certainty is not enough. The certainty must be primary, nothing actually, but all things potentially. The certainty which it gives does not lie at the root of things. It implies a dualism of thought and being; we must therefore go beyond it to something more fundamental. Philosophy "must penetrate to a stage where thought and being are one-to the absolute unity of both, which precedes their disruption into the several worlds of Nature and Mind. It must show us the very beginning of thought, before it has come to the full consciousness of itself.” 1

Now whence is this must, this necessity of penetration to an absolute unity,-whatever that may mean? How is it that, when we are supposed to be seeking a beginning of philosophy, we are able dogmatically to lay down its prerequisites in this fashion? Have we already a philosophy of what a philosophy ought to be? In that case, how can we be supposed to be seeking the beginning of any philosophy? Surely it is more in accordance with all rules of sound scientific and philosophical procedure to see whether we can go backwards or upwards to this unity, after we have studied the facts and the conceptions which they involve, than to assume that there must be such an absolute unity for philosophy; and further, that we must be able to know it, and to demonstrate all forms of reality from it as a common basis. What is this but to assume, at the outset, a particular solution of the great problem of philosophy, while a more modest and circumspect method would expect such a solution, whatever its nature might be only at the end, and after careful inquiry?

1 Wallace's Logic of Hegel, pp. 126, 127.

1. One is anxious to know precisely the points of the proof for this Hegelian representation of the imperfection of Descartes' doctrine and the necessity of its own. There seem to be two main grounds of proof. These are two statements or principles, which are given in a somewhat dogmatic fashion, as apparently self-evident. For it is a characteristic of this pre-suppositionless philosophy that it more than any other makes assumptions without proffering either proof or warrant of them. The one alleged principle is that, "to be conscious of a limit is to transcend it." Or, more particularly, we are to identify "the consciousness of self as thinking with transcending the limits of its own particular being, and so with the consciousness or idea of God." "Self-consciousness has a negative element in it, that is, something definite, and therefore limited." This is a statement of the principle, and also a hint of its immediate application. The other principle is the well-known Spinozistic aphorism that determination is negation,-Omnis determinatio est negatio.

The two principles now mentioned very closely coincide. The negation refers to the qualities of individual objects; the abstraction from limits refers to things as in space and time, or to things as bounded. As quality is itself a determination, it is a limit. In order to get at what is truly real, we have to abstract from the actual limits of individuals,-nay, we have ultimately to abstract from all limit whatever and we shall find the only true reality in what is then called the Infinite. Hegel is credited with bringing out explicitly the principles which governed the thought of Spinoza.

2. The so-called principle Omnis determinatio est negatio has already been sufficiently exposed.1 Let us look now at the other generality which is vaunted as a principle, and the ground of advanced philosophy. It is thus Hegel himself states the principle:"The knowledge which we have of a limit, shows

1 See supra, p. cxii et seq.

that we already overleap the limit; it shows our infinity. The things of nature are finite by this even, that limit does not exist for them, but only for us who compare them with each other. We are finite when we receive a contrary into consciousness. But we overleap this limit in the knowledge even which we have of that contrary (other). It is only the unconscious being (der Unwissende) that is finite, for it is ignorant of its limit. On the other hand, every being which knows limit knows the limit as not a limit of its knowledge, but as an element of which it has consciousness, as an element that belongs to the sphere of its knowledge. It is only the being unknown (or of which there is no consciousness) that could constitute a limit of knowledge; whilst that known limit is by no means a limit of knowing. Consequently, to know one's own limit is to know one's own illimitability. Meanwhile, when we conceive spirit as unlimited, as truly infinite, we ought not to conclude that the limit is in no way in the spirit, but rather to recognise that spirit ought to determine itself, and therefore to limit itself and place itself in the sphere of the finite. Only the understanding is deceived when it considers this finitude as insurmountable, and the difference of limit and infinity as absolutely irreconcilable, and when, conformably to this conception, it pretends that spirit is finite or infinite. Finitude, seized in its reality is, as we have just said, in infinity. The limit is in the unlimited; and consequently spirit is not infinite or finite, but as well the one as the other. The spirit remains infinite in its finitude, for it suppresses its finitude. In it nothing has an existence fixed and isolated, but all is found idealised, all passes and is absorbed in its unity. It is thus that God, because He is Spirit, must determine Himself, posit in Him finitude (otherwise He would be only a void and dead abstraction); but as the reality which He gives Himself in determining Himself is a reality which is completely adequate to Him, God, in determining Himself, becomes

in no way a finite Being. Limit is not then in God and in the Spirit, but it is placed (posited) by the Spirit in order that it may be suppressed. It is only as moment that finitude can appear in the Spirit and remain there ; for by its ideal nature the Spirit raises itself above it, and knows that limit is in no way a limit insuperable for it. This is why it overpasses it, and frees itself from it. And this deliverance is not as the understanding represents it, a deliverance that is never accomplished, an indefinite effort towards the infinite,-but a deliverance in which the Spirit frees itself from this indefinite progress, completely effaces its limit or its contrary, and raises itself to its absolute individuality and its true infinity."1

Again: "To be annulled by and in its contrary, there is the dialectic which makes the finitude of preceding spheres. But it is the Spirit, the notion, the eternal in itself which effaces this image (simulacrum) of existence, in order to accomplish within itself the annihilation of the appearance."

11 2

We find the principle of this passage repeated in Hegelian literature as apparently not requiring proof. We are told that "to know a limit as such is to be in some sense beyond it;" "the consciousness of a limit implies the consciousness of something beyond it ;" and as applied to reality, it is said to follow that "the dualism of mind and matter is not absolute, and thought transcends the distinction while it recognises it." We find it asserted that "if the individual is to find in his self-consciousness the principle of all knowledge, there must be something in it which transcends the distinction of self and not-self, which carries him beyond the limit of his own individuality." Subjective consciousness passes into objective in the consciousness of God. "It is because we find God in our own minds that we find anything else." Finally, the result of the doctrine

1 Philosophie des Geistes, sect. 387, Zusatz. Compare Logik, sect. 94. 2 Ibid., sect. 38

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