Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow Alan

Moore Curt Swan download

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-man-of-
tomorrow-alan-moore-curt-swan-50158774

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Whatever Happened To The Rich Young Man Keith Foster

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-rich-young-man-
keith-foster-59378964

Whatever Happened To The Music Teacher How Government Decides And Why
Donald J Savoie

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-music-teacher-
how-government-decides-and-why-donald-j-savoie-52537910

Whatever Happened To The Metric System John Bemelmans Marciano

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-metric-system-
john-bemelmans-marciano-56048698

Whatever Happened To The Egyptian Revolution Galal A Amin

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-egyptian-
revolution-galal-a-amin-37577990
Whatever Happened To The Leisure Society A J Veal

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-leisure-
society-a-j-veal-42883768

Whatever Happened To The Third World A History Of The Economics Of

Development Peter De Haan

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-third-world-a-
history-of-the-economics-of-development-peter-de-haan-11185342

Whatever Happened To The Egyptians Changes In Egyptian Society From

1950 To The Present Galal Amin

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-egyptians-
changes-in-egyptian-society-from-1950-to-the-present-galal-
amin-1872678

Whatever Happened To The C86 Kids An Indie Odyssey Nige Tassell

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-c86-kids-an-
indie-odyssey-nige-tassell-44954706

Whatever Happened To The Real Black Country Black Country Chronicles

19391999 Tom Larkin

https://ebookbell.com/product/whatever-happened-to-the-real-black-
country-black-country-chronicles-19391999-tom-larkin-46316240
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
pronounced anthropomorphic, and thought itself is described as a
mere faculty of finitisation.
Jacobi has stated this charge most distinctly in the seventh
supplement to his Letters on Spinoza,—borrowing his line of
argument from the works of Spinoza himself, and applying it as a
weapon against knowledge in general. In his attack knowledge is
taken to mean knowledge of the finite only, a process of thought
from one condition in a series to another, each of which is at once
conditioning and conditioned. According to such a view, to explain
and to get the notion of anything, is the same as to show it to be
derived from something else. Whatever such knowledge embraces,
consequently, is partial, dependent and finite, while the infinite or
true, i.e. God, lies outside of the mechanical inter-connexion to
which knowledge is said to be confined.—It is important to observe
that, while Kant makes the finite nature of the Categories consist
mainly in the formal circumstance that they are subjective, Jacobi
discusses the Categories in their own proper character, and
pronounces them to be in their very import finite. What Jacobi
chiefly had before his eyes, when he thus described science, was the
brilliant successes of the physical or 'exact' sciences in ascertaining
natural forces and laws. It is certainly not on the finite ground
occupied by these sciences that we can expect to meet the in-
dwelling presence of the infinite. Lalande was right when he said he
had swept the whole heaven with his glass, and seen no God. (See
note to § 60.) In the field of physical science, the universal, which is
the final result of analysis, is only the indeterminate aggregate,—of
the external finite,—in one word, Matter: and Jacobi well perceived
that there was no other issue obtainable in the way of a mere
advance from one explanatory clause or law to another.
63.] All the while the doctrine that truth exists for the mind was so
strongly maintained by Jacobi, that Reason alone is declared to be
that by which man lives. This Reason is the knowledge of God. But,
seeing that derivative knowledge is restricted to the compass of
finite facts, Reason is knowledge underivative, or Faith.
Knowledge, Faith, Thought, Intuition are the categories that we
meet with on this line of reflection. These terms, as presumably
familiar to every one, are only too frequently subjected to an
arbitrary use, under no better guidance than the conceptions and
distinctions of psychology, without any investigation into their nature
and notion, which is the main question after all. Thus, we often find
knowledge contrasted with faith, and faith at the same time
explained to be an underivative or intuitive knowledge:—so that it
must be at least some sort of knowledge. And, besides, it is
unquestionably a fact of experience, firstly, that what we believe is in
our consciousness,—-which implies that we know about it; and
secondly, that this belief is a certainty in our consciousness,—which
implies that we know it. Again, and especially, we find thought
opposed to immediate knowledge and faith, and, in particular, to
intuition. But if this intuition be qualified as intellectual, we must
really mean intuition which thinks, unless, in a question about the
nature of God, we are willing to interpret intellect to mean images
and representations of imagination. The word faith or belief, in the
dialect of this system, comes to be employed even with reference to
common objects that are present to the senses. We believe, says
Jacobi, that we have a body,—we believe in the existence of the
things of sense. But if we are speaking of faith in the True and
Eternal, and saying that God is given and revealed to us in
immediate knowledge or intuition, we are concerned not with the
things of sense, but with objects special to our thinking mind, with
truths of inherently universal significance. And when the individual
'I,' or in other words personality, is under discussion—not the 'I' of
experience, or a single private person—above all, when the
personality of God is before us, we are speaking of personality
unalloyed,—of a personality in its own nature universal. Such
personality is a thought, and falls within the province of thought
only. More than this. Pure and simple intuition is completely the
same as pure and simple thought. Intuition and belief, in the first
instance, denote the definite conceptions we attach to these words
in our ordinary employment of them: and to this extent they differ
from thought in certain points which nearly every one can
understand. But here they are taken in a higher sense, and must be
interpreted to mean a belief in God, or an intellectual intuition of
God; in short, we must put aside all that especially distinguishes
thought on the one side from belief and intuition on the other. How
belief and intuition, when transferred to these higher regions, differ
from thought, it is impossible for any one to say. And yet, such are
the barren distinctions of words, with which men fancy that they
assert an important truth: even while the formulae they maintain are
identical with those which they impugn.
The term Faith brings with it the special advantage of suggesting the
faith of the Christian religion; it seems to include Christian faith, or
perhaps even to coincide with it; and thus the Philosophy of Faith
has a thoroughly orthodox and Christian look, on the strength of
which it takes the liberty of uttering its arbitrary dicta with greater
pretension and authority. But we must not let ourselves be deceived
by the semblance surreptitiously secured by a merely verbal
similarity. The two things are radically distinct. Firstly, the Christian
faith comprises in it an authority of the Church: but the faith of
Jacobi's philosophy has no other authority than that of a personal
revelation. And, secondly, the Christian faith is a copious body of
objective truth, a system of knowledge and doctrine: while the scope
of the philosophic faith is so utterly indefinite, that, while it has room
for the faith of the Christian, it equally admits a belief in the divinity
of the Dalai-lama, the ox, or the monkey,—thus, so far as it goes,
narrowing Deity down to its simplest terms, a 'Supreme Being.' Faith
itself, taken in this professedly philosophical sense, is nothing but
the sapless abstract of immediate knowledge,—a purely formal
category applicable to very different facts; and it ought never to be
confused or identified with the spiritual fulness of Christian faith,
whether we look at that faith in the heart of the believer and the in-
dwelling of the Holy Spirit, or in the system of theological doctrine.
With what is here called faith or immediate knowledge must also be
identified inspiration, the heart's revelations, the truths implanted in
man by nature, and also in particular, healthy reason or Common
Sense, as it is called. All these forms agree in adopting as their
leading principle the immediacy, or self-evident way, in which a fact
or body of truths is presented in consciousness.
84.] This immediate knowledge consists in knowing that the Infinite,
the Eternal, the God which is in our idea, really is: or, it asserts that
in our consciousness there is immediately and inseparably bound up
with this idea the certainty of its actual being.
To seek to controvert these maxims of immediate knowledge is the
last thing philosophers would think of. They may rather find occasion
for self-gratulation when these ancient doctrines, expressing as they
do the general tenor of philosophic teaching, have, even in this
unphilosophical fashion, become to some extent universal
convictions of the age. The true marvel rather is that any one could
suppose that these principles were opposed to philosophy,—the
maxims, viz., that whatever is held to be true is immanent in the
mind, and that there is truth for the mind (§ 63). From a formal
point of view, there is a peculiar interest in the maxim that the being
of God is immediately and inseparably bound up with the thought of
God, that objectivity is bound up with the subjectivity which the
thought originally presents. Not content with that, the philosophy of
immediate knowledge goes so far in its one-sided view, as to affirm
that the attribute of existence, even in perception, is quite as
inseparably connected with the conception we have of our own
bodies and of external things, as it is with the thought of God. Now
it is the endeavour of philosophy to prove such a unity, to show that
it lies in the very nature of thought and subjectivity, to be
inseparable from being and objectivity. In these circumstances
therefore, philosophy, whatever estimate may be formed of the
character of these proofs, must in any case be glad to see it shown
and maintained that its maxims are facts of consciousness, and thus
in harmony with experience. The difference between philosophy and
the asseverations of immediate knowledge rather centres in the
exclusive attitude which immediate knowledge adopts, when it sets
itself up against philosophy.
And yet it was as a self-evident or immediate truth that the 'Cogito,
ergo sum,' of Descartes, the maxim on which may be said to hinge
the whole interest of Modern Philosophy, was first stated by its
author. The man who calls this a syllogism, must know little more
about a syllogism than that the word 'Ergo' occurs in it. Where shall
we look for the middle term? And a middle term is a much more
essential point of a syllogism than the word 'Ergo.' If we try to justify
the name, by calling the combination of ideas in Descartes an
'immediate' syllogism, this superfluous variety of syllogism is a mere
name for an utterly unmediated synthesis of distinct terms of
thought. That being so, the synthesis of being with our ideas, as
stated in the maxim of immediate knowledge, has no more and no
less claim to the title of syllogism than the axiom of Descartes has.
From Hotho's 'Dissertation on the Cartesian Philosophy' (published
1826), I borrow the quotation in which Descartes himself distinctly
declares that the maxim 'Cogito, ergo sum,' is no syllogism. The
passages are Respons. ad II Object.: De Methodo IV: Ep. I. 118.
From the first passage I quote the words more immediately to the
point. Descartes says: 'That we are thinking beings is "prima
quaedam notio quae ex nullo syllogismo concluditur"' (a certain
primary notion, which is deduced from no syllogism); and goes on:
'neque cum quis dicit; Ego cogito, ergo sum sive existo, existentiam
ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit.' (Nor, when one says, I
think, therefore I am or exist, does he deduce existence from
thought by means of a syllogism.) Descartes knew what it implied in
a syllogism, and so he adds that, in order to make the maxim admit
of a deduction by syllogism, we should have to add the major
premiss: 'Illud omne quod cogitat, est sive existit.' (Everything which
thinks, is or exists.) Of course, he remarks, this major premiss itself
has to be deduced from the original statement.
The language of Descartes on the maxim that the 'I' which thinks
must also at the same time be, his saying that this connexion is
given and implied in the simple perception of consciousness,—that
this connexion is the absolute first, the principle, the most certain
and evident of all things, so that no scepticism can be conceived so
monstrous as not to admit it:—all this language is so vivid and
distinct, that the modern statements of Jacobi and others on this
immediate connexion can only pass for needless repetitions.
65.] The theory of which we are speaking is not satisfied when it has
shown that mediate knowledge taken separately is an adequate
vehicle of truth. Its distinctive doctrine is that immediate knowledge
alone, to the total exclusion of mediation, can possess a content
which is true. This exclusiveness is enough to show that the theory
is a relapse into the metaphysical understanding, with its pass-words
'Either—or.' And thus it is really a relapse into the habit of external
mediation, the gist of which consists in clinging to those narrow and
one-sided categories of the finite, which it falsely imagined itself to
have left for ever behind. This point, however, we shall not at
present discuss in detail. An exclusively immediate knowledge is
asserted as a fact only, and in the present Introduction we can only
study it from this external point of view. The real significance of such
knowledge will be explained, when we come to the logical question
of the opposition between mediate and immediate. But it is
characteristic of the view before us to decline to examine the nature
of the fact, that is, the notion of it; for such an examination would
itself be a step towards mediation and even towards knowledge. The
genuine discussion on logical ground, therefore, must be deferred till
we come to the proper province of Logic itself.
The whole of the second part of Logic, the Doctrine of Essential
Being, is a discussion of the intrinsic and self-affirming unity of
immediacy and mediation.
66.] Beyond this point then we need not go: immediate knowledge is
to be accepted as a fact. Under these circumstances examination is
directed to the field of experience, to a psychological phenomenon.
If that be so, we need only note, as the commonest of experiences,
that truths, which we well know to be results of complicated and
highly mediated trains of thought, present themselves immediately
and without effort to the mind of any man who is familiar with the
subject. The mathematician, like every one who has mastered a
particular science, meets any problem with ready-made solutions
which pre-suppose most complicated analyses: and every educated
man has a number of general views and maxims which he can
muster without trouble, but which can only have sprung from
frequent reflection and long experience. The facility we attain in any
sort of knowledge, art, or technical expertness, consists in having
the particular knowledge or kind of action present to our mind in any
case that occurs, even we may say, immediate in our very limbs, in
an out-going activity. In all these instances, immediacy of knowledge
is so far from excluding mediation, that the two things are linked
together,—immediate knowledge being actually the product and
result of mediated knowledge.
It is no less obvious that immediate existence is bound up with its
mediation. The seed and the parents are immediate and initial
existences in respect of the off-spring which they generate. But the
seed and the parents, though they exist and are therefore
immediate, are yet in their turn generated: and the child, without
prejudice to the mediation of its existence, is immediate, because it
is. The fact that I am in Berlin, my immediate presence here, is
mediated by my having made the journey hither.
67.] One thing may be observed with reference to the immediate
knowledge of God, of legal and ethical principles (including under
the head of immediate knowledge, what is otherwise termed
Instinct, Implanted or Innate Ideas, Common Sense, Natural
Reason, or whatever form, in short, we give to the original
spontaneity). It is a matter of general experience that education or
development is required to bring out into consciousness what is
therein contained. It was so even with the Platonic reminiscence;
and the Christian rite of baptism, although a sacrament, involves the
additional obligation of a Christian up-bringing. In short, religion and
morals, however much they may be faith or immediate knowledge,
are still on every side conditioned by the mediating process which is
termed development, education, training.
The adherents, no less than the assailants, of the doctrine of Innate
Ideas have been guilty throughout of the like exclusiveness and
narrowness as is here noted. They have drawn a hard and fast line
between the essential and immediate union (as it may be described)
of certain universal principles with the soul, and another union which
has to be brought about in an external fashion, and through the
channel of given objects and conceptions, There is one objection,
borrowed from experience, which was raised against the doctrine of
Innate ideas. All men, it was said, must have these ideas; they must
have, for example, the maxim of contradiction, present in the mind,
—they must be aware of it; for this maxim and others like it were
included in the class of Innate ideas. The objection may be set down
to misconception; for the principles in question, though innate, need
not on that account have the form of ideas or conceptions of
something we are aware of. Still, the objection completely meets and
overthrows the crude theory of immediate knowledge, which
expressly maintains its formulae in so far as they are in
consciousness.—Another point calls for notice. We may suppose it
admitted by the intuitive school, that the special case of religious
faith involves supplementing by a Christian or religious education
and development. In that case it is acting capriciously when it seeks
to ignore this admission when speaking about faith, or it betrays a
want of reflection not to know, that, if the necessity of education be
once admitted, mediation is pronounced indispensable.
The reminiscence of ideas spoken of by Plato is equivalent to
saying that ideas implicitly exist in man, instead of being, as the
Sophists assert, a foreign importation into his mind. But to
conceive knowledge as reminiscence does not interfere with, or
set aside as useless, the development of what is implicitly in man;
—which development is another word for mediation. The same
holds good of the innate ideas that we find in Descartes and the
Scotch philosophers. These ideas are only potential in the first
instance, and should be looked at as being a sort of mere
capacity in man.
88.] In the case of these experiences the appeal turns upon
something that shows itself bound up with immediate consciousness.
Even if this combination be in the first instance taken as an external
and empirical connexion, still, even for empirical observation, the
fact of its being constant shows it to be essential and inseparable.
But, again, if this immediate consciousness, as exhibited in
experience, be taken separately, so far as it is a consciousness of
God and the divine nature, the state of mind which it implies is
generally described as an exaltation above the finite, above the
senses, and above the instinctive desires and affections of the
natural heart: which exaltation passes over into, and terminates in,
faith in God and a divine order. It is apparent, therefore, that,
though faith may be an immediate knowledge and certainty, it
equally implies the interposition of this process as its antecedent and
condition.
It has been already observed, that the so-called proofs of the being
of God, which start from finite being, give an expression to this
exaltation. In that light they are no inventions of an over-subtle
reflection, but the necessary and native channel in which the
movement of mind runs: though it may be that, in their ordinary
form, these proofs have not their correct and adequate expression.
69.] It is the passage (§ 64) from the subjective Idea to being which
forms the main concern of the doctrine of immediate knowledge. A
primary and self-evident inter-connexion is declared to exist between
our Idea and being. Yet precisely this central point of transition,
utterly irrespective of any connexions which show in experience,
clearly involves a mediation. And the mediation is of no imperfect or
unreal kind, where the mediation takes place with and through
something external, but one comprehending both antecedent and
conclusion.
70.] For, what this theory asserts is that truth lies neither in the Idea
as a merely subjective thought, nor in mere being on its own
account;—that mere being per se, a being that is not of the Idea, is
the sensible finite being of the world. Now all this only affirms,
without demonstration, that the Idea has truth only by means of
being, and being has truth only by means of the Idea. The maxim of
immediate knowledge rejects an indefinite empty immediacy (and
such is abstract being, or pure unity taken by itself), and affirms in
its stead the unity of the Idea with being. And it acts rightly in so
doing. But it is stupid not to see that the unity of distinct terms or
modes is not merely a purely immediate unity, i.e. unity empty and
indeterminate, but that—with equal emphasis—the one term is
shown to have truth only as mediated through the other;—or, if the
phrase be preferred, that either term is only mediated with truth
through the other. That the quality of mediation is involved in the
very immediacy of intuition is thus exhibited as a fact, against which
understanding, conformably to the fundamental maxim of immediate
knowledge that the evidence of consciousness is infallible, can have
nothing to object. It is only ordinary abstract understanding which
takes the terms of mediation and immediacy, each by itself
absolutely, to represent an inflexible line of distinction, and thus
draws upon its own head the hopeless task of reconciling them. The
difficulty, as we have shown, has no existence in the fact, and it
vanishes in the speculative notion.
71.] The one-sidedness of the intuitional school has certain
characteristics attending upon it, which we shall proceed to point out
in their main features, now that we have discussed the fundamental
principle. The first of these corollaries is as follows. Since the
criterion of truth is found, not in the nature of the content, but in the
mere fact of consciousness, every alleged truth has no other basis
than subjective certitude and the assertion that we discover a
certain fact in our consciousness. What I discover in my
consciousness is thus exaggerated into a fact of the consciousness
of all, and even passed off for the very nature of consciousness.
Among the so-called proofs of the existence of God, there used to
stand the consensus gentium, to which appeal is made as early as
Cicero. The consensus gentium is a weighty authority, and the
transition is easy and natural, from the circumstance that a certain
fact is found in the consciousness of every one, to the conclusion
that it is a necessary element in the very nature of consciousness. In
this category of general agreement there was latent the deep-rooted
perception, which does not escape even the least cultivated mind,
that the consciousness of the individual is at the same time
particular and accidental. Yet unless we examine the nature of this
consciousness itself, stripping it of its particular and accidental
elements and, by the toilsome operation of reflection, disclosing the
universal in its entirety and purity, it is only a unanimous agreement
upon a given point that can authorize a decent presumption that
that point is part of the very nature of consciousness. Of course, if
thought insists on seeing the necessity of what is presented as a fact
of general occurrence, the consensus gentium is certainly not
sufficient. Yet even granting the universality of the fact to be a
satisfactory proof, it has been found impossible to establish the
belief in God on such an argument, because experience shows that
there are individuals and nations without any such faith.[1] But there
can be nothing shorter and more convenient than to have the bare
assertion to make, that we discover a fact in our consciousness, and
are certain that it is true: and to declare that this certainty, instead
of proceeding from our particular mental constitution only, belongs
to the very nature of the mind.
72.] A second corollary which results from holding immediacy of
consciousness to be the criterion of truth is that all superstition or
idolatry is allowed to be truth, and that an apology is prepared for
any contents of the will, however wrong and immoral. It is because
he believes in them, and not from the reasoning and syllogism of
what is termed mediate knowledge, that the Hindoo finds God in the
cow, the monkey, the Brahmin, or the Lama. But the natural desires
and affections spontaneously carry and deposit their interests in
consciousness, where also immoral aims make themselves naturally
at home: the good or bad character would thus express the definite
being of the will, which would be known, and that most immediately,
in the interests and aims.
73.] Thirdly and lastly, the immediate consciousness of God goes no
further than to tell us that He is: to tell us what He is, would be an
act of cognition, involving mediation. So that God as an object of
religion is expressly narrowed down to the indeterminate
supersensible, God in general: and the significance of religion is
reduced to a minimum.
If it were really needful to win back and secure the bare belief that
there is a God, or even to create it, we might well wonder at the
poverty of the age which can see a gain in the merest pittance of
religious consciousness, and which in its church has sunk so low as
to worship at the altar that stood in Athens long ago, dedicated to
the 'Unknown God.'
74.] We have still briefly to indicate the general nature of the form of
immediacy. For it is the essential one-sidedness of the category,
which makes whatever comes under it one sided and, for that
reason, finite. And, first, it makes the universal no better than an
abstraction external to the particulars, and God a being without
determinate quality. But God can only be called a spirit when He is
known to be at once the beginning and end, as well as the mean, in
the process of mediation. Without this unification of elements He is
neither concrete, nor living, nor a spirit. Thus the knowledge of God
as a spirit necessarily implies mediation. The form of immediacy,
secondly, invests the particular with the character of independent or
self-centred being. But such predicates contradict the very essence
of the particular,—which is to be referred to something else outside.
They thus invest the finite with the character of an absolute. But,
besides, the form of immediacy is altogether abstract: it has no
preference for one set of contents more than another, but is equally
susceptible of all: it may as well sanction what is idolatrous and
immoral as the reverse. Only when we discern that the content,—the
particular, is not self-subsistent, but derivative from something else,
are its finitude and untruth shown in their proper light. Such
discernment, where the content we discern carries with it the
ground of its dependent nature, is a knowledge which involves
mediation. The only content which can be held to be the truth is one
not mediated with something else, not limited by other things: or,
otherwise expressed, it is one mediated by itself, where mediation
and immediate reference-to-self coincide. The understanding that
fancies it has got clear of finite knowledge, the identity of the
analytical metaphysicians and the old 'rationalists,' abruptly takes
again as principle and criterion of truth that immediacy which, as an
abstract reference-to-self, is the same as abstract identity. Abstract
thought (the scientific form used by 'reflective' metaphysic) and
abstract intuition (the form used by immediate knowledge) are one
and the same.
The stereotyped opposition between the form of immediacy and
that of mediation gives to the former a halfness and inadequacy,
that affects every content which is brought under it. Immediacy
means, upon the whole, an abstract reference-to-self, that is, an
abstract identity or abstract universality. Accordingly the essential
and real universal, when taken merely in its immediacy, is a mere
abstract universal; and from this point of view God is conceived
as a being altogether without determinate quality. To call God
spirit is in that case only a phrase: for the consciousness and self-
consciousness, which spirit implies, are impossible without a
distinguishing of it from itself and from something else, i.e.
without mediation.
75.] It was impossible for us to criticise this, the third attitude, which
thought has been made to take towards objective truth, in any other
mode than what is naturally indicated and admitted in the doctrine
itself. The theory asserts that immediate knowledge is a fact. It has
been shown to be untrue in fact to say that there is an immediate
knowledge, a knowledge without mediation either by means of
something else or in itself. It has also been explained to be false in
fact to say that thought advances through finite and conditioned
categories only, which are always mediated by a something else, and
to forget that in the very act of mediation the mediation itself
vanishes. And to show that, in point of fact, there is a knowledge
which advances neither by unmixed immediacy nor by unmixed
mediation, we can point to the example of Logic and the whole of
philosophy.
76.] If we view the maxims of immediate knowledge in connexion
with the uncritical metaphysic of the past from which we started, we
shall learn from the comparison the reactionary nature of the school
of Jacobi. His doctrine is a return to the modern starting-point of this
metaphysic in the Cartesian philosophy. Both Jacobi and Descartes
maintain the following three points:
(1) The simple inseparability of the thought and being of the thinker.
'Cogito, ergo sum' is the same doctrine as that the being, reality, and
existence of the 'Ego' is immediately revealed to me in
consciousness. (Descartes, in fact, is careful to state that by thought
he means consciousness in general. Princip. Phil. I. 9.) This
inseparability is the absolutely first and most certain knowledge, not
mediated or demonstrated.
(2) The inseparability of existence from the conception of God: the
former is necessarily implied in the latter, or the conception never
can be without the attribute of existence, which is thus necessary
and eternal.[2]
(3) The immediate consciousness of the existence of external things.
By this nothing more is meant than sense-consciousness. To have
such a thing is the slightest of all cognitions: and the only thing
worth knowing about it is that such immediate knowledge of the
being of things external is error and delusion, that the sensible world
as such is altogether void of truth; that the being of these external
things is accidental and passes away as a show; and that their very
nature is to have only an existence which is separable from their
essence and notion.
77.] There is however a distinction between the two points of view:
(1) The Cartesian philosophy, from these unproved postulates, which
it assumes to be unprovable, proceeds to wider and wider details of
knowledge, and thus gave rise to the sciences of modern times. The
modern theory (of Jacobi), on the contrary, (§ 62) has come to what
is intrinsically a most important conclusion that cognition, proceeding
as it must by finite mediations, can know only the finite, and never
embody the truth; and would fain have the consciousness of God go
no further than the aforesaid very abstract belief that God is.[3]
(2) The modern doctrine on the one hand makes no change in the
Cartesian method of the usual scientific knowledge, and conducts on
the same plan the experimental and finite sciences that have sprung
from it. But, on the other hand, when it comes to the science which
has infinity for its scope, it throws aside that method, and thus, as it
knows no other, it rejects all methods. It abandons itself to wild
vagaries of imagination and assertion, to a moral priggishness and
sentimental arrogance, or to a reckless dogmatising and lust of
argument, which is loudest against philosophy and philosophic
doctrines. Philosophy of course tolerates no mere assertions or
conceits, and checks the free play of argumentative see-saw.
78.] We must then reject the opposition between an independent
immediacy in the contents or facts of consciousness and an equally
independent mediation, supposed incompatible with the former. The
incompatibility is a mere assumption, an arbitrary assertion. All other
assumptions and postulates must in like manner be left behind at
the entrance to philosophy, whether they are derived from the
intellect or the imagination. For philosophy is the science, in which
every such proposition must first be scrutinised and its meaning and
oppositions be ascertained.
Scepticism, made a negative science and systematically applied to all
forms of knowledge, might seem a suitable introduction, as pointing
out the nullity of such assumptions. But a sceptical introduction
would be not only an ungrateful but also a useless course; and that
because Dialectic, as we shall soon make appear, is itself an
essential element of affirmative science. Scepticism, besides, could
only get hold of the finite forms as they were suggested by
experience, taking them as given, instead of deducing them
scientifically. To require such a scepticism accomplished is the same
as to insist on science being preceded by universal doubt, or a total
absence of presupposition. Strictly speaking, in the resolve that wills
pure thought, this requirement is accomplished by freedom which,
abstracting from everything, grasps its pure abstraction, the
simplicity of thought.

[1] In order to judge of the greater or less extent lo which

Experience shows cases of Atheism or of the belief in God, it is
all-important to know if the mere general conception of deity
suffices, or if a more definite knowledge of God is required. The
Christian world would certainly refuse the title of God to the idols
of the Hindoos and the Chinese, to the fetiches of the Africans,
and even to the gods of Greece themselves. If so, a believer in
these idols would not be a believer in God. If it were contended,
on the other hand, that such a belief in idols implies some sort of
belief in God, as the species implies the genus, then idolatry
would argue not faith in an idol merely, but faith in God. The
Athenians took an opposite view. The poets and philosophers who
explained Zeus to be a cloud, and maintained that there was only
one God, were treated as atheists at Athens.
The danger in these questions lies in looking at what the mind
may make out of an object, and not what that object actually and
explicitly is. If we fail to note this distinction, the commonest
perceptions of men's senses will be religion: for every such
perception, and indeed every act of mind, implicitly contains the
principle which, when it is purified and developed, rises to
religion. But to be capable of religion is one thing, to have it
another. And religion yet implicit is only a capacity or a possibility.
Thus in modern times, travellers have found tribes (as Captains
Ross and Parry found the Esquimaux) which, as they tell us, have
not even that small modicum of religion possessed by African
sorcerers, the goëtes of Herodotus. On the other hand, an
Englishman, who spent the first months of the last Jubilee at
Rome, says, in his account of the modern Romans, that the
common people are bigots, whilst those who can read and write
are atheists to a man.
The charge of Atheism is seldom heard in modern times:
principally because the facts and the requirements of religion are
reduced to a minimum. (See § 73.)
[2] Descartes, Princip. Phil. I. 15: Magis hoc (ens summe
perfectum existere) credet, si attendat, nullius alterius rei ideam
apud se inveniri, in qua eodem modo necessariam existentiam
contineri animadveriat;—intelliget illam ideam exhibere veram et
immutabilem naturam, quaeque non potest non existere, cum
necessaria existentia in ea contineatur. (The reader will be more
disposed to believe that there exists a being supremely perfect, if
he notes that in the case of nothing else is there found in him an
idea, in which he notices necessary existence to be contained in
the same way. He will see that that idea exhibits a true and
unchangeable nature,—a nature which cannot but exist, since
necessary existence is contained in it.) A remark which
immediately follows, and which sounds like mediation or
demonstration, does not really prejudice the original principle.
In Spinoza we come upon the same statement that the essence
or abstract conception of God implies existence. The first of
Spinoza's definitions, that of the Causa Sui (or Self-Cause),
explains it to be cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id cujus
natura non potest concipi nisi existens (that of which the essence
involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived
except as existing). The inseparability of the notion from being is
the main point and fundamental hypothesis in his system. But
what notion is thus inseparable from being? Not the notion of
finite things, for they are so constituted as to have a contingent
and a created existence. Spinoza's 11th proposition, which follows
with a proof that God exists necessarily, and his 20th, showing
that God's existence and his essence are one and the same, are
really superfluous, and the proof is more in form than in reality.
To say, that God is Substance, the only Substance, and that, as
Substance is Causa Sui, God therefore exists necessarily, is merely
stating that God is that of which the notion and the being are
inseparable.
[3] Anselm on the contrary says: Negligentiae mihi videtur, si
post-quam confirmati sumus in fide, non studemus, quod
credimus, intelligere. (Methinks it is carelessness, if, after we have
been confirmed in the faith, we do not exert ourselves to see the
meaning of what we believe.) [Tractat. Cur Deus Homo?] These
words of Anselm, in connexion with the concrete truths of
Christian doctrine, offer a far harder problem for investigation,
than is contemplated by this modern faith.
 CHAPTER VI.

LOGIC FURTHER DEFINED AND DIVIDED.

79.] In point of form Logical doctrine has three sides: (α) the
Abstract side, or that of understanding: (ß) the Dialectical, or that of
negative reason: (y) the Speculative, or that of positive reason.
These three sides do not make three parts of logic, but are stages or
'moments' in every logical entity, that is, of every notion and truth
whatever. They may all be put under the first stage, that of
understanding, and so kept isolated from each other; but this would
give an inadequate conception of them.—The statement of the
dividing lines and the characteristic aspects of logic is at this point
no more than historical and anticipatory.
80.] (α) Thought, as Understanding, sticks to fixity of characters and
their distinctness from one another: every such limited abstract it
treats as having a subsistence and being of its own.
In our ordinary usage of the term thought and even notion, we
often have before our eyes nothing more than the operation of
Understanding. And no doubt thought is primarily an exercise of
Understanding:—only it goes further, and the notion is not a
function of Understanding merely. The action of Understanding
may be in general described as investing its subject-matter with
the form of universality. But this universal is an abstract universal:
that is to say, its opposition to the particular is so rigorously
maintained, that it is at the same time also reduced to the
character of a particular again. In this separating and abstracting
attitude towards its objects, Understanding is the reverse of
immediate perception and sensation, which, as such, keep
completely to their native sphere of action in the concrete.
It is by referring to this opposition of Understanding to sensation
or feeling that we must explain the frequent attacks made upon
thought for being hard and narrow, and for leading, if consistently
developed, to ruinous and pernicious results. The answer to these
charges, in so far as they are warranted by their facts, is, that
they do not touch thinking in general, certainly not the thinking of
Reason, but only the exercise of Understanding. It must be added
however, that the merit and rights of the mere Understanding
should unhesitatingly be admitted. And that merit lies in the fact,
that apart from Understanding there is no fixity or accuracy in the
region either of theory or of practice.
Thus, in theory, knowledge begins by apprehending existing
objects in their specific differences. In the study of nature, for
example, we distinguish matters, forces, genera and the like, and
stereotype each in its isolation. Thought is here acting in its
analytic capacity, where its canon is identity, a simple reference of
each attribute to itself. It is under the guidance of the same
identity that the process in knowledge is effected from one
scientific truth to another. Thus, for example, in mathematics
magnitude is the feature which, to the neglect of any other,
determines our advance. Hence in geometry we compare one
figure with another, so as to bring out their identity. Similarly in
other fields of knowledge, such as jurisprudence, the advance is
primarily regulated by identity. In it we argue from one specific
law or precedent to another: and what is this but to proceed on
the principle of identity?
But Understanding is as indispensable in practice as it is in theory.
Character is an essential in conduct, and a man of character is an
understanding man, who in that capacity has definite ends in view
and undeviatingly pursues them. The man who will do something
great must learn, as Goethe says, to limit himself. The man who,
on the contrary, would do everything, really would do nothing,
and fails. There is a host of interesting things in the world:
Spanish poetry, chemistry, politics, and music are all very
interesting, and if any one takes an interest in them we need not
find fault. But for a person in a given situation to accomplish
anything, he must stick to one definite point, and not dissipate
his' forces in many directions. In every calling, too, the great
thing is to pursue it with understanding. Thus the judge must
stick to the law, and give his verdict in accordance with, it,
undeterred by one motive or another, allowing no excuses; and
looking neither left nor right. Understanding, too, is always an
element in thorough training. The trained-intellect is not satisfied
with cloudy and indefinite impressions, but grasps the objects in
their fixed character: whereas the uncultivated man wavers
unsettled, and it often costs a deal of trouble to come to an
understanding with him on the matter under discussion, and to
bring him to fix his eye on the definite point in question.
It has been already explained that the Logical principle in general,
far from being merely a subjective action in our minds, is rather
the very universal, which as such is also objective. This doctrine is
illustrated in the case of understanding, the first form of logical
truths. Understanding in this larger sense corresponds to what we
call the goodness of God, so far as that means that finite things
are and subsist. In nature, for example, we recognise the
goodness of God in the fact that the various classes or species of
animals and plants are provided with whatever they need for their
preservation and welfare. Nor is man excepted, who, both as an
individual and as a nation, possesses partly in the given
circumstances of climate, of quality and products of soil, and
partly in his natural parts or talents, all that is required for his
maintenance and development. Under this shape Understanding
is visible in every department of the objective world; and no
object in that world can ever be wholly perfect which does not
give full satisfaction to the canons of understanding. A state, for
example, is imperfect, so long as it has not reached a clear
differentiation of orders and callings, and so long as those
functions of politics and government, which are different in
principle, have not evolved for themselves special organs, in the
same way as we see, for example, the developed animal
organism provided with separate organs for the functions of
sensation, motion, digestion, &c.
 The previous course of the discussion may serve to show, that
understanding is indispensable even in those spheres and regions
of action which the popular fancy would deem furthest from it,
and that in proportion as understanding, is absent from them,
imperfection is the result. This particularly holds good of Art,
Religion, and Philosophy. In Art, for example, understanding is
visible where the forms of beauty, which differ in principle, are
kept distinct and exhibited in their purity. The same thing holds
good also of single works of art. It is part of the beauty and
perfection of a dramatic poem that the characters of the several
persons should be closely and faithfully maintained, and that the
different aims and interests involved should be plainly and
decidedly exhibited. Or again, take the province of Religion. The
superiority of Greek over Northern mythology (apart from other
differences of subject-matter and conception) mainly consists in
this: that in the former the individual gods are fashioned into
forms of sculpture-like distinctness of outline, while in the latter
the figures fade away vaguely and hazily into one another. Lastly
comes Philosophy. That Philosophy never can get on without the
understanding hardly calls for special remark after what has been
said. Its foremost requirement is that every thought shall be
grasped in its full precision, and nothing allowed to remain vague
and indefinite.
It is usually added that understanding must not go too far. Which
is so far correct, that understanding is not an ultimate, but on the
contrary finite, and so constituted that when carried to extremes
it veers round to its opposite. It is the fashion of youth to dash
about in abstractions: but the man who has learnt to know life
steers clear of the abstract 'either—or,' and keeps to the concrete.
81.] (ß) In the Dialectical stage these finite characterisations or
formulae supersede themselves, and pass into their opposites.
(1) But when the Dialectical principle is employed by the
understanding separately and independently,—especially as seen in
its application to philosophical theories, Dialectic becomes
Scepticism; in which the result that ensues from its action is
presented as a mere negation.
(2) It is customary to treat Dialectic as an adventitious art, which for
very wantonness introduces confusion and a mere semblance of
contradiction into definite notions. And in that light, the semblance is
the nonentity, while the true reality is supposed to belong to the
original dicta of understanding. Often, indeed, Dialectic is nothing
more than a subjective see-saw of arguments pro and con, where
the absence of sterling thought is disguised by the subtlety which
gives birth to such arguments. But in its true and proper character.
Dialectic is the very nature and essence of everything predicated by
mere understanding,—the law of things and of the finite as a whole.
Dialectic is different from 'Reflection.' In the first instance, Reflection
is that movement out beyond the isolated predicate of a thing which
gives it some reference, and brings out its relativity, while still in
other respects leaving it its isolated validity. But by Dialectic is meant
the in-dwelling tendency outwards by which the one-sidedness and
limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen in its true light,
and shown to be the negation of them. For anything to be finite is
just to suppress itself and put itself aside. Thus understood the
Dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific
progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent connexion and
necessity to the body of science; and, in a word, is seen to
constitute the real and true, as opposed to the external, exaltation
above the finite.
(1) It is of the highest importance to ascertain and understand
rightly the nature of Dialectic. Wherever there is movement,
wherever there is life, wherever anything is carried into effect in
the actual world, there Dialectic is at work. It is also the soul of all
knowledge which is truly scientific. In the popular way of looking
at things, the refusal to be bound by the abstract deliverances of
understanding appears as fairness, which, according to the
proverb Live and let live, demands that each should have its turn;
we admit the one, but we admit the other also. But when we look
more closely, we find that the limitations of the finite do not
merely come from without; that its own nature is the cause of its
abrogation, and that by its own act it passes into its counterpart.
We say, for instance, that man is mortal, and seem to think that
the ground of his death is in external circumstances only; so that
if this way of looking were correct, man would have two special
properties, vitality and—also—mortality. But the true view of the
matter is that life, as life, involves the germ of death, and that the
finite, being radically self-contradictory, involves its own self-
suppression.
Nor, again, is Dialectic to be confounded with mere Sophistry. The
essence of Sophistry lies in giving authority to a partial and
abstract principle, in its isolation, as may suit the interest and
particular situation of the individual at the time. For example, a
regard to my existence, and my having the means of existence, is
a vital motive of conduct, but if I exclusively emphasise this
consideration or motive of my welfare, and draw the conclusion
that I may steal or betray my country, we have a case of
Sophistry. Similarly, it is a vital principle in conduct that I should
be subjectively free, that is to say, that I should have an insight
into what I am doing, and a conviction that it is right. But if my
pleading insists on this principle alone I fall into Sophistry, such as
would overthrow all the principles of morality. From this sort of
party-pleading Dialectic is wholly different; its purpose is to study
things in their own being and movement and thus to demonstrate
the finitude of the partial categories of understanding.
Dialectic, it may be added, is no novelty in philosophy. Among the
ancients Plato is termed the inventor of Dialectic; and his right to
the name rests on the fact, that the Platonic philosophy first gave
the free scientific, and thus at the same time the objective, form
to Dialectic. Socrates, as we should expect from the general
character of his philosophising, has the dialectical element in a
predominantly subjective shape, that of Irony. He used to turn his
Dialectic, first against ordinary consciousness, and then especially
against the Sophists. In his conversations he used to simulate the
wish for some clearer knowledge about the subject under
discussion, and after putting all sorts of questions with that
intent, he drew on those with whom he conversed to the opposite
of what their first impressions had pronounced correct. If, for
instance, the Sophists claimed to be teachers, Socrates by a
series of questions forced the Sophist Protagoras to confess that
all learning is only recollection. In his more strictly scientific
dialogues Plato employs the dialectical method to show the
finitude of all hard and fast terms of understanding. Thus in the
Parmenides he deduces the many from the one, and shows
nevertheless that the many cannot but define itself as the one. In
this grand style did Plato treat Dialectic. In modern times it was,
more than any other, Kant who resuscitated the name of Dialectic,
and restored it to its post of honour. He did it, as we have seen (§
48), by working out the Antinomies of the reason. The problem of
these Antinomies is no mere subjective piece of work oscillating
between one set of grounds and another; it really serves to show
that every abstract proposition of understanding, taken precisely
as it is given, naturally veers round into its opposite.
However reluctant Understanding may be to admit the action of
Dialectic, we must not suppose that the recognition if its
existence is peculiarly confined to the philosopher. It would be
truer to say that Dialectic gives expression to a law which is felt in
all other grades of consciousness, and in general experience.
Everything that surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of
Dialectic. We are aware that everything finite, instead of being
stable and ultimate, is rather changeable and transient; and this is
exactly what we mean by that Dialectic of the finite, by which the
finite, as implicitly other than what it is, is forced beyond its own
immediate or natural being to turn suddenly into its opposite. We
have before this (§ 80) identified Understanding with what is
implied in the popular idea of the goodness of God; we may now
remark of Dialectic, in the same objective signification, that its
principle answers to the idea of his power. All things, we say,—
that is, the finite world as such,—are doomed; and in saying so,
we have a vision of Dialectic as the universal and irresistible
 power before which nothing can stay, however secure and stable
it may deem itself. The category of power does not, it is true,
exhaust the depth of the divine nature or the notion of God; but it
certainly forms a vital element in all religious consciousness.
Apart from this general objectivity of Dialectic, we find traces of
its presence in each of the particular provinces and phases of the
natural and the spiritual world. Take as an illustration the motion
of the heavenly bodies. At this moment the planet stands in this
spot, but implicitly it is the possibility of being in another spot;
and that possibility of being otherwise the planet brings into
existence by moving. Similarly the 'physical' elements prove to be
Dialectical. The process of meteorological action is the exhibition
of their Dialectic. It is the same dynamic that lies at the root of
every other natural process, and, as it were, forces nature out of
itself. To illustrate the presence of Dialectic in the spiritual world,
especially in the provinces of law and morality, we have only to
recollect how general experience shows us the extreme of one
state or action suddenly shifting into its opposite: a Dialectic
which is recognised in many ways in common proverbs. Thus
summum jus summa injuria: which means, that to drive an
abstract right to its extremity is to do a wrong. In political life, as
every one knows, extreme anarchy and extreme despotism
naturally lead to one another. The perception of Dialectic in the
province of individual Ethics is seen in the well-known adages,
Pride comes before a fall: Too much wit outwits itself. Even
feeling, bodily as well as mental, has its Dialectic. Every one
knows how the extremes of pain and pleasure pass into each
other: the heart overflowing with joy seeks relief in tears, and the
deepest melancholy will at times betray its presence by a smile.
(2) Scepticism should not be looked upon merely as a doctrine of
doubt. It would be more correct to say that the Sceptic has no doubt
of his point, which is the nothingness of all finite existence. He who
only doubts still clings to the hope that his doubt may be resolved,
and that one or other of the definite views, between which he
wavers, will turn out solid and true. Scepticism properly so called is a
very different thing: it is complete hopelessness about all which
understanding counts stable, and the feeling to which it gives birth is
one of unbroken calmness and inward repose. Such at least is the
noble Scepticism of antiquity, especially as exhibited in the writings
of Sextus Empiricus, when in the later times of Rome it had been
systematised as a complement to the dogmatic systems of Stoic and
Epicurean. Of far other stamp, and to be strictly distinguished from
it, is the modern Scepticism already mentioned § (39), which partly
preceded the Critical Philosophy, and partly sprung out of it. That
later Scepticism consisted solely in denying the truth and certitude of
the super-sensible, and in pointing to the facts of sense and of
immediate sensations as what we have to keep to.
Even to this day Scepticism is often spoken of as the irresistible
enemy of all positive knowledge, and hence of philosophy, in so
far as philosophy is concerned with positive knowledge. But in
these statements there is a misconception. It is only the finite
thought of abstract understanding which has to fear Scepticism,
because unable to withstand it: philosophy includes the sceptical
principle as a subordinate function of its own, in the shape of
Dialectic. In contradistinction to mere Scepticism, however,
philosophy does not remain content with the purely negative
result of Dialectic. The sceptic mistakes the true value of his
result, when he supposes it to be no more than a negation pure
and simple. For the negative, which emerges as the result of
dialectic, is, because a result, at the same time the positive: it
contains what it results from, absorbed into itself, and made part
of its own nature. Thus conceived, however, the dialectical stage
has the features characterising the third grade of logical truth, the
speculative form, or form of positive reason.
82.] (y) The Speculative stage, or stage of Positive Reason,
apprehends the unity of terms (propositions) in their opposition,—
the affirmative, which is involved in their disintegration and in their
transition.
(1) The result of Dialectic is positive, because it has a definite
content, or because its result is not empty and abstract nothing, but
the negation of certain specific propositions which are contained in
the result,—for the very reason that it is a resultant and not an
immediate nothing. (2) It follows from this that the 'reasonable'
result, though it be only a thought and abstract, is still a concrete,
being not a plain formal unity, but a unity of distinct propositions.
Bare abstractions or formal thoughts are therefore no business of
philosophy, which has to deal only with concrete thoughts. (3) The
logic of mere Understanding is involved in Speculative logic, and can
at will be elicited from it, by the simple process of omitting the
dialectical and 'reasonable' element. When that is done, it becomes
what the common logic is, a descriptive collection of sundry thought-
forms and rules which, finite though they are, are taken to be
something infinite.
If we consider only what it contains, and not how it contains it,
the true reason-world, so far from being the exclusive property of
philosophy, is the right of every human being on whatever grade
of culture or mental growth he may stand; which would justify
man's ancient title of rational being. The general mode by which
experience first makes us aware of the reasonable order of things
is by accepted and unreasoned belief; and the character of the
rational, as already noted (§ 45), is to be unconditioned, and thus
to be self-contained, self-determining. In this sense man above all
things becomes aware of the reasonable order, when he knows of
God, and knows Him to be the completely self-determined.
Similarly, the consciousness a citizen has of his country and its
laws is a perception of the reason-world, so long as he looks up
to them as unconditioned and likewise universal powers, to which
he must subject his individual will. And in the same sense, the
knowledge and will of the child is rational, when he knows his
parents' will, and wills it.
Now, to turn these rational (of course positively-rational) realities
into speculative principles, the only thing needed is that they be
thought. The expression 'Speculation' in common life is often used
with a very vague and at the same time secondary sense, as
when we speak of a matrimonial or a commercial speculation. By
this we only mean two things: first, that what is immediately at
hand has to be passed and left behind; and secondly, that the
subject-matter of such speculations, though in the first place only
subjective, must not remain so, but be realised or translated into
objectivity.
What was some time ago remarked respecting the Idea, may be
applied to this common usage of the term 'speculation': and we
may add that people who rank themselves amongst the educated
expressly speak of speculation even as if it were something purely
subjective. A certain theory of some conditions and circumstances
of nature or mind may be, say these people, very fine and correct
as a matter of speculation, but it contradicts experience and
nothing of the sort is admissible in reality. To this the answer is,
that the speculative is in its true signification, neither preliminarily
nor even definitively, something merely subjective: that, on the
contrary, it expressly rises above such oppositions as that
between subjective and objective, which the understanding
cannot get over, and absorbing them in itself, evinces its own
concrete and all-embracing nature. A one-sided proposition
therefore can never even give expression to a speculative truth. If
we say, for example, that the absolute is the unity of subjective
and objective, we are undoubtedly in the right, but so far one-
sided, as we enunciate the unity only and lay the accent upon it,
forgetting that in reality the subjective and objective are not
merely identical but also distinct.
Speculative truth, it may also be noted, means very much the
same as what, in special connexion with religious experience and
doctrines, used to be called Mysticism. The term Mysticism is at
present used, as a rule, to designate what is mysterious and
incomprehensible: and in proportion as their general culture and
way of thinking vary, the epithet is applied by one class to denote
the real and the true, by another to name everything connected
with superstition and deception. On which we first of all remark
 that there is mystery in the mystical, only however for the
understanding which is ruled by the principle of abstract identity;
whereas the mystical, as synonymous with the speculative, is the
concrete unity of those propositions, which understanding only
accepts in their separation and opposition. And if those who
recognise Mysticism as the highest truth are content to leave it in
its original utter mystery, their conduct only proves that for them
too, as well as for their antagonists, thinking means abstract
identification, and that in their opinion, therefore, truth can only
be won by renouncing thought, or as it is frequently expressed,
by leading the reason captive. But, as we have seen, the abstract
thinking of understanding is so far from being either ultimate or
stable, that it shows a perpetual tendency to work its own
dissolution and swing round into its opposite. Reasonableness, on
the contrary, just, consists in embracing within itself these
opposites as unsubstantial elements. Thus the reason-world may
be equally styled mystical,—not however because thought cannot
both reach and comprehend it, but merely because it lies beyond
the compass of understanding.
83.] Logic is subdivided into three parts:—
I. The Doctrine of Being:
II. The Doctrine of Essence:
III. The Doctrine of Notion and Idea.
That is, into the Theory of Thought:
I. In its immediacy: the notion implicit and in germ.
II. In its reflection and mediation: the being-for-self and show of the
notion.
III. In its return into itself, and its developed abiding by itself: the
notion in and for itself.
The division of Logic now given, as well as the whole of the
previous discussion on the nature of thought, is anticipatory: and
the justification, or proof of it, can only result from the detailed
 treatment of thought itself. For in philosophy, to prove means to
show how the subject by and from itself makes itself what it is.
The relation in which these three leading grades of thought, or of
the logical Idea, stand to each other must be conceived as
follows. Truth comes only with the notion: or, more precisely, the
notion is the truth of being and essence, both of which, when
separately maintained in their isolation, cannot but be untrue, the
former because it is exclusively immediate, and the latter because
it is exclusively mediate. Why then, it may be asked, begin with
the false and not at once with the true? To which we answer that
truth, to deserve the name, must authenticate its own truth:
which authentication, here within the sphere of logic, is given,
when the notion demonstrates itself to be what is mediated by
and with itself, and thus at the same time to be truly immediate.
This relation between the three stages of the logical Idea appears
in a real and concrete shape thus: God, who is the truth, is known
by us in His truth, that is, as absolute spirit, only in so far as we
at the same time recognise that the world which He created,
nature and the finite spirit, are, in their difference from God,
untrue.

CHAPTER VII.

FIRST SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.

THE DOCTRINE OF BEING.

84.] Being is the notion implicit only: its special forms have the
predicate 'is'; when they are distinguished they are each of them an
'other': and the shape which dialectic takes in them, i.e. their further
specialisation, is a passing over into another. This further
determination, or specialisation, is at once a forth-putting and in that
way a disengaging of the notion implicit in being; and at the same
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com