INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER V.
NECESSITY, CHANCE, FREEDOM.

I.

All things are necessitated; each is necessitated by the totality of conditions; hence, whatever is must be so, and under the conditions cannot be otherwise.

Remark.—This is the most exhaustive statement of the position of the “understanding.” Nothing seems more clear than this to the thinker who has advanced beyond the sensuous grade of consciousness and the stages of Perception.

II.

But things change—something new begins and something old ceases; but, still, in each case, the first principle must apply, and the new thing—like the old—be so “because necessitated by the totality of conditions.”

Remark.—The reader will notice that with the conception of change there enters a second stage of mediation. First, we have simple mediation in which the ground and grounded are both real. Secondly, we have the passage of a potentiality into a reality, and vice versa. Therefore, with the consideration of change we have encountered a contradiction which becomes apparent upon further attempt to adjust the idea of necessity to it.

III.

If the same totality of conditions necessitates both states of the thing—the new and the old—it follows that this totality of conditions is adapted to both, and hence is indifferent to either, i. e. it allows either, and hence cannot be said to necessitate one to the exclusion of the other, for it allows one to pass over into the other, thereby demonstrating that it did not restrict or confine the first to be what it was. Hence it now appears that chance or contingency participated in the state of the thing.

IV.

But the states of the thing belong to the totality, and hence when the thing changes the totality also changes, and we are forced to admit two different totalities as the conditions of the two different states of the thing.

Remark.—Here we have returned to our starting-point, and carried back our contradiction with us. In our zeal to relieve the thing from the difficulty presented—that of changing spontaneously—we have posited duality in the original totality, and pushed our change into it. But it is the same contradiction as before, and we must continue to repeat the same process forever in the foolish endeavor to go round a circle until we arrive at its end, or, what is the same, its beginning.

V.

If it requires a different totality of conditions to render possible the change of a thing from one state to another, then if a somewhat changes the totality changes. But there is nothing outside of the totality to necessitate it, and it therefore must necessitate itself.

VI.

Thus necessity and necessitated have proved in the last analysis to be one. This, however, is necessity no longer, but spontaneity, for it begins with itself and ends with itself. (a) As necessitating it is the active determiner which of course contains the potentiality upon which it acts. Had it no potentiality it could not change. (b) As necessitated it is the potentiality plus the limit which its activity has fixed there. (c) But we have here self-determination, and thus the existence of the Universal in and for itself, which is the Ego.

Remark.—It cannot be any other mode of existence than the Ego, for that which dissolves all determinations and is the universal potentiality is only one and cannot be distinguished into modes, for it creates and destroys these. The ego can abstract all else and yet abide—it is the actus purus—its negativity annulling all determinations and finitudes, while it is directed full on itself, and is in that very act complete self-recognition. (See proof of this in Chapter IV., III., 3.)

VII.

Thus the doctrine of necessity presupposes self-determination or Freedom as the form of the Total, and necessity is only one side—the realized or determined side—of the process isolated and regarded in this state of isolation. Against this side stands the potentiality which, if isolated in like manner, is called Chance or Contingency.

CHAPTER VI.
OF MEDIATION.

The comprehension of mediation lies at the basis of the distinction of sensuous knowing from the understanding. The transition from intuition to abstract thinking is made at first unconsciously, and for this reason the one who has begun the process of mediation handles the “mental spectres” created by abstraction with the utmost naïveté, assuming for them absolute validity in the world at large. It is only the speculative insight that gains mastery over such abstractions, and sees the Truth. If this view could be unfolded in a popular form, it would afford a series of solvents for the thinker which are applicable to a great variety of difficult problems. For it must be remembered that the abstract categories of the understanding—such as essence and phenomenon, cause and effect, substance and attribute, force and manifestation, matter and form, and the like, give rise to a series of antinomies, or contradictory propositions, when applied to the Totality. From the standpoint of mediation—that of simple reflection, “common sense” so called—these antinomies seem utterly insoluble. The reason of this is found in the fact that “common sense” places implicit faith in these categories (just mentioned), and never rises to the investigation of them by themselves. To consider the validity of these categories by themselves is called a transcendental procedure, for it passes beyond the ordinary thinking which uses them without distrust.

The transcendental investigation shows that the insolubility attributed to these antinomies arises from the mistake of the thinker, who supposes the categories he employs to be exhaustive. Speculative insight begins with the perception that they are not exhaustive; that they have by a species of enchantment cast a spell upon the mind, under which every thing seems dual, and the weary seeker after Truth wanders through a realm of abstractions each of which assumes the form of a solid reality—now a giant, and now a dwarf, and now an impassible river, impenetrable forest, or thick castle wall defended by dragons.

The following questions will illustrate the character of the problems here described:

“Why deal with abstractions—why not hold fast by the concrete reality?”

(This position combats mediation under its form of abstraction.)

“Can we not know immediately by intuition those objects that philosophy strives in vain to comprehend? in short, are not God, Freedom and Immortality certain to us and yet indemonstrable?”

(This position combats mediation as involved in a system of Philosophy.)

These questions arise only in the mind that has already gone beyond the doctrine that it attempts to defend, and hence a self refutation is easily drawn out of the source from whence they originate.

ABSTRACTION.

(a) It will be readily granted that all knowing involves distinction. We must distinguish one object from another.

(b) But the process of distinguishing is a process that involves abstraction. For in separating this object from that, I contrast its marks, properties, attributes, with those of the other. In seizing upon one characteristic I must isolate it from all others, and this is nothing more nor less than abstraction.

(d) Nor is this a subjective defect, an “impotency of our mental structure,” as some would be ready to exclaim at this point. For it is just as evident that things themselves obtain reality only through these very characteristics. One thing preserves its distinctness from another by means of its various determinations. Without these determinations all would collapse into one, nay, even “one” would vanish, for distinction being completely gone, one-ness is not possible. This is the “Principle of Indiscernibles” enunciated by Leibnitz. Thus distinction is as necessary objectively as subjectively. The thing abstracts in order to be real. It defends itself against what lies without it by specializing itself into single properties, and thus becoming in each a mere abstraction.

(e) Moreover, besides this prevalence of abstraction in the theoretic field, it is still more remarkable in the practical world. The business man decries abstractions. He does not know that every act of the will is an abstraction, and that it is also preceded by an abstraction. When he exhorts you to “leave off abstractions and deal with concrete realities,” he does this: (1.) he regards you as he thinks you are; (2.) he conceives you as different, i. e. as a practical man; (3.) he exhorts you to change from your real state to the possible one which he conceives of (through the process of abstraction). The simplest act with design—that of going to dinner, for example—involves abstraction. If I raise my arm on purpose, I first abstract from its real position, and think it under another condition.

(f) But the chief point in all this is to mark how the mind frees itself from the untruth of abstraction. For it must be allowed that all abstractions are false. The isolation of that which is not sufficient for its own existence, (though as we have seen, a necessary constituent of the process of knowing and of existing,) sets up an untruth as existent. Therefore the mind thinks this isolation only as a moment of a negative unity, (i. e. as an element of a process). This leads us to the consideration of mediation in the more general form, involved by the second question.

IMMEDIATE KNOWING.

(a) Definition.—“Immediate” is a predicate applied to what is directly through itself. The immediateness of anything is the phase that first presents itself. It is the undeveloped—an oak taken immediately is an acorn; man taken immediately is a child at birth.

(b) Definition.—“Mediation” signifies the process of realization. A mediate or mediated somewhat is what it is through another, or through a process.

(c) Principle.—Any concrete somewhat exists through its relations to all else in the universe; hence all concrete somewhats are mediated. “If a grain of sand were destroyed the universe would collapse.”

(d) Principle.—An absolutely immediate somewhat would be a pure nothing, for the reason that no determination could belong to it, (for determination is negative, and hence mediation). Hence all immediateness must be phenomenal, or the result of abstraction from the concrete whole, and this, of course, exhibits the contradiction of an immediate which is mediated (a “result.”)

(e) The solution of this contradiction is found in “self-determination,” (as we have seen in former chapters). The self-determined is a mediated; it is through the process of determination; but is likewise an immediate, for it is its own mediation, and hence it is the beginning and end—it begins with its result, and ends in its beginning, and thus it is a circular process.

This is the great aperçu of all speculative philosophy.

(f) Definition.—Truth is the form of the Total, or that which actually exists.

(g) Hence a knowing of Truth must be a knowing of the self-determined, which is both immediate and mediate. This is a process or system. Therefore the knowing of it cannot be simply immediate, but must be in the form of a system. Thus the so-called “immediate intuition” is not a knowing of truth unless inconsistent with what it professes.