But there is a counterpart almost in antagonism to this. There is a concept, i. e. a grouping of existence into totals mediated by necessary links, which presents itself as embodied in things: and this embodied concept is the objective world. That world, apart from our interpretation and conception, offers itself as a synthesis of universal, particular and individual. It groups itself into systems, mechanical, chemical, and teleological. But in all of these there is lacking the evidence of the inward and subjective principle of unification. The unity is external, the members are held in a vice: their unity is given as a fact: it follows through certain laws and does not reveal itself. There is a want of perspicuity of connexion: logic—the need of inner explanation—in short, is not satisfied by this logic of facts. It is rather a realm of necessity than of freedom. It wants life; wants true self-activity. As in the subjective notion, the facts resented the hand of the logician (for here is the sphere of logic proper in the old Aristotelian sense), and refused to show themselves in the simple and transparent transitions of his argument: so the objective synthesis of the members of a mechanical system, or of a kingdom of means and ends, lacks the freedom and lucidity of inner movement which logical insight demands. Objectivity—the logic of fact—is a syllogism of necessity, so hardened and fixed that the necessity of the conclusion is more obvious than the self-determination by the syllogism.
The third stage of the Notion shows the union of the pellucidity and ideality of the syllogistic progress with the necessity and reality of the objective order. Here actuality and the concept are at one. At first as a mere fact—or more fact than idea. Life, organic life, is no doubt development: a totality which is in all its parts, and where parts have their being in the total. But life as such, the so-called vital principle, does not emancipate itself to a true universal: it is immersed in its particulars. Intellectual life, on the contrary,—the form of consciousness—rises independent and distinct from the totality of life. Psychology follows Biology. But as such—under the form of intellect and will—it has an antithesis no less fatal to its absoluteness than the opposite one-sidedness of life. There is—to put it in language more familiar to the present day—there is an analogue of life in all nature; and all reality, even the rock and the crystal, has its life-history. There is, properly speaking, no mere inorganic reality: organic life is universal. And then, going a step further, we attribute to all reality something analogous to a soul, or a consciousness. We talk, in rash moods, of mind-stuff and feelings, even in molecules. But as Spinoza has reminded us, terms like Will and Intellect have about them something finite, because they imply an antagonism to an object: they are predominantly subjective. The reality in its final truth must be a subject-object: the adequacy of thought and being, the equation of real and ideal, the intellection which is life. And this is called Absolute Idea. It is natural to translate such an equation, when made a result, into a mere blank. And a blank it would be, if we suppose all that has gone before obliterated, and only the result left. Then, in the coincidence of opposites, we have only a zero of a gulf of negation. A life which is consciousness may seem to fade away like a vague ideal with no reality. A consciousness which is life can be no consciousness at all. The is and the is known dare not coincide or they perish both.
A categorical proposition, says Hegel, can never express a speculative truth. That is to say: the subject over-rides the predicate, or the predicate makes you ignore the subject. The affirmation keeps out of sight the negation. To say that life is consciousness makes us forget that the very assertion would not and could not be made, unless also life were other than consciousness. In its full proportion of meaning, therefore, the proposition must imply a return to unity through difference, to identity through otherness. Affirmation, fully realised, is re-affirmation through negation. Cognition is but recognition deepened by contrast. This law which governs—or rather which is—logic; the principle of identity through contradiction—must not be lost sight of in the supreme struggle of thought. The Idea is the unity of life and consciousness: but it is a unity in which they are (aufgehoben)—not a zero in which they utterly collapse.
We may illustrate in two ways. In the first we may compare the 'Ενεργεια of Aristotle. That is his formula of reality. Nominally it only means activity and actuality: and sums up the metaphysical formula for what really is,—the hard fact of being. But through it there glimmers the meaning of consciousness. It not merely is, but it means what it is. Energy of Soul is the end of life—the supreme fulfilling of desire, and consummation of tendency. As such it is, and feels that it is. It is the virtuous deed, which is its own reward. But Aristotle seems sometimes to fall from that identification of being and consciousness. The world of praxis parts from the world of Theoria. In that case the activity is a mere activity—the outward shell of action: and then, as a supplement or complement to the abstract result of the activity the consciousness of achievement gets a distinct position as Pleasure: and the activity, now no consummation, but only a means to an end, get its completion from this arbitrarily abstracted shadow of reality.[1]
The second illustration may come from Mr. Spencer.
'We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can think of Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit we are referred to the second for a final answer: and when we have got the final answer of the second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it.' Beyond this see-saw indeed we cannot go, so as to leave it behind: but in reality we transcend it. The Mind that is in terms of Matter is partly the region of psychic event, partly the world of science, art and religion. And psychic event is always antithetical to physical reality. But the spiritual world already includes the antithesis of psychical and physical, and including it keeps it as a principle of life and consciousness. The supreme or absolute mind does not indeed rise above Physis and Psyche so as to have no antagonism: but it is the unity of antitheses.
What those who crave for something higher than this rest in unrest, this life in consciousness and consciousness in life, want, would destroy the very condition of reality. Still philosophising, they would be above philosophy. They want an objective reality in which they may still their beating hearts,—a 'repose which ever is the same' and yet is not annihilation:—to sink into the great sea of being, and leave consciousness with its radical division behind. Such a craving philosophy, in Hegers hands, has no power of satisfying. It cannot, in the sense in which Jacobi and Schelling used the words, reveal Being. It cannot get at the That except by means of the What, and is the eternal antithesis and correlation of these two. It will always be rational and logical—for it is its function to think being: and it will re-affirm that an unthought and a-logical being is a mere name, which in the language of humanity at least has no meaning, whatever it may stand for in the Volapük of imagined gods. To go beyond this correlation of Being and Thought is therefore no advance, but a relapse into the Natura Naturans, which, in its abstract completeness, is, but dare not be anything. Philosophy therefore in its supreme Idea is still the 'Ενεργεια of θεωρία, and not bare Οὐσία. For it mere Being is always Nothing. And to be actual it must live in antithesis and live victorious over antithesis. It follows the law of humanity (Und das heisst ein Kämpfer sein)—which can only exist in warfare as a church militant, but for continuous existence must also be a church triumphant. Like religion and art, it sometimes craves for utter union in the fullness of Being. Such a fullness is the unspeakable and the vain,—which we may picture as the apathy of Nirvana; but which is the absorption of Art, Religion and Philosophy,—the cease of consciousness and an abyss. We may call it—it matters not—Being.
These stages of the Notion must be examined in somewhat fuller detail. The subjective notion is the effort at the comprehension (at first subjective) of the two correlated elements into which actuality as such has been seen to fall—and to fall again and again without end. It brings out, or explicates (and with some opposition to the divisions of reality) the unity which was presupposed by the antagonist and inseparable reals. Hitherto we have had two things or aspects in relation and move from one to the other by an act of reflection. But to get two points in relation, they must belong to or exist in a unity. The divided reality of cause and effect must, if it is to be intelligible, submit to a unification of its elements. It is comparatively easy to get on if we are always allowed to have one foot on solid ground, and can move the other. Give us a standing-point, and explanation is simplified. But to get a notion of things is, it may seem, to transcend them, or get beneath them, and take a stand-point outside actuality which shall unify them. If we added to immediate being a further element to explain it, it may be said we now superadd a third to explain the two others. Over and above the different and related elements, there is assumed to be a unity. And at first it is certainly such a superimposed element, added to the facts, and regarded as our way of looking at them, as a subjective notion or grasp, holding together what is in itself reluctant to be unified.
The three aspects or factors in a Concept are the Universal, the Particular, and the Individual. These are what Hegel calls the 'moments' or 'vanishing factors' of the notion. They are 'vanishing,' because in their logical mobility they form a pellucid union: if they are distinct, yet they refuse to be independent of one another. Or, we may say, each in its truth is the meeting-ground and unification of the two others, thus forming a sort of cycle of perpetual movement. And in this way we may see that the addition of the third has really been a simplification: it has made two one. For the Unit which welds together is not a tertium quid, but simply the explicit statement and assertion of the truth implied in the antithesis, which was yet inseparability, of the two others. And for the same reason, neither mere universal nor mere particular nor mere individual are full reality, when taken apart. One can understand how Hegel could speak of the 'Bacchantelike intoxication' of the concept. It may be illustrated by the following utterances in which a modern psychologist labours to express the complex unity of mental fact. First we are told that a 'nervous shock,' e. g. the awakening caused by a sudden blow, or a simple sensation (so-called), is the ultimate unit of consciousness. And if this were all, it would correspond to the qualities of immediate being, which we can suppose measurable: we should get a science of purely empirical psychology based on psychical atoms. But, immediately after, it appears that the 'relational element' is never absent from the lowest stage of consciousness. Accordingly, besides feelings, there must be relations between feelings. And that means a good deal: especially if we also note the proposition that, in truth, 'neither a feeling nor a relation is an independent element of consciousness,' Evidently you cannot have either without both, and it seems difficult to have both when neither is independent. Nor does it mend matters to learn that 'a relation is a momentary feeling': for that only seems a way of implying that it is, and yet is not, a feeling. Such are the difficulties that beset the sincere attempt to comprehend. The fixed points of explanation stagger under the burden of truth; and their unsteadiness shows that they lack the full foundation. Yet that foundation—it must be repeated—is not something extra: it is the underlying unity which gives life to the relativity of the separates.
For the peculiarity of the Notional stand-point is that it insists on thorough comprehension. The usual explanation refers us from a later to an earlier, from a strange to a familiar, from a complex to a simple, from compound to elements. It keeps analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction apart. To comprehend is, on the other hand, to light up earlier by later and later by earlier, and carry both into their unity. It does not merely refer existence to its ground, phenomenon to law, or effect to cause; because beyond these it has still to reveal the unity of nature which carries on one of these into the other. Thus, the explanatory method in Social Science may either refer us to the simple elements or parts out of which the total is composed, or to an earlier stage in the same institution's life. The analytical sociologist does the former: the historical the latter. Neither really faces the problem. For if the whole is made up of parts, it is made up of parts which have been characterised by the whole. If the later has come from the earlier, that only shows that the nature of the earlier was inadequately ascertained. Development—which implies a permanent which changes, an identity which is also different,—is thus more than mere reference to an antecedent; because the antecedent must also figure as a simultaneous. Cessante causa, cessat et effectus. But here, in the concept (or λόγος) or syllogism, the permanent exists as the—may we call it—consciousness which binds together the elements of reality, as the life and the history, which is ideally continuous through real changes, and is a real unity through the distinctions of appearance.