Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic

by William Wallace

Such a comprehension e. g. of the State would show that though it must have a universal aspect, a particular, and an individual, yet these are not severally identifiable with the divisions of sovereign, executive, and people, but that in each of the latter the three moments of the notion must appear, and that e. g. the people is not mere people, but also executive and sovereign, just as the sovereign is no mere sovereign, but also executive and of the people. The same may be illustrated in the so-called individual. A man in his special department and sphere of action may very likely lose the sense of his wholeness and his integrity,—perhaps in more senses than one! He may reduce himself to the limits of his profession. But in so doing he becomes untrue, or, in Hegelian parlance, abstract: he fails to recognise the universality of his position. All work, however petty, which is done in the right spirit, is holy.

'One place performs, like any other place,
The proper service every place on earth
Was framed to furnish man with: serves alike
To give him note, that through the place he sees
A place is signified he never saw.'

It is a false patriotism, for example, which is inconsistent with the spirit of universal brotherhood: and there is something radically wrong with the religion, on the other hand, which cannot be carried into act amid the pettiness of ordinary practical interests. The universal, again, is not a world beyond this world of sense and individuals: if it were so, it would itself be a mere particular. It is rather the world of sense unified, organised, and, if we may say so, spiritualised. And an individual which is merely and simply individual is an utter abstraction, which is quite meaningless, and in the real world impossible. Or, if we prefer to express the same thing in connexion with the mind, sensation apart from thought is an inconceivable abstraction. Sensation is always alloyed with thought, and we can at the most suppose pure sensation to exist amongst the brutes. The mere individual opens out and expands: and in that expansion we see the universal: (sensation is thought in embryo). But, on the other hand, the developed universal concentrates itself into a point: (thought returns into the centre of feeling).

The same process of particular, individual and universal, which thus goes on under the apparent point of the notion, is more distinctly and explicitly seen, with due emphasis on the several members, in the evolution of the notion into the Judgment and the Syllogism. The judgment is the statement of what each individual notion implicitly is, viz. a universal or inward nature in itself, or that it is a universal which individualises itself. The judgment may, therefore, in its simplest terms be formulated as: The Individual is the Universal. The connective link,—the copula 'is,' expresses however at first no more than a mere point-like contact of the two terms, not their complete identity. By a graduated series of judgments this identity between the two terms is drawn closer, until in the three terms and propositions of a syllogism the unity of the three factors of the notion finds its most adequate expression in (subjective) thought.

It may be a question how far syllogisms as they are ordinarily found are calculated to impress this synthesis of the three elements upon the observer. The three elements there tend to bid each other good-bye, and are only kept together by the awkward means of the middle term, and the conjunction 'therefore.' In these circumstances it becomes easy to show, that the major premiss is a superfluity, not adding anything to the cogency of the argument. But under the prominence of this criticism of form, we are apt to let slip the real question touching the nature of the syllogism. And that nature is to give their due place to the three elements in the notion: which in the syllogism have each a quasi-independence and difference as separate terms, while they are also reduced to unity. The syllogism expresses in definite outlines that everything which we think, or the comprehension which constitutes an object, is a particular which is individualised by means of its universal nature. As always, thought refers to reality; and a notion has to be carried out into objectivity. But as Aristotle complained, matter is recalcitrant to form. The objective appears at first only as an opposite, and instead of revealing, it rather obscures and condenses the features of subjectivity.

Objectivity, or the thought which has forgotten its origin and stands out as a world, may be taken in three aspects: Mechanical, Chemical, and Teleological. That is to say, the mode in which groups or systems naturally present themselves in the objective world, is threefold. The contradiction which stands in the way of comprehending objectivity comes from the fact that it contains subjectivity absorbed in it. In other words, the object is at once active and passive; as thought and subjectivity it should be its own synthetiser, as objectivity it is necessitated to interdependence, and the subjectivity, at this stage, is in abeyance. Consequently, either the two attributes co-exist, or they cancel each other, or they are in mutual connexion.

(1) In the first case the objects are independent, and yet are connected with one another. Such connexion is an external one, due to force, impulse, and outward authority. The principle of union is implied: but the objects are mutually determined from without. The more, for example, an object acts upon the imagination, the more vehement is the reaction of the mind towards it.—(2) But if the object is independent, as has been allowed, then the determination from without must really come from within. Thus desire is a turning or bent towards the object which draws it. The desiring soul leans out of itself. It gravitates towards a centre: and it is its own nature to be thus centripetal. The lesser objects of themselves draw closer around the more prominent object.—(3) But if this gravitation were absolute, the objects would lose their independence altogether, and sink into their centre. Accordingly if the independence of these objects is to remain, there must be, as it were, a double centre, the relative centre of each object, and the absolute centre of the system to which it belongs. In each of these three forms of mechanical combination, the objects continue external and independent. A mechanical theory of the state regards classes as independent, seeks to produce a balance between them, separates individuals and associations from the state, and, in short, conceives the state as one large centralising force with a number of minor spheres depending upon it, but with a greater or less amount of self-centred action in each of them.

The fact is that an object cannot really be thought as thus independently subsistent. Its real nature is rather affinity,—a tendency to combine with another: it requires to receive its complement. Every object is naturally in a state of unstable equilibrium, with a tendency to quit its isolation and form a union. This theory, which is called the Chemical theory of an object, regards it as the reverse of indifferent: as in a permanent state of susceptibility. When objects thus open and eager for foreign influences combine, there results a new product, in which both the constituents are lost, so far as their qualities go. The qualities of the constituents are neutralised. A man's mind, for example, prepared by certain culture, meets a new stimulus in some strange doctrine, and the result is a new form of intellectual life. But at this point the process, which such a form of objectivity represents, is closed: all that remains is for the product to break up one day into its constituent factors. There is no provision made for carrying it on further. Hence if we are to have a self-regulating system of objectivity, we must rise above the Chemical theory of objects. And to do that, the first course is to look at the objective world as regulated (though not immanently constituted) by the Notion.

The Notion as regulative of objectivity,—as independent and self-subsistent, but as in necessary connexion with Objectivity,—is the End, Aim, or Final Cause. According to this, the Teleological and practical theory of the Universe[2], the object is considered as bound to reproduce and carry out the notion, and the notion is looked upon as meant to execute itself in reality. The two sides, subjective and objective, are, in other words, in necessary connexion with each other, but not identical. This is the contrast of the End and the Means. By the 'Means' is meant an object which is determined by an End, and which operates upon other objects.—(1) The End is originally subjective: an instinct or desire after something—a feeling of want and the wish to remedy it. It is confronted by an objective mass, which is indifferent to these wishes: and manifests itself as a tendency outwards,—an appetite towards action. It seizes and uses up the objective world.—(2) But the End in the second place reduces this indifferent mass to be an instrument or Means: makes it the middle term between itself and the object.—(3) But the means is only valuable as a preparation to the End regarded as Realised, which thus counts as the truth of the thing. These are the three terms of the Syllogism of Teleology: the Subjective End, the Means, and the End Realised. It is the process of adaptation by which each thing is conceived as the means to some end, and which actively transforms the thing into something by which that end is realised. In the last resort it presents us with an objective world in which utility or design is the principle of systematisation: and in which therefore there is an endless series of ends which become means to other and higher ends. After all is done, the object remains foreign to the notion, and is only subsumed under it, and adapted to it. We want a notion which shall be identifiable with objectivity—which shall permeate it through and through, as soul does body. Such a unity of Subjective and Objective—the Motion in (and not merely in relation to) Objectivity—is what Hegel terms the Idea.

The first form of the Idea is Life, taking that as a logical category, or as equivalent to self-organisation. The living, as organisms, are contrasted with mere mechanisms. The essential progress of modern science lies in its emphasis on this aspect of the Idea: which includes all that the teleological period taught about adaptation, and only sets aside the externality of means to ends there found. The savant of the last century and the beginning of the present dealt with the object of his inquiries as a mechanical, chemical, or teleological object. The modern theorist tends to see the world as one self-evolving Life. According to the naturalist of last century, kinds of animals and plants were viewed as convenient, and perhaps arbitrary arrangements: according to the moderns, these kinds represent the grades or steps in the life of the natural world.