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

by William Wallace

ANTICIPATORY SKETCH OF THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY.

The psychology of the Greeks has to all appearance given the mere intellect an undue pre-eminence, if it has not even treated it as man's essential self. Whether the appearance is altogether sound might be a profitable inquiry for those who most criticise it. At any rate, a later psychology has taught us to regard man as at once a cognitive, an emotional, and a volitional being. It has arrived at this conclusion as it looked at the division that parted off the systems of science from the sphere of conduct and social life, and both from the inner life of sentiment, of love, admiration and reverence. And the inference was justifiable, in the same way as Plato's when, as he surveyed the triple sphere into which the outward world of his contemporary society was divided, he concluded a triplicity of the soul. If it was justifiable, it was also, as in his case, somewhat misleading. In the outward manifestation, where the letters are posted up on a gigantic scale, one tends to forget that they only spell one word. Their difference and distance seem increased, and we fail to note that, though there are three aspects, yet there is only one power or soul, which exhibits itself under one or other of the three tones or modes. In the actual human being, cognition is always of some emotional interest and always leads up to some practical result. From different points of view one or other is occasionally declared to be primary and original; the others derivative and secondary. At any rate we may say that in the ordinary human being who is still in the garden of preparation and has not yet stepped forth on one of the separate routes of life, his knowledge, his emotional and his active life are in a tolerable harmony, and that each in its little development is constantly followed by the other.

But with the outward differentiation an inward went hand in hand. In some cases the intellectual or scientific, in others the emotional, in others the active faculties became predominant. Human nature in order to attain all its completeness had first of all, as it were, to lose its life in order to gain it. The individual had to sacrifice part of his all-sided development in order that he might gain it again, and in a larger measure, through the medium of society. This process is the process of civilisation: the long and, as it often seems, weary road by which man can only realise himself by self-sacrifice: can only reach unity through the way of diversity, and must die to live. It is a process in which it is but too easy to notice only one stage and speak of it as if it were the whole. It is possible sometimes to identify civilisation with the material increase in the means of producing enjoyment, or with the progress of scientific teaching as to the laws of those material phenomena on which material civilisation is largely dependent. It is possible sometimes to take as its test the stores of artistic works, and the extension of a lively and delicate love of all that is beautiful and tasteful. One may identify it with a high-toned moral life, and with an orderly social system. Or one may maintain that the real civilisation of a country presupposes a lofty conception and reverent attitude to the supreme source of all that is good, and true, and beautiful.

The question is important as bearing on the relation of philosophy to the special sciences. Philosophy is sometimes identified with the sum of sciences: sometimes with their complete unification. Philosophy, says a modern, is knowledge completely unified. It is of course to some extent a question of words in what sense a term is to be defined. And no one will dispute that the scientific element is in point of form the most conspicuous aspect of philosophy. Yet if we look at the historical use of the term, one or two considerations suggest themselves. Philosophy, said an ancient, is the knowledge of things human and divine. Again and again, it has claimed for its task to be a guide and chart of human life—to reveal the form of good and of beauty. But to do this, it must be more than a mere science, or than a mere system of the sciences. Again, it has been urged by modern critics that Kant at last discovered for philosophy her true province—the study of the conditions and principles of human knowledge. But though epistemology is all-important, the science of knowledge is not identical with philosophy: nor did Kant himself think it was. Rather his view is on the whole in accord with what he has called the 'world's (as opposed to the scholar's) conception of philosophy[1],' as the science of the bearing of all ascertainable truths on the essential aims of human reason—teleologia humanae rationis,—in accord, too, with the world's conception of the philosopher as no mere logician, but the legislator of human reason.

This, it need hardly be added, is the conception of philosophy which is implicitly the basis of Hegel's use. Let us hear Schelling. 'A philosophy which in its principle is not already religion is no true philosophy[2].'

Or again, as to the place of Ethics: 'Morality is Godlike disposition, an uplifting above the influence of the concrete into the realm of the utterly universal. Philosophy is a like elevation, and for that reason intimately one with morality, not through subordination, but through essential and inner likeness[3].' But, again, it has more than once been felt that philosophy is kindred with Art. It has been said—not as a compliment—that philosophy is only a form of gratifying the aesthetic instincts. Schopenhauer has suggested—as a novelty—that the true way to philosophy was not by science, but through Art. And Schelling before him had—while asserting the inner identity of the two—even gone so far as to assert[4] that 'Art is the sole, true and eternal organon as well as the ostensible evidence of philosophy.'

Philosophy, therefore, is one of a triad in which the human spirit has tried to raise itself above its limitations and to become god-like. And philosophy is the climax; Art the lowest; Religion in the mean. But this does not mean that Religion supersedes Art, and that Philosophy supersedes religion; or, if we retain the term 'supersede,' we must add that the superseded is not left behind and passed aside: it is rather an integral constituent of what takes its place. Philosophy is true and adequate only as it has given expression to all that religion had or aimed at. So, too, Religion is not the destruction of Art: though here the attitude may often seem to be more obviously negative. A religion which has no place for art is, again, no true religion. And thus again, Philosophy becomes a reconciler of Art and Religion: of the visible ideal and the invisible God. Art, on the other hand, is a foretaste and a prophecy of religion and philosophy.

But Art, Religion, and Philosophy, again, rest upon, grow out of, and are the fulfilment of an ethical society-a state of human life where an ordered commonwealth in outward visibility is animated and sustained by the spirit of freedom and self-realisation. And that public objective existence of social humanity in its turn reposes on the will and intelligence of human beings, of souls which in various relations of discipline and interaction with their environment have become free-agents, and have risen to be more than portions of the physical world, sympathetic with its changes, and become awake to themselves and their surroundings. Such is the mental or spiritual life as it rises to full sense of its power, recognises its kindred with the general life, carries out that kindred in its social organisation, and at length through the strength social union gives floats boldly in the empyrean of spiritual life, in art, religion, and philosophy.

But, what about the special relationship of philosophy to the sciences? Undoubtedly the philosophers of the early years of the century have used lordly language in reference to the sciences. They have asserted—from Fichte downwards—that the philosophical construction, of the universe must justify itself to itself—must be consistent, continuous, and coherent—and that it had not to wait for experience to give it confirmation. Even the cautious Kant[5] had gone so far as to assert that the 'understanding gives us nature'—i. e. as he explains, natura formaliter spectata, viz., the order and regularity in the phenomena—that it is the source of the laws of nature and of its formal unity. The so-called proofs of natural laws are only instances and exemplifications, which no more prove them, than we prove that 6 x 4 = 24, because 6 yards of cloth at 4s. must be paid for by 24 shillings. To assert that this instance is no proof, is not to reject experience—still less to refuse respect to the new discoveries of science. But it is unquestionably to assert that there is something prior to the sciences—prior, i. e. in the sense that Kant speaks of the a priori, something which is fundamental to them, and constitutes them what they are—something which is assumed as real if their syntheses (and every scientific truth is a synthesis) are to be possible. The analysis and exhibition in its organic completeness of this Kantian a priori is the theme of the Hegelian Logic.

The Philosophy of Nature stands in the Hegelian system between Logic and Mental or Spiritual Philosophy. Man—intelligent, moral, religious and artistic man—rests upon the basis of natural existence: he is the child of the earth, the offspring of natural organisation. But Nature itself—such is the hypothesis of the system—is only intelligible as the reflex of that a priori which has been exhibited in Logic. The whole scheme by which the natural world is scientifically held together, apprehended by ordinary consciousness and elaborated by mathematical analysis, presupposes the organism of the categories—these fundamental habits of thought or form of conception which are the framework of the existence we know. Yet Nature never shows this intelligible world—the Idea—in its purity and entirety. In the half-literal, half-figurative phrases of Hegel, Nature shows the Idea beside itself, out of its mind, alienated, non compos mentis. 'It is a mad world, my masters,' 'The impotence of nature—Ohnmacht der Natur[6]—is a frequent phrase, by which he indicates the a-logical, if not illogical, character of the physical world. Here we come across the negation of mind: chance plays its part: contingency is everywhere. If you expect that the physical universe will display unquestioning obedience to the laws of reason and of the higher logic, you will be disappointed. What you see is fragmentary, chaotic, irregular. To the bodily sense—even when that sense has been rendered more penetrating by all the many material and methodical aids of advanced civilisation—the Idea is in the natural world presented only in traces, indications, portions, which it requires a well-prepared mind to descry, still more to unite. Yet at the same time the indications of that unity are everywhere, and the hypothesis of the logical scheme or organisation of the Idea is the only theory which seems fully to correspond with the data. Nature[7], says Hegel, is the Idea as it shows itself in sense-perception, not as it shows itself in thought. In thought a clear all-comprehending total; in sense a baffling fragment. The Idea—the unity of life and knowledge—is everywhere in nature, but nowhere clearly, or whole, or otherwise than a glimpse; not a logical scheme or compact theory. Nature is the sensible in which the intelligible is bound—the reality which is the vehicle of the ideal. But the ideal treasure is held in rough and fragile receptacles which half disclose and half conceal the light within. Nature in short contains, but disguised, the idea, in fainter and clearer evidences: it is the function of man, by his scientific intelligence and ethical work, building up a social organisation, to provide the ground on which the ultimate significance and true foundation of the world may be deciphered, guessed, or believed, or imaginatively presented. The verification of the guess or deciphering, of course, lies in its adequacy to explain and colligate the facts. The true method and true conception is that which needs no subsequent adjustments—no epicycles to make it work—which is no mere hypothesis useful for subjective arrangement, but issues with uncontrollable force and self-evidence from the facts.