But Inductive Logic should have adopted a more thorough policy. There can only be one Logic, which must be both inductive and deductive, but exclusively, and in parts, neither. To achieve that task however Logic must not turn its back indifferently on what it calls metaphysics, and it must rise to a higher conception of the problems of what it calls psychology.
In these circumstances the ordinary logic, in its fundamental terms, is more on the level of popular thought, than in a strictly scientific region, and does not attempt to unite the two regions, and examine the fundamental basis of thought on which scientific methods rest. The case of Concrete and Abstract will illustrate what has been said. To popular thought the sense-world is concrete: the intellectual world abstract. And so it is in the ordinary logic. To Hegel, on the contrary, the intellectual interpretation of the world of reality and experience is a truer and thus a more concrete description of it than that contained in a series of sense-terms. Now the difference between the two uses of the term is not a mere arbitrary change of names. When the philosopher denies the concreteness of the sense-world, and declares that it, as merely sensible, is only a mass of excluding elements, a 'manifold,' and in the second instance a series of abstractions, drawn out of this congeries by perception, the change of language marks the total change of position between the philosophic and the popular consciousness. Reality and concreteness as estimated by the one line of thought are the very reverse of those of the other. A mere sense-world to the philosopher is a world which wants unity, which is made up of bits imperfectly adjusted to each other, and always leading us to look for an explanation of them in sources outside them. The single things we say we perceive,—the here and the now we perceive them in—are found, upon reflection and analysis, to depend upon general laws, on relations that go beyond the single,—on what is neither here nor now, but everywhere and timeless. The reality of the thing is found to imply a general system of relations which make it what it is. Sense-perception in short is the beginning of knowledge: and it begins by taking up its task piecemeal. It rests upon a felt totality: and to raise this to an intelligible totality, it must at first only isolate one attribute at a time.
The apprehension of a thing from one side or aspect,—the apprehension of one thing apart from its connexions,—the retention of a term or formula apart from its context,—is what Hegel terms 'abstract.' Ordinary terms are essentially abstract. They spring from the analysis of something which would, in the first stage of the process, in strictness be described not as concrete, but as chaos:—as the indefinite or 'manifold' of sensation. But the first conceptions, which spring from this group when it is analysed, are abstract: they are each severed from the continuity of their reality. To interpret our feeling, our experience as felt, we must break it up. But the first face that presents itself is apt to impress us unduly, and seems more real, because nearer feeling: on the other it is more unreal, because less adequate as a total expression of the felt unity. In the same sense we call Political Economy an abstract science, because it looks upon man as a money-making and money-distributing creature, and keeps out of sight his other qualities. Our notions in this way are more abstract or more concrete, according as our grasp of thought extends to less or more of the relations which are necessarily pre-supposed by them. On the other hand, when a term of thought owns and emphasises its solidarity with others, when it is not circumscribed to a single relation, but becomes a focus in which a variety of relations converge, when it is placed in its right post in the organism of thought, its limits and qualifications as it were recognised and its degree ascertained,—then that thought is rendered 'concrete.' A concrete notion is a notion in its totality, looking before and after, connected indissolubly with others: a unity of elements, a meeting-point of opposites. An abstract notion is one withdrawn from everything that naturally goes along with it, and enters into its constitution. All this is no disparagement of abstraction. To abstract is a necessary stage in the process of knowledge. But it is equally necessary to insist on the danger of clinging, as to an ultimate truth, to the pseudo-simplicity of abstraction, which forgets altogether what it is in certain situations desirable for a time to overlook.
In a short essay, with much grim humour and quaint illustrations, Hegel tried to show what was meant by the name 'abstract,' which in his use of it denotes the cardinal vice of the 'practical' habit of mind. From this essay, entitled 'Who is the Abstract Thinker[1]?' it may be interesting to quote a few lines. A murderer is, we may suppose, led to the scaffold. In the eyes of the multitude he is a murderer and nothing more. The ladies perhaps may make the remark that he is a strong, handsome, and interesting man. At such a remark the populace is horrified. "What! a murderer handsome? Can anybody's mind be so low as to call a murderer handsome? You must be little better yourselves." And perhaps a priest who sees into the heart, and knows the reasons of things, will point to this remark, as evidence of the corruption of morals prevailing among the upper classes. A student of character, again, inquires into the antecedents of the criminal's up-bringing: he finds that he owes his existence to ill-assorted parents; or he discovers that this man has suffered severely for some trifling offence, and that under the bitter feelings thus produced he has spurned the rules of society, and cannot support himself otherwise than by crime. No doubt there will be people who when they hear this explanation will say "Does this person then mean to excuse the murderer?" In my youth I remember hearing a city magistrate complain that book-writers were going too far, and trying to root out Christianity and good morals altogether. Some one, it appeared, had written a defence of suicide. It was horrible! too horrible! On further inquiry it turned out that the book in question was the Sorrows of Werther.
'By abstract thinking, then, is meant that in the murderer we see nothing but the simple fact that he is a murderer, and by this single quality annihilate all the human nature which is in him. The polished and sentimental world of Leipsic thought otherwise. They threw their bouquets, and twined their flowers round the wheel and the criminal who was fastened to it.—But this also is the opposite pole of abstraction.—It was in a different strain that I once heard a poor old woman, an inmate of the workhouse, rise above the abstraction of the murderer. The sun shone, as the severed head was laid upon the scaffold. "How finely," said the woman, "does God's gracious sun lighten up Binder's head!" We often say of a poor creature who excites our anger that he is not worth the sun shining on him. That woman saw that the murderer's head was in the sunlight, and that it had not become quite worthless. She raised him from the punishment of the scaffold into the sunlit grace of God. It was not by wreaths of violets or by sentimental fancies that she brought about the reconciliation: she saw him in the sun above received into grace.'
[1] 'Wer denkt abstrakt!' (Vermischte Schriften, vol. ii. p. 402.)