Reason, then, is infinite, as opposed to understanding, which is finite thinking. The limits which are found and accepted by the analytic intellect, are limits which reason has imposed, and which it can take away: the limits are in it, and not over it. The larger reason has been laying down those limits, which our little minds at first tend to suppose absolute. Let us put the same law in more concrete terms. It is reason,—the Idea,—or, to give it an inadequate and abstract name, Natural Selection—which has created the several forms of the animal and vegetable world: it is reason, again, which in the struggle for existence contradicts the very inadequacies which it has brought into being: and it is reason, finally, which affirms both these actions,—the hereditary descent, and the adaptation—in the provisionally permanent and adequate forms which result from the struggle.
The three stages thus enumerated are therefore not merely stages in our human reason as subjective. They state the law of rational development in pure thought, in Nature, and in the world of Mind,—the world of Art, Morals, and Science. They represent the law of thought or reason in its most general or abstract terms. They state, mainly in reference to the method or form of thought, that Triplicity, which will be seen in those real formations or phases to which thought moulds itself,—the typical species of reason. They reappear hundreds of times, in different multiples, in the system of philosophy. The abstract point of the Notion which parts asunder in the Judgment, and returns to a unity including difference in the Syllogism:—the mere generality of the Universal, which, by a disruption into Particulars and detail, gives rise to the real and actual Individual:—the Identity which has to be combined with Difference in order to furnish a possible Ground for Existence:—the baldness and nakedness of an Immediate belief, which comes to the full and direct certainty of itself, to true immediacy, only by gathering up the full sense of the antithesis which can separate conviction from truth, or by realising the Mediation connecting them:—all these are illustrations of the same law really applied which has been formally stated as the necessity for a defining, a dialectical, and a speculative element in thought. The three parts of Logic are an instance of the same thing: and when the Idea, or organism of thought, appears developed in the series of Natural forms, it is only to prepare the kingdom of reason actualised in the world of Mind. The Understanding, on the field of the world, corresponds, says Hegel[9], to the conception of Divine Goodness. The life of nature goes on in the independence and self-possession of all its parts, each as fixed and proud of its own, as if its share of earth were for ever assured. The finite being then has his season of self-satisfied ease: while the gods live in quiet, away from the sight of man's doings. The dialectical stage, again, corresponds to the conception of God as an omnipotent Lord: when the Power of the universe waxes terrific, destroying the complacency of the creatures and making them feel their insufficiency,—when the once beneficent appears jealous and cruel, and the joyous equanimity of human life is oppressed by the terrors of the inscrutable hand of fate. The easy-minded Greek lived for the most part in the former world: the uneasy Hebrew to a great extent in the latter. But the truth lay neither in the placid wisdom of Zeus, leaving the world to its own devices, nor in the jealous Jehovah of Mount Sinai: the true speculative union is found in the mystical unity of Godhead with human nature. In this comprehensive spirit did Hegel treat Logic.
This Triplicity runs through Hegel's works. If you open one, the main divisions are marked with the capitals A, B, C. One of these, it may be, is broken up into chapters headed by the Roman numerals I, II, III. Under one or more of these probably come severally the Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3. Any one of these again may be subdivided, and gives rise to sections, headed by the small letters a, b, c. And, lastly, any one of these may be treated to a distribution under the three titles α, β, γ. Of course the division is not in each case carried equally far: nor does the subject always permit it: nor is Hegel's knowledge alike vigorous, or his interest in all directions the same.
[1] 'Verstand,'
[2] 'Die Vernunft ohne Verstand ist Nichts; der Verstand doch Etwas ohne Vernunft.' Hegel's Leben, p. 546.
[3] Ὃτι οὐ κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων τὰ ἐv τῷ ἑvi κόσμῳ ἀὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκεϊ. Simplic. Phys. fol. 38 a (ed. Diels, p. 176).
[4] 'Vernunft.'
[5] Novum Organum, Book I. 70.
[6] Phenomenologie des Geistes, p. 67.