The key to the solution was found somewhat in the same way as led to the Darwinian theory concerning the Origin of Species. When the question touching the causes of variation and persistence in the natural kinds of plants and animals seemed so complex as to baffle all attempts at an answer, Darwin found what seemed a clue likely to lead to a theory of descent. The methods adopted in order to keep up, or to vary, a species under domestication were open to anybody's inspection: and those principles, which were consciously pursued in artificial selection by the breeder, suggested a theory of similar selection in free nature. In studying the phenomena of thought, of which the species or types were no less numerous and interesting than those in organic nature, it was perhaps impossible to survey the whole history of humanity. But it was comparatively easy to observe the process of thought in those cases where its growth had been fostered consciously and distinctly. The history of philosophy records the steps in the conscious and artificial manipulation of what for the far greater part is transacted in the silent workshops of nature. Philosophy, in short, is to the general growth of intelligence what artificial breeding is to the variation of species under natural conditions. In the successive systems of philosophy, the order and concatenation of ideas was, as it were, clarified out of the perturbed medium of real life, and expressed in its bare equivalents in terms of thought, and thus first really acquired. Half of his task was already performed for the logician, and there remained the work, certainly no slight one—of showing the unity and organic development which marked the conscious reasoning, and of connecting it with the general movement of human thought. The logician had to break down the rigid lines which separated one system of philosophy from another,—to see what was really involved in the contradiction of one system by its successor,—and to show that the negation thus given to an antecedent principle was a definite negation, ending not in mere zero or vacuity, but in a distinct result, and making an advance upon the previous height of intelligence.
To say this was to give a new value to the history of philosophy. For it followed that each system was no mere opinion or personal view, but was in the main a genuine attempt of the thinker to give expression to the tacit or struggling consciousness of his age. Behind the individual—who is often unduly regardless of his contemporaries and predecessors, and who writes or thinks with little knowledge or sympathy for them, there is the general bearing and interest of the age, its powerful solidarity of purpose and conception. The philosopher is the prophet, because he is in a large part the product of his age. He is an organ of the mind of his age and nation; and both he and it play a part in the general work of humanity.
On the other hand, it is dangerous to insist too forcibly on the rationality of the history of philosophy. For it may be taken to mean—probably only by blinded or wooden commentators—that each step in the evolution and concatenation of the logical idea is to be identified with some historical system, and that these systems must have appeared in this precise order. And this would be to expect too much from the 'impotence of nature' which plays its part in the historical world also: as that on one side forms part of the Natural. There is Reason in the world—and in the world of history; but not in the pellucid brightness and distinct outlines proper to the Idea in the abstract element of thought. It may take several philosophers to make one step in thought; and sometimes one philosopher of genius may take several steps at once. There may even be co-eval philosophies: and there may be philosophies which appear to run on in independent or parallel lines of development. It may well be that Hegel has underestimated these divergencies, and that he has been too apt to see in all history the co-operation to one dominant purpose. But these errors in the execution of a philosophy of history, and especially of the history of philosophy, should not diminish our estimate of its principle.[10]
At first this process was seen in the medium of time. But the conditions of time are of practical and particular interest only. The day when the first leaves appear, and the season when the fruit ripens on a tree, are questions of importance to practical arboriculture. But botany deals only with the general theory of the plant's development, in which such considerations have to be generalised. So logic leaves out of account those points of time and chance which the interests of individuals and nations find all-important. And when this element of time has been removed, there is left a system of the types of thought pure and entire,—embalming the life of generations in mere words. The same self-identical thought is set forth from its initial narrowness and poverty on to its final amplitude and wealth of differences. At each stage it is the Absolute: outside of it there is nothing. It is the whole, pure and entire: always the whole. But in its first totality it is all but a void: in its last a fully-formed and articulated world,—because it holds all that it ever threw out of itself resumed into its grasp.
In these circumstances nothing can sound higher and nobler than the Theory of Logic. It presents the Truth unveiled in its proper form and absolute nature. If the philosopher may call this absolute totality of thought ever staying the same in its eternal development,—this adequacy of thought to its own requirements—by the name of God, then we may say with Hegel that Logic exhibits God as He is in His eternal Being before the creation of Nature and a finite Mind.[11] But the logical Idea is only a phantom Deity—the bare possibility of a God or of absolute reality in all the development of its details.
The first acquaintance with the abstract theory is likely to dash cold water on the enthusiasm thus awakened, and may sober our views of the magic efficacy of Logic. 'The student on his first approach to the Science,' says Hegel, 'sees in Logic at first only one system of abstractions apart and limited to itself, not extending so as to include other facts and sciences. On the contrary, when it is contrasted with the variety abounding in our generalised picture of the world, and with the tangible realities embraced in the other sciences,—when it is compared with the promise of the Absolute Science to lay bare the essence of that variety, the inner nature of the mind and the world, or, in one word, the Truth,—this science of Logic in its abstract outline, in the colourless cold simplicity of its mere terms of thought, seems as if it would perform anything sooner than this promise, and in the face of that variety seems very empty indeed. A first introduction to the study of Logic leads us to suppose that its significance is restricted to itself. Its doctrines are not believed to be more than one separate branch of study engaged with the terms or dimensions of thought, besides which the other scientific occupations have a proper material and body of their own. Upon these occupations, it is assumed, Logic may exert a formal influence, but it is the influence of a natural and spontaneous logic for which the scientific form and its study may be in case of need dispensed with. The other sciences have upon the whole rejected the regulation-method, which made them a series of definitions, axioms, and theorems, with the demonstration of these theorems. What is called Natural Logic rules in the sciences with full sway, and gets along without any special investigation in the direction of thought itself. The entire materials and facts of these sciences have detached themselves completely from Logic. Besides they are more attractive for sense, feeling, or imagination, and for practical interests of every description.
And so it comes about that Logic has to be learned at first, as something which is perhaps understood and seen into, but of which the compass, the depth, and further import are in the earliest stages unperceived. It is only after a deeper study of the other sciences that logical theory rises before the mind of the student into a universal, which is not merely abstract, but embraces within it the variety of particulars.—The same moral truth on the lips of a youth, who understands it quite correctly, does not possess the significance or the burden of meaning which it has in the mind of the veteran, in whom the experience of a lifetime has made it express the whole force of its import. In the same way, Logic is not appreciated at its right value until it has grown to be the result of scientific experience. It is then seen to be the universal truth,—not a special study beside other matters and other realities, but the essence of all these other facts together.[12]
[1] E. g. 'formal' in Hamlet, iv. 5. 215; 'informal' in Measure for Measure, v. 236.