Sophist
The Hegelian philosophy claims, as we have seen, to be based upon
experience: it abrogates the distinction of a priori and a posteriori
truth. It also acknowledges that many differences of kind are resolvable
into differences of degree. It is familiar with the terms 'evolution,'
'development,' and the like. Yet it can hardly be said to have
considered the forms of thought which are best adapted for the
expression of facts. It has never applied the categories to experience;
it has not defined the differences in our ideas of opposition, or
development, or cause and effect, in the different sciences which make
use of these terms. It rests on a knowledge which is not the result of
exact or serious enquiry, but is floating in the air; the mind has been
imperceptibly informed of some of the methods required in the sciences.
Hegel boasts that the movement of dialectic is at once necessary and
spontaneous: in reality it goes beyond experience and is unverified
by it. Further, the Hegelian philosophy, while giving us the power of
thinking a great deal more than we are able to fill up, seems to be
wanting in some determinations of thought which we require. We cannot
say that physical science, which at present occupies so large a share
of popular attention, has been made easier or more intelligible by the
distinctions of Hegel. Nor can we deny that he has sometimes interpreted
physics by metaphysics, and confused his own philosophical fancies with
the laws of nature. The very freedom of the movement is not without
suspicion, seeming to imply a state of the human mind which has entirely
lost sight of facts. Nor can the necessity which is attributed to it be
very stringent, seeing that the successive categories or determinations
of thought in different parts of his writings are arranged by the
philosopher in different ways. What is termed necessary evolution seems
to be only the order in which a succession of ideas presented themselves
to the mind of Hegel at a particular time.
The nomenclature of Hegel has been made by himself out of the language
of common life. He uses a few words only which are borrowed from his
predecessors, or from the Greek philosophy, and these generally in a
sense peculiar to himself. The first stage of his philosophy answers to
the word 'is,' the second to the word 'has been,' the third to the
words 'has been' and 'is' combined. In other words, the first sphere
is immediate, the second mediated by reflection, the third or highest
returns into the first, and is both mediate and immediate. As Luther's
Bible was written in the language of the common people, so Hegel seems
to have thought that he gave his philosophy a truly German character
by the use of idiomatic German words. But it may be doubted whether the
attempt has been successful. First because such words as 'in sich seyn,'
'an sich seyn,' 'an und fur sich seyn,' though the simplest combinations
of nouns and verbs, require a difficult and elaborate explanation. The
simplicity of the words contrasts with the hardness of their meaning.
Secondly, the use of technical phraseology necessarily separates
philosophy from general literature; the student has to learn a new
language of uncertain meaning which he with difficulty remembers. No
former philosopher had ever carried the use of technical terms to the
same extent as Hegel. The language of Plato or even of Aristotle is but
slightly removed from that of common life, and was introduced naturally
by a series of thinkers: the language of the scholastic logic has become
technical to us, but in the Middle Ages was the vernacular Latin of
priests and students. The higher spirit of philosophy, the spirit of
Plato and Socrates, rebels against the Hegelian use of language as
mechanical and technical.
Hegel is fond of etymologies and often seems to trifle with words. He
gives etymologies which are bad, and never considers that the meaning of
a word may have nothing to do with its derivation. He lived before the
days of Comparative Philology or of Comparative Mythology and Religion,
which would have opened a new world to him. He makes no allowance for
the element of chance either in language or thought; and perhaps there
is no greater defect in his system than the want of a sound theory
of language. He speaks as if thought, instead of being identical with
language, was wholly independent of it. It is not the actual growth
of the mind, but the imaginary growth of the Hegelian system, which is
attractive to him.
Neither are we able to say why of the common forms of thought some are
rejected by him, while others have an undue prominence given to them.
Some of them, such as 'ground' and 'existence,' have hardly any basis
either in language or philosophy, while others, such as 'cause' and
'effect,' are but slightly considered. All abstractions are supposed by
Hegel to derive their meaning from one another. This is true of some,
but not of all, and in different degrees. There is an explanation of
abstractions by the phenomena which they represent, as well as by their
relation to other abstractions. If the knowledge of all were necessary
to the knowledge of any one of them, the mind would sink under the load
of thought. Again, in every process of reflection we seem to require
a standing ground, and in the attempt to obtain a complete analysis we
lose all fixedness. If, for example, the mind is viewed as the complex
of ideas, or the difference between things and persons denied, such an
analysis may be justified from the point of view of Hegel: but we shall
find that in the attempt to criticize thought we have lost the power of
thinking, and, like the Heracliteans of old, have no words in which
our meaning can be expressed. Such an analysis may be of value as a
corrective of popular language or thought, but should still allow us to
retain the fundamental distinctions of philosophy.
In the Hegelian system ideas supersede persons. The world of thought,
though sometimes described as Spirit or 'Geist,' is really impersonal.
The minds of men are to be regarded as one mind, or more correctly as
a succession of ideas. Any comprehensive view of the world must
necessarily be general, and there may be a use with a view to
comprehensiveness in dropping individuals and their lives and actions.
In all things, if we leave out details, a certain degree of order
begins to appear; at any rate we can make an order which, with a little
exaggeration or disproportion in some of the parts, will cover the whole
field of philosophy. But are we therefore justified in saying that
ideas are the causes of the great movement of the world rather than the
personalities which conceived them? The great man is the expression of
his time, and there may be peculiar difficulties in his age which he
cannot overcome. He may be out of harmony with his circumstances, too
early or too late, and then all his thoughts perish; his genius passes
away unknown. But not therefore is he to be regarded as a mere waif
or stray in human history, any more than he is the mere creature or
expression of the age in which he lives. His ideas are inseparable from
himself, and would have been nothing without him. Through a thousand
personal influences they have been brought home to the minds of
others. He starts from antecedents, but he is great in proportion as he
disengages himself from them or absorbs himself in them. Moreover
the types of greatness differ; while one man is the expression of the
influences of his age, another is in antagonism to them. One man is
borne on the surface of the water; another is carried forward by the
current which flows beneath. The character of an individual, whether he
be independent of circumstances or not, inspires others quite as much
as his words. What is the teaching of Socrates apart from his personal
history, or the doctrines of Christ apart from the Divine life in which
they are embodied? Has not Hegel himself delineated the greatness of
the life of Christ as consisting in his 'Schicksalslosigkeit' or
independence of the destiny of his race? Do not persons become ideas,
and is there any distinction between them? Take away the five greatest
legislators, the five greatest warriors, the five greatest poets, the
five greatest founders or teachers of a religion, the five greatest
philosophers, the five greatest inventors,--where would have been all
that we most value in knowledge or in life? And can that be a true
theory of the history of philosophy which, in Hegel's own language,
'does not allow the individual to have his right'?
Once more, while we readily admit that the world is relative to the
mind, and the mind to the world, and that we must suppose a common or
correlative growth in them, we shrink from saying that this complex
nature can contain, even in outline, all the endless forms of Being and
knowledge. Are we not 'seeking the living among the dead' and dignifying
a mere logical skeleton with the name of philosophy and almost of God?
When we look far away into the primeval sources of thought and belief,
do we suppose that the mere accident of our being the heirs of the Greek
philosophers can give us a right to set ourselves up as having the true
and only standard of reason in the world? Or when we contemplate the
infinite worlds in the expanse of heaven can we imagine that a few
meagre categories derived from language and invented by the genius of
one or two great thinkers contain the secret of the universe? Or, having
regard to the ages during which the human race may yet endure, do we
suppose that we can anticipate the proportions human knowledge may
attain even within the short space of one or two thousand years?
Again, we have a difficulty in understanding how ideas can be causes,
which to us seems to be as much a figure of speech as the old notion
of a creator artist, 'who makes the world by the help of the demigods'
(Plato, Tim.), or with 'a golden pair of compasses' measures out the
circumference of the universe (Milton, P.L.). We can understand how
the idea in the mind of an inventor is the cause of the work which is
produced by it; and we can dimly imagine how this universal frame may
be animated by a divine intelligence. But we cannot conceive how all the
thoughts of men that ever were, which are themselves subject to so many
external conditions of climate, country, and the like, even if regarded
as the single thought of a Divine Being, can be supposed to have
made the world. We appear to be only wrapping up ourselves in our own
conceits--to be confusing cause and effect--to be losing the distinction
between reflection and action, between the human and divine.
These are some of the doubts and suspicions which arise in the mind of
a student of Hegel, when, after living for a time within the charmed
circle, he removes to a little distance and looks back upon what he
has learnt, from the vantage-ground of history and experience. The
enthusiasm of his youth has passed away, the authority of the master no
longer retains a hold upon him. But he does not regret the time spent
in the study of him. He finds that he has received from him a real
enlargement of mind, and much of the true spirit of philosophy, even
when he has ceased to believe in him. He returns again and again to his
writings as to the recollections of a first love, not undeserving of
his admiration still. Perhaps if he were asked how he can admire
without believing, or what value he can attribute to what he knows to be
erroneous, he might answer in some such manner as the following:--
1. That in Hegel he finds glimpses of the genius of the poet and of the
common sense of the man of the world. His system is not cast in a poetic
form, but neither has all this load of logic extinguished in him the