Sophist
individual to the universal, from the object to the subject. The
Sophist first uttered the word 'Man is the measure of all things,' which
Socrates presented in a new form as the study of ethics. Once more we
return from mind to the object of mind, which is knowledge, and out
of knowledge the various degrees or kinds of knowledge more or less
abstract were gradually developed. The threefold division of logic,
physic, and ethics, foreshadowed in Plato, was finally established by
Aristotle and the Stoics. Thus, according to Hegel, in the course of
about two centuries by a process of antagonism and negation the leading
thoughts of philosophy were evolved.
There is nothing like this progress of opposites in Plato, who in the
Symposium denies the possibility of reconciliation until the opposition
has passed away. In his own words, there is an absurdity in supposing
that 'harmony is discord; for in reality harmony consists of notes of a
higher and lower pitch which disagreed once, but are now reconciled by
the art of music' (Symp.). He does indeed describe objects of sense
as regarded by us sometimes from one point of view and sometimes from
another. As he says at the end of the Fifth Book of the Republic, 'There
is nothing light which is not heavy, or great which is not small.' And
he extends this relativity to the conceptions of just and good, as well
as to great and small. In like manner he acknowledges that the same
number may be more or less in relation to other numbers without any
increase or diminution (Theat.). But the perplexity only arises out of
the confusion of the human faculties; the art of measuring shows us what
is truly great and truly small. Though the just and good in particular
instances may vary, the IDEA of good is eternal and unchangeable. And
the IDEA of good is the source of knowledge and also of Being, in which
all the stages of sense and knowledge are gathered up and from being
hypotheses become realities.
Leaving the comparison with Plato we may now consider the value of
this invention of Hegel. There can be no question of the importance of
showing that two contraries or contradictories may in certain cases be
both true. The silliness of the so-called laws of thought ('All A = A,'
or, in the negative form, 'Nothing can at the same time be both A, and
not A') has been well exposed by Hegel himself (Wallace's Hegel), who
remarks that 'the form of the maxim is virtually self-contradictory,
for a proposition implies a distinction between subject and predicate,
whereas the maxim of identity, as it is called, A = A, does not fulfil
what its form requires. Nor does any mind ever think or form conceptions
in accordance with this law, nor does any existence conform to it.'
Wisdom of this sort is well parodied in Shakespeare (Twelfth Night,
'Clown: For as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink,
very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, "That that is is"...for
what is "that" but "that," and "is" but "is"?'). Unless we are willing
to admit that two contradictories may be true, many questions which lie
at the threshold of mathematics and of morals will be insoluble puzzles
to us.
The influence of opposites is felt in practical life. The understanding
sees one side of a question only--the common sense of mankind joins
one of two parties in politics, in religion, in philosophy. Yet, as
everybody knows, truth is not wholly the possession of either. But the
characters of men are one-sided and accept this or that aspect of the
truth. The understanding is strong in a single abstract principle and
with this lever moves mankind. Few attain to a balance of principles
or recognize truly how in all human things there is a thesis and
antithesis, a law of action and of reaction. In politics we require
order as well as liberty, and have to consider the proportions in which
under given circumstances they may be safely combined. In religion there
is a tendency to lose sight of morality, to separate goodness from
the love of truth, to worship God without attempting to know him.
In philosophy again there are two opposite principles, of immediate
experience and of those general or a priori truths which are supposed to
transcend experience. But the common sense or common opinion of mankind
is incapable of apprehending these opposite sides or views--men are
determined by their natural bent to one or other of them; they go
straight on for a time in a single line, and may be many things by turns
but not at once.
Hence the importance of familiarizing the mind with forms which will
assist us in conceiving or expressing the complex or contrary aspects
of life and nature. The danger is that they may be too much for us, and
obscure our appreciation of facts. As the complexity of mechanics cannot
be understood without mathematics, so neither can the many-sidedness of
the mental and moral world be truly apprehended without the assistance
of new forms of thought. One of these forms is the unity of opposites.
Abstractions have a great power over us, but they are apt to be partial
and one-sided, and only when modified by other abstractions do they make
an approach to the truth. Many a man has become a fatalist because he
has fallen under the dominion of a single idea. He says to himself, for
example, that he must be either free or necessary--he cannot be both.
Thus in the ancient world whole schools of philosophy passed away in the
vain attempt to solve the problem of the continuity or divisibility of
matter. And in comparatively modern times, though in the spirit of an
ancient philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, feeling a similar perplexity,
is inclined to deny the truth of infinitesimals in mathematics. Many
difficulties arise in practical religion from the impossibility of
conceiving body and mind at once and in adjusting their movements to one
another. There is a border ground between them which seems to belong to
both; and there is as much difficulty in conceiving the body without the
soul as the soul without the body. To the 'either' and 'or' philosophy
('Everything is either A or not A') should at least be added the clause
'or neither,' 'or both.' The double form makes reflection easier and
more conformable to experience, and also more comprehensive. But
in order to avoid paradox and the danger of giving offence to the
unmetaphysical part of mankind, we may speak of it as due to the
imperfection of language or the limitation of human faculties. It is
nevertheless a discovery which, in Platonic language, may be termed a
'most gracious aid to thought.'
The doctrine of opposite moments of thought or of progression by
antagonism, further assists us in framing a scheme or system of the
sciences. The negation of one gives birth to another of them. The double
notions are the joints which hold them together. The simple is developed
into the complex, the complex returns again into the simple. Beginning
with the highest notion of mind or thought, we may descend by a series
of negations to the first generalizations of sense. Or again we may
begin with the simplest elements of sense and proceed upwards to the
highest being or thought. Metaphysic is the negation or absorption of
physiology--physiology of chemistry--chemistry of mechanical philosophy.
Similarly in mechanics, when we can no further go we arrive at
chemistry--when chemistry becomes organic we arrive at physiology:
when we pass from the outward and animal to the inward nature of man we
arrive at moral and metaphysical philosophy. These sciences have each of
them their own methods and are pursued independently of one another.
But to the mind of the thinker they are all one--latent in one
another--developed out of one another.
This method of opposites has supplied new instruments of thought for the
solution of metaphysical problems, and has thrown down many of the walls
within which the human mind was confined. Formerly when philosophers
arrived at the infinite and absolute, they seemed to be lost in a region
beyond human comprehension. But Hegel has shown that the absolute and
infinite are no more true than the relative and finite, and that they
must alike be negatived before we arrive at a true absolute or a true
infinite. The conceptions of the infinite and absolute as ordinarily
understood are tiresome because they are unmeaning, but there is
no peculiar sanctity or mystery in them. We might as well make an
infinitesimal series of fractions or a perpetually recurring decimal
the object of our worship. They are the widest and also the thinnest of
human ideas, or, in the language of logicians, they have the greatest
extension and the least comprehension. Of all words they may be truly
said to be the most inflated with a false meaning. They have been
handed down from one philosopher to another until they have acquired a
religious character. They seem also to derive a sacredness from their
association with the Divine Being. Yet they are the poorest of the
predicates under which we describe him--signifying no more than this,
that he is not finite, that he is not relative, and tending to obscure
his higher attributes of wisdom, goodness, truth.
The system of Hegel frees the mind from the dominion of abstract ideas.
We acknowledge his originality, and some of us delight to wander in the
mazes of thought which he has opened to us. For Hegel has found admirers
in England and Scotland when his popularity in Germany has departed, and
he, like the philosophers whom he criticizes, is of the past. No other
thinker has ever dissected the human mind with equal patience and
minuteness. He has lightened the burden of thought because he has shown
us that the chains which we wear are of our own forging. To be able to
place ourselves not only above the opinions of men but above their
modes of thinking, is a great height of philosophy. This dearly obtained
freedom, however, we are not disposed to part with, or to allow him to
build up in a new form the 'beggarly elements' of scholastic logic
which he has thrown down. So far as they are aids to reflection and
expression, forms of thought are useful, but no further:--we may easily
have too many of them.
And when we are asked to believe the Hegelian to be the sole or
universal logic, we naturally reply that there are other ways in which
our ideas may be connected. The triplets of Hegel, the division into
being, essence, and notion, are not the only or necessary modes in which
the world of thought can be conceived. There may be an evolution by
degrees as well as by opposites. The word 'continuity' suggests the
possibility of resolving all differences into differences of quantity.
Again, the opposites themselves may vary from the least degree of
diversity up to contradictory opposition. They are not like numbers
and figures, always and everywhere of the same value. And therefore
the edifice which is constructed out of them has merely an imaginary
symmetry, and is really irregular and out of proportion. The spirit of
Hegelian criticism should be applied to his own system, and the terms
Being, Not-being, existence, essence, notion, and the like challenged
and defined. For if Hegel introduces a great many distinctions, he
obliterates a great many others by the help of the universal solvent 'is
not,' which appears to be the simplest of negations, and yet admits
of several meanings. Neither are we able to follow him in the play of
metaphysical fancy which conducts him from one determination of thought
to another. But we begin to suspect that this vast system is not God
within us, or God immanent in the world, and may be only the invention
of an individual brain. The 'beyond' is always coming back upon us
however often we expel it. We do not easily believe that we have within