Part 13

In Hegel’s view hypnotic phenomena produce a kind of temporary and artificial atavism. Mechanical or chemical means, or morbid conditions of body, may cause even for the intelligent adult a relapse into states of mind closely resembling those exhibited by the primitive or the infantile sensibility. The intelligent personality, where powers are bound up with limitations and operate through a chain of means and ends, is reduced to its primitively undifferentiated condition. Not that it is restored to its infantile simplicity; but that all subsequent acquirements operate only as a concentrated individuality, or mass of will and character, released from the control of the self-possessed mind, and invested (by the latter’s withdrawal) with a new quasi-personality of their own. With the loss of the world of outward things, there may go, it is supposed, a clearer perception of the inward and particularly of the organic life. The Soul contains the form of unity which other experiences had impressed upon it: but this form avails in its subterranean existence where it creates a sort of inner self. And this inner self is no longer, like the embodied self of ordinary consciousness, an intelligence served by organs, and proceeding by induction and inference. Its knowledge is not mediated or carried along specific channels: it does not build up, piecemeal, by successive steps of synthesis and analysis, by gradual idealisation, the organised totality of its intellectual world. The somnambulist and the clairvoyant see without eyes, and carry their vision directly into regions where the waking consciousness of orderly intelligence cannot enter. But that region is not the world of our higher ideas,—of art, religion, and philosophy. It is still the sensitivity—that realm of sensitivity which is ordinarily covered by unconsciousness. Such sensitive clairvoyants may, as it were, hear themselves growing; they may discern the hidden quivers and pulses of blood and tissue, the seats of secret pain and all the unrevealed workings in the dark chambers of the flesh. But always their vision seems confined to that region, and will fall short of the world of light and ideal truth. It is towards the nature-bond of sensitive solidarity with earth, and flowers, and trees, the life that “rolls through all things,” not towards the spiritual unity which broods over the world and “impels all thinking things,” that these immersions in the selfless universe lead us.

What Hegel chiefly sees in these phenomena is their indication, even on the natural side of man, of that ideality of the material, which it is the work of intelligence to produce in the more spiritual life, in the fully-developed mind. The latter is the supreme over-soul, that Absolute Mind which in our highest moods, aesthetic and religious, we approximate to. But mind, as it tends towards the higher end to “merge itself in light,” to identify itself yet not wholly lost, but retained, in the fullness of undivided intellectual being, so at the lower end it springs from a natural and underlying unity, the immense solidarity of nether-soul, the great Soul of Nature—the “Substance” which is to be raised into the “Subject” which is true divinity. Between these two unities, the nature-given nether-soul and the spirit-won over-soul, lies the conscious life of man: a process of differentiation which narrows and of redintegration which enlarges,—which alternately builds up an isolated personality and dissolves it in a common intelligence and sympathy. It is because mental or tacit “suggestion”(88) (i.e. will-influence exercised without word or sign, or other sensible mode of connexion), thought-transference, or thought-reading (which is more than dexterous apprehension of delicate muscular signs), exteriorisation or transposition of sensibility into objects primarily non-sensitive, clairvoyance (i.e. the power of describing, as if from direct perception, objects or events removed in space beyond the recognised limits of sensation), and somnambulism, so far as it implies lucid vision with sealed eyes,—it is because these things seem to show the essential ideality of matter, that Hegel is interested in them. The ordinary conditions of consciousness and even of practical life in society are a derivative and secondary state; a product of processes of individualism, which however are never completed, and leave a large margin for idealising intelligence to fulfil. From a state which is not yet personality to a state which is more than can be described as personality—lies the mental movement. So Fichte, too, had regarded the power of the somnambulist as laying open a world underlying the development of egoity and self-consciousness(89): “the merely sensuous man is still in somnambulism,” only a somnambulism of waking hours: “the true waking is the life in God, to be free in him, all else is sleep and dream.” “Egoity,” he adds, “is a merely _formal_ principle, utterly, and never qualitative (i.e. the essence and universal force).” For Schopenhauer, too, the experiences of animal magnetism had seemed to prove the absolute supernatural power of the radical will in its superiority to the intellectual categories of space, time, and causal sequence: to prove the reality of the metaphysical which is at the basis of all conscious divisions.

(iii.) The Development of Inner Freedom.

The result of the first range in the process of psycho-genesis was to make the body a sign and utterance of the Soul, with a fixed and determinate type. The “anthropological process” has defined and settled the mere general sentiency of soul into an individualised shape, a localised and limited self, a bundle of habits. It has made the soul an Ego or self: a power which looks out upon the world as a spectator, lifted above immanence in the general tide of being, but only so lifted because it has made itself one in the world of objects, a thing among things. The Mind has reached the point of view of reflection. Instead of a general identifiability with all nature, it has encased itself in a limited range, from which it looks forth on what is now other than itself. If previously it was mere inward sensibility, it is now sense, perceptive of an object here and now, of an external world. The step has involved some price: and that price is, that it has attained independence and self-hood at the cost of surrendering the content it had hitherto held in one with itself. It is now a blank receptivity, open to the impressions of an outside world: and the changes which take place in its process of apprehension seem to it to be given from outside. The world it perceives is a world of isolated and independent objects: and it takes them as they are given. But a closer insistance on the perception develops the implicit intelligence, which makes it possible. The percipient mind is no mere recipiency or susceptibility with its forms of time and space: it is spontaneously active, it is the source of categories, or is an apperceptive power,—an understanding. Consciousness, thus discovered to be a creative or constructive faculty, is strictly speaking self-consciousness(90).

Self-consciousness appears at first in the selfish or narrowly egoistic form of appetite and impulse. The intelligence which claims to mould and construe the world of objects—which, in Kant’s phrase, professes to give us nature—is implicitly the lord of that world. And that supremacy it carries out as appetite—as destruction. The self is but a bundle of wants—its supremacy over things is really subjection to them: the satisfaction of appetite is baffled by a new desire which leaves it as it was before. The development of self-consciousness to a more adequate shape is represented by Hegel as taking place through the social struggle for existence. Human beings, too, are in the first instance to the uninstructed appetite or the primitive self-consciousness (which is simply a succession of individual desires for satisfaction of natural want) only things,—adjectival to that self’s individual existence. To them, too, his primary relation is to appropriate and master them. Might precedes right. But the social struggle for existence forces him to recognise something other which is kindred to himself,—a limiting principle, another self which has to form an element in his calculations, not to be neglected. And gradually, we may suppose, the result is the division of humanity into two levels, a ruling lordly class, and a class of slaves,—a state of inequality in which each knows that his appetite is in some measure checked by a more or less permanent other. Lastly, perhaps soonest in the inferior order, there is fashioned the perception that its self-seeking in its isolated appetites is subject to an abiding authority, a continuing consciousness. There grows up a social self—a sense of general humanity and solidarity with other beings—a larger self with which each identifies himself, a common ground. Understanding was selfish intelligence: practical in the egoistic sense. In the altruistic or universal sense practical, a principle social and unifying character, intelligence is Reason.

Thus, Man, beginning as a percipient consciousness, apprehending single objects in space and time, and as an appetitive self bent upon single gratifications, has ended as a rational being,—a consciousness purged of its selfishness and isolation, looking forward openly and impartially on the universe of things and beings. He has ceased to be a mere animal, swallowed up in the moment and the individual, using his intelligence only in selfish satisfactions. He is no longer bound down by the struggle for existence, looking on everything as a mere thing, a mere means. He has erected himself above himself and above his environment, but that because he occupies a point of view at which he and his environment are no longer purely antithetical and exclusive(91). He has reached what is really the moral standpoint: the point i.e. at which he is inspired by a universal self-consciousness, and lives in that peaceful world where the antitheses of individualities and of outward and inward have ceased to trouble. “The natural man,” says Hegel(92), “sees in the woman flesh of his flesh: the moral and spiritual man sees spirit of his spirit in the moral and spiritual being and by its means.” Hitherto we have been dealing with something falling below the full truth of mind: the region of immediate sensibility with its thorough immersion of mind in body, first of all, and secondly its gradual progress to a general standpoint. It is only in the third part of Subjective mind that we are dealing with the psychology of a being who in the human sense knows and wills, i.e. apprehends general truth, and carries out ideal purposes.

Thus, for the third time, but now on a higher plane, that of intelligence and rationality, is traced the process of development or realisation by which reason becomes reasoned knowledge and rational will, a free or autonomous intelligence. And, as before, the starting-point, alike in theoretical and practical mind, is feeling—or immediate knowledge and immediate sense of Ought. The basis of thought is an immediate perception—a sensuous affection or given something, and the basis of the idea of a general satisfaction is the natural claim to determine the outward existence conformably to individual feeling. In intelligent perception or intuition the important factor is attention, which raises it above mere passive acceptance and awareness of a given fact. Attention thus involves on one hand the externality of its object, and on the other affirms its dependence on the act of the subject: it sets the objects before and out of itself, in space and time, but yet in so doing it shows itself master of the objects. If perception presuppose attention, in short, they cease to be wholly outward: we make them ours, and the space and time they fill are projected by us. So attended to, they are appropriated, inwardised and recollected: they take their place in a mental place and mental time: they receive a general or de-individualised character in the memory-image. These are retained as mental property, but retained actually only in so far they are revivable and revived. Such revival is the work of imagination working by the so-called laws of association. But the possession of its ideas thus inwardised and recollected by the mind is largely a matter of chance. The mind is not really fully master of them until it has been able to give them a certain objectivity, by replacing the mental image by a vocal, i.e. a sensible sign. By means of words, intelligence turns its ideas or representations into quasi-realities: it creates a sort of superior sense-world, the world of language, where ideas live a potential, which is also an actual, life. Words are sensibles, but they are sensibles which completely lose themselves in their meaning. As sensibles, they render possible that verbal memory which is the handmaid of thought: but which also as merely mechanical can leave thought altogether out of account. It is through words that thought is made possible: for it alone permits the movement through ideas without being distracted through a multitude of associations. In them thought has an instrument completely at its own level, but still only a machine, and in memory the working of that machine. We think in names, not in general images, but in terms which only serve as vehicles for mental synthesis and analysis.

It is as such a thinking being—a being who can use language, and manipulate general concepts or take comprehensive views, that man is a rational will. A concept of something to be done—a feeling even of some end more or less comprehensive in its quality, is the implication of what can be called will. At first indeed its material may be found as immediately given and all its volitionality may lie in the circumstance that the intelligent being sets this forward as a governing and controlling Ought. Its vehicle, in short, may be mere impulse, or inclination, and even passion: but it is the choice and the purposive adoption of means to the given end. Gradually it attains to the idea of a general satisfaction, or of happiness. And this end seems positive and definite. It soon turns out however to be little but a prudent and self-denying superiority to particular passions and inclinations in the interest of a comprehensive ideal. The free will or intelligence has so far only a negative and formal value: it is the perfection of an autonomous and freely self-developing mind. Such a mind, which in language has acquired the means of realising an intellectual system of things superior to the restrictions of sense, and which has emancipated reason from the position of slave to inclination, is endued with the formal conditions of moral conduct. Such a mind will transform its own primarily physical dependence into an image of the law of reason and create the ethical life: and in the strength of that establishment will go forth to conquer the world into a more and more adequate realisation of the eternal Idea.

Essay V. Ethics And Politics.

“In dealing,” says Hegel, “with the Idea of the State, we must not have before our eyes a particular state, or a particular institution: we must rather study the Idea, this actual God, on his own account. Every State, however bad we may find it according to our principles, however defective we may discover this or that feature to be, still contains, particularly if it belongs to the mature states of our time, all the essential factors of its existence. But as it is easier to discover faults than to comprehend the affirmative, people easily fall into the mistake of letting individual aspects obscure the intrinsic organism of the State itself. The State is no ideal work of art: it stands in the everyday world, in the sphere, that is, of arbitrary act, accident, and error, and a variety of faults may mar the regularity of its traits. But the ugliest man, the criminal, a sick man and a cripple, is after all a living man; the affirmative, Life, subsists in spite of the defect: and this affirmative is here the theme(93).” “It is the theme of philosophy,” he adds, “to ascertain the substance which is immanent in the show of the temporal and transient, and the eternal which is present.”

(i.) Hegel as a Political Critic.

But if this is true, it is also to be remembered that the philosopher is, like other men, the son of his age, and estimates the value of reality from preconceptions and aspirations due to his generation. The historical circumstances of his nation as well as the personal experiences of his life help to determine his horizon, even in the effort to discover the hidden pulse and movement of the social organism. This is specially obvious in political philosophy. The conception of ethics and politics which is presented in the _Encyclopaedia_ was in 1820 produced with more detail as the _Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts_. Appearing, as it did, two years after his appointment to a professorship at Berlin, and in the midst of a political struggle between the various revolutionary and conservative powers and parties of Germany, the book became, and long remained, a target for embittered criticism. The so-called War of Liberation or national movement to shake off the French yoke was due to a coalition of parties, and had naturally been in part supported by tendencies and aims which went far beyond the ostensive purpose either of leaders or of combatants. Aspirations after a freer state were entwined with radical and socialistic designs to reform the political hierarchy of the Fatherland: high ideals and low vulgarities were closely intermixed: and the noble enthusiasm of youth was occasionally played on by criminal and anarchic intriguers. In a strong and wise and united Germany some of these schemes might have been tolerated. But strength, wisdom, and unity were absent. In the existing tension between Austria and Prussia for the leadership, in the ill-adapted and effete constitutions of the several principalities which were yet expected to realise the advance which had taken place in society and ideas during the last thirty years, the outlook on every hand seemed darker and more threatening than it might have otherwise done. Governments, which had lost touch with their peoples, suspected conspiracy and treason: and a party in the nation credited their rulers with gratuitous designs against private liberty and rights. There was a vast but ill-defined enthusiasm in the breasts of the younger world, and it was shared by many of their teachers. It seemed to their immense aspirations that the war of liberation had failed of its true object and left things much as they were. The volunteers had not fought for the political systems of Austria or Prussia, or for the three-and-thirty princes of Germany: but for ideas, vague, beautiful, stimulating. To such a mood the continuance of the old system was felt as a cruel deception and a reaction. The governments on their part had not realised the full importance of the spirit that had been aroused, and could not at a moment’s notice set their house in order, even had there been a clearer outlook for reform than was offered. They too had suffered, and had realised their insecurity: and were hardly in a mood to open their gates to the enemy.

Coming on such a situation of affairs, Hegel’s book would have been likely in any case to provoke criticism. For it took up a line of political theory which was little in accord with the temper of the age. The conception of the state which it expounded is not far removed in essentials from the conception which now dominates the political life of the chief European nations. But in his own time it came upon ears which were naturally disposed to misconceive it. It was unacceptable to the adherents of the _ancien régime_, as much as to the liberals. It was declared by one party to be a glorification of the Prussian state: by another to rationalise the sanctities of authority. It was pointed out that the new professor was a favourite of the leading minister, that his influence was dominant in scholastic appointments, and that occasional gratuities from the crown proved his acceptability. A contemporary professor, Fries, remarked that Hegel’s theory of the state had grown “not in the gardens of science but on the dung-hill of servility.” Hegel himself was aware that he had planted a blow in the face of a “shallow and pretentious sect,” and that his book had “given great offence to the demagogic folk.” Alike in religious and political life he was impatient of sentimentalism, of rhetorical feeling, of wordy enthusiasm. A positive storm of scorn burst from him at much-promising and little-containing declamation that appealed to the pathos of ideas, without sense of the complex work of construction and the system of principles which were needed to give them reality. His impatience of demagogic gush led him (in the preface) into a tactless attack on Fries, who was at the moment in disgrace for his participation in the demonstration at the Wartburg. It led him to an attack on the bumptiousness of those who held that conscientious conviction was ample justification for any proceeding:—an attack which opponents were not unwilling to represent as directed against the principle of conscience itself.

Yet Hegel’s views on the nature of political unity were not new. Their nucleus had been formed nearly twenty years before. In the years that immediately followed the French revolution he had gone through the usual anarchic stage of intelligent youth. He had wondered whether humanity might not have had a nobler destiny, had fate given supremacy to some heresy rather than the orthodox creed of Christendom. He had seen religion in the past “teaching what despotism wished,—contempt of the human race, its incapacity for anything good(94).” But his earliest reflections on political power belong to a later date, and are inspired, not so much by the vague ideals of humanitarianism, as by the spirit of national patriotism. They are found in a “Criticism of the German Constitution” apparently dating from the year 1802(95). It is written after the peace of Lunéville had sealed for Germany the loss of her provinces west of the Rhine, and subsequent to the disasters of the German arms at Hohenlinden and Marengo. It is almost contemporaneous with the measures of 1803 and 1804, which affirmed the dissolution of the “Holy Roman Empire” of German name. The writer of this unpublished pamphlet sees his country in a situation almost identical with that which Macchiavelli saw around him in Italy. It is abused by petty despots, distracted by mean particularist ambitions, at the mercy of every foreign power. It was such a scene which, as Hegel recalls, had prompted and justified the drastic measures proposed in the _Prince_,—measures which have been ill-judged by the closet moralist, but evince the high statesmanship of the Florentine. In the _Prince_, an intelligent reader can see “the enthusiasm of patriotism underlying the cold and dispassionate doctrines.” Macchiavelli dared to declare that Italy must become a state, and to assert that “there is no higher duty for a state than to maintain itself, and to punish relentlessly every author of anarchy,—the supreme, and perhaps sole political crime.” And like teaching, Hegel adds, is needed for Germany. Only, he concludes, no mere demonstration of the insanity of utter separation of the particular from his kin will ever succeed in converting the particularists from their conviction of the absoluteness of personal and private rights. “Insight and intelligence always excite so much distrust that force alone avails to justify them; then man yields them obedience(96).”