CHAPTER XXVI.

THOUGHT PURE AND ENTIRE.

The English reader may probably be taken to be familiar with the conception of Logic as the Science of the _Form_ of Thought. He may also have heard this explained as equivalent to the Science of Thought as Thought, or of Thought as Form, or of Formal Thought. But, probably, also, he brings to the lesson no very high estimate of _form_ as such. In the old language of Greek philosophy, transmitted through the Schoolmen of the West, and still lingering in the phraseology of Bacon and Shakespeare[1], Forms and substantial forms were powers in the world of reality. But a generation arose which knew them not: to which they were only belated survivals of the past. The forms had lost connexion with matter and content, and had come to seem something occult, transcendent, and therefore, to a practical and realistic age, something fantastic and superfluous. Yet it may be well to recall that the same author who has put on record his view that forms are only mental figments, unless they be fully 'determinate in matter,' has equally laid it down that the so-called 'causes' of vulgar philosophy--the matter and the agent--are only 'vehicles of the form,' Thus spontaneously did Bacon reconstruct the Aristotelian theory of the interdependence of form and matter, that form is always form _of_ (or _in_) matter, and that matter is always _for_ form.

The relativity of form and matter, or of form and content, is indeed almost a commonplace of popular discussion on logical subjects. But like other uncritical applications of great truths, this is both carried beyond its proper bounds, and is not carried out with sufficient thoroughness. There cannot--it is said--be a formal logic, because every exercise of thought is internally affected or modified by the material--the subject-matter--with which it deals. It is implied in such an argument that the 'subject-matter' finds no difficulty in existing by itself, but that the 'thought' is a mere vacuity or un-characterised something which owes its every character to the said matter. But a subject-matter which has content and character has therefore form: it is already known, already thought. And as to this thought, which is said to approach its matter with a self so blank, so impartial, so neutral--what is it? It is a thought or a thinking which has never as yet thought,--which is only named 'thought' by right of expectation, but is itself nothing actual. Of such --fictitious--thought there can hardly be a science.

On the other hand, that may be easily called a formal logic, which is much more than formal: and that may be called material, which is only a species of formal. Great indeed is the virtue of names, to suppress and to replace thought. When forms hang on as mysterious names after their day is passed--when they are retained in a certain honour, while the real working methods have assumed other titles; then these forms become purely formal and antiquated. Thus the Logic of Aristotle seemed in its unfamiliar language to a later generation to be purely formal and superfluous. It was only another side of the same mistake when the new forms--the forms efficient and active in matter,--were not recognised as formal, but were boldly styled material: and the Logic which discussed such matter-marked forms was called a material Logic.

The phrase Matter of Thought, like its many congeners, is a fruitful mother of misconceptions. Caught up by the pictorial imagination, which is always at hand to anticipate thought, it suggests a matter, which is not thought, but is _there,_ all the same, lying in expectation of it. It suggests two things--(for are there not two words, and a preposition or term of relation between them?). But there are not two things. This _matter_ is just as much a nonentity as the aforesaid _thought_: a matter of thought is a thought matter,--matter, thought once, and possibly to be thought again.

All this talk about the Relativity of form and matter is insincere, and semi-conventional. It is (like the well-known antithesis between Matter and Mind, of which indeed it is only a variation) a halting between two views. That which it chiefly leans to, is that there can be no form without matter, though there may well be matter which is not yet formed. At the best it goes no further than to admit or assert that _besides_ the one there is _also_ the other. It establishes a see-saw, and is proud of it. This is Dualism. Its maxim is, Don't forget that there is an Other. You have explored the One: you have perhaps done well. But there is also and always the Other. The second view is not the mere negation of this dualism. That there is a dualism is a fact which it acknowledges.[2] All life and reality is manifested in dualism--in antithesis: but the life and the reality is one. Mind--_Geist_--actualised and intelligent experience--is the one ultimate and essential reality.[3] In the face of its unity, mere matter is only a half-truth, and mere thought is only another. The reality, the unity, and the truth, is matter as formed, nature as reflected in mind. In the reality of experience there is always the presence of thought: and thought is only real when it is wedded with nature in the truth of man's mind. So far Bacon and Hegel coincide. Man--in so far as he is Mind--and of course Mind in its fullness is not merely subjective nor merely objective, but absolute--is the measure of all things, the central and comprehensive reality. Such a man--and such a mind--is, we need hardly add, not the man in the street, nor the man in the study: but the infinite, universal, eternal mind in whom these and all others essentially have their being. Such truth of Man--such Mind--is the Absolute: it is sometimes named God: it is the ideal of all aspiration, and the fountain of all truth.

'Logic,' says Hegel[4], 'is the science of the Idea in the medium of mere thought.' It exhibits the truth in one partial aspect, or shows one appearance of the total unity of the world,--the aspect it would wear if we could for a moment suppose the reality of Nature to vanish out of sight, and the ideality of Mind reduced to a ghost. It dissects the underlying organisation--the scheme of unification--which the world of mental or spiritual experience presents in all its concreteness. And it does so because it exhibits the last result of the ever clearer and clearer experience which Mind achieves as it comes to see and realise itself. The logical skeleton is the sublimated product of a rich concrete experience. It has been a curious delusion of some who were probably satisfied by a casual glance at Hegel's _Logic_, especially in its earlier chapters, to suppose that the Logic was meant to be the absolute beginning: and that pure or mere thought was the congenital endowment of the heaven-born philosopher[5]. To Hegel, on the contrary, Logic was an abstraction from a fuller, more concrete reality. He did not indeed suppose that the symbolical conception of Movement--in its popular pictorialness--would be an adequate substitute or representative for thought; but he knew that the energy of mental development was the fact, and the truth, of which 'becoming' is a meagre, abstract phase.

Logic, then, is not the Science of mere or pure thought, but of the Idea (which is co-terminous with reality)--of the Mind's synthetic unity of experience--looked at, however, abstractly, in the medium of pure thought. Just so, Nature-philosophy is the same Idea, as it turns up bit after bit distracted, fragmentary, and more or less mutilated, in the multiplication, the time and space division, of physical phenomena. But as science requires us to go from the simple to the more complex, as the truth has to prove itself true, by serving in its conclusion as the corroboration of all its premisses or presuppositions; so the system of philosophy begins with the Logic. Yet it can only begin there, because it has already apprehended itself in its completeness: and it can only move onward because it is the concentrated essence--the implicit being--of all that it actually and explicitly is. It may appear to emerge from a point: but that point has at its back the intellectual unity of a philosophy which embraces the world. It presupposes the complete philosopher who shall be the complete organ of absolute intelligence, of universal and eternal Spirit.

A satisfactory Logic then presupposes or implies a complete system of philosophy. No doubt, for a logic which deals with the minor problems of ratiocination or formal induction, all that is needed is a certain general acquaintance with popular conceptions, and with the results or methods of physical science. But if logic takes its business seriously, it must go behind these presuppositions. It must trace back reasoning to its roots, fibres, and first principles. And to do that it is not enough to put at the front a psychological chapter. Far from helping, psychology in these matters is much more in need of being helped itself. Till it has learned a little of the puzzle of the one and the many, the same and the diverse, being, quality, and essence, psychology will be as little use to Logic as blind guides generally are. Nor need this prevent us from saying that when psychology has thoroughly learned these mysteries, it will give fresh life and reality to the logic which it touches upon. The principles of Logic lie in another field,[6] and are deeper in the ground, than obvious psychological gossip.

If Logic then deals with form, it deals with a form of forms--the form of the world, of life, and of reality. It is a form, which is a unity in diversity, an organism,--a form which is infinitely manifold, and yet in all its multiplicity one. Logic is the morphology of thought,--of that thought which in Nature is concealed under the variety and divisions of things, and which in the theory of mental and spiritual life is resumed into a complete biology of the world-organism. The problem of Logic then demands an abstraction--an effort of self-concentration--an effort by which the whole machinery of the sensible universe shall be left behind, and the accustomed clothing of our thoughts be removed. To move in this ether of pure thought is clearly one of the hardest of problems.

Like Plato, we may occasionally feel that we have caught a glimpse of the super-sensible world unveiled; but it disappears as the senses regain their hold. We can probably fix a firm eye on one term of reason, and criticise its value: but it is less easy to survey the Bacchic dance from term to term[7], and allow them to criticise themselves. The distracting influence of our associations, or of outside things, is always leading us astray. Either we incline to treat thoughts as psychological products or species, the outcome of a mental process, which are (_a_) given to us from the beginning, and so _a priori_ or innate, or which (_b_) spring up in the course of experience by mutual friction between our mind and the outside world, and so are _a posteriori_ or derivative. Or disregarding the subjective side of thoughts, we act as if they were more correctly called things: we speak of relations between phenomena: we suppose things, and causes, and quantities to form part of the so-called external universe, which science explores. The one estimate of thought, like the other, keeps in view, though at some distance, and so as not to interfere with their practical discussions, the separate and equal existence of thoughts and things. The psychologists or subjectivists of logic scrutinise the world within us first of all, and purpose to accomplish what can be done for the mind as possessing a faculty of thought, before they turn to the world of things. The realists or objectivists of logic think it better for practical work to allow thought only the formal or outside labour of surveying and analysing the laws of phenomena out of the phenomena which contain them. Neither of them examines thought--'the original synthetic unity'--in its own integrity as a movement in its own self, an inner organisation, of which subject and object, the mind and the things called external, are the vehicles, or, in logical language, the accidents.

If it is possible to treat the history of the English Constitution as an object of inquiry in itself and for its own sake, without reference to the individuals who in course of time marred and mended it, or to the setting of events in which its advance is exhibited, why not treat the thought, which is the universal element of all things, of English Constitution, and Italian Art, and Greek Philosophy, in the same way,--absolutely, i. e. in itself and for its own sake? When that is done, distinctions rigidly sustained between _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ become meaningless because now seen to belong to a distinction of earlier and later in the history of the individual consciousness. There is at best only a modified justification for such mottoes and cries, as 'Art for Art's sake,' or 'Science must be left free and unchecked,' or 'The rights of the religious conscience ought always to be respected': but there can be no demur or limitation to the cry that Thought must be studied in Thought by Thought and for the sake of Thought. For Art, and Science, and Religion are specialised modes in which the totality or truth of things presents itself to mankind, and none of them can claim an unconditioned sway: their claims clash, and each must be admitted to be after all a partial interpretation, a more or less one-sided interpretation of the true reality of the world. Thought on the other hand is unlimited: for it exists not merely in its own abstract modes, but interpenetrates and rules all the other concrete forms of experience, manifesting itself in Art and Religion, not less than in Science. And thus when we study Thought, we study that which is in itself and for itself,--we study Absolute Being. On the other side it must be noted that in Logic it is Absolute Being, only when and as it is _thought,_ which we study. The two sides, Being and Thought, must both come forward: and come in unity, although in some phases of the Idea the thought-element, in others the being-element is more pronounced.

Thought, too, is Being. An old distinction of the Stoics, which not inaptly represents popular views on this matter, set on one side ὄντα, existences (which were always corporeal, whether they were the things we touch and feel, or the words and breathings by which we utter them), and on the other side the meanings or thoughts proper or σημαινόμενα (which were incorporeal). These λεκτά, as they were otherwise called, were to the Stoics the proper sphere of Logic. In the sense therefore which the Stoics and popular consciousness give to being, the object of logic does not possess being. It is not corporeal. It cannot however be said to be in the sphere of non-being. It is rather a part of reality--of concrete being--which can be considered apart, as if it stood alone. Alone it does not stand. And yet it holds a position so fundamental,--is the same theme again and again repeated under endless variations,--is so obviously the universal of things--that it may properly form the subject of independent study.

It is, moreover, a part of Reality, which may well claim to stand for the whole. It is, so to say, the score of the musical composition, rolled up in its bare, silent, unadorned lineaments; the articulated theme, besides, and not the mere germinal concept, of all the variety of melody. But it is only laid up there _in abstracto_, because in the soul of the composer it had already taken concrete form, due to his capacity and training, his mental force, his art and science. It is there that the score has its source. But secondly, the musical work exists in the performance of the orchestra: in the manipulations of the several instruments, in the notes of the singers, in all the diversity of parts which make up the mechanism for unfolding the meaning or theme--that unreality, that mere thought, which to the stricter Stoic might be said to have no ὔπαρξις, or bodily subsistence. And there are still people who will be disposed to assert that it is only in the multitude of notes of violin, trombone, flute, &c., that the music is real:--though perhaps these hardy realists do not quite mean what they say. For what they probably mean, and what is the fact, is that the music exists as a complete reality in those who have ears and minds capable of comprehending and enjoying it: in those who can reunite meaning and theme to execution and orchestration: and we may even add that it is more and more real, in proportion to the greater power with which they can bring these two into one.

We shall rather say then that thought points to reality, and that mere nature seeks for interpretation: that mere thought and mere being both seek for reunion. Yet if in the complete reality we thus distinguish two elements, we may follow Hegel in setting the pure Idea first. It is no doubt in a way true that, as has been said, Hegel may be often read most easily if we first begin with his concluding paragraphs. In psychology and ethics the fundamental principles have assumed a more imposing, a larger, a more humanly-interesting shape, than they bear in the intangible outlines of Logic. There they are written in blacker ink and broader lines than in the grey on grey. But after all, it is only for those who have grasped the faint--yet fixed--outlines that the full-contoured figure speaks its amplest truth. The true sculptor must begin with a thorough study of anatomy. For those therefore who do not care merely for results, it is indispensable to begin--or at least to turn back to the beginning--to the Logic. No doubt the full tones of the heard and sounded harmony are the true and adequate presentation of the composer's purpose: but they will be best comprehended and appreciated by those who have thoroughly grasped the score.

In Logic, so regarded, thought is no longer merely our thought. It is the constructive, relational, unifying element of reality. Without it reality would not articulately be anything for us: and such thoughts seem to be its net extract, its quintessence, its concentrated meaning. But really they are only the potent _form_ of reality. Or, more exactly, in its limits, under its phases, must come all reality if it is to be part and parcel of our intelligent possession, our certified property. Such a thought is the frame-work, the shape-giver of our world, of our communicable experience. It is the formative principle of our intelligent life, as it is the principle through which things have meaning for us, and we have meaning for and fellowship with others. It is not so rich as religion and art, perhaps it does not have the intensity of feeling and faith: but it is at the very basis of all of these, or it is the concentrated essence of what in them is explicated and developed. Humanity in these its highest energies is more than mere thought--more than mere logic: but it is still at the root thought, and it is still governed by the laws and movement of this higher logic. For this is a logic which is no mere instrument of technical reasoning, for proof or disproof: no mere code of rules for the evaluation of testimony. It is a logic which deals with a thought--or an Idea in thought-form--which is the principle of all life and reality: the way of self-criticism which leads to truth: a thought which is at home in all the phases and provinces of experience.

Under the same name, Logic, therefore, we find something quite different from what the example of Aristotle and his ancient and modern followers had accustomed us to.[8] Under the auspices of Kant and his 'Transcendental logic' there has emerged the need of something more corresponding to the title. For the word itself was not used either by Aristotle or the Stoics. Neither the Analytics and Topics of the one, nor the Dialectic of the other, exhaust the conception of the science, or, to put it more accurately, they are only inceptions of a science, the fulfilment of which was reserved for a later time. Bacon and Locke, Descartes and Spinoza, all the thinkers of modern Europe call for a deeper probing of the logical problem: for a grasp of it which shall be more worthy of its conventional name, Logic, the theory of Reason. And we may even say that what is wanted is a unification of the problem of the Organon with that of the first philosophy, a unification of Logic with Metaphysics: a recognition that the problem of reason is not merely the method of reasoning, but the whole theory as to the correlations of perception and conception, of thinking and reality.

This conception of Logic as the self-developing system of Thought pure and entire, is the distinctive achievement of Hegel. 'I cannot imagine,' he says, 'that the method which I have followed in this system of Logic, or rather the method which this system follows in its own self, is otherwise than susceptible of much improvement, and many completions of detail: but I know at the same time that it is the only genuine method. This is evident from the circumstance that it is nothing distinct from its object and subject-matter: for it is the subject-matter within itself, or its inherent dialectic, which moves it along.'[9]

But how is this universe of thought to be discovered, and its law of movement to be described? From times beyond the reach of history, from nations and tribes of which we know only by tradition and vague conjectures, in all levels of social life and action, the synthetic energy of thought has been productive, and its evolution in the field of time has been going on. For thousands of years the intellectual city has been rearing its walls: and much of the process of its formation lies beyond the scope of observation. But fortunately there is a help at hand, which will enable us to discover at least the main outlines in the system of thought.

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]

[Footnote 1: E. g. 'formal' in _Hamlet_, iv. 5. 215; 'informal' in _Measure for Measure,_ v. 236.]

[Footnote 2: _Encycl._ § 574 (_Philosophy of Mind,_ p. 196).]

[Footnote 3: _Encycl._ § 377.]

[Footnote 4: _Logic_, vol. ii. p. 30.]

[Footnote 5: The criticisms of A. Trendelenburg, in his _Logische Untersuchungen,_ rest on such assumptions. 'Trendelenburg,' says Hartmann, 'means low-water mark in German philosophy.']

[Footnote 6: See above all Bradley's _Principles of Logic_, and Bosanquet's _Logic_, &c.]

[Footnote 7: 'Das Wahre ist der bacchantische Taumel, an dem kein Glied nicht trunken ist; und weil jedes, indem es sich absondert, ebenso unmittelbar sich auflöst,--ist es ebenso die durchsichtige und einfache Ruhe.' _Phenom. des Geistes,_ p 35.]

[Footnote 8: Prantl, _Geschichte der Logik,_ i. 87.]

[Footnote 9: _Wissenschaft der Logik_, i. p. 39.]

[Footnote 10: See _Encyclop._ § 549 _(Philosophy of Mind_, pp. 148 seqq.). It is, of course, quite another question--to be answered by intelligent research--how far in particular cases Hegel has accurately studied a thinker, and faithfully interpreted him. Some of his critics in this line appear to mistake philology--which is a highly important authority in its own field--for philosophy: and will no doubt go on doing so.]

[Footnote 11: Hegel's _Werke_, iii., 33.]

[Footnote 12: _Wissenschaft der Logik_, i. p. 43.]