CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE THREE PARTS OF LOGIC.

Logic, as it is understood in these pages, is the critical history of the terms of thought by which reality, the sum of experience, the world, is described or expressed. It is the philosophical criticism of the concepts, or elements of conception, by which we define or develop the Totality, the Absolute. It describes the constitution of the intellectual realm, by and in which we give body, coherence, unity, and system to reality. It is the self-developing organisation of the thoughts by which we think things, and by which things are what they are. It is the ripe fruit of the experience of the ages of humanity, and it therefore bears in itself a principle of growth. But if it be a fruit, it is a fruit which can watch its own growth, which reflects upon its own life. Its three parts show the main stages of its development, beginning with the least adequate and most abstract or general description of reality.

The first part of Logic, the theory of Being[1], may be called the theory of unsupported and freely-floating Being. We do not mean something which _is,_ but the mere 'is,' the bare fact of Being, without any substratum. The degree of condensation or development, where substantive and attribute, or noun and verb, co-exist, has not yet come. The terms or forms of Being float as it were freely in the air, and we go from one to another, or--to put it more correctly--one passes into another. The terms in question are Is and Not: Become: There is: Some and Other: Each: One: Many: and so on through the terms of number to degree and numerical specificality. This Being is immediate: i.e. it contains no reference binding it with anything beyond itself, but stands forward baldly and nakedly, as if alone; and, if hard pressed, it turns over into something else. It includes the three stages of Quality, Quantity, and Measure. The ether of 'Is' presumes no substratum, or further connexion with anything: and we only meet a series of points as we travel along the surface of thought. To _name,_ to _number_, to _measure_, are the three grades of our ordinary and natural thought: so simple, that one is scarcely disposed to look upon them as grades of thought at all. And yet if thought is self-specification, what more obvious forms of specifying it are there than to name (so pointing it out, or qualifying it), to number (so quantifying it, or stating its dimensions), and to measure it? These are the three primary specificates by which we think,--the three primary dimensions of thought. Thought, in so determining, plays upon the surface, and has no sense of the interdependence of its terms. And if we could imagine a natural state of consciousness in which sensations had not yet hardened into permanent things, and into connexions between things, we should have something like the range of Immediate Being. Colours and sounds, a series of floating qualities, pass before the eye and the ear: these colours and sounds are in course of time counted: and then, by applying the numbers to these qualities, we get the proportions or limits ascertained. When this process in actual life,--the advance from the vague feelings which tell us of sweet, cold, &c., by means of a definite enumeration of their phenomena, to the rules guiding their operation,--is reduced to its most abstract terms, we have the process of Being. It would be the period when a distinction between things and their actions or properties has not arisen. The demonstrative pronouns and the numerals are among the linguistic expressions of Being in its several stages. Perhaps too we may illustrate it by the so-called 'impersonal' verb--which has hardly reached the stage of verb proper, having no subject: or by the name which still fluctuates between the stage of substantive or adjective.

The first sphere was that of Being directly confronting us, and using the demonstrative pronouns first of all. The second is Relative or Reflective Being: and in this we have to deal with the relative pronouns. The surface of Being is now seen to exhibit a secondary formation, to involve a sort of permanent standard in itself, and to be essentially relative. The mere quality, when reduced to number, is seen to be subjected to a certain measure, rule, sort, or standard: and this reflex of itself always haunts it, modifying and determining it. Thus instead of qualities, we begin to speak of the properties of a thing: we have, as it were, two levels of Being, in intimate and necessary connexion, where there was only one before. At first it was but a mere surface-picture, one thing here and another there: a this and a that; one, _now,_ and another, _then. This,_ it might be, was round, and _that_ square: _now,_ it was bright, and _then,_ it was dull: _here_ was a head, and _there_ was a limb. But the comparison of quality with quantity, measuring one by the other, gave rise to the conception of something permanent, a true nucleus amid the changes. The fact, previously single, is now become double: the mere event is now a phenomenon, a temporary and outward manifestation of something inner. We now see each that _is,_ in the halo of what it _has been,_ or will be: the passing modification in the light of the permanent type. But as yet the permanent and the passing are separate, and only throw light on each other: A explaining itself by B and B by A. We have apparently two facts; neither of which can however stand by itself and therefore refers us to the other. But to get a real rest in this incessant round of mutual reference of one to another we must take a higher stand-point.

In this sphere of Relativity the terms expressive of things come in pairs: such as Same and Different, Like and Unlike: True Being and Show or Semblance: Cause and Effect: Substance and Accident: Matter and Form: and the like. If we compare mere Being to the cell in its simple state, we may say that in the second sphere of Logic a nucleus has been formed,--that a distinction has sprung up between two elements, which are still in closest interconnexion. We have penetrated behind the seeming simplicity of the surface: and in fact discovered it to be mere seeming in the light of the substratum, cause, or essence, upon which it is now reflected. In immediate Being one category, or specificate, or dimension of thought passes over into another, and then disappears: but in mediated Being one category has a meaning only by its relation to another,--only by its reflection on another,--only by the light which another casts upon it. Thus a cause has no meaning except in connexion with its effect: a force implies or postulates an exertion of that force: an essence is constituted by the existence which issues from it. Instead of 'is,' therefore, which denotes resting-upon-self, or connexion-with-self, the verb of the second sphere is 'has,' denoting reference, or connexion-with-something-else: e.g. the cause _has_ an effect: the thing _has_ properties. Instead of numerals, come the prepositions and pronouns of relation, such as which, same, like, as, by, because. The only conjunction in the first stage or Being was 'And,'--mere juxtaposition; and even that conjunction was perhaps premature, and due to reflective thought, going beyond what was immediately before it, and tracing out connexions with other things. The first stage, as we have seen, treated of the terms of natural thought present in the action of the senses: the second stage--that of Essential Being--deals with scientific, reflective, or mediate thought. What, why, are the questions: comparison and connexion the methods: the establishment of relations of similarity, causation, and co-existence, the purpose in this range of logical method. Its categories are those most familiar to science in its reflective and comparative stage. It is the peculiar home of what are known as Metaphysical subtleties. The natural but delusive tendency of reasoning is to throw the emphasis on one side of the relation, and to regard the other as accessary and secondary. Contrasts between _essentia_ and _existentia: substantia_ and _modi_: cause and effect: real and apparent: constantly occur.

If the first branch of Logic was the sphere of simple Being in a point or series of points, the second is that of difference and discordant Being, broken up in itself. The progress in this second sphere--of _Essentia_ or Relative being--consists in gradually overcoming the antithesis and discrepancy between the two sides in it--the Permanent and the Phenomenal. At first the stress rests upon the Permanent and true Being which lies behind the seeming--upon the essence or substratum in the background, on which the show of immediate Being has been proved by the process in the first sphere really to rest. Then, secondly, Existence comes to the front, and Appearances or Phenomena are regarded as the only realities with which science can deal. And yet even in this case we cannot but distinguish between matter and form, between the phenomena and their laws, between force and its exercises: and thus repeat the relativity, though both terms in it are now on the whole transferred into the range of the Phenomenal world. The third range of Essential Being is known as Actuality, where the two elements in relation rise to the level of independent existences, essences in phenomenal guise--bound together, and deriving their very characteristics from that close union. Relativity or correlation is now clearly apparent in actual form, and comprises the three heads of Substantial Relation, Causal Relation, and Reciprocal Relation. In this case while the two members of the relation are now indissolubly linked together, they are no more submitted to each other than they are independent. According to Reciprocity everything actual is at once cause and effect: it is the meeting-point of relations: a whole with independent elements in mutual interconnexion. Such a total is the Notion.

This brings us to the third branch of Logic,--the theory of the Notion, or Grasp of Thought.[2] The theory of Causality, with which the second branch closed, continued to let the thought fall asunder into two unequal halves--always however in relation or connexion with each other. But in the present part of the Logic the two halves are re-united, or in their difference their identity is also recognised. Instead of a cause of a thing (which is separate from it in order), we have a concept which is its principle of unity, its universal in which it is individualised. Instead of incessant and endless Relativity, we have Development. By development is meant self-specification, or self-actualisation: the thing is what it becomes, or while it changes it remains identical with itself. The Category or Development is the category or method of philosophic or speculative science: just as Being corresponded to natural thought, and Relativity or Reflection to metaphysical and realistic science. According to the law of Development diversity and unity both receive their due. Mere unity or Being reappears now as Universality or Generality. Mere diversity, or the relativity of essence, re-appears as Particularity, or the speciality of details. And the union of the two is seen in the Individualised notion or real object. In other words, the true thought which really grasps and gets all round its object, which is a real whole, is a Triplicity: it is first seen all as the ground or self-same, the possibility--secondly, all as the existence in details, and difference, the actuality or contingency--and thirdly, all as the self-same in difference, and the possible in actuality. Every object in its full reality is an innate movement; and to grasp it wholly we must apprehend it as such a self-evolving and self-involving unity of elements, in each of which however it is whole and entire. Thus the Notion embraces the three elements or factors of universal, particular and individual. These three elements first rise to independence and get their full significance or explication in the syllogism, with its three terms and judgments, exhibiting the various ways in which any two of these elements in thought are brought into unity by means of the third. This adequate form is a system or organic unity which contains in itself the premisses of its conclusion or the means to its realisation,--which is a process within itself, and when complete and self-supporting perforce gives itself reality.

The Notion or _Begriff_ is where Hegel makes his special mark on Logic. Schelling, even, following on Kant, had (like Schopenhauer after him) lauded the merit of the Intuition at the expense of the mere notion[3] and expressed himself surprised at Hegel's use of the word. But what Hegel wants first to insist upon is that the Intuition or Perception (_Anschauung_) is built upon the Notion--that it is only because there is a universal principle in its details that the individual reality of the percept is assured. That we can elicit a notion from a perception is only possible because it is implicitly dominated by a universal. Secondly, Hegel wishes to note (as elsewhere) that the full adequate notion, the notion as self-explaining and self-constituting, is all that is meant by the object. Thus the Notion or Subject_--Causa Sui_--when it is fully realised in the plenitude of its elements or differences,--when each element has scope of its own, is the Object--the actual and individualised total of thought, or syllogism in reality. This objective world or Object appears in three forms. An Object is either a mechanical, a chemical, or a teleological object. The terms mechanical and chemical are not to be understood in the narrow sense of a machine or chemical compound. They are to be taken in an analogical sense, just as J. S. Mill speaks of a chemical or geometrical method of treating social problems. The object or realised notion is mechanical, when the unification of the members in the totality comes or seems to come from without, so that the whole or universal they form is external and almost indifferent to the particulars, and only arranges them. An object is chemical, when the connexion or genesis of the compound from its factors is not evident: when the elements are as it were lost, and only give rise to a fresh particular. An object is teleological, when the universal is, though not distinctly conceived as realised, still always as tending to be realised by the particulars. And in each of these grades the object comes more and more to be seen to be a self-enacting, self-legislating being; more and more a due pendant to the subject-notion. Modern science is a vehement opponent of teleology: and with justice, so far as in teleology, means and end fall apart. But it is mistaken in supposing itself to return to the mechanical point of view. On the contrary its success is most generally secured by rising to the point of view given by the Idea of Life, and by looking upon the objective world as an Organism, that is, as the notion in objectivity, soul indissolubly united with body. But even the Idea of Life, in which we enter the third stage of the notion, is defective as a representation of the truth of Objectivity: for body and soul must part. The conception of an Organism or living being is too crude. Reality is no doubt well described as alive: the Absolute well defined as Life. But here again Life is taken in a higher than its sense of _mere_ Life: it is life as intelligent and volitional energy. If the universe--the Absolute--can be said to be living, it must be said also that it is more than Living. Such a life--such existence--is what Aristotle has called _θεωρία_ and ἐνέργεια of the highest in man. It is mental and spiritual life. In its consummation it is the Idea--the absolute Idea--the totality which is and is aware of itself,--the developed unity of the Notion with Objectivity. This unity thus presented is what lies implicit to our perception in Nature: and thus the Idea, as developed in Logic, forms the prologue and presupposition to the Philosophy of Nature.

[Footnote 1: Being (_das Seyn_) probably conveys much more to an English reader than is here meant or wanted. It is Being, where the distinction between essence and appearance has not yet emerged or been thought of. If being = τὸ ὄν, then essence (_Wesen_) = _τὸ ὄντως_ ὄν, the being which underlies and yet includes appearance. _Wesen_ has more right to the substantival vocable of Being: _Seyn_ is little better than an 'Is' or 'Be.'

In writers of Locke's time, 'Being seems to mean a reality, an actually existing object, e.g. Clarke: 'There has existed from eternity some one unchangeable and independent Being.' 'What the substance or _essence_ of that Being is, we have no idea.' 'Essence,' says Locke, 'may be taken for the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is.' Of course Aristotle long ago noted Being as one of the terms with variety of implication; and his own fluctuation about _οὐσία_ is an obvious illustration of this.

In the translation of the _Logic_, _Wesen_ is occasionally rendered by Being (e. g. Supreme Being); _Seyn,_ by existence. _Seyn_ here means so little that one can hardly find any word of sufficiently minimal content for it.]

[Footnote 2: No doubt, as Dr. W. T. Harris remarks, _Notion_ (used by Dr. Stirling) is a quite insignificant rendering of Hegel's _Begriff_:--for which he proposes Self-activity. But, as he admits, that is just Hegel's way: he coins brand-new the old terms, and forces us, if we will follow him, to think full meaning into them.]

[Footnote 3: See vol. ii, Notes and Illustrations, p. 408.]