CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SEARCH FOR A FIRST PRINCIPLE.

If there be one thing which, more than another, distinguishes Modern Philosophers from the Ancient Philosophy of Athens, it is the desire to discover a First Principle of certainty, a handle by which they may get hold of and set in due order the perplexed mass of reality. They find themselves born to an inheritance of tradition, a mass of belief and lore which overwhelms where it does not support. The long watches of the Middle Ages had been a time of preparation--even if the 'cerebration' had been somewhat unconscious. The mind had been by discipline trained to freedom. As it worked amid the material and tried to order it and defend it, the intellect grew to recognise its lordship over the load of authority. Overt revolts indeed against coercion by decrees and by canons of dogma had never been wanting even in the quietest of the so-called 'ages of faith.' But it is not in the loudest outcry or the most rampant dissent that progress shows its most effective course. The 'catholic' and 'orthodox' tradition equally bears witness to a movement to emancipation, to self-centred intelligence. Such an emancipation however cannot be complete and self-realised without a sharp and painful wrench at the moment of mental birth. The great word of disruption, of self-assertion, of defiance to the past and to the dominant, must be said: and, as human beings are constituted, it will be said in a tone of acerbity for which neither the revolutionist nor the reactionary are severally alone responsible.

Thus to hear the brave words and the bold defiance hurled out by the thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one might fancy they, like Archimedes, sought a supernal vantage-ground from which they could move the world. Yet, unlike the material earth, the intellectual globe is a burden we each carry with us,--which we find upon us when--if ever--we begin to shake ourselves out of the slothful unconsciousness of our merely vegetative life. For though we all carry it, we do not all feel its weight. In some individuals and in some ages there is so accurate a proportion between the inner power and the outer pressure that the load of belief and custom is but a well-fitting garb, almost a second nature. To others there is a felt disproportion, a sense of superincumbent clothes and uncongenial, unnatural trappings. Out of such struggles to be free, grow, occasionally, philosophers, and reformers. To the former the burden is the burden of the unintelligible: to the latter the burden of the unbearable and intolerable. To the philosopher the removal of the burden consists in such a re-adjustment of the intellectual world that it shall be no longer a foreign thing, but bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. But, to re-adjust and to re-organise, one must stand back from the objective: one must cast it forth, and look about for a clue to an exit from the maze of confusion. The given and subsistent is put on probation: not rejected, but for the moment declined: not denied, but asked to present its credentials.[1] This is the ἐποχή of the sceptical schools of later Greece; the invitation to doubt addressed by Descartes to his own soul. It is the protest against that vulgar precipitancy which in primitive and modern credulity is ready to give itself away to any doctrine which has the voice and the garb of outward authority. Or is it the assertion! of the royal and inalienable sovereignty of the Subjectivity to be _certain_ of whatever claims to be objective and _true_: the assertion that what is true must be seen and experienced to be true. Or it is, in another way, the principle of Socrates: that the beginning of knowledge, the first step in the way of wisdom, is to know that you know nothing--to realise the absolute supremacy of self-consciousness.

It is in short the same demand as Augustine's. There is indeed a wide gulf of temperament and circumstances dividing the bishop of Hippo from the mathematician Descartes and the rationalist Spinoza. But in the cry for the knowledge of 'God and my Soul' as the first, the indispensable, the sole knowledge: as the _one_ knowledge which binds the finite and the infinite together,--the knowledge on which turns the truth of science, and the reality of experience, the great thinkers of these diverse ages are at one.[2] They turn their backs upon the external that they may find rest in the truly internal, on the inner certainty, which is not a mere subjective but a very objective also: not a mere _anima mea,_ but in close unity therewith _Deus meus._ This is perhaps more explicit in Spinoza, in some points, than in Descartes, and in many respects more decisively put by Augustine than by either. But this is what is really meant by the initial concentration of suspense: this is what is sought when a Principle is sought. Nothing short of this unity of subjective and objective in an Absolute--we may say--Ego, is a principle.

But 'principles' like other terms are sometimes lightly taken; and can be in the plural--just as in lower levels of religion and society there can be gods many and lords many. Nor in a way wrongly. For, as has been before pointed out, a principle is the unity of beginning and end: it is only caught hold of by approaching from different directions: it loses its life and power when cut off from the many organs by which it distributes itself so as to grasp reality. If it be essentially one, it is not a bare unit: it cannot, without injury, be reduced to utter simplicity, and accepted in the shape of a single term. And yet this is what almost inevitably happens to every so-called principle.

Like a _deus ex machina_, or a trick of the trade, it is applied to unloose every knot, and to clear any difficulties that arise. But a principle of this stamp possesses no intimate connexion or organic solidarity with the theory which it helps to prop. It is always at hand as a ready-made schema or heading, and can be attached to the most incongruous orders of fact. Thus in the works of Aristotle, the principle of 'End' or 'Activity' has sometimes seemed to be applied to whatever subject comes forward, and like a hereditary official vestment to suit all its wearers equally well or equally ill. What is true 'on the whole' is not always true 'of each': the _καθόλον_ never quite equals the _καθ' ἔκαστον._ The modern principle of Utility is equally flexible in its application to the problems of moral and social life. It costs no trouble to pronounce the magic word, and even 'such as are of weaker capacity' may make something out of such a formula. But an abstract formula, which is equally applicable to everything, is not particularly applicable to anything. While it seems to save trouble, and is so plain as to be almost tautological (as when the worth of a thing or act is explained to mean its utility), it really suggests fresh questions in every case, and multiplies the difficulty. Having an outward adaptability to every kind of fact, the principle has no true sympathy with any: it becomes a mere form, which we use as we do a measuring-rod, moving it along from one thing to another. We are always reverting to first principles as our last principles also. Even Aristotle, when he remarked that an object had to be criticised from its own principles and not from general formulae, saw through the fallacy of this style of argument.

This is like asking for bread and getting a stone. The philosopher, who ought to take us through the shut chambers of the world, merely hands us a key at the gate, telling us that it will unlock every door, and then the insides will speak for themselves. But we would have our philosopher do a little more than this. Not being ourselves omniscient, we should be glad of a guide-book at the least, and perhaps even of the services of an interpreter to explain some peculiarities, some startling phenomena, and sights even more unpleasant than those which appalled the spouse of the notorious Bluebeard. Or, dropping metaphor, we wish the formula to be applied systematically and thoroughly. When that is done the formula loses its abstractness; it gains those necessary amplifications and qualifications, as we call them, without which no theory explains much or gives much information. And thus, instead of fancying that our initial formula contains the truth in a nutshell, we shall find that it is only one step to be taken on the way to truth, and that its narrow statement sinks more and more into insignificance, as its amplified theory gains in significance.

But an adequate principle must have other qualities.[3] What has been said up to this point, only amounts to a condition, that our principle must cease to be abstract and formal, and must become concrete and real. What we want, it may be said, is a Beginning. But a beginning is not exactly the same thing as a principle: a beginning is to a large extent a matter of choice and convenience,--a matter depending on the state and prospects of the beginner; and the main point is not where we should begin, but that we should be thorough in our treatment. It is otherwise, however, in the present case. For the skill of the expositor simply lies in the exactitude with which he reproduces the spontaneous movement of growth in his object. His art is _celare artem:_ to retire, as it were, into the background, and seem to leave the object to expound itself. In a dramatic work it is no doubt the hand of the dramatist that seems to set the whole of the characters in motion, that weaves destinies and snips the thread of life. And yet in a perfect work of dramatic art everything must seem to flow on by a necessity of character, a consecution of inner fate. The true artist dare not act or allow the _deus ex machina._ So every genuine work of science--which is more than a compilation, a school-book, a bundle of notes, and contributions toward a subject--must be a self-determined unity--a self-justifying scheme in which the personality of the worker enters into and is absorbed in the system of his work.

If this is generally true, it is above all a canon to rule the logician. He at least must follow the Logos and the Logos alone. His theme must be a law unto itself: all its movements must be freely and nobly objective. For his subject-matter is at least an organism, and develops according to an inward law. But it is even more than an organism: it must not merely develop, as organisms do,--not merely live and grow--but _know_ that it develops and as it were _will_ its own development--and in that harmony of being, willing, and knowing, be essentially one. In Hegelian language it must not merely be implicit_--an sich_ or _für uns_--the subject of a change which it undergoes and feels, but without definitely realising,--the subject of a change which we (the historians) perceive. It must also be _für sich_: aware of its modifications, an agent in bringing them about: and yet withal in so looking forth and willing, be self-possessed, and self-enjoying.

The principle of Hegelianism is the principle of Development, the principle of the Notion--but a Notion which is objective as well as subjective--the Idea. That principle then determines the beginning of Logic. We must know the whole course of growth and history before we can say where is the true commencement. It must be that out of which the end can obviously and spontaneously issue. In a sense, it must implicitly contain the end. It must show us the very beginning of thought, before it has yet come to the full consciousness of itself,--when the truth of what it is still lurks in the background and has to be developed. We must see thought in its first and fundamental calling. As the biologist, when he describes the structure of a plant, rests upon the assumption of a previous development of parts, in an existing plant, which has resulted in a seed,--but begins with the seed from which the plant is derived: so the logician must begin with a point which in a way presupposes the system to which it leads. But in its beginning this presupposition is not apparent: and in fact, the presupposition will only appear when the development of the system is complete. The first step in a process, just because it is a step, may be said to presuppose the completed process. Thus the beginning of Logic presumes the fullest realisation of Mind, as the beginning of botany can only be told by one who knows the whole story of the plant. It is from this circumstance that Hegel describes philosophy as a circle rounded in itself, where the end meets with the beginning, or says that philosophy has to grasp its original grasp or conceive its concept. In other words, it is not till we reach the conclusion that we see, in the light thus shed upon the beginning, what that beginning really was. From the general analogy of the sciences we should not expect that the beginning of thought would be full-grown thought, or indeed seem to the undiscerning eye to be thought at all. In many cases, the embryonic organism shows but little similarity to the adult, and occasionally a violent abruptness seems, on cursory glance, to mark off one stage of a creation's growth from the next. Who that knew not the result could in the seed prefigure to himself the tree? The beginning is not usually identifiable with the final issue, except by some effort to trace the process of connexion. The object of science only appears in its truth when the science has done its work.

The beginning of philosophy must hold a germ of development, however dead and motionless it may seem. But it must also to some extent be a result,--the result of the development or concentration of consciousness;--of the other forms of which it is the hypothetical foundation, or, of which it is (otherwise viewed) the first appearance. The variety of imaginative conception, and the chaos of sense, must vanish in a point, by an act of abstraction, which leaves out all the variety and the chaos,--or rather by an act of distillation, which draws out of them their real essence and concentrated virtue. This variety, when thoroughly examined and tested, shrivels up into a point:--it only _is._ Everything definite as we call it, the endless repetitions of existence, have disappeared, and have left only the energy of concentration, the unitary point of Being.

We may describe the process in two ways. We may say that we have left out of sight all existing differences,--that we have stripped off every vestige of empirical conceptions, and left a residue of pure thought. The thought is pure, perhaps, but it is not entire. In this way of describing it, pure thought is the most abstract thought,--the last outcome of those operations which have divested our conceptions of everything real and concrete about them. But thus to speak of the process as Abstraction would be to express half of the truth only: and would really leave us a mere zero, or gulf of vacuity. In the beginning there would then be nothing--the mere annihilation of all possible and actual existence. And it is certainly true that in the beginning there can be nothing.--On the other hand, and secondly, there is affirmation as well as negation involved in the ultimate action by which sense and imagination pass into thought. They are not left behind, and the emptiness only retained: they are carried into their primary consequence, or into their proximate truth. They are reduced to their simplest equivalent or their lowest term in the vocabulary of thought: which is Being. The process which creates the initial point of pure thought is at once an abstraction from everything, and a concentration upon itself in a point:-- which point, accordingly, is a unity or inter-penetration of positive and negative. This absolute self-concentration into a point is the primary step by which Mind comes to know itself,--the first step in the Absolute's process of self-cognition--that process which it is the purpose of Logic to trace, so far as it is conducted in the range of mere thought.

The bare point of Being and nothing more is the beginning in the process of the Absolute's self-cognition: it is, in other words, our first and rudimentary apprehension of reality,--the narrow edge by which we come in contact with the universe of Reason. For these are two aspects of the same. The process of the self-cognition or manifestation of the Absolute Idea is the very process by which philosophers (not philosophers only) have built up the edifice of thought. What the one statement views from the universal side or the totality, the other views in connexion with the several achievements of individual thinkers. Of course the evolution of the system of thought, as it is brought about by individuals, leaves plenty of room for the play of what is known as Chance. The Natural History of Thought or the History of Philosophers has to regard the action of national character upon individual minds, and the reciprocal action of these minds upon one another. The History of Organic Nature similarly presents the dependence of the species upon their surroundings, and of one species upon another in the medium of its conditions. Gradually Physical Science reduces these conditions to their universal forms, and may try to exhibit the evolution of the animal through its species in all grades of development. So in the Science of the development of this Idea the accidents, as we may call them, disappear: and the temporary and local questions, which once engrossed the deepest attention, fade away into generalised forms of universal application. Philosophy, as it historically presents itself in the world, is not an accidental production, or dependent on the arbitrary choice of men. The accident, if such there be, is that these particular men should have been the philosophers, and not that such should have been their philosophy. They were, according to their several capacity for utterance, only the mouth-pieces of the Spirit of the Times,--of the absolute mind under the superficial limitations of their period. They saw the Idea of their world more clearly and distinctly than other men; and therein lies their title to fame: but really their words were only a reflex,--an almost involuntary and necessary movement, due to the pressure of the cosmical reason. The great philosophers are, like all men in all estates, and according to their measure, the ministers of the Truth,--apostles charged to bring about that consummation of the times in which reality is more fully apprehended and more adequately estimated. Necessity is laid upon them to consecrate themselves to the service of the Idea, and to devote their lives to the noble but austere work of speculation--the work which seeks _sine ira et studio_ to reconstruct that city of God which is the permanent, if it often be the hidden, foundation of human life.

[Footnote 1: Cf. p. 90.]

[Footnote 2: Augustin. _Soliloq._ i. 7. 'Deum et animam scire cupio. Nihilne plus? Nihil omnino.']

[Footnote 3: 'A Principle,' says Herbart (_Psychologie als Wissenschaft,_ Einl.) 'should have the double property of having originally a certainty of its own, and of generating other certainty. The way and manner in which the second comes about is the Method.']