an objective content; so, too, the world, or the whole of things, is not made to remain a stranger to consciousness, but to be thought or understood. The subjective notion is a container with a content; the universe which is unconscious of itself is a content without a container. The latter contradiction is abolished by the interpenetration of the two spheres in the absolute Idea, which, from the theoretical standpoint, is called Truth, and from the practical standpoint, the Good: this is the highest category and the last term in the development of being. To sum up: Being is becoming, development. The contradiction inherent in being is the principle or impulsive force of development. Being, self-expansion (selfunfolding), and self-concentration (the understanding of self), constitute the unchanging stages in the process. Quality, quantity, measure: essence and phenomenon, substantiality and causality, reciprocal action; subjectivity, objectivity, absolute: these are the serial stages of being. Knowing this principle, this process, and these stages, we know a priori the order followed in the creations of nature (expanded reason) and of mind (concentrated and comprehended reason). II. Philosophy of Nature 1 1. The Inorganic World Creative thought, like the reproductive thought of man, begins with the most abstract, the most vague, and the most intangible: with space and matter. After passing through a long line of development it culminates in the most concrete, the most perfect, the most accomplished: the human organism. 1 Encyclopedia, §§ 245 ff. We shall consider, in the following résumé of the Philosophy of Nature, the changes (which were not very important) to which it was subjected by the school. Like being, the first notion in logic, space exists and does not exist; matter is something and nothing. This contradiction is the very principle of physical evolution, the spring which sets it in motion; it is reconciled in movement, which divides matter into separate unities (Fürsichsein) and forms the heavenly system of them. The formation of heavenly bodies is, as it were, the first step taken by nature on the path of individuation. The individualizing tendency, which runs through nature like a mighty desire, manifests itself as attraction. Universal gravitation is the ideal unity whence all things spring and whither they tend, affirming itself in the midst of their separation. It is the individuality, the soul, the cement of the world; it makes an organism, a living unity (universum) of the world. Primitive and formless matter, the common source of the heavenly bodies, corresponds to what logic calls indeterminate being. The distribution of this matter, its organization into a sidereal world, corresponds to the categories of quantity. Gravitation, at last, realizes the idea of proportion. The astronomical cosmos is an elementary society which anticipates human society. But the laws which govern it are, as yet, merely mechanical laws; the relations which the stars sustain to each other are summed up in the law of attraction. Hence the science which considers this primary phase of being, astronomy, deals with the dimensions of the stars, their distances, their external relations, rather than with their essential qualities, their composition, and their physiology. 2. Chemism A second evolution leads to the qualitative differentiation of matter. The original state of indifference is followed by a variety of agencies (light, electricity, heat), by the reciprocal action of elements, by the inner process of opposition and reconciliation, separation and combination, polarity and union, which form the subject-matter of physics and chemistry. Sidereal motion affects only the surface of bodies; chemism is an inner transformation, a change not only of place, but of essence, a prelude to that ultimate transformation of "substance" into "subject," of matter into mind, of being into consciousness, of necessity into freedom, which is the final goal of creation. But Nothing in the original flow of things resembles individuality; nothing is stable, fixed, or concentrated. nature soon returns into itself. Just as in logic pure thought returns into itself and forms a circle or totality (Begriff), so in nature, the realization of logic, the chemical process returns into itself at a certain point and forms those centralized wholes which we call organisms, living beings. 3. The Organic World The appearance of life is wholly spontaneous, and needs no deus ex machina to explain it. It is the effect of the same higher and immanent power which, as attraction and affinity, separated the stellar groups and the elements of chemism. Surely, mechanism alone cannot produce it; and if matter were nothing but matter, the course of its transformations would forever be in the straight line and centrifugal. But beneath the physical process the evolution of the Idea takes place, which is the final goal of things, only because it is also their creative principle. The earth itself is a kind of organism, a crude outline of the masterpiece which nature tends to realize. In this sense, Schelling and his school have a right to speak of the soul of the celestial bodies, of the life of the earth. This life has its vicissitudes, its revolutions, and its history, the subject-matter of geology, and though it gradually diminishes, it does so merely to become the inexhaustible source of new, truly organic and individual life. From the ashes of the terrestrial organism arises the vegetable kingdom. But the plant itself is, as yet, merely an imperfect organism, a kind of association or federation, the members of which are more or less autonomous individuals. Individuality proper is realized only in the animal kingdom. The animal is, decidedly, an indivisible whole, whose parts are really members, i. e., servants of the central unity. It asserts its individuality by constant assimilation, respiration, and locomotion. It is endowed with sensibility, nay, even with inner heat and voice in its most perfect representatives. However, there are insensible transitions here. As the inorganic kingdom is connected with the vegetable kingdom by astral individualities and crystallizations; so the vegetable kingdom passes into the animal kingdom in the zoöphyte. Animals are developed by degrees. The same idea, the same fundamental plan, more and more perfectly executed, runs through crustaceans, mollusks, insects, fishes, reptiles, and mammals. Finally, in the human organism, the most perfect animal form, the creative idea is reflected in all its fulness. Here it stops. In the material realm it produces nothing more perfect. We say, in the material realm, for instead of being exhausted in the creation of man, the creative idea saves its most precious treasures until it reaches the sphere of mind, i. e., humanity. III. Philosophy of Mind 1. The Subjective Mind, or the Individual Man is essentially mind, i. e., consciousness and freedom. But on emerging from the hands of nature he is so only in principle. The mind, like nature, is subject to the law of development. Consciousness and freedom do not exist at the dawn of individual or generic life; they are the products of the evolution called history. The individual in the state of nature is governed by blind instinct, by brutal passions, and by that egoism which characterizes animal life. But as reason develops, he recognizes others as his equals; he becomes persuaded that reason, freedom, spirituality— these terms are synonymous are not his exclusive property, but the common possession of all; he henceforth ceases to claim them as his exclusive privilege. The freedom of his fellow-creatures becomes the law, the bridle, the limit, of his own freedom. By giving way to this power, which is higher than the individual, the subjective mind yields to — 2. The Objective Mind, or Society 1 The blind forces manifested in the state of nature, e. g., the instinct for the propagation of species and the instinct for revenge, continue, but change their form. Henceforth they become marriage and legal punishment: regulated, disciplined instincts, ennobled by the law. The objective mind first manifests itself in the form of right, which is freedom conceded and guaranteed to all. The individual who is recognized as free is a person. The personality realizes and asserts itself through property. Each legal person has, by virtue of his free activity, the right to possess, and, consequently, also the right to transfer his property. This transference takes place in the form of a contract. The contract is the State in embryo. Right appears in the fulness of its power, only when individual caprice opposes the general or legal will (the objective mind). The conflict between the individual will and the legal will gives rise to wrong (i. e., the un-right, Unrecht, the 1 Encyclopedia, §§ 482 ff. |