Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/178

164 J- ELLIS MCTAGGAET : VOLITION. Volition must not be taken here as meaning the desire to change, or to resist change, which is the form in which it most usually shows itself. If this were the case there would be nothing appropriate in naming this category after it, since the category involves a perfect harmony, and also a necessary harmony, so that there can be no question of either desiring or fearing change. It is not this, however, that Hegel means by Volition here. He means that sense of approval of objec- tive reality as in harmony with our desires and aspirations which, while it leads to action when imperfect, is incom- patible, when perfect, with all change. 1 This comes out more clearly in the nomenclature of the Greater Logic, when he calls this category the Idea of the Good. Taken in this sense Volition is an appropriate name for a category which asserts that the unity reproduces the nature of the individual, since it is when objective reality confirms with the desires and aspirations of our own nature that we feel the approval which is the essence of perfect Volition. Of course, as with Cognition Proper, so with Volition it is only the perfect state which can be an example of the category. Our ordinary volition is not by any means a case of objective reality being nothing but a counterpart of our own nature. It is only when the harmony is perfect, and necessarily perfect, that the resemblance comes. The order of these two categories Cognition Proper and Volition cannot be inverted for the reason given above. It is impossible that the unity should reproduce the nature of the individuals, unless the nature of the individuals is identi- cal. And that has. to be proved, before it can be asserted. The category of Cognition Proper does prove it, for if the nature of each of the individuals is a reproduction of the nature of the unity, then the nature of each of the indi- viduals must be the same. And so we are entitled to go on to Volition. The category of Volition, it may be remarked, is a wider category than tha t of Cognition Proper, and therefore a higher one. The idea of the unity reproducing the individuals is indeed no wider than that of the individuals reproducing the unity. But the category of Volition contains both of them, for we reached it by perceiving that it was as true to say the one, as to say the other that both views are true. The course of the dialectic renders this the natural form 1 Lotze also takes this view of the essence of Volition, cp. Microcosmus, book 9, chap. v. (trans, vol ii., p. 706).