Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/188

174 J. ELLIS MCTAGGART : itself, and that it is only consciousness which affords an adequate example of the final category. It is true that there is no express recognition of any dif- ferentiation, nor of the fact that it is one part of reality which is for another part. But that reality is essentially differentiated, in Hegel's conception, becomes clear if we look back to the previous categories. It is impossible to doubt that, under the category of Life, he regarded it as differen- tiated. There was nothing in the transition to Cognition to remove this differentiation, and indeed the treatment of Cognition makes it obvious that this category, also, was dif- ferentiated. But, again, there is nothing in the transition from Cognition to the Absolute Idea which removed the dif- ferentiation, which, therefore, must be there still. We have said that the nature of each individual consists in the fact that its similarity to the others is present to it in other words, that its nature consists in certain relations to other individuals. This view must not be confounded with that suggested by Green that " for the only kind of consciousness for which there is reality, the conceived con- ditions are the reality". 1 For there is all the difference possible between attempting to reduce, as Green has done, one side of an opposition to the other, and asserting, as we have done, that the two sides are completely fused in a unity which is more than both of them. Experience can be analysed into two abstract, and there- fore imperfect, moments the immediate centres of differen- tiation and the relations which unite and mediate them. The extreme atomistic view takes the immediate centres as real, and the mediating relations as unreal. Green's view, as extreme on the other side, takes the relations as real and the centres as unreal. The view of the dialectic, on the contrary, accepts both elements as real, but asserts that neither has any separate reality, because each is only a moment of the true reality. Reality consists of immedi- ate centres which are mediated by relations. The imper- fection of language compels us to state this proposition in a form which suggests that the immediacy and the mediator are different realities which only influence one another ex- ternally. But this is not the case. They are only two sides of the same reality. And thus we are entitled to say that the whole nature of the centres is to be found in their relations. But we are none the less entitled to say that the whole nature of the relations is to be found in the centres. 1 Works, vol. ii., p. 191.