Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/341

HEGELIAN CATEGORIES IN THE HEGELIAN ARGUMENT. .">1>7 connexion), the relation of reciprocity involves the dependence of all exclusive realities on each other. Hegel has shown that the single, exclusive reality, however significant, is not the ultimate, or final reality. For it is self-identical and thus implies others ; and it is furthermore necessarily linked to others and is thus dependent on them. In its most intimate nature, therefore, it contains the im- plication of others and the connexion with them. The demonstration of the fundamental doctrine of Hegel's system is thus completed, and he enters upon the discussion of his second important teaching. It may be formulated thus : b. Ultimate Reality is not a composite of all individual realities : it is neither an aggregate nor a system. The argument on which Hegel lays most stress is simply the following : Ultimate, or final, reality must be complete ; if it fail to include every scrap and shred of actuality, there is something outside and beyond it : it is then no longer ultimate. But if ultimate, or as we now see complete, reality be simply a composite, it must be made up of an infinite number of parts ; it must include, in other w r ords, every single aspect of reality which exists now in every corner of every world ; it must, indeed, include every reality which is, which has been or which is to come. Such an infinity would be, however, unknowable and incalculable ; whereas ultimate reality has been shown to be knowable. It follows that no knowable composite could be complete, and therefore that no composite could fulfil the conditions of ultimate reality. The reasoning is, of course, that which Kant had introduced, in his doctrine of the Antinomies, though the method is Hegel's. The conception of a composite of an infinite number of parts is developed until it discloses its own contradictions and shows itself as in truth inconceivable and unknowable. But besides showing that a Complete, or Ultimate, Reality, if composite, would be unknowable, Hegel furthermore insists that it would be impossible. Two forms of this doctrine of the Ultimate, as mere composite, are logically conceivable. The first of these theories holds that ultimate reality is a bare, but complete, plurality that is, a composite of individuals which are distinct and unconnected. The argument which Hegel opposes to this view is precisely that by which he has proved that ultimate reality is not any one unconnected individual : A plurality of unconnected individuals, however complete, is even more obviously im- possible than a single unconnected reality, for every one of