Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/344

This page needs to be proofread.

330 MARY WHITON CALKINS : complete and entire, and that a complete, composite reality is incon- ceivable. The One is defined as reconciliation of the opposition between Finite and Infinite. By the Finite, is meant the Somewhat, the single reality, and by Infinity, Hegel means to indicate that whatever the number of actual realities, any particular Somewhat is other to each of the other realities and so related to each of them. ' White,' for instance,, is not-black, not-coloured, not-sour, not-square, not-just and so on. Its nature is the negation of an indefinite number of other qualities ; it is not itself ultimate reality because it implies all these others and requires an endless enumeration of them all in order to its own definition. But the very endlessness of this infinite plurality, Hegel teaches, is a bar to its ultimateness ; and the only reconciliation of the two is by the con- ception of an underlying One. This Absolute One is not made up of the specious Infinity (schlechte Unendlichkeif), or Many, but includes the Many, and differentiates itself into them, so that it is a Being-for-Self as well as a One that is to say, a True Infinite. Or, in Hegel's words : "The One forms the pre -supposition of the Many; and in the thought of the One is implied that it explicitly makes itself Many". 1 The fact of there being many, Hegel names Repulsion ; 2 the fact, that these many are nevertheless alike, in that they are parts of the One, he names Attraction. This physical metaphor is greatly overworked, especially in the larger Logic never, however, so much as entirely to obscure its real meaning. The significant feature of the doctrine is the conception of complete reality as more than bare aggregate and more even than mere whole of co-ordinate parts as, in truth, a One which manifests itself in its parts. The most important criticism of these closing sections of book i. concerns Hegel's varying use of the categories Finite and Infinite. He makes (1) the opposition, fundamental to his argument, of the Finite that is, the single unit to the Specious Infinite whether temporally 3 or non-temporally regarded. He furthermore (2) contrasts the Specious Infinite with the True Infinite equivalent to Being-for-Self, or One. 4 But he utterly obscures the force of his argument when (3) he lays stress on a third opposition, the contrast between the Finite, conceived as the Here-and-Now, and the Specious Infinite, regarded as the Beyond (the Jenseits). 5 This contrast is certainly significant, but is out of place at this point in the argument, since Finite and Infinite, in this meaning, are, once more, no other than the constantly reappearing categories of Appearance and Essence. The argument just outlined, reappears in book iii., under the heading. S3 7 llogism. There is, however, this difference, that Hegel passes at once, in book iii., from the theory of ultimate reality as a single individual, to the conception of ultimate reality as a system of related parts, ignoring the hypothesis refuted in book i. that final reality is a plurality of distinct and unrelated parts. Moreover, in book iii., Hegel lays special stress on the likeness of the parts which make up the supposedly com- plete composite of reality. In the sections on 'Judgment' which im- mediately precede, Hegel has shown that ultimate reality can never be- identical with any one individual, since the fact that the individual is simply a bundle of likenesses and milikenesses implies always the exist- 1 Encycl, $ 97, note ; cf. Werke, iii., S. 182 3 , 175 1 . 2 Werke, iii., 189 s , Dass viele Bins seien, ist die Repulsion selbst ; cf.. Encycl., 98. 3 Werke, iii., 140 1 ; cf. EncycL, 92 seq.

  • EncycL, 95 3 . 5 Werke, iii., 143 seq. ; EncycL, 95 2 .