HEGELIAN CATEGORIES IN THE HEGELIAN ARGUMENT. 335 Fichte and even Schelling (in some periods of his thought) assert unequivocally that all reality is of the nature of con- sciousness. But because they failed, lavishly as they used the word ' absolute,' to realise the self-centred unity which makes up the conception of absoluteness, therefore they did not attain the culminating doctrine of the Absolute Con- sciousness as an Absolute Personality. Fichte is therefore -correctly represented as teaching that God, or the Absolute, " exists only in the consciousness of thinking men ". l It is Hegel's great achievement to substitute for this theory of reality as a connected system of finite selves, the doctrine of an Absolute Self, whose and who is all reality. This Abso- lute Spirit, he teaches, is self-differentiated into the rich variety of the world of nature and of finite spirit, yet is always conscious of itself as distinct, not separate, from these lesser selves and these natural phenomena. In enforc- ing this conclusion, Hegel had, however, little need to argue for the conception of ultimate reality as consciousness, since this had been abundantly demonstrated by his predecessors. This part of his doctrine, therefore, is more broadly treated and less severely argued. On the other hand, only by the close logic and the constant repetitions of his argument for an Absolute which is neither aggregate nor system, but in the strictest sense a unity, could Hegel transmute the un- satisfactory ambiguity of Fichte's teaching that the Absolute which explains the world of finite selves is itself simply the sum of these finite selves, into the doctrine of a personality which yet is Absolute. "The highest, extremest Summit," he says, "is pure Personality, which alone, through that absolute dialectic which is its nature, encloses and holds all within itself." 2 A closer study of the text will emphasise Hegel's con- clusion. a. The nature of Ultimate Reality is not adequately conceived as life. As has been noticed, this section should logically have been preceded by a discussion of the hypothesis : ultimate reality is mere inorganic matter. The omission is accounted for, historically, by the fact that materialism of the mechanical form had long been superseded, whereas organic nature was often tacitly excepted, even by idealists, from the spiritualistic conception of reality. Kant's Kritik der Urtheilskrnft had suggested the theory, which was firmly imbedded in Schilling's nature-
- A. B. Thompson, Unity of Fichte's Doctrine of Knowledge, p. 128;
cf. the " Anweisung zum seeligen Leben," Werk*, v., 450. 2 Werke, v., 339 2 ; cf. 317 2 , 59 2 .
