Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/451

PSYCHOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHIES. 437 own, the principle of Negativity ; (2) that it also possessed in its own right at least one conception, that of Being, not derived from any alien, that is to say, from any perceptual source. It was supposed to be a purely mental or spiritual activity, to the eternal operation of which were due the nature and the existence of that which ordinary common sense calls the Universe, including the Great First Cause, or Divine Mind. It was the peculiarity, and, perhaps, as some may think, the inconvenience, of a theory which thus selected a single psychological function, detached from the rest, to bear the burden of explanation, that, unlike theories of the two former classes which proceeded from psychology to philosophy, it was compelled on the contrary to begin with philosophy, and supply a theory adequate to explain the Universe, before descending into psychological questions. Indeed, so far as I know, psychology proper was something to which Hegel never did descend. He was satisfied with explaining, first the world of inorganic matter, or Nature in Time and Space, then the world of individual minds, considered chiefly in their relations to one another as members of a vast society, and finally the Absolute Mind itself, as one and all identical with a single psychological function, namely, with that creature of his imagination, Thought ; or, as he also ex- presses it, with the Self-determining Concept (Begriff), whose law is Negativity. It is difficult to see how a theory which holds that every- thing is what it isn't as well as what it is, on the ground that its full Concept or Idee can only be formed by taking account of what it is contrasted with, while that full Concept or Idee is the thing itself, can afford an explanation of anything whatever. But although Thought, as a function acting by the law of Negativity, has of itself no fixed point on which an explanation can be suspended, yet it may be supposed to attain one when it reaches its full and complete realisation in the Absolute Mind (Geist) ; and then, on reaching that realisation, which it is supposed to have done from all eternity, it returns as it were into itself, its path of develop- ment as a function being considered as describing a closed circle, having its end and its beginning identical. But in that case, the Absolute Mind being thus complete, and free from the action of all Negativity which is not included within it- self, an action which, if admitted, would destroy its absolute character, is, in respect of its being the source of all activity, neither more nor less than our old friend of the first class of theories, that nominis umbra, the Soul or Mind which animates the World. And it is from that conception, if from anything,