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HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE OBJECTIVE NOTION. 37 worked out, shows itself to have a defect which can only be remedied by the further development of the idea of deter- mination." We concluded that the final result reached in the Sub- jective Notion might be expressed as " the conception of a regular system of laws proceeding from the more general to the less general, embracing at the top the whole of reality 111 a single unity, and at the bottom accounting for every quality in every individual " (MiND, 1897, p. 357). But now that the Subjective Notion is worked out to its highest point its inherent one-sidedness comes to the front namely, its omission of connexion by determination. And this shows itself in an imperfection which becomes apparent in the highest form of the Subjective Notion. According to that form the highest type of knowledge is, Every A is either B or C. But such knowledge is necessarily incomplete. For of any given A, we know it is either B or C, but we do not know which it is. And yet it is certain that it is one of them, and it is no more the other than it is X or Y. How is this to be determined? All that the Subjective Notion can do for us is to class A x under the general head A, and ex hypothesi this cannot determine whether it is B or C. (If we put the position, as Hegel does, in the form of a dis- junctive syllogism, the question will take the form, How do we get the minor premiss, A is not C '?) We require a further determination of objects which their inner nature, as we are able at this stage of the dialectic to understand it, cannot give us. What can remain ? It can only be deter- mination from outside. And thus we are naturally led back at the end of the Subjective Notion to the conception of the reciprocal connexion of objects by determination that very conception which we had temporarily ignored while dealing with the Subjective Notion. Thus the argument takes the course that, from the nature of the dialectic, might be antici- pated. When we left one element of Reciprocity behind, and, in the Thesis of the Doctrine of the Notion, devoted ourselves to developing the other side only, we could predict that the incompleteness thus created would require us to develop the other element of Reciprocity in the Antithesis. And this is exactly what has happened. We are now on the point of beginning the Antithesis namely, the Objective Notion, and the course of the argument has led us back to the ignored element of Reciprocity. I am aware that this is not the way in which Hegel him- self makes the transition from the Subjective to the Objec- tive Notion (cp. Encyclopedia, section 193, and Werke, vol. v.,