Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/60

46 J. ELLIS MCTAGGABT : Objects. But, since these determinations only serve to bring out its own inner nature, it may be said to be self-deter- mined. On the other hand, the surrounding Objects are looked at only as determining, not as determined at all, and so not self-determined. (Of course this only refers to the systems in which they are the determining Objects. Each -of them has its own system, in which it is the central Object and therefore Universal.) The relations which connect the Universal with the Individuals are called by Hegel the Par- ticular. From another point of view the central Object may derive the title of Universal from the fact that it is the point of meeting of the other two terms, since only in that particular Object would the influence of the surrounding Objects pro- duce just those actions and reactions. This is what Hegel iseems to have been thinking of when he remarks that either the determining Objects or the relations could be taken as the Universal, as well as the determined Object. For we may consider the determining Objects as the bond of union between the central Object and the relations since it is only these determinants which could enter into just those relations with that centre. Or we may consider the relations .as the bond between the determining and the determined Objects, since those Objects could only be united by those relations. But this does not seem as deep a meaning for Universality as the one suggested in the last paragraph, and the successive transformation of the determining Objects and the relations into the Universal appears to have no influence on the general argument. It should be noticed that the example of this category .given by Hegel in both the Greater and the Smaller Logic is misleading. He there makes the State, or the Govern- ment, take the place of what I have called the central Object, while the citizens are the determining Objects. Now the State does not differ from the citizens as one citizen does from another, but is generically different. And both State and 'Government are, in their own nature, and not merely when specially taken as centres, realities of a more universal nature than individual citizens are. And thus the example would suggest that there are some Objects which are by their nature fitted to be the central Objects of systems, while others are assigned to the humbler position of deter- mining Objects. But this, as we have seen, would be a mistake. For every possible Object is equally subject to Mechanism with Affinity, and we saw in the course of the deduction that every Object subject to Mechanism