Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/61

HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE OBJECTIVE NOTION. 47 with Affinity became the centre of a system of Absolute Mechanism. Indeed we may say that the example, in the form which it takes in the Smaller Logic, 1 is not only misleading, but in- correct. For there he speaks of the State as the central Object. Now the State is not an Object distinct from the citizens, which can act and react on them, as each of them does on the rest. It is, as no one realised more thoroughly than Hegel, a unity of which the individual citizens are the parts. It is, no doubt, for Hegel, a real unity, not a mere aggregate, but on the other hand it is a unity which only exists in the citizens, and not side by side with them. Now this is a conception too advanced for Absolute Mechanism. For the conception of a system which is also a unity we shall have to wait for the category of Teleology, and con- ceive the State, not as an Object side by side with its citizens, but as the principle of their unity. Hegel now passes from Absolute Mechanism to the next category. In his own words (Enc., section 199) " the immediacy of existence, which the objects have in Absolute Mechanism, is implicitly negatived by the fact that their independence is derived from, and due to, their connexions with each other, and therefore to their own want of stability". In other words, the whole nature of each Object lies in the relations between it and other Objects. But each of these relations does not belong exclusively, ex hypothesi, to the one Object, but it shares it with the others. The nature of wax consists, for example, partly in the fact that it is melted by fire. But this melting is just as much part of the nature of the fire. The fact is shared between the wax and the fire, and cannot be said to belong to one of them more than the other. It belongs to both of them jointly. We must notice in passing that this would not be true of self-conscious beings. Our emotions and perceptions are the result of the action of outside Objects on us, but there is a very intelligible meaning in saying that my pain is more my quality than it is that of the stone which hit me. But 1 The example, in the form in which it is given in the Greater Logic ( HVrfcg, vol. v., p. 197), can scarcely be called positively incorrect. For Hegel does not speak there, as he does in the Smaller Logic (Enc., section 198), of both Staat and Regierung, but of Eegierung only. And if we take Regierung, as Hegel probably did, to mean a separate class the king, civil servants, etc. it would form a separate Object by the side of the citizens, which could enter into relations of Mechanism with them. But the ex- ample would still be misleading, as suggesting an intrinsic difference between those Objects which were fitted to be central Objects, and those which were not.