Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/69

HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE OBJECTIVE NOTION. 55 fresh element. And that fresh element is the harmony between the purposes of a self-conscioijs being on the one hand, and the surrounding reality on the other. This cer- tainly involves pleasure, and, if pleasure be taken as the good, or if the End was in itself moral, it also involves good. And thus, with " finite and outward " Ends, their realisation takes us into the world of values, since, at the lowest, the realisation implies that some sentient being has got what he wanted. But with Ends, in the Hegelian sense of the word, it is quite different. In the first place, to say that an End is realised is now, as was explained above, a mere tautology. And, in the second place, an End, in this sense, is only the inner unity of existence. It has no necessary relation to any conscious being, and, consequently, no implication of value, which is an unmeaning term apart from consciousness. Is there one End in the universe or more ? Are we to consider all reality as a single system held together by a single End, or is there a plurality of Ends embracing, of course, a still greater plurality of Means ? Hegel does not make this point clear. It seems certain to me, however, that we must regard all reality as forming a single system with a single End. In the first place, if there was more than one End they would be simply juxtaposed, without any con- nexion, since under this category a plurality can only be united as Means to an End. But juxtaposition without connexion is a standpoint which the dialectic has long ago transcended. The same view is imposed on us by the manner in which the idea of End has been reached. Each system of Absolute Mechanism was transformed into a system of Chemism, and that, again, into a Teleological system. It would seem, then, as if there ought to be a Teleological system for each system of Absolute Mechanism, of which there were many. But it must be remembered that each of these Mechanical systems comprised just the same Objects since each of them ex- tended over the whole universe. The only difference between them lay in the fact that each of them took a different Object for its centre. Now the centre of union of a Teleological system is not one of the Objects which form the system, but the unity behind it which Hegel calls the End. And there- fore all these systems of Ends and Means will turn out to be the same system. For the Means are the same in each case since each system has the plurality of the whole universe as its Means and the same Means cannot possibly have two different Ends. If we call the Means x, and the Ends A