Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/189

HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE CATEGORIES OF THE IDEA. 175 Our view, however, although free from this one-sidedness, may seem to involve a circle. That A's nature should con- sist in recognising B's nature,- would present no difficulties, if B had an independent nature of its own. But if B's nature consisted merely in recognising A's nature, it is not very easy to see how they can either of them have any nature at all. Nor is the matter improved by the increase of the number of individuals. A's nature, it is true, will then consist in the recognition of the natures of a large number of individuals, and the nature of each of these will not con- sist exclusively in recognising A's nature. But in each case it will consist in the recognition of the nature of other individuals, and the difficulty recurs. If the nature of every- thing consists simply in reflecting others, what is there to be reflected ? The word reflecting, indeed, would not be correct if it implied that the individual for which the content exists was passive. But, for our present purpose, it is sufficient that the individual has no other content, whether the content is produced actively or passively. To demand that the Logic should give us a complete account of the nature of reality, indeed, would be unreason- able. Pure thought is only one element of reality an element which is found in every part of the whole, but which still is not the whole, and the Logic can therefore only supply a skeleton. But still, the Logic is bound, in its own department, to supply an account which is not contradictory ; and unless we are able to avoid the circle which has been indicated above, this will not have been done. There is only one way in which such a circle can be avoided. Each individual must have a separate nature of its own, so that the others, when they recognise their own as similar to it, may have something to which they recognise themselves to be similar. At the same time, it is clear from the dialectic that the nature of the individuals lies wholly in their connexions with one another that it is expressed nowhere else, and that there it is expressed fully. It follows that the separate and unique nature of each individual must be found only, and be found fully, in its connexions with other individuals in the fact, that is, that all the other individuals are for it. This must not be taken to mean that the connexion is the logical prius of the individual nature that the latter is in any sense the consequent or result of the former. Nor does it mean that the individual natures could be explained or deduced from the fact of connexion. Such theories would,