Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/197

HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE CATEGORIES OF THE IDEA. 183 nature of the plurality would he in the same position as the abstract fact of plurality is for us, and could be inferred from the fact of the unity. In such a state of knowledge the only question left unanswered would he the question : Why is reality as a whole what it is? Such a question cannot be answered, for it ought not to be asked. If the cognitive mind still persists in asking it, as I fancy it does, that will discredit, not the complete rationality of reality, but rather the complete reality of cognition. It will be a fresh support for the view which I believe to be the ultimate fruit of the whole dialectic that reality is nothing more than conscious- ness, but that consciousness is a great deal more than thought.