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THE
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PRINCIPLE AND THE METHOD
OF THE
96850
HEGELIAN DIALECTIC
!
A DEFENCE OF THE DIALECTIC
AGAINST ITS CRITICS
BEING A
THESIS ACCEPTED BY THE FACULTY OF THE COLLEGE OF LETTERS
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN PART FULFILMENT.
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
EVANDER BRADLEY MCGILVARY
PART I'
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE DIALECTIC
Reprinted from the PHILOSOPHIcal Review, Vol. VI, No. 5
BOH
BERKELEY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
1897
.
THE
90450
PRINCIPLE AND THE METHOD
OF THE
HEGELIAN DIALECTIC
A DEFENCE OF THE DIALECTIC
AGAINST ITS CRITICS
BEING A
THESIS ACCEPTED BY THE FACULTY OF THE COLLEGE OF LETTERS
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN PART FULFILMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
EVANDER BRADLEY MC^ VARY
PART I
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE DIALECTIC
Reprinted from the PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW, Vol. VI, No. 5
BERKELEY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
1897

Athenæum
Press
Ginn
Compar
PREFACE
iii
HEGEL'S Logic has been the object of attack upon every
conceivable ground. Hence no defence of it can be circum-
stantial without falling under the category of the false Infinite.
Wishing to keep out of that category, I have attempted to
defend the Logic against two objections only; but these are
the most vital objections, for it seems to me that the most
significant attacks that have been made against the Hegelian
dialectic have been attacks upon the very conception of that
dialectic, or attacks upon the consistency and uniformity of the
method which the dialectic pursues. Those who repudiate the
very conception of the dialectic take as their theme the impos-
sibility of treating logic as an organic science without the aid
of experience; for they conceive the Hegelian dialectic as a
science apart, and of course they have no very great difficulty
in showing the impossibility of such a science. Those who
attack the method of the dialectic generally try to convict that
method of inconsistency and vacillation. To them it seems to
be rather a lack of method, a blind fumbling and a grasping of
whatever comes within reach if, peradventure, it may serve the
purpose in hand.
In accordance with the desire to be brief in my discussion of
the subjects undertaken, I have merely attempted, in answer
to criticisms of the first class, to show what was really Hegel's
claim with regard to the alleged presuppositionless character of
the Logic, what his view of the relation of logic to experience,
and what his justification for beginning the dialectical move-
ment where he begins it. In treating the second class of
criticisms, I have taken Mr. McTaggart's treatise as fairly rep-
resentative of the others. I have done this because it is the
most recent work on the subject and is probably fresh in the
reader's mind; because it is able and clear; and, above all,
iv
PREFACE.
because it brings out into desirable prominence the points at
issue. As against Mr. McTaggart, I have tried to prove that
external reflection is not used in the dialectic movement proper,
and that the negative is the one power that moves the whole
machinery.
In quoting from Hegel I have confined myself almost exclu-
sively to his larger Science of Logic, designated in the follow-
ing pages as the Greater Logic. It seems desirable to make
that larger work the basis of this discussion for several reasons:
the dialectical element is much more fully developed and
exhibited in it than in the Logic of the Encyclopaedia; it is a
much more unfamiliar work to English readers, and thus may
throw new light on the topics under treatment; it has been
neglected by most of the critics of Hegel, and should be
restored to the position of importance it rightfully occupies in
the Hegelian system; and, lastly and chiefly, it represents
Hegel's ripest views on logic. The first volume, from which
most of my quotations are taken, had been thoroughly revised
just before the author's untimely death. This fact must be
emphasized, for we so often read nowadays that the Lesser
Logic is the latest authentic record of the great dialectician's
views of dialectic. One would think, from many representa-
tions in modern works, that the Greater Logic was a juvenile
production, definitively shelved when the Encyclopaedia ap-
peared on the scene. Fortunately, we have unmistakable tes-
timony of Hegel's own appreciation of the more elaborate
performance, in the fact that he reissued, or, rather, prepared to
reissue, that work in 1831. Unhappily he was cut short in the
midst of that revision; but not before he had written enough
the whole first volume to show what were his latest views
on this the cardinal science in his system. The Greater Logic is
so full in its treatment of the principle or presupposition of the
dialectic and in its exposition of the method of that dialectic,
that it hardly leaves anything to be desired—except, perhaps,
the doing of it all into vernacular German or English. All I
undertake to do in these little papers is to bring out clearly by
quotations Hegel's doctrine, and to set this doctrine over
against the misrepresentations that have been too current both
PREFACE.
V
within and without the Hegelian schools.
For Hegel as he is
written about is not always Hegel as he wrote.
This preface must not be brought to a close without a word
of acknowledgment to my esteemed teacher and friend, Dr.
George Holmes Howison, Mills Professor of Intellectual and
Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity in the University of Cali-
fornia. He it was who led me to begin the study of Hegel,
and, in my first attempts to catch the spirit and understand the
significance of Hegel's philosophy, gave me the benefit of his
ripe knowledge. My subsequent study has been carried on
in close touch with him, and, although the views expressed
in this paper are not coincident in all points with his views,
still I owe more than I can estimate to the stimulus and the
suggestiveness of his criticisms.
1897.
THE PRESUPPOSITION QUESTION IN HEGEL'S
LOGIC.
PERHAPS the objection most often urged against Hegel's
logic is that it is not true to its claim of making no
presuppositions. Almost every critic of the logic dwells at
great length upon the absurdity of such a claim and upon the
consequent impossibility of making it good. For instance,
Trendelenburg says: "It is the fundamental thought of the
Hegelian dialectic, that pure thought, out of its own imma-
nent necessity, without presupposition, begets and knows the
moments of Being." Then he goes on to ask: "Is there such
a logical beginning without presupposition, a beginning in
which thought has nothing but itself, and scorns all imagery
and perception, and thus deserves the name of pure thought?" 1
His answer to the question is, "No." For all through Hegel's
dialectic there can be detected the presence of perception and,
in particular, of spatial motion, as presuppositions of the
whole logical movement and as its motive power. It is need-
less to quote from the other critics. Ab uno disce omnes.
An unsuspicious reader of the above extract will take for
granted that Hegel really claims that his logic is without any
presupposition; and although the passage admits of a double
interpretation, still the whole discussion following it is without
any meaning unless it is directed against the alleged preten-
sion of a presuppositionless logic. But a careful study of
Hegel's logic shows that no such pretension is made. On
the contrary, Hegel expressly states that his logic has a pre-
supposition; and he states it so explicitly that the wonder is
that so many critics have followed Trendelenburg and ignored
Hegel. In the Preface to his Greater Logic, in the Introduc-
tion, and in the body of that work, in which he devotes a
whole chapter to the question, "With what must the Science
begin?" Hegel unambiguously says that his Logic presup-
1 Logische Untersuchungen, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 36, 37.
498
[VOL. VI.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
poses the result of the Phenomenology of the Spirit. In order
that such an assertion may not appear unsupported, I will
quote some of the passages that leave the matter no longer in
doubt. The passage in the Introduction runs thus: "In the
Phenomenology of the Spirit I have exhibited consciousness in
its progress from the first immediate opposition of itself and
its object, on to absolute knowledge. This course traverses
all the forms of the relation of consciousness to its object, and
has as its result the conception of our science. This conception
needs no justification here, apart from the fact that it comes
out as the final result in the Logic itself, — it needs no justifi-
cation here, because it got its justification there" (in the Phe-
nomenology). "And it is capable of no other justification than
just this production of it by consciousness, all whose own
peculiar forms are resolved into this conception as their truth.
This conception of the pure science and the deduction of
it are presupposed in this present treatise, in so far as the Phe-
nomenology of the Spirit is nothing else but such a deduction of
it."1 Again, in his discussion of the question, “With what
must the Science begin?" he says: "The beginning is logical,
in that it should be made in the element of free, independent
thought, in pure knowledge. It is mediated therefore by the
fact that pure knowledge is the last absolute truth of conscious-
ness. It has been remarked in the Introduction that the Phe-
nomenology of the Spirit is the science of consciousness, the
exhibition of the fact that consciousness has the conception of
our science, that is, of pure knowledge, as its result. To this
extent, then, the logic has the science of the Phenomenal
Spirit as its presupposition; for that science contains and dis-
plays the necessity, and hence the proof of the truth, of the
standpoint of pure knowledge, as well as the way in which
that standpoint is reached."2 In two or three sentences he
characterizes the starting-point and the movement of the
1 I, 31, 32 (33–35). I use the 1841 issue of the second edition of the Greater
Logic; but give the paging of the issue of 1833-4 in parenthesis. It should be
remembered that the first volume of the second edition was carefully revised by
its author just before his death.
• I, 57 (61).
No. 5.]
499
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
Phenomenology, and then proceeds: "In that treatise, immedi
ate consciousness is also the first and immediate fact in the
science; in the Logic, however, that is the presupposition,
which had proved to be the result of that former study, viz.,
the Idea as pure knowledge."1 Again: "Here Being is the
initial category (das Anfangende), exhibited as arising by
mediation, a mediation that at the same time cancels itself;
and there is present the presupposition of pure knowledge, as
the result of finite knowledge or consciousness." 2
•
These passages could not be clearer or more decisive as to
Hegel's meaning. The presupposition of the Logic is the
Phenomenology, and the presupposition of the Phenomenology
is immediate, sensuous consciousness. Hegel's thought, then,
is this: If sensuous consciousness is an unquestionable point
of departure, and no one can deny that it is,
then it can
be shown conclusively that the point of view of absolute knowl-
edge is attainable from this starting-point. And if this point
of view of absolute knowledge is a legitimate point of view,
then a logic such as he proceeds to develop is a legitimate
science; for the subject-matter of such a science rises objec-
tively before the view of one who reaches that eminence.
We have now arrived at the point where we can see what
reply Hegel would make to the charge that concrete experi-
ence furnishes him with the motive power for his logical
machinery. He would say that Absolute Idealism, and logic
as a science in the system of Absolute Idealism, do not pre-
tend to teach that man can think in complete and utter isola-
tion from sensuous experience. If man could and did so
think, such thought would not be the pure absolute thought
that logic demands; but it would be a falsely infinite, abstract
thought, which could not be absolute for the very reason that
it has beyond it, and therefore limiting it, an experience in
which sense plays a part. The progress in the Phenomenology
from sensuous consciousness to absolute knowledge does not
consist in “shuffling off the mortal coil" of sense, but in mak-
ing "the mortal put on immortality," - to speak plainly, it con-
¹ I, 57, 58 (62).
■ I, 58, 59 (63).
HorM
500
[Vol. VI.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
#
sists in showing that the sense element in consciousness is not
an independent ingredient that may as well stand outside of
knowledge as within it; but that this sense element is, in its
very nature, a moment in absolute knowledge, included essen-
tially in absolute knowledge and not in any ultimate opposition
to it. >
Many passages could be quoted from the Logic to show that
the thought that logic deals with is not abstract thought in
the ordinary sense of the word 'abstract'; it is not an element
in experience merely coördinate with sense, and furnishing the
form to experience while sense furnishes the matter.
In a
passage in the Preface to the second edition, Hegel discusses
the ordinary view taken of the function of thought, and repu-
diates it. "The indispensable basis, the Conception, the Uni-
versal, which is thought itself in so far as we can abstract only
from image-presentation (Vorstellung) in the wor
not be regarded as only an indifferent form, v
ferently on a content. But these thoughts
1
con-
indig-
Ind
.ntial
spiritual things, which thoughts are themse es the s
content, are such a content as contains ultiple det rmina-
tions, and has in it also the distinction of a su nd body, of
conception and a relative reality. The deeper sis is the
true Soul (die Seele für sich), the pure Conception, which is
the innermost principle of all objects, their simple life-pulse,
as well as the life-pulse of subjective thought." This pas-
sage is so very important in helping to orient one in Hegel's
philosophy, and therefore in Hegel's Logic, that it will per-
haps be permissible to dwell upon it further. And in order to
obtain a better understanding of it, it will be well to contrast the
view expressed in it with the view of thought held by Lotze,
by Mr. F. H. Bradley, and by almost every one else, and made
the basis by Mr. McTaggart 2 for an attempted justification of
Hegel. This ordinary view finds expression in such language
as this: "Thought is everywhere but a mediating activity
moving hither and thither, bringing into connection the origi-
nal intuitions of external and internal perception, which are
1 I, 16, 17 (18).
2 Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic.
Mao!!
No. 5.]
501
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
predetermined by fundamental ideas and laws the origin of
which cannot be shown; it develops special and properly logi-
cal forms, peculiar to itself, only in the effort to apply the idea
of truth (which it finds in us) to the scattered multiplicity of
perceptions, and of the consequences developed from them.
Hence nothing seems less justifiable than the assertion that
this Thinking is identical with Being, and that Being can be
resolved into it without leaving any residuum; on the contrary,
everywhere in the aux of thought there remain quite insoluble
those inua nu which represent the several aspects of
that important content which we designate by the name of
Being." 1
This view fing inore trenchant expression in such
sentences as these: "Tought, in its actual processes and
results, cannot transcend the dualism of the that' and the
'what.' "Truth and thought are not the thing itself, but are
of it and about it." "For I do not deny that reality is an
object of thought; I deny that it is barely and merely so. If
you rest here on a distinction between thought and its object,
that opens a further question to which I shall return. But if
you admit that in asserting reality to fall within thought, you
meant that in reality there is nothing beyond what is made
thought's object, your position is untenable."2 These state-
ments form an excellent contrast against which Hegel's doc-
trine can be easily understood. Thought as only a mediating
activity, thought as exclusive of thing, these two complemen-
tary conceptions are emphasized by the logical dualists I have
just quoted. Thought as not merely a mediating activity,
thought as inclusive of thing, are the conceptions emphasized
¹ Lotze, Microcosmos, p. 354 of the second volume of the English translation.
I have quoted the passage Mr. McTaggart quotes, but it could easily be paralleled
by numerous passages from Lotze's Logic.
2 F. H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, pp. 168, 169. See the whole chap-
ter, where, although he admits that this dualism is not absolute and must be
transcended, he maintains that such transcendence is not within the power of
thought. The last sentence quoted above is ambiguous, and it seems to me that
Mr. Bradley makes out the untenability of his opponent's position by taking
advantage of this ambiguity. If by what is made thought's object' is meant
what in time has already been so made, then cadit quaestio. If not, the untena-
bility of the adversary's position is not so easily proved.
502
[Vol. VI.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
4
by Hegel as requisite to the intelligent and truly profitable
reading of his Logic. He devotes four pages of his Preface to
the discussion and refutation of the view that thought and
thing stand against each other in a dualistic relation which
thought cannot transcend. Hegel's view of thought can be
summed up in one term, so often misunderstood, but a term
that he has taken much pains to rescue from such a fate.
Hegel's thought is begreifendes Denken.¹ We English-speak-
ing people, in borrowing our words 'conceive,' 'concept,'
'conception,' from a dead language, have lost the striking
imagery that could have been called up in a Roman mind by
these words. The Germans are more fortunate in having a
native word, which, though the metaphor in it has faded, still
has cognates that can revive the metaphor. Begreifendes
Denken is grasping, clutching thought, thought that grips its
object as its own inalienable possession. Perhaps we might
translate das begreifende Denken, by the phrase 'object-appro-
priating thought'; for the logical relation of such thought to
its object is analogous to the legal relation of the master to the
slave; the slave had no independent status; he stood only
in his master, who engulfed him. Hegel also calls thought
objectives Denken, inasmuch as it transcends the distinction
between subject and object. "Pure science, accordingly, pre-
supposes emancipation from the opposition of consciousness.
It contains thought in so far as it is just as much the object-
matter in itself, or the object-matter in itself in so far as it is
just as much pure thought. As Science, the truth is the pure
self-developing self-consciousness, and has the form of self, in
that the absolute is known conception, but the conception as such
is the absolute. This objective thought, then, is the content
of pure Science."2 Again, in another place, a few lines lower,
what he says seems to have Mr. Bradley prophetically in mind,
for there we read: "In Logic we do not have to do with
thought about something that lies independently outside of
thought and is the basis of that thought."3 Again, compare
with the passage formerly quoted from Lotze, this passage
2 I, 33 (35). ´
8 I, 33 (36).
1 I, 25 (27).
a
No. 5.]
503
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
"1
from Hegel: "Logic is accordingly determined as the science
of pure thought, and has as its principle pure knowledge, the
unity which is not abstract but concrete and living, because
in it the opposition for consciousness of a subjectively indepen-
dent being and of a second such being, an object, is known as
transcended, and Being of itself is known as pure Conception,
and pure Conception as true Being.' Once more: "Logic is
the pure Science, that is, pure knowledge in the whole compass
of its development. This idea [of pure knowledge], however,
has defined itself in that result [i.e., of the Phenomenology]
to be certainty become truth, certainty which, on the one hand,
no longer stands with its object over against it; it has taken its
object into itself, knows its object as its own very self. On
the other hand, it has transcended the knowledge of itself as
of something that stands over against the objective and is its
denial; thought has rid itself of this subjectivity and is a unity
with its riddance." 2
It would not have been necessary, in quoting these passages
in justification of my interpretation of Hegel's meaning, to
pile Pelion on Ossa, were it not that the most recent critic
and defender of Hegel gives it out as probably, if not certainly,
Hegel's view, that the 'datum' as he calls it, is not identical
with thought.
3
Having thus shown what Hegel's attitude was towards the
relation of thought to its objects, objects of sensuous experi-
ence among others, I can now return to the charge which I
began to discuss above, the charge that Hegel surreptitiously
makes use of sensuous experience and its living, moving
reality, in order to get life and movement into his pure
thought. According to Hegel's view, such a charge would be
preposterous in the literal sense of the word. The living,
moving reality of nature has no independence; it is merely
the expression of the life of thought. It is only in thought
that nature "lives and moves and has its being." In the
Preface to the first edition, Hegel says: "The development of
all natural and spiritual life rests on the nature of the pure
1 I, 47 (50).
2 I, 58 (62).
$ P. 499.
504
[Vol. VI.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
1
essences alone, that constitute the content of Logic." In
another place, he says that the immanent negativity which is
the principle of the logical movement is "the principle of all
natural and spiritual life."2 The question with Hegel, as with
Kant, is not whether nature, external or internal, physical or
psychical, is one vast system of forces and of life; but the
question is whence comes that life. Does it belong to nature
as an independent kingdom, or is the kingdom thought's own?
And as Kant answered this question by recognizing the con-
stitutional sovereignty of thought in the world of sense, by
acknowledging a power not nature's self, that works in nature's
life, so Hegel answered the same question by recognizing the
same sovereignty and the same power-but with a differ-
ence: the sovereignty is absolute. Trendelenburg, Haym, and
Schmid might thus have spared their pains in showing that
Hegel borrowed from experience his motive power, stole from
the heaven of sensuous perception the fire to make the earth
of his logical categories warm into the semblance of life. It
was incumbent upon them to overthrow the Critical Philosophy
in its subordination of the world of experience to logic,
before claiming such an easy victory over the Absolute Phi-
losophy. For the very elements, which, according to the
above-named critics, Hegel stole from experience and smug-
gled into thought, had already been shown by Kant to have
been lent to experience by thought.
But the question will be asked: Is, then, Hegel's logic
after all not a science of abstract thought? Does not Hegel
himself define logic as "the science of the pure idea in the
abstract element of thought"? Two answers can be given
to these questions, varying according to what is meant
by 'abstract' and by pure.' If by abstract thought' and
'pure thought' is meant thought thinking away with nothing
to think, somewhat like Browning's "roses embowering with
naught they embower," there is one answer, a categorical
"No." But if by abstraction is meant abstraction from the
abstraction of ordinary consciousness which sets sense over
1 I, 7 (7, 8).
2 I, 41.
No. 5.]
505
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
""
against thought, abstraction from sense as an absolute other to
thought, then there is another answer: "Logic is abstract.
And if by 'pure' is meant refined from the common-sense
error that thought must mix itself with an external matter
before it can do execution upon it, then logical thought is
pure. In saying all this I am not resorting to subtleties of
rhetoric to avoid surrendering to the exigencies of inevitable
exegesis. I am merely reading Hegel's definition of logic in
the Encyclopaedia in the light of a prolonged explanation of
its subject-matter in the Greater Logic which some, who glibly
quote the Encyclopaedia, have not done him the honor to read
and study.
If the reader will open the Greater Logic on page 58 (62),
he will find these words: "Pure knowledge, as having consoli-
dated into this unity [of the subjective and the objective] has
sublated all reference to another and to mediation; it is the
distinctionless." This is the way in which logic comes by its
abstract character; it is not by refusing to transcend the dis-
tinction between thought and its object and thus maintaining
itself in the sphere of the very different abstraction of finite
consciousness; but it is by transcending that distinction.
But along with this transcending of the distinction that
belongs to ordinary consciousness, there comes another feature
that to ordinary consciousness appears as an abstraction,
namely, the failure to notice the sensuous nature of the object,
in so far as it is merely sensuous. Of course, in so far as the
nature of an object is merely sensuous, it is abstract; so
abstract that it has no reality at all. Red, as it is to mere
sense, unrelated by thought to other colors or to any other sen-
sation, is something that only the fertile imagination of such
men as John Stuart Mill can conceive. Red, as we know it,
gets its distinctive character from the relations in which it
stands, and the relations in which it stands are logical rela-
tions. This is, of course, the same old story that Professor
T. H. Green told so often, but it bears repeating "because
it so true," and because not every one has come to recognize
its truth. Now as these relations are logical, logic has not
506
[VOL. VI.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
only the right, but also the duty, to consider what are gener-
ally called sensuous objects and all the relations in which they
stand; only it must not consider such objects as merely affec-
tions of sense, unelaborated by thought. Pure thought, as
logic deals with it, is, therefore, thought that refuses to take
into account the abstractly sensuous nature of things; and, if
you wish it, is abstract in so refusing to do. But such an
abstraction from an abstraction is a concrete view as well as
an abstraction, just as a negation of a negation is an affirma-
tion as well as a negation.
That this, again, is Hegel's view and not my own subjective
interpretation, will appear upon reading a passage in that much
neglected Introduction to the Greater Logic, where Hegel has
expressed himself so clearly that I must be permitted to quote
the passage quite at large. In it the reader will notice that
Hegel, while recognizing the abstractness of logic and of
logical thought from one point of view, maintains that from a
higher point of view they are concrete. "Thus whoever
approaches the science finds in logic, at first, an isolated sys-
tem of abstractions, which is restricted to itself and does not
reach over the other knowledges and sciences. Rather, con-
trasted with the riches of the presentative consciousness of the
world (Weltvorstellung), with the content of the other sciences,
which appears so real, and above all, with the promise of the
absolute science to unveil the essence of these riches, the inner
nature of spirit and of the world, in a word, to unveil the truth,
this science, in its abstract form, in the colorless, cold simplicity
of its pure categories, has the appearance of doing anything
rather than of keeping its promise, and of standing empty-
handed in the presence of these riches. The first acquaintance
with logic restricts its significance to itself. Its content
passes only for an isolated occupation with the categories,
besides which the other scientific occupations have an impor-
tant matter and content of their own.
Thus, then, logic
must indeed be learned as something that one does well enough
to understand and get an insight into; but something in which
compass, depth, and further significance are at the beginning
•
ג.
No. 5.]
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
507
7
Val
et
lacking. It is only with a deeper knowledge of the other
sciences, that, for the subjective spirit, the logical is raised to
the rank of a universal; not a universal that is only abstract, but
one that comprehends within itself the riches of the particular.
Now, although in the beginning of this study, the logical
is not present to the spirit in this conscious power, still by this
study the spirit receives into itself the power that leads it into
all truth. The system of logic is the realm of shadows, the
world of simple essences, freed from all sensuous concreteness.
The study of this science, abode and work in this realm of
shadows, is the absolute culture and discipline of conscious-
ness. Therein is plied an occupation remote from sensuous
perceptions and aims, from feelings, from the merely make-
believe world of ordinary consciousness. Considered on its
negative side, this occupation consists in keeping aloof from
the contingency of sophistic thought and from the arbitrari-
ness of letting this, that, or the other reason strike and pre-
vail. By such study, however, thought wins self-reliance and
independence. It becomes at home in the abstract and in
procedure by conceptions without sensuous substrata; it be-
comes the unconscious power of taking up the alien manifold
of the knowledges and sciences into the form of reason, of
conceiving and keeping them in their essentiality, of stripping
off the external, and, in this way, of extracting from them
what is logical. To say the same thing in other words, it
becomes the power of filling the abstract groundwork of the
logical, previously acquired by the study of logic, with the
content of all truth, and of giving it the value of a universal
which no longer stands as a particular by the side of another
particular, but reaches over this other particular and is its
essence, the absolutely true." 1
"1
After what has been said, it will be easy to reply to the
other criticism of Trendelenburg, that "motion is without more
ado presupposed by the dialectic, which is to presuppose noth-
ing." What moves, of course, has a sensuous aspect, but the
efforts of modern experimental psychology have not yet suc-
1 I, 43-45 (46–48).
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ceeded in discovering a sense of motion (pace Professor James),
any more than in discovering a sense of time or of space.
And one might very well risk his reputation as a prophet on
the prediction that such a discovery will never be made.
Motion involves a synthesis, and the synthetic as synthetic
can never be apprehended by mere sense. Kant's results on
this point are likely to remain unshaken, and are available for
us here, even though Kant himself did not apply them to the
explanation of motion. Motion is a schematized category;
and Kant would have classed it as such if only he had taken a
wider view of the pure categories and had included Becoming
among them. But the motion in Hegel's Logic, which has
been the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence to his
critics, is a category not even schematized. In spite of Tren-
delenburg's failure to find in Hegel any intimation that motion
in logic is something different from motion in external nature,
Hegel expressly repudiates any admixture of time in his logi-
cal Becoming, which he calls the motion of Being and Naughto
into each other. He objects to the popular proverbs that
identify Being and Naught, on the ground that this identifica-
tion is not made in the pure element of thought, but has its
medium in time. In this case, however, a word to the wise
was not sufficient; and Trendelenburg and many after him
have filled up their pages with the charge that in motion a
false brother has been brought in unawares to spy out the
liberty that the categories should have in the world of thought
(
to whom the critics will give place, no, not for an hour!
The truth is that it is the critics themselves who have brought
in physical motion through their failure to read Hegel carefully.
He states that he prefers the word becoming' to the word
'transition' (Uebergehen), because in the latter there is an im-
plication that the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem
are external to each other, and the movement is represented as
taking place between these fixed points.2 If this fixity and
mutual externality of points between which motion takes place
1 I, 75 (80), "Seyn und Nichts werden in der Zeit auseinander gehalten."
2 I, 87 (92, 93).

No. 5.1
509
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
is not the characteristic of natural motion, it would be hard to
characterize it. And if the absence of this characteristic does
not plainly indicate a motion that is not natural, it is for the
critics to adduce a single instance of natural motion that is not
thought of as characterized by just this trait.
What Hegel means by 'motion' in the dialectic is the
timeless and spaceless synthesis of opposites in one eternal
thought, in which they keep their distinctness, but in which
such a logical interplay of these distinctions prevails, that the
very essence of each is seen to consist in the character it gets
from its organic relation to the other. Perhaps an illustra-
tion will help us to understand Hegel's thought, an illustration
taken from one of the highest instances, in the world of
nature, of that organic unity which, he says,¹ should character-
ize the system of categories. The human hand, considered as
a thing in space, has only a latent reference to all other things
in space; but the thought of a human hand, as a hand, is really
the thought of the whole human body, in which the hand is
only an element. Think the hand as it is in itself, in its own
peculiar nature and conception, and you find that that very
thought of the hand, which tries so hard to be peculiar, has
transcended its peculiarity and become the thought of the
body, in which the thought of the hand is only a moment or
constitutive factor. Now distinguish between the human hand
and the human trunk in your thought, and you will discover
that your distinction cannot widen into an absolute separation,
without the loss, to each separate element, of its own charac-
ter. To use Hegel's language, "in their distinction they
remain, each in itself, the whole concept."2 Each becomes
the other, in that the thought of each is seen to involve the
thought of the other. But does each change in time from
what it was in itself to what the other is in itself? Assuredly
not. Time does not come into consideration here at all. It
is not that you first think the hand completely, and then pro-
ceed to think the trunk. It is that the very thought of the
hand, in the very act of self-realization, becomes the thought
2 I, 48 (51).
1 I, 31 (33).
cole.
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Antithes
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of the trunk also- not two thoughts, here of a hand, there of
a trunk, but one thought of a hand-and-trunk, which is neither
hand alone nor trunk alone, but a body with organic distinc-
tions in it.
Hegel's contention, then, is that the categories of thought
are so inter-related that you cannot employ one of them with-
out employing in that very act its antithesis. The employment
of the antithesis is not a second act; but the first act proves, on
inspection, not to be the employment of merely one category,
nor the double employment of two categories, but the single
employment of an organizing category, in which the so-called
first and second categories are moments or distinctions. Now
this turning out of a category not to be itself alone, but rather
itself as a distinction against its opposite in the concrete unity
that synthesizes them, - this turning out, I say, is not a tem-
poral process, much less a spatial process, but is an eternal,
unchanging truth. Movement can be predicated of it only as a
"transferred epithet." It is the student who moves from the
psychic state in which he is not consciously aware of the
synthetic character of his thought, or perhaps it is more cor-
rect to say, in which he has not paid attention to the neces-
sary logical environment of the category in which he is
especially interested; and he advances to the psychic state in
which the tout ensemble is an object of explicit knowledge
because it has become an object of accurate attention. But
this psychic time-movement is not a logical time-movement of
the category itself. We must learn to divest words of their
profane time and space associations and connotations, if we
wish to take them with us into the holy sanctuary of logic.
And Hegel is not guilty of the neglect of not pointing this
out from time to time in the body of his Greater Logic, espec-
ially in the case of compound words in which the prepositional
or adverbial component smacks strongly of time and space
suggestions, as in the case of Transition ¹ (Uebergehen) and of
Determinate Being2 (Daseyn). In other cases he takes for
1 I, 87 (92, 93).
2 I, 107 (113).
1
No. 5.]
511
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
granted that his Preface to the second edition has been read,
and the contents noted and remembered.
What has been said so far, may be summed up as follows:
Logic presupposes the Phenomenology, and the Phenomenology
presupposes ordinary consciousness with its sensuous cogni-
tion; and thus logic indirectly presupposes sensuous expe-
riences. But it abstracts from the sensuous element in
experience, because it has transcended the point of view from
which the sensuous is regarded as an independent element
standing over against thought. In logic the sensuous is con-
sidered only in so far as it has been intellectualized.
But now a reader of the Greater Logic will undoubtedly ask
whether Hegel does not admit of beginning upon the study of
logic without the preliminary discipline of the science of the
phenomenal consciousness. Does he not give the option to the
candidate for logical study either of orienting himself for logic
by mastering the Phenomenology, or of merely making the
arbitrary resolve to consider thought as such, and then of
plunging immediately into the bacchic whirl of the categories?
There is no question that Hegel proposes such an alternative;¹
but it may be worth while to see in what condition a candi-
date will find himself if he chooses the latter course. He
will be one of those for whom logic is a science of mere
abstractions; he will come to discover, to his great disappoint-
ment, that the bacchic dance is only an "unearthly ballet of
bloodless categories." He will, in short, take the attitude
that Mr. F. H. Bradley takes,2 until he receives into himself
"the power that leads into all truth." And the reason for
this attitude is manifest. Such a resolve to consider thought
as such, in its abstract purity, is, as Hegel himself says, thor-
oughly arbitrary-there is no necessity in it, considered as a
merely psychological event. It is only a fact in the subjective
history of the man who makes the resolve; and when in time
it disappears, as all timed things must and all psychic things
quickly do, then the logic that is built upon such a resolve
1 I, 59 (63).
2 The Principles of Logic, p. 533-
512
[VOL. VI.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
goes too.
It will be as powerless to resist the seductions of
"that warm and breathing beauty of flesh which our hearts
find delightful," as was Hume's scepticism impotent against
some "lively impression of the senses, which obliterate all
these chimeras." It is only when the consideration of thought
as such is not the result of a capricious resolve, but is seen to
be the inevitable consequence of even the most sensuous con-
sciousness, and when thought has taken into itself "all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" instead of deal-
ing with them as enticements from without it is only then
that a logic that deals with pure thought does not appear a
spectral woof of impalpable abstractions," but "leaves the
world more glorious."
""
And, besides, such a contingent resolve is itself a presuppo-
sition, and a very insecure presupposition upon which to found
an absolute science. It is true that, having such a presupposi-
tion, we can and must proceed, as Hegel shows, without any
other; and if we do so, we shall find that we must start with
pure Being. But to proceed without any further presupposi-
tion beyond an unnecessitated resolve, is not to start without
any presupposition. And this leads us back to the question
whether Hegel anywhere claims that his Logic is without pre-
suppositions. After a careful and somewhat extended exami-
nation of Hegel's own statements and of his theory of logic,
we can now answer that question as we answered it in the
beginning of this enquiry. Hegel nowhere makes the claim
that this science is without presupposition. He explicitly says
the very contrary.
But what he does say, and what has been misunderstood
and misinterpreted into that, is that the category with which
the logical movement begins must be, at least apparently, with-
out presupposition. The distinction and world-wide difference
between these two statements, the one that Hegel makes, and
the other that the critics say he makes, is so important to the
understanding of the dialectic, that we must drive home the
consciousness of it. To say that logic has no presuppositions
is to say that any one, no matter how immature, no matter
No. 5.]
513
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
how "drunk in sense," can, just as he is, without any further
growth, without any change of heart, begin the study of spec-
ulative logic. Hegel was not so foolish as to make any such
statement. What he did say has already been quoted in part,
and can be summed up by saying that no really vital study of
logic can begin until the student is convinced of the necessity
of the point of view of absolute knowledge. A rather formal,
and yet by no means idle, study of logic, as a kind of pro-
paedeutic to logic as a vital science, can be begun by any one
who makes a really earnest resolve to deal with abstract
thought. This resolve is a presupposition of the formal study;
and such a successful prosecution of the formal study as will
finally reveal to him the secret of absolute knowledge, is a
further presupposition of the study of the living logical
universal.
Having seen what Hegel did not say was without presuppo-
sition, let us now go on to see what he really did say was with-
out presupposition; and let us try to see what he meant by
such a claim. I will quote a few sentences. “The beginning
must be an absolute, or, what is the same thing, an abstract be-
ginning. It must presuppose nothing, must be mediated by noth-
ing, and must have no ground." "Neither is that beginning
something arbitrary, something assumed merely for the nonce,
nor is it something that appears as a capricious phenomenon
or as a thing presupposed by leave, of which, however, the
sequel shows that one did right in making it the beginning.
"What constitutes the beginning, the beginning itself, is to
be taken, therefore, as something not analyzable, something in
its simple, empty immediacy, such as Being or the absolutely
void." 3
"12
This last sentence makes a good point of departure for the
study of Hegel's meaning. The presupposition of logic is
that there is such a thing as absolute knowledge, knowledge in
which the elements are not brought together by an external
force which simply brings them into juxtaposition, but in
which every element is what it is by virtue of its relation
2 I, 61, 62 (66).
8 I, 65, 66 (70).
1 I, 59 (63).
را
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PHICAL
to the others in the unity of the absolute whole. If this
view of the concrete, synthetic unity of thought is true,
then it must be possible to take any category and show
that it involves the whole system of categories; just as it was
shown above that the conception of the human hand involves
the conception of the whole human body. That is, there must
be a science which traces the gradual unfolding of the implica-
tions of each category until that category is seen only as a
moment in the ultimate unity of the Absolute Idea. The
question is: Where must this science begin? Evidently, if it
is to do its work thoroughly, it must begin, not at some rather
fully developed category, but at the lowest category. It is
a matter, not of choice, but of necessity; and the necessity is
imposed by the very idea of the science. For the science is
to be the exhibition of the organic unity of all the categories.
Hence all the categories must be discussed if the science is to
be complete; and as it is the science that exhibits the truth
that every category in itself involves every other category, the
only orderly procedure is to begin with that category which
seems farthest removed from any such implication. Now the
category that seems least to involve the organic unity to which
it belongs must be the one that bears in itself the least trace
of being organic-it must be simple and unanalyzable, at least
in appearance; for whatever is itself a unity of distinctions.
may more easily be a distinction within a higher unity, than
what seems to be a bare blank identity without distinctions.
In other words an organism has this peculiarity, that every
member in it is an organism also, and what is not itself
organic cannot have an integral place within a higher organic
individual.
If this is true, then the science that undertakes to exhibit.
the organic nature and unity of the system of categories must
show the organic nature of each single category; and it must
begin, in order to be systematic, with the category which has
the least trace of such an organic nature. And as the organic
nature of the Absolute Idea, of which they are all to be proved
members, is a unity of distinctions into which it may be
No. 5.]
515
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
analyzed, then the category that, on the face of it, is abso-
lutely simple and without distinctions must be the category to
begin with.
Is there such a category? It seems that we
have it in the conception of pure Being. Starting, then, with
this category of seemingly absolute simplicity, we are bound to
show that it is not so simple as it seems, if we are to maintain
our conception of the organic unity of all the categories.
Thus, we see that the very nature of the task that logic sets
before itself makes it necessary that it should begin with the
conception that claims to be unanalyzable, to be simple, to have
no elements, or, what is the same thing, no presuppositions; for
the presuppositions of a category in the dialectic are the ele-
ments or moments that constitute the synthetic unity of that
category. Now of all the categories that we use, there are
none that can lay such plausible claim to being simple, as pure
Being and pure Naught. The choice lies between the two;
and dialectical considerations, that is, considerations determined
by the very nature of the process that constitutes the principle
of the logical science, decide the issue in favor of pure Being.
This, then, is the proper place to examine the criticism that
Naught, and not Being, should be the starting-point of such a
dialectical development. This criticism was made in Hegel's
lifetime, and in the second edition of his Greater Logic he
notices it.¹ He maintains that the only consideration that can
determine one to accept Naught as the emptiest category is
one of merely external reflection, "an external play of abstrac-
tion." In other words, it is only when you set the negative
and the positive side by side in an external way, that it seems
that the negative is more empty and unanalyzable than the
positive. For the presentative consciousness (Vorstellung),
the negative is the more empty; but for the thinking or logi-
cal consciousness, the negative is the fuller. For when you
reflect that the thought of the negative has as an element in
it the thought of that which it negates, you see that the nega-
tive, when thought, must presuppose the positive; but it is not
so easily seen that the positive presupposes the negative. To
1 I, 95, 96 (100-102).
516
[VOL. VI.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
say the same thing in another way, if the positive presupposes
the negative, the presupposition is implicit and latent, and
difficult to bring before the attention. But the negative pre-
supposes the positive explicitly, and has no semblance of a
meaning except as containing the positive as a moment within
it. Hence Being, the positive, appears to be more simple and
unanalyzable than Naught, the negative.
I have thus shown what Hegel means by saying the begin-
ning for logic or within logic must be without presupposi-
tion. Explicit statements have been adduced to show that my
explanation is not forced, but is merely an amplification of
what Hegel himself says. But if the reader is still not satis-
fied, I ask him to examine the reasons Hegel gives for not
accepting some of the other initial categories proposed. He
passes in review the suggestions that the first category should
be Beginning, Subject-matter, I. His objection in every case
is either that the proposed substitute is nothing but another
name for pure Being, or that it is evidently a unity of distinc-
tions and consequently analyzable. It may be well to quote
what he says with regard to beginning with the category of
Beginning. "It is still Naught, and is to be something. The
Beginning is not pure Naught, but a Naught out of which
something is to proceed. Being is thus already contained in
Beginning. Beginning contains both Being and Naught
or
it is Non-being that is at the same time Being, and Being that
is at the same time Non-being." He carries this train of
reflection on through four paragraphs, the gist of all which is
that Beginning, as admitting of analysis, must be rejected as
not the initial category. Again, what he says against I (ego)
as an applicant for the first position is equally significant: “I
in general, however, is also at the same time a concrete cate-
gory, or, rather, it is the most concrete of all
ness of self as of an infinitely manifold world.
the conscious-
For making I
the beginning and the ground of philosophy, it is imperative
to eliminate this concrete content." 2
1 I, 63, 64 (68).
2 I, 66 (71).
No. 5.]
517
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
1
Thus, whether we look at what Hegel says positively as to
the presuppositionlessness of the initial category he has chosen,
or at what he says negatively, as against categories that apply
for the first place in the dialectic, we see clearly that by the
demand that the beginning of logic should have no presupposi-
tion, is meant that the initial category should be the most simple,
unanalyzable conception, containing within it no explicit refer-
ence to any other category. All considerations, thus far,
therefore, indicate pure Being as the point of departure for the
dialectical development.
But I have not yet given the subtlest argument that Hegel
advances in support of his procedure in beginning with this
category. What has been given is to some extent not an
exhibition of the unconditioned necessity of starting at this
point. For it was only after a search that we discovered pure
Being to be the most available applicant.
It is at this point again, as at so many others, that the con-
ception of pure knowledge, pure thought, comes to the logi-
cian's aid. The presupposition of the Logic can be made to
discover, without contingency or failure, the presuppositionless
category. I have already quoted at length the passage in the
enquiry, "With what must the Science begin?" in which
Hegel shows that it must begin with the results reached by
the Phenomenology. If the reader will refer to the passage,¹
read it over again, and then read what is now to be quoted,
a continuation of that passage, he will see the train of
thought and the meaning of Hegel.
"Now that, from the standpoint of this conception of pure
knowledge, the beginning remains immanent, there is nothing
to do but consider that pure knowledge, or, rather, setting aside
all reflections, all opinions that we may otherwise have, there
is nothing to do but only take what is before us.
"Pure knowledge, as having consolidated into this unity, has
sublated all reference to an other and to mediation; it is the
distinctionless; this distinctionless thing ceases therewith to
be even knowledge; there is only simple immediacy present.
1 See above, p. 503.
ད་
་ ་་ སྨན
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[VOL. VI.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
Simple immediacy is itself an expression of a category of reflec-
tion, and implies a distinction from what is mediated. Hence,
in its true expression, this simple immediacy is pure Being.'
"' 1
Perhaps a little comment on this passage may help to clear
away all obscurity. Logic, as a fruitful science, begins at the
point in our philosophical career where we have come to see
that knowledge and its object are not opposed, but are one
with each other. Knowledge is the all, which includes its
object, and is not mediated by it, as if it were something really
other than it. In such logic, therefore, we cannot begin with
an object as distinct from knowledge, but must begin with
knowledge knowing itself. The beginning must be immanent
within thought, and we must take merely what we find in that
conception of pure knowledge or pure thought, as our begin-
ning. We thus find that we must begin with the conception
of simple immediacy; for if there is no reference to an other
in the thought that we are dealing with, there is only imme-
diacy and simplicity present. But the term 'simple immediacy'
is not a very happy term to use here, because it is not the
expression of what we wish to express. 'Immediacy' is a nega-
tive term, and, like all negative terms, gets all its import from
its contrast with mediation. We wish to express a thought
that does not get its import from something else; that is, we
want some word to express the category that is really presup-
positionless. Pure Being' is the term we want. Now, of
course, the verbal symbol is contingent. Because we are not
Germans, we do not call it das reine Seyn, as Hegel did. But
the category of the presuppositionless is forced on us as the
initial category of our logic, by virtue of the presupposition
with which we came to the subject.
We must remember, therefore, that when Hegel uses the
term 'pure Being,' he uses it in the sense of the category of
thought-thinking-self, without even distinguishing any moments
within itself; for it is just beginning to think itself, without
yet seeing of what further nature the self that it thinks is. It
has a further nature, as will presently appear; but at the begin-
1 I, 58 (62).

No. 5.]
519
HEGEL'S LOGIC.
ning of this thought, the only trait that appears is this empty
thinking, which is well expressed by 'pure Being.'
These, then, are the two considerations that led Hegel to
begin his dialectical movement with pure Being; or, as he
would have preferred to say, these are the facts in the subject-
matter with which Logic deals, that make it necessary that
the science should begin with this category. The one fact is
that, as the science is to show the organic relation in which
every category stands to all-inclusive thought, this exhibition
must begin with that category which seems to stand infinitely
removed from such an organic unity; and in its progress it
must sweep the road it traverses, along with it, into the goal
it reaches. The other fact is that in this science thought
begins to think thought, and must therefore begin with the
category which is proper to this commencement of pure self-
realization, namely, the category of pure Being.
how
"Now the
This method of Hegel's for justifying his beginning
unlike it is to the methods attributed to him by his critics!
Some think that they see mere arbitrariness in his choice of
point of departure. He is made to say: "Let Being be the
starting-place," and it is the starting-place. But this is almost
as good as the way in which Mr. McTaggart, again working
from the Encyclopaedia and apparently ignoring the Greater
Logic, tries to justify the ways of Hegel to men.
idea from which the dialectic sets out, and in which it pro-
fesses to show that all the other categories are involved, is the
idea of Being. Are we justified in assuming the validity of
this idea? The ground on which we can answer this question
in the affirmative is that the rejection of the idea as invalid
would be self-contradictory, as was pointed out above. For it
would be equivalent to the denial that anything whatever
existed. And in that case the denial itself could not exist,
and the validity of the idea of Being has not been denied."
"This is, of course, the Cartesian argument, which is never
stated by Hegel precisely in this form, but on which the justi-
fication of his use of the category of Being, as valid of reality,

1 Op. cit., p. 90.
"1

520
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
sum.
appears to depend." 1 This would be well enough if Hegel
began his Logic with the category of Actual Existence (Wirk-
lichkeit) — but perhaps I should not concede even so much.
It would be well enough as a justification for a phenomenologi-
cal and not a logical development from that point. And,
besides, Mr. McTaggart would find it hard to convince a
sceptic by any Cartesian process that the existence of his
denial proved the existence of pure Being; and Descartes
would have made a worse case of it than he did, if he had
taken as his argument, Cogito, ergo ens purum et abstractum
Hegel found that it took some five hundred pages of
the Phenomenology to raise an empirical sceptic to the point
where he could see that the existence of anything involved
pure Being, and he found that he could do it only by making
thought so ungrateful as to swallow up the 'datum' from
which it set out. In other words, Hegel saw clearly that it
was only upon the presupposition of an absolute thought, of
which his commentator denies the possibility, that pure Being
could be shown to be involved in the existence of any psychic
fact, and so in a denial of pure Being. It is hard to see how
Mr. McTaggart, with his knowledge of the Encyclopaedia,
could suppose that he is justifying the category of pure Being
by pointing to an object (the psychic state of denial) which is
thought under the category of Actuality. It is a far cry from
the first category in Being to an advanced one in Essence.
Hegel's justification of his use of the category of Being as
valid of reality could not very well rest upon a confusion of
pure Being with actual concrete existence. It could rest only
on the insight that in the last analysis what appears to have an
existence independent of thought is really not independent of
thought, but is of the very constitution of thought; that thought
thus has no counterpart to itself, but exhausts the whole of
reality—in a word that thought is pure and absolute. The cate-
gory under which we think this unconditionality of thought is
the category of pure Being.

1 Op. cit., p. 21.
THE
PRINCIPLE AND THE METHOD
OF THE
HEGELIAN DIALECTIC
A DEFENCE OF THE DIALECTIC
AGAINST ITS CRITICS
BEING A
THESIS ACCEPTED BY THE FACULTY OF THE COLlege of LETTERS
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN PART FULFILMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
EVANDER BRADLEY MCGILVARY
PART II
THE METHOD OF THE DIALECTIC
Reprinted from MIND, New Series, Vol. VII, No. 25 and 26
BERKELEY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
1897

4
}


THE DIALECTICAL METHOD. (I.)
[Off-printed from MIND: a Quarterly Review of Psychology and
Philosophy. Vol. VII., N.S., No. 25.]
BY PROF. E. B. MCGILVARY.
In this paper I shall consider, as far as I may, the objections
that have been raised against the method of the Hegelian
dialectic, with a view to determine what is the real nature of
that method. And in doing this I shall avail myself, in great
part, of Mr. McTaggart's chapter on the development of the
method of the dialectic,¹ as a convenient and accessible state-
ment of the views against which I wish to protest as being
unhegelian. It matters not that he presents his views as a
sympathiser with Hegel rather than as an opponent. The
views call for such a discussion as will bear equally against
an adverse school of criticism, which has flourished upon a
misunderstanding of the method it criticises. Even where
Mr. McTaggart's contentions are fire-new, as in his claim
that the negative is not essential to the movement of the
dialectic, what he says will make a good basis upon which to
treat the subject of the negative in its relation to the dialectic,
a favourite subject of the critics.
If there is any work, the results of which depend entirely
upon the integrity of the method employed, that work is
Hegel's Logic. Indeed, the method is more important and
more secure than the results in their detail, and no one
knew this better than its author. In the Introduction to
his Greater Logic, he calls the method "the soul of the
structure," and says of it: "Although I could not possibly
¹ Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, by John McTaggart Ellis McTag-
gart, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Cambridge: at the
University Press, 1896. Chapter IV. Part of the work appeared in a
series of articles in MIND (New Series, Nos. 1, 2, 8, and 10).
2
Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik, i., 42 (45). In my reference to this
work I follow the pagination of the reissue of 1841, from the press of
Duncker & Humblot, Berlin; giving in parenthesis the paging of the
first issue. The three volumes of the Logic form the third, fourth and
fifth volumes of the Complete Works. I use the Greater Logic rather
than the Lesser, partly because it is a fuller treatment of the whole
V
2
E. B. MCGILVARY:
1
think that the method which I have pursued—or rather
which this system pursues of itself-might not be capable of
much perfecting, of much thorough revising in its details, I
know, nevertheless, that it is the only true method. This
is clear of itself already from the fact that it is nowise
distinct from its object and content; for it is the content
in itself, it is the dialectic that the content has within it,
which moves the content forward. It is clear that no treat-
ment can pass for scientific that does not go the gait of this
method and conform to its simple rhythm, for it is the gait
of the subject-matter itself."1
Against this, Mr. McTaggart claims that the method is
not uniform, but is constantly changing, and that the change
is of two kinds: first, from external reflexion, which alone.
is at work in the categories of Being, through various in-
termediate forms, till at the last inner reflexion gets in
its hand; secondly, that the negative is not an essential
element in the method, but functions only in its earlier
stages and gradually disappears altogether from the scene
of action.
I. I shall begin with the first point made, namely, that
external reflexion is the power that moves the machinery
in the categories of Being as over against those of Essence
and of Conception. His statement is this: "In Being each
category appears, taken by itself, to be permanent and ex-
clusive of all others, and to have no principle of transition
in it. It is only outside reflexion which examines and breaks
down this pretence of stability, and shows us that the dia-
lectic process is inevitable. In Essence, however, each
category by its own import refers to that which follows it,
and the transition is seen to be inherent in its nature. But
it is still felt to be, as it were, only an external effect of that
nature. The categories have still an inner nature, as con-
trasted with the outer relations which they have with the
other categories. So far as they have this inner nature,
they are still conceived as independent and self-centred.
But with the passage into the notion things alter; that
passage is the very hardest, because it proposes that in-
dependent actuality shall be thought as having all its sub-
stantiality in the passing over and identity with the other
subject; partly because it is not so familiar to English readers, and thus
will throw new light on the points discussed; and partly because the
first volume of the Greater Logic, which concerns us most especially in
the present paper, is the latest work from Hegel's pen, and therefore
represents his matured views better than the Logic of the Encyclopædia.
¹I., 39 (41, 42).
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
3
independent actuality '.1 Not only is the transition now
necessary to the categories, but the transition is the cate-
gories. The reality in any finite category, in this stage,
consists only in its summing up those which went before,
and in leading on to those which come after.” 2
Thus
Now, before we can satisfactorily enter upon a discussion
of this point, it will be necessary to make some preliminary
remarks about the double aspect in which the categories
appear in the Logic. The primary purpose of the Logic is
to show how even the most abstract and seemingly inde-
pendent and inorganic category contains within itself the
Tife of the whole system of all-inclusive Thought; and how
"this life, if allowed full play, will develop that barren cate-
gory through all the stages of thought up to the highest.
Now, as this category grows under our observation, we see
it taking the form of other categories familiar to us.
in the very development of the lowest category we reach
other categories whose evolution it is the business of logic
to display. Hence it is not necessary to give a separate
genealogical table to each category; but the pedigree of one
category will be the pedigree of many-but, from one point
of view, not the pedigree of all. And this is an important
point. There are categories that, in the form in which we
ordinarily use them, or rather in which we think we use
them, are not to be found in the direct line of march from
pure Being towards the goal of the Absolute Idea. But
though not on the line of march, they are near by, and it
takes only a little flank movement to sweep them into it.
But this flank movement arrests the procession
"for the
subjective spirit," as Hegel would say. It appears as if
there were a zigzag movement with constant stops, and not
a "never-halting march "4
3
I may illustrate what I mean by borrowing and developing
the metaphor Hegel uses for representing the absolute unity
of thought. This unity is a circle; thought's movement
is in an orbit that returns upon itself. But suppose that
one has not yet discovered the orbit, does not even know
whether there be any orbit or any movement; suppose one
loses one's perspective, and, from any position, views two
points in the circumference of the circle. These points
1 "Enc., Section 159."
2
Op. cit., pp. 123, 124.
3 I wish to call especial attention to this reservation. For, from an-
other point of view, it is the pedigree of all.
* I., 39 (41): "In unaufhaltsamem
. Gange".
1
4
E. B. MCGILVARY:
may appear to him side by side, rather than one in advance
of the other. The more advanced point is then viewed as if it
were collateral with the nearer; hence when a movement is
discovered and is supposed to be in a bee-line from the point
of observation through one of these points on to the infinite,
it will seem as though a digression must be made from this
line in order to catch the other point into the movement.
In the same way a higher category is viewed as if it were
co-ordinate with a lower one; so viewed, it will not have all
the characteristics it should have, else it would not appear
co-ordinate. In such a case, it is clear that when the lower
category has advanced to the higher, it will not have passed
through the form the higher takes when reduced to a lower
plane. Now, as ordinary thought is abstract and thinks its
categories in their abstractness, and not in their concrete-
ness, it will be necessary, when dialectic comes alongside of
a category in its abstract form, to show how this abstract
category develops itself into the same concrete fulness into
which its seeming co-ordinate was developed. To change
the figure, the stone which, in the structure of speculative
logic, has its significance only as resting on the lower stones
and furnishing a basis for the higher, is by the common
thinker torn out of its place and used as an independent
unit. It is the business of the speculative builder, when he
reaches this stone in its structural place, to show that even
when lying apart it bears traces upon itself that cannot fail
to indicate that such isolation is not proper to it, but that it
belongs to an architectural system; and to show that these
traces also indicate where it belongs in that system.
But even this is not all.,Common understanding has its
own ways of artificially grouping these abstract categories.
One way, and a very favourite way, especially in dealing with
the categories that dialectic reaches first, is to pair them off,
and to set each member of a pair over against the other, as
of equal rank, but mutually incompatible. Thus from the
abstract point of view, these paired-off categories are contra-
dictory to each other; and what dialectic does, appears to
be a reconciling of these contradictions. When Hegel, there-
fore, speaks of any category "as such," he means that cate-
gory regarded as the "unspeculative" thinker regards it;
that is, as leading to no dialectical result, and even as indepen-
dent of the process by which speculative logic has reached it.
And when he speaks of its "opposite," he means, in the lower
categories, what the abstract thinker regards as its irrecon-
cilable contradictory; and when he speaks of " reconciling
these contradictories, he is merely using language that repre-
7
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
5
sents the view of abstract thought. Dialectic, however, does
not recognise the claims of the opposites to be incompatible,
and hence need perform no atoning work. To put this in
technical Hegelian language, it is merely external reflexion
that regards the speculative logic as reconciling contra-
dictories. Logic itself, in performing this operation which
an onlooker calls a reconciliation, is not conscious of being
engaged in a ministry of reconciliation, but is only conscious
of advancing from a lower to a higher category.
What I have said above may easily be misunderstood; for
it may seem to imply that the higher category is not a unity
of opposites. It is such a unity, but not of contradictory R
opposites, or of contrary opposites, as these terms are used in
the traditional logic; and it is this fact that I have wished to
make prominent, and I may be thought to have carried the
emphasis on to the point of danger. To put it all in one
sentence, logic takes what appear to be contradictories, and
does what appears to be a reconciling of them; but succeeds
in so doing, merely because they are not such contradictories
as cannot be thought together in one thought.
The best proof of the correctness of this exposition is the
light that it throws upon many a dark passage in Hegel's
Logic. If we bear in mind the double aspect of the negative
categories, we shall be able to solve riddles that otherwise
would remain insoluble, except by the Gordian-knot method
to which Mr. McTaggart has resorted. I shall quote one pas-
sage of the many that find their explanation only in what has
just been said. In the Greater Logic, under the section,
Determinate Being as Such, there is a sub-section, Determin-
ate Being in General. Here we read: "Determinate Being
arises out of Becoming. Determinate Being is the simple
unity of Being and Naught. Because of this simplicity, it
has the form of an immediate. Its mediation, Becoming, lies
behind it, has been sublated. Determinate Being, therefore,
appears as a primal datum from which we take our start." i
Here it is evident that Hegel is not concerned with deter-
minate Being as it has been mediated—that is, as it appears
to the speculative thinker-but as it appears apart from its
mediation. He seems to be giving an answer, not to the
question how this category has arisen in the course of the
dialectical process, but to the question how it comes that, if
it has thus arisen, it appears unmediated. The answer is
that the process lies behind the category, and the unspecu-
lative thinker does not look behind for it, but looks only at
1 ¹ I., 106 and 107 (112 and 113).
6
E. B. MCGILVARY:
what lies immediately before him. It is true that there is some
excuse for such neglect on the part of the thinker; for, in
one sense, this category, as well as every other, is immediate
even from the point of view of the speculative thinker; for
immediacy is not a characteristic on the same level with
mediation and antagonistic to it. Like all true dialectical
negatives, it is higher than that which it negates, containing
mediateness as one of its moments. In this sense imme-
diacy is self-mediation; and it is in this sense that determin-
ate Being is for the speculative thinker immediate; for its
presuppositions, its moments, its media are in it and not be-
hind it. This is one of the things that Hegel means when
he says that in this category mediation is sublated; for to
sublate means both to cancel and to retain. Mediation is
cancelled, for this category is immediate; and it is retained,
for this category is, from a higher point of view, self-
mediated. But a full insight into this truth does not yet
appear, and it would be anticipating a later result of the dia-
lectic to bring forth this truth at this stage. This revelation
will be made first by the category of Being-for-self. Hence
the real purpose of introducing determinate Being as imme-
diate and of saying that it appears as a new starting-point,
is to account for the apparent immediacy of the category as
it is ordinarily regarded.
We are now ready to return to the discussion upon which
we entered on the second page of this paper, and to examine
the claim made by Mr. McTaggart, that in the categories of
Being the dialectic advance is made possible only by outer
reflexion. And the first thing to do is to determine the
meaning of the expression "outer reflexion". It is a phrase
constantly used by Hegel in his Logic, and fully explained in
the Second Book;¹ but it will not be necessary to quote and
to explain this difficult passage, for I do not intend to give
an outline of Hegel's doctrine of reflexion, but merely to
touch upon such features of this doctrine, or rather upon
such corollaries from it, as bear upon our present purpose.
It does not concern us to investigate the true dialectical
relation between the different kinds of reflexion, but merely
to ascertain what Hegel means when he denies that outer
reflexion is the motive power in the earlier categories, and
what Mr. McTaggart presumably means when he asserts
that it is the only means used to secure the dialectical
advance in these categories.
Outer reflexion is a way of regarding two categories as
1
¹ II., 19 (19), seq.
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
7
having no genetic relation to each other, but as merely co-
existing in the thinker's mind independently of each other.
This thinker, as a third party, compares the categories and
passes judgment upon them as to resemblance or difference.
This judgment does not affect the true inner nature of the
categories, but merely records the impression they make on
an onlooker. For a corroboration of this description of the
function of outer reflexion, I shall quote two passages from
the First Book of the Greater Logic; for it is this book that
deals with the categories now in question. In one passage
Hegel says: "This sameness of the determinations" (of
Something and Other) "is only a matter of outer reflexion,
of comparison of the two ". Here we see an identification
of outer reflexion and comparison. The second passage is
more explicit. "We have still," says he, "to mention par-
ticularly the word unity, which is, if I may say so, very in-
felicitous. It designates, even more than identity does, a
subjective reflexion; for it is for the most part considered as
a relation that arises from comparison, from external re-
flexion. In as far as this faculty finds the same characteris-
tic in two different objects, a unity is present in such wise
that, withal, there is also presupposed the complete indiffer-
ence to this unity on the part of the objects themselves that
are compared. The act of comparing, therefore, and the
unity do not concern the objects themselves at all, but are
an activity and a determination external to them. Ex-
ternal or outer reflexion, then, brings together two cate-
gories considered as mutually independent, and establishes
a relation between them for its own convenience; but this
relation is not regarded as in any way arising from their
true inner nature, or as in any way affecting that nature.
Inner reflexion is opposed to this outer reflexion. What
this inner reflexion is can be seen by studying the passage in
the Introduction to the Greater Logic, where Hegel says
that "the divisions and headings of the books, sections and
chapters. . . do not belong to the contents and body of the
science, but are arrangements of outer reflexion. They
are meant to have no other significance than that of a table
of contents. But, besides, the necessity of the connexion
(of the categories thus brought together externally) "and
the immanent origin of the distinctions are found in the
treatment of the subject-matter itself; for they are in-
volved in the progressive self-determination of the conception.
That by which the conception accomplishes its self-advance-
³ I., 94 (100).
¹ I., 117 (123).
2 I., 84 and 85 (90).
3
"2
8
E. B. MCGILVARY:
ment is the aforesaid negative, that it has in it. This con-
stitutes the truly dialectical feature. . . . Ordinarily the
dialectic is regarded as an external and negative activity,
that does not belong to the subject-matter itself. This
activity is supposed to have its source in mere vain caprice,
acting as a subjective impulse to take what is firm and true
and make it totter and fall to pieces."1 Here the contrast
between outer and inner reflexion is clearly stated, although
inner reflexion is not mentioned by name. While in outer
reflexion the relation between two categories is established,
not by the categories themselves, but by an outsider, in
inner reflexion one category is seen to rise inevitably out of
the other by immanent necessity, by reason of the negative
that resides in the other. “Outside reflexion " is therefore
subjective, and is contingent on the attitude of an outsider.
Inner reflexion is objective, and is necessary from the very
inner constitution of the object.
With the caveat already entered, that I am here treating
of outer and of inner reflexion only in their bearing upon my
present purpose, and not in their dialectical relations to
each other, I am now ready to examine Mr. McTaggart's
assertion that, in the categories of Being, "it is only outside
reflexion which .. shows us that the dialectical process is
inevitable". But as he maintains that the process through-
out Being is not uniform, so he would perhaps say that the
kind of reflexion involved in the advance changes with the
advance, and that if we want a typical instance of the
enginery used in Being, we must take up the very first triad.
So be it. If we can prove that the advance here is not due
to outer reflexion, a fortiori we may conclude that nowhere
is it due to outer reflexion.
Hegel himself realises the difficulty of getting a start.
This difficulty lies in the fact that we must begin with an
immediate category, with one that has not arisen from any
other; for if it has so arisen it is no longer the first category,
but its source is a category prior to it. But any immediate
category must be simple; it may have no moments or con-
stitutive factors; else it would not be immediate, but would
be mediated by these moments.2 But if it has no moments
it would seem as if it must be a dead self-identity; and
any progress from the category could not therefore be ac-
1 I., 39-41 (42 and 43).
2
I have discussed this point quite at length in an article on The Pre-
supposition Question in Hegel's Logic" in the Philosophical Review,
September, 1897, pp. 512 seq.
"
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
9
1
complished by any indwelling motive power, but must be
due to power from some external source. The advance is
forced upon it from outside and is in no sense its own act.
This, then, is the apparent dilemma that Hegel had to
face: Either there are moments immanent in the first cate-
gory or there are none. If there are, then the first category
is not the first category. If there are none, then the move-
ment must be due to external reflexion, and is not a
necessary logical movement at all. Hegel, however, evi-
dently believed that this dilemma was more apparent than
real; for on the very page of his Greater Logic where he
calls attention to the fact that the transition in the first triad
appears different from the subsequent transitions ¹ he states
that inner reflexion is at work here as well as outer re-
flexion; and we shall soon see that inner reflexion is the true
organon of the dialectical movement, and that outer reflexion
is appealed to for the reason that we are dealing with cate-
gories appearing in a form not amenable to dialectic, because
not capable of being thought. As they are not thought-
determinations at all when appearing in this form, but are
mere make-believes, their spurious character must be shown
by the faculty of make-believe, that is, by external reflexion.
Even the very way in which the two kinds of reflexion are
spoken of here, shows which is the active power. Hegel
is saying to his unspeculative opponent, who wants to test
everything by outer reflexion: "Your own outer reflexion,
as well as the inner reflexion proper to logic, sets down the
indefiniteness of pure Being as equal to Naught, and declares
it to be a mere creation of thought, a nothing". Thus we
see that, in the very first triad, he shows, in the most un-
mistakable way, his belief that inner reflexion is the
vehicle of progress.
Let us now see whether we can discover how he justifies
to himself such an escape from the apparent dilemma that
confronts him. His statement of the difference which ap-
pears between the transition from the first to the second
category, and all the later transitions, is this: "In the pure
reflexion of the beginning, such as is made in this Logic
with Being as such, the transition is still hidden. Because
Being is only posited as immediate, Naught breaks forth
into view in it only immediately. But all the follow-
1 ¹ I., 94 (100).
Ibid., “Diese Unbestimmtheit oder abstracte Negation, welche so
das Seyn an ihm selbst hat, ist es, was die äussere wie die innere Re-
flexion ausspricht, indem sie es dem Nichts gleich setzt".
10
E. B. MCGILVARY:
ing categories, e.g., determinate Being, are more concrete
(i.e., complex, made up of factors). "There has already
been explicitly posited in them the element that contains
and produces the contradictions of those abstractions, and
therefore contains and produces their transition. In Being
as simple and immediate, the recollection that it is the
result of complete abstraction and thus is already abstract
negativity or Naught, has been laid aside before entering
upon our science.
But in the course of the science, ex-
pressly from Essence onward, that one-sided immediacy will
be shown to be mediated; for there Being appears as
Existence, and the mediating factor of this Being, the
Ground, is explicitly posited." 2
1
Again in another place he says: "We may still make
another remark about the character of the transition of
Being and Naught into each other, namely, that this tran-
sition is to be conceived without the help of any further
categories of reflexion. It is immediate and entirely ab-
stract, because of the abstraction of the transitive moments,
that is, because there has not been explicitly posited in
either of these moments the determinateness of the other,
by means of which the transition could be effected. Naught
is not yet posited in Being, although Being is essentially
Naught, and vice versa. Hence it is not permissible to
apply here principles of mediation which are further deter-
mined, and to conceive of Being and Naught as in some
essential relation (Verhältniss)-the transition is not as yet
an essential relation. It is thus not proper to say: 'Naught
is the ground of Being, or Being is the ground of Naught';
or to say, 'Naught is the cause of Being, and so forth'; or
again to say: There can be transition into Naught only
under the condition that something is, or into Being only
under the condition of Non-Being'. The kind of relation
(Beziehung) cannot be further determined without further
determining at the same time the related sides. The nexus
of Ground and Consequence, for instance, no longer has for
its connected sides mere Being and Naught, but it has" (as
one side) "expressly Being that is Ground, and" (as the
other side) "something which is indeed only posited, not
independent, but something which is not abstract Naught,'
because abstract Naught is independent.
"3
¹ Here let the reader bear in mind the etymology of this word, ex-
sistentia, a standing forth out of something as its ground. It is Being in
an essential relation.
2 I., 94 and 95 (100).
* I., 99 and 100 (105 and 106).
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
11
And once again, at the end of the completed work, where
he reviews the whole dialectical procedure in the light of the
final result, he says: "The beginning has, accordingly, for
this method no other characterisation than that it is the
•
simple and universal. . The universal, however, in the
absolute method, is not regarded as a mere abstract, but as
the objective universal, that is, as that which of itself
(an sich) is the concrete totality, but a totality not yet
explicitly posited, not yet for itself" (i.e., not yet explicitly
recognised). "Even the abstract universal as such is in
its concept, that is, considered in its truth, not merely the
simple; but as abstract it is already explicitly posited as
infected with negation. There is, therefore, whether in
reality or in thought, nothing so simple and so abstract as
one usually supposes. Such a simple is a mere make-
believe, which has its ground only in the unconsciousness
of what is in fact present. The initial category has been
previously characterised as the immediate; this immediacy
of the universal is the very same thing that is here expressed
as that which is of itself, without being for itself.
The concrete totality which makes the beginning has, as
such, in itself (in ihr selbst) the beginning of the advance
and of the development. It is, as concrete, possessed of dis-
tinctions within itself (in sich unterschieden). Because of
its first immediacy, however, the first distinct elements are
at first different. However, the immediate, as self-referred
universality, as subject, is also the unity of these different
elements. This reflexion is the first stage of the advance,
the emergence of difference, judgment,¹ determination. The
essential thing is that the absolute method finds and recog-
nises the determination of the universal in the universal
itself. The finite knowledge of the understanding proceeds,
in the act of determination, in the following way: what it
laid aside in the creation of the universal by abstraction, it
takes up again from the concrete in just as external a
manner. On the contrary, the absolute method does not
conduct itself as external reflexion, but gets the determinate
out of the object itself, seeing that the method is the very
immanent principle and soul of the object." 2
I have made these many long quotations because the
¹ Hegel's use of "Urtheil" is peculiar, and, for the beginner, is puz-
zling. He takes it in the sense of a self-originated diremption of a
concept; and it should, perhaps, be so translated here.
²III., 323-326 (333-335), quoted, as the asterisks show, with large
omissions.
12
E. B. MCGILVARY:
""
point they are meant to support is so important, and that
point is this. Although the first category appears as simple
and abstract, it is not so in reality, and the negation which
seems to stand beside it as a mere indifferent neighbour is,
in fact, "bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh,
an Eve
created out of the rib of Adam. But this immanent origin
does not make itself manifest in the beginning; or, to use
Hegel's own language just quoted, "in the pure reflexion of
the beginning the transition is still hidden". At that stage,
then, all that one can say is, that "Naught breaks forth into
view in Being only immediately". There seems, as yet, to
be no mediation for it on the part either of Being or of some
third and external agent. We are not yet in a position to say
that the emergence of the category Naught is due either to
outer or to inner reflexion.¹ Just as the first category is taken
in its immediacy, so the second is, at this point, to be con-
sidered as immediate. But just as further on we shall see
that our first category is not immediate to the exclusion of
mediation, but is mediated and self-mediated, so we shall see
that the movement from the first category, which surprises
us now because we cannot see any mediation for it, is
mediated by the very moments which we shall find to me-
diate Being. As soon as Being shows itself up as not simple
but complex, the apparently immediate emergence of the
thought of Naught upon the thought of Being shows itself
to be brought about by the originally hidden, but actually
present, complex factors of Being. The transition is, then,
really made by virtue of the negative that lurks unseen in
pure Being; but because the negative is at present in hid-
ing, the act of transition is also hidden.
There are thus three different kinds of reflexion that may
deal with the relation existing between the categories of the
first triad-pure reflexion, external reflexion and internal re-
flexion. Let us now proceed to see in detail how each kind
of reflexion will exhibit the relation and how Hegel ex-
presses the result obtained by each.
1. Pure reflexion puts the relation thus: "Because Being
is only posited as immediate, Naught breaks forth into view
in it only immediately. The transition is as yet hidden."
This is Hegel's own way of representing the point of view of
¹It is this inability to say anything as yet about the mediation of
Naught, that makes Hegel call the reflexion at this stage "pure re-
flexion" (In der reinen Reflexion des Anfangs, i., 94 (100)).
"Pure"
here means two things. It means "not externally mediated," and also
apparently not mediated at all". It has the same meanings when used
with Being and Naught, as will appear presently.
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
13
pure reflexion.¹ To express the same idea more fully, we
should say that the thought (category) of Being can never be
thought alone; but in thinking it we discover that we
are always at the same time thinking the thought (category)
of Naught. Neither Being alone, nor Naught alone, ever ex-
hausts the content of the thought that thinks either; but
both must be thought together in one synthetic thought.
The conception of Naught is thus to be perceived in the
conception of Being. In the concept of Being, in the
thought that clutches it, there is also present, clutched in the
very same grip, another element, namely Naught. This is
what Hegel means in the passage quoted above,³ when he
says: "Even the abstract universal as such is, in its con-
cept, that is, considered in its truth, not merely the simple ;
but, as abstract, it is already posited as infected with nega-
tion".
2
2. External reflexion has a different way of setting forth the
relation between Being and Naught, and, as we should ex-
pect, it is a very shallow and superficial way. Pure reflexion
is the immediate act of the infant logic; external reflexion
is the self-confident, but trivial, worthless act of the youthful
logic, which knows only the outside appearance of things,
but thinks it "knows it all". Being an act of comparison,
external reflexion must have some objects given to it, and is
merely concerned with the resemblance or the difference of
these objects as they appear to the subject who reflects only
upon the surface of them. In the present instance, before
external reflexion can act, it must have both Being and
Naught come before it, and then it must compare them.
These conditions are met in Hegel's treatment of these cate-
gories in the text of his Greater Logic, where he says:
Being, pure Being-without any further determination. In
its undetermined immediacy, it is only like itself nor is it un-
like anything else; it has no difference within itself, nor any as
against what is without. If any determination or contents
were distinguished within it, or were made the means of
setting it down as distinct from something else, it would not
be maintained in its purity. It is pure indeterminateness
and vacuity. There is nothing to be perceived in it, if we
can here speak of perceiving; or rather it is only this pure,
empty perceiving itself. Just as little is anything to be
thought in it or rather it is likewise only this empty
66
¹ I., 94 (100).
2 I., 73 (78): “Es ist nichts in ihm anzuschauen". But see below.
3
³ P. 65 above.
14
E. B. MCGILVARY:
thought. Being, the undetermined immediate, is in fact
Naught, and nothing more or less than Naught." 1
Here we see that after Hegel has defined Being, he tells
us that in this category we see nothing. This may be taken
to mean one of two things. One meaning may be that
which we have already indicated in discussing the point of
view of pure reflexion: 2 "In the thought that thinks the
category of pure Being, we perceive besides the category of
Naught". If this were the correct paraphrase we should
expect "Nichts" and not "nichts," for elsewhere Hegel always
capitalises his categories; here both in the edition of 1812
and in the two issues of the second edition, the word is not
capitalised. We may conclude that this is not the meaning
of the passage, and we are then forced to the alternative
that Hegel's thought is this: "In such an undetermined per-
ception or thought as we have in pure Being, there is not
anything to be seen or thought. Indeed we have a mere
objectless perception or thought; and just such a lack of
object for perception or thought is what we mean by Naught.
Hence the category of undetermined Being is, in fact, exactly
the category of undetermined Naught, no more, no less."
If this is the line of thought, as it seems to be, it is clear
that Hegel could never have said that the category of pure
Being, so defined, was the category of pure Naught, unless
the latter category with its meaning were already indepen-
dently in his mind, waiting to be compared with the
former. For Hegel has just said that of itself pure Being
has no resemblances. The recognition, therefore, of any
likeness to something else, or of any identity with some-
thing else, cannot have been forced upon him by the
category itself that is now the object of thought; but it
must be the result of an external reflexion on his part, seeing
that external reflexion differs from the internal reflexion of
the absolute method just in this, that it does not obtain its
result by a process that the object of thought performs.
But if the identification of Being and Naught has been
accomplished by external reflexion, then the category of
Naught does not arise dialectically out of the category of Being,
but is merely pronounced identical with that category by an
external arbiter who decides nothing on its intrinsic merits.
That the course of thought in this passage is that of ex-
ternal reflexion is further shown in the next paragraph, where
Hegel proceeds to justify the identification of Being and
Naught by rehearsing fully the definition of Naught, and by
1 ¹ I., 72 and 73 (77 and 78).
2 P. 67 above.
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
15
showing that it is exactly the same as that of pure Being.
"Naught, pure Naught; it is simple likeness to self, com-
plete vacuity, absence of determinateness and contents,
lack of distinctions within itself. In so far as perception or
thought may be here mentioned, it is generally considered
a distinction whether something or nothing be perceived or
thought. To perceive or to think nothing, therefore, has a
meaning; the two" (i.e., something and nothing) "are dis-
tinct; hence Naught is (exists) in our perception or thought;
or rather it is empty perception and thought itself, and is
the same empty perception or thought as pure Being.
Naught is therefore the same determination, or rather lack
of determination, and hence altogether the same thing, that
pure Being is." 1
Here it is evident that Hegel is merely
comparing, point by point, the two categories, and as a
result pronounces a judgment of identity between them.
In short, he is simply engaging in external reflexion. But
besides identifying the two categories, he also remarks upon
a distinction which is commonly held to exist between the
no categories. It must, however, be noticed that he here
offers proof of the validity of this distinction. He merely
appeals to current opinion; such an appeal surely is not a
dialectical process.
It seems to me that one cannot escape the conviction that
in the two paragraphs we have here examined, the procedure
is one of external reflexion, and not a dialectical procedure
by internal reflexion. To repeat what has been said, com-
parison of two categories, which of themselves do not prompt
to any such comparison, leads the author to say that they
are identical; current opinion as to their distinctness leads
him to animadvert upon this distinction. It should be ob-
served, however, that from such an identity as has been
established, he has no right to say that Being and Naught
are unseparated and inseparable, and that each vanishes in the
other, and that the truth is neither the one nor the other, but
the effected transition of the one into the other, all of which
he does say in the following paragraph-he has no right to
say this, unless he merely means that the psychological
association in the thinker's mind between Naught and the
definition of Being, and between Being and the definition of
Naught, is so strong that, when he thinks of the definition
of Being, the thought of Naught arises inevitably by spon-
taneous associative processes, and vice versa.
The conclusion of this examination, therefore, is that in
I., 73 (78).
16 E. B. MCGILVARY: THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
Hegel's Greater Logic the whole of the text that treats of the
categories, Being and Naught, so far as the identification and
the distinction of the two categories go, is concerned with
exhibiting the work of external reflexion. Now the question
arises, whether these paragraphs contain the only representa-
tion given by Hegel of the relation between these categories.
If so, his case is hopeless. He is unmistakably convicted of
using in the dialectic an instrument that he has in the most
explicit terms declared to be unavailable for the purpose;
and the unity that is brought about between Being and
Naught is as blank a self-identity as was either pure Being
or pure Naught. There is no movement. His thought is as
changeless as the Brahman's, who "year in and year out
gazes at the tip of his own nose and mutters 'Om, Om,
Om' to himself or else keeps silent".¹ But did Hegel mean
to palm off this paralysis of thought, this movelessness of
external reflexion, as a genuine dialectical movement of vital
inner reflexion? Are we forced to the alternative of saying,
either that he himself was deceived in the matter, or else
that he tried to deceive others? Surely not, when in the
very first paragraph of his first remark 2 on this passage he
tells us that in pure Naught he is conceiving only the abstract
negation, and of course we may conclude from the distinction
he is constantly making between abstract negation and dia-
lectical negation that he is not dealing with the latter. In-
deed, he tells us expressly that his purpose is not "to deal
with the form of the opposition" (between Being and Naught)
that is, at the same time, with the form of the relation be-
tween them, but with abstract, immediate negation, with
Naught purely independent, with unrelated denial—which,
if one would, one could express by bare not". If it had been
his purpose to exhibit the second category in its dialectical
form and in its dialectical relation, it would have been proper
to substitute Non-Being for Naught, and in such a category
all the dialectical characteristics of the negative would have
manifested themselves. "For in Non-Being the relation to
Being is contained; it is both Being and the negation of
Being expressed in one word; Naught, as it is in Becoming."
He thus disavows, in as clear and unmistakable terms as lan-
guage can provide, any attempt to exhibit a dialectical move-
ment in what he has said about the identity and about the
distinctness of Being and Naught, when treating those cate-
gories in their purity.
(6
1 I., 92 (97).
- I., 74 (79).
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD. (II.)
[Off-printed from MIND: a Quarterly Review of Psychology and
Philosophy. Vol. VII., N.S., No. 26.]
BY PROF. E. B. MCGILVARY.
RETURNING now from the remarks to the text of the work,
with the third paragraph of the first chapter¹ we enter
upon a new movement of thought altogether. The identity
of Being and Naught is still maintained and also their dis-
tinction; but this identity and this distinction are no longer
the identity and the distinction of indifferent objects which
have been compared by an indifferent manipulator. Their
identity becomes the unity of an organic whole in which
their distinction is merely the variety of the organic
factors entering into such a whole, a variety that is not,
and cannot be, subjected to such a tension that a separation
between the factors takes place. The dialectic engine has,
up to this point, been revolving upon a turn-table operated
by external force; from now on, it makes its way forward
by its own power.
3. This remark leads us to our next task, which is to
consider the relation that inner reflexion establishes between
Being and Naught, and to see how Hegel exhibits this rela-
tion. But here we are likely to be called to a halt. We
shall be told that Hegel nowhere indicates such a relation
for us. And such an eminent authority on the Hegelian
dialectic as Dr. W. T. Harris may be cited as conceding the
truth of this contention; and, indeed, Dr. Harris does say
that Hegel throws no light on the subject. The dialectic
here takes a "hidden step," the logical chain contains a
"suppressed link "2 He thinks that Hegel himself knew well
enough what the relation is, but he knew it so well that he
did not think it possible that any one else could be ignorant
of it; hence he has not touched upon the subject directly at
all; and the expositor must "undertake a new analysis with
a view to discover if possible that hidden step”. That, if the
¹I., 73 (78).
'Hegel's Logic: A Book on the Genesis of the Categories of the Mind.
A Critical Exposition. By William T. Harris, LL.D., U.S. Commissioner
of Education. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Company, 1890. P. 172.
2
E. B. MCGILVARY:
need existed, Dr. Harris has supplied it, I do not question,
and that Dr. Harris has shown the nature of this step in a
far more lucid exposition than it was Hegel's good fortune
to hit upon, I do not question. What I do question is that
Hegel is silent as to the true dialectical process here.
The paragraph in which he treats of Becoming expresses
the dialectical relation between Being and Naught. It is
true that it is couched in the most distinctively Hegelian
diction, whereas Dr. Harris writes in a language which he
who runs may read. A literal translation of the Hegelian
dialect of the passage I refer to runs thus: "Pure Being and
pure Naught are thus the same. The truth, however, is neither
Being nor Naught, but the fact that Being-not makes, but
-has made a transition into Naught, and Naught into
Being. But just as certainly is the truth not their indistin-
guishableness, but the fact that they are not the same, that they
are absolutely distinct, yet also unseparated and inseparable;
and that each vanishes immediately in its opposite. Their truth
is, thus, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one in
the other-is, namely, Becoming; a movement in which both
are distinct, but with a distinction which is immediately just
as certainly cancelled.”¹
What Hegel means by the "truth" of any category is that
in which alone it has any being, that in which it functions
as a moment, but apart from which, in independence of
which, it has…….o reality at all. And what he means by the
vanishing of a category in its opposite, is the loss of it as an
independent category in the engulfing organic totality of its
dialectical negative. But the category that thus loses its
life finds it again in the fuller life of the higher category
into which it has been translated. If, then, the truth of
Being and Naught is Becoming, "we see, therefore,” to use
Dr. Harris' words, "that we really thought a Becoming in-
stead of an isolated term which we have named Being or
Naught "2
Dr. Harris would perhaps say to this, that he does not
deny that Hegel states accurately enough the result of the
process in this case; what he denies is that he depicts the
process itself in the very act. Hegel shows that the result is thus
and so, but not why it is thus and so. And it is this expla-.
nation that Dr. Harris proceeds to give, and which I may
summarise by saying that pure Being cannot be thought, and
that for two reasons: first, to think Being as pure or inde-
terminate is to determine it by its contrast with all determined
2 Op. cit., p. 173.
¹ L., 73 and 74 (78 and 79).
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
3
independent actuality '.¹ Not only is the transition now
necessary to the categories, but the transition is the cate-
gories. The reality in any finite category, in this stage,
consists only in its summing up those which went before,
and in leading on to those which come after.'
"2
Now, before we can satisfactorily enter upon a discussion
of this point, it will be necessary to make some preliminary
remarks about the double aspect in which the categories
appear in the Logic. The primary purpose of the Logic is
to show how even the most abstract and seemingly inde-
pendent and inorganic category contains within itself the
Tife of the whole system of all-inclusive Thought; and how
"this life, if allowed full play, will develop that barren cate-
gory through all the stages of thought up to the highest.
Now, as this category grows under our observation, we see
it taking the form of other categories familiar to us. Thus
in the very development of the lowest category we reach
other categories whose evolution it is the business of logic
to display. Hence it is not necessary to give a separate
genealogical table to each category; but the pedigree of one
category will be the pedigree of many-but, from one point
of view,³ not the pedigree of all. And this is an important
point. There are categories that, in the form in which we
ordinarily use them, or rather in which we think we use
them, are not to be found in the direct line of march from
pure Being towards the goal of the Absolute Idea. But
though not on the line of march, they are near by, and it
takes only a little flank movement to sweep them into it.
But this flank movement arrests the procession
"for the
subjective spirit," as Hegel would say. It appears as if
there were a zigzag movement with constant stops, and not
a "never-halting march "4
I may illustrate what I mean by borrowing and developing
the metaphor Hegel uses for representing the absolute unity
of thought. This unity is a circle; thought's movement
is in an orbit that returns upon itself. But suppose that
one has not yet discovered the orbit, does not even know
whether there be any orbit or any movement; suppose one
loses one's perspective, and, from any position, views two
points in the circumference of the circle. These points
1 "Enc., Section 159."
2
Op. cit., pp. 123, 124.
³ I wish to call especial attention to this reservation. For, from an-
other point of view, it is the pedigree of all.
• I., 39 (41): “In unaufhaltsamem
. Gange".
4
E. B. MCGILVARY:
may appear to him side by side, rather than one in advance
of the other. The more advanced point is then viewed as if it
were collateral with the nearer; hence when a movement is
discovered and is supposed to be in a bee-line from the point
of observation through one of these points on to the infinite,
it will seem as though a digression must be made from this
line in order to catch the other point into the movement.
In the same way a higher category is viewed as if it were
co-ordinate with a lower one; so viewed, it will not have all
the characteristics it should have, else it would not appear
co-ordinate. In such a case, it is clear that when the lower
category has advanced to the higher, it will not have passed
through the form the higher takes when reduced to a lower
plane. Now, as ordinary thought is abstract and thinks its
categories in their abstractness, and not in their concrete-
ness, it will be necessary, when dialectic comes alongside of
a category in its abstract form, to show how this abstract
category develops itself into the same concrete fulness into
which its seeming co-ordinate was developed. To change
the figure, the stone which, in the structure of speculative
logic, has its significance only as resting on the lower stones
and furnishing a basis for the higher, is by the common
thinker torn out of its place and used as an independent
unit. It is the business of the speculative builder, when he
reaches this stone in its structural place, to show that even
when lying apart it bears traces upon itself that cannot fail
to indicate that such isolation is not proper to it, but that it
belongs to an architectural system; and to show that these
traces also indicate where it belongs in that system.
But even this is not all. Common understanding has its
own ways of artificially grouping these abstract categories.
One way, and a very favourite way, especially in dealing with
the categories that dialectic reaches first, is to pair them off,
and to set each member of a pair over against the other, as
of equal rank, but mutually incompatible. Thus from the
abstract point of view, these paired-off categories are contra-
dictory to each other; and what dialectic does, appears to
be a reconciling of these contradictions. When Hegel, there-
fore, speaks of any category "as such," he means that cate-
gory regarded as the "unspeculative" thinker regards it;
that is, as leading to no dialectical result, and even as indepen-
dent of the process by which speculative logic has reached it.
And when he speaks of its "opposite," he means, in the lower
categories, what the abstract thinker regards as its irrecon-
cilable contradictory; and when he speaks of "reconciling
these contradictories, he is merely using language that repre-
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
5
2
1
But to say that Being arose historically by the generative
act of Naught is very different from saying that when once
born into history it has a logical bond binding it to its
psychological parent. The logician must examine the
category itself, in order to discover its relationship; the
testimony of genealogical tables is external testimony.
Family marks are worth more than family Bibles. The
logician who investigates his category finds that it is
essentially Naught—not the abstract Naught of the unreflect-
ing consciousness, but the Naught that is a synthetic unity
of Being and its opposite, the Naught that is Becoming.
But when he is just beginning his investigation, he has
not yet made the discovery. He merely sees Being and
Naught side by side. There does not seem to be an advance
from Being to Naught; Naught seems to have been reached
already, when Being is reached. He seems to have two
immediate data. But after his investigations have progressed
somewhat, he sees that, when he had what appeared to be
two data, he really had one concrete category, to the two
moments of which he paid attention separately. Being
stands side by side with Naught, because neither is pure,
because each is merely an organic element in Non-Being,
the concrete negation of Being. It is because Being is what
it is only in that which robs it of its abstract independence,
in that which negates it and thus posits it-it is because of
this, that Being passes into Naught. But when the logician
sees this, he also sees that this Naught into which Being
passes is a dialectical negative, and not an abstract negative.
But as the dialectical negative is richer than its positive, the
passing from Being to Naught is an advance in a straight line,
not a transverse motion. To sum this up in an expression
which reproduces almost verbatim an expression of Hegel's,
Naught appears immediately in Being just because Being is
Being, only in the higher unity of Naught; just because
Being is Being, only as an essential moment in the concrete
totality of its negative.
The logician is a spectator of a performance by Hermann,
the magician, and must not go behind the scenes. He is to
let the magical feats begin where it is the good will of the
magician to let them begin, and he must await developments.
All he can do is to register the fact that when Being appears
¹ What I say here and in the whole of this paragraph, as to the identity
of the antithesis and synthesis when they are viewed dialectically, will
be justified in the sequel.
2 That is, unless he has mastered the presupposition of logic. See the
Philosophical Review, September, 1897, p. 497 ff.
6
E. B. MCGILVARY:
behind the lights, Naught stands by her side; or to be more
exact in the metaphor, he notes that Being appears Protean;
now she is Being and now she is Naught. He cannot see this
metamorphosis going on; but he knows that it has taken
place; for when he thinks that he is looking at Being, he
discovers that he is really looking at Naught. He must
wait patiently, and keep his eyes open and his wits alert.
By-and-by he will detect the secret of the illusion. And he
will then have the satisfaction of knowing that he comes
by the solution of the puzzle without committing a breach
of propriety. He has not sacrificed his dignity as a logician
by peeping into psychological dressing-rooms.
Two questions now arise. (1) If Hegel really knew the
true dialectical nature of the relation between Being and
Naught, why did he not express it clearly in the text of his
work when treating of these first two categories, instead of
reserving the statement for his treatment of the third cate-
gory and for the remarks? (2) Is not Hegel's way of
stating this dialectical relation a petitio principii ?
(1) The answer to the first question can be given only
when we go back to what has been said in another place
about the double aspect of many categories.¹ Pure Being
has this double aspect. Regarded abstractly, you have a
category that can be treated only by external reflexion,
because such a category is not dialectical; just as a hand,
regarded geometrically, cannot be treated biologically. We set
a restriction upon the scope of our investigation, and cannot
go beyond the restriction until we remove it.
Regarded in another way, Being is not an abstract
identity, but is only a moment in a higher synthesis. This
is the true dialectical way of regarding it; and the logician,
if he has mastered the presupposition of his science, is
conscious that this is the only dialectical way of looking at
it. He knows that the category of thought-thinking-self,
or pure Being, is not a category of dead self-identity. He
knows that thought is thinking this category, and that
therefore this category is only a distinction, a moment,
within thought. It is an organic member within an or-
ganism. Hence it is pure Being, not as abstract, but as
determined by its own nature of being organically related
with its fellow-categories.
A careful reader of Hegel will therefore see that in A
and B, on pages 72 (77) and 73 (78) of the first volume of
the Greater Logic, the author is treating two categories by
¹ See January number of MIND, p. 57 ff.
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
7
external reflexion; in C, he is treating them as they stand
organically interrelated within a higher unity. In A and
B, he is showing to ordinary consciousness the contradic-
tion into which it falls, when it uses Being and Naught as
it is constantly using them. And as the demonstration is
for the sake of ordinary consciousness, it must be conducted
in the only way which ordinary consciousness can follow,
the way of external reflexion. Having thus shown the im-
possibility of the abstractly pure Being and pure Naught of
ordinary consciousness, by showing how in their abstraction
they are absolutely identical, and how their distinction is only
a make-believe, Hegel then proceeds in C to state the truth
with regard to them. This truth is that they have an
identity in a higher unity, in which they also maintain
their distinctness. In the independent character in which
they purport to exist, they do not exist. They exist only as
moments, only as distinctions. This thought is very clearly
brought out in C, and is expanded in the latter part of the
1
¹ Since writing the text I have read Mr. Hobhouse's discussion of the
dialectical movement in his most valuable volume, The Theory of
Knowledge, pp. 197-202. Does it bewray a heart too wickedly Hegelian
in its desire to sublate everything in sight, when I say that I admit the
truth contained in his characterisation of the Hegelian method, only I do
not think it is the whole truth? Is it a case in which "Hegelism be-
nignantly smiles at " her opponents' "exertions, and murmurs, 'If the
red slayer thinks he slays' 'When me they fly, I am the wings,' etc."?
(Professor James' The Will to Believe, p. 293). Mr. Hobhouse says that
"the dialectical process belongs to the pathology of thought". If what
I maintained in the January number of MIND (p. 57 ff.) be true, then
one aspect-but not the most important nor the most dialectical aspect
-of dialectic does concern "the pathology of thought". But even sup-
posing that this were an exhaustive account of the matter, is healthy
thought on such a subject as the real function and value of abstraction
so common, and is unsound thought so rare, that Hegel's attempt to
supply a therapeutic is to be patronisingly judged as having indeed "a
justification and a value of its own," but as being for all that mighty
"tedious"? Again, when Mr. Hobhouse says that "this process
is
set on foot, not by abstraction as such, but by the one-sided use of ab-
straction," does he not know that it is just this one-sided use of abstraction
and only this that Hegel calls abstraction? The kind of abstract which
Mr. Hobhouse rightly recognises as a genuine characteristic of reality,'
Hegel recognises as such also. He sins merely by calling it not an "ab-
stract," but a "distinction,” a (6 moment," etc. Is it quite fair then in
Mr. Hobhouse to hold Hegel up to general condemnation for one-sided-
ness, merely because Hegel was not lucky enough to anticipate Mr.
Hobhouse's terminology? This seems to me to be but another of the
innumerable instances in which an Hegelian insight gets itself "tricked
and flounced " in some fin de siècle garb and then goes before the bar of
public opinion as a witness to prove the philosophic barrenness of Hegel's
mind, because forsooth it did not bring forth this offspring ready-clad in
the most modern fashion.
•
•

8
E. B. MCGILVARY:
1
second remark; but it is unnecessary to quote the passage
here.
Let us state this turn of thought in another way. We
must begin our logical movement with pure Being.
But
pure Being has a double aspect. It may be regarded as an
unrelated abstract, or it may be regarded as merely an
organic factor in a thought-unity. We begin with the first
aspect of it, and find that it is a false aspect. We then take
it in its other aspect; but we now find that really we are
dealing as much with the organic unity to which it belongs
as with the factor that belongs to this unity. That is, we
may say that on this showing we really do not begin with
pure Being, but with Becoming, which has Being as its
moment. But such a statement must not be read with too
much emphasis on the negative side of it; for as we now
begin with Becoming, which has Being and Naught as its
moments, the logical beginning, as Hegel defines it, is not
Becoming, but the moments of Becoming. Becoming,
being a concrete category analysable into Being and
Naught, cannot be the logical beginning in this sense, but
its elements are logically prior to it; and Being is the element
with which we must begin. But this Being is no longer
pure Being as abstract, but Being as a moment in Becoming.
But in saying this we are already saying that in one sense
we begin with Becoming. A little further reflexion will
show that there is no contradiction in these two statements.
There are two kinds of logical presuppositions, and therefore
two logical beginnings. There is the presupposition on the
part of the organic unity; for it presupposes its distinctions;
hence logical movement must begin with these distinctions.
But they are distinctions, only on the presupposition of a
unity within which they have their being; hence logical
movement must begin with the unity. Hegel, in saying
that the initial category must be without presuppositions,
means that it must be the ultimate distinction. In saying that
Being presupposes absolute knowledge, absolute thought, he
means that this ultimate distinction has in its turn factors,
and thus becomes the ultimate unity in which what was just
now the organic whole is a distinction; therefore the ultimate
distinction is not ultimate, in the sense of being unanalysable.2
To apply all this to the case in point, and to sum up the
whole discussion in an answer to the question we started to
¹I., 85 and 86 (91).
2 A fuller discussion of this reciprocity will follow in a continuation of
this article in a subsequent number of MIND.
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
9
answer: Hegel does represent the inner dialectical movement
in the text of his Logic; but does not begin to do so till he
comes to Becoming; because it is only after he has Be-
coming, that he has Being as its moment. But this "after
is also a before," but not a
(6 before that is not also an
"after". Hence, because pure abstract Being and pure
abstract Naught are "befores " that are not also "afters," he
begins with them only to show that he cannot begin with
them. He does not really begin until he gets to Becoming,
for it is only then that he has something prior to Becoming.
These paradoxes may perhaps do something toward reducing
to order the confusion that has flourished so long over this
whole realm under the reign of the critics.
(2) The answer to this question leads us naturally to the
second question asked above. At first sight this question
seems a poser. For it appears as if the logical validity of
the final result of the logical process depended on the logical
validity of the movement in the first triad, and yet the logical
validity of this movement appears to be assured to us only
by the final result. Is not this a petitio? Now, there is
no question that there is a circular movement in this reason-
ing. Hegel himself admits it: "By this advance, then, the
beginning loses the one-sidedness it had in being altogether
an immediate and abstract category. It becomes something
mediated, and the line of progressive movement in this
science thus becomes a circle. At the same time, it follows
that what constitutes the beginning is, in the beginning,
not yet truly known, since at this stage it is as yet unde-
veloped and is without contents. It also follows that it is
only the logical science, and that, too, in its completed de-
velopment, that affords us a perfect knowledge of the begin-
ning, a knowledge full of contents and truly grounded." 2
But the circle is not a vicious circle. We do not begin with
some arbitrarily assumed premiss. We begin where the
nature of our task requires us to begin. This task is, as
already stated, to show how even the lowest category leads
irresistibly on to the highest. We start, therefore, with
what is apparently the lowest, namely, pure Being. In-
evitably, we know not as yet how or why Naught emerges
before our view, and so identifies itself with Being that the
two are inseparable. From this indissoluble but as yet mys-
terious union, into which our first category spontaneously
enters, the progress is understood, and is seen to be logically
necessary and perfectly uniform to the very last; and then,
¹ See page 238, above.
2 I., 61 (65 and 66).
10 E. B. MCGILVARY: THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
behold, we reach the point from which we set out at the
beginning, but with this difference, that, whereas at first
we did not seem to know anything about this category, not
even why it was inseparably connected with another, now
we know all about it; and among other things, we now
know why it led to the second category, and we see that its
relation to the second is exactly the relation of the first
category of every triad to its dialectical antithesis, as will
appear in the sequel. Thus we step upon a platform that
appears to be stationary; but to our great surprise we find
that it moves, we know not why. Subsequently the move-
ment of the platform brings us within sight of the propelling
machinery. The movement continues, and finally we are
back where we started. But now we know the reason for
the movement that was at first so inexplicable.¹
¹ We should remember, however, that this inexplicability is only a
psychological ἀπορία. The logical has no embarrassments. There
is nothing now hidden from it, that shall subsequently be made
known. The logician, as a man enacting a history in time, meets with
many perplexities and many overwhelming surprises in his studies at
logic. The logician, as a logician, is surprised at no truth that he sees
in his studies in logic. He eternally knows it; otherwise I do not see
how he could ever come to know it in any year of grace. To say the same
thing in other words, the student who has mastered the presupposition
of his logical science knows that his first dialectical category is an organic
member in an all-inclusive totality of thought. He therefore knows
why his first category leads to the second. The transition is for him a
moveless movement, a timeless process, of inner reflexion. But for a
student who begins with a mere resolve to consider thought as such, the
transition is a great mystery, only to be revealed in the fulness of time.
At some moment in his student's career, there will dawn upon him the
light which eternally lighteth every man.
(To be concluded.)
1
n
•
.
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD. (III.)
(Conclusion.)
[Off-printed from MIND: a Quarterly Review of Psychology and
Philosophy. Vol. VII., N.S., No. 27.]
BY PROF. E. B. McGILVARY.
II. Let us now address ourselves to the contention that
there is another kind of change in the method of the dialec-
tic, a change from dependence upon contradiction into abso-
lute indifference to contradiction. Mr. McTaggart says that
the difference is greatest between the method employed at
the very beginning of the process and the method employed
at its end. In the categories of Being, neither the thesis nor
the antithesis "is in any respect more advanced than the
other, and neither of them can be said to be more closely
connected than the other with the synthesis, in which both
of them alike find their explanation and reconciliation. But
when we come to Essence the matter is changed. Here the
transition from thesis to antithesis is still indeed from posi-
tive to negative, but it is more than merely this. The anti-
thesis is not merely complementary to the thesis, but is a
correction of it. It is consequently more concrete and true
than the thesis, and represents a real advance. And the
transition to the synthesis is not now made so much from
the comparison of the other two terms as from the antithesis
alone. For the antithesis does not now merely oppose a
contrary defect to the original defect of the thesis. It cor-
rects, to some degree, that original mistake, and therefore has
-to use the Hegelian phraseology- the truth' of the thesis
more or less within itself. As the action of the synthesis is
to reconcile the thesis and the antithesis it can only be de-
duced from the comparison of the two. But if the antithesis
has-as it has in Essence the thesis as part of its own sig-
nificance, it will present the whole of the data which the
synthesis requires, and it will not be necessary to recur to the
thesis, before the step to the synthesis is taken.
"But although the reconciliation can be inferred from the
second term, apart from the first, a reconciliation is still
necessary. For, while the antithesis is an advance upon the
thesis, it is also opposed to it. It is not simply a completion
2
E. B. MCGILVARY:
(
of it, but also a denial, though a denial which is already an
approximation to union. This element of opposition and
negation tends to disappear in the categories of the Notion.
As these approach the end of the whole process, the steps are
indeed discriminated from one another, but they can scarcely
be said to be in opposition. For we have now arrived at a
consciousness more or less explicit that in each category all
that have gone before are summed up, and all that are to
come after are contained implicitly. The movement of the
Notion is after all to be looked on only as a kind of play.
The other which it sets up is in reality not another.' And,
as a consequence, the third term merely completes the second
without correcting one-sidedness in it, in the same way as
the second term merely expands and completes the first.
As this type is realised, in fact, the distinctions of the three
terms gradually lose their meaning. There is no longer an
opposition produced between two terms and mediated by a
third. Each term is a direct advance on the other before
it. The object of the process is not now to make the one-
sided complete, but the implicit explicit. For we have
reached a stage when each side carries in it already more or
less consciousness of that unity of the whole which is the
synthesis, and requires development rather than refuta-
tion." 1
A few pages farther on, we read : "We may draw several
important conclusions with regard to the general nature of
the dialectic, from the manner in which the form changes as
it advances towards completion. The first of these is one
which we may fairly attribute to Hegel himself, since it is
evident from the way in which he deals with the categories,
although it is not explicitly noticed by him. This is the
subordinate place held by negation in the whole process.
We have already observed that the importance of the nega-
tion in the dialectic is by no means primary. In the first
place Hegel's Logic is very far from resting, as is supposed
by some critics, on the violation of the law of contradiction.
It rather rests on the impossibility of violating that law,
and on the necessity of finding, for every contradiction, a re-
conciliation in which it vanishes. And not only is the idea
of negation destined always to vanish in the synthesis, but
even its temporary introduction is an accident, though an
inevitable accident. . . . But this can now be carried still
further. Not only is the presence of negation in the dia-
lectic a mere accident, though a necessary one, of the gradual
1
Op. cit., pp. 124, 125.
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
3
completion of the idea. We are now led to consider it as
an accident which is necessary indeed in the lower stages
of the dialectic, but which is gradually eliminated in pro-
portion as we proceed further." 1
I have quoted thus largely in order that the issue may
be
clearly defined. My aim is not so much to controvert the
expositor, but to expound his author and mine. But here,
as in so many other instances, exposition is most effectively
accomplished by a refutation of a counter-exposition. As
every affirmation is also a negation, it is often well that what
one denies should be brought clearly before consciousness, in
order that what one affirms may be the more significant. As
I understand Hegel, he affirms exactly what his commentator
denies; and to understand the affirmation, it is well to under-
stand the denial also.
It is my purpose to prove that in respect of the relation in
opposition between the thesis and the antithesis, and in re-
spect of the dialectical efficiency of the negative, there is
really no change in Hegel's Logic from the very first triad
to the very last. In order to do this, I shall attack the prob-
lem of the method of the initial triad, believing that a com-
plete exhibition of the method there employed will be in
itself a complete refutation of Mr. McTaggart's position.
As we enter upon this problem, we must recall what
has been said about the double character of some of the
categories, and about the so-called reconciliation of con-
tradictories.2 The true view of the movement, even in the
categories of Being, is that the true dialectical negative of
any thesis is not the abstract antithesis of that thesis, but it
is the so-called synthesis of that thesis with the abstract
antithesis; so that, if we are going to count steps, we may
say that in one very important sense the dialectical move-
ment is not triadic, although, of course, if we consider the
two aspects of the negative as two distinct steps in the
process; that is, if we consider as one step the viewing of
the negative as abstractly negative and as another step the
viewing of it as concretely positive, we do have a triadic
movement. But this whole matter of counting steps is
a senseless procedure, an external reflexion; and the witti-
cisms based upon it only show the shallowness of the views
of the wits.
¹ Op. cit., p. 134.
3
2 See January number of MIND, pp. 57-60.
³ See III., 333, 334 (343-344), where Hegel shows that the movement
may be considered tetradic or dyadic as well as triadic; but all such
enumeration is "superficial and external".
4
E. B. MCGILVARY:
Hegel's own testimony on this point is decisive. "It" (i.e.,
the negation of any concept) "is a new concept, but one
higher and richer than the preceding; for it has become
richer by the negation or opposite of that concept. It thus
contains its predecessor and more too, and is the unity of
that predecessor and its opposite." This is what he says
in the Introduction to the Greater Logic. He says the
same thing at the very end of this work,2 where, having
traversed the long road that leads from pure Being to the
Absolute Idea, he reviews the course that has been accom-
plished, and pays particular attention to the method that
has achieved the result. There he devotes some eight or
ten pages to the full treatment of the relation between
thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or, as he there calls them,
“the first,” “the second," and "the third"; and he looks
at this relation from many points of view. I cannot quote
the whole passage, although any one who wishes to under-
stand the method thoroughly should make himself perfectly
familiar with what is there said. All I can do here is to
quote in part: "The second" (i.e., the antithesis), "which
has thus arisen, is accordingly the negative of the first; and,
to take anticipatory account of what follows, it is the first
negative. The immediate" (i.e., the thesis) "has, on this
negative side, perished in its other; but that other is essen-
tially not the empty negative, Naught, which is taken for
the usual result of dialectic; but it is the other of the first,
the negative of the immediate. Thus it is determined as the
mediate-in short, contains within itself the determination of
the first" (ie., of the thesis). "The first is hence essentially
preserved and kept in its other. To keep fast hold of the
positive in its own negative, in the content of the presup-
position, in the result this is the most important thing in
the knowledge that belongs to the stage of reason. What
is, accordingly, now present is the mediated, which at first,
or when likewise taken immediately, is also a simple category;
for since the first has perished in it, only the second is
present. Now, because the first is also contained in the
second, and the second is the truth of the first, this unity
can be expressed as a proposition, in which the immediate
is put as subject, and the mediate as its predicate. . . . The
second category, the negative or mediate, is, further, likewise
the mediating category. At first it can be taken as a
¹ I., 39 (41).
2 III., 328 (338), seq.
3
3 The thought would be better expressed by the use of hyphens: “the
other-of-the-first, the negative-of-the-immediate," and below, "the nega-
tive-of-the-positive”.
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
5
simple category; but viewed as it is in its truth, it is
a relation or an essential relation. For it is, indeed, the
negative, but the negative of the positive, and includes the
positive within itself. It is thus the other, not of something
to which it is indifferent,-for then it would not be an other,
nor would it be a relation or an essential relation,-but it is
the other by virtue of itself (an sich), the other-of-another.
Therefore it includes its own other in itself, and is, accord- ✔
ingly, as this contradiction, the explicitly posited dialectic of its
own self. . . . The second, as contrasted with the first, is
itself the determinate, i.e., is distinction or essential relation.
The dialectical moment in it consists, hence, in positing the
unity that is contained in it. If, therefore, the negative, the
determinate, e.g., essential relation and judgment and all the
categories that come under the second moment" (ie., appear
as antithesis)," do not themselves, taken in their independ-
ence, already appear as contradiction and as dialectical, it is
due to a mere defect of the thinking faculty, which does not
bring its thoughts together. For the materials," adequate
for the recognition of contradiction, "the opposite categories
in one relation, are already explicitly posited, and present for
thought. Formal thought, however, makes identity a law,
and lets the contradictory content that it has before it be
degraded into the sphere of presentative consciousness, into
space and time; and there the contradictory is maintained
in the reciprocal externality of coexistence or succession, and
thus does not appear to consciousness to be in mutual con-
tact. In its dealing with this content, formal thought lays
down the definite principle that contradiction is not think-
able. In fact, however, the thinking of contradiction is the
essential factor in conception. Even formal thought actually
thinks contradiction; only, while thinking it, it refuses to
recognise it, turns from it, and in that just-quoted principle
betakes itself to abstract negation.
"The negativity just considered constitutes the critical
point in the movement of the concept. It is the simple point
of negative self-reference, the innermost fountain of all ac-
tivity, of vital and spiritual self-movement, the dialectical
soul that everything true has in it, and by which alone it is
a truth."
"1
To bring out all the wealth of meaning that lies stored up
in these cryptic utterances would take more pages than are
at my disposal. But it requires no great space, and cer-
tainly no great penetration, to repeat some things that are
¹III., 330-332 (340-342).
6
E. B. MCGILVARY:
レ
​said by Hegel in the passage I have partly cited. The
central thought of it all is this: When we have reached any
antithesis, we do not need to wait for a synthesis in order to
reconcile that antithesis with its thesis; but the antithesis itself,
viewed as speculative logic views it and not as abstract, make-
believe, but impossible thought would view it, is already a synthesis
of the thesis with the opposite of the thesis.
In other words, the antithesis has two significations; or
rather it may be regarded from two points of view. Looked
at from one point of view, it is merely an abstract opposite
of its thesis, having no intimate relation to it, living as a
quarrelsome neighbour beside it, separated from it by an
insurmountable wall of partition, through which only its
objurgations can find passage. The law of identity keeps it
bound down fast on its own side of the fence; the law of
contradiction forbids its trespassing on its neighbour's pre-
mises; while the law of the excluded middle says that there
is no fence between them. And thus this point of view opens
before us a scene that is-illusion; "vanity of vanities, all
is vanity". So we must betake ourselves to the other point
of view, and see whether that will not display before us a
substantive reality.
From this second point of view, the antithesis is no longer
a virago living next door to the thesis, but is the indispens-
able, all-absorbing, husband-sublating wife, "the joy of its
bosom, the plague of its life". The non-existent wall of
separation no longer separates; it unites. The husband is
seen to be only a member of a family, and the wife is the
family.
But illustrations and all like aids to comprehension are
only external. The matter must be understood in its native
logical truth; and it seems to me that this truth is capable
of being understood, and even of being expressed in language
that is no more figurative than all languages must be.
us try.
Let
The negative of anything, as merely presentatively before
consciousness (als vorgestellt), may appear to that con-
sciousness with all suggestion of its intrinsic essential
relation to its positive suppressed; only, one is tempted
in such a case to appropriate Prof. James' happy word
"sciousness," as a more faithful designation of such a
mythical consciousness. When, for instance, I present to
myself the image-idea of Naught, I may seem to have a mere
vacuum as the only object before my consciousness, a vacuum
which explicitly excludes the content of Being, and therefore
has no Being in it. But this is a mere seeming. Because
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
7
if it is a merely presented Naught and not a thought Naught,
not a conceived Naught, then it is not Naught to me, and
therefore the presentation of it to me is not consummated.
The desired result is achieved only when I think what is
proffered, as being Naught; and to think it as Naught is to
think it as negative of Being, as Non-Being; that is, Being
must be present as rejected within the thought that thinks
Naught. I must think what-it-is-not, and think Naught as
not what-it-is-not. Naught is, then, the synthesis, in thought,
of Being and rejection or negation, a synthesis of elements
which, if they could exist out of such synthesis, would be
pure Being and pure denial or abstract pure Naught. It
takes, thus, only a little psychological reflexion to see that
the thought of the negative is, as a matter of fact, always a
thought that includes its positive as a moment within it;
and it takes but a little logical reflexion to see that it must
be so.
The thought of the negative is, therefore, not a dead
self-identity, but is a synthetic unity, with the positive that it
negates as a distinction partly constitutive of it; whereas the
thought of the so-called positive is never achievable except
as merely a part-thought within the organic whole of a
negative thought. But such a negative thought is not merely
negative; in denying the positive, it not only posits itself
but it also posits as a factor within itself the positive which
it itself denies.
Now, even when " common-sense" rises to the height from
which it can see that the positive is only a part-thought, it
makes the mistake of supposing that the negative is only
another part-thought, along with which the positive part-
thought makes a whole by external juxtaposition. It is
perhaps Hegel's greatest merit to have seen the insufficiency
and utter inadequacy of any such supposition, and to have
made this his insight the instrument for the reconstruction
of the science of logic, for the rescue of dialectic from the
fate of being a mere capricious iconoclast, and for making
it the constructive principle of philosophy, seeing that it
was the constructive and not the destructive principle of
thought. He saw that what is only positive does not exist,
except as a merely apprehended but not yet comprehended
member in a concrete whole; he saw that what is only
negative does not exist except as a whole not recognised
as a whole; and he saw that what in truth really exists,
and what alone exists, is the negative whole of thought,
which, because negative, has distinctions; which, because
a whole, has the distinctions within it and not without;
and which, because not negating something outside of it
L
8
E. B. MCGILVARY:
1
or an independent other, is truly positive. As already
shown, this positive-negative whole, has, as its organic
constitutive factors, the positive and negation. The fac-
tors, regarded in themselves, in abstraction from the whole
in which alone they have being, are pure, i.e., abstract
Being and abstract negativity or pure Naught. But so
regarded, they cannot be thought, and what cannot be thought
cannot be logical; and so long as they are not thought, they
have no dialectical character belonging to them. They get
dialectical character only when they are taken up into
thought; that is, when they cease to be mere unsubstantial
ghosts, mere make-believes which are not, and become real
thoughts that are. The dialectical movement is the change
from what they are not and never were and never could be,
but were supposed to be, to what they really are. Dialectic
is the nullifying of a nullity that parades itself in the guise
of an entity; but this nullity is not cancelled out of con-
sideration. The abstractions that are shown by dialectic to
be nonentities are shown to be such, only in being shown to
be real organic factors in the one thing that can with any
propriety be called real, that is, in negative-positive thought,
or self-consciousness.
Lon
Now it is for the reason that the dialectical negative is
thus negative because what it negates is within it,-it is for
this reason that Hegel calls it "the other by virtue of itself,
the other-of-another" ("das Andere an sich selbst, das Andere
eines Andern"). It does not owe its otherness to the mere
accident of being arbitrarily and externally contrasted with
something to which it is indifferent, but it is an other be-
cause it has in itself, as its own moment, its other, by virtue of
which it has the characteristic of otherness. It is itself
the other-of-another, not what may be regarded as an other
-of something independent.
Having thus shown what is the true logical view of the
relation between the antithesis and the thesis, let us see
whether this relation does not hold in the very first triad.
As has already been shown, the first triad is not abstract
Being, abstract Naught, and Becoming. But it is Being
which has its reality only in its negation; which negation, being
concrete, is the synthetic unity of Being and its opposite,
Naught; in other words, that negation is Becoming. The
thought or category, Becoming, is just the same thought as
Non-Being when Non-Being is thought, and is not merely an
imaged abstraction. As Hegel says, "in Non-Being the
relation to Being is contained; it is both Being and the
negation of Being expressed in one word; Naught, as it
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
9
is in Becoming" Since it is thus a dialectical negative,
which is richer than its thesis, including, as it does, both
its thesis and the opposite of that thesis, it is "just as posi-
tive as it is negative"; and when thought of as positive we
call it Becoming.
It would not be difficult to show that in any other so-
called triad in the categories of Being, the antithesis, when
thought, that is, when dialectical and not abstract, is already
the synthesis. Take for instance the Finite, the false Infi-
nite, and the true Infinite. The false Infinite is not really
the antithesis in thought of the Finite; it is only by an
unrealisable abstraction that the false Infinite has any being.
To negate the Finite in thought one must think it as a
moment in the Infinite; the Infinite cannot exclude it;
hence the Infinite cannot be, in real thought, a false Infinite.
And, again, the Finite cannot be thought except as a
moment in the thought of the Infinite. Of course a finite
thing may be discovered to consciousness by presentation.
without the presentation of the Infinite, for the Infinite.
cannot be presented at all. But this finite thing can be
thought as finite, only as a distinction within a thought that
thinks what the Finite is not, viz., the Infinite.
But this relation between thesis and synthetic antithesis
in these early categories is exactly the relation that exists
in the categories of Conception (Begriff). Let us take
Concept, Judgment, Syllogism, as example of the later
triads. A negation of what usually passes for a concept is
a judgment; that is, you cannot in thought negate such a
concept without ipso facto judging. Nor can you ever judge
without ipso facto negating such a concept. That is to say,
unless the so-called subject and the so-called predicate are
kept distinct, kept in the negative reciprocity of distinction,
there is no judgment. But if this distinction is a bare ne-
gation, a mutual exclusion, there is no judgment either.
The so-called subject and the so-called predicate are not
in external juxtaposition. The true logical subject 2—not
the so-called logical subject-includes the predicate while
denying it, that is, while distinguishing it from itself.
Mr. Bosanquet says, "Subject and Predicate in the actual
judgment are really distinct, as a real identity from or in
its differences". "You cannot affirm without introducing a
distinction or reference into the content of the affirmation ;
1 I., 74 (79).
As
2 The true logical subject in "synthetic judgments " is the all-inclusive
unity of the distinctions named in the subject and predicate, and in
analytic judgments" it is the unity analysed.
66
10
E. B. MCGILVARY:
1
and yet such distinction or reference, being part of what is
affirmed, and not a relation between what is affirmed and something
else, cannot, it would seem, be the essence of the affirma-
tion." The subject, the all-inclusive unity of distinctions,
is the negative unity of these distinctions, not their dead
identity. But because that negative is thus a mediating
unity, in which the so-called subject and the so-called pre-
dicate of the "synthetic judgment" are brought together,
it is the syllogism. To recapitulate, the negative of the con-
cept, as explained above, is judgment; this negative of the
concept regarded as positive, because not negative of some-
thing external to it, is the syllogism. Now the reader who
has followed this very brief exhibition of the dialectic of
Concept, Judgment, and Syllogism, will see that the method
is exactly the same as that employed in the triad, Being,
Naught, and Becoming.
We can now see what becomes of Mr. McTaggart's con-
tention that the negative is only a necessary accident in
the dialectical process, tending to disappear in the higher
categories. We may traverse this contention in two ways.
We may say truly that negation, far from being a necessary
accident in the dialectical process, never appears in it—mean-
ing here by negation what Mr. McTaggart means by it; for the
dialectical process is never from one extreme to another
extreme equally one-sided ".2 And we may also say that ne-
gation is not an accident tending to disappear, because it is
the very life of the process, and appears in the fulness of its
power only when it has brought all things under its feet,
as the All-in-All of the Absolute Idea.
It happens that abstract understanding puts over against
the thesis some other would-be category, now in the relation
of contradictory opposition, now of contrary opposition, now
of subcontrary opposition; and what disappears in the
higher categories is the particular definite way the abstract
understanding has of relating a lower abstract antithesis with
its thesis; and what takes its place is some other particular
way. But what is permanent through all such changes on
the part of abstract understanding, is the one way that
dialectic has of advancing by negation from a lower cate-
gory to the higher, in which alone the lower has being.
"That by which the Concept accomplishes its self-advance-
ment is the aforesaid negative that it has in it. This con-
stitutes the truly dialectical feature." 3
1 Bosanquet's Logic, I., 82. The italics are mine, to emphasise what
is here pertinent.
ap. cit., p. 134.
3 I., 40 (43).
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
11
What we have already said will throw light upon another
vexed question that concerns the nature of the dialectic.
Is its method analytic or synthetic? Is the first category a
box within which the others are all contained, or is it a
grain of sand to which the others are added to make a heap?
If this second form of putting the question fairly represents
what is meant by the first form, the answer must be
that it is neither analytic nor synthetic; for such analysis
and synthesis are nothing but mere partition and aggrega-
tion. But if by analysis is meant the bringing to explicit
consciousness (Setzung) of what a category is in itself (an
sich), and if by synthesis is meant the enrichment of a
category by another which is not an externally indifferent
other, then the answer must be that the process is both
analytic and synthetic. For in an organism, analysis and
synthesis are not inverse processes, but are the same process.
And by this I mean something different from what Mr
Bradley and Mr. Bosanquet mean when they say that there
is no analysis without synthesis, and no synthesis without
analysis. For what they mean is that a thought-whole
does not crumble to pieces under the operation of analysis,
but that the act of analysis can be performed and the re-
sult of analysis can be recognised as an analysis, only when
in the same act these analytic elements are ideally held
together in the whole, from the ideal disintegration of which
they have arisen; and that an intellectual synthesis can
take place and be recognised as synthesis, only when the
synthetic result is not a homogeneous whole, but the dis-
tinctions unified are still kept distinct. All this is true even
in the ideal partition and aggregation of spaced objects conceived
merely as mutually external. Now what I mean by the
co-operation, or rather by the identity, of analysis and
synthesis is something very different from this. One can-
not analyse the conception one has of any member in an
organic whole without finding in that conception the con-
ception of the other members and of the whole within which
they are members; and this gives the analytic character
to the operation.
But at the same time these other mem-
bers are truly others, and the whole is more than the part ;
and this gives the synthetic character to the operation.
Let us hear what the great dialectician himself says on
this subject: "This is what Plato demanded of knowledge,
that it should consider things in themselves, in their absolute-
ness; that is, partly, in their universality; but also, partly,
that one should not stray away from them, and should com-
prehend them, not in their environments, instances, and
12
E. B. MCGILVARY:
5
external contrasts, but that one should keep them alone
before one's thoughts and bring to consciousness what is
immanent in them. The method of absolute knowledge is
in so far analytic. The fact that this method finds the 'further
determination of its initial universal entirely in this universal
alone, is the absolute objectivity of the conception,—and
the method is the assurance of this objectivity. It is, how-
ever, just as much synthetic, since its object, determined in
its immediacy as simple universal, shows itself as an other,
by the very determinateness which it has in its immediacy
and universality. This relation to a different something-a
relation which constitutes the object in itself—is, however,
not the same thing as is meant by synthesis in finite know-
ledge. Already by its quite as analytic character of being a
relation within a conception, it is thoroughly distinguished from
this latter synthetic procedure. This moment of original
self-diremption (des Urtheils)—a moment as synthetic as it is
analytic by which this initial universal obtains out of itself
its determination of being its own other, is to be called the
dialectical moment."1
Let me give an illustration of Hegel's meaning by using
what, at first, seems not to admit of serving as such. What
is the relation of a plane triangle to the space outside of it?
Of course, if merely looked at, the triangle is seen to be out-
side of the space that is outside of it. Considered as mutu-
ally external, neither can by analysis be derived from the
other. But instead of merely looking at the triangle, think it,
that is, bring it under conception, and proceed to examine
logically the concept you have of it. Logically, the concept
of it is the concept of a plane-figure-bounded-by-three-straight-
lines. That is to say, we find as an element held logically
within the organic unity of the concept "triangle," the con-
cept "line". Now examine this concept "line"-again
avoid merely looking at it in a passive gaze-and you will
find that it is the concept of limit-between-two-surfaces.
That is, the concept "surface" is an element held logically
within the organic unity of the concept "line". Again,
examining this concept "surface," you will find that it is the
concept of limit-between-two-solids; so that, here again, we
find that the concept "solid" is included as an element
logically within the concept "surface".
"surface". Thus we find that
the tridimensional space, circumjacent to a plane triangle, is
an analytic element in the very concept of that triangle. But
it is no less true that this tridimensional space is the inclusive
1 ¹ III., 326 (335-336).
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
13
concept, in which the concept of the triangle in its turn is
an element; that is, this tridimensonial space, when thought,
is synthetically related to the triangle, having the triangle as
an analytic element within it. We do not, and cannot, think
tridimensional space as an element in a quadridimensional
space. We think it as a moment in the concept of one or
more of its dimensions, and think it as the total concept in-
cluding its dimensions as its moments. The analysis of the
concept of a dimension gives tridimensional space as a dis-
tinction within it, but this distinction is at the same time
the synthesis of this dimension with the other dimensions.
But such synthesis and such analysis are not juxtaposition
of mutually external pieces and partition into mutually ex-
ternal segments. The analysis is the recognition of the
distinctions as moments within an organic unity; the syn-
thesis is the recognition of each distinction as itself the whole
within which all other distinctions, themselves wholes including it,
are included. No distinction is an ultimate distinction in-
capable of analysis. Think it as an ultimate distinction,
and, behold, in that very thought it becomes a synthetic
whole subsuming under it that whole in which you try to
consider it as an ultimate element. In conception, then, sub-
sumption is reciprocal. The thought-movement, that is, the
dialectic, by which we go from a distinction within a unity
up to that unity, is a movement outwards, which at the same
time is not a movement outwards, but a permanent abiding
within the point of departure. "Dialectic is the movement
outwards, that remains within, a movement in which the one-
sidedness and limitation of the categories of the understand-
ing shows itself to be what in reality it is, namely, its nega-
tion." 1 An analysis of a concept as it is in itself, which
results in a synthesis of it with a true other; a synthesis of
a concept with its other, which is not an absolutely indepen-
dent other, but is an other within that concept-this is the
dialectical process, this is the dialectical method, which, be-
ginning with a seemingly poor, ultimate, unanalysable con-
cept, reaches the richest concept "without introducing any
element from without "2 "Every new step of the process
outward out of self, that is, of further determination, is also a
process within self." 3
1 Encyclopædia, § 81, Werke, vi., 152. Prof. Wallace's translation,
"indwelling tendency outwards," of Hegel's "das immanente Ausgehen
not only robs the sentence of its strong paradoxical flavour, but fails to
express the vital thought that Hegel expressed in the original.
2 I., 39 (41).
3 ³ III., 339 (349).
14
E. B. MCGILVARY:
In closing this examination of Hegel's dialectical method,
there are two remarks I wish to make. One of them is that
the relation of Hegel's negative to the negative of formal
logic is often misstated. It is not true that formal logic deals
with a negative that is absolute, with a contradiction that
cannot be gainsaid; while speculative logic deals with a
negative that is relative, with a contradiction that has no
backbone and can be bullied into retractation. The truth is,
that the dialectical negative is the only negative that can be
thought, and it is an absolute negative. We often make
ourselves believe that denial can be a relegation of the denied
into another universe than our own, or at least that it can
be the expression of the logical non-existence for us of what
is denied. And we more often make ourselves believe that
contradictions cannot but logically annihilate each other.
It is one of Hegel's good offices to philosophy to have pointed
out that a negative thought not only can, but must, be abso-
lute, while no negation can be "bare," and that contradic-
tions are not only thinkable, but that where there is thought,
there is contradiction-however, a contradiction transcended.
The contradictories of formal logic are abstractions, good
enough in their own place; but the law of contradiction is
not a law of active thought; it is merely the law that ex-
presses the relation that exists between two organic elements
in thought, when we insist on not regarding their organic
character. It is the law that controls the external relation
of objects of presentative consciousness, when thought as
presented; it is not a law that controls the relation of
objects of intellectual consciousness, when thought as
intellectual and timeless. In so far as any man thinks,
and not merely passively "takes it in," he has trans-
cended the law of contradiction and is under the law of
dialectic.
The second remark is, that it follows as a consequence of
the analytic character of dialectical synthesis, that there is no
↓ external necessity in the world of thought, in the eternal world
that lies behind the world of time and space and is the
ground of that temporal and spatial order. In the logical
universe, every distinction is itself the whole by virtue of
the fact that the other distinctions are logically within it.
Every distinction is a monad, a whole logical universe within
itself, entirely self-active, knowing no restraint or compulsion
from an independent, external source; for everything that
is other than it, is an other in and for it. But that other in
and for it is not a dependent element in the sense that it for
its part looks outside of itself for its ground of being. As
THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
15
it is a logical element, it is likewise itself the whole, in its
turn sublating what sublated it.
How many wholes, then, are there? There is one whole,
and there are many wholes; for the hard and fast line of
difference that runs between "one" and " many" is a line
that can be drawn only when dealing with elements that
are thought under the relation of mutual externality. The
logical universe can, therefore, with no more propriety be
called a monistic universe than a pluralistic one; nor, on the
other hand, is there any more propriety in calling it plural-
istic than in calling it monistic, except in the polemical
interest of denying an asserted one-sided monism. Neither
1
a pluralism with no real logical unity, nor a monism with
no self-active distinctions, is compatible with the laws of
thought. And those who read Hegel's monism into a system
in which there is no liberty except the one single liberty of the
one single whole, make Hegel do violence to the fundamental
law of the totality of each logical distinction, a law which
he himself made central within his system. The truth is
neither a Spinozism in which the distinctions disappear, nor
an idealistic monism ¹ in which the distinctions are efficiently
operated by a free comprehending unity, not an atheistic
pluralism ¹ in which there is no logical ground of interrelation
between the distinctions. Mere monism and mere pluralism
are transcended in the view that emphasises the logical
necessity of the free distinctions, and the synthetic as well
as analytic character of each of these distinctions.
fine, the truth is neither an absolute One at the expense
of the Many, nor the separately independent Many at the
expense of the harmonising unity of the One; but it is the
unity of the One and the Many, a logically free One of the
logically free Many, which are themselves, each, the One.
1
In
And it is just here that logic makes room for ethics. For
ethics is possible only when there is interrelation between
free self-active centres of consciousness, each recognising
itself and others as members of one commonwealth of souls,
in which each has rights and duties. Each has rights, be-
2
¹I do not mean to imply that all idealism is monistic or that all plural-
ism is atheistic; all I say is that there is a kind of idealism that is mon-
istic, and a kind of pluralism that is atheistic; and of both I say that
they are logically inadequate.
2 I wish here to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Howison of
the University of California for the great help I have received from him
on this point,—as indeed on very many others brought out in this series
of papers,—although the use I have made of this truth is not such as he
would greatly approve, denying as he does any ethical value to Monism.
16 E. B. MCGILVARY: THE DIALECTICAL METHOD.
cause each is the end toward which all work; each has
duties, because each works toward accomplishing the end
of others. Each has rights, because each is the synthetic
unity within which the others function as moments; each
has duties, because each functions as a moment within the
unity of the several others. No logic that does not provide
for such a relation between self-active members of a system
is ethical; no ethics that does not provide an intellectual
and dialectical basis for such a community is logical. And
as the Hegelian ethics rests upon the dialectic, and as the
Hegelian dialectic provides satisfactorily for ethics, the
charge often made that Hegel merely asserts freedom for
the individual without vindicating it, is seen to be baseless.
The Hegelian dialectic is adequate to all scientific needs-
ethical needs among others-because all scientific needs are
but expressions of dialectical necessity; but the Hegelian
dialectic that is adequate, is the Hegelian dialectic, not the
pseudo-Hegelian dialectic, which occupies and concerns the
critics. Of course in claiming adequacy for the Hegelian
dialectic I do not claim that it is the last word in philosophy,
or that as Hegel worked it out it is inerrant. All that is
meant is that this insight into the fundamental relation of
the One and the Many is the insight that solves the true
problem of present-day thought, the problem of making an
ethical world intelligible and an intelligible world ethical.

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