«*l/*5 >V«o W ■ «3£}V> Clarmtarn |jr*$s Series LOTZE'S SYSTEM OF* PHILOSOPHY PART II METAPHYSIC A'OL. r. Honfcon HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PBESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER Clarenfcon 39re*sS £>eru» METAPHYSIC IN THREE BOOKS ONTOLOGY, COSMOLOGY, AND PSYCHOLOGY BY HERMANN LOTZE ENGLISH TRANSLATION EDITED BY BERNARD BOSANQUET, M.A. FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD ^> > Of THR [university; klIF0K& ©xfotfc AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1884 [ All rights reserved] ±y //^- # *• AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The publication of this second volume has been delayed by a variety of hindrances, which caused a lengthened inter- ruption of its passage through the press. In the meantime several works have appeared which I should have been glad to notice ; but it was impossible, for the above reason, to comment upon them in the appropriate parts of my book ; and I therefore reserve what I have to say about them. I can promise nothing in respect of the third volume but that, should I have strength to finish it, it will be confined to a discussion of the main problems of Practical Philosophy, Aesthetic, and the Philosophy of Religion. I shall treat each of these separately, and without the lengthiness which was unavoidable in the present volume owing to a diver- gence from prevalent views. The Author. GOTTINGEN: December 23, 1878. EDITOR'S PREFACE. The Translation of the Metaphysic has been executed, like that of the Logic, by several hands. The whole of Book I (Ontology) and the chapter 'Of Time' (Book II, ch. iii) were translated by the late Mr. T. H. Green, Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford ; chapters i, ii, and iv, of Book II by Mr. B. Bosanquet, Fellow of University College, Oxford ; chapters v-viii (inclusive) of Book II by the Rev. C. A. Whittuck, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford ; and the whole of Book III by Mr. A. C. Bradley, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. The Index and Table of Contents were added by the Editor. The entire translation has been revised by the Editor, who is responsible in every case for the rendering finally adopted. The Editor has to thank Mr. J. C. Wilson, of Oriel College, Oxford, for ample and ready assistance when consulted on passages involving the technical language of Mathematics or Physics ; if the Author's meaning in such places has been intelligibly conveyed, this result is wholly due to Mr. Wilson's help. In conveying his assent to the proposal of an English translation, the Author expressed a wish to work out Book III of the Metaphysic (the Psychology) more fully, but had not time to carry out his intention. For the third volume of the Author's ' System of Philosophy,' alluded to in the Preface, no materials were found after his death sufficiently advanced for publication, excepting a paper subsequently published in c Nord und Slid ' (June 1882), under the title ' Die Principien der Ethik.' The Author's views on the sub- jects reserved for the volume in question may be gathered in part from his earlier work •' Mikrokosmus,' which will soon, it may be hoped, be made accessible to English readers, and more fully from his lectures recently published under the titles 'Grundziige der Aesthetik,' 'der Praktischen Philosophic,' and ' der Religionsphilosophie.' TABLE OF CONTENTS. BOOK I. On the Connexion of Things. INTRODUCTION. Section I. Reality, including Change, the subject of Metaphysic . „ II. Origin of expectations which conflict with experience . „ III. The foundation of experience ....•• „ IV. Consistent and inconsistent scepticism . . ... „ V. Probability depends on the assumption of connexion according to Law .......•••• „ VI. Relation of Metaphysic to experience „ VII. The method of Metaphysic not that of Natural Science . „ VIII. In what sense the Essence of Things is unknowable „ IX. Metaphysic the foundation of Psychology, not vice versa „ /X. Idea of Law and of Plan. Metaphysic must start from the former „ XI. No clue to be found in the Dialectic Method ,, XII. No clue to be found in the forms of Judgment „ XIII. Divisions of the subject „ XIV. The natural conception of the universe ..... PAGE I 2 2 3 4 6 7 9 ii H 16 17 20 21 CHAPTER I. ON THE BEING OF THINGS. 1. Real and unreal 2 3 2. Sensation the only evidence of Reality ? . ■ 2 4 3. Sensation gives assurance of nothmg beyond itself 24 4. Being of Things apart from Consciousness. Their action on each other . 25 5. Questions of the origin and the nature of reality distinguished . . 27 6. Objective relations presuppose the Being of Things 28 7. Being apart from relations meaningless 29 8-9. Pure Being a legitimate abstraction, but not applicable to Reality . . 30 10. 'Position' and 'Affirmation' meaningless apart from relations . .31 11. ' Position ' appears to involve the difficulties attaching to creative action . 33 12. Herbart's ' irrevocable Position ' 35 13. Herbart's indifference of Things to relations, inconsistent with their en- tering into relations .......••• 3" 14. The isolation of Things a mere abstraction 3^ viii Table of Contents. CHAPTER II. OF THE QUALITY OF THINGS. 15. The essence of Things . . 16. A Thing is taken to be more than its qualities .... 17. Herbart's conception of the essence of a Thing as a 'simple Quality' 18. A Quality need not be abstract nor dependent on a subject 19. How can what is simple have varying ' states ' ? . 20. The common element in sensations of colour 21. Things only vary within certain limits 22. The movement of consciousness not analogous to the variations of a 'simple Quality'. ......••• 23. ' Simple Qualities ' represented by compound expressions (Herbart) 24. If there are Things, they must be capable of change, as the soul is . CHAPTER III. OF THE REAL AND REALITY. PAGE 4 4 1 42 44 46 48 5° 5 1 52 53 / 25. Things not of the nature of 'simple Qualities' .... 26. Things commonly described by their states ..... 27. A complete conception would include past and future history of Thing 28. Matter as imparting reality to Qualities 29. Matter which has no Qualities can receive none .... 30. Matter explains nothing if it is mere ' Position ' 31. ' Real' is a predicative conception, not a subject .... 32. A Thing as a Law .......... 33. A Law need not be General ?........ 34. What is that which conforms to the Law? '35. Danger of the antithesis between the world of Ideas and Reality 36. Difficulty of expressing the notion of a Law or Idea which is naturally real 74 57 57 59 60 61 62 64 67 68 7° 72 CHAPTER IV. OF BECOMING AND CHANGE. 37. Substance a mode of behaviour of Things, not a mysterious nucleus . 76 38. How is change subject to certain limits, to be conceived? . . -77 39. Law of Identity does not even prove the continuous existence of Things . 7S 40. Resolution of all permanence into Becoming So 41. Sbim/us and tvepyaa in two senses ........ 81 42. Why are consequences realised ? ........ 82 43. The Things must be such realisations 84 44. This would only explain development, not causation . . . .86 45. In ' transeunt ' action changes in the agent must be 'noticed' by the patient 87 46. ' Immanent ' action usually assumed as obvious . . . . .87 47. Notion of Becoming compared with notion of 'states of a persistent Thing 88 48. Quantitative comparability of factors in every effect . . . -9° 49. Degrees of Intensity of Being 91 Table of Contents. ix chapter v. OK THE NATURE OF PHYSICAL ACTION. PAGE 93 95 96 97 99 101 103 104 106 107 109 110 50. No effect due to a single active cause 51. Cause, Reason, and the Relation which initiates action 52. Modification of Causes and Relation by effect 53. ' Occasional Causes ' and ' Stimuli ' 54. Must the relation which initiates action be contact ? 55. A ' causa transiens ' is only preliminary to action . 56. Difficulty of conceiving the passage of a force or state from A to B 57. Origin of erroneous idea that cause and effect must be equal and like 58. Relation of consequence to ground may be synthetic as well as analytic 59. How far must Things be homogeneous in order to react upon each other 60. Desire to explain all processes as of one kind. 'Like known only by like 61. Attempt to dispense with ' transeunt' action. Occasionalism 62. Neither mere 'Law' nor mere 'relation' can explain interaction of two Things . . . . . . . . . . . .111 63. Leibnitz's ' Pre-established Harmony ' . . . . . • 113 64. What his completely determined world gains by realisation . . . 115 65. Complete determinism incredible . . . . . . . .116 66. Corresponding states of different Monads. Illustration of the two clocks 118 67. Operation according to general laws necessary for active causation . 1 20 CHAPTER VI. THE UNITY OF THINGS. 68. What is involved in the idea of 'transeunt' operation . . . .123 69. Pluralism and Monism . . . . . . . . . . 1 24 70. Separate Things not really independent of each other . . . .126 71. Unity of Things analytically involved in reciprocal action . . .127 72. How their unity is consistent with apparent degrees of independence . 128 73. The relation of the One to the Many cannot be exhibited to Perception . 129 74. Alleged contradiction of regarding the One as the Many . . . 130 75. The Logical copula inadequate to the relation between the One and the Many . . . 131 76. Reality subject to Law of Identity in form but not in fact . . . 134 77. The One and the Many illustrated by Herbart's ' accidental views ' .135 78. Herbart admits multiplicity in the nature of individual Things . . 137 79. Leibnitz' world, when ceasing to be immanent in God, has no unity . 138 80. Relations between the contents of ideas can only exist for Thought . 140 81. Variable Relations between Things must be modifications in the things . 142 CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION. 82. Real Relations are the reciprocal actions of Things conditioned by the unity which includes them 145 83. We have not to account for the origin of Motion 146 X Table of Contents. 84. The assumption of Motion is not the same thing as the assumption of Life (as spiritual existence) 149 85. The dominant principles of any real world are prescribed by its nature and are not prior to it . . . . . . . . 149 86. The reference to 'any' real world, other than that which exists, is imaginary and illustrative . 15 1 87. Consistency of causation has no meaning apart from the comparison of cases within the actual world 152 88. Hegel, Schelling, Weisse, — Necessity and Freedom .... 154 89. Necessity as an appearance produced within reality. Idealism and Realism . . . • T 57 90. The Idea must have a concrete content 157 91. The Phases of the Idea must be causally connected .... 158 92. The Idea generates a mechanical system by which it is realised . . 161 93. Realism recognises the necessity of regressive interpretation . . 163 94. Subjectivity in relation to the possibility of Knowledge . . . 165 95. Fichte on the world of Spirits and the world of Things . . . 166 96. A spiritual nature seems necessary for Things if they are to be subjects of states 167 97. Need Things exist at all? 169 98. As mere media of effects, they can hardly be said to exist . . . 171 BOOK II. Cosmology. CHAPTER I. OF THE SUBJECTIVITY OF OUR PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 99. The genesis of our idea of Space no test of its validity 100. Euclidean Space is what we have to discuss . . 101. Space is not a Thing, Property, or Relation 102. Space not merely a Genus-concept 103. Kant on empty Space . 104. Kant on Space as given ....... 105. Why Kant denied the reality of Space 106. Finiteness or Infinity of World do not decide the question . 107. Nor does Infinite divisibility of real elements, or the reverse 103. Real difficulties. What is Space, and how are things in it? 109. Reality of Space does not explain its properties . 110. Do the points of real Space act upon each other? 111. Constructions of Space out of active points .... 112. Constructions of real Space and hypothesis of subjective Space 113. Nothing gained by the independent reality of Space 114. Things in Space ; on hypothesis of its being subjective 115. Things in an independently existing Space .... 116. Relations between things and reactions of things . 117. The movability of things 174 175 176 177 179 180 181 182 184 186 186 187 190 191 194 195 197 198 200 Table of Contents. XI CHAPTER II. DEDUCTIONS OF SPACE. 118. Spinoza on Consciousness and Extension .... 119. Schelling on the two factors in Nature and Mind 120. Limit of what can be done by speculative construction. Hegel and Weisse . 121. Deductions of the three dimensions ..... 122. Three questions involved in ' Psychological ' Deductions of Space 123. Alternatives suggested by idea of subjective Space 124. Can any Space represent what our Space will not ? 125. Symbolical spatial arrangements, of sounds, etc. . 126. No Space will represent disparate qualities .... 127. Other Spaces than common Space in what sense possible 128. Geometry dependent on its data ...... 129. All constructions presuppose the Space-perception 130. Constructions of straight line, plane, etc. presuppose them . 131. The sum of the angles of a triangle ..... 132. Helmholtz on the possible ignorance of a third dimension . 133. Dwellers on a sphere-surface and parallel lines 134. Analogy from ignorance of third dimension to ignorance of fourth 135. There cannot be four series 'perpendicular' to each other . 136. Extension must be homogeneous ...... 137. Riemann's 'multiplicities ' are not Space unless uniform PAGE 202 203 204 205 206 209 210 211 212 214 215 217 218 220 222 225 226 229 232 235 CHAPTER III. OF TIME. 138. Spatial representations of Time 139. The conception of empty Time ..... 140. The connexion of 'Time' with events in it . . 141. Kant's view of Time as subjective .... 142. Kant's proof that the world has a beginning in Time . 143. The endlessness of Time not self-contradictory 144. The past need not be finite because each event is finished 145. An infinite series may be 'given' .... 146. Time as a mode of our apprehension .... 147. Empty Time not even a condition of Becoming . 148. Time as an abstraction from occurrence 149. Time as an infinite whole is Subjective 150. No mere systematic relation explains ' Present ' and 'Past' 151. Indication of ' Present ' to a Subject .... 152. Subjective Time need not make the Past still exist 153. Absence of real succession conceivable by approximation 154. Even thought cannot consist of a mere succession 155. But Future cannot become Present without succession . 156. Empty 'Time' Subjective, but succession inseparable from Reality 157. Existence of Past and Future 238 239 241 242 242 243 245 247 248 250 252 253 254 255 258 260 261 -263 265 268 Xll Table of Contents. CHAPTER IV. OF MOTION. 158. Law of Continuity 159. Continuity essential to Becoming 160. Grounds for the Law of Persistence 161. The Persistence of Rest 162. The Persistence of Motion . 163. Motion inconceivable without Law of Persistence 164. Possibility of absolute Motion, on doctrine of real Space 165. Possibility of absolute Rotation ..... 166. Amount and direction of Motion to be accepted like any constant 167. Difficulty of alleged indifference of Things to change of place 168. On view of phenomenal Space percipient subject with organism is tial to occurrence of Motion . 169. Solitary Motion possible, if observer is granted . 170. 'State' corresponding to a Persistent Motion 171. Motion is not the same as the Measure of Motion 172. Parallelogram of Motions akin to Law of Persistence 173. Parallelogram necessarily true if only motions are considered essen PAGE 270 271 273 275 276 278 2 79 281 282 283 285 288 289 290 291 293 CHAPTER V. THE THEORETICAL CONSTRUCTION OF MATERIALITY. 174. Matter homogeneous, or heterogeneous with common properties? 175. Limitation of the problem ....... 176. Descartes and Spinoza on Consciousness and Extension 177. Schelling and Hegel ; problems attempted by the latter 178. Kant does not connect his views of Matter and of Space 179. Why Kant explained Matter by Force . .... 180. ' Force ' involves relation between things .... 181. 'Force' as a property of one element a figure of speech -\ 182. Kant rightly implies activity on the part of Things, not mere sequence according to Law 183. Kant's two forces a mere analysis of the position of a thing . 184. Still a mechanical system of forces essential, and several may attach each element .......... 185. Force can only act at a distance ....... 186. Idea of 'communication ' of Motion 187- Space no self-evident hindrance to action ..... to 296 297 298 3°i 302 304 306 308 3" 3i3 3*5 316 318 3 21 CHAPTER VI. THE SIMPLE ELEMENTS OF MATTER. 188. Prima facie grounds in favour of Atomism . 189. Lucretius, — differences in the Atoms .... 190. Consequences of the Unity of an extended Atom . 324 326 328 Table of Contents. 191. Notion of unextended Atoms— Herbart 192. Herbart's view modified— the Atoms not independent of each other 193. Is Matter homogeneous or of several kinds? 194. Homogeneous Matter not proved by constancy of Mass 195. Connexion of the elements with each other in a sysj:ematic_unity 196. Plurality in space of identical elements merely phenomenal . 197. Self-multiplication of Atomic centres conceivable Xlll PAGE 331 333 335 337 339 34° 343 CHAPTER VII. THE LAWS OF THE ACTIVITIES OF THINGS. 198. The square of the distance,— difficulties in the radiation of Force 199. No mechanical deduction of a primary Force 200. Alleged infinite attraction at no distance 201. Herbart's view of the 'Satisfaction' of Force, not conclusive 202. Philosophy desires one primary law of action 203. Affinity would naturally correspond to the Distance itself 204. Attempt to account for Square of Distance . 205. Can Force depend on motions of acting elements ? 206. Does Force require time to take effect at a distance ? . 207. Causation and Time — Reciprocal action 208. Idealism admits no special Laws as absolute 209. Conservation of Mass 210. Constancy of the Sum of Motions .... 211. Absorption of Cause in Effect 212. Not self-evident that there can be no gain in physical action 213. Equality and Equivalence distinguished 214. Equivalence does not justify reduction to one process . 215. 'Compensation ' in interaction of Body and Soul . 216. The Principle of Parsimony 345 348 348 35° 352 353 355 357 358 360 362 363 3"54 366 366 369 37i 37 2 373 CHAPTER VIII. THE FORMS OF THE COURSE OF NATURE. 217. Deductions of the forms of reality impossible . . . 378 218. Possibility of explaining natural processes in detail on the view of subjective Space ........«• 380 219. Success the test of the methods of physical science .... 381 220. Mechanism the action of combined elements according to general laws 3S3 221. Mechanism as a distinct mode of natural activity — a fiction . . . 385 222. The planetary system, light and sound ... . 388 223. Electricity and Chemistry should not be sharply opposed to Mechanism 390 224. Motives for forming the conception of a Vital Force .... 392 225. Vital Force could not be one for all Organisms 393 226. Difference between organic and inorganic substances proves nothing about Vital Force 394 227. A 'Life-principle' would have to operate mechanically . . • 395 228. Mechanical aspect of Organisms 397 229. Mechanical view indispensable but not exhaustive . . . -399 XIV Table of Contents. PAGE 230. Purpose implies a subject — God, the soul 400 231. Von Baer on purpose in ' Nature ' ....... 402 232. Unity of world determines all modes of action 404 233. The mechanical order need not exclude progress 405 234. Is there a fixed number of Natural Kinds ? 408 235. Criticism of the question 'Is real existence finite or infinite?' . . 409 236. Development of the Cosmos — only its general principles a question for Metaphysic 414 237. Actual development of life a question for Natural History. Conclusion 415 BOOK III. Psychology. CHAPTER I. THE METAPHYSICAL CONCEPTION OF THE SOUL. Introductory. Rational and Empirical Psychology . . . .418 238. Reasons for the belief in a 'Soul.' — 1. Freedom is no reason . . 420 239. 2. Mental and physical processes disparate ...... 421 240. Disparateness no proof of separate psychical substance . . . 422 241. 3. Unity of Consciousness 4 2 3 242. Unity of the conscious Subject 4 2 4 243. The subject in what sense called 'substance' ..... 426 244. Kant on the Substantiality of the Soul 4 2 7 245. What the Soul is ; and the question of its immortality . . . 430 246. Origin of the Soul may be gradual 43 2 247. Ideas of psychical and psycho-physical mechanism .... 435 248. Interaction between Body and Soul 436 249. Idea of a bond between Body and Soul ...... 438 250. The Soul not a resultant of physical actions 439 251. Meaning of explaining the Soul as a peculiar form of combination between elements . 441 252. Consciousness and Motion in Fechner's ' Psycho-Physik ' . . . 442 CHAPTER II. SENSATIONS AND THE COURSE OF IDEAS. 253. The physical stimulus of sensation 254. The physiological stimulus of sensation 255. The conscious sensation .... 256. Adequate and inadequate stimuli of sense , 257. The connexion of various classes of sensation 258. Weber's Law ...... 259. Hypotheses as to the reason of Weber's Law 260. The so-called chemistry of ideas . 445 446 448 450 45i 453 455 45<> Table of Contents. xv PAGE 261. The disappearance of ideas from consciousness. The checking of ideas 459 262. The strength of ideas 4 6 ° 263. Dim ideas * 462 264. The more interesting idea conquers 463 265. Association of ideas 465 266. Herbart's theory respecting the reproduction of a successive series of ideas 467 CHAPTER III. ON THE MENTAL ACT OF « RELATION.' 267. Simple ideas and their relations 47° 26S. The necessary distinction between them 47 * 269. Psycho-physical attempts to explain ideas of relation .... 472 270. Herbart's theory of the psychical mechanism 474 271. The truer view respecting simple ideas and ideas of relation expressed in Herbartian language . 47^ 272. The referring activity as producing universal conceptions . • 477 273. Attention as an activity of reference 47$ 274. Attention and the 'interest' possessed by ideas 479 CHAPTER IV. THE FORMATION OF OUR IDEAS OF SPACE. 275. The subjectivity of our perception of Space 481 276. How is the perception of spatial relations possible ? .... 482 277. Distinctions depending on Space cannot be preserved as such in the Soul 484 278. A clue needed for the arrangement of impressions by the Soul . . 485 279. The 'extra- impression' as a clue or 'local sign'' . . . 486 280. Does the 'local sign' arise in the same nerve-fibre as the main impression? 488 281. ' Local signs ' must be not merely different but comparable . . . 49° 282. * Local signs ' must be conscious sensations 49 1 283-7. On the local signs connected with visual sensations .... 493 288-9. Local signs connected with the sense of touch 5°3 290. How these feelings are associated with movement .... 506 CHAPTER V. THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF MENTAL ACTIVITY. 291. The 'seat' of the Soul 5°9 292. The Soul not omnipresent within the body ... . 5 IQ 293. No reason to suppose that it has an action graduated according to dis- tance • • 5 11 294. No suitable place can be found for it on the hypothesis that it acts by contact only • 5 12 295. It must act directly and independently of Space, but only at certain necessary points 5 X 3 XVI Table of Conte7its. organs 296. Which these points are is determined from time to time by the activities which go on in them ...... 297. Our ignorance of the special functions of the central nervous 298. Ideas of a ' Scnsorium commune'' and ' Motorium commune 299. The organ of language ...... 300. How the soul initiates action ..... 301. Reproduction of the right concomitant feeling 302. Application of this view to the organ of language 303. Phrenology 304. The connexion of Consciousness with bodily states 305. Does memory depend on physical traces left in the brain? 306. Loss of memory ....... 307. Existence of the soul during unconsciousness Conclusion 515 5*7 518 519 521 522 523 524 526 529 53i 533 535 Index 537 BOOK I. ON THE Jg&S&gSKm+jyF THINGS. ON. I. Real is a term which we apply to things that are in opposition to those that are not ; to events that happen in distinction from those that do not happen ; to actually existing relations in contrast with those that do not exist. To this usage of speech I have already had occasion to appeal. I recall it now in order to give a summary indication of the object of the following enquiries. It is not the world of the thinkable, with the inexhaustible multiplicity of its inner relations — relations which are eternally valid — that here occupies us. Our considerations are expressly directed to this other region, of which the less palpable connexion with that realm of ideas, ever since the attention of Plato was first fastened upon it, has remained the constantly recurring question of Philosophy. It is a region that has been described in opposite terms. It has been called a world of appearance, of mere phenomena — and that in a depreciatory sense — by men who contrasted the variable multiplicity of its contents with the imperturbable repose and clearness of the world of ideas. To others it presented itself as the true reality. In its unfailing move- ment, and in the innumerable activities pervading it, they deemed themselves to have a more valuable possession than could be found in the solemn shadow-land of unchangeable ideas. This diversity of appellation rests on a deep antithesis of conception, which will attract our notice throughout all philosophy. My only reason for mentioning it here is that the two views, while wholly different in their estimates of value, serve equally to bring to light the centre round which metaphysical enquiries, so far as their essence is concerned, will always move ; i. e. the fact of change. While predicable only by metaphor of anything that is merely object of thought, change com- VOL. I. B V 2 Introduction. [book i. pletely dominates the whole range of reality. Its various forms — becoming and decay, action and suffering, motion and development — are, as a matter of fact and history, the constant occasions of those enquiries which, as forming a doctrine of the flux of things in opposition to the permanent being of ideas, have from antiquity been united under the name of Metaphysic. II. It is not that which explains itself but that which perplexes us that moves to enquiry. Metaphysic would never have come into being if the course of events, in that form in which it was presented by immediate perception, had not conflicted with expectations, the fulfilment of which men deemed themselves entitled to demand from whatever was to be reckoned as truly existing or truly taking place. These expectations might be accounted for in various ways. They might be held to be innate to the intelligent spirit. If that were true of them, it would follow that, in the form of necessary assumptions as to the mode of existence and connexion of anything that can possibly be or happen, they determine our judgment upon every occurrence with which observation presents us. Or they might be taken to consist in requirements arising in the heart out of its needs, hopes, and wishes ; in which case their fulfilment by the external world, as soon as attention was recalled to it, would be no less strongly demanded. Or finally it might be held that, without carrying any intellectual necessity in their own right, they had arisen out of the de facto constitution of experience as confirmed habits of apprehension, suggesting that in every later perception the same features were to be met with as had been found in the earlier. The history of philosophy may convince us of the equally strong vivacity and assurance, with which these different views have asserted themselves. The tendency of the present day, however, is to deny the possession of innate cog- nition, to refuse to the demands of the heart every title to a share in the determination of truth, to seek in experience alone the source of that certain knowledge which we would fain acquire in regard to the connexion of things. III. Philosophy has been too painfully taught by the course of its history how the neglect of experience avenges itself, for any fresh reminder of its indispensableness to be required. Taken by itself, however, and apart from every presupposition not furnished by itself, experience is not competent to yield the knowledge which we seek. For our wish is not merely to enumerate and describe what has happened or is happening. We also want to be able to predict what under definite circumstances will happen. But experience cannot book i.] Experience and Knowledge. 3 show us the future ; and cannot even help us to conjecture what it will be unless we are certain beforehand that the course of the world is bound to follow consistently, beyond the limits of previous observation, the plan of which the beginning is presented to us within those limits. An assurance, however, of the validity of this supposition is what experience cannot afford us. Grant as much as you please that observation in its ceaseless progress had up to a certain moment only lighted on cases of conformity to the rules which we had inferred from a careful use of earlier perceptions : still the proposition that this accumulation of confirmatory instances, which has so far gone on with- out any exception being met with, has increased the probability of a like confirmation in the future, is one that can only be maintained on the strength of a previous tacit admission of the assumption, that the same order which governed the past course of the world will also determine the shape to be taken by its future. This one supposition, accordingly, of there being a universal inner connexion of all reality as such which alone enables us to argue from the structure of any one section of reality to that of the rest, is the foundation of every attempt to arrive at knowledge by means of experience, and is not derivable from experience itself. Whoever casts doubt on the suppo- sition, not only loses the prospect of being able to calculate anything future with certainty, but robs himself at the same time of the only basis on which to found the more modest hope of being able under definite circumstances to consider the occurrence of one event as more probable than that of another. IV. There have been philosophers of sceptical tendency who have shown themselves well aware of this. Having once given up the claim to be possessors of any such innate truth as would also be the truth of things, they have also consistently disclaimed any pretension from a given reality to infer a continuation of that reality which was not given with it. Nothing in fact was left, according to them, in the way of knowledge but the processes of pure Mathematics, in which ideas are connected without any claim being made that they hold good of reality, or history and the description of what is or has been. A science of nature, which should undertake from the facts of the present to predict the necessity of a future result, they held to be impossible. It was only in practical life that those who so thought relied with as much confidence as their opponents on the trustworthiness of those physical principles, which within the school they maintained to be quite without justification. The present professors of natural science, who by their noisy glorification of experience compel every meta- b 2 4 Introduction. [Book i. physical enquiry at the outset to this preliminary self-defence, appear to be only saved by a happy inconsistency from the necessity of a like disclaimer. With laudable modesty they question in many individual cases whether they have yet discovered the true law which governs some group of processes under investigation : but they have no doubt in the abstract as to the presence of laws which connect all parts of the world's course in such a way that, if once complete knowledge had been attained, infallible inferences might be made from one to the other. Now experience, even if it be granted that in its nature it is capable of ever proving the correctness of this assumption, certainly cannot be held to have yet done so. There still lie before us vast regions of nature, as to which, since we know nothing of any con- nexion of their events according to law, the assertion that they are throughout pervaded by a continuous system of law cannot rest on the evidence of experience, but must be ventured on the ground of a conviction which makes the systematic connexion of all reality a primary certainty. V. There are various ways of trying to compromise the difficulty. Sometimes the admission is made that the science of nature is only an experiment in which we try how far we can go with the arbitrary assumption of a law regulating the course of things ; that only the favourable result which experience yields to the experiment convinces us of the correctness of the assumption made. Upon this we can in fact only repeat the remark already made, and perhaps it will not be useless actually to repeat it. If a question is raised as to the nature of the connexion between two processes, of which the mutual de- pendence is not deducible from any previously known truth, it is usual no doubt to arrive at the required law by help of an hypothesis, of which the proof lies in the fact that no exception can be found to its application. But in truth an hypothesis thus accredited is intrin- sically after all nothing more than a formula of thought in which we have found a short expression for the common procedure which has been observable in all instances, hitherto noticed, of the connexion in question. The character of a law is only imparted to this expression by the further thought, which experience cannot add, but which we add — the thought that in the future members of this endless series of instances the same relation will hold good which, as a matter of ex- perience, we have only found to hold good between the past members of the series. It is again only by a repetition of what I have already said that I can reply to the further expansion of the view referred to. It may book i.] Probability and the Idea of Lazv. 5 readily be allowed that the observation of the same connexion between two occurrences, when constantly repeated without an instance to the contrary, gives an ever increasing probability to the assumption of a law connecting them and renders their coincidence explicable only on this assumption. But on what after all does the growing power of this surmise rest? If to begin with we left it an open question whether there is any such thing as law at all in the course of things, we should no longer be entitled to wish to find an explanation for a succession of events, and in consequence to favour the assumption which makes it explicable. For every explanation is in the last resort nothing but the reduction of a mere coincidence between two facts to an inner relation of mutual dependence according to a universal law. Every need of explanation, therefore, and the right to demand it, rests on the primary certainty of conviction that nothing can in truth be or happen which has not the ground of its possibility in a connected universe of things, and the ground of its necessary realisation at a definite place and time in particular facts of this universe. If we once drop this primary conviction, nothing any longer requires explanation and nothing admits of it ; for that mutual dependence would no longer exist which the explanation consists in pointing out. Or, to employ a different expression : if we did not start from the assumption that the course of things was bound by a chain of law, then and for that reason it would not be a whit more improbable that the same processes should always occur in a uniform, and yet perfectly accidental, connexion, than that there should be the wildest variety of the most manifold combinations. And just because of this the mere fact of a constantly repeated coin- cidence would be no proof of the presence of a universal law, by the help of which a further forecast might become possible as to the yet unobserved cases that lie in the future. It is not till the connexion of manifold facts according to law is established as a universal principle that any standard can exist for distinguishing a possible from an impos- sible, a probability from an improbability. Not till then can the one case which has been observed to occur, to the exclusion of the multi- tude of equally possible cases, warrant us in assuming the persistency of a special relation, which in accordance with the universal reign of law yields this one result and excludes other results that are in them- selves equally possible. All experience accordingly, so far as it believes itself to discover a relation of mutual dependence between things according to law, is in this only confirming the supposition, previously admitted as correct, of there being such a relation. If the supposition is still left in doubt, 6 Introduction. [Book i. experience can never prove it. And the actual procedure of physical enquiry is in complete harmony with this state of the case. Even where the processes observed seem to contradict every thought of a uniting law, the investigator never takes himself to have found in these experiences a disproof of the supposition stated, such as would render further effort useless. He merely laments that a confirmation of it is not forthcoming, but never despairs of arriving at such a con- firmation by further research. VI. If then we enquire not so much into ostensible principles, which are generally drawn up for contentious purposes, as into those which without being put into words are continually affirmed by practice, we may take the prevalent spirit of the natural sciences to be represented by the confession that the certainty of there being a relation of mutual dependence between things according to law is independent of expe- rience. Nay, it is common in these sciences to take that relation for granted in the particular form of a relation according to universal law with an exclusiveness which philosophy cannot accept off-hand. But in this admission that there are laws the investigator of nature still believes that all he has done has been to admit a general point of view. The question what the laws of reality are, which in fact includes every object of further enquiry, he reserves as one that is to be dealt with exclusively by the elaboration of experience. He denies the necessity or possibility of any metaphysical enquiry which in this region might aspire to add anything to the results that experience may give. Against such claims the only adequate defence of Metaphysic would consist in the complete execution of its aims ; for it would only be in detail that it could be made intelligible how the manipulation, which experience must undergo in order to yield any result, is impossible, unless by the aid of various definite intermediary ideas, which contain much that does not arise out of the mere general idea of conformity to law, as such, and of which, on the other hand, the certainty cannot in turn be founded on empirical evidence. For the present this brief hint on the subject may be taken to suffice — the more so as it is to be immediately followed by a comprehensive concession to our opponents. In our view Metaphysic ought not to repeat the attempt, which by its inevitable failure has brought the science into disrepute. It is not its business to undertake a demon- stration of the special laws which the course of things in its various directions actually follows. On the contrary, while confining itself to an enquiry into the universal conditions, which everything that is to be counted as existing or happening at all must, according to it, book !.] Metaphysic and Natural Science. 7 be expected to fulfil, it must allow that what does in reality exist or happen is a thing which it cannot know of itself but can only come to know by experience. But it is only from this final knowledge of fact that those determinate laws of procedure could be derived, by which this particular reality satisfies those most general requirements which hold good for every conceivable reality. Metaphysic accordingly will only be able to unfold certain ideal forms (if that expression may be allowed), to which the relations between the elements of everything real must conform. It can supply none of those definite proportions, constant or variable, by the assignment of which it might give to those forms the special mathematical construction necessary to their applicability to a real world that is throughout determined in respect of quality, magnitude, number, and sequence. All this Metaphysic leaves to experience. It will still, however, continue to demand that the results at which experience arrives should admit of being so inter- preted as to fit these ideal forms and to be intelligible as cases of their application ; and to treat as fictions or as unexplained facts those which remain in contradiction with them. VII. There would be nothing then to forbid us from identifying Metaphysic with the final elaboration of the facts with which the sciences of experiment and observation make \X acquainted — but an elaboration distinguished from such sciences by the pursuit of other aims than those towards which they are directed with such laudable and unremitting energy. Natural science, while employing the con- ceptions of certain elements and forces most effectually for the acqui- sition of knowledge, foregoes the attempt to penetrate to the proper nature of those elements and forces. In a few cases important dis- coveries, leading to rapid progress in further insight, have been made by application of the calculus to certain assumed processes, at any possible construction of which science itself has been unable to arrive. We therefore do no. injustice to science in taking its object to consist in a practical command over phenomena ; in other words, the capability, however acquired, of inferring from given conditions of the present to that which either will follow them, or must have pre- ceded them, or must take place contemporaneously with them in parts of the universe inaccessible to observation. That for the acquisition of such command, merely supposing a mutual dependence of pheno- mena according to some law or other, the careful comparison of phenomena should to a great extent suffice, without any acquaintance with the true nature of what underlies them, is a state of things intel- ligible in itself and of which the history of science gives ample evidence. 8 Introduction. [Book I. That the same process should always suffice for the purpose is not so easy to believe. On the contrary, it seems likely that after reaching a certain limit in the extent and depth of its enquiries, natural science will feel the need, in order to the possibility of further progress, of reverting to the task of denning exhaustively those centres of rela- tion, to which it had previously been able to attach its calculations while leaving their nature undetermined. In that case it will either originate a new Metaphysic of its own or it will adopt some existing system. So far as I can judge, it is now very actively engaged in doing the former. Its efforts in that direction we observe with great interest but with mixed feelings. The enviable advantage of having acquired by many-sided investigation an original knowledge of facts, for which no appropriation of other men's knowledge can form a per- fect substitute, secures a favourable judgment in advance for these experiments of naturalists: and there is the more reason that this should be so, since the philosophical instinct, which is able to ensure their success, is not the special property of a caste, but an impulse of the human spirit which finds expression for itself with equal intensity and inventiveness among those of every scientific and practical calling. But there is a drawback even here. It arises from the involuntary limitation of the range of thought to the horizon of the accustomed occupation, to external nature, and from the unhesitating transference of methods which served the primary ends of natural science correctly enough, to the treatment of questions bearing on the ulterior relations of the facts of which mastery has been obtained, and on their less palpable dependence upon principles to which reference has been studiously avoided in the ascertainment of the facts themselves. Of course it is not my intention to indicate here the several points at which, as it seems to me, these dangers have not been avoided. I content myself with referring on the one hand to the inconsiderate habit of not merely regarding the whole spiritual life from the same ultimate points of view as the processes of external nature, but of applying to it the same special analogies as have determined our con- ception of those processes ; and secondly to the inclination to count any chance hypothesis of which the object is one that admits of being presented to the mind, or, failing of this, of being merely indicated in words, good enough to serve as a foundation for a wholly new and paradoxical theory of the world. I do not ignore the many valuable results that are due to this mobility of imagination. I know that man must make trial of many thoughts in order to reach the truth, and that a happy conjecture is apt to carry us further and more quickly on our book i.] Method of the Treatise, g way than the slow step of methodical consideration. Still there can be no advantage -in making attempts of which the intrinsic impossibility and absurdity would be apparent if, instead of looking solely at the single problem of which the solution is being undertaken, we carried our view to the entire complex of questions to which the required solution must be equally applicable. I do not therefore deny that the metaphysical enterprises of recent physical investigators, along with the great interest which they are undoubtedly calculated to excite, make pretty much the same impression on me, though with a some- what different colouring, as was made on the votaries of exact science by the philosophy of nature current in a not very remote past. Our business, however, is not with such individual impressions. I only gave a passing expression to them in order to throw light on the purpose of the following dissertation. The qualification of being conducted according to the method of natural science, by which it is now the fashion for every enquiry to recommend itself, is one which I purposely disclaim for my treatise. Its object is indeed among other things to contribute what it can to the solution -of the difficult problem of providing a philosophical foundation for natural science ; but this is not its only object. It is rather meant to respond to the interest which the thinking spirit takes, not merely in the calculations by which the sequence of phenomena on phenomena may be foretold, but in ascertaining the impalpable real basis of the possibility of all phenomena, and of the necessity of their concatenation. This interest, reaching beyond the region on which natural science spends its labour, must necessarily take its departure from other points of view than those with which natural science is familiar, nor would I disguise the fact that the ultimate points of view to which in the sequel it will lead us will not be in direct harmony with the accustomed views of natural science. "VIII. There is a reproach, however, to which we lay ourselves open in thus stating the problem of Metaphysic. It is not merely that experience is vaunted as the single actual source of our ascertained knowledge. Everything which cannot be learnt from it is held to be completely unknowable : everything which in opposition to the ob- servable succession of phenomena we are apt to cover by that com- prehensive designation, the essence of things. The efforts, therefore, to which we propose to devote ourselves will be followed with the pitying repudiation bestowed on all attempts at desirable but im- practicable undertakings. Beyond the general confidence that there is such a thing as a connexion of things according to law, the human to Introduction. [Book I. spirit, it is held, has no source of knowledge, which might serve the purpose of completing or correcting experience. It would be a mere eccentricity to refuse to admit that a confession of the inscrutability of the essence of things, in a certai?i sense, must at last be elicited from every philosophy; but what if the more exact determination of this sense, and the justification of the whole assertion of such inscrutability, should be just the problem of Metaphysic, which only promises to enquire, but does not fix beforehand the limits within which its enquiry may be successful? And it is clear that the assertion in question, if prefixed to all enquiry, is one that to a certain extent con- tradicts itself. So long as it speaks of an essence of things, it speaks of something and presupposes the reality of something as to the existence of which according to its own showing experience can teach nothing. As soon as it maintains the unknowability of this essence, it implies a conviction as to the position in which the thinking spirit stands to the essence, which, since it cannot be the result of experience, must be derived from a previously recognized certainty in regard to that which the nature of our thought compels us to oppose, as the essence of things, to the series of phenomena. But it is just these tacit presuppositions, which retain their power over us all the time that we are disputing our capacity for knowledge, that stand in need of that explanation, criticism, and limitation, which Metaphysic deems its proper business. Nor have we any right to take for granted that the business is a very easy one, and that it may be properly discharged by some remarks well-accredited in general opinion, to be prefixed by way of introduction to those interpretations of experience from which alone a profitable result is looked for. When we assume nothing but conformity to law in the course of things, this expression, simple itself, seems simple in its signification : but the notions attached to it turn out to be various and far-reaching enough, as soon as it has to be employed in precisely that interpretation of experience which is opposed to Metaphysic. I will not enlarge on the point that every physical enquiry employs the logical principles of Identity and Excluded Middle for the attain- ment of its results : both are reckoned as a matter of course among the methods which every investigation follows. But meanwhile it is forgotten that these principles could not be valid for the connected series of phenomena without holding good also of the completely un- known basis from which the phenomena issue. Yet many facts give sufficient occasion for the surmise that they apply to things themselves and their states in some different sense from that in which they apply book i.] Assumptions of ' Natter al Science. II to the judgments which are suggested to us in thinking about these states. We show as little scruple in availing ourselves of mathematical truths, in order to advance from deduction to deduction. It is tacitly assumed that the unknown essence of things, for one manifestation of which we borrow from experience a definite numerical value, will never out of its residuary and still unknown nature supply to the con- sequence which is to be looked for under some condition an in- calculable coefficient, which would prevent the correspondence of our mathematical prediction with the actual course of events. Nor is this all. Besides these presumptions which are at any rate general in their character and which are all that can be noticed at the outset, in the actual interpretation of experience there are implied many unproven judgments of a more special sort, which can only be noticed in the sequel. For logical laws hold good primarily of nothing but the thinkable content of conceptions, mathematical laws of nothing but pure quantities. If both are to be applied to that which moves and changes, works and suffers, in space and time, they stand in constant need of fresh ideas as to the nature of the real, which as connecting links make it possible to subordinate to the terms of those laws this new region of their application. It is vain for us therefore to speak of a science founded on experience that shall be perfectly free from presuppositions. While this science thinks scorn of seeking support from Metaphysic and disclaims all knowledge of the essence of things, it is everywhere penetrated by unmethodised assumptions in regard to this very essence, and is in the habit of improvising developments, as each separate question sug- gests them, of those principles which it does not deem it worth while to subject to any systematic consideration. IX. In making these remarks I have no object in view but such as may properly be served by an introduction. I wish to prepossess that natural feeling of probability, which in the last instance is the judge of all our philosophical undertakings, in favour of the project of putting together in a systematic way the propositions in regard to the nature and connexion of what is real, which, independently of ex- perience and in answer to the questions with which experience chal- lenges us, we believe ourselves to have no option but to maintain. I expressly disclaim, however, the desire to justify this belief, from which as a matter of fact we are none of us exempt, by an antecedent theory of cognition. I am convinced that too much labour is at present spent in this direction, with results proportionate to the groundlessness of the claims which such theories make. There is 12 Introduction. [booki. something convenient and seductive in the plan of withdrawing at- tention from the solution of definite questions and applying oneself to general questions in regard to cognitive capacities, of which any one could avail himself who set seriously about it. In fact, however, the history of science shows that those who resolutely set themselves to mastering certain problems generally found that their cognisance of the available appliances and of the use of them grew keener in the process; while on the other hand the pretentious occupation with theories of cognition has seldom led to any solid result. It has not itself created those methods which it entertains itself with exhibiting but not employing. On the contrary, it is the actual problems that have compelled the discovery of the methods by which they may be solved. The constant whetting of the knife is tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with it. I know that such an expression of opinion is in unheard-of opposi- tion to the tendency of our time. I could not, however, repress the conviction that there is an intrinsic unsoundness in the efforts made to found a Metaphysic on a psychological analysis of our cognition. The numerous dissertations directed to this end may be compared to the tuning of instruments before a concert, only that they are not so necessary or useful. In the one case it is known what the harmony is which it is sought to produce: in the other case the mental activities which are believed to have been discovered are compared with a canon which the discoverers profess that they have still to find out. In the last resort, however, every one allows that as to the truth of our cognition and its capability of truth no verdict can be compassed which is independent of that cognition itself. It must itself determine the limits of its competence. In order to be able to do this — in order to decide how far it may trust itself to judge of the nature of the real, it must first arrive at a clear notion of the proposi- tions which it is properly obliged — obliged in thorough agreement with itself— to assert of this real. It is by these assumptions, which are simply necessary to Reason, that the conception of the real which is supposed to be in question is determined ; and it is only their con- tent that can justify Reason, when the question is raised, in forming any judgment with regard to its further relation to this its object — either that is in maintaining the unknowability of its concrete na- ture, or in coming to the conclusion as the only one compatible with the reconciliation of all its thoughts, that the conception of things which it generates has no independent object, or in persistently re- taining a belief in such an object in some sense which reason itself book i.] Metaphysic and Psychology. \ - \$ RSlJ determines — a belief which, because of such a nature, neitheS^Stii^Q T nor admits further proof. On the other hand it strikes me asq ttfto ^* unjustifiable to treat the most obscure of all questions, that of the psychological origin of knowledge and the play of conditions which co-operate in producing it, as a preliminary question to be easily dealt with, of which the issue might settle decisively the validity or invalidity collectively or severally of the utterances of reason. On the contrary the psychological history of the origin of an error only conveys a proof that it is an error on supposition that we are previously ac- quainted with the truth and can thus be sure that the originating condition of the error involved a necessary aberration from that truth. Thus the doctrine which I would allege rests not on any conviction which has previously to be admitted as to the psychological roots of our knowledge, but simply on an easily recognisable fact, of which the admission is implied by the very act of disputing it. Every one, evade it as he will, must in the last instance judge of every proposi- tion submitted to him and of every fact with which experience pre- sents him upon grounds of which the constraining force presses itself upon him with an immediate assurance. I say, ' in the last instance,' for even when he undertakes to examine this self-evidence, his final affirmation or denial of it must always rest on the like self-evidence as belonging to his collected reasons for deciding on the matter. In regard to that which this self-supported reason must affirm, now that by the space of centuries it has, in sequence on experience, reflected on itself, a comprehensive consciousness may be obtained or at least sought. But how all this takes place in us, and how it comes about that those fundamental truths which are necessities of our thought ac- quire their self-evidence — these are points on which enlightenment, if possible at all, can only be looked for in a remote future. But when- ever it may come, it can only come after the first question has been answered. The process of our cognition and its relations to objects must, whether we like it or no, be subject to those judgments which our reason passes as necessities of thought upon every real process and on the effect of every element of reality upon every other. These declarations are not in the least at war with the high interest which we take in psychology as a proper region of enquiry. They only amount to a repetition of the assertion which every speculative philosophy must uphold, that while Psychology cannot be the founda- tion of Metaphysic, Metaphysic must be the foundation of Psy- chology. s 14 Introduction. ebooki. X. It is time, however, for some more precise statements as to the line which it is proposed to take in the following enquiry. In re- ferring to the supposition of a universal relation of mutual dependence between all things real as the common foundation of all scientific investigation, I at the same time indicated a doubt with reference to the exclusive form to which in the present stage of scientific culture it is the fashion to reduce this relation — the form of conformity to universal law. This form is neither the only one nor the oldest under which the human spirit has presented to itself the connexion of things. It was emphatically not as instances of a universal rule but as parts of a whole that men first conceived things : as related to each other not primarily by permanent laws but by the unchangeable purport of a plan, of which the realisation required from the several elements not always and everywhere an identical procedure, but a changeable one. In this conviction originated the dazzling forms of the idealistic constructions of the universe. Starting from a supreme idea, into the depths of which they claimed to have penetrated by im- mediate intuition, the authors of these schemes thought to deduce the manifold variety of phenomena in that order in which the phenomena were to contribute to the realisation of the supposed plan. It was not the discovery of laws that was their object, but the establishment of the several ends which the development of things had gradually to attain and of which each determined all habits of existence and be- haviour within the limits of that section of the universe which it governed. The barrenness of these schemes is easily accounted for. They failed in that in which men always will fail, in the exact and ex- haustive definition of that supreme thought, which they held in honour. Now any shortcoming in this outset of the theory must be a source of constantly increasing defect in its development, as it descends to particulars. If ever a happy instinct led it to results that could be accepted, it was only an aesthetic satisfaction that such guesses yielded, not any certainty that could meet doubt by proof. Yet the general conviction from which the speculations in question set out does not yield in any way, either as less certain or as less admissible, to the supposition of universal conformity to law, which in our time is deemed alone worthy of acceptance. For my part therefore — and I wish there to be no uncertainty on the point — I should reckon this theory of the universe, if it could be carried out in detail, as the completion of philosophy ; and though I cannot but deem it incapable of being thus carried out, I yet do not scruple to allow to the conviction, that its fundamental thought is virtually cor- V book i.] Idealism and notion of Law. 15 rect, all the influence which it is still possible for it to retain on the formation of my views. But from among the objects of the enquiry before us, this theory, at least as carrying any immediate certainty, remains excluded. For we are not to employ ourselves upon the world of ideas itself, with its constituents arranged in an order that holds good eternally and is eternally complete, but upon the given world, in which the process of realisation of the ideas is supposed to be visible. Now it is not once y/*"' for all nor in a systematic order that this real world unfolds ectypes of the ideas. In that case it would scarcely be possible to say in what respect the series of the ectypes is distinguishable from that of the archetypes. But the world of reality presents innumerable things and occurrences distributed in space and time. It is by shifting relations of these that the content of the ideas is realised in manifold instances and with degrees of completeness or incompleteness— is so realised only again to disappear. However then we may think oh the obscure question of the position in which the ideas stand~to the world of phenomena and of the regulation of this world by them, it is certain that as soon as their realisation becomes dependent on the changing connexion between a number of points brought into relation, there must arise a system of universal laws; in accordance with which in all like cases of recurrence a like result necessarily follows, in unlike cases an unlike result, and a certain end is attained in one case, missed in another. Accordingly, even the idealistic theory of the world, which believes reality to be governed by ends that belong to a plan, if it would render the process of realisation of these ends in- telligible, necessarily generates the ' conception of a universal con- nexion of things' according' to law as a derived principle, though it may refuse it the dignity of an ultimate principle. It will find no difficulty in admitting -further that the human spirit does not possess any immediate revelation as to an end and direction of the collective movement of the universe, in which according to its own supposition that spirit is a vanishing point. Having for its vocation, however, to work at its limited place in the service of the whole according to the same universal laws which hold good for all the several elements of the whole, the human spirit will more easily possess an immediate consciousness of this necessity by which it like everything else is de- termined. Considerations of this sort settle nothing objectively: but they suffice to justify the abstract limitation of our present problem. Metaphysic has merely to show what the universal conditions are 1 6 Introduction. [Book i. which must be satisfied by anything of which we can say without contradicting ourselves that it is or that it happens. The question remains open whether these laws, which we hope to master, form the ultimate object which our knowledge can reach, or whether we may succeed in deducing them from a highest thought, as conditions of its realisation which this thought imposes on itself. XI. In order to the discovery of the truths we are in search of it would be desirable to be in possession of a clue that could be relied on. The remarks we have just made at once prevent us from avail- ing ourselves of a resource in which confidence was placed by the philosophers of a still recent period. The followers of the idealistic systems to which I last referred imagined that in their dialectic method they had security for the completeness and certainty of the formulae in which they unfolded the true content of the universe. They directed their attention but slightly to the riddles of experience. To a much greater degree they had allowed themselves to be affected by the concentrated impression of all the imperfections by which the world outrages at once our knowledge our moral judgment, and the wishes of our hearts. In opposition to that impression there arose in their minds with great vivacity but, as was not denied, in complete obscurity the forecast of a true being, which was to be free from these shortcomings and at the same time to solve the difficult problem of rendering the presence of the shortcomings intelligible. This fore- cast, into which they had gathered all the needs and aspirations of the human spirit, they sought by the application of their method to unfold into its complete content. In their own language they sought to raise that into conception 1 which at the outset had been appre- hended only in the incomplete form of imagination 2 . I do not propose to revert to the criticism of this method, on the logical peculiarity of which I have enlarged elsewhere. It is enough here to remark that in accordance with the spirit of the theories in which it was turned to account, it has led only to the assignment of certain universal forms of appearance which cannot be absent in a world that is to be a complete ectype of the supreme idea. It has not led to the discovery of any principles available for the solution of questions relating to the mutual qualification of the several elements, by which in any case the realisation of those forms is completely or incompletely attained. The method might conceivably be trans- formed so as to serve this other end, for its essential tendency, which is to clear up obscure ideas, will give occasion everywhere for its use. 1 [Begriff.] 2 [Vorstellung.] B' K ij The Dialectic Method. 1 7 But in this transformation it would lose the most potent part of that which formerly gave it its peculiar charm. Its attraction consisted in this, that it sought in a series of intuitions, which it unfolded one out of the other, to convey an immediate insight into the very inner movement which forms the life of the universe, excluding that labour of discursive thought which seeks to arrive at certainty in roundabout ways and by use of the most various subsidiary methods of proof. As making such claims, the method can at bottom only be a form of that process of exhibiting already discovered truths which unfolds them in the order which after much labour of thought in other direc- tions comes to be recognised as the proper and natural system of those truths. If however the method is to be employed at the same time as a form of discovering truth, the process, questionable at best, only admits of being in some measure carried- out in relation to those universal and stable forms of events and phenomena, which we have reason for regarding as an objective development of the world's content or of its idea. In regard to the universal laws, by which the realisation of all these forms is uniformly governed, we certainly cannot assume that they constitute a system in which an indisputable principle opens out into a continuous series of developments. We cannot in this case ascribe the development to the reality 1 as ob- jective, but only to our' thoughts about the reality 1 as subjective. The Dialectic method would therefore have to submit to conversion into that simpler dialectic, or, to speak more plainly, into that mere process of consideration in which the elementary thoughts that we entertain as to the nature and interconnection of the real are com- pared with each other and with all the conditions which warrant a judgment as to their correctness, and in which it is sought to replace the contradictions and shortcomings that thereupon appear by better definitions. Nothing is more natural and familiar than this mode of procedure, but it is also obvious that it does not of itself determine beforehand either the point of departure for the considerations of which it consists or in detail the kind of progress which shall be made in it. XII. Other attempts at the discovery of a clue have started from 1 [*Sache ' in this work means whatever a name can stand for, is coextensive with 1 Vorstellbarer Inhalt ' (a content which can be presented in an idea), Logic, sect. 342, and therefore has 'objectivity' (Objectivitat), Logic, sect. 3; on the other hand it is much wider than ' Ding ' (a thing), which has not only • Objectivitat ' but also ' Wirklichkeit ' (concrete external reality); cp. Logic, sect. 3. There is no exact English equivalent for ' Sache ' in this sense.] VOL. I. C 1 8 Introduction. [Book I. a conception of classification. There lies a natural charm in the as- sumption that not only will the content of the universe be found to form an ordered and rounded whole according to some symmetrical method, but also that the reason, of which it is the vocation to know it, possesses for this purpose innate modes of conception in organised and completed array. The latter part of this notion, at any rate, was the source of Kant's attempt by a completion of Aristotle's doctrine of Categories to find the sum of truths that are necessities of our thought. In the sense which Aristotle himself attached to his Cate- gories, as a collection of the most universal predicates, under which every term that we can employ of intelligible import may be sub- sumed, they have never admitted of serious philosophical application. At most they have served to recall the points of view from which questions may be put in regard to the objects of enquiry that present themselves. The answers to those questions always lay elsewhere — not in conceptions at all, but in fundamental judgments directing the application of the conception in this way or that. Kant's reformed table of Categories suffers primarily from the same defect ; but he sought to get rid of it by passing in fact from it to the ' principles of Understanding' which, as he held, were merely contracted in the Categories into the shape of conceptions and could therefore be again elicited from them. The attempt is a work of genius, but against the reasoning on which it is founded and the consequences drawn from it many scruples suggest themselves. Kant found fault with Aristotle for having set up his Categories without a principle to warrant their completeness. On the other hand, plenty of people have been forth- coming to point out the excellence of the principles of division which Aristotle is supposed to have followed. I do not look for any result from the controversy on this point. Given a plurality of unknown extent, if it is proposed to resolve it not merely by way of dichotomy into M and non-iW but ultimately into members of a purely positive sort, M, N, O, P, Q, there can be no security in the way of method for the completeness of this disjunctive process. From the nature of the case we must always go on to think of a residuary member R, of which nothing is known but that it is different from all the preceding members. Any one who boasts of the completeness of the division is merely saying that for his part he cannot add a fresh member R. Whoever denies the completeness affirms that a further member R has occurred to him which with equal right belongs to the series. Aristotle may have had the most admirable principles of division ; but they do not prove that he has noticed all the members which properly book i.] The method of Classification. 19 fall under them. But the same remark holds equally good against Kant. It may be conceded to him that it is only in the form of the judgment that the acts of thought aire performed by means of which we affirm anything of the real. If it is admitted further as a con- sequence of this that there will be as many different primary pro- positions of this kind as there are essentially different logical forms of judgment, still the admission that these different forms of judgment have been exhaustively discovered cannot be insisted on as a matter, properly speaking, of methodological necessity. The admission will be made as soon as we feel ourselves satisfied and have nothing to add to the classification ; and if this agreement were universal, the matter would be practically settled, for every inventory must be taken as complete, if those who are interested in its completeness can find nothing more to add to it. But that kind of theoretical security for an unconditional completeness, which Kant was in quest of, is something intrinsically impossible. These however are logical considerations, which are not very decisive here. It is more important to point out that the very admission from which we started is one that cannot be made. The logical forms of judgment are applied to every possible subject- matter, to the merely thinkable as well as to the real, to the doubt- ful and the impossible as well as to the certain and the possible. We cannot therefore be the least sure that all the different forms, which are indispensable to thought for this its wide-reaching em- ployment, are also of equal importance for its more limited ap- plication to the real. So far however as their significance in fact extends also to this latter region, it is a significance which could not be gathered in its full determination from that general form in which it was equally applicable to the non-real. The categorical form of judgment leaves it quite an open question, whether the subject of the judgment to which it adds a predicate is a simple ' nominal essence J ' remaining identical with itself, or a whole which possesses each of its parts, or a substance capable of experiencing a succession of states. The hypothetical form of judgment does not distinguish whether the condition contained in its antecedent clause is the reason of a consequence, or the cause of an effect, or the de- termining end from which the fact stated in the consequent proceeds as a necessary condition of its fulfilment. But these different con- ceptions, which are here presented in a like form, are of different im- portance for the treatment of the real. The metaphysical significance 1 [' Einfacher Denkinhalt.'] C 2 20 Introduction. [Book I. of the Categories is, therefore, even according to Kant's view, only a matter of happy conjecture, and rests upon material considerations, which are unconnected with the forms of judgment, and to which the systematisation of those logical forms has merely given external occasion. It is only these incidentally suggested thoughts that have given to the Categories in Kant's hands a semblance of importance and productiveness, which these playthings of philosophy, the object of so much curiosity, cannot properly claim. This roundabout road of first establishing a formal method affords us no better security than we should have if we set straight to work at the thing — at the matter of our enquiry. XIII. We are encouraged to this direct course by the recollection that it is not a case of taking possession for the first time of an unknown land. Thanks to the zealous efforts of centuries the objects we have to deal with have long been set forth in distinct order, and the questions about them collected which need an answer. Nor had the philosophy which has prepared the way for us itself to break wholly new ground. In regard to the main divisions of our subject it had little to do but to repeat what everyone learns anew from his own experience of the world. Nature and spirit are two regions so different as at first sight to admit of no comparison, and demanding two separate modes of treatment, each devoted to the essential character by which the two regions are alike self-involved and sepa- rate from each other. But on the other hand they are destined to such constant action upon each other as parts of one universe, that they constrain us at the same time to the quest for those universal forms of an order of things which they both have to satisfy alike in themselves and in the connexion with each other. It might seem as if this last-mentioned branch of its enquiry must be the one to which early science would be last brought. As a matter of history, however, it has taken it in hand as soon as the other two branches, and has long devoted itself to it with greater particularity than, considering the small progress made in the other branches, it could find conducive to success. But whatever may be the case historically, now at least when we try to weigh the amount of tenable result which has been won from such protracted labour, we are justified in beginning with that which is first in the order of things though not in the order of our knowledge ; I mean with Ontology, which, as a doctrine of the being and relations of all reality, had precedence given to it over Cosmology and Psychology — the two branches of enquiry which follow the reality into its opposite distinctive forms. It is book i.] The divisions of Metapkysic. 21 to this division of the subject that with slight additions or omission?, Metaphysic under every form of treatment has to all intents and purposes returned. The variety in the choice of terms occasioned by peculiar points of view adopted antecedently to the consideration of the natural division of the subject, has indeed been very great. But to take any further account of these variations of terminology, before entering on the real matter in hand, seems to me as useless as the attempt to determine more exactly that limitation of the problems before us which metaphysicians have had before them in promising to treat only of rational cosmology and psychology, as opposed in a very intelligible manner to the further knowledge which only ex- perience can convey. XIV. No period of human life is conceivable in which man did not yet feel himself in opposition to an external world around him. Long in doubt about himself, he found around him a multitude of perceptibly divided objects, and he could not live long without having many impressions forced upon him as to their nature and connexion. For none of the every-day business that is undertaken for the satisfaction of wants could go on without the unspoken con- viction that our wishes and thoughts have not by themselves the power to make any alteration in the state of the outer world, but that this world consists in a system of mutually determinable things, in which any alteration of one part that we may succeed in effecting is sure of a definite propagation of effects on other parts. Moreover no such undertaking could be carried out without coming on some resistance, and thus giving rise to the recognition of an unaccountable independence exercised by things in withstanding a change of state. All these thoughts as well as those which might readily be added on a continuation of these reflections, were primarily present only in the form of unconsciously determining principles which regulated actions and expectations in real life. It is in the same form that with almost identical repetition they still arise in each individual, constituting the natural Ontology with which we all in real life meet the demand for judgments on events. The reflective attempt to form these assump- tions into conscious principles only ensued when attention was called to the need of escaping contradictions with which they became em- barrassed when they came to be applied without care for the con- sequences to a wider range of knowledge. It was thus that Philosophy, with its ontological enquiries, arose. In the order of their development these enquiries have not indeed been independent of the natural order in which one question suggests 2 2 Introdtiction. another. Still owing to accidental circumstances they have often drifted into devious tracks ; have assumed and again given up very various tendencies. There is no need, however, in a treatise which aims at gathering the product of these labours, to repeat this chequered history. It may fasten directly on the natural conception of the universe which we noticed just now — that conception which finds the course of the world only intelligible of a multiplicity of per- sistent things, of variable relations between them, and of events arising out of these changes of mutual relation. For it is just this view of the universe, of which the essential purport may be thus sum- marised, which renews itself with constant identity in every age. Outside the schools we all accommodate ourselves to it. Not to us merely, but to all past labourers in the field of philosophy, it has presented itself as the point of departure, as that which had either to be confirmed or controverted. Unlike the divergent theories of spe- culative men, therefore, it deserves to be reckoned as itself one of the natural phenomena which, in the character of regular elements of the universe, enchain the attention of philosophy. For the present however all that we need to borrow from history is the general con- viction that of the simple thoughts which make up this view there is none that is exempt from the need of having its actual and possible import scientifically ascertained in order to its being harmonised with all the rest in a tenable whole. No lengthy prolegomena are needed to determine the course which must be entered on for this purpose. We cannot speak of occurrences in relations without previously think- ing of the things between which they are supposed to take place or to subsist. Of these things, however — manifold and unlike as we take them to be — we at the same time affirm, along with a distinction in the individual being of each, a likeness in respect of that form of reality which makes them things. It is with the simple idea of this being that we have to begin. The line to be followed in the sequel may be left for the present unfixed. Everything cannot be said at once. That natural view of the world from which we take our departure, simple as it seems at first sight, yet contains various interwoven threads ; and no one of these can be pursued without at the same time touching others which there is not time at the outset to follow out on their own account and which must be reserved to a more convenient season. For our earlier considerations, therefore, we must ask the indulgence of not being disturbed by objections of which due account shall be taken in the sequel. CHAPTER I. On the Being of Tilings. 1. One of the oldest thoughts in Philosophy is that of the oppo- sition between true being and untrue being. Illusions of the senses, causing what is unreal to be taken for what is real, led to a perception of the distinction between that which only appears to us and that which is independent of us. The observation of things taught men to recognise a conditional existence or a result of combination in that which to begin with seemed simple and self-dependent. Continuous becoming was found where only unmoving persistent identity had been thought visible. Thus there was occasioned a clear conscious- ness of that which had been understood by ' true being,' and which was found wanting in the objects of these observations. Independ- ence not only of us but of everything other than itself, simplicity and unchanging persistence in its own nature, had always been reckoned its signs. Its signs, we say, but still only its signs ; for these charac- teristics, though they suffice to exclude that of which they are not predicable from the region of true being, do not define that being itself. Independence of our own impressions in regard to it is what we ascribe to every truth. It holds good in itself, though no one thinks it. Independence of everything beside itself we affirm not indeed of every truth, but of many truths which neither need nor admit of proof. Simplicity exclusive of all combination belongs to every single sensation of sweetness or redness ; and motionless self- subsistence, inaccessible to any change, is the proper character of that world of ideas which we oppose to reality on the ground that while we can say of the ideas that they eternally hold good we cannot say that they are. It follows that in the characteristics stated of Being not only is something wanting which has been thought though not expressed but the missing something is the most essential element of that which we are in quest of. We still want to know what exactly that Being itself is to which those terms may be applied by way of 24 On the Being of Things. [Book i. distinguishing the true Being from the apparent, or what that reality consists in by which an independent simple and persistent Being distinguishes itself from the unreal image in thought of the same independent simple and persistent content. 2. To this question a very simple answer may be attempted. It seems quite a matter of course that the thinking faculty should not be able by any of its own resources, by any thought, to penetrate and exhaust the essential property of real Being, in which thought of itself recognises an opposition to all merely intelligible existence. The most that we can claim, it will be said, is that real Being yields us a living experience of itself in a manner quite different from thinking, and such experiences being once given, a ground of cognition with reference to them thereupon admits of being stated, which is necessary not indeed for the purpose of inferring that presence of real Being which is matter of immediate experience but for maintaining the truth of this experience against every doubt. Upon this view no pretence is made of explaining by means of conceptions the difference of real Being from the conception of the same, but immediate sensation 1 has always been looked upon as the ground of cognition which is our warrant for the presence of real Being. Even after the habit has been formed of putting trust in proofs and credible communications, we shall still seek to set aside any doubt that may have arisen by rousing ourselves to see and hear whether the things exist and the occurrences take place of which information has been given us ; nor does any proof prove the reality of its conclusion unless, apart from the correctness of its logical concatenation, not merely the truth of its original premisses, as matter of thought, but the reality of its content is established — a reality which in the last resort is given only by sensuous perception. It may be that even sensation sometimes deceives and presents us with what is unreal instead of with what is real. Still in those cases where it does not deceive, it is the only possible evidence of reality. It may in like manner be questioned whether sensation gives us insight into the real as it is. Still of the fact that something which really is underlies it, sensation does not seem to allow a doubt. 3. The two objections just noticed to the value of sensation cannot here be discussed in full, but with the second there is a difficulty con- nected which we have to consider at once. The content of simple sensations cannot be so separated from the sensitive act as that detached images of the two, complete in themselves, should remain 1 [' Sinnlichen Empfindung.'] Chapter I.] Bcillg Ciud ScilSCltion. 25 after the separation. We can neither present redness, sweetness, and warmth to ourselves as they would be if they were not felt, nor the feeling of them as it would be if it were not a feeling of any of these particular qualities. The variety, however, of the sensible qualities, and the defmiteness of each single quality as presented to the mind's eye, facilitate the attempt which we all make to separate in thought what is really indivisible. The particular matter which we feel, at any rate, appears to us independent of our feeling, as if it were something of which the self-existent nature was only recognised and discovered by the act of feeling. But we do not succeed so easily in detaching the other element — that real being, of which, as the being of this sensible content, it was the business of actual sensation in opposition to the mere recollection or idea of it to give us assurance. It cannot be already given in this simplest affirmation or position which we ascribed to the sensible con- tents, and by which each of them is what it is and distinguishes itself from other contents. Through this affirmation that which is affirmed only comes to hold good as an element in the world of the thinkable. It is not real merely because it is in this sense something, as opposed to nothing void of all determination. In virtue of such affirmation Red is eternally Red and allied to Yellow, not allied to what is warm or sweet. But this identity with itself and difference from something else holds good of the Red of which there is no actual sensation as of that of which there is actual sensation. Yet it is only in the case of the latter that sensation is supposed to testify to real existence. Apart from that simplest affirmation, however, the various sensible qualities in abstraction from the sensitive act which apprehends them have nothing in common. If therefore we assert of them, so far as they are felt, a real Being different from this affirmation, this Being is not anything which as attaching to the nature of the felt quality would merely be recognised and discovered by the sensitive act. On the contrary, it lies wholly in the simple fact of being felt, which forms the sole distinction between the actual sensation of the quality that is present to sense and the mere idea of quality which is not so present. Thus it would appear that the notion with which we started must be given up ; for sensation is not a mere ground of cognition of a real Being which is still something different from it and of which the proper nature has still to be stated ; and the being which on the evidence of sensation we ascribe to things consists in absolutely nothing else than the fact of their being felt. 4. This assertion, however, can only be hazarded when certain 26 On the Being of Things. [booki. points of advanced speculation have been reached, which we shall arrive at later. The primary conception of the world is quite remote from any such inference. According to it sensation is certainly the only ' causa cognoscendi ' which convinces us of Being, and just because it is the only one, there easily arises the mistake of. supposing that what it alone can show consists only of it ; whereas in fact Being is, notwithstanding, independent of our recognition of it, and all things, of which we learn the reality, it is true, only from sensation, will continue to be, though our attention is diverted from them and they vanish from our consciousness. Nothing indeed appears more self-evident than this doctrine. We all do homage to it. Yet the question must recur, what remains to be understood by the Being of things, when we have got rid of the sole condition under which it is cognisable by us. It was as objects of our feeling that things were presented to us. In this alone consisted as far as we could see what we called their Being. What can be left of Being when we abstract from our feeling ? What exactly is it that we suppose our- selves to have predicated of things, in saying that they are without being felt ? Or what is it that for the things themselves, by way of proof, confirmation, and significance of their being, takes the place of that sensation which for us formed the proof, confirmation, and signi- ficance of their being. The proper meaning of these questions will become clearer, if I pass to the answers which the natural theory of the world gives to them ; for it must not be supposed that this theory makes no effort to remedy the shortcoming which we have noticed. Its simplest way of doing so consists in the reflection that on the disappearance of our own sensation that of others takes its place. The men whom we leave behind will remain in intercourse with others. Places and objects, from which we are removed, will be seen by others as hitherto by us. This constitutes their persistency in Being, while they have vanished from our senses. Everyone, I think, will find traces in himself of this primary way of presenting the case. Yet it helps us rather to put off the question than to answer it. It is sure to repeat itself at once in another form. Being was said to be independent of any consciousness on the part of a sentient subject. What then if consciousness is extinguished out of the entire universe and there is no longer any one who could have cognisance of the things that are supposed to exist ? In that case, we answer, they will continue to stand in those relations to each other in which they stood when they were objects of perception. Each will have its place in chapter i.] Being as real relations. 27 space or will change it. Each will continue to exercise influences on others or to be affected by their influence. These reciprocal agencies will constitute that in which the things possess their being indepen- dently of all observation. Beyond this view of the matter the natural theory of things scarcely ever goes. In what respect it is unsatisfac- tory and in what it is right we have now to attempt to consider. 5. There is one point on which it is held to be defective, but un- fairly, because its defect consists merely in its inability to answer an improper question, which we have simply to get out of the habit of putting. The question arises in this way. All those relations, in which we just now supposed the reality of things to consist, may be thought of equally as real and as unreal. But they must be actually real and not merely thought of as real, if they are to form the Being of things and not merely the idea of this Being. In what then, we ask, consists this reality of that which is in itself merely thinkable, and how does it arise? That this question is unanswerable and self- contradictory needs no elaborate proof. In what properly consists the fact — how it comes about or is made — that there is something and not nothing, that something and not nothing takes place ; this it is eternally impossible to say. For in fact, whatever the form of the question in which this curiosity might find expression, it is clear that we should always presuppose in it as antecedent to that reality of which we seek an explanation, a prior connected reality, in which from definite principles definite consequences necessarily flow, and among them the reality that has to be explained. And the origin of this latter reality would not be like that of a truth which arises as a consequence out of other truths but which yet always subsisted along with them in eternal validity. The origin in question would be ex- pressly one in which a reality, that was previously itself unreal, arises out of another reality. Everything accordingly which we find in the given reality — the occurrence of events, the change in the action of things upon each other, the existence of centres of relation between which such action may take place — all this we must assume to begin with in order to render the origin of reality intelligible. This obvious circle has been avoided by the common view. Nor can it be charged with having itself fallen into another circle in re- ducing the real Being of things to the reality of those relations the maintenance of which it supposed to constitute what was meant by this Being. For it could not be intended to analyse this most general conception of reality, of which the significance can only be conveyed in the living experience of feeling. All that could be meant by 28 On the Being of Things. cbooki. definitions of Being in the common theory was an indication of that which within this given miracle of reality is to be understood as the Being: of the Things in distinction from other instances of the same reality, from the existence of the relations themselves and from the occurrence of events. Whether the common theory has succeeded in this latter object is what remains to be asked. 6. Philosophy has been very unanimous in denying that it has. How, it is asked, are we to understand those relations, in the sub- sistence of which we would fain find the Being of the Things ? If they are merely a result of arbitrary combinations in which we present things to our minds, we should equally fail in our object whether the things ordered themselves according to this caprice of ours or whether they did not. In the former case we should not find the Being independent of ourselves which we were in search of. If the latter were the true state of the case, it would make it still more plain that there must be something involved in the Being of things which our definition of this Being failed to include — the something in virtue of which they are qualified to exist on their own account, not changing with and because of our changeable conception of their .Being. We cannot be satisfied therefore without supposing that the relations, of which we assume the existence, exist between the things themselves, so as to be discoverable by our thought but not created by or dependent on it. The more, however, we insist on this ob- jective reality of relations, the more unmistakeable we make the dependence of the Being of everything on the Being of everything else. No thing can have its place among the other things, if these are not there to receive it among them. None can work or suffer, before the others are there to exchange impressions with it. To put the matter generally; in order to there being such a thing as an action of one thing upon another, it would seem that the centres of relation between which it is to take place must be established in independent reality. A Being in things, resting wholly on itself and in virtue of this independence rendering the relations possible by which things are to be connected, must precede in thought every relation that is to be taken for real. This is the pure Being, of which Philosophy has so often gone in quest. It is opposed by Philosophy, as being of the same significance for all things, to the empirical Being which, originating in the various relations that have come into play between things, is different for every second thing from what it is for the third, and which Philosophy hopes somehow to deduce as a supervening result from the pure Being. chapter i.] Pure 'Being strictly meaningless. 29 7. I propose to show that expectation directed to this metaphysical use of the conception of pure Being is a delusion, and that the natural theory of the world, in which nothing is heard of it, is on this point nearer the truth than this first notion of Speculation. Every conception, which is to admit of any profitable application, must allow of a clear distinction between that which is meant by it and that which is not meant by it. So long as we looked for the Being of things in the reality of relations in which the things stand to each other, we possessed in these relations something by the affirmation of which the Being of that which is, distinguishes itself from the non- Being of that which is not. The more we remove from the concep- tion of Being every thought of a relation, in the affirmation of which it might consist, the more completely the possibility of this distinc- tion disappears. For not to be at any place, not to have any posi- tion in the complex of other things, not to undergo any operation from anything nor to display itself by the exercise of any activity upon anything; to be thus void of relation is just that in which we should find the nonentity of a thing if it was our purpose to define it. It is not to the purpose to object that it was not this nonentity but Being that was meant by the definition. It is not doubted that the latter was the object of our definition, but the object is not attained, so long as the same definition includes the opposite of that which we intended to include in it. No doubt an effort will be made to rebut this objection in its turn. It will be urged that if, starting from the comparison of the multiform Being of experience, we omit all the relations on which its distinction rests, that which remains as pure Being is not the mere privation of relations but that of which this very unrelatedness serves only as a predicate, and which, resting on itself and independent, is distin- guished by this hardly to be indicated but still positive trait from that which is not. Now it is true that our usage is not to employ these and like expressions of that which is not or of the nothing, but the usage is not strictly justifiable so long as we apply the expressions to this pure Being. They only have an intelligible sense because we already live in the thought of manifold relations, and within the sphere of these the true Being has opportunity of showing by a definite order of procedure what is the meaning of its independence and self-subsistence. Once drop this implication, and all the above expressions, in the complete emptiness of meaning to which they thereupon sink, are unquestionably as applicable to Nothing as they are to Being, for in fact independence of everything else, self-sub- 30 On the Being of Things. [Book i. sistence and complete absence of relation are not less predicable of the one than of the other. 8. We may expect here the impatient rejoinder — 'There still re- mains the eternal difference that the unrelated Being is while the unrelated non-Being is not : all that comes of your super-subtle investigation is a contradiction of your own previous admission. For the meaning of Being, in the sense of reality and in opposition to not-being, is as you say undefinable and only to be learnt by actual living. The cognition thus gained necessarily and rightfully pre- supposes the conception of pure Being, as the positive element in the experienced Being. We have not therefore the problem of dis- tinguishing Being from not-Being any longer before us. That is settled for us in the experience of life. Our problem merely is within real Being by negation of all relations to isolate the pure Being, which must be there to begin with in order to the possibility of entrance into any relations whatever. In forming this conception of pure Being therefore, Thought is quite within its right, although for that which it looks upon as the positive import of the conception it can only offer a name, of which the intelligibility may be fairly reckoned on, not a description.' Now by way of reply to these objections I must remind the reader that what I disputed was not at all the legitimacy of the formation of the idea in question but only the allowability of the metaphysical use which it is sought to make of it. The point of this distinction I will endeavour first to illustrate by examples. Bodies move in space with various velocities and in various directions. No doubt we are justi- fied as a matter of thought in fixing arbitrarily and one-sidedly now on one common element, now on another, in these various instances, and thus in forming the conception of direction without reference to velocity, that of velocity apart from direction, that of motion as the conception of a change of place, which leaves direction and velocity unnoticed. There is nothing whatever illegitimate in the formation of any of these abstractions. Nor is it incompatible with the nature of the abstractions that instances of each of them should be so con- nected in thought as to yield further knowledge. None of them, however, immediately and by itself allows of an application to reality without being first restored to combination with the rest from which our Thought, in arbitrary exercise of its right of abstraction, had detached them. There will never be a velocity without direction; never a direction ab in the proper sense of the term without a velocity leading from a to b, not from b to a. There will never be a motion chapter i.] Pure Being by itself unreal. 3 1 that is a mere change of place, as yet without direction and velocity and waiting to assume these two qualifications later on. That which we are here seeking to convey is essentially, if not altogether, the familiar truth that general ideas are not applicable to the real world in their generality, but only become so applicable when each of their marks, that has been left undetermined, has been limited to a com- pletely individual determinateness, or, to use an expression more suited to the case before us, when to each partial conception neces- sary to the complete definition there has been again supplied in case it expresses a relation, the element to which the relation attaches. 9. We take the case to be just the same with the conception of pure Being. It is an abstraction formed in a perfectly legitimate way, which aims at embracing the common element that is to be found in many cases of Being and that distinguishes them from not- Being. We do not value this abstraction the less because the sim- plicity of what it contains is such that a verbal indication of this common element, as distinct from any systematic construction of it, is all that is possible. Still, like those to which we compared it, it does not admit, as it stands, of application to anything real. Just as an abstract motion cannot take place, just as it never occurs but in the form of velocity in a definite direction, so pure Being cannot in reality be an antecedent or substance of such a kind as that empirical existence with its manifold determinations should be in any sort a secondary emanation from it, either as its consequence or as its modification. It has no reality except as latent in these particular cases of it, in each of these definite forms of existence. It is merely in the system of our conceptions that these supervene upon it as subsequent and subordinate kinds. There was a correct feeling of this in what I call the natural theory of the world. It was quite aware of the intellectual possibility of detaching the affirmation that is the same in all cases from the differences of the manifold relations which are affirmed by it in the different cases of Being, just as the uniform idea of quantity can be detached from the different numbers and spaces which are subordinate to it. But it rightly held to the view that the pure Being thus constituted has not reality as pure but only in the various instances in which it is a latent element ; just as is the case with quantity, which never occurs as pure Quantity but only as this or that definite Quantum of something. 10. The length of this enquiry, which leads to a result seemingly so simple, must be justified by the sequel. It may be useful, I think, to repeat the same thought once again in another form. There are 32 On the Being of Things. [Booki. other terms which have been applied to pure Being, in the desire to make that which admits of no explanatory analysis at least more intelligible by a variety of signs. Thus it is usual to speak of it as an unconditional and irrevocable Position 1 or Putting. It will be readily noticed that as so applied, each of these terms is used with an ex- tension of meaning in which it ceases to represent any complete thought. They alike tend to give a sensuous expression to the idea in question by recalling the import in which they are properly used ; and when that on which their proper meaning rests has again to be expressly denied the result is obscurity and confusion. We cannot speak of a putting or Position in the proper sense of the term without stating what it is that is put. And not only so, this must be put somewhere, in some place, in some situation which is the result of the putting and distinguishes the putting that has taken place from one that has not taken place. Any one who applied this term to pure Being would therefore very soon find himself pushed back again to a statement of relations, in order to give to this ' Posi- tion' or pure Being the meaning necessary to its distinction from the not-putting, the pure non-Being. The notion which it is commonly attempted to substitute for this — that of an act of placing pure and simple, which leaves out of sight every relation constituted by the act — remains an abstraction which expresses only the purpose of the person thinking to think of Being and not of not-Being, while on the other hand it carefully obliterates the conditions under which this purpose can attain its end and not the precise opposite of this end. Nor would it be of any avail to be always reverting to the proposition that after all it is by this act of putting that there is constituted the very intelligible though not further analysable idea of an objectivity which can be ascribed only to that which is, not to nothing. For, apart from every other consideration, if we in fact not merely per- formed the act of mere putting, as such, but by it put a definite content, without however adding what sort of procedure or what relations were to result to the object from this act of putting, the consequence would merely be that the thing put would be presented to our consciousness as an essence which signifies something and distinguishes itself from something else, but not as one that is in opposition to that which is not. Real Being, as distinct from the mere truth of the thinkable, can never be arrived at by this bare act 1 [' Position oder Setzung.' It seems unavoidable that the English word ' Posi- tion ' should be used, though it has of course no active meaning such as belongs to ' Position ' and ' Setzung.'] chapter ij Being as ' Position ' or Affirmation. 23 of putting, but only by the addition in thought of those relations, to be placed in which forms just the prerogative which reality has over cogitability. The other general signification, which the expressions 'Position' and 'putting' have assumed, illustrates the same state of the case. We cannot affirm simply something, we can only affirm a proposition — not a subject, but only a predicate as belonging to a subject. Now it is psychologically very intelligible that from every act of affirmation we should look for a result, which stands objectively and permanently before thought, while all negation implies the opposite expectation, that something will vanish which previously thus stood before it. It is quite natural therefore that we should fall into the delusion of imagining that in the purpose and good will to affirm there lies a creative force, which if it is directed to no definite predicate but exercised in abstraction would create that universal and pure Being which underlies all determinate Being. In fact however the affirma- tion does not bring into Being the predicate which forms its object, and it could just as well, though for psychological reasons not so naturally, assert the not-Being of things as their Being. The Being of things, therefore, which is in question, cannot be found in the affirmation of them merely as such but only in the affirmation of their Being. We are thus brought back to the necessity of first determining the sense of this Being in order to the presence of a possible object of the affirmation, and this determination we have, so far at least, found no means of carrying out except by presupposition of relations, in the reality of which the Being of that which is consists in antithesis to the not-Being of that which is not. 11. There is a further reason for avoiding the expression which I have just been examining. 'Position' and 'putting forth' are alike according to their verbal form terms for actions 1 . Now it may seem trifling, but I count it important all the same, to exercise a precaution in the choice of philosophical expressions and not to employ words which almost unavoidably carry with them an association which has a disturbing influence on the treatment of the matter expressed. In the case before us the prejudicial effects apprehended have not remained in abeyance. It has not indeed been believed possible to achieve a putting forth which should create Being : but there was always associated with the application of the word the notion that it has been by a corresponding act, from whomsoever proceeding, that this Being so unaccountably presented to us has originated and that we then 1 [v. note on p. 32.] VOL. I. D 34 Of the Being of Things. [booki. penetrate to its true idea when we repeat in thought this history of its origin. We shall find the importance of this error, if we revert to the reproach brought against the natural theory of the world. It is objected that in looking for the Being of every thing in its relations to other things, it leaves no unconditioned element of reality — none that would not have others for its presupposition. If a can only exist in relation to b, then, it is said, b must be there beforehand ; if b exists only in relation to c, then c must be its antecedent. And if perchance there were a last element z dependent not on any further elements but on the first a, this, it will be urged, would only make still more apparent the untenability of a construction of reality which after all has to make the being of a itself the presupposition of this Being. But this whole embarrassment could only be incurred by one, whose problem it was to make a world ; nor would he incur it, unless a limitation on his mode of operation interfered with the making of many things at the same time and compelled him to let an interval of time elapse in passing from the establishment of the one element to that of the other : for undoubtedly, if Being consists only in the reality of relations, a could not stand by itself and therefore could not exist till the creating hand had completed the condition of its being by the after-creation of b. But what could justify us in importing into the notion of this productive activity this habit of our own thinking faculty, which does, it is true, in presenting relations to itself pass from one point of relation to another ? Why should we not rather assume that the things as well as the relations between them were made in a single act, so that none of them needed to wait, as it were hung in the air during a certain interval, for the supplementary fulfilment of the conditions of its reality ? We will not attempt however further to depict a process, which cannot be held to be among the objects of possible investigation. It is not our business to discover in what way the reality of things has been brought about, but only to show what it is that it must be thought of and recognised as being when once in some way that we cannot conceive it has come to be. We have not to make a world but so to order our conceptions as that they may correspond without contradiction to the state of the given world as it stands. Such a contradiction we may be inclined to think is involved in the thought of a creative ' Position,' which could only put forth things that really are under the condition of their being mutually related, yet on the other hand could only put them forth one after the other. But there is no contradiction in the recognition of a present world of reality, of which the collective elements are as a chapter i.] Meaning of ' ' 'irrevocable Position! 35 matter of fact so conditioned by the tension of mutual relatedness that only in this can the meaning of their Being and its distinction from not-Being be recognised. 12. The foregoing remarks contain an objection to the metaphysi- cal doctrine of Herbart, which requires some further explanation. It need not be said that Herbart never entertained the unphilosophical notion that the irrevocable 'position,' in which he found the true Being of things, was an activity still to be exercised. He too looked on it as a fact to be recognised. As to how the fact came to be so it was in his eyes the more certain that nothing could be said as, being unconditioned and unchangeable according to his understanding of those terms, it excluded every question in regard to origin and source. But a certain ambiguity seems to me to He in the usage of this ex- pression of an irrevocable ' position.' There are two demands which may no doubt be insisted on. In the first place, assuming that we are in undoubted possession of the true conception of Being, we should be bound to be on our guard in its application against attaching it to qualities which on more exact consideration would be found to contradict it. Nothing can then compel us on this assumption to revoke the affirmation or ' position,' as an act performed by ourselves, by which we recognised the presence in some particular case of that 'position,' not to be per- formed by us, in which true Being consists. If on the other hand instead of being in possession of the correct conception of Being, we are only just endeavouring to form it, intending at a later stage to look about for cases of its application, in that case we have so to construct it as to express completely what we meant, and necessarily meant, to convey by it. Nothing therefore ought to be able to compel us again to revoke the recognition that in the characteristics found by us there is apprehended the true nature of that position which we have not to make but to accept as the Being presented to us. Here are two sorts of requirement or necessity, but in neither case have we to do with anything except an obligation incumbent on our procedure in think- ing. The proposition — Being consists in so and so, and the proposi- tion — this is a case of Being, ought alike to be so formed as that we shall not have to revoke either as premature or incorrect. But as to the nature of Being itself nothing whatever is settled by either require- ment and it is not self-evident that the 'position' which constitutes Being and which is not one that waits to be performed by us, is in itself as irrevocable as our thoughts about it should be. The common view of the world does not as a matter of fact, at least at the d 2 6 Of the Being of Things. i book i. beginning, make this claim for Being. The fixedness of Being, which it ascribes to things, only amounts to this, that they serve as relatively persistent points on which phenomena fasten and from which occur- rences issue. But according to this view if once reason had been found to say of a thing, ' It has been,' it would in spite of this revoca- tion of its further persistence still be held that, so long as it has been, it has had full enjoyment of the genuine and true Being, beside which there is no other specifically different Being. The question whether such a view is right or wrong I reserve for the present. Herbart decided completely against it. True Being according to him is only conceived with irrevocable correctness, if it is apprehended as itself a wholly irrevocable ' position.' This necessary requirement, however, with him involved the other — the requirement that every relation of the one thing to another, which could be held necessary to the Being of the Thing, should be excluded, and that what we call the true Being should be found only in the pure ' position,' void of relation, which we have not to exercise but to recognise. No doubt it is our duty to seek such a cognition of the real as will not have again to be given up. But I cannot draw the deduction that the object of that cognition must itself be permanent, and therefore I cannot ascribe self-evident truth to this conviction of Herbart's. It is a Metaphysical doctrine in regard to which I shall have more frequent opportunity later on of expressing agreement and hesitation, and which I would now only subject to consideration with reference to the one point, with which we are specially occupied. In order to preserve the connexion of our thoughts, I once again recall the point that the conception of a pure, completely unrelated Being turned out to be correctly formed indeed, but perfectly inapplicable. We were able to accept it only as an expression or indication of that most general affirmation, .which is certainly present in every Being, and distinguishes it from not-Being. But we maintained that it is never merely by itself, but only as having definite relations for its object, that this affirmation constitutes the Being of the real ; that thus pure Being neither itself is, nor as naked 'Position' of an unrelated content forms the reality of that content, nor is rightly entitled to the name of Being at all. 13. On the question how determinate or empirical Being issues from pure Being, the earlier theories, which started from the indepen- dence of pure Being, pronounced in a merely figurative and incomplete manner. The wished for clearness we find in Herbart. According to his doctrine pure Being does not lie behind in a mythical past. Each individual thing enjoys it continuously, for each thing is in virtue of a chapter i.] Her bar t on Being and Relations. 3 7 * position ' which is alien to all relations and needs them not. It is just the complete indifference of things to all relations, and it alone, that makes it possible for them to enter into various relations towards each other, of which in consequence of this indifference none can in any- way add to or detract from the Being of the things. From this com- merce between them, which does not touch their essence, arises the chequered variety of the course of the given world. I cannot persuade myself that this is an admissible way of pre- senting the case. Granting that there really is such a thing as an element a in the enjoyment of this unrelated ' Position ' of being unaffected by others and not reacting upon them, it does not indeed contradict the conception of this Being that ideas of relation should afterwards be connected with it. But in reality it is impossible for that to enter into relations which was previously unrelated. For a could not enter into relations in general. At each moment it could only enter into the definite relation m towards the definite element b, to the exclusion of every other relation /* towards the same element. There must therefore be some reason in operation which in each individual case allows and brings about the realisation only of m, not that of a chance p. But since a is indifferent towards every relation, there cannot be contained in its own nature either the reason for this definite ?«, nor even the reason why it should enter into a relation, that did not previously obtain, with b and not rather with c. That which decided the point can therefore only be looked for in some earlier relation /, which however indifferent it might be to a and b, in fact subsisted between them. If a and b had been persistently confined each to its own pure Being, without as yet belonging at all to this empirical reality and its thousandfold order of relations, they would never have issued from their ontological seclusion and been wrought into the web of this universe. For this entry could only have taken place into some region in space, at some point of time, and in a direction somewhither ; and all this would imply a determinate place outside the world, which the things must have left in a deter- minate direction. Therefore, while thus seemingly put outside the world into the void of pure Being, the Things would have already stood, not outside all relations to the world, but only in other and looser relations instead of in the closer ones, which are supposed to be established later. And just as it would be impossible for them to enter into relations if previously unrelated, so it would be impossible for them wholly to escape again from the web of relations in which they had once become involved. c 8 Of the Being of Things. [Book-i. It may indeed be urged with some plausibility thai, since we take the relations of things to be manifold and variable, Being can attach to no single one of them, and therefore to none at all : that therefore it cannot be Being which the Thing loses, if we suppose all its rela- tions successively to disappear. But this argument would only be a repetition of the confusion between the constancy of a general idea and the reality of its individual instances. Colour, for instance, is not necessarily green or red, but it is no colour at all if it is none of these different kinds. Were it conceivably possible that all relations of a thing should disappear without in their disappearance giving rise to new ones — a point of which I reserve the consideration — we could not look upon this as the return of the thing into its pure Being, but only as its lapse into nonentity. A transition, therefore, from a state of un- relatedness into relation, or vice versa, is unintelligible to us. All that is intelligible is a transition from one form of relation to another. And an assumption which would find the true Being of Things in their being put forth without relations, seems at the same time to make the conception of these things unavailable for the Metaphysical ex- planation of the universe, while it was only to render such explanation possible that the supposition that there are Things was made at all. 14. There is yet one way out of the difficulty to be considered. ' In itself,' it may be said, ' pure Being is foreign to all relations, and no Thing, in order to be, has any need whatever of relations. But just because everything is indifferent to them, there is nothing to prevent the assumption that the entry of all things into relations has long ago taken effect. No thing has been left actually to enjoy its pure Being without these relations that are indifferent to it, and it is in this shape of relatedness that the sum of things forms the basis of the world's changeable course.' Or, to adopt what is surely a more correct statement — 'It has not been at any particular time in the past that this entry into relations has taken place, which, as we pointed out, is unthinkable. Every thing has stood in relations from eternity. None has ever enjoyed the pure Being which would have been possible for its nature.' In this latter transformation, however, the thought would essentially coincide with that which we alleged in opposition to it. It would amount simply to this, that there might be a pure Being, in which Things, isolated and each resting on itself, without any mutual relation, would yet be ; that there is no such Being, however, but in its stead only that manifoldly determined empirical Being, in each several form of which pure Being is latently present. Between the view thus put and our own there would no longer be any chapter i.] Can Things enter into Relations f 39 difference, except the first part of the statement, supposing it to be adhered to. A Being, which might be but is not, would for us be no Being at all. The conception of it would only purport to be that of a possibility of thought, not the conception of that reality of which alone Metaphysic professes to treat. We should certainly persist in denying that this pure Being so much as could be elsewhere than in our thoughts. We take the notion of such Being to be merely an abstrac- tion which in the process of thinking, and in it only, separates the common affirmation of whatever is real from the particular forms of reality, as applied to which alone the affirmation is itself a reality. CHAPTER II. Of the Quality of Tilings. 15. According to the natural theory of the world, as Ave have so far followed it, the Being of Things is only to be found in the reality of certain relations between one and another. There are two directions therefore in which we are impelled to further enquiry. We may ask in the first place, what is the peculiar nature of these relations, in the affirmation of which Being is supposed to lie ? In that case its defi- nition would assign a number of conditions, which whatever is to be a Thing must satisfy. We feel, secondly, with equal strength the need of trying to find first in the conception of the Thing the subject which would be capable of entering into the presupposed relations. The order of these questions does not seem to me other than interchange- able, nor is it indeed possible to keep the answers to them entirely apart. It may be taken as a pardonable liberty of treatment if I give precedence to the second of the mutually implied forms of the problem. It too admits of a double signification. For if we speak of the essence of Things, we mean this expression to convey sometimes that by which Things are distinguished and each is what it is, sometimes that in virtue of which they all are Things in opposition to that which is not a Thing. These two questions again are obviously very closely connected, and it might seem that the mention of the first was for us superfluous. For it cannot be the business of ontology to describe the peculiar qualities by which the manifold Things that exist are really distinguished from each other. It could only have to indicate generally what that is on the possible varieties of which it may be possible for distinctions of Things to rest. But this function it seems to fulfil in investigating the common structure of that which constitutes a Thing as such ; for this necessarily includes the idea and nature of that by particularisation of which every individual Thing is able to be what it is and to draw limits between itself and other Things. The sequel of our discussion may however justify our procedure in allowing ourselves Things as Subjects of Predicates. 41 to be driven to undertake an answer to this second question by a pre- liminary attempt at answering the first. 16. What the occasions may be which psychologically give rise in us to the idea of the Thing, is a question by which the objects of our present enquiry are wholly unaffected. The idea having once arisen, and it being impossible for us in our natural view of the world to get rid of it, all that concerns us is to know what we mean by it, and whether we have reason, taking it as it is, for retaining it or for giving it up. As we have seen, sensation is our only warrant for the certainty that something is. It no doubt at the same time warrants the certainty of our own Being as well as that of something other than ourselves. It is necessary, however, in this preliminary consideration to forget the reference to the feeling subject, just as the natural view of the world at first forgets it likewise and loses itself completely in the sensible qualities, of which the revelation before our eyes is at the supposed stage of that view accepted by it as a self-evident fact. It is only in sensation therefore that it can look, whether for the certainty of there being something, or, beyond this, for the qualities of that which is. Yet from its very earliest stage it is far from taking these sensible qualities as identical with that which it regards as the true Being in them. Not till a later stage of reflection is it attempted to maintain that what we take to be the perception of a thing is never more than a plurality of contemporary sensations, held together by nothing but the identity of the place at which they are presented to us, and the unity of our consciousness which binds them together in its intuition. The natural theory of the world never so judges. Un- doubtedly it takes a thing to be sweet, red, and warm, but not to be sweetness, redness, and warmth alone. Although it is in these sensible qualities that we find all that we experience of its essence, still this essence does not admit of being exhaustively analysed into them. In order to convey what is in our minds when we predicate such qualities of a Thing, the terms which connote them must, in grammatical language, be construed into objects of that ' z's,' understood in a tran- sitive sense, which according to the usage of language is only intran- sitive. The other ways of putting the same proposition, such as ' the thing tastes sweet,' or ' it looks red,' help to show how in the midst of these predicates, as their subject or their active point of departure, the Thing is thought of and its unity not identified with their multiplicity. This idea, however far it may be from being wrought out into clear consciousness, in every case lies at the bottom of our practical procedure where we act aggressively upon the external world, 4 2 Of the Quality of Things. ebooki. seeking to get a hold on things, to fashion them, to overcome their resistance according to our purposes. I need not dwell on the occasions — readily suggesting themselves to the reader — which confirm us in this conception, while at the same time they urgently demand a transformation of it which will make good its defects. Such are the change in the properties in which the nature of a determinate thing previously seemed to consist, and the observation that none belongs to the thing absolutely, but each only under conditions, with the removal of which it disappears. The more necessary the distinction in consequence becomes between the thing itself and its changeable modes of appearance, the more pressing becomes the question, what it is that constitutes the thing itself, in abstraction from its properties. But I do not propose to dwell on the more obvious answers to this question any more than on the occa- sions which suggest it. Such are the statements that the Thing itself is that which is permanent in the change of these properties, that it is the uniting bond of their multiplicity, the fixed point to which changing states attach themselves and from which effects issue. All this is no doubt really involved in our ordinary conception of the Thing, but all this tells us merely how the true Thing behaves, not what it is. All that these propositions do is to formulate the functions obligatory on that which claims to be recognised as a Thing. They do not state what we want to know, viz. what the Thing must be in order to be able to perform these required functions. I reserve here the question whether and how far we may perhaps in the sequel be com- pelled, by lack of success in our attempts, to content ourselves with this statement of postulates. The object of ontological thinking is in the first instance to make the discovery on which the possi- bility of fulfilling the ontological problem depends — to discover the nature of that to which the required unity, permanence, and stability belong. 17. It is admitted that sensation is the single source from which we not only derive assurance of the reality of some Being, but which by the multiplicity of its distinguishable phenomena, homogeneous and heterogeneous, first suggests and gives clearness to the idea of a par- ticular essence * which distinguishes itself from some other particular essence. It is quite inevitable therefore that we should attempt to think of the required essence 2 of things after the analogy of this sen- sible material, so far at any rate as is compatible with the simultaneous 1 [' Die Vorstellung eines Was, das von einem andern Was sich untersckeidet.'] 2 ['Was.'] chapter ii.] Herbart' s * Simple Qualities! [(UN T Trf-3, ' problem of avoiding everything which would disqualify sakp^ti»ns for adequately expressing this essence 1 . ^^^^^HU^ ^ This attempt has been resolutely made in the ontology of H erDTnTT To insist on the mere unity, stability, and permanence of Things, was a common-place with every philosophy which spoke of Things at all. It was then left to the imagination to add in thought some content to which these formal characteristics might be applicable. Herbart defines the content. A perfectly simple and positive quality, he holds, is the essence of every single thing, i. e. of every single one among those real essences, to the combinations of which in endless variety we are compelled by a chain of thought, of which the reader can easily supply the missing links, to reduce the seemingly independent ' Things ' of ordinary perception. Now if Herbart allows that these simple qualities of Things remain completely unknown to us ; that nothing comes to our knowledge but appearances flowing from them as a remote consequence, then any advantage that might otherwise be derived from his view would disappear unless we ventured to look for it in this, that his unknown by being brought under the conception and general character of quality would at least obtain an ontological qualification, by which it would be distinguished from a mere postu- late, as being a concrete fulfilment of such postulate. If however we try to interpret to ourselves what is gained by this subordination, we must certainly confess that Quality in its proper sense is presented to us exclusively in sensations, and in no other instances. Everything else which in a looser way of speaking we so call consists in determinate relations, which we gather up, it is true, in adjectival expressions and treat as properties of their subjects, but of which the proper sense can only be apprehended by a discursive comparison of manifold related elements, not in an intuition. There would be nothing in this, however, to prevent us from generalising the conception of Quality in the manner at which, to meet Herbart's view, we should have to aim. Our own senses offer us impressions which do not admit of comparison. The colour we see is completely heterogeneous to the sound we hear or the flavour we taste. Just as with us, then, the sensations of the eye form a world of their own, into which those of the ear have no entry, so we are prepared to hold of the whole series of our senses that it is not a finished one, and to ascribe to other spirits sensations which remain eternally unknown to us, but of which, notwithstanding, we imagine that to those who are capable of them they would exhibit themselves with the same 1 ['Wesen.'] 44 Of the Quality of Things. [Booki. character of being vividly and definitely pictured, with which to us the sensations of colour, for instance, appear as revelations of themselves. It is always difficult in the case of the simplest ideas by the help of words about them to represent the characteristic trait, scarcely ex- pressible but by the ideas themselves, in virtue of which they satisfy certain strongly felt needs of thought. Still I trust to be sufficiently intelligible if I find in the character, just mentioned, of being present- able as a mental picture or image immediately without the help of a discursive process, the reason of our preference for apprehending the essence of a thing under the form of a simple quality. Just as the colour red stands before our consciousness, caring, so to speak, to exhibit nothing but itself, pointing to nothing beyond itself as the condition of its being understood, not constituting a demand that something should exist which has still to be found out, but a complete fulfilment ; so it is thought that the super-sensible Quality of the Thing, simple and self-contained, would reveal its essence, not as something still to be sought for further back, but as finally found and present. And even when further reflection might be supposed to have shaken our faith in the possibility of satisfying this craving for an intuitive knowledge and limited us to laying down mere forms of thinking which determine what the essence of things is not ; even then we constantly revert to this longing for the immediate present- ability of this essence, which after all can only be satisfied with the likeness of the quaesitum to a sensible quality. We may have to forego intuition ; but we feel its absence as an abiding imperfection of our knowledge. 18. That the demand in question must really be abandoned is not in dispute. Whatever eternal simple and super-sensible Quality we may choose to think of as the essence of the Thing, it will be said that, as a Quality, it always remains in need of a subject, to which it may belong. It may form a How, but not the What of the Thing. It will be something which the Thing has, not which it is. This objection, familiar as it is to us all, with the new relation which it asserts between Subject and Quality, rests meanwhile on two grounds of which the first does not suffice to render impossible the previously assumed identity of the Thing with its simple quality. In our thought and in its verbal expression, the Qualities — red, sweet, warm — appear as generalities, which await many more precise deter- minations, in the way of shade, of intensity, of extension, and of form, from something which belongs to the nature of the individual case in Chapter ii.] A Quality need not be general. 4 5 which they are sensible, and thus not to the qualities themselves. We thus present them to ourselves in an adjectival form, as not themselves amounting to reality but as capable of being employed by the real, which lies outside them, through special adjustment to clothe its essence ; as a store of predicable materials, from which each thing may choose those suitable to the expression of its peculiar nature. Then of course the question is renewed as to the actual essence which with this nature of its own lies behind this surface of Quality. But we must be on our guard against repeating in this connexion a question which in another form we have already disclaimed. We gave up all pretension of being able to find out how things are made and we confessed that the peculiar affirmation or ' position,' by which the real is eternally distinguishable from the thinkable, may indeed be indicated by us — but that we cannot follow its construction as a process that is taking place. But it is precisely this objection that may now be brought up against us, that we are illegitimately attempt- ing to construe that idea of the Thing, which must comprehend the simple supra-sensible Quality along with its reality, into the history of a process by which the two constituent ideas which make up the idea of the Thing — or rather the objects of these ideas — have come to coincide. For if we maintain the above objection in its full force — [the objection founded on the distinction between the Quality of the Thing and the Thing itself] and refuse to keep reverting to the sup- position that some still more subtle quality constitutes the Thing itself, while a quality of the kind just objected to merely serves as a predicate of the Thing, the result will be that we shall have on the one side a Quality still only generally conceived, unlimited, and unformed, as it presents itself merely in thought and therefore still unreal ; on the other side a ' position ' which is still without any content, a reality which is as yet no one's reality. It would be a hopeless enterprise to try to show how these two — such a quality and such a ' position ' — combine, not in our thought to produce an idea of the Thing, but in reality to produce the Thing itself. This however was not what was meant by the view, which sought to identify the essence of the Thing with its simple supra-sensible Quality. It was emphatically not in the form of a still undetermined generality — not as the redness or sweetness which we think of, but obviously only in that complete determination, in which red or sweet can be the object of an actually present sensation — it was only in this form that the Quality, united with the ' position ' spoken of, was thought of as identical with the essential Being (the W eon) of Things. It was not 46 Of the Quality of Tilings. [booki. supposed that there had ever been a process by which the realities signified by these two constituent ideas had come to be united, or by which the complete determinateness of the Quality as forming the essential Being of the Thing, had been elaborated as a secondary modification out of the previous indeterminateness of a general Quality. It is true, that in our usage of terms there unavoidably attaches to the word ' Quality' a notion of dependence, of its requiring the support of a subject beyond it ; and it is this notion which occa- sions ' Quality ' to be treated as synonymous with the German ' Eigenschaft V But in truth this impression of its dependence issues only from the general abstraction of Quality, which we form in thought, and is improperly transferred to those completely determined qualities, which form the content of real feelings and constitute the occasions of these abstractions. 19. But, true as this defence of the view referred to may be, we still gain nothing by it. Undoubtedly, if a quality in the complete determinateness which we supposed, simple and unblended with any- thing else, formed an unchangeable object of our perception, we should have no reason to look for anything else behind it, for a subject to which it attached. But if we just now took this in the sense that this quality might in that case pass directly for the Thing itself, we must now subjoin the counter-remark that in that case, if nothing else were given, we should have no occasion at all to form the conception of a Thing and to identify that quality with it. For the impulse to form the conception and the second of the reasons which forbid the identi- fication of the simple quality with the Thing, lie in the given change. The fact that those qualities which form the immediate objects of our perception, neither persist without change nor change without a prin- ciple of change, but always in their transition follow some law of consecutiveness, has led to the attempt to think of the Thing as the persistent subject of this change and of the felt qualities merely as predicates of which one gives place to the other. Whether this attempt is justified at all — whether an entirely different interpretation of the facts of experience ought not to be substituted for it — is a question which we reserve as premature. For the present our business is only to consider in what more definite form this assumption of Things, in case it is to be retained, must be presented to thought, if it is to render that service to our cognition for the sake of which it is made ; if, i. e., it is to make the fact of change thinkable without contradiction. 1 [lit. « Property.'] chapter ii.] The Thing and Its ' states! 47 And in regard to this point I can only maintain that speculative philo- sophy, while trying to find a unity of essence under change, was wrong in believing that this unity was to be found in a simplicity, which in its nature is incapable of being a unity or of forming the persistent essence of the changeable. Change of a thing is only to be found where an essence a, which previously was in the state a 1 , remains identical with itself while passing into the state a 2 . In this connexion I still leave quite on one side the difficulties which lie in the conception, apparently so simple, of a state. For the present it may suffice to remark that we are obliged by the notion we attach to the term 'state ' to say not that the essence is identically like 1 itself, but only that it is identical with itself, in its various states. For no one will deny that a, if it finds itself in the state a 1 , cannot be taken to be exactly like a 2 , without again cancelling the difference of the states, which has been assumed. All that we gain by the distinction, however, is, to begin with, two words. For the question still remains : In what sense can that at different moments remain identical with itself, which yet in one of these moments is not identically like itself as it was in the other ? It is scarcely necessary to remark how entirely unprofitable the answers are which in the ordinary course of thought are commonly given to this question ; such as, The essence always remains the same with itself, only the phenomenon changes ; the matter remains the same, the form alters ; essential properties persist, but many un- essential ones come and go ; the Thing itself abides, only its states are variable. All these expressions presuppose what we want to know. We have here pairs of related points, of which one term cor- responds in each case to the Thing a, the other is one of its states a 1 , a 2 . How can the first member a of these pairs be identical with itself, if the several second members are not identical with each other, and if, notwithstanding, the relation between the two members of each pair is to be maintained, in the sense that the second member, which is the Form, the Phenomenon, the State, is to be Form, Phe- nomenon, or State of the first member ? So long as we are dealing with the compounded visible things of 1 [' Gleichheit,' used here, and in §§ 59 and 268, with a strict insistance on all that is involved in its meaning of equality; viz. on the qualitative likeness, without which comparison by measurement is impossible. Thus in the places referred to the terms which are ' gleich ' are a and a, and neither ' equal ' nor ' like ' translates ' gleich ' adequately ; it includes both. ' Identity ' was used in Logic, § 335 ff., but will not do here, because of the contrast with the continued identity, ' Identitat,' imputed to a thing.'] 48 Of the Quality of Things. 1 book i. common perception, the pressure of this difficulty is but slight. In such cases we look upon a connected plurality of Predicates pqr, as the essence of a thing. This coherent stock may not only assume and again cast off variable additions, s and /, but it may in itself by the internal transposition of its components in qrp, rpq,prq, experience something which we might call its own alteration in opposition to the mere variation of those external relations. Or finally it may be the form of combination that remains the same, while the elements themselves, p q and r, vary within certain limits. In these cases the imagination still finds the two sides of its object before it, and can ascribe to one of them the identity \ to the other the difference 2 . What justifies it in understanding the fluctuations of that which does not remain exactly like itself as a series of states of the Identical, is a question which is left to take care of itself. The difficulty involved in it comes plainly into view if we pass from the apparent things of perception to those which we might in truth regard as independent elements in the order of the Universe, and we think of each of these as deter- mined by a simple quality, a. The simple, if it alters at all, alters altogether, and in the transition from a to b, there remains nothing over to which the essence would withdraw, as to the kernel that remains the same in the process of change. Only a succession, abc, of different essences — one passing away, the other coming into being — would be left, and with this disappearance of all conti- nuity between the different appearances there would disappear the only reason which led us to regard them as resting on subject Things. 20. This inference cannot be invalidated by an objection which readily suggests itself and which I have here other reasons for noticing. It is to the instance of sensations that we must constantly revert, if we would explain to ourselves what supra-sensible Qualities really mean to us when we combine them with sensations under the common idea of Quality. Let us then take a simple Red colour, a, in which we find no mixture with other colours, still less a combination of other colours, as representing the manner in which the simple quality, a, of an essence would appear to us, if it were perceivable by the senses. It will then be argued as follow : If this Red passes into an equally simple Yellow, there still undoubtedly remains a common element, which we feel in both colours, though it is inseparable from a and b, the universal C of colour. Neither the redness in the red, nor that which makes the yellow what it is, has any existence either in 1 ['Identitat.'] a ['Ungleichheit.'] chapter ii.] The common element in sensations. 49 fact or in thought apart from the luminous appearance in which the nature of colour consists, nor has this appearance any existence of its own other than in the redness or yellowness. On the contrary its whole nature shows itself now in one colour, now in the other. In the same way the essence of the thing will now be the perfectly simple a, now the equally simple b, without this implying a disappearance of the com- mon C, the presence of which entitles us to regard a and b merely as its varying states or predicates. It would be idle to meet this argument by saying that the common element C of colour is only a product of our intellectual process of comparison ; nay, not even such a product, but merely the name for the demand, simply unrealisable, which we make upon our intellect to possess itself of this common element presumed to be present in red and yellow, in detachment from both colours. For the fact, it might be replied, would still remain that we should not make this impracticable demand, if it were not felt in the perception of red and yellow, ' There is something there, which we look for though we do not find it as anything perceivable or separate, this common C, for which we have made the name colour.' Now since we readily forego the pretension of apprehending the essence of things in the way of actual intuition, and confine ourselves to enquiring for the form of thought under which we have to conceive its unknown nature, we might certainly continue to look upon the comparison just stated as conveying the true image of the matter in hand, i.e. the image of that relation, in which the simple essence stands to its changeable states. We might at the same time regard this analogy of our sensations as a proof of the fact that the demand which we make upon the nature of things for an identity within the difference does not, as such, transgress the limits of the actually possible. In more detail the case might be put thus : What may be the look of that persistent C, which maintains itself in the change of the simple qualities of the Thing, of this it is true we have no know- ledge, and we as little expect to know it as we insist on seeing the general colour C, which maintains itself in the transition from Red to Yellosv. The mere fact, however, that in order to render this transition possible the continuous existence of this universal is not merely demanded without evidence by our thought, but is immediately testified to by sensation as plainly present though not separable from particular sensible objects — this proves to us that the continuance of a common element in a series of different and absolutely simple members is at any rate something possible, and not a combination of words to which no real instance could correspond. VOL. I. E 50 Of the Quality of Things. ebooki. 21. The above will, I hope, have made plain the meaning of this rejoinder. I should wish ultimately to show that it is inapplicable, but before I attempt this, I may be allowed to avail myself of it for the purpose of more exactly defining certain points so as to save the necessity of enlarged explanations further on. When in our com- parison we chose to pass from the simple quality red to another equally simple, to point to yellow as this second quality seemed a selection which might be made without hesitation. But sour or sweet might equally have presented themselves. It was only the former transition, however, (from red to yellow) which left something actually in common between the different members ; while the second on the contrary (from red to sweet) would have left no other community than that which belongs to our subjective feeling as directed to those members. Our selection therefore was natural, for we knew what the point was at which we wished to arrive and allowed ourselves to be directed by this reference. The fact however that the other order of procedure is one which we can equally present to ourselves reminds us that the transition from one simple quality to another is not in every case possible without loss of the common element C. This however is no valid objection. It will be at once replied that in speaking of change it has always been understood that its course was thus limited to certain definite directions. No one who takes the essence of a thing to admit of change can think of it as changeable without measure and without principle. To do so would be again to abolish the very reason that compelled us to assign the succession of varying phenomena to a real subject in the Thing ; for that reason lay merely in the consecutiveness with which definite transitions take place while others remain excluded. The only sense therefore that has ever attached to the conception of change, the only sense in which it will be the object of our further consideration, is that in which it indicates transformations or movements of a thing within a limited sphere of qualities. Beyond this will be another equally limited sphere of qualities, forming the range within which another essence undergoes change, but it is understood that in change the thing never passes over from one sphere into the other. As regards the more precise definition of these spheres, our comparison with colours can only serve as a figure or illustration. As colour shifts to and fro from one of its hues to another, without ever approximating to sounds or passing into them, it serves well as a sensible image of that limitation of range which we have in view. But this does not settle the question whether the various forms a 1 a 2 a s ..., into which chapter ii.] Things must be changeable 5 1 the essence a might change now and again, are kinds of a common C only in the same sense in which the colours are so, or whether they are really connected with each other in some different form, which logical subordination under the same generic idea does not adequately symbolise. 22. It is time, however, to show the unsatisfactoriness of this attempt to justify a belief in the capacity for change on the part of a Thing, of which the essence was confined to a perfectly simple Quality. If our imagination ranges through the multiplicity of sen- sible qualities, it finds certain groups of these within which it succeeds in arresting a common element C, while beyond them it fails to do so. This was the point of departure of our previous argument. Passing from this consideration of an intellectual process to consideration of the Thing, we said; '{/"the essence of a thing changes, the limitation within itself of such a sphere of states affords it the possibility of completing its change within the sphere without loss of its abiding nature C. Only if it passed beyond these limits would all continuity disappear and a new essence take its place.' Very well ; but what correspondence is there between these two 'if 's' which we allowed to follow each other as if completely homogeneous ? The former refers to a movement of our intellect. Meanwhile the object presented to the intellect stands before it completely unmoved. The general colour, of which we think, is not sometimes Red, sometimes Yellow, but is always simultaneously present in each of these colours and in each of the other hues, which we class together as equally external primary species of colour. In the Thing, however, the supposed C cannot be made so simply to stand towards the manifold a 1 a 2 a 3 in the rela- tion of a universal kind to its species. Even were it the case that in respect of their nature a 1 a 2 a 3 admit of being regarded as species of C, still, if the thing changes, they are not contained in it, as in a uni- versal C, with the eternal simultaneity of species that exist one along with the other. They succeed each other, and the essence a, if it is a 1 , for that reason excludes from itself a 2 and a 3 . Thus it is just this that remains to be asked, how that second //"can be understood ; how we are to conceive the state of the case by which it comes about that the thing moves — moves, if you like, within a circumscribed sphere of qualities a 1 a 2 a 3 . . ., but still within .it does move, and so passes from one to the other of the qualities as that, being in the one, it excludes the others ; how it is that it so moves while yet these qualities are the species of a universal C, eternally simultaneous and only differing as parts of a system. And, be it observed, we are at present not enquiring E 2 52 Of the Quality of Things. ibooki. for a cause which produces this motion, but only how the essence a is to be thought of, in case the motion takes place. This question we cannot answer without coming to the conclusion that the change is not reconcilable with the assumption of a simple quality, constituting this essence. At the moment when a has the form a 1 and in conse- quence excludes the forms a 2 and a 3 , it cannot without reservation be identified with a C, which includes a 1 a 2 a 3 equally in itself. It would have to be C 1 in order to be a 1 , C 2 in order to be a 2 , and the same course of changes which we wished to combine with a persistent simple quality would find its way backwards into this quality itself. 23. I could not avoid the appearance of idle subtlety if I pursued this course of thought without having shown that it is forced upon us. Why, it will be asked, do we trouble ourselves, out of obstinate partiality for the common view, to give a shape to the idea of the Thing in which it may include the capacity of change ? Why do we not follow the enlightened view of men of science which finds no difficulty in explaining the multiplicity of phenomena by the help of changeable relations between unchangeable elements ? There is the more reason for the question since this supposition not only forms the basis of the actual procedure of natural science but is precisely that for which Herbart has enforced respect on the part of every metaphysical enquirer. Let us pursue it then in the definite form which this philosopher has given to it. According to him, not only as a matter of fact do elements, which undergo no change in the course of nature, underlie phenomena, but according to their idea the real essences, the true things which we have to substitute for the apparent things of percep- tion, are unchangeably identical with themselves, each resting on itself, standing in need of no relation to each other in order to their Being, but for that reason the more capable of entering into every kind of relation to each other. Of their simple qualities we have no knowledge, but undoubtedly we are entitled to think of them as different from each other and even as opposed in various degrees without being obliged in consequence to transfer any such predicates, supposing them to be found by our comparison, to the qualities themselves as belonging to their essence ; as if, that is, some of the qualities were actively negated by others, and some were presupposed by and because of others. This admission made, let us suppose that two essences, A and B, come into that relation M to each other which Herbart describes as their being together. I postpone my remarks about the proper sense of this ' together.' All that we now chapter ii.] Herbart 's ' self-maintenance of Things! 53 know of it is that it is the condition under which what Herbart con- siders to be the indifference of essences towards each other ceases. Supposing them then to be ' together ;' it might happen that A and B without detriment to their simplicity might yet be representable by the compound equivalent expressions a + y and (3 — y. In that case the continuance of this state of being ' together ' would require the simul- taneous subsistence of +y and — y; i.e. the continuance of two opposites, which if we put them together in thought, seem necessarily to cancel each other. But they cannot really do so. Neither are the simple essences A and B according to their nature accessible to a change, nor are the opposite elements which our Thought, in its comparing process, might distinguish in them, actually separable from the rest, in combination with which they belong to two absolutely simple and indivisible Qualities. ' But, if this be so, nothing happens at all and everything remains as it is ! ' This is the exclamation which Herbart expects to hear, but he adds that we only use such language because we are in full sail for the abyss which should have been avoided. I must however repeat it. What has taken place has been this. We, the thinkers, have imagined that from the contact of opposites there arose some danger for the continuance of the real essences. We have then re- minded ourselves that their nature is inaccessible to this danger. Thus it has been we who have maintained the conception of the real essence in its integrity against the falsification which would have invaded it in every attempt to account its object capable of being affected by any disturbance from without. This has taken place in our thought, but in the essence itself nothing has in fact happened. The name of self-maintenance, which Herbart gives to this behaviour on the part of the Things, can at this stage of his theory as yet mean nothing but the completely undisturbed continuance of that which in its nature is inaccessible to every disturbance that might threaten it. An activity issuing from the essences, a function exercised by them, it indicates as little as a real event which might occur to them. And just for this reason the multiplicity of kinds and modes, in which Herbart would have it that this self-maintenance takes effect, cannot really exist for it. The undisturbed continuance is always the same, and except the variation of the external relations, through which the so-called ' being together ' of the essences is brought about and again annulled, nothing new whatever in consequence of this being ' to- gether ' happens in the universe. 24. Quite different from this sense of self-maintenance, which 54 Of the Quality of Tilings. [Booki. Herbart himself expressly allows in the Metaphysic, is that other sense in which he applies the same conception in the Psychology. Only the investigator of Nature could have satisfied himself with the conclusion just referred to. For him the only concern is to ascertain the external processes, on which for us the change in the qualita- tively different properties of things as a matter of fact depends. It is no part of his task to enquire in what way these processes, sup- posing them to take place, bring it about that there is such a thing as an appearance to us. If it is the belief of the students of Natural Science that the theory, which regards all those processes as mere changes in the relations of elements themselves unchangeable, is adequate for its purpose — though in the sequel I shall have to deny that according to this way of presenting the case any but an incom- plete view even of the course of external nature is possible — yet for the present I am ready to allow that there may be apparent success upon this method in the attempt to eliminate all changes on the part of the real itself from the course of the outer world. But this only renders the admission of change a yet more in- evitable necessity, if we bear in mind that the entire order of the universe which forms the object of Metaphysical enquiry includes the origin of the phenomenon in us no less than the external processes which are its de facto conditions. Thus, if the physical investigator explains the qualitative change of things as mere appearance, the metaphysician has to consider how an appearance is possible. Her- bart is quite right — and I do not for the present trouble myself with the reproaches which might be brought against this point of his doctrine — in assuming the simple real essence of the soul as the in- dispensable subject, for which alone an appearance can arise. Whereas in regard to no other real essence do we know in what its self-maintenance consists, this, according to him, is clear in regard to the soul. Each of its primary acts of self-maintenance, he holds, has the form of an idea, i. e. of a simple sensation. Between these aboriginal processes there take place a multitude of actions and reactions, from which is supposed to result, in a manner which we need not here pursue in detail, the varied whole of the inner life. These acts of self-maintenance on the part of the soul, however — con- sisting at one time in a sensation, at another in the hearing of a sound; now in the perception of a flavour, now in that of warmth — are manifestly no longer simple continuations of the imperturbable essence of the soul. Taking a direction in kind and form according to the kind and form of the threatening disturbance, they are func- chapter ii.] Change in the sottl indispensable. 55 tions, activities, or reactions of the soul, which are not possible to an unchangeable but only to a changeable Being. For it is not in a merely threatened disturbance but only in one which has actually taken effect that the ground can lie of the definite reaction, which ensues at every moment to the exclusion of many others that, as far as the nature of the soul goes, are equally possible for it. In order to be able to meet the threatened disturbance a by an act of self- maintenance a, the other disturbance b by another act 0, the soul must take some note of the fact that at the given moment it is a and not b, or b and not a, that demands the exercise of its activity. It must therefore itself suffer in both cases, and differently in one case from the other. This change on its own part — I say change, for it would be useless to seek to deny that various kinds of suffering are inconceivable without various kinds of change on the part of the subject suffering — cannot be replaced by the mere change in the relations between the soul unchanged in itself, and other elements. Any such relation would only be a fact for a second observer, which might awaken in him the appearance of a change taking place in the observed soul, which in reality does not take place : but even for this observer the appearance could only arise, if he on his own part at least actually possessed that capability of change which in the ob- served soul he holds to be a mere appearance. It is therefore quite impossible entirely to banish the inner liability to change on the part of the real from an explanation of the course of the universe. If it were feasible to exclude it from a theory of the outer world, it would belong the more inevitably to the essence of that real Being, for which this outer world is an object of perception. But, once admitted in this position, it cannot be a self-evident im- possibility for the real elements, which we regard as the vehicles of natural operations. That, on the contrary, it is a necessity even for these, we shall try to show later on. Our consideration of the question, however, so far rests on a cer- tain supposition; on the necessity, in order to render the fact of appearance intelligible, of conceiving a simple real subject, the soul. There is no need for me here to justify this assumption against the objections which are specially directed against it. It is no object of our enquiry, so far, to decide whether the conception of Things is tenable at all; whether it does not require to be superseded by another conception. I repeat ; it is only in case Things are to be taken to exist and to serve to make the world intelligible, that we then enquire in what way they must be thought of. And to that 56 Of the Quality of Things. question we have given the answer that Essence, Thing or Substance, can only be that which admits of Change. Only the predicates of Things are unchangeable. They vary indeed in their applicability to Things, but each of them remains eternally the same with itself. It is only the Things that change, as they admit of and reject now one predicate, now another. This thought indeed is not new. It has already been expressly stated by Aristotle. For us, however, it neces- sarily raises at once questions that are new. CHAPTER III. Of the Real and Reality. 25. The changes which we see going on, and the consecutiveness which we believe to be discoverable in them, compelled us to assume the existence of Things, as the sustainers or causes of this continuity. The next step was, if possible, to ascend from that which needs ex- planation to the unconditioned, in regard to which only recognition is possible. For this purpose we tried to think of the Thing as un- changeably the same with itself, and, impressed with the need of assimilating the idea of it as much as possible to what is contained in sensation, since sensation alone actually gives us an independent something instead of merely requiring it, we took its nature to consist in a simple quality. We convinced ourselves, however, that an un- changeable and simple quality is not thinkable as a subject of change- able states or appearances, and thus we are compelled to give up the claim to any such immediate cognition as might reveal the essence of Things to us in a simple perception. I do not mean to imply by this that we should have hoped really to attain this perception. But we indulged the thought that, for such a spirit as might be capable of it, there would be nothing in the essence of Things incompatible with their being thus apprehended. This conviction in its turn we have now to abandon. In its very nature that which is to be a Thing in the sense of being a subject of change would repel the possibility of being presented as an unmoving object of any intuition. A new form has therefore to be sought for that which is to be accounted the essence of any Thing; and in order to find it we again take our departure from that natural theory of the world which without doubt has tried answers of its own to all these questions that are constantly reasserting themselves with fresh insistance. 26. In regard to the common objects of perception we answer the question, What are they ? in two ways, of which one soon reduces itself to the other. Products of art, which exhibit a purpose on the 58 Of the Real and Reality. [Book i. part of a maker, we denote by reference to the end for which they are intended, setting aside the variety of forms in which they fulfil that end. The changeable products of nature, in the structure of which a governing purpose is more or less obscure to us, we characterise according to the kind and order of phenomena into which they develope of themselves or which could be elicited from them by external conditions. In both cases by the essence of the thing that we are in quest of we understand the properties and modes of procedure, by which the Thing is distinguished from other things. The other series of answers, on the contrary, exhibits as this essence the material out of which the things are made, overlooking the various kinds of behaviour and existence to which in the case of each thing the particular formation of this material gives rise. Yet after all this second mode of answering the question ultimately passes over into the former. It satisfies only so long as it consists in a reduction of a compound to more simple components. Supposing us to have dis- covered this simple matter, how then do we answer the question, What after all is the simple matter itself? What for instance is the Quicksilver, of which we will suppose ourselves to have discovered that something else consists of it ? So long as our concern was to reduce this other thing to it, it was taken for something simple. But itself in its simplicity, what is it ? We find it fluid at our ordinary temperatures, fixed at lower temperatures, vaporous at higher ones ; but we could not say what it is in itself, supposing it not to be acted on by any of these external conditions or by any of the other con- ditions, under which its phenomenal properties change in yet other ways. We can in fact only answer, that it is in itself the unassignable something, which under one condition appears as a 1 , under another as a 2 , under a third as a 3 , and of which we assume that, if these con- ditions succeed each other in reverse order, it will pass again from a 3 into a 2 and a 1 , without ever being converted into 1 , 2 or /3 3 — forms which in a like mutual connexion exhibit the various phenomena of another thing, say Silver. Thus, it may be stated as a general truth, that our idea of that which makes a Thing what it is consists only in the thought of a certain regularity with which it changes to and fro within a limited circle of states whether spontaneously or under visible external conditions, without passing out of this circle, and without ever having an existence on its own account and apart from any one of the forms which within this circle it can assume. This way of presenting the case, while fully sufficient for the needs of Chapter III.] Marks and L(IW. 59 ordinary judgment, has given occasion to various further metaphysical experiments. 27. If attention is directed to the qualities by which one Thing distinguishes itself from another, its essence in this sense cannot any longer be thought of as object of a simple perception, but only in the logical form of a conception, which expresses the permanently uni- form observance of law in the succession of various states or in the combination of manifold predicates. From this point a very natural course of thought leads us to two ways of apprehending the Thing. We may define it first by the collective marks, which at a given mo- ment it exhibits, in their de facto condition. This gives us a state- ment of what the essence is, to ri io-n according to Aristotle's ex- pression. But it would be conceivable that, like two curves which have an infinitely small part of their course in common, so two different things, A and B, should coincide in the momentary con- dition of their marks, but should afterwards diverge into paths of development as different as were the paths that brought them to the state of coincidence. In that case the essence of each will be held only to be correctly apprehended, if the given condition of each is interpreted as the result of that which it previously was, and at the same time as the germ of that which it will be. This seems the natural point of departure from which Aristotle arrived at the for- mula ri rjv elvat. He did not complete it by the other equally valuable ri earat eivai, though the notion that might have been so expressed was not alien to his way of thinking. In practice, it must be ad- mitted, these determinations of the idea of the Thing, which theoreti- cally are of interest, cannot be carried through. Even the actual present condition of a Thing would not admit of exhaustive analysis, without our thinking of the mutual connexion between the manifold phenomena which it exhibits, as already specifically ordered according to the same law which would appear still more plainly upon a con- sideration of the various states, past and to be expected, of the Thing. The second formula therefore only gives general expression to the intention of constantly gaining a deeper view of the essence of the Things, in a progression which admits of indefinite continuance, while a fuller regard is for ever being paid to the multiplicity of the different ways in which the Thing behaves under different conditions, to its connexion with the rest of the world, and lastly — according to a direction of enquiry very natural, though still out of place in this part of Metaphysics — to the final purpose of which the fulfilment is the Thing's vocation in the universe. As a means of setting aside the 60 Of the Real and Reality. [Book i. difficulties, which beset us at this point, the expressions referred to have not in fact been used, nor do they seem at all available for the purpose. 28. We proceed to particularise some of these. Had we succeeded in making the essential idea of a thing so completely our own, that all modes of procedure of the thing under all conditions would flow from the idea self-evidently as its necessary consequences, we should after all in so doing have only attained an intellectual image of that by which as by its essentia the Thing is distinguished from everything else. The old question would repeat itself, what it is which makes the thing itself more than this its image in thought, or what makes the object of our idea of the thing more than thinkable, and gives it a place as a real thing in the world. Just as the Quality demanded a Subject to which it might attach, so still more does the idea, less independent than the quality, seem to require a fixed kernel to give its matter that reality which, as the material contained in an idea, it does not possess. If we have once forbidden ourselves to look for the essence of the Thing in a simple uniform quality that may be grasped in perception ; if we resolved rather to find an ex- pression for it in the law which governs the succession of its pheno- mena ; then that which we are in quest of has to fulfil for all things the same indistinguishable function. Itself without constituent quali- ties it has to give reality to the varying qualities constituent of things. We are thus brought to the notion of a material of reality, a Real pure and simple, which in itself is neither this nor that, but the prin- ciple of reality for everything. The history of Philosophy might recount numerous forms under which this notion has been renewed ; but it is needless to treat them here in detail. The natural requirements of the case have always led, when once this path has been entered on, to the same general deter- minations as Plato assigned to this vXrj. The consideration that ob- servation presents us with an indefinite number of mutually independent Things, permanent or transitory, caused this primary matter of all things to be regarded by the imagination as divisible, in order that there might be a piece of it in each single thing, sufficient to stiffen the thing's ideal content into reality. But this conception of divisi- bility in its turn had to be to a certain extent withdrawn. For it would imply that before its division the matter has possessed a continuity, and this would be unthinkable without the assumption of its having properties of some kind, by which it would have been possible for this material of reality to be distinguished from other thinkable mate- Chapter III.] Matter dS tllC Real (^" ^ ^ "V 6 & ft C? T m rials. But thus understood, as already definitely qualifi9&^ Xvaukl not have disposed of the metaphysical question which it was irfc^mgcU I solve. For the question was not, what quality of primary matter as a matter-of-fact formed the basis of the individual things that fashion themselves out of it, but what it is that is needed to help any and every thinkable quality to be more than thinkable, to be real. If therefore the imagination did notwithstanding, as we do not doubt that it did, present this ultimate Real to itself mainly as a continuous and divisible substance, this delineation of it, occasioned by reference to the observation of natural objects, strictly speaking went beyond that which in this connexion it was intended to postulate. All that had to be supposed was the presence in every single thing, however many things there might be, of such a kernel of reality, wholly void of properties. There were therefore according to this notion an indefinite number of instances of this conception of the real, but they did not stand in any connexion with each other any more than in any other case many instances of a general idea, merely because they are all subordinate to that idea, stand in any actual connexion with each other. But I will not continue this line of remark ; for the obscurity of this whole conception is not to be got rid of by criticism, but by pointing out its entire uselessness. 29. It is manifest that a representation which has its value in the treatment of ordinary objects of experience, has been applied to a metaphysical question, which it is wholly insufficient to answer. In sensuous perception we are presented with materials, which assume under our hands such forms as we will, or are transformed by ope- rations of nature into things of the most various appearance. But a little attention informs us that they are but relatively formless and undetermined. The possibility of assuming new forms and of manifold transmutation they all owe to the perfectly determinate properties which they possess, and by which they offer definite points of contact to the conditions operating on them. The wax, which to the ancients represented the primary matter on which the ideas were supposed to be impressed in order to their realisation, would not take this im- pression, and would not retain the form impressed on it but for the peculiar unelastic ductility and the cohesion of its minute parts, and any finer material which we might be inclined to substitute for it, though it might possess a still more many-sided plasticity, would at the same time be still less capable of preserving the form communi- cated to it. It is therefore a complete delusion to hope by this way of ascent 62 Of the Real and Reality. [book i. to arrive at something which, without any qualification on its own part, should still bear this character of pure receptivity, necessary to the Real we are in quest of. After all we should only arrive at a barren matter R, which would be equally incapable of receiving a definite shape, and of duly retaining it when received. For that which was without any nature of its own different from everything else, could not be acted on by any condition p at all, nor by any condition p otherwise than by another q. No position of circumstances therefore would ever occur under which that indeterminate subject R could be any more compelled or entitled to assume a certain form ir rather than any other we like, k. If we supposed however this unthinkable event to come about and R to be brought into the form n, there would be nothing to move it to the retention of this form to the exclusion of any other, k, since every other would be equally possible and equally indifferent to it. In this absence of any resistance, which could only rest on some nature of R's own, every possibility of an ordered course of the world would disappear. In every moment of time everything that was thinkable at all would have an equal claim to reality, and there would be none of that predominance of one condition over another which is indispensable to account for any one state of things or to bring about a determinate change of any state of things. But not only would any origin or preservation of individual forms be re- duced to nothing by the complete absence of qualities on the part of the Real. The relation itself, which at each moment must be sup- posed to obtain between it and the content to which it gives reality, would from a metaphysical point of view be unmeaning. Words no doubt may be found by which to indicate it metaphorically. We speak of the properties which constitute the whole essence of a Thing, as inhering in the unqualified substance of the Real, or as attaching to it, or as sustained by it. But all these figurative expressions with the use of which language cannot dispense, are in contradiction with the presupposed emptiness and formlessness of the matter. Nothing can sustain anything, or allow it to attach to or depend upon itself, which does not by its own form and powers afford this other points of contact and support. Or, to speak without a figure, it is impos- sible to see what inner relation could be meant, if we ascribed to a certain Real a property ir or a group of properties it as its own. R would be as void of relation to the property or group of properties, as alien to it, as any other R \ 30. These shortcomings on the part of the conception of the Real would make themselves acutely felt as soon as an attempt was made, chapter in.] Matter by itself 'is nothing. 63 not merely to set it up in isolated abstraction, but to turn it to account for the actual explanation of the course of things. It would then become evident that nothing could be built on it which had any likeness to a Static or Mechanic of change. But it will be objected that we are fighting here against ghosts raised by ourselves, so long as we speak of processes by which the connexion of the real with the qualities it contains is supposed for the first time to have come about. This, however, it will be said, is what has never been meant. Even the ancients, who originated the conception of matter in question, we find were aware that at no place or time did the naked and unformed matter exist by itself. It had existed from eternity in union with the Forms, by means of which the different Things, now this, now that, had been fashioned out of it. In the plainest way it was stated that, taken by itself, it was rather without being, a \u\ Sv, and that Being first arose out of its indefeasible union with the qualitative content supplied by the Ideas. This may be fairly urged, and in this ex- planation we might perfectly acquiesce, if it were one that really admitted of being taken at its word. If it were so taken, it would amount simply to a confession that what the theory understood and looked for under the designation of the Real is nothing more than the 'Position,' throughout inseparable from the constituent qualities of Being, by which these qualities not merely are thought of but are ; and that consequently it would be improper for this ' Position,' which only in thought can be detached as the uniform mode of putting forth from that which is put forth by it, to be regarded in a sub- stantive character as itself a something, a Real, the truly existing Thing ; improper that, compared with it, everything which on other grounds we took to form the essence of the Thing, should be forced into the secondary position of an unessential appendage. The doctrines, however, which speak of the real material of Being, are far from conveying this unreserved admission even in the ex- planation adduced. On the contrary, they continue to interpret the distinction between the principle that gives reality and the real itself as if it represented something actual. When they ascribe to the matter, which has no independent existence, successive changes of form, they do not merely mean by this that the inexplicable ' Position' passes from the content it to the other content *. In that case all that would be attained would be a succession, regulated or unregu- lated, of states of fact without inner connexion. Their object rather is to be able to treat the matter R as the really permanent connecting member which experiences n and x, or exchanges the one for the 64 Of the Real and Reality. \ book i. other, as states of itself, and which, in virtue of its own nature, forbids the assumption of other phenomena and ^, or the realisation of another order of succession. Without this last addition the conception of the Real R would not, upon this view any more than upon other, have any value. For I repeat, it is only under the obligation of ex- plaining a particular consecutiveness in the course of the world, which does not allow any and every thinkable variation in the state of facts, that we are constrained, instead of resting in the phenomena, to look for something behind them under the name of the Real, however that is to be conceived. A flux of absolute becoming without any principle, once allowed, demands no explana- tion and needs no assumption to be made which could lead to such an explanation, intrinsically impossible, as the one given. The doctrines in question, therefore, under the guidance of this natural need which they think to satisfy by the supposition of the Real pure and simple, do not in fact make the admission which they seem to make. Al- though their ' matter ' R nowhere exists in its nakedness, this is, so to speak, only a fact in the world's history, which need not follow from the idea of R. Although as a matter of fact everywhere imprisoned in variously qualified forms, still in all those forms R continues to exist as the single self-subsistent independent Being and imparts its own reality to the content which changes in dependence on it. Thus the matter, considered by itself and in detachment from the forms in which it appears, is still not properly, as it is called, a (ifj ov, but according to the proper sense even of the doctrines which so designate it, merely an ol< ov, if weight may be laid on the selection of these expressions. And against this permanent residuum of the doctrine of the uXtj the objections already made retain their force. It is impossible to transfer the responsibility of providing for the reality of the deter- minate content to a Real without content, understood in a substantive sense, for none of the connecting thoughts are possible which would be needed in order to bring this Real into the desired relation with the qualities assigned to it. 31. I cannot therefore believe that interpreters, as they went deeper into this ancient notion of an empty Real as such, of an existing nothing which yet purports to be the ground of reality to all definite Being, would find in it a proportionately deeper truth. To us it is only an example of an error of thought, which is made too often and too easily not to deserve an often-repeated notice. If we ask whence the colour of a body proceeds, we usually think at first of a pigment which we suppose to communicate the colour to it. And in this we chapter in.] The communication of Reality \ 65 are often right ; for in compound things it may easily be that a pro- perty, which seems to be spread over the whole of them, attaches only to a single constituent. But we are- wrong already in as far as our phrase implies that the pigment communicates its colour to the whole body. Nothing of the sort really happens, but a combination of physical effects brings it about that in our sensation the impression of colour produced by the pigment completely disguises the other impression, which would have been produced by the other constituents of the body, that have throughout remained colourless. But when we repeat our_ question, it appears that the same answer cannot always be repeated. v The pigment cannot owe its colour to a new pigment. Sooner oF later the colouring must be admitted as the immediate result of the properties which a body possesses on its own account as its proper nature, and does not borrow from anything else. Our procedure has been just the same with reference to the things and their reality. We desired to know whence their common pro-' perty of reality is derived, and in imagination introduced into each of them a grain of the stuff of reality which we supposed to communi- cate to the properties gathered about it the fixedness and consistency of a Thing. What actual behaviour, however, or what process this expression of ' communication ' so easily used, is to signify, remained more than we could say. In fact, just as little as a pigment would really convey its colouring to anything else, could the mere presence of the Real convey the reality, which is emphatically held to be peculiar to it, to an essence in the way of qualities, which, we are to suppose, have somehow grouped themselves around it. Indeed, the metaphysical representation is in much worse case than that which we made use of in the example just instanced. For of the pigment we did not dream that it was itself not merely colourless, but in its nature completely indifferent to the various colours that may be thought of, and that it proceeded to assume one of them as if the colours, before they were properties of a thing, already possessed a reality which enabled them to enter into a relation to bodies and to let themselves be assumed by bodies. In this case we were aware that the Redness, which we ascribe to the pigment, is the immediate result of its own nature under definite circumstances ; that it could not exist, that nothing could have it, until these circumstances acted on this nature, and that it would change if the body, instead of being what it is, were another equally determinate body. But in our meta- physical language, when we spoke of the properties in opposition to the real essence of things, we in fact spoke as if the thinkable quali- vol. 1. F 66 Of the Real and Reality. [book i. ties, by which one thing is distinguished from another, before they really existed as qualities of a Thing might already possess a reality which should enable them to enter into a definite relation to an empty Real a relation by which, without having any foundation more than all other qualities in the nature of this Real, it was possible for them to become its properties. I leave this comparison, however, to be pursued on another occa- sion. Apart from figure, our mistake was this. We demanded to know what it is on which that Being of Things which makes them Things rests. By way of answer we invented the Substantive con- ception of the Real pure and simple, and believed that by it we had represented a real object, or rather the ultimate Real itself. In fact however real is an adjectival or predicative conception, a title belong- ing to everything that in some manner not yet explained behaves as a Thing— changes, that is to say, in a regular order, remains identical with itself in its various states, acts and suffers ; for it is this that we assumed to be the case with Things, supposing that there are Things. The question was, on what ground this actual behaviour rests. It is a question that cannot be settled by thinking of our whole require- ment as satisfied in general by the assumption of a Real as such, of which after all, as has been shown, we could not point out how in each single case it explains the reality which itself is never presented to us as universal and homogeneous, but only as a sum of innumer- able different individual cases. The conception of the Real therefore is liable to a criticism similar to though somewhat different from that which is called for by the con- ception of pure Being. This latter we found correctly formed, but inapplicable, so long as the definite relations are not made good again, which had been suppressed in it by the process of abstraction. Of the conception of the Real on the contrary it may be maintained that it is untruly formed. That which is conceived in this conception everywhere presupposes the subject to which it may belong, and cannot itself be subject. For this reason it cannot be spoken of in substantive form as the Real, but only applied adjectivally to all that is real. It would be well if the usage of language favoured this way of speaking, more lengthy though it is, in order to keep the thought constantly alive that it is not through the presence of a Real in them that Things become or are real, but that primarily they are only called real if they exhibit that mode of behaviour which we denominate reality. In regard to this we have stated what we mean by it. The mode under which it may be thinkable has still to be ascertained. Chapter III] The Tiling CIS CI LdlU . 6j 32. With a view to answering the above question we are naturally- led to the opposite path to that hitherto pursued. Let us see how far it will take us. The two incomplete ideas, by the union of which we form the conception of the Thing — that of the content by which it is distinguished from other things and that of its reality — cannot be any longer taken to represent two actually separable elements of its Being. The Reality must simply be the form in which the content actually exists, and can be nothing apart from it. But the requirement that this should be so meets at once with a serious objection. So long as we could answer the question What the Thing is by calling it a simple quality, we had a uniform content, apprehensible in intuition, before us, to which it seemed, to begin with at leasts that the ' Position ' of reality might be applied without contradiction. We have now decided that this essence is only to be found in a law, according to which the changeable states, properties or phenomena, a 1 a 2 a 3 of the thing, are connected with each other. But how could a law be that which, if simply endowed with reality, would constitute a thing ? How could it be gifted with those modes of behaviour which we demand of whatever claims to be a Thing ? This question involves real difficulty, but it also expresses doubts which merely arise from a scarcely avoidable imperfection in our linguistic usage. The first of these doubts is analogous to that which we raised against the simple Quality as essence of the Thing, and which we found to have no justification. As long as we thought of the Quality in the way presented to us in language by adjectives, as a generality abstracted from many instances, distinct indeed from other qualities but undetermined in respect of intensity, extent and limitation ; so long it could not be accepted as the essence of a Thing. After all the determinateness still lacking to it had been made good, it might have been so accepted, if the necessary requirement of capability of change had not prevented this. In like manner the con- ception of law is at the outset understood in a similar general sense. Abstracted from a comparison between the modes of behaviour of different things, it represents primarily the rule, according to which from a definite general class of conditions a definite class of results is derived. The rule indeed is such that there is a permanent propor- tion according to which definite changes in the results correspond to definite changes in the conditions ; but the cases in which the law will hold good, and the determined values of the conditions which give rise in each of these cases to equally determined values on the part of the effects — these are not contained in the law itself or contained in F 2 68 Of the Real and Reality. [Book i. it only as possibilities which are thought of along with it, but of which it asserts none as a fact. In this shape a law cannot be that of which the immediate reality, even if it were thinkable, would form a Thino\ But this is not what is meant by the theories which employ such an expression [which identify thing and law]. What they have in view, to put it shortly, is not a general law but an instance of its application. This latter expression, however, needs further explana- tion and limitation. 33. If in the ordinary general expression of a law, for all quantities left indefinite, we substitute definite values, it is not our habit, it is true, to call the individual instance thus obtained any longer a law at all, because unless we revert to the general form of which it is an application it is no longer fitted to serve as a ground of judgment upon other like cases, and this assistance in reasoning is the chief service which in ordinary thinking we expect from a law. Intrin- sically, however, there is no such real difference between the in- dividual instance and the universal as would forbid us from sub- suming the former under the name of Law. On the contrary, it is itself what it is in respect of its whole nature only in consequence of the law, and conversely the law has no other reality but in the case of its application. It is therefore a legitimate extension of the usage of terms, if we apply the name of a law to the definite state of facts itself, which includes a plurality of relations between elements which are combined according to the dictates of the general law. It may be the general law of a series of quantities that each sequent member is the » th power of the preceding one. It is not, however, in this general form that the law forms a series. We have no series till we introduce in place of n a definite value, and at the same time ■*» give to some one of the members, say the first, a definite quantitative value. Applying this to our present case, the general law would correspond only to the abstract conception of a Thing as such; the actual series on the other hand, which this laws governs, to the conception of some individual Thing. And it is only in this latter sense as corresponding to the actual series that it can be intended to represent a law as being the essence to which ' Position ' as a Thing belongs. Upon this illustration two remarks have to be added. In our parallel the definite series appears as an example of a general law, of which innumerable other examples are equally possible. It may turn out in the sequel that this thought has an equally necessary place in the metaphysical treatment of things ; but at this point it is still chapter hi.] A law need not be general, 69 foreign to our enquiry. It does not belong to that essence of a thing of which we are here in quest, that the law which orders its content should apply also to the content of other things. On the contrary, it is completely individual and single of its kind, distinguishing this thing from all other things. On this point we are often in error, misled by the universal tendency to construct reality out of the abstractions, which the reality itself has alone enabled us to form. The course, which investigation cannot avoid taking, thoroughly accustoms us to look on general laws as the Prim, to which the manifold facts of the real world must afterwards, as a matter of course, subordinate them- selves as instances. We might, however, easily remind ourselves that as a matter of fact all general laws arise in our minds from the com- parison of individual cases. These are the real Prius, and the general law which we develope from them is primarily only a product of our thought. Its validity in reference to many cases is established by the experiences from the comparison of which it has arisen, and is established just so far as these confirm it. Had our comparison, instead of being between one thing and other things, been a com- parison of a thing with itself in various states — and that is the sort of comparison to which alone our present course of enquiry would properly lead — then it would by no means have been self-evident that the consecutiveness and conformity to law, which we had found to obtain between the successive states of the one thing, must be trans- ferable to the relations between any other elements whatever they might be, and thus to the states and nature of another thing. We should have no right therefore to regard the essence of the Thing as an instance of a universal law to which it was subject. At the same time it is obvious that this law of the succession of states in a single thing, wholly individual as it is, if it were apprehended in thought, would continue logically to present itself to us as an idea, of which there might be many precisely similar copies. It is quite possible to attempt to make plurals even of the idea of the universe and of the supreme Being. It is considerations in a different region, not logical but material, that alone exclude the possibility of there being such plurals; and it is these alone which in our Metaphysic can in the sequel decide for or against the multiplicity of precisely similar things, for or against the validity of universal laws which they have to obey. To make my meaning clearer, I will supplement the previous illus- tration of a numerical series by another. We may compare the essence of a thing to a melody. It is not disputed that the successive sounds of a melody are governed by a law of aesthetic consecutive- 7o Of the Real and Reality. [Book i, ness, but this law is at the same time recognised as one perfectly individual. There is no sense in regarding a particular melody as a kind, or instance of the application, of a general melody. Leaving to the reader's reflection the task, which might be a long one, of making good the shortcomings from which this illustration, like the previous one, suffers, I proceed to the second supplementary remark which I have to make. If we develope a general law from the comparison of different things under different circumstances, two points are left undeter- mined — one, the specific nature of the things, the other, the par- ticular character of the conditions under which the things will behave in one way or in another. Let both points be determined, and we arrive at that result, identical with itself and unchangeable, which we represented by comparison with a definite series of quantities, but which cannot answer our purpose — the purpose of apprehending that essence of the Thing which remains uniform in change. We have therefore, as already remarked, only to carry out the comparison of a thing with itself in its various states. The consecutiveness and con- formity to law, that would thus appear, would be the individual law or essence of the Thing in opposition to the changeable conditions that have now to be left undetermined. One more misunderstanding I should like to get rid of in conclusion. It is no part of our present question whether and how this comparison and the discovery of the abiding law is possible for us with reference to any particular thing. Our problem merely is to find the form of thought in which its essence could be adequately apprehended supposing there to be no hindrance in the nature of our cognition and in its position towards Things to the performance of the process. The same reserve is made by every other metaphysical view, Even the man who looks for the essence of the Thing in a simple Quality does not expect to know that Quality and therefore satisfies himself with establishing the general form in which it would appear to him, but denies himself the prospect of ever looking on this appearance. 34. So much for those objections to the notion of a law as con- stituting the essence of the Thing, which admit of being set aside by an explanation of our meaning. In fact, if we thought of the 1 Position ' which conveys reality as lighting upon this individual law, it would form just that permanent yet changeable essence 1 of a Thing which we are in search of. The reader, however, will find little satis- faction in all this. The question keeps recurring whether after all 1 [_' Das bestandige und dennoch veranderliche Was.'] Chapter III.] Coilfoi)}iit)' to LillJ. 7 1 that ' Position ' of reality, applied to this content, can in fact ex- haustively constitute the essence of a real Thing ; whether we have not constantly to search afresh for the something which, while fol- lowing this law, would convey to it — convey to what is in itself a merely thinkable mode of procedure — reality? In presence of this constantly recurring doubt I have no course but to repeat the answer which I believe to be certainly true. Let us, in the first place, recall the fact that in what we are now asking for there is something in- trinsically unthinkable. We are not satisfied with the doctrine that the Thing is an individual law. We believe that we gain something by assuming of it that in its own nature it is something more and other than this, and that its conformity to this law, by which it dis- tinguishes itself from everything else, is merely its mode of procedure. Can we however form any notion of what constitutes the process which we indicate by this familiar name of conformity to law? If this nucleus of reality, which we deem it necessary to seek for, pos- sessed a definite nature, alien to that which the law enjoins, how could it nevertheless come to adjust itself to the law ? And if we would assume that there are sundry conditions of which the operation upon it might compel it to such obedience, would this compulsion be itself intelligible, unless its own nature gave it the law that upon these conditions supervening it should obey that other law supposed to be quite alien to its nature? In any case that which we call conformity to law on the part of a Thing would be nothing else than the proper being and behaviour of the Thing itself. On the other side : What exactly are we to take the laws to be before they are conformed to ? What sort of reality, other than that of the Things, could belong to them, such as they must certainly have if it is to be possible for a nature of Things, assumed hitherto to lie beyond them, to adjust itself to them ? There is only one answer possible to these questions. It is not the case that the things follow a mode of procedure which would in any possible form be actually separable from them. Their procedure is whatever it may be, and by it they yield the result which we afterwards, upon reflective comparison, conceive as their mode of procedure and thereupon endow in our thought with priority to the Things themselves, as if it were the pattern after which they had guided themselves. If we would avoid this conclusion by denying to the required nucleus of the Thing any nature of its own, we should be brought back to that conception of the absolute Real, R, which we have already found so useless. Even if this real Nothing were itself thinkable, it would certainly not be capable of distributing the 72 Of the Real and Reality. ebook i. reality, which it is supposed to have of its own, over the content which forms the essence of a determinate Thing. It could not there- fore represent our quaesiium, the something of which we require a so-called conformity to a determinate mode of procedure. There is therefore, it is clear, nothing left for us but to attempt to defend the proposition, that the real Thing is nothing but the realised individual law of its procedure. 35. I shall be less wearisome if I connect my further reflections on the subject with an historical antithesis of theories. Idealism and Realism have always been looked upon as two opposite poles of the movement of philosophical thought, each having different though closely connected significations, according as the enquiry into what really is, or the reference to that which is to be valued and striven after in life, was the more prominent. The opposition was in the first instance occasioned by the question which now occupies us. In the inexhaustible multiplicity of perceivable phenomena Plato noticed the recurrence of certain uniform Predicates, forming the permanent store from which, in endless variety of combination, all ihings derive their particular essence or the nature by which one distinguishes itself from the other and each is what it is. And just as the simple elements, so the real combinations of these which the course of nature ex- hibited, were no multiplicity without a Principle, but were subject on their own part to permanent types, within which they moved. Further, the series of relations, into which the different things might enter with each other — ultimately even the multiplicity of that world which our own action might and should institute — testified no less to this inner order of all reality. The case was not such as the Sophists, his predecessors in philosophy, had tried to make it out to be. It was not the case that a stream of Becoming, with no check upon its waves, flowed on into ever new forms, unheard of before, without obligation to return again to a state the same with or like to that from which it set out. On the contrary, everything which it was to be possible for Reality to bring about was confined within fixed limits. Only an immeasurable multiplicity of places, of times, and of combinations remained open to it, in which it repeated with variations this content of the Ideal world. The full value of this metaphysical conception I shall have to bring out later. For the present I wish to call attention to the misleading path, never actually avoided, into which it has drawn men astray. It was just the multiplicity in space and time of scattered successive and intersecting phenomena — the course of things— that properly consti-. chapter in.] Ideas are subsequent to Reality. 73 tuted the true reality, the primary object given us to be perceived and known. That world of Ideas, on the other hand, which compre- hended the permanent element in this changing multiplicity and the recurrent forms in the transmutation of the manifold, was in contrast with it something secondary, having had its origin in the comparisons instituted by our thought, and, so far as of this origin, neither real nor calculated to produce in turn any reality out of itself. However great the value of the observation that Reality is such as to enable us by the connexion of those ideas of ours to arrive at a correspondence with its course ; still it was wrong to take this world of ideas for any- thing else than a system of abstractions or intellectual forms, which only have reality so far as they can be considered the modes of pro- cedure of the things themselves, but which could in no sense be opposed to the course of things as a Prins to which this course adjusts itself, completely or incompletely, as something secondary. In order .to make my meaning quite clear, I must emphasize the proposition that the only reality given us, the true reality, includes as an inseparable part of itself this varying flow of phenomena in space and time, this course of Things that happen. This ceaselessly ad- vancing melody of event — it and nothing else — is the metaphysical place in which the connectedness of the world of Ideas, the multi- plicity of its harmonious relations, not only is found by us but alone has its reality. Within this reality single products and single occur- rences might be legitimately regarded as transitory instances, upon which the world of ideas impressed itself and from which it again withdrew : for before and after and beside them the living Idea re- mained active and present in innumerable other instances, and while "changing its forms never disappeared from reality. But the whole of reality, the whole of this world, known and unknown together, could not properly be separated from the world of Ideas as though it were possible for the latter to exist and hold good on its own account before realising itself in the given world, and as though there might have been innumerable equivalent instances — innumerable other worlds — besides this, in which the antecedent system of pure ddeas might equally have realised itself. Just as the truth about the in- dividual Thing is not that there is first the conception of the Thing which ordains how it is to be, and that afterwards there comes the mere unintelligible fact, which obeys this conception, but that the conception is nothing more than the life of the real itself; so none of the Ideas is an antecedent pattern, to be imitated by what is. Rather, each Idea is the imitation essayed by Thought of one of the 74 Of the Real and Reality. [Book i. traits in which the eternally real expresses itself. If the individual Ideas appear to us as generalities, to which innumerable instances correspond, we have to ascribe this also to the nature of that supreme Idea, into which we gather the individual Ideas. The very meaning of there being such an Idea is that a stream of phenomena does not whirl on into the immeasurable with no identity in successive moments, without ever returning to what it was before and without relationship between its manifold elements. The generality of the Ideas therefore is implied in the systematic character of what fills the universe, in the inner design of the pattern, of which the un- broken reality and realisation constitute the world. It is completely misinterpreted as an outline-sketch of what might be in impeachment of what is — of a possibility which, in order to arrive at reality, would require the help of a second Cosmos, of a real and of movements of the real that are no part of itself. 36. I shall have frequent opportunity in the sequel of dwelling again on this system of thought ; nor in fact can I hope to make it perfectly clear till I shall have handled in detail the manifold diffi- culties which oppose a return to it. I say expressly — a return to it ; for to me it seems the simplest and most primary truth, while to re- presentatives of the present intricate phase of scientific opinion it usually appears a rash and obscure imagination. Psychologically it is almost an unavoidable necessity that the general laws, which we have obtained from comparison of phenomena, should present them- selves to us as an independent and ordaining Prius, which precedes the cases of its application. For in relation to the movement of our cognition they are really so. But if by their help we calculate a future result beforehand from the given present conditions, we forget that what comes first in our reflection as a major premiss is yet only the expression of the past and of that nature of its own which Reality in the past revealed to us. So accustomed are we to this misunder- standing, so mastered by the habit of first setting what is in truth the essence of the Real over against the Real, as an external ideal for it to strive after, and of then fruitlessly seeking for means to unite what has been improperly separated, that every assertion of the original unity of that which has been thus sundered appears detrimental to the scientific accuracy to which we aspire. True, the need of blending Ideal and Real, as the phrase is, has at all times been keenly felt; but it seems to me that the attempts to fulfil this problem have some- times promoted the error which they combated. In demanding a special act of speculation in order to achieve this great result, they Chapter III.] TJlC LllW FCdl, llOt realised. 75 maintain the belief in a gulf, not really there, which it needs a bold leap to pass. For the present, however, I propose to drop these general con- siderations, and, if possible, to get rid of the obscurity and apparent inadmissibility of the result just arrived at. One improvement is directly suggested by what has been said. We cannot express our Thesis, as we did just now, in the form : ' The Thing is the realised individual law of its behaviour.' This expression, if we weigh its terms, would contain all the false notions against which we were anxious to guard. Instead of the 'realised law' it would clearly be better to speak of the law never realised, but that always has been real. But no verbal expression that we could find would serve the purpose of excluding the suggested notion which we wish to be expressly excluded. For in speaking of a law, we did not mean one which, though real as a law, had still to wait to be followed, but one followed eternally; and so followed that the law with the following of it was not a mere fact or an event that takes place, but a self-completing activity. And this activity, once more, we look upon not in the nature of a behaviour separable from the essence which so behaves, but as forming the essence itself — the essence not being a dead point behind the activity, but identical with it. But however fain we might be to speak of a real Law, of a living active Idea, in order the better to express our thought, language would always compel us to put two words together, on which the ordinary course of thinking has stamped two incompatible and contradictor}' meanings. We therefore have to give up the pretension of remaining in complete accord with the usage of speech. CHAPTER IV. Of Becoming and Change. 37. When I first ventured, many years ago, on a statement of metaphysical convictions, I gathered up the essence of the thoughts, with which we were just then occupied, in the following proposition : ' It is not in virtue of a substance contained in them that Things are ; they are, when they are. qualified to produce an appearance of there being a substance in them.' I was found fault with at the time on two grounds. It was said that the proposition was materially untrue, and that in respect of form the two members of the proposition appeared not to correspond as antitheses. The latter objection would have been unimportant, if true : but I have not been able to convince myself of its truth, or of the material incorrectness of my expression. According to a very common usage the name ' Substance ' was employed to indicate a rigid real nucleus, which was taken, as a self-evident truth, to possess the stability of Reality — a stability which could not be admitted as belonging to the things that change and differ from each other without special justification being demanded of its possibility. From such nuclei the Reality was supposed to spread itself over the different properties by which one thing distinguishes itself from another. It was thus by its means, as if it was a coagu- lative agent, which served to set what was in itself the unstable fluid of the qualitative content, that this content was supposed to acquire the form and steadfastness that belong to the Thing. It was matter of indifference whether this peculiar crystallisation was thought of as an occurrence that had once taken place and had given an origin in time to Things, or whether the solidifying operation of the substance was regarded as an eternal process, carried on in things equally eternal and without origin in time as an essential characteristic of their nature. In either case the causal relation remained the same. It was by means of a substance empty in itself that Reality, with its fixedness in the course of changes, was supposed to be lent to the determinate content. The appearance of substance. J J I believe myself to have shown that no one of the thoughts involved in this view is possible. In going on, however, to supplement the conclusion that it is not in virtue of a substance that Things are, by the further proposition that, if they are qualified to produce an appearance of the substance being in them, then they are. I did not intend any correspondence between this and the other nJ^ber of the antithesis in the sense of opposing to the rejected construction of that which makes a Thing a Thing another like construction. What I in- tended was to substitute for every such constriction (which is an im- possibility) that which alone is possible, \hyiefinition of what constitutes the Thing. The notion which it was sought to convey could only be this, that when we speak of southing that makes a Thing, as such ('die Dingheit'), we mean the form of real existence belonging to a content, of which the behaviour presents to us the appearance of a substance being present in it; the truth being that the holding- ground which under this designation of substance we suppose to be supplied to Things is merely the manner of holding itself exhibited by that which we seek to support in this impossible way. 38. There was no great difficulty in showing the unthinkableness of the supposed real-in-itself. The denial is easy, but is the affirmation of a tenable view equally easy? Setting aside the auxiliary conception just excluded, have we other and better means — are we left with means that still satisfy us— of explaining the functions which we cannot but continue still to expect of Things, if the assumption of their existence is to satisfy the demands for the sake of which it was made? On this question doubts will arise even for a man who resolves to adopt by way of experiment the result of the previous considerations. I repeat : A world of unmoved ideal contents, if it were thinkable without presupposing motion at least on the part of him to whom it was object of observation, would contain nothing to occasion a quest for Things behind this given multiplicity. Nor is it the mere variety of these phenomena, but only the regularity of some kind perceived or surmised in it, that compels us to the assumption of persistent principles by which the manifold is connected. Common opinion, under a mistake soon refuted, had thought to find these subjects of change in the Things perceivable by the senses. For these we substituted supra-sensible essences of perfectly simple quality. But the very simplicity of these would have made any alternative but Being or not-Being impossible for them, and would thus have excluded change. Yet change must really take place somewhere, if only to render possible the appearance of change some- yS Of Becoming and Change. ibooki. where else. Then we gave up seeking the permanent element of Things in a state of facts always identical with itself, and credited ourselves with finding it in the very heart of change, as the uniform import of a Law, which connects a multiplicity of states into one rounded whole. Even thus, however, it seemed that only an ex- pression had been gained for that in virtue of which each Thing is what it is, and distinguishes itself from what it is not. As to the question how an essence so constituted can partake of existence in the form of a Thing, there remained a doubt which, being insufficiently silenced, evoked the attempt to represent the real-in-itself as the un- yielding stem to which all qualities, with their variation, were related as the changeable foliage. The attempt has failed, and leaves us still in presence of the same doubt. The first point to be met is this : If we think of change as taking place, then the law which comprehends its various phases as members of the same series will serve to represent the constant character of the Thing which persists through- out the change ; but how can we think the change itself, which we thus presuppose ? How think its limitation to these connected members of a series ? And then we shall have to ask : Would the regularity in the succession of the several states a 1 , a 2 , a 3 . . . really amount to that which, conceived as persistence of a Thing, we believe it necessary to seek for in order to the explanation of phenomena ? These questions will be the object of our next consideration. 39. Under the name ' change,' in the first place, there lurks a difficulty, which we must bring into view. It conveys the notion that the new real, as other than something else, is only the continuation of a previous reality. It tends to avoid the notion of a naked coming into being, which would imply the origin of something real out of a complete absence of reality. Yet after all it is only the distinctive nature of the new that can anyhow be thought of as contained in the previously existing. The reality of the new, on the other hand, is not contained in the reality of the old. It presupposes the removal of that reality as the beginning of its own. It thus beyond a doubt becomes (comes into being) in that sense of the term which it is sought to avoid. It is just this that constitutes the distinction between the object of Metaphysic and that world of ideas, in which the content of a truth a is indeed founded on that of another b, but, far from arising out of the annihilation of b, holds good along with it in eternal validity. If now we enquire, how this becoming, involved in every change, is to be thought of, what we want to know, as we naturally suppose, is chapter iv.] Bet omi ' ng and the Law of Identity. 79 not a process by which it comes about. The necessity would be too obvious of again assuming the unintelligible becoming in this process by which we would make it intelligible. Nor can even the notion of becoming be represented as made up of simpler notions without the same mistake. In each of its forms, origination and decay, it is easy to find a unity of Being and not-Being. But the precise sense in which the wide-reaching term ' Unity' would have in this connexion to be taken, would not be that of coincidence, but only that of transition from the one to the other, and thus would already include the essential character of becoming. There is no alternative but to give up the attempt at definition of the notion as well as at construc- tion of the thing, and to recognise Becoming, like Being, as a given perceivable fact of the cosmos. Only on one side is it more than object of barren curiosity. It may appear to contain a contradiction of the law of Identity, or at least of the deductions thought to be derivable from this law. No doubt this law in the abstract sense, which I previously stated *, holds good of every object that can be presented to thought, a will never cease to = a till it ceases to be. That which is, never is anything that is not, so long as it is at all. On the same principle that which becomes, originates, passes away, is only something that becomes so long as it is becoming, only something that originates so long as it originates, only something that passes away so long as it passes away. There does not therefore follow from the law of Identity anything whatever in regard to the reality of any m. Let ?n be what it will, it will be = m, in case it is and so long as it is. But whether it is, and whether, once being, it must always be, is a point on which the principle of Identity does not directly decide at all. Yet such an inference from it is attempted. Because the conception of Being, like every other conception, has an unchangeable import, it is thought that the reality, which the conception indicates, must belong as unchangeably to that to which it once belongs. The doctrines of the irremoveability and indiscerptibility of everything that truly is are thus constantly re- current products of the movement of metaphysical thought. But this inference is limited without clear justification to the sub- sistence of the Things on which the course of nature is supposed to rest. That relations and states of Things come into Being and pass away is admitted without scruple as a self-evident truth. It is true that without this admission the content of our experience could not be presented to the mind at all. If, however, it were the principle of 1 [Logic, § 55.] 80 Of Becoming and Change. [Book i. Identity that required the indestructibility of Things, the same principle would also require the unchangeableness of all relations and states. For of everything, not merely of the special form of reality, it demands permanent equality with itself. This consideration might lead us to repeat the old attempts at a denial of all Be- coming, or — since it cannot be denied — to undertake the self-contra- dictory task of explaining at least the becoming of the appearance of an unreal becoming. But if we refuse to draw this inference from the principle of Identity, then that persistency in the Being of Things, which we hitherto tacitly presupposed, needs in its turn to be established on special metaphysical grounds, and the question arises whether the difficult task of reconciling it with the undeniable fact of change cannot be altogether avoided by adopting an entirely opposite point of view. 40. This question has in fact already been often enough answered in the affirmative. Theories have been advanced in the history of Thought, which would allow of no fixed Being and reduced everything to ceaseless Becoming. They issued, however, — as the enthusiasm with which they were generally propounded was enough to suggest — from more complex motives than we can here examine. We must limit ourselves to following the more restricted range of thoughts within which we have so far moved. Still, we too have seen reason to hold that it is an impossible division of labour to refer the maintenance of the unity which we seek for in succession to the rigid unalterable- ness of real elements, and the production of succession merely to the fluctuation of external relations between these elements. Change must find its way to the inside of Being. We therefore agree with the last-mentioned theorists in thinking it worth while to attempt the resolution of all Being into Becoming, and in the interpretation of its permanence, wherever it appears, as merely a particular form of Becoming ; as a constantly repeated origination and decay of Things exactly alike, not as a continuance of the same Thing unmoved. But it would be useless to speak of Becoming without at the same time adding a more precise definition. Neither do we find in experience an origination without limit of everything from everything, nor, if we did find it, would its nature permit it to be the object of scientific enquiry, or serve as a principle of any explanation. Even those theorists who found enthusiastic delight in the sense of the un- restrained mobility enjoyed by the Becoming which they held in honour as contrasted with the lifeless rigidity of Being— even they, though they have set such value on the inexhaustible variety of. Chapter IV.] BcCOMing 7UUSt JlClVC Us LttWS. 8 1 Becoming, and on its marvellous complications, have yet never held its eternal flux to be accidental or without direction. Even in Heraclitus we meet with plain reference to inexorable laws which govern it. It is only, then, as involving this representation of a definite tendency that the conception of Becoming merits further metaphysical examination. 41. The thought just stated first had clear expression given it by Aristotle in his antithesis of bvvauis and ivepyeta. The undirected stream of event he encloses, so to speak, within banks, and determines what is possible and what is impossible in it. For what he wishes to convey is not merely the modest truth, that anything which is to be real must be possible. It is of this possibility rather that he maintains that it cannot be understood as a mere possibility of thought, but must itself be understood as a reality. A Thing exists Swdpei when the conditions are really formed beforehand for its admission as an element of reality at some later period, while that alone can exist ivepyelq, of which a 8vvap.is is contained in something else already existing ivepyeiq. Thus all Becoming is characterised throughout by a fixed law, which only allows the origination of real from real, nay more, of the determinate from the determinate. We have here the first form of a principle of Sufficient Reason, transferred from the con- nected world of Ideas to the world of events. The first conscious assertion of a truth, which human thought has made unconscious use of from the beginning, is always to be looked on with respect as a philosophical achievement, even if it does not offer the further fruits which one would fain gather from it. Barren in detail, however, these two Aristotelian conceptions certainly are, however valuable the general principle which they indicate. They would only be applicable on two conditions ; if they were followed by some specific rule as to what sequent can be contained Sura/iet in what antecedent, and if it could be shown what is that C which must supervene in order to give reality to the possible transition from bvvapis into ivepyeta. To find a solution of the first problem has been the effort of centuries, and it is still unfound. On the second point a clearer explanation might have been wished for. The examples of which Aristotle avails himself include two cases which it is worth while to distinguish. If the stones lying about are Swdpei the house, or the block of marble dwdfiei the statue, both stones and marble await the exertion of activity from without, to make that out of them ivepyeta which indeed admits of being made out of them but into which they do not develope themselves. They are possibilities of something VOL. I. G i 8 2 Of Becoming and Change. [Book i, future because they are available for that something if made use of by a form-giving motion. On the other hand, if the soul is the activity of the living body, it is in another sense that the body is Svw^ei the soul. It does not wait to have the end to which it is to shape itself determined from without, as the stone waits for external handling to be worked into a house or into a statue. On the contrary it involves in itself the necessary C, the active impulse which presses forward to the realisation of that single end, of which the conditions are involved in it to the exclusion of all other ends. Each case is metaphysically important. The first is in point where we have to deal with the connexion between different elements of which one acts on the other and with the conveyance of a motion to something which as yet is without the motion. The second case apart from anything else involves the question, on which we propose to employ ourselves in the immediate sequel : granted that a thing a, instead of awaiting from without the determination of that which it is to become, contains in its own nature the principle of a and the principle of exclusion of every 0, how comes it about that this is not the end of the matter but that the a of which the principle is present proceeds to come into actual being, and ceases to exist merely in principle ? 42. I shall most easily explain at once the meaning of this question and the reason for propounding it, by adducing a simple answer, which we might be tempted to employ by way of setting the question aside as superfluous. It is self-evident, we might say, that a proceeds from a because a conditions this a and nothing but this a, not any 0. Now it is obvious that this answer is only a repetition of the question- able supposition which we just made. The very point we wanted to ascertain was, what process it is in the thing that in reality compels the conditioned to issue from that which conditions it, as necessarily as in our thought the consciousness of the truth of the proposition which asserts the condition carries with it the certainty of the truth of that which asserts the conditioned. We do not in this case any more than elsewhere cherish the unreasonable object of finding out the means by which in any case a realised condition succeeds further in realising its consequence. But to point to it as a self-evident truth that one fact should in reality call another into being, if to the eye of thought they are related as reason and consequence, is no settlement of our question. I reserve for the present the enquiry into the manner in which we think in any case of the intelligible nature of a conse- quence F as contained in the nature of its reason G 1 . Whatever 1 [G and F refer to the German words used here ' Grand ' and ' Folge.'] Chapter IV.] RctlSOIl (Hid Consequent. 83 this relation may be, the mere fact that it obtains does not suffice to make the idea of F arise out of G even in our consciousness. Were it so, every truth would be immediately apparent to us. No round- about road of enquiry would be needed for its discovery, nor should we even have a motive to seek for it. The universe of all truths connected in the way of reason and consequent would stand before our consciousness, so long as we thought at all, in constant clearness. But this is not the case. Even in us the idea of the consequence F arises out of that of its reason G only because the nature of our soul, with the peculiar unity which characterises it, is so conditioned by particular accompanying circumstances, p, that it cannot rest in the idea of G and, supposing no other circumstances, q, to condition it otherwise, cannot but pass on account of its own essence to the idea of F— to that and no other. In the absence of those accompanying conditions, p, which consist in the whole situation of our soul for the moment, the impulse to this movement is absent likewise ; and for that reason innumerable ideas pass away in our consciousness without evoking images of the innumerable consequences, F, of which the content is in principle involved in what these ideas contain. If instead of the conditions, p, those other circumstances, q, are present — consisting equally in the general situation of the soul for the moment — then the movement may indeed arise but it does not necessarily issue in the idea of F. It may at any moment experience a diversion from this goal. This is the usual reason of the distraction and wandering of our thoughts. It is never directly by the logical affinity and concatenation of their thinkable objects that their course is determined but by the psychological connexion of our ideas, so far as these are the momentary states of our own nature. Of the connexion of reason and consequence in Things we never recognise more than just so much as the like connexion on the part of our own states enables us to see of it. It is not enough therefore to appeal to the principle, that the content of G in itself, logically or necessarily, conditions that of F, and that therefore in reality also F will ensue upon G. The question rather is why the Things trouble themselves about this connexion between necessities of thought ; why they do not allow the principle G which they contain to be for ever a barren principle, but actually procure for it the consequence F which it requires ; in other words, what addition of a complementary C must be supposed in order that the Things in their real being may pass from G to F just as our G 2 84 Of Becoming and Change. [Book i. thought — not always or unconditionally — passes from the knowledge of G to the knowledge of F. 43. We are thus brought back to a proposition which I shall often in the sequel have occasion to repeat : namely that the error lies just in this, in first setting up in thought an abstract series of principles and consequences as a law-giving power, to which it is supposed that every world that may possibly be created must be subject, and in then adding that, as a matter of self-evidence, the real process of becoming can and must in concreto strike only into those paths which that ab- stract system of law has marked out beforehand. It will never be intelligible whence the conformity of Things to rules of intellectual necessity should arise, unless their own nature itself consists in such conformity. Or, to put the matter more correctly, as I stated in detail above (34) ; it is just this real nature of things that is the First in Eeing — nay the only Being. Those necessary laws are images in thought of this nature, secondary repetitions of its original procedure. It is only for our cognition that they appear as antecedent patterns which the Things resemble. It is therefore of no avail to appeal to the indefeasible necessity, by which Heraclitus thought the waves of Becoming to be directed. Standing outside the range of Becoming, this 'Av&yKT) would have had no control over its course. It became inevitable that Becoming should be recognised as containing the principle of its direction in itself, as soon as we admitted the necessity of substituting its mobility for the stationariness of things. Now if we attempt to find the necessity in the Becoming, one thing is clear. Between the extinction of the reality of m and the origin of the new reality of fi, no gap, no completely void chasm can be fixed. For the mere removal of m would in itself be exactly equivalent to the removal of anything else, p or q, that we like to imagine. Any other new reality therefore, n or k, would have just as much or as little right to follow on the abolished m, as that n ; and it would be impossible that definite consequents should flow from definite antecedents. It is impossible therefore that the course of nature should consist in successive abolitions of one and originations of another reality. Every effort to conceive the order of events in nature as a mere succession of phenomena according to law, can only be justified on the ground that it may be temporarily desirable for methodological reasons to forego the search for an inner connexion. As a theory of the true constitution of reality it is impossible. But the theory of Becoming might with perfect justification admit all this and only complain of a misinterpretation of its meaning. chapter iv.] Becoming may include Persistence. 85 Just as motion, it will be said, cannot be generated by stringing together moments of rest in the places a, b,