natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est_; cf. Seneca, Epist. cxvii.
6. The principle is common to Stoics and Epicureans: it is the maxim of Catholic truth _Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est_--equivalent to Aristotle's ὄ πᾶσι δοκεῖ, τοῦτ' εἷναι φάμεν--But as Aristotle remarks (_An. Post._ i. 31) τὸ καθόλον καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἀδίνατον αἰσθάνεσθαι.
Jacobi: _Werke,_ vi. 145. 'The general opinion about what is true and good must have an authority equal to reason.'
P. 136, § 72. Cf. _Encyclop._ § 400: 'That the heart and the feeling is not the form by which anything is justified as religious, moral, true, and just, and that an appeal to heart and feeling either means nothing or means something bad, should hardly need enforcing. Can any experience be more trite than that hearts and feelings are also bad, evil, godless, mean, &c.? Ay, that the heart is the source of such feelings only, is directly said in the words: Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, &c. In times when the heart and the sentiment are, by scientific theology and philosophy, made the criterion of goodness, religion, and morality, it is necessary to recall these trivial experiences.'
CHAPTER VI.
P. 145, § 80. Goethe; the reference is to _Werke,_ ii. 268 (Natur und Kunst): Wer Groszes will, muß sich zusammenraffen: In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister, Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben.
Such 'limitation' of aim and work is a frequent lesson in _Wilhelm properly speaking, only the element in which the one-sided can act...The best thing is to restrict oneself to a handi-work.' And i. ch. 12: 'To be acquainted with and to exercise one thing rightly gives higher training than mere tolerableness (halfness) in a hundred sorts of things.' And ii. ch. 12: 'Your general training and all establishments for the purpose are fool's farces.'
P. 147, § 81. Cf. Fichte, _Werke,_ ii. 37. 'Yet it is not _we_ who analyse: but knowledge analyses itself, and can do so, because in all its being it is a _for-self_ (Für:sich),' &c.
P. 149, § 81. Plato, the inventor of Dialectic. Sometimes on the authority of Aristotle, as reported by _Diog. Laert._ ix. 25, Zeno of Elea gets this title; but Hegel refers to such statements as _Diog.
Laer,',_ ii. 34 τρίτον δὲ Πλάτων προσέθηκε τὸν διαλεκτικὸν λόγον, καὶ ἐτελεσιουργῆσε φιλοσοφίαν.
Protagoras. But it is rather in the dialogue _Meno,_ pp. 81-97, that Plato exhibits this view of knowledge. Cf. _Phaedo,_72 E, and _Phaedrus,_ 245.
Parmenides; especially see Plat. _Parmen._ pp. 142, 166; cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ xi v. 204.
With Aristotle dialectic is set in contrast to apodictic, and treated as (in the modern sense) a quasi-inductive process (Ar. _Top._ Lib.
viii.): with the Stoics, dialectic is the name of the half-rhetorical logic which they, rather than Aristotle, handed on to the schoolmen of the Middle Ages.
P. 150, § 81. The physical elements are fire, air, earth, and water.
Earthquakes, storms, &c, are examples of the 'meteorological process.'
'Mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective creations of the mind's own faculties, to mere ideas of the intellect; and believing that by watching and contemplating these ideas of its own making, it can read in them what takes place in the world without.' Mill thus takes it as equivalent to an ontological mythology--probably a rare use of the term.
CHAPTER VII.
P. 156, § 85. The Absolute. The term, in something like its modern usage, is at least as old as Nicolaus Cusanus. God, according to him, is the _absoluta omnium quidditas (Apol._406), the _esse absolutum,_ or absolutus: absoluta vita, absoluta ratio: absoluta essendi forma._ On this term and its companion _infinities_ he rings perpetual changes.
But its distinct employment to denote the 'metaphysical God' is much more modern. In Kant, _e.g._ the 'Unconditioned' (Das Unbedingte) is the metaphysical, corresponding to the religious, conception of deity; and the same is the case with Fichte, who however often makes use of the adjective 'absolute.' It is with Schelling that the term is naturalised in philosophy: it already appears in his works of 1793 and 1795: and from him apparently it finds its way into Fichte's absolute is neither knowing nor being; nor is it identity, nor is it indifference of the two; but it is throughout merely and solely the absolute.'
The term comes into English philosophical language through Coleridge and later borrowers from the German. See Ferrier's _Institutes of Metaphysic,_ Prop. xx, and Mill's _Examination of Hamilton,_ chap. iv.
between the 'I,' in so far as it is the producing, and the 'I' as the produced; the original synthetical and yet identical proposition: the _cogito=sum_ of Schelling.
P. 159. Definition of God as _Ens realissimum, e.g._ Meier's Jacobi, _Werke,_ iv. 6, thus describes Spinoza's God.
As to the beginning cf. Fichte, _Werke,_ ii. 14 (speaking of 'absolute knowing'): 'It is not a knowing of something, nor is it a knowing of nothing (so that it would be a knowing of somewhat, but this somewhat be nothing): it is not even a knowing of itself, for it is no knowledge at all _of_;--nor is it _a_ knowing (quantitatively and in relation), but it is (the) knowing (absolutely qualitatively). It is no act, no event, or that somewhat is in knowing; but it is just the knowing, in which alone all acts and all events, which are there set down, can be set down.'
History of Philosophy; cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ i. 165. 'If the Absolute, like its phenomenon Reason, be (as it is) eternally one and the same, then each reason, which has turned itself upon and cognised itself, has produced a true philosophy and solved the problem which, like its solution, is at all times the same. The reason, which cognises itself, has in philosophy to do only with itself: hence in itself too lies its whole work and its activity; and as regards the inward essence of philosophy there are neither predecessors nor successors.
'Just as little, as of constant improvements, can there be talk of "peculiar views" of philosophy...The true peculiarity of a philosophy is the interesting individuality, in which reason has organised itself a form from the materials of a particular age; in it the particular speculative reason finds spirit of its spirit, flesh of its flesh; it beholds itself in it as one and the same, as another living being.
Each philosophy is perfect in itself, and possesses totality, like a work of genuine art. As little as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, could have seemed to them mere preliminary exercises for themselves--but as cognate spiritual powers;--so little can reason in its own earlier formations perceive only useful preparatory exercises.' Cf. Schelling, iv. 401.
P. 160, § 86. Parmenides (ap. Simplic. _Phys._): of the two ways of investigation the first is that _it is,_ and that not-to-be is not.
ἡ μὲν ὅπως ἓστι τε καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἓστι μὴ εἶναι P. 161, § 87. The Buddhists. Cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ xi. 387. Modern histories of Buddhism insist upon the purely ethico-religious character of the teaching. Writers like von Hartmann (_Religionsphilosophie,_ p.
320) on the contrary hold that Buddhism carried out the esoteric theory of Brahmanism to the consequence that the abstract one is nothing.
According to Vassilief, _Le Bouddhisme,_ p. 318 seqq., one of the Buddhist metaphysical schools, the Madhyamikas, founded by Nâgârdjuna 400 years after Buddha, taught that All is Void.--Such metaphysics were probably reactions of the underlying Brahmanist idea.
But generally Buddhism (as was not unnatural 60 years ago) is hardly taken here in its characteristic historical features.
who first sought the truth and the real substance of things got on a false track, like inexperienced travellers who fail to discover the way, and declared that nothing can either come into being or disappear, because it is necessary that what comes into being should come into being either from what is or from what is not, and that it is from both of these impossible: for what is does not become (it already is), and nothing would become from what is not.'
(5) is an addition of ed. 3 (1830); cf. _Werke,_ xvii. 181.
P. 168, § 88. The view of Heraclitus here taken is founded on the interpretation given by Plato (in the _Theaetetus,_152; _Cratylus,_ 401) and by Aristotle, of a fundamental doctrine of the Ephesian--which however is expressed in the fragments by the name of the everliving fire. The other phrase (Ar. _Met._ i. 4) is used by Aristotle to describe the position, not of Heraclitus, but of Leucippus and Democritus. Cf. Plutarch, _adv. Colotem,_ 4. 2 Δημόκριτος διορίζεται μὴ μᾱλλον τὸ δὲν ἥ τὸ μηδν εἶναι; cf. Simplic. in Ar. _Phys._ fol. 7.
'Being (Seyn) expresses the absolute, Determinate being (Daseyn) a conditional, 'positing': Actuality, one conditioned in a definite sort by a definite condition. The single phenomenon in the whole system of the world has _actuality;_ the world of phenomena in general has Daseyn; but the absolutely-posited, the Ego, _is. I am_ is all the Ego can say of itself.'
Spinoza, _Epist._ 50, _figura non aliud quam determinatio et determinatio negatio est._ P. 172, § 92. Grenze (limit or boundary), and Schranke (barrier or check) are distinguished in _Werke,_ iii. 128-139 (see Stirling's Vernunft,_ p. 795, that Hume only erschränkt our intellect, ohne ihn zu begrenzen.
'From the individual and ever-identical essence (ὀυσία) and the divisible which is corporeal, he compounded a third intermediate species of essence...And taking these, being three, he compounded them all into one form (ἰδέα), adjusting perforce the unmixable nature of the other and the same, and mingling them all with the essence, and making of three one again, he again distributed this total into as many portions as were fitting, but each of them mingled out of the same and the other and the essence.'
experience has taught me that for most men the greatest obstacle to the understanding and vital apprehension of philosophy is their invincible opinion that its object is to be sought at an infinite distance.
The consequence is, that while they should fix their eye on what is present (das Gegenwärtige), every effort of their mind is called out to get hold of an object which is not in question through the whole inquiry.'...'The aim of the sublimest science can only be to show the actuality,--in the strictest sense the actuality, the presence, the vital existence (Daseyn)--of a God in the whole of things and in each one...Here we deal no longer with an extra-natural or supernatural thing, but with the immediately near, the alone-actual to which we ourselves also belong, and in which we are.'
_Werke,_ xiv. 214 seqq.: 'The absolute is therefore what in one unity is finite and infinite.'
P. 178. Idealism of Philosophy: cf. Schelling, ii. 67. 'Every philosophy therefore is and remains Idealism; and it is only under itself that it embraces realism and idealism; only that the former Idealism should not be confused with the latter, which is of a merely relative kind.'
Hegel, _Werke,_ iii. 163. 'The proposition that the finite is "ideal" constitutes Idealism. In nothing else consists the Idealism of philosophy than in recognising that the finite has no genuine being...The contrast of idealistic and realistic philosophy is therefore of no importance. A philosophy that attributed to finite existences as such a genuine ultimate absolute being would not deserve the name philosophy...By "ideal" is meant existing as a representation in consciousness: whatever is in a mental concept, idea or imagination is "ideal": "ideal" is just another word for "in imagination,"--something not merely distinct from the real, but essentially not real. The mind indeed is the great idealist: in the sensation, representation, thought of the mind the fact has not what is called _real_ existence; in the simplicity of the Ego such external being is only suppressed, existing _for me,_ and "ideally" in me. This subjective idealism refers only to the representational form, by which an import is mine.'
P. 180, § 96. The distinction of nature and mind as real and ideal is especially Schelling's: See _e.g._ his _Einleitung,_ &c. iii. 272. 'If it is the problem of Transcendental Philosophy to subordinate the real to the ideal, it is on the contrary the problem of the philosophy of nature to explain the ideal from the real.'
P. 183, § 98. Newton: see _Scholium_ at the end of the _Principia,_ and cf. _Optics,_ iii. qu. 28.
Modern Atomism, besides the conception of particles or molecules, has that of mathematical centres of force.
Kant, _Werke,_ v. 379 (ed. Rosenk.). 'The general principle of the _dynamic_ of material nature is that all reality in the objects of the external senses must be regarded as moving force: whereby accordingly so-called solid or absolute impenetrability is banished from natural science as a meaningless concept, and repellent force put in its stead; whereas true and immediate attraction is defended against all the subtleties of a self-misconceiving metaphysic and declared to be a fundamental force necessary for the very possibility of the concept of matter.'
forty-four years at Göttingen, enjoyed in the latter half of the eighteenth century a considerable repute, both in literature and in mathematical science. Some of, his epigrams are still quoted.
P. 190, § 102. The two 'moments' of number Unity, and Sum (Anzahl), may be compared with the Greek distinction between one and ἀριθμός (cf. Arist. _Phys._ iv. 12 ἐλάχίστος ἀριθμός ἡ δυάς). According to Rosenkranz (_Leben Hegels_) the classification of arithmetical operations often engaged Hegel's research. Note the relation in Greek between λογικόν and λογιστικόν. Cf. Kant's view of the 'synthesis' in arithmetic.
P. 193, § 103. Intensive magnitude. Cf. Kant, _Kritik der reinen Vernunft,_ p. 207, on Anticipation of Perception (Wahrnehmung), and p.
414, in application to the question of the soul's persistence.
P. 195, § 104. Not Aristotle, but rather Simplicius on the _Physics_ of Aristotle, fol. 306: giving Zeno's argument against the alleged composition of the line from a series of points. What you can say of one supposed small real unit, you can say of a smaller, and so on _ad P. 196, § 104. The distinction between imagination and intellect made by Spinoza in _Ep._ xii. (olim xxix.) in _Opp._ ed. Land vol. ii. 40 seqq. is analogous to that already noted (p. 402) between _ratio_ and _intellegentia,_ and is connected, as by Boëthius, with the distinction which Plato, _Timaeus,_ 37, draws between eternity (αἰών) and time.
The infinite (_Eth._ i. prop. 8. Schol. I) is the 'absolute affirmation of a certain nature's existence,' as opposed to finitude which is really _ex parte negatio._ 'The problem has always been held extremely difficult, if not inextricable, because people did not distinguish between what is concluded to be infinite by its own nature and the force of its definition, and what has no ends, not in virtue of its essence, but in virtue of its cause. It was difficult also because they did not distinguish between what is called infinite because it has no ends, and that whose parts (though we may have a maximum and minimum of it) we cannot equate or explicate by any number. Lastly because they lid not distinguish between what we can only understand (_intelligere,_) but not imagine, and what we can also imagine.'
To illustrate his meaning, Spinoza calls attention to the distinction of substance from mode, of eternity from duration. We can 'explicate' the existence only of modes by duration: that of substance, 'by eternity, _i.e._ by an infinite fruition of existence or being' (_per aeternitatem, hoc est, infinitam existendi, sive, invita latinitate, essendi fruitionem._) The attempt therefore to show that extended _substance_ is composed of parts is an illusion,--which arises because we look at quantity 'abstractly or superficially, as we have it in imagination by means of the senses.' So looking at it, as we are liable to do, a quantity will be found divisible, finite, composed of parts and manifold. But if we look at it as it really is,--as a Substance --as it is in the intellect alone--(which is a work of difficulty), it will be found infinite, indivisible, and unique. 'It is only therefore when we abstract duration and quantity from substance, that we use time to determine duration and measure to determine quantity, so as to be able to imagine them. Eternity and substance, on the other hand, are no objects of imagination but only of intellect; and to try to explicate them by such notions as measure, time, and number--which are only modes of thinking or rather of imagining--is no better than to fall into imaginative raving.' 'Nor will even the modes of Substance ever be rightly understood, should they be confounded with this sort of _entia rationis_' (_i.e. modi cogitandi_ subserving the easier retention, explication and _imagination_ of things _understood_)' or aids to imagination. For when we do so, we separate them from substance, and from the mode in which they flow from eternity, without which they cannot be properly understood.' (Cf. Hegel's _Werke,_ i. 63.)
The verses from Albr. von Haller come from his poem on Eternity (1736).
Hegel seems to quote from an edition before 1776, when the fourth line was added in the stanza as it thus finally stood:-- Ich häufe ungeheure Zahlen, Gebürge Millionen auf, Ich welze Zeit auf Zeit und Welt auf Welten hin, Und wenn ich auf der March des endlichen nun bin, Und von der fürchterlichen Höhe Mit Schwindeln wieder nach dir sehe, Ist alle Macht der Zahl, vermehrt mit tausend Malen, Noch nicht ein Theil von dir.
Ich tilge sie, und du liegst ganz vor mir.
sublime may be its description by Haller,' &c.
P. 197, § 104. Pythagoras in order of time probably comes between Anaximenes (of Ionia) and Xenophanes (of Elea). But the mathematical and metaphysical doctrines attributed to the Pythagorean are known to us only in the form in which they are represented in Plato and Aristotle, _i.e._ in a later stage of development. The Platonists (cf.
treated mathematical fact as mid-way between 'sensibles' and 'ideas'; and Aristotle himself places mathematics as a science between physical and metaphysical (theological) philosophy.
The tradition (referred to p. 198) about Pythagoras is given by Iamblichus, _Vita Pyth._ §115 seqq.: it forms part of the later Neo-Pythagorean legend, which entered literature in the first centuries of the Christian era.
P. 201, § 107. Hebrew hymns: _e.g. Psalms_ lxxiv. and civ.; Proverbs viii. and Job xxxviii. _Vetus verbum est,_ says Leibniz (ed. Erdmann, p. 162), _Deum omnia pondere, mensura, numero, fecisse._ P. 202, § 108. The antinomy of measure. These logical puzzles are the so-called fallacy of Sorites (a different thing from the Divin._ ii. 4--and the φαλακρός cf. Horace, _Epist._ ii. 1-45.
CHAPTER VIII.
P. 213, § 115. The 'laws of thought' is the magniloquent title given in the Formal Logic since Kant's day to the principles or maxims (_principia_, Grundsätze) which Kant himself described as 'general and formal criteria of truth.' They include the so-called principle of contradiction, with its developments, the principle of identity and excluded middle: to which, with a desire for completeness, eclectic logicians have added the Leibnizian principle of the reason. Hegel has probably an eye to Krug and Fries in some of his remarks. The three laws may be compared and contrasted with the three principles, --homogeneity, specification, and continuity of forms, in Kant's Erdmann, p. 273: cf. fourth Letter to Clarke). _Il n'y a point deux individus indiscernables. Un gentilhomme d'esprit de mes amis, en parlant avec moi en présence de Madame l'Electrice dans le jardin de Herrenhausen, crut qu'il trouverait bien deux feuilles entièrement semblables. Madame l'Electrice l'en défia, et il courut longtems en vain pour en chercher._ The principle of individuation or indiscernibility is: 'If two individuals were perfectly alike and equal and, in a word, indistinguishable by themselves, there would be no principle of individuation: (Leibniz, ed. Erdm. p. 277) _Poser deux choses indiscernables est poser la même chose sous deux noms_ (p. 756).
_Principium individuationis idem est quod absolutae specificationis quâ res ita sit determinata, ut ab aliis omnibus distingui possit._ P. 221, § 119. Polarity. Schelling, ii. 489. 'The law of Polarity is a universal law of nature'; cf. ii. 459: 'It is a first principle of a philosophic theory of nature to have a view (in the whole of nature), on polarity and dualism.' But he adds (476), 'It is time to define more accurately the concept of polarity.' So Oken, _Naturphilosophie_: §76: 'A force consisting of two principles is called Polarity.' § 77: 'Polarity is the first force which makes its appearance in the world.'
§ 81: 'The original movement is a result of the original polarity.'
P. 223, § 119. Cf. Fichte, ii. 53. 'To everything but this the logically trained thinker can rise. He is on his guard against contradiction. But, in that case, how about the possibility of the maxim of his own logic that we can think no contradiction. In some way he must have got hold of contradiction and thought it, or he could make no communications about it. Had such people only once regularly asked themselves how they came to think the _merely_ possible or contingent (the not-necessary), and how they actually do so! Evidently they here leap through a not-being, not-thinking, &c, into the utterly unmediated, self-initiating, free,--into beënt non-being,--in short, the above contradiction, as it was laid down. With consistent thinkers the result of this incapacity is nothing but the utter abolition of freedom,--the most absolute fatalism and Spinozism.
P. 227, §121. Leibniz (ed. Erdmann, p. 515). 'The principle of _la raison déterminante_ is that nothing ever occurs without there being a cause for it, or at least a determinant reason, _i.e._ something which may serve to render a reason _à priori_ why that is existent rather than in any other way. This great principle holds good in all events.'
Cf. p. 707. 'The principle of "sufficient reason" is that in virtue of which we consider that no fact could be found true or consistent, no enunciation truthful, without there being a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise...When a truth is necessary, we can find the reason of it by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and truths, until we come to primitive ideas...But the sufficient reason ought also to be found in contingent truths or truths of fact, _i.e._ in the series of things spread through the universe of creatures, or the resolution into particular reasons might go into a limitless detail:...and as all this detail embraces only other antecedent, or more detailed contingencies,...the sufficient or final (_dernière_) reason must be outside the succession or series of this detail of contingencies, however infinite it might be. And it is thus that the final reason of things must be in a "necessary substance," in which the detail of the changes exists only _eminenter,_ as in the source,--and it is what we call God.' _(Monadology_ §§ 32-38.)
Hence the supremacy of final causes. Thus _Opp._ ed. Erdmann, p. 678: _Ita fit ut efficientes causae pendeant a finalibus, et spiritualia sint natura priora materialibus._ Accordingly he urges, p. 155, that final cause has not merely a moral and religious value in ethics and theology, but is useful even in physics for the detection of deep-laid truths. Cf. p. 106: _C'est sanctifier la Philosophie que de faire couler ses ruisseaux de la fontaine des attributs de Dieu. Bien loin d'exclure les causes finales et la considération d'un être agissant avec sagesse, c'est de là qu'il faut tout déduire en Physique._ Cf.
also _Principes de la Nature_ (Leibn. ed. Erdm. p. 716): 'It is surprising that by the sole consideration of efficient causes or of matter, we could not render a reason for those laws of movement discovered in our time. _Il y faut recourir aux causes finales_.'
P. 228, § 121 Socrates. The antitheses between Socrates and the Sophists belongs in the main to the Platonic dialogues,--not co the historical Socrates. It is the literary form in which the philosophy of Plato works out its development through the criticism of contemporary opinions and doctrines. And even in Plato's writings the antagonism is very unlike what later interpretations have made out of it.
P. 231, § 124. Thing by itself (thing in itself) the Ding:an:sich.
empirical chemistry the chief object is the _particularity_ of the matters and products, which are grouped by superficial abstract features which make impossible any system in the special detail. In these lists, metals, oxygen, hydrogen, &c.--metalloids, sulphur, phosphorus appear side by side as _simple_ chemical bodies on the same level. The great physical variety of these bodies must of itself create a prepossession against such coordination; and their chemical origin, the process from which they issue, is clearly no less various. But in an equally chaotic way, more abstract and more real processes are put on the same level. If all this is to get scientific form, every product ought to be determined according to the grade of the concrete and completely developed process from which it essentially issues, and which gives it its peculiar significance; and for that purpose it is not less essential to distinguish grades in abstractness or reality of the process. Animal and vegetable substances in any case belong to a quite other order: so little can their nature be understood from the chemical process, that they are rather destroyed in it, and only the way of their death is apprehended. These substances, however, ought above all to serve to counter-act the metaphysic predominant in chemistry as in physics,--the ideas or rather wild fancies of the _unalterability of matters_ under all circumstances, as well as the categories of the _composition_ and the _consistence_ of bodies from such matters. We see it generally admitted that chemical matters lose in combination the _properties_ which they show in separation: and yet we find the idea prevailing that they are the same things _without_ the properties as they are _with_ them,--so that as things _with_ these properties they are not results of the process.'--Cf. _Werke,_ vii. a.
372: 'Air does not consist of oxygen and nitrogen: but these are the forms under which air is put,' cf. _ib._403.
2nd ed. 1800. 'God is, in the highest and unique sense of the word, Force, _i.e._ the primal force of all forces, the soul of all souls' (p. 63), 'All that we call matter, therefore, is more or less animate: it is a realm of efficient forces. One force predominates: otherwise there were no _one,_ no whole' (p. 207). 'The supreme being (Daseyn) could give its creatures nothing higher than being. (_Theophron._) But, my friend, being and being, however simple in the concept, are in their estate very different; and what do you suppose, Philolaus, marks its grades and differences? (_Phil._) Nothing but forces. In God himself we found no higher conception; but all his forces were only one. The supreme force could not be other than supreme goodness and wisdom, ever-living, ever-active. (_Theoph._) Now you yourself see, Philolaus, that the supreme, or rather the All (for God is not a supreme unit in a scale of beings like himself), could not reveal himself otherwise than in the universe as active. In him nothing could slumber, and what he expressed was himself. He is before everything, and everything subsists in him: the whole world an expression, an appearance of his 'It was the mistake of Spinoza,' says Herder, 'to be unduly influenced by the Cartesian phraseology. Had he chosen the conception of force and effect, everything would have gone easier, and his system become much more distinct and coherent. 'Had he developed the conception of power, and the conception of matter, he must in conformity with his system necessarily have come to the conception of forces, which work as well in matter as in organs of thinking: he would in that case have regarded power and thought as forces, _e.g._ as one.' (Cf. H. Spencer, 'Force, the Ultimate of Ultimates.' First Princ. p 169) According to Rosenkranz (_Leben Hegels,_ p. 223) there exists in manuscript a criticism by Hegel on the second edition of Herder's _God._ Herder's Dialogue belongs to the controversy aroused by Jacobi's letters on Spinoza.
P. 250, § 136. Newton. Leibniz charges him with the view that God needs from time to time _remonter sa montre,_ otherwise it would cease going: that his machine requires to be cleaned (_décrasser_) by extraordinary aid' (ed. Erdm. p. 746).
under the heading Allerdings. Originally the first four lines appeared Ins Innre der Natur bringt sein erschaffner Geist: Zu glücklich, wenn sie noch die äußre Schale weist!
(To nature's heart there penetrates no mere created mind: Too happy if she but display the outside of her rind.)
Hegel--reading weizt for weist--takes the second line as Too happy, if he can but know the outside of her rind.
Goethe's attack upon a vulgar misuse of the lines belongs to his dispute with the scientists. His verses appeared in 1820 as _Heiteres Reimstück_ at the end of Heft 3 _zur Morphologie,_--of which the closing section is entitled _Freundlicher Zuruf_ (_Werke_ xxvii. 161), as follows:-- "Ins Innre der Natur," O du Philister!-- "Dringt kein erschaffner Geist."...
"Glückselig! wem sie nur Die äußre Schale weis't."
Das hör' ich sechzig Jahre wiederholen, Ich fluche drauf, aber verstohlen: Sage mir taufend tausendmale: Alles giebt sie reichlich und gern; Natur hat weder Stern Noch Schale, Alles ist sie mit einem Male.
[The last seven lines may be thus paraphrased in continuation: I swear--of course but to myself--as rings within my ears That same old warning o'er and o'er again for sixty years, And thus a thousand thousand times I answer in my mind: --With gladsome and ungrudging hand metes nature from her store: She keeps not back the core, Nor separates the rind, But all in each both rind and core has evermore combined.]
(φθόνoς γὰρ ξω θείον χόρoυ ἴσταται); _Timaeus,_ 29 E; and Aristotle, _Metaph._ i. 2. 22.
Reflexionen_). Gegen große Vorzüge eines Andern giebt es kein Rettungsmittel als die Liebe. Cf. Schiller to Goethe, 2 July, 1796.
'How vividly I have felt on this occasion...that against surpassing merit nothing but Love gives liberty' (daß es dem Vortrefflichen gegenüber seine Freiheit giebt als die Liebe).
'Pragmatic.' This word, denoting a meddlesome busybody in older English and sometimes made a vague term of abuse, has been in the present century used in English as it is here employed in German.
According to Polybius, ix. I. 2, the πραγματικὸς τρόπος τῆς ἱστορίας is that which has a directly utilitarian aim. So Kant, _Foundation of Metaph. of Ethic (Werke,_ viii. 41, note): 'A history is pragmatically composed when it renders prudent, _i.e._ instructs the world how it may secure its advantage better or at least as well as the ages preceding.'
Schelling (v. 308) quotes in illustration of pragmatic history-writing the words of Faust to Wagner (Goethe, xi. 26): Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst, Das ist im Grund der herren eigner Geist,, In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.
Cf. also Hegel, _Werke,_ ix. 8. 'A second kind of reflectional history is the pragmatic. When we have to do with the past and are engaged with a distant world, the mind sees rising before it a present, which it has from its own action as a reward for its trouble. The events are different; but their central and universal fact, their structural plan is identical. This abolishes the past and makes the event present. Pragmatic reflections, however abstract they be, are thus in reality the present, and vivify the tales of the past with the life of to-day.--Here too a word should specially be given to the moralising and the moral instructions to be gained through history,--for which it was often studied...Rulers, statesmen, nations, are especially bidden learn from the experience of history. But what experience and history teach is that nations and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted upon teaching which could have been drawn from it.'
Cf. Froude: _Divorce of Catherine,_ p. 2. 'The student (of history) looks for an explanation (of political conduct) in elements which he thinks he understands--in pride, ambition, fear, avarice, jealousy, or sensuality.'
P. 257, § 141. Cf. Goethe, xxiii, 298. 'What is the outside of an organic nature but the ever-varied phenomenon of the inside? This outside, this surface is so exactly adapted to a varied, complex, delicate, inward structure that it thus itself becomes an inside: