be explained, when we come to the logical question of the opposition between mediate and immediate. But it is characteristic of the view before us to decline to examine the nature of the fact, that is, the notion of it; for such an examination would itself be a step towards mediation and even towards knowledge. The genuine discussion on logical ground, therefore, must be deferred till we come to the proper province of Logic itself.
The whole of the second part of Logic, the Doctrine of Essential Being, is a discussion of the intrinsic and self-affirming unity of immediacy and mediation.
66.] Beyond this point then we need not go: immediate knowledge is to be accepted as a _fact._ Under these circumstances examination is directed to the field of experience, to a psychological phenomenon. If that be so, we need only note, as the commonest of experiences, that truths, which we well know to be results of complicated and highly mediated trains of thought, present themselves immediately and without effort to the mind of any man who is familiar with the subject. The mathematician, like every one who has mastered a particular science, meets any problem with ready-made solutions which pre-suppose most complicated analyses: and every educated man has a number of general views and maxims which he can muster without trouble, but which can only have sprung from frequent reflection and long experience.
The facility we attain in any sort of knowledge, art, or technical expertness, consists in having the particular knowledge or kind of action present to our mind in any case that occurs, even we may say, immediate in our very limbs, in an out-going activity. In all these instances, immediacy of knowledge is so far from excluding mediation, that the two things are linked together,--immediate knowledge being actually the product and result of mediated knowledge.
It is no less obvious that immediate _existence_ is bound up with its mediation. The seed and the parents are immediate and initial existences in respect of the off-spring which they generate. But the seed and the parents, though they exist and are therefore immediate, are yet in their turn generated: and the child, without prejudice to the mediation of its existence, is immediate, because it _is._ The fact that I am in Berlin, my immediate presence here, is mediated by my having made the journey hither.
67.] One thing may be observed with reference to the immediate knowledge of God, of legal and ethical principles (including under the head of immediate knowledge, what is otherwise termed Instinct, Implanted or Innate Ideas, Common Sense, Natural Reason, or whatever form, in short, we give to the original spontaneity). It is a matter of general experience that education or development is required to bring out into consciousness what is therein contained. It was so even with the Platonic reminiscence; and the Christian rite of baptism, although a sacrament, involves the additional obligation of a Christian up-bringing. In short, religion and morals, however much they may be faith or immediate knowledge, are still on every side conditioned by the mediating process which is termed development, education, training.
The adherents, no less than the assailants, of the doctrine of Innate Ideas have been guilty throughout of the like exclusiveness and narrowness as is here noted. They have drawn a hard and fast line between the essential and immediate union (as it may be described) of certain universal principles with the soul, and another union which has to be brought about in an external fashion, and through the channel of _given_ objects and conceptions, There is one objection, borrowed from experience, which was raised against the doctrine of Innate ideas. All men, it was said, must have these ideas; they must have, for example, the maxim of contradiction, present in the mind,--they must be aware of it; for this maxim and others like it were included in the class of Innate ideas. The objection may be set down to misconception; for the principles in question, though innate, need not on that account have the form of ideas or conceptions of something we are aware of.
Still, the objection completely meets and overthrows the crude theory of immediate knowledge, which expressly maintains its formulae in so far as they are in consciousness.--Another point calls for notice. We may suppose it admitted by the intuitive school, that the special case of religious faith involves supplementing by a Christian or religious education and development. In that case it is acting capriciously when it seeks to ignore this admission when speaking about faith, or it betrays a want of reflection not to know, that, if the necessity of education be once admitted, mediation is pronounced indispensable.
The reminiscence of ideas spoken of by Plato is equivalent to saying that ideas implicitly exist in man, instead of being, as the Sophists assert, a foreign importation into his mind. But to conceive knowledge as reminiscence does not interfere with, or set aside as useless, the development of what is implicitly in man;--which development is another word for mediation. The same holds good of the innate ideas that we find in Descartes and the Scotch philosophers. These ideas are only potential in the first instance, and should be looked at as being a sort of mere capacity in man.
88.] In the case of these experiences the appeal turns upon something that shows itself bound up with immediate consciousness. Even if this combination be in the first instance taken as an external and empirical connexion, still, even for empirical observation, the fact of its being constant shows it to be essential and inseparable. But, again, if this immediate consciousness, as exhibited in experience, be taken separately, so far as it is a consciousness of God and the divine nature, the state of mind which it implies is generally described as an exaltation above the finite, above the senses, and above the instinctive desires and affections of the natural heart: which exaltation passes over into, and terminates in, faith in God and a divine order. It is apparent, therefore, that, though faith may be an immediate knowledge and certainty, it equally implies the interposition of this process as its antecedent and condition.
It has been already observed, that the so-called proofs of the being of God, which start from finite being, give an expression to this exaltation. In that light they are no inventions of an over-subtle reflection, but the necessary and native channel in which the movement of mind runs: though it may be that, in their ordinary form, these proofs have not their correct and adequate expression.
69.] It is the passage (§ 64) from the subjective Idea to being which forms the main concern of the doctrine of immediate knowledge. A primary and self-evident inter-connexion is declared to exist between our Idea and being. Yet precisely this central point of transition, utterly irrespective of any connexions which show in experience, clearly involves a mediation. And the mediation is of no imperfect or unreal kind, where the mediation takes place with and through something external, but one comprehending both antecedent and conclusion.
70.] For, what this theory asserts is that truth lies neither in the Idea as a merely subjective thought, nor in mere being on its own account;--that mere being _per se,_ a being that is not of the Idea, is the sensible finite being of the world. Now all this only affirms, without demonstration, that the Idea has truth only by means of being, and being has truth only by means of the Idea. The maxim of immediate knowledge rejects an indefinite empty immediacy (and such is abstract being, or pure unity taken by itself), and affirms in its stead the unity of the Idea with being. And it acts rightly in so doing. But it is stupid not to see that the unity of distinct terms or modes is not merely a purely immediate unity, _i.e._ unity empty and indeterminate, but that--with equal emphasis--the one term is shown to have truth only as mediated through the other;--or, if the phrase be preferred, that either term is only mediated with truth through the other. That the quality of mediation is involved in the very immediacy of intuition is thus exhibited as a fact, against which understanding, conformably to the fundamental maxim of immediate knowledge that the evidence of consciousness is infallible, can have nothing to object. It is only ordinary abstract understanding which takes the terms of mediation and immediacy, each by itself absolutely, to represent an inflexible line of distinction, and thus draws upon its own head the hopeless task of reconciling them. The difficulty, as we have shown, has no existence in the fact, and it vanishes in the speculative notion.
71.] The one-sidedness of the intuitional school has certain characteristics attending upon it, which we shall proceed to point out in their main features, now that we have discussed the fundamental principle. The _first_ of these corollaries is as follows. Since the criterion of truth is found, not in the nature of the content, but in the mere fact of consciousness, every alleged truth has no other basis than subjective certitude and the assertion that we discover a certain fact in our consciousness. What I discover in my consciousness is thus exaggerated into a fact of the consciousness of all, and even passed off for the very nature of consciousness.
Among the so-called proofs of the existence of God, there used to stand the _consensus gentium,_ to which appeal is made as early as Cicero.
The _consensus gentium_ is a weighty authority, and the transition is easy and natural, from the circumstance that a certain fact is found in the consciousness of every one, to the conclusion that it is a necessary element in the very nature of consciousness. In this category of general agreement there was latent the deep-rooted perception, which does not escape even the least cultivated mind, that the consciousness of the individual is at the same time particular and accidental. Yet unless we examine the nature of this consciousness itself, stripping it of its particular and accidental elements and, by the toilsome operation of reflection, disclosing the universal in its entirety and purity, it is only a _unanimous_ agreement upon a given point that can authorize a decent presumption that that point is part of the very nature of consciousness. Of course, if thought insists on seeing the necessity of what is presented as a fact of general occurrence, the _consensus gentium_ is certainly not sufficient. Yet even granting the universality of the fact to be a satisfactory proof, it has been found impossible to establish the belief in God on such an argument, because experience shows that there are individuals and nations without any such faith.[1] But there can be nothing shorter and more convenient than to have the bare assertion to make, that we discover a fact in our consciousness, and are certain that it is true: and to declare that this certainty, instead of proceeding from our particular mental constitution only, belongs to the very nature of the mind.
72.] A _second_ corollary which results from holding immediacy of consciousness to be the criterion of truth is that all superstition or idolatry is allowed to be truth, and that an apology is prepared for any contents of the will, however wrong and immoral. It is because he believes in them, and not from the reasoning and syllogism of what is termed mediate knowledge, that the Hindoo finds God in the cow, the monkey, the Brahmin, or the Lama. But the natural desires and affections spontaneously carry and deposit their interests in consciousness, where also immoral aims make themselves naturally at home: the good or bad character would thus express the _definite being_ of the will, which would be known, and that most immediately, in the interests and aims.
73.] _Thirdly_ and lastly, the immediate consciousness of God goes no further than to tell us _that_ He is: to tell us _what_ He is, would be an act of cognition, involving mediation. So that God as an object of religion is expressly narrowed down to the indeterminate supersensible, God in general: and the significance of religion is reduced to a minimum.
If it were really needful to win back and secure the bare belief that there is a God, or even to create it, we might well wonder at the poverty of the age which can see a gain in the merest pittance of religious consciousness, and which in its church has sunk so low as to worship at the altar that stood in Athens long ago, dedicated to the 'Unknown God.'
74.] We have still briefly to indicate the general nature of the form of immediacy. For it is the essential one-sidedness of the category, which makes whatever comes under it one sided and, for that reason, finite. And, first, it makes the universal no better than an abstraction external to the particulars, and God a being without determinate quality. But God can only be called a spirit when He is known to be at once the beginning and end, as well as the mean, in the process of mediation. Without this unification of elements He is neither concrete, nor living, nor a spirit. Thus the knowledge of God as a spirit necessarily implies mediation. The form of immediacy, secondly, invests the particular with the character of independent or self-centred being. But such predicates contradict the very essence of the particular,--which is to be referred to something else outside. They thus invest the finite with the character of an absolute. But, besides, the form of immediacy is altogether abstract: it has no preference for one set of contents more than another, but is equally susceptible of all: it may as well sanction what is idolatrous and immoral as the reverse. Only when we discern that the content,--the particular, is not self-subsistent, but derivative from something else, are its finitude and untruth shown in their proper light. Such discernment, where the content we discern carries with it the ground of its dependent nature, is a knowledge which involves mediation. The only content which can be held to be the truth is one not mediated with something else, not limited by other things: or, otherwise expressed, it is one mediated by itself, where mediation and immediate reference-to-self coincide. The understanding that fancies it has got clear of finite knowledge, the identity of the analytical metaphysicians and the old 'rationalists,' abruptly takes again as principle and criterion of truth that immediacy which, as an abstract reference-to-self, is the same as abstract identity. Abstract thought (the scientific form used by 'reflective' metaphysic) and abstract intuition (the form used by immediate knowledge) are one and the same.
The stereotyped opposition between the form of immediacy and that of mediation gives to the former a halfness and inadequacy, that affects every content which is brought under it. Immediacy means, upon the whole, an abstract reference-to-self, that is, an abstract identity or abstract universality. Accordingly the essential and real universal, when taken merely in its immediacy, is a mere abstract universal; and from this point of view God is conceived as a being altogether without determinate quality. To call God spirit is in that case only a phrase: for the consciousness and self-consciousness, which spirit implies, are impossible without a distinguishing of it from itself and from something else, _i.e._ without mediation.
75.] It was impossible for us to criticise this, the third attitude, which thought has been made to take towards objective truth, in any other mode than what is naturally indicated and admitted in the doctrine itself. The theory asserts that immediate knowledge is a fact. It has been shown to be untrue in fact to say that there is an immediate knowledge, a knowledge without mediation either by means of something else or in itself. It has also been explained to be false in fact to say that thought advances through finite and conditioned categories only, which are always mediated by a something else, and to forget that in the very act of mediation the mediation itself vanishes.
And to show that, in point of fact, there is a knowledge which advances neither by unmixed immediacy nor by unmixed mediation, we can point to the example of Logic and the whole of philosophy.
76.] If we view the maxims of immediate knowledge in connexion with the uncritical metaphysic of the past from which we started, we shall learn from the comparison the reactionary nature of the school of Jacobi. His doctrine is a return to the modern starting-point of this metaphysic in the Cartesian philosophy. Both Jacobi and Descartes maintain the following three points: (1) The simple inseparability of the thought and being of the thinker. '_Cogito, ergo sum_' is the same doctrine as that the being, reality, and existence of the 'Ego' is immediately revealed to me in consciousness. (Descartes, in fact, is careful to state that by thought he means consciousness in general. Princip. Phil. I. 9.) This inseparability is the absolutely first and most certain knowledge, not mediated or demonstrated.
(2) The inseparability of existence from the conception of God: the former is necessarily implied in the latter, or the conception never can be without the attribute of existence, which is thus necessary and eternal.[2] (3) The immediate consciousness of the existence of external things.
By this nothing more is meant than sense-consciousness. To have such a thing is the slightest of all cognitions: and the only thing worth knowing about it is that such immediate knowledge of the being of things external is error and delusion, that the sensible world as such is altogether void of truth; that the being of these external things is accidental and passes away as a show; and that their very nature is to have only an existence which is separable from their essence and notion.
77.] There is however a distinction between the two points of view: (1) The Cartesian philosophy, from these unproved postulates, which it assumes to be unprovable, proceeds to wider and wider details of knowledge, and thus gave rise to the sciences of modern times. The modern theory (of Jacobi), on the contrary, (§ 62) has come to what is intrinsically a most important conclusion that cognition, proceeding as it must by finite mediations, can know only the finite, and never embody the truth; and would fain have the consciousness of God go no further than the aforesaid very abstract belief that God _is_.[3] (2) The modern doctrine on the one hand makes no change in the Cartesian method of the usual scientific knowledge, and conducts on the same plan the experimental and finite sciences that have sprung from it. But, on the other hand, when it comes to the science which has infinity for its scope, it throws aside that method, and thus, as it knows no other, it rejects all methods. It abandons itself to wild vagaries of imagination and assertion, to a moral priggishness and sentimental arrogance, or to a reckless dogmatising and lust of argument, which is loudest against philosophy and philosophic doctrines. Philosophy of course tolerates no mere assertions or conceits, and checks the free play of argumentative see-saw.
78.] We must then reject the opposition between an independent immediacy in the contents or facts of consciousness and an equally independent mediation, supposed incompatible with the former. The incompatibility is a mere assumption, an arbitrary assertion. All other assumptions and postulates must in like manner be left behind at the entrance to philosophy, whether they are derived from the intellect or the imagination. For philosophy is the science, in which every such proposition must first be scrutinised and its meaning and oppositions be ascertained.
Scepticism, made a negative science and systematically applied to all forms of knowledge, might seem a suitable introduction, as pointing out the nullity of such assumptions. But a sceptical introduction would be not only an ungrateful but also a useless course; and that because Dialectic, as we shall soon make appear, is itself an essential element of affirmative science. Scepticism, besides, could only get hold of the finite forms as they were suggested by experience, taking them as given, instead of deducing them scientifically. To require such a scepticism accomplished is the same as to insist on science being preceded by universal doubt, or a total absence of presupposition.
Strictly speaking, in the resolve that _wills pure thought,_ this requirement is accomplished by freedom which, abstracting from everything, grasps its pure abstraction, the simplicity of thought.
[1] In order to judge of the greater or less extent lo which Experience shows cases of Atheism or of the belief in God, it is all-important to know if the mere general conception of deity suffices, or if a more definite knowledge of God is required. The Christian world would certainly refuse the title of God to the idols of the Hindoos and the Chinese, to the fetiches of the Africans, and even to the gods of Greece themselves. If so, a believer in these idols would not be a believer in God. If it were contended, on the other hand, that such a belief in idols implies some sort of belief in God, as the species implies the genus, then idolatry would argue not faith in an idol merely, but faith in God. The Athenians took an opposite view. The poets and philosophers who explained Zeus to be a cloud, and maintained that there was only one God, were treated as atheists at Athens.
The danger in these questions lies in looking at what the mind may make out of an object, and not what that object actually and explicitly is. If we fail to note this distinction, the commonest perceptions of men's senses will be religion: for every such perception, and indeed every act of mind, implicitly contains the principle which, when it is purified and developed, rises to religion. But to be capable of religion is one thing, to have it another. And religion yet implicit is only a capacity or a possibility.
Thus in modern times, travellers have found tribes (as Captains Ross and Parry found the Esquimaux) which, as they tell us, have not even that small modicum of religion possessed by African sorcerers, the _goëtes_ of Herodotus. On the other hand, an Englishman, who spent the first months of the last Jubilee at Rome, says, in his account of the modern Romans, that the common people are bigots, whilst those who can read and write are atheists to a man.
The charge of Atheism is seldom heard in modern times: principally because the facts and the requirements of religion are reduced to a minimum. (See § 73.)
[2] Descartes, Princip. Phil. I. 15: _Magis hoc (ens summe perfectum existere) credet, si attendat, nullius alterius rei ideam apud se inveniri, in qua eodem modo necessariam existentiam contineri animadveriat;--intelliget illam ideam exhibere veram et immutabilem naturam, quaeque non potest non existere, cum necessaria existentia in ea contineatur._ (The reader will be more disposed to _believe_ that there exists a being supremely perfect, if he notes that in the case of nothing else is there found in him an idea, in which he notices necessary existence to be contained in the same way. He will see that that idea exhibits a true and unchangeable nature,--a nature which _cannot but exist,_ since necessary existence is _contained in it._) A remark which immediately follows, and which sounds like mediation or demonstration, does not really prejudice the original principle.
In Spinoza we come upon the same statement that the essence or abstract conception of God implies existence. The first of Spinoza's definitions, that of the _Causa Sui_ (or Self-Cause), explains it to be _cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id cujus natura non potest concipi nisi existens_ (that of which the essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing). The inseparability of the notion from being is the main point and fundamental hypothesis in his system. But what notion is thus inseparable from being? Not the notion of finite things, for they are so constituted as to have a contingent and a created existence.
Spinoza's 11th proposition, which follows with a proof that God exists necessarily, and his 20th, showing that God's existence and his essence are one and the same, are really superfluous, and the proof is more in form than in reality. To say, that God is Substance, the only Substance, and that, as Substance is _Causa Sui,_ God therefore exists necessarily, is merely stating that God is that of which the notion and the being are inseparable.
[3] Anselm on the contrary says: _Negligentiae mihi videtur, si post-quam confirmati sumus in fide, non studemus, quod credimus, intelligere._ (Methinks it is _carelessness,_ if, after we have been confirmed in the faith, we do not _exert ourselves to see the meaning of what we believe._) [Tractat. Cur Deus Homo?] These words of Anselm, in connexion with the concrete truths of Christian doctrine, offer a far harder problem for investigation, than is contemplated by this modern faith.
CHAPTER VI.
LOGIC FURTHER DEFINED AND DIVIDED.
79.] In point of form Logical doctrine has three sides: (α) the Abstract side, or that of understanding: (_ß_) the Dialectical, or that of negative reason: (y) the Speculative, or that of positive reason.
These three sides do not make three _parts_ of logic, but are stages or 'moments' in every logical entity, that is, of every notion and truth whatever. They may all be put under the first stage, that of understanding, and so kept isolated from each other; but this would give an inadequate conception of them.--The statement of the dividing lines and the characteristic aspects of logic is at this point no more than historical and anticipatory.
80.] (α) Thought, as _Understanding,_ sticks to fixity of characters and their distinctness from one another: every such limited abstract it treats as having a subsistence and being of its own.
In our ordinary usage of the term thought and even notion, we often have before our eyes nothing more than the operation of Understanding.
And no doubt thought is primarily an exercise of Understanding:--only it goes further, and the notion is not a function of Understanding merely. The action of Understanding may be in general described as investing its subject-matter with the form of universality. But this universal is an abstract universal: that is to say, its opposition to the particular is so rigorously maintained, that it is at the same time also reduced to the character of a particular again. In this separating and abstracting attitude towards its objects, Understanding is the reverse of immediate perception and sensation, which, as such, keep completely to their native sphere of action in the concrete.
It is by referring to this opposition of Understanding to sensation or feeling that we must explain the frequent attacks made upon thought for being hard and narrow, and for leading, if consistently developed, to ruinous and pernicious results. The answer to these charges, in so far as they are warranted by their facts, is, that they do not touch thinking in general, certainly not the thinking of Reason, but only the exercise of Understanding. It must be added however, that the merit and rights of the mere Understanding should unhesitatingly be admitted. And that merit lies in the fact, that apart from Understanding there is no fixity or accuracy in the region either of theory or of practice.
Thus, in theory, knowledge begins by apprehending existing objects in their specific differences. In the study of nature, for example, we distinguish matters, forces, genera and the like, and stereotype each in its isolation. Thought is here acting in its analytic capacity, where its canon is identity, a simple reference of each attribute to itself. It is under the guidance of the same identity that the process in knowledge is effected from one scientific truth to another. Thus, for example, in mathematics magnitude is the feature which, to the neglect of any other, determines our advance. Hence in geometry we compare one figure with another, so as to bring out their identity.
Similarly in other fields of knowledge, such as jurisprudence, the advance is primarily regulated by identity. In it we argue from one specific law or precedent to another: and what is this but to proceed on the principle of identity?
But Understanding is as indispensable in practice as it is in theory.
Character is an essential in conduct, and a man of character is an understanding man, who in that capacity has definite ends in view and undeviatingly pursues them. The man who will do something great must learn, as Goethe says, to limit himself. The man who, on the contrary, would do everything, really would do nothing, and fails. There is a host of interesting things in the world: Spanish poetry, chemistry, politics, and music are all very interesting, and if any one takes an interest in them we need not find fault. But for a person in a given situation to accomplish anything, he must stick to one definite point, and not dissipate his' forces in many directions. In every calling, too, the great thing is to pursue it with understanding. Thus the judge must stick to the law, and give his verdict in accordance with, it, undeterred by one motive or another, allowing no excuses; and looking neither left nor right. Understanding, too, is always an element in thorough training. The trained-intellect is not satisfied with cloudy and indefinite impressions, but grasps the objects in their fixed character: whereas the uncultivated man wavers unsettled, and it often costs a deal of trouble to come to an understanding with him on the matter under discussion, and to bring him to fix his eye on the definite point in question.
It has been already explained that the Logical principle in general, far from being merely a subjective action in our minds, is rather the very universal, which as such is also objective. This doctrine is illustrated in the case of understanding, the first form of logical truths. Understanding in this larger sense corresponds to what we call the goodness of God, so far as that means that finite things are and subsist. In nature, for example, we recognise the goodness of God in the fact that the various classes or species of animals and plants are provided with whatever they need for their preservation and welfare.
Nor is man excepted, who, both as an individual and as a nation, possesses partly in the given circumstances of climate, of quality and products of soil, and partly in his natural parts or talents, all that is required for his maintenance and development. Under this shape Understanding is visible in every department of the objective world; and no object in that world can ever be wholly perfect which does not give full satisfaction to the canons of understanding. A state, for example, is imperfect, so long as it has not reached a clear differentiation of orders and callings, and so long as those functions of politics and government, which are different in principle, have not evolved for themselves special organs, in the same way as we see, for example, the developed animal organism provided with separate organs for the functions of sensation, motion, digestion, &c.
The previous course of the discussion may serve to show, that understanding is indispensable even in those spheres and regions of action which the popular fancy would deem furthest from it, and that in proportion as understanding, is absent from them, imperfection is the result. This particularly holds good of Art, Religion, and Philosophy.
In Art, for example, understanding is visible where the forms of beauty, which differ in principle, are kept distinct and exhibited in their purity. The same thing holds good also of single works of art.
It is part of the beauty and perfection of a dramatic poem that the characters of the several persons should be closely and faithfully maintained, and that the different aims and interests involved should be plainly and decidedly exhibited. Or again, take the province of Religion. The superiority of Greek over Northern mythology (apart from other differences of subject-matter and conception) mainly consists in this: that in the former the individual gods are fashioned into forms of sculpture-like distinctness of outline, while in the latter the figures fade away vaguely and hazily into one another. Lastly comes Philosophy. That Philosophy never can get on without the understanding hardly calls for special remark after what has been said. Its foremost requirement is that every thought shall be grasped in its full precision, and nothing allowed to remain vague and indefinite.
It is usually added that understanding must not go too far. Which is so far correct, that understanding is not an ultimate, but on the contrary finite, and so constituted that when carried to extremes it veers round to its opposite. It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions: but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract 'either--or,' and keeps to the concrete.
81.] (ß) In the Dialectical stage these finite characterisations or formulae supersede themselves, and pass into their opposites.
(1) But when the Dialectical principle is employed by the understanding separately and independently,--especially as seen in its application to philosophical theories, Dialectic becomes Scepticism; in which the result that ensues from its action is presented as a mere negation.
(2) It is customary to treat Dialectic as an adventitious art, which for very wantonness introduces confusion and a mere semblance of contradiction into definite notions. And in that light, the semblance is the nonentity, while the true reality is supposed to belong to the original dicta of understanding. Often, indeed, Dialectic is nothing more than a subjective see-saw of arguments _pro_ and _con,_ where the absence of sterling thought is disguised by the subtlety which gives birth to such arguments. But in its true and proper character.
Dialectic is the very nature and essence of everything predicated by mere understanding,--the law of things and of the finite as a whole.
Dialectic is different from 'Reflection.' In the first instance, Reflection is that movement out beyond the isolated predicate of a thing which gives it some reference, and brings out its relativity, while still in other respects leaving it its isolated validity. But by Dialectic is meant the in-dwelling tendency outwards by which the one-sidedness and limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen in its true light, and shown to be the negation of them. For anything