The Logic of Hegel. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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to be conceived as an abstract away and away for ever and ever, but in the simple manner previously indicated.
The thinking of the old metaphysical system was finite. Its whole mode of action was regulated by categories, the limits of which it believed to be permanently fixed and not subject to any further negation. Thus, one of its questions was: Has God existence? The question supposes that existence is an altogether positive term, a sort of ne plus ultra. We shall see however at a later point that existence is by no means a merely positive term, but one which is toe low for the Absolute Idea, and unworthy of God. A second question in these metaphysical systems was: Is the world finite or infinite? The very terms of the question assume that the finite is a permanent contradictory to the infinite: and one can easily see that, when they are so opposed, the infinite, which of course ought to be the whole, only appears as a single aspect and suffers restriction from the finite. But a restricted infinity is itself only a finite. In the same way it was asked whether the soul was simple or composite. Simpleness was, in other words, taken to be an ultimate characteristic, giving expression to a whole truth. Far from being so, simpleness is the expression of a half-truth, as one-sided and abstract as existence:—a term of thought, which, as we shall hereafter see, is itself untrue and hence unable to hold truth. If the soul be viewed as merely and abstractly simple, it is characterised in an inadequate and finite way.
It was therefore the main question of the pre-Kantian metaphysic to discover whether predicates of the kind mentioned were to be ascribed to its objects. Now these predicates are after all only limited formulae of the understanding which, instead of expressing the truth, merely impose a limit. More than this, it should be noted that the chief feature of the method lay in 'assigning' or 'attributing' predicates to the object that was to be cognised, for example, to God. But attribution is no more than an external reflection about the object: the predicates by which the object is to be determined are supplied from the resources of picture-thought, and are applied in a mechanical way. Whereas, if we are to have genuine cognition, the object must characterise its own self and not derive its predicates from without. Even supposing we follow the method of predicating, the mind cannot help feeling that predicates of this sort fail to exhaust the object. From the same point of view the Orientals are quite correct in calling God the many-named or the myriad-named One. One after another of these finite categories leaves the soul unsatisfied, and the Oriental sage is compelled unceasingly to seek for more and more of such predicates. In finite things it is no doubt the case that they have to be characterised through finite predicates: and with these things the understanding finds proper scope for its special action. Itself finite, it knows only the nature of the finite. Thus, when I call some action a theft, I have characterised the action in its essential facts: and such a knowledge is sufficient for the judge. Similarly, finite things stand to each other as cause and effect, force and exercise, and when they are apprehended in these categories, they are known in their finitude. But the objects of reason cannot be defined by these finite predicates. To try to do so was the defect of the old metaphysic.
29.] Predicates of this kind, taken individually, have but a limited range of meaning, and no one can fail to perceive how inadequate they are, and how far they fall below the fulness of detail which our imaginative thought gives, in the case, for example, of God, Mind, or Nature. Besides, though the fact of their being all predicates of one subject supplies them with a certain connexion, their several meanings keep them apart: and consequently each is brought in as a stranger in relation to the others.
The first of these defects the Orientals sought to remedy, when, for example, they defined God by attributing to Him many names; but still they felt that the number of names would have had to be infinite.
30.] (2) In the second place, the metaphysical systems adopted a wrong criterion. Their objects were no doubt totalities which in their own proper selves belong to reason—that is, to the organised and systematically-developed universe, of thought. But these totalities—God, the Soul, the World—were taken by the metaphysician as subjects made and ready, to form the basis for an application of the categories of the understanding. They were assumed from popular conception. Accordingly popular conception was the only canon for settling whether or not the predicates were suitable and sufficient.
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