Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/109

Rh METAPHYSIO 99 relation to each other. For such a logic and such a meta physic must rest on the assumption of an absolute division between being and thought, the very two terms the unity of which it must be the utmost object of both logic and metaphysic to prove and to produce. 4. The Relation of Metaphysic to Philosophy of Religion. The possibility of a &quot;first philosophy,&quot; as we have already seen, is essentially bound up with the possibility of what we may call a last philosophy. It is only in so far as we can rise above the point of view of the individual and the dualism of the ordinary consciousness in so far, in other words, as we can have at least an anticipative consciousness of that last unity in which all the differences of things from each other and from the mind that knows them are explained and transcended that we are able to go back to that first unity which all these differences pre suppose. The life of man begins with a divided conscious ness, with a consciousness of self which is opposed to the consciousness of what is not-self, with a consciousness of a multiplicity of particulars which do not seem to be bound together by any one universal principle. Such division and apparent independence of what are really parts of one whole is characteristic of nature, and in spirit it is at first only so far transcended that it has become conscious of itself. A conscious difference, however, as it is a difference in consciousness, is no longer an unmediated difference. It is a difference through which the unity has begun to show itself, and which therefore the unity is on the way to subordinate. And all the development of consciousness and self-consciousness is just the process through which this subordination is carried out, up to the point at which the difference is seen to be nothing but the manifestation of the unity. Just so far, therefore, as this end is present to us, so far as we are able to look forward to the solution or reconciliation of all the divisions and oppositions of which we are conscious and to see that there is an all- embracing unity which they cannot destroy, is it possible that we should look back to the beginning or first unity, and recognize that these divisions and oppositions are but the manifestations of it. Thus the extremes of abstractness and of concreteness of thought are bound up together. The freedom of intelligence by which we get rid of the complexity of our actual life, and direct our thoughts to the simplest and most elementary conditions of being and knowing, is possible only to those who are not limited to that life, but can regard it and all its finite concerns from the point of view of the infinite and the universal. In this sense it is true that religion and metaphysic spring from the same source, and that it is possible to vindicate the rationality of religion only on metaphysical principles. The philosophy of religion is, in fact, only the last application or final expression of metaphysic; and, conversely, a metaphysic which is not capable of furnishing an explanation of religion contradicts itself. This last remark affords us a kind of criterion of a true metaphysic. Can it or can it not explain religion? If it cannot, it must be equally unable to explain its own possi bility, and therefore implicitly it condemns itself. Thus a pantheistic system, which loses the subject in the absolute substance, cannot explain how that subject should appre hend the substance of which it is but a transitory mode, nor, on the other hand, can it explain why the substance should manifest itself in and to a subject. And the same criticism maybe made on all theories in which the first or metaphysical unity is abstractly opposed to the manifoldness and con tingency of things. Not only of Spinoza, but also of Kant, of Fichte, and even of Schelling, it might with some truth be said that their absolute is like the lion s den, towards which all the tracks are directed, while none come from it. It is essential that the first unity should be such as to explain the possibility of difference and division, for, if it is not, then the return to unity out of difference is made as accidental as the difference itself. When Aristotle repre sented the Divine Being as pure self-consciousness, pure form without matter, he found himself unable to account for the existence of any world in which form was realized in matter. When therefore he speaks of tho process of the finite world by which it returns to God, and attributes to nature a will, which is directed to the good as its final cause, his theory seems to be little more than a metaphor in which the analogy of consciousness is applied to the unconscious. For, if the Divine Being is not manifested in the world, any tendency of the world to realize the good becomes an inexplicable fact. A similar difficulty is, as we saw, involved in Kant s confusion of the bare identity of understanding with the absolute unity of knowledge. Reducing the unity of self-consciousness to such a bare identity, Kant could not be expected to see, what Aristotle had not seen, that pure self-consciousness is essentially related to anything but itself. Hence the various attempts which he made in his ethical works and in his Criticism of Judgment to find a link of connexion between the noumenal and the empirical were necessarily condemned even by him self as the expressions of a merely regulative and subjective principle of knowledge. Even Fichte, who found in the thought, which is for him the prius of all existence, a principle of differentiation and integration which explained how self-consciousness in us should be necessarily correlative with the consciousness of a world, was unable to free him self from the Kantian opposition of a noumenal identity in which there is no difference to a phenomenal unity which is realized in difference. Hence by him also the return out of difference is regarded as an impossibility, or as a processus in infinitum, and the absolute unity as that which is beyond all knowledge and only apprehended by faith. If we look to completely elaborated theories, and dis regard all tentative and imperfect sketches, it may fairly be said that all that has as yet been done in the region of pure metaphysic is contained in two works, in the Meta physic of Aristotle and the Logic of Hegel. And up to a certain point the lesson which they teach is one and the same, viz., that the ultimate unity which is presupposed in all differences is the unity of thought with itself, the unity of self-consciousness, and that in this unity is con tained the type of all science, and the form of all existence ; in other words, I = I is the formula of the universe. The difference between these two works has, however, already been indicated. With Aristotle, because he neglects the essential relation of self-consciousness to consciousness, or of the conscious self to the world of objects in space and time, the unity of self-consciousness tends to pass, as it did pass with the Neo-Platonists, into a pure identity without difference. In the Hegelian logic, on the other hand, self- consciousness is interpreted as a unity which realizes itself through difference and the reconciliation of difference as, in fact, an organic unity of elements, which exist only as they pass into each other. In other words, it is shown that the differentiating movement by which the subjective and the objective self are opposed and the integrating movement by which they are reunited are both essential. Hence we cannot think of the conscious self as a simple resting identity, but only as an active self-determining principle ; nor can we think of its self-determination as a pure affirmation of itself, without any negation, but only as an affirmation which involves a double negationan opposition of two elements which yet are essentially united. Each factor in this unity, in fact, is necessarily conceived as passing beyond itself into the other; the subject is subject only as it relates itself to the object, the object is