Page:Ethical Theory of Hegel (1921).djvu/58

 system as a whole. The principle—the notion—establishes itself in its members, and the act whereby each posits itself in its other is a process whereby the whole establishes itself. Thus the one-sidedness of the relation of substance disappears in the notion, for the latter posits itself in and as its accidents. Substance is absolute merely because it is underived; the notion is absolute because it is self-determined. The movement of the accidents has become a movement of substance itself, and the outward reference falls now within the whole, not merely as an additional factor, but as an integral element. It is that through which the notion realizes itself. Thus the notion is a category of activity; its nature is to go out of itself and find itself in this movement.

There is nothing mysterious in the statement that the notion is absolute not because it is underived but because it is self-determining. There is a dangerous tendency in thought to revert to the principles of essence when dealing with the notion, and to raise old problems which have really been answered. In this mood it is urged that the self-determination of the notion does not free it from the difficulties of substance; it, too, has a nature which it must presuppose. And this logical problem is the basis of the charge that Hegel’s conception of freedom amounts merely to that of a so-called spiritual mechanism, determinism in a subtler medium. Now, in dealing with this difficulty it is important to see clearly what is at issue. Doubtless the notion has a nature, but that is not a defect—it is not the defect we urged against substance. The question is, Must the notion presuppose its nature in the same sense as that which was found to mar the conception of substance? We may therefore ask for a clearer statement of the meaning of presupposition in this connexion. We have seen that substance is in truth indeterminate. Accidents, of course, appear on the surface, and substance dwells in them and has power over them. But there are within it no differences to account for the differences it produces in its appearance; it is indwelling and hidden. When we force this point to the utmost it yields the conclusion that substance does nothing. Doubtless it posits its accidents and determines them; but how can there be a power that acts and is unaffected by its action? Substance is unmoved; and the movement must therefore be in some