Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/114

98 us to understand "being"—which is itself unthinkable, since there is nothing with which we can contrast it.

Now Hegel, according to Croce, admits that the concepts of "being" and "not-being" have no meaning if taken separately, and asserts that they acquire significance when they are united in the concept of "becoming." But even when the two concepts are brought together they do not succeed in throwing light on each other, since a condition precedent to their having a joint meaning would be the previous and independent possession of meaning by one or the other. The blind cannot lead the blind.

Even the concept of "becoming," the delight of the Hegelians, the reflector (to their minds) which illumines those two poor concepts of "being" and "not-being" which remain obscure until they are transcended—even the concept of "becoming" appears on careful examination to be merely a disguise for the concept of "being." "Becoming" implies motion, change, diversity in time. To say that the world becomes amounts to saying that changes take place in the world (regularly or sporadically), and that in consequence things which had certain characteristics at a certain moment have different characteristics at a later moment. We are therefore dealing with diversity—that is to say, with the funda-