Page:Journal of Speculative Philosophy Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/12

4 perfect. "Spirit," says Hegel, "is self-contained being. But matter, which is spirit outside of itself, [turned inside out,] continually manifests this, its inadequacy, through gravity—attraction to a central point beyond each particle. (If it could get at this central point, it would have no extension, and hence would be annihilated.)" The soul of this method lies in the comprehension of the negative. In that wonderful exposé of the importance of the negative, which Plato gives in the Parmenides and Sophist, we see how justly he appreciated its true place in Philosophic Method. Spinoza's "omnis determinatio est negatio" is the most famous of modern statements respecting the negative, and has been very fruitful in results.

One would greatly misunderstand the Speculative view of the negative should he take it to mean as some have done, "that the negative is as essential as the positive." For if there are two independent somewhats over against each other, having equal validity, then all unity of system is absolutely impossible—we can have only the Persian Ahriman and Ormuzd; nay, not even these—for unless there is a primal unity, a "Zeruane-Akerene"—the uncreated one, these are impossible as opposites, for there can be no tension from which the strife should proceed.

The Speculative has insight into the constitution of the positive out of the negative. "That which has the form of Being," says Hegel, "is the self-related;" but relation of all kinds is negation, and hence whatever has the form of being and is a positive somewhat, is a self-related negative. Those three stages of culture in knowing, talked of by Plato and Spinoza, may be characterized in a new way by their relation to this concept. The first stage of consciousness—that of immediate or sensuous knowing—seizes objects by themselves—isolatedly—without their relations; each seems to have validity in and for itself, and to be wholly positive and real. The negative is the mere absence of the real thing; and it utterly ignores it in its scientific activity. But the second stage traces relations and finds that things do not exist in immediate independence, but that each is related to others, and it comes to say that "Were a grain of sand to be destroyed, the universe would collapse." It is a necessary consequent to the previous stage, for the reason that so soon as the first stage gets over its childish engrossment with the novelty of variety, and attempts to seize the individual thing, it finds its characteristic marks or properties. But these consist invariably of relations to other things, and it learns that these properties, without which the thing could have no distinct existence, are the very destruction of its independence, since they are its complications with other things.

In this stage the negative has entered and has full sway. For all that was before firm and fixed, is now seen to be, not through itself, but through others, and hence the being of everything is its negation. For if this stone exists only through its relations to the sun, which is not the stone but something else, then the being of this stone is its own negation. But the second stage only reduces all to dependence and finitude, and does not show us how any real, true, or independent being can be found to exist. It holds fast to the stage of mediation alone, just as the first stage held by the immediate. But the dialectic of this position forces it over into the third.

If things exist only in their relations, and relations are the negatives of things, then all that appears positive—all being—must rest upon negation. How is this? The negative is essentially a relative, but since it is the only substrate (for all is relative), it can relate only to itself. But self-relation is always identity, and here we have the solution of the previous difficulty. All positive forms, all forms of immediateness or being, all forms of identity, are self-relations, consisting of a negative or relative, relating to itself. But the most wonderful side of this is the fact that since this relation is that of the negative, it negates itself in its very relation, and hence its identity is a producing of non-identity. Identity and distinction are produced by the self-same process, and thus self-determination is the origin of all