Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/113

 j. B. BAILLIE, Hegel's Logic. 99 level with it (that would be the Indifferentism of Schelling) ; it is to contain it in itself. This alone is Idealism. Now it was mainly to solve this problem and establish that position that Hegel wrote the Phenomenology of Mind. Such being the general nature of the problem which he has to solve, it is not difficult to see that to accomplish his purpose the inquiry will conveniently fall into two parts. In one part he will be exclusively engaged in showing that Mind, when and wherever we find it in relation to an object, is actually ' higher than ' its object. ... In such an inquiry there will be no need to confine attention to any one form under which this relation exists. Any and every form will have to be con- sidered " (p. 140). "The further and second question is, What amount or degree of truth does each possess, what degree of intimacy is expressed by any given relation, how far does the object dealt with at any point realise or express the essential nature of mind, how far is the mind in dealing with the object explicitly aware of itself as being in its object, as being at one with it as well as its own self ? " (p. 143). " Hence the inquiry is a historical analysis or analytical history of the kinds of truth of which the mind is capable;" or again, it "may be named a Constructive History of the forms of Experience"; or once more it "can be looked at as a Philosophical History of Consciousness " ; or finally " as a Transcendental Psychology. All these various expressions merely indicate different aspects of exactly the same problem " (p. 145). " Only one method of proof was open to him. For he held, on the one hand, that his own view was the absolutely true, and on the other hand, that the views of others were likewise true, but imperfect. His proof, therefore, had to reconcile both of these positions. And this was only possible by showing that the truth the other views contained was true by being a form or expression of his own, and was imperfect. . . . And on the other side he had to show that his own view actually and explicitly expressed the truth implied in the other imperfect views " (p. 150). The result is that "the only and complete content of philosophy will be the whole diversity of experience, which alone reveals, and where alone is found, the meaning and content of that Absolute which is the only object of philosophy". "Not merely does he [Hegel] maintain and preserve all finitude through and by means of the Absolute. The tendency of this new view even seems to be to do full justice to them at the expense of the Absolute itself" (p. 152). It is difficult to see how Dr. Baillie would reconcile this statement with the criticism he passes upon Hegel for "the elimination of the individual in the construction of the System " (p. 358). It would be worth while, had we space at our disposal, to examine this criticism in detail. It seems to be based upon a misinterpretation of Hegel's statement that the individual simply "looks on". Hegel does not thereby deny that the activity of the individual determines the philosophical result,