Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/351

 HEGELIAN CATEGORIES IN THE HEGELIAN ARGUMENT. 337 There are, to be sure, two ways in which the finite self instinctively contradicts this independence of the world, thereby asserting its own self-sufficiency. The first is the way of thought, or cognition, in which it "receives the existing world into itself, into subjective conception, 1 that is, analyses and classifies it. In other words : the fact that the external object can be thought about 2 shows that it is itself the stuff of which consciousness is made. Yet this fact cannot obscure the truth that the activity of finite understanding assumes, always, the existence of something outside itself to be analysed and classified. In truth " the finitude of consciousness lies in the presupposition of a world already in existence ". 3 The second attitude of the finite self to the external world seems at first sight more successful in reducing its externality. For, in Volition, the finite self changes the world and converts it to the ends of the self. 4 Herein, volition is clearly distinguished from cognition, for " while Intelligence merely proposes to take the world as it is, Will takes steps to make it what it ought to be ". Yet, even, in volition, the finite self fails to attain ultimate reality, for " as finite it presupposes the purposed end of the Good to be a mere subjective idea and the object to be inde- pendent," 5 that is, it is limited by reality external to it. So long, therefore, as we define reality in terms of the purely human consciousness, we conceive of reality as a system of which the finite consciousness forms merely one of the related parts. Even Hegel might well have added if the external world be a world not of material realities but of other finite selves, ultimate reality, thus conceived, is composite not individual. But it has been shown that ultimate reality, whatever its concrete nature, is Absolute One, not organic unity of parts. The finite self and the reality external to it must then be conceived as parts of a more ultimate reality. 6 And this " identity of the two sides which supersedes them both " can be none other than Will but no longer merely finite will. The Will, which includes within itself both the finite self and the world external to it, the Will " which knows the world to be its own " is none other than the Absolute Idea or Self " the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself. . . and. . is completely self -identical in its otherness ". 7 It will be well in conclusion to comment on the re-orderings of the categories, required by the preceding interpretation of Hegel's argument. The categories in book i. are unchanged in order, and have been merely interrupted by including parallel or related groups of categories from other books. But certain important omissions from book i. must be briefly justified. The category of Becoming is not, as it claims to be, a synthesis of the first two categories, Being and Naught but is rather the universal category of the Logic, the common method by which every category is shown to l Encycl., 225. 2 Werke, v., 270-310 ; EncycL, 227-232. 'EncycL, 226 2 ; cf. Werke, v., 267 2 . 4 Werke, v., 314 2 ; EncycL, 234 2 . 5 EncycL, 233; cf. Werke, v., 312 2 . EncycL, 234; Werke, v., 316 2 . 7 EncycL, 236, 238 1 ; cf. Werke, v., 31 7 1 . 22