Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/181

 HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECTIVE NOTION. 165 division of the Doctrine of the Notion, which is the last of the three parts into which the logic is divided. The last category preceding it is Reciprocity. This, for the purpose of our present paper, we must assume to be valid, and it will form the postulate from which our arguments must start. Reciprocity is the last category of Actuality, the final division of the Doctrine of Essence. 1 Since our argument is to start from the admission that Reciprocity is valid, we must begin by defining the sig- nificance of this category. By asserting the validity of Reciprocity, Hegel means, in the first place, that every- thing is so connected with other things, that the existence and nature of the one is dependent on the existence and nature of the other, and vice versa. Secondly, everything in the universe is connected in this way, directly or in- directly, with everything else, so that the universe forms a connected whole. And, thirdly, the whole nature of every- thing consists of nothing else but these relations of reciprocal dependence with other things. Starting with this, we have to reach the highest stage of the Subjective Notion that to which Hegel gives the name of the Disjunctive Syllogism. We may provisionally define this category as asserting that the nature of everything is determined by a hierarchy of general laws, which are them- selves ultimate and cannot be reduced to anything else. These laws form a series, the lower subordinated to the higher, such that the highest law embraces the whole extent of reality, while the lowest completely define the nature of the objects to which they apply. We may therefore say that the advance made by the dialectic in the Subjective Notion is from the idea of complete determination in general, to the idea of complete determination by a symmetrical structure of general laws. We are apt to confuse these two ideas in general language, but they are in fact distinct. The admission that A is always determined by something outside itself does not assert that determination is by general laws. It still leaves the possi- bility open that each determination is unique and individual, and that the supposed existence of general laws is due to a mistake in our observation of the facts. If the dialectic succeeds in proving that determination does involve general laws it will therefore have made a real advance. The Subjective Notion is divided with a greater minute- 1 This applies to the Smaller Logic. In the Greater Logic the arrange- ment is rather different, but the difference is here unimportant.