Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/183

 HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECTIVE NOTION. 167 example, "all things are a categorical judgment"; 1 and again, "everything is a syllogism ". 2 We must look, then, for another explanation of the ter- minology. We can find it, I think, in the connexion of this part of the dialectic with formal logic. Formal logic, of course, owes its existence to abstraction. When we take its standpoint we make abstraction of all but certain qualities of reality. Now these qualities, we shall find, are those which are demonstrated as valid at that part of the dialectic which we are considering in this paper, so that at this stage, and not before, formal logic could be metaphysically justified. We find that formal logic assumes that we have the power of ascribing general notions as predicates to subjects, and in this way arriving at truth with regard to those sub- jects. And it also assumes that we are in possession, in some manner or the other, of various general truths, such as are expressed in the statements All A is B, No A is C. On the other hand, we find that there are other charac- teristics of reality of which formal logic takes no account. It makes no distinction between trivial and important pro- positions. " No man is wholly evil," and " no man has green hair," are assertions which are for formal logic of pre- cisely the same rank. And, in the second place, it does not inquire how, in the first instance, w r e ever came to know the truth of any proposition. It always assumes that something is known, as a datum, and only occupies itself with consider- ing how other knowledge can be deduced from this. Now we shall see that the Subjective Notion of the dia- lectic begins with the idea of universal notions, and that it soon is led on to the further idea of the existence of valid generalisations the two assumptions of formal logic. And we shall also see that the characteristic defects of the Sub- jective Notion are the inability to give any account of the existence of these generalisations which shall be free from contradiction, and the inability to distinguish between the relative importance of such generalisations. These defects are not overcome till we reach the Syllogism of Necessity, which is the last stage in the Subjective Notion, and forms the transition to a higher idea. This will enable us to explain why the divisions of the Subjective Notion draw their names from formal logic. It is not that these categories apply only to the subject-matter of formal logic, but that the procedure of formal logic is 1 Enc., Section 177. Lecture Note. - Ibid., Section 181.