Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/52

 38 J. ELLIS MCTAGGAET : p. 170.) But it appears necessary to differ from him on this point, for three reasons. In the first place, this view of the relation between the Subjective and Objective Notions seems the only one by which we can account for the difficult tran- sition between Reciprocity and the Subjective Notion (cp. MIND, 1897, pp. 170-173). In the second place, Hegel's transition leaves the special and characteristic defect of the Subjective Notion its powerlessness to determine which of the possible alternatives is real unnoticed and untran- scended. And, finally, Hegel's transition does not seem convincing in itself. The line of his argument appears to be that at the end of the Subjective Notion the mediation is merged, that this produces immediacy, and that this forms the transition to the Object. But how has the mediation been merged, so that we can pass to the immediate Object ? Surely it has not been completely merged. The highest point of the Subjective Notion, as we saw, is found in the proposition A is either B or C. This may be said to be an immediate connexion between A on the one hand, and B and C on the other. But in any particular object A will be connected with B or C not with both. A still requires mediation to determine whether, in this case, it is to be B or C, and it is rather the necessity of this mediation, as we have seen, and not the transcending of all mediation, which takes us on to the Objective Notion. MECHANISM. Hegel begins by remarking that the Object, which he takes to begin with as single, splits itself up " into distinct parts each of which is itself the totality" (Enc., section 194). He accounts for this by means of the immediacy which he takes to be the special characteristic, at this stage, of the Objective Notion. But, even on my view of transition to the Objective Notion, the breaking up of the Object remains intelligible. At the end of the Subjective Notion we had, not indeed a blank unity, but a system of objects completely united, and united this is the essential point by their inner natures, and not by any merely external relation. Now when we pass from connexion by similarity to connexion by determination, we leave this union by inner nature behind us. If we look at things as they determine one another, we find them con- nected indeed, but, so far, connected only in an external way. They no longer form a single unity, but, on the contrary, an aggregate of objects, secondarily connected, no doubt, but primarily separated.