Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/59

 HEGEL'S TBEATMENT OF THE OBJECTIVE NOTION. 45 wax is really reacting as actively on the pencil, as gun- powder does on a match. The result which we thus reach is not unlike the discovery in the Doctrine of Being, that Being-for-another is really Being-for-self. The inner nature of each Object is really identical with its relations to all other Objects, and we thus pass to the category of ABSOLUTE MECHANISM. Since Hegel has correlated Formal Mechanism with De- terminism, and Mechanism with Affinity with Fatalism,. we might venture to carry on the process by comparing Absolute Mechanism with Spinoza's doctrine of Freedom. According to Spinoza, everything and everybody is free. For Freedom only consists in acting according to your nature, and there is, of course, 110 power in the universe (yourself included) which could possibly make you do anything not according to your nature. This is doubtless true as far as it goes. But it does not go as far as Spinoza thinks, who endeavours to find in it a basis for resignation, if not for optimism. For this it is insufficient, for the reasons pointed out above. If we are to mean by Freedom anything which is of the least value to spirit, it must mean acting, not merely according to our nature, but according to our desires and, ultimately, our ideals. Supposing that I get toothache when I sit near a window, or feel jealous when I see my superiors, I shall cer- tainly be acting according to my nature, but that will not make me feel that toothache and jealousy are desirable or ideal, and there will be a painfully true sense in which I can say that my freedom is interfered with by each of them. The only valuable freedom must be sought elsewhere not in indeterminism indeed, but in self-realisation. But this, comes later in the dialectic. According to the Category of Absolute Mechanism, every Object is the centre of a system composed of all the other Objects which influence it. As everything in the universe stands in reciprocal connexion with everything else, it follows that each of these systems embraces the whole of reality, and that they are distinguished from one another by the fact that each has a different centre. The central Object in each system is called by Hegel the Universal. Its best claim to that name seems to be that it alone in the system is to be looked on as self-determined. It is determined, in the first place, by all the surrounding