Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/74

 60 J. ELLIS MCTAGGART : Hegel's second argument (Enc., section 211, Werke, vol. v., p. 230) is that the Realised End will, if we adhere to our present category, be nothing but a Means, that it will con- sequently require another Realised End beyond it, which in turn will be nothing but a Means, and so on ad infinitum. This also will require some expansion. When we use the word End in its common and un- Hegelian sense, there is a clear distinction between the Means and the Realised End. A saw and a plank may be taken as Means to the End of making sawdust, but no one could mistake either a saw or a plank for the actual sawdust which is the Realised End. But in the Hegelian sense of End the case is different. For here the Means is not an Object which might be made to subserve the End. It is an Object which does subserve it, and subserve it necessarily and by its intrinsic nature. The Means therefore is an Object whose nature is such that it manifests the End. (If we are speaking of a single Object it is better, except for brevity, to say " which participates in manifesting the End," since of course an End can only be manifested in a plurality of Means.) Now what is the Realised End? Is it anything more than this? It can be nothing more. The only form a Realised End can take is that of an Object whose nature is such that it manifests the End. And therefore, for Hegelian Teleology, there is no difference between the Means and the Realised End. This conclusion we shall find later on to be the truth. But it is inconsistent with our present position, and the attempt to combine the two produces a contradiction. For the Realised End is the union of the End and Means, and, if these are taken as in any way distinguishable, it cannot be the same as either of them. Hence when we find that our Realised End is identical with the Means, we cannot regard it as really the Realised End. If it is one extreme of the relation it cannot be the union of both. We take it then simply as the Means, and look for another Realised End beyond it. (We may remark, for completeness' sake, that it would have been equally possible to take it as the Realised End, and then to look for another Means to mediate be- tween it and the End. The course of the argument would be similar.) But the new Realised End would also neces- sarily be identical with the Means, for the same reasons as before, and our search would have to be continued ad in-, finitum. Such an infinite process would involve a contra- diction, for it is the whole nature of the End and Means