Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/160

 146 J. ELLIS MCTAGGAET : in the dialectic in which the identity between the Synthesis and the new Thesis is more evident. In dealing with this category we must, of course, bear in mind, as in the case of other categories named from concrete phenomena, the relation between those phenomena and the category. The logical category of Life does not apply only to what are commonly called living beings, but is equally true of all reality. Nor does it involve any attempt to deduce by pure thought all the empirical characteristics of biological life. The choice of the name is due to the fact that this is the category of pure thought which is most usually and natu- rally employed in dealing with the phenomena of life. This is manifestly the case. The most remarkable peculiarity of a living being is that, while it is really a unity, it is only a unity on condition of being differentiated, and that, in so far as we regard it as a living being, the only meaning of the parts is that they are united, while the only meaning of the whole is that it is differentiated. In the case of Life Hegel makes it more explicit, than he does when dealing with other categories with concrete names, that he intends to keep strictly to pure thought, and avoid all empirical intermixture. For he expressly cautions us against supposing the Life of the dialectic to be identical with the life of concrete experience, whether the latter be taken by itself, or as a manifestation of Spirit (Werke, vol. v., pp. 245-246). But we shall, I think, see later on, that his intentions were not realised, and that his treatment of the category included some empirical details which were unjustifiable and confusing. We have now to consider the transition from the category of Life to that of Cognition, postponing for the present our attempt to demonstrate that Hegel's subdivisions of Life are useless. We may briefly anticipate the argument by saying that the unity required by the category of Life will prove fatal to the plurality which is no less essential to it, unless that plurality is of a peculiar nature, and that it is this peculiarity which takes us into the category of Cogni- tion. The unity which connects the different individuals is not, we must first observe, anything outside them, for it has no reality distinct from them. The unity has, therefore, to be somehow in the individuals which it unites. Now in what sense can the unity be in the individuals ? It is clear, in the first place, that it is not in each of them taken separately. Such an expression is obviously contra- dictory ; since, if the unity was in each of them taken