Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/161

 HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE CATEGORIES OF THE IDEA. 147 separately, it could not connect one of them with another, and, therefore, would not be a unity at all. The common-sense solution of the question would seem to be that it is not in each of them when taken separately, but that it is in all of them when taken together. But, if we attempt to escape in this way, we fall into a fatal diffi- culty. That things can be taken together implies that they can be taken separately. For, if there were no means of separating them, they would not be an aggregate at all, but a mere undifferentiated unity. Now, if the unity is only in the individuals taken as an aggregate, it is not in the in- dividuals taken separately. And, by the definition of the category .from which we started, the individuals have no existence at all, except in so far as they embody the unity. Therefore the individuals, taken separately, do not exist at all ; and, therefore, they do not exist as an aggregate. In the case of less perfect unities, there would be no difficulty in saying that they resided in the aggregate of the individuals, and not in the individuals taken separately. A regiment, for example, is not a reality apart from the soldiers, neither is it anything in each individual soldier, but it is a unity which is found in them all when taken together. But here the differentiations are not entirely dependent on the unity. Each man would exist, and would be distinguishable from the others, if the regiment had never been formed. In the category of Life, however, no dif- ferentiations can exist independent of the unity. And therefore the unity must be found in them, not only in so far as they are not taken as differentiated, but also in respect of their differentiation. The unity cannot, indeed, as we saw above, be in each individual as a merely separated in- dividual. But it must, in some less crude way, be found in each of the united individuals, and not merely in the sum of them. For those separate characteristics which differenti- ate the individuals can have no existence at all unless the unity is manifested in them. It might be suggested that we could overcome this diffi- culty by the idea of mutual determination. If each in- dividual is in relation with all the rest, then its character is determined by these relations, that is by the unity of which the individuals are parts. Thus, it may be said, the unity will be manifested in the separate nature of each individual, since that nature will be what it is by reason of the unity of all the individuals. But this is only going back to the category of Mechanism, and the same difficulties which compelled us to regard