Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/163

 HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE CATEGORIES OF THE IDEA. 149 The system in which all the Objects, and all their relations, are contained, becomes the reality the only true Object, of which all the relations contained in the system are adjectives. The individual Objects disappear." l This explanation also, therefore, must be rejected. For it destroys the individuals in favour of the unity, while our category asserts that the individuality and the unity are equally essential. And such a victory would be fatal to the unity also, since it converts it into a mere undifferentiated blank, and therefore into a nonentity. The impossibility of taking the connexion required by the category of Life as one of mutual determination of individuals comes, it will be seen, from the high degree to which the notion of unity has now been developed. Any individuality not identical with the unity is incompatible with it. And in mutual determination the individuality is not identical with the unity, since it does not express the whole of that unity, but merely a part of it. For the whole unity is only expressed by the mutual determinations of all the individuals, and these, of course, are not all to be found within each single individual. We are forced back to the conclusion that it is necessary that in some way or another the whole of the unity shall be in each individual, and that in no other way can the individuals have the requisite reality. Yet, as we saw above, to suppose that the unity exists in the individuals as isolated, is to destroy the unity. The unity must be complete in each individual. Yet it must also be the bond which unites them. How is this to be? How is it possible that the whole can be in each of its parts, and yet be the whole of which they are parts ? The solution can only be found by the introduction of a new and higher idea. The conception which, according to Hegel, will overcome the difficulties of the category of Life, is that of a unity which is not only in the individuals, but also for the individuals. (I am here using " in " and " for " rather in their customary English meanings, than as the equivalents of Hegel's technical terms, "an" and "fur".) What is meant by a unity being for the individuals which are its parts ? There is only one example of such a category known to us in experience, and that is a system of conscious individuals. Accordingly Hegel calls his next category, to which the transition from Life takes us, Cognition (Erkennen). This 1 MIND, 1899, p. 47.