Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/165

 HEGEL'S TEEATMENT op THE CATEGORIES OF THE IDEA. 151 We must, of course, remember with Cognition, as with Mechanism, Chemism and Life, that the dialectic does not profess to deduce all the empirical characteristics of the concrete state whose name is given to the category, but merely to deduce that pure idea which is most characteristic of that particular state. But in the case of Cognition there is a special feature to be noticed. We can recall and imagine instances of the categories of Mechanism and Life outside the spheres of Mechanics and Biology, and this helps us to realise the difference between the concrete state and the category which Hegel names after it. But of the category of Cognition there is no example known to us, and, as far as I can see, no example imaginable by us, except the concrete state of Cognition. We cannot, I think, conceive any way in which a unity should be for each of the indi- viduals which compose it except by the individuals being conscious. This renders it more likely, than with the other categories of Mechanism, Chemism and Life, that we shall suppose that we have demonstrated more of the character- istics of Cognition by pure thought than in fact we have demonstrated. And great caution will be necessary, there- fore, if we attempt to apply the conclusions gained in this part of the dialectic to theological or cosmological problems. The pure idea of Cognition, to which the process of the dialectic has now conducted us, is free from any empirical taint either in its nature or its demonstration. It is true that it is suggested to us by the fact that there is part of our experience namely our own possession of consciousness in which the category comes prominently forward. It is possible that the human mind might never have thought of such a category at all, if it had not had such an example of it so clearly offered to it. But this does not affect the validity of the transition as an act of pure thought. The manner in which the solution of a problem has been sug- gested is immaterial if, when it has been suggested, it can be demonstrated. Is the transition from Life to Cognition validly demon- strated ? It will have been noticed, no doubt, that, although these two categories form the Thesis and Antithesis of a triad, the passage from one to the other has about it a great deal of the nature of a transition to a Synthesis. Certain difficulties and contradictions arise in the category of Life, which forbid us to consider it as ultimately valid, and the claim of the category of Cognition to validity lies in the fact that it can transcend and remove these contradictions.