Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/168

 154 j. ELLIS MCTAGGABT: viduals, and the individuals have no nature except to be the unity. This we learned in the category of Teleology. But the unity is something different from each of the individuals ; and, therefore, if the content of the unity is found in each of the individuals, there is a meaning in saying that it is for each of the individuals. On the other hand, the unity is not different from all the individuals together. (It is, of course, not equivalent to a mere sum or aggregate of the individuals, because it is their real unity. But then they exist as a real unity, and not as a mere sum or aggregate, so that the unity is identical with the individuals as they really are.) If therefore the content of the unity is identical with that of the individuals, this merely means that its content is identical with itself not that it is identical with the content of anything else. And so the conception of the individuals being for the unity becomes unmeaning. Since, then, the individuals cannot be for the unity, the dialectic gives us no reason to suppose that the unity is either a conscious being, or possesses any quality analogous to consciousness. But the dialectic does not by this give us any reason to deny consciousness to the unity. To suppose that it did would be to confound unjustifiably the category of pure thought, which Hegel calls Cognition, with the concrete fact after which it is named. To avoid such con- fusion altogether is very difficult. We have seen that Hegel himself did not always succeed in doing so, either in the details of the Subjective Notion, or in Chemism, and we shall see that the same criticism is applicable to the details of his treatment of Life. And this constitutes the chief objection to his practice of naming categories after the concrete subject-matter which best illustrates them. Such a plan is no doubt very convenient for an author whose penetration had discovered many more stages in thought than there were abstract names for in existing terminology. And it was also stimulating to the learner, assisting him to call up a vivid picture of the category, and suggesting its practical application and importance. But these advantages are more than counterbalanced by the perplexities of such a nomenclature. One of these con- cerns the Logic itself, and we have seen examples of it in the Subjective Notion and Chemism. Any concrete state contains many abstract ideas as its moments, and if we call one of the abstract ideas by the name of the concrete state, we shall run considerable risk of mixing it up with the others, and of supposing that we have deduced by pure thought far more than we have really done.