Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/171

 HEGEL'S TREATMENT OF THE CATEGORIES OF THE IDEA. 157 Indeed, if the system unified its internal differentiations in the same way that the individual unifies its external differentiations by having them for itself, it seems difficult to deny that it would be an individual too. And if it were an individual, it would stand side by side with the other individuals, and could not be their unity which is just what we set out by declaring that it was. And this supports our previous conclusion that the two relations, though equally real, are not similar, and that, while the individuals are in unity, the unity is for each individual. In passing from Life to Cognition we are making a step in the Logic which is of exceptional importance to the Philosophy of Spirit. If we are able to arrive at any definite conclusions as to our own ultimate importance in the uni- verse, and our own relations to the unity of the Absolute, they must be based on the results at which we have now arrived, since here, for the first time, we have a category put forward as the adequate expression of reality -the only example of which, that we either know or can imagine, is a unity of conscious beings. We may sum up the argument as follows, putting it into concrete terms, and ignoring, for the sake of simplicity of expression, the possibility of the category of Cognition having other examples than consciousness examples at present unknown and unimagined by us. The Absolute must be differentiated into persons, because no other differentiations have vitality to stand against a perfect unity, and because a unity which was undifferentiated would not exist. Any philosophical system which rejected this view would have to adopt one of three alternatives. It might regard reality as ultimately consisting, partly of spirit and partly of matter. It might take a materialistic position, and regard matter as the only reality. Or, holding that spirit was the only reality, it might deny that spirit was necessarily and entirely differentiated into persons. Of each of these posi- tions it might, I believe, be shown that it could be forced into one of two untenable extremes. It might not be in earnest with the differentiation of the unity. In that case it could be driven into an Oriental pantheism, referring everything to an undifferentiated unity, which could neither account for experience nor have any meaning in itself. Or else and this is the more probable case at the present time it would have to preserve the differentiation by asserting the existence, in each member of the plurality, of some element which was fundamentally isolated from the rest of experience, and only externally connected with it. In this