Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/175

 HEGEL'S TBEATMENT OF THE CATEGOEIES OF THE IDEA. 161 not a desire or aspiration apart from his master's will. But the perfection of slavery is not true freedom. And true harmony between part and whole can only arise, when as in the category of Cognition, the part has a distinct and individual nature of its own, and finds that nature in accord with the nature of the whole. We may remark, in passing, that, for this reason, this category is the first on which any distinctly optimistic view of the universe could be founded. Previous categories could give at best but a Stoical or Spinozistic resignation. Since there is to be a harmony between the Individuals and the Unity, the question naturally arises, which side is active and which side passive ? The question, as will be seen later, is not really exhaustive, and the answer to it will be unable to express the full reality. But it is the natural way to look at the matter to begin with. If we find two things necessarily agreeing with one another, the natural inference is that one is dependent on the other, or else both on a third. Now there is no third here, besides the in- dividuals and the unity, and we seem bound therefore to conclude that the harmony is produced either by the unity reproducing the nature of the individuals, or by the individuals reproducing the nature of the unity. Of these two alternatives we can, to begin with, only accept the latter. If the unity were to reproduce the nature of the individuals, we should have nothing to guarantee that the nature of each individual was not different. And as the nature of the unity is one and indivisible, it would find it impossible to reproduce these varying natures. On the other hand, there is no such difficulty about the supposition that the many individuals each reproduce the nature of the one unity. This gives us COGNITION PKOPEE. (In the Greater Logic Hegel calls this category Die Idee des Wahren. In the Smaller Logic he calls it simply Das Erkennen, which Prof. "Wallace translates Cognition Proper to distinguish it from the more general category of which it is a subdivision.) If we try to find a distinction between knowledge and volition, we shall find that the object of each is to produce a harmony, and that they differ only in the fact that in the one the object, and in the other the subject, is the determining side of the harmony. This can be tested by looking at a case where the harmony is imperfect, or has broken down. In such a case, should it occur in know- 11