Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/508

 HEGEL'S CONCEPTION OF NATUKE. 507 moment is absolutely identical with every other, and that is the defect of space. The negation of space is the point, but each point is equally every other, and generates therefore a line and line a surface (pp. 48-9). The point is only the beginning of the line : it is a limit which directs you to go beyond, and yet you are always where you were before. Space is such an eternal monotony as we may figure the life of Mr. Spencer's Unknowable, only unconscious of its own ennui. But this negativity of space by which it is for ever negating itself while it yet remains identical is exhibited in nature definitely as negation in the form of time (p. 52). Such phrases as ' a point of time,' or ' an hour's distance from here to there,' are testimony that space and time are inseparable. Time is the negative unity of externality ; it is continuous or self-external, but it is perpetually self-destruc- tive. It is while it is not, and is not while it is ; " Chronos devouring his own children," Hegel says (p. 54). It is not made up of moments any more than space of points ; but it is an eternal present in which two things are combined, being and not being. Eegarded as being which is not, it is the past ; regarded as not-being which is, it is the future (pp. 57 if., especially p. 60). Hence, we may say for Hegel, the justice of the trite comparison of time with a river : only while Heraclitus declared you can never bathe twice in the same stream, we shall have to say you can never bathe twice in a different stream. For Heraclitus was thinking not of time, but of something more definite, viz., Motion, the logical genesis of which is this : Time though negative is still indifferent, every present is a past ; here it combines with space, and the result of their combination is place, a spatial now (p. 62). Place is different from point, for a point is anywhere, but place is only one : it is a point of space fixed in time. But place regarded as space is indifferent ; it cannot be thought without some other place, to which it moves. Of this process of motion matter is the precipitate, it is motion as it were arrested, the limit of motion, the union of time and space. Hence matter and space and motion are interchangeable ; on the lever a greater distance acts in place of mass (p. 63 ad Jin.'), or a falling stone may be fatal in virtue of its rapidity " a man may be killed by space and time " (p. 64). (2) In Physics the theory of Special Individuality affords an excellent illustration of Hegel's method. Special indi- viduality is distinguished from the universal individuality of the elements and their process by its specific character ; it is distinguished from magnetism and chemism and electricity,