Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/511

 510 S. ALEXANDER : two things clear : (1) However abstract and difficult the process is, and however unacceptable particular con- clusions may be, yet Hegel's Philosophy of Nature is an attempt to understand the forms of nature as they really are apart from the ordinary prejudices with which we approach the study of them. It is so difficult just because it demands the effort of following the order of thinking instead of the order of experience. And (2) that its distinguishing feature and merit lies in Hegel's sense of concreteness and totality, his habit of regarding things as a whole, according to the place they occupy in the system of nature. Hence it is he separates many things which are usually put together. He will not regard the four elements as chemical compounds because their function is not chemical (p. 159) ; though he knows of the equivalence of electricity and magnetism and heat, he refuses to identify them (p. 260). He separates colour from light, and the sensible qualities of objects from the senses of animals. The whole of the system may be described in fact as an attempt to arrange natural facts according to their logical function in the economy of nature. Here indeed, as elsewhere, the dialectical process seems to be guided by a sense of logical propriety, an. instinctive presentiment of what must come next in the order. Experience is always suggesting its facts, and it is only because it is kept in the background that the dialectic seems to have prepared for us, after many anxieties of abstract thought, the surprise of a familiar face. It is a logical re-arrangement of experience, and logical because instead of regarding experience from many different points of view, or in abstraction, like the special sciences, Hegel treats it as a whole, in the concrete. Hegel's abstract thought is for ever battling against abstraction. It is this concreteness or totality of view, the philosophical counter- part of common sense, that determines Hegel's attitude both to previous philosophy and to the methods of science. (1) Hegel's relation to previous Philosophy q/. It is no part of the present article to trace the connexion of Hegel's philosophy of nature with Kant's and Schelling's. To Kant, especially in his conception of organic life (Cri/n/nr of J //</</- ment), Hegel's debt was immense. The amount of his in- debtedness to Schelling I am not able to measure. It is in his attitude to Kant's conception of matter that Hegel's totality of view is plainest. In the Metaphysical A/i'/nnit* of Xntti.ral Science Kant had given a ' construction' of matter, an account of the conditions of its possibility. He resolved matter into two fundamental forces, one of repulsion, the other of at-