Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/517

 516 S. ALEXANDER I partial aspects of the truth, needing to be combined by philo- sophy as in a stereoscope, to give them solidity and reality ? After so much said in praise of Hegel, it is time to recur to a subject which was mentioned at the opening of the paper, and to indicate where Hegel has failed and what remains to do. Grant Hegel his initial abstract conception of nature, and his elaboration of it in detail, though it is full of diffi- culties, and often merely fantastic, yet is suggestive and luminous to a great degree. The difficulty lies in conceding the beginning. The central question which Natural Philo- sophy has to solve is the question, how does there come to be such a thing as nature, or in Hegel's own language, why did God determine to create the world ? This question Hegel converted into the only form in which it is subject for philosophy What is implied in the notion of nature, and what is its connexion with the divine idea ? AVhatevcr value be attached to Hegel's answer, he has done this great service, of indicating to what point the effort of philosophy must be directed. His own answer we have had already : nature is the Idea in its otherness, and therefore external to itself; and from this a step further is made to the complete indifference of nature and to its confusion of forms, its ina- bility to preserve its types. This solution of the ultimate problem is plainly insufficient : the transition is unclear from the Idea to nature. Perhaps he was led to make it by his theological studies, and the profound impression which the conception of the Trinity left upon him. And certain!; illustrated by reference to the religious consciousness it receives a remarkable accession of clearness ; even then it seems hardly more than the formulation of a fact, without a reason for it. And the illustration is not available for those who, sceptical as to the notion of the Trinity, wish to be shown the logical necessity of nature in its own right. ^Moreover, there is in Hegel's account of the relation of Idea and nature an ambiguity of language of which he sometimes seems to take advantage : the ambiguity of nature in the form of otherness, which may im-un simply nature as other than the Idea, or nature as the Idea itself displaying other- ness. The latter is certainly Hegel's real intention (cp. p. 23), but to the former is to be attributed something of the satisfaction we experience in reading Hegel, that though nature is transparent lo the Idea it is different from it. But it is in its failure to explain the variety of nature that the chief defect of Hegel's conception consists. From the self-externality of nature we can conclude its falling asunder