Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/524

 HEGEL'S CONCEPTION OF NATURE. 323 overhastiness of thought which is the first symptom of mysticism. If he had been writing upon them, he would not have been content to enumerate them as I have done, but would have shown their origin in some logical secret of the mind, which he would have expressed in a peculiar lan- guage that might have required the study of all three volumes of the Logic to understand. But in lecture he might have added, through much nervous coughing, a commentary something like this : ' We recognise what is of value in this way of thinking, that the spirit is at one with nature in spite of its apparent antagonism. The spirit must retain in its outside-of-itselfness its at-home-with-itself- ness (muss in seinem Aussersichseyn sein Beisichseyn erhalten). But such theories wipe out (verwischeii) all distinctions by identifying the lower with the higher. They thus commit the opposite mistake to those who, treating mind like a- machine, interpret the higher by the lower. Hence the greater attractiveness of the former theory to the metaphysi- cal instinct, since its measure is the spirit. It has the attractive force of innocence, for it does not perceive that it evades the very problem to be solved. The office of the philosophy of nature is to explain how it is that nature, which is penetrated by the spirit, can in the first place be different from spirit and next is by insensible stages over- come so as to be spirit. The spirit must come forth out of that which is not spirit. It is the mysticism of the reflective understanding to cut the knot by identifying spirit straight away with that which it is not.' And then with the harsh- ness with which he often treated views that he did not like, he might have added : ' The understanding, unaware of the difference of the Idea, and finding nature rebellious against the spirit (ividerspenstig gegen den Cfeisf), must needs people it with ghosts '.