Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/256

240 subordinate place of negation in the process. Hegel's logic does not rest on the violation of the law of contradiction, but rather on the necessity of finding for every contradiction a reconciliation in which it vanishes. (6) The finite categories are all contained as elements in the absolute, and the question arises in what relation they stand to each other as thus constituting its moments. It does not seem that this relation is the same in which they stood as finite categories in the process. For the truth which is at the bottom of the whole dialectic is the unreality of any finite category against its synthesis. The procession of the categories, with its advance through oppositions and reconciliations, does not present absolute truth, as Hegel supposed. For in the true process of thought, each category develops from the preceding by rendering explicit what was before implicit, and this is an ideal which from the very nature of dialectic can never be quite realized.

The causes of the present aversion to philosophy in Italy are (1) false conception of the object and worth of philosophy, and (2) certain prejudices due to the recent conditions of philosophy in Italy. To these must be added more serious and fundamental obstacles: (3) the dogmatical and sceptical spirit of the Italians, due in great part to their Catholic inheritance, which prevents them taking a free and untrammelled view for the sake of truth alone; and (4) the specialization of knowledge and science, which, though it may ultimately lead to a quest for unity, at present serves only to obscure that unity. Again (5) the present tendency of the Italian mind is historico-critical; and the interest in the history of philosophy, which after all is not very profound, is for the present at any rate unfavorable to original systematic philosophy. Lastly, (6) the endeavor to conciliate the practical and the scientific demands of the age in the reorganization of secondary education, has crowded out the studies which might have favored the development of philosophy.