Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/601

No. 5.] according to the principle which we are tracing out, a connection between ideas is itself a general idea, and that a general idea is a living feeling, we have taken one step toward the understanding of personality. Personality is some kind of coordination of ideas, and coordination implies a teleological harmony which is more than a mere purposive pursuit of a predeterminate end. A general idea, living and conscious now, it is already determinative of acts in the future to an extent to which it is not now conscious.

The conclusion reached in the first paper was that the dialectic cannot fully represent in any part of its movement the real and essential nature of pure thought, but obscures this under particulars which are not essential, and so may be regarded as in some degree subjective. The discrepancy arises from the fact that, whereas the true process — which follows the essence of the actual process in time, and which alone is preserved and summed up in the Absolute Idea — is a direct process from one term which exists only in the transition to another; the actual process, on the other hand, is one from contradictory to contradictory, each of which is conceived as possessing some stability and independence. Secondly, it is subjective, because it does not fully express its own meaning, the meaning of the process forwards. The dialectic advance has mixed up with it elements which do not belong to the true advance, but are due to our original ignorance about the latter, of which we only gradually get rid.

Nevertheless, this subjectivity of the dialectic does not lessen its significance or practical importance, for it is a method of arriving at truth. It is of importance that the end should be reached, that we should advance to the Absolute Idea; but the steps by which we reach this may contain mistakes. Again, the element of indirectness which is introduced by the movement from thesis to antithesis diminishes as the dialectic proceeds, and in the ideal type wholly dies away. Confirmation of this view is found by examining the all-including triad given by H. as Logic, Nature, and Spirit. Here we have all the characteristics of the Notion; the second term is to be regarded, not as in opposition to, but as the completion of the first. The transition can be stated in the form which is used of the lower categories, i.e. we may take as thesis pure thought, and for antithesis the element of Immediacy in experience. We see that when the whole ground of the dialectic process is covered in a single triad, either method may be used, which suggests that the two methods are approximate to the two ends of the series which are here