Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/120

104 difficulties which beset a coöperative attempt at constructing a more tenable theory of right. It touches upon the effort of the society "to free the current ideal of what is right from all that is merely traditional." But the common obligations of the family and society are determined by tradition to so great an extent that if the traditional element is subtracted it becomes almost impossible to say what the spirit of the obligation was. This is made plain by a survey of the historic changes in the domestic relations which have been determined from age to age by the contemporary state of tradition. Scrutinizing our own ideal of the family, it is impossible to decide how much of it is due to the indestructible conditions of the well-being of life and how much of it is merely traditional. Of this difficulty no complete solution can be offered. Tradition can never be wholly eliminated, and whatever theory of right the society may construct, it can never be perfect and enduring.

Is the Absolute Idea to be regarded as growing up in time by the evolution of one category after another, or does it exist eternally, and is the succession of events something that has no part in any ultimate system of the universe? Primarily the succession of categories in Hegel's Logic is not temporal, but it is tempting to explain time by the dialectical evolution and indeed H. himself does so in his philosophy of history. Nevertheless this view is incompatible with H.'s system. If the time-process be taken as the development of the rationality of the universe from Pure Being to the Absolute Idea, we can only say that the real will be completely rational and the rational will be completely real. Moreover the time-process must be finite,. (1) Because an infinite time-process would be the mockery of a "false infinite"; (2) because the dialectical process has a beginning and an end, and any time process which embodies it must have the same. There can be no steps in it before Pure Being nor after the Absolute Idea. But if it is finite, what determined the Absolute Idea to develop itself at one time rather than another? There is no way out of this difficulty on the basis of this theory. For it regards the realization of the dialectic