Remark, also, the evasive nature of his reply. Common-sense suggests to him a plain direct question, not without interest. This question, plain as it is, goes to the bottom of his system. He evades it by answering, that Philosophy has nothing to do with the interests of men. Very true; his system has nothing to do with them. But the question put was not, "Has Philosophy to concern itself with the interests of mankind?" The question put was, “If, as you say, Being and Non-Being are the same, is it the same thing to have a house and not to have it?" Hegel might have given a better answer even upon his own principles.

To return, however. The first proposition has given us the two contraries; there must be an identity-a relation-to give them positive reality. As pure Being, and as pure Non-Being, they have no reality; they are mere potentialities. Unite them, and you have the Becoming (Werden), and that is reality. Analyze this idea of Becoming, and you will find that it contains precisely these two elements,-a Non-Being from which it is evolving, and a Being which is evolved.

Now these two elements, which reciprocally contradict each. other, which incessantly tend to absorb each other, are only maintained in their reality by means of the relation in which they are to each other; that is, the point of the magnet which keeps the poles asunder, and by keeping them asunder prevents their annihilating each other. The Becoming is the first concrete Thought we can have, the first conception; Being and Non-Being are pure abstractions.

A question naturally suggests itself as to how Being and NonBeing pass from Abstractions into Realities. The only answer Hegel gives us is, that they become Realities: but this is answering us with the very question itself. We want to know how they become. In themselves, as pure Abstractions, they have no reality; and although two negatives make an affirmative in language, it is not so evident how they can accomplish this in fact. The question is of course insoluble; and those Hegelians whom we questioned on the point, unanimously declared it to be one of

those truths (very numerous in their system) which can be comprehended, but not proved.

Let us grant the Becoming. It is the identity of Being and Non-Being; and as such it is Being as determined, conditioned. All determination (Bestimmung) is Negation.* Therefore, in order that Being should become, it must suffer first a negation ; the Ansichseyn must also be Anderseyn, and the relation of the two is total reality, the Anundfürsichseyn.

Quality is the first negation: it is the reality of a thing. That which constitutes Quality is the negation which is the condition of its Being. Blue, for example, is blue only because it is the negation of red, green, purple, etc.; a meadow is a meadow only because it is not a vineyard, a park, a ploughed field, etc.

Being, having suffered a Negation, is determined as Quality,— it is Something, and no longer an Abstraction. But this something is limited by its very condition; and this limit, this negation, is external to it: hence Something implies Some-other-thing. There is a This and a That. Now the Something and the Some-other-thing, the This and the That, are the same thing. This is a tree; That is a house. If I go to the house, it will then be the This, and the tree will be That. Let the tree be the Something, and the house the Some-other-thing, and the same change of terms may take place. This proves that the two are identical. The something carries its opposite (other-thing) within itself; it is constantly becoming the other-thing. Clearly showing that the only positive reality is the Relation which always subsists throughout the changes of the terms.

This, it must be owned, looks like the insanity of Logic. It is not, however, unexampled in Hegel's works. In his Phänomenologie des Geistes, he tells us that perception gives us the ideas of Now, Here, This, etc. And what is the Now? At noon I say, "Now it is day." Twelve hours afterwards I say, "Now it is night." My first affirmation is therefore false as to the second,

* This, as many other ideas, is borrowed from Spinoza, in whose system it has real significance. In Hegel's it is a mere play upon words.

my second false as to the first: which proves that the Now is a general idea; and as such a real existence, independent of all particular Nows.

Our readers are by this time probably quite weary of this frivolous Logic; we shall spare them any further details. If they wish further to learn about Quantities, Identities, Diversities, etc., they must consult the original.

Those who are utter strangers to German speculation will wonder, perhaps, how it is possible for such verbal quibbles to be accepted as Philosophy. But, in the first place, Philosophy itself, in all its highest speculations, is but a more or less ingenious playing upon words. From Thales to Hegel, verbal distinctions have always formed the ground of Philosophy, and must ever do so as long as we are unable to penetrate the essence of things. In the second place, Hegel's Logic is a work requiring prodigious effort of thought to understand: so difficult and ambiguous is the language, and so obscure the meaning. Now, when a man has once made this effort, and succeeded, he is very apt to overvalue the result of all that labor, and to believe what he has found, to be a genuine truth. Thirdly, Hegel is very consistent; consistent in audacity, in absurdity. If the student yields assent to the premises, he is sure to be dragged irresistibly to the conclusions. Fourthly, the reader must not suppose that the absurdities of Hegel's system are so apparent in his works as in our exposition. We have exerted ourselves to the utmost to preserve the real significance of his speculations; but we have also endeavored to bring them into the clear light of day. Any thing except a verbal translation would reveal some aspects of the absurdity, by the very fact of bringing it out of the obscurity with which the German terminology veils it. The mountain looming through a fog turns out to be a miserable hut as soon as the fog is scattered; and so the boasted system of Absolute Idealism turns out to be only a play upon words, as soon as it is dragged from out the misty terminology in which it is enshrouded.

§ V. APPLICATION OF THE METHOD TO NATURE AND HISTORY, RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.

Having exhibited the various evolutions of the Idee as pure Thought, Hegel undertakes to exhibit its objective evolutions in the domain of Nature.

In the former attempt he had only to deal with abstractions; and it was no such difficult matter to exhibit the "genesis of ideas"-the dependence of one formula upon another. Verbal distinctions were sufficient there. But verbal distinctions, audacious logic, and obscure terminology avail nothing in attacking the problems presented to us by Nature; and in endeavoring to give scientific solutions, Nature is not to be coerced. Aware of the difficulties-seeing instinctively that the varieties of Nature could not be reduced to the same simplicity as the varieties of the Idee-as Thought had been reduced in his Logic-Hegel asserted that the determinations of the Idee in its exteriority could not follow the same march as the determinations of the Idee as Thought. Instead of generating each other reciprocally, as in the Logic, these determinations in Nature have no other connection than that of coexistence; sometimes indeed they appear isolated.

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When we look abroad upon Nature, we observe an endless variety of transformations. At first these seem without order; on looking deeper, we find that there is a regular series of development from the lowest to the highest. These transformations are the struggles of the Idee to manifest itself objectively. Nature is a dumb Intelligence striving to articulate. At first she mumbles; with succeeding efforts she articulates; at last she speaks.

Every modification which the Idee undergoes in the sphere of pure Thought it endeavors to express in the sphere of Nature. And thus an object is elevated in the scale of creation in so far as it resumes within itself a greater number of qualities: inorganic matter is succeeded by organic, and amongst organized

beings there is a graduated scale from the plant up to man. In man the Idee assumes its highest grade. In Reason it becomes conscious of itself, and thereby attains real and positive existence —the highest point of development. Nature is divine in principle (an sich), but it is a mistake to suppose it divine as it exists. By the Pantheists Nature is made one with God, and God one with Nature. In truth, Nature is but the exteriority (Aeusserlichkeit) of God: it is the passage of the Idee through imperfection (Abfall der Idee). Observe moreover that Nature is not only external in relation to the Idee, and to the subjective existence of the Idee, namely Intelligence; but exteriority constitutes the condition in virtue of which Nature is Nature (sondern die Aeusserlichkeit macht die Bestimmung aus, in welcher sie als Natur ist).

The Philosophy of Nature is divided into three sectionsMechanics, Physics, and Physiology. Into the details, we are happy to say, our plan forbids us to enter; or we should have many striking illustrations of the futility of that Method which pretends to construct the scheme of the world à priori. Experimental philosophers-Newton especially-are treated with consistent contempt. Hegel is not a timid speculator; he recoils from no consequence; he bows down to no name; he is impressed by no fact, however great. That Newton's speculations should be no better than drivel, and his "discoveries" no better than illusions, were natural consequences of Hegel's fundamental theories. That all Europe had been steadily persevering in applying Newton's principles, and extending his discoveries,―that Science was making gigantic strides, hourly improving man's mastery over Nature, hourly improving the condition of mankind, this fact, however great it might appear to others, when coupled with the other fact, that upon the ontological Method no discoveries had yet been made, and none seemed likely to be made-appeared to Hegel as unworthy of a philosopher's notice. The interests of mankind were vulgar considerations, for which