CHAPTER VII.

P. 156, § 85. The Absolute. The term, in something like its modern usage, is at least as old as Nicolaus Cusanus. God, according to him, is the absoluta omnium quidditas (Apol.406), the esse absolutum, or ipsum esse in existentibus (De ludo Globi, ii. 161 a), the unum absolutum, the vis absoluta, or possibilitas absoluta, or valor absolutus: absoluta vita, absoluta ratio: absoluta essendi forma. On this term and its companion infinities he rings perpetual changes. But its distinct employment to denote the 'metaphysical God' is much more modern. In Kant, e.g. the 'Unconditioned' (Das Unbedingte) is the metaphysical, corresponding to the religious, conception of deity; and the same is the case with Fichte, who however often makes use of the adjective 'absolute.' It is with Schelling that the term is naturalised in philosophy: it already appears in his works of 1793 and 1795: and from him apparently it finds its way into Fichte's Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre of 1801 (Werke, ii. 13) 'The absolute is neither knowing nor being; nor is it identity, nor is it indifference of the two; but it is throughout merely and solely the absolute.'

The term comes into English philosophical language through Coleridge and later borrowers from the German. See Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysic, Prop. xx, and Mill's Examination of Hamilton, chap. iv.

P. 158, § 86. Cf. Schelling, iii. 372: I = I expresses the identity between the 'I,' in so far as it is the producing, and the 'I' as the produced; the original synthetical and yet identical proposition: the cogito=sum of Schelling.

P. 159. Definition of God as Ens realissimum, e.g. Meier's Baumgarten's Metaphysic, § 605.

Jacobi, Werke, iv. 6, thus describes Spinoza's God.

As to the beginning cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 14 (speaking of 'absolute knowing'): 'It is not a knowing of something, nor is it a knowing of nothing (so that it would be a knowing of somewhat, but this somewhat be nothing): it is not even a knowing of itself, for it is no knowledge at all of;--nor is it a knowing (quantitatively and in relation), but it is (the) knowing (absolutely qualitatively). It is no act, no event, or that somewhat is in knowing; but it is just the knowing, in which alone all acts and all events, which are there set down, can be set down.'

History of Philosophy; cf. Hegel, Werke, i. 165. 'If the Absolute, like its phenomenon Reason, be (as it is) eternally one and the same, then each reason, which has turned itself upon and cognised itself, has produced a true philosophy and solved the problem which, like its solution, is at all times the same. The reason, which cognises itself, has in philosophy to do only with itself: hence in itself too lies its whole work and its activity; and as regards the inward essence of philosophy there are neither predecessors nor successors.

'Just as little, as of constant improvements, can there be talk of "peculiar views" of philosophy.... The true peculiarity of a philosophy is the interesting individuality, in which reason has organised itself a form from the materials of a particular age; in it the particular speculative reason finds spirit of its spirit, flesh of its flesh; it beholds itself in it as one and the same, as another living being. Each philosophy is perfect in itself, and possesses totality, like a work of genuine art. As little as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, could have seemed to them mere preliminary exercises for themselves--but as cognate spiritual powers;--so little can reason in its own earlier formations perceive only useful preparatory exercises.' Cf. Schelling, iv. 401.

P. 160, § 86. Parmenides (ap. Simplic. Phys.): of the two ways of investigation the first is that it is, and that not-to-be is not.

ἡ μὲν ὅπως ἓστι τε καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἓστι μὴ εἶναι

P. 161, § 87. The Buddhists. Cf. Hegel, Werke, xi. 387. Modern histories of Buddhism insist upon the purely ethico-religious character of the teaching. Writers like von Hartmann (Religionsphilosophie, p. 320) on the contrary hold that Buddhism carried out the esoteric theory of Brahmanism to the consequence that the abstract one is nothing. According to Vassilief, Le Bouddhisme, p. 318 seqq., one of the Buddhist metaphysical schools, the Madhyamikas, founded by Nâgârdjuna 400 years after Buddha, taught that All is Void.--Such metaphysics were probably reactions of the underlying Brahmanist idea.

But generally Buddhism (as was not unnatural 60 years ago) is hardly taken here in its characteristic historical features.

P. 167, § 88. Aristotle, Phys, i. 8 (191 a. 26): 'Those philosophers who first sought the truth and the real substance of things got on a false track, like inexperienced travellers who fail to discover the way, and declared that nothing can either come into being or disappear, because it is necessary that what comes into being should come into being either from what is or from what is not, and that it is from both of these impossible: for what is does not become (it already is), and nothing would become from what is not.'

(5) is an addition of ed. 3 (1830); cf. Werke, xvii. 181.

P. 168, § 88. The view of Heraclitus here taken is founded on the interpretation given by Plato (in the Theaetetus,152; Cratylus, 401) and by Aristotle, of a fundamental doctrine of the Ephesian--which however is expressed in the fragments by the name of the everliving fire. The other phrase (Ar. Met. i. 4) is used by Aristotle to describe the position, not of Heraclitus, but of Leucippus and Democritus. Cf. Plutarch, adv. Colotem, 4. 2 Δημόκριτος διορίζεται μὴ μᾱλλον τὸ δὲν ἥ τὸ μηδν εἶναι; cf. Simplic. in Ar. Phys. fol. 7.

P. 169, § 89. Daseyn: Determinate being. Cf. Schelling, i. 209. 'Being (Seyn) expresses the absolute, Determinate being (Daseyn) a conditional, 'positing': Actuality, one conditioned in a definite sort by a definite condition. The single phenomenon in the whole system of the world has actuality; the world of phenomena in general has Daseyn; but the absolutely-posited, the Ego, is. I am is all the Ego can say of itself.'

P. 171, § 91. Being-by-self: An:sich:seyn.

Spinoza, Epist. 50, figura non aliud quam determinatio et determinatio negatio est.

P. 172, § 92. Grenze (limit or boundary), and Schranke (barrier or check) are distinguished in Werke, iii. 128-139 (see Stirling's Secret of Hegel, i. 377 seqq.). Cf. Kant's remark, Krit. d. r. Vernunft, p. 795, that Hume only erschränkt our intellect, ohne ihn zu begrenzen.

P. 173, § 92. Plato, Timaeus, c. 35 (formation of the world-soul): 'From the individual and ever-identical essence (ὀυσία) and the divisible which is corporeal, he compounded a third intermediate species of essence.... And taking these, being three, he compounded them all into one form (ἰδέα), adjusting perforce the unmixable nature of the other and the same, and mingling them all with the essence, and making of three one again, he again distributed this total into as many portions as were fitting, but each of them mingled out of the same and the other and the essence.'

P. 175, § 94. Philosophy. Cf. Schelling, Werke, ii. 377. 'A various experience has taught me that for most men the greatest obstacle to the understanding and vital apprehension of philosophy is their invincible opinion that its object is to be sought at an infinite distance. The consequence is, that while they should fix their eye on what is present (das Gegenwärtige), every effort of their mind is called out to get hold of an object which is not in question through the whole inquiry.' ... 'The aim of the sublimest science can only be to show the actuality,--in the strictest sense the actuality, the presence, the vital existence (Daseyn)--of a God in the whole of things and in each one.... Here we deal no longer with an extra-natural or supernatural thing, but with the immediately near, the alone-actual to which we ourselves also belong, and in which we are.'

P. 177, § 95. Plato's Philebus, ch. xii-xxiii (pp. 23-38): cf. Werke, xiv. 214 seqq.: 'The absolute is therefore what in one unity is finite and infinite.'

P. 178. Idealism of Philosophy: cf. Schelling, ii. 67. 'Every philosophy therefore is and remains Idealism; and it is only under itself that it embraces realism and idealism; only that the former Idealism should not be confused with the latter, which is of a merely relative kind.'

Hegel, Werke, iii. 163. 'The proposition that the finite is "ideal" constitutes Idealism. In nothing else consists the Idealism of philosophy than in recognising that the finite has no genuine being.... The contrast of idealistic and realistic philosophy is therefore of no importance. A philosophy that attributed to finite existences as such a genuine ultimate absolute being would not deserve the name philosophy.... By "ideal" is meant existing as a representation in consciousness: whatever is in a mental concept, idea or imagination is "ideal": "ideal" is just another word for "in imagination,"--something not merely distinct from the real, but essentially not real. The mind indeed is the great idealist: in the sensation, representation, thought of the mind the fact has not what is called real existence; in the simplicity of the Ego such external being is only suppressed, existing for me, and "ideally" in me. This subjective idealism refers only to the representational form, by which an import is mine.'

P. 180, § 96. The distinction of nature and mind as real and ideal is especially Schelling's: See e.g. his Einleitung, &c. iii. 272. 'If it is the problem of Transcendental Philosophy to subordinate the real to the ideal, it is on the contrary the problem of the philosophy of nature to explain the ideal from the real.'

P. 183, § 98. Newton: see Scholium at the end of the Principia, and cf. Optics, iii. qu. 28.

Modern Atomism, besides the conception of particles or molecules, has that of mathematical centres of force.

Kant, Werke, v. 379 (ed. Rosenk.). 'The general principle of the dynamic of material nature is that all reality in the objects of the external senses must be regarded as moving force: whereby accordingly so-called solid or absolute impenetrability is banished from natural science as a meaningless concept, and repellent force put in its stead; whereas true and immediate attraction is defended against all the subtleties of a self-misconceiving metaphysic and declared to be a fundamental force necessary for the very possibility of the concept of matter.'

P. 184, § 98. Abraham Gottheit Kästner (1719-1800), professor forty-four years at Göttingen, enjoyed in the latter half of the eighteenth century a considerable repute, both in literature and in mathematical science. Some of, his epigrams are still quoted.

P. 190, § 102. The two 'moments' of number Unity, and Sum (Anzahl), may be compared with the Greek distinction between one and ἀριθμός (cf. Arist. Phys. iv. 12 ἐλάχίστος ἀριθμός ἡ δυάς). According to Rosenkranz (Leben Hegels) the classification of arithmetical operations often engaged Hegel's research. Note the relation in Greek between λογικόν and λογιστικόν. Cf. Kant's view of the 'synthesis' in arithmetic.

P. 193, § 103. Intensive magnitude. Cf. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 207, on Anticipation of Perception (Wahrnehmung), and p. 414, in application to the question of the soul's persistence.

P. 195, § 104. Not Aristotle, but rather Simplicius on the Physics of Aristotle, fol. 306: giving Zeno's argument against the alleged composition of the line from a series of points. What you can say of one supposed small real unit, you can say of a smaller, and so on ad infinitum. (Cf. Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, p. 329.)

P. 196, § 104. The distinction between imagination and intellect made by Spinoza in Ep. xii. (olim xxix.) in Opp. ed. Land vol. ii. 40 seqq. is analogous to that already noted (p. 402) between ratio and intellegentia, and is connected, as by Boëthius, with the distinction which Plato, Timaeus, 37, draws between eternity (αἰών) and time.

The infinite (Eth. i. prop. 8. Schol. I) is the 'absolute affirmation of a certain nature's existence,' as opposed to finitude which is really ex parte negatio. 'The problem has always been held extremely difficult, if not inextricable, because people did not distinguish between what is concluded to be infinite by its own nature and the force of its definition, and what has no ends, not in virtue of its essence, but in virtue of its cause. It was difficult also because they did not distinguish between what is called infinite because it has no ends, and that whose parts (though we may have a maximum and minimum of it) we cannot equate or explicate by any number. Lastly because they lid not distinguish between what we can only understand (intelligere,) but not imagine, and what we can also imagine.'

To illustrate his meaning, Spinoza calls attention to the distinction of substance from mode, of eternity from duration. We can 'explicate' the existence only of modes by duration: that of substance, 'by eternity, i.e. by an infinite fruition of existence or being' (per aeternitatem, hoc est, infinitam existendi, sive, invita latinitate, essendi fruitionem.) The attempt therefore to show that extended substance is composed of parts is an illusion,--which arises because we look at quantity 'abstractly or superficially, as we have it in imagination by means of the senses.' So looking at it, as we are liable to do, a quantity will be found divisible, finite, composed of parts and manifold. But if we look at it as it really is,--as a Substance --as it is in the intellect alone--(which is a work of difficulty), it will be found infinite, indivisible, and unique. 'It is only therefore when we abstract duration and quantity from substance, that we use time to determine duration and measure to determine quantity, so as to be able to imagine them. Eternity and substance, on the other hand, are no objects of imagination but only of intellect; and to try to explicate them by such notions as measure, time, and number--which are only modes of thinking or rather of imagining--is no better than to fall into imaginative raving.' 'Nor will even the modes of Substance ever be rightly understood, should they be confounded with this sort of entia rationis' (i.e. modi cogitandi subserving the easier retention, explication and imagination of things understood)' or aids to imagination. For when we do so, we separate them from substance, and from the mode in which they flow from eternity, without which they cannot be properly understood.' (Cf. Hegel's Werke, i. 63.)

The verses from Albr. von Haller come from his poem on Eternity (1736). Hegel seems to quote from an edition before 1776, when the fourth line was added in the stanza as it thus finally stood:--

Ich häufe ungeheure Zahlen, Gebürge Millionen auf, Ich welze Zeit auf Zeit und Welt auf Welten hin, Und wenn ich auf der March des endlichen nun bin, Und von der fürchterlichen Höhe Mit Schwindeln wieder nach dir sehe, Ist alle Macht der Zahl, vermehrt mit tausend Malen, Noch nicht ein Theil von dir. Ich tilge sie, und du liegst ganz vor mir.

Kant, Kritik d. r. Vernunft, p. 641. 'Even Eternity, however eerily sublime may be its description by Haller,' &c.

P. 197, § 104. Pythagoras in order of time probably comes between Anaximenes (of Ionia) and Xenophanes (of Elea). But the mathematical and metaphysical doctrines attributed to the Pythagorean are known to us only in the form in which they are represented in Plato and Aristotle, i.e. in a later stage of development. The Platonists (cf. Arist. Met. i. 6; xi. 1. 12; xii. 1. 7; cf. Plat. Rep. p. 510) treated mathematical fact as mid-way between 'sensibles' and 'ideas'; and Aristotle himself places mathematics as a science between physical and metaphysical (theological) philosophy.

The tradition (referred to p. 198) about Pythagoras is given by Iamblichus, Vita Pyth. §115 seqq.: it forms part of the later Neo-Pythagorean legend, which entered literature in the first centuries of the Christian era.

P. 201, § 107. Hebrew hymns: e.g. Psalms lxxiv. and civ.; Proverbs viii. and Job xxxviii. Vetus verbum est, says Leibniz (ed. Erdmann, p. 162), Deum omnia pondere, mensura, numero, fecisse.

P. 202, § 108. The antinomy of measure. These logical puzzles are the so-called fallacy of Sorites (a different thing from the chain-syllogism of the logic-books); cf. Cic. Acad. ii. 28, 29; De Divin. ii. 4--and the φαλακρός cf. Horace, Epist. ii. 1-45.