Preface

PROLEGOMENA

TO THE STUDY OF

HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY

AND

_ESPECIALLY OF HIS LOGIC_

BY

WILLIAM WALLACE, M.A., LL.D.

FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE

AND WHYTE'S PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1894

IN REMEMBRANCE OF

B. JOWETT

LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK

AND

MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE

OXFORD

PREFACE

The present volume of Prolegomena completes the second edition of my LOGIC OF HEGEL which originally appeared in 1874. The translation, which was issued as a separate volume in the autumn of 1892, had been subjected to revision throughout: such faults as I could detect had been amended, and many changes made in the form of expression with the hope of rendering the interpretation clearer and more adequate. But, with a subject so abstruse and complicated as Hegel's Logic, and a style so abrupt and condensed as that adopted in his _Encyclopaedia_, a satisfactory translation can hardly fall within the range of possibilities. Only the enthusiasm of youth could have thrown itself upon such an enterprise; and later years have but to do what they may to fulfil the obligations of a task whose difficulties have come to seem nearly insuperable. The translation volume was introduced by a sketch of the growth of the _Encyclopaedia_ through the three editions published in its author's lifetime: and an appendix of notes supplied some literary and historical elucidations of the text, with quotations bearing on the philosophical development between Kant and Hegel.

The Prolegomena, which have grown to more than twice their original extent, are two-thirds of them new matter. The lapse of twenty years could not but involve a change in the writer's attitude, at least in details, towards both facts and problems. The general purpose of the work, however, still remains the same, to supply an introduction to the study of Hegel, especially his _Logic,_ and to philosophy in general. But, in the work of altering and inserting, I can hardly imagine that I have succeeded in adjusting the additions to the older work with that artful juncture which would simulate the continuity of organic growth. To perform that feat would require a master who surveyed from an imperial outlook the whole system of Hegelianism in its history and meaning; and I at least do not profess such a mastery. Probably therefore a critical review will discern inequalities in the ground, and even discrepancies in the statement, of the several chapters. To remove these strains of inconsistency would in any case have been a work of time and trouble: and, after all, mere differences in depth or breadth of view may have their uses. The writer cannot always compel the reader to understand him, as he himself has not always the same faculty to penetrate and comprehend the problems he deals with. In these arduous paths of research it may well happen that the clearest and truest perceptions are not always those which communicate themselves with fullest persuasion and gift of insight. Schopenhauer has somewhere compared the structure of his philosophical work to the hundred-gated Thebes: so many, he says, are the points of access it offers for the pilgrims after truth to reach its central dogma. So--if one may parallel little things with his adventurous quest--even the less speculative chapters, and the less consecutive discourse, of these Prolegomena may prove helpful to some individual mood or phase of mind. If--as I suspect--the Second Book should elicit the complaint that the reader has been kept wandering too long and too deviously in the _Porches of Philosophy_, I will hope that sometimes in the course of these rovings he may come across a wicket-gate where he can enter, and--which is the main thing--gather truth fresh and fruitful for himself.

Fourteen chapters, viz. II, XXIV, and the group from VII to XVIII inclusive, are in this edition almost entirely new. Three chapters of the first edition, numbered XIX, XXII, XXIII, have been dropped. For the rest, Chaps. III-VI in the present correspond to Chaps. II-V in the first edition: Chap. XIX to parts of VII, VIII: Chaps. XX-XXIII to Chaps. IX-XII: Chaps. XXV-XXX to Chaps. XIII-XVIII: and Chaps. XXXI, XXXII to Chaps. XX, XXI. But some of those nominally retained have been largely rewritten.

The new chapters present, amongst other things, a synopsis of the progress of thought in Germany during the half-century which is bisected by the year 1800, with some indication of the general conditions of the intellectual world, and with some reference to the interconnexion of speculation and actuality. Jacobi and Herder, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling have been especially brought under succinct review. In the first edition I did Kant less than justice. I have now, so far as my limits allowed, tried to rectify the impression; and even more perhaps, by a clear palinode, to tender my apology for the meagre and somewhat inappreciative notice I gave to the great names of Fichte and Schelling. For like reasons, and from a growing perception how much post-Kantian thought owed to the pre-Kantian thinkers, Spinoza and Leibniz have been partly brought within my range. If, furthermore, I may seem to have transgressed the due amount of allusions and comparisons drawn from Plato and Aristotle, Bacon and Mill, the excuse must be sought in that fixture of philosophical horizon which can hardly but creep on after a quarter of a century spent in teaching philosophy under the customs and ordinances of the Oxford School of Classical Philology.

It would be to mistake the scope of this survey to seek in it a history of the philosophers of the period I have named. They have been presented, not in and for themselves, but as _momenta_ or constituent! factors in producing Hegel's conception of the aim and method of philosophy. To do this it was necessary to lay stress on their inner purport and implications: to treat the individual thinker in subordination to the general movement of ideas: to give, as far as was possible, a constructive conception of them rather than an analysis and chronicle. Yet as the picture had to be done, so to say, with a few vigorous touches, and made characteristic rather than descriptive, it cannot have that fairness and completeness which only patient study of every feature and untiring experiment in reconstruction can enable even the artist to produce. I may have seemed to confine the environment too exclusively to continental thinkers: but this is not, I think, due to any anti-patriotic bias. English (by which term, I may explain to my countrymen, I mean English-writing) thought, if it has its own intrinsic value, has after all been only an occasional influence, of suggestion and modification, in Germany. It is not therefore an integral portion of my theme. Even in Kant's case, too much may be made of the stimulus he received from Hume.

Even twenty years ago, my translation could hardly be described literally as a voice crying in the wilderness. But since that time there has been a considerable out-put of history, translation, and criticism referring to the great age of German philosophy, and a comparatively numerous group of writers, more or less familiar with the aims and principles of that period, have treated various parts of philosophy with notable independence and originality. To these writers it has sometimes been found convenient to give the title of Neo-Kantians, or Neo-Hegelians. The prefix suggests that they do not in all points reproduce the ideal or the caricature which vulgar tradition fancied, and perhaps still fancies, to be implied in German 'transcendentalism.' And that for the good reason that the springs of the movement lie in the natural and national revulsion of English habits of mind. Slowly, but at length, the storms of the great European revolution found their way to our intellectual world, and shook church and state, society and literature. The homeless spirit of the age had to reconsider the task of rebuilding its house of life. It may have been that some of the seekers, in the fervour of a first impression, spoke unadvisedly, as if salvation could and would come to English philosophy only by Kant and Hegel. Yet, there was a real foundation for the belief that the insularity--however necessary in its season, and however admirable in some of its results--which had secluded and narrowed the British mind since the middle of the eighteenth century, needed something deeper and stronger than French 'ideology' to bring it abreast of the requirements of the age. Whatever may be the drawbacks of transcendentalism, they are virtues when set beside the vulgar ideals of enlightenment by superficialisation. Mill has well pointed out how the spirit of Coleridge was for the higher intellectual life a needful complement to the spirit of Bentham. Yet the spirit of Coleridge had but caught some of the side-lights and romantic illuminations: it had not dared to face the central sun either in literature or philosophy. The scholar who has given us excellent versions of Fichte's lighter works, those who have translated and expounded Kant, and the great author who opened German literature to the British public, have brought us nearer the higher teaching of Germany. In Germany itself it has always been the possession only of the few. Even at the height of the classical period there were litterateurs who vended thousands of their books for Goethe's hundreds, and the great philosophers had ten opponents to one follower even amongst the teachers of their day. Yet Goethe and not Kotzebue gave the permanent law to literature; Hegel, and not Krug or Fries, has influenced philosophy. To have had the resolution to learn in this school is the merit of 'Neo-Hegelianism.' It has probably not found Kant free from puzzles and contradictions, or Hegel always intelligible. But the example of the Germans has served to widen and deepen our ideas of philosophy: to make us think more highly of its function, and to realise that it is essentially science, and the science of supreme reality. And it has at least familiarised many with the heresy that dilettantism and occasional fits of speculativeness are worth as little in philosophy as elsewhere. To have striven for dignity in its scope, and scientific security in its method, is something. If the Neo-Hegelian has not given philosophy a settled language, it may be urged that a philosophical language cannot be created by the easy device of inventing a few Hellenistic-seeming vocables.

I could have wished to make these volumes a worthier contribution to the work whereby these and other writers have recently enriched our island philosophy. Not least because of the honoured name I have ventured to write on the dedication-page. If, as Epicurus said, we should above all be grateful to the past, the first meed is from the scholar due to the teachers of earlier years, and not least those who have now entered into their rest. I do not forget what I, and others, owed to T. H. Green, my predecessor in the Chair of Moral Philosophy; that example of high-souled devotion to truth, and of earnest and intrepid thinking on the deep things of eternity. But at this season the memory of my Oxford tutor and friend is naturally most prominent. The late Master of Balliol College was more than a mere scholar or a mere philosopher. He seemed so idealist and yet so practical: so realist and yet so full of high ideals: so delicately kind and yet so severely reasonable. You felt he saw life more steadily and saw it more whole than others: as one reality in which religion and philosophy, art and business, the sciences and theology, were severally but elements and aspects. To the amateurs of novelty, to the slaves of specialisation, to the devotees of any narrow way, such largeness might, with the impatience natural to limited minds, have seemed indifference. So must appear those who on higher planes hear all the parts in the harmony of humanity, and with the justice of a wise love maintain an intellectual _Sôprosyné_. On his pupils this secret power of an other-world serenity laid an irresistible spell, and bore in upon them the conviction that beyond scholarship and logic there was the fuller truth of life and the all-embracing duty of doing their best to fulfil the amplest requirements of their place.

In earlier days Jowett had been keenly interested in German philosophy, and had made a version (most of which was still extant in 1868) of the Logic I have translated. But Greek literature, and above all Plato, drew him to more congenial fields. It was on his suggestion,--or shall I say injunction--at that date, that the work I had casually begun was some years later prosecuted to completion. It was his words, again, two years ago, that bade me spare no labour in the work of revision.

OXFORD,

_December_, 1893.

FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The 'Logic of Hegel' is a name which may be given to two separate books. One of these is the 'Science of Logic' (Wissenschaft der Logik), first published in three volumes (1812-1816), while its author was schoolmaster at Nüremberg. A second edition was on its way, when Hegel was suddenly cut off, after revising the first volume only. In the 'Secret of Hegel,' the earlier part of this Logic has been translated by Dr. Hutchison Stirling, with whose name German philosophy is chiefly associated in this country.

The other Logic, of which the present work is a translation, forms the First Part in the 'Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.' The first edition of the Encyclopaedia appeared at Heidelberg in 1817; the second in 1827; and the third in 1830. It is well to bear in mind that these dates take us back forty or fifty years, to a time when modern science and Inductive Logic had yet to win their laurels, and when the world was in many ways different from what it is now. The earliest edition of the Encyclopaedia contained the pith of the system. The subsequent editions brought some new materials, mainly intended to smooth over and explain the transitions between the various sections, and to answer the objections of critics. The work contained a synopsis of philosophy in the form of paragraphs, and was to be supplemented by the _viva voce_ remarks of the lecturer.

The present volume is translated from the edition of 1843, forming the Sixth Volume in Hegel's Collected Works. It consists of two nearly equal portions. One halt here printed in more open type, contains Hegel's Encyclopaedia, with all the author's own additions. The first paragraph under each number marks the earliest and simplest statement of the first edition. The other half, here printed in closer type, is made up of the notes taken in lecture by the editor (Henning) and by Professors Hotho and Michelet. These notes for the most part connect the several sections, rather than explain their statements. Their genuineness is vouched for by their being almost verbally the same with other parts of Hegel's own writings.

The translation has tried to keep as closely as possible to the meaning, without always adhering very rigorously to the words of the original. It is, however, much more literal in the later and systematic part, than in the earlier chapters.

The Prolegomena which precede the translation have not been given in the hope or with the intention of expounding the Hegelian system. They merely seek to remove certain obstacles, and to render Hegel less tantalizingly hard to those who approach him for the first time. How far they will accomplish this, remains to be seen.

OXFORD, _September,_ 1873.

CONTENTS

BOOK I.

OUTLOOKS AND APPROACHES TO HEGEL.

CHAPTER I.

WHY HEGEL IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND 3

CHAPTER II.

WHY TRANSLATE HEGEL? 14

CHAPTER III.

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY AND HEGEL 21

CHAPTER IV.

HEGEL AND THEOLOGY 30

CHAPTER V.

PSEUDO-IDEALISM: JACOBI 37

CHAPTER VI.

THE SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY 57

CHAPTER VII.

ANTICIPATORY SKETCH OF THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 72

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SCEPTICAL DOUBT: HUME 88

CHAPTER IX.

THE ATTEMPT AT A CRITICAL SOLUTION: KANT 98

CHAPTER X.

THE CRITICAL SOLUTION (_continued_): KANT 112

CHAPTER XI.

SYNTHESIS AND RECONSTRUCTION: FICHTE 124

CHAPTER XII.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCHELLING 136

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND IDEALISM 147

CHAPTER XIV.

TRANSITION TO HEGEL 163

BOOK II.

IN THE PORCHES OF PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER XV.

THE TWO AGES OF REASON 175

CHAPTER XVI.

THE NEW IDEALISM 189

CHAPTER XVII.

METHODS, ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL 202

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE RANGE OF PERSONALITY 230

CHAPTER XIX.

GENESIS IN MENTAL LIFE 261

CHAPTER XX.

GENERAL LAW OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 277

CHAPTER XXI.

ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE: AND THE ORDINARY LOGIC 292

CHAPTER XXII.

FROM SENSE TO THOUGHT 307

CHAPTER XXIII.

FIGURATE OR REPRESENTATIVE THOUGHT 323

CHAPTER XXIV.

FROM SUBSTANCE TO SUBJECT 335

CHAPTER XXV.

REASON AND THE DIALECTIC OF UNDERSTANDING 348

BOOK III.

LOGICAL OUTLINES.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THOUGHT PURE AND ENTIRE 365

CHAPTER XXVII.

ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE: OR THE CATEGORIES 383

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE THREE PARTS OF LOGIC 394

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SEARCH FOR A FIRST PRINCIPLE 404

CHAPTER XXX.

THE LOGIC OF DESCRIPTION: NATURAL REALISM: BEING 415

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE LOGIC OF EXPLANATION AND REALISTIC METAPHYSICS:

ESSENCE 440