UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA.

THE

SECRET OF HEGEL.

III.

THE SECTION, QUALITY, AS TRANSLATED IN II., HERE COMMENTED AND INTERPRETED.

DEFINITENESS (QUALITY).

THE language just encountered must appear very strange to the uninitiated English reader, and, perhaps, he may be inclined to attribute the circumstance to imperfection of translation. Let him be assured, however, that in German, and to the German student who approaches Hegel for the first time, the strangeness of the initiatory reception is hardly less repulsive than it has just proved to himself. There is no valid reason for despair, then, as regards intelligence here, because it is a translation that is before one, and not the original. To due endeavour, the Hegelian thought will gather round these English terms quite as perfectly, or nearly so, as round their German equivalents. Comment nevertheless is wanted, and will facilitate progress.

Bestimmen and its immediate derivatives constitute much the largest portion of the speech of Hegel. The reader, indeed, feels for long that with Bestimmung and Bestimmung he is bestimmt into Unbestimmtheit; and

even finds himself, perhaps, actually cursing this said Bestimmung of Hegel as heartily as ever Aristotle cursed the Idea of Plato. Stimme means voice, and the action of Bestimmen is to supply voice to what previously had none. As already said, then, Hegel's Bestimmung is a sort of naming of Adam: it is a process of Logical Determination-a process in which concrete determinateness, or determinate concretion, grows and grows in organised complexity up from absolute abstract indeterminateness or from absolutely indeterminate abstraction to a consummate Absolute. To Hegel what is, is Thought; and the life of Thought can only be Logical Determination, or the distinguishing (differentiating) of indefinite abstraction (the beginning of Thought) into ultimate concrete definiteness (the end of Thought) by means of the operation of the faculties of Thought (Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Reason), to the resolution of the Begriff (the An sich, the indefinite Universal) through the Ur-theil (the Für sich, the separation into Particulars, into Many, as against One), and the production of the Schluss (the concrete Singular,) which is the All of Thought, Thought elevated into its ultimate and complete concretion as the absolute Subject (which again is the ultimate An und für sich).-This is a very complete expression for the industry of Hegel.-Bestimmen, then, is to develop in abstract Thought all its own constitutive, consecutive, and co-articulated members, or elements, or principles. Bestimmen attaches or develops a Bestimmung, and produces Bestimmtheit. Bestimmen is to be-voice, to vocify, voculate, render articulate, to define, determine, or distinguish into the implied constitutive variety: even to accentuate will be seen to involve the same function; or we may say modulate, then

modify that is, dis-cern into modi-the native constituent modi. Bestimmen is the reverse of generalisation; instead of evolving a summum genus, it involves a species infima, or rather an individuum-not indeed infimum, but summum. Generalisation throws out dif ferentia, Bestimmung (specification, singularisation) adds them. The one abstracts from difference and holds by identity; the other abstracts from identity and holds by difference. Bestimmen, then, is to produce, not Logical Extension, but Logical Comprehension (Inhalt), Logical Determination; it adds differentiæ or significates; it means to specify, to differentiate, to distinguish, to qualify, characterise, &c., or more generally, just to define or determine. Bestimmtheit has the sense in it of the past participle: it is a differentiatum, specificatum, qualificatum-just a Determinate, a Definite in general, or the quality of determinateness and definiteness; hence the meanings attached by Hegel himself to it of Form, Product, &c., and of Element when that word signifies, not a constituting, but a constituted element. Bestimmung may refer to the process as a whole, but it generally applies to a resultant member of this process: it is what corresponds to a predicate; it is a significate, a specificate, a differentia, &c.; it is a property, a peculiarity, a speciality, a particularity, a quality; it is a principle, a sign, an exponent, a constituent, and, in that sense, an element also. It may be translated character, characteristic, article, member, modus, determination, definition, trait, feature, dodge-even wrinkle, if you like. Then looking to the use of the trait, the senses vocation, destination, &c. are brought in. Qualification is another very useful word for it, and so likewise are function, factor, term, expression, value. Bestimmtheit, then, here

(in the text before us), is just definiteness, tangibleness, recognisableness-and that is always due to Quality.

Being, Seyn,-to understand this word, abstract from all particular Being, and think of Being in general, or of the absolute generality of Being. There must be no sense of personality attached to it, as is so common in England; nor, indeed, any sense of anything. The common element in the whole infinite chaos of all and everything that is, is Being. Seyn, in Germany, often in Hegel himself, means the abstraction of sensuous Isness but here it is more general than that; it is the quality of Isness, pur et simple; it brings with it a sense at once of comprehensive universality and of ultimate principle. Carlyle (Frederick the Great,' vol. iii. p. 408) says, ""Without Being," as my friend Oliver was wont to say, "Well-being" is not possible.” ' Cromwell had soldiers and other concrete materiel in his eye, when he said Being here; still put as Being, these are abstractly put. In like manner, we have here just to put, not soldiers, &c. only, but all that is, abstractly as Being. It refers, in fact, to the absolutely abstract, to the absolutely generalised thought of Being. In short, Being as Being must be seen to be a solid simple without inside or outside, centre or sides: it is just to be taken an ihm selber, absolutely abstractly; it is just the unit into which all variety, being reflected, has disappeared: it is the an sich of such variety.

The meaning of Immediate, Unmittelbar, will be got by practice: it just means directly present. Anything seen, felt, &c. is immediate. Being, then, is just what is indefinitely immediate to us. It (the term immediate) is derived from the Logical use of it as in Immediate Inferences, i.e. inferences without intermediate proposition. Essentity or Essence, Wesen, is inner or true, or

noumenal Being as opposed to outer, apparent, sensuous, or phenomenal Being. It is the principle of what is or shows. It may be translated also Inbeing, or Principial Being. By practice, however, the Hegelian Wesen will attach itself even to Essence, once the thought is seen. It is evident that, the thought of pure or abstract Seyn being realised, there is no call for any reference to the thought of Wesen. Absolutely abstract Being seems self-substantial, and awakens no question of a whence or what; it is thus free from any determination which it might receive by being related to Essence: in this absolute generalisation, indeed, Seyn and Wesen have coalesced and become indistinguishable. But it is as opposed to Wesen that Seyn acquires the sensuous shade already spoken of. In that contraposition, Seyn is phenomenal show; it is the Seyn of Wesen, and so outer, and very outer-a palpable crust, as it were, which very tangibly is. As yet, as we have said, our Seyn is the abstraction from all that is, and so the common element of all that is. It is to be said and seen, also, that the two shades of Seyn tend to run together, for, after all, each at last only implies immediacy to consciousness.

In itself (An sich), italicised, means in itself as virtually, impliciter, or potentially in itself: it is the búvapus of Aristotle. At the end of the first paragraph, we have also an 'in its own self' which is not italicised: this is a translation of the peculiarly Hegelian German, an ihm selber, an innovation on his own tongue to which Hegel was compelled in order to distinguish another and current shade of meaning which might confuse the sense he wished to attach to an sich. An ihm selber, in fact, implies, not the mere latent potentiality of an sich, but a certain overt potentiality, a