75. On this subject Hartmann reminds us that Hegel confesses that the Understanding cannot think a contradiction – in the sense of unifying it and explaining it. All, as he rightly points out, that the Understanding can do is to be conscious of the existence of contradictions. This, he contends, will not serve Hegel’s purpose of justifying the Reason. For, since the recognition of the existence of contradictions can never change the incapacity of the Understanding to think them, the only result would be “a heterogeneity or inconsequence” of being, which presents these contradictions, and thought, which is unable to think them. This inconsequence might end, if Hegel’s assertion be correct that contradictions are everywhere, in a total separation between thought and being, but could have no tendency to make thought dissatisfied with the procedure of the Understanding, and willing to embrace that of the Reason. This, however, misrepresents Hegel’s position. The contradictions are not in being, as opposed to thought. They are in all finite thought, whenever it attempts to work at all. The contradiction on which the dialectic relies is, that, if we use one finite category of any subject-matter, we find ourselves compelled, if we examine what is implied in using, to use also, of the same subject-matter, its contrary. The Understanding recognises this contradiction, while at the same time it cannot think it, – cannot, that is, look at it from any point of view from which the contradiction should disappear. It cannot therefore take refuge in the theory that there is a heterogeneity between itself and being, for it is in its own working that it finds something wrong. If the law of contradiction holds, thought must be wrong when it is inevitably led to ascribe contrary predicates to the same subject, while if the law of contradiction did not hold, no thought would be possible at all. And if, as the dialectic maintains, such contradictions occur with every finite category – that is, whenever the Understanding is used, the Understanding must itself confess that there is always a contradiction in its operations, discoverable when they are scrutinised with sufficient keenness. Either, then, there is no valid thought at all – a supposition which contradicts itself, – or there must be some form of thought which can harmonise the contradictions which the Understanding can only recognise.

76. But if the Understanding is reduced to a confession of its own insufficiency, is the Reason any better off? Does the solution offered by the Reason supply that complete ideal of knowledge which all thought demands? The answer to this question will depend in part on the actual success which the Absolute Idea may have in explaining the problems before us so as to give satisfaction to our own minds. But the difference between the indication in general terms of the true explanation, and the working out of that explanation in detail is so enormous, that we shall find but little guidance here. It may be true that “the best proof that the universe is rational lies in rationalising it,” but, if so, it is a proof which is practically unattainable. The only general proof open to us is a negative one. The dialectic comes to the conclusion that each of the lower categories cannot be regarded as ultimate, because in each, on examination, it finds an inherent contradiction. In proportion as careful consideration and scrutiny fail to reveal any corresponding contradiction in the Absolute Idea, we may rely on the conclusion of the dialectic that it is the ultimate and only really adequate category. It may, however, be worth while to point out that the Absolute Idea does comply with several requirements which we should be disposed to regard à priori as necessary for an idea which should prove itself adequate to the task of offering a complete explanation of the universe. The explanation afforded by the use of the Absolute Idea is that in all reality the idea, while it finds an independent Other given to it, finally learns that in that Other there is nothing alien to itself, so that it finds itself in everything. The key which is applied is thus the idea of the human mind itself, as engaged in activity, whether theoretical or practical. Such an explanation, if it can be proved to be true, must, it would seem, be satisfactory to us. For we can reach no standing point outside the human mind, from which we could pronounce that an explanation which showed the intelligibility of the whole universe, and its fundamental similarity to that mind, was unsatisfactory. Our object, in pursuit of which we rejected the limitations of the Understanding and took to the use of the Reason, was to explain, that is, to rationalise the universe. And it would be impossible to rationalise it more than this category does, which regards it as the manifestation and incarnation of reason.

77. What then should be the attitude of the Understanding towards the Reason? We have shown that the Understanding at once postulates, and cannot attain, a complete and harmonious ideal of knowledge. Supposing that the Reason can, as it asserts, attain this ideal, is the Understanding therefore bound to admit its validity? It is no doubt perfectly true, as Hartmann points out, that our power of seeking for anything, or even the necessity we may be under of seeking it, is not in itself the least proof that we shall succeed in our search. It does not then directly follow that, because there is no other way than the Reason by which we could attain that which the Understanding postulates, we can therefore attain it by means of the Reason. And this might have been a decisive consideration if Hegel had attempted to prove the validity of the Reason to the Understanding in a positive manner. But to do this would have been unnecessary, and, indeed, self-destructive. For such a proof would have gone too far. It would have proved that there was nothing in the Reason which was not also in the Understanding – in other words, that there was no difference between them. If there are two varieties of thought, of which one is higher and more comprehensive than the other, it will be impossible from the nature of the case for the lower and narrower to be directly aware that the higher is valid. From the very fact that the higher will have canons of thought not accepted by the lower, it must appear invalid to the latter, which can only be forced to accept it by external and indirect proof of its truth. And of this sort is the justification which the Reason does offer to the Understanding. It proves that we have a need which the Understanding must recognise, but cannot satisfy. This leaves the hearer with two alternatives. He may admit the need and deny that it can be satisfied in any way, which, in the case of a fundamental postulate of thought, would involve complete scepticism. If he does not do this, he must accept the validity of the Reason, as the only source by which the demand can be satisfied. The first alternative, however, in a case like this, is only nominal. If we have to choose between a particular theory and complete scepticism, we have, in fact, no choice at all. For complete scepticism is impossible, contradicted as it would be by the very speech or thought which asserted it. If Hegel’s demonstrations are correct, there is to be found in every thought something which for the Understanding is a contradiction. But to reject all thought as incorrect is impossible. There must therefore be some mode of thought, higher than the Understanding, and supplementary to it, by which we may be justified in doing continually that which the Understanding will not allow us to do at all. And this is the Reason.

78. We are thus enabled to reject Hartmann’s criticism that the dialectic violates all the tendencies of modern thought, by sundering the mind into two parts, which have nothing in common with one another. The Understanding and the Reason have this in common, that the Reason is the only method of solving the problems which are raised by the Understanding, and therefore can justify its existence on the principles which the Understanding recognises. For the distinctive mark of the Reason is, as Hegel says, that “it apprehends the unity of the categories in their opposition,” that it perceives that all concrete categories are made up of reconciled contradictions, and that it is only in these syntheses that the contradictory categories find their true meaning. Now this apprehension is not needed in order to detect the contradictions which the finite categories involve. This can be done by the Understanding. And when the Understanding has done this, it has at any rate proved its own impotence, and therefore can scarcely be said to be essentially opposed to Reason, since it has forfeited its claim to any thorough or consistent use at all. The whole justification of the Reason, as the necessary complement of the Understanding, is repeated in each triad of the Logic. The fact that the thesis leads of necessity to the antithesis, which is its contrary, is one of the contradictions which prove the impotence of the Understanding. We are forced either to admit the synthesis offered by the Reason, or to deny the possibility of reconciling the thesis and antithesis. The thesis itself, again, was a modified form of the synthesis of a lower thesis and antithesis. To deny it will therefore involve the denial of them also, since it offers the only means of removing their contradiction. And thus we should be driven lower and lower, till we reach at last an impossible scepticism, the only escape from which is to accept the union of opposites which we find in the Reason. Thus the Reason, though it does something which the Understanding cannot do, does not really do anything which the Understanding denies. What the Understanding denies is the possibility of combining two contrary notions as they stand, each independent and apparently self-complete. What the Reason does, is to merge these ideas in a higher one, in which their opposition, while in one sense preserved, is also transcended. This is not what is denied by the Understanding, for the Understanding is incapable of realising the position. Reason is not contrary to, but beyond the Understanding. It is true that whatever is beyond the Understanding may be said to be in one sense contrary to it, since a fresh principle is introduced. But as the Understanding has proved that its employment by itself would result in chaos, it has given up its assertion of independence and leads the way naturally to Reason. Thus there are not two faculties in the mind with different laws, but two methods of working, the lower of which, though it does not of course contain the higher, yet leads up to it, postulates it, and is seen, in the light of the higher method, only to exist as leading up to it, and to be false in so far as it claims independence. The second appears as the completion of the first; it is not merely an escape from the difficulties of the lower method, but it explains and removes those difficulties; it does not merely succeed, where the Understanding had failed, in rationalising the universe, but it rationalises the Understanding itself. Taking all this into consideration the two methods cannot properly be called two separate faculties, however great may be the difference in their working.

79. We must now pass to the second of the three questions proposed at the beginning of this chapter – namely, the internal consistency of the system. And it will be necessary to consider in the first place what foundation is assumed, upon which to base our argument, and whether we are entitled to this assumption. Now the idea from which the dialectic sets out, and in which it professes to show that all the other categories are involved, is the idea of Being. Are we justified in assuming the validity of this idea? The ground on which we can answer this question in the affirmative is that the rejection of the idea as invalid would be self-contradictory, as was pointed out above. For it would be equivalent to a denial that anything whatever existed. And in that case the denial itself could not exist, and the validity of the idea of Being has not been denied. But, on the other hand, if the denial does exist, then there is something whose existence we cannot deny. And the same dilemma applies to doubt, as well as to positive denial. If the doubt exists, then there is something of whose existence we are certain; if the doubt does not exist, then we do not doubt the validity of the category. And both denial and doubt involve the existence of the thinking subject. We have thus as firm a base as possible for our transcendental argument. It is not only a proposition which none of our opponents do in fact doubt, but one which they cannot by any possibility doubt, one which is involved and postulated in all thought and in all action. Whatever may be the nature of the superstructure, the foundation is strong enough to carry it.

80. The next consideration must be the validity of the process by which we conclude that further categories are involved in the one from which we start. In this process there are three steps. We go from thesis to antithesis, from thesis and antithesis to synthesis, and from synthesis again to a fresh thesis. The distinctness of the separate steps becomes somewhat obscured towards the end of the Logic, when the importance of negation, as the means by which the imperfect truth advances towards perfection, is considerably diminished. It will perhaps be most convenient to take the steps here in the form in which they exist at the beginning of the Logic. The effect produced on the validity of the process by the subsequent development of the method will be discussed in the next chapter. It is not necessary to say much of the transition from the synthesis to the fresh thesis. It is, in fact, scarcely a transition at all. It is, as can be seen when Becoming passes into Being Determinate, rather a contemplation of the same truth from a fresh point of view – immediacy in the place of reconciling mediation – than an advance to a fresh truth. Whether in fact this new category is always the same as the previous synthesis, looked at from another point of view, is a question of detail which must be examined independently for each triad of the Logic, and which does not concern us here, as we are dealing only with the general principles of the system. But if the old synthesis and the new thesis are really only different expressions of the same truth, the passage from the one to the other is valid even according to formal Logic. Since nothing new is added at all, nothing can be added improperly.

81. Our general question must be put in a negative form to suit the transition between thesis and antithesis. It would be misleading to ask whether we were justified in assuming that, since the thesis is valid, the antithesis is valid too. For the result of the transition from thesis to antithesis is to produce, till the synthesis is perceived, a state of contradiction and scepticism, in which it will be doubted if either category is valid at all, since they lead to contradictions. Our question should rather be, Are we justified in assuming that, unless the antithesis is valid, the thesis cannot be valid? The ground of this assumption is that the one category implies the other. If we examine attentively what is meant by pure Being, we find that it cannot be discriminated from Nothing. If we examine Being-for-self, we find that the One can only be defined by its negation and repulsion, which involves the category of the Many. It is objected that these transitions cannot be justified, because they profess to be acts of pure thought, and it is impossible to advance by pure thought alone to anything new. To this an answer was indicated in the last chapter, where we found that the motive to the whole advance is the presence in experience, and in our minds as they become conscious of themselves in experience, of the concrete reality, of which all categories are only descriptions, and of which the lower categories are imperfect descriptions. Since pure thought has a double ground from which it may work – the abstract and imperfect explicit idea from which the advance is to be made, and the concrete and perfect implicit idea towards which the explicit idea gradually advances – real progress is quite compatible with pure thought. Because it has before it a whole which is so far merely implicit, and has not been analysed, it can arrive at propositions which were not contained, according to the rules of formal logic, in the propositions from which it starts, but are an advance upon the latter. On the other hand, the process remains one of pure thought only, because this whole is not empirically given. It is not empirically given, although it could not be given if experience did not exist. For it is necessarily in all experience; and being the essential nature of all reality, it can be deduced from any piece of experience whatever. Our knowledge of it is dependent, not on experience being thus and thus, but only on experience existing at all. And the existence of experience cannot be called an empirical fact. It is the presupposition alike of all empirical knowledge, and of all pure thought. We should not be aware even of the existence of the laws of formal logic without the existence of experience. Yet those laws are not empirical, because, although they have no meaning apart from experience, they are not dependent on any one fact of experience, but are the only conditions under which we can experience anything at all. And for a similar reason, we need not suppose that dialectic thought need be sterile because it claims to be pure.

82. From another point of view, it is sometimes said that the transitions of the dialectic only exist because the connection between the two categories has been demonstrated by means of facts taken from experience. In that case the dialectic, whatever value it might have, could not possess the inherent necessity, which characterises the movements of pure thought, and which its author claimed for it. It could at most be an induction from experience, which could never rise above probability, nor be safely applied beyond the sphere in which it had been verified by experience. I have endeavoured to show above that, since thought can be pure without being sterile, it does not follow that an advance must be empirical because it is real. Whether it is in fact empirical or not, is another matter. If we can conceive any change in the nature of the manifold of sensations, as distinct from the categories by which they are built up, which would invalidate any of the transitions of the dialectic, then no doubt we should have to admit that the system had broken down. It is of course impossible to prove generally and à priori that no such flaw can be found in any part of the system. The question must be settled by an investigation of each category independently, showing that the argument in each depends upon the movement of the pure notion, and not on any particulars of sense. To do this would be beyond the scope of my present essay, but the special importance of the idea of Motion renders it necessary to discuss Trendelenburg’s theory that it has been illegitimately introduced into the dialectic by the observation of empirical facts.

83. The remaining transition is that from thesis and antithesis to synthesis. We have seen above that if the synthesis does reconcile the contradictions, we are bound to accept it as valid, unless we can find some other means of reconciling them. For otherwise, since we cannot accept unreconciled contradictions as true, we should have to deny the validity of thesis and antithesis. And since the thesis itself was the only reconciliation possible for a lower thesis and antithesis, we should have also to deny the validity of the latter, and so on until, in the denial of Being, we reached a reductio ad absurdum. All that remains, therefore, is to consider whether the synthesis is a satisfactory reconciliation of contradictions. With regard to the general possibility of transcending contradictions, we must remember that the essence of the whole dialectic lies in the assertion that the various pairs of contrary categories are only produced by abstraction from the fuller category in which they are synthesised. We have not, therefore, to find some idea which shall be capable of reconciling two ideas which had originally no relation to it. We are merely restoring the unity from which those ideas originally came. It is not, as we might be tempted to think, the reconciliation of the contradiction which is an artificial expedient of our minds in dealing with reality. It is rather the creation of the contradiction which was artificial and subjective. The synthesis is the logical prius of its moments. Bearing this in mind, we shall see that the possibility of transcending contradictions is a simpler question than it appears to be. For all that has to be overcome is a mistake about the nature of reality, due to the incomplete insight of the Understanding. The contradiction has not so much to be conquered as to be disproved.