HEGEL S PROCEDURE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE, 171 



successive inferences as necessarily folloicing from certain 

 premises ; he implies the postulate that a belief which ne 

 cessarily follows after certain antecedents is a true belief: 

 and, did an opponent reply to one of his inferences, that, 

 though it was impossible to think the opposite, yet the 

 opposite was true, he would consider the reply irrational 

 The procedure, however, which he would thus condemn as 

 destructive of all thinking whatever, is just the procedure 

 exhibited in the enunciation of his own first principles. 



Mankind find themselves unable to conceive that there 

 can be thought without things thought of. Hegel, how 

 ever, asserts that there can be thought without things 

 thought of. That ultimate test of a true proposition the 

 inability of the human mind to conceive the negation of it 

 which in all other cases he considers valid, he considers 

 invalid where it suits his convenience to do so ; and yet at 

 the same time denies the right of an opponent to follow his 

 example. If it is competent for him to posit dogmas, which 

 are the direct negations of what human consciousness recog 

 nises ; then is it also competent for his antagonists to stop 

 him at every step in his argument by saying, that though 

 the particular inference he is drawing seems to his mind, 

 and to all minds, necessarily to follow from the premises, 

 yet it is not true, but the contrary inference is true. Or, 

 to state the dilemma in another form : If he sets out with 

 inconceivable propositions, then may he with equal propri 

 ety make all his succeeding propositions inconceivable ones 

 may at every step throughout his reasoning draw exactly 

 the opposite conclusion to that which seems involved. 



Hegel s mode of procedure being thus essentially sui 

 cidal, the Hegelian classification which depends upon 

 it, falls to the ground. Let us consider next that of 

 H, Comte. 



As all his readers must admit, M. Comte presents us 

 with a scheme of the sciences which, unlike the foregoing 



