SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE METHODS 



cognize objects apart from the limitations im- 

 posed by our intelligence, the apparent contra- 

 diction in terms is no obstacle to Hegel. There 

 is a contradiction, no doubt, but what of that ? 

 Truth has been vulgarly supposed to consist in 

 agreement. Not a bit of it : it consists in con- 

 tradiction. This is one of the fundamental 

 postulates of the Hegelian logic. The Test of 

 Truth is not that "a is a," but that "a is not 

 A." Everything which is, is that which it is not.^ 

 Non-existence exists, because it is a thought ; 

 pure Being also, in the absence of determi- 

 native conditions, is not distinguishable from 

 Not-being ; therefore Non-existence is the same 

 as Existence, and contraries are identical. An 

 idea is not a modification of the subject ; an 

 idea is the object. In coming into existence, 



^ In a certain sense this statement is profoundly true. No- 

 thing is itself without being to some extent something else. 

 Or, in other words, it is impossible sharply to demarcate an 

 individual entity from the remainder of existence, and to 

 cognize it in individual isolation and completeness. For the 

 simplest act of cognition involves a lapse of time, during which 

 the individual entity cognized has lost certain attributes and 

 acquired certain others, and has thus become different from 

 itself. This is the obverse of the scientific truth that nowhere 

 is there such a thing as Rest, or the maintenance of a given 

 status y — a truth which Hes at the bottom of the Doctrine of 

 Evolution. Hegel's fault, however, is that he does not use 

 this truth scientifically, but employs it as a formula to conjure 

 with. 



175 



