en. v.] THE TWO METHODS. 119 



Mian inductions from premises supplied by sensible ex- 

 perience, Hegel speedily arrives at an ingenious solution 

 of the antinomies which baffle the ordinary thinker who 

 seeks to frame hypotheses concerning objective reality. The 

 customary rules of ratiocination, based upon a collation of 

 the results of sensible experience, are set aside with a high 

 hand. If it be declared that we can and do cognize objects 

 apart from the limitations imposed by our intelligence, the 

 apparent contradiction 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 contradiction. This is one oi the 

 fundamental postulates of the Hegelian logic. The Test of 

 Truth is not that "a is a," but that "A is not A." Every- 

 thing which is, is that which it is not. 1 Non-existence 

 exists, because it is a thought ; pure Being also, in the 

 absence of determinative 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, the Idea comes into non-existence ; 

 it negatives itself. "But the process does not stop there. 

 The negation itself must be negatived. By this negation of 

 its negation, the Idea returns to its primitive force. But it 

 is no longer the same. It has developed all that it con- 

 tained. It has absorbed its contrary. Thus the negation 

 of the negation, by suppressing the negation, at the same 



1 In a certain sense this statement is profoundly true. Nothing is itself 

 without being to some extent something else. Or, in other words, it is im- 

 possible 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 eutity cognized has lost certain attributes and acquired certain 

 others, and lias 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 

 vf a given status, — a truth which lies at the bottom of the Doctrine of Evo- 

 ition. Hegel's fault, however, is that he does not ase this truth scienti- 

 fically, but employs it as a formula to conjure with. 



