transition is here not external, but in Essence, in the Notion, and this transition-Becoming-is the union of Being and Nought, is objective and actual Contradiction. It is not something postulated by subjective thought simply. This contradiction of Being and Nought in Becoming is an element of the Notion of all Reality, even of the Notion of Absolute Spirit. In living organisms it is a continual transition and transformation of the constituent elements and organs out of one another and into one another. Life, superior as such to the process, overcomes the contradiction given in it for a certain length of time only. Only spirit is superior to transition. Spirit endures the contradiction posited in it, and comes back to unity with itself out of its constituent differences. Human spirit, having arrived as spirit at self-consciousness, at independent existence, has its eternal home in absolute spirit, where, after laying aside the sensuous nature in which it abides as soul, it finds itself in the region of its own truth and freedom. Absolute spirit, the eternal and absolute Ego, returns out of the transitory world, as infinitely multiplied Ego, to itself. Absolute spirit, as God, is absolutely superior to Becoming as the abstract unity of Being and Nought; it is Becoming in its highest aspect as the activity of spirit in itself, which determines itself, and absorbs within itself again its own determinations. In God, Being is the totality of the Notion, and Nought in God is the freedom of self-determination as Negativity which to the highest degree absorbs' itself, and absolute self-affirmation, self-manifestation, which, according to Aristotle, is νόησις νοήσεως, and according to Christian doctrine is the triune process of life, is Becoming, in God as God. God does not "become" in the sense of not having existed before; yet this element of abstract Becoming, through which that becomes which was not before, is given in the Absolute (God and his efficient power). God as creator of the world posits this Becoming, and thereby this contradiction of determinate Being, which does not correspond to what it implicitly is, to its Notion. Temporal Being is the actual contradiction of an inner force externalized, a spiritual force existing as sensible Being.

1 The word absorbs is used in this article as a translation of aufhebt, signifying the reduction to an element of a higher unit.-ED.

V.

An objector to the Hegelian category of Contradiction says, in allusion to Lotze's "Geschichte der Esthetik": "The Notion itself does not change with things, but only its applicability to a definite sphere of existence. The same Notion continues true only as it is related to a thing, depends upon it, changes with it." Certainly such a notion of the understanding as is ready-made, fixed, unchangeable. Only it is a pity that in Reality (not abstract, dead Reality, but concrete and living) there is nothing to correspond to it; it is not the real, living Notion of the Thing. Another objector to Contradiction wrote in 1877: "No one doubts that every concrete thing is made up of different elements. But it is to be just as little disputed that the thinking subject must accept the object of thought as it is presented in the outset of the thought-process. The real object is subject to change and development, but the logical subject must be accepted at one time the same as at another." This amounts to saying that thought must hold fast to what was in the past, in a vanished moment of time, yet which was there not as a complete existence, but only half-way developed. Hegel, however, has nothing to say about the permanence in thought of a Reality which is itself not permanent. The Hegelian Notion is the Notion of the Thing, takes the Thing as it is and trusts to its own dialectic. "If the Thing changes, if the real object is subject to transition and development," then this constituent activity of the real object must be included in the Notion, if it is to be the concrete Notion of a concrete object. But what causes this continuing diversity in objects is Contradiction, which in its abstract aspect is the passing from Being to Nought, and vice versa—that is, Becoming. This abstract Contradiction is an element of the Notion of all concrete, living Reality. The logicians concede that contrary propositions can be united, and thereby-unless they wish to be guilty themselves of their own logical contradiction-they concede as a fact the Contradiction of (qualitative) Being and not-Being. The Difference of Being and Nought is the ground of all Differences. . . The unity of Being and Nought, and their immediate passage into Becoming as is set forth in the beginning of the Logic, should not be conceived as concrete. It is not that the Being of

this concrete thing is immediately the not-Being of the same, as though it were continually destroyed and continually recreated; but that in it, so far as it is living, Being is continually passing into not-Being, and vice versa. The object holds out through this activity of Being and not-Being for a certain length of time, and at last its immediate sensible existence falls asunder and disappears in the current of Becoming. Only Spirit is superior to this current; in Spirit only is Reality adequate to the Notion.

"All must fall into Nought if it would continue in Being"that is, in finite Being, which is indebted to Contradiction for its existence, and through the dialectic of which it is further developed.

Nevertheless, despite the sway of Contradiction and Negation, all is preserved, the preservation of which Aristotle wished to be assured. . . . Blue remains always blue. Flower, ox, cow, man himself all these phases of existence remain always the same, are not destroyed by Contradiction, though many individuals among them fall into Nought. "Everything is transitory, but a cow's tail is always long," I hear a famous man often say. In other words, the intelligible world of (Platonic) Ideas, or, what is the same thing, the all-ruling Dialectic of the Notion, is untouched by destruction. The Absolute, with its Contradiction always arising and always overcome, does not contradict itself. . . .

In order to be more certain of at last effecting a reconciliation between Hegel and the logicians, and to be able to ask the opposers of Contradiction to allow the "Father of Life" to live, I make a final concession. It is this: that when we are dealing with purely external relations, with the abstractions of externality, direction in space, and the limitations in time of historical facts, according to Hegel himself, we are to apply the logic of the understanding, divested of dialectic and rational features, with its finite limitations, and especially with its Laws of Contradiction and Excluded Middle. . . . Trendelenburg need have no fear for Geometry, for Hegel, in the preface to "Phenomenology of Spirit," has explained his position in detail. He states, in substance, that, by reason of its content, the methods of analytic and synthetic. cognition are pre-eminently adapted to Geometry, as in it the inflexible categories of the understanding and their applications of formal Identity are entirely in place.

So there need be no apprehension that the dialectic method will infringe upon the rights of the finite. We leave to Geometry its categories of the understanding, and to Michel his two Groschen-so long as he can keep them together-and admit that his reckoning must be based on these much-famed laws of logic. To the question whether Cæsar died on the Ides of March, 44 B. C., we certainly cannot answer Yes and No at the same time, nor can we say "neither Yes nor No"; the logicians are in the right here. This is either a shilling or else it is not a shilling; I have either paid my shoe-bill or I have not paid it; in all these cases the fundamental laws of Contradiction and Excluded Middle must be appealed to. Only such logic should modestly keep within its sphere, and not try to deal with subjects not to be measured by its standards. It should not announce its finite categories and abstractions as though they were all-inclusive, and hence infinite and absolute.

MARTINEAU'S IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS.'

BY S. W. DYDE.

The subject-matter of this article is included under two heads: I, a statement in Mr. Martineau's own language of his ethical views; and II, a criticism of two of his fundamental conceptions-namely, his understanding of what is meant by a spring of action, and his view of volition. An estimate of his conception of volition must embrace some reference to his theory of conscience. Indirectly I aim to show that the difference between Utilitarian ethics on the one hand and on the other hand the ethics of intuition, as represented by Mr. Martineau's "Idiopsychological Ethics," is not really radical, and that a possible reconciliation between these two conflicting theories is indicated now and then by Mr. Martineau himself. Although I dwell perforce upon the views of Mr. Martineau, with which I cannot completely agree, I do so in order to empha

1 "Types of Ethical Theory," by James Martineau, D. D., LL. D., Principal of Manchester New College, London. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885. The theory discussed in this article covers pp. 1-279 of vol. ii. The references are to the first edition.

size those features of his theory which seem to me to point to better things. Indeed, it may be I only direct attention to another aspect of the basal principle of ethics, and try to show that this second aspect, united with the aspect rendered prominent by Mr. Martineau, makes the true foundation of moral science.

us.

I. What is the essence of a psychological method? (1) It not only assumes reflective self-knowledge to be possible, but gives it precedence in ethical relations over other knowledge, and proceeds thence into the scene around; and (2) it not only begins from the self-conscious man, as the better known, and treats the phenomena so found as genuine phenomena, but accepts also whatever these phenomena carry; and if they imply in their very nature certain objective assumptions, these reports, as contained within the known phenomena, it trusts as knowledge; in other words, it believes in the inner experiences not simply as appearances within us, but where they offer testimony as witnesses of realities without Both these positions require to be emphasized. An egoistic doctrine such as Fichte's Idealism misses the true ethical conditions, as it reduces moral obligation to a mere modification of Self. Without objective conditions the idea of Duty involves a contradiction. Conscience does not frame the law; it simply reveals the law that holds us; and to make everything of the disclosure and nothing of the thing disclosed is to affirm and to deny the revelation in the same breath. Further, our psychology must be dualistic in its results, recognizing, as in its doctrine of perception, so in its doctrine of conscience, a Self and an other than self. In perception it is Self and Nature; in morals it is Self and God. Psychological self-knowledge is possible, for, as we are continually telling our own thoughts and feelings and purposes, is it not ridiculous to assert that we can not know them? Moreover, of these phenomena of the mind there must be an inner mental order, legible to the same eye that deciphers the mental classes. We psychologically know more than ourselves, for the first function of intelligence is to construe not itself, but the scene in which it is placed. Yet subjective knowledge and objective are correlative. On the simple testimony of our perceptive faculty we believe in both the perceived object and the perceiving self. To the implicit beliefs secreted within our moral consciousness let precisely so much be conceded as we readily grant to the testimony of percep