essence; and third, the categories of the notion. These may be regarded as three main ways in which unity and difference may be presented in thought. Taking the matter in broad outline, there are three modes in which we may apprehend these two aspects. We may be offered any of three alternatives—(a) unity or difference, or (b) unity and difference, or (c) unity because of difference. Under the control of the categories of being we may say simply that a content ‘is’, and the negative aspect (non-being) may for the moment be entirely excluded from the explicit content of our thought. Or again we may say that it is one, excluding multiplicity; or many, excluding unity. This is the poorest form of thinking, and corresponds to the most superficial aspect of objects. The inadequacy of such principles is obvious and need not be laboured. In full truth every aspect of the intelligible world is in profound harmony with every other, and contains within it a reference to the whole. Hegel’s proof of this lies in the complete dialectic: the full implication of the whole in each aspect or fragment is not made fully clear until the end, viz. the stage of the notion (in the wide sense); the defects of the categories of being are, at their own proper stage, shown only externally, and fresh light is shed on their true nature at each step in the argument. The thinker who uses the categories of being, however, is far from apprehending this truth. He tries to isolate each aspect and to take it merely by itself. Each thing is itself, he says, and not another; and he is quite unaware of the deeper nature of each element whereby it has community with every other element and with the whole. We have seen the fate which overtakes this kind of thought. If we try to grasp reality under these categories it eludes us; reality will not be confined in these abstract forms, and the strange result which greets us is that it is Protean and changes as we hold it.[1]
In the categories of essence this false simplicity and externality of thought begins to disappear. The thinker notes a distinction between the aspects of appearance and essence. The surface show of a thing is not its whole truth; behind that show there is a certain identity and permanence—an essence. As we progress in this series of categories we gradually discover that things are inter-connected; and
- ↑ Cf. above, p. 12 f.
