A. The Idea of the True.

(G. L. iii. 274. Enc. 226.) The category has this name because the only example which can be given of it is a system of knowledge in the Individual which truly represents the Universe-system.

280. If we compare knowledge and volition, we find that the object of each is to produce a harmony, and that they differ in the fact that in the one the object, and in the other the subject, is the determining side of the harmony. This can be tested by looking at a case where the harmony is discovered to be imperfect. In such a case, should it occur in knowledge, we condemn the knowledge as being incorrect; and we endeavour to amend it by altering our beliefs till they harmonise with the objects. With volition it is Just the reverse. Here we condemn the outside reality which does not accord with our desires, and we endeavour to restore harmony by altering the objects so that they may be as we desire them.

Thus in knowledge the aim of the knowing subject is that its state should be a representation of the state of the world at large. Of course this does not imply that the mind is

merely passive in the process, and has nothing to do but receive erects from outside. The question is not about the way results are produced, but about the test of them when they are produced. However active the process of knowledge may be, the fact remains that its correctness depends on its agreement with the object known.

Thus knowledge is an example of this category, and it is the only one which can be given, since volition — the only other example of the wider category of Cognition — would not be ,appropriate in this subdivision.

We must of course remember, here as elsewhere, that what we are entitled to predicate of all existence is not the possession of all the characteristics of knowledge which are empirically known to us, but only those which are involved in the logical category.

It is further to be remembered that, according to the category, each Individual-system has to harmonise with the whole of the “Universe-system, and that there is nothing in the Individual except this system which harmonises with the Universal. Accordingly, if we look at an actual knowing individual — such as each of us is — we find that his nature, as it empirically appears to us, falls to exemplify the category in two ways. It is too large, and not large enough. On the one hand, I do not know the whole universe perfectly. On the other hand, I am not merely a knowing being, but have also volitions and emotions.

The Encyclopaedia as was mentioned above, calls this, category Cognition. It is inconvenient, of course, that the same name should be used both for the wider category and for its subdivision, but otherwise the nomenclature of the Encyclopaedia seems better. For what exemplifies the category is not truths or true propositions — non-existent realities, which are just as real whether’ they are or are not ever known by anyone. The category is exemplified by knowledge — by existent states of existent conscious Individuals. And this is expressed more clearly if the category is called Cognition than if it is called the Idea of the True.

What have we gained by the establishment of this category? We have not proved that there is some knowledge — that some beliefs are true. The assertion that there is some knowledge could never be proved, for any proof offered would consist of assertions, which, if valid, would be knowledge. Thus the proof would assume the conclusion to be proved. On the other hand, any attempt to disprove it, or even to deny or doubt it, would equally assume its truth.

This then, could not be proved, and, moreover, the dialectic is here concerned, riot with knowledge itself, but with a category

of which knowledge furnishes indeed the only example known. to us, but which must nevertheless be carefully distinguished from that example.

What is really gained by this category is that we know that the Universe is an organic system of Individuals, the nature of each of which forms another system, in harmony with the system of the Universe, and determined by it.

281. The Idea of the True is divided by Hegel into Analytic Cognition and Synthetic Cognition. These appear to be Thesis and Antithesis respectively, but the Synthesis is lacking It seems curious that he did not take Philosophical Thought as the Synthesis, since he certainly regards this as being both analytical and synthetical (cp. Enc. 238).

Hegel discusses Analytic and. Synthetic Cognition at considerable length (G. L. iii. 278-319. Enc. 227-232). What he says about them is sufficiently simple and. straightforward. I omit it here because it seems entirely to the category which we are considering. Once More Hegel has been misled by the concrete state which he has taken as an example of his category.

The distinction which he draws here is not between analytic and synthetic propositions, but that between knowledge obtained by a process of analysis and knowledge obtained by a process of synthesis. Both of these processes can yield synthetic propositions.

Now the distinction between these two processes may be very relevant when we consider the state of knowledge as empirically known to us. But there is no corresponding distinction to be found in the category of the dialectic, with which Hegel is dealing here. Indeed, we may go further. Not only are we unable to see what distinction in the category should correspond to the distinction between analytic and synthetic knowledge, but we are able to see clearly that there can be no such distinction.

For the distinction between analytic and synthetic knowledge relates wholly to the method of acquiring it. The distinction does not exist in the nature of the knowledge, as known. If I know that Caesar is mortal, I know the same truth, whether I learn it by seeing him die, or by deduction from the truth that all men are mortal. The other truths acquired along with it by the same process may be different in the two cases. In the first, I may learn along with the fact that Caesar is mortal, the fact that Brutus stabbed him. In the second, I may learn along with the fact that Caesar is mortal, the fact that Brutus is mortal. But the knowledge that Caesar is mortal will be the same, by whichever method it is acquired.

This distinction can therefore have no place in the present category, the example of which is not the acquisition of knowledge, but the possession of the knowledge when acquired. When the dialectic passed from the lower categories of Teleology to Realised End, it became clear that the application of the category to any subject-matter involved, not that the Means were becoming. the manifestation of the End, but that they were the manifestation of the End. Nothing that has happened since that point has given us a right to change that conclusion. The Means expressing, the End have developed into the Individual-systems which harmonise with the Universal-system, but. the relation between the whole and the parts has remained a relation of manifestation, not a relation of a process towards manifestation.

Nor is anything in Hegel’s treatment of Life inconsistent with this view. He takes the Body, indeed, as an inadequate and temporary manifestation of the Seele, but still, such as the manifestation is, it is always present when the category of Life is present. The category does not deal with the gradual production of Life.

Thus the principle on which these subdivisions, Analytic and Synthetic Cognition, have been introduced seems unjustified. And the mass of detail given under them, while applicable enough to the concrete process of acquiring knowledge, contains nothing which has any significance with regard to the category. I therefore believe myself justified in omitting it.

282. Hegel’s error in introducing these subdivisions does not destroy the line of his argument, for we can go directly from the undivided category of the Idea of the True to the next category — the Idea of the Good. Hegel himself indeed makes the transition from the subdivision of Synthetic Cognition, but, if it was not for the error which led to the introduction of the subdivisions, he could have made the transition just as well from the undivided category.

The transition, according to Hegel, rests on the necessity of Cognition (G. L. iii. 319. Enc. 232). As the account in the Encyclopaedia is both clearer and shorter than the account in the Greater Logic, I will quote the Encyclopaedia. The two accounts do not, I think, differ in meaning. “The necessity,” says Hegel, “which finite cognition produces in the Demonstration, is, in the first place, an external necessity, intended for the subjective intelligence alone. But in necessity as such, cognition itself has left behind its pre-supposition and starting-point, which consisted in accepting its content as given or found. Necessity qua necessity is implicitly the self-relating notion. The subjective idea has thus implicitly reached an original and objective determinateness — a something not-given, and for that reason immanent in the subject. It has passed over into the idea of Will.”

It is obvious from this that Hegel regards the necessity of the harmony of the Individuals with the Universe as giving so much stability and self-centredness to the Individuals that we must add to the statement that they harmonise with the Universe, the further statement that the Universe harmonises with them. If the harmony of the Individuals with the Universe were gradually attained, then the necessity of the harmony would also be gradually attained. And since his comparison of the harmony with the concrete state of knowledge has led him to regard the harmony as gradually attained, he regards the necessity as gradually attained also. He supposes it to be attained by something analogous to the process of Demonstration, which he treats under Synthetic Cognition, and therefore does not find himself in a position to make the transition to the Idea of the Good till he has reached the end of Synthetic Cognition.

If, however, we realise that the harmony must exist in its full completeness if the category of the Idea of the True is applicable at all, we shall see that in reaching the Idea of the True we have reached the conception that the harmony is necessary. If the category valid, then the Individual-systems are determined by the Universe-system to harmonise with it, And therefore the harmony is necessary — which is, as Hegel himself asserts, sufficient to allow us to pass to the Idea of the Good.

283. Hegel is, I think, right in maintaining that the necessity of the harmony, considered as determined from the side of the Universe, entitles us to conceive it as being equally determined from the side of the Individual. If a harmony is imperfect, if it is only accidentally perfect, or if the necessity of its perfection is due to some outside cause, there is some meaning in saying that the harmony is determined by one side rather than the other — by A and not by B. For in all these three cases a want of a perfect harmony can be conceived, and our assertion means that, in such a case, we should regard B, and not A, as defective in harmony. We say that the actions of a citizen are in harmony with the law, and not that the law is in harmony with them. For we can conceive that the citizen should cease to be law-abiding; and, if he did, we should condemn his actions, and not the law, for the discrepancy.

And, again, it might be that A could exist without being in harmony with B, while B could not exist without being in harmony with A. In this case, also, we might say that A rather than B determined the harmony, on account of the logical priority of A.

But it is not so here. The harmony between the Universal and the Individual is perfect, necessary, and. not due to any outside cause, but to the intrinsic nature of the related terms. The absence of the harmony is inconceivable. We cannot therefore say that one term rather than the other is shown to be defective by any possible discrepancy, and so declare the other term to be the determinant.

Nor can we pronounce either term determinant on the other possible ground — that it is independent of the harmony while the other is not independent. For, if the category is correct, the Universe depends on the harmony quite ,is much as the Individual. They only exist In virtue of the harmony between their systems and the system of the Universe. But the same is true of the Universe. And therefore it is no truer to say that the Universe determines the Individuals: than it is to say that the Individuals determine the Universe.

284. The first use that Hegel makes of this result is to conclude that, as one is no truer than the other, we must say both. To the statement that the Universe-system determines the Individual-systems, we must add the statement that the Individual-systems determine the Universe-system. So we reach