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HEG 
 
 SUB] 
 
 I 
 
i< 
 
 't* 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ANGUS Mac VANNEL, A.M. 
 
 SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
 
 FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 IN THE 
 
 Faculty of Philosophy 
 Columbia University 
 
 NKW YORK 
 N^lAv, 1S96 
 
 
 r IS' r 
 
In t 
 an out 
 Hegel 
 ideal is 
 the sil( 
 the wo 
 concret 
 spiritua 
 I wis 
 
 Columl 
 
PRKKACK 
 
 In the following brief essay I have endeavoured to give 
 an outline of Hegel's doctrine of the will. Human life for 
 Hegel is one, and the will is simply the man. Life's highest 
 ideal is not achieved by the one who "cares but to pass into 
 the silent life," but by such as live well the every-day life of 
 the world; who see treasured up in the various relations of 
 concrete social life— the family, the state, the church— the 
 spiritual experience of the human race. 
 
 I wish to inscribe this essay to my father and mother. 
 
 John Angus Mac Vannel. 
 
 Columbia University, May, i8g6. 
 
 (V) 
 
§ 
 § 
 § 
 § 
 
 § 1 
 §1 
 § 1 
 § I 
 § I 
 § I 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 § I. The conception of evolution u 
 
 § 2. The spiritual ebb and flow in philosophy i, 
 
 § 3. The system of Hegel j. 
 
 § 4. The absolute idea g 
 
 § 5- The idea of development in Hegel's philosophy ... 17 
 
 § 6. Moral institutions jg 
 
 § 7. The will as realized in institutional life 19 
 
 § 8. The subject of this essay 20 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF HEGEL 
 
 § 9. Introduction 2 
 
 § 10. The results of Greek philosophy 23 
 
 § II. The middle ages 2c 
 
 § 12. Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza 25 
 
 § 13. Transition ; Leibnitz, Hume 28 
 
 § 14. Kant, Fichte, Schelling 29 
 
 § 15. The problem of Hegel -e 
 
 (vii) 
 
 \ I 
 
vni 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 § i6. Logic g 
 
 § 17. Nature 
 
 to 
 
 § 18. Mind 
 
 40 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 § 19. Evolution and consciousness .^ 
 
 § 20. The physical process ^^ 
 
 § 21. The evolution by antagonism of one spiritual principle. 45 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SUBJECTIVE MIND 
 
 § 22. Subjective Mind (psychology) g 
 
 § 23. Anthropology 
 
 § 24. Phenomenology of mind 
 
 § 25. Psychology 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE FREEDOM OF MAN 
 
 § 26. The unity and continuity of mind ^g 
 
 § 27. Intelligence and will . . 
 
 56 
 
 § 28. The will and self-realization g 
 
 § 29. The individual and the universal g 
 
 § 30. The social organism 
 
 § 31. The ethical development from Kant to Hegel .... 65 
 
 § 32- From abstract to concrete moraHty g- 
 
 h 
 
COA'TENTS 
 
 rAOB 
 
 39 
 40 
 
 §33- (0 I^egality, (2) Morality, (3) The ethical life . 
 
 ix 
 
 fAOB 
 70 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 LAW — ABSTRACT RIGHT 
 
 §34. The province of law or right 71 
 
 §35. Hegel's conception of "natural rights" 71 
 
 § 36. Personality the foundation of rights and duties .... 72 
 
 §37. The right of property y^ 
 
 § 38. Hegel's conception of property 78 
 
 § 39. Contract yo 
 
 § 40. Hegel's theory of punishment Si 
 
 § 41. The legal and the moral 82 
 
 48 
 SO 
 
 53 
 54 
 
 56 
 56 
 58 
 60 
 62 
 
 65 
 67 
 
 CHAPTER Vn 
 
 THE MORALITY OF CONSCIENCE 
 
 § 42. Morality as obedience to external law . , 83 
 
 § 43' Hegel's conception of motive 84 
 
 § 44. The good and conscience 85 
 
 § 45. Conscience and environment 87 
 
 § 46. The ethical life 88 
 
 CHAPTER Vni 
 THE ETHICAL LIFE 
 
 § 47. The social life 89 
 
 § 48. The higher individualism go 
 
 ■I 
 
 V I 
 
 ii 
 
X CONTEXTS 
 
 rAOB 
 
 § 49. The ethical world o^ 
 
 § 50. The family 
 
 §51. The civic community o- 
 
 § 5 2. The state 5 
 
 §53. Brief summary and conclusion 55 
 
 i! 
 
rAOB 
 
 9a 
 92 
 
 95 
 
 96 
 
 99 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 § J. The intellectual and spiritual vitality of every age, as 
 well as of every individual, is due to the dominating and 
 fructifying influence of some one comprehensive idea. The 
 present age owes the greater portion of its mental life to the 
 principle of evolution; an idea which hss become the very 
 atmosphere of all enquiry in the domain of art, of science 
 and of religion. In the popular consciousness it is accepted 
 without dissent that the principle first appeared in its appli- 
 cation by Darwin to the facts of biology, and that its exten- 
 sion to the sphere of mental life was an after-thought. As a 
 matter of fact, however, the systematic and more pregnant 
 application of the principle in the domain of history, of art, 
 of philosophy, and of religion had been made by He^cl 
 almost half a century before the time of Darwin ; and even 
 Hegel cannot lay claim to its discovery. Evolution and 
 Darwinism are far from being convertible terms. As is true 
 of all great ideas, evolution has been in the world from the 
 first beginnings of thought. Traces of it are to be found in 
 early Greek philosophy and in many of the heathen my- 
 thologies. The conception in its present fulness has been 
 slowly evolved in the environment of the advancing human 
 knowledge of twenty-four centuries. It is no longer a theory 
 merely; it has become a creed : and it now lends such 1 
 living interest to the past development of all organisms 
 institutions, and creeds, that it is a difficult matter to ade- 
 quately appreciate the standpoint of those who were without 
 »97] II 
 
 % 
 
12 
 
 I/EGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [I9» 
 
 i I 
 
 ! i 
 J i 
 
 the idea. No longc" can the saying of Goethe be accepted 
 without reservation that " the history of the past is a book 
 with seven seals." 
 
 It is this conception of development that has caused the 
 history of philosophy to be regarded as a part of philosophy 
 itself. A more sympathetic appreciation is gradually com- 
 ing to s(" "n the different systems which history presents, the 
 progressive effort on the part of the human spirit to reach a 
 more adequate conception of the world as rational. An 
 earnest study of these systems but strengthens our faith in 
 the spiritual nature and ultimate destiny of man. "The 
 refutation of a system," says Hegel, " only means that its 
 limits are passed, and that the fixed principle in it has been 
 reduced to an organic element in the completer system that 
 follows. Thus, the history of philosophy in its true mean- 
 ing deals not with the past, but with the eternal and veritable 
 present : and in its results resembles not a museum of the 
 aberrations of the human intellect, but a pantheon of God- 
 like figures representing various stages of the immanent 
 logic of all hitman thought."' 
 
 § 2. In philosophy as in religion there has been the spir- 
 itual ebb and flow; but with each return of the tide there 
 has been advance. " Biologically considered," says Prof. 
 James, " man's life consists for the most part in adjustments 
 that arc unscientific, and deals with probabilities and not 
 with certainties." In the development of philosophy the 
 case is very similar. Many who have essayed a system of 
 philosophy never reached the high level of thought neces- 
 sary to express adequately the essential, informing spirit of 
 their time. For the fullest expression of the spiritual life of 
 England — in that she was forced to find her metaphysics 
 somewhere — we must go not to her philosophy but to her 
 
 1 IVerke, VI, § 86, Quoted by Sterrett, Studies in IlegtPs Philosophy of Re- 
 ligion, p. 15. 
 
199] 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 13 
 
 poetry. Twice only in the history of Western thought has 
 philosophy reached the high-tide : first, in the embodiment 
 by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle of the essential truth in the 
 rich and complex life of the period in which they lived ; and 
 second, the modern development in Germany which sprang 
 up within the bosom of Christian education, begun by Kant, 
 and which was carried to its completion, and therein its most 
 adequate expression, by Hegel. The outcome of both de- 
 velopments gives us a deeper faith in the essential rationality 
 of the actual world, and more clearly emphasizes the primacy 
 of thought. " What is the absolute nature of man's conscious 
 experience, intellectual and moral ?" is the question for 
 which both sought an explanation — as it ij. the question of 
 all philosophy. Both maintain that the only principle of 
 explanation is that of self-consciousness. In other words, 
 that the absolute nature o: all reality is spiritual. The 
 second, however, did more than merely reaffirm the truth 
 maintained by the first. It furnished a new ai.d fuller 
 demonstration, rendered possible by reason of an enriched 
 experience — of those threshings which the soul of man was 
 forced to undergo through centuries of struggle in its ad- 
 vance to higher issues. 
 
 § 3. Prof. Huxley claimed for Descartes' system the dis- 
 tinction of being the final philosophy; and others have 
 claimed ^he same for the systems of Spinoza, Leibnitz and 
 Hegel. As Prof. James says, we need to be ever reminded 
 afresh that no philosophy can ever be more than an hypoth- 
 esis. It is a slavish submission to the letter of any doctrine 
 or system that kills. Life is widening; it is becoming a 
 fuller and a richer thing, and human experience will ever 
 prove too strong for any system. Nor was Hegel one who 
 would expect, much less who would crave our indulgence. 
 Doubtless, as Prof. Green once said of the systcTn, " it will 
 all have to be done over again." Nevertheless, so compre- 
 
M 
 
 HEGELS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [200 
 
 
 I ' 
 
 hensive a system as that of Hegel, however we regard it as 
 an achievement, was at least splendid as an endeavor ; and 
 the due meed of which is our grateful admiration. Condi- 
 tioned as it was by the thought of the preceding twenty-four 
 centuries, it is fair to regard the system as the summing up 
 and most perfect expression of the German development of 
 philosophy. 
 
 The system has been designated "pantheistic" times with- 
 out number. The truth or untruth of such a charge can be 
 ascertained only by a sympathetic and earnest study of the 
 system at first hand. There is one charge in particular, 
 however, of which Hegel has been and still continues to be 
 accused. It is the pre\ ailing belief that he is simply an 
 a priori metaphysician, who spins theories oat of his head al- 
 together regardless of the facts of experience. In his intro- 
 duction to the Logik, Hegel states the connection which his 
 philosophy bears, and of necessity bears, to experience. " It 
 does not in the least neglect the empirical facts contained in 
 the several sciences, but recognizes and adopts them ; it ap- 
 preciates and applies towards its own structure the universal 
 element in these sciences, their laws and classifications ; but 
 besides all this, into the categories of science it introduces, 
 and gives currency to other categories "* Again: "Thought 
 is only true in proportion as it sinks itself in the facts. "3 It 
 is not too much to say that neither in his premises nor in his 
 conclusions does Hegel go beyond experience. In the his- 
 tory of philosophy it would be difficult ;;o find a more prac- 
 tical and sober-minded philosopher than Hegel ; and it is 
 this that gives to his system its greatest recommendation. 
 For idealism as it is ordinarily understood Hegel could have 
 no sympathy whatever. He was an idealist; but not in the 
 sense of reducing the world to the mere ideas of an individ- 
 
 '^JVerke VI. § 9. Translated by William Wallace, ;!nd ed. Oxford, 1S92. 
 »/5?V., §23. 
 
I 
 
 20 1 ] JiEG ELS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 15 
 
 ual. Philosophy must include every phase of the actual 
 world. Reality is one, and Reason knows itself as the 
 essence of Reality. " The rational is the real, and the real is 
 the ratioral." This is the contention of Hogel. But by no 
 efifort of pure thought or reasoning in vacuo does he attempt / 
 to discern the rational. The task of philosophy, as Hegel 
 conceived it, is to trace in nature, in the human mind, in 
 social institutions, in history, and in religion, an immanent / 
 Reason. " In thine own soul build it up again," sings the 
 Chorus in Faust. Hegel starts from the assumption — the 
 assumption, it may be said, of all the sciences — that exist- 
 ence is one, and intelligence is one, and that the " unpreju- 
 diced and whole-hearted" mind of man can know reality. 
 And it can do this simply because, as a spiritual being, man 
 " is more than individual, because the universal nature that 
 is in him can break through the isolation of a merely indi- 
 vidual existence, and go forth to find itself — the objective re- 
 flex of its own being — in that universal th^ ught and reason 
 which moves and lives in nature, in the infinitely diversified 
 interests of human life, and in the progressive history of 
 the race." ♦ 
 
 The whole aim of the Logic, as Prof. Watson has well 
 said, " is to show that thought is competent to grasp ' being* 
 in its inmost nature, and that we have only to state explic- 
 itly what thought actually thinks, to be convinced beyond 
 the possibility of doubt, that we actually think ' being' as it 
 is, and not any distorted appearance of it. No thinker has 
 ever insisted with the same earnestness of conviction as 
 
 * Principal Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 300. So Hegel : " There can- 
 not be a Divine Reason and a human, there cannot be a Divine Spirit and a 
 human, which are absolutely different. Human reason — the consciousness of 
 one's being — is indeed reason; it is the divine in man, and Spirit, in so far as it 
 is the Spirit of God, is not a spirit beyond the stars. On the contrary, God is 
 present, omnipresent, and exists as Spirit in all spirits." Philosophy of Religion 
 (Eng. Trans. Speirs and Sanderson, p. t,^. 
 
 ^ 1 
 
 % 
 
i6 
 
 HECF.nS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 ft 
 
 ! 1 
 
 [202 
 
 Hegel that the world we know is the only real world. This 
 conviction is bound up with his whole conception of reality; 
 for he believed and regarded it as the special task of philoso- 
 phy to demonstrate, that in the world as it actually is — the 
 world of nature and the distinctively human world of society, 
 art and religion — reason is at work, and hence that the task 
 of philosophy is to show that ' what is real is rational,' the 
 spiritual world is the natural world contemplated as it really 
 is."5 
 
 § 4. It was Parmenides who first among the Greeks as- 
 serted the identity of thought and being. For Aristotle, the 
 universe has its principle or life in God, who is immanent in 
 and yet transcends all things. In Aristotle's own words, 
 
 God, v6^atg T/ Kad' avr^, or hipyeia ^ naO' avT^v, i. 6., He is Sclf-COn- 
 
 scious Reason. Such is also the " Idea" of Hegel. Herbert 
 Spencer, in one of the concluding sections of his Soci- 
 ology makes a noteworthy and often-quoted remark: 
 " Consequently," he says, " the final outcome of that specu- 
 lation commenced by the primitive man is that the Power 
 manifested throughout the universe distinguished as material, 
 is the same Power which in ourselves wells up under the 
 form of consciousness.* Aristotle and Hegel could both 
 assent to this ; but they would go further. It was their en- 
 deavour to show that what we regard as the corporeal world 
 is the manifestation of the same reality whose nature is most 
 adequately revealed in the mental world — in self-conscious- 
 ness : — in other words, that nature and spirit are stages in 
 the evolution of one life which remains identical with itself 
 through all its changes. There is for Hegel an immanent 
 and universal reason through all the life of the external world 
 and in the intellectual and moral life of man. Thus to the 
 notion of the Absolute Hegel gave a new significance. For 
 
 * Philosophical Review, vol. iii., art. " The Problem of Hegel." p. 548. 
 •§659. 
 
[202 
 
 d. This 
 
 reality ; 
 
 philoso- 
 
 T is — the 
 
 society, 
 
 the task 
 
 )nal,' the 
 
 it really 
 
 eeks as- 
 totle, the 
 lanen.t in 
 n words, 
 self-con- 
 Herbert 
 his Soci- 
 remark : 
 ,t specu- 
 e Power 
 material, 
 nder the 
 Id both 
 heir en- 
 al world 
 is most 
 nscious- 
 tages in 
 ith itself 
 manent 
 al world 
 s to the 
 For 
 
 203] HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 17 
 
 him the Absolute is not a shadowy something on the border- 
 land of dreams, but the indwelling and informing life of the 
 rich and varied contents of the universe — the beginning and 
 end of all, " All that God is," he says, " He imparts and 
 reveals ; and He does so, at first, in and through nature."' 
 Thus the material world rightly understood 1 the natural 
 environment for the life of spirit, where — 
 
 " That which drew from out the boundless deep 
 Turns again home." 
 
 § 5. To this idealistic conception of the universe, Hegel 
 joined the dc :trine of evolution to which reference was made 
 at the beginning of this essay as the informing principle in 
 the mental life of the present century. This idea of develop- 
 ment is the leading conception of Hegel's philosophy. He 
 was the first to clearly perceive that the most important 
 application of the law is to be found in the development of 
 man's spiritual nature. Tennyson makes Ulysses say, "I 
 am a part of all that I have met." Man is really a part of 
 all that has gone before. More than of any other creature, 
 it may be said of him that only in the light of his history 
 can we adequately appreciate what he has become. Con- 
 scious mind, while it is the most independent of finite exist- 
 ences, is at the same time the most dependent. But Hegel 
 would be iii earnest with the idea of evolution. For him 
 as for Aristotle the full nature of any reality is revealed 
 only in the totality of its development, and only when its 
 end is before us can Reality be completely characterized. 
 " We can only understand the amoeba and the polype by a 
 light reflected from the study of man." ^ Yet a very great 
 part of current evolutionism exhausts itself in merely tabu- 
 lating the phenomenal phases of reality, with no attempt at 
 
 ' Wtrke VI. § 140 (The Logic of Hegel, Wallace's Translation.) 
 'Lewes, Study oj Psychology, p. 122. 
 
 '\\ 
 
iii 
 
 1 . I 
 
 i8 
 
 HEGEnS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [204 
 
 . I ! 
 
 showing the vital, essential principle in the development — 
 and thereby losing the worth of evolution as a principle for 
 the explanation of reality. Hegel would not deny the 
 validity of the historical sciences. "Yet how," he would 
 ask, "can we say there has been evolution and not mere 
 I aimless change ? " Only in the light of a realized idea can 
 we say that there has been such a thing as evolution. To 
 show this is in reality the task ot philosophy — to gather the 
 partial and seemingly contingent elements and arrange them 
 according to their realized idea. The principle of explana- 
 tion must not be that of the higher by the lower, but one 
 which, while explaining the lower, is also adequate for the 
 explanation of the higher. Matter, according to Hegel, far 
 from explaining spirit, can itself only be explained in terms 
 of spirit. In all paths of human progress the question is, 
 "What has been evolved?" The higher forms of religion 
 cannot be explained by merely tracing their development 
 through refinements on the crude superstitions of savages. 
 Nor is it an adequate explanation of society to find its basis 
 in sympathy among creatu.-es of a like kind. "The process 
 of cosmical evolution," says Laurie, "which is supposed 
 ultimately to have culminated in man (and a process there 
 must have been) does not affect the interpretation of man 
 as a distinctive organism. Granting Darwinian presump- 
 tions, there is yet a point at which the imman mt universal 
 Will emerges out of self-consciousness and constitutes Man. 
 It is from this point of view that we start in our endeavors 
 to say what man is."9 And what is in man now must have 
 been in him potentially from the first. This is Hegel's con- 
 ception. 
 
 § 6. The test of any system of philosophy, it has been 
 said, is the account it gives of the institutions of civilization. 
 " What does it see in human history and the institutions of 
 
 • The Ethics of Reason, p. 189. 
 
[204 
 
 )ment — 
 ciple for 
 eny the 
 e would 
 ot mere 
 idea can 
 on. To 
 ither the 
 ige them 
 explana- 
 , but one 
 ;e for the 
 legel, far 
 in terms 
 estion is, 
 ■ religion 
 elopment 
 savages, 
 its basis 
 e process 
 supposed 
 ess there 
 1 of man 
 jresump- 
 universal 
 ites Man. 
 ndeavors 
 lust have 
 lel's con- 
 has been 
 'ilization. 
 utions of 
 
 205] HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE V/ILL 19 
 
 the family, civil society, the state, the church?"" Uniting 
 as he did the idea of development with his idealism, it will 
 be at once apparent what is Hegel's conception of the in- 
 stitutional life of the human race. In all existing institutions- 
 the past lives on in the present, and forms its central life 
 and nucleus. In those which have withstood the test of time, 
 the family, the state, the church, unless we are to resign our- 
 selves to a thorough-going skepticism about humanity, we 
 must be prepared to admit with Hegel that to some degree 
 at least the "real is the rational." Not that "whatever is is 
 right;" but in so far as institutions have served as embodi- 
 ments of man's needs and aspirations they are of ethical 
 value. Institutions are the expression of man's conception 
 of his relation to his environment; the realized idea of 
 humanity. The social organism is the incarnation of man's 
 inner life : virtues are the subjective habits of his will, and 
 institutions are their outward embodiment : in other words, 
 experience shov/s they are the conditions under which man 
 can best realize himself. Thus, according to Hegel's con- 
 ception, they grew out of an ethical need — the self-realiza- 
 tion of man. Not that in their development this end of the 
 fulfillment of the capacities of the human spirit was always 
 consciously presented, yet in the consciousness of man there 
 must have supervened a universal principle, which, however 
 dimly, enabled him to set himself up as an end to be realized, 
 and to present to his consciousness persons other than him- 
 self. It is this universal principle of reason which, in the 
 development of the human race, has been the immanent and 
 informing life of all individual and social activity. 
 
 § 7. The ethical process is then for Hegel that for which 
 
 the cosmical process exists. The conscious soul is at first 
 
 apparently immersed in nature ; its notion is that of a free 
 
 spiritual being. The consciousness of self implies a con- 
 
 '^^'Avcta, The Logic of Hegel, ■^. \'j. 
 
 I 
 
'v*t 
 
 .m\ ' 
 
 ill! 
 
 :. 
 
 m 
 1 
 
 ; 1 
 
 r 
 
 20 
 
 HEGELS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [206 
 
 sciousness of not-self, and grows with it and by means of it. 
 Its progress is thus one of self-determination and self-realiza- 
 tion through environment — the environment of an intellect- 
 ual and moral world. " We think in relations," says Her- 
 bert Spencer. The ethical world is a world of relations also. 
 Nature and society as systems of relations are organic to the 
 individual as intelligence and will through the emergence in 
 him of the universal Reason. It is in this environment of in- 
 telligence and of social institutions that man is to find fulfil- 
 ment for his will and assert his freedom. Thus man, by 
 identifying himself with the established laws, virtues and in- 
 stitutions — although he may not at first be aware of the im- 
 port of his action — is identifying his good with the common 
 good ; and his rights and his duties arise in proportion as he 
 becomes identified with the social system. In other words, 
 Jie becomes a Person, The child is first a member of the 
 family and its moralization proceeds through the desires and 
 inclinations being brought into conformity with the duties 
 and ideals prescribed in the family life. "New occasions 
 teach new duties." More comprehensive institutions, the 
 school, civil society, the state, the church, render possible 
 new ideals through new relations and furnish further oppor- 
 tunities for the expansion of the individual. The individual 
 will — his essential self — expands in the life of the people, and 
 gradually comes to discover that established laws and insti- 
 tutions, far from being restrictions on his liberty, are the 
 very substance in which man becomes human, and spiritual, 
 and free. 
 
 § 8. The aim of the present essay is to give an outline of 
 Hegel's doctrine of the will as realized in social institutions. 
 For Hegel the will is the man ; it has no other meaning. 
 And man is moral only as he devotes himself to the common 
 good. For Hegel, as for T. H. Green, " There is no other 
 genuine enthusiasm for humanity than one which has trav- 
 
 
V^'-avjILf-MiKia-^ 
 
 •^ 
 
 [206 
 
 ;ans of it. 
 ;H-realiza- 
 
 intellect- 
 says Her- 
 tions also, 
 inic to the 
 irgence in 
 nent of in- 
 find fulfil- 
 5 man, by 
 es and in- 
 of the im- 
 e common 
 rtion as he 
 her words, 
 ber of the 
 lesires and 
 the duties 
 
 occasions 
 itions, the 
 
 r possible 
 ler oppor- 
 
 individual 
 leople, and 
 
 and insti- 
 , are the 
 spiritual, 
 
 outline of 
 istitutions. 
 
 meaning, 
 e common 
 no other 
 
 has trav- 
 
 207] HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 2\ 
 
 eled the common highway of reason — the life of the good 
 neighbor and honest citizen — and can never forget that it is 
 still only a further stage of the same journey." Since 
 Hegel's system is an organic whole and thus scarcely admits 
 of dismembering, there are many topics connected with the 
 subject of which only mention or the merest outline can be 
 given within the limits to which this short essay must be 
 confined. 
 
 A true philosophy mu'*'^ "see life steadily, and see it 
 whole" — it must be one, in other words, whose principle is 
 extensive as well as intensive enough to embrace in its devel- 
 opment every phase of existence. That truth lies in the 
 whole is the very spirit of Hegelianism. The system gives 
 one at least a feeling for the complexity of existence and a 
 distrust of the extreme. Yet it would be an uninteresting 
 system indeed that did not contain inconsistencies. Consis- 
 tency ever tends to become dogmatic, and hence unfruitful in 
 its results. In the very spirit of his philosophy Hegel at his 
 death might have said : " I pass, but shall not die." Brown- 
 ing makes David say to the dying Saul : " Each deed thou 
 hast done dies, revives, goes to work in the world." The 
 present generation is little conscious of how much of its men- 
 tal supplies is drawn from the system of Hegel. 
 
 One cannot express just what in his mental and spirit- 
 ual life he owes to the teacher he has once learned to rever- 
 ence. But it is difficult to understand how, after a sympa- 
 thetic study of Hegel's system, one could refuse his assent to 
 the fair and excellent words of Prof. Watson : " Contact 
 with a mind so wide, so subtile and so deep, a mind fired 
 with sympathy for all the manifestations of the human spirit, 
 cannot be otherwise than stimulating and ennobling." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF HEGEL 
 
 111 
 
 :■ II 
 
 lii! 
 
 '-!! 
 
 § 9. The preceding chapter may serve to indicate the gen- 
 eral standpoint from which this essay on Hegel's doctrine of 
 the will in its application to the institutional life of the race 
 has been undertaken. The system of Hegel, like thought 
 itself, is essentially an organism, and only when viewed as 
 such can we hope to understand and appreciate the various 
 phases or members of the whole. This will involve a brief 
 survey of the rise and development of the main problems 
 for which each generation sought a solution, and which 
 Hegel had to face anew, and of the system in which his own 
 solution is embedded. Hegel found before him the claims 
 of nature on the one hand, and those ot spirit on the other ; 
 of the finite and of the infinite; of the individual and of 
 society ; of the necessity of nature on the one hand, and of 
 moral responsibility on the other. It may with fairness be 
 said that Hegel was the first to clearly perceive that the 
 claims were complementary rather than antagonistic. It is 
 in this that his essential originality exists. Stirling speaks 
 of him as a " crafty borrower." 1 he same charge has been 
 brought against Aristotle. But in borrowing (which of 
 necessity is an element in all progress, especially intellectual 
 and spiritual progress) Aristotle and Hegel comprehended 
 the vitalizing truth in the systems of thei/ predecessors, and 
 embodied it in higher forms. It is in this that true origi- 
 nality consists- 
 
 To fully indicate the method by which Hegel attempts the 
 22 [208 
 
I 
 
 20'^ 
 
 HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 23 
 
 : the gen- 
 octrine of 
 [ the race 
 ; thought 
 viewed as 
 le various 
 Ive a brief 
 problems 
 nd which 
 :h his own 
 the claims 
 he other ; 
 al and of 
 id. and of 
 lirness be 
 
 that the 
 tic. It is 
 ig speaks 
 
 has been 
 (which of 
 ntellectual 
 irehended 
 ssors, and 
 true origi- 
 
 empts the 
 [208 
 
 reconciliation of the opposing doctrines which have already 
 been referred to would mean an exposition of the entire 
 system. Prudence itself would dictate that no such task be 
 attempted. The object of the essay will have been attained 
 if it serve to indicate ( I ) the problem of Hegel, and this in 
 its ethical bearings chiefly; and (2) how the individual sub- 
 ject, born into the world with the possibility of distinguish- 
 ing itself from the objects it knows and the ends it chooses, 
 gradually erects itself into a person, intelligent, social, ethi- 
 chl, by consciously identifying himself with the ethical sub- 
 stance into which he is born, and how in turn " the micro- 
 cosm of the individual mind reflects and reproduces in short- 
 hand the whole of that process which has taken place on the 
 grander scale of the world's spiritual history."' 
 
 " It is true philosophy," says Kant, " to trace the diverse 
 forms of a thing through all its history."' In this historical 
 outline of the problem of philosophy as it presented itself to 
 Hegel, the attempt will be made merely to disengage the lead- 
 ing principles of the development, dwelling, perhaps, more 
 particularly on the systems of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, 
 yet only in so far as the elements of truth in their systems are 
 transmuted by the alchemy of Hegel's genius and given a 
 fuller and more harmonious embodiment. Nor in this intro- 
 duction does it occur to us to say anything new, but it may 
 be that through insight into the defects and inconsistencies 
 of preceding systems we may the more adequately appreci- 
 ate the nature of Hegel's problem, and also some of the de- 
 fects in its solution. The problems of ethics and of society 
 are not new ; and, while the difficulty lies in their solution, 
 yet it might be that a clearer statement of the real problem 
 would carry us a considerable way to its solution. 
 
 § 10. To determine the true relation between the three 
 
 'Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 298. 
 *Physiche Geographie, Introduction, p. iv. § 4. 
 
|N»! 
 
 i ;'ii' 
 
 
 il;' 
 
 
 24 
 
 HEGEUS DOCTRINE OE THE WILL 
 
 [210 
 
 
 points of rational convergence, Man, Nature, God, has been 
 the subject of reflective thought in all ages. From this re- 
 sults the difficulty which Martineau has called " the dualism 
 of the intellect dealing with a triad of intelligibles." To the 
 Greeks, inasmuch as inner experience is always subsequent 
 to the perception of the external world, the relations of God 
 and the cosmos appealed with the greater force. Mediaeval 
 philosophy, as a result of Christianity, was engaged almost 
 entirely with the relation of man and God, to the subordina- 
 tion of the claims of nature. In the spirit of revolt, the 
 claims of nature to our highest regard have, in modern 
 thought, been perhaps unduly emphasized. 
 
 "What is the substance or unitary reality underlying all 
 the diversity of the world around us?" was the question of 
 early Greek philosophy. The Ionic races solved existence 
 in the sure and certain terms of physical atheism ; the Doric 
 in terms of intellectual pantheism. Plato endeavored to 
 mediate between them. He revered Parmenides, as he tells 
 us, more than all other philosophers together : for he had 
 determined the future of metaphysics, in that he first made 
 thinking intelligence the truth of things. For Plato, reality, 
 as such, is spiritual. In his system mind is first separated 
 from body. Strictly speaking, however, it is not correct to 
 regard his system as a metaphysical dualism. Aristotle's 
 ontology in its logical outcome is a dualism that inclines to 
 idealism. The relation between the body and the soul pre- 
 sents us with the most significant example of the dual nature 
 of all things. Mind is the principle which vitalizes and in- 
 forms matter : life and mentality were for Aristotle identical 
 terms. " Existence is the activity of the Divine Reason." 
 When he comes to the theology, however — the final com- 
 pletion of his philosophy — the ideal element is given pre- 
 eminence as the only self-existent reality. God is no longer 
 the perfect Actuality of which the world is the potentiality 
 
 %. 
 
, [210 
 
 has been 
 this re- 
 dualism 
 To the 
 tjsequcnt 
 s of God 
 [ediaeval 
 i almost 
 bordina- 
 volt, the 
 modern 
 
 lying all 
 estion of 
 existence 
 he Doric 
 k^ored to 
 5 he tells 
 r he had 
 rst made 
 , reality, 
 eparated 
 )rrect to 
 ristotle's 
 clines to 
 >oul pre- 
 i\ nature 
 > and in- 
 identical 
 Reason." 
 lal com- 
 /en pre- 
 o longer 
 entiality 
 
 21 1 J HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL ^^ 
 
 ((5(/vn/i/f), but an Actuality absolutely hvt\> Awautui, — a mere 
 First Cause, not a Causa Jmmancns, and here we are but a 
 step from the religion of annihilation. Greek philosophy cul- 
 minated in a psychological and ethical dualism — a dualism 
 of body and mind, reason and sensibility — the despair of a 
 philosophy of the oncrete life of man. 
 
 § II. In the middle ages, in spite of the fundamental 
 doctrine of Christianity — the essential unity of apparent 
 disparates — this withdrawal from nature became still more 
 pronounced. For them, it is true, the Real was the Uni- 
 versal, but a universal won through abstraction. The re- 
 bound to the opposite extreme was inevitable. The watch- 
 word of the revolt was "the Real is the individual:" 
 whatever is true must be in the actual world, and present to 
 sensation. To maintain or dispute the truth of this proposi- 
 tion has been the task of modern philosophy. 
 
 § 12. The system of Descartes, with whom modern philos- 
 ophy is usually said to begin, forms a g?tnglion, as it were, 
 between the old and the new. His system is important for 
 the reason that all the problems of modern inquiry were 
 either explicity stated, or immanent in it. For Descartes, 
 corpus est res extensa; mens est res cogitans. The dualism 
 of mind and matter is absolute. Mind and matter, spiritual 
 and corporeal substance have parallel and original rights. 
 Thus, Descartes puts us face to face with the real difficulty 
 of philosophy. If the system represents the final type of 
 philosophy, a distinction which Prof. Huxley claimed for it, 
 then philosophy may at once be given up as a delusion. 
 There are three criticisms that may fairly be made against 
 Descartes* system, (i) If, as Descartes asserts, mind and 
 matter are things-in-themselves, absolutely separated from 
 each other, they can have no conceivable nature. In order 
 that a thinking substance exist, it must have a perception or 
 thought of some object. The "thinking substance" of 
 
 % 
 
26 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [212 
 
 (fiji 
 
 m 
 
 i* 
 
 Descartes is like Aristotle's First Cause, which dwells at in 
 ever-receding end from its object — " thinking upon thought." 
 If we are to be consistent, we must admit that such a First 
 Cause and such a thinking substance are both unknown and 
 unknowable. (2) In the exigency of explanation Descartes 
 assumes that there is an apprehension by the mind of what 
 is external to it. Such an assumption is also inadmissible. 
 Eithef the premises or the assumption must be given up. 
 It mind is simple, abstract self-consciousness, with no object 
 but itself, and matter the extended, passive substance Des- 
 cartes assumes it to be, there can be no knowledge one of 
 the other. Mind and matter are in some way elements of a 
 unity: and when severed their nature becomes inconceiv- 
 able. (3) In the Cartesian system the relation which God 
 occupies is a merely external one — a tertium quid — to mind 
 and matter , producing, uniting and sustaining them, not by 
 any intelligible evolution of Kis nature, but going beyond 
 Himself to create existences beside Himself by a miracle 
 altogether external and arbitrary. It is a substitution of 
 assertion for reason. Descartes' conception is that our idea 
 of God is not God in us, but an idea of which God's exist- 
 ence is the cause. Since, then, in God, who is the Absolute 
 Unity, idea and reality fall asunder (He is conceived simply 
 as the Cause of our idea of Him), God is made a purely 
 objective and finite existence. 
 
 The work of Malebranche and Spinoza was but the legiti- 
 mate evolution into clearer consciousness of the principles 
 immanent in the system of Descartes. Malebranche turned 
 to supernaturalism and transfigured the universe into God ; 
 Spinoza to naturalism and translated God into the universe. 
 For Spinoza mind and matter are only accidents of the one 
 substance ; they are really the same thing looked at from 
 different points of view.j Interaction is out of the question. 
 
 ' Prof. Lloyd Morgan, in his Introduction to Comparative Psychol jy, p. 3, 
 
 '1 
 
 ^1 
 
ok 
 
 213] IIEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 27 
 
 The two kinds of processes exist alongside of each other, not 
 through each other. Deus sive natiira. 
 
 " In one point of view," says Prof. Edward Caird, " this 
 theory of Spinoza deserves the highest praise for that very 
 charac^^eristic which probably excited most odium against it 
 at the time it was first published, namely, its exaltation of 
 matter. It is the mark of an imperfect Spiritualism to hide 
 its eyes from outward nature, and to shrink from the mater- 
 ial as impure and defiling. But its horror and fear are proofs 
 of weakness; it flies from an enemy it cannot overcome. 
 Spinoza's bold identification of spirit and matter, God and 
 nature, contains {♦* it the germ of a higher idealism than can 
 be found in any philosophy that asserts the claims of the 
 former at the expense of the latter. A system that begins 
 by making nature godless, will inevitably end, as Schelling 
 once said, in making God unnatural. The expedients by 
 which Descartes keeps matter at a distance from God were 
 intended to maintain His pure Spirituality; but their ulti- 
 mate effect is seen in his reduction of the spiritual nature to 
 mere will. As Christianity has its superiority over other re- 
 ligions in this, that it does not end with the opposition of the 
 human to the divine, the natural to the spiritual, but ulti- 
 mately reconciles them, so a true idealism must vindicate its 
 claims by absorbing materialism into itself. It was, there- 
 fore, a true instinct of philosophy that led Spinoza to raise 
 matter to the co-equal of spirit, and at the same time to pro- 
 says " that the reality of object and subject is strictly co-ordinate. And those who 
 hold this view regard as little DCtter tha;i nonsense the assertion that whereas the 
 reality of the subject is unquestionable, the reality of the object is a matter that 
 is open to discussion. Self and cosmos are of co-ordinate reality ; they are the 
 polarized aspects of experience as explained through reason." While subject and 
 object are co-ordinate, yet the subject is conscious of ;he relation which exists. It 
 is the recognition of this which constitutes the fundamental difference between 
 the doctrine of Spinoza and Herbert Spencer on the one hand, and of Idealism 
 on the other. Spencer remains true to the logical implications of his doctrine; 
 Spinoza failed to do so. 
 
 ( 
 
 i 
 
 
ii 
 
 
 i|li;:.i 
 
 .!,!!:! 
 
 
 
 llili 
 
 I:' 
 
 ll i 
 
 28 
 
 HECEJS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [214 
 
 test against the Cartesian conception of matter as mere inert 
 mass, moved only by impulse from without. ' What were a 
 God that only impelled a world from without? ' says Goethe. 
 ' It becomes Him to stir it by an inward energy, to involve 
 nature in Himself, Himself in nature, so that which lives and 
 moves and has its being in Him can never feel the want of 
 His power or His Spirit.' "♦ 
 
 Nevertheless Spinoza's transformation of the world sub 
 specie aeternitatis was superficial. He left it p'most as he 
 found it. His Absolute Being is the dead Jl-absorbing 
 substance, not the spirit that reveals itself in nature and in; 
 the mind of man. His parallelism is at times equivalent to 
 the doctrine of Leibnitz of the essential identity of mind and 
 matter. In passing, however, from abstract indeterminate 
 being to the idea of God conceived as a self-determining 
 principle, the source of all the manifold determinations of 
 the universe, he broke with the very first principle of his 
 system, but in so doing caught sight, as Caird says, of the 
 idea of a unity pre-supposed in and transcending the diflTer- 
 ence between matter and mind, subject and object. 
 
 § 13. Historically the parallelistic monism was turned in 
 two directions — of materialism and of idealism. From 
 Bacon, who " disclosed the way to unfettered waters and un- 
 dreamed shores," had resulted a predilection to materialism, 
 and the natural scientists were disposed to follow. Hobbes 
 was their philosophical leader. In his system individualism 
 was embodied in its severest form. He taught the natural 
 origin of the state as Locke did that of knowledge. Man is 
 merely a part of nature ; all knowledge is experience ; ex- 
 pesience is merely sensuous perception. Hume's skepticism 
 was the truth immanent in the systems of Bacon, Hobbes, 
 and Locke, and was the contribution of English thought to 
 philosophy. 
 
 *Eisays in Literature and Philosophy^ Vol. I. 
 
 1^ 
 
[214 
 
 ere inert 
 it were a 
 i GcEthe. 
 ) involve 
 lives and 
 : want of 
 
 orld siib^ 
 st as he 
 bsorbing 
 e and ia 
 i^alent to 
 nind and 
 lerminate 
 ermining 
 ations of 
 le of his 
 ^s, of the 
 he diflfer- 
 
 iurned in 
 From 
 s and un- 
 terialism, 
 
 Hobbes 
 vidualism 
 e natural 
 
 Man is 
 nee ; ex- 
 kepticism 
 
 Hobbes, 
 lought to 
 
 ;2i5] HEGEL S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 29 
 
 Leibnitz took the direction of idealism. " His system," 
 Paulsen says, " is absolutely determined by his relation to 
 Spinoza."5 Regarding existence as a whole as an ascending 
 series of mental forces, he conceived of soul and body as but 
 lower and higher forms of one being. The monads are 
 beings of a spiritual nature. His disciple Wolfif made soul and 
 Ijody two different things, and God he conceived as the ex- 
 ternal Governor of the universe, thus returning at a stroke to 
 the Cartesian point of view ; from monism to a lifeless dual- 
 ism. 
 
 Thus from the doubt of Descartes and of Bacon comes the 
 pure Intellect ; which by Descartes is left to itself, while by 
 Bacon it is given over to the leading and the light of nature. 
 The followers in the line of the Cirtesian tendency were, as 
 has been seen, Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wolflf ; in that of Bacon, 
 Hobbes, Locke and Hume — the one led to materialism and 
 skepticism, the other to an unsatisfying and imperfect spirit- 
 ualism. The development in both directions had now 
 reached its limit, and philosophy was hurried by David 
 Hume, the prime inspirer of modern philosophy in its de- 
 structive and constructive sides, to a new and decisive turn- 
 ing point. 
 
 § 14. Abstraction was the essential error of pre-Kantian 
 philosophy ; and even Kant, as will be noted in what follows, 
 was never able to entirely free himself, much less his system, 
 from the conditions of his time. Matter was set over against 
 mind, the individual against society, th° universal reign of law 
 in the natural ^;orld against God, freedom and immortality. 
 The fundamental enquiry of the great idealistic movement 
 begun by Kant and carried to its completion by Hegel, was 
 to find a principle sufficiently comprehensive to give impar- 
 tial recognition to the claims of the scientific, ethical and re- 
 ligious consciousness of man. In other words, to show that 
 ^Introduction to Philosophy (translated by Thilly),p. 293. 
 
 ■\\ 
 
 < 
 
30 
 
 HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [216 
 
 •11;'. 
 
 ml 
 
 
 man, natural, intelligent, moral, social and religious, is a 
 being all of one piece, and that he came from and goes to 
 God. Such was the problem of idealism, a revolution as 
 rich in results for philosophy as that which Copernicus 
 effected for astronomy. An outline of the development 
 from Kant to Hegel remains to be given. 
 
 Far from denying the necessary connection of objects of 
 experience in space and time (the contention of natural 
 science), Kant rather set to work at the beginning to dis- 
 cover the universal principles which our ordinary and scien- 
 tific knowledge presupposes. For only when these have 
 been found can the more ambitious problem concern- 
 ing the existence of supra-sensible realities, God and the 
 freedom and immortality of the human soul, be with hope of 
 success attempted. Starting provisionally from the ordinary 
 dualism of thought and things, by a gradual transformation 
 of the theory Kant arrived at the conclusion that the only 
 way of accounting for this endless order of nature is that it is 
 one which our own intelligence forges ; that, instead of our 
 passively apprehending objects (which Empiricists had 
 maintained was the sole condition of our orderf.d experi- 
 ence), it is rather by our intelligence alone that known 
 objects are constituted. Our "experience" must forever 
 remain unexplained and unaccounted for so long as we 
 maintain our belief that thought and nature are abstract op- 
 posites. The point of view, then, which Kant would have us 
 take is this, that the science o* being and the science of 
 knowledge are organically one and inseparable. This was 
 the fundamental principle in the systems of Plato and Aris- 
 totle. Berkeley's idealism was built on sensations rather than 
 on reason. The development from Kant to Hegel was the 
 bringing to clearer consciousness the truth immanent in the" 
 systems of Plato and Aristotle.* 
 
 r;'i 
 
 • It may be interesting to quote the view of the late Prof. Romanes, made from 
 
 'li: 
 
 ;;^' 
 
 l;i' 
 
■■■'5; 
 
 [216 
 
 us, is a 
 goes to 
 Lition aa 
 pernicus 
 lopment 
 
 bjects of 
 natural 
 T to dis- 
 id scien- 
 :se have 
 concern- 
 and the 
 I hope of 
 ordinary 
 ormation 
 the only 
 that it is 
 d of our 
 ists had 
 1 experi- 
 t known 
 : forever 
 g as we 
 tract op- 
 i have us 
 :ience of 
 This wa5 
 md Aris- 
 ther than 
 was the 
 nt in the" 
 
 I, made from 
 
 
 2 1 7] HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 3 1 
 
 The outcome, then, of Kant's doctrine of space and time 
 which is interwoven with his entire system of thought, con- 
 sidered in reference to itself alone, is that our conception of 
 the nature of the Absolute Reality must be a spiritual one. 
 For his doctrine, and the facts on which it is based, main- 
 tains the organic and living relation between subject and 
 object. Both must be viewed as dcpendently sharing in a 
 universal, spiritual life, in which each sub: ists and has its 
 essential being. Space and time, therefore, we are to re- 
 gard not as self-subsistent and pre-existent conditions of the 
 Absolute — as previous philosophers had done when they 
 conceived of the Absolute materialistically as "Substance:" 
 rather we are to consider space and time as dependent 
 functions of the Absolute. " Substance " is a purely relative 
 notion and possesses only "phenomenal" validity. The 
 Absolute is essentially spiritual. 
 
 Kant found in the "static and permanent ego" the pre- 
 supposition of all connected experience. But it was a 
 knowledge of phenomena only. He had shown that the 
 mind was not the mere creature of environment — the merely 
 passive, as Locke and Hume had conceived it. The great 
 factor, it is true, was the active synthesis; but there was 
 
 the standpoint of science in his work, Mind and Motion and Monism, p. 36 f. 
 (edited by Prof. Lloyd Morgan) : " If the advance of natural science is now 
 steadily leading us to the conclusion that there is no motion without mind, must 
 we not see how the independent conclusion of mental science is thus independently 
 confirmed — the conclusion, I mean, that there is no being without knowing? To 
 me, at least, it does appear that the^ time has come when we may begin, as it 
 were, in a dawning light, to see that the study of nature and the study of mind 
 a.e meeting upon this greatest of possible truths. And if this is the case — if 
 there is no motion without mind, no being without knowing — shall we infer, 
 with Clifford, that universal being is mindless, or answer with a dogmatic nega- 
 tive that most stupendous of questions — Is there knowledge with the Most 
 High ? If there is no motion without mind, no being without knowing, may we 
 not rather infer that it is in the medium of mind and in the medium of knowl- 
 edge we live, and move, and have our being? " 
 
 i 
 
 r 
 
32 
 
 HEGEL S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [218 
 
 t 
 
 Still needed the '* prick of sense from the things-in-them- 
 selves." Kant was never able to bridge the chasm between 
 phenomena and noumena in the world of knowledge, nor 
 between desire and reason in the world of practice. The 
 human spirit has two fundamental characteristics, the im- 
 plications of which were not clearly grasped by Kant, though 
 he himself had snoplied the principle by which the apparent 
 disparates might be reconciled. On the one l..nd, the 
 human mind as such is conditioned in eo far as it stands in 
 an essential relation of dependence for its spiritual develop- 
 ment on the world of nature, of society, and on God. On 
 the other hand, the mind has within it a principle of ration- 
 ality or spontaneity which enables it to react on its environ- 
 ment, and thus create its intellectual, its moral, and its 
 religious world. Kant, it is true, made mind a factor in the 
 constitution of experience ; he also recoiled from Individual- 
 ism in morals ; yet he never reached the organic view of 
 the relatio;! of the environment to the individual which re- 
 gards environment in all its phases, of nature, society, and 
 religion, as well as the individual, as having their life in the 
 organic evolution of one spiritual principle. "The age of 
 Kant," says President Schurman, "was one of transition, 
 and Kant's philosophy has not escaped the contradictions 
 immanent to all Becoming."^ He was unable to perceive 
 the full significance of the doctrine which is fundamental to 
 his system. He could not free his system from the abstract 
 dualism that destroys any system in which it occurs— the 
 separation of thought and being. His insight led him to 
 see that existence can only mean existence for a conscious- 
 ness — but he could not hold himself fully to the idea that 
 consciousness in the very act of being conscious transcends 
 the dualism between itself and its object : that thus, freedom 
 may include necessity, the noumenal the phenomenal, that 
 
 "^Kantian Ethics and Ethics of Evolution, p. 18. 
 
219] HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL jj 
 
 spirit is the truth of nature. To show this was the work of 
 Fichte and Schelling, but especially of Hegel. 
 
 Ill the preceding section it was maintained that Kant's pe- 
 culiar merit (a merit to which previous philosophers could 
 not legitimately lay claim) consisted in his constant en- 
 deavor to do full justice to the claims of the scientific, as well 
 as to those of the moral and religious, consciousness. His in- 
 vestigation resulted in the discovery of the categories and of 
 their supreme condition, the unity of apperception. Fichte, 
 Schelling and Hegel worked out in their fulness the implica- 
 tions of this idealistic principle. The connection between 
 mind and nature pointed to a common root of both — an or- 
 ganic unity with many antitheses; that the objective uni- 
 verse of nature and of history, in that it is intelligible, is the 
 working of an immanent Reason to which man's conscious- 
 ness is akin. Thus German Idealism was to raise the mod- 
 ern mind to a higher consciousness blending the " living 
 realism of the ancient world and the inwardness and ideality 
 of the Christian religion." 
 
 Starting from this principle of the unity of apperception, 
 or the ego, Fichte, followed by Schelling, made it, as abso- 
 lute, their metaphysical principle. For Fichte, as for Hegel,, 
 philosophy means the systematic development of thought 
 from its most abstract phase to the wealth and fulness of 
 real existence. His task, as he conceived it, was to bring 
 into organic connection the disjecta membra of the Kantian 
 system. His fundamental conception, as Prof. Paulsen re- 
 marks, is that being is life, inner life. His merit was to 
 demonstrate how, ultimately, all reality must be referred to 
 «elf-consciousness ; to make explicit what was implicit in 
 Kant's notion of the unity of apperception. " The fii:<al 
 notion of Fichte's philosophy," says Prof. Adamson, " ex- 
 pressed more clearly in the later works than in the Wissen- 
 schaftslehrey has been seen to be that of the divine or spirit- 
 
 % 
 
 -A 
 
 ■ i 
 
 w 
 
 f 
 
If: 
 
 !:«; 
 
 34 HEGEL'S DOCTRLXE OF THE WILL [22O 
 
 ual order of which finite spirits are the manifestation or real- 
 ization, and in the light of which human life and its sur- 
 roundings appear as the continuous progress in ever higher 
 stages towards the realization of the final end of reason. 
 Under this conception, the oppositions of thought which 
 play so important a part in philosophy — Being and Thought, 
 Mind and Nature, Soul a. d Body, Freedom and Law, 
 Natural Inclination and Moral Effort, Mechanism and Tele- 
 ology — are reconciled. They appear in their due place as 
 different aspects of the several stages in and through which 
 the spiritual order is realized. But, as has also been seen, the 
 element wanting in Fichte's system is the definite recogni- 
 tion between this view of the spiritual development of reason 
 and the natural, historical development of nature and hu- 
 manity." ^ 
 
 For this neglect of and often contempt on the part of 
 Fichte for the riches of intelligence as revealed in the forms 
 of nature and history, in other words, of " experience," his 
 system has been accused of being pure subjective idealism 
 — a charge that is not altogether without foundation. Sup- 
 port from experience to the essential principle of his ideal- 
 ism was to be brought from nature by Schelling, from history 
 by Hegel. 
 
 Fichte's chief concern lay in the sphere of the practical 
 reason. Accordingly, he did not go further than to speak 
 of nature as merely not-I. The noumenon of Kant still 
 haunts his system. It was Schelling's endeavor to supple- 
 ment Fichte in this regard and exhibit nature as an intelli- 
 gible system, as a function or process of intelligence towards 
 self-consciousness as its necessary goal; i. e., to show its 
 essential oneness with the ego as intelligent, and not, as 
 Descartes had done, as the dead antithesis of conscious 
 thought. " Matter," says Schelling, " is the universal seed- 
 
 ^ Fichte (In Blackwood's Philosophical Classics), p. 219 f. 
 
mmi 
 
 221] HEGEI^S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL || 
 
 corn of the universe, in which is wrapped up everything that 
 unfolds itself in the later development." We thus come to 
 see that nature and personality are not two things, but are 
 correlatives rather; yet not merely correlatives. "They are 
 members of one great organism of intelligence. "9 Thus for 
 Schelling as for Herbert Spencer the force which permeates- 
 nature is the same as that which finds expression in the 
 world of mind. In his " Identity Philosophy," however, h& 
 returned to the position of Spinoza, in which subject and 
 object, mind and nature, are regarded as parallel develop- 
 ments of equal importance and value. All difference is 
 merged in absolute oneness. He finds nothing in spirit but 
 what he found in nature. Thus he came to hold what seems 
 to be the characteristic doctrine of all pantheism and natural- 
 ism — the principle, that is, which regards subject as the 
 mere correlative of object, self-consciousness of nature, that 
 the spiritual and material world are two "sides of the same 
 shield," and " imply each other equally^ In the small 
 treatise of 1804 "Philosophy and Religion," Schelling puts 
 forth clearly and distinctly the doctrine that the existence of 
 the universe is not essential to the Absolute ; rather its rela- 
 tion to the latter is one of mere accident. This is Spinoza's 
 conception of the Absolute as mere blank, indeterminate 
 being, and in returning to this position, Schelling resigned 
 the real import of idealism in which the idea of God is that 
 of a self-determining principle, the source and life of all the 
 manifold determinations of the universe. 
 
 § 15. About Hegel, as about every other philosopher, the 
 essential question must be, what was his problem and what 
 his method? Briefly stated, his problem was to discover the 
 nature of that Uiiity which is the underlying principle of the 
 spheres of nature and mind, and to indicate with all possible 
 comprehensiveness how this Reality reveals itself as the in- 
 » Seth, From Kant to Hegel, p. 57. 
 
 ■A 
 
36 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL [232 
 
 dwelling life of science, art, morality and religion. " From 
 all periods of the world," says Wallace of Oxford, " from 
 mediaeval piety and stoical pride, Kant and Sophocles, 
 science and art, religion and philosophy, Hegel gathers in 
 the vineyards of the human spirit the grapes from which he 
 crushes the wine of thought." The vital part of the Critical 
 philosophy is the perception that the Absolute is not sub- 
 stance but self-conscious spirit ; that is, the unity of self- 
 consciousness is the principle to which all things are to be 
 referred, and in which they must ultimately find their expla- 
 nation. To this result all previous philosophy tended. 
 Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Fichte and Schelling (to name merely 
 those who were more conscious of the tendency than others) 
 all strove towards that idealism which finds the interpreta- 
 tion of existence in self-consciousness. Conscious spirit is 
 the ideal end and real pre-supposition of the universe. In 
 other words, if there exists a universe, a cosmos, God is; 
 and God is Spirit because the universe exists. 
 
 The answer, then, to the question ho\v Hegel came to 
 his notion of spirit? is not far to seek. The entire previous 
 development was organic to his system and exists as its pre- 
 supposition. Yet this detracts nothing from his originality. 
 Rather the reverse is true. Hegel saw the vital spirit of 
 previous philosophy and was in earnest with his discovery. 
 What he endeavored to show was that in spite of all their 
 apparent conflicts the kingdoms of nature and of spirit are 
 essentially one ; or rather, that this conflict was but " the 
 self-appointed manifestation of their ultimate unity."'" In 
 what precedes we have tried to indicate how and when these 
 various conflicts have arisen in philosophy. They were 
 rather phases of the one conflict of spirit with nature. We 
 have also seen how, previous to this, mind was the absolute 
 
 " Eucken, The Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought (Trans, 
 by Phelps) p. 16. 
 
 re 
 
 ev 
 
 sh 
 
 dil 
 
 orj 
 
 sell 
 
 neJ 
 
223] tlEGELS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL ^j 
 
 opposite of matter, spirit of nature, freedom of necessity, the 
 individual of society, the Infinite of the finite, faith of knowl- 
 edge, the knowable of the unknowable. It was Hegel's 
 task, and herein consists the vital and valuable element in 
 his philosophy, to show that the one is but the truth of the 
 other; that soul is the truth of the body, freedom of nocei- 
 sity, the individual of society, the Infinite of the finite. 
 " The central object of the Hegelian system is by no means 
 mystical or repellent, and lies sufficiently close to men's in- 
 terests to demand careful inquiry. For it is nothing else 
 than an attempt to show that all thought is, on its human 
 side, a gradual approximation to God, and on its Divine side, 
 a gradual revelation of His own nature. And the means by 
 which the result is sought to be obtained is nothing else than 
 an unfaiHng belief in Reason, and in its power to correct the 
 imperfect notions of logic and science, in its power to con- 
 struct and justify ideas of its own, in its irrefragable and ab- 
 solute authority." " Reason for Hegel is the immanent 
 principle of the world. 
 
 The principle of Identity had been the watchword of pre- 
 vious philosophy. Matter was matter and mind was mind : 
 and mind and matter were absolutely opposed. Hegel 
 arrived at the principle of his entire system by a considera- 
 tion of the very nature of the self-conscious and self- 
 determining spirit. The implications of this method had 
 been only imperfectly grasped by Kant and Fichte. Hegel 
 recognized that self-consciousness is the unity to which 
 every manifold must be referred. But he was the first to 
 show that thought or self-consciousness is founded upon 
 difference: that consciousness is a "many-in-one" — an 
 organic whole, a unity in which the opposition between the 
 self and the external world is overcome. Again, behind the 
 necessity of nature Kant found a noumenal world for the free 
 " Courtney, Studies in Philosophy. 
 
 i 
 
 ii 
 
 ■A 
 
 I 
 
38 
 
 HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF T'fE WILL 
 
 [224 
 
 
 i'l'ii 
 
 play of man's spiritual life. To this dualism or othcr- 
 worldlincss, Hegel opposes the freedom of necessity ; only 
 through the transforrrntion of our natural impulses, affec- 
 tions and desires can the spirit accomplish its freedom, 1. ^., 
 through a world which at first appears the very opposite of 
 spirit, and along the beaten highways of this common world 
 lies the way which leads to the everlasting life." 
 
 § 16. For Hegel, Logic and Metaphysics are identical. 
 Logic, he tells us, is "the all-animating spirit of all the 
 sciences, and its categories the spiritual hierarchy." In 
 reality there is no passing over "the ugly broad-ditch" 
 from thought to nature and spirit. The categories never 
 existed otherwise than in nature and spirit. They are 
 equally objective and subjective. Reason is an organism : 
 for us there is but one reason and one universe, and the 
 universe exists as the manifestation of that reason. This is 
 anthropomorphism ; but it is not to be lost sight of that 
 without some form of anthropomorphism, we must give 
 allegiance to thorough-going agnosticism. Everything we 
 attribute to existence — the existence of the atom even — is a 
 reflection of our own spirit — the spirit is back of it all. 
 
 Logic, then, is the study of the pure thought-forms (pure 
 in the sense that they are ideally separated for purposes of 
 examination) which are embodied in nature and spirit, whose 
 animating principles they are. Hegel attempts to prove in 
 the Logic that the ultimate unity of the world is spiritual by 
 showing how the various categories, through which we are 
 accustonr ed to explain the world — being, measure, essence, 
 force, substance — hypostatized aspects of reality, and as 
 " interlocked moments" passing into each other through 
 their own immanent dialectic, resolve themselves into that of 
 self-consciousness or spirit. There is no positive without a 
 
 " A somewhat fuller account of the ethical development from Kant to Hegel 
 will be given in a succeeding chapter. 
 
1 
 
 225] 
 
 IlEGF.nS DOCTRrXE OF TIfE WILL 
 
 39 
 
 ne^Mtivc, and on'y throu{;h this antithesis is advance made to 
 a liifjher synthesis. It is affirmation, through negation to 
 reaffirmation with enriched content. '• Through death to 
 life," Is the fundamental conception of the Hegelian Logic, as 
 we shall find it to be also the vital and informing principle 
 of his Ethics. " An immanent negativity" is the " ground of 
 advance, the very soul of the world-march." The Logic 
 leads up to the Absolute Idea which is the perfect form of 
 that relation we are conscious of as existing between subject 
 and object, between a knower and his knowledge. '3 
 
 § 17. As has been noted above, nature is, for Hegel, not 
 the mere co-equal of spirit. It is " petrified intelligence " — 
 thought externalized. Or rather it is the necessary manifes- 
 tation of spirit in the sense that through nature spirit realizes 
 itself. The universe is in externality what God is in inter- 
 nality. " Nature is in herself the process of the evolution of 
 the spirit from her own bosom ; and consequently embodies 
 the spiritual presence throughout." Aristotle and Schelling 
 found the principle of the world in Absolute Spirit as pure 
 self-consciousness (pure form opposed to the finite world). 
 For Hegel, God is that Absolute Spirit which is being 
 realized in the world, and in whom we live and move and 
 have our being ; through whom and to whom are all things. 
 
 In the philosophy of nature Hegel's purpose is to show 
 how, starting from the conception of nature which regards 
 it as pure externality in space, it manifests more and more 
 explicitly through its rising spiral of mechanism, chemism 
 and organism, until it unfolds its essential nature — its truth 
 
 •Trof. Watson (The Problem of Hegel, Philosophical Revino, Vol. III.) well 
 remarks : " Herbert Spencer says the true Reality must be beyond the distinc- 
 tion of subject and object, and that of it we can only affirm that it is — without 
 being able to define in the least luhat is is. Now Hegel in showing that pure 
 ' being' is pure nothing has refuted this doctrine by anticipation. The Absolute 
 of Spencer is simply Hegelian ' being,' of which we cannot even affirm that it is, 
 without contradicting ourselves." 
 
 
'i 
 
 ;t; 
 
 40 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [226 
 
 i,!'-'.; 
 
 — in mind. Thus in nature thought is objectified. The 
 categories are the constitutive and regulative principles of 
 objectivity and of the thinking subject. Thus nature is 
 in*;elligible and man intelligent, that is, nature is organic to 
 intelligence, and exists only in the life of spirit. The Abso- 
 lute, on whom subject and object, intelligence and the in- 
 telligible world, are in living organic dependence, is an 
 Absolute Spirit. The material world in its source and goal 
 exists as the manifestation of a living Spiritual Activity. 
 'All that God is He imparts and reveals, and He does so at 
 first in and through nature.""* 
 
 § 18. "From our point of view," says Hegei, "mind or 
 spirit has for its presupposition nature, of which it is the 
 truth, and for that reason its absolute prius. In this its truth 
 nature is vanished, and mind has resulted as the "Idea" 
 entered on possession of itself. Here the subject and object 
 of the Idea are one — either is the intelligent un'ty, the 
 notion. This identity is absolute negativity — for whereas in 
 nature the intelligent unity has its objectivity perfect but 
 externalized, this self-externalization has been nullified, and 
 the unity in that way been made one and the same with 
 itself. Thus at the same time it is this identity only so far 
 as it i? a return out of nature. "'^ 
 
 One of Christianity's best gifts to philosophy was to show 
 that natuie, instead of being essentially evil and opposed to 
 spirit, is, in reality, the very means through which must be 
 realized the highest spiritual life ; that, in other words, nature 
 exists for spirit. Hegel more than any preceding philoso- 
 pher, by his thorough appreciation of the ethical and relig- 
 ious significance of Christianity, saw the implication of this 
 truth. In this respect. Browning is in the realm of poetry 
 what Hegel is in that of philosophy. It is this which gives 
 
 '♦ Werke, VI, § 140. (Wallace's Translation.) 
 " Ibid., VII, § 381. (Wallace's Translation.) 
 
 
 m% 
 
22 7 j HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL ^j 
 
 to the philosophy of the one, as it does to the poetry of the 
 other, its essential healthfulness and spiritual vitality,, Nature 
 like mind is rational, hut through consciousness mind spirit- 
 ualizes and informs nature as an instrument of its purposes. 
 From this point of view man at once completes and trans- 
 cends nature. " All tended to mankind, and man produced, 
 all has its end thus far." Born into the vorld at a certain 
 point of time, man's life is a process of thought and action — 
 finding himself at home in the world. In knowing the ex- 
 ternal world, and identifying himself with the ethical sub- 
 stance, he comes gradually to the fulfilment of the com- 
 mand yviMi ffaurdr— first to kuow and therewith to be himself — 
 to feel his calling to be that of a co-worker in the realization 
 of the divine purpose " to which the whole creation moves." 
 
 " Progress is man's distinctive mark alone. 
 Not God's and not the beast's. God is, they are, 
 Mar. partly is and wholly hopes to be." '• , 
 
 It is to this conception of the world that we have been 
 brought by this brief and imperfect introduction to Hegel's 
 philosophy, namely, the consciousness of the identity of the 
 power without and the power within ; that the necessity, the 
 machinery of nature and of the institutions in which the hu- 
 man mind has expressed itself, is but the manifestation, the 
 organic evolution, of the same spiritual principle by which 
 man is raised to conscious freedom. And in the spiritual 
 life of man is continued the revelation of the Absolute Spirit, 
 which, as Hegel says, " was begun in nature." " God dwells 
 in all," says Browning, " from life's minute beginnings up at 
 last to man 
 
 \ 
 
 :i 
 
 But in completed man tegins anew 
 A tendency to God." 
 
 '• Browning, A Death in the Desert, 
 
 :\M 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 li 
 
 ■■*■* 
 
 I 
 
 § 19. In the preceding chapter we endeavored to trace 
 the gradual emergence in the history of thought of the 
 various problems for which Hegel sought a comprehensive 
 principle of explanation. Thought or intelligence is an 
 organism and in its history has developed into varied and 
 complex forms. One-sided embodiments have been passed 
 by in its onward course, yet the existence of which de- 
 pended on their having within them some eletncn' ". truth. 
 Materialism and idealism, the necessity of nature and the 
 freedom implied in the commands of our moral nature, un- 
 belief and faith, the individual and society — does Hegel 
 afiford us any assistance in inclining our minds to the truth 
 of the claims of each of these? Such a question cannot be 
 answered at the present stage of this essay and never dog- 
 matically. It may be said that philosophy, like poetry, 
 answers no questions. Its function is rather to rectify our 
 mind's attitude towards those questions which the mind 
 itself proposes. Existence can be adequately solved only 
 in a life. Philosophy may serve at least to free us from 
 arbitrary notions and fruitless questions. 
 
 Development was found to be the key -word of He^jeJ -; 
 philosophy. !^ind comes forth from nature, of which it is 
 the truth or realization. Hegel here brings us face to face 
 with the central point of modern philosophical controversy. 
 Ordinarily we conceive the soul a spiritual substance in- 
 serted as an extraneous principle at some definite point in 
 42 [228 
 
 r -ii 
 
229] 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRLVE OF THE WILL 
 
 43 
 
 % 
 
 the growth of the body, which we regard as a material sub- 
 stance. Biology, at present busy with the application of 
 the law of development to mental phenomena, shows that 
 such a notion must be qualified. The physical organism, 
 we are told has been evolved: and our intellectual and 
 moral nature also bears traces of development. May not 
 consciousness itself have been evolved also? In this chapter 
 it remains briefly to inquire in what sense Hegel would per- 
 mit the application of the idea of development to human 
 consciousness. 
 
 § 20. We may conceive the development of consciousness 
 to take place in one of three ways ; ( i ) Consciousness in 
 its last analysis is a product ; the development of the mind 
 is a development entirely from without. " Mental phe- 
 nomena," says Lewes, " are functions of the organism," and 
 " the organism is a part of nature and is swept along in the 
 great current of natural forces." ' Thus for Lewes, thought 
 is itself an ultimate development of matter. A few pages 
 previous (p. 74), he had admitted that " the conquest of 
 modern speculation is that our world arises in conscious- 
 ness;" he began by asserting that the material substance 
 was only such through consciousness, and ended by making 
 it a quality of the same material substance ; and this is the 
 fundamental difficulty of all materialistic explanations. We 
 can gain an intelligible expression of matter and force in 
 terms of thought, but no such expression of thought or con- 
 sciousness in terms of matter and force. " You cannot get," 
 says Principal Caird, " to mind as an ultim .te product of 
 matter, for in the very attempt to do so, you have already 
 begun with mind." ' Again, " that notion of Force or Phy- 
 sical Causality, from which the matenalist would construct 
 the world independently of mind, is itself a creation or cate- 
 
 ' Study of Psycholo^, p. 103. 
 » Philosophy of Religion, p. 88. 
 
 f 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 • ii 
 
 
44 
 
 HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [23CX 
 
 Ml 
 
 
 I- 
 
 •1;!' 
 
 gory of mind, and instead of looking for thought or mental 
 energy as the final product into which force is convertible^ 
 we must regard force as itself something which exists only 
 for thought."3 
 
 Those who conceive consciousness to be a function of the 
 nervous system have called attention to the intimate connec- 
 tion that increasing knowledge discloses between the psy- 
 chical and physical processes ; to the principle which is the 
 highest generalization reached in science — the conservation 
 of energy ; the sum of real motion, they assert, and of mo- 
 tive force is constant ; and life and consciousness having had 
 beginnings are therefore products — the result of physical 
 processes. Thus they find it possible to pass from the inor- 
 ganic to the organic, and from the organic to the conscious, 
 without calling in the aid of any principle other than that ol 
 force. Darwin speaks of an a priori tendency of the individ- 
 ual to maintain itself in the struggle for existence. Where^ 
 we may ask, did this self-causation or seif-development come 
 from ? The criterion of existence for modern thought is. 
 activity, and thus, at a stroke, the conception of the mind as. 
 a tabula rasa is brushed aside as intolerable. By no flight 
 of imagination can we conceive that everything comes into a: 
 thing from without. How then explain this organic unity 
 " which maintains itself by continuous self-differentiation and 
 integration?" The most perfect unity is that of self-con- 
 sciousness, for in it all externality has disappeared and the 
 principle of force is still less applicable than in the phe- 
 nomena of life. Force can exist only between two things, 
 external to each other. But in consciousness, its very 
 nature is in the fact that externality has vanished, and for it 
 such a principle as force exists as a relation. Thus the 
 question returns upon us, how can consciousness arise from 
 that for the existence and constitution of which conscious- 
 
 ' Philosophy of Religion, p. 93. 
 
 m 
 
 
 
.231] 
 
 n EG EDS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 45 
 
 ness is necessary ? It is not necessary to deny the exist- 
 ence of matter ; to understand it is our single duty. The vital 
 principle of evolution is that any reality is understood only 
 in the totality of its development. Whatever, then, is subse- 
 quently evolved must have been originally involved. " But 
 this is a view of the world which spiritualizes matter rather 
 than materializes mind; for in the whole realm of being 
 down to the lowest existence in outward nature, it leaves 
 nothing absolutely foreign to thought, nothing which, either 
 tictually or virtually, thought cannot claim as its own." ♦ 
 
 (2) A second conception of the application of the idea of 
 -development to the soul is Leibnitz's "Pre-established" 
 harmony between soul-life and the life of the world. This 
 <;an only be mentioned in passing. It may with fairness be 
 -said that all would now admit a certain power of determina- 
 tion from both inner and outer. We pass, therefore, to the 
 (3) conception — that of Hegel — which regards the life of 
 consciousness, of the soul, as a self-development, or self- 
 Kdetermination through environment, and after what has 
 already been said we may here be very brief. 
 
 § 21. For Hegel, as we have seen, the real is the intelli- 
 gible, and the intelligible the real. Aristotle had reached 
 this doctrine when he conceived " the reason of man to be a 
 pure universal or universal Jiivo//<f, the evolution of which to 
 •complete self-consciousness is one with the process whereby 
 the objective world comes to be known:" yet he was unable 
 to maintain himself at the height of this conception. Start- 
 ing out with the admission of a material principle essentially 
 different from the principle of reason, this, if consistently 
 <:arried out, would bring him to a religion of annihilation, 
 and a freedom not won by overcoming the world, but by a 
 complete withdrawal from its influence. 
 
 For the doctrine that the real is the intelligible and the 
 
 * Caird, loc, cit. p. 1 10. 
 
 I 
 
 ; I 
 
IT 
 
 46 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF TJIE WILL 
 
 [232 
 
 
 intelligible the real, Kant prepared the way by showing that 
 without a subject there exists no object; that existence has 
 meaning only for a thinking self. Even granting the a 
 posteriori, as against the a priori, origin of conceptions; 
 admitting also the entire Associationist psychology, yet in 
 some way these conceptions are immanent in experience, 
 and are still the rational constitutive principles of the uni- 
 verse. So that the individual in coming to self-conscious- 
 ness througli reaction with the world of nature, shows that 
 the principles at work in his consciousness are identical with 
 those involved in the constitution of nature. Kant and his 
 successors, then, could accept with gratitude whatever the 
 biologist may tell us of the dependence of soul-life on the 
 organism. They could accept as a matter of course the 
 development from feeling or sensation as traced by the 
 Empiricists. The Scientist and the Idealist are.Qlie.in their 
 abiding faith that the world is rational at the core. 
 
 From this standpoint it is clearly erroneous to speak of 
 the conscious rational being as such, in spite of the necessary 
 relation it bears to influences of environment, as in any 
 absolute ense determined from without. Such an idealistic 
 theory of the internal and external world enables us to see 
 their essential unity, and recognize the relative nature of any 
 distinction between self-determination and determination 
 through environment. Since this environment or the .ex- 
 ternal world is the manifestation of reason, it thus, though 
 at first presenting itself under the form of contingency and 
 as a hindrance, comes to be recognized as the very condi- 
 tion under which the development of the individual conscious 
 spirit is accomplished. Thought then, Hegel would say, is 
 an eternal process of self-manifestation and self-realization, 
 which in its necessary evolution reveals itself as force, and 
 manifests itself in the various forms of existence and laws of 
 phenomena, natural and spiritual. So that the history of a 
 
233] IIEGELS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 47 
 
 conscious spirit, in its relations with the environment, physi- 
 cal, ethical, religious, into which it is born, is not a struggle 
 between two independent and unrelated forces, but, as Prof. 
 Edward Caird expresses it, " the evolution by antagonism of 
 a spiritual principle." Thus it Js seen that ultimately it is 
 for the creation of the Person that environment exists. Man 
 has within him a principle which, finding itself at home in 
 nature, erects him above nature, and in turn enables him to 
 recognize his oneness with the Eternal and Absolute Sub- 
 ject, the Infinite Spirit for whom both nature and the in- 
 dividual spirit exist. From this standpoint, also, as Lange 
 says, " man's conscious life remains still a problem when all 
 the consequences of Darwinism have been granted." 
 
 Hegel, t' en, would assent to Lewes* statement that the 
 triumph of modern speculation is that the world arises ip 
 consciousness, but would understand it differently. He 
 would not deny the existence of matter ; yet he would insist 
 on a clear understanding of what is meant by it. If the 
 external world in space and time exist only for a self-con- 
 scious subject, consciousness can no longer be regarded as a 
 product of that world. Materialism formerly asserted that 
 matter was the creative condition of force ; now it asserts 
 that force is the creative condition of matter. Idealism 
 accepts this, seeing in force nothing but a function of spirit, 
 since force is in a conditioned relation to space and time, 
 which are themselves spiritual functions. The kingdoms of 
 nature and spirit are organically one and inseparable. 
 " Spirit," as President Schurman expresses it, " is the eternal 
 reality, and nature its eternal manifestation." * 
 
 ^Belief in God. 
 
 II 
 
 li 
 
 if 
 
 
 ^11 
 
 / 
 
 i 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SUBJECTIVE MIND 
 
 -41 
 
 7 
 
 ■■i^»\ 
 
 § 22. In the "Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences," 
 which is the only " complete, matured, and authentic state- 
 ment of Hegel's philosophical system," ' the subject matter 
 of philosophy is distributed under the three main heads — 
 (i) Logic, (2) Philosophy of Nature, and (3) Philosophy of 
 Mind. "It is this third part," says Prof. Wallace, "or 
 rather it is the last two divisions therein (embracing the 
 great general interests of humanity, sjch as law and morals, 
 religion and art, as well as the development of philosophy 
 itself) which forms the topics of Hegel's most expanded 
 teaching, and is the most interesting part of Hegel." 
 
 If Hegel has a metaphysical basis of ethics — a philosophy 
 of right, of the state and of history — he also has a psychol- 
 ogy. The Philosophy of Mind has to do primarily with the 
 world of intelligence and of humanity. It is the philosophy 
 of man, i. e., psychology in its broadest sense ; which, as 
 Herbart says, shoots its roots into the sciences of life, and 
 blossoms in the historical sciences. The Philosophy of 
 Mind is subdivided into the three parts — (i) Subjective, (2) 
 Objective, and (3) Absolute Mind. It demonstrates the 
 several stages of that development by which man makes 
 explicit what was implicit in his nature from the first. Be- 
 ginning with the individual as a sentient organism, a mere 
 bit of nature so to speak, it shows how, from the first letting 
 into the soul through feeling of the infinite secret of the uni- 
 
 48 
 
 ' Wallace, Logic of Hegel, p. xi. 
 
 [234 
 
 ,1 , 
 
235] HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL ^jo 
 
 verse, step by step the individual, " rounded to a separate 
 mind," advances to completed freedom by coming into con- 
 scious relationship with the intelligible world, the ethical 
 substance, and finally into conformity with the Divine im- 
 manence. Man at first is a mere bundle of sensations and 
 impulses. Out of these he is to construct his intellectual 
 and moral world, and thus realize in himself th^t freedom 
 which is the birthright of spirit. It is in this bioad sense of 
 the realization of the human spirit that we are to understand 
 Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, and in which his doctrine of 
 the will consists. In this essay we are concerned with the 
 first two divisions of the Philosophy of Mind, namely. Sub- 
 jective and Objective Mind, or as they may be named, 
 Psychology and Ethics. Under the first designation Hegel 
 would understand the development of the individual mind 
 from its naturalness to formal freedom ; under the second, 
 the mind as it determines itself in its action by the idea of 
 the good. 
 
 (i) The first of the sub-divisions of the Philosophy of 
 Mind — Subjective Mind — considers, as has been s;. 1, the 
 subject-matter of what is generally termed Psychology, and 
 includes Anthropology, Phenomenology, and Psychology. 
 — (2) The field of Objective Mind includes man's rationality — 
 as externally organized in the domestic, social, and political 
 relations of human beings. (3) "Absolute Mind" exhibits 
 man in the perfection of his moral and spiritual character. 
 Hegel ever remained the sworn enemy of abstraction. You 
 cannot abstract man from his natural and social relations. 
 He is born into them, and not by withdrawal from, but 
 through such relations, does man realize his nature. Yet 
 only in so far as the individual reacts upon environment is 
 there any interest whatever for us. It is man as subject to 
 natural conditions that constitutes the subject-matter of 
 Anthropology. 
 
 If* 
 
 li 
 
 
 I 
 
 .M-i 
 
 h 
 
so 
 
 IIEGEVS DOCTRIXE OF THE WILL 
 
 [236 
 
 '?f 
 
 (rt) Anthropology 
 
 § 23. The mind as soul is physically conditioned. What 
 Hegel calls Anthropology is the science at the present time 
 more generally known as " Physiological Psychology " — the 
 soul in its relations to the body. " The end of nature is to 
 destroy itself, to break through the immediate sensible cov- 
 ering, and, like the phoenix from its flame, to arise from this 
 externality — new born as spirit." Spirit is the being-with- 
 self {Beisichsein) of the Idea. The meaning of this, in the 
 light of what precedes, will now be clear. The Idea has re- 
 turned from its self-alienation to self ; and the development 
 which spirit undergoes is the gradual advance from natural 
 determinateness to freedom. The soul for Hegel is no 
 separate immaterial entity. Wherever there is nature, there 
 is soul as its immanent, ideal life. " Soul is the substance 
 or ' absolute ' basis of all the particularizing and individual- 
 izing of mind : it is in the soul that mind finds the material 
 on which its character is wrought, and the soul remains the 
 pervading, identical ideality of it all. But as it is conceived 
 thus abstractly the soul is only the sleep of mind — the pas- 
 sive vovq of Aristotle — which is potentially all tilings." ' For 
 Hegel, holding the conception of reality he does, the ques- 
 tion of the immateriality of the soul can have no interest 
 and little meaning. Such a question has meaning only for 
 those who maintain what Lotze calls " that simple and thor- 
 ough division of reality, which places matter on one side 
 and the mind on the other, confident and full of faith in re- 
 gard to the former, timid and doubtful about the latter." ^ 
 " We need no more ask," says Aristotle, " whether the soul 
 and body are one, than whether the wax and the impression 
 stamped upon it are so." ♦ Plato had separated the soul 
 
 » Werke, VII, § 389. (Wallace's Translation.) 
 ^Metaphysic (English Translation, Vol. II., p. 190.) 
 ^De Anima, II, i, 412, b. 8, 
 
 / 
 
 i 
 
!i| 
 
 237] HEGELS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 51 
 
 from its bodily environment. Aristotle, though he did not 
 realize all the import of the conception, made soul the truth 
 of body : yet it was by no means the product of physiolog- 
 ical conditions : rather, it was the truth of body, the i,\a\a, 
 in which alone do the bodily conditions gain their real mean- 
 ing. It remains a unity throughout the various stages of its 
 development. 
 
 Before its emergence as mind, the soul passes through 
 three stages, designated by Hegel the Natural or Physical, 
 the Feeling, and the Actual Soul. ( I ) The physical soul 
 is as it were an anima iniindi, a world-soul, still in sympathy 
 with the influences of the universe. The lower down in the 
 scale of development the more complete is this sympathy 
 with the cosmic life. This soul universal is " rather the 
 universal substance," as Hegel says, " which has its actual 
 truth only in individuals and single subjects." Next we find 
 the general planetary life of the nature-governed mind 
 specialized into divisions in accordance with the nature of 
 the geographical continents, thereby producing the varieties 
 of race. Next the soul is further deuniversalized into the 
 individualized subject — individual in reference only to special 
 talent, temperament, character and physiognomy, of fam- 
 ilies or single individuals. In the development of the soul 
 as an individual or permanent subject, Hegel marks the four 
 stages — and here he speaks only in the most general terms 
 of the individual life — namely, childhood, when mind is 
 wrapped up in itself; youth, the period of storm and stress; 
 manhood, the period of the individual's true relation to its 
 environment; and lastly, old age, the period of freedom 
 from the strain of the outward present. What the life of the 
 individual consists in is rising out of the abstract and unde- 
 veloped " in himself," through physical, mental and moral 
 control, and becoming " for tiimself " what he is at first only 
 " in himself" or potentially — a free and reasonable being. 
 
 I 
 
 a 
 
 ..'..^^■miStiimMsi^tiM^f ' 
 
i 
 
 }3 I/EGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL [238 
 
 (2) The feeling or sentient individual is the simple 
 "ideality" or subjective side of sensation. Its individuality 
 is yet merely formal : it is not yet a true self or subject, and 
 is therefore passive. " Everything," says Hegel, " is in sen- 
 sation ; if you will, everything that emerges in conscious in- 
 telligence and in reason has its source and origin in sensa- 
 tion ; for source and origin just means the first immediate 
 manner in which a thing appears." ^ The sentient life serves 
 as the substratum of the self-conscious, intelligent and willing 
 soul. The individual subject at first immersed, as it were, in 
 its sensations, desires, instincts and passions, gradually 
 comes to give these a place as its own in itself. In this way 
 emerges a j^(/'-feeling (^Selbstgef'uhl), but a self- feeling only 
 in the particular feeling — one quite different from that of the 
 fully furnished self of intelligent self-consciousness. The 
 subject has not yet learned to duly subordinate particular 
 feelings and desires ; whilst the intelligent subject har ♦^he 
 consciousness of his intellectual and moral world n 
 
 ordered whole, into the system of which is subsumeo -«^n 
 particular idea, feeling, or desire as it arises. It is through 
 habit that these various feelings group themselves about the 
 common centre — the soul, which in time moves among them, 
 so to speak, without consciousness of the fact, and is thus 
 disengaged for further advancement in its mental life. 
 " Habit," says Hegel, " is the mechanism of self-feeling, as 
 memory is the mechanism of intelligence .... it is the 
 mode of feeling (as well as intelligence, will, etc., so far as 
 they belong to self-feeling) made into a natural and mechani- 
 cal existence. . . . The main point about habit is that by its 
 means man gets emancipated from the feelings, even in being 
 affected by them." ^ The feelings and impulses are thus 
 subordinated and controlled by the individual. 
 
 * Werke, VII, § 400 {^Philosophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 ^Ibid., § 410 {Philoiophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 
 r 
 
:k 
 
 . 
 
 239] HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL jj 
 
 (3) The soul becomes actual when the body has been 
 appropriated and made its instrument; the various parts of 
 the body being made organic to its central aim. The soul 
 thus becomes a single subject, of which the body is the sign. 
 The soul thus through the self-relation of the various feel- 
 ings and desires arrives at a higher stage of its development 
 in that these have become the object for a subject — a subject 
 with a world external to it. Reflected thus into its ideality 
 the soul rises to become consciousness. 
 
 {b) Phenomenology of Mind 
 
 § 24. Consciousness as such is the relation of the Ego to 
 an object, which may be internal or external. The sentient 
 soul was conscious, but only in a dim way ; it had feelings, 
 yet was scarcely aware that it had them. As more dis- 
 tinctively consciousness, the soul separates itself from what 
 it feels, and as subjec is conscious of an object. We thus 
 reach the second stage in Hegel's account of the develop- 
 ment of subjective mind — the point of view that subject and 
 object imply one another equally. The aim of the con- 
 scious mind is to really see itself as the subject for which 
 the object exists, and to which the latter is organic; as 
 Hegel says, "to make its appearance identical with its 
 essence, to raise its self-certainty to truth." 
 
 The stages in the development are three in number: (i) 
 Consciousness as such (^Das Bewusstsein als solches) ; (2) 
 Self-consciousness {Selbstbewusstsein) \ and (3) rational 
 self-consciousness, the unity of consciousness and self-con- 
 sciousness {Die Vernuft), "where the mind sees itself em- 
 bodied in the object, and sees itself as implicitly and 
 explicitly determinate, as Reason, the notion of the mind." ' 
 Under these three stages Hegel includes the manifestations 
 of the mind in sensuous consciousness, perception, under- 
 
 ' Werke, VII, § 417 (^Philosophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 
 I, 
 
n*^ 
 
 mm 
 
 s^ 
 
 c . HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL [24O 
 
 Standing, self-consciousness, and reason. The sense-con- 
 sciousness is wealthiest in matter, but poorest in thought. 
 Gradually it separates itself from the object, making it a 
 definite system of relations— a related thing, i. e., perceives 
 it. The consciousness of such an object is intellect. This 
 is the consciousness active and outgoing, rather than a mere 
 tabula rasa, receptive and passive ; it is self-consciousness 
 as the truth of consciousness, making me aware of myself 
 and of the object as mine. This, for Hegel, is the im- 
 pulsive, dynamic or practical aspect of consciousness, free- 
 ing itself from its sensuousness, and realizing itself through 
 the object. From the point of view of consciousness the 
 object is merely its relative other. But from the stand-point 
 of self-consciousness or reason it receives the rational 
 characteristic of being its very other. 
 
 {c) Psychology 
 § 25. In the Anthropology the soul was viewed in its nat- 
 ural character from the standpoint of Spinoza. In the 
 Phenomenology it was regarded from the Fichtean point of 
 view, as Ego distinguishing itself from nature ; and now in 
 the Psychology mind is regarded by Hegel as the truth of 
 the soul and of consciousness, that is, the synthesis of the 
 two preceding points of view ; not as the mere negatic.i of 
 objectivity, but as reconciled and in alliance with it, thus 
 attaining the freedom which is the essence of spirit ; as in- 
 telligence finding itself in the objects it knows, and as will 
 giving itself a content in the ends it seeks to realize. " Psy- 
 chology " had already come into use as a designation for all 
 that Kegel comprised under "subjective mind," and it 
 would thus have been better had he omitted the term here. 
 As it is, he regards psychology as the study of the faculties 
 or general modes of mental activity, gtia mental ; ideation, 
 memory, desire, ^/f., apart altogether from th ir empirical 
 
 i 
 
■J'^S'V * V^'i'flWWWWPA'-F ' 'fiVmi 
 
 241] 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE tVJLL 
 
 55 
 
 content-regarding these as functions of the one hvmg 
 unity-mind. The so-called faculties are but the various 
 stages in the process of liberation of the mind from the form 
 of immediacy-to become an individuality, a concrete sub- 
 iectivity The process is one in which the mmd finds and 
 makes the world its own; its aspects being: (i) Theoretical 
 mind. Intelligence is (apparently) determined from with- 
 out; yet as knowing, it states the object of determination as 
 its own. Its development is through the three stages : {a) 
 intuition, {b) conception, (.) thought. (2) The practical 
 mind, will. The mind as will is conscious of its own deter- 
 mination. Its stages are. {a) practical feeling, (^) impulse 
 (.) happiness. (3) The free mind in which tney are both 
 united This is will as free intelligence. The mind which 
 knows itself as free, and wills itself as its object, is the 
 reasonable will. It is at first merely formal freedom, and 
 this is the last word of ihe psychological development as 
 traced by Hegel under " Subjective Mind/' ^^f ^^-""Jf 
 to the consideration of the content with which the self- 
 unfolding will or mind has invested itself, we must briefly 
 gather up the results so far gamed, and understand more 
 fully what Hegel means by the will and its freedom. • ^. 
 
 

 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FREEDOM OF MAN 
 
 1 
 
 § 26. Hegel everywhere emphasizes the unity and con- 
 tinuity of mind. He could have no sympathy whatever with 
 the so-called doctrine of mental faculties. The mind is a 
 living, developing, organic unity, and completed freedom is 
 its immanent notion. The faculties are so many phases of 
 its evolution. ''The distinction," says Hegel, "of Intelli- 
 gence from Will is often incorrectly taken to mean that each 
 has a fixed and separate existence of its own, as if volition 
 could be without intelligence, or the activity of intelligence 
 could be without will." ' In knowledge we idealize the real, 
 in action we realize the ideal, and both involve self-conscious 
 activity, which for Hegel is the primary and fundamental 
 characteristic of man. In one relation self consciousness is 
 knowledge; in another relation it is action. 
 
 § 27. The will, then, for Hegel, is the mind; not any sep- 
 arate faculty co-ordinate with other faculties. In the theo- 
 retic sphere it is the mind in search of the true; in the 
 practical sphere, it is the mind in search of the good. In- 
 stead of speaking of freedom of will, we should speak of 
 freedom of mind. The self-determination of self-conscious- 
 ness constitutes man's freedom. The freedom of the will or 
 mind is the freedom of the whole mind ; the freedom of self- 
 determination through the cosmos it knows (i. e., the mind 
 as intelligent subject) and in the ideals to which it is de- 
 voted (/. e., the mind as choosing subject). Spontaneity is 
 
 » Werke, VII, § 445 (^The Philosophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 56 [242 
 
24 J] HEGEDS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 57 
 
 r"as essential to consciousness as receptivity; it must react on 
 1 impressions from the environment, just as in the moral • 
 sphere it must react by way of identification with or with- 
 drawal from the solicitations of environment. Thus the very 
 fact of knowledge implies freedom. The activity of con- 
 sciousness as attention, apart from the activity of which, as 
 Hegel says, there is nothing for the mind, moves freely 
 among the elements, modifying and informing the world by 
 its own inward nature. " Even in knowledge," says Green, 
 "man exerts a free activity— an activity which is not in time, 
 not a link in the chain of natural becoming, which has no 
 antecedents other than itself, but is self-originated." ' Thus 
 the mind, by its free activity, abolishes the foreignness of the 
 external world and makes the world its cosmos. Intelligence 
 is thus essentially a process, a free activity to which the 
 known world is organic. Intelligence and will are but the 
 action and counter-action of the one living, organizing unity 
 —mind. In so far as it appropriates its determined content, 
 the world of objects, the mind is theoretical intelligence 
 But in so far as it goes on to determine its own content and 
 constitute its own ideals, it is intelligence as practical; it is 
 will, and has entered on a new stage of self-realization. The 
 freedom of will is thus in thought, and the will can make 
 itself objective a? it becomes a thinking will, to create its jwn 
 universe out of its own inmost nature. "These two sioes of 
 man's nature," says Prof. Watson,—" his intelligence and his 
 will-his consciousness of the world and his consciousness 
 of himself— do not develop independently of each other; for 
 as man learns to comprehend the meaning of the world he 
 also learns to comprehend himself." 3 For Hegel the very 
 essence of the mind is what it becomes through its own 
 activity : it is not a substance but a subject ; it is the form 
 
 ^ Prolegomena to Ethics, % i2, 
 iComte, Mill and spencer, p. ISO. 
 
 i 
 
 ■MHM 
 
58 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRIAE OF THE WILL 
 
 [244 
 
 J 
 
 ■$ 
 ;« 
 
 I 
 
 Of its intellectual and moral environment; in both of which 
 It IS striving for the revelation of its ideal. 
 • § 28. The will is then the entire human consciousness on 
 Its active side. It is consciousness as it attends to a stim- 
 ulus, and as it realizes the highest ideal of reason. Yet it is 
 far from being thinking will that mind in the first instance 
 appears as consciousness. Some account of this has been 
 given in the preceding chapter. It is first in a state of 
 nature; yet it is not something merely natural. To begin 
 with, the individual has sensations, inclinations and im- 
 pulses, 1- common with the animals, and these are the first 
 materials of his self-unfolding. Since, however, the essen- 
 tial self of the individual is constituted by the universal, 
 spiritual principle of Reason, the sensations are not mere 
 sensations, nor the appetites mere appetites. Reason im- 
 plicit gradually becomes explicit. The sensations are, 
 through the unifying activity of the self-conscious subject, 
 made perceptions; that is. they are given their place in the 
 subject's comprehension of the meaning of the world; and 
 in virtue of the same spiritual principle there emerges in 
 consciousness not mere appetites, but desires for the fuller 
 realization of the conscious life. As Hegel remarks of the 
 impulses and inclinations: " The immanent ' reflection ' of 
 mind Itself carries it beyond their particularity and their 
 natural immediacy, and gives their content a rationality and 
 objectivity, in which they exist as necessary ties of social 
 relation, as rights and duties."* -Each individual has a 
 hfe of Its own only in so far as it exhibits within itself the ' 
 life that is implied in the world as a whole. The life of the 
 individual is thus one phase of the universal life that pul- 
 sates through all existence." s 
 
 Thus the life of sensation and impulse is the substratum 
 
 * ^V'-'^^. VII, § 474 ( The Philosophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 
 * Watson, Comte, Mill and Spencer, p. 170. 
 
 If^. 
 
 ,\ 
 
I-. 
 
 •^. 
 
 245] HEGEL S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 59 
 
 of the life of consciousness ; and apart from these, conscious- 
 ness, either on the theoretical or practical side, must remain 
 an abstraction. The life of consciousness must be the im- 
 manent and informing principle of the life of sensation and 
 impulse, and through these create its world of the true and 
 the good. " The motive power," as Hegel says, " is the 
 need, instinct, inclination and passion of man." ^ Desire, in 
 addition to the feeling of a want, presupposes the existence 
 of some object by which the want may be satisfied. " Im- 
 pulse and passion are the very life-blood of all action ; they 
 are needed if the agent is really to be in his aim and the 
 execution thereof." "The will," says Hegel, "as thinking 
 will and implicitly free, distinguishes itself from the particu- 
 larity of the impulses .... the reflective will now sees 
 the impulse as its own, because it closes with it and thus 
 gives itself specific individuality and actuality. It is now on 
 the standpoint of choosing between inclinations, and is 
 option or choicer ^ This, in brief, is Hegel's answer to 
 those who assert the determination of the will by motives. 
 The self-presenting subject has within itself the idea of an 
 end to be realized, and the adoption by the subject of a par- 
 ticular impulse as the means for the realization of the idea 
 of his good is the subject's self-expression. " The will is free, 
 just because it is determined by motives:"^ or as President 
 Schurman says, " whoever reflects that a motive is really an 
 idea and that an idea has no existence apart from the sub- 
 ject that has it, must object to the comparison of man and 
 his motives to a balance and its weights. The former is a 
 merely ideal, the latter a real duality. Man is nothing, 
 apart from his ideas, but the weights and the balance have 
 each an independent existence," 9 
 
 « Philosophy of History, Translated by Sibree, p. 23. 
 
 ' Werke, VII, § 476-7 {^The Philosophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 
 ^D'Axcy, Short Study of Ethics,^. Z^. 
 
 '^Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution, p. 15. 
 
 / 
 
 : Si 
 ■ t\ 
 
 f 
 
 ,\ 
 
 .•?*'-«£ .:K.SHitBJi>i!'i*!fia.,s^i-, I 
 
6o 
 
 HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [246 
 
 
 Gradually the individual will or the self attains, through 
 reflection and comparison, to the idea of a universal satis- 
 faction, or of happiness. "Their mutual limitations (jhat is, 
 of impulses)," says Hegel, "on one hand, proceed from a 
 mixture of qualitative and quantitative considerations: on 
 the other hand, as happiness has its sole affirmative contents 
 in the springs of action, it is on them that the decision turns, 
 as it is the subjective feeling and good pleasure which must 
 have the casting vote as to where happiness is to be placed." '° 
 Thus for Hegel the domain of psychology extends as far as 
 what may be called the formal freedom of the individual 
 seeking happiness in the satisfaction of the wants and im- 
 pulses : and Eudemonism is accordingly assigned its syste- 
 matic position in the exposition of his doctrine. So far, 
 however, no reference has been made to the content of the 
 will — the intrinsic worth of the inclinations and impulses. 
 Which are good, and which bad ? As soon as this is done, 
 psychology becomes merged in ethics ; the treatment passes 
 from the conception of happiness to the most general of the 
 entire practical sphere — the conception of the good. 
 
 § 29. For Hegel, man's individuality is owing to the rela- 
 tion which he of necessity bears to nature and society. It 
 is through these that his isolation grows defined. The 
 notion of individuality is to bring this environment into 
 organic unity: th<j person is to become the truth of the 
 natural and the social. The will is the man as activity — as 
 self-determining. Since, then, self-consciousness is first of 
 all a consciousness of the self as opposed to the world of 
 objects or nature, and especially, as Prof. Watson says, to 
 other self conscious beings, it follows that the satisfaction of 
 the individual self can not be found in self-centered isolation 
 from nature and other self-conscious beings. It is through 
 its relations to the world and to other human beings that the 
 •" Werke, VII, § 479 (7%<f Philosophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 
247] 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 6i 
 
 t: 
 
 \ 
 
 individual consciousness is made capable of a universal life, 
 one transcending the limits of mere individuality. It is 
 through these relations that the universal life or reason must 
 find expression. As Principal Caird says, " Morality, or the 
 moral life, may be described as the renunciation of the 
 private or exclusive self and the identification of our life with \ 
 an ever-widening sphere of spiritual life beyond us,"" 
 Thus Hegel provides for the satisfaction of the individual 
 happiness in the very union of the universal and particular. 
 The individual in living for his family or for the state ' at 
 once wills the good and finds his happiness in realizing it.' 
 Man is in reality a member of the state before he is a man. 
 Self-realization is man's supreme end, but is possible only 
 through other selves ; through renunciation of the individual 
 self in favor of the universal, truer self, of which the family, 
 society, the state, are the reflection. " It must further be 
 understood," says Hegel, "that all the worth which the 
 human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses 
 only through the state. For his spiritual reality consists in 
 this, that his own essence — Reason — is objectively present 
 to him, that it possesses objective immediate existence for 
 him. Thus only is he fully conscious ; thus only is he a par- 
 taker of morality— of a just and moral, social and political 
 life. The state is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth." " 
 
 Law is the objectivity of spirit ; volition is its true ioxm. 
 Only that will which obeys law is free. For Hegel freedom 
 comes only through perfected obedience. Will as self-real- 
 ization is the very essence of the individual. Its develop- 
 ment from its natural condition to that of formal freedom is 
 a continuous growth in self-determination and self-expres- 
 sion. The mind is only that which it attains by its own 
 eflforts : it makes itself actually what it was always potentially. 
 
 " The Philosophy of Religion, p. 263-4. 
 
 ^ The Philosophy of History (^^xt^,^,i^i). 
 
 \ 
 
 fl 
 
 /' 
 
 i 
 
■A 
 
 62 
 
 HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [248 
 
 The realization of -ts idea — freedom — "is mediated by con- 
 sciousness and will." As nature was found to be the deposit 
 of reason, so human institutions are the product of the free 
 spirit of man as thinking will working in conformity with the 
 Divine immanence. They represent the stage of self-realiza- 
 tion to which the human spirit has come. This ethical sub- 
 stance is the environment into which the individual is born 
 to develop into the stature of the perfv^ct man. So that be- 
 yond the mere fact of physical control and of intellectual 
 progress through habit, language, etc., which Hegel traces 
 under " subjective mind" or psychology, there is that of the 
 moral life, the co-ordination of all the impulses and propen- 
 sities into a system, for which " subjective " mind has been a 
 preparation. The moral life is accomplished by the self- 
 presenting subject, transmuting its merely individual wants 
 and impulses into organic elements of the larger self to be 
 achieved in the wider life of the social organism. 
 
 § 30. For Hegel, accordingly, it is impossible to explain 
 the nature of the individual without having regard always to 
 the varied relations of the family, school, society and state, 
 into which he is born. These relations, or institutions, are 
 the embodiments so far made by man of his conception of 
 his capabilities ; and the individual, in virtue of the spiritual 
 principle of reason within him, reflects upon and responds to 
 the reason without him embodied in these 
 
 'M 
 
 " Relations dear, and all the charities 
 Of father, son and brother."" 
 
 Hegel's conception is altogether at variance with the indi- 
 vidualist theory of society. All the instincts and desires by 
 which the individual is actuated pre-suppoSe some kind of 
 organized society, of family, clan or tribe. The holding of 
 property, for example, one of the earliest steps in social 
 
 ^^ Paradise Losl, Bk. IV. 
 
 .*.? 
 
 t^amM^^.M^ 
 
 M^*>**.i« mm^ 
 
 I. 
 
249] HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL ^^ 
 
 organization, implies protection of it for the individual. It 
 is thus one stage in the evolution of the idea of a common 
 good. 
 
 If we restrict the term to its ordinary significance, it is 
 true that Hegel never wrote a separate treatise on ethics. 
 This fact, however, is but another instance of his dislike of 
 abstraction. For him the living personality of man is a 
 unit — " all of one piece," and in so far, and in whatever way 
 man seeks to realize his capabilities, he is ethical. The 
 moral or ethical is for Hegel the sphere of freedom ; what- 
 ever is moral is essentially free, and whatever is free is 
 moral. The development from soul to mind is a growth in 
 freedom — it is the mind acting more and more from itself 
 as centre. We may say, therefore, that the entire Philos- 
 ophy of Mind is a treatise on ethics. The second part of 
 the Philosophy of Mind, " Objective " Mind, is more fully 
 elaborated in a separate treatise, the " Philosophic des 
 Rechts," '♦ which shows us the mind in its freedom as think- 
 ing will incarnating itself in the ethical substance — the laws, 
 customs, morals, and social life of the world. Just as in the 
 realm of knowledge, so in that of practice, the world, which 
 at first is a " foreign" other, a natural world, is transformed 
 into a social and political world by man as an intelligent 
 and voHtional being; and it is this scientific evolution of 
 will, or of man as thinking will, which is, according to 
 Hegel, alone capable of yielding a philosophy of law, rights 
 and duties. 
 
 The ideal, then, for Hegel is not only personal, it is also 
 social. As was noted above, self consciousness is the pri- 
 mary and fundamental fact of human nature. It is an 
 organic, spiritual unity. It transcends the antithesis of sub- 
 
 " Tke Philosophy of Rights or Law, published by Hegel in 1821, Werke, VIII. 
 The Philosophy of Miud, (the third part of the Encyclopoedia), Werke, VII, was 
 published in 181 7. « 
 
 ), 
 
1^1 
 
 54 HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL [250 
 
 ject and object, mind and matter. The object cannot be — 
 as Descartes and so many others in the history of philosophy 
 abstractly conceived it — the absolute antithesis of subject, 
 nor matter of mind, but their disparateness is tran- 
 scended in self-consciousness or reason. We can thus see 
 what answer Hegel would give to an objector denying that, 
 while the ideal is personal, it is also social. " Mr. Kidd is 
 therefore right," says D'Arcy, " when, in his Social Evolu- 
 tion, he describes reason as essentially anti-social. Why 
 should the individual subordinate his private interests to the 
 interests of the community ? Why should he deny himself 
 pleasure that others may benefit? No purely reasonable 
 answer can be given to these questions. If they are to be 
 answered at all, the answer must, to some extent at all 
 events, transcend reason, or, as Mr. Kidd puts it, be ultra- 
 rational. Self, like a despot, dominates the whole realm of 
 experience, and, unless mastered by some superior principle, 
 must wage unceasing war against all who would pretend to 
 equal authority." '^ 
 
 Hegel would simply say " without object there is no sub- 
 ject ; without nature, no spirit ; without necessity, no free- 
 dom ; without society, no persons as we know them." They 
 are but complementary sides of one fact. It is strange how 
 writers in the interests of religion still persist in declaring for 
 the ultra-rational " and some superior principle." " God 
 is not wisely trusted," wrote T. H. Green in the spirit of 
 Hegel, " when declared unintelligible. God is forever 
 Reason ; and His communication, His revelation, is Reason ; 
 not, however, abstract reason, but reason as taking a body 
 from, and giving life to, the whole system of experience 
 which makes the history of man. The revelation, therefore, 
 is not made in a day, or a generation, or a century. The 
 divine mind touches, modifies, becomes the mind of man, 
 
 " Short Study of Ethics, pp. 58-9. 
 
 I I «1 1 1 pil [fa 
 
250 
 
 HECEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 65 
 
 through a process of which mere intellectual conception is 
 only the beginning, but of which the gradu; » complement is 
 an unexhausted series of spiritual discipline through all the 
 agencies of social life."'* 
 
 § 31. Parallel with what may be called the metaphysical 
 development from Kant to Hegel, which has been so sugges- 
 tively traced by Prof, Seth, there was the ethical develop- 
 ment ; which may be briefly characterized as a development 
 from an abstract to a concrete, and therefore living and 
 practicable morality. For Kant, the essence of morality is, 
 to use the phrase of Mr. Bradley in his Ethical Studies, 
 " Duty for Duty's sake." The central fact of the moral life 
 is for Hegel, " My station and its duties." A few remarks 
 may here be made on Kant's doctrine, which may perhaps 
 serve to bring into clearer light the standpoint of Hegel. 
 
 Kant's theory of knowledge, in its fundamental conception, 
 is that existence, that is, all knowable existence, is existence 
 for a self ; that is, if there is one intelligible world there can 
 be made no absolute separation between subject and ©bject, 
 the spiritual and natural. The categories are not to be re- 
 garded as innate ideas imposed by the mind on an alien 
 matter. Form must ever be the immanent life of matter. 
 Except in abstraction they cannot exist apart. It is the 
 dualism of nature and spirit, necessity and freedom, which 
 Kant sought to remove. How far he was successful and how 
 far he remained in bondage to the view he was combatting, 
 has been briefly indicated in a previous chapter. 
 
 When we turn with Kant to the sphere of the practical 
 reason, it will be found that there is here a corresponding 
 dualism. His entire ethical theory rests on the fundamental 
 fact of the moral law, spontaneously imposed 011 the will by 
 reason and binding on all rational beings. Its cliaracteristic 
 feature is authority, and commands a man to do what is 
 
 J8 ifTorJis, Vol. III., p. 239. 
 
 /' 
 

 66 
 
 HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [252 
 Of the inclinations 
 
 right irrespective of his inclinations. 
 Kant writes : " It must be the universal wish of every 
 rational being to be wholly free from them." '' Here is the 
 dualism of the natural and the spiritual still hovering over the 
 mind of Kant — a dualism between the pure idea of duty and 
 empirical instigation of pleasure. His moral purism, accord- 
 ingly, merges into rigorism, and tends to the view that duty 
 can be duty only when it is reluctantly performed. More- 
 over, on Kant's own theory of knowledge for the categories 
 there is required a sensuous content, " without it they are 
 empty." " How," we may ask, " is volition, action accord- 
 ing to the pure idea of duty, conceivable apart from individ- 
 ual appetites and desires?" The will and the thinking, feel- 
 ing and desiring self cannot be conceived as thus externally 
 related to each other. For Hegel the will is the self. In all 
 desire it is the self seeking its expression — its realization ; 
 and self-realization cannot be accomplished through the an- 
 nihilation of an integral part of its own nature, feeling and 
 desire. 
 
 Kant, however, was always building wiser than he knew, 
 and was in reality basing his doctrine on a deeper truth 
 which could be fully brought to light by those who had re- 
 gard to the spirit rathe*- than to the letter of his moral 
 theory. Kant shows us^ ^Aristotle had caught sight of the 
 same distinction) that to act from the consciousness of law 
 is a thing quite dififerent from acting as subject to law. To 
 act from a consciousness of law is to will, that is, to be free. 
 Yet man is a unit, an organic unity, and in his desires, in- 
 clinations, impulses, must be found the material of the ideals 
 and laws which reason proposes. It was Hegel who first 
 clearly perceived the unity and continuity of mind. Kant 
 presents us with two great forms, or principles of action, in 
 accordance with which we may seek the fulfilment of our 
 
 " Theory of Ethics (Abbott's translation), 3d ed., p. 46. 
 
253] 
 
 HEGEDS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 67 
 
 knew, 
 
 truth 
 
 lad re- 
 
 ral 
 
 f the 
 
 f law 
 
 To 
 
 free. 
 
 s, in- 
 
 Sdeals 
 
 first 
 
 iKant 
 
 )n, in 
 
 our 
 
 rational nature, (i) "Treat humanity always as an end, 
 never as a means," Thus Kant conceives man as a person 
 endowed with a will through which he may seek self-realiza- 
 tion. The conception is still abstract if the self be separated 
 from all particular desires. (2) The second amounts to 
 this, " Whatever the special courses of conduct be in which 
 you seek the fulfilment of your rational nature, these must 
 be the same for all men." Here Kant approaches Hegel's 
 point of view, the idea, namely, of humanity as a self-con- 
 scious organism, the individual members of which are at 
 once ends and means — the truth of the universal and the 
 particular; and man in submitting himself to the universal 
 law of reason is in reality unfolding his own rational nature. 
 The idea of a social organism, however, remained for Kant 
 merely an ideal, and the conception of such an organism 
 must ever remain a mere idea if man is a being in whom 
 there is an irreconcileable dualism of reason and desire. 
 
 The initial difficulty with Kant is his conception that all 
 desire is for pleasure. For Hegel, as Prof. Dewey remarks 
 in another connection, "the spiritualizing of the impulse is 
 organizing it so that it becomes one factor in action."'* The 
 law is the law of the desires themselves : through it they are 
 harmonized and made instrumental to the realization of the 
 self which has them. Kant tells us to act as though mem- 
 bers of a social organism. But such an organism does not 
 exist. For Kant morality is not, nor will it ever be, realized 
 in the community. Man must seek to realize himself not in 
 any existing community, or any that ever will exist, but, as 
 Prof. Watson says, " in an intelligible world which exists for 
 him only as an unrealizable ideal." "^ 
 
 § 32. Herein Hegel's doctrine is the direct antithesis of 
 Kant's. The end of action or the good for Hegel is the 
 
 " Elements of Ethics, p. 24. 
 
 " Comte, Mill and Spencer, p. 230. 
 
 \ 
 
68 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [254 
 
 I 
 
 /I 
 
 realized will, that is, the developed self; "the satisfaction of 
 desires according to law," that is, the universal element 
 which refection reveals. Morality has been ever realizing 
 itself in the world — this is the conception of Hegel. The 
 rational is in some sense the real. Instead of following 
 Kant's dualism of the abstract universal lav/ or Imperative 
 and the actual world, Hegel maintains that the moral law 
 has become incarnated in the ethical life of humanity. 
 " The Word has become flesh and dwells among us." The 
 City of God must be found in the everlasting Real. The 
 state so far is not completely rational, it is true; yet the 
 ideal, the completely rational, must be realized in part. It 
 m„ay be far from "the parliament of man" and " the federa- 
 tion of the world;" yet this can come, according to Hegel, 
 only by transforming, not supplanting, that which already 
 exists — the further spiritualization of what we already 
 possess. Human institutions are thus, in Schleiermacher's 
 phrase, "an ethical heritage ;" and man's education is simply 
 a growing conformity of his reason — of his conscience — with 
 the reason — the conscience of his environment. His en- 
 vironment is the concrete realization by humanity of its idea 
 of the good. 
 
 "The consciousness of a social good, which is at the same 
 time the true good of the individual, a consciousness which 
 is implied even in savage life, is the moving principle in the 
 whole evolution of morality. What holds human beings 
 together in society is this idea of a good higher than merely 
 individual good. Every form of social organization rests 
 upon this tacit recognition of a higher good that is realized 
 in the union of oneself with others. Suppose this entirely 
 absent, and the moral consciousness would be impossible. 
 For the moral consciousness always involves the recognition 
 of a higher than individual good, and, because this higher 
 good is partially realized in social laws and institutions, the 
 
255] 
 
 HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 69 
 
 f 
 
 m 
 
 w 
 
 individual feels himself constrained by his reason to submit 
 to it. It is by reflection upon this good, as realized in out- 
 ward laws and institutions, that the individual becomes con-i 
 scious of moral law. At first, law seems to be externally 
 imposed, but the individual in reflecting upon it recoj^nizes 
 that the real force of the law lies in the fact that it is an ex- 
 pression of his higher self. It is true that in awakening to 
 the consciousness of moral law as deriving its authority from 
 reason, the individual at first asserts that custom and exter- 
 nal law have no authority over him ; that the sole authority 
 he can rationally obey is the law of his own reason. But 
 this is only one side of the truth ; the other side is, that in 
 custom and law there already is realized the law of reason. 
 No doubt, society at any time is only a partial realization of 
 the law of reason, and, therefore, no form of society is final; 
 but it is none the less true that only in so far as morality 
 realizes itself in society can it be realized at all."=° Perhaps 
 no better summary of Hegel's ethical doctrine can be given 
 than in these words of Prof. Watson, which of course aie 
 used by him in another connection. 
 
 In a previous chapter it was found that the Absolute for 
 Hegel is the Eternal Spirit thinking itself in nature and his- 
 tory. This is the metaphysics which Hegel furnishes us of 
 man's ethical life. Here also we have his theory of obliga- 
 tion. With Kant the Categorical Imperative was essentially 
 subjective. With Hegel, there can be no abstract i°]f-reali- 
 zation. Apart from environment, capacity must be merely 
 an abstraction. No man's morality and religion arise alto- 
 gether in the bosom of his own being. The antenna of the 
 individual soul respond to the moral and religious notions of 
 I the spiritual community into which it is born. Thus the 
 
 state in all its fullness of relations exists for the realization 
 of the human spirit— this is the essence of Hegel's ethical 
 
 i ■"' ComU, Mill anil Spencer, pp. 229, 230. 
 
 .■lI' 
 
 s/ 
 
 ,-/ 
 
^ 
 
 70 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [256 
 
 // 
 
 teaching. Ethical man, is man as realized in human institu- 
 tions. Man is free simply because he cannot do what he likes. 
 § 33. Hegel treats the subject of ethics under the three 
 great divisions: (i) Abstract Right; (2) Morality and 
 (3) what he calls Sittlichkeit, the integration of the other 
 two. We may designate them (i) Abstract Right — Law; 
 (2) Abstract Duty — Morality: (3) The Ethical Life. One 
 is not necessarily earlier in time than the others. In reality, 
 they are members of one concrete whole — the ethical life of 
 an individual. There is also, however, an historical justifica- 
 tion for Hegel's treatment. Before the time of Socrates it 
 may be said that the moral life was that of the law-obeying 
 citizen. With Socrates came the transition from abstract 
 law to subjective morality ; and with Christianity came the 
 integration of the two preceding phases. " It was only after 
 Christianity that the individual, and not isolatedly, but in 
 connection with the whole community, came to know the 
 full import of what is named moral experience. Christianity it 
 was that wrought as a purifying ferment in the souls of men, 
 abasing all the greeds of sense, shaming the lusts and prides 
 and vanities of self, awakening repentance, chastening the 
 heart, and leading the soul generally into candor, and sim- 
 plicity, and humility, and love." *' The historical process is 
 repeated in the individual life. It is obedience to an exter- 
 nal law at first (abstract Right) ; with reflection comes the 
 storm and stress ; awakening reason asserts that " custom 
 and external law have no authority over the individual ; he 
 must obey only his own reason, conscience." Gradually the 
 other side of the truth comes into view, " that in custom and 
 law there already is realized the law of reason." Each stage 
 becomes more concrete than the preceding ; and his is the 
 ethical life whose whole nature is permeated by the life and 
 spiritual atmosphere of his country. 
 
 *' Stirling, Lectures on the Philosophy of Law, p. 34. 
 
 "f 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 LAW 
 
 II 
 
 4 
 
 f 
 
 Abstract Right 
 
 § 34. The sphere for the realization of man's free will 
 Hegel designates "Objective Mind." It is the sphere of 
 man's devotion to .^e common good. The province of 
 Law or Right is the first stage in the evolution of personality. 
 In the first instance the term, of course, must be taken in a 
 comprehensive senye — not as laws consciously imposed by a 
 law-giver — nor yet in the sense of moral right ; but merely 
 in the sense of unu' irmity and equality, as the actual body 
 of all the conditions of freedom; i. e., "of laws, or rights, 
 which express definite and stereotyped modes of behaviour.'" 
 A right can be constituted only by the action of a free sub- 
 stantial will. Abstract right or Law forms the foundation 
 merely for the more living morality to be built upon it. 
 
 § 35. It follows at once 'rom Hegel's general conception 
 that he could make no distinction between natural and posi- 
 tive rights. The fundamental law of rights, according to 
 Hegel, is, "Be a person, and respect others as persons."" 
 "By the absolute rights of individuals we mean those which 
 are so in their primary and strictest sense, such as would be- 
 long to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which 
 e ery man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in 
 it. 3 "The phrase ' Law of Nature,' or Natural Right," says 
 
 ' Wallace, Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, p. clxxxix. 
 » Werke VIII, Philosophie des Kechts, § 36 (translated by Sterrett). 
 ' Blackstone, Commentaries, i, 123. 
 257] ^' 
 
 \ 
 
72 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [258 
 
 Hegel, " in use for the philosophy of law, involves the am- 
 biguity that it may mean either right as something existing 
 ready-formed in nature, or right as governed by the nature 
 of things, i. e., by the notion. The former used to be the 
 common meaning, accompanied with the fiction of a state of 
 nature, in which the law of nature should hold sway ; whereas 
 the social and political state rather required and implied a 
 restriction of liberty and a sacrifice of natural rights. The 
 real fact is that the whole law and its every article are based 
 on free personality alone — on self-determination or autonomy* 
 which is the very contrary of determination by nature. The 
 law of nature — strictly so-called — is for that reason the pre- 
 dominance of the strong and the reign of force, and a state 
 of nature a state of violence and wrong, of which nothing 
 truer can be said than that one ought to depart from it. 
 The social state, on the other hand, is the condition in 
 which alone right has its actuality ; what is to be restricted 
 and sacrificed is just the wilfulness and violence of the state 
 of nature." + 
 
 § 36. Thus for Hegel the subject of rights is the person. 
 But the person who is the subject of abstract right is not the 
 person as developed in intellectual and ethical relations. It 
 is primarily, as it were, the person in an excluding relation 
 to others, and who represents the first phase of realizing 
 will — in whom no humaneness is present, with no positive 
 duties, but on whom commands are laid, and who is capable 
 of entering into any of the relations presented to him in his 
 environment. A person, conceived in this abstract way, 
 does not exist, since to be real, i. e., constituted a person, it 
 must be given some measure of objective reality. It is 
 through the will, which, as has been indicated above, is the 
 constitutive clement of the person, that there is given to the 
 person the embodiment necessary to its completeness. It is 
 
 * Werke, VII, § 502 (^The Philosophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
[258 
 
 259] 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 n 
 
 4 
 
 through the activity of the will, then, that the world of 
 nature is posited as belonging to the person. The sphere of 
 abstract right or law will thus include whatever is appropri- 
 ated by the act of will. Hegel distinguishes three forms of 
 this externalization of the will: 
 
 (a) Property is the primary form in which personality as 
 self-relating free-will renders itself objectively real. 
 
 (^) Contract involves a common will and the maintenance 
 of rights through the union of two or more wills respecting 
 the institution and transference of property. 
 
 (f ) Injustice and crime — the sphere of the particular will 
 in opposition to itself as absolute or universal v/ill. 
 
 § 37. " There is nothing," says Blackstone, " which so 
 generally strikes the imagination, and engages the afTections 
 of mankind, as the right of property, or that sole and des- 
 potic dominion which one man claims and exercises over 
 the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the 
 right of any other individual in the universe. And yet, there 
 are very few that will give themselves the trouble to con- 
 sider the original and foundation of this right These 
 
 enquiries, it must be owned, would be useless and even 
 troublesome in common life. It is well if the mass of man- 
 kind will obey the laws when made, without scrutinizing toa 
 nicely into the reason of making them." 
 
 In the discussions over economic problems at the present 
 time, the questions involved in the theory of property are 
 perhaps the most disturbing. The difficulties of the political 
 order which have for so long threatened to correct, or rather 
 to annihilate the institutions of the past have, in part at 
 least, been replaced by the still graver difficulties of the 
 social order. The equality of political with the inequality of 
 social conditions is the problem with which the present gen- 
 eration has to deal. We are told by Mr. Henry George and 
 others that all property is the result of labor ; yet their name 
 
ir 
 
 74 
 
 I/EGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [260 
 
 is legion who labor and who possess no property ; and there 
 is perhaps an increasing number who, while ignorant of what 
 labor means, nevertheless live a life of ease and luxury. It 
 is, perhaps, not too much to say that property is becoming 
 more and more concentrated, and the contrast between the 
 rich and the poor more and more accentuated. " At Rome, 
 as in Greece," says Laveleye, " inequality, after stifling lib- 
 erty, destroyed the state itself.''^ 
 
 The idea of property is a primary and fundamental one, 
 and underlies most of our social and economic difficulties. 
 It would thus seem to be something inherent in the very 
 nature of man. It has been variously discussed by the 
 philosopher, the economist, and the social reformer. In the 
 notion " right of property" there are two elements to be 
 taken into account by any theory attempting an explana- 
 tion of the nature and origin of property. There is the indi- 
 vidual and the social element. Property is a creation of 
 some form of society, whether the society consists in the 
 horde, clan, tribe, or civilized nation. Man, in so far as he 
 is a property-holder, is a member of some form of social 
 group. " We at length know something," says Maine, " con- 
 cerning the beginnings of the great institution of property in 
 land. The collective ownership of the soil by groups of 
 men either in fact united by blood relationship, or believing 
 or assuming that they are so united, is now entitled to rank 
 as an ascertained primitive phenomenon, once universally 
 characterizing those communities of mankind between whose 
 civilization and our own there is any distinct connection or 
 analogy." ^ And Lafargue writes : " Mankind underwent 
 a long and painful process of development before arriving at 
 private property in land." ' 
 
 ^Primitive Property (translated by Marriott). Preface to original edition, 
 
 p. XXX. 
 
 ^ Early History of Institutions^ p. 1-2. ' Evolution of Property, p. 35. 
 
I 
 
 261] IIEGEVS DOCTRTNE OF THE WILL mm 
 
 Merely to trace the changing phases of any reality does 
 not in itself explain the reality. " Evolution is not a force, 
 but a process ; not a cause, but a law." ^ The mode in 
 which property has been appropriated, as well as the objects 
 appropriated, may vary at dififerent times and in different 
 societies. Doubtless in the initial stages of social progress 
 the notion of property existed merely in an indistinct, yet 
 real sense of unity and consequent feeling of co-ownership by 
 the individuals composing the horde, family, clan or tribe. 
 In the early nomadic life, co-ownership would be felt in 
 whatever articles were carried from place to place. When 
 the tribe came to possess a settled abode (occasioned by 
 growth in numbers or through the appearance of other 
 tribes) landed property began to develop into the various 
 forms of tribal ownership so adequately traced by Maine, 
 Laveleye and Lafargue, 
 
 Roman jurisprudence, on which our modern jurispru- 
 dence is professedly based, founds the right of property 
 principally on the fact of occupancy of a res niilliiis. Ac- 
 cording to this theory the possession of a particular object 
 or piece of ground would be co-extensive with the power to 
 retain it. The right of appropriation would simply be the 
 right of the strongest. 
 
 Hobbes' theory of property follows as a direct conse- 
 quence from his theory of the state. There is no right of 
 property as against the sovereign power. In insisting on the 
 importance of the individual, though he makes it too severely 
 prominent, Hobbes did good service for the future. Locke, 
 with individualism still as his starting-point, accepts the 
 notion of a contract or convention, but finds the foundation 
 of property in labor. It is my labor bestowed on objects 
 which makes them my property. The chief end of civil 
 society is the preservation of the property so constituted.' 
 
 •Morley, On Compromise, p. 210. • Toleration, (Works, II). 
 
 % 
 
76 
 
 HEG EDS DOCTRINE OF :'HE WILL 
 
 [262 
 
 
 In making labor the principle of the ight of property, Locke 
 pointed out the clement which the i^'aneral mind recognizes 
 as constitutive of that right. Yet here a difficulty is raised^ 
 namely, why is it that possession is not always held by 
 labor, and why does the laborer not always possess prop- 
 erty? The right of labor, moreover, presupposes that the 
 use of the materials has been conceded. Society must have 
 some share in every product of labor. The difficulty, how- 
 ever, must not obscure the element of truth in Locke's view. 
 The view itself represents the distinctively British or 
 economic standpoint regarding the right of property. 
 
 The result of German discussion was to direct attention to 
 the ideal or personal side of property, in contrast to its. 
 purely material value. Kant regarded it as one of the in- 
 alienable rights of personality, and thus invested it with a 
 distinctly moral character. Kant and Fichte, however, re- 
 gard the state merely as an institution which by physical 
 power lends sanction to the law. For Fichte the ultimate 
 foundation of property is in an act of will to which bodily 
 action has given effect. He believed the time was coming 
 when "property will lose its exclusively private character 
 and become a social institution." In general, it may be said 
 that the English view the right in its objective, utilitarian or 
 economic aspect; whereas the Germans lay the emphasis 
 rather on the subjective requirements of personality. It 
 would seem that an adequate theory would combine the sub- 
 jective and objective points of view. As Prof. Newcomb 
 says : " The respect for property is greater to-day because 
 the right is more rationally defined and exercised." " 
 
 Almost invariably in theories of property two questions 
 
 are confused, which, in an analytic discussion of the problem, 
 
 should be kept separate. Not that process can in any stage 
 
 be separated from the product, yet for purposes of examin- 
 
 '" Political Science Quarterly, Vol. I. 
 
263] HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL •» 
 
 ation an ideal separation must be made, (i) There is first 
 the historical question, In what way, as a matter of fact, 
 have men appropriated property? This side has perhaps 
 been given an undue emphasis in modern times through 
 the prevailing influence of the historical method of enquiry. 
 (2) Granting, in the second place, the appropriation, how 
 has the notion of right come to be associated with it? 
 " Why it was," says Maine, " that lapse of time created a 
 sentiment of respect for his possession — which is the exact 
 source of the universal reverence of mankind for that which 
 has for a long period de facto existed — are questions really 
 deserving the profoundest examination, but lying far be- 
 yond the boundary of our present enquiries." " But it is 
 just the answer to this question which is fundamental to any 
 theory of the " right " of property. 
 
 The notion " right of property " involves at least ( i ) the 
 idea of permanence, and (2) that the property-holder is 
 secured in his right so long as he wills to keep it. There 
 is <:hus involved in the right an individual and a social ele- 
 ment. Property as an institution is contemporaneous with 
 society, and Laveleye appears to take an extreme position 
 when he asserts that " at the present day property has been 
 deprived of all social character. ... It is a privilege sub- 
 ject to no fetters, no reservation, and no obligation, which 
 seems to have no other end than the well-being of the indi- 
 vidual." (i) There is first the individual element, and il^is 
 is founded in the will of the person. The individual has an 
 idea of a self-satisfaction, of a good to be reah"zed ; and ap- 
 propriation is its expression. Appropriation as the expres- 
 sion of will is thus the initial condition of the existence of 
 property. It is not, however, the whole process. If it 
 were, the lower animals could be said to have the proprie- 
 tary sentiment. The question rather is, Why is it that other 
 
 " Ancient Law, p. 24S. 
 
78 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRLVE Of THE WILL 
 
 [264 
 
 . i 
 
 individuals possessed of similar needs and desires leave the 
 appropriating individual in undisturbed possession? The 
 social element must in some way be accounted for. (2) 
 "Man is by nature a political animal," says Aristotle. 
 Property is a social institution in primitiv" as well as in 
 modern times. In the appropriation by the indi\ idual there 
 is involved the social element, namely, the recognition by 
 the individual of the right of appropriation as belonging to 
 other individuals, and the recognition by the latter of a 
 similar right of the individual to the appropriated objects as 
 the permanent medium for the expression of his wants and 
 desires. Thus, in reality, in the right to labor is pre-sup- 
 posed the right to certain materials. Without a universal 
 element in the individual mind, social union is inconceivable. 
 If the individual is to be conceived atomistically, to speak of 
 a "right of property" is ti'iintelligible. "Where there is no 
 recognition of a common lod there can be no right in any 
 other sense than power." '^ The ground of property can 
 only lie in the recognition by the members of any social 
 group of a common good ; a good, recognized, it may be, 
 dimly, yet which is in some way immanent and operative in 
 the minds of the individuals composing a horde, family, 
 clan, tribe, society or state ; and only on this basis — if we 
 are to mean anything by the word — can we speak of a right 
 of property, or indeed of a right or duty of any kind. 
 
 § 38. Since it is chiefly Hegel's view of property which 
 has been embodied in the preceding section, a summary of 
 his doctrine will be sufficent. (i) For the development of 
 man's free personality some instrument is required. " It is 
 necessary," says Hegel, "to find some external sphere for 
 his freedom." In the psychology was briefly traced the pro- 
 cess by which the spirit gradually takes possession of the 
 body — informs it. So now, mind is to take possession of 
 
 "Green, Principles of Political Obligation, Works, Vol. ii, p. 370. 
 
[264 
 
 leave the 
 n? The 
 ;or. (2) 
 'Vristotle. 
 ell as in 
 ual there 
 iiition by 
 )nging to 
 tter of a 
 objects as 
 nnts and 
 pre-sup- 
 unix'rrsal 
 ceivable. 
 speak of 
 ere is no 
 ht in any 
 erty can 
 y social 
 may be, 
 rative in 
 family, 
 — if we 
 I a right 
 
 :y which 
 mary of 
 mcnt of 
 "It is 
 lere for 
 the pro- 
 of the 
 ssion of 
 570. 
 
 265] HEGEVS DOCTRINE. OF THE WILL yg 
 
 nature and make it also instrumental. Appropriatiun as an 
 act of will is the primary stage in man's self-realization. 
 Occupation is, accordingly, an incident rather than the basis 
 of property. The thing is tfUHe because I put my will into 
 it. Propi ity is thus, primarily, realized will. TUit this nt.cds 
 qualification. (2) As was noted above, Hegel maintains 
 that personality is the foundation of all rights. Right and 
 duty are thus cornlata : what is a right is also a duty, and 
 what is a duty is also a right. Here then, for Hcgcl, there 
 comes in the social element in property.^ The rationality of 
 property does not lie in its satisfaction 6f wants, that is, of 
 the merely individual or empirical will, but in its ;ibrogation 
 of the mere subjectivity of personality. It is in property 
 that the person primarily exists as reason. It is the effort 
 on the part of the individual to give reality to a universal — 
 a good. "The good is the universal of will." It is a good 
 which the individual recognizes to be common to himself 
 with others. As a rational being man recognizes the uni- 
 versal in particular wants and desires. Property is accord- 
 ingly the first stage in man's development as a rational or 
 moral being. 
 
 Hegel traces the notion of property through the three 
 stages. ( I ) The first the immediate taking possession of a 
 thing; (2) The fuller consciousness of the difference between 
 the person and the thing in the transformation of the latter 
 through use ox consumption ; (3) The voluntary ;r//;/^///5/i!- 
 ment is a still fuller sort of ownership. 
 
 § 39. The relinquishment of property leads naturally to 
 the subject of contracts. In ownership the will of the indi- 
 vidual enters the circle of the common will ; were there only 
 a single proprietor the property relation could not be devel- 
 oped. The relation of one property to another is the rela- 
 tion of will to will. "Mine" is the correlative of "thine;" 
 and this relation exists because we admit the existence of a 
 
i\ 
 
 i I 
 
 «o 
 
 HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [266 
 
 common will which we are ready to obey. Property really 
 becomes mine when recognized as such by another. This 
 recognition is the essential principle in contract. In it the 
 notion of a common will is beginning to take visible shape. 
 The will of contract, as distinguished from the universal will 
 which has its foundation in the essential nature of man as a 
 rational being, and which, if realized, would result in abso- 
 lute justice, is particular and accidental. The universal will 
 must, of course, find its realization in and through the par- 
 ticular will. But in the particular will on which contract is 
 based there is no assurance of its conformity with the uni- 
 versal, nor of the inner motive of those to whom is owing its 
 existence. This common will of the individuals in a contract 
 of necessity sooner or later conflicts with the true, universal 
 will. Such collision constitutes wrong. The wrong in 
 question may of course be unconscious or unintentional. 
 Fraud is conscious wrong ; it respects the form but disre- 
 gards the substance of right. Wrong as crime is where 
 neither the form nor substance of right is regarded. Crime 
 is opposed to right as right, inasmuch as it is an attack on 
 freedom in its universal sense. Crime as such has, of course, 
 no external existence — no more than right. Revenge, which is 
 often resorted to, and in which punishment in its earliest stages 
 undoubtedly consisted, is merely the assertion once more of 
 right cf the subjective will. Inasmuch, however, as crime is 
 an internal, not an external, condition, a condition of the will 
 rather than an act resulting therefrom, it follows that any 
 annulling of this phase of the particular will can only come 
 from regarding punishment as but the completion of the act 
 undertaken by the subjective will in its assertion of a right 
 which is at variance with the common will. In the criminal 
 himself must lie the universal that is to do him justice. It 
 is in this fact that punishment has its justification ; and on 
 this all rational theories of punishment must ultimately be 
 based. 
 
 rj 
 
[266 
 
 T really 
 This 
 
 n it the 
 shape, 
 sal will 
 an as a 
 1 abso- 
 sal will 
 be par- 
 tract is 
 he uni- 
 nng its 
 ontract 
 liversal 
 mg in 
 xtional. 
 disre- 
 where 
 Crime 
 ack on 
 :ourse, 
 hich is 
 stages 
 lore of 
 rime is '^ 
 he will 
 at any 
 ' come 
 ;he act 
 ■\ right 
 iminal 
 ;e. It 
 nd on 
 ;ely be 
 
 267J 
 
 llEGEVS DOCTRLVE OF THE IVll.I. 
 
 81 
 
 § 40. This leads us to see what is Hegel's conception of 
 the true meaning of punishment. To use his own words, 
 " punishment is not foreign constraint to which the criminal 
 is subjected, but the manifestation of his own act." Crime 
 is not simply an evil, but is the action of a person and a vio- 
 lation of right as such. It is in this fact that the justification 
 of punishment, both from the point of view of the criminal 
 and of society, is to be found. His punishment is in reality 
 the right of the criminal as a free, self-determining agent; it 
 is the natural expression of his action. This is consistent 
 with Hegel's theory of right and duty, namely, that there can 
 be no such thing as abstract self-realization: rights and 
 duties are meaningless to an individual irrespective of soci- 
 ety. " Only, if we grant that without society men cannot 
 realize their true self, can it be maintained that no one is 
 justified in separating himself from society. But if society is 
 necessary to constitute a right, as distinguished from a mere 
 object of desire, it cannot be said that society is an acci- 
 dental relation into which men may or may not enter ; it is a 
 relation into which they viust enter by the very law of their 
 reason. I have rights only as a member of society, not as a 
 separate individual." '3 
 
 " Punishment," says Hegel, " is really a right to the crim- 
 inal himself." To the question, then, so often discussed, 
 whether punishment in its proper nature is to be regarded as 
 preventive, retributive or reformatory, Hegel would answer 
 that it is in reality all three. For Hegel man's good is a 
 social good; and punishment is preventive in so far as it 
 tends to remove hindrances to social unity which have been 
 caused by individual caprice. It is educative, also, as the 
 positive aspect of prevention — in that it creates in the mem- 
 bers of a society the consciousness that punishment is the 
 just and natural outcome of the criminal act. Tunish- 
 
 " Watson, Comte, Mill and Spencer, p. 268. 
 
mm 
 
 UXi 
 
 8:- 
 
 HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [268, 
 
 * ' 
 
 
 
 ment, again, is retributive. Not in the sense of revenge, 
 however, which is only a new violation ; the deed of a mere 
 subjective arbitrary will — pre-social vengeance. It is retri- 
 butive in the sense of expressing public indignation at 
 wrong-doing. As Green says, " this indignation is insepara- 
 ble from the interest in social well-being, and along with it 
 the chief agent in the establishment and maintenance of 
 legal punishment.'''-^ 
 
 § 41, The right of punishment — as the right of property 
 — is for Hegel based on the moral nature of man. Property, 
 contract, wrong, are stages in the process by which the indi- 
 vidual is led to reflect on his own nature — driven back into 
 himself. Thus it is in his relation to other individuals that 
 man is gradually led to reflect upon and understand his own 
 moral nature. So that the machinery of law is but instru- 
 mental in bringing man to know himself. It is simply 
 because law and custom are the expression of the moral 
 life of the social organism that the individual member in 
 time becomes conscious of his own moral and spiritual 
 nature, JL ^w compelled him to respect the rights of others 
 — whatever his subjective will or inclination might have 
 been. But it cannot be said that such an act is moral on the 
 part of the mdividual. Does the respect for the rights of 
 others spring from a dictate of reason ? When the individ- 
 ual puts this question to himself he has entered the moral 
 sphere. Morality is personal — this is the next stage in the 
 life of the individual. " This," says Hegel, " is the sphere of 
 reflective thought, the internal forum of conscience. "^^ Thus 
 we como to Hegel's second stage in the treatment of objec- 
 tive mind — of morality or the moral life. 
 
 
 '♦ Works II., Political Obligation, § 183. 
 
 ^^ Philosophic des Rechts, (SterreU's Translation) § 104, 
 
[268, 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MORALITY OF CONSCIENCE 
 
 § 42. It was Socrates who said that " an unexamined life 
 is not one that bhoiilc' be led by man." In the preceding 
 chapter was given an outline of Hegel's first division of " ob- 
 jective mind," namely, the sphere of law or right, where life 
 consisted in conformity to existing law. The person had 
 not arrived at that stage of mi^rality in which he could re- 
 gard the various laws and customs he obeyed as the very 
 medium through which his self-realization is to be attained. 
 His conformity to the laws, it may be, was the result of com- 
 pulsion rather than of a spiritual assimilation of their import. 
 This represents the stage of enforced obedience in the life of 
 the individual— an ab-*-act phase, and, inasmuch as the 
 obedience is not freely cnosen by the individua , a non-moral 
 phase. Environment, as the expression of morality, moral- 
 izes the individual and gives him whatever conscience he 
 has. The environment of human relations is thus, a^ Prof. 
 Dewey remarks, to conscience what the ex;ternal world of 
 experience is. to consciousness. Tho individual has to put 
 meaning into both, and thereby come to understand and re- 
 alize his own inner life. 
 
 The second division— of conscience— deals with the other 
 side of the relation— the individual subject which environ- 
 ment gradually awakens to a sense of moral values. In 
 conforming to the life of the family, of society, and of the 
 state, the individual in reality lives over the life of his people 
 and of the human race, and thus gradually rises to conscious 
 269] 83 
 
mmmimmm 
 
 84 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [270 
 
 I I' 
 
 \\ 
 
 participation in a common good which is being reahzed in 
 the Hves of men. From the fact that law or right is treated 
 before morality it would seem that Hegel regarded law as 
 the basis of morality, rather than morality as the basis of 
 law. As will be seen later, the phases law and duty are 
 both abstract, and the truly ethical life results from an inte- 
 gration of the two. As to the question whether law pre- 
 cedes morality or the reverse, there can be little doubt that 
 the notion of right or law enters more into social relations, 
 and furnishes the general standard for society in its judg- 
 ment of action. For the majority of individuals their 
 morality appears as the result of laws externally enforced, 
 rather than of the living self-unfolding of the spiritual 
 nature. The concrete act is the unit of morality or con- 
 duct; and the act, to be moral, is for the individual who has 
 adopted it as the medium of his self-expression, his good. 
 In reality, then, law and morality are evolved together, and 
 their separation, save for purposes of examination, creates a 
 false antithesis. This, then, is Hegel's meaning. Morality, 
 the identification by the individual of his good with the 
 common or universal good, is the principle of cohesion in 
 every form of association from the most primitive horde to 
 the various social institutions — the family, the church, the 
 state — of modern civilization. " Pure individualism would 
 mean social dissolution." ' 
 
 § 43. Society is thus for Hegel an expression of morality. 
 The " moral" in reality includes the entire active life of man. 
 The end of life is self-expression and self-development 
 through activity. So that our every action contributes to 
 the self-unfolding of the personal life. For Hegel, as he 
 says, the moral signifies volitional mode, so far as it is in the 
 interior of the will in general.^ It is the subjective aspect of 
 
 ' D'Arcy, Short Study of Ethics, p. 195. 
 
 2 Wevkc, VII., § 503 ( The Philosophy of Mind, translated by Wallace) . 
 
[270 
 
 ilized in 
 ; treated 
 i law as 
 basis of 
 iuty are 
 
 an inte- 
 law pre- 
 )ubt that 
 -elations, 
 its judg- 
 als their 
 enforced, 
 
 spiritual 
 ! or con- 
 
 who has 
 lis good, 
 ither, and 
 
 creates a 
 Morality, 
 
 with the 
 (hesion in 
 
 horde to 
 lurch, the 
 
 m would 
 
 morality, 
 fe of man. 
 clopment 
 ributcs to 
 cl, as he 
 t is in the 
 aspect of 
 
 Wallace). 
 
 271] 
 
 HEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 85 
 
 conformity to the laws and institutions in which the ethical 
 principle, at work in the life of humanity, has embodied itself , 
 it thus includes the "purpose" and " intention" of the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 In the sphere of abstract right the will of the person found 
 its realization in objective action; in "morality" freedom 
 becomes the conscious possession of the subject. The will 
 finds its freedom in the internal rather than in the external. 
 The supreme aim of the will in its subjective character, as 
 Hegel says, is that laws and precepts shall have their recog- 
 nition and justification in the heart and conscience of the 
 subject. It is this internal freedom that stamps their value 
 on actions and makes the subject responsible for his deeds. 
 From the moral standpoint man is judged according to his 
 own self-determination. He is responsible, according to 
 Hegel, for such changes wrought in his environment as were 
 consciously included in his purpose. Are actions, then, to 
 be the subject of moral approval or disapproval, (i) solely 
 from their consequences, or (2) is merely the inner side of the 
 action, irrespective of consequences, to be taken into ac- 
 count? This, according to Hegel, is a false antithesis. It is 
 in the motive of the self-determining subject that the morality 
 of an action is to be found. The motive has both a subjec- 
 tive and objective reference. For Hegel, as has been seen, 
 the primary and fundamental ethical conception is, the good. 
 It is in the action — the end — that the satisfaction of the self 
 is attained. The self cannot be separated from the object, 
 but is the immanent life of the activity ; the activity is the 
 end, and it is to this that morality appertains. The motive 
 is the determining soul of action. 
 
 § 44. "The Good," says Hegel, "is the Idea, as the 
 unity of the concept of the will and of the particular will. It 
 is realized freedom, the absolute final purpose of the world. 
 In this unity, abstract right, as well as well-being, and the 
 

 86 
 
 HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [272 
 
 subjectivity of knowledge are annulled as independent in 
 themselves, but at the same time are contained and pre- 
 served in it as to their essence. "3 The harmony of the par- 
 ticular and universal will is the good. Conscience is simply 
 the mind acting in a certain direction — specifying in what 
 the good consists. For llegel the right is not good without 
 well-being, and well-being is not good without right. Since 
 the good so far exists as a universal not brought into har- 
 mony with the particular modes of the individual's action, it 
 imposes on the individual will an inviolable ideal of duty. It 
 was this standpoint which Kant regarded as the highest. 
 The difficulty involved \\\ Kant's doctrine of duty has been 
 outlined in a preceding chapter. As Hegel says, " It is the 
 merit of the lofty standpoint of Kant's philosophy to have 
 emphasized the significance of duty. Yet every action de- 
 mands some definite content and aim. Abstract duty does 
 not contain such, consequently, the question arises, what is 
 duty?"t 
 
 "It is Hegel," says Prof. Seth, "who, of all modern phil- 
 osophers, has given most adequate expression to the essen- 
 tial principle of the ethical life, alike on its negative and on 
 its positive side. With Kant he recognizes the full claim of 
 reason, but he insists upon correlating with it the rightful 
 claim of sensibility. In ethics, as in metaphysics, Hegel 
 finds the universal in the particular, the rational in the sen- 
 sible. In the evolution of the moral, as of the intellectual 
 life, he discovers the dialectical movement of affirmation 
 through negation, of life through death ; in the one as in the 
 other phase of human experience, ' that is first which is nat- 
 ural, and afterwards that which is spiritual,' The life of 
 natural sensibility is only the raw material of the moral life."s 
 
 ' WerkefW\\,% 129 (/y»7Mc///«V r/w /'tr/^A.Sterrett's Translation). 
 * Werke, VII, § § 133-4 (^Philosophie des Rechts, Stetrett's Translation) . 
 " A Study oj Ethical Principles, p. 227. 
 
273] 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRLVE OF THE WILL 
 
 87 
 
 In the preceding chapters we have tried to indicate how 
 Hegel was in reality the first to penetrate beneath dualism 
 in all its forms ; and this is especially apparent in his ethical 
 system. Previous to the time of Hegel, ethical theories were 
 founded on a dualistic, or, as Prof. Seth says, "a half view of 
 human nature." The highest life, according to Plato and 
 Aristotle, was the life of contemplation. The theories of the 
 Cynics and the Cyrenaics were one-sided — a one-sidedness 
 aggravated by the Stoic and the Epicurean systems. The 
 asceticism of the Middle Ages needs only to be mentioned 
 — an asceticism which hung like a body of death to the sys- 
 tem of Kant. For Hegel, however, the life of natural sensi- 
 bility must be the "raw material," but only the raw material 
 of the moral life. It is for the practical reason to direct and 
 control ; and man in being self-conscious can determine 
 himself through the chaos of sensations and desires into a 
 free intelligence and will. The developed man is he whose 
 natural inclinations and desires are purged by the alchemy 
 of a consistent purpose, which in turn imparts to his various 
 activities their peculiar significance and value. The ethical 
 life is the self-unfolding of the whole personality. 
 
 § 45. The genuine conscience, says Hegel, is the mind 
 wishing for that only which is absolutely good. Conscience 
 is the reflection of man into himself; it is self-communion. 
 But for Hegel morality is not yet "ethicality," the organic 
 unity of the good and conscience, of the universal and the 
 individiial. From the formal standpoint of morality, con- 
 science lacks all such objective content. " It is merely the 
 infinite formal certitude of itself — of the subjective 'ndividual. 
 It expresses the absolute right of the subjective self-con- 
 sciousness to know just what the right and obligatory are."^ 
 This is the m ^re subjective consciousness with its demand, 
 " duty for duty's sake." It insists on maintaining only its 
 
 • Werke, VIII, Philosophic des Rechts, § 137 (Sturretfs Translation). 
 

 I i 
 
 [/ 
 
 88 
 
 JIEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE ^v ILL 
 
 [274 
 
 inner convictions ; and, if permitted to go on, would really 
 dissolve all definite forms of right and duty. But Hegel, as 
 will be apparent, is far from denying the right of private 
 judgment. The good as objective and universal must find 
 its realization through the self-determining activity of in- 
 dividual subjects. "We may grant," says Hegel, "that no 
 current form of morality is absolutely true and final. When 
 any current form has become insufficient or obsolete, it is 
 the prerogative of subjectivity to evolve another. In truth, 
 every existing form of cthicality (concrete social morality) 
 has been produced through this subjective activity of the 
 social spirit."'' 
 
 § 46. The Good or Duty must be universal and objective 
 as well, and the medium of its expression can only be the 
 self-determining activity of the individual subject. "And 
 the true conscience cannot be merely subjective and inde- 
 terminate consciousness of an abstractly universal power 
 and right of self-determination." "The individual," says 
 Schurman, " has not to create from his own innate empti- 
 ness some new morality ; in the main, he has only to make 
 his own the morality of his people and his country." ^ The 
 integration of the Good and subjective will forms the third 
 phase of " Objective Mind " — the ethical life. Yet law and 
 morality are not set aside : they are transformed into the 
 concrete moral life of man as it is unfolded in a social com- 
 munity. " Both right and morality need the ethical for their 
 foundation, as without it neither has any actuality. Only 
 the Idea, the true infinite, is actual. Rights exist only as 
 the branch, or as a plant clinging round a firm tree." ^ 
 
 ' Werke, VIII, Fhilosophie dcs Rechts, § 138 (Sterrett's Translation). 
 
 ^Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution, p. 66. 
 
 » Werke, VIII, Fhilosophie des Rechts (Sterrett's Translation). 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE ETHICAL LIFE 
 
 Life is one : the individuil and society are its two necessary manifestations ; 
 life considered singly, and life in relation to others. Flames kindled upon a com- 
 mon altar, they approach each other in rising, until they mingle together in God. 
 
 Mazzini. 
 
 § 47. The ethical world of concrete social life {Sittlichkcit) 
 which forms the third division of Hegel's treatment of " ob- 
 jective " mind, is the integration of the two preceding stages, 
 the legal or objective freedom, and of abstract subjectivity, 
 asserting the right of private judgment. In this stage man's 
 self-consciousness becomes the ethical or spiritual conscious- 
 ness, and his will, the will of the spirit. The individual life 
 becomes an expression of the spiritual life of its environ- 
 ment. No longer does the individual subject render an 
 enforced submission to the laws and institutions as some- 
 thing foreign to his nature: rather, as Hegel says, these 
 afiford to him the " testimony of the spirit as being of its 
 own essence." ' Freedom is the full-blown flower of spirit. 
 In the ethical life of organized human and spiritual relations, 
 this ideal of freedom is gradually unfolded in the minds and 
 hearts of men ; who come to learn that their highest good 
 is bound up with the good of others, The reedom of the 
 will is for Hegel the expression of the entne personality, as 
 the individual is the expression of society. On the fidelity 
 with which the individual performs his function depends the 
 lite of the social organism : and in turn, it is the existence 
 
 •?5] 
 
 » Werke, Mil, § 147. 
 
 89 
 
90 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [276 
 
 of the social organism which enables the individual to fulfil 
 his capacities. " In ceasing to contend for his rights against 
 others, he has made all their rights his own. The sacrifice 
 of selfishness is the birth of the true self. The universal, 
 which seemed to swallow up the individual life, for the first 
 time gives it possession of the good for which it exists." ' 
 
 § 48. The individual in becoming conscious of the various 
 relations existing in the community in which he is a vital 
 and organic member, recognizes their fulfilment as duties 
 which are binding on his will. The world of man's duty is 
 the actual world. "There is nothing else for him to do," 
 says Hegel, "than that which is prescribed, proclaimed and 
 made known to him in his ethical relations." 3 As man 
 grows into true freedom, the fulfilment of these duties will 
 more and more wear the aspect of necessity : for with Hegel, 
 freedom is the freedom of necessity. Man's freedom is 
 through obedience ; not that duty, however, can ever be a 
 limitation. "Obligatory duty can appear as a limitatinii 
 only to uiidetermined subjectivity or abstract ireedom, and 
 to the desires of the natural will, or to that moral will which 
 determines its indeterminate good through its own caprice,"* 
 In fulfilling his duty the individual man finds his liberation 
 from the unsatisf)'ing isolation of his natural self. "It is 
 when the moral life of society flows into me that my nalllle 
 reaches a fuller development ; and then only are my social 
 duties adequately fulfilled when they cease to have tl»o 
 aspect of an outward law and pass, in love and self-devotion, 
 into the spontaneity of a second nature." ^ 
 
 Virtue for Hegel is ethical personality: it is the ethical 
 spirit in so far as it is embodied in the life of the individual. 
 
 ^ Caird, The Evolution of Religion, Vol. II, p. 155. 
 
 ^ Werke, VIII, § 150 {Philosop/iie des Rechts, Sterrett's Translation.) 
 
 * Werke, VIII, § 149 (^Philosophie ties Rechts, Sterrett's Translation). 
 
 * Principal Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 265. 
 
277] HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL gj 
 
 "We are suckled at the breast of the environing ethos," says 
 Hegel. The individual is what he is in so far as he has re- 
 sponded to the moulding influences of his " spiritual setting." 
 That man is virtuous who manifests the ethical as an abiding 
 element in his character. As with Aristotle, virtue is a 
 habit: the ethical spirit becomes a second nature; the living 
 and informing soul of every action. Education, then, in its 
 broadest and truest sense, is " the art of making men ethical : 
 it considers man as a merely natural being — it shows the 
 way to a new birth, how to convert his first nature into a 
 second spiritual nature, so that this spiritual becomes a habit 
 in him." The man, however, who is to remain alive spirit- 
 ually must not allow his subjective consciousness to become 
 dim through a spirit-deadening conformity to mere habit, 
 nor his soul to cease its response to the ravishing ideal. He 
 must ever be mindful of the truth expressed in Lowell's 
 words : 
 
 "New occasions teach new duties; 
 
 Time makes ancient good uncouth." 
 
 In other words, only as it is progressive can the soul of 
 man \\\\\\\ moral and spiritual healthfulness. A man's con- 
 BUlfcidcc J3 co|)tinually reacting on iis environment. The 
 dtJltsbltillJ^fe' \\\ i(|tl|'i(|||f||s is the absolute) form, as Hegel 
 says, the existing nctdrtljl)') the ethical life of the community. 
 1/ tllcfo oxi«lH a bornl nf union in the state it must issue from 
 tke Inner life of the IndividuvU members. It cannot come 
 from without. And, as IVof. Dewey states it, " the moral 
 eilfl'^nvni' nf man takes the form not of isolated fancies about 
 right and wrong, nor of attempts to frame a morality for 
 himself, nor of efforts to bring into being some praiseworthy 
 ideal never realized, but the form of sustaining and furthering 
 the moral world of which he is a member." The work of the 
 individual is a work for others, and is rendered possible only 
 
92 
 
 Hr.GEi:S DOCTKLXE OF THE WILL 
 
 [278 
 
 •If 
 
 .t 
 
 through the work of others, Man as an individual thus 
 lives through the universal ; seeing in the universal his out- 
 ward existence, which is gradually reproduced in his own 
 conscious experience and in that of his fellow-citizens. 
 Thus, also, his every action, even the commonest, is trans- 
 formed in the light of its spiritual worth and given its signifi- 
 cance in the gradual unfolding in the hearts and lives of men 
 of that power " which makes for righteousness." For Hegel, 
 ethical atomism is inconceivable. Man is an intelligent and 
 moral personality because, as individual, he is a partaker of 
 the life of Universal Reason — a sharer in that Divine life 
 v/hicl: gradually " reproduces itself iit the human soul."'' 
 
 § 49. Hegel traces the development of the person to 
 completed freedom through three stages : 
 
 (1) The family; which is the primary nucleus of all 
 human union and fellowship. 
 
 (2) The civic community ; th union of independent in- 
 dividuals in a formal universality for the security of private 
 and common interests. 
 
 (3) The state; which is the self-conscious substance, or 
 the invisible spirit of the nation developed to an organic 
 actuality in the hearts and customs and genius of the people. 
 
 § 50. The family is the primary union of mankind. "The 
 spirit," says Hegel, " finds itself bound to another, and in 
 this tie feels the assurance of its own existence." Love, 
 which is its foundation, its organizing and controlling prin- 
 ciple, is the consciousness of our unity with another. It 
 contains first of all a feeling of dependence ; and in my union 
 with another I am made that which I feel my true nature 
 bids me become. "The family," says Mackenzie, "is like a 
 burning-glass which concentrates human sympathies on a 
 point. Within that narrow circle selfishness is gradually 
 overcome and wider interests developed. The family ena- 
 
 I 
 
 'Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, § 180. 
 
2791 
 
 IlEGKL'S noCTRINE OF Tlfl'. iVU.I. 
 
 93 
 
 bles a few persons to become not mcr^ ly objects for each 
 other, but parts of a single life ; and the unity thus effected 
 may then be very readily extended as sympathies j;ro\v." ' 
 The family has ever been the first instrument of man's social 
 education — of his moralization. As sensation is the first cle- 
 ment in the growth of his intellectual world, so love is the 
 first in humane self-knowledge. 
 
 Hegel considers the family relation in three of its aspects: 
 (i) marriage, (2) family property, (3) the education of the 
 children and the dissolution 01 the family. 
 
 The family is based upon marriage. Hegel conceives the 
 question of marriage to lie at the very foundation o( "^he life 
 of a state. "The greatest and deepest of all li nan contro- 
 versies," says Gladstone, " is the marriage controversy. It 
 appears to be surging up on all sides around us." The his- 
 tory of human marriage may b- traced back to ft)rms which 
 diftcr little from the life of the animals. Merely to trace it 
 back to its lowly beginning, however; to regard it as merely 
 a natural institution, is to lose sight of the higher purposes 
 which, at present, we are accustomcl to associate with it. 
 "Marriage has been subject to evolution in various ways," 
 writes Wcstcrmarck, "though the course of evolution has 
 not always been the same. The dominant tendency has been 
 the cxtcn:^ion of the wife's rights. A wife is no longer the 
 husband's property; and according to modern ideas, mar- 
 riage is, or should be, a contract on the footing of perfect 
 equality between the sexes. The history of human marriage 
 is the history of a relation in which women have been gradu- 
 ally triumphing over the passions, prejudices and selfish 
 interests of men." ^ Yet in every phase of human evolution 
 the question of interest is, "what has been evolved," and "to 
 what end is the evolution directed?" 
 
 ' An Introduction to Social Philosophy, p]). 363-4. 
 8 History of Human Marriage, pp. 549-550. 
 
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 For Hegel marriage is essentially an ethical or spiritual 
 relation. It is not to be regarded as an ordinary mutual 
 contract; for, in reality, it is an agreement to pass beyond 
 that sphere. The objective point of its inception is the free 
 consent of the persons concerned to give up their independ- 
 ent personality and find their true and higher personaHty in 
 each other — "the two-cell'd heart beating, with one full 
 stroke, life." The subjective feeling is not, for Hegel, the 
 only one of importance. " It is a further abstraction," he 
 says, "when the divine, the substantial in this phase of senti- 
 ment is separated from its proper sexual side, and from the 
 feeling and the consciousness of spiritual unity, and falsely 
 given a separate existence as Platonic love!' 9 Abstraction 
 finds no place in Hegel's system. The natural self must be 
 the organ of the spiritual life. " Our life is one, because our 
 nature is one." '° " The new life which rises out of the mar- 
 riage union, and of which the qperely animal nature is incapa- 
 ble, reacts on the crude material out of which it emerges. 
 Love and self-surrender transfigure appetite into a spiritual 
 affection, and purge it of its baseness." " Hegtl's entire 
 doctrine of ethics is informed by the idea that the spirit 
 must realize its capacities, not by withdrawal from the nat- 
 ural, but by transforming the natural into a spiritual setting 
 for its higher purposes. " From flesh unto spirit man 
 grows," says Browning ; and Matthew Arnold — 
 
 " Know man hath all which Nature hath, but more, 
 And in that more lies all his hopes of good." " 
 
 The absolute prerequsite of marriage, then, according to 
 Hegel, is reciprocal love. Bassanio found the image of Por- 
 
 » Werke VIII., § 162 {Philosopie des Rechts, Sterrett's Translation). 
 '" Seth, A Study of Ethical Principles, p. 219. 
 
 ■' Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 275. 
 1'^ Quoted by Prof. Seth, loc. cit. 
 
28 1 ] HEGEUS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL qc 
 
 tia imprinted on his heart. Both found their harmonious ex- 
 istence in the other. Shakespeare doubtless intended theirs 
 as the " marriage of true minds," and Belmont as rhe land of 
 harmony and love. According to Hegel the marriage cere- 
 mony should be sacredly solemnized as the visible expres- 
 sion of a spiritual relation. His entire conception is based 
 on the worth of personality. Anything, therefore, which in- 
 dicates that either party is used as a means rather than as an 
 end, destroys the truth of the relation. Property acquires 
 also an ethical interest when held in common. In the fam- 
 ily possessions, however, the unity of the parents is in an 
 an external thing— but in the child, in which their love is in- 
 carnated, the unity is in a spiritual being. The marriage re- 
 lation is completed in the natural and spiritual birth of the 
 child. As Browning says, " 'Tis in a child man and wife 
 grow complete, one ilesh." It is the duty of the parents :o 
 help the child in its self-unfolding, as a free spiritual being, 
 to independent personality; this is its spiritual birth. 
 
 § 51. The Civic Community stands between the family 
 and the state, although its historical evolution may be sub- 
 sequent to that of the state. It is the sphere of self-interest. 
 Yet individualism is only possible on a social basis. Pushed 
 to the extreme it is anarchy. Even in attaining the satis- 
 faction of his wants the individual must enter into relation 
 with others and so minister also to the attainment of their 
 ends. Thus in the liberation from mere wants lies their 
 social or universal aspect. "Particularity limited by uni- 
 versality is alone the measure through which every particu- 
 lar individual furthers his own welfare." '3 Of the civic com- 
 munity Hegel notices the three phases: (i) the system of 
 wants, (2) the administration of justice, (3) the police and 
 municipal corporation. Wants arc satisfied through labor. 
 By the division of labor production and technical skill is in- 
 
 '» Weike, VIII, § 182 {Philosophie des Rechts, Sterrett's Translation). 
 
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 96 
 
 IIEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
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 creased ; and each individual becon>es more dependent on 
 the social system. " It is Reason as immanent in the sys- 
 tem of human wants and activities that articulates this sys- 
 tem into an organic whole of different members." '* 
 
 § 52. The State for Hegel is the realization of the moral 
 idea. " It is the spirit that dwells i'l the world and realizes 
 itself in the world through consciousness. It is the course 
 of God through the world that constitutes the state. Its 
 ground is the power of Reason actualizing itself as will." 
 In it the family and the civic community find their true ex- 
 pression. Reason must be to some extent at least the 
 immanent and vitalizing principle of all existing states ; just 
 as every human being, however abnormal, reflects the ideal. 
 The bond between states is the spirit of humanity which has 
 been partially realized in the course of history. The spirit 
 of humanity is the spirit of God as actual on earth. The 
 ideal state is the harmony of the individual and the uni- 
 versal — the harmonious and complete realization of both 
 elements. 
 
 Every phase of human life is for Hegel a product of 
 growth, not of manufacture.>l Freedom is the self-unfolding 
 of a person under the immanent law of reason. In a pre- 
 ceding chapter Hegel's conception of the development of 
 consciousness was traced in outline. Consciousness was not 
 simply the creation of an environment, nor yet was its '::x- 
 istence apart from environment conceivable. Thought is an 
 organic process. A godless world and a vvorldless God are 
 both alike abstractions. Freedom is not the freedom of in- 
 difference, but the freedom of necessity, which regards the 
 volition apart from the character as a pure abstraction. So 
 also in Hegel's conception of society the individual apart 
 from society simply does not exist. The conception of 
 " natural rights" and of the " social contract" are alike ab- 
 
 '♦ Werke, VIII, § 200 {Philosophie des Rechts, Sterrett's Translation). 
 
 i 
 
 «.^iii!;!i I 
 
283] HEGEVS D0C7RINE OF THE WILL gt, 
 
 struCtions, Rights and duties belong to man only because 
 "he is by nature a so".ial being." The individualism of 
 modern society received its practical refutation in the French 
 Revolution. For Hegel, will, not force, is the basis of the 
 state. Rights and duties, than which nothing in the state 
 are more real, have their ultimate justification in sell-con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 The true view of society as an organism is that which re- 
 gards the individual life as the soci.il life. "The state licing 
 objective reason, or spirit, the individual himself has real 
 human objectivity, true individuality, and a truly ethical 
 quality only as he is a member of the State."'' It is, there- 
 fore, a mistak-e to emphasize the antithesis between the in- 
 dividual and social life. In one sense it is true that the in- 
 div'-lual can only realize his capacities by rising superior to 
 environment. Yet, as Prof. Seth well says, " the individual 
 and the social are in reality two aspects of the one undivided 
 life of virtue, and their unity is discovered with their reduc- 
 tion to the common principle of Personality," "^ According 
 to Hegel, the state is not a mechanism ; it is the rational life 
 of self-conscious freedom ; it is the order of the moral world. 
 It is thus the moral order of individuals ; the life of the state 
 is, therefore, the life of individuals. In reality, as Prof. Seth 
 remarks in the passage already mentioned, society is not an 
 " organism," but the ethical organization of individuals. In 
 living the social life, however, the individual must also find 
 the satisfaction of his own interests. " In the right of the 
 individual to seek his own welfare lies the possibility of his 
 seeking the welfare of the social organism. "'? Thus egoism 
 and altruism, as theories, are both alike abstract. Morality 
 is the realization of the person. But abstract self-realization 
 
 '* Morris, Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 80. 
 
 i«^ Study 0/ Ethical Pi inciples, p. 284. 
 
 " Prof. Henry Jones, Essays in Philosophical Criticism, p. 200. 
 
:i ii;'!!'i 
 
 ii' 
 
 98 
 
 H EG EDS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [284 
 
 ir 
 
 
 •If 
 
 is inconceivable. As Prof. Royce says, " there is no merely 
 inner self." There is no such thing as individual self-con- 
 sciousness — nor individual self-realization. 
 
 From this standpoint there is no conflict between Indi- 
 vidualism and Socialism, Progress in society can only mean 
 progress in the individuals composing it. It is the fuller 
 articulation of the rights and duties of the indiviuual mem- 
 bers in order to their freer self-development. The state is the 
 medium of personal self-expression: this is its ethical basis. 
 Personality is the ultimate fact. All rights and duties are 
 the expression of persons; " State intcffercnce " may limit 
 the individual ; it cannot limit the person. The development 
 of society, therefore, must be from within. In development 
 an ideal is implied ; and ideals can only originate in person- 
 ality. " The life task of every individual," says Hluntschli, 
 " is to develop his c<ipacities and to manifest his essence. 
 , So, too, the duty of the state-person is to develop the latent 
 [ powers of the .lation, and to manifest its capacities." '^ 
 "The liberation of mind, in which it proceeds to come to 
 itself and to realize its truth, and the business of so doing, is 
 the supreme right, the absolute Law." '^ The true freedom 
 of the individual means, for Hegel, nothing but "determina- 
 tion by the absolute idea throughout." The civic and social 
 institutions are the objective expression of man's freedom — 
 of the moral ideal. The moral life is the state reflected in 
 the heart of the individual member, while the state is the 
 concrete body with which the moral life is clothed. Hegel, 
 however, recognizes no finality in the moral life, nor in the 
 ethical institutions in which it is embodied. It is not neces- 
 sary to enter further into his conception of the state as a 
 politi!"al organization. The moral life is the life of the good 
 
 '8 The Theory of the State, p. 321 {English translation). 
 
 '» Hegel, Werke, VII, § 550 (, The Philosophy of Mind, Wallace's Translation). 
 
ii- 
 
 [284 
 
 285] 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WTLL 
 
 99 
 
 citizen — a life which is made up of civic and social relations ; 
 the fulfilment of which is man's highest duty. V 
 
 Religion is the basis of the moral life and of the state. 
 For Hegel the real basis of social life, and even of intelli- 
 gence, is religion, liut, as Prof. Wallace says, " religion is a 
 faith and a theory which gives unity to the facts of life, and 
 gives it, not because the unity is in detail proved or detected, 
 but because life and experience ine.'for^bly demand and 
 evince such a unity to the heart. Th'". religion of a time is 
 not its nominal creed, but its dominant conviction of the 
 meaning of reality, the principle which animates all its being 
 and all its striving, the faith it has in the laws of nature and 
 the purpose of life." "^ 
 
 The will is the man. His ideal is self-realization or free- 
 dom ; and self-realization is achieved through the individual's 
 making the life of the world his own. The larger and fuller 
 life of the spirit is gradually achieved in the unity of the 
 family, of the civic community and of the state. In some 
 individuals the spiritual life is expanded even to identifica- 
 tion with the life of humanity ; and this is all possible be- 
 cause the human spirit has its life in an infinite Spirit, which 
 has been the immanent life of all human activity. To con- 
 clude with Principal Caird's words : " Every pulse-beat of its 
 life is the expression and realization of the life of God." 
 
 § 53. In the preceding chapters we have endeavored to 
 give an outline of the ethical phase of Hegel's system, not 
 with the intention of discovering how much there is to con- 
 demn, but how much we inherit from it that is true. In 
 conclusion, a few words by way of summary may serve to 
 bring together some of the main conclusions arrived at in 
 the essay, which must be incomplete and, to that extent at 
 least, imperfect. Philosophy for Hegel is an interpretation 
 
 '^ HegeVs Philosophy of Mind : Introduction, p. xxxvii. 
 
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 HEGEDS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
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 of life, of human experience. We speak of human progress, 
 and we seek an explanation. For this explanation are we to 
 look forward or backward? Hegel answers that every ex- 
 planation of man must be of man as he now is. To trace 
 every phase of human activity — society, morality and re- 
 ligion — back to its lowly beginnings, Hegel admits, will 
 throw new light on what, at present, mati is and does. This 
 is true, indeed, of man above all other beings — only in the 
 light of his history can he be adequately known. Man's life 
 implies the natural and spiritual life of the race. Yet, if we 
 are to speak of development in a sense other than that of 
 mere aimless change, we must ndmit that what has been de- 
 vcloped must in some way have been immanent in, indeed, 
 the informing life of the process. " What Spirit is," says 
 Hegel in one striking passage, " it has always been essen- 
 tially ; distinctions are only the development of this essen- 
 tial nature. The life of the ever-present Spirit is a circle of 
 progressive embodiments, which looked at in one aspect 
 still exist beside each other, and only as looked at from an- 
 other point of view appears as past. The grades which 
 Spirit seems to have left behind it, it still possesses in the 
 depths of the present." 
 
 That the real is the intelligible and the intelligible the 
 real, is the principle on which is based the idealism begun 
 by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, revived by Kant, and 
 which received its most adequate expression in Hegel. We 
 endeavored to trace in outline through the history of philos- 
 ophy the working of the metaphysical and ethical dualism 
 which lingered in the systems of Plato and Aristotle, and 
 gave rise to such abstractions as those of nature and spirit, 
 necessity and freedom, the individual and society, the finite 
 and the infinite. Hcgel'was the first cleeirly to perceive how 
 these apparent disparates find their reconciliation in self-con- 
 sciousness or in spirit. Man's fundamental characteristic — 
 
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 287] 
 
 HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
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 his essence — for Hegel is self-consciousness. But man has 
 no life alone. He is an intelligent and moral consciousness 
 only as he goes outside of himself to find a kindred presence 
 with the life of which he may identify himself. The finite 
 consciousness, in knowledge and in its moral activity lives in 
 its relationnhips. Indeed, there is but one self-conscious- 
 ness which is the soul of all reality. Self-consciousness is 
 God, who reveals Himself in nature and in the luiman spirit. 
 All that is, is the revelalion of spirit to itself. In the third 
 chapter was considered in what sense it is permissible to 
 speak of a development of the human self-consciousness. It 
 was held that, instead of consciousness being the result of a 
 phj'sical process, rather the reverse was true ; or, to use 
 Green's words, " the constituent elements of an organism 
 can only be truly and adequately conceived as rendered 
 what they are by the end reai. ^d through the organism." 
 The organism is instrumental, /. c, organic to the life of 
 self-conscious intelligence. Spirit is the truth of nature. 
 
 The individual is at first appr.ienlly immersed in nature. 
 His end is self-realization ; to become a free, self-conscious 
 spirit is "the last of life for which the first was made." He 
 is from the first a self-determining being. The will is the 
 activity of consciousness as self-reflecting and self-objectify- 
 ing. The life process is the realization of the " self" through 
 environment. " S[)irituality," says Prof. Royce, " lives by 
 self-differentiation into mutually opposing forces, and by 
 victory in and over these oppositions." To trace this real- 
 ization of the " self" was the object of the remaining chap- 
 ters. And Hegel teaches that self-realization can come oidy 
 through self-renunciation. Not that for the realization of 
 the moral life, the natural life is to be renounced, as with 
 Kant. This natural life is rather to be transformed, spirit- 
 ualized, and made the worthy setting for the higher life of 
 the spirit. To be human, means to live a life of natural 
 
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 102 
 
 IIEGEVS DOCTRINE OF THE WILL 
 
 [288 
 
 wants, sympathies, and desires. Yet on these natural 
 " appetites" of the merely individual self, there supervenes 
 man's spiritual endowment — his essential self — reason, con- 
 sciousness, the immanent life of whicii is that universal 
 reason which has given rise to and still vitalizes and informs 
 the spiritual environment in which the iiulividual is to be 
 realized. Self-consciuusness is universal consciousness. 
 " Spirituality is the community of spirits." For man to 
 seek his good — the realization of himself — apart from the 
 common good embodied in the life of the family, of the 
 church and of the state, is to lose it. The individual good 
 is the social good ; the individual life, the social life. And, 
 to conclude this essay with the closing words of Hegel's 
 Philosophy of History, "That the history of the world, with 
 all the changing , ccnes which its annals present, is this pro- 
 cess of the development and actualization of Spirit — this is 
 the true theodicy, the justification of God in history. Only 
 this insight can reconcile the human spirit with the course 
 of universal history — namely, that what has happened and 
 is happening each day is not only not without God, but that 
 it is essentially His work." 
 
u 
 
 [288 
 
 VITA 
 
 y 
 
 
 I, John An(;u.s MacVannki., was born at St. Mary's, 
 Ontario, October 5, 1871. I attcndctl the St. Mary's Colle- 
 giate Institute for four years, matriculating into the Uni- 
 versity of Toronto, July 1889. In the University of Toronto 
 I received honors in Classics, luiglish Literature and Philoso- 
 phy. My teachers in Philosophy were Prof. Paldwin, I'rof. 
 Hume, Dr. Tracy and Dr. Kirschmann, I received the B. A. 
 degree in 1893, and the M. A. degree in 1894. During 
 1894-5, 'Js Sage Scholar in Ethics in the Cornell University, 
 I attended the lectures of Presi'lent Schurnian, Prof, Creigh- 
 ton. Prof. Titchener and Prof, Corson ; and during 1895-6, as 
 University Fellow in Philosophy in Columbia University, I 
 attended the courses given by Prof. Butler, Prof. Hyslop, 
 Dr. F"arrand, and Prof, Giddings. My major subject was 
 with Prof. Butler, to whose guidance and continued kindness 
 I owe the completion of this dissertation. 
 
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