320 MARY WHITON CALKINS I a more ultimate reality the alleged Unknowable Essence or Force. But this, as he points out, makes it clear that the Unknowable Essence stands in necessary relation to the known phenomenon and that it is therefore, to some degree, itself known. In other words : we know at least the related- ness of ultimate to phenomenal reality ; and the knowledge of even this one fact (its relation) forbids our excluding ultimate reality from the universe of the knowable. 1 The conformity of Hegel's terminology, in the " Essence and Appear- ance " sections of book ii., to the current scientific conceptions of his times, sometimes obscures, but never obliterates, the essential outlines of the argument. He shows, by repeated illustration, that the alleged unknowable is invariably linked to the known phenomenon ; that it is, indeed, described only in terms of the known. Thus 'magnetic force' an example of alleged unknowable force exists only in so far as it is expressed in actual magnetic phenomena. Out of relation to these phenomena, magnetic force is not merely unknowable but non- existent. So, Hegel insists, the philosophising natural science which explains every set of phenomena by some hypothesised force overlooks the truth that the force can itself be defined only as the reality of these particular phenomena. Such a theory, therefore, involves the thinker in a vicious circle a " Hexenkreise," as Hegel somewhere calls it. Throughout these sections, Hegel : s illustrations are chiefly borrowed from Schelling's nature-philosophy. The theory which he combats is, however, as has been pointed out, the characteristic teaching of Kant. Essence and Ground and Force are alike in that each is supposed to be unknowable reality ; and what Hegel teaches is that every alleged un- knowable reality is postulated merely in so far as it stands in inevitable relation to the known, and that thus the supposedly Unattainable Reality is unwittingly admitted (even by those who call it unknowable) to be known. The difficulty of these sections is due, in large part, to the arbitrary assignment of certain pairs of the categories to the division headed " Essence " and of others to the class named " Appearance ". This division is doubly untrue to the underlying conception of Hegel, since it assigns to " Essence " categories such as Consequence and Form which rightly belong to " Appearance " ; and, on the other hand, includes under " Appearance " categories, such as Content and Inward, which have to do exclusively with " Essence ". An even more serious difficulty is the arrangement of these categories on the model of book i., in triad form, as if they grew out of each other by antithesis and synthesis, whereas most of these categories of book ii. are, in the main, re-statements of the fundamental opposition, that between Essence and Appearance, the really real and the apparently real. The true movement in the two books may thus be symbolised : 1 Those portions of this paper which appear in the larger type contain a statement of its main teaching. They may be read consecutively, neglecting the sections in small type. These latter undertake to sub- stantiate this reading of Hegel by an examination of the text of the Logic.
