This view of Hegel’s system becomes inevitable when we consider, on the one hand, that his conclusion is that all that is real is rational, and, on the other hand, that his method consists in proving that each of the lower steps of the dialectic, taken by itself, is not rational. We cannot then ascribe reality to any of these steps, except in so far as they lose their independence and become moments of the Absolute Idea.
We are compelled, according to Hegel, to pass from each thesis and antithesis to their synthesis, by discovering that the thesis and antithesis, while incompatible with one another, nevertheless involve one another. This produces a contradiction, and this contradiction can only be removed by finding a term which reconciles and transcends them.
Now if we suppose that the dialectic process came into existence gradually in time, we must suppose that all the contradictions existed at one time or another independently, and not reconciled, i.e., as contradictions. Indeed, as the time process is still going on, all the reality round us at the present day must consist of unreconciled contradictions.
This would be inconsistent with the law of Contradiction. To say that the world consists of reconciled contradictions would produce no difficulty, for it means nothing more than that it consists of things which appear contradictory when not thoroughly understood. But to say that a contradiction can exist as such would plunge us in utter confusion. All reasoning, Hegel’s as much as anybody else’s, rests on the law that two contradictory propositions cannot both be true. It would be useless to reason, if, when you had demonstrated your conclusion, it was as true to assert the opposite of that conclusion.
And, again, if contradictory propositions could both be true, the special line of argument which Hegel follows would have lost all its force. We are enabled to pass on from the thesis and antithesis to the synthesis just because a contradiction cannot be true, and the synthesis is the only way out of it. But if contradictions are true, there is no necessity to find a way out of it, and the advance of the dialectic loses all its force. If the contradictions exist at all, there seems no reason that they should not continue to do so. We should not be able to avoid this by saying that they are real, but that their imperfection made them transitory. For the dialectic process, even if we suppose it to take place in time, is not a mere succession in time, but essentially a logical process. Each step has to be proved to follow from those before it by the nature of the latter. It is clear that
