HEGEL'S TBEATMENT OF THE OBJECTIVE NOTION. 39 Of course this does not mean that the union by inner nature has been disproved or abolished. It is still there. But we have seen that, by itself, it cannot account for reality, and that it must be supplemented by the principle of connexion by determination. The objects which are determining one another have still their inner natures, as those have been expounded in the Subjective Notion. But we are now considering them as determining one another, and from that point of view they must be looked at as separate, since their relations are external. Thus the reality, which was previously looked at as primarily a whole, is now looked at as primarily a plurality, or, in Hegelian language, the totality breaks up into distinct parts. The Objects are, then, at first taken as merely externally connected. Mechanics is the science which has the strongest tendency to treat the external relations of objects as entirely independent of their inner natures and, therefore, Hegel calls the first division of the Objective Notion by the name of Mechanism. Of this the first and most extreme form is FOEMAL MECHANISM. The definition of this, as often happens in the dialectic, is identical with that of the larger division, of which it is the first subdivision. The two other subdivisions modify and correct the characteristic idea of Mechanism. But in Formal Mechanism it is given in its full extent. Each object enters into external relations with all others outside it, but these external relations are not affected by, and do not affect, the internal nature of the objects related. A theory so extreme as this can only be accepted, with regard to objects of experience, as a methodological ex- pedient. It may sometimes be convenient to consider objects, for some particular and limited purpose, as if their external relations had no influence on their inner nature, or their inner nature on their external relations. But ex- perience teaches us, too plainly to be disregarded, that every external event that happens to any object of experience does effect its inner nature, and that, on the other hand, the ex- ternal relations into which objects enter are largely deter- mined by what the objects are. Atoms, however, cannot be directly perceived, and in their case, therefore, empirical knowledge is powerless to check the errors of theory. And Atomism has got very near, some- times, to the position of Formal Mechanism. It would not indeed assert that the inner nature of the atoms was entirely
