Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/99

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85
SUMMARIES OF ARTICLES.
[Vol. XIII.

under different names, appear not only in close succession but at essentially different stages of the dialectic. Yet result and method are alike of permanent value; and the essential argument must be retraced by all who are to reach the standpoint of Absolute Idealism. This paper proposes a rearrangement of the Logic, which shall disentangle the several lines of argument. The following outline is offered: Introduction. Metaphysics is possible, for Ultimate Reality is neither undetermined (Bk. I, Identity and Difference) nor unknowable (Bk. II, Essence, Appearance, etc.). Ultimate reality is Absolute One, being neither a single reality among others, — for such reality is same and other (Bk. I, Determined Being; Bk. II, Identity and Difference), and like and unlike (Bk. II, Likeness and Unlikeness; Bk. Ill, Notion and Judgment), and dependent on others (Bk. II, Causality), — nor a composite of ultimate parts (Bk. I, Finitude, Infinity, and Being-for-Self; Bk. II, Action and Reaction; Bk. Ill, Mechanism). Ultimate reality is Absolute Self, and not mere life (Bk. Ill, Life) or finite consciousness (Bk. Ill, Cognition). The introductory argument is directed against Eleaticism of all times, on the one hand, and against Kant in particular, on the other. The argument for the unity of reality, occupying much the greater part of the Logic, has two parts: First, that Ultimate Reality is no single isolated reality; and second, that it is not a sum of isolated realities. On the first point, the argument from "sameness" or "likeness" is given far greater prominence than that based on "interdependence," doubtless because the latter is due to Kant and was common property in Hegel's time. On the second point, Hegel shows that a bare, unrelated plurality is impossible; but he never seriously considers the theory of the Absolute as a system of related individuals. However, he unequivocally rejects it, and the omission can readily be supplied on his own principles. The argument that ultimate reality is a self is also not so rigorously treated as that it is Absolute One; this because the general thesis of idealism was sufficiently accepted. As to the new ordering of the categories, determinate being is the real synthesis of being and naught, not becoming, which is rather a universal category, the common method of dialectical procedure. The section on quantity is omitted, because the whole of it is elsewhere duplicated, and its omission dispenses with the worse than useless section on measure. In general, the changes consist merely in the juxtaposition of groups of equivalent categories; and the justification for each change can be found in Hegel's own admission.

Theodore de Lacuna.

Mechanismus und Vitalismus in der modernen Biologie. E. von Hartmann. Ar. f. sys. Ph., IX, 2, pp. 139-178; 3, pp. 331-377.

This article is a critical resume of the leading mechanistic and vitalistic biological views from Müller onward. The earlier vitalists, von Humboldt, Bichât, and particularly Müller, hold to a life principle the advocacy of which is now impossible, — in M.'s definition "an unconsciously-working,