Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
The simple fact that Hegel puts Jacob Bœhme on a par with Bacon,
suffices alone to show that his stand-point is far remote from the one
usually regarded as scientific: so far remote, indeed, that it is not
easy to find any common basis on which to found a criticism. Those who
hold that the mind is moulded into conformity with surrounding things
by the agency of surrounding things, are necessarily at a loss how to
deal with those who, like Schelling and Hegel, assert that surrounding
things are solidified mind—that Nature is “petrified intelligence.”
However, let us briefly glance at Hegel’s classification. He divides
philosophy into three parts:―
1. _Logic_, or the science of the idea in itself, the pure idea.
2. _The Philosophy of Nature_, or the science of the idea considered
under its other form—of the idea as Nature.
3. _The Philosophy of the Mind_, or the science of the idea in its
return to itself.
Of these, the second is divided into the natural sciences, {13}
commonly so-called; so that in its more detailed form the series runs
thus:—Logic, Mechanics, Physics, Organic Physics, Psychology.
Now, if we believe with Hegel, first, that thought is the true essence
of man; second, that thought is the essence of the world; and that,
therefore, there is nothing but thought; his classification, beginning
with the science of pure thought, may be acceptable. But otherwise, it
is an obvious objection to his arrangement, that thought implies things
thought of—that there can be no logical forms without the substance of
experience—that the science of ideas and the science of things must
have a simultaneous origin. Hegel, however, anticipates this objection,
and, in his obstinate idealism, replies, that the contrary is true. He
affirms that all contained in the forms, to become something, requires
to be thought; and that logical forms are the foundations of all things.
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