(1) To speak of thought or objective thought as the heart [and soul
of the world, may seem to be ascribing consciousness to the things of
nature. We feel a certain repugnance against making thought the inward
function of things, especially as we speak of thought as marking the
divergence of man from nature. It would be necessary, therefore, if
we use the term thought at all, to speak of nature as the system of
unconscious thought, or, to use Schelling's expression, a petrified
intelligence. And in order to prevent misconception, thought-form or
thought-type should be substituted for the ambiguous term thought.
From what has been said the principles of logic are to be sought
in a system of thought-types or fundamental categories, in which
the opposition between subjective and objective, in its usual
sense, vanishes. The signification thus attached to thought and its
characteristic forms may be illustrated by the ancient saying that
'νοῧς governs the world,' or by our own phrase that 'Reason is in the
world: which means that Reason is the soul of the world it inhabits,
its immanent principle, its most proper and inward nature, its
universal. Another illustration is offered by the circumstance that
in speaking of some definite animal we say it is (an) animal. Now,
the animal, _quâ_ animal, cannot be shown; nothing can be pointed out
excepting some special animal. Animal, _quâ_ animal, does not exist: it
is merely the universal nature of the individual animals, whilst each
existing animal is a more concretely, defined and particularised thing.
But to be an animal,--the law of kind which is the universal in this
case,--is the property of the particular animal, and constitutes its
definite essence. Take away from the dog its animality, and it becomes
impossible to say what it is. All things have a permanent inward
nature, as well as an outward existence. They live and die, arise and
pass away; but their essential and universal part is the kind; and this
means much more than something _common_ to them all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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