Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
insufficient process, and give it out to be the absolute process. In
the real process of nature they, however, found by experience that the
crystal dissolved gives water, and in the crystal, water is lost and
solidifies, or becomes the so-called water of crystallization; they
found that the evaporation of the earth is not to be found as moisture,
in outward form in the air, for air remains quite pure, or hydrogen
entirely disappears in pure air; they have sought in vain to find
hydrogen in the atmospheric air. Similarly they discovered that quite
dry air in which they can show neither moisture nor hydrogen, passes
into mist, rain, &c. These are their observations, but they spoilt all
their perceptions of changes by the fixed conception which they brought
with them of whole and part, and of consistence out of parts, and of
the previous presence as such, of what manifests itself in coming into
existence. When the crystal dissolved reveals water, they say, “it is
not that water has arisen, for it was already present there.” When
water in its decomposition reveals hydrogen and oxygen, that means,
according to them, “these last have not arisen for they were already
there as such, as the parts of which the water subsists.” But they can
neither demonstrate water in crystal nor oxygen and hydrogen in water,
and the same is true of “latent heat.” As we find in all expression
of perception and experience, as soon as men speak, there is a Notion
present; it cannot be withheld, for in consciousness there always is a
touch of universality and truth. For the Notion is the real principle,
but it is only to cultured reason that it is absolute Notion, and not
if it remains, as here, confined in a determinate form. Hence these
men necessarily attain to their limits, and they are troubled because
they do not find hydrogen in air; hygrometers, flasks full of air
brought down from heights by an air-balloon, do not show it to exist.
And similarly the water of crystallization is no longer water, but is
changed into earth.