Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3) — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
Much progress is not, however, made with these number-relations, for
they do not present much to the speculative Notion. The relationships
and laws of nature cannot be expressed by these barren numbers; they
form an empirical relation which does not constitute the basis of
the proportions of nature. Plato now says: “God divided this entire
series lengthways into two parts which he set together crosswise like
an X, and he bent their ends into a circular form and comprehended
them in a uniform motion—forming an inner circle and an outer—and he
called the motion of the outer circle the motion of the same, and
that of the inner the motion of the diverse, giving supremacy to the
former, and leaving it intact. But the inner motion he again split
into seven orbits after the same relations; three of these he made to
move with equal velocity, and four with unequal velocity to the three
and to one another. This is the system of the soul within which all
that is corporeal is formed; the soul is the centre, it penetrates
the whole and envelopes it from without and moves in itself. Thus
it has the divine beginning of a never-ceasing and rational life in
itself.”[53] This is not quite devoid of confusion, and from it we
can only grasp the general fact that as to Plato with the idea of the
corporeal universe that of the soul enters in as the all-embracing
and simple, to him the essence of the corporeal and of the soul is
unity in difference. This double essence, posited in and for itself
in difference, becomes systematized within the one in many moments,
which are, however, movements; thus this reality and that essence both
pertain to this whole in the antithesis of soul and body, and this
again is one. Mind is what penetrates all, and to it the corporeal is
opposed as truly as that it itself is mind.