III. FIRST ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT 
TO OBJECTIVITY
§26
The first of these attitudes of thought is seen in the method which has no 
doubts and no sense of the contradiction in thought, or of the hostility of 
thought against itself. It entertains an unquestioning belief that reflection is 
the means of ascertaining the truth, and of bringing the objects before the 
mind as they really are. And in this belief it advances straight upon its 
objects, takes the materials furnished by sense and perception, and 
reproduces them from itself as facts of thought; and then, believing this 
result to be the truth, the method is content. Philosophy in its earliest 
stages, all the sciences, and even the daily action and movement of 
consciousness, live in this faith.
§27
This method of thought has never become aware of the antithesis of 
subjective and objective: and to that extent there is nothing to prevent its 
statements from possessing a genuinely philosophical and speculative 
character, though it is just as possible that they may never get beyond finite 
categories, or the stage where the antithesis is still unresolved. In the 
present introduction the main question for us is to observe this attitude of 
thought in its extreme form; and we shall accordingly first of all examine 
its second and inferior aspect as a philosophic system. One of the clearest 
instances of it, and one lying nearest to ourselves, may be found in the 
Metaphysic of the Past as it subsisted among us previous to the philosophy 
of Kant. It is however only in reference to the history of philosophy that 
this Metaphysic can be said to belong to the past: the thing is always and at 
all places to be found, as the view which the abstract understanding takes 
of the objects of reason. And it is in this point that the real and immediate 
good lies in a closer examination of its main scope and its modis operandi.
§28n
The Metaphysic of the past assumed, as unsophisticated belief always does, 
that thought apprehends the very self of things, and that things, to become 
what they truly are, require to be thought. For Nature and the human soul 
are a very Proteus in their perpetual transformations; and it soon occurs to 
the observer that the first crude impression of things is not their essential 
being. This is a point of view the very reverse of the result arrived at by the 
Critical Philosophy; a result, of which it may be said, that it bade man go 
and feed on mere husks and chaff.
We must look more closely into the procedure of that old metaphysic. In 
the first place it never went beyond the province of the analytic 
understanding. Without preliminary inquiry it adopted the abstract 
categories of thought and let them rank as predicates of truth. But in using 
the term thought we must not forget the difference between finite or 
discursive thinking and the thinking which is infinite and rational. The 
categories, as they meet us prima facie and in isolation, are finite forms. 
But truth is always infinite, and cannot be expressed or presented to 
consciousness in finite terms. The phrase infinite thought may excite 
surprise, if we adhere to the modern conception that thought is always 
limited. But it is, speaking rightly, the very essence of thought to be 
infinite. The nominal explanation of calling a thing finite is that it has an 
end, that it exists up to a certain point only, where it comes into contact 
with, and is limited by, its other. The finite therefore subsists in reference 
to its other, which is its negation and presents itself as its limit. Now 
thought is always in its own sphere its relations are with itself, and it is its 
own object. In having a thought for object, I am at home with myself. The 
thinking power, the 'I', is therefore infinite, because, when it thinks, it is in 
relation to an object which is itself. Generally speaking, an object means a 
something else, a negative confronting me. But in the case where thought 
thinks itself, it has an object which is at the same time no object: in other 
words, its objectivity is suppressed and transformed into an idea. Thought, 
as thought, therefore in its unmixed nature involves no limits; it is finite 
only when it keeps to limited categories, which it believes to be ultimate. 
Infinite or speculative thought, on the contrary, while it no less defines, 
does in the very act of limiting and defining make that defect vanish. And 
so infinity is not, as most frequently happens, to be conceived as an abstract 
away and away for ever and ever, but in the simple manner previously 
indicated.
The thinking of the old metaphysical system was finite. Its whole mode of 
action was regulated by categories, the limits of which it believed to be 
permanently fixed and not subject to any further negation. Thus, one of its 
questions was: Has God existence? The question supposes that existence is 
an altogether positive term, a sort of ne plus ultra. We shall see however at 
a later point that existence is by no means a merely positive term, but one 
which is too low for the Absolute Idea, and unworthy of God. A second 
question in these metaphysical systems was: Is the world finite or infinite ? 
The very terms of the question assume that the finite is a permanent 
contradictory to the infinite: and one can easily see that, when they are so 
opposed, the infinite, which of course ought to be the whole, only appears 
as a single aspect and suffers restriction from the finite. But a restricted 
infinity is itself only a finite. In the same way it was asked whether the soul 
was simple or composite. Simpleness was, in other words, taken to be an 
ultimate characteristic, giving expression to a whole truth. Far from being 
so, simpleness is the expression of a half-truth, as one-sided and abstract as 
existence - a term of thought, which, as we shall hereafter see, is itself 
untrue and hence unable to hold truth. If the soul be viewed as merely and 
abstractly simple, it is characterised in an inadequate and finite way.
It was therefore the main question of the pre-Kantian metaphysic to 
discover whether predicates of the kind mentioned were to be ascribed to 
its objects. Now these predicates are after all only limited formulae of the 
understanding which, instead of expressing the truth, merely impose a 
limit. More than this, it should be noted that the chief feature of the method 
lay in 'assigning' or 'attributing' predicates to the object that was to be 
cognised, for example, to God. But attribution is no more than an external 
reflection about the object: the predicates by which the object is to be 
determined are supplied from the resources of picture-thought, and are 
applied in a mechanical way. Whereas, if we are to have genuine cognition, 
the object must characterise its own self and not derive its predicates from 
without. Even supposing we follow the method of predicating, the mind 
cannot help feeling that predicates of this sort fail to exhaust the object. 
From the same point of view the Orientals are quite correct in calling God 
the many-named or the myriad-named One. One after another of these 
finite categories leaves the soul unsatisfied, and the Oriental sage is 
compelled unceasingly to seek for more and more of such predicates. In 
finite things it is no doubt the case that they have to be characterised 
through finite predicates: and with these things the understanding finds 
proper scope for its special action. Itself finite, it knows only the nature of 
the finite. Thus, when I call some action a theft, I have characterised the 
action in its essential facts; and such a knowledge is sufficient for the 
judge. Similarly, finite things stand to each other as cause and effect, force 
and exercise, and when they are apprehended in these categories, they are 
known in their finitude. But the objects of reason cannot be defined by 
these finite predicates. To try to do so was the defect of the old metaphysic.
§31n
This metaphysic was not free or objective thinking. Instead of letting the 
object freely and spontaneously expound its own characteristics, 
metaphysic presupposed it ready-made. If anyone wishes to know what free 
thought means, he must go to Greek philosophy: for Scholasticism, like 
these metaphysical systems, accepted its facts, and accepted them as a 
dogma from the authority of the Church. We moderns, too, by our whole 
upbringing, have been initiated into ideas which it is extremely difficult to 
overstep, on account of their far-reaching significance. But the ancient 
philosophers were in a different position. They were men who lived wholly 
in the perceptions of the senses, and who, after their rejection of mythology 
and its fancies, presupposed nothing but the heaven above and the earth 
around. In these material, non-metaphysical surroundings, thought is free 
and enjoys its own privacy - cleared of everything material and thoroughly 
at home. This feeling that we are all our own is characteristic of free 
thought - of that voyage into the open, where nothing is below us or above 
us, and we stand in solitude with ourselves alone.
§32n
Dogmatism may be most simply described as the contrary of Scepticism. 
The ancient Sceptics gave the name of Dogmatism to every philosophy 
whatever holding a system of definite doctrine. In this large sense 
Scepticism may apply the name even to philosophy which is properly 
Speculative. But in the narrower sense, Dogmatism consists in the tenacity 
which draws a hard and fast line between certain terms and others opposite 
to them. We may see this clearly in the strict 'either - or': for instance, The 
world is either finite or infinite; but one of these two it must be. The 
contrary of this rigidity is the characteristic of all Speculative truth. There 
no such inadequate formulae are allowed, nor can they possibly exhaust it. 
These formulae Speculative truth holds in union as a totality, whereas 
Dogmatism invests them in their isolation with a title to fixity and truth.
It often happens in philosophy that the half-truth takes its place beside the 
whole truth and assumes on its own account the position of something 
permanent. But the fact is that the half-truth, instead of being a fixed or 
self-subsistent principle, is a mere element absolved and included in the 
whole. The metaphysic of understanding is dogmatic, because it maintains 
half-truths in their isolation: whereas the idealism of speculative 
philosophy carries out the principle of totality and shows that it can reach 
beyond the inadequate formularies of abstract thought. Thus idealism 
would say: The soul is neither finite only, nor infinite only; it is really the 
one just as much as the other, and in that way neither the one nor the other. 
In other words, such formularies in their isolation are inadmissible, and 
only come into account as formative elements in a larger notion. Such 
idealism we see even in the ordinary phases of consciousness. Thus we say 
of sensible things, that they are changeable: that is, they are, but it is 
equally true that they are nor. We show more obstinacy in dealing with the 
categories of the understanding. These are terms which we believe to be 
somewhat firmer - or even absolutely firm and fast. We look upon them as 
separated from each other by an infinite chasm, so that opposite categories 
can never get at each other. The battle of reason is the struggle to break up 
the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything.
§34n
The name 'rational', given to this species of psychology, served to contrast 
it with empirical modes of observing the phenomena of the soul Rational 
psychology viewed the soul in its metaphysical nature, and through the 
categories supplied by abstract thought. The rationalists endeavoured to 
ascertain the inner nature of the soul as it is in itself and as it is for thought. 
In philosophy at present we hear little of the soul: the favourite term is now 
mind (spirit). The two are distinct, soul being as it were the middle term 
between body and spirit, or the bond between the two. The mind, as soul, is 
immersed in corporeity, and the soul is the animating principle of the body.
The pre-Kantian metaphysic, we say, viewed the soul as a thing. 'Thing' is a 
very ambiguous word. By a thing, we mean, firstly, an immediate 
existence, something we represent in sensuous form: and in this meaning 
the term has been applied to the soul. Hence the question regarding the seat 
of the soul. Of course, if the soul have a seat, it is in space and sensuously 
envisaged. So, too, if the soul be viewed as a thing we can ask whether the 
soul is simple or composite. The question is important as bearing on the 
immortality of the soul, which is supposed to depend on the absence of 
composition. But the fact is, that in abstract simplicity we have a category, 
which as little corresponds to the nature of the soul, as that of 
compositeness.
One word on the relation of rational to empirical psychology. The former, 
because it sets itself to apply thought to cognise mind and even to 
demonstrate the result of such thinking, is the higher; whereas empirical 
psychology starts from perception, and only recounts and describes what 
perception supplies. But if we propose to think the mind, we must not be 
quite so shy of its special phenomena. Mind is essentially active in the 
same sense as the Schoolmen said that God is 'absolute actuosity'. But if the 
mind is active it must as it were utter itself. It is wrong therefore to take the 
mind for a processless ens, as did the old metaphysic which divided the 
processless inward life of the mind from its outward life. The mind, of all 
things, must be looked at in its concrete actuality, in its energy; and in such 
a way that its manifestations are seen to be determined by its inward force.