J. M. E. McTaggart

“ The conclusion cannot be fairly drawn from the eternity of the dialectic process. For if we are entitled to hold the universe perfect, the same arguments lead us to consider it also timeless and changeless. Imperfection and progress then may claim to share whatever reality is to be allowed to time and change, and no conclusion can be drawn, such as Hegel appears at times inclined to suggest, against attempting to make the future an improvement on the past. ”

“ But if contradictions are true, there is no necessity to find a way out of it, and the advance of the dialectic loses all its force. If the contradictions exist at all, there seems no reason that they should not continue to do so. We should not be able to avoid this by saying that they are real, but that their imperfection made them transitory. For the dialectic process, even if we suppose it to take place in time, is not a mere succession in time, but essentially a logical process. Each step has to be proved to follow from those before it by the nature of the latter. ”

“ And, more generally, if the universe appears to us to be only imperfectly rational, we must be either right or wrong. If we are right, the world is not perfectly rational But if we are wrong, then it is difficult to see how we can be perfectly rational. And we are part of the world. Thus it would seem that the very opinion that the world is imperfect must, in one way or another, prove its own truth.
If this is correct, we shall be confronted with a difficulty as hopeless as that which encountered us when we supposed the dialectic to develop itself in time. ”

“ Now the conclusion from the Hegelian dialectic was that whatever was real was rational. We are, therefore, compelled to assert that every thought, and every thinking being, are completely rational — can be explained in a way which gives entire rest and satisfaction to reason. But, it may be said, this is not -in the least interfered with by the fact that many real thoughts are defective symbols of the other reality which they profess to represent. The false can be real — indeed, must be — for a thought cannot misrepresent reality unless it is itself real. Till it is real it can do nothing. ”

“ If the system is correct, the categories are so inseparably connected that the existence of one stage in the dialectic process implies the existence of all, and the existence of any reality, again, implies the existence of the categories. The category of Pure Being can thus be deduced from the existence of the universe as a whole, and the existence of the universe as a whole does not require, as it does not admit, any outside cause. But here, to account for the existence of the universe in time, we have taken as our ultimate fact the realisation of the first category at a particular time. ”

“ To say that the world consists of reconciled contradictions would produce no difficulty, for it means nothing more than that it consists of things which appear contradictory when not thoroughly understood. But to say that a contradiction can exist as such would plunge us in utter confusion. All reasoning, Hegel’s as much as anybody else’s, rests on the law that two contradictory propositions cannot both be true. ”

“ So far as a thing is timeless, it cannot change, for with change time comes necessarily. But how can a thing which does not change produce an effect in time? That the effect was produced in time implies that it had a beginning. And if the effect begins, while no beginning can be assigned to the cause, we are left to choose between two alternatives. Either there is something in the effect — that is, the quality of coming about as a change — which is altogether uncaused. Or the timeless reality is only a partial cause, and is determined to act by something which is not timeless. ”

“ Indeed we often, in every-day life, and in science, do find the false to be more or less rational. It is as possible to account, psychologically, for the course of thought which brings out an erroneous conclusion as for the course of thought which brings out a correct one. We can explain our failures to arrive at the truth as well as our successes. It would seem then that there is nothing to prevent ourselves and our thoughts being part of a completely rational universe, although our thoughts are in some respects incorrect symbols. ”

“ If we accept the objections to taking finite time as part of our ultimate explanation, it can only be because we are bound to an infinite regress. An infinite regress involves infinite time. But infinite time is impossible — an unreal abstraction, based on the impossibility of limiting the regress in thought. Any argument which involves its real existence is thereby reduced to an absurdity. And since the objections to finite time as part of our ultimate explanation do involve its real existence, we may, it is asserted, safely ignore the objections and accept the principle. ”

“ Categories are forms of thought which we apply to reality, and which have no meaning except as so applied. And all reality embodies, as it must do to be self-consistent and free from contradictions, the Absolute Idea, although in many cases when we experience reality much of this is only implicit. In all our consciousness, therefore, we have implicit the whole process and result of the dialectic, although in many cases only few categories are explicitly acknowledged to be valid. ”

“ It is perhaps not impossible that our minds should form the conception of something on which other things depend, while it depends itself on nothing. But an event in time could never hold such a place. For an event in time has always before it a time when it was not, and this coming into existence deprives it of the possibility of being self-subsistent. ”

“ The only way of fixing an event to a particular time is by connecting it with some other event which happened in a particular time. This would lead here to an infinite regress, and, independently of this, would be impracticable. For, by the hypothesis, the dialectic development was to account for the entire universe, and there can, therefore, be no event outside it to which it can be referred in order that it can be accounted for itself. ”

“ One of the most interesting and important questions which arise in connexion with Hegel’s philosophy is the question of the relation between the succession of the categories in the dialectic and the succession of events in time. Are we to regard the complex and concrete Absolute Idea, in which alone true reality is to be found, as gradually growing up in time by the evolution of one category after another? ”

“ We conclude the category in question to be an inadequate way of looking at reality, and we try to find a higher conception, which will embrace all the truth of the lower one, while it will avoid the contradictions. This is what we ought, it would seem, to do with the idea of time. If it only presents us with a choice between impossibilities, we must regard it as an inadequate way of looking at the universe. And in this case we cannot accept the development of the dialectic in time as part of our ultimate solution. ”

“ The succession of categories in Hegel’s Logic is, of course, not primarily a temporal succession. We pass from one to another because the admission of the first as valid logically requires the admission of the second as valid. At the same time there are various reasons for accepting the view that one category succeeds another in time. One of the facts of the universe which requires explanation is the existence of time, and it seems at first sight a simple and satisfactory explanation to account for it by the gradual development of the notion from Pure Being to the Absolute Idea. ”

“ That a thought is a delusion need not imply that it, or the being who thinks it, is irrational. Everything which, like a thought, is used as a symbol, can be viewed in two aspects — firstly as a fact, and secondly as representing, as a symbol, some other fact. ”

“ Hegel’s adherence to the eternal nature of the dialectic becomes evident in a manner all the more significant because it is logically unjustifiable. In several places he seems on the point of saying that all dissatisfaction with the existing state of the universe, and all efforts to reform it, are futile and vain, since reason is already and always the sole reality. ”

“ Actual time begins whenever change begins, and so cannot be regarded as a fixed point by which the beginning of change can be determined. A certain amount of the dialectic process has now been realised in time. Can we give any reason why the amount should not have been greater or less? Yet if no such reason can be given, the present state of the universe is left unaccounted for by our system. ”

“ But, on the other hand, we lose the possibility of treating time as a distinction which can be bridged over, or explained away, when we wish to make a connexion between time and the timeless. If time is an ultimate fact, then the distinction between that which does, and that which does not, happen in time, must be an ultimate distinction ”

“ Now if we suppose that the dialectic process came into existence gradually in time, we must suppose that all the contradictions existed at one time or another independently, and not reconciled, i.e., as contradictions. Indeed, as the time process is still going on, all the reality round us at the present day must consist of unreconciled contradictions. ”

“ It is clear that it would be impossible, by mere analysis of a logical category, to deduce the conclusion that for some time it could exist independently, but that after that its imperfection would drive it on to another stage. ”

“ If the dialectic is the key to the universe, then, whenever we do view the universe under the aspect of time, the different categories will appear as manifesting themselves as a process in time. But the fact that they can appear successively, and in time, does not necessarily imply that they came into existence successively, and are fundamentally a time series. ”

“ No reconciliation and no mediation is possible upon the hypothesis with which we are here dealing. According to some views of the question time might be regarded as nothing but a form assumed by eternity, or time and the timeless might be regarded as forms of a higher reality. ”

“ Nor are we by any means able to eliminate completely the contingency of the data of sense, without which the categories are void and meaningless, and a universe which contains an ultimately contingent element cannot be held to be completely rational. It would seem, too, that if we are perfectly rational in a perfectly rational universe, there must always be a complete harmony between our desires and our environment. ”

“ Time is in itself quite empty and indifferent to its content. No possible reason could be given why the process should not have begun a hundred years later than it did, so that we should be at the present moment in the middle of the French Revolution. ”

“ There are not, I believe, any expressions in the Logic which can be fairly taken as suggesting the development of the dialectic. It is true that two successive categories are named Life and Cognition, and that science informs us that Life existed in this world before Cognition. ”

“ Before the mind there is a single exception, but the whole mind itself, which does not appear, engages in the process, operates on the datum and produces the result. The opposition between the real, in that fragmentary character in which the mind possesses it, and the true reality felt within the mind, is the moving cause of that unrest which sets up the dialectical process. ”

“ The difficulty lies in the fact that we are compelled by the nature of time to regard the time series as indefinitely extended, and to regard each member of it as, in itself, exactly like each other member. ”

“ In the first place, the theory that time is an ultimate reality would lead to insoluble difficulties as to the commencement of the process. Secondly, the Absolute Idea must be held to be the presupposition and the logical prius of the lower categories. It follows that a theory which makes the appearance of the lower category the presupposition of the appearance of the higher one, cannot fully represent the ultimate reality of the process. ”

“ Whether, this is the case or not, with regard to simple perception of the facts before us, it cannot be denied that wherever there is a long chain of argument, to which the mind is voluntarily kept attentive, there must be a desire to know the truth. ”

“ And, again, if contradictory propositions could both be true, the special line of argument which Hegel follows would have lost all its force. We are enabled to pass on from the thesis and antithesis to the synthesis just because a contradiction cannot be true, and the synthesis is the only way out of it. ”

“ In the first aspect we say that it is real or unreal; in the second that it is true or false. These two pairs of predicates have no intrinsic connexion. A false judgment is just as really a fact as a true one. ”