Classics in the History of Psychology

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Christopher D. Green
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DICTIONARY OF
PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY

JAMES MARK BALDWIN (1901)

Definitions Heg - Hes

Posted August 2000


Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. (1770-1831.) Born at Stuttgart, he entered the university at Tübingen as a student of theology, receiving a master's degree in philosophy, 1790. In this same year Schelling entered the university at the age of sixteen, and seems to have stimulated Hegel to greater activity. Hegel had already read Rousseau, and knew something of the Wolffian philosophy. In 1793 he left Tübingen, and became a private tutor in a family at Berne. He wrote a life of Christ, studied Kant and Benjamin Constant, and read for the first time Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, which had just appeared. In 1797 he became a tutor at Frankfort, and there read Plato and Sextus Empiricus. In 1801 he removed to Jena, and began lecturing. Closing his lectures at Jena in 1806, on account of the war, he edited a newspaper in Bamberg until 1808, when he took charge of the gymnasium at Nuremberg. In 1816 he became professor of philosophy at Heidelberg. In 1818 he removed to Berlin to take the place left vacant by Fichte's death. Died at Berlin. See the following topics.


Hegelianism or Hegelism. After HEGEL (q.v.). See HEGEL'S TERMINOLOGY (especially II), IDEALISM, EPISTEMOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, and METAPHYSICS.


Hegel's Terminology (in relation to the Hegelian Philosophy).

I. GENERAL NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HEGEL'S TERMINOLOGY.

Amongst the thinkers who, since Aristotle, have undertaken to work out a relatively independent terminology adequate to the complexity and to the organization of a complete philosophical system, Hegel occupies a very prominent place. His terms are chosen, on the whole, with a very careful regard to his own central theories. They are, in a number of instances, decidedly novel. Where they are familiar terms, their meaning is altered to such a characteristic doctrine of the system, according to which the process, or other object which Hegel names by any term, is the fulfilment, or 'truth,' i.e. the complete expression, of the meaning and purpose of the processes familiarly known under the same name. The method of nomenclature thus indicated is viewed by Hegel himself as justified by general practice; and so far this seems indeed plain, since a familiar source of technical names is the deliberate employment of an already familiar term in a meaning which is not only specialized, but specialized through an emphasis laid upon tendencies or purposes latent in the popular usage. In Hegel's case, however, this fashion of creating his own terminology, by employing familiar terms in new ways, is rendered decidedly more baffling than usual by the twofold fact: (1) that the terms whose sense is thus transformed are already old technical terms, of a past usage no longer vague, but, as Hegel himself holds, rather too abstractly sharp in definition; and (2) that the change from the traditional usage is frequently very considerable, and concerns some of the most original features of the Hegelian system. The result is that brief summaries of the philosophy of Hegel, in his own terminology, are, as this first case illustrates, extremely misleading; and many of the most familiar criticisms of his system as 'panlogism,' as reducing life to 'mere thought,' as recognizing 'no reality but the thinking process,' or as 'identifying the philosophizing intelligence with the absolute,' whatever may be the ultimate justification of these criticisms, actually express, as they occur, mere impressions resulting from such a view of the whole system, obtained without grasping the sense of its terms. In any case it is not at all easy to restate Hegelian definitions without summarizing the whole of the Logik.

As for the sources and development of Hegel's terminology, a considerable proportion of his terms are of course Aristotelian and scholastic in origin, although then usually much influenced by the Kantian usage. A portion are specifically Kantian terms. Another portion are of distinctly independent and German origin. A considerable influence of popular usage appears (in such cases as aufheben). Hegel was fond, like Plato and Aristotle, of etymological comments on the supposed origin and meaning of his terms; and in view of the state of the science of language at the time, his etymologies are often decidedly arbitrary. Deliberate plays upon words are also frequent. At the point where we first meet with Hegel's technical vocabulary in any really free expression, viz. in the Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807), it appears very fully developed, although not as rich as later in the Logik. In the former work, some of the categories (e.g. Wirklichkeit, as opposed to Dasein, Sein, &c.) are not uniformly used in the pregnant sense later obtaining, and a certain number of vaguer or of more poetically formed terms or phrases do not later reappear; while, on the other hand, the relative poverty of the categories of the Phänomenologie has been a frequent topic of complaint, especially amongst the Hegelian critics of that work. The Logik, in its longer form, was first published 1812-16. In the Encyklopädie der Philosophischen Wissenschaften (1st ed. 1817, 2nd ed. 1827), the general statement of the whole system, together with its psychological, ethical, theological, and other terminology, appears.

II. FUNDAMENTAL FEATURES OF THE SYSTEM AS DETERMINING THE TERMINOLOGY.

a. If we now approach a little more closely our task of explaining the main features of Hegelian usage, a few preliminary observations as to the system, viewed as a whole, will help us. To know, with Hegel, as with many other thinkers, is a process involving two factors, namely, the factor usually called experience, and a factor including various constructive processes, of lower or of higher grades. The distinguishing features of Hegel's doctrine depend upon three central theses: (1) that the factor usually called experience, and the other factor (Kant's 'spontaneity' of the thinking process), can never be sundered, but are universally present, in all grades of knowledge, however low or high, (2) that the lower stages of the knowing process itself are identical in their essential nature with the higher, so that the various grades of knowledge usually distinguished as perception, understanding, reflection, reason, &c., are not essentially different mental processes, but are merely successive phases in the evolution of a single process; (3) that the knowing process, in these its phases, in its evolution, and in its entire constitution, not only precisely corresponds to, but is identical with, the essential nature of the world, the object or true being, which is known, so that not only the theory of knowledge cannot be separated from metaphysics, but also the theory of the constitution of the universe is identical with the theory of the process by which we come to know the universe. All these theses are, in a measure, common to the idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; but Hegel's working out of the theory is in many ways different from that of his idealistic contemporaries. Of these three theses, the first is the one most commonly misunderstood by opponents of the dialectic method (e.g. by Trendelenburg, in the latter's famous criticism in his Logische Untersuchungen). It has been supposed by such critics that Hegel deliberately intended to deduce the empirical element in knowledge wholly from the other, or spontaneous, factor of 'pure thought'; and Hegel has been blamed for failing in this essentially hopeless enterprise. But the criticism is founded upon a mistaken interpretation of Hegel's perfectly explicit statement of his position, as will easily appear from what follows.

b. Since knowledge and its object, what Hegel himself ultimately means by thought and by being, are not only thus correlative, but in essence identical, the exposition of the system in the Logik naturally proceeds in such a form as to bring this result as clearly as possible to light. Quite apart from the technicalities of the method, its spirit may in general be summarized by saying that, in our philosopher's opinion, all the necessary concepts which lie at the basis of human science, the categories of our thought, can be made rightly to appear as themselves particular stages in the one process whose general character has just been pointed out. The Logik itself will be the system of these concepts, with an account of the way in which higher concepts are rationally evolved out of lower ones. Of every one of these concepts it will be true, according to the general theses of the theory before us, that it is at once a concept of a type or grade of object, and a concept of a stage of knowledge. But not always will this double aspect be easy to seize as we consider any one concept in question. The objective and subjective meanings, as we here might call them, belonging to the various terms, will be always present; but sometimes the stage in the evolution of knowledge represented by the concept in question will be in itself either too objective or too subjective, and sometimes the mere accidents of traditional usage will direct the reader's mind too much to one side or the other of the meaning. Examples of categories that, by virtue of the stage of evolution which they represent, undertake to be categories of fact rather than categories of knowledge, are furnished by such terms as Sein, Dassin, Existenz, Ding, Eigenschaft, &c. Examples of categories that are explicitly categories of the knowing process, are represented by the terms Urtheil and Schluss, i.e. judgment and syllogism. More neutral terms, which in common usage, or at certain stages of the actual history of philosophical discussion, have had both their objective and subjective meanings emphasized, are das Allgemeine and die Idee. For the Platonic ideas were originally purely objective truths; and the reality of universals has often been discussed. The term Reflection is an interesting example of a term which first suggests to the reader's mind the process of subjective reflection, while Hegel frequently emphasizes its objective meaning as a name for a real process. As a fact, so far as the stage in the evolution of the subject-matter at any point permits, all the terms alike are intended to apply both to stages of what tradition calls the subjective knowing process, and to grades of what are usually regarded as external objects or processes. Thus Hegel speaks of judgment and syllogism (Urtheil and Schluss) as objective processes, present in nature or in history, frequently applying the former of these two terms to name processes of differentiation and division (especially those occurring on higher conscious levels), and the latter to name processes of reorganization and of the reconciliation of divided tendencies. This tendency in Hegel's terminology, while its justification, to the author's mind, forms one of the theses of the system, often gives his language, to one who first meets it, a fantastic, or at all events an allegorizing, appearance, which does not easily pass away, but which in any case must be regarded as a result of the author's deliberate intent, so far as it illustrates the general theses of the unity of Sein and Denken.

III. THE DIALECTICAL METHOD: GENERAL FEATURES.

a. The method of procedure by which Hegel passes from the lower to the higher stages, in the development of his Logik, is of course the most characteristic feature of the entire system. This is the famous dialectical method. Stated still apart from its technical details, it takes two principal forms. The first form especially applies to categories that are defective by being too abstract, and that lay too much stress upon the objective aspect of the truth which they contain. They, in general, are more or less entirely the categories of Immediacy (Unmittelbarkeit), or, in other words, are categories of the world viewed as fact, or as datum. They are, by the general doctrine of the system, imperfect categories. Rightly criticized, they are therefore to lead to higher categories. The process of accomplishing this end is a process of showing that the fact-world is really a world of relations amongst facts, or that its truth is relative, so that what a given category attempts to define as a alone, or as b alone, turns out, upon analysis to mean a related to b. This relation of a to b also appears to our author's mind as a fact that we grasp only in the transition (Uebergang) from a to b; so that in general we find that, if we first try to hold a alone, and then to determine what a means, we discover, often to our surprise, and generally with a clear sense of some contradiction thus brought to light, that a means b, either as one of its own aspects or (especially in the lower and therefore less stable categories) as something opposed to a itself, into which a nevertheless turns under our very hands, as we endeavour to state its meaning. Hereupon, we observe that the true a can be defined only by taking explicit account of b, only by transition from one category to the other, and only by the further explicit recognition of the unity (Einheit) of a and b in something whose nature appears as one involving the aforesaid a related to b. This new unity, made explicit, now gets some name, let us say c, and appears as a higher category of the series, which, in general, will have to be treated in the same fashion. The Einheit itself of a and b does not mean their simple identification; but just as any one space before us involves both right and left directions, or both up and down, and is thus the unity of up and down, right and left, without involving the mere confusion of these various directions, so in c, a and b are brought into unity, without our now losing sight of their differences, which the whole procedure has only made more explicit. The contradiction latent in trying to define a alone has thus been first brought to light, and then sublated or aufgehoben.

b. A simple example of this form of the dialectical method is found at the outset of the Phänomenologie, where common sense is challenged to point out some object which is certainly known for what, in our experience, is it. The first answer undertaken by common sense is: This object, viz. the object that I here and now see or touch; This is known to me directly. Hegel's reply is: But what is this object? What does this mean? He then points out, in various ways, that the name this, ipso facto, applies to any object whatever found in experience, so that, instead of reporting its knowledge of a single fact as such, common sense has to define its knowledge, so far, as the most general, vague, and indefinite knowledge possible, a mere knowledge of thisness in general, or of a somewhat here and now; so that this, merely as this, means as yet anything, or as good as nothing. The result, so far as it here concerns us, is, that the only knowable objects are much more than merely single facts given as such, viz. as this. The known objects of experience involve relations between this and that, now and then, here and there, and are accordingly interrelated masses of differentiated experience -- e.g. an object seen against a background, or a thing which is one by virtue of and in contrast to its many qualities, &c.

The other form of the dialectical method often involves, at the precise point where it occurs, less apparent paradox, largely because we are better prepared for it when its stage is reached. It is, moreover, of a type more generally characteristic of modern idealistic systems, whether Hegelian or not. It is used when our categories have reached some more explicitly subjective stage, when the relativity of our world is already recognized, and when the purpose is to show that the subjective meaning in question is also an objective meaning, or that our more explicitly ideal processes are also expressive of the essence of absolute facts. Here the method in general consists in showing that the development of the ideal process, and of all the complex interrelationships which this involves, is itself a fact, a law of truth, relatively independent, through its very universality, of the single subjective stages through which it has become explicit, so that, in discovering the inevitable character of a given process of thinking, we have discovered the only truth that, at this stage, there is to know. This truth now becomes once more, in a higher sense, unmittelbar or immediate. We now experience its actuality. This form of the dialectical method is used in Hegel's restatement of the ontological proof of God's existence; it appears very notably in the transition from Subjektivität to Objecktivität in the third part of the Logik. In general it is used against sceptics, against Kant, against Fichte, and against subjectivism of all sorts. In substance it consists in saying, first, that some point of view, or ideal construction, has now given us a demand, or a fully developed need, for a certain system of conceptions, or of relationships, a, b, c, d, &c.; secondly, that the question hereupon arises, whether any objective truth corresponds to this ideal demand; and thirdly, that, carefully considered, the ideal demand, by its very universality and necessity, has shown itself to cover the whole ground which any object could here occupy, so that the fully grown Begriff is itself the object sought, the curtain is the picture, and the thought is the being. The basis for this use of the dialectical method is the same as that employed by any idealist who intends to show that the completed meaning of a system of ideas is identical with all that the mind seeks in looking for objective truth.

These two forms of the dialectical method, although developed with great thoroughness and originality by Hegel, are in origin not at all peculiar to himself. The two principles involved, viz. That facts are knowable only as interrelated, and That the universal laws of ideal processes, taken together with the processes which embody these laws, are equivalent to all that is properly to be meant by reality, are not unfamiliar to students of philosophy, quite apart from Hegel's system. The peculiar relation which Hegel brought to pass between these principles and the logical principles of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle, has led to considerable misunderstanding, and the form of statement has rendered the system difficult to survey in its wholeness.

Literature: TRENDELENBURG, Ueber die dialektische Methode, in vol. i of Logische Untersuchungen; J. ELLIS MacTAGGART, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic; GEORGES NOËL, La Logique de Hegel; WALLACE, Prolegomena to Hegel's Logic (2nd ed.), are among the best discussions of the special topic here in question. Trendelenburg's view has been, for Hegel's critics, extremely influential, and is very skilfully stated, despite its defects.

IV. THE MOST GENERAL TERMS OF THE SYSTEM; EXPERIENCE OF THE DIALECTIC PROCESS.

In following the various stages of the dialectical process, one meets with a good many terms which are repeatedly used, not to define any of the individual categories, but to characterize the presuppositions and occurrences which are more or less universal throughout the process. These may here best be taken, first in order, as the most general terms of the entire system.

a. The word unmittelbar, or immediate, as employed by Hegel, is the first of the terms of most general use in the system. This term primarily refers both to the presence and to the apparent lack of relationships which first seem to characterize objects when taken as sense takes them, or when viewed as a falsely abstract thinking views them. Aristotle's propositions called amesa would be viewed by Hegel as also relatively immediate, but Hegel applies the word to numerous other objects. But immediate, in a secondary and higher sense, also refers to a character observable in all truth, even from the highest point of view.

Unmittelbar, in a relative sense of the term, is, for the first, any starting-point, or beginning, or presupposition; vermittelt, or mediated, on the contrary, is any result or consequence (cf. Werke, 2nd ed., iii, Logik, 39). In a still more obvious way, however, facts, taken as such, things, mere sensations, first appear to us as unmittelbar, and we only gradually discover that they are vermittelt, in so far as they stand in relations, without which they prove to be meaningless; and so are the result of conditions, both subjective and objective, which forbid us to treat them as alone. Numerous special shadings are given to the meaning of these two terms, unmittelbar and vermittelt, by the subject-matter and the context; but these meanings are all derived from the general meanings: -- unrelated and related; given and explained; elementary and developed; initial and resultant. In matters of practical import, unmittelbar can often be translated by unwon or unearned. Thus the object of a given vague plan appears as merely unmittelbar, when we have as yet no idea of the means by which to win it; the possession of unlearned powers involves an immediacy to which we have as yet no explicit right, &c.

b. The universal law, principle, or process of Vermittelung, or of the whole evolution, both of thought and of things, is termed Negativität. This term, one of the most difficult in Hegel's usage, suggests in one word the entire system.

Negativität is a principle both of destruction and of production. That which Negativität produces, on the positive and objective side of its work, is first precisely the world that at the outset the philosopher empirically finds as the realm of immediacy, the whole universe of experience. Upon its destructive and subjective side, Negativität, as the principle determining the process of knowledge, next appears as denying or sublating the appearance of mere immediacy which characterizes this world, as so as both destroying abstractions and reducing the world of fact to a realm of universal relativity. Negativität finally, as the 'negation of the negation,' appears, in a new constructive task, as the process whereby the rational unity of thought, and of things of immediacy and mediation, of experience and reason, comes to light, in the positive system of the philosopher. In consequence, Negativität explicitly names a law or process both of things and of knowledge. This law, again, on its objective side, is the principle that everything merely immediate is false, transient, and illusory, but that the very constitution and evolution of the real world, as a whole, depends upon this very fact. In the process of displaying this transiency of every finite fact, in the conflicts due to the resulting contradictions, and in the bringing to light of the illusions, the very life and actuality of the whole outer or objective universe consists. Even the positive construction of the objective empirical world by the principle of Negativität is consequently full of relatively destructive processes. The visible universal is thus the incorporation of the principle called Negativität, which, as Hegel sometimes says, might be called die Seele der Welt.

The absolute possesses Negativität as its own principle or law. If one takes the absolute abstractly, views it apart from the world in which it expresses itself (as the philosophical mystics love abstractly to view the absolute), or in a similar manner regards any principle as if it could be isolated from its manifestations, the absolute, or the principle in question, then possesses what Hegel calls reine oder sich auf sich beziehende Negativität, 'pure or self-related, or self-centered, Negativity.' This implies that such absolute, taken thus in abstracto, would be a self-denying essence, a sich auf sich beziehende Negativität, or an idea which was self-related only in this negative way (cf. Logik, 2nd part, Werke, iv. 17, 31).

c. Any unity, i.e. any whole meaning or object, which exemplifies in a particular case the principle of negativity, by combining within itself differentiated, opposed, but related contents, is frequently called a negative Einheit (see Logik, 2nd part, Werke, iv. 42). So the unity of consciousness is a notable case of negative Einheit.

The exercise of Negativität, or an act which exemplifies it, especially in its first or more destructive aspect, but also, on occasion, in its constructive aspect, is an act for which Hegel uses the verb aufheben. Of this word he gives a full account in Logik, Werke, iii. 104. Aufheben and vermitteln, he here tells us, are very largely synonymous. In popular language aufheben is already ambiguous, since it means both to destroy and to lay aside for keeping. Hegel is attracted by this double sense, which seems to him an instance of unconscious speculative thought. He accordingly gives the verb its technical usage.

V. FURTHER GENERAL TERMINOLOGY. THE STAGES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 'VERMITTELUNG.'

We now come to a series of generally applied expressions, for the various degrees in which any object, or category, may manifest either a relatively pure immediacy, or some form of explicit mediation. These expressions are the characteristic phrases and epithets: Abstrakt, Concret, an sich, an sich oder für uns, an ihm or an ihm selbst, für sich, an und für sich, gesetzt, bestimmt; together with various abstract nouns, such as Ansichsein, Fürsichsein, Bestimmung, Bestimmtheit, Beschaffenheit, which, while having a place amongst the categories, and principally useful as characterizing the stages in the development of other categories.

a. Abstrakt and Concret have, in Hegel, an opposition not identical with the more familiar technical usage. With him an individual object may be so taken as to make appear abstract, while any universal principle becomes concrete just in proportion as it becomes true. Hegel's use of abtrakt includes, however, most of the ordinary applications, and is more extensive. Any object is abstract, in so far as it is viewed in a false isolation from its genuine relations, or if it is something in the world of objective things and processes, when it appears as a fact apart. In the objective sense, Robinson Crusoe alone on the island would be a relatively abstract individual, because he could not live a whole human life; when the man Friday came, Crusoe and his life were already more concrete, for man lives in relation to his kind. Abstrakt differs from unmittelbar, in so far as the former more easily applies to the cases which ordinary usage also calls abtract, viz. to cases where a relation is abstracted from its terms, a principle from its applications, &c. But it is true, of course, that reine Unmittelbarkeit is in Hegel's sense an abstraction. However, unmittelbar connotes presence, while abstrakt primarily refers only to isolation. Concret, on the other hand, is any whole, especially when its organization is explicit. 'The unity of various contents is the concrete' (Gesch. d. Philos., Werke, xiii. 37, Einl. -- a passage in which the concept of the concrete is very fully developed and illustrated). Philosophy, therefore, instead of being confined to abstractions, really deals, according to our philosopher, with the most concrete object, namely, the organic unity called the world or the absolute.

The expressions next on our foregoing list, an sich and its correlatives, form a closely connected and very characteristic phraseology, which recurs in our philosopher's discussion of categories of every grade.

b. If deliberately dwelt upon in its Unmittelbarkeit, any object is viewed an sich. It is so viewed especially when one returns to such immediate view by a deliberate ignoring of other objects. But thus viewed it is not only falsely viewed, but is a basis for truer views, an abstraction out of which the more concrete form of these truer views develops. In this way an sich comes to mean latent, undeveloped, not overt, as one can speak of the infant Shakespeare as already, or an sich, a born poet. For even in dwelling upon the infant as infant, one necessarily interprets the infant in terms of what is to come. For the same reason, an sich may become wholly equivalent, in some contexts, to the scholastic in potentia. In case of mental processes, an sich may mean unconscious, as the man who hates his brother is an sich a murderer (or a murderer in his heart), although he perhaps does not recognize how murderous his hate is. This sense of unconscious is frequent in the Phänomenologie. All these meanings have both objective and subjective applications. The Kantian sense of an sich, according to which an sich means independent of consciousness, is often enough used in citations from Kant, and in criticisms of that philosopher, and is by Hegel connected with the notion of abstract (and secondary) immediacy, which according to Hegel belongs to objects, precisely in so far as they are conceived to be independent either of consciousness or of other things. An sich in all its meanings differs from unmittelbar, mainly by its greater intensity, viz. by virtue of the still more deliberate ignoring of relations which is in mind when an object is taken, not merely as it comes, but with express effort to sunder it from other objects, and to view it by itself; or again, when an object appears in the world in such wise as thus to lay stress upon the absence, or the complete latency, of its relations. Das Unmittelbare, in its first or lower forms, has as yet no relations; but what is an sich tries, as it were, to disown them (Logik, Werke, iii. 119: 'In so far as anything is in itself, it is withdrawn from relation to other, and from otherness').

c. The peculiarly Hegelian phrase an ihm, equivalent according to the author to AN sich, with an emphasis laid upon the AN (loc. cit., 120), is most naturally to be used either in the form, 'Etwas hat an ihm any given character,' or also in the form, 'Es ist an ihm, namely, an etwas, this same character.' Hegel justifies the usage so far by appeal to such popular phrases as, Es ist nichts daran. Hegel, however, in a sufficiently barbarous fashion, is capable of saying dass das Etwas das, was es an sich ist, auch an ihm ist (loc. cit., 123), so that an ihm becomes a predicative phrase, which is not easily intelligible apart from the technical explanation. This explanation is that an ihm refers to a character which is, in a more external and overt fashion, so in a subject, or rather, as one might say, attached to this subject, as to determine the subject's relations to others. If a man's latent traits of character, never yet expressed in his conduct, were supposed to be revealed by his features, a physiognomist would say that what the man in himself (an sich) is, is also an ihm, that is, belongs to him as feature, or is in him after all (Stirling, Secret of Hegel, new edition of 1898, 399, renders the force of an ihm as 'the manifestable peculiar nature' of its object). In brief, then, while the an sich of any being is a name for characters which are, if possible, to be dwelt upon by ignoring this being's relations to others, and while the an sich is therefore a name for abstract, fundamental, but latent and barely potential features, an ihm refers to characters that seem externally attributed to the being in question, so that they are more manifest, and are more such characters as indicate relations. A name for the characters which a being, as a consequence of its an sich, or original and latent nature, has an ihm, is the Bestimmung, or vocation, destiny, power, capacity, of a being, its fitness for external relationships (Logik, loc. cit., 123). This term is translated by Stirling (op. cit., 259) as qualification, and is interpreted by the same author (op. cit., 399) as 'that to which the something (Etwas) is adequate.' Bestimmung is opposed to Bestimmtheit by Hegel (loc. cit.) as capacity to the particular state, the definite condition or activity embodying this capacity. If the Bestimmung is fulfilled, one has a Bestimmtheit proper, the relation between the two being much that of first act and second act in scholastic terminology. Thus the Bestimmung des Menschen, the vocation or capacity of man, is to be reasonable, or is Reason (so Hegel himself, loc. cit.); but his thinking activity, his Denken, the fulfilment of this capacity, is his Bestimmtheit.

d. In general, any being is bestimmt, in so far as its determinate features bring it into contrast with external beings. Bestimmen is the verb which expresses the process of adding the specific differences, or differentiae, to the more general characters of anything. Bestimmtheit involves, when externally viewed, a Beschaffenheit (by Stirling ingeniously rendered talification), whereby a thing appears like this or that when involved in chance relations to other things. The Beschaffenheit is thus nearly allied to Aristotle's accident, as in the well-known Aristotelian example: 'You are not cultivated in so far as you are you (i.e. in yourself), but in so far as this has occurred to you.' So the Beschaffenheit reveals the Bestimmung, but in more accidental and external ways.

e. A being is für sich in a sense still more advanced. When characters no longer latent have been so developed, when relationships no longer ignored have become so explicitly included in the definition of a being, that it now appears capable of a genuine independence, as an internally related whole of meaning, it is taken für sich when this independence is insisted upon, or when, in the objective world, such independence appears to assert itself. An atom, a Leibnitzian monad, or a Kantian autonomous moral subject, undertakes to be für sich. Fürsichsein is therefore such independent being as, for some definite reason, appears to include a system of internal relations, and to cut off external relations (cf. Encyk., Werke, vi. 189; Logik, Werke, iii. 165).

A being is an und für sich in so far as its asserted independence is altogether the developed result of its nature, so that what it is in itself fully justifies its asserted independence of external relations. This stage is also called Beisichsein, and the compound An-und-fürsichsein is also employed (Encyk., Werke, vi. 161; Logik, Werke, iv. 5). An-und-fürsichsein belongs, in the highest sense only, to the absolute, but is often attributed to the later categories and to conscious beings of higher grades.

f. As to the terms gesetzt and Gesetztsein, it must be observed that any character is gesetzt in so far as it is explicitly shown to result from the nature of the object to which it is referred. Gesetztsein means the condition or state of being thus gesetzt. Thus the born poet, or poet an sich, who shows himself in youth to have the Bestimmung of a poet, or to have poetry in him (an ihm), or to bear the marks of a poet about him (still an ihm), is not yet gesetzt as a poet until by original production he has lived up to his early promise. Gesetzt is directly translated as posited. Stirling point out (op. cit., 368) how numerous are the consequences of this central conception of Gesetztsein. 'It is gesetzt,' says Stirling, 'means, it is developed into its proper explication, statement, expression, enunciation, exhibition, &c. Again, a Gesetztes, as not self-referent, is but lunar, satellitic, parasitic, secondary, derivative.' Still other derived senses appear in Stirling's view, in various passages; but these can usually be made clear from the context.

A final observation must here be made, in closing this series of terms, as to the interesting and frequent expression, An sich oder für uns. As Hegel is extremely anxious to distinguish, in the progress of the dialectical method, between what is so far explicit (gesetzt) and what is thus far only latent or potential in the development of any conception, he frequently has occasion to insist that a given feature, asserted to belong to any object, is not yet the explicit result of presuppositions, or is not yet vermittelt, but appears as a fact whose potentialities we, the philosophizing readers, predict in advance, or observe, while they are yet, in the object itself, only latent. What is latent thus becomes the same as what we externally observe to be in the object; and therefore what is an sich is so far just for us, or is observable from our point of view.

VI. OTHER TERMS.

a. Very characteristic of this system is the series of grades of being, or of gradations of the existential predicate. These are: Sein, Dasein (including Realität), Existenz, Wirklichkeit, Substantialität, and Objektivität. To say of a given object merely, Es ist, is not, for Hegel, as pregnant an assertion as to say, Es existirt. Still more do you say if you assert, Es ist wirklich. The most pregnant assertion on the list would be, Es hat Objectivität. An object may possess Sein without having Existenz. When Hegel asserts, in a well-known passage, Alles Vernünftige ist wirklich, und alles Wirkliche ist vernünftig, he does not mean that whatever exists is rational, for it is a part of Hegel's thesis that much of the merely phenomenal, but still existent, world contains chance, i.e. irrational contingency, while only the notion is actual or wirklich. Hegel's ontological phraseology must therefore be carefully considered in interpreting his meaning. This, to be sure, is less true of the Phänomenologie that of Hegel's later works, since in the Phänomenologie the ontological vocabulary is less clearly differentiated. In particular our terms mean as follows: --

Sein is the name for pure immediacy as such. Everything and anything is -- the vaguest fancy or dream, in so far as it possesses immediacy. But pure immediacy taken absolutely in itself, as merely itself, without definitions and contrasts, would be the same as nothing. Hence the actual cases of immediacy all possess Dasein, or determinate being, i.e. being that has some sort of Bestimmtheit, or contrast with other beings. Dasein would be possessed, so far, by any object with characters, e.g. a house, or any part of the universe, viewed merely as distinguishable part, but also by a rainbow, a flash of lightning, a taste or smell, or any Etwas. But such an Etwas is primarily bestimmt, its Dasein involves its determination. Only the precisely determinable, then, is present in the world of Dasein. If one says that he experiences something, we naturally ask, What? If there is no answer naming the determinations of the Etwas in question, we have to say that it is nothing in particular, and this indefiniteness, if complete, would send us back to reines Sein, which is again equal to Nichts. But now, as Spinoza affirmed, omnis determinatio est negatio, and so determination, or Bestimmtheit, implies contrast with, and so negation of, some other determinate character, and every Etwas is opposed to ein Anderes, its negation or other (as light is contrasted with darkness, &c.). Such contrast, as a universal feature of Dasein, includes the twofold character that every Etwas is positive, in so far as it is what it is, and negative, in so far as it excludes the other. The positive character, whereby light for instance, is light, as opposed to the negative character, whereby light is not darkness, Hegel calls the Realität of any Etwas, as opposed to its Negation. So that the term Realität is used, in the sense of the Kantian table of categories (see KANT'S TERMINOLOGY), to mean the positive aspect of the Bestimmtheit or differentia of any determinate being whatever (cf. Encyk., Werke, vi. 180; Logik, Werke, iii. 109 ff.). The difference between this usage and either the scholastic usage or the senses of reality more common in recent discussion must be noted.

b. Existenz, as opposed to Sein, Dasein, and Realität, is a much higher category, and, although it expresses a later form of immediacy, belongs to the world of Wesen, i.e. of explicitly mediated or relative being, to the world of principles and of phenomenal expressions of principles. The typical case of Existenz is any physical thing, with qualities. This has a grade of being, not merely involving, like Dasein, or like colours and rainbows, contrasts with other beings of the same grade, but pointing back to explanations, through principles, of the basis (Grund) upon which the thing's existence depends, or which it manifests, even in its immediacy. What has Existenz is also in interaction with its environment.

Wirklichkeit is a still higher category. What has Existenz is a relatively immediate fact, but appears as the result of conditions, and as related to an environment. But what has Wirklichkeit not only has a basis, or is explicitly the expression of a principle, but contains this basis within itself, so that it is relatively (in the complete case wholly) independent of any environment. It is, then, a higher instance both of Fürsichsein and of An-und-fürsichsein. If a physical thing with qualities has Existenz, an organism, a commonwealth, a solar system, or any such relative totality (Totalität), possesses Wirklichkeit. In the most genuine sense, only the absolute would be wirklich, but the term is often employed for finite but relatively organic beings (Logik, Werke, iv. 113, 115 ff., 120, 176 f., 178; Encyk., Werke, iv. 250, 253, 282 ff.; and cf. the introd. to the Encyk., iv. 10).

The type of Wirklichkeit historically represented by Spinoza's substance possesses, for Hegel, the grade of being which he names Substantialität, namely, Wirklichkeit conceived as a fully developed necessary nature of things.

c. Objektivität is the grade of being possessed by an object which explicitly fulfils or expresses a system of rational ideas, thoughts, or laws that is also subjectively conceived. This category differs from Wirklichkeit chiefly by virtue of the more explicit prior sundering of the ideal aspect of the world from its immediate aspect. To say that a thing is wirklich implies, indeed, that it expresses what can be defined as a law or rational character; but one may first accept the Wirklichkeit as an immediate fact, and then observe its constitution, as a student of politics first regards the state as an actuality, and then analyses its structure. But when one affirms Objektivität, one does so after defining laws, subjective principles, systems or rational interrelationships, which already have their inner or a priori validity and necessity.

When one asserts of these systems that they also possess the immediacy exemplified, on lower stages, by Dasein, Existenz, &c., then, and not till then, is one dealing with the grade of being defined as Objektivität. The systems of things subject to law or expressive of purpose, which we find in nature and in history, possess therefore not only Wirklichkeit, but also Objektivität; as, for instance, one may say: 'Purpose is an objective fact in the universe' (Encyk., Werke, vi. 365 ff.; Logik, Werke, v. 167 ff.).

Objektivität is possessed, in its own highest grade, by the completely fulfilled or expressed Wahrheit, or truth, which Hegel calls the Idee, or, in other words, by the life or self of the universe, the concrete embodiment of the principle of Negativität, also technically called the Subject-Object. The Idee is at once a name for the absolute, and for the world-process, taken in all its stages, but here viewed as a logical category (Logik, Werke, v. 229 ff.).

d. In contrast to the terms for the categories of immediacy stand the terms for the processes and results of mediation or of the process of thought. The term Gedanken is often used by Hegel to name what are by ordinary usage called thoughts, namely, abstract thoughts -- the ordinary concepts. In this narrower sense, however, Gedanken are but fragments of the true Denken; and it is the purpose of the philosopher to lead such mere Gedanken to the unity of the Begriff. For the general definition of Gedanke, as subjective and individual occurrence, see Encyck., Werke, vii. 2, 355; the frequent narrower use is exemplified in the Vorrede to the Phänomenologie, Werke, ii. 7, 24 f.

The term Begriff, itself has been variously translated; but Stirling's choice of notion, accepted also by Wallace, has now, on the whole, possession of the field. A good deal could be said in favour of the term meaning, as a translation of Begriff, were it possible to fix this essentially fluent popular term to any technical usage. The very fluency of the term meaning would tend to suggest Hegel's conception of what the Begriff is to accomplish, and its neutral reference either to objective or to subjective meaning, and either to volitional end or to intellectual significance, would be in conformity with the purpose of Hegel.

The term Begriff is, to the process of active mediation called Denken, precisely what the term Sein is to the contents and processes of the world of immediacy in the first division of the Logik. Begriff, namely, is: (1) a general name for any of the individual or relatively separable processes and products of Denken, and here especially for the earlier stages of Denken; (2) a name for the principle, law, or living meaning which expresses itself in the whole evolution of Denken; (3) a collective, or better, here, an organic name for the whole course of the evolution itself, conceived as an objective world of rational fact.

In sense (1) we can speak of various Begriffe, e.g. of the Begriffe of individuality, of the universal, of the syllogism; or, again, we can speak of all the previous categories of Sein and Wesen as, on their subjective side, Begriffe. So far Begriff is then a class name.

In sense (2), which is the most important of the three, and which one may call the first concrete sense, the term Begriff has both an objective and a subjective application. It names (a) the principle which, just because it is that of Denken, is the real principle which governs the whole universe, and which expresses itself therein; and this use of the term is very frequent in Hegel's terminology not only here, but in other works than the Logik. Or (b) it names the philosophical process of subjectively appreciating the nature and meaning of this principle. This subjective use of the term Begriff is, on the whole, predominant in the Phänomenologie, and is never abandoned. It appears in the Logik, and Hegel himself uses the terminology subjektiver und objektiver Begriff.

Sense (3) appears in the title to this division, and is very easily derived from sense (2). It is the second concrete sense in which Begriff is used.

As for the further nature of this principle (the Begriff) itself, we now know it, in general, from the account already given of Negativität; only that term is explicitly an abstract noun. But Begriff, when employed with objective reference in sense (2), is generally -- apart from special meanings, almost always -- employed to name concrete embodiments of the principle, or the principle as concretely embodied. Negativität therefore stands to Begriff very much in the relation in which, in scholastic terminology, Deitas stands to Deus. Negativität is the Qualität of the Begriff. Sense (3) above enables us, also in concrete fashion, to speak of the whole world as the Begriff.

The Begriff (in senses 2, 3), as Hegel often declares (e.g. Logik, Werke, v. 12), is Spinoza's Substanz 'set free,' or turned into a subject. In this same sense, taken with objective reference, one can speak of the Begriff in the terms above used in speaking of the Idee; only that in the Idee, as the final form of the Begriff itself, the aspect of immediacy has fully returned to this principle of the universal mediation of thought and of things, by virtue of the discussion of the categories of Objektivität. In any case, what was first expressed as Sein, and then as Wesen, is now to be fulfilled as Begriff. That alone can be real which is of the nature of the life, principle, or meaning that determines the whole process of Denken. So much, then, for the terms Denken, Gedanke, and Begriff.

e. The way in which Negativität appears as the character of the Begriff is next notable. The Begriff, as the principle which determines both thought and things, is to be not only a self-related and self-differentiating process, but a process whose differentiations have exactly the type observable in self-consciousness of all grades. Self-consciousness, as Hegel is never weary of telling us, is a unity, at first immediate or abstract. This unity, however, preserves itself just by exercising itself in overcoming, and reducing to the service of its own desire, or will, or conception, or insight, countless facts that at first view are foreign to its own nature. It thus involves mediation, with constant rewinning of immediacy. That is how any man lives, whether materially or spiritually. The logical account of the Begriff will have therefore first to state the universal dynamics of this self-conscious process in the most universal form. Hegel here calls the first, or immediate, aspect of the Begriff, its abstract universality (abstrakte Allgemeinheit). Its mediation through variety of life, will, experience, meanings, finite individuals, &c., he calls in general its Sich-Bestimmung or its Besonderheit, its particularity. The developed Begriff, in differentiating itself into a variety of Bestimmungen, which, while held within the developing universal, may still in their immediacy seem at first foreign to its one meaning, 'comes to itself' precisely so far as, with concrete Allgemeinheit (or concrete universality), it recognizes these particulars as within itself, and as even in their immediacy still its own meaning. The finite facts of the life of the Begriff, the individuals of finite experience, the various Existenzen, &c., are thus within the concrete universal of the whole life of the true Begriff. The three terms, universal, particular, and singular (or individual), like the original terms unmittelbar and vermittelt, may frequently change places in their application; but throughout their discussion the main conception remains, as just stated, constant. The process present is the one originally called Negativität, but now it is present as a conscious process. It is a process of asserting unity through self-differentiation, and through bringing the results again into organic relations. The outcome of the process is a unity, essentially the unity of Self-Consciousness, wherein all finite individuality is present within a union (Einheit) of Allgemeinheit and Besonderheit ('The one undivided soul of many a soul' of Shelley's familiar phrase). Hegel, in general, defines this union as the category, one might say, of the unity of the many in the one.

These three, the categories of the Begriff, viz. Allgemeinheit, Besonderheit, and Einzelnheit, are to be understood, like the rest of the discussion, with reference to the special nature of Hegel's own Begriff. They are then not the merely tradition conceptions known under these names. In the later developments of this division of the Logic, the concrete universal becomes explicitly identical with an infinite individual (in Hegel's technical sense of infinite as developed above in (7), viz. a completely self-determined individual).

f. The particular mediations of the Begriff, in its primary or more subjective forms, occur through the development of the doctrines of Urtheil and Schluss. These, the principal sections of the traditional Logic, are incorporated by Hegel into his own theory in a greatly altered form, and with a deliberate effort to give them an interpretation which may also be stated as an objective process. An Urtheil is a process of making differentiation and the opposition of related terms explicit. No judgment, therefore, is subjectively expressive of a whole truth, and no corresponding objective process is a final one. Every judgment is one-sided, is a particular expression of Negativität, and passes away into some higher form of judgment, or into that truer expression of the Begriff, the Schluss. In particular, judgment depends upon opposing finite individuals, particulars and universals, in various degrees of abstraction, one to another, and then endeavouring to hold their unity also abstractly before the mind, despite the opposition. The higher forms of judgment express more nearly the organic union of finite individuals or particulars in inclusive universal wholes; but no judgment can reach the final unity, and the truth of the judgment is the Schluss. The Schluss is, as subjective process, an effort to express the uniting principle or Mitte (middle term), namely, the very selfhood of truth itself, which binds the many particulars of a differentiated experience in the unity of a single conscious whole. The objective correspondent of the subjective process called Schluss is any expression of an organically unifying principle in the realm of truth itself. The categories of Schluss, precisely as the necessity of such union becomes manifest, tend themselves to assume a more one-sidedly objective character, and the truth of the Schluss is the realm of Objektivität already considered (see above, (7)) -- a realm where objects are known as expressing rationality in its wholeness. When these objects are once more reflectively regarded as objects due to ideal demands, and so not merely as corresponding to Denken, but produced by it, the circle of this form of idealism is completed in the Idee. The Idee itself, in its freest manifestation as absolute Idee, is the highest possible logical definition of Hegel's Absolute itself. (J.R.)

GLOSSARY.

(The numbers and letters refer to the sections and paragraphs of this article.)


Absolute Idee, VI. f Gesetztsein, V. f
Abstrakt, V. a Grund, VI. b
Abstrakte Allgemeinheit, VI. e  
Allgemein, II. b Idee, II. b, VI. c
An etwas, V. c
An ihm, V. c Logik, II. b
An sich, V. b
An sich oder für uns, V. f Mitte, VI. f
An und für sich, V. e
An-und-fürsichsein, V. e Negation, VI. a
Aufheben, I, III. a, IV. c Negativität, IV. b, VI. c
Nichts, VI. a
Begriff, III, VI. d
Beisichsein, V. e Objektivität, III. b, VI. c
Beschaffenheit, V. d
Besonderheit, VI. e Realität, VI. a
Bestimmt, V. d Reflection, II. b
Bestimmtheit, V. c, d, VI. a Reines Sein, VI. a
Bestimmung, V. c Reine Unmittelbarkeit, V. a
Concret, V. a Sein, I, II. b, VI. a
Concrete Allgemeinheit, VI. e Schluss, II. b, VI. f
Setzen, V. f
Dasein, I, II. b, VI. a Sich-Bestimmung, VI. e
Denken, II. b, VI. d Subjekt-Objekt, VI. c
Ding, II. b Subjektiver und objektiver Begriff, VI. d
Subjektivität, III. b
Eigenschaft, II. b Substantialität, VI. b
Einheit, III. a, IV. e
Einzelnheit, VI. e Totalität, VI. b
Es existirt, VI. a
Es hat Objektivität, VI. a Uebergang, III. a
Es ist, VI. a Unmittelbar, III. b, IV. a, V. 
Es ist wirklich, VI. a Unmittelbarkeit, III. a
Etwas, VI. a Urtheil, II. b, VI. f
Existenz, II. b, VI. b
Vermitteln, IV. a, c, V. 
Für sich, V. e Vermittelung, IV. b
Fürsichsein, V. e Vernünftig, VI. a
Gedanke, VI. d Wahrheit, VI. c
Gesetzt, V. f Wesen, VI. b
Wirklich, VI. a
Wirklichkeit, I, VI. b


Heliotropism: see TROPISM    .


Hell [AS. helan, to hide]: Ger. Hölle; Fr. enfer; Ital. inferno. The place where lost sinners abide, suffering endless punishment, and keeping company with the devil and with devils.

Like many other words, which have gathered an import that is the result of the associations of centuries, the term hell is commonly used without any very exact conception of its meaning; it is taken symbolically. To gain further information, one turns naturally to the Scriptures. There, the word hell, with all its mediaeval materialistic associations, has been used to translate no less than three widely different terms. These are: -- (1) The Hebrew Sheol, with its Greek equivalent HADES (q.v.); for this, hell in its modern significance is no fair translation. (2) The Greek TartaroV, for which, once more, hell is no proper equivalent, TartaroV being the place to which rebel immortals have been consigned, or where the corrupt are pent up for ever. (3) The Greek Gehenna (Teenna), the place where the impenitent suffer the penalties they have brought upon themselves. Gehenna is associated with the 'Valley of the children of Hinnom,' a place connected traditionally with defilement, foulness, and corruption. For this term hell furnishes a fair enough equivalent, because there can be little doubt that, in the centuries preceding Jesus, this valley came to be associated in popular Jewish usage with the place where irrevocable vengeance overtook the wicked.

The clause in the Apostles' Creed -- 'He descended into hell' -- must be taken in connection with this subject. It is probably a late addition to this symbol; and, having little Scripture warrant, it has been interpreted very variously. The Greek Church teaches that the human soul of Christ descended into hell to preach the gospel for the redemption of those who were there on account of original sin. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the God-Man made the descent in order to release the 'saints of Israel.' The Lutherans hold that the God-Man descended on the morning of the Resurrection only (the interval since death having been passed in Paradise), and for the purpose of pronouncing sentence on sin. The Reformed theologians regarded the expression as wholly figurative, and as indicating the sufferings which Christ endured through the crucifixion. In other words, the phrase merely emphasized Christ's humiliation in the state of death. Others, like Schleiermacher and the Wesleyans, hold that the doctrine is without scriptural warrant. The details of the journey and sojourn are to be found in the extraordinary 'Gospel of Nicodemus.' Similar stories, it may be noted, are current in other religions.

It is well to remember that, on all the matters discussed under this head, the most striking feature of Scripture is its silence. Consequently, philosophical discussion of the subject must be based more on the ideas of the destiny of mankind formulated at various periods and by various races than upon documentary evidence. See ESCHATOLOGY, and cf. HEAVEN.

Literature: PFLEIDERER, Philos. of Religion (Eng. trans.), iv. 154 f.; ALGER, Crit. Hist. of the Doctrine of a Future Life; ATZBERGER,  Eschatologie; KLIEFOTH, Eschatologie; DELITZSCH, Bib. Psychol. (Eng. trans.); KABISCH, Die Eschat. d. Paulus. On the descent into hell: PFLEIDERER, loc. cit., and iii. 101; PEARSON, Exposition of the Creed; KÖNIG, Lehre v. Christi Höllenfahrt; SCHWEIZER, Hinabgefahren z. Hölle als Mythus ohne bibl. Begründung; BOYER, (Amer.) Luth. Quart. (1894). (R.M.W.)


Hellenistic (Civilization, &c.) or Hellenism [Gr. 'EllhnisthV, an imitator of the Greeks]: Ger. hellenistisch; Fr. hellénistique; Ital. ellenizzante, Ellenismo. (1) The term characterizing the composite civilization which flourished in the lands round the Mediterranean, but particularly in Egypt and Syria, from the time of Alexander the Great.

It was composite because it consisted in the junction of Greek with oriental influences and characteristics. One aspect of it is of supreme importance for philosophy of religion -- the influence of Greek civilization upon the Jews, and the results of this. A juster appreciation of the subject -- its circumstances and consequences -- has become possible only during the last generation, and is still in progress. Its prime importance may be gathered from the fact that, notwithstanding the lamentable destruction of many of the monuments of Graeco-Jewish literature, three of them remain practically unimpaired. Those are the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, known as the Septuagint; the writings of Philo of Alexandria; and the New Testament books. Hellenistic civilization is therefore hardly to be overestimated for the understanding of the rise and early history of Christianity, as well as for the religious and spiritual condition of the world into which Jesus was born. Possibly, it may not be inapposite to add that few fields offer richer material to the student.

(2) The name Hellenistic is applied also to the Greek idiom or diction which sprang up when the Jews came into contact with Hellenic civilization. In contradistinction to the Romans, the Jews came by Greek rather through commerce than through literature; hence, to a large extent, the formal defects incident to their use of the Greek language. Something must also be set down to the changes which had taken place in the language itself under pressure of the universalism of Alexander. Hebrew, further, reacted on Greek; and from these influences, along with others of less moment, sprang the language and style of which the New Testament is the chief monument, and the Septuagint and Philo the great historical exemplars.

Literature: For (1): SCHÜRER, Hist. of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ (Eng. trans.), giving full literature. For (2): REUSS, Hist. of the New Testament (Eng. trans.), giving full literature. (R.M.W.)


Helmholtz, Hermann von. (1821-94.) Born at Potsdam, Prussia, and educated for military surgery. He received his Ph.D. degree from Berlin University, 1842, and became surgeon in the army; assistant in the anatomical museum at Berlin; professor of physiology after 1849 at Königsberg, after 1855 at Bonn, and after 1858 at Heidelberg. After 1871 he was professor of physics at Berlin, and in 1888 took charge of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt. His fame rests upon valuable contributions to the physiology of the nervous system, to the theory of mathematical physics, and to the psychology of sight and sound. One of the founders of experimental psychology, and one of the most famous scientific men of the 19th century.


Helvétius, Claude Adrien. (1715-71.) A French philosopher, and Encyclopedist, born and died in Paris. Educated at the College of Louis le Grand, and prepared by an uncle for a career as financier, in 1738, through the queen, he received the lucrative position of farmer-general, and later became chamberlain of the queen's household. Gaining a fortune, he retired to an estate at Voré in 1751, devoting the remainder of his life to the care of his property and to literature. While in Paris he had associated with Diderot, Holbach, d'Alembert, and the other French ENCYCLOPEDISTS (q.v.).


Hemeralopia [Gr. hmera, day, + wy, eye]: Ger. Hemeralopie, Nachtblindheit; Fr. héméralopie; Ital. emeralopia. This term and the term nyctalopia are used by different authors in exactly opposite senses, according as the term is regarded as etymologically equivalent to 'seeing at daytime,' or 'blind at daytime'; 'seeing at night-time,' or 'blind at night-time.' Nyctalopia is used by ancient and mediaeval writers as the equivalent of night-blindness. The conditions referred to are described under the terms DAY-BLINDNESS and NIGHT-BLINDNESS (q.v.). See also Hemeralopia and Nyctalopia in Quain's Dictionary of Medicine. (J.J.)


Hemi- [Gr. hmi-]: Ger. halb-; Fr. hémi-; Ital. emi-. A prefix used to indicate limitation to one half or side (of the body); thus hemianaesthesia denotes the loss of tactile sensibility in one half of the body; hemiplegia, a paralysis affecting one side of the body; hemispasm, a spasm of one side of the body only; hemianopia or hemianopsia, a special form of visual defect affecting the separate halves of the retina; and so on.

The existence of these several forms of defect, limited, and often most sharply limited, to one half of the organ concerned, is an evidence of the dual and symmetrical structure of most portions of the nervous system, and of the frequent special association of the centres in one hemisphere with the organs of one side of the body, either directly or by a decussation of the connecting fibres. (J.J.)


Hemianopsia [Gr. hmi-, half, + a' privative, + wy, eye]: Ger. Hemianopsie; Fr. hémianopsie; Ital. emianopsia. A complete or partial loss of vision affecting one half of the field of vision, and accordingly one half of each retina. When this defect is described with reference to the field of vision, it is called hemianopsia or hemianopia; when with reference to the retina, hemiopia; thus temporal hemianopsia corresponds to nasal hemiopia.

Hemianopsia results from the manner of connection of the fibres of the two optic nerves with their subcortical and cortical centres. Owing to the great diversity of cases described, as well as of opinions relative to the manner of the central connections, the description must be limited to a few prominent and most generally accepted relations. Lateral homonymous hemianopsia (perhaps the most usual variety, and also termed equilateral or corresponding) involves loss of either the right or left half of the field of vision of each eye, while crossed or symmetrical hemianopsia involves loss of vision in either the two temporal or the two nasal halves of the field of vision. If the left optic tract (back of the crura), or these fibres in their further central connections, be injured, right lateral hemianopsia results; and left lateral hemianopsia if the injury is in the right optic tract. Double temporal hemianopsia might result from lesion over the centre of the commissure, or from a lesion of the central connections of each of the fibre systems which cross there, while double nasal hemianopsia (rare) would require a lesion affecting part of each optic tract or parts of their central connections. The differences in symptoms according as the lesion is in the tract, subcortical centres, or cortical centres, are most minute and in part uncertain. Cf. LOCALIZATION (cerebral). Some have supposed that the manner of decussation and central distribution of the fibres of the optic nerves is itself variable in man. The irregular forms consist of combinations of other disturbances in the retinal field with hemianopsia, of affections of the superior or inferior halves of the special quadrants of the field of vision -- known as inferior and superior hemianopia -- and the like. Tetranopsia signifies symmetrical quadrant defects in the two visual fields.

Hemianopsia of cortical origin in the occipital lobe is apt to occur in connection with MENTAL BLINDNESS (q.v.), this connection being significant of the functional nature of this visual centre. No simple formulation can be given of the relation of lesions in this area when limited to one hemisphere and when present in both, further than that the latter is more certain to produce mental blindness. It is clear that the centre, the incapacitation of which produces hemianaesthesia of the retina, is not the same as that, the injury of which appears as mental blindness. Cases of colour hemianaesthesia without true hemianopsia are not infrequent. Central hemianopsia is extraordinarily distinct when it occurs as a symptom of MIGRAINE (q.v., with figure, after Baldwin), and its progress as a symptom exhibits the development of the central disturbance.

Literature: art. by WILBRAND, in Norris and Oliver's Syst. of Diseases of the Eye, ii. 189-315 (with references); ROSS, Nerv. Diseases, i. 382 ff.; GOWERS, Nerv. Diseases, 145-62; Wood's Ref. Handb. of the Med. Sci., sub verbo; BALDWIN, Hemianopsia in Migraine, Science (May 4, 1900). (J.J.)


Hemiparesis: see PARALYSIS.


Hemiplegia: see PARALYSIS.


Hemming, Nicolaus. (1518-1600.) A Danish philosophical writer, a pupil of Melanchthon.


Hemorrhage [Gr. aima, blood, + ragaV, a burst]: Ger. Blutaustritt, Blutfluss; Fr. hémorragie; Ital. emorragia. The flowing of blood from a ruptured blood-vessel. Occurring in the brain -- cerebral hemorrhage -- it causes apoplexy. The portion of the brain supplied by the ruptured vessel, or affected by pressure of the escaping blood, being suddenly thrown out of function, causes sudden loss of motion, sensation, and consciousness. Cerebral hemorrhage is frequently the cause of hemiplegia, i.e. paralysis of one side of the body. (C.F.H.)


Henotheism [Gr. en, one, + qeoV, God]: Ger. Henotheismus; Fr. hénothéisme; Ital. enoteismo. 'The worship of a single god.'

This term was first used by Max Müller in a paper on 'Semitic Monotheism,' which appeared in The Times (London) in 1860, to designate what he maintains to be an earlier stage in the history of religion than either Polytheism or Monotheism. 'The primitive intuition of God,' he says, 'was in itself neither monotheistic nor polytheistic, though it might become either. . . . Polytheism must everywhere have been preceded by a more or less unconscious theism. In no language does the plural exist before the singular. The primitive intuition of God, and the ineradicable feeling of dependence on God,' cannot however be correctly called monotheistic. 'A belief in God as exclusively One involves a distinct negation of more than one God, and that negation is possible only after the conception, whether real or imaginary, of many gods.' The belief, he says, might be formulated as 'There is a God,' but not yet as 'There is but one God' (see his selected Essays, ii). The term is put forward in similar phraseology in a lecture on the Vedas, delivered in 1865, and reprinted in the same volume. He there points out that, though the number of gods invoked in the hymns of the Rig-Veda is very considerable, the poet frequently 'seems to know, for the time being, of one single god only. In the momentary vision of the poet his divinity is not limited by the thought of any other god.' See also Physical Religion, 180-1. (A.S.P.P.)

A similar point of view is to be found in Schelling's Philosophie der Mythologie, 6te Vorles., under the term 'relative monotheism.' (K.G.)


Heraclitus. Born about 500 B.C. at Ephesus, Asia Minor. A Greek philosopher of noble birth. He took no part in public affairs, refusing, it is said, positions of honour and influence which were offered to him. Known to have written one work, On Nature, fragments of which have come down to us. He is called Heraclitus the Dark, because of the obscurity of his teachings. Cf. PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY.


Herbart, Johann Friedrich. (1776-1841.) German philosopher, educated in the gymnasium of Oldenburg, his native town, and at Jena under Fichte. For some time he was private tutor in Switzerland. Began lecturing at Göttingen in 1802, and became professor extraordinary, 1805. In 1809 he was called to Königsberg to the chair once held by Kant. Recalled to Göttingen in 1833, he died there. He devoted much attention to pedagogy. See HERBARTIANISM.


Herbartianism (after HERBART, J. F., q.v.): Ger. Herbart'sche Lehre; Fr. Herbartianisme; Ital. Herbartianismo. Philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical views due to or much influenced by Herbart.

The Herbartian Metaphysics. Herbart's conception of metaphysics is a conscious return to the type of solution found in Aristotle; except that it goes further back and lays under contribution something of the method of Socrates (cf. SOCRATIC METHOD). The first task of metaphysics, on his view, is to 'rectify' and justify concepts. This can be done only by an adequate criticism, both of thought and of experience. Only on the basis of patient criticism and mutual adjustment of meanings can philosophy proceed at all. The true question is: What must we think about cause, self, change, reality, God, &c., that our thoughts may be consistent and our lives true? Knowledge cannot, in the last analysis, contradict experience; for experience, in the last analysis, is knowledge. So the real must ultimately be reached through such knowledge as is found to be the full teaching of experience, interpreted consistently with itself. On this basis and by this method Herbart reached his doctrine of atoms or 'reals,' which had the properties both of objective existence and of presentation -- a view which is, in the work of other thinkers, also the historical outcome of such a conception of philosophy and its method, as e.g. the 'atomism' of Leibnitz and the 'real beings' of Lotze. Metaphysics therefore builds itself upon all science, and takes light from every experiential -- as well as from every rational -- source (revised quotation from the writer's article 'Metaphysics,' in Johnson's Universal Cyc., new ed., 1894). (J.M.B.)

The Herbartian Psychology. As the title of his great work (Psychol. als Wiss., &c., cited below) indicates, Herbart's psychology is founded on the threefold basis of metaphysics, mathematics, and experience. It is its foundation in experience which gives it abiding interest and value. Experience yields at once a point of departure and the means of verifying hypotheses. The point of departure is found in the problematic and sometimes contradictory character of certain results of introspection. The chief instance of a datum of introspection involving an inner contradiction is found in the fact of self-consciousness. This is contradictory, because it implies at once the sameness and the duality of subject, and also because the self of which we are conscious has no content apart from particular states, of thinking, willing, &c., and yet it cannot be identified with these particular states, being the common centre to which they are all referred. Psychology must give such an account of the nature and genesis of self-consciousness as will remove these contradictions. But experience not only yields such points of departure for the framing of psychological hypotheses, it also supplies the means of verifying them. Psychological theories must be tested by their power to explain the actual facts of mental life as they are found in concrete experience.

Herbart derives from his metaphysics the conception of the soul as being intrinsically a simple unchanging being without any plurality of states, activities, or powers. In its actual working as a psychological principle, this conception translates itself (1) into the denial of innate ideas or faculties, (2) into certain fundamental laws of the interaction of psychical states. All psychological explanation is based on the interaction of certain ultimate states of the soul, which arise in it through its various relations to other simple beings ('reals'), and are called by Herbart presentative activities.

Apart from the changes which they undergo through their action on each other, these presentative activities are contents of consciousness or presentations. Presentations may be entirely alike in quality -- as, for instance, my sensation of green yesterday and my sensation of the same green to-day; or they may be entirely disparate in quality -- e.g. sweetness and redness; in both these cases they merge in a single complex presentation or conscious presentative activity. If, on the other hand, they are neither identical nor disparate in quality -- as, for example, the colours red and green -- they are more or less contrary, and for that reason they tend to exclude each other from consciousness. When one presentative activity is completely excluded from consciousness or 'arrested' by others of contrary quality, it remains in existence as a tendency to become conscious. It will become a conscious presentation so soon as the arresting conditions are removed, just as a bent spring of perfect elasticity will recover its original position on removal of the pressure by which it is held down. But arrest need not be complete. The mutual antagonism of presentations may result only in their diminished intensity -- the partial reduction of conscious to unconscious presentative activity. If we suppose a case in which only two simple presentations are in conflict, neither of them will be completely arrested. A certain 'sum of arrest' is distributed between them in the inverse ratio of their respective intensities. When the sum of arrest is distributed among a larger number of presentative activities only a few can escape complete arrest. Hence the narrowness of consciousness, which is thus for Herbart not a mere empirical fact, but a necessary consequence of his fundamental assumptions.

Those presentative activities which are in consciousness at any moment are said to be above the threshold, and those which are unconscious are said to be below the threshold. Throughout our mental life, presentative activities are continually rising and sinking. They are sinking in so far as they gradually lose conscious intensity owing to arrest, and so approach or pass below the threshold; they are rising when they gradually increase in conscious intensity or gradually approach the threshold of consciousness owing to the removal of arresting conditions.

We have so far spoken of arrest as if it concerned only single simple presentations. We must now consider it in connection with the union of presentations. For Herbart the union of presentations is an alliance against antagonistic forces. The united presentations resist as a whole the arrest of any one of them by sharing in the 'sum of arrest,' and for the same reason the rise of any of them above the threshold tends to raise the others.

The necessary and sufficient condition of union is co-presentation -- the simultaneous existence of presentative activities above the threshold. Not only disparate and qualitatively identical, but also contrary presentations unite with each other.

The union of disparate presentations is called complication, that of contrary or qualitatively identical presentations is called fusion. Fusion takes place between the presentation residua which remain after the partial arrest of presentative activities. It also takes place while the process of arrest is still going on.

It is important for the Herbartian theory of reproduction that complications and fusions are formed between presentative activities only in so far as they are simultaneously above the threshold. If a has entered into union with b, and both a and b afterwards sink below the threshold, the subsequent emergence of a into consciousness will tend to raise b also into consciousness, but only in that degree of conscious intensity which b possessed at the moment of its original co-presentation with a. When b has reached this degree of intensity it ceases to receive further support from a. On the other hand, the conscious intensity of a when the union was formed determines the strength of the support which it gives to b. Herbart explains from this point of view the fact that 'in a series of associated presentations, A, B, C, D, E, such as the movements made in writing the words of a poem learned by heart, or the simple letters of the alphabet themselves, we find that each member recalls its successor, but not its predecessor' (Ward, Encyc. Brit., art. 61). The Herbartian explanation is as follows: in the original experiences A first rises into full conscious intensity, and it is then gradually arrested by the occurrence of B. When B has risen to its full height above the threshold, A has sunk towards it; similarly, when C has attained its maximum of conscious intensity, B has become obscured, and A has become still more obscured; the same holds for D and E. Now, suppose the whole series to have passed from consciousness, and that on a subsequent occasion C recurs. The fusion of C with A and B took place when C itself was at its maximum intensity; and its tendency to revive A and B will be proportionate in strength to this intensity: on the other hand, A and B were both on the wane at the time of co-presentation, A being nearer the threshold than B. C will therefore reproduce A and B in a state of obscuration, and the revived A will be more obscured than the revived B. On the other hand, since C was co-presented in its maximum intensity both with A and B, it will reinstate these simultaneously and rapidly. Thus there will be no successive emergence of B and A into full distinctness, but only a simultaneous reproduction of them in different degrees of obscurity. D and E, on the contrary, will emerge successively into full conscious intensity. For D had reached its maximum when it fused with A, B, and C, and A, B and C will therefore tend to reinstate it in full intensity. But since A, B, and C were waning at the time of co-presentation, they will reinstate D slowly and gradually, and for a similar reason they will tend to reinstate E still more slowly.

This is a good example of the way in which Herbart applies his abstract principles to the elucidation of psychological matter of fact. In this instance his own ingenuity is perhaps more conspicuous than any actual service-rendering to psychological theory. But at other points his explanations are more felicitous, and have, in fact, proved epoch-making. In particular we may refer to his account of the genesis of spatial and temporal presentation as distinctive forms of serial order due to different modes of fusion, to the doctrine of presentation masses and of APPERCEPTION (q.v.), and to his classical investigation of the nature and development of SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS (q.v.).

The doctrine of apperception variously modified and improved has become the common property of modern psychologists; and all modern accounts of the stages in the growth of the consciousness of self are under a deep debt, recognized or unrecognized, to Herbart. His theories of the origin of temporal and spatial presentations in many respects highly suggestive; and though on the whole they must be regarded as failures, it ought to be remembered that they are the first systematic attempts to solve these problems.

The most noteworthy among those who can be called in the strict sense disciples of Herbart in psychology are T. Waitz, M. Drobisch, W. Volkmann (v. Volkmar). The Zeitschrift für exacte Philosophie was, until recently, the recognized organ of the school. It has now given place to the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Pädagogik. Steinthal and Lazarus have applied the Herbartian doctrine of apperception to the psychology of language and of primitive thought. (G.F.S.)

With Herbart's name is also associated one of the most fruitful movements in modern educational theory, and to this the term Herbartianism is also applied (cf. PEDAGOGICS). In this, his theory of apperception is the central doctrine. The principal writers of the school are Ziller, Rein, and Lange. Herbart's own pedagogical work is The Application of Psychology to the Science of Education (Eng. trans., 1898). (J.M.B.)

Literature: Herbart's complete works have been edited by G. HARTENSTEIN (latest ed. in 13 vols., 1883-93). His most important psychological writings are Psychologische Untersuchungen über die Stärke einer Vorstellung (1812; Werke, vii), Ueber die Möglichkeit und Nothwendigkeit Mathematik auf Psychologie anzuwenden (1822; Werke, vii), Psychologie als Wissenschaft neu gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik (1824-5; Werke, v, vi). The Lehrbuch zur Psychologie (1st ed. in 1813, 2nd ed. revised and enlarged in 1834; Werke, v; also in Eng. trans.) gives a brief account of his psychological doctrine adapted for beginners. For general accounts of Herbart see the histories of modern philosophy, especially HÖFFDING; on the psychology, F. A. LANGE, Grundlegung d. math. Psychol. (1865); G. DUMDEY, Herbart's Verhältniss z. engl. Associationspsychol. (1890); STOUT, Mind, 1898, 321, 473, and 1899, 1, 353; RIBOT, Ger. Psychol. of To-day (Eng. trans.), 24 ff.; ZIEHEN, Verhältniss d. Herbart'schen Psychol. z. physiol. -exper. Psychol. (1900); on the pedagogics, DE GARMO, Herbart and the Herbartians. (G.F.S.- J.M.B.)


Herbert, Edward, of Cherbury. (1581-1648.) Born in Montgomery castle in northern Wales, and educated at Oxford, he became knight of the Order of the Bath in 1603. In 1608 he journeyed to France, and in 1610 to Flanders, where he joined the army of Prince Moritz or Oranien as a volunteer. After several years spent in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy he became (1616) emissary to the French court, and peer of Ireland in 1625. In 1629 Charles I made him peer of England with the title Baron of Cherbury. He is an important figure in the history of English DEISM (q.v.).


Herder, Johann Gottfried von. (1744-1803.) An important figure in modern German literature. As a philosopher, he belongs with J. G. Hamann, Jacobi, and others, who vindicate feeling or faith against reason, which Kant had chiefly emphasized.


Heredity [Lat. hereditas]: Ger. Vererbung; Fr. hérédité; Ital. eredità. (1) Organic or physical: the transmission from parent to offspring of certain distinguishing characters of structure or function.

(2) Social: the process of social transmission; that by which individuals of successive generations accommodate to a continuous social environment, thus producing TRADITION (q.v.). Suggested by J. Mark Baldwin (Amer. Naturalist, June, July, 1896). Cf. also Soc. and Eth. Interpret. (1st ed., 1897).

(1) Organic. Many of the general facts of organic heredity have long been known. The theory of evolution has opened up fresh questions with regard to its nature, origin, and limitations. Of late the question has been raised whether ACQUIRED CHARACTERS (q.v.) are thus transmitted. As in the case of so many biological problems, the discussion has been transferred from the organism to the cell. According to the CELL THEORY (q.v., 7), there is a continuity of cell life; and, in REPRODUCTION (q.v.), this continuity is maintained in the germ-plasm; cf. the diagram given under CELL. Any transmission of acquired characters must be by some mode of influence of the body-cells on the germ-cells, the exact nature of which is at present unknown. Assuming that such influence of other than a general kind (e.g. in nutrition, poisoning, &c.) is unproven, and omitting the cases of transference of microbes as in some diseases (e.g. syphilis), there remains the question of the nature of hereditary transmission in the germ-cells. How do the characters of the adult lie enfolded in the fertilized ovum? And how do they become unfolded in the course of development? It is generally admitted that the IDIOPLASM (q.v.) contains the hereditary substance which in some way controls cell-development. According to one hypothesis there are present in the sexual cells minute germinal representatives of all the parts of the adult; of these the 'gemmules' of Darwin are derived from all parts of the organism (cf. PANGENESIS); the 'biophores' and 'determinants' of Weismann belong to the germ-plasm alone.

According to a second great hypothesis, the differentiation results from the mutual influence of the cells, the nature of each being determined by the environment made by the others. Other hypotheses combine, in different degrees, the conception of nuclear distribution and environing influence. But we are still far from anything like an ultimate solution of the problem. (C.LL.M., E.B.P., J.M.B.)

It is now evident, however, that characters are inherited, not so much from, as through, the parent organisms, and that the reason why the offspring resembles the parent is that they both develop from a substance of essentially the same structure and composition, held to be identically the same by those who advocate the doctrine of the 'continuity of germ-plasm.' (E.S.G.)

The question of the origin of heredity has been recently discussed, and taken form in connection with the researches into VARIATION (q.v.). Heredity giving more or less close lack of variation -- what is called 'breeding true' to stock -- from parent to offspring, is the opposite of variability, which is departure from the 'true' or like. It has generally been assumed that heredity -- at least in the simple form seen in cell-division, the so-called daughter-cells being parts of the original mother-cells -- was an original property of living matter, and variation from the true was the thing to account for. Recently, however, the theory has been advanced by Bailey (Plant Breeding, 1895, and especially Survival of the Unlike, 1896) and Williams (Geol. Biology; Science, July 16, 1897; Amer. Naturalist, Nov., 1898), and advocated independently by Adam Sedgwick (Nature, Sept. 21, 1899), that variation is normal, and heredity acquired by the restriction and limiting of variation to the extent seen in the relative amount of 'breeding true' that is actually found in nature. It would seem a priori more reasonable to ask why such an unstable compound as protoplasm, acted upon by a complex environment, should not vary (i.e. should have heredity), than the reverse. And, moreover, the complicated apparatus necessary for sexual reproduction and transmission, itself showing the wide variations it does in different organisms in different life conditions, must have been acquired, even though it be the direct descendant of the earliest cellular multiplication.

A recent more exact statistical treatment of heredity has been made by Galton and Pearson, the results leading to the formulation of GALTON'S LAW of ancestral inheritance (q.v.). Pearson, who has worked out quantitative mathematical methods of treating vital phenomena, finds the solution of three great problems essential to an exact science of evolution -- VARIATION (q.v.), SELECTION (q.v.), and heredity (see a series of papers, 'Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution,' Proc. Roy. Soc., 1894 ff., summarized in The Chances of Death and in Grammar of Science, 2nd ed., 1900).

The evidence for and against the inheritance of acquired characters, in cases of sexual reproduction, is about as follows: -- There are no clear and unambiguous cases of transmission of specific modifications. The arguments for such transmission are largely presumptive, based upon the requirements of the theory of EVOLUTION (q.v.). Of such arguments the following seem to be strongest. (1) Incomplete or imperfect instincts -- together with complex instincts, which must at some time have been imperfect -- cannot be due to NATURAL SELECTION (q.v.); for their early stages would involve partial correlations of movement of no use to the animal. Selectionists meet this by saying that (a) the organism as a whole must be considered, not the single organs or functions, in the matter of individual survival; (b) a certain degree of intelligence usually accompanies and supplements such instincts; (c) the intelligence, together with individual accommodations of all sorts, screen the variations which occur in the direction of the particular function, and so allow its evolution under natural selection (see ORGANIC SELECTION); (d) many of the instances cited under this head are not congenital characters at all, but are functions re-acquired by the young of each succeeding generation (see TRADITION).

(2) Paleontologists find bony structures whose initial and early stages are thought to have had no utility, and appeal is made generally of the so-called non-useful stages of useful organs. This is conceded to be the gravest objection now current to the universal applicability of natural selection. It is met -- when urged as giving presumptive evidence of the transmission of acquired characters -- by saying: (a) that it proves too much; for the bony structures are least subject to modification by external influences, and, if such inheritance appear in them, it should appear more strongly in other structures where we do not find evidence of it; (b) that even if such an objection hold against natural selection, still some unknown auxiliary factor may be operative; (c) that actual utility can be pointed out in most cases, and may be fairly assumed in others; (d) organic or indirect selection again has application here, as supplementary to natural selection; (e) the principle of 'change of function' (Functionswechsel; see A. Dohrn, Der Ursprung der Wirbelthiere und das Princip des Functionswechsels, 1875) is cited, according to which, in such 'non-useful' stages, the organ in question served another and useful function.

Other objections of a general sort -- such as that geological time is not sufficient for so slow a process as evolution by natural selection, that small variations could not produce such large differences, that variations are not sufficiently numerous nor sufficiently wide in distribution -- are considered by selectionists to be mainly of an a priori character, even as objections to natural selection, and, hence, to offer no positive ground whatever for belief in the inheritance of acquired characters.

The advocates of the hypothesis of Lamarckian inheritance often fail to distinguish between the effects of the general influences of the environment upon the whole organism -- e.g. malnutrition, toxic agents such as alcohol, &c. -- and the specific modifications of particular parts and functions, arising from mutilation, use, the stimulation of particular organs, &c. The former are not denied by selectionists; but they claim that the sort of effect thus produced upon the offspring is rather a disproof than a proof of Lamarckism. For example, the effect of alcoholic excess is not an increased tendency to drink alcoholic beverages -- the tendency itself shown in the children is accounted for as already congenital to the parent -- but certain general deteriorating or degenerative changes in the nervous system or constitution of the offspring, as in hysteria, scurvy, idiocy, malformations, &c., which the parent did not have at all. Furthermore, the mechanism required to accomplish the two sorts of effect respectively are widely different. The general effects of the first sort upon the offspring are due simply to the influences which work upon the organism as a whole, through the ordinary metabolic physiological processes. But to accomplish the transmission of specific modifications of particular parts, a most complex special mechanism would be necessary, whereby the part affected in the parent would impart some sort of special modification to the germ-cells, which would again cause the same modification of the same part in the offspring (see the address of Sedgwick before the British Association, in Nature, 1899). It is suggested also by Stout that such a complex mechanism of transmission would be a highly specialized adaptation, and if it be necessary to Lamarckian heredity, it would itself have to be accounted for without such heredity, which is what the Lamarckians declare impossible. For a recommendation as to terms see TRANSMISSION.

Again, it has been argued (Weismann, Baldwin) that if the Lamarckian principle were in general operation we should expect to find many functions, such as speech in man, reduced to the stereotyped form of reflexes or animal instincts (see, however, on the other side, as regards this particular function, Romanes, Darwin and after Darwin, iii).

The philosophical defence of the Lamarckian principle is usually made from the point of view of teleology, that is, of getting determinate evolution, which is, in some form, the realization of a purpose or end. It is thought that through the accommodations secured by individual animals -- provided they be inherited -- a determinate direction of evolution toward such a realization is secured; while, on the other hand, the principle of natural selection, working upon so-called fortuitous variations, is 'blind' and mechanical (cf. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism; so also Wundt). There seem to be certain confusions lurking in this view. In the first place, it confuses teleology, in the process of evolution, with purpose in the individual. There are two errors here. (1) It is not seen that the evolution process might realize an end or ideal without aid from the individual's efforts or conscious processes. Indeed, even on the Lamarckian principle, most of the inherited modifications would not be directly due to the individual's purpose or conscious effort, and so the purpose of the whole could not be interpreted in terms of the teleology of the individual; for those who maintain a general teleological view in cosmology must hold that the cosmic evolution as a whole, and not merely biological evolution, is in some sense purposive. (2) It is not seen that the reverse is also true, i.e. that in spite of purpose in the individual, together with the inheritance of acquired modifications, the outcome might, on the whole, be the same as that due to simple probability with the natural selection of favourable variations from a great many cases. This has been shown, in fact, to be the case in recent investigations in MORAL STATISTICS (q.v.); e.g. suicide follows the laws of probability, and varies with climate, food supply, &c., in a way which can be plotted in a curve, despite the fact that each suicide chooses to kill himself. That is, the result is as regular and a liable to exact prediction, if we take a large population, as are deaths from disease or accident, or other 'natural' events in which purpose and choice have no part. In such cases, indeed, we have results which are as subject to law and as definite as those of mechanics, although the data are teleological. This case and the reverse, indicated above, show the fallacy of claiming that the exercise of individual purpose and the teleology of evolution must go together.

But there is another supposition open to objection in the view which requires Lamarckian heredity in order to secure teleology in evolution; the position that natural selection, working on so-called fortuitous or chance variations, is 'blind' and non-teleological. It has been found that biological phenomena -- variations in particular -- follow the definite law of PROBABILITY (q.v.); in short, that there is no such thing as the really fortuitous or unpredictable. Natural selection, therefore, working upon variations, themselves subject to law, gives a possible method of realizing a cosmic design, if such exists, just as adequate as any other natural process subject to law. Combining this with the result mentioned above, that even moral events are found to be subject to law when taken in large numbers -- thus including events in which individual purpose plays a part -- we are driven to the conclusion that the law of probabilities upon which natural selection rests is the vehicle of teleology in evolution -- lawful replacing fortuitous variations.

A good illustration may be seen in the use made of vital statistics in life INSURANCE (q.v.). We pay a rate based on the calculation of the probability of life, and thus by observing this law realize the teleological purpose of providing for our children more effectively, though indirectly, than if we each carried our money in a bag around our necks, and gradually added to it of our savings. And furthermore, the insurance company is a great teleological agency, both for us and for itself; for it secures dividends for its stockholders also on the basis of charges adjusted to the 'chances' of life drawn from the mortality tables. Why is it not a reasonable view that the cosmic purpose -- if we may call it so -- works by similar, but more adequate, knowledge of the whole -- whether in conformity to or in contravention of our individual striving -- and so secures its results? Can such results be called blind or unteleological?

Indeed, we may go further, and say that this working out of cosmic purpose through some law of the whole rather than through the individual is necessary to teleology as such. In biology the law of REGRESSION (q.v.) provides just such a 'governor' or regulator of the process. According to it, individuals which depart widely from the mean are not able to transmit their characters fully; but there is a regression towards a value which represents the mean attainment of the species up to date. Thus evolution is kept consistently to a determinate direction, and not violently wrenched by what might be called cosmic caprice. So it is necessary that the 'choice,' the capricious will, of the individual should be neutralized, and a consistent plan carried out despite the uncalculable variations of our private purposes. This principle of 'regression' or 'conservation of type' holds whether the inheritance of acquired modifications be true or not -- whether the effects of personal effort and purpose be transmitted or not -- and as it deals with all the cases, variations and modifications alike, the purposeful deeds of the individual can, in any case, be only a factor of minor importance to the result. Its real importance would depend upon its relation to the whole group of agencies entering into heredity. In so far as this fact should be in a direction divergent from that of the movement in general, it would, by the law of regression, be ineffectual; in so far as it should be in harmony with it, it would be unnecessary and unimportant; although in the latter case, no doubt, the Lamarckian factor, if real, would accelerate biological evolution. Cf. TELEOLOGY.

Special topics are GALTON'S LAW (q.v.) of ancestral inheritance, REGRESSION (q.v.), VARIATION (q.v.), and ATAVISM (q.v.).

Literature: (organic): the best general work is DELAGE, Structure du Protoplasma, containing full literary lists to 1895, continued annually as the Année Biologique. See lists also in the annual Zoological Record, the Anatomischer Jahresbericht, and in WILSON, The Cell in Devel. and Inheritance. Recent general works are W. K. BROOKS, The Foundations of Zool. (1899); HEADLEY, The Problems of Evolution (1901). Other works are cited under BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, ACQUIRED CHARACTERS, and the topics cited above. More psychological references occur in the literature of COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY, INSTINCT, and PLAY. See also BIBLIOG. G, 1, f. (Social): see SOCIAL EVOLUTION. (J.M.B., E.B.P., C.LL.M., G.F.S.)


Heresy and Heterodoxy [Gr. airesiV, selection]: Ger. Häresie, Ketzerei; Fr. hérésie; Ital. eresia. Dissent from the fundamental dogmas of the Church, springing up within its own membership. Heterodoxy, though often used as synonymous, has not the same ecclesiastical reference. It implies, rather, opposition to generally received opinions (e.g. in economics); when applied to religious matters, it often imports departure from the usual interpretation of doctrine or dogma -- departure which yet does not amount to heresy.

As a rule, in the New Testament the word heresy indicates merely a party (see, e.g., Acts xv, xxiv, xxvi, xxviii), though occasionally it is used to designate doctrinal error (Titus iii. 10; 2 Pet. ii. 1). When Christianity had embodied itself in a formal organization, heresy came to mean dissent from or opposition to the doctrine deemed necessary to salvation. Till the time of Augustine, the name was applied chiefly to those who persisted in error, particularly if they were moved by enmity to the Church. The terrible severity of the Church towards heresy in later times is well known. When the civil power was called upon to assist the ecclesiastical in inflicting punishment, bigotry was at the height of its prosperity. The so-called 'liberal' theologian is the ordinary representative of heterodoxy. See ARIANISM, GNOSTICISM, MONTANISM, and PELAGIANISM.

Literature: the works (against various heretics) of the following Fathers: JUSTIN MARTYR, IRENAEUS, TERTULLIAN, CLEMENT of Alexandria, HIPPOLYTUS, EPIPHANIUS, PHILASTRIUS of Brescia, AUGUSTINE, THEODORET; HILGENFELD, Ketzergesch. d. Urchristenthums; HAHN, Ketzer im Mittelalter; BLUNT, Dict. of Sects, Heresies, and Eccles. Parties. (R.M.W.)


Heritage: see INHERITANCE, HEREDITY, and GALTON'S LAW (of ancestral inheritance).


Hermaphrodite [Gr. 'ErmhV, Apollo, + 'Afrodith, Venus]: Ger. Zwitter; Fr. hermaphrodite; Ital. ermafrodito. Having the essential organs of both sexes united in the same individual (as in the earthworm); a condition common amongst the invertebrates, often found as a teratological feature, but amongst vertebrates found only very exceptionally in some fishes and Cyclostomes (Myxine and Bdellostoma).

It is often employed for abnormal monstrosities in man and higher animals with malformations of the sexual organs, representing double sex. (C.LL.M.- E.S.G.)


Hermeneutics [Gr. ermhneuein, to interpret]: Ger. Hermeneutik; Fr. herméneutique; Ital. ermeneutica. That department of exegetical theology which treats of the science or theory of literary interpretation.

It lays down the principles which exegesis applies. In early Christian times the schools of Alexandria and of Antioch were ranged against one another in such hermeneutics as then existed. The former employed the allegorical, the latter the literal (or emphatic), method. It cannot be said that great progress was made beyond either of these schools before the Reformation. Flacius (1567) and Glassius (1629) are the first scientific hermeneutists. They were followed by Bengel (1740), Ernesti (1765), and especially by Winer (1822). Among later hermeneutists Hermann and his school may be mentioned. See EXEGESIS.

Literature: IMMER, Hermeneutics of the New Testament (Eng. trans.); S. DAVIDSON, Sacred Hermeneutics; HOFMANN, Bib. Hermeneutik; TERRY, Bib. Hermeneutics. (R.M.W.)


Hermes, Georg. (1775-1831.) A German teacher of philosophical theology. Educated at Rheine and at Münster, he became a teacher in both the gymnasium and the university at Münster. From 1820 until his death he was professor of theology at Bonn. J. E. Erdmann classes him as a semi-Kantian, because he insisted that in faith we have presentiments of the nature of being-in-itself, without being able definitely to conceive it.


Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes is Greek for Thoth, the name of an Egyptian god, who is said to be the author of the sacred books of the Egyptians. The name Trismegistus is probably from an epithet attached to the name Thoth in the Nubian hieroglyphic writings, meaning 'thrice-great.' These sacred books being lost, others were prepared in Greek, two or three centuries afterwards, purporting to be reproductions of the originals.

These grew at the hands of unknown authors to include a very considerable literature. It consists of a synthesis of Neo-Platonic, Judaic, and cabalistic ideas, which is intended as a substitute for Christianity. Some passages are almost Christian, but contain also mystic numerical symbolisms of Egyptian, and mystical elements of Philonic, origin. (R.M.W.)


Hero-worship: Ger. Heldenverehrung; Fr. culte des héros; Ital. culto degli eroi. Religious exercises directed towards prominent individual persons.

Inspection of primitive religions proves that many objects are worshipped -- stones, fire, trees, and so forth. Among these objects are men -- the departed, ancestors, saints, heroes. Hero-worship is difficult to differentiate from ANCESTOR WORSHIP (q.v.). The latter is essentially a private affair; the former, on the contrary, is usually public. If, then, a single ancestor come to be viewed as the progenitor of a large 'corporate' family, and if, in this way, his worship become quasi-public, the path is open for hero-worship. When the ancestor becomes publicly recognized as a 'heros eponymos,' hero-worship ensues. The central fact is that the hero is regarded as being the author or mediator of benefits. Apotheosis and canonization are its ecclesiastical forms.

Literature: see ANCESTOR WORSHIP, and APOTHEOSIS. (R.M.W.)