McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic

24/John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
ence may no doubt place the inadequacy of some finite category in a
specially clear light, or may render the transition to the next stage of the
idea particularly obvious and easy, but it is only greater convenience
which is thus gained; with sufficient power any part, however unpromising,
would yield the same result.
17. The basis of the dialectic process, then, is the nature of experience,
in so far as the nature of pure thought is contained in it. If the other
element in experience has really a primary and essential nature of its
own, it will not concern us here, for, as it takes no part in the development
of the idea, its existence, and not its particular qualities, is the only
thing with which we are at present concerned. The nature of experience
however, though it is the basis of the dialectic, is not its logical postulate.
For it is not assumed but ascertained by the dialectic, whose whole
object is the gradual discovery and demonstration of the Absolute Idea,
which is the fundamental principle which makes the nature of experience.
The general laws governing experience are the causa essendi of
the logic, but not its causa cognoscendi.
The only logical postulate which the dialectic requires is the admission
that experience really exists. The dialectic is derived from the nature
of experience, and therefore if it is to have any validity of real
existence, if it is to have, that is to say, any importance at all, we must
be assured of the existence of some experience—in other words, that
something is.
The object of the dialectic is to discover the forms and laws of all
possible thought. For this purpose it starts from the idea of Being, in
which all others are shown to be involved. The application of the results
of the dialectic to experience thus depends on the application to experience
of the idea of Being, and the logical postulate of the dialectic is no
more than that something is, and that the category of Being is therefore
valid.
It will be noticed that the basis and the postulate of the dialectic
correspond to the two aspects of the idea which we mentioned above as
the fundamental cause of the process. The basis—the nature of pure
thought—is the complete and concrete idea which is present in our minds,
though only implicitly, and which renders it impossible that we should
stop short of it by permanently acquiescing in any finite category. The
postulate—the abstract idea in its highest state of abstraction, which is
admitted to be valid—is that which is explicitly before the mind, and
from which the start is made.