ultimate authority should not be irresistible when it attempts to be oppressive beyond a point.
This brings us to a question which is fundamental in judging Hegel's whole philosophy. Is there
more reality, and is there more value, in a whole than in its parts? Hegel answers both questions in
the affirmative. The question of reality is metaphysical, the question of value is ethical. They are
commonly treated as if they were scarcely distinguishable, but to my mind it is important to keep
them apart. Let us begin with the metaphysical question.
The view of Hegel, and of many other philosophers, is that the character of any portion of the
universe is so profoundly affected by its relations to the other parts and to the whole, that no true
statement can be made about any part except to assign its place in the whole. Since its place in the
whole depends upon all the other parts, a true statement about its place in the whole will at the
same time assign the place of every other part in the whole. Thus there can be only one true
statement; there is no truth except the whole truth. And similarly nothing is quite real except the
whole, for any part, when isolated, is changed in character by being isolated, and therefore no
longer appears quite what it truly is. On the other hand, when a part is viewed in relation to the
whole, as it should be, it is seen to be not self-subsistent, and to be incapable of existing except as
part of just that whole which alone is truly real. This is the metaphysical doctrine.
The ethical doctrine, which maintains that value resides in the whole rather than in the parts, must
be true if the metaphysical doctrine is true, but need not be false if the metaphysical doctrine is
false. It may, moreover, be true of some wholes and not of others. It is obviously true, in some
sense, of a living body. The eye is worthless when separated from the body; a collection of
disjecta membra, even when complete, has not the value that once belonged to the body from
which they were taken. Hegel conceives the ethical relation of the citizen to the State as analogous
to that of the eye to the body: in his place the citizen is part of a valuable whole, but isolated he is
as useless as an isolated eye. The analogy, however, is open to question; from the ethical
importance of some wholes, that of all wholes does not follow.
The above statement of the ethical problem is defective in one im-