Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/269

 266 of a differentiation, an analysis; there is nothing understood which is not differentiated (indistinto). The theory has a certain tendency to stop with finite elements (distinti finiti); but the principle that every particular is part of a whole imposes the necessity of an infinite continuum. Hence, since even thought is simply a special case of the natural process, it is impossible to deduce the whole process of nature from thought. We never attain a final term.—There is a problem at this point which Ardigo fail to estimate correctly, in that knowledge is nevertheless the natural process through which alone we acquire our knowledge of all other processes of nature. On the other hand he (especially in La Ragione, 1894) describes the cognitive functions in detail, especially emphasizing the intimate relationship of recollection and judgement, and finding once more the relation of indistinto and distinti in the rhythm of synthesis and of analysis. He likewise extols the services of Kant to the morphology of knowledge in this work. And he afterwards emphasized Kant's theory of the synthetic unity of consciousness in his chief work L'unita della coscienza (1898) in still stronger terms. Psychic life consists of a continuous synthetic process. There is a profound tendency in things to combine all elements and functions in a single stream. This confluence (confluenza mentale) is the only explanation of the association of ideas. It is impossible to explain this unity of consciousness as a product of separate elements, because the only way we can discover the elements is by an analytic process of thought which already presupposes a given whole. Ardigo's admiration for Kant, whom he called il secondo Galilei da filosofia nei tempi moderni, does not prevent him from severely criticizing the theory of the