Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/106

Rh 96 METAPHYSIC facts ; if we take our stand on the former, we are com pelled to regard all objective experience as irrational, because it does not correspond to the pure identity of thought. In Aristotle s view of logic it cannot be said that this difficulty is clearly solved, though he seems to have seen the error of both extremes. On the one hand he often recognizes the synthetic character of the process of induc tion, as when he speaks of the universal idea or law as a central principle, in which we must find the key to all the difficulties suggested by different aspects of a given subject. Yet in other places we trace the influence of a merely ana lytic conception of that process as a process in which the universal is to be reached by abstracting from the peculi arities of individuals. And this conception of it is favoured by Aristotle s metaphysical theory, according to which the forms of things in the finite world are manifested in a resisting matter, a matter which prevents them from being perfectly or universally realized. For, in so far as this is the case, the facts will not be entirely explained by the knowledge of the form, and the knowledge of the form must be obtained, not by combining all the facts, but rather by abstracting from them. Again, in Aristotle s account of the process of thought in the Prior Analytics, he regards it as a formal deductive process; and, though in the Posterior Analytics he attempts to give a synthetic meaning to the syllogism by treating it as the method in which the properties of a thing may be proved of it, or combined with it, through its essential definition, yet this adventitious meaning bestowed upon the syllogistic process does not alter its essential nature. The ultimate source of this inadequate view of the process of thought seems to lie in Aristotle s imperfect conception of the unity or identity which is for him the type of knowledge. For, though, both in the Metaphysic and the De Anima, he defines that identity as self-consciousness or as a consciousness of objects which is identical with self-consciousness, yet he does not seem clearly to distinguish between a unity in which there is no difference and a unity in which difference is transcended and reconciled. This seems to be shown by his description of the principles which reason apprehends as individua or indi visible unities, rather than unities which imply, while they transcend, difference. Yet, in this definition of the unity of knowledge as self-consciousness, Aristotle has implicitly admitted that there is a duality or difference in the unity itself, and this might have been expected to modify his conception of the relation of consciousness to its objects. For, as self-consciousness is not simple like a chemical element, but only in the sense that it is an indissoluble unity of opposites, it might have been anticipated that one who had realized self-consciousness as the principle of knowledge would be able to regard the opposition between the consciousness of self and the consciousness of the world as itself also capable of being conceived as a unity. This misconception of Aristotle may be shown in another way. In the Metaphysic we find him laying down what is called the logical law of contradiction as the ultimate principle of knowledge. The meaning of this principle, however, as Aristotle states it, is simply that thought in its essence is definition or distinction. If, as Heraclitus says, everything at once is and is not, if we cannot attach any definite predicates to things by which they may be distinguished from each other, then, as Aristotle argues, thought is chaos, and knowledge is impossible. If determination be not negation, if the assertion of A be not the negation of not-A, then there is no meaning in words. The criticism to be made on this view is obviously, not that it is a false statement of the law of thought, but that it is an imperfect statement of it. Thought is undoubtedly distinction ; and, if all distinction be confounded, no meaning can be apprehended or ex pressed. But thought is also relation and connexion of the things distinguished, and this aspect of it is equally important with the other. Aristotle shows his one-sided- ness a one-sidedness which throws him into opposition to Plato, but which enables him to correct Plato only by falling into the opposite error when he exclusively fixes his attention on the &quot; differentiating &quot; aspect of knowledge, and takes no notice of the &quot; integrating &quot; aspect of it. It is easy to see that this exclusive attention to one side of the truth may lead in many ways to a distorted view both of the world and of the intelligence that apprehends it. If Heraclitus be interpreted as simply denying the right of thought to introduce its definiteness into the flux of sense, nothing but absolute scepticism can come out of his philosophy ; and Aristotle was right in maintaining that it is only as the flux is brought to a stand, and the universal is fixed as a permanent and definite object of thought, 1 that knowledge becomes possible. But, on the other hand, if distinction be taken as absolute, if the definite assertion of a thing be taken as a negation of all relation to what it is not, if the fixity of thought be taken as an abstract self- identity which excludes all the movement of finite things wherein they show their finitude and pass beyond them selves into other things, then knowledge will be equally impossible. Our consciousness, on such a theory, would be disintegrated into parts which would own no connexion with each other ; nor would it be possible for us to think of things as, in spite of their differences, bound together into the unity of one world. The law of contradiction or distinction, therefore, is likely to lead to serious miscon ceptions, unless it be complemented by a law of relation a law expressing the truth that there is a unity which transcends all distinction. For all intelligible distinction all distinction of things in the intelligible world must be subordinate to their unity as belonging to that world, and therefore essentially connected with each other and with the intelligence. In such a world, in other words, there can be no absolute distinctions or differences (not even between being and not-being) ; for distinction without relation is impossible, and a conception held in absolute isolation from all correlated conceptions ceases to have any meaning. This does not, of course, imply a negation of the law of contradiction within its own sphere, but it does imply that that sphere is limited, and that there is no absolute contradiction. All opposition is within a pre supposed unity, and therefore points to a higher reconcilia tion, a reconciliation which is reached when we show that the opposition is one of correlative elements. The great step in logical theory which was taken by the idealistic philosophy of the post-Kantian period was simply to dissipate the confusion which had prevailed so long between that bare or formal identity, which is but the beginning of thought and knowledge, and that concrete unity of difference, which is its highest idea and end. It was, in other words, to correct and complete the concep tions of thought as analytical, and as externally syntheti cal, by the conception of it as self-determining, to show that it is a unity which manifests itself in difference and opposition, yet in all this, even when it seems to be dealing with an object which is altogether external to it, is really developing and revealing itself. This new movement of thought might, in one point of view, be described as the addition of another logic to the logic of analysis and the logic of inductive synthesis which were already in existence. But it was really more than this ; for the new logic was not merely an external addition rov Kat6ov fv -rfj ^t X!7&amp;gt; -An. Post., ii. 19.