Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/358

 344 F. C. S. SCHILLER I however despicable a sense, can really be contradictory. The very fact of its existence shows that the 'contradic- tions,' which our thought discovers in it, are in some way illusory, that the reality " somehow " (to use Mr. Bradley 's favourite word in this connexion) overpowers, swallows, reconciles, transcends and harmonises them. 1 If therefore it appears 'contradictory,' the fault is ours. It is, in Herbart's language, a zufdllige Ansicht. It can be purged of its apparent contradiction, and it is our duty to effect this and to inter- pret it into a harmony with itself which our mind can grasp. Only of course I can see that this purification may require something more than a dialectical juggle with terms : we may need a real discovery, we may have to make a real advance, before the refractory ore of "appearance" will yield us the pure gold of " reality ". I have intentionally used a word which seems to me to give the clue out of the labyrinth into which Mr. Bradley has beguiled the fair maid, Philosophy. The conception of Harmony seems to me to be one legitimately applicable to ultimate reality and to contain a meaning which I vainly look for in that of ' contradiction '. It forms a postulate higher and more ultimate than that of non-contradiction, which indeed seems to be only a special case thereof, viz., that of a harmony among the contents of our thought. The contradictory involves a jar or discord in the mind, which most people in their normal condition feel to be unpleasant (when they perceive it), and this is the first and immediate reason why we avoid contradictions and reject the contra- dictory. The second reason is that our Thinking rests on the Principle of Contradiction, and that if we admitted the con- tradictory, we should have (if we were consistent) to give up thinking. But thinking is too inveterate a habit (at least in some of us), and on the whole too useful, to permit of the serious adoption of this alternative. Thus the struggle to avoid and remove contradictions appears as an integral part of the great cosmic striving towards satisfaction, harmony and equilibrium, in which even the inanimate appears more suo to participate. 2 In this struggle the intellectual machinery which works by the Principle of Contradiction plays an important part, and we should fare but ill without its aid. 1 Unless indeed the internal conflict which is described as a ' contra- diction ' be the essential nature of all reality as such as some extreme pessimists have contended. ( 2 See MIND, N.S., No. 36, pp. 462-463.