Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/16

 2 BERNARD BOSANQUET : term, and when thus affirmed, and protected by adequate distinction, have nothing in them contrary to one another. It was a friend, I think, of Mr. Verdant Green, who described a college cap as an abortive attempt to square the circle, and better examples of the conjunction would not be hard to find. There are places for all predicates ; and when all predicates are in their place, none of them is contrary to any other. It is the bringing them together, on' an inadequate basis of distinction, which is the essence of contradiction and con- trariety ; and this may happen with any diverse terms what- ever. I may venture to note that even Dr. McTaggart, by- implying in his description of contradiction l that the predi- cates are antecedently " contrary " suggests to my mind that he has not completely analysed its nature. It is a trivial point in itself ; but perhaps it indicates that he would not agree with me in taking Contradiction as a mere consequence and symbol of something much more fundamental. Logical Contradiction, then, is an intellectual deadlock, caused by the attempt to bring together two or more different terms without adequate adjustment of content for their re- ception. Contradiction in this sense is rightly pronounced unthinkable, and cannot therefore be a characteristic of Truth or of Ultimate Eeality. For these, if they are any- thing, are experiences in which Thought is triumphant, and harmonious with itself at least, even if with more besides. It will be a first step in our argument if we can decide at this point how far even such bare formal Contradiction is in some sense an actual existent and a characteristic of Reality. We see that it cannot be a characteristic of Ultimate Eeality, and we are disposed at the first look to agree with eminent thinkers that it is simply a blunder of our own making, some- thing subjective, and incapable of belonging to the actual world. But in saying this, we seem to have unduly idealised the world of fact, and taken it as equivalent to Ultimate Eeality. For the unrest of action and cognition seems to arise from the perpetual presence of implicit Contradiction in the nature of actual fact, a presence which becomes explicit on the slightest reflexion and forces us to go further in the hope of faring better. It must, I infer, be admitted that fact, as given in ordinary experience, is both actual and self- contradictory. To deny this is either to pronounce all objects of cognition subjective or illusory so long as cognition is progressive, for its progress is a proof that it still meets with contradiction, or to stake out, within experience, some 1 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, p. 9.