Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/382

 366 W. H. FAIKBROTHER : element of 'Feeling' (afcr&prt?) necessarily (ri&r)) conies in, and the ' minor ' premiss remains no mere logical particular but asserts a concrete ' moving ' fact actually present. To illustrate : All sweet things are fitting to be tasted, 1 This particular thing here to my hand is sweet, ergo, This is fitting to be tasted. " Here we have a Syllogism the conclusion of which is in- controvertible logically, but the subject-matter of which re- mains no mere truth of abstract reasoning. It contains a concrete physical element affecting the sentient organism, which prompts ' movement ' in such a way that (assuming nothing to come in as a hindrance) the reasoner necessarily both recognises the truth of the conclusion and proceeds to eat the sweetmeat. " Bearing this characteristic of the practical syllogism in mind let us see how it accounts for Incontinence. Suppose (as is often the case in fact) there are in the mind not one, but two, universal judgments both equally true and both, as a rule, equally right to carry out in practical application, but which, owing to some ' accidental ' cause, are for the moment in opposition ; i.e., at this moment it is right to follow out the one, wrong to act according to the other. As universal judgments they are purely intellectual facts and neither of them can ' move ' (each of them Xeyet ov xivet), but, unfortunately for the poor weakling we are thinking of, the one he ought not to act according to is exemplified in some concrete sensible thing before him. This ' affects ' him, not intellectually but physically, it raises a feeling of pleasure and consequent desire, and the ' opposition ' or ' struggle ' becomes no longer the strife between two, as it were, distant voices saying respectively ' Come here ' and ' Go there,' but between one of those voices still appealing, ' Come here/ on the one side, and, on the other, a physical force which literally ' drags ' him in the opposite direction. ^ /zei> ovv Xeyei favyeiv TOVTO, ij 8' eTnOv^La aji. The problem, we remember, is, ' What moves the limbs ? ' and Feeling (excited by the definite object before him) can move the limbs, whereas intellectual truths, not exemplified in this manner, cannot. We have to remember too that what the incontinent 1 The substitution, a few lines infra, of the word f)8i> for the phrase yfvfo-dcu Set shows that the word 8tl has here the ordinary simple mean- ing it always bears in Aristotle, and has nothing to do with such a con- ception as that of ' ought '.