Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/502

 486 J. H. MUIRHEAD : that the synthetic unity of apperception is to our own lives which we have the advantage of seeing from inside. And since it thus views it from a standpoint which is merely external, knowledge can never represent the object so faith- fully as to attain its own ideal." l Let us be quite clear as to what it is in the above argu- ments that concerns us. We are not concerned with the question as to whether the ideal of complete knowledge is for us a possibility. To know completely the flower in the crannied wall, we must know the whole world besides, and this we may admit is and must remain for us an ideal. The question is whether the ideal is itself " ruined " by an inner contradiction. The above arguments are put forward to prove that it is by showing that both from the side of unity and diversity in realising its ideal knowledge must commit suicide. Now we may at once admit that this conclusion follows from the assumptions as to the nature of the unity and the diversity demanded by the ideal of knowledge on which both these arguments are based. Thus if, as is assumed in the former argument, the unity at which knowledge aims is one which is incompatible with the difference of subject and object, it follows of course that the attainment of the unity would involve the destruction of difference, and with it the ruin of knowledge as such. Similarly if we begin by assum- ing with Mr. McTaggart that the individuality of which we are in search is contained in something other than thought, it must of course remain so to the end so far as thought and knowledge are concerned. The ideal of thought is to think everything, but if everything is precluded by its nature as thing from entering into thought then well then by its nature it must be left out. But there is surely the prior question which on so important a matter might be worth asking, whether the unity and the differentiation which form the twofold aspect of the ideal are really of the nature supposed. With regard to the former of these points it is admitted, of course, that all knowledge is a process of unification : all judg- ment is synthetic. But it is equally of the essence of know- ledge to be the unification of differences : all judgment qua judgment is analytic. Finally, in being the one it is also the other. We are not to say judgment is synthetic and analytic; in being synthetic it is analytic. We cannot have the unity except at the price of the difference and vice versa. And 1 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, 198.