Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/164

 150 J. ELLIS MCTAGGABT : does not seem a very fortunate name. For the category, as we shall see, is subdivided into Cognition Proper and Volition, and Cognition is scarcely a word of sufficient generality to cover Volition as a subspecies. If the category was to be named from its concrete example at all, perhaps Consciousness might have been more suitable. If we take all reality, for the sake of convenience, as limited to three individuals, A, B and C, and suppose them to be conscious, then the whole will be reproduced in each of them. A will, as conscious, be aware of himself, of B, and of C, and of the unity which joins them in a system. And thus the unity is within each individual. At the same time, the unity is not in the individuals as isolated. For the whole point of saying that the unity is for A, is that it exists both out of him and in him. To recur to our example, the essence of consciousness is that the contents of consciousness purport to be a representation of something else than itself. (In cases of error, indeed, the contents of consciousness have no external counterpart. But then, as we shall see later on, it is only in so far as consciousness is not erroneous that it is an example of this category.) Thus the unity is at once the whole of which are parts the individuals, and also completely present in each indi- vidual. Of course it is not in the individuals in the same manner as the individuals are in it. But this is not to be expected. The dialectic cannot prove that contradictions are not contradictory ; and, if it did, it would destroy all thought. Its work is to remove contradictions, and this it accomplishes, when it meets the demand that the unity shall be in the individuals and the individuals in the unity, by showing that both are true, though in different ways. The unity is now, as it is required by the categor}' to be, the whole nature of each individual. In so far as we regard an individual as merely cognitive, and in so far as his cog- nition is perfect (and both these conditions would be realised when we were judging him under the category of Cognition), his whole nature would consist in the conscious reproduction of the system of which he is a part. This does not involve the adoption of the view that the mind is a tabula rasa, and that it only receives passively impressions from outside. However the cognition may be produced, and however active the part which the mind itself may take in its pro- duction, the fact remains that the cognition, when produced and in so far as perfect, is nothing but a representation of reality outside the cognitive mind.