Page:The Idealistic Reaction Against Science (1914).djvu/134

 the rest? May not Hegel be right in assigning to contradiction a place in the very heart of the idea, and in looking npon it as the germ from which its development springs? When we assert with Bradley that finite thought is an appearance, we can no longer consistently regard the principle of contradiction as an absolute criterion any more than any other logical axiom. If logical principles be set up as judges of reality, we grant by implication the value of finite thought, judgment, and human reason. On the other hand, if the unconditioned value of the axioms be granted, it is not a necessary inference, as Bradley, following in the footsteps of Herbart and the ancient Eleatics, would have us believe, that movement and change are illusory, because they contradict the laws governing our thoughts. Multiplicity and transformation, as we receive them directly from intuition, are not contradictory in themselves, the contradiction exists only between our one-sided concepts. We may resolve movement as presented to us by intuition into abstract elements, but in that case we must bear in mind that each one of these elements is but a partial view, a limit which we ourselves have laid down in order to facilitate analysis and research, and which does not correspond to any real division. Thus, on the one hand, if we isolate certain persistent and uniform elements from the process of change which we apprehend by means of immediate intuition, we may state that body remains unchanged; if, on the other hand, we look at it from another point of view, and introduce only varying elements into the idea, regarded in abstraction from the complex of intuitive data, we should be led to a diametrically opposite conclusion. Who, however, can fail to see that the opposition in such a case is the artificial creation of our partial view? Change is in no way contradictory to the principles of human intellect; it is true that the birth of the new amid the unceasing flux of experience eludes the grasp of our abstract concepts, which are constrained to sacrifice the wealth of mind and nature