Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/297

Rh separated, but never as both at once; and therefore, even although words are brought together which express the latter, these words assert a process of thought which cannot be carried out. The consciousness of this infeasibility is the feeling of contradiction. The second law of thought, the principle of sufficient reason, would affirm that the above attributing or denying must be determined by something different from the judgment itself, which may be a (pure or empirical) perception, or merely another judgment. This other and different thing is then called the ground or reason of the judgment. So far as a judgment satisfies the first law of thought, it is thinkable; so far as it satisfies the second, it is true, or at least in the case in which the ground of a judgment is only another judgment it is logically or formally true. But, finally, material or absolute truth is always the relation between a judgment and a perception, thus between the abstract and the concrete or perceptible idea. This is either an immediate relation or it is brought about by means of other judgments, i.e., through other abstract ideas. From this it is easy to see that one truth can never overthrow another, but all must ultimately agree; because in the concrete or perceptible, which is their common foundation, no contradiction is possible. Therefore no truth has anything to fear from other truths. Illusion and error have to fear every truth, because through the logical connection of all truths even the most distant must some time strike its blow at every error. This second law of thought is therefore the connecting link between logic and what is no longer logic, but the matter of thought. Consequently the agreement of the conceptions, thus of the abstract idea with what is given in the perceptible idea, is, on the side of the object truth, and on the side of the subject knowledge.

To express the union or separation of two concept-spheres referred to above is the work of the copula, "is – is not." Through this every verb can be expressed by