APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) CONDITIONS OF THE THINKABLE SYSTEMATISED; ALPHABET OF HUMAN THOUGHT. impossible); as A.) NEGATIVE (or (I.) NON-CONTRADICTION, (the law of things and of thought,) is-Nihil purum, The really Impossible. (Objective the Condition of tive.) there is violated II.) RELATIVITY, (the law of thought, not of things,) is-Nihil cogitabile, The Impossible to thought. (Subjec i.) Identity. ii.) Contradiction. iii.) Excluded Middle. (Knowledge; i.e. between Subject and Object, as the condition of Knowing; and here, while the Subject is always Self, the Object is either of Self (Subject-object) or of Not-Self (Object-object.) i.) SUBJECT AND OBJECT. (Instrinsic Qualitative: ii.) SUBSTANCE AND QUALITY. Contingent and Derivative. May be variously classified, but no classification can be here detailed. THINKING (employing that term as comprehending all our cognitive energies,) is of two kinds. It is either A) Negative or B) Positive. A.) Thinking is NEGATIVE, (in propriety, a negation of thought,) when Existence is not attributed to an object.* It is of two kinds; inasmuch as the one or the other of the conditions of positive thinking is violated. In either case, the result isNothing.+ It might be supposed that Negative thinking being a negation of thought is in propriety a negation therefore, absolutely, of all mental activity. But this would be erroneous. In fact, as Aristotle observes (Soph. Elench. c. xxxi. § 1.), every negation involves an affirmation, and we cannot think or predicate nonexistence, except by reference to existence. Thus even Negative thought is realised only under the condition of Relativity and Positive thinking. For example, we try to think-to predicate existence, in some way, but find ourselves unable. We then predicate incogitability, and if we do not always predicate, as an equivalent, (objective) non-existence, we shall never err. † (From Addenda to second edition)-(1853.) Lest in the sequel it be omitted, I shall here, in the outset, at least indicate, what, along with the philosophy of which it is the basis-the Philosophy of the Conditioned, has been strangely overlooked by metaphysicians: I mean the distinction of the Necessity of Thought into two kinds, the Positive and the Negative; the one the necessity of so thinking, (the impossibility of not so thinking,) determined by a mental Power; the other the necessity of not so thinking, (the impossibility of so thinking,) determined by a mental Impotence. Leibnitz was the first who, articulately at least, established the quality of Necessity, (the impossibility of not so thinking), as the criterion of our native or noetic or non-experiential notions and judgments. This was more fully developed and applied by Kant; and, with a few feeble reclamations, this part of the Critical Philosophy has been generally accepted wheresoever it has been adequately understood. In fact, the doctrine of necessity, the test of unacquired cognitions, may now be laid down as an acknowledged criterion, nay almost as a commonplace, in Metaphysic-out of England.-But Leibnitz, Kant, and subsequent philosophers, have not observed, that we must distinguish this Necessity as it proceeds from the one or from the other of two, and even two counter, sources; thus dividing it into two great categories-categories which fall themselves to be afterwards subdivided. For, 1°, we may not only be able, but be positively determined, to think one alternative, whilst impotent to conceive its counter; and 2°, we may be negatively unable to think one contradictory, and yet find ourselves equally impotent to conceive its opposite. The former, from a Power, is thus primarily inclusive and secondarily exclusive; the latter, from an Impotence, is thus simply and bilaterally exclusive. And while it has always been acknowledged, that of contradictories the one or the other must be, and be thought, as indiscriminately NECESSARY; we are brought by this novel doctrine to the further confession, that even of contradictories we may, however, not be able to realise in thought the discriminate POSSIBILITY of either. This distinction also affords us the all-important contrast of legitimate and ille |