illusion? If non-contradiction be possible in reality, and impossible in thought, how can thought represent correctly the real? What sort of a proof does he give of this? He says: "If the only real objects of thought, even when we are nominally speaking of noumena, are phænomena, our thoughts are true when they are made to correspond with phænomena: and the possibility of this being denied by no one, the thinking process is valid whether our laws of thought are laws of absolute existence or not.' Suppose the mind incapable of thinking noumena, capable of thinking only phænomena as coming from noumena,-suppose the mind under no necessity of thinking these otherwise than in conformity to what they really are,—then we may refuse to believe that our generalisations from the phænomenal attributes of noumena can be applied to noumena in any other aspect, without in the least invalidating thought in regard to anything to which thought is applicable.2 In other words, contradictory attributes while they cannot be thought to coexist in the phænomenal sphere, and cannot so coexist, may yet be believed to coexist in the unknown noumenal (unimaginable) sphere of being. What is impossible in the phænomenal sphere (perceived and imaginable), is yet possible in the unperceived, unimaginable, sphere of being; and therefore, if actual, thus true, and this possibility in regard to the unimaginable would not render invalid the (opposite) law in the sphere of the phænomenal-perceivable and imaginable. In the first place, the belief in the possibility of the union of contradictories, whatever they might be, is precluded by the nature of the so-called thought or judgment which is said to unite them. Such a judgment is null, has no object, is not real as a judgment. And Mill, of all people, should be ready to acknowledge that we cannot believe where there is no object of belief. In the second place, if the law of noncontradiction be true or certainly true only in regard to the existence we perceive and think or imagine, but not in regard to the sphere of things beyond and above this, which yet produces the perceived and imagined or phænomenal, then our whole knowledge may be only an illusion; for this phænomenal given as non-contradictory may be the product of what is in itself really and essentially contradictory. 1 Examination, pp. 494, 495.

2 Ibid.

Therefore, truth and falsehood, yes and no, right and wrong, make after all but the dream of the finite mind, which is for ever barred from the certainty of true reality. And though our laws of thought are not invalidated by this supposition in the phænomenal sphere, the phænomenal sphere is itself but an uncertain symbolism, perhaps a delusive appearance of its very contradictory.

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE LAWS OF THOUGHT-THE DOCTRINE OF HEGEL

STATEMENT AND CRITICISM.

§ 179. The general ground on which Hegel attempts to abolish the laws of Identity and Non-Contradiction is the assumption that Identity and Difference, as inseparable in thought, are the same thing, or at least are mutually creative, -that identity is only identity as it is not difference, and difference is only difference as it is not identity, that each is not only itself but the special other of itself. This of course proceeds on the general assumption that what is necessarily connected in thought is so necessarily connected in existence, and that opposites are, in so far as real, mutually constitutive, in fact, mutually creative. The truth is, that while Identity and Difference are mutually implicative, alike in apprehension and thought, these are not thus mutually creative. They cannot be either apprehended or thought unless as relations already existing, and as existing in opposition as realities, while known together. Identity and Difference as mere abstract generalities are not possible, unless through special apprehension of identities and differences and they are nothing more than terminal abstractions, unless as realised in this or that specific identity or difference; and these are not possible "unless as forms of reality, which no thought of ours, or process of thought passing through us, can create. Further, if identity and difference disappear in a higher concept or reality, and this goes on without limit, or ad infinitum, there is no truth, philosophical, moral, or religious, in the world. And there is no basis possible even for this assertion itself. Identity and

Difference, truth, reality, and laws of thought, all thus ultimately disappear in a perpetual flow-in fact, a verbal chaos. The doctrine of Hegel may be thus summarily stated, almost in his own words :

(a) "It is very important to conceive identity in its truth, that is to say, not as identity purely abstract, but as enclosing difference in itself. .. Essence is only identity and radiation in itself in as far as it is negatively relating itself to itself, that is to say, repulsion of itself by itself: it contains therefore essentially the determination of difference. Difference, as the mutual relation of two contraries, is determinate difference, difference in itself properly called, opposition, the relation of positive and negative. The positive is only positive in so far as it is not negative, the negative is only negative in so far as it is not positive. Each being thus only because it is not the other, each radiates in the other and is only by the other; each of the different has not an other in general in face of it, but its other; each is the other of its other. Difference is thus contradiction, relation of contradictories which reciprocally suppose each other.

"The positive is the same thing as identity, but not true identity, that is to say, determined as not being the negative. The negative is none other than difference itself; it is difference with the determination of not being identity. It is supposed that there is an absolute difference in positive and negative; but the two are in themselves the same thing, and we might call the positive negative, and vice versa. Thus the same obligation is a positive good for the creditor, a negative good for the debtor ;-a way to the east is also a way to the west. The positive and negative are in essential relation, and reciprocally suppose each other. The north pole of the magnet cannot be without the south pole, the south pole without the north pole. Let one cut the magnet in two, we have not in the one piece the north pole, in the other the south pole. In the same way, electricity positive and electricity negative are not two separate fluids, subsisting the one without the other.

"Difference in itself gives place to the proposition,-of two opposed predicates only one can belong to the same thing, and to this,-between two contradictory predicates there is no middle. This principle of Contradiction expressly contradicts the principle of Identity, in so far that, according to the latter, the thing ought to be simple relation to itself, and that, according to the first, it ought to be relation to its opposite. It is by the intelligence which is proper to it that the understanding puts thus alongside of each other two contradictory principles without even comparing them. The understanding seeks to escape contradiction, and in doing so falls into it. It is pretended that A is necessarily +A or A, and that there is no third term. But this third term is A itself; it is found by this even that one affirms that it does not exist. If + A signifies a distance of six miles to the west, – A an equal distance to the east, we may efface the plus and the minus, the distance does not the less exist. In physics

the idea of polarity is current, and it contains a more true determination of opposition. In place of saying that there is no middle term between two contradictories, as the understanding does, it would rather be necessary to say that all is contradictory. . . Thus in nature, the acid is in itself at the same time the base, that is to say, its being is wholly being in relation with its contrary. The acid does not therefore rest quietly in the opposition; its tendency is to posit what is in itself, reuniting itself to the base. Contradiction is the essence of all life and all movement: it is the spring of universal activity, it moves the world, and it is ridiculous to say that it cannot be conceived.

"The positive is that difference, which is for itself, and which at the same time is in relation with its other. The negative is also for itself, and at the same time, as subsisting by itself, it is only a relation with its other."—(Logik, Encycl. § 115, 116, 119, 120, cf. Ott, Hegel, p. 192 et seq.)

Again (Logik, Part ii., p. 56), "Contrary and contradictory concepts -a difference which is here especially noted-lays the ground of the reflection - determination of difference, and opposition. They are looked upon as two special kinds, that is, each as firm for itself and valid against the other, without any thought of the dialectic and the inner nothingness of this distinction, as if that which is contrary must not be so severely determined as the contradictory."

66

Species are contrary, so far only as they are different, to wit, through the genus as their objective nature have they an in and for itself being standing; they are contradictory, in so far as they are exclusive. Each of these determinations for itself is, however, one-sided, and without truth: in either—or of the disjunctive judgment is placed their unity as their truth."—(Logik, p. 107.)

Again, "Formal thinking makes for itself the determinate ground proposition that contradiction is not thinkable; in fact, however, the thought of contradiction is the essential moment of the concept."(P. 342.)

$180. Now it is perfectly true that every cognition implies a relation, and that our highest concepts, logical and metaphysical, are known in relation to their contraries. We have thus being and non-being, substance and accident, cause and effect, and so on. We have light and shade, &c., in our sensible experience. But it does not follow, as Hegel assumes, that the one concept in the correlation produces the other, or that the necessary relation of the contraries or opposites implies the non-existence of their real opposition as factors in our experience. The knowledge of opposites is one, but the opposites known are not therefore one. These are two wholly different propositions.

§ 181. Identity is ambiguous, and of this ambiguity Hegel takes advantage :