Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/15

NEW SERIES. No. 57.] [JANUARY, 1906. MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY I. CONTRADICTION AND REALITY. BY BERNARD BOSANQUET. THE purpose of this paper is to insist on the familiar view which treats Negativity as a fundamental characteristic of the Real ; to exhibit this view in connexion with one or two points in logical theory, and to insist that its value depends on the principle being pressed home in its full force. 1. I start, then, from what I take to be the nature of pure formal or logical Contradiction. The crucial point seems to be that no predicates are intrinsically contrary to one another. They only become so by the conditions under which they are drawn together. Contradiction consists in " differents " being ascribed to the same term, while no distinction is alleged within that term such as to make it capable of receiving them. This is Plato's law of Contradiction what does or suffers "opposites " (it is enough to say 'differents ') in the same relation must in itself be two and not one, and it is the root of his distinction between Opinion or Appearance and Know- ledge or Reality. It is a formal contradiction if you say, " This colour is both beautiful and ugly, i.e., not-beautiful ". It ceases to be a contradiction if you say, " This colour by day- light is beautiful and by candlelight is ugly ". Are not, it may be asked, those terms intrinsically contrary which can in no case be affirmed of one another, such as the circle and the square ? Why, no. They do not impede one another or the process of thought unless we bring them together in a special form, to which their content is inadequate. They may quite well be conjoint predicates of the same complex 1