Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/196

182 G. E. MOORE : other : and then the old conclusions follow. Nor, finally, is a vicious circle involved in our own attempt to establish con- clusions with regard to truth, by rules of logic in which that conception is presupposed. For our conclusion is that truth is itself a simple concept ; that it is logically prior to any proposition. But a vicious circle occurs only where a pro- position is taken as prior to a concept, or a more complex proposition (one involving more concepts) as prior to one which is more simple. Valid logical processes would seem to be of two kinds. It is possible to start from a complex proposition and to consider what propositions are involved in it. In this case the latter must always be more simple than the former ; and they may be true, although the former is false. Or it is possible to start from a more simple pro- position and to deduce one that is more complex, by succes- sive additions of concepts ; which is the properly deductive procedure exhibited in the propositions of Euclid : and in this case the premiss must be true, if the conclusion is so. It may be well to state that both procedures are synthetic, in the sense that the results arrived at are different from the premisses, and merely related to them. In a vicious circle, on the other hand, the two procedures are confused. A result arrived at by the former of the two processes just described, is regarded as involving the truth of its premiss. Thus, when we say that the conceptual nature of truth is involved in logical procedure, no vicious circle is committed, since we do not thereby presuppose the truth of logical procedure. But when an existent is said to be involved in truth, a vicious circle is committed, since the proposition " Something is true," in which " Something exists " is supposed to be involved, must itself be true, if the latter is to be so. It seems necessary, then, to regard the world as formed of concepts. These are the only objects of knowledge. They cannot be regarded fundamentally as abstractions either from things or from ideas ; since both alike can, if anything is to be true of them, be composed of nothing but concepts. A thing becomes intelligible first when it is analysed into its constituent concepts. The material diversity of things, which is generally taken as starting-point, is only derived ; and the identity of the concept, in several different things, which appears on that assumption as the problem of philosophy, will now, if it instead be taken as the starting- point, render the derivation easy. Two things are then seen to be differentiated by the different relations in which their common concepts stand to other concepts. The opposition