Part 37

BRADLEY, Principles of Logic, p. 11.

Op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 75, 76.

BRADLEY, op. cit., pp. 4-6.

Op. cit., pp. 7, 8.

This study may be regarded as in some sense a development of pp. 7-10 of The Necessary and the Contingent in the Aristotelian System, published in 1896 by The University of Chicago Press. While quite independent in treatment, the two papers supplement each other.

The best special illustration of this truth with which I am acquainted is presented for the science of chemistry in an article by F. WALD, "Die Genesis der stöchiometrischen Grundgesetze," in Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie, Vol. XVIII (1895), pp. 337 ff.

H 99.

In allusion to fr. 90 (DIELS). DIELS finds in fr. 108 (fr. 18, BYWATER), [Greek: oti sophon esti pantôn kechôrismenon] the thought that God is the Absolute, comparing the [Greek: Nous] of Anaxagoras and the [Greek: chôristê idea] of Plato and the [Greek: ousia chôristê] of Aristotle. He assumes that [Greek: sophon]=[Greek: logos] and concedes great significance to the fragment. But this interpretation is utterly incompatible with everything else that we know of Heraclitus, and should be admitted only if it were the only one admissible. ZELLER discusses the fragment at length, Vol. I, p. 629, 1. If Diels's interpretation be accepted, the exposition above given of Heraclitus's logical position must be abandoned.

It has been, and in some quarters is still, the fashion to say that Heraclitus is the originator of the doctrine of relativity; but Zeller is quite right in denying the charge. No doubt his teachings lent themselves readily to such a development, but he did not so express himself. According to him the contrarieties coexist in the process.

Cf. RITTER-PRELLER, § 65c.

This, in a word, is the burden of my study of The Necessary and the Contingent in the Aristotelian System.

I have in preparation a study of the problem of physical interaction in Pre-Socratic philosophy which deals with this question in all its phases.

This statement is, of course, figurative, since Empedocles denied the existence of a void.

I cannot now undertake a defense of this statement, which runs counter to certain ancient reports, but must reserve a full discussion for my account of physical interaction.

The motive for making this assumption was clearly the desire to make of the [Greek: Nous] the prime mover in the world while exempting it from reaction on the part of the world, which would have been unavoidable if its nature had contained parts of other things. It is the same problem of "touching without being touched in return" that led Aristotle to a similar definition of God and of the rational soul. The same difficulty besets the absolutely "simple" soul of Plato's Phaedo and the causality of the Ideas.

ARISTOTLE, De Generatione et Corruptione, 323^b 10 f.

We have seen that this distinction was latent in Anaximenes's process of rarefaction and condensation. For other matters see CHAIGNET, Histoire de la Psychologie, Vol. I, p. 114, whose account, however, needs to be corrected in some particulars.

I say "perhaps" because ancient reports differ as to the precise relation of position and arrangement to the distinction between qualities, primary and secondary.

This is only another instance of what MR. VENN (Empirical Logic, p. 56) has wittily alluded to as "screwing up the cause and the effect into close juxtaposition."

Simplicius says [Greek: euthys meta to prooimion]; see DIELS, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1903), p. 347, l. 18.

Fr. 2, DIELS.

See DIELS, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, p. 343, l. 2; p. 344, l. 27.

320 C f.

Considerations of space as well as circumstances attending the immediate preparation of this discussion for the press have precluded any but the most general and casual reference to the recent literature of the subject. Much of this literature only imperfectly distinguishes the logical and psychological points of view, so that critical reference to it, unaccompanied by detailed restatement and analysis of the positions criticised, would be useless.

In order to avoid complicating the problems, we have here employed the common notion that the physical world, physical object, and property may be taken for granted as possible adequate contents of judgment, and that the problem is only as to the objectivity of economic and ethical contents. Of course we may, in the end, come to believe that the "physical" object is itself an economic construct, in the large sense of "economic;" that is, an instrument of an effective or successful experience. Thus in terms of the illustration used above, in the attitude of entertaining in a general way the plan of building a house of some sort or other, one may have before him various building materials the ascertained qualities of which are, it may be, socially recognized as in a general way fitting them for such a use. There is doubtless so much of real foundation for the common notion here referred to. But along with the definition of the plan in ethical and economic judgment, along with the determination actually to build a house, and a house of a certain specific kind, must go further determination of the means in their physical aspects, a determination which all the while reacts into the process of determination of the end. See below, p. 246, note 3.

In the moral life, as elsewhere, the distinction of deduction and induction is one of degree. There is but one type or method of inference, though some inferences may approach more closely than do others the limit of pure "subsumption."

See III below.

It is no part of the present view that the ends which enter into economic conflict are incapable of becoming organic and intrinsically interrelated members of the provisional system of life. On the contrary, the very essence of our contention is that adjustment established between two such conflicting ends in economic judgment is in itself ethical and a member of the provisional system of the individual's ends of life, and will stand as such, subject to modification through changes elsewhere in the system, so long as the economic conditions in view of which it was determined remained unchanged. The "mutual exclusiveness" of the ends in ethical deliberation is simply the correlate of a relative fixity in certain of the conditions of life. A man's command over the means of obtaining such things as books and fuel varies much and often suddenly in a society like ours from time to time; but, on the other hand, his physical condition, his intelligence, his powers of sympathy, and his spiritual capacity for social service commonly do not. Hence there can be and is a certain more or less definite and permanent comprehensive scheme of conduct morally obligatory upon him so far as the exercise of these latter faculties is concerned, but so far as his conduct depends upon the variable conditions mentioned, it cannot be prescribed in general terms, nor will any provisional ideal of moral selfhood admit any such prescriptions as integral elements into itself. The moral self is an ideal construct based upon these fixed conditions of life--conditions so fixed that the spiritual furtherance or deterioration likely to result from certain modes of conduct involving and affecting them can be estimated directly and with relative ease by the "ethical" method of judgment. Implied in such a construct is, of course, a reference to certain relatively permanent social and also physical conditions. In so far as society and physical nature, and for that matter the individual's own nature, are variable, these are the subjects of "scientific" or "factual" judgments incidental to the determination of problems by the "economic" method--problems, that is, for which no general answer, through reference to a more or less definite and stable working concept of the self, can be given. Thus our knowledge of the physical universe is largely, if not chiefly, incidental to and conditioned by our economic experience. Again, our economic judgments are in every case determinative of the self in situations in which, as presented by (perhaps even momentarily) variable conditions, physical, social, or personal, the ethical method is inapplicable. In a socialistic state, in which economic conditions might be more stable than in our present one, many problems in consumption which now are economic in one sense would be ethical because admitting of solution by reference to the type of self presupposed in the established state program of production and distribution. Even now it is not easy to specify an economic situation the solution of which is absolutely indifferent ethically. There is a possibility of intemperance even in so "æsthetic" an indulgence as Turkish rugs.