FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121  
122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   >>   >|  
logic, I am well aware, is not very accurate or subtle; and I wish Mr. Russell had not left it to me to discover the connection between these two propositions. Green is an indefinable predicate, and the specific quality of it can be given only in intuition; but it is a quality that things acquire under certain conditions, so much so that the same bit of grass, at the same moment, may have it from one point of view and not from another. Right and left are indefinable; the difference could not be explained without being invoked in the explanation; yet everything that is to the right is not to the right on no condition, but obviously on the condition that some one is looking in a certain direction; and if some one else at the same time is looking in the opposite direction, what is truly to the right will be truly to the left also. If Mr. Russell thinks this is a contradiction, I understand why the universe does not please him. The contradiction would be real, undoubtedly, if we suggested that the idea of good was at any time or in any relation the idea of evil, or the intuition of right that of left, or the quality of green that of yellow; these disembodied essences are fixed by the intent that selects them, and in that ideal realm they can never have any relations except the dialectical ones implied in their nature, and these relations they must always retain. But the contradiction disappears when, instead of considering the qualities in themselves, we consider the things of which those qualities are aspects; for the qualities of things are not compacted by implication, but are conjoined irrationally by nature, as she will; and the same thing may be, and is, at once yellow and green, to the left and to the right, good and evil, many and one, large and small; and whatever verbal paradox there may be in this way of speaking (for from the point of view of nature it is natural enough) had been thoroughly explained and talked out by the time of Plato, who complained that people should still raise a difficulty so trite and exploded.[8] Indeed, while square is always square, and round round, a thing that is round may actually be square also, if we allow it to have a little body, and to be a cylinder. [Footnote 8: Plato, _Philebus_, 14, D. The dialectical element in this dialogue is evidently the basis of Mr. Russell's, as of Mr. Moore's, ethics; but they have not adopted the other elements in it, I mean the political and the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121  
122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
things
 

square

 

contradiction

 

qualities

 

nature

 
quality
 
Russell
 

explained

 
direction
 

condition


dialectical

 

yellow

 
intuition
 

indefinable

 
relations
 

verbal

 
compacted
 
disappears
 

paradox

 

implication


irrationally

 

conjoined

 

aspects

 

element

 

Philebus

 

Footnote

 

cylinder

 

dialogue

 

evidently

 

elements


political

 
adopted
 

ethics

 

talked

 

speaking

 
natural
 

complained

 
people
 

exploded

 
Indeed

difficulty
 

conditions

 
acquire
 
moment
 

invoked

 

difference

 
specific
 

predicate

 
accurate
 

subtle