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CHAPTER V

LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY-THE WISDOM OF GOD

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HE science of logic, being the science of thought, plainly does not rest on, or begin from, any mere assumption or hypothesis, but starts from plain, clear, self-evident matters of fact.

There are no two matters of fact more certain than that I think' and 'I am.' I do not infer that I am from the fact that I think, nor that I think from the fact that I am. Each of these two facts stands firmly and indubitably on a third, namely, I am sure beyond all doubt that I know I think and that I know that I am. I or Ego, think or thought, am or being, know or knowledge, are the four terms which it is the business of logic to explain and whose essential relation it must show. All four, however, are thoughts, and as such, are matters of fact in human experience, or in other words in human cognition; all thoughts are matters of experience, whether true or false. Of course, the business of logic deals only indirectly with error or the untrue-its real province is to determine, What is Truth? or, in other words, What is Science ? for whatever is called science, but is not in its real nature True, is only fuel for the fire.'

There is a wide difference between elementary and advanced science. The former is not untrue because it is not advanced, but advanced always implies

elementary science. Furthermore, however advanced a man's knowledge of any science may be, he is always obliged to be using his most elementary knowledge. For instance, in arithmetic he is always adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing; or in geometry he is always dealing with points, lines, planes, circles, triangles, squares, oblongs and curves, however advanced the problem to be solved. So in the science of logic, seeking for an understanding of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ, he is always dealing with notions, judgments, and syllogisms in the manifold forms of thought, understanding, and reason or ideas.

As science begins in seeking to know the relation in matters of fact, these latter are, so far, elementary science. It is of the utmost importance to recognize distinctly that all matters of fact are such only because they are essentially relations of ideas. There are no facts devoid of ideas, and facts only become scientific knowledge when the ideas and the relations they involve are clearly brought to light. Burke said, 'One fact is worth a thousand arguments,' but we say, one fact explained is worth a thousand unexplained. It is a gross error to proclaim that only mathematics involves relations of ideas. Every sense-fact rests ultimately on logical ideas; if this were not so, no branch of physical science would be possible. Thus the science of logic as the science of thought, ideas, judgments and syllogisms is the metaphysic of physics; the science of thought is also the metaphysic of every branch of mathematics. Indeed, apart from thought, science is an idle name. We have seen that matters of fact and relations of ideas stand or fall together. The one is nowhere without the other; for as Dr. Stirling says: Even in mathematics there is eyesight sensuous quite as

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well as eyesight intellectual, and the difference between them is, that the one is but sight, the other insight.' Without both sight and insight the whole estate of geometry' would be, as it were, a blank. All ordinary concrete existences-bricks, stones, mortar, mud-imply relations of ideas quite as apodictic as any relations in mathematics. Yet the most fundamental and vital of all questions is, What is the full import or meaning of 'I think' and 'I am.' In the same reference Kant asks, 'How is experience as science possible? 'How are à priori synthetic judgments possible?' He endeavours to answer these questions in his Transcendental Logic. He tells us, 'Our cognition has, on the part of the mind, two sources,' and that neither sense-perceptions without notions, nor notions without sense-elements, are capable of furnishing a finished perception,' pure perceptions (space and time) or pure notions are alone possible à priori; empirical ones only à posteriori,' for 'in all the Rational Theoretic Sciences Synthetic à priori Judgments are present as Principles.' 'I call all cognition transcendental which is occupied not so much with objects, as with the process by which we come to know them, in so far as that process has an à priori element.' Consequently, 'the sure criteria of à priori cognition are necessity and strict universality.' The result, so far, is based on what he names sensation, the matter of sensecognition, while pure notions (categories) constitute the à priori form under which an object in general must be thought, so with Kant, Thoughts without a content of perception,' are void; ' perceptions, without a focus of notions, are blind.' As yet, with him, perceptions and notions are outside and independent of each other. His aim is to show how their conjunction is possible, and for this purpose synthetic

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judgments à priori are necessary. His only means of conjoining notions and perceptions is imagination. His vast machinery of Schemata is a fiasco if the unity is not already essentially one with his original synthetic unity of apperception,' the I think,' which he calls the transcendental unity of self-consciousness.' To save his synthetic unity of imagination from being too palpable a fiasco, he brings in the concept of Time (though pure time does not itself, empirically or à priori, in any way act on objects). 'Ideas, in matters of fact, are relations of substance, causality, and reciprocity and these cannot be separated from motion, impenetrability, and inertia,' and yet Kant rejects these latter because they are not quite pure and independent of empirical sources.' But most surprising of all-he reduces the Ego-I think, I am (and therewith the reality of personality), to the simple reflection,' as Kant himself names it, which is neither perception nor notion, but a mere consciousness falsely converted into a thing.' Why cannot the real substantial personality of man be proved à priori? Simply because he holds that man in his thought is not infinite, and therefore does not and cannot step beyond the world of sense,' whereas man is an Ego, a Person, just because he in thought is infinite and transcends in immediate self-consciousness all sense limits. But that, says Kant, would be to have penetrated into the sphere of the noumena '—to which we may add, this involves, further, a knowledge of the essential unity of phenomena and noumena, that is, of things-in-themselves, which, again, involves a knowledge of God in spirit and in truth: as Christ said, 'Ye shall know that I am in My Father and ye in Me and I in you,' and ‘the words (thoughts, notions, ideas) I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life,' all of which to know

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'is life eternal.' Therefore to know truly matters of fact (phenomena, existences) is to know truly 'relations of ideas.' So, if God created the world and the finite spirit of man, then all created things (matters of fact) are the manifestations of matters of sense-sight and of intellectual insight, for when their true meaning is understood, they are seen to be relations of God's Ideas. Man, being a rational being, sense-sight and reason-sight are with him in essential unity, though through lack of caution he often reasons and acts illogically. (To reason illogically is not reason.) The logical error of Kant, as already noted, was that he treated sense-thought and the à priori notions of intellect as if they somehow existed independently of each other until brought into unity by what he calls the transcendental synthesis of imagination.' Logical thought with him is a mere abstract empty form; it abstracts from all matters of knowledge.' Yet in spite of his depreciation of the Ego, he regards it as the seat and source of all his judgments, categories, and à priori cognitions. Indeed, his transcendental logic is deduced from the Ego. Understanding is a function of the Ego, and judgments are functions of the understanding; and Reason is the function of the Ego that conjoins all judgments, notions, categories into syllogisms of necessity under an intuitive or perceptive understanding that knows the objects of sense in the same act of consciousness in which it knows itself as universal (infinite) thought, for man's thought and knowledge are never purely subjective and finite. Thus it is manifest that if man knows what an original or intuitive perception is, it belongs as truly to him as to God. Kant says the problem proper pure reason is, 'How are à priori synthetic judgments possible?' Now human thought is essentially

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