separated by distinction and analysis, and, one after another, can thus be brought forward as ideal predicates. This assertion holds of that immediate sense of a special reality, which we found above in the character of each felt complex. There is, in brief, no fragment of the “this” such that it cannot form the object of a distinction. And hence the “this,” in the first place, is mere experience throughout; and, in the second place, throughout it may be called intelligible. It owns no aspect which refuses to become a quality, and in its turn to play the part of an ideal predicate.[1]
But it is easy here to deceive ourselves and to fall into error. For taking a given whole, or more probably selecting one portion, we begin to distinguish and to break up its confused co-existence. And, having thus possessed ourselves of definite contents and of qualities in relation, we call on our “this” to identify itself with our discrete product. And, on the refusal of the “this,” we charge it with stubborn exclusiveness. It is held to possess either in its nature a repellent content, or something else, at all events, which is intractable. But the whole conclusion is fallacious. For, if we have not mutilated our subject, we have at least added a feature which originally was not there—a feature, which, if introduced, must of necessity burst the “this,” and destroy it from within. The “this,” we have seen, is a unity below relations and ideas; and a unity, able to develope and to harmonize all distinctions, is not found till we arrive at ultimate Reality. Hence the “this” repels our offered predicates, not because its nature goes beyond, but rather because that nature comes short. It is not more, we may say, but less than our distinctions.
And to our mistake in principle we add probably an error in practice. For we have failed probably
- ↑ Compare here p. 175, and Principles of Logic, chapter ii.
