sure of the ground it goes upon? But if the reader will follow me, I think I can show him that the mere finitude of the mind is a more difficult thesis to support than its infinity.
It would be well if I could ask the reader to tell me what he means by ‘finite.’ As that can not be, I must say that finite is limited or ended. To be finite is to be some one among others, some one which is not others. One finite ends where the other finite begins; it is bounded from the outside, and can not go beyond itself without becoming something else, and thereby perishing.[1]
‘The mind,’ we are told, ‘is finite; and the reason why we say it is finite is that we know it is finite. The mind knows that itself is finite.’ This is the doctrine we have to oppose.
We answer, The mind is not finite, just because it knows it is finite. ‘The knowledge of the limit suppresses the limit.’ It is a flagrant self-contradiction that the finite should know its own finitude; and it is not hard to make this plain.
Finite means limited from the outside and by the outside. The finite is to know itself as this, or not as finite. If its knowledge ceases to fall wholly within itself, then so far it is not finite. It knows that it is limited from the outside and by the outside, and that means it knows the outside. But if so, then it is so far not finite. If its whole being fell within itself, then, in knowing itself, it could not know that there was anything outside itself. It does do the latter; hence the former supposition is false.
Imagine a man shut up in a room, who said to us, ‘My faculties are entirely confined to the inside of this room. The limit of the room is the limit of my mind, and so I can have no knowledge whatever of the outside;’ should we not answer, ‘My dear sir, you contradict yourself. If it were as you say, you could not know of an outside, and so, by consequence, not of an inside, as such. You should be in earnest and go through with your doctrine of “relativity.”’
To the above simple argument I fear we may not have done
- ↑ We have not to dwell on the inherent contradiction of the finite. Its being is to fall wholly within itself; and yet, so far as it is finite, so far is it determined wholly by the outside.
