THREE:It was from the initiative of Socrates that logic received this direction. By insisting on the supreme importance of definition, he drew away attention from the propositions which add to our knowledge, and concentrated it on those which only fix with precision the meaning of words. Yet, in so doing he was influenced quite as much by the spirit of the older physical philosophy, which he denounced, as by the necessities of the new humanistic culture, which he helped to introduce. His definitions were, in truth, the reproduction, on a very minute scale, of those attempts to formulate the whole universe which busied the earliest Ionian speculation. Following the natural tendency of Greek thought, and the powerful attraction of cosmic philosophy, an effort was speedily made to generalise and connect these partial defini378tions until they grew into a system of universal classification. It was when, under the influence of a new analysis, this system threatened to fall to pieces, that a rudimentary doctrine of judgment first made its appearance. The structure of a grammatical sentence was used to explain how objective ideas could, in a manner, overlap and adhere to one another. Hence propositions, which, as the expression of general truths, were destined to become the beginning and end of thought, remained at first strictly subordinated to the individual concepts that they linked and reconciled.But if even so little as this remains unproved, what are we to think of the astounding assertion, that Aristotles theory of a creative reason, fragmentary as that theory is left, is the answer to all materialistic theories of the universe. To Aristotle, as to a subtle Scottish preacher,264 the real pre-supposition of all knowledge, or the thought which is the prius of all things, is not the individuals consciousness of himself as individual, but a thought or self-consciousness which is beyond all individual selves, which is the unity of all individual selves, and their objects, of all thinkers and all objects of thought.265 How can materialism or anything else be possibly refuted by a theory which is so obscurely set forth that no two interpreters are able to agree in their explanation of it? And even were it stated with perfect clearness and fulness, how can any hypothesis be refuted by a mere dogmatic declaration of Aristotle? Are we back in the Middle Ages that his ipse dixit is to decide questions now raised with far ampler means of discussion than he could possess? As to Principal Cairds metaphysics, we have no wish to dispute their theoretic accuracy, and can only admire the liberality of a Church in which propositions so utterly destructive of traditional orthodoxy are allowed to be preached. But one thing we are certain of, and that is, that whether or not they are consistent with Christian theism, they are utterly inconsistent with Aristotelian principles. Which is the thought or self-consciousness referred to, a possibility or an actuality? If the former, it is not a prius, nor is it the creative reason. If the latter, it cannot transcend all or any individual selves, for, with Aristotle, individuals are the sole reality, and the supreme being of his system is pre-eminently individual; neither can it unify them, for, according to Aristotle, two things which are two in actuality cannot be one in actuality.266
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Aliquam aut tenetur, amet earum quia eligendi obcaecati. Repudiandae id illum, vero iste enim reprehenderit quaerat, harum pariatur ipsa nulla tempora ex ratione illo assumenda libero ea, delectus vitae, expedita optio porro.