INTRODUCTION.
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have been had it indulged generally in divisions of this description? It would have been where metaphysical philosophy is now.
All other systems make game of the laws of thought.§ 71. The confusion here pointed out and illustrated, has led all philosophers to make game of the laws of thought. Confounding the simply inconceivable by us with the absolutely inconceivable, they tell us that many things which are absolutely inconceivable we must nevertheless conceive to exist—that is to say, we must think what the laws of thinking (according to the showing of these philosophers) prevent us from thinking. We are called upon to think a thing to exist, which, in the same breath, they tell us we cannot think at all. In a word, they tell us that we can think what they tell us we cannot think; and what is that but making game of the laws of thought, and turning the whole code into ridicule? For example, the law is laid down broadly that we cannot think anything out of relation to ourselves; but before the sound of these words has died away, we are told that we must and do think things out of relation to ourselves. Surely there is something very wrong in that statement. Either the law which it lays down is not the law, or, if the law, it must be so binding that we cannot think things otherwise that as it prescribes. But philosophers do not like to be held too tightly to their own terms; they do not always relish