CONTRADICTION AND REALITY. 3 fixed world of realism, which would after all not coincide with actual fact in the given variation and development of the latter. Logical Contradiction, then, is a characteristic of Reality so far as presented in the actual world of fact. In the form of pain, dissatisfaction, and unrest, it may almost be called itself an actual existent. It consists in an attempted synthesis, which fails owing to the inadequate adjustment of the contents employed ; and it is actual over the whole region of progressive action and cognition, which is equivalent to the region of finite experience. This view of its range is established by the fact of progress. 2. Our next step is to ascertain what form or spirit of difference survives when a logical contradiction is resolved. The point I would draw attention to is that we are here dealing with a survival of what was present in Logical Con- tradiction. Nothing is changed, except that what was attempted has been achieved. The contents are diverse, as they were ; they rush towards each other through the same rational impulse whether in its practical or in its intellectual form ; the difference is merely that now they have been re- adjusted, and can carry out their union. How are we to describe the form or spirit of their difference ? I may illustrate it is merely an illustration, for I do not wish to raise purely historical questions by Hegel's view of contradiction. It is familiar ground that Hegel has been accused of denying or disregarding the logical law which pronounces Logical Contradiction to be unthinkable, and that his best interpreters (Dr. McTaggart and Mr. Bradley) have cleared his reputation of this impiety. The dialectic, so far from disregarding the Law of Contradiction, rests, as they have pointed out, entirely upon it. It is because Con- tradiction is unthinkable and intolerable that a conjunction of judgments which makes their predicates irreconcilable demands a readjustment of contents and the formation of a new totality. Now, while I admit that this is contained in Hegel's view of Contradiction, I cannot but think that there is something more behind. Hegel obviously feels himself fundamentally in antagonism to the current formal view of Contradiction as merely unthinkable. No words are too strong for him to express his scorn of such an attitude. " What moves the world is Contradiction ; it is ridiculous to say that Contra- diction is unthinkable. What is true in this assertion only comes to this, that Contradiction cannot be final, and that by its own action it cancels while it maintains itself (aufhebt). The cancelled and maintained contradiction however is not
