Reformed Logic / A System Based on Berkeley's Philosophy with an Entirely New Method of Dialectic

by D. B. McLachlan

Sphericity of the Earth. The geographical synthesis is not always formed on the pattern of a natural association. That is the first and most obvious shape to give it, and for thousands of years it appears to have answered the topographical needs of mankind. But as exploration extended it was found that the associative theory did not in some cases afford true preconception. If we travel far enough in any fixed direction we shall return to the point from which we started. This could not have been predicted from a synthesis formed on the model of a landscape. Such a return however takes place in the objects denominated spheres, and so the spherical instead of the flat form has been conceptually given to the geographical concretion. That is all that is meant by saying that the world is round. There is no world, as the mystical realist—projecting outwards his mental synthesis—imagines. There is only a scheme of spherical positions in the intellect, which facilitates the recollection of places and enables us to foresee the shortest and easiest way of reaching—i.e. experiencing places. The concretion is true inasmuch as the prediction is found to coincide with real experience. But that by no means implies that the places exist except when perceived in minds.

XXVI—SEQUENCE

Sequence is a series most resembling a procession of objects in a natural group (second category). It differs therefrom in that the objects cannot be seen together. It differs from concretion in that the order in which the objects appear cannot be altered, or if they are human and alterable we cease to treat them as a sequence. They no longer have the predictive value which moves us to form artificial groups of objects.

Satisfactory examples of reasoning in sequence are less numerous than might be supposed. It is a poor category for argument. Series either occur with perfect regularity, like the seasons of the year, phases of the moon, &c., and then they rapidly become mere recollections and lose the problematical character essential to a true inference, or the connection between the objects is too casual for argumentative purposes. Darwin's theory of the formation of coral atolls is a fine argument in sequence, but the application of this theory to reefs not examined by him is hardly uncertain enough to be an argument. It is the first sequential inference that is valid—the rest are foregone conclusions.

Geology supplies some good sequences. It has been noticed, for instance, that the sea leaves ripple-marks on sandy beaches, and stones with similar marks have been found at a distance from the sea; it is a valid sequential inference that the marks in the latter case have also been formed by the action of the waves. Here the difference in locality between the two compared series—the modern complete and the ancient incomplete—supplies that slight element of doubt essential to an argument.

So as regards the mode of making ancient flint tools: it has been found that tools exactly similar to the ancient can now be made with the simplest possible means, and it is a true argument to infer that the ancient implements were made by these means. The conclusion is highly probable without being infallibly certain, and that is what a dialectical conclusion ought to be.

We may admit that some of the astronomical sequences are forms of reasoning, for they were such to their first discoverers, and to minds not thoroughly conversant with them they are still in the nature of predictions that might fail of accomplishment. Political, financial, and sporting forecasts are sequential arguments, and we may also include speculations on the future states of all growing organisms and developing institutions.

Time. The intervals between the objects of a sequence are imagined after the model of lateral intervals in association. This is Time. Like space it is mere blanks in experience, though treated by realists as external and self-subsisting. It can be measured by reference to objects on whose sequential recurrence we have the most reliance, such as the phases of the moon, the positions of the sun in the ecliptic, the movements of the hands of a clock or the chiming of its bells. Abstract or unbounded time is called 'eternity'; like abstract space it is a refined form of nothing. Time and space are usually coupled together as if co-ordinate, but eternity is the co-ordinate of space. Time is divided sequence and would correspond to materially divided space, that is, space with objects in it at regular intervals.

Matter, space, and time are the three pillars of the realistic world. We have now seen what they are made of. Matter is a general idea compiled by ourselves from phenomenal consciousness. It is no substance—only an average. Space has even less reality. It is first the interval between two objects in association; then this interval is used metaphorically as an expression and measure of perspective decadence. Time is an application of the same associative interval to express the blanks between objects in sequence. Space and time are thus pure nullities—negatives with positive names. These three notions being exploded as entities, there remain as a residuum of true fact and the starting-point of philosophy—minds, their energies, and their consciousness. This is a very ancient triad.

Science constantly confounds sequence and causation. We are told that the moon causes eclipses of the sun, that heat causes objects to expand, that a seal causes an imprint. This is a metaphor from human causation, and the expression is now so rooted in language that it would hardly be possible to introduce a more correct phraseology. Yet it is as incorrect as to say that one o'clock causes two o'clock, or that daylight causes darkness. The confusion has arisen from the fact that both sequence and causation deal with fixed inconvertible series, but only in the latter is there real power exerted to produce the effect. Material things and their apparent effects are due to a cause lying behind both.