For
example, that word Omniscient, as implying infinite knowledge, impresses
me as being a word with a delusive air of being solid and full, when it
is really hollow with no content whatever. I am persuaded that knowing
is the relation of a conscious being to something not itself, that the
thing known is defined as a system of parts and aspects and
relationships, that knowledge is comprehension, and so that only finite
things can know or be known. When you talk of a being of infinite
extension and infinite duration, omniscient and omnipotent and perfect,
you seem to me to be talking in negatives of nothing whatever.
1.8. LOGIC STATIC AND LIFE KINETIC.
There is another infirmity of the mind to which my attention has been
called by an able paper read this spring to the Cambridge Moral Science
Club by my friend Miss Amber Reeves. In this she has developed a
suggestion of Mr. F.C.S. Schiller's. The current syllogistic logic rests
on the assumption that either A is B or it is not B. The practical
reality, she contends, is that nothing is permanent; A is always
becoming more or less B or ceasing to be more or less B.
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