146 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



categories, are grounded in the being or reality that is appre 

 hended by our thought, and are produced by the former in the 

 latter. 



It is only because we conceive being or reality as endowed with 

 certain modes, as made determinate in some way or other, for the 

 concept of pure being as such is absolutely vague and indeter 

 minate, that we can predicate of it the conceptual content of this, 

 that, or the other, category. We cannot, for instance, make any 

 intelligible use of predicates taken from the category of quantity 

 in reference to mind, for we conceive mind as a sort of being or 

 reality not endowed with quantity, as other than quantitative. 

 It is only to material being, existing in space and time, that we 

 can apply predicates belonging to, or derived from, this cate 

 gory. 



And, conversely, we cannot make any predication whatever 

 about being or reality except in some category or other : &quot; That 

 which was not conceived as a substance, or a quality, or a state, 

 and so forth, would not be conceived at all ; . . . and therefore the 

 consideration of these distinctions belong to logic, since they char 

 acterize our thought about objects in general ; and though logic 

 is not interested in the indefinite variety of existing qualities 

 blue, green, sour, shrill, soft, etc. (because an object, in order to 

 be an object, need not have any one of these qualities in particular, 

 but only one or other) yet it is interested in the category of quality, 

 or in noticing that our object must have some quality or other : 

 in the category of relation, or in noticing that it must stand in 

 relations to other objects : and so on.&quot; 1 



Aristotle and the Scholastics after him assumed that this logical inquiry 

 into the highest and widest definite or determinate concepts used in our 

 interpretation of reality, i.e. in our logical judgments, was simultaneously 

 and eo ipso a determination of the modes or forms in which reality actually 

 exists. 2 



Perhaps this assumption that the categories of thought represent modes 

 of real being is unwarranted ? If that be so, then there is this other 

 alternative, that the categories are so many purely subjective equipments of 

 the mind&quot; primordial concepts of the pure understanding,&quot; as Kant (77) 

 called them, 3 a system of innate mental apparatus by means of which we 

 interpret or judge a something or other that is supposed to come from 



1 JOSEPH, op. cit., p. 45. 



2 &quot; The idea underlying Aristotle s scheme of the categories may be expressed 

 thus to discover the forms of existence which must be realized in some specific 

 way in the actual existence of anything whatsoever.&quot; ibid. 



3 &quot; Die StammbegrirTe des reinen Verstandes.&quot; Critique of Pure Reason. 



