106 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



has, however, not yet been mentioned. This is the so called 

 'law of contradiction,' w r hich Descartes and his successors ac- 

 cepted as self-evident, and which Hegel is supposed to have called 

 in question. For such an interpretation of his position, Hegel 

 is himself largely to blame; but it is very misleading none the 

 less. So far from being invalidated, the law of contradiction is 

 the one moving principle of the whole dialectic, not only in pure 

 thought, but in the natural and social orders. Not only have we 

 here no break with rationalism, but there is a bond of union which 

 is worthy of most careful examination. 



The current interpretation has arisen, in the first place, natu- 

 rally enough from Hegel's deep-seated contempt for the school- 

 logic that he found in possession of the field. There was a 

 precious bit of truth contained in it the classification of the 

 syllogistic moods, for example but that might all be expressed 

 in a couple of pages. The rest was 'pure fudge,' and he seldom 

 lost an opportunity for pouring his contempt upon it. Almost 

 inevitably, he went too far. The particular form which his ex- 

 cess took was given by his weakness for reading new meanings 

 into old formulae. Generally, indeed, the meanings thus im- 

 ported were deep speculative truths, which the idioms of lan- 

 guage and the dogmas of religion unconsciously contained a 

 mode of interpretation which Hegel's evolutionary theory of the 

 relation of thought to the lower forms of consciousness was well 

 adapted to support. But on occasion he could as easily read-in 

 all manner of untruth. Thus in criticising the 'law of identity' 

 (A is A), he interprets it as an affirmation of the externality 

 of relations; and the 'law of the excluded middle' (A is either 

 B or not-B) he similarly interprets as declaring that all meaning 

 consists in the relation of contradiction. Finally, the law of 

 contradiction (A is not not- A) he finds to mean that a contra- 

 diction is unthinkable ; whereas to himself the truth is that it is 

 not permanently thinkable, for when a thought is shown to contra- 

 dict itself it inevitably undergoes some modification which re- 

 solves the contradiction. Now it is true, that Hegel takes issue 



