In arguing this dialectic thesis, one must
avoid slipping from the logical into the physical
point of view. It would be easy, in taking
a concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to
choose one in which the letter M should stand
for a collective noun of some sort, which noun,
being related to L by one of its parts and to
N by another, would inwardly be two things
when it stood outwardly in both relations.
Thus, one might say: 'David Hume, who
weighed so many stone by his body, influences
posterity by his doctrine.' The body and the
doctrine are two things, between which our
finite minds can discover no real sameness,
though the same never covers both of them.
103
And then, one might continue: 'Only an Absolute
is capable of uniting such a non-identity.'
We must, I say, avoid this sort of example, for
the dialectic insight, if true at all, must apply
to terms and relations universally. It must be
true of abstract units as well as of nouns collective;
and if we prove it by concrete examples
we must take the simplest, so as to avoid
irrelevant material suggestions.
Taken thus in all its generality, the absolutist
contention seems to use as its major
premise Hume's notion 'that all our distinct
perceptions are distinct existences, and that
the mind never perceives any real connexion
among distinct existences.
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