CHAP. VII.

ON THE MATTER AND FORM OF THOUGHT.

THE distinction adopted between Matter and Form in common language, relatively to works of Art, will serve to illustrate the character of the corresponding distinction in Thought. The term Matter is usually applied to whatever is given to the artist, and consequently, as given, does not come within the province of the art itself to supply. The Form is that which is given in and through the proper operation of the art. In Sculpture, for example, the Matter is the marble in its rough state as given to the sculptor; the Form is that which the sculptor in the exercise of his art communicates to it". The distinction between Matter and Form in any mental operation is analogous to this. The former includes all that is given to, the latter all that is given by, the operation. In the division of notions, for example, whether performed by an act of pure thinking or not, the generic notion is that given to be divided; the addition of See Fries, System der Logik, §. 19. His division corresponds to the above, though based on a somewhat different principle.

the difference in the act of division constitutes the species. And accordingly, Genus is frequently designated by logicians the material, Difference, the formal part of the Species. So likewise in any operation of pure thinking, the Matter will include all that is given to and out of the thought; the Form is what is conveyed in and by the thinking act itself.

The same analogy may be carried on in relation to what are called material and formal processes of thinking. It may happen on certain occasions that the marble given to the sculptor is insufficient for the completion of the statue. It becomes necessary, therefore, to suspend the artistic process itself, in order to obtain additional material; and this provision of new material the artist does not undertake purely as a sculptor. So in relation to any process of thinking. The empirical data requisite for an act of conception, judgment, or reasoning, may be insufficient, and require the addition of fresh material not furnished by the mere act of thinking. The operation in this case is one of mixed or material thinking; i. e. of thinking preceded by an appeal to experience for the provision of further data; and this appeal is no part of the duty of the logician, as such. Whereas, if the materials originally given are alone sufficient to necessitate, in obedience to the laws of thought, an act of conception, judgment, or reasoning, the process is properly distinguished as one of pure or formal thinking.

Notwithstanding this analogy, it is in many respects important that the matter and form of a thought should not be confounded with material and formal thinking respectively. Thinking is not always formal because its product has form, nor does the presence of a form in the antecedent of thought always necessitate a formal process in consequence. The sculptor, to continue our image, may ultimately complete his work with all the form and finish of art: it does not therefore follow, that all his material must have been given to him at once in the first instance. Or he may have carved with exactness one subordinate figure of a group: it does not therefore follow, that his material is sufficient to enable him to complete the whole. The present chapter is intended to point out more clearly the distinction and relation between the form of thought and formal thinking.

The antithesis of matter and form,—the objective and the subjective,—the variable and the permanent, -the contingent and the necessary, runs through all the phenomena of consciousness. The manifold elements presented by any object of consciousness constitute the matter: the relations which the mind, acting by its own laws, institutes between the several elements as it combines them into an

object, constitute the form ". In this point of view, Space and Time are called by Kant the

See Kant, Kritik der r. V. p. 32. (ed. Rosenkranz.)

Forms of the Sensibility in general, external or internal; the objects of the former being necessarily regarded by the mind as lying out of ourselves in Space, the objects of the latter, as succeeding one another in Time. These may thus be regarded as the subjective conditions under which sensibility in general is possible. The same antithesis may be carried through those special acts of consciousness, in which the understanding operates, whether in conjunction with the presentative faculties, as in an act of mixed thinking; or representatively, as in pure thinking. A savage, to adopt an illustration of Kant's, sees a house in the distance, not knowing what it is. It is thus present to him only as an intuition in space. But the very same complex phenomenon is presented to a man who knows it to be a building designed for the habitation of men. To the same sensible data, the understanding now adds its own contribution, by which the several presentations of sense are combined into one whole, under the general notion of a house. The sensible attributes here constitute the matter; their union in a concept is the form.

In Thought, as in Intuition, there is thus a variable and a permanent, an objective and a subjective element, a matter given to the thinker, a form communicated by the thinking act. In respect of the matter, concepts differ one from Logik, Einleitung v.

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another, as being composed of this or that variety of given attributes. In respect of the form, all agree, as being a collection of attributes representing an object. To every concept, it is essential that it possess in some degree distinctness and clearness; that we should be conscious, that is, of a plurality of attributes discerned from each other, and of their union in a definite whole. Distinctness and Clearness are thus the two Forms, constituting the Concept as such: the given attributes are the Matter, distinguishing it as a concept of this object or of that. The former is determined, as we have seen in the last chapter, in accordance with the general laws of Contradiction and Identity: the other is contained in each case in the special data preliminary to the act of thought.

The matter and form of Judgments may be distinguished in the same manner as those of Concepts. The act of judging consists in regarding two given concepts as coexisting or not in one or more possible objects of intuition. The matter is thus given beforehand in the special concepts compared; and by this, one judgment is distinguished from another, as a judgment about this or that thing. The elements essential to all judgments as such, are, firstly, that one or more objects be compared under each concept; and, secondly, that those objects be pronounced identical or distinct. We have thus the two Forms of Quantity and Quality; the former being either