#lesser logic

...to offer the idea that the contradiction introduced into the world of Reason by the categories of the Understanding is inevitable and essential was to make one of the most important steps in the progress of Modern Philosophy. But the more important the issue thus raised the more trivial was the solution. Its only motive was an excess of tenderness for the things of the world. The blemish of contradiction, it seems, could not be allowed to mar the essence of the world; but there could be no objection to attaching it to the thinking Reason, to the essence of mind. Probably, nobody will feel disposed to deny that the phenomenal world presents contradictions to the observing mind; meaning by ‘phenomenal’ the world as it presents itself to the senses and understanding, to the subjective mind. But if a comparison is instituted between the essence of the world and the essence of the mind, it does seem strange to hear how calmly and confidently the modest dogma has been advanced by one and repeated by others, that thought or Reason, and not the World, is the seat of contradiction.