If Mr. Russell thinks
this is a contradiction, I understand why the universe does not
please him. The contradiction would be real, undoubtedly, if we
suggested that the idea of good was at any time or in any relation the
idea of evil, or the intuition of right that of left, or the quality
of green that of yellow; these disembodied essences are fixed by the
intent that selects them, and in that ideal realm they can never have
any relations except the dialectical ones implied in their nature, and
these relations they must always retain. But the contradiction
disappears when, instead of considering the qualities in themselves,
we consider the things of which those qualities are aspects; for the
qualities of things are not compacted by implication, but are
conjoined irrationally by nature, as she will; and the same thing may
be, and is, at once yellow and green, to the left and to the right,
good and evil, many and one, large and small; and whatever verbal
paradox there may be in this way of speaking (for from the point of
view of nature it is natural enough) had been thoroughly explained and
talked out by the time of Plato, who complained that people should
still raise a difficulty so trite and exploded.[8] Indeed, while
square is always square, and round round, a thing that is round may
actually be square also, if we allow it to have a little body, and to
be a cylinder.
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