te is of the utmost consequence. Such an implicate
there must always be under an all-pervading Law of Thought which has
not yet been named, but which may be called tentatively the law of
Homogeneous Counter-relativity. The title, one hopes, is sufficiently
technical-looking: though cumbrous, it is descriptive. The law itself
is simple, and may be thus stated and explained.

_The Law of Homogeneous Counter-relativity._

Every positive in thought has a contrapositive, and the
positive and contrapositive are of the same kind.

The first clause of our law corresponds with Dr. Bain's law of
Discrimination or Relativity: it is, indeed, an expansion and
completion of that law. Nothing is known absolutely or in isolation;
the various items of our knowledge are inter-relative; everything is
known by distinction from other things. Light is known as the opposite
of darkness, poverty of riches, freedom of slavery, in of out; each
shade of colour by contrast to other shades. What Dr. Bain lays stress
upon is the element of difference in this inter-relativity. He bases
this law of our knowledge on the fundamental law of our sensibility
that change of impression is necessary to consciousness. A long
continuance of any unvaried impression results in insensibility to it.
We have seen instances of this in illustrating the maxim that
custom blunts sensibility (p. 74). Poets have been beforehand with
philosophers in formulating this principle. It is expressed with the
greatest precision by Barbour in his poem of "The Bruce," where he
insists that men who have never known slavery do not know what freedom
is.

Thus contrar thingis evermare
Discoverings of t' other are.

Since, then, everything that comes within our consciousness comes as
a change or transition from something else, it results that our
knowledge is counter-relative. It is in the clash or conflict of
impressions that knowledge emerges: every item of knowledge has its
illuminating foil, by which it is revealed, over against which it is
defined. Every positive in thought has its contrapositive.

So much for the element of difference. But this is not the whole of
the inter-relativity. The Hegelians rightly lay stress on the common
likeness that connects the opposed items of knowledge.

"Thought is not only _distinction_; it is, at the same time,
_relation_.[1] If it marks off one thing from another, it, at
the same time, connects one thing with a