There seems something in this distinction. But it may well be dangerous to formulate it too precisely. No hard and clear-cut distinctions can here be made. The logical method can scarcely supersede the pre-logical method, for it covers less ground and is more exclusive, it can never be the universal legatee of the pre-logical method. We are probably concerned with two tendencies which may exist contemporaneously, and each have its value. It may even be said that the pre-logical and the logical temperaments represent two types of people, found everywhere even to-day. Some observers, like Heymans in his thoughtful book on the psychology of women, have noted how women seem often to combine contradictory impulses on an organic basis, but they have not always observed that that gift may be as inestimable as it is dangerous.
In this connection it is interesting to recall that Harnack, the great historian of Christian dogma, while asserting that Athanasius in combating Arianism saved Christianity, yet asserts with equal emphasis that the doctrine of Athanasius embodied a mass of contradictions which multiply as we advance. He might have added that that was why it was vital. Life, even in the plant, is a tension of opposing forces. Whatever is vital is contradictory, and if of two views we wish to find out which is the richest and the most fruitful we ought perhaps to ask ourselves which embodies the most contradictions.
December 31.—"The heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and all their host shall fade away, as a leaf fadeth off the vine, and as a fading leaf from the fig-tree." So the world seemed made to Isaiah, and that light airy way of accepting it may linger in one's mind all the more persistently because of its contrast with the heavy solemnity of the Hebraic genius. So it is with all these men of creative genius, whatever nation they belong to. Wherever Man flowers into Genius, wherever, that is to say, he becomes most quintessentially Man, he can never take the world seriously. He vaguely realises that it is merely his own handiwork, his own creation out of chaos, and that he himself transcends it. So for the physicist of genius the universe is made up of holes, and for the poet of genius it is a dream, and even for the greatest of these solemn Hebraic prophets it is merely a leaf, a fading leaf from the fig-tree.
Qualis artifex pereo! It may well be the last exclamation of the last Son of Man on the uninhabitable Earth.