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CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
FOURTH LECTURE.
Jain Education International
METAPHYSICS.
This evening's lecture is concerned with what is termed metaphysics. There is some doubt as to what is precisely meant by the term, but it was originally applied to a certain group of the philosophical dissertations of Aristotle which were placed in a collection of his manuscripts after his treatise on physics. But whatever be the significance the term was intended to express, I think, we may safely take it to refer to that department of knowledge which transcends physics. Thus, while physics deals with what may be termed concrete facts, metaphysics assorts them into concepts and relations, and, finally, reduces them into consistent systematised knowledge. As we have had occasion to observe ere this, philosophy and science are wedded together, so that the divorcing of the one from the other is fatal to both. For science must tend towards the comprehensive consistency of systematic thought to rise above the petty trivialities of existence, and philosophy must adhere rigidly to rationalism of nature to secure the generally neglected harmony between imagination and actuality, or fact. Metaphysics may thus be defined as the process or expression of reflection on the facts of experience, culminating in an all-comprehen
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