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as the starting point of logic. With reference to judgments, the relation may be taken alternatively as constituting its terms or not, and either affirmation or negation may be taken as prior to the other. With reference to inferences, as opposed to Hegelian logic (therefore taken "as the self-creating dialectic of truth"), empirical logic (therefore taken as the particular affirmation contingently reached through other particular affirmations), or formal logic (therefore taken as the explication of an affirmation by negation), this logic holds that the conclusion is "a definition of the indefinite matter to which reasoning has reference" (II 231). The given analytic necessity within the ideal inferential form is "somehow applicable to the indefinite matter of experience," and on the other hand "the synthetic material process is a definite necessity inexplicably emerging out of the indefinite" (II 232).
This logic, unlike the traditional ones, has categories applicable to widely different metaphysical and epistemological theories, including the Vedantic assertion of the unreality of the world. We must reject the dogmatic assumption that "the knowing self ought to move toward more and more determinate truth.” The logical impulse may be satisfied "in getting rid of the limitation of the definite, and not in securing increase of definiteness" (II 239). So far as logic is concerned, freedom or the absolute state may be attained either in the direction of the definite or in that of the indefinite. The limiting mystery of philosophy is neither the definite nor the indefinite but their disjunction (II 239).19
Logic alone cannot establish the Absolute as the Indefinite. This is established by revelation. But logic can make it intelligible, provided. the logic includes the category of indefinite. Logically, the term is a determination carved out of the indeterminate. Metaphysically, the definite object of experience is somehow defined out of its indefinite ground, which is itself never given in experience. "Relation must be between two definite terms" (II 247). The indefinite cannot be related, cannot be either subject or predicate of a judgment, is not relative to anything. This, however, is mere logic, and is not ada vanced as an ontological proof for the existence of the indefinite Absolute. At most, it shows (and that by a dubious conversion) that the Absolute, if there is any such thing, is indefinite. The existence of the Absolute is a presupposition accepted by faith. The purpose of neo-Vedanta is to understand the Absolute, not to determine wheth
19 This system of logic is further developed by an elaborate theory of relations in the paper "The Definition of Relation as a Category of Existence" (written 1918, published posthumously, II 245-57).
