i
Yes, but what is a minimum? Sometimes a maximum is a minimum, and
sometimes the other way about. If you know you know, and if you don’t
you don’t.
ii
Yes, but what is a minimum? So increased material weight involves
increased moral weight, but where does there begin to be any weight at
all? There is a miracle somewhere. At the point where two very large
nothings have united to form a very little something.
iii
There is no such complete assimilation as assimilation of rhythm. In
fact it is in assimilation of rhythm that what we see as assimilation
consists.
When two liquid bodies come together with nearly the same rhythms, as,
say, two tumblers of water, differing but very slightly, the two
assimilate rapidly—becoming homogeneous throughout. So with wine and
water which assimilate, or at any rate form a new homogeneous substance,
very rapidly. Not so with oil and water. Still, I should like to know
whether it would not be possible to have so much water and so little oil
that the water would in time absorb the oil.
I have not thought about it, but it seems as though the maxim _de minimis
non curat lex_—the fact that a wrong, a contradiction in terms, a
violation of all our ordinary canons does not matter and should be
brushed aside—it seems as though this maxim went very low down in the
scale of nature, as though it were the one principle rendering
combination (integration) and, I suppose, dissolution (disintegration)
also, possible. For combination of any kind involves contradiction in
terms; it involves a self-stultification on the part of one or more
things, more or less complete in both of them. For one or both cease to
be, and to cease to be is to contradict all one’s fundamental axioms or
terms.
And this is always going on in the mental world as much as in the
material; everything is always changing and stultifying itself more or
less completely. There is no permanence of identity so absolute, either
in the physical world, or in our conception of the word “identity,” that
it is not crossed with the notion of perpetual change which, _pro tanto_,
destroys identity. Perfect, absolute identity is like perfect, absolute
anything—as near an approach to nothing, or nonsense, as our minds can
grasp. It is, then, in the essence of our conception of identity that
nothing should maintain a perfect identity; there is an element of
disintegration in the only conception of integration that we can form.
What is it, then, that makes this conflict not only possible and bearable
but even pleasant? What is it that so oils the machinery of our thoughts
that things which would otherwise cause intolerable friction and heat
produce no jar?
Surely it is the principle that a very overwhelming majority rides
rough-shod with impunity over a very small minority; that a drop of
brandy in a gallon of water is practically no brandy; that a dozen
maniacs among a hundred thousand people produce no unsettling effect upon
our minds; that a well-written i will go as an i even though the dot be
omitted—it seems to me that it is this principle, which is embodied in
_de minimis non curat lex_, that makes it possible that there should be
_majora_ and a _lex_ to care about them. This is saying in another form
that association does not stick to the letter of its bond.