220 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



are, eo ipso, making our law as abstract, hypothetical, and necessary as any 

 law of mathematics ; and we can say of it, when thus formulated, &quot; that if it is 

 once true, it is always true, and that so far as it is true it is necessary in that 

 system of reality &quot; l : for all conceivable reality is subject to the laws of thought, 

 and, therefore, to the principle of identity. 



In this sense and it may be well to call attention to it here every judg 

 ment, even the particular, elementary interpretation of a sense experience, 

 such as &quot; It rains,&quot; is necessarily and universally true : in the sense that if true 

 at all it is always and everywhere true (80). If it rained at a particular time 

 and place, it is true throughout all time and space that it did rain then and 

 there. The laws of thought are thus involved in all intellectual judgments, 

 and it is just because they are that all truth all true judgments can be de 

 scribed in a real, admissible, and intelligible sense, as &quot; necessary &quot;. This 

 necessity is purely logical, i.e. it belongs to the mental act of judgment, and 

 virtually amounts to this, that if the judgment is true it cannot be otherwise 

 than true. 



Such necessity supposes and is dependent on a mental analysis and com 

 parison of certain elements or aspects of reality. It is not, therefore, a merely 

 subjective, psychical necessity ; for the mind may abstain altogether from analys 

 ing the elements of reality in question, or pronouncing any judgment upon 

 them. There is no necessity about the actual occurrence or existence of such 

 a mental process : it need never have taken place. But, granting that the 

 process of analysis has taken place, it will lay bare the grounds for the judg 

 ment formulated. If this be about abstract objects of thought the objective 

 grounds will be, or may be, cogent ; if it be an attempt to affirm a general law 

 about the actual happening of phenomena, the grounds for a categorical state 

 ment will not be cogent, for, to use the words of Green, &quot; any proposition 

 about a natural phenomenon is true of it only under conditions of which we 

 do not know all, while a proposition about a geometrical figure ... is true 

 of it under conditions which we completely know &quot;. a 



The general propositions in which natural or physical laws are formu 

 lated do not usually express, but rather abstract from, the one all-im 

 portant condition on which their absolute truth depends, the positive Will 

 of the Creator ; and hence we speak of their necessity and universality or 

 their necessary and universal truth, which we call &quot; physical &quot;as being not 

 &quot; absolute &quot; but &quot; hypothetical,&quot; &quot; contingent,&quot; i.e. dependent on the Free 

 Will of the Creator. 3 To the ordinary formulae, therefore, which express the 

 &quot; laws &quot; of &quot; Physical Nature &quot; we can conceive exceptions. The Author of 

 Nature can derogate from them, i.e. He can so alter or interfere with the 

 conditions of the -existence and activity of created agencies that our formula, 

 which did not count on such interference, may be, in a particular case, inapplic 

 able. If we formulated our law so as to include, and take account of, such 

 interference, the law thus hypotherically formulated could not be disturbed by 

 such intervention. This is why logical, metaphysical, and mathematical laws 

 or truths are unchangeable : because they deal with hypothetical relations 

 which obtain, by a necessity of thought, between abstract objects that are 



1 WELTON, op. cit., p. 205. C/. supra, p. 218. 



* Phil. Works, vol. il, pp. 349-50, apud WELTON, I.e. (italics ours). 



1 C/. JOYCE, Logic, p. 237. 



