MINE AND THINE 69 



that there are "necessary truths" which are not "truths 

 of fact," is to sever the intelligence from its object, in 

 such a way as to grant to utter scepticism all that it can 

 require. What conclusion can be drawn from this except 

 that " thought " is a blunder, and that its explanatory ideas 

 do not explain? 



And even if we granted to Dr. Ward this ambiguous 

 realm of thoughts which are neither true nor false but 

 "valid," it will not serve his turn, nor heal the divisions 

 of his broken universe. For how can general ideas unite 

 particular things? The former are in the ideal world of 

 Epistemology, the latter are in the real world of Ontology. 

 Real things have no universal side, or element, or character; 

 thoughts have no particular side. Yet these opposites and 

 exclusives are put into opposite and exclusive regions, and 

 then required to constitute somehow that concrete "one 

 in the many," that orderly and yet varied universe, the 

 reality of which is the one postulate which reason demands, 

 and which it is the object of every intellectual endeavour 

 to demonstrate. Dr. Ward himself requires unity no less 

 than difference ; but having excluded it from his original 

 premisses, he can re-introduce it only on condition of its 

 not being real. 



The whole force of this theory lies in its criticism of 

 existential universals. And this criticism is unanswerable. 

 For it is quite true that the real world contains none of 

 these abstract, general entities ; and that the world is not 

 made up of things plus relations, of facts and events plus 

 universal laws. But it is not less true that the world con- 

 tains no particulars, and that it is as impossible fn find a 

 thing out of all relation as to find a relation existing by 

 itself. A genuine particular, as Aristotle has shown once 



