iv.] THE IDEA OF 'NOTHING' 289 



It is of a pedagogical and social nature. It sets straight 

 or rather warns, the person warned and set straight being 

 possibly, by a kind of doubling, the very person that 

 speaks. 



So much for the second point; now for the first. We 

 said that negation is but the half of an intellectual act, 

 of which the other half is left indeterminate. If I pro- 

 nounce the negative proposition, "This table is not white," 

 I mean that you ought to substitute for your judgment, 

 "The table is white," another judgment. I give you an 

 admonition, and the admonition refers to the necessity 

 of a substitution. As to what you ought to substitute 

 for your affirmation, I tell you nothing, it is true. This 

 may be because I do not know the color of the table; 

 but it is also, it is indeed even more, because the white 

 color is that alone that interests us for the moment, so that I 

 only need to tell you that some other color will have to be 

 substituted for white, without having to say which. A 

 negative judgment is therefore really one which indicates 

 a need of substituting for an affirmative judgment another 

 affirmative judgment, the nature of which, however, is 

 not specified, sometimes because it is not known, more 

 often because it fails to offer any actual interest, the 

 attention bearing only on the substance of the first. 



Thus, whenever I add a "not" to an affirmation, when- 

 ever I deny, I perform two very definite acts: (1) I interest 

 myself in what one of my fellow-men affirms, or in what he 

 was going to say, or in what might have been said by an- 

 other Me, whom I anticipate; (2) I announce that some 

 other affirmation, whose content I do not specify, will 

 have to be substituted for the one I find before me. Now, 

 in neither of these two acts is there anything but affirma- 

 tion. The sui generis character of negation is due to 

 superimposing the first of these acts upon the second. 



