24 THE WORLD-ENERGY 



g. THE LAWS OF THOUGHT. 



The " necessary laws of thought" are nothing else 

 than the technical presentation in three abstract proposi- 

 tions, expressing successively, with greater explicitness, 

 the conviction above set forth, namely: That perfect 

 consistency in consciousness is the ultimate and only 

 absolute ground of certitude. 



The law of identity declares that "whatever is, is." 

 Regarded formally, this is pure, empty tautology. But 

 the statement also contains implicitly the deepest signifi- 

 cance. It declares in effect that existence is absolute and 

 uniform. Already in the fifth century before the Chris- 

 tian era, this truth was felt, and Parmenides sought to 

 give it utterance in his dictum that "Being alone is and 

 non-being is not." Aristotle also reaffirmed it in his 

 representation of the " Unmoved mover of the world," 

 while in the modern world it reappears in the affirmation 

 that the total quantity of matter or of energy can never 

 be either increased or diminished. 



Thus the first law of thought is, in germ, the doctrine 

 of the conservation of energy. It implies that existence 

 can never be changed into non-existence, nor the latter 

 into the former. So far as existence itself is concerned, 

 there is neither past nor future, but only a ceaseless, 

 changeless present. 



This law is, then, the law of consistency under the 

 form of absolute continuity. The truly existent, how- 

 ever great its complexity, however much of mutual oppo- 

 sition there may possibly be between its various multi- 

 form phases, can still never contradict itself. The law, as 

 stated, says nothing whatever as to whether multiplicity 



