GENERAL PRINCIPLES 6 1 



many statements to which it is impossible satisfactorily 

 to apply this test. Their very nature is such that the 

 process of analysis cannot in their case be brought to an 

 end, and consequently we remain unable to say whether 

 they are really self-contradictory or not. At any rate, 

 their self-contradiction, or the absence of it, cannot be 

 made self-evident. For instance, the statement that 

 'I took a long walk yesterday' may be perfectly true, 

 but by no amount of analysis is it possible for us to test 

 its truth by reducing it to self-evident propositions. It is 

 not necessarily but contingently true. Its truth is not 

 directly grounded in the eternal nature of things, but is 

 determined by a multitude of other truths, which may 

 each in their turn demand an infinite analysis l . These 



form his view that ' in the notion of each individual substance all 

 its events are contained, along with all their circumstances and 

 the whole sequence of external things.' Lettre au Prince Ernest 

 (1686) (G. ii. 12). 'Always in every true affirmative proposition, 

 whether necessary or contingent, universal or singular, the notion 

 of the predicate is in some way comprehended in that of the 

 subject, praedicatum inest subjecto ; otherwise I know not what truth 

 is. But I require no more connexion here than that which exists 

 a parte rei between the terms of a true proposition, and it is only in 

 this sense that I say that the notion of the individual substance 

 includes all its events and all its characteristics, even those that 

 are commonly called extrinsic (that is to say, those which belong 

 to it only in virtue of the general connexion of things and on 

 account of its expressing the whole universe in its own way). 

 u For there must always be some foundation for the connexion of 

 ;the terms of a proposition, and this is to be found in their notions." 

 That is my great principle, as to which I think all philosophers 

 should be at one, and of which one of the corollaries is the common 

 axiom that nothing happens without it being possible to give a 

 reason why things should have gone thus rather than otherwise, 

 although this reason often inclines without necessitating, a perfect 

 indifference being a chimerical or incomplete supposition/ Lettre 

 a Arnauld (1686) (G. ii. 56). 



1 Cf. De Sdentia Universali sen Calculo Philosophic? (E. 83 b ; G. vii. 

 200) : ' The difference between necessary and contingent truths is 

 indeed the same as that between commensurable and incommen- 

 surable numbers. For the reduction of commensurable numbers 

 to a common measure is analogous to the demonstration of necessary 

 truths, or their reduction to identical truths. But, as in the case 

 of surd ratios the reduction involves an infinite process and yet 

 approaches a common measure so that a definite but unending 

 series is obtained, thus also contingent truths require an infinite 



