AND OF thought: S^ 



either a fact or nothing: at all,, a trubh^ for thought 

 may vary through alll the gradations of logical 

 necessity, from possibility up to " necessary truth." 

 Whenever, therefore, we set out to prove a fact, we 

 are trying to derive it from a totally different order 

 of existence, to deduce the real from the logical, and 

 hence to reduce reality to thought. Thus all proof 

 is perversion : it involves an unwarranted manipul- 

 ation of the evidence on which it is based. As 

 soon as we are not content to take things simply 

 as they are, and for what they are, as soon as we 

 Inquire into the reasoit of what is, we inevitably pass 

 into the totally different sphere of what must be (or 

 may be, for possibility indicates only the- degree of 

 confidence with which: we attribute the logical con- 

 nexion, necessary in itself, to reality),, in which 

 things do not become but are related. For it is 

 only as a psychological event in the life history of 

 an individual whose knowledge grows, that truth 

 becomes or changes ; in itself It possesses an ideal 

 validity which Is eternal, and to which the analogies 

 of Time and Space are inapplicable. Hence there 

 is no change or motion about the world of Ideas : 

 change and motion belong only to the world of 

 existence and exist either in the real mind which 

 apprehends, or in the Becoming of things which it 

 seeks to comprehend. Instead of changes whereby 

 one thing takes the place of another, the ideal world 

 exhibits only logically necessary connexions between 

 its co-existent and mutually implicated members. 

 To speak therefore of a logical process or a process 

 of thought, Is a misnomer, if by process we mean 

 any change in the relations of the ideas. The ideas 

 must co-exist, or else there is no relation between 

 them; but if they co-exist, i.e. are both there already, 



