NECESSARY TRUTHS— EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. 649 



osity as to whether the object in hand is or is not of a kind 

 connected with that ultimate purpose. Usually the con- 

 nection is not obvious, and we only find that the object S 

 is of a kind connected with P, after first finding that it is 

 of a kind M, which itself is connected with P. Thus, to 

 fix our ideas by an example, we have a curiosity (our ulti- 

 mate purpose being conquest over nature) as to how Sirius 

 ma}' move. It is not obvious whether Sirius is a kind of 

 thing which moves in the line of sight or not. When, 

 however, we find it to be a kind of thing in whose spectrum 

 the hydrogen-line is shifted, and when we reflect that (hat 

 kind of thing is a kind of thing which moves in the line 

 of sight; we conclude that Sirius does so move. Whatever 

 Sirius's attribute is, Sirius is ; its adjective's adjective can 

 supersede its own adjective in our thinking, and this with 

 no loss to our knowledge, so long as ive stick to the definite 

 purpose in view. 



Now please note that this elimination of intermediary 

 kinds and transfer of t'-s's along the line, results from our 

 insight into the very meaning of the word is, and into the 

 constitution of any series of terms connected by that rela- 

 tion. It has naught to do with what any particular thing is 

 or is not ; but, ivliatever any given thing may be, we see 

 that it also is whatever that is, indefinitely. To grasp in 

 one view a succession of is's is to apprehend this relation 

 between the terms which they connect ; just as to grasp a 

 list of successive equals is to apprehend their mutual equal- 

 ity throughout. The principle of mediate subsumption 

 thus expresses relations of ideal objects as such. It can be 

 discovered by a mind left at leisure with any set of mean- 

 ings (however originally obtained), of which some are pred- 

 icable of others. The moment we string them in a serial 

 line, that moment we see that we can drop intermediaries, 

 treat remote terms just like near ones, and put a genus in 

 the place of a species. This shows that the principle of 

 mediate subsumption has nothing to do ivith the particular 

 order of our experiences, or ivith the outer coexistences and 

 sequences of terms. Were it a mere outgrowth of habit 

 and association, we should be forced to regard it as having 

 no universal validity ; for every hour ot the day we meet 



