NECESSARY TRUTHS— EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. 661 



Nothing but the clear sight of the ideas themselves 

 shows whether the axiom of skipped intermediaries applies 

 to them or not. Their connections, immediate and remote, 

 flow from their inward natures. We try to consider them 

 in certain ways, to bring them into certain relations, and 

 we find that sometimes we can and sometimes we cannot. 

 The question ivhether there are or are not inward and essential 

 connections hetiueen conceived objects as such, really is the same 

 thing as the question ivhether ive can get any neiv perception 

 from mentally coupling them together, or pass from one to 

 another by a mental operation ivhich gives a result. In the 

 case of some ideas and operations we get a result ; but no 

 result in the case of others. Where a result comes, it is 

 due exclusively to the nature of the ideas and of the opera- 

 tion. Take blueness and yellowness, for example. We can 

 operate on them in some ways, but not in other ways. We 

 can compare them ; but we cannot add one to or subtract 

 it from the other. We can refer them to a common kind, 

 color ; but we cannot make one a kind of the other, or infer 

 one from the other. This has nothing to do with experience. 

 For we can add blue pigment to yellow pigment, and sub- 

 tract it again, and get a result both times. Only we know 

 perfectly that this is no addition or subtraction of the blue 

 and yellow qualities or natures themselves.* 



There is thus no denying the fact that the mind is filled 

 loith necessary and eternal relations which it finds between cer- 

 tain of its ideal conceptions, and, ivhich form a determinate 

 system, independent of the order of frequency in ivhich experience 

 may have associated the conceptions originals in time and space. 



Shall we continue to call these sciences 'intuitive,' ' in- 

 nate,' or ' a priori ' bodies of truth, or not ?t Personally 



* Cf. Locke's Essay, bk. ii. chap, xvii § 6. 



t Some readers may expect me to plunge into the old debate as to 

 whether the a priori truths are 'analytic' or 'synthetic' It seems to me 

 that the distinction is one of Kant's most unhappy legacies, for the reason 

 that it is impossible to make it sharp. No one will say that such analytic 

 judgments as " equidistant lines can nowhere meet " are pure tautologies. 

 The predicate is a somewhat new way of conceiving as well as of naming 

 the subject. There is something ' ampliative ' in our greatest truisms, our 

 state of mind is richer after than before we have uttered them. This 



