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knows — which has really nothing to do with the intuitive or 

 other character of the truths themselves, further than to show 

 that they are by no means necessary notions in the human soul. 



What are called necessary truths refer, in many cases, neither 

 to truths nor falsehoods, but only to words without meaning. 



A thing cannot be and not be at the same time.'''' This is 

 given as an instance of necessary thought. But the words do 

 not refer to a thought at all. They refer to a sentence in which 

 the meaning of the one half neutralizes that of the other, leaving 

 the sentence, as a whole, meaningless. This is clear at once, 

 on our trying the two halves of the sentence as two sentences. 

 That thing is That thing is not.'' What is the effect 

 of these two statements jointly ? Merely this, that nothing is 

 either affirmed or denied — that is, nothing is meant. No 

 thought cannot be a necessary thought, nor can it be the 

 opposite of necessary — it can just be nothing. Take the 

 sentence, again, that '^^two and two cannot be five,'' — it is 

 said to be a necessary truth. What is it really ? Merely 

 this, that the ^ov^five, if used to mean one more than two and 

 two, cannot also mean two and three, minus one. It must 

 mean just what it means. To say that it does not mean 

 what it means is only to utter another sentence in which the 

 one half neutralizes the other, rendering it literally nonsense. 

 It is a great mistake to regard arguments of such a character 

 as the basis of reasoning — the starting-points of safe thought. 

 The eternal value of truth does not depend upon its necessity 

 as thought, any more than the value of virtue depends upon 

 the fixity of fatalism. However freely it is accepted and 

 cultivated in the soul, its reality and worth are the same. 



The mind of man is so formed that certain impressions made 

 upon it, and certain states within it, are the necessary results 

 of certain conditions. Some of these conditions are provided, 

 so that they are not under human control, but by far the most 

 important are made to depend for their existence, so to speak, 

 upon that which is neither a sensation nor a thought — neither 

 a capacity of the one nor of the other — while yet it is the 

 helmsman of the mind. The sea over which this pilot has to 

 steer is not one on which we must reach the haven of even so 

 much as one truth, however rudimentary. The starting-point 

 in so many speculations, the ego itself, is utterly denied, and 

 that by some ol those who are of the greatest rank among 

 what are called thinkers." The idea of infinite space," 

 which passes with so many for an intuition," Professor Bain 

 calls an incompetent, irrelevant, impossible conception." * 



Mental and Moral Science, ed. 1868, p. 34, Ap^pendix. 

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