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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 word 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 of 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, Appendix. 
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