knowledge? The 'logically - inevitable is the very antithesis of the 'externally - connected'; and the 'spatially-contiguous' (or 'continuous') is but a travesty of the 'logically-one'. A theory of reasoning which relies on such analogies stands self-condemned. We might as well base our analysis of mediation on the equally plausible, and equally barbarous, assumptions that knowledge is an 'edifice', that truth is a 'ladder', and that an argument has 'steps'.
What, then, becomes of the doctrine that 'Mediation is grounded on the Immediate'? Are there no self-evident principles of reasoning? And are there no self-evident truths in the texture of knowledge or none, at least, to guarantee our reasoning as the foundations on which it rests?
There is a sense in which every judgement is infallible. For, as Mr. F. H. Bradley[1] has expressed it, 'we cannot, while making a judgement, entertain the possibility of its error'. But every judgement alike is thus 'infallible'; and though 'infallible', it may be erroneous, and we ourselves may come to recognize its falsity. Again, there is a sense in which all truth is selfevident. For 'truth', in Spinoza's famous saying, 'is the criterion of itself and of the false, as light reveals itself and darkness'.[2] But to deny that truth is con-
- ↑ Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 382.
- ↑ Ethica, ii. 43 S. 'Sane sicut lux seipsam et tenebras manifestat, sic veritas norma sui et falsi est'.
