VIII.
If our argument were a Platonic dialogue, there would be hereabouts an interruption from some impatient Thrasymachus or Callicles or Polus, who would have been watching us, threatening and muttering, during aU of the latter part of our discussion. At last, perhaps, συστρέψας ἑαυτὸν ὥσπερ θηρίον, he would spring upon us, and would say: “Why, you nonsense-mongers, have you not bethought you of the alternative that represents the reality in this question of yours? Namely, an error is an error, neither to the thought that thinks it, nor of necessity to any higher inclusive thought, but only to a possible critical thought that should undertake afterwards to compare it with its object. An error is a thought such that if a critical thought did come and compare it with its object, it would be seen to be false. And it has an object for such a critical thought. This critical thought need not be real and actually include it, but may be only a possible judge of its truth. Hence your Infinite all-knower is no reality, only a logical possibility; and your insight amounts to this, that if all were known to an all-knower, he would judge error to be mistaken. And so error is what he would perceive to be error. What does all that amount to but worthless tautology?”
This argument of our Thrasymachus is the only outwardly plausible objection that we fear to the foregoing analysis, because it is the only objection that fully expresses the old-established view of common sense about such problems. Though common
