how could one undertake that task except by first admitting that Being essentially implies the validity of ideas? This reflection is conclusive indeed against a realist, whose Independent Being was first to be real whether or no any ideas were to be found in the universe, and consequently whether or no validity, which is essentially bound up with the Being of ideas, united reality and idea in one context. But this reflection still leaves open one line of possible criticism which may be applied to our Third Conception. Validity or truth may be, as the Scholastic philosophy also would have said, an essential aspect of true Being, without on that account furnishing the final definition of what constitutes the whole Being of things. And here is it indeed a fair matter for question. That the Third Conception, as far as it goes, has some degree of validity, is indeed obvious enough. But is it adequate and final? Can the realm of validity remain merely a realm of validity? Here is indeed the place where we begin the final stage of our journey towards an adequate view of the meaning of the ontological predicate.
We have now several times insisted upon the empirical basis which the Third Conception of Being, as we have said, inevitably presupposes. But one may here object to our account that, although in many cases our Third Conception rests its assertion that a given idea is valid upon an obviously empirical foundation, this is not always, nor even ever altogether the case. For the mathematician, as we ourselves saw, deals with a world far transcending our actual physical powers of empirical verification. And it is not uncommon to suppose
