self-contradiction. Or again, were no error possible,
there would be no truth, since then the assertion that
there is no truth would itself be no error, or would itself
be true. This, again, would be a contradiction. Or
finally, if error were impossible, any and every account of
Being or truth, of ideas and of objects, of the world or of
nothing at all, would be equally true, or in other words,
no truth would ever be defined. For truth we define by
its contrast with the error that it excludes. So some
ideas certainly can and do err in as far as they undertake
to be ideas of objects. Ideas can then fail of their desired
correspondence with their intended objects, just because
these objects are indeed other than themselves. But the
error of an idea is always a failure to win the intended
aim of the idea, precisely in so far as the idea sought
truth. Hence, as no purpose can simply and directly
consist in willing or intending its own defeat, it is plain
that an idea, precisely in so far as it can turn out to be an
erroneous idea, can intend what its object forbids it to
carry out, and can mean what its object excludes; while
in so far as the object thus refutes the idea, the object
contains what the idea did not purpose, and was unable
to predetermine. In brief, the very Possibility of Error,
the absolutely certain truth that some ideas give false
accounts of their own objects, shows that some objects
contain what is opposed to the intent of the very ideas
that refer to these objects. And so the antithesis is
proved.
VIII
In view of this apparent antinomy, how is the idea related to its object? How is error possible? What is
