Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: feeling of every one who hears them for the first time is that they are superfluous, if not indeed a little silly. Why state them so ponderously when no one questions their truth. Are we any further forward when we have admitted that A is A, that A cannot be both A and not A, that a thing must be either A or not A? Yet it is because of our unanimity on these apparently unimportant points that we are able to reason with one another in the full assurance that we shall come to certain inevitable conclusions, if only the facts are stated aright. Two minds that are given the same facts cannot but come to the same conclusion. Depending upon these laws, we are able to rely upon producing by our exposition a definite calculable effect upon the minds of others. Given certain facts, we can prophesy the mind's reaction upon them. Unfortunately the certainty of reaction is disturbed by the nature of the facts submitted to the mind. When dealing with quite abstract elements, as in formal logic and pure mathematics, the action of the mind can be depended upon. But unfortunately the greater part of our mental activity is carried on in connection with matters that are far from abstract. It is customary to use a figure of speech and speak, as we have done once or twice already, of mental content. Naturally we must be on our guard against accepting this figure as expressing literal truth. The relation between the mind and mental content is not that between container and thing contained. For convenience of expression we speak of the mind and the subject upon which the mind acts, but the two terms are often very loosely understood. Occasionally we think about this subject as something outside of us altogether. For example,the mind may be said to act upon the colours when we watch a sunset. If this...