CHAPTER II
OBJECTIVE VALIDITY OF THE “LAWS OF THOUGHT”
I once inquired of a maid-servant whether her mistress was at home. She replied, in a doubtful fashion, that she thought that her mistress was in unless she was out. I concluded that the maid was uncertain as to the objective validity of the law of excluded middle, and remarked that to her mistress. But since I used the phrase “laws of thought,” the mistress perhaps supposed that a “law of thought” has something to do with thinking and seemed to imagine that I wished to impute to the maid some moral defect of an unimportant nature. Thus she remonstrated with me in an amused way, since she probably imagined that I meant to find fault with the maid’s capacity for thinking.
CHAPTER III
IDENTITY
In the first chapter we have noticed the opinion that identities are fundamental to all logic. We will now consider some other views of the value of identities.
Identities are frequently used in common life by people who seem to imagine that they can draw important conclusions respecting conduct or matters of fact from them. I have heard of a man who gained the double reputation of being a philosopher and a fatalist by the repeated enunciation of the identity “Whatever will be, will be”; and the Italian equivalent of this makes up an appreciable part of one of Mr. Robert Hichens’ novels. Further, the identity “Life is Life” has not only been often accepted as an explanation for a particular way of living but has even been considered by an authoress who calls herself “Zack” to be an appropriate title for a novel; while “Business is Business” is frequently thought to provide an excuse for dishonesty in trading, for which purpose it is plainly inadequate.
Another example is given by a poem of Mr. Kipling, where he seems to assert that “East is East” and “West is West” imply that “never the twain shall meet.” The conclusion, now, is false; for, since the world is round—as geography books still maintain by arguments which strike every intelligent child as invalid[20]—what is called the “West” does, in fact, merge into the “East.” Even if we are to take the statement metaphorically, it is still untrue, as the Japanese nation has shown.