Page:Essays on Truth and Reality (1914).djvu/295

276 (i) Wherever S-P is asserted, it is asserted as real, and therefore as fully mediated. Hence, so far as the condition of the judgement falls outside the judgement, we have error. We have that which can be at pleasure affirmed or denied. And, even where S-P is asserted of a sphere limited by designation, we still have error in the above sense, since we fail to get into the judgement the full conditions under which, in this sphere, S and P hold together. Error is so far, we may say, the assertion of the unmediated as mediated.

(ii) Where S-P is affirmed of a certain designated world, S-P also may contain and depend on a condition x1, which condition is incompatible with a condition x2 taken to be present in the designated world. S-P therefore is valid elsewhere but not in this world. Whether the condition x2 is viewed as positive or as privative makes no difference. Error here consists in discrepancy with something limited which is taken as absolutely real. This, I understand, is the kind of error of which I have spoken in Chap. IX, p. 266.

Error is always difference between an idea and reality. And hence in the end all truth is in varying degrees error, and, on the other side, no error is absolute. For every idea, to be an idea, must be real. But, where the reality has been for any purpose limited, and is viewed in this character as absolute — so far we can have unconditional truth and utter error. This is the doctrine which I understand to be advocated by Prof. Bosanquet and myself. If I could think that Prof. Stout also had now been led to a conclusion much the same, that result would be welcome. In any case I am sure that the subject would gain if he would discuss it further. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE II1 IN this Supplementary Note I propose to deal briefly with two subjects. (I.) I wish to examine the doctrine as to Number advocated by Prof. Royce in The World and the Individual, First Series. And (II.) I must attempt to show that some of the main ideas on which Mr. Russell's views seem to rest, are inconsistent and ultimately untenable. It is with great reluctance

1 This Note is from the article in Mind for April 1910.