Ideas, self-consistent and complete; and by this

predicate it has to qualify and make good the

Reality. And, as we have seen, its attempt would in the

end be suicidal. Truth should mean what it stands for,

and should stand for what it means; but these two

aspects in the end prove incompatible. There is still a

difference, unremoved, between the subject and the

predicate, a difference which, while it persists, shows

a failure in thought, but which, if removed, would

wholly destroy the special essence of thinking.

We may put this otherwise by laying down that any

categorical judgment must be false. The subject and the

predicate, in the end, cannot either be the other. If

however we stop short of this goal, our judgment has

failed to reach truth; while, if we attained it, the

terms and their relation would have ceased. And hence

all our judgments, to be true, must become conditional.

The predicate, that is, does not hold unless by the help

of something else. And this "something else" cannot be

stated, so as to fall inside even a new and conditional

predicate.

It is however better, I am now persuaded, not to say

that every judgment is hypothetical. The word,

it is clear, may introduce irrelevant ideas. judgments

are conditional in this sense, that what they affirm is

incomplete. It cannot be attributed to Reality, as such,

and before its necessary complement is added. And, in

addition, this complement in the end remains unknown.

But, while it remains unknown, we obviously cannot tell

how, if present, it would act upon and alter our

predicate. For to suppose that its presence would make

no difference is plainly absurd, while the precise

nature of the difference falls outside our

knowledge. But, if so, this unknown modification of our

predicate may, in various degrees, destroy its special

character. The content in fact might so be altered, be

so redistributed and blended, as utterly to be

transformed. And, in brief, the predicate may, taken as

such, be more or less completely untrue. Thus we really

always have asserted subject to, and at the mercy of,

the unknown. And hence our

judgment, always but to a varying extent, must in the

end be called conditional.

But with this we have arrived at the meeting-ground

of error and truth. There will be no truth which is

entirely true, just as there will be no error which is

totally false. With all alike, if taken strictly, it

will be a question of amount, and will be a matter of

more or less. Our thoughts certainly, for some purposes,

may be taken as wholly false, or again as quite

accurate; but truth and error, measured by the Absolute,

must each be subject always to degree. Our judgments, in

a word, can never reach as far as perfect truth, and

must be content merely to enjoy more or less of