First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life

n plain fact just nothing; "Not-A" is the absence of any trace of the quality that constitutes A, it is the rest of everything for ever. But there seems t

to ignore anger or abstract nouns or the sound of thunder. And logicians, following

ary, together with the words Not A, a

ce in which these words are printed. Obviously th

letter A inside a circular boun

ogic" re Euler's diagrams and Immediate Inferences.), and to speak of the total area of A and Not-A as the Universe of Discourse; and the metaphy

gative class and passes into the illimitable horizon of nothingness. You talk of pink things, you ignore, as the arbitrary postulates of Logic direct, the more elusive shades of pink, and draw your line. Beyond is the not-pink, known and knowable, and still in the not-pink region one comes to the Outer Darkness. Not blue, not happy, not iron, all the NOT classes meet in that Outer Darkness. That same Outer Darkness and nothingness is infinite space and infinite time and any being of infinite qualities; and all that region I rule out of c

stifiable content. For example, that word Omniscient, as implying infinite knowledge, impresses me as being a word with a delusive air of being solid and full, when it is really hollow with no content whatever. I am persuaded that knowing is the relation of a conscious being to something not itself, that the thing known