ABSTRACT
We have held that the prime office of reason was the discovery of necessary connections. The tendency of recent thought has been to restrict this office by confining necessity within increasingly narrow limits. It is insisted, first, in the spirit of Hume, that necessity never links existents, but only our own meanings. It is then added that not all meanings admit of such linkage, but only those that can stand as terms in propositions, simple or compound. Next propositions themselves are scrutinized, and many that were thought to be necessary are excluded; only analytic propositions are admitted to the inner fold. Finally, many even of these are questioned, on the ground that they contain empirical elements. ‘All bachelors are unmarried, is analytic, of course, but the content of its terms is drawn from experience, and, strictly speaking, empirical contents are never linked by necessity. So we are left in the end with such luminous assertions as ‘ a is a’, or ‘a is not non-a’ or p⊃·p v q as the most characteristic achievements of reason.
