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 The Java® Virtual
Machine Specification
Java SE 8 Edition
This page intentionally left blank
 The Java® Virtual
Machine Specification
Java SE 8 Edition

Tim Lindholm
Frank Yellin
Gilad Bracha
Alex Buckley

Upper Saddle River, NJ • Boston • Indianapolis • San Francisco

New York • Toronto • Montreal • London • Munich • Paris • Madrid
Capetown • Sydney • Tokyo • Singapore • Mexico City
Copyright © 1997, 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood City, California 94065, U.S.A.

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Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and
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To Sophia and Susan, in deepest appreciation.
This page intentionally left blank
 Table of Contents

Preface to the Java SE 8 Edition xv

1 Introduction 1
1.1 A Bit of History 1
1.2 The Java Virtual Machine 2
1.3 Organization of the Specification 3
1.4 Notation 4
1.5 Feedback 4

2 The Structure of the Java Virtual Machine 5

2.1 The class File Format 5
2.2 Data Types 6
2.3 Primitive Types and Values 6
2.3.1 Integral Types and Values 7
2.3.2 Floating-Point Types, Value Sets, and Values 8
2.3.3 The returnAddress Type and Values 10
2.3.4 The boolean Type 10
2.4 Reference Types and Values 11
2.5 Run-Time Data Areas 11
2.5.1 The pc Register 12
2.5.2 Java Virtual Machine Stacks 12
2.5.3 Heap 13
2.5.4 Method Area 13
2.5.5 Run-Time Constant Pool 14
2.5.6 Native Method Stacks 14
2.6 Frames 15
2.6.1 Local Variables 16
2.6.2 Operand Stacks 17
2.6.3 Dynamic Linking 18
2.6.4 Normal Method Invocation Completion 18
2.6.5 Abrupt Method Invocation Completion 18
2.7 Representation of Objects 19
2.8 Floating-Point Arithmetic 19
2.8.1 Java Virtual Machine Floating-Point Arithmetic and IEEE
754 19
2.8.2 Floating-Point Modes 20
2.8.3 Value Set Conversion 20
2.9 Special Methods 22
2.10 Exceptions 23
2.11 Instruction Set Summary 25

vii
 The Java® Virtual Machine Specification

2.11.1 Types and the Java Virtual Machine 26

2.11.2 Load and Store Instructions 29
2.11.3 Arithmetic Instructions 30
2.11.4 Type Conversion Instructions 32
2.11.5 Object Creation and Manipulation 34
2.11.6 Operand Stack Management Instructions 34
2.11.7 Control Transfer Instructions 34
2.11.8 Method Invocation and Return Instructions 35
2.11.9 Throwing Exceptions 36
2.11.10 Synchronization 36
2.12 Class Libraries 37
2.13 Public Design, Private Implementation 37

3 Compiling for the Java Virtual Machine 39

3.1 Format of Examples 39
3.2 Use of Constants, Local Variables, and Control Constructs 40
3.3 Arithmetic 45
3.4 Accessing the Run-Time Constant Pool 46
3.5 More Control Examples 47
3.6 Receiving Arguments 50
3.7 Invoking Methods 51
3.8 Working with Class Instances 53
3.9 Arrays 55
3.10 Compiling Switches 57
3.11 Operations on the Operand Stack 59
3.12 Throwing and Handling Exceptions 60
3.13 Compiling finally 63
3.14 Synchronization 66
3.15 Annotations 67

4 The class File Format 69

4.1 The ClassFile Structure 70
4.2 The Internal Form of Names 74
4.2.1 Binary Class and Interface Names 74
4.2.2 Unqualified Names 75
4.3 Descriptors 75
4.3.1 Grammar Notation 75
4.3.2 Field Descriptors 76
4.3.3 Method Descriptors 77
4.4 The Constant Pool 78
4.4.1 The CONSTANT_Class_info Structure 79
4.4.2 The CONSTANT_Fieldref_info, CONSTANT_Methodref_info, and
CONSTANT_InterfaceMethodref_info Structures 80
4.4.3 The CONSTANT_String_info Structure 81
4.4.4 The CONSTANT_Integer_info and CONSTANT_Float_info
Structures 82

viii
 The Java® Virtual Machine Specification

4.4.5 The CONSTANT_Long_info and CONSTANT_Double_info

Structures 83
4.4.6 The CONSTANT_NameAndType_info Structure 85
4.4.7 The CONSTANT_Utf8_info Structure 85
4.4.8 The CONSTANT_MethodHandle_info Structure 87
4.4.9 The CONSTANT_MethodType_info Structure 89
4.4.10 The CONSTANT_InvokeDynamic_info Structure 89
4.5 Fields 90
4.6 Methods 92
4.7 Attributes 95
4.7.1 Defining and Naming New Attributes 101
4.7.2 The ConstantValue Attribute 101
4.7.3 The Code Attribute 102
4.7.4 The StackMapTable Attribute 106
4.7.5 The Exceptions Attribute 113
4.7.6 The InnerClasses Attribute 114
4.7.7 The EnclosingMethod Attribute 116
4.7.8 The Synthetic Attribute 118
4.7.9 The Signature Attribute 118
4.7.9.1 Signatures 119
4.7.10 The SourceFile Attribute 123
4.7.11 The SourceDebugExtension Attribute 124
4.7.12 The LineNumberTable Attribute 124
4.7.13 The LocalVariableTable Attribute 126
4.7.14 The LocalVariableTypeTable Attribute 128
4.7.15 The Deprecated Attribute 129
4.7.16 The RuntimeVisibleAnnotations Attribute 130
4.7.16.1 The element_value structure 132
4.7.17 The RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations Attribute 135
4.7.18 The RuntimeVisibleParameterAnnotations Attribute 136
4.7.19 The RuntimeInvisibleParameterAnnotations Attribute 137
4.7.20 The RuntimeVisibleTypeAnnotations Attribute 139
4.7.20.1 The target_info union 144
4.7.20.2 The type_path structure 148
4.7.21 The RuntimeInvisibleTypeAnnotations Attribute 152
4.7.22 The AnnotationDefault Attribute 153
4.7.23 The BootstrapMethods Attribute 154
4.7.24 The MethodParameters Attribute 156
4.8 Format Checking 158
4.9 Constraints on Java Virtual Machine Code 159
4.9.1 Static Constraints 159
4.9.2 Structural Constraints 163
4.10 Verification of class Files 166
4.10.1 Verification by Type Checking 167
4.10.1.1 Accessors for Java Virtual Machine Artifacts 169
4.10.1.2 Verification Type System 173
4.10.1.3 Instruction Representation 177
4.10.1.4 Stack Map Frame Representation 178

ix
 The Java® Virtual Machine Specification

4.10.1.5 Type Checking Abstract and Native Methods 184

4.10.1.6 Type Checking Methods with Code 187
4.10.1.7 Type Checking Load and Store Instructions 194
4.10.1.8 Type Checking for protected Members 196
4.10.1.9 Type Checking Instructions 199
4.10.2 Verification by Type Inference 319
4.10.2.1 The Process of Verification by Type Inference 319
4.10.2.2 The Bytecode Verifier 319
4.10.2.3 Values of Types long and double 323
4.10.2.4 Instance Initialization Methods and Newly Created
Objects 323
4.10.2.5 Exceptions and finally 325
4.11 Limitations of the Java Virtual Machine 327

5 Loading, Linking, and Initializing 329

5.1 The Run-Time Constant Pool 329
5.2 Java Virtual Machine Startup 332
5.3 Creation and Loading 332
5.3.1 Loading Using the Bootstrap Class Loader 334
5.3.2 Loading Using a User-defined Class Loader 335
5.3.3 Creating Array Classes 336
5.3.4 Loading Constraints 336
5.3.5 Deriving a Class from a class File Representation 338
5.4 Linking 339
5.4.1 Verification 340
5.4.2 Preparation 340
5.4.3 Resolution 341
5.4.3.1 Class and Interface Resolution 342
5.4.3.2 Field Resolution 343
5.4.3.3 Method Resolution 344
5.4.3.4 Interface Method Resolution 346
5.4.3.5 Method Type and Method Handle Resolution 347
5.4.3.6 Call Site Specifier Resolution 350
5.4.4 Access Control 351
5.4.5 Overriding 352
5.5 Initialization 352
5.6 Binding Native Method Implementations 355
5.7 Java Virtual Machine Exit 355

6 The Java Virtual Machine Instruction Set 357

6.1 Assumptions: The Meaning of "Must" 357
6.2 Reserved Opcodes 358
6.3 Virtual Machine Errors 358
6.4 Format of Instruction Descriptions 359
mnemonic 360
6.5 Instructions 362
aaload 363

x
 The Java® Virtual Machine Specification

aastore 364
aconst_null 366
aload 367
aload_<n> 368
anewarray 369
areturn 370
arraylength 371
astore 372
astore_<n> 373
athrow 374
baload 376
bastore 377
bipush 378
caload 379
castore 380
checkcast 381
d2f 383
d2i 384
d2l 385
dadd 386
daload 388
dastore 389
dcmp<op> 390
dconst_<d> 392
ddiv 393
dload 395
dload_<n> 396
dmul 397
dneg 399
drem 400
dreturn 402
dstore 403
dstore_<n> 404
dsub 405
dup 406
dup_x1 407
dup_x2 408
dup2 409
dup2_x1 410
dup2_x2 411
f2d 413
f2i 414
f2l 415
fadd 416
faload 418
fastore 419
fcmp<op> 420
fconst_<f> 422

xi
 The Java® Virtual Machine Specification

fdiv 423
fload 425
fload_<n> 426
fmul 427
fneg 429
frem 430
freturn 432
fstore 433
fstore_<n> 434
fsub 435
getfield 436
getstatic 438
goto 440
goto_w 441
i2b 442
i2c 443
i2d 444
i2f 445
i2l 446
i2s 447
iadd 448
iaload 449
iand 450
iastore 451
iconst_<i> 452
idiv 453
if_acmp<cond> 454
if_icmp<cond> 455
if<cond> 457
ifnonnull 459
ifnull 460
iinc 461
iload 462
iload_<n> 463
imul 464
ineg 465
instanceof 466
invokedynamic 468
invokeinterface 473
invokespecial 477
invokestatic 481
invokevirtual 484
ior 489
irem 490
ireturn 491
ishl 492
ishr 493
istore 494

xii
 The Java® Virtual Machine Specification

istore_<n> 495
isub 496
iushr 497
ixor 498
jsr 499
jsr_w 500
l2d 501
l2f 502
l2i 503
ladd 504
laload 505
land 506
lastore 507
lcmp 508
lconst_<l> 509
ldc 510
ldc_w 512
ldc2_w 514
ldiv 515
lload 516
lload_<n> 517
lmul 518
lneg 519
lookupswitch 520
lor 522
lrem 523
lreturn 524
lshl 525
lshr 526
lstore 527
lstore_<n> 528
lsub 529
lushr 530
lxor 531
monitorenter 532
monitorexit 534
multianewarray 536
new 538
newarray 540
nop 542
pop 543
pop2 544
putfield 545
putstatic 547
ret 549
return 550
saload 551
sastore 552

xiii
 The Java® Virtual Machine Specification

sipush 553
swap 554
tableswitch 555
wide 557

7 Opcode Mnemonics by Opcode 559

Index 563

A Limited License Grant 581

xiv
 Preface to the Java SE 8 Edition

THE Java SE 8 Edition of The Java Virtual Machine Specification incorporates

®

all the changes that have been made to the Java Virtual Machine since the Java SE
7 Edition in 2011. In addition, numerous corrections and clarifications have been
made to align with popular implementations of the Java Virtual Machine.
This Edition continues the tradition of specifying the abstract Java Virtual
Machine, serving as documentation for a concrete implementation only as a
blueprint documents a house. An implementation of the Java Virtual Machine must
embody this specification, but is constrained by it only where absolutely necessary.
Notable changes to the Java programming language in Java SE 8 have brought
corresponding changes to the Java Virtual Machine. To maximize binary
compatibility, it has been desirable to specify default methods directly in the
Java Virtual Machine, rather than relying on compiler magic that might not be
portable across vendors or product releases, and is certainly not applicable to
pre-existing class files. In the context of JSR 335, Lambda Expressions for the
Java Programming Language, Dan Smith at Oracle consulted with implementers
to determine how best to integrate default methods into the constant pool and
method structures, the method and interface method resolution algorithms, and the
bytecode instruction set. JSR 335 also introduced private and static methods
in interfaces at the class file level; they too have been carefully integrated with
interface method resolution.
A theme of Java SE 8 is co-evolution of the Java SE platform libraries with the
Java Virtual Machine. A small but useful example is support for method parameter
names at run time: storing such names in the class file structure goes hand in hand
with offering a standard API to retrieve them (java.lang.reflect.Parameter).
This illustrates an interesting development in the class file structure over the years:
the First Edition of this specification defined six attributes, of which three were
deemed critical to the Java Virtual Machine, while this Java SE 8 Edition defines
23 attributes, of which five are deemed critical to the Java Virtual Machine; that is
to say, attributes now exist primarily to support libraries and tools rather than the
Java Virtual Machine itself. To help readers understand the class file structure, this
specification more clearly documents the role of each attribute and the constraints
placed upon it.

xv
 PREFACE TO THE JAVA SE 8 EDITION

Many colleagues in the Java Platform Group at Oracle have provided valuable
support to this specification: Mandy Chung, Joe Darcy, Joel Franck, Staffan
Friberg, Yuri Gaevsky, Jon Gibbons, Jeannette Hung, Eric McCorkle, Matherey
Nunez, Mark Reinhold, John Rose, Georges Saab, Steve Sides, Bernard Traversat,
Michel Trudeau, and Mikael Vidstedt. Particular thanks to Dan Heidinga (IBM),
Karen Kinnear, Keith McGuigan, and Harold Seigel for their ironclad commitment
to compatibility and security in popular Java Virtual Machine implementations.

Alex Buckley
Santa Clara, California
March, 2014

xvi
 C H A P T E R 1
Introduction

1.1 A Bit of History

The Java® programming language is a general-purpose, concurrent, object-oriented

language. Its syntax is similar to C and C++, but it omits many of the features that
make C and C++ complex, confusing, and unsafe. The Java platform was initially
developed to address the problems of building software for networked consumer
devices. It was designed to support multiple host architectures and to allow secure
delivery of software components. To meet these requirements, compiled code had
to survive transport across networks, operate on any client, and assure the client
that it was safe to run.
The popularization of the World Wide Web made these attributes much more
interesting. Web browsers enabled millions of people to surf the Net and access
media-rich content in simple ways. At last there was a medium where what you
saw and heard was essentially the same regardless of the machine you were using
and whether it was connected to a fast network or a slow modem.
Web enthusiasts soon discovered that the content supported by the Web's HTML
document format was too limited. HTML extensions, such as forms, only
highlighted those limitations, while making it clear that no browser could include
all the features users wanted. Extensibility was the answer.
The HotJava browser first showcased the interesting properties of the Java
programming language and platform by making it possible to embed programs
inside HTML pages. Programs are transparently downloaded into the browser
along with the HTML pages in which they appear. Before being accepted by the
browser, programs are carefully checked to make sure they are safe. Like HTML
pages, compiled programs are network- and host-independent. The programs
behave the same way regardless of where they come from or what kind of machine
they are being loaded into and run on.

1
1 INTRODUCTION

A Web browser incorporating the Java platform is no longer limited to a

predetermined set of capabilities. Visitors to Web pages incorporating dynamic
content can be assured that their machines cannot be damaged by that content.
Programmers can write a program once, and it will run on any machine supplying
a Java run-time environment.

1.2 The Java Virtual Machine

The Java Virtual Machine is the cornerstone of the Java platform. It is the
component of the technology responsible for its hardware- and operating system-
independence, the small size of its compiled code, and its ability to protect users
from malicious programs.
The Java Virtual Machine is an abstract computing machine. Like a real computing
machine, it has an instruction set and manipulates various memory areas at run time.
It is reasonably common to implement a programming language using a virtual
machine; the best-known virtual machine may be the P-Code machine of UCSD
Pascal.
The first prototype implementation of the Java Virtual Machine, done at Sun
Microsystems, Inc., emulated the Java Virtual Machine instruction set in software
hosted by a handheld device that resembled a contemporary Personal Digital
Assistant (PDA). Oracle's current implementations emulate the Java Virtual
Machine on mobile, desktop and server devices, but the Java Virtual Machine
does not assume any particular implementation technology, host hardware, or
host operating system. It is not inherently interpreted, but can just as well be
implemented by compiling its instruction set to that of a silicon CPU. It may also
be implemented in microcode or directly in silicon.
The Java Virtual Machine knows nothing of the Java programming language, only
of a particular binary format, the class file format. A class file contains Java
Virtual Machine instructions (or bytecodes) and a symbol table, as well as other
ancillary information.
For the sake of security, the Java Virtual Machine imposes strong syntactic and
structural constraints on the code in a class file. However, any language with
functionality that can be expressed in terms of a valid class file can be hosted by
the Java Virtual Machine. Attracted by a generally available, machine-independent
platform, implementors of other languages can turn to the Java Virtual Machine as
a delivery vehicle for their languages.

2
 Organization of the Specification 1.3

The Java Virtual Machine specified here is compatible with the Java SE 8 platform,
and supports the Java programming language specified in The Java Language
Specification, Java SE 8 Edition.

1.3 Organization of the Specification

Chapter 2 gives an overview of the Java Virtual Machine architecture.

Chapter 3 introduces compilation of code written in the Java programming
language into the instruction set of the Java Virtual Machine.
Chapter 4 specifies the class file format, the hardware- and operating system-
independent binary format used to represent compiled classes and interfaces.
Chapter 5 specifies the start-up of the Java Virtual Machine and the loading, linking,
and initialization of classes and interfaces.
Chapter 6 specifies the instruction set of the Java Virtual Machine, presenting the
instructions in alphabetical order of opcode mnemonics.
Chapter 7 gives a table of Java Virtual Machine opcode mnemonics indexed by
opcode value.
In the Second Edition of The Java® Virtual Machine Specification, Chapter 2
gave an overview of the Java programming language that was intended to support
the specification of the Java Virtual Machine but was not itself a part of the
specification. In The Java Virtual Machine Specification, Java SE 8 Edition, the
reader is referred to The Java Language Specification, Java SE 8 Edition for
information about the Java programming language. References of the form: (JLS
§x.y) indicate where this is necessary.
In the Second Edition of The Java® Virtual Machine Specification, Chapter 8
detailed the low-level actions that explained the interaction of Java Virtual Machine
threads with a shared main memory. In The Java Virtual Machine Specification,
Java SE 8 Edition, the reader is referred to Chapter 17 of The Java Language
Specification, Java SE 8 Edition for information about threads and locks. Chapter
17 reflects The Java Memory Model and Thread Specification produced by the JSR
133 Expert Group.

3
1 INTRODUCTION

1.4 Notation

Throughout this specification we refer to classes and interfaces drawn from the
Java SE platform API. Whenever we refer to a class or interface (other than those
declared in an example) using a single identifier N, the intended reference is to the
class or interface named N in the package java.lang. We use the fully qualified
name for classes or interfaces from packages other than java.lang.
Whenever we refer to a class or interface that is declared in the package java or
any of its subpackages, the intended reference is to that class or interface as loaded
by the bootstrap class loader (§5.3.1).
Whenever we refer to a subpackage of a package named java, the intended
reference is to that subpackage as determined by the bootstrap class loader.
The use of fonts in this specification is as follows:
• A fixed width font is used for Java Virtual Machine data types, exceptions,
errors, class file structures, Prolog code, and Java code fragments.
• Italic is used for Java Virtual Machine "assembly language", its opcodes and
operands, as well as items in the Java Virtual Machine's run-time data areas. It is
also used to introduce new terms and simply for emphasis.
Non-normative information, designed to clarify the specification, is given in
smaller, indented text.

This is non-normative information. It provides intuition, rationale, advice, examples, etc.

1.5 Feedback

Readers may send feedback about errors, omissions, and ambiguities in this
specification to [email protected].
Questions concerning the generation and manipulation of class files by javac (the
reference compiler for the Java programming language) may be sent to compiler-
[email protected].

4
 C H A P T E R 2
The Structure of the Java
Virtual Machine

THIS document specifies an abstract machine. It does not describe any particular
implementation of the Java Virtual Machine.
To implement the Java Virtual Machine correctly, you need only be able to read
the class file format and correctly perform the operations specified therein.
Implementation details that are not part of the Java Virtual Machine's specification
would unnecessarily constrain the creativity of implementors. For example, the
memory layout of run-time data areas, the garbage-collection algorithm used, and
any internal optimization of the Java Virtual Machine instructions (for example,
translating them into machine code) are left to the discretion of the implementor.
All references to Unicode in this specification are given with respect to The
Unicode Standard, Version 6.0.0, available at http://www.unicode.org/.

2.1 The class File Format

Compiled code to be executed by the Java Virtual Machine is represented using

a hardware- and operating system-independent binary format, typically (but not
necessarily) stored in a file, known as the class file format. The class file format
precisely defines the representation of a class or interface, including details such
as byte ordering that might be taken for granted in a platform-specific object file
format.
Chapter 4, "The class File Format", covers the class file format in detail.

5
2 THE STRUCTURE OF THE JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE

2.2 Data Types

Like the Java programming language, the Java Virtual Machine operates on two
kinds of types: primitive types and reference types. There are, correspondingly, two
kinds of values that can be stored in variables, passed as arguments, returned by
methods, and operated upon: primitive values and reference values.
The Java Virtual Machine expects that nearly all type checking is done prior to
run time, typically by a compiler, and does not have to be done by the Java
Virtual Machine itself. Values of primitive types need not be tagged or otherwise
be inspectable to determine their types at run time, or to be distinguished from
values of reference types. Instead, the instruction set of the Java Virtual Machine
distinguishes its operand types using instructions intended to operate on values of
specific types. For instance, iadd, ladd, fadd, and dadd are all Java Virtual Machine
instructions that add two numeric values and produce numeric results, but each is
specialized for its operand type: int, long, float, and double, respectively. For a
summary of type support in the Java Virtual Machine instruction set, see §2.11.1.
The Java Virtual Machine contains explicit support for objects. An object is
either a dynamically allocated class instance or an array. A reference to an object
is considered to have Java Virtual Machine type reference. Values of type
reference can be thought of as pointers to objects. More than one reference to an
object may exist. Objects are always operated on, passed, and tested via values of
type reference.

2.3 Primitive Types and Values

The primitive data types supported by the Java Virtual Machine are the numeric
types, the boolean type (§2.3.4), and the returnAddress type (§2.3.3).
The numeric types consist of the integral types (§2.3.1) and the floating-point types
(§2.3.2).
The integral types are:
• byte, whose values are 8-bit signed two's-complement integers, and whose
default value is zero
• short, whose values are 16-bit signed two's-complement integers, and whose
default value is zero

6
 Primitive Types and Values 2.3

• int, whose values are 32-bit signed two's-complement integers, and whose
default value is zero
• long, whose values are 64-bit signed two's-complement integers, and whose
default value is zero
• char, whose values are 16-bit unsigned integers representing Unicode code
points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, encoded with UTF-16, and whose default
value is the null code point ('\u0000')
The floating-point types are:
• float, whose values are elements of the float value set or, where supported, the
float-extended-exponent value set, and whose default value is positive zero
• double, whose values are elements of the double value set or, where supported,
the double-extended-exponent value set, and whose default value is positive zero
The values of the boolean type encode the truth values true and false, and the
default value is false.

The First Edition of The Java® Virtual Machine Specification did not consider boolean
to be a Java Virtual Machine type. However, boolean values do have limited support in
the Java Virtual Machine. The Second Edition of The Java® Virtual Machine Specification
clarified the issue by treating boolean as a type.

The values of the returnAddress type are pointers to the opcodes of Java Virtual
Machine instructions. Of the primitive types, only the returnAddress type is not
directly associated with a Java programming language type.

2.3.1 Integral Types and Values

The values of the integral types of the Java Virtual Machine are:
• For byte, from -128 to 127 (-27 to 27 - 1), inclusive
• For short, from -32768 to 32767 (-215 to 215 - 1), inclusive
• For int, from -2147483648 to 2147483647 (-231 to 231 - 1), inclusive
• For long, from -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 (-263 to 263
- 1), inclusive
• For char, from 0 to 65535 inclusive

7
2 THE STRUCTURE OF THE JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE

2.3.2 Floating-Point Types, Value Sets, and Values

The floating-point types are float and double, which are conceptually associated
with the 32-bit single-precision and 64-bit double-precision format IEEE 754
values and operations as specified in IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point
Arithmetic (ANSI/IEEE Std. 754-1985, New York).
The IEEE 754 standard includes not only positive and negative sign-magnitude
numbers, but also positive and negative zeros, positive and negative infinities, and
a special Not-a-Number value (hereafter abbreviated as "NaN"). The NaN value
is used to represent the result of certain invalid operations such as dividing zero
by zero.
Every implementation of the Java Virtual Machine is required to support two
standard sets of floating-point values, called the float value set and the double value
set. In addition, an implementation of the Java Virtual Machine may, at its option,
support either or both of two extended-exponent floating-point value sets, called
the float-extended-exponent value set and the double-extended-exponent value set.
These extended-exponent value sets may, under certain circumstances, be used
instead of the standard value sets to represent the values of type float or double.
The finite nonzero values of any floating-point value set can all be expressed in
the form s × m × 2(e − N + 1), where s is +1 or −1, m is a positive integer less than
2N, and e is an integer between Emin = −(2K−1−2) and Emax = 2K−1−1, inclusive,
and where N and K are parameters that depend on the value set. Some values can
be represented in this form in more than one way; for example, supposing that a
value v in a value set might be represented in this form using certain values for
s, m, and e, then if it happened that m were even and e were less than 2K-1, one
could halve m and increase e by 1 to produce a second representation for the same
value v. A representation in this form is called normalized if m ≥ 2N-1; otherwise
the representation is said to be denormalized. If a value in a value set cannot be
represented in such a way that m ≥ 2N-1, then the value is said to be a denormalized
value, because it has no normalized representation.
The constraints on the parameters N and K (and on the derived parameters Emin
and Emax) for the two required and two optional floating-point value sets are
summarized in Table 2.3.2-A.

8
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
form of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It is through this preliminary
formative activity of thought that reflective or logical thought has
presented to it a world of meanings ranged in an order of relative
independence and dependence, and arranged as elements in a
complex of meanings whose various constituent parts mutually
influence one another's meanings.[37]
As usual, Lotze mediates the contradiction between material
constituted by thought and the same material just presented to
thought, by a further position so disparate to each that, taken in
connection with each by turns, it seems to bridge the gulf. After
describing the prior constitutive work of thought as above, he goes
on to discuss a second phase of thought which is intermediary
between this and the third phase, viz., reflective thought proper. This
second activity is that of arranging experienced quales in series and
groups, thus ascribing a sort of universal or common somewhat to
various instances (as already described; see p. 144). On one hand, it
is clearly stated that this second phase of thought's activity is in
reality the same as the first phase: since all objectification involves
positing, since positing involves distinction of one matter from
others, and since this involves placing it in a series or group in which
each is measurably marked off, as to the degree and nature of its
diversity, from every other. We are told that we are only considering
"a really inseparable operation" of thought from two different sides:
first, as to the effect which objectifying thought has upon the matter
as set over against the feeling subject; secondly, the effect which
this objectification has upon the matter in relation to other matters.
[38] Afterward, however, these two operations are declared to be
radically different in type and nature. The first is determinant and
formative; it gives ideas "the shape without which the logical spirit
could not accept them." In a way it dictates "its own laws to its
object-matter."[39] The second activity of thought is rather passive
and receptive. It simply recognizes what is already there. "Thought
can make no difference where it finds none already in the matter of
impressions."[40] "The first universal, as we saw, can only be
experienced in immediate sensation. It is no product of thought, but
something that thought finds already in existence."[41]
The obviousness of this further contradiction is paralleled only by its
inevitableness. Thought is in the air, is arbitrary and wild in dealing
with meanings, unless it gets its start and cue from actual
experience. Hence the necessity of insisting upon thought's activity
as just recognizing the contents already given. But, on the other
hand, prior to the work of thought there is to Lotze no content or
meaning. It requires a work of thought to detach anything from the
flux of sense irritations and invest it with a meaning of its own. This
dilemma is inevitable to any writer who declines to consider as
correlative the nature of thought-activity and thought-content from
the standpoint of their generating conditions in the movement of
experience. Viewed from such a standpoint the principle of solution
is clear enough. As we have already seen (p. 121), the internal
dissension of an experience leads to detaching certain factors
previously integrated in the concrete experience as aspects of its
own qualitative coloring, and to relegating them, for the time being
(pending integration into further immediate qualities of a
reconstituted experience), into a world of bare meanings, a sphere
qualified as ideal throughout. These meanings then become the
tools of thought in interpreting the data, just as the sense qualities
which define the presented situation are the immediate matter for
thought. The two as mutually referred are content. That is, the
datum and the meaning as reciprocally qualified by each other
constitute the objective of thought.
To reach this unification is thought's objective or goal. Every
successive cross-section of reflective inquiry presents what may be
taken for granted as the outcome of previous thinking, and as the
determinant of further reflective procedure. Taken as defining the
point reached in the thought-function and serving as constituent unit
in further thought, it is content or logical object. Lotze's instinct is
sure in identifying and setting over against each other the material
given to thought and the content which is thought's own "building-
stone." His contradictions arise simply from the fact that his
absolute, non-historic method does not permit him to interpret this
joint identity and distinction in a working, and hence relative, sense.
II. The question of how the existence of meanings, or thought-
contents, is to be understood merges imperceptibly into the question
of the real objectivity or validity of such contents. The difficulty for
Lotze is the now familiar one: So far as his logic compels him to
insist that these meanings are the possession and product of
thought (since thought is an independent activity), the ideas are
merely ideas; there is no test of objectivity beyond the thoroughly
unsatisfactory and formal one of their own mutual consistency. In
reaction from this Lotze is thrown back upon the idea of these
contents as the original matter given in the impressions themselves.
Here there seems to be an objective or external test by which the
reality of thought's operations may be tried; a given idea is verified
or found false according to its measure of correspondence with the
matter of experience as such. But now we are no better off. The
original independence and heterogeneity of impressions and of
thought is so great that there is no way to compare the results of
the latter with the former. We cannot compare or contrast
distinctions of worth with bare differences of factual existence (I, 2).
The standard or test of objectivity is so thoroughly external that by
original definition it is wholly outside the realm of thought. How can
thought compare meanings with existences?
Or again, the given material of experience apart from thought is
precisely the relatively chaotic and unorganized; it even reduces
itself to a mere sequence of psychical events. What sense is there in
directing us to compare the highest results of scientific inquiry with
the bare sequence of our own states of feeling; or even with the
original data whose fragmentary and uncertain character was the
exact motive for entering upon scientific inquiry? How can the
former in any sense give a check or test of the value of the latter?
This is professedly to test the validity of a system of meanings by
comparison with that whose defects call forth the construction of the
system of meanings.
Our subsequent inquiry simply consists in tracing some of the phases
of the characteristic seesaw from one to the other of the two horns
of the now familiar dilemma: either thought is separate from the
matter of experience, and then its validity is wholly its own private
business, or else the objective results of thought are already in the
antecedent material, and then thought is either unnecessary or else
has no way of checking its own performances.
1. Lotze assumes, as we have seen, a certain independent validity in
each meaning or qualified content, taken in and of itself. "Blue" has
a certain meaning, in and of itself; it is an object for consciousness
as such, not merely its state or mood. After the original sense
irritation through which it was mediated has entirely disappeared, it
persists as a valid meaning. Moreover, it is an object or content of
thought for others as well. Thus it has a double mark of validity: in
the comparison of one part of my own experience with another, and
in the comparison of my experience as a whole with that of others.
Here we have a sort of validity which does not raise at all the
question of metaphysical reality (I, 14, 15). Lotze thus seems to
have escaped from the necessity of employing as check or test for
the validity of ideas any reference to a real outside the sphere of
thought itself. Such terms as "conjunction," "franchise,"
"constitution," "algebraic zero," etc., claim to possess objective
validity. Yet none of these professes to refer to a reality beyond
thought. Generalizing this point of view, validity or objectivity of
meaning means simply that which is "identical for all consciousness"
(I, 3); "it is quite indifferent whether certain parts of the world of
thought indicate something which has beside an independent reality
outside of thinking minds, or whether all that it contains exists only
in the thoughts of those who think it, but with equal validity for
them all" (I, 16).
So far it seems clear sailing. Difficulties, however, show themselves
the moment we inquire what is meant by a self-identical content for
all thought. Is this to be taken in a static or in a dynamic way? That
is to say: Does it express the fact that a given content or meaning is
de facto presented to the consciousness of all alike? Does this
coequal presence guarantee an objectivity? Or does validity attach to
a given meaning or content in the sense that it directs and controls
the further exercise of thinking, and thus the formation of further
new objects of knowledge?
The former interpretation is alone consistent with Lotze's notion that
the independent idea as such is invested with a certain validity or
objectivity. It alone is consistent with his assertion that concepts
precede judgments. It alone, that is to say, is consistent with the
notion that reflective thinking has a sphere of ideas or meanings
supplied to it at the outset. But it is impossible to entertain this
belief. The stimulus which, according to Lotze, goads thought on
from ideas or concepts to judgments and inferences is in truth
simply the lack of validity, of objectivity in its original independent
meanings or contents. A meaning as independent is precisely that
which is not invested with validity, but which is a mere idea, a
"notion," a fancy, at best a surmise which may turn out to be valid
(and of course this indicates possible reference); a standpoint to
have its value determined by its further active use. "Blue" as a mere
detached floating meaning, an idea at large, would not gain in
validity simply by being entertained continuously in a given
consciousness, or by being made at one and the same time the
persistent object of attentive regard by all human consciousnesses.
If this were all that were required, the chimera, the centaur, or any
other subjective construction could easily gain validity. "Christian
Science" has made just this notion the basis of its philosophy.
The simple fact is that in such illustrations as "blue," "franchise,"
"conjunction," Lotze instinctively takes cases which are not mere
independent and detached meanings, but which involve reference to
a region of experience, to a region of mutually determining social
activities. The conception that reference to a social activity does not
involve the same sort of reference of a meaning beyond itself that is
found in physical matters, and hence may be taken quite innocent
and free of the problem of reference to existence beyond meaning,
is one of the strangest that has ever found lodgment in human
thinking. Either both physical and social reference or neither is
logical; if neither, then it is because the meaning functions, as it
originates, in a specific situation which carries with it its own tests
(see p. 96). Lotze's conception is made possible only by
unconsciously substituting the idea of an object as a content of
thought for a large number of persons (or a de facto somewhat for
every consciousness), for the genuine definition of object as a
determinant in a scheme of activity. The former is consistent with
Lotze's conception of thought, but wholly indeterminate as to validity
or intent. The latter is the test used experimentally in all concrete
thinking, but involves a radical transformation of all Lotze's
assumptions. A given idea of the conjunction of the franchise, or of
blue, is valid, not because everybody happens to entertain it, but
because it expresses the factor of control or direction in a given
movement of experience. The test of validity of idea[42] is its
functional or instrumental use in effecting the transition from a
relatively conflicting experience to a relatively integrated one. If
Lotze's view were correct, "blue" valid once would be valid always—
even when red or green were actually called for to fulfil specific
conditions. This is to say validity really refers to rightfulness or
adequacy of performance in an asserting of connection—not to a
meaning as contemplated in detachment.
If we refer again to the fact that the genuine antecedent of thought
is a situation which is disorganized in its structural elements, we can
easily understand how certain contents may be detached and held
apart as meanings or references, actual or possible. We can
understand how such detached contents may be of use in effecting a
review of the entire experience, and as affording standpoints and
methods of a reconstruction which will maintain the integrity of
behavior. We can understand how validity of meaning is measured
by reference to something which is not mere meaning; by reference
to something which lies beyond it as such—viz., the reconstitution of
an experience into which it enters as method of control. That
paradox of ordinary experience and of scientific inquiry by which
objectivity is given alike to matter of perception and to conceived
relations—to facts and to laws—affords no peculiar difficulty because
the test of objectivity is everywhere the same: anything is objective
in so far as, through the medium of conflict, it controls the
movement of experience in its reconstructive transition. There is not
first an object, whether of sense perception or of conception, which
afterward somehow exercises this controlling influence; but the
objective is any existence exercising the function of control. It may
only control the act of inquiry; it may only set on foot doubt, but this
is direction of subsequent experience, and, in so far, is a token of
objectivity. It has to be reckoned with.
So much for the thought-content or meaning as having a validity of
its own. It does not have it as isolated or given or static; it has it in
its dynamic reference, its use in determining further movement of
experience. In other words, the "meaning," having been selected
and made up with reference to performing a certain office in the
evolution of a unified experience, can be tested in no other way than
by discovering whether it does what it was intended to do and what
it purports to do.[43]
2. Lotze has to wrestle with this question of validity in a further
respect: What constitutes the objectivity of thinking as a total
attitude, activity, or function? According to his own statement, the
meanings or valid ideas are after all only building-stones for logical
thought. Validity is thus not a property of them in their independent
existences, but of their mutual reference to each other. Thinking is
the process of instituting these mutual references; of building up the
various scattered and independent building-stones into the coherent
system of thought. What is the validity of the various forms of
thinking which find expression in the various types of judgment and
in the various forms of inference? Categorical, hypothetical,
disjunctive judgment; inference by induction, by analogy, by
mathematical equation; classification, theory of explanation—all
these are processes of reflection by which connection in an
organized whole is given to the fragmentary meanings with which
thought sets out. What shall we say of the validity of such
processes?
On one point Lotze is quite clear. These various logical acts do not
really enter into the constitution of the valid world. The logical forms
as such are maintained only in the process of thinking. The world of
valid truth does not undergo a series of contortions and evolutions,
paralleling in any way the successive steps and missteps, the
succession of tentative trials, withdrawals, and retracings, which
mark the course of our own thinking.[44]
Lotze is explicit upon the point that only the thought-content in
which the process of thinking issues has objective validity; the act of
thinking is "purely and simply an inner movement of our own minds,
made necessary to us by reason of the constitution of our nature
and of our place in the world" (II, 279).
Here the problem of validity presents itself as the problem of the
relation of the act of thinking to its own product. In his solution
Lotze uses two metaphors: one derived from building operations, the
other from traveling. The construction of a building requires of
necessity certain tools and extraneous constructions, stagings,
scaffoldings, etc., which are necessary to effect the final
construction, but which do not enter into the building as such. The
activity has an instrumental, though not a constitutive, value as
regards its product. Similarly, in order to get a view from the top of a
mountain—this view being the objective—the traveler has to go
through preliminary movements along devious courses. These again
are antecedent prerequisites, but do not constitute a portion of the
attained view.
The problem of thought as activity, as distinct from thought as
content, opens up altogether too large a question to receive
complete consideration at this point. Fortunately, however, the
previous discussion enables us to narrow the point which is in issue
just here. The question is whether the activity of thought is to be
regarded as an independent function supervening entirely from
without upon antecedents, and directed from without upon data, or
whether it marks the phase of the transformation which the course
of experience (whether practical, or artistic, or socially affectional or
whatever) undergoes for the sake of its deliberate control. If it be
the latter, a thoroughly intelligent sense can be given to the
proposition that the activity of thinking is instrumental, and that its
worth is found, not in its own successive states as such, but in the
result in which it comes to conclusion. But the conception of thinking
as an independent activity somehow occurring after an independent
antecedent, playing upon an independent subject-matter, and finally
effecting an independent result, presents us with just one miracle
the more.
I do not question the strictly instrumental character of thinking. The
problem lies not here, but in the interpretation of the nature of the
instrument. The difficulty with Lotze's position is that it forces us into
the assumption of a means and an end which are simply and only
external to each other, and yet necessarily dependent upon each
other—a position which, whenever found, is thoroughly self-
contradictory. Lotze vibrates between the notion of thought as a tool
in the external sense, a mere scaffolding to a finished building in
which it has no part nor lot, and the notion of thought as an
immanent tool, as a scaffolding which is an integral part of the very
operation of building, and which is set up for the sake of the
building-activity which is carried on effectively only with and through
a scaffolding. Only in the former case can the scaffolding be
considered as a mere tool. In the latter case the external scaffolding
is not the instrumentality; the actual tool is the action of erecting the
building, and this action involves the scaffolding as a constituent part
of itself. The work of building is not set over against the completed
building as mere means to an end; it is the end taken in process or
historically, longitudinally, temporally viewed. The scaffolding,
moreover, is not an external means to the process of erecting, but
an organic member of it. It is no mere accident of language that
"building" has a double sense—meaning at once the process and the
finished product. The outcome of thought is the thinking activity
carried on to its own completion; the activity, on the other hand, is
the outcome taken anywhere short of its own realization, and
thereby still going on.
The only consideration which prevents easy and immediate
acceptance of this view is the notion of thinking as something purely
formal. It is strange that the empiricist does not see that his
insistence upon a matter accidentally given to thought only
strengthens the hands of the rationalist with his claim of thinking as
an independent activity, separate from the actual make-up of the
affairs of experience. Thinking as a merely formal activity exercised
upon certain sensations or images or objects sets forth an absolutely
meaningless proposition. The psychological identification of thinking
with the process of association is much nearer the truth. It is,
indeed, on the way to the truth. We need only to recognize that
association is of matters or meanings, not of ideas as existences or
events; and that the type of association we call thinking differs from
casual fancy and revery by control in reference to an end, to
apprehend how completely thinking is a reconstructive movement of
actual contents of experience in relation to each other.
There is no miracle in the fact that tool and material are adapted to
each other in the process of reaching a valid conclusion. Were they
external in origin to each other and to the result, the whole affair
would, indeed, present an insoluble problem—so insoluble that, if
this were the true condition of affairs, we never should even know
that there was a problem. But, in truth, both material and tool have
been secured and determined with reference to economy and
efficiency in effecting the end desired—the maintenance of a
harmonious experience. The builder has discovered that his building
means building tools, and also building material. Each has been
slowly evolved with reference to its fit employ in the entire function;
and this evolution has been checked at every point by reference to
its own correspondent. The carpenter has not thought at large on
his building and then constructed tools at large, but has thought of
his building in terms of the material which enters into it, and through
that medium has come to the consideration of the tools which are
helpful.
This is not a formal question, but one of the place and relations of
the matters actually entering into experience. And they in turn
determine the taking up of just those mental attitudes, and the
employing of just those intellectual operations which most effectively
handle and organize the material. Thinking is adaptation to an end
through the adjustment of particular objective contents.
The thinker, like the carpenter, is at once stimulated and checked in
every stage of his procedure by the particular situation which
confronts him. A person is at the stage of wanting a new house:
well, then, his materials are available resources, the price of labor,
the cost of building, the state and needs of his family, profession,
etc.; his tools are paper and pencil and compass, or possibly the
bank as a credit instrumentality, etc. Again, the work is beginning.
The foundations are laid. This in turn determines its own specific
materials and tools. Again, the building is almost ready for
occupancy. The concrete process is that of taking away the
scaffolding, clearing up the grounds, furnishing and decorating
rooms, etc. This specific operation again determines its own fit or
relevant materials and tools. It defines the time and mode and
manner of beginning and ceasing to use them. Logical theory will
get along as well as does the practice of knowing when it sticks
close by and observes the directions and checks inherent in each
successive phase of the evolution of the cycle of experience. The
problem in general of validity of the thinking process as distinct from
the validity of this or that process arises only when thinking is
isolated from its historic position and its material context (see ante,
p. 95).
3. But Lotze is not yet done with the problem of validity, even from
his own standpoint. The ground shifts again under his feet. It is no
longer a question of the validity of the idea or meaning with which
thought is supposed to set out; it is no longer a question of the
validity of the process of thinking in reference to its own product; it
is the question of the validity of the product. Supposing, after all,
that the final meaning, or logical idea, is thoroughly coherent and
organized; supposing it is an object for all consciousness as such.
Once more arises the question: What is the validity of even the most
coherent and complete idea?—a question which arises and will not
down. We may reconstruct the notion of the chimera until it ceases
to be an independent idea and becomes a part of the system of
Greek mythology. Has it gained in validity in ceasing to be an
independent myth, in becoming an element in systematized myth?
Myth it was and myth it remains. Mythology does not get validity by
growing bigger. How do we know the same is not the case with the
ideas which are the product of our most deliberate and extended
scientific inquiry? The reference again to the content as the self-
identical object of all consciousness proves nothing; the subject-
matter of a hallucination does not gain validity in proportion to its
social contagiousness.
According to Lotze, the final product is, after all, still thought. Now,
Lotze is committed once for all to the notion that thought, in any
form, is directed by and at an outside reality. The ghost haunts him
to the last. How, after all, does even the ideally perfect valid thought
apply or refer to reality? Its genuine subject is still beyond itself. At
the last Lotze can dispose of this question only by regarding it as a
metaphysical, not a logical, problem (II, 281, 282). In other words,
logically speaking, we are at the end just exactly where we were at
the beginning—in the sphere of ideas, and of ideas only, plus a
consciousness of the necessity of referring these ideas to a reality
which is beyond them, which is utterly inaccessible to them, which is
out of reach of any influence which they may exercise, and which
transcends any possible comparison with their results. "It is vain,"
says Lotze, "to shrink from acknowledging the circle here involved ...
all we know of the external world depends upon the ideas of it which
are within us" (II, 185). "It is then this varied world of ideas within
us which forms the sole material directly given to us" (II, 186). As it
is the only material given to us, so it is the only material with which
thought can end. To talk about knowing the external world through
ideas which are merely within us is to talk of an inherent self-
contradiction. There is no common ground in which the external
world and our ideas can meet. In other words, the original
separation between an independent thought-material and an
independent thought-function and purpose lands us inevitably in the
metaphysics of subjective idealism, plus a belief in an unknown
reality beyond, which although unknowable is yet taken as the
ultimate test of the value of our ideas. At the end, after all our
maneuvering we are where we began: with two separate disparates,
one of meaning, but no existence, the other of existence, but no
meaning.
The other aspect of Lotze's contradiction which completes the circle
is clear when we refer to his original propositions, and recall that at
the outset he was compelled to regard the origination and
conjunctions of the impressions, the elements of ideas, as
themselves the effects exercised by a world of things already in
existence (see p. 31). He sets up an independent world of thought,
and yet has to confess that both at its origin and at its termination it
points with absolute necessity to a world beyond itself. Only the
stubborn refusal to take this initial and terminal reference of thought
beyond itself as having a historic or temporal meaning, indicating a
particular place of generation and a particular point of fulfilment,
compels Lotze to give such objective references a transcendental
turn.
When Lotze goes on to say (II, 191) that the measure of truth of
particular parts of experience is found in asking whether, when
judged by thought, they are in harmony with other parts of
experience; when he goes on to say that there is no sense in trying
to compare the entire world of ideas with a reality which is non-
existent (excepting as it itself should become an idea), he lands
where he might better have frankly commenced.[45] He saves
himself from utter skepticism only by claiming that the explicit
assumption of skepticism—the need of agreement of a ready-made
idea as such with an extraneous ready-made material as such—is
meaningless. He defines correctly the work of thought as consisting
in harmonizing the various portions of experience with each other. In
this case the test of thought is the harmony or unity of experience
actually effected. The test of validity of thought is beyond thought,
just as at the other limit thought originates out of a situation which
is not dependent upon thought. Interpret this before and beyond in
a historic sense, as an affair of the place occupied and rôle played by
thinking as a function in experience in relation to other non-
intellectual experiences of things, and then the intermediate and
instrumental character of thought, its dependence upon unreflective
antecedents for its existence, and upon a consequent experience for
its final test, becomes significant and necessary. Taken at large,
apart from temporal development and control, it plunges us in the
depths of a hopelessly complicated and self-revolving metaphysic.
 VI

SOME STAGES OF LOGICAL

THOUGHT
The man in the street, when asked what he thinks about a certain
matter, often replies that he does not think at all; he knows. The
suggestion is that thinking is a case of active uncertainty set over
against conviction or unquestioning assurance. When he adds that
he does not have to think, but knows, the further implication is that
thinking, when needed, leads to knowledge; that its purpose or
object is to secure stable equilibrium. It is the purpose of this paper
to show some of the main stages through which thinking,
understood in this way, actually passes in its attempt to reach its
most effective working; that is, the maximum of reasonable
certainty.
I wish to show how a variety of modes of thinking, easily
recognizable in the progress of both the race and the individual, may
be identified and arranged as successive species of the relationship
which doubting bears to assurance; as various ratios, so to speak,
which the vigor of doubting bears to mere acquiescence. The
presumption is that the function of questioning is one which has
continually grown in intensity and range, that doubt is continually
chased back, and, being cornered, fights more desperately, and thus
clears the ground more thoroughly. Its successive stations or arrests
constitute stages of thinking. Or to change the metaphor, just in the
degree that what has been accepted as fact—the object of
assurance—loses stable equilibrium, the tension involved in the
questioning attitude increases, until a readjustment gives a new and
less easily shaken equilibrium.
The natural tendency of man is not to press home a doubt, but to
cut inquiry as short as possible. The practical man's impatience with
theory has become a proverb; it expresses just the feeling that,
since the thinking process is of use only in substituting certainty for
doubt, any apparent prolongation of it is useless speculation,
wasting time and diverting the mind from important issues. To follow
the line of least resistance is to cut short the stay in the sphere of
doubts and suggestions, and to make the speediest return into the
world where one can act. The result, of course, is that difficulties are
evaded or surmounted rather than really disposed of. Hence, in spite
of the opposition of the would-be practical man, the needs of
practice, of economy, and of efficiency have themselves compelled a
continual deepening of doubt and widening of the area of
investigation.
It is within this evolution that we have to find our stages of thinking.
The initial stage is where the doubt is hardly endured but not
entertained; it is no welcome guest but an intruder, to be got rid of
as speedily as possible. Development of alternative and competitive
suggestions, the forming of suppositions (of ideas), goes but a little
way. The mind seizes upon the nearest or most convenient
instrument of dismissing doubt and reattaining security. At the other
end is the definitive and conscious search for problems, and the
development of elaborate and systematized methods of investigation
—the industry and technique of science. Between these limits come
processes which have started out upon the path of doubt and
inquiry, and then halted by the way.
In the first stage of the journey, beliefs are treated as something
fixed and static. To those who are using them they are simply
another kind of fact. They are used to settle doubts, but the doubts
are treated as arising quite outside the ideas themselves. Nothing is
further from recognition than that ideas themselves are open to
doubt, or need criticism and revision. Indeed, the one who uses
static meanings is not even aware that they originated and have
been elaborated for the sake of dealing with conflicts and problems.
The ideas are just "there," and they may be used like any
providential dispensation to help men out of the troubles into which
they have fallen.
Words are generally held responsible for this fixation of the idea, for
this substantiation of it into a kind of thing. A long line of critics has
made us familiar with the invincible habit "of supposing that
wherever there is a name there is some reality corresponding to it";
of supposing that general and abstract words have their equivalent
objects somewhere in rerum natura, as have also singular and
proper names. We know with what simplicity of self-confidence the
English empirical school has accounted for the ontological
speculation of Plato. Words tend to fix intellectual contents, and give
them a certain air of independence and individuality. That some
truth is here expressed there can be no question. Indeed, the
attitude of mind of which we are speaking is well illustrated in the
person who goes to the dictionary in order to settle some problem in
morals, politics, or science; who would end some discussion
regarding a material point by learning what meaning is attached to
terms by the dictionary as authority. The question is taken as lying
outside of the sphere of science or intellectual inquiry, since the
meaning of the word—the idea—is unquestionable and fixed.
But this petrifying influence of words is after all only a superficial
explanation. There must be some meaning present or the word
could not fix it; there must be something which accounts for the
disposition to use names as a medium of fossilization. There is, in
truth, a certain real fact—an existent reality—behind both the word
and the meaning it stands for. This reality is social usage. The
person who consults a dictionary is getting an established fact when
he turns there for the definition of a term. He finds the sense in
which the word is currently used. Social customs are no less real
than physical events. It is not possible to dispose of this fact of
common usage by reference to mere convention, or any other
arbitrary device. A form of social usage is no more an express
invention than any other social institution. It embodies the
permanent attitude, the habit taken toward certain recurring
difficulties or problems in experience. Ideas, or meanings fixed in
terms, show the scheme of values which the community uses in
appraising matters that need consideration and which are
indeterminate or unassured. They are held up as standards for all its
members to follow. Here is the solution of the paradox. The fixed or
static idea is a fact expressing an established social attitude, a
custom. It is not merely verbal, because it denotes a force which
operates, as all customs do, in controlling particular cases. But since
it marks a mode of interpretation, a scheme for assigning values, a
way of dealing with doubtful cases, it falls within the sphere of ideas.
Or, coming to the life of the individual, the fixed meaning represents,
not a state of consciousness fixed by a name, but a recognition of a
habitual way of belief: a habit of understanding.
We find an apt illustration of fixed ideas in the rules prevalent in
primitive communities, rules which minutely determine all acts in
which the community as a whole is felt to have an interest. These
rules are facts because they express customs, and carry with them
certain sanctions. Their meaning does not cease with judicial
utterance. They are made valid at once in a practical way against
anyone who departs from them. Yet as rules they are ideas, for they
express general ways of defining doubtful matters in experience and
of re-establishing certainty. An individual may fail in acknowledgment
of them and explicit reference is then necessary. For one who has
lost himself in the notion that ideas are psychical and subjective, I
know of no better way to appreciate the significance of an idea than
to consider that a social rule of judgment is nothing but a certain
way of viewing or interpreting facts; as such it is an idea.
The point that is of special interest to us here, however, is that these
ideas are taken as fixed and unquestionable, and that the cases to
which they are to apply are regarded as in themselves equally fixed.
So far as concerns the attitude of those who employ this sort of
ideas, the doubt is simply as to what idea should be in a particular
case. Even the Athenian Greeks, for instance, long kept up the form
of indicting and trying a tree or implement through which some
individual had been killed. There was a rule—a fixed idea—for
dealing with all who offended against the community by destroying
one of its citizens. The fact that an inanimate object, a thing without
intention or volition, offended was not a material circumstance. It
made no difference in the case; that is, there was no doubt as to the
nature of the fact. It was as fixed as was the rule.
With advance in the complexity of life, however, rules accumulate,
and discrimination—that is, a certain degree of inquiring and critical
attitude—enters in. Inquiry takes effect, however, in seeking among
a collection of fixed ideas just the one to be used, rather than in
directing suspicion against any rule or idea as such, or in an attempt
to discover or constitute a new one. It is hardly necessary to refer to
the development of casuistry, or to the multiplication of distinctions
within dogmas, or to the growth of ceremonial law in cumbrous
detail, to indicate what the outcome of this logical stage is likely to
be. The essential thing is that doubt and inquiry are directed neither
at the nature of the intrinsic fact itself, nor at the value of the idea
as such, but simply at the manner in which one is attached to the
other. Thinking falls outside both fact and idea, and into the sphere
of their external connection. It is still a fiction of judicial procedure
that there is already in existence some custom or law under which
every possible dispute—that is, every doubtful or unassured case—
falls, and that the judge only declares which law is applicable in the
particular case. This point of view has tremendously affected the
theory of logic in its historic development.
One of the chief, perhaps the most important, instrumentalities in
developing and maintaining fixed ideas is the need of instruction and
the way in which it is given. If ideas were called into play only when
doubtful cases actually arise, they could not help retaining a certain
amount of vitality and flexibility; but the community always instructs
its new members as to its way of disposing of these cases before
they present themselves. Ideas are proffered, in other words,
separated from present doubt and remote from application, in order
to escape future difficulties and the need of any thinking. In
primitive communities this is the main purport of instruction, and it
remains such to a very considerable degree. There is a prejudgment
rather than judgment proper. When the community uses its
resources to fix certain ideas in the mind—that is, certain ways of
interpreting and regarding experience—ideas are necessarily
formulated so as to assume a rigid and independent form. They are
doubly removed from the sphere of doubt. The attitude is uncritical
and dogmatic in the extreme—so much so that one might question
whether it is to be properly designated as a stage of thinking.
In this form ideas become the chief instruments of social
conservation. Judicial decision and penal correction are restricted
and ineffective methods of maintaining social institutions unchanged,
compared with instilling in advance uniform ideas—fixed modes of
appraising all social questions and issues. These set ideas thus
become the embodiment of the values which any group has realized
and intends to perpetuate. The fixation supports them against
dissipation through attrition of circumstance, and against destruction
through hostile attack. It would be interesting to follow out the ways
in which such values are put under the protection of the gods and of
religious rites, or themselves erected into quasi-divinities—as among
the Romans. This, however, would hardly add anything to the logic
of the discussion, although it would indicate the importance attached
to the fixation of ideas, and the thoroughgoing character of the
means used to secure immobilization.
The conserving value of the dogmatic attitude, the point of view
which takes ideas as fixed, is not to be ignored. When society has no
methods of science for protecting and perpetuating its achieved
values, there is practically no other resort than such crystallization.
Moreover, with any possible scientific progress, some equivalent of
the fixed idea must remain. The nearer we get to the needs of
action the greater absoluteness must attach to ideas. The necessities
of action do not await our convenience. Emergencies continually
present themselves where the fixity required for successful activity
cannot be attained through the medium of investigation. The
alternative to vacillation, confusion, and futility of action is
importation to ideas of a positive and secured character, not in strict
logic belonging to them. It is this sort of determination that Hegel
seems to have in mind in what he terms Verstand—the
understanding. "Apart from Verstand," he says, "there is no fixity or
accuracy in the region either of theory or practice"; and, again,
"Verstand sticks to fixity of characters and their distinctions from one
another; it treats every meaning as having a subsistence of its own."
In technical terminology, also, this is what is meant by "positing"
ideas—hardening meanings.
In recognizing, however, that fixation of intellectual content is a
precondition of effective action, we must not overlook the
modification that comes with the advance of thinking into more
critical forms. At the outset fixity is taken as the rightful possession
of the ideas themselves; it belongs to them and is their "essence."
As the scientific spirit develops, we see that it is we who lend fixity
to the ideas, and that this loan is for a purpose to which the
meaning of the ideas is accommodated. Fixity ceases to be a matter
of intrinsic structure of ideas, and becomes an affair of security in
using them. Hence the important thing is the way in which we fix
the idea—the manner of the inquiry which results in definition. We
take the idea as if it were fixed, in order to secure the necessary
stability of action. The crisis past, the idea drops its borrowed
investiture, and reappears as surmise.
When we substitute for ideas as uniform rules by which to decide
doubtful cases that making over of ideas which is requisite to make
them fit, the quality of thought alters. We may fairly say that we
have come into another stage. The idea is now regarded as
essentially subject to change, as a manufactured article needing to
be made ready for use. To determine the conditions of this transition
lies beyond my purpose, since I have in mind only a descriptive
setting forth of the periods through which, as a matter of fact,
thought has passed in the development of the inquiry function,
without raising the problem of its "why" and "how." At this point we
shall not do more than note that, as the scheduled stock of fixed
ideas grows larger, their application to specific questions becomes
more difficult, prolonged, and roundabout. There has to be a definite
hunting for the specific idea which is appropriate; there has to be
comparison of it with other ideas. This comes to involve a certain
amount of mutual compromise and modification before selection is
possible. The idea thus gets somewhat shaken. It has to be made
over so that it may harmonize with other ideas possessing equal
worth. Often the very accumulation of fixed ideas commands this
reconstruction. The dead weight of the material becomes so great
that it cannot sustain itself without a readjustment of the center of
gravity. Simplification and systematization are required, and these
call for reflection. Critical cases come up in which the fiction of an
idea or rule already in existence cannot be maintained. It is
impossible to conceal that old ideas have to be radically modified
before the situation can be dealt with. The friction of circumstance
melts away their congealed fixity. Judgment becomes legislative.
Seeking illustrations at large, we find this change typified in Hebrew
history in the growing importance of the prophet over the judge, in
the transition from a justification of conduct through bringing
particular cases into conformity with existent laws, into that effected
by personal right-mindedness enabling the individual to see the law
in each case for himself. Profoundly as this changed conception of
the relation between law and particular case affected moral life, it
did not, among Semites, directly influence the logical sphere. With
the Greeks, however, we find a continuous and marked departure
from positive declaration of custom. We have assemblies meeting to
discuss and dispute, and finally, upon the basis of the considerations
thus brought to view, to decide. The man of counsel is set side by
side with the man of deed. Odysseus was much experienced, not
only because he knew the customs and ways of old, but even more
because from the richness of his experience he could make the
pregnant suggestion to meet the new crisis. It is hardly too much to
say that it was the emphasis put by the Greek mind upon discussion
—at first as preliminary to decision, and afterward to legislation—
which generated logical theory.
Discussion is thus an apt name for this attitude of thought. It is
bringing various beliefs together; shaking one against another and
tearing down their rigidity. It is conversation of thoughts; it is
dialogue—the mother of dialectic in more than the etymological
sense. No process is more recurrent in history than the transfer of
operations carried on between different persons into the arena of
the individual's own consciousness. The discussion which at first
took place by bringing ideas from different persons into contact, by
introducing them into the forum of competition, and by subjecting
them to critical comparison and selective decision, finally became a
habit of the individual with himself. He became a miniature social
assemblage, in which pros and cons were brought into play
struggling for the mastery—for final conclusion. In some such way
we conceive reflection to be born.
It is evident that discussion, the agitation of ideas, if judged from
the standpoint of the older fixed ideas, is a destructive process.
Ideas are not only shaken together and apart, they are so shaken in
themselves that their whole validity becomes doubtful. Mind, and not
merely beliefs, becomes uncertain. The attempt to harmonize
different ideas means that in themselves they are discrepant. The
search for a conclusion means that accepted ideas are only points of
view, and hence personal affairs. Needless to say it was the Sophists
who emphasized and generalized this negative aspect—this
presupposition of loss of assurance, of inconsistency, of
"subjectivity." They took it as applying not only to this, that, and the
other idea, but to ideas as ideas. Since ideas are no longer fixed
contents, they are just expressions of an individual's way of thinking.
Lacking inherent value, they merely express the interests that induce
the individual to look this way rather than that. They are made by
the individual's point of view, and hence will be unmade if he can be
led to change his point of view. Where all was fixity, now all is
instability: where all was certitude, nothing now exists save opinion
based on prejudice, interest, or arbitrary choice.
The modern point of view, while condemning sophistry, yet often
agrees with it in limiting the reflective attitude as such to self-
involution and self-conceit. From Bacon down, the appeal is to
observation, to attention to facts, to concern with the external world.
The sole genuine guaranty of truth is taken to be appeal to facts,
and thinking as such is something different. If reflection is not
considered to be merely variable matter, it is considered to be at
least an endless mulling over of things. It is the futile attempt to spin
truth out of inner consciousness. It is introspection, and theorizing,
and mere speculation.
Such wholesale depreciation ignores the value inherent even in the
most subjective reflection, for it takes the settled estate which is
proof that thought is not needed, or that it has done its work, as if it
supplied the standard for the occasions in which problems are hard
upon us, and doubt is rife. It takes the conditions which come about
after and because we have thought to measure the conditions which
call out thinking. Whenever we really need to reflect, we cannot
appeal directly to the "fact," for the adequate reason that the
stimulus to thinking arises just because "facts" have slipped away
from us. The fallacy is neatly committed by Mill in his discussion of
Whewell's account of the need of mental conception or hypothesis in
"colligating" facts. He insists that the conception is "obtained" from
the "facts" in which "it exists," is "impressed upon us from without,"
and also that it is the "darkness and confusion" of the facts that
make us want the conception in order to create "light and order."[46]
Reflection involves running over various ideas, sorting them out,
comparing one with another, trying to get one which will unite in
itself the strength of two, searching for new points of view,
developing new suggestions; guessing, suggesting, selecting, and
rejecting. The greater the problem, and the greater the shock of
doubt and resultant confusion and uncertainty, the more prolonged
and more necessary is the process of "mere thinking." It is a more
obvious phase of biology than of physics, of sociology than of
chemistry; but it persists in established sciences. If we take even a
mathematical proposition, not after it has been demonstrated—and
is thus capable of statement in adequate logical form—but while in
process of discovery and proof, the operation of this subjective
phase is manifest, so much so, indeed, that a distinguished modern
mathematician has said that the paths which the mathematical
inquirer traverses in any new field are more akin to those of the
experimentalist, and even to those of the poet and artist, than to
those of the Euclidean geometer.
What makes the essential difference between modern research and
the reflection of, say, the Greeks, is not the absence of "mere
thinking," but the presence of conditions for testing its results; the
elaborate system of checks and balances found in the technique of
modern experimentation. The thinking process does not now go on
endlessly in terms of itself, but seeks outlet through reference to
particular experiences. It is tested by this reference; not, however,
as if a theory could be tested by directly comparing it with facts—an
obvious impossibility—but through use in facilitating commerce with
facts. It is tested as glasses are tested; things are looked at through
the medium of specific meanings to see if thereby they assume a
more orderly and clearer aspect, if they are less blurred and
obscure.
The reaction of the Socratic school against the Sophistic may serve
to illustrate the third stage of thinking. This movement was not
interested in the de facto shaking of received ideas and a
discrediting of all thinking. It was concerned rather with the virtual
appeal to a common denominator involved in bringing different ideas
into relation with one another. In their comparison and mutual
modification it saw evidence of the operation of a standard
permanent meaning passing judgment upon their conflict, and
revealing a common principle and standard of reference. It dealt not
with the shaking and dissolution, but with a comprehensive
permanent Idea finally to emerge. Controversy and discussion
among different individuals may result in extending doubt,
manifesting the incoherency of accepted ideas, and so throwing an
individual into an attitude of distrust. But it also involves an appeal
to a single thought to be accepted by both parties, thus putting an
end to the dispute. This appeal to a higher court, this possibility of
attaining a total and abiding intellectual object, which should bring
into relief the agreeing elements in contending thoughts, and banish
the incompatible factors, animated the Socratic search for the
concept, the elaboration of the Platonic hierarchy of Ideas in which
the higher substantiate the lower, and the Aristotelian exposition of
the systematized methods by which general truths may be employed
to prove propositions otherwise doubtful. At least, this historic
development will serve to illustrate what is involved in the transition
from the second to the third stage; the transformation of discussion
into reasoning, of subjective reflection into method of proof.
Discussion, whether with ourselves or others, goes on by suggestion
of clues, as the uppermost object of interest opens a way here or
there. It is discursive and haphazard. This gives it the devious
tendency indicated in Plato's remark that it needs to be tied to the
post of reason. It needs, that is, to have the ground or basis of its
various component statements brought to consciousness in such a
way as to define the exact value of each. The Socratic contention is
the need of compelling the common denominator, the common
subject, underlying the diversity of views to exhibit itself. It alone
gives a sure standard by which the claims of all assertions may be
measured. Until this need is met, discussion is a self-deceiving play
with unjudged, unexamined matters, which, confused and shifting,
impose themselves upon us.
We are familiar enough with the theory that the Socratic universal,
the Platonic idea, was generated by an ignorant transformation of
psychological abstractions into self-existent entities. To insist upon
this as the key to the Socratic logic is mere caricature. The
objectivity of the universal stood for the sense of something decisive
and controlling in all reflection, which otherwise is just manipulation
of personal prejudices. This sense is as active in modern science as
it was in the Platonic dialectic. What Socrates felt was the
opinionated, conceited quality of the terms used in the moral and
political discussion of his day, as that contrasted with the subject-
matter, which, if rightly grasped, would put an end to mere views
and argumentations.
By Aristotle's time the interest was not so much in the existence of
standards of decision in cases of doubt and dispute as in the
technique of their use. The judge was firmly seated on the bench.
The parties in controversy recognized his jurisdiction, and their
respective claims were submitted for adjudicature. The need was for
rules of procedure by which the judge might, in an obvious and
impartial way, bring the recognized universal or decisive law to bear
upon particular matters. Hence the elaboration of those rules of
evidence, those canons of demonstrative force, which are the
backbone of the Aristotelian logic. There was a code by which to
decide upon the admissibility and value of proffered testimony—the
rules of the syllogism. The figures and terms of the syllogism
provided a scheme for deciding upon the exact bearing of every
statement propounded. The plan of arrangement of major and minor
premises, of major, minor, and middle terms, furnished a manifesto
of the exact procedure to be followed in determining the probative
force of each element in reasoning. The judge knew what testimony
to permit, when and how it should be introduced, how it could be
impeached or have its competence lessened, and how the evidence
was to be arranged so that a summary would also be an exhibit of
its value in establishing a conclusion.
This means that there now is a distinctive type of thinking marked
off from mere discussion and reflection. It may be called either
reasoning or proof. It is reasoning when we think of the regularity of
the method for getting at and employing the unquestioned grounds
which give validity to other statements. It is proof as regards the
degree of logical desert thereby measured out to such propositions.
Proof is the acceptance or rejection justified through the reasoning.
To quote from Mill: "To give credence to a proposition as a
conclusion from something else is to reason in the most extensive
sense of the term. We say of a fact or statement, it is proved, when
we believe its truth by reason of some other fact or statement from
which it is said to follow."[47] Reasoning is marshaling a series of
terms and propositions until we can bind some doubtful fact firmly to
an unquestioned, although remote, truth; it is the regular way in
which a certain proposition is brought to bear on a precarious one,
clothing the latter with something of the peremptory quality of the
former. So far as we reach this result, and so far as we can exhibit
each step in the nexus and be sure it has been rightly performed,
we have proof.
But questions still face us. How about that truth upon which we fall
back as guaranteeing the credibility of other statements—how about
our major premise? Whence does it derive its guaranty? Quis
custodes custodiet?
We may, of course, in turn subsume it under some further major
premise, but an infinite regress is impossible, and on this track we
are finally left hanging in the air. For practical purposes the
unquestioned principle may be taken as signifying mutual concession
or agreement—it denotes that as a matter of fact its truth is not
called in question by the parties concerned. This does admirably for
settling arguments and controversies. It is a good way of amicably
arranging matters among those already friends and fellow-citizens.
But scientifically the widespread acceptance of an idea seems to
testify to custom rather than to truth; prejudice is strengthened in
influence, but hardly in value, by the number who share it; conceit is
none the less self-conceit because it turns the heads of many.
Great interest was indeed afterward taken in the range of persons
who hold truths in common. The quod semper ubique omnibus
became of great importance. This, however, was not, in theory at
least, because common agreement was supposed to constitute the
major premise, but because it afforded confirmatory evidence of its
self-evident and universal character.
Hence the Aristotelian logic necessarily assumes certain first or
fundamental truths unquestioned and unquestionable, self-evident
and self-evidencing, neither established nor modified by thought, but
standing firm in their own right. This assumption was not, as
modern dealers in formal logic would sometimes have it, an external
psychological or metaphysical attachment to the theory of reasoning,
to be omitted at will from logic as such. It was an essential factor of
knowledge that there should be necessary propositions directly
apprehended by reason and particular ones directly apprehended by
sense. Reasoning could then join them. Without the truths we have
only the play of subjective, arbitrary, futile opinion. Judgment has
not taken place, and assertion is without warrant. Hence the
scheduling of first truths is an organic part of any reasoning which is
occupied with securing demonstration, surety of assent, or valid
conviction. To deny the necessary place of ultimate truths in the
logical system of Aristotle and his followers is to make them players
in a game of social convention. It is to overlook, to invert, the fact
that they were sincerely concerned with the question of attaining the
grounds and process of assurance. Hence they were obliged to
assume primary intuitions, metaphysical, physical, moral, and
mathematical axioms, in order to get the pegs of certainty to which
to tie the bundles of otherwise contingent propositions.
It would be going too far to claim that the regard for the authority of
the church, of the fathers, of the Scriptures, of ancient writers, of
Aristotle himself, so characteristic of the Middle Ages, was the direct
outcome of this presupposition of truths fixed and unquestionable in
themselves. But the logical connection is sure. The supply of
absolute premises that Aristotle was able to proffer was scant. In his
own generation and situation this paucity made comparatively little
difference; for to the mass of men the great bulk of values was still
carried by custom, by religious belief, and social institution. It was
only in the comparatively small sphere of persons who had come
under the philosophic influence that need for the logical mode of
confirmation was felt. In the mediaeval period, however, all
important beliefs required to be concentrated by some fixed principle
giving them stay and power, for they were contrary to obvious
common-sense and natural tradition. The situation was exactly such
as to call into active use the Aristotelian scheme of thought.
Authority supplemented the meagerness of the store of universals
known by direct intuition, the Aristotelian plan of reasoning afforded
the precise instrumentality through which the vague and chaotic
details of life could be reduced to order by subjecting them to
authoritative rules.
It is not enough, however, to account for the ultimate major
premises, for the unconditioned grounds upon which credibility is
assigned. We have also to report where the other side comes from:
matters so uncertain in themselves as to require that they have their
grounds supplied from outside. The answer in the Aristotelian
scheme is an obvious one. It is the very nature of sense, of ordinary
experience, to supply us with matters which in themselves are only
contingent. There is a certain portion of the intellectual sphere, that
derived from experience, which is infected throughout by its
unworthy origin. It stands forever condemned to be merely empirical
—particular, more or less accidental, inherently irrational. You cannot
make gold from dross, and the best that can be done for and with
material of this sort is to bring it under the protection of truth which
has warrant and weight in itself.
We may now characterize this stage of thinking with reference to our
original remark that different stages denote various degrees in the
evolution of the doubt-inquiry function. As compared with the period
of fixed ideas, doubt is awake, and inquiry is active, but in itself it is
rigidly limited. On one side it is bounded by fixed ultimate truths,
whose very nature is that they cannot be doubted, which are not
products or functions in inquiry, but bases that investigation
fortunately rests upon. In the other direction all "matters of fact," all
"empirical truths" belong to a particular sphere or kind of existence,
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