elf; that whatever _is_ by
the same act _is not_, and gets undone and swept away; and that thus
the irremediable torrent of life about which so much rhetoric has been
written has its roots in an ineluctable necessity which lies revealed
to our logical reason. This notion of a being which forever stumbles
over its own feet, and has to change in order to exist at all, is a
very picturesque symbol of the reality, and is probably one of the
points that make young readers feel as if a deep core of truth lay in
the system.

But how is the reasoning done? Pure being is assumed, without
determinations, being _secundum quid_. In this respect it agrees with
nothing. Therefore _simpliciter_ it is nothing; wherever we find it,
it is nothing; crowned with complete determinations then, or _secundum
aliud_, it is nothing still, and _hebt sich auf_.

It is as if we said, Man without his clothes may be named 'the naked.'
Therefore man _simpliciter_ is the naked; and finally man with his hat,
shoes, and overcoat on is the naked still.

Of course we may in this instance or any other repeat that the
conclusion is strictly true, however comical it seems. Man within the
clothes is naked, just as he is without them. Man would never have
invented the clothes had he not been naked. The fact of his being clad
at all does prove his essential nudity. And so in general,--the form
of any judgment, being the addition of a predicate to a subject, shows
that the subject has been conceived without the predicate, and thus by
a strained metaphor may {282} be called the predicate's negation. Well
and good! let the expression pass. But we must notice this. The
judgment has now created a new subject, the naked-clad, and all
propositions regarding this must be judged on their own merits; for
those true of the old subject, 'the naked,' are no longer true of this
one. For instance, we cannot say because the naked pure and simple
must not enter the drawing-room or is in danger of taking cold, that
the naked with his clothes on will also take cold or must stay in his
bedroom. Hold to it eternally that the clad man _is_ still naked if it
amuse you,--'tis designated in the bond; but the so-called
contradiction is a sterile boon. Like Shylock's pound of flesh, it
leads to no consequences. It does not entitle you to one drop of his
Christian blood either in the way of catarrh, social exclusion, or what
further results pure nakedness may involve.