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6
TRUTH AND ERROR

number, space, motion, time and judgment; no other terms are needed and no other terms are coined, but by a process well known in philology as a disease of language, sometimes these terms lapse into meanings which connote fallacies. The human intellect is of such a nature that it has notions or ideas which may be certitudes or fallacies. All the processes of reasoning, including sensation and perception, proceed by inference; the inference may be correct or erroneous, and certitudes are reached by verifying opinions. This is the sole and only process of gaining certitudes. The certitudes are truths which properly represent noumena, the illusions are errors which misrepresent noumena. All knowledge is the knowledge of noumena, and all illusion is erroneous opinion about noumena. The human mind knows nothing but realities and deals with nothing but realities, but in this dealing with the realities—the noumena of the universe—it reaches some conclusions that are correct and others that are incorrect. The correct conclusions are certitudes about realities; the incorrect conclusions are fallacies about realities. Science is the name which mankind has agreed to call this knowledge of realities, and error is the name which mankind has agreed to give to all fallacies. Thus it is that certitudes are directly founded upon realities; and fallacies alike all refer to realities. In this sense then it may be stated that all error as well as knowledge testifies to reality, and that all our knowledge is certitude based upon reality, and that fallacies would not be possible were there not realities about which inferences are made.

Known realities are those about which mankind has knowledge; unknown things are those things about