of human beings or of time.

The latter is a law of truth, the

former a law of people's taking-to-be-true. The content of the
two is wholly different and they are independent of one another;
neither can be inferred from the other. Hence it is extremely
confusing to designate both by the same name, "Principie of
Identity". Thesc mixings-together of w holly di fferent thi ngs
are to blame for the frightful unclarity that we encounter among
the psychological logicians.
The question why and with what right we acknowledge a law
of logic to be true, logic can answer only by reducing it to an-
other law of logic. Where that is not pos si ble, logic can gi ve
no answer. If we step away from logic, we may say: we are
compelled to make judgments by our own nature and by externa!
circumstances; and if we do so, we cannot reject this law-of
ldentity, for example; we must acknowledge it unless we wish
to reduce our thought to confusion and finally renounce all judg-
ment whatever. 1 shall neither dispute nor support this view; 1
shall merely remark that what we have here is nota logical con-
sequence. What is given is not a reason for something's being
true, but for our taking it to be true. Not only that: this impos-
si bility of our rejecting the law in question hinders us not at al!
in supposing beings who do reject it; where it hinders us is in
supposing that these beings are right in so doing, it hinders us
in having doubts whether we or they are right. At least this is
true of myself. If other persons presume to acknowledge and
doubt a law in the same breath, it seems to me an attempt to
jump out of one's own skin against which 1 can do no more than
urgently warn them. Anyone who has once acknowledged a law
of truth has by the same token acknowledged a law that pre-
scribes the way in which one ought to judge, no matter where,
or when, or by whom tho judgmont is mado,
Surveying the whole question, it seems to me that the source
of the dispute lies in a difference in our conceptions of what is
true. For me, what is true is something objective and inde-
pendent of the judging subject; for psyc;:hological logicians it
xviii is not. What Herr B. Erdmann calls 'objective certainty' is
merely a general acknowledgmenton the part of the subjects who
judge, which is thus not independent of them but susceptible to
alteration with the constitution of their minds.
We can generalize this still further: for me there is a domain
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