10

Logic
IV 10
possesses, whether that which that sign or any of the signs of that collection represents the things as possessing that character or not. Very good: now only tell me what it mean to say that an object possesses a character, and I shall be satisfied. Even now, in advance of our study of Definition we can sufficiently see that we can only reach a conception of the less known through the more known, and that consequently the only meaning which we can attach to the phrase that a thing "has a character" is that something is true of it. So there we are after the reading passages of this labyrinth, already thrown out at the very conception of the trught, at which we entered it. Indeed, when one comes to consider it, how futile it was to imagine that we were to clear up the idea of truth by the more occult idea of reality! Yet the logician will never be scientifically or safely equipped for his explorations until he knows precisely