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mathematical demonstration of it, of which there
have been more than one, will necessarily be found
upon examination to be fallacious.

Whatever things we may take it into our heads to
regard as forming a collection,— say the milky
way, this bit of chalk, and King Peter of Servia,— have
some character in common not possessed by anything
else in the universe. For it is a fact that they might be
regarded as forming a collection which should exclude
everything else; and just as the fact that a piece of
chalk could easily be scratched constitutes it eternally
true that it is soft now, so the fact that any things
could be regarded as forming a collection containing nothing
else constitutes a character which they all possess
and they alone. Qualities or characters, like relations are