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are true. They relate in part to forces, in part
to the action of minds. The manner
in which he comes to have this knowledge
seems to me tolerably clear. Certain uniformities,
that is to say certain general ideas of action, prevail throughout the
universe, and the reasoning mind is himself a product
of this universe. These same laws are thus,
by logical necessity, incorporated in his own
being. For example, what we call straight
lines are nothing but one out of an
innumerable multitude of families of
topically nonsingular lines such that through any two points there is one and
one only. The particular family of lines called straight has no
geometrical properties that distinguish it
from any other of the innumerable