you make what are called philosophical and theological inquiries, when
you turn your implement towards the final absolute truth of things.

This real vagueness of class terms is equally true whether we consider
those terms used extensively or intensively, that is to say whether in
relation to all the members of the species or in relation to an
imaginary typical specimen. The logician begins by declaring that S is
either P or not P. In the world of fact it is the rarest thing to
encounter this absolute alternative; S1 is pink, but S2 is pinker, S3 is
scarcely pink at all, and one is in doubt whether S4 is not properly to
be called scarlet. The finest type specimen you can find simply has the
characteristic quality a little more rather than a little less. The neat
little circles the logician uses to convey his idea of P or not P to the
student are just pictures of boundaries in his mind, exaggerations of a
natural mental tendency. They are required for the purposes of his
science, but they are departures from the nature of fact.


1.6. EMPTY TERMS.

Classes in logic are not only represented by circles with a hard firm
outline, whereas in fact they have no such definite limits, but also
there is a constant disposition to think of all names as if they
represented positive classes. With words just as with numbers and
abstract forms there have been definite phases of human development.
There was with regard to number, the phase when man could barely count
at all, or counted in perfect good faith and sanity upon his fingers.
Then there was the phase when he struggled with the development of
number, when he began to elaborate all sorts of ideas about numbers,
until at last he developed complex superstitions about perfect numbers