119. The point of this, the most obvious, contradiction inherent in Locke’s empiricism, is more or less striking according to the fidelity with which the notion of matter-of-fact, or of the reality that is not of the mind, proper to that system, is adhered to. When the popular Logic derived from Locke has so far forgotten the pit whence it was digged as to hold that propositions of a certainty at once real and general can be derived from experience, and to speak without question of ‘general matters-of-fact’ in a sense which to Locke almost, to Hume altogether, would have been a contradiction in terms, it naturally finds no disturbance in regarding mathematical certainty as different not in kind, but only in degree, from that of any other ‘generalisation from experience.’ Not aware that the distinction of mathematical from empirical generality is the condition upon which, according to Locke, the former escapes condemnation as ‘trifling,’ it does not see any need for distinguishing the sources from which the two are derived, and hence goes on asserting against imaginary or insignificant opponents that mathematical truth is derived from ‘experience;’ which, if ‘experience’ be so changed from what Locke understood by it as to yield general propositions concerning matters-of-fact of other than analytical purport, no one need care to deny. That it can yield such propositions is, doubtless, the supposition of the physical sciences; nor, we must repeat, is it the _correctness_ of this supposition that is in question, but the validity, upon its admission, of that antithesis between experience and the work of thought, which is the ‘be-all and end-all’ of the popular Logic. ... and to received views of natural science: but Locke not so clear about this.