210. What will you reply to one reasoning thus. Certainly nothing in the form of an argument: all that you can do is to call his attention to the absurdity of his position; but this is to be done not by argument, but by exactly determining the meaning of the words and analyzing the conceptions which they express. This is all that can or should be done. The contradiction exists; this is certain; but what is wanted is, that he see that he has fallen into it; and if the explanation of the terms, and the analysis of the conceptions do not suffice, nothing else will. Let us see how this may be done in the same example. The whole is greater than its part. What is the whole? The collection of the parts, the parts themselves united. The idea of the parts then enters into the idea of the whole. What is the meaning of greater? One thing is said to be greater than another, when, besides containing an equal quantity, it also contains something else. Seven is greater than five, because, besides the same five, it contains also two. The whole contains one part and also the other parts; therefore, the idea of _greater than its part_ enters into the idea of whole. Thus it is that we must refute whoever denies this principle; and this method, better than that of argumentation, may be said to explain the terms and analyze the conceptions, for it clearly does nothing but define the former and decompose the latter. SIXTH PROPOSITION. 211. The principle of contradiction is known only by immediate evidence. _Demonstration._--Two things are here to be proved: that the knowledge is by evidence, and that the evidence is immediate. As regards the former we will remark that the principle of contradiction is not a simple fact of consciousness, but a purely ideal truth. Every fact of consciousness involves reality, and cannot be expressed without the assertion of some existence: the principle of contradiction neither affirms nor denies any thing positive; that is, it does not say that any thing exists or does not exist; it only expresses the opposition of being to not-being, and of not-being to being, abstraction made from our taking the word being copulatively or substantively.