We have said there is some doubt as to this characteristic extending to mediate evidence; by this we mean that also in mediate evidence the idea of the predicate may be contained in that of the subject. In this it is not our intention to ignore the difference between theorems and axioms, but to call the reader's attention to a doctrine which we propose to develop, while treating of mediate evidence. In the present chapter we shall only treat of evidence in general, or of immediate evidence alone. 241. Evidence involves relation, for it implies comparison. When the understanding does not compare, it has no evidence, but only a perception, which is a pure fact of consciousness; and this evidence does not refer to perception alone, but always supposes or produces a judgment. We find two things in every act where there is evidence: the pure intuition of the idea, and the decomposition of this idea into various conceptions accompanied with the perception of their mutual relations. This we will explain by an example from geometry. The triangle has three sides: this is an evident proposition, for in the very idea of triangle, we find the three sides; and in conceiving the triangle, we in some sense conceive the three sides. Had we limited ourselves to the contemplation of the simple idea of triangle, we should have had intuition of the idea, but not evidence, which begins only when we find, in decomposing the conception of triangle, and considering in it the idea of figure in general, of side, and of the number three, these all contained in the primitive conception. Evidence consists in the clear conception of this. So true is this that the very nature of things makes common language philosophical. We do not say, an idea is evident, but a judgment is: no one calls a term evident, but a proposition only. And why? Because the term simply expresses the idea without any relation, or decomposition into its partial conceptions; whereas the proposition expresses the judgment, that is, affirms or denies that one conception is contained in another, which, in the present matter, supposes decomposition of the entire conception. 242. Immediate evidence is the perception of identity between various conceptions, separated by the analytical power of the intellect. Thus identity combined in a certain way with diversity is not a contradiction, as it might at first sight seem, but something very natural, if we observe one of the most constant facts of our intellect, the faculty of analyzing the most simple conceptions, and of seeing relations between identical things.