As to the grounds of this maxim, not to go beyond the evidence, not to distribute a term that is given as undistributed, it is one of the things so plain that to try to justify is only to obscure them. Still, we must here state explicitly what Formal Logic assumes to be contained or implied in the evidence afforded by any proposition, such as 'All S is P.' If we remember that in chap. iv. § 7, it was assumed that every term may have a contradictory; and if we bear in mind the principles of Contradiction and Excluded Middle, it will appear that such a proposition as 'All S is P' tells us something not only about the relations of 'S' and 'P,' but also of their relations to 'not-S' and 'not-P'; as, for example, that 'S is not not-P,' and that 'not-P is not-S.' It will be shown in the next chapter how Logicians have developed these implications in series of Immediate Inferences. If it be asked whether it is true that every term, itself significant, has a significant contradictory, and not merely a formal contradictory, generated by force of the word 'not,' it is difficult to give any better answer than was indicated in §§ 3-5, without venturing further into Metaphysics. I shall merely say, therefore, that, granting that some such term as 'Universe' or 'Being' may have no significant contradictory, if it stand for 'whatever can be perceived or thought of'; yet every term that stands for less than 'Universe' or 'Being' has, of course, a contradictory which denotes the rest of the universe. And since every argument or train of thought is carried on within a special 'universe of discourse,' or under a certain _suppositio_, we may say that _within the given suppositio every term has a contradictory_, and that every predication concerning a term implies some predication concerning its contradictory. But the name of the _suppositio_ itself has no contradictory, except with reference to a wider and inclusive _suppositio_. The difficulty of actual reasoning, not with symbols, but about matters of fact, does not arise from the principles of Logic, but sometimes from the obscurity or complexity of the facts, sometimes from the ambiguity or clumsiness of language, sometimes from the deficiency of our own minds in penetration, tenacity and lucidity. One must do one's best to study the facts, and not be too easily discouraged. CHAPTER VII IMMEDIATE INFERENCES