regard to the nature of scientific laws. The former class tend to suppose that when they say ‘This always accompanies that’ they mean only ‘This has accompanied, does now, and will accompany that in these particular instances’: they reduce the scientific law quite simply and directly to the familiar type of proposition which I have pointed out. But this does not satisfy the metaphysicians. They see that when you say ‘This would accompany that, _if_ that existed,’ you don’t mean only that this and that have existed and will exist together so many times. But it is beyond even their powers to believe that what you do mean is merely what you say. They still think you must mean, somehow or other, that something does exist, since that is what you generally mean when you say anything. They are as unable as the empiricists to imagine that you can ever mean that 2 + 2 = 4. The empiricists say this means that so many couples of couples of things have in each case been four things; and hence that 2 and 2 would not make 4, unless precisely those things had existed. The metaphysicians feel that this is wrong; but they themselves have no better account of its meaning to give than either, with Leibniz, that God’s mind is in a certain state, or, with Kant, that your mind is in a certain state, or finally, with Mr Bradley, that something is in a certain state. Here, then, we have the root of the naturalistic fallacy. The metaphysicians have the merit of seeing that when you say ‘This would be good, if it existed,’ you can’t mean merely ‘This has existed and was desired,’ however many times that may have been the case. They will admit that some good things have not existed in this world, and even that some may not have been desired. But what you can mean, except that _something_ exists, they really cannot see. Precisely the same error which leads them to suppose that there must _exist_ a supersensible Reality, leads them to commit the naturalistic fallacy with regard to the meaning of ‘good.’ Every truth, they think, must mean somehow that something exists; and since, unlike the empiricists, they recognise some truths which do not mean that anything exists here and now, these they think must mean that something exists _not_ here and now. On the same principle, since ‘good’ is a predicate which neither does nor can exist, they are bound to suppose either that ‘to be good’ means to be related to some other particular thing which can exist and does exist ‘in reality’; or else that it means merely ‘to belong to the real world’--that goodness is transcended or absorbed in reality.