The quaint name of "Laws of Thought," which is often applied to the principles of Logic, has given rise to confusion in two ways: in the first place, the "Laws," unlike other laws, cannot be broken, even in thought; and, in the second place, people think that the "Laws" have something to do with holding for the operations of their minds, just as laws of nature hold for events in the world around us.[17] But that the laws are not psychological laws follows from the facts that a thing may be true even if nobody believes it, and something else may be false if everybody believes it. Such, it may be remarked, is usually the case. Perhaps the most frequent instance of the assumption that the laws of logic are mental is the treatment of an identity as if its validity were an affair of our permission. Some people suggest to others that they should "let bygones be bygones." Another important piece of evidence that the truth of propositions has nothing to do with mind is given by the phrase "it is morally certain that such-and-such a proposition is true." Now, in the first place, morality, curiously enough, seems to be closely associated with mental acts: we have professorships and lectureships of, and examinations in, "mental and moral philosophy." In the second place, it is plain that a "morally certain" proposition is a highly doubtful one. Thus it is as vain to expect any information about our minds from a study of the "Laws of Thought" as it would be to expect a description of a certain social event from Miss E. E. C. Jones's book _An Introduction to General Logic_. Fortunately, the principles or laws of Logic are not a matter of philosophical discussion. Idealists like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and even practical idealists like the White Knight, explicitly accept laws like the law of identity and the excluded middle.[18] In fact, throughout all logic and mathematics, the existence of the human or any other mind is totally irrelevant; mental processes are studied by means of logic, but the subject-matter of logic does not presuppose mental processes, and would be equally true if there were no mental processes. It is true that, in that case, we should not know logic; but our knowledge must not be confounded with the truths which we know.[19] An apple is not confused with the eating of it except by savages, idealists, and people who are too hungry to think. FOOTNOTES: [2] Russell, _Ph. L._, pp. 17, 19, 207-8. [3] Schröder, _A. d. L._, i. p. 4. [4] See Appendix A. This Appendix also illustrates the importance attached to the Principle of Identity by the Professor and Bruno. [5] _S. o. S._, pp. 9-15. [6] _A. d. L._, i. p. 132. [7] Cf., besides the reference in the last note but one, _E. L. L._, pp. 183, 191. "Contrariwise," it may be remarked, is not a term used in traditional logic. [8] _S. L._, 1881, pp. 173-5, 324-5; 1894, pp. 194-6.