All science tends to carry us over the hard lines of separation which practical interests treat as if ultimate disruptions. The sciences of Nature, for instance, in their completed circle must carry us from the inorganic to the organic: must in some way make a path from the lifeless to the alive. The science of thought has a corresponding task. It has to show that the incommensurability between thought and being, or between the idea and actuality, disappears on closer examination. When we trace the development of thought sufficiently far, we see that Being is an imperfect or inadequate thought,--certainly not adequate to the Idea, but not for that reason generically differing from it. The fixity of Being as more than, and superior to, mere Thought is a habit of mind, due to the same worldly-minded immobility as leads us all to believe (and, within the limited practical range, to believe rightly) that the earth is solidly at rest, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of the Copernicans. But Thought has not deposited all its burden, or uttered all its meaning in Being. Being is the veriest abstraction,--the very rudiment of thought--meagre as meagre can be. It is on one side the bare position or affirmation of thought: on the other hand it is the very negation of thought,--if thought be only possible under difference. For a mere 'Is' is a mere indescribable without-difference. There is no such thing as mere Being: or mere Being is mere nothing: _mere_ Being is not. The first category of Ontology is that of Being. It is the merest simplicity and meagreness, with nothing definite in it at all: and for that very reason constantly liable to be confused with categories of more concrete burden. It denotes all things, and connotes next to nothing. It does not however mean something which has being; it does not mean definite being: still less does it mean permanent and substantial being. Ordinary language certainly uses being in all these senses. But if we are to be logical, we must not mix up categories with one another: we must take terms at their precise value. Mere Being then is the mere 'Is,' which can give no explanation or analysis of itself: which indescribable in itself: which is an 'Is' and nothing more. The simplest answer to those who invest Being with so much signification, is to ask them to consider the logical _copula_. 'Every school-boy knows' that the 'Is' of the copula disappears in several languages: that it is far from indispensable in Latin: that in Greek e. g. the demonstrative article serves the same purpose. In Hebrew too the pronouns officiate for the so-called substantive verb: and the same verb probably does not exist in the Polynesian family of languages, where its place is supplied by what we call the demonstrative pronoun.[3] In the copula, which according to M. Laromiguiere, as quoted by Mr. Mill, expresses only '_un rapport spécial entre le sujet et l'attribut_,' we encounter the mere undeveloped and unexplained