Note 27 — SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS. (continued 2)

It may be here observed that this quality of indefiniteness on the part of such reasoning is merely a practical outcome of the theoretical considerations adduced in Chapter V. For as we there saw that the ratio between the known and the unknown is in this case wholly indefinite, it follows that any symbols derived from the region of the known—even though such symbols be the highest generalities which the latter region affords—must be wholly indefinite when projected into the region of the unknown. Or rather let us say, that as the region of the unknown is but a progressive continuation of the region of the known, the determinate value of symbols of thought varies inversely as the distance—or, not improbably, as the square of the distance—from the sphere of the known at which they are applied.