published by Gauthier-Villars and by Georg at Geneva. We shall see there a distinction between the direct definition and the definition by postulates.
"The definition by postulates," says M. Couturat, "applies not to a single notion, but to a system of notions; it consists in enumerating the fundamental relations which unite them and which enable us to demonstrate all their other properties; these relations are postulates."
If previously have been defined all these notions but one, then this last will be by definition the thing which verifies these postulates. Thus certain indemonstrable assumptions of mathematics would be only disguised definitions. This point of view is often legitimate; and I have myself admitted it in regard for instance to Euclid's postulate.
The other assumptions of geometry do not suffice to completely define distance; the distance then will be, by definition, among all the magnitudes which satisfy these other assumptions, that which is such as to make Euclid's postulate true.
Well the logicians suppose true for the principle of complete induction what I admit for Euclid's postulate; they want to see in it only a disguised definition.
But to give them this right, two conditions must be fulfilled. Stuart Mill says every definition implies an assumption, that by which the existence of the defined object is affirmed. According to that, it would no longer be the assumption which might be a disguised definition, it would on the contrary be the definition which would be a disguised assumption. Stuart Mill meant the word existence in a material and empirical sense; he meant to say that in defining the circle we affirm there are round things in nature.
Under this form, his opinion is inadmissible. Mathematics is independent of the existence of material