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The characters of the conditioning events involved in the ingression of a sense-object into nature can be largely expressed in terms of the physical objects which are situated in those events. In one respect this is also a tautology. For the physical object is nothing else than the habitual concurrence of a certain set of sense-objects in one situation.
"The whole ancient world," she says, "basked in the full sunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it daily, voiced it in their literature, and went with it in calm serenity through the gate of Death." Now "calm serenity" is bad tautology, and the general assertion of this passage is equally open to censure. "The whole ancient world," as the Americans would say, is a large order.
"I have lived and have loved," saith Schiller; and if it were not that there seems some tautology in the phrase, I should say, such is my own motto. If Lady Jane but prove true if I have really succeeded if, in a word but why speculate upon such chances? what pretensions have I? what reasons to look for such a prize?
To CROWN with REFLECTION is surely a mode of speech approaching to nonsense. OPENING VIRTUES BLOOMING ROUND is something like tautology; the six following lines are poor and prosaic. ART is in another couplet used for ARTS, that a rhyme may be had to HEART. The six last lines are the best, but not excellent. The rest of his sepulchral performances hardly deserve the notice of criticism.
But when it is done for some particular reason, then it becomes a figure of speech. We should likewise be aware of tautology, which is a repetition of the same word or thought, or the use of many similar words or thoughts. Tho this does not seem to have been much guarded against by some authors of great note, it is, notwithstanding, a fault, and Cicero himself often falls into it.
'Good and upright is the Lord. Now it is clear that the former of these two epithets is here employed, not in its widest sense of moral perfectness, or else 'upright, which follows, would be mere tautology, but in the narrower sense, which is familiar too, to us, in our common speech, in which good is tantamount to kind, beneficent, or to say all in a word, loving.
There is always the possibility that a new prophet will rediscover the old truth; will find again written on the red sands the secret of the obvious. But it will always be the same secret, for which thousands of these simple and serious and splendidly valiant men will die. The highest message of Mahomet is a piece of divine tautology.
Observing a natural hesitation, he explained that they would by this means, crush their competitors, and could easily clap a price on their goods to cover the odd shillings. The bargain was soon struck. Mr. Richard was a great man. All his guests felt in their secret souls and pockets excuse the tautology that some day or other they should want to borrow money of him.
And, if we chose to make "good" but a synonym for pleasure, we remain in the same tautology when we affirm that every pleasure is a good. But Bentham assumed that good in this sense and moral good are the same thing. His assumption is not borne out by the moral judgments of mankind.
He remarks that Tennyson was "not merely and mainly a poet of the educated classes." He should have said "merely or mainly." He enjoins upon us to "define our terms" and "know the exact meanings of the terms we use" which is absolute tautology. He says of flirtation on which he seems an authority that "I greatly fear, and am morally certain" it is as much perpetrated by men as by women.
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