"Whatever was born, must die." That sounds like a self-evident truth to me, heartless though it might be to illustrate it with a photo of cute newborn puppies. Let's call our above statement T. Let's also observe at once that in contrast to many of the propositions that are bruited about as self-evident truths, it can't plausibly be considered a tautology. T, above, is very different from, say, "a triangle has three lines." The latter can be understood as meaning, "that which we call a 'triangle' has three lines" so the question of a possible exception doesn't arise. T doesn't read like "that which we say has been 'born' must die." I make a ponderous point of this because the synthetic/analytic distinction has come under heavy criticism in philosophical circles for decades now. If I recall correctly, Quine -- who is number 1 on the list I posted here yesterday -- made his reputation with an essay on...