to be different. A side in a square possesses, by the fact of being a
side, very different relations and properties from those of a straight
line conceived in isolation. In this case the whole is not made up
merely by adding the parts together. It is a geometrical whole, and its
parts are combined according to a special form of necessity which is
rooted in the nature of space. Speaking generally, the point is that
parts must occupy certain perfectly definite places as regards each
other. You cannot make a square by merely adding three right angles to
one, nor by taking a given straight line and adding three more equal
straight lines to its length. You must construct in a definite way so
as to fulfil definite conditions. The identity shows itself in the
different elements which make it up, not as a mere repeated quality,
but as a property of contributing, each part in a distinctive way, to
the nature of the whole. Such an identity is not a mere total or sum,
though I imagine that its relations can be fully expressed in terms of
quantity, certain differentiated objects or conceptions being given
(_e.g._ line and angle).
I take a further instance to put a sharp point upon this distinction.
The relation of whole and parts is nowhere more perfect, short of
a living mind, than in a work of art. There is a very fine Turner
landscape now [1] in the “Old {56} Masters” Exhibition at Burlington
House--the picture of the two bridges at Walton-on-Thames. The picture
is full of detail--figures, animals, trees, and a curving river-bed.
But I am told that if one attempts to cut out the smallest appreciable
fragment of all this detail, one will find that it cannot be done
without ruining the whole effect of the picture. That means that the
individual totality is so welded together by the master’s selective
composition, that, according to Aristotle’s definition of a true
“whole,” if any part is modified or removed the total is entirely
altered, “for that of which the presence or absence makes no difference
is no true part of the whole.” [2]
[1] February 1892. [2] _Poetics_, 8
Of course, in saying that the part is thus essential to the whole, it
is implied that the whole reacts upon and transfigures the part. It is
in and by this transformation that its pervading identity makes itself
felt throughout all the elements by which it is constituted. As the
picture would be ruined if a little patch of colour were removed, so
the little patch of colour might be such as to be devoid of all value
if seen on a piece of paper by itself. I will give an extreme instance,
almost amounting to a _tour de force_, from the art of poetry, in
illustration of this principle. We constantly hear and use in daily
life the phrase, “It all comes to the same thing in the end.” Perhaps
in the very commonest speech we use it less fully, omitting the word
“thing”; but the sentence as written above is a perfectly familiar
platitude, with no special import, nor grace of sound or rhythm. Now,
in one of the closing stanzas of Browning’s poem _Any Wife to Any
Husband_, this sentence, only modified {57} by the substitution of “at”
for “in,” forms an entire line. [1] And I think it will generally be
felt that there are few more stately and pathetic passages than this
in modern poetry. Both the rhythm and sonorousness of the whole poem,
and also its burden of ideal feeling, are communicated to the line
in question by the context in which it is framed. Through the rhythm
thus prescribed to it, and through the characteristic emotion which it
contributes to reveal, the “whole” of the poem re-acts upon this part,
and confers upon it a quality which, apart from such a setting, we
should never have dreamed that it was capable of possessing.
[1] In order to remind the reader of the effect of this passage
it is necessary to quote a few lines before and after--
“Re-issue words and looks from the old mint,
Pass them afresh, no matter whose the print,
Image and superscription once they bore!
Re-coin thyself and give it them to spend,--
It all comes to the same thing at the end,
Since mine thou wast, mine art and mine shalt be,
Faithful or faithless, sealing up the sum
Or lavish of my treasure, thou must come
Back to the heart’s place here I keep for thee!”
We are not here concerned with the peculiar “aesthetic” nature of
works of art, which makes them, although rational, nevertheless unique
individuals. I only adduced the above examples to show, in unmistakable
cases, what is actually meant when we speak of “a whole” as constituted
by a pervading identity which exhibits itself in the congruous or
co-operating nature of all the constituent parts. In wholes of a higher
kind than the whole of mere quantity the parts no longer repeat each
other. They are not merely distinct, {58} but different. Yet the common
or continuous nature shows itself within each of them.
The parts of a sum-total, taking them for convenience of summation
as equal parts, may be called units; [1] the parts of an abstract
system, such as a geometrical figure, may be called elements (I cannot
answer for mathematical usage), and the parts of a concrete system, an
aesthetic product, a mind, or a society, might be called members.
[1] A unit of measurement implies in addition that it has been
equated with some accepted standard. If I divide the length of
my room into thirty equal parts, each part is a “unit” in the
sum-total; but I have not measured the room till I have equated
one such part with a known standard, and thus made it into a
unit in the general system of length equations.
But every kind of whole is an identity, and its parts are always
differences within it.
_Nature of Knowledge_
4. It will be well to sum up here what we have learnt of the nature
of knowledge in general, before passing to the definition and
classification of Judgment.
Knowledge is always Judgment. Judgment is constructive, for us, of
the real world. Constructing the real world means interpreting or
amplifying our present perception by what we are obliged to think,
which we take as all belonging to a single system one with itself,
and with what constrains us in sense-perception, and objective in the
sense that its parts act on each other independently of our individual
apprehension, and that we are obliged to think them thus. The process
of construction is always that of exhibiting a whole in its parts,
_i.e._ an identity in its differences; that is to say, it is always
both analytic and synthetic. The objects of knowledge differ in the
mode of relation between their {59} parts and the whole, and thus give
rise to different types of judgment and inference; and this difference
in the form of knowledge is a difference in the content of Logic, which
deals with the objects of experience only from the point of view of
their properties as objects in an intellectual world.
_Conclusion_
5. I hope that these general lectures, which, as I am quite aware, have
anticipated the treatment of many difficult questions which they have
not attempted to solve, have been successful in putting the problem of
Logic before us with some degree of vividness. If this problem were
thoroughly impressed upon our minds, I should say that we had already
gained something definite from this course of study. The points which I
desire to emphasise are two.
(1) I hope that we have learned to realise the world of our knowledge
as a living growth, sustained by the energy of our intelligence; and to
understand that we do not start with a ready-made world in common, but
can only enter upon the inheritance of science and civilisation as the
result of courage, labour, and reasonable perseverance; and further,
that we retain this inheritance just as long as our endurance and
capacity hold out, and no longer.
And (2) I have attempted to make clear that this living growth, our
knowledge, is like the vegetable or animal world in being composed
of infinite minor systems, each and all of which are at bottom the
same function with corresponding parts or elements, modified by
adaption to the environment. So that the task of analysing the form of
judgment bears a certain resemblance to that of analysing the forms
of plants. Just as from the single cell of the undifferentiated Alga,
to {60} the most highly organised flower or tree, we have the same
formation, with its characteristic functions and operations, so from
the undifferentiated judgment, which in linguistic form resembles
an ejaculation or interjection, to the reasonable systems of exact
or philosophical science, we find the same systematic function with
corresponding elements.
But the world of knowledge has a unity which the world of organic
individuals cannot claim; and this whole system of functions is itself,
for our intelligence, approximately a single function or system,
corresponding in structure to each of its individual parts, as though
the plant world or animal world were itself in turn a plant or animal.
We cannot hope to exhaust the shapes taken by the pervading fundamental
function of intelligence. We shall only attempt to understand the
analogies and differences between some few of its leading types.
{61}
LECTURE IV TYPES OF JUDGMENT AND THE GENERAL CONDITIONS
INVOLVED IN ASSERTION
_Correspondence between types of Judgment and nature of objects as
Knowledge_
1. The question of correspondence between the types of Judgment and the
orders of Knowledge was really anticipated in discussing the relation
between the content and the form of knowledge. We saw that the content
or matter and nature known determines on the whole the form or method
of knowledge by which it can be known.
I give a few cases of this correspondence, not professing to complete
the list. We should accustom ourselves to think of these forms as
constituting a progression in the sense that each of them betrays a
reference to an ideal of knowledge which in itself it is unable to
fulfil, and therefore inevitably suggests some further or divergent
form. And the defect by which the forms contradict the ideal, is felt
by us as a defect in their grasp of reality, in their presentation of
real connections.
_“Impersonal” Judgment_
_a_. We think of the judgment as predicating an ideal content of a
subject indicated in present perception. But there are judgments
which scarcely have an immediate subject at all, such as “How hot!”
“Bad!” “It hurts!” In the judgments thus represented the true subject
is some {62} undefined aspect of the given complex presentation. Of
course the words which we use are not an absolutely safe guide to the
judgment--they may be merely an abbreviation. But there are typical
judgments of this kind in which we merely mean to connect some namable
content with that which can only be defined as the focus of attention
at the moment. Such judgments might be called predications of mere
quality. The only link by which they bind their parts into a whole is
a feeling referred to our momentary surroundings. A _mere_ quality, if
not defined or analysed, or a feeling of pleasure or pain, is the sort
of object which can be expressed in such a judgment.
_Perceptive Judgment_
_b_. Then we have the very wide sphere of perceptive judgment, which
we may most conveniently confine to judgments which have in the
subject elements analogous to “This,” “Here,” “Now.” Such particles as
these indicate an effort to distinguish elements within the complex
presented. They have no content beyond the reference to presentation,
and, in “here” and “now,” an implication that the present is taken in
a particular kind of _continuum_. Otherwise they mean nothing more or
other than is meant by pointing with the finger. We may or may not
help out a “subject” of this kind by definite ideas attached to it as
conditions of the judgment. If we do, we are already on the road to a
new form of knowledge, incompatible with the judgment of perception.
For so long as we keep a demonstrative, spatial or temporal, reference
in the thought, the subject of judgment is not cut loose from our
personal focus of presentation. And as the existence of such a focus is
undeniable, we are secure against criticism so far as the {63} content
of the subject is concerned. But if we begin to specify it, we do so at
our peril.
Such judgments as these have been called “Analytic judgments of
sense.” [1] The term is not generally accepted in this meaning, but
is conveniently illustrative of the nature of these judgments. It
is intended to imply that they are a breaking up and reconstruction
of what, in our usual loose way of talking, is said to be given in
sense-perception. They remain on the whole within the complex of “that
which” is presented.
[1] Mr. F.H. Bradley, _Principles of Logic_, p. 48.
From the point of view which we have taken, such judgments are not
confined to what we think it worth while to _say_, but are the essence
of every orderly and objective perception of the world around us. In a
waking human consciousness nothing is unaffirmed.
We have no other term than perception to express the process which is
employed in scientific observation and experiment. But it is plain that
so soon as the judgment that refers to “This” is modified through the
inevitable demand for qualification by exact ideas--“_This_ hurts me,”
“_What_ hurts you?” “This old sprain, at the pace we are walking”--a
conflict of elements has arisen within the judgment. And as commonplace
perception passes into scientific observation, the qualifying ideas, on
which truth and relevancy depend, dwarf the importance of the “this,”
and ultimately oust it altogether. That is a simple case in which
the ideal of knowledge and the nature of reality operate within the
judgment to split asunder its primitive form. The subject as expressed
by a pure demonstrative refuses to {64} take account either of truth,
_i.e._ consistency with knowledge as a whole, or of relevancy, _i.e._
consistency with the relation involved in the particular predication
that may be in question. Our commonplace perception halts between
these two extremes. It deals with the world of individual objects and
persons, which, being already systematised according to our current
observations and interests, has, so long as we keep to its order, a
sufficient degree of truth and relevancy for the needs of daily life.
Thus if I say, “This book will do as a desk to write upon,” the truth
of the qualification “book” (_i.e._ the reality of the subject) is
assumed on the ground of the facility of recognising a well-known
“thing,” while the relevancy of the qualification “book” is not
questioned, because we accept an individual thing as an object of
habitual interest _qua_ individual, and do not demand that whenever it
is named those properties alone should be indicated which are relevant
to the purpose for which it is named. The “thing” is a current coin of
popular thought, and makes common perception workable without straining
after a special relevancy in the subject of every predication. Such
special relevancy leads ultimately to the ideal of _definition_, in
which subject and predicate are adequate to each other and necessarily
connected. A definitory judgment drops the demonstrative and relies
on qualifying ideas alone. It is therefore an abstract universal
Judgment, while the Judgment of Perception, so long as it retains the
demonstrative, is a Singular Judgment.
_Proper names in Judgment_
_c_. But a very curious example of a divergence or half-way house in
Knowledge is that form of the singular Judgment in which the subject is
a proper name. A proper name is {65} designative and not definitory.
It may be described as a generalised demonstrative pronoun--a
demonstrative pronoun which has the same particular reference in the
mouth of every one who uses, it, and beyond the given present of time.
So the reference of a proper name is a good example of what we called
a universal or an identity. That which is referred to by such a name
is a person or thing whose existence is extended in time and its parts
bound together by some continuous quality--an _individual_ person or
thing and the whole of this individuality is referred to in whatever
is affirmed about it. Thus the reference of such a name is universal,
not as including more than one individual, but as including in the
identity of the individual numberless differences--the acts, events,
and relations that make up its history and situation.
What kinds of things are called by Proper Names, and why? This question
is akin to the doctrine of Connotation and Denotation, which will be
discussed in the next lecture. It is a very good problem to think over
beforehand, noting especially the limiting cases, in which either some
_people_ give proper names to things to which other people do not give
them, or some _things_ are given proper names while other things of the
same general kind are not. These judgments, which are both Singular and
Universal, may perhaps be called for distinction’s sake “Individual”
Judgments.
_Abstract Judgment_
_d_. The demonstrative perception may also be replaced by a more or
less complete analysis or definition.
Within this province Definition of a concrete whole is one extreme,
_e.g_. “Human Society is a system of wills”; {66} that of an abstract
whole the other extreme, “12 = 7 + 5.” There are all degrees, between
these two, in the amount of modification which the parts undergo
by belonging to the whole. There are also all sorts of incomplete
definitions, expressing merely the effects of single conditions out of
those which go to make up a whole. These form the abstract universal
judgments of the exact sciences, such as, “If water is heated to 212°
Fahr. under one atmosphere it boils.” In all these cases some idea,
“abstract” as being cut loose from the focus of present perception,
whether abstract or concrete in its content, replaces the demonstrative
of the judgment which is a perception. These are the judgments which in
the ordinary logical classification rank as universal.
_The general definition of Judgment_
2. It was quite right of us to consider some types of judgment
before trying to define it generally. It is hopeless to understand a
definition unless the object to be defined is tolerably familiar. We
have said a great deal about knowledge and about judgment as the organ
or medium of knowledge. Now we want to study particular judgments in
their parts and working, and observe how they perform their function of
constructing reality.
Now, for our purpose, we may take the clearest cases of judgment, viz.
the meanings of propositions.
The distinctive character of Judgment as contrasted with every other
act of mind is that it claims to be true, _i.e._ pre-supposes the
distinction between truth and falsity.
First, we have to consider what is implied in claiming truth.
Secondly, by what means truth is claimed in Judgment.
{67} Thirdly, the nature of the ideas for which alone truth can be
claimed.
_What is implied in claiming truth_
(i.) Claiming truth implies the distinction between truth and falsity.
I do not say, “between truth and falsehood,” because falsehood
includes a lie, and a lie is not _prima facie_, an error or falsity of
knowledge. It is, as may be said of a question, altogether addressed
to another person, and has no existence as a distinct species within
knowledge. Thus a lie is called by Plato “falsehood in words”; the term
“falsehood in the mind” he reserves for ignorance or error, which he
treats as the worst of the two, which from an intellectual point of
view it plainly is.
No distinction between truth and falsity can exist unless, in the act
or state which claims truth, there is a reference to something outside
psychical occurrence in the course of ideas. Falsity or error are
relations that imply existences which, having reality of one kind,
claim in addition to this another kind of reality which they have not.
In fact, all things that are called false, are called so because they
claim a place or property which they do not possess. They must exist,
in order to be false. It is in the non-fulfilment, by their existence,
of some claim or pretension which it suggests, that falsity consists.
And so it is in the fulfilment of such a claim that truth has a
meaning. A false coin exists as a piece of metal; it is false because
it pretends to a place in the monetary system which its properties or
history [1] contradict.
[1] For it is, I suppose, technically false, even if over value,
if not coined by those who have the exclusive legal right to
coin.
As the claim to be true is made by every judgment in its {68} form,
there can be no judgment without some recognition of a difference
between psychical occurrences and the system of reality. That is to
say, there is no judgment unless the judging mind is more or less aware
that it is possible to have an idea which is not in accordance with
reality.
Thus, _if_ an animal has no real world distinct from his train of
mental images, if, that is, and just because, these are his world
directly, and without discord, he cannot judge. The question is, _e.g._
when he seems disappointed, whether the pleasant image [1] simply
disappears and a less pleasant image takes its place, or whether the
erroneous image was distinguished as an element in “a mere idea,” which
could be retained and compared with the systematised perceptions which
force it out, _as_ an idea with reality.
[1] It will be observed that we are not treating the mental
images as being taken for such by the primitive mind. It is just
in as far as they are _not_ yet _taken for such_ that they _are
merely such_. Mr. James says that the first sensation is for the
child the universe (_Psychology_ II. 7). But it is a universe
in which all is equally mere fact, and there is no distinction
of truth and falsehood, or reality and unreality. That can only
come when an existent is found to be a fraud.
We must all of us have seen a dog show signs of pleasure when he
notices preparations for a walk, and then express the extreme of
unhappiness when the walk is not taken at all, or he is left at home.
People interpret these phenomena very carelessly. They say “he thought
that he was going to be taken out.” If he did “_think that_, etc,” then
he made a judgment. This would imply that he distinguishes between the
images suggested to his mind, and the reality of their content as the
future event of going out, and knew that he might have the one without
the other following. But of {69} course it is quite possible that the
dog has no distinct expectation of something different from his present
images, but merely derives pleasure from them, which he expresses, and
suffers and expresses pain when they are replaced by something else. It
is here, no doubt, in the conflict of suggestion and perception, that
judgment originates.
On the other hand, animals, especially domestic animals, do seem to use
the imperative, which perhaps implies that they know what they want,
and have it definitely contrasted with their present ideas as something
to be realised.
However this may be, the claim of truth marks the minimum of Judgment.
There can be no judgment until we distinguish psychical fact from the
reference to Reality. A mere mental fact as such is not true or false.
In other words, there is no judgment unless there is something that,
formally speaking, is capable of being denied. When your dog sees
you go to the front door, he may have an image of hunting a rabbit
suggested to his mind, but so far there is nothing that can be denied.
If he has the image, of course he has. There is nothing that can be
denied until the meaning of this image is treated as a further fact
beyond the image itself, in a system independent of the momentary
consciousness in his mind. _Then_ it is possible to say, “No, the
fact does not correspond to your idea,” _i.e._ what we are ultimately
obliged to think as a system is inconsistent with the idea as you
affirmed it of the same system.
_By what means the claim to truth is made_
(ii.) The first thing then in Judgment is that we must have a world of
reality distinguished from the course of our ideas. Thereupon the claim
to truth is actually made by attaching the meaning of an idea to some
point in the real {70} world. This can only be done where an identity
is recognised between reality and our meaning.
Thus (keeping to the Judgment of Perception) I say, “This table is
made of oak.” This table is given in perception already qualified by
numberless judgments; it is a point in the continuous system or tissue
which we take as reality. Among its qualities it has a certain grain
and colour in the wood. I know the colour and grain of oak-wood, and if
they are the same as those of the table, then the meaning or content
“made of oak” coalesces with this point in reality, and instead of
merely saying, “This table is made of wood that has such and such a
grain and colour,” I am able to say “This table is made of oak-wood.”