hood imagined is in the end believed, it is not always because it gains some kind of direct connection with outward fact. In the end it may actually identify itself with the habitual feeling which we have of ourselves. And this common meeting-ground of illusion and truth serves often to confuse them together in our minds. But we can not here further pursue these discussions.
§ 37. To resume, It is not the mere symbolic use of ideas which distinguishes truth from bare imagination. For imagi nation is not confined to particular images. Just as in percep tion it is hard to say where inference first appears, and where the analytic judgment becomes synthetic, so in much imagina tion we shall find the presence of a discursive element. The idea of a circle, we might say and say falsely, was nothing but an image; but the idea of a chiliagon would show us at once that there is a point where our imagery fails. And it is obvious that ideas of abstract relations may be held before the CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 77 mind without any judgment. This, however, is a content which is wholly symbolic, and yet (where no hypothetical judgment comes in) it is purely imaginary. It is detached from the existence of the image in our minds, but it is not attached to another reality.27 § 38. We now perhaps are able to say what it is we mean by the idea of an individual (or, we had better say, of a par ticular) fact. We saw the futility of seeking to find this in the proper names of persons, for what they stand for is never confined to a single event. The idea of particularity implies two elements. We must first have a content qualified by " thisness," and we must add to that content the general idea of reference to the reality. In other words a particular must first be represented in a series; this gives us the first element. But so far we do not get beyond mere " thisness; " the members are exclusive, within the series, but the whole col lection is not unique. To get the complete idea of a par ticular fact we must make our series, so to speak, externally exclusive as well and thus particular. And we do not do this till we qualify it by the idea of reference to our unique reality.
If we actually attributed the series to reality, we not only should have got the idea that we wanted, but also more.28 We should have judged that our idea was true in fact. And in this case we do not wish to go so far. We desire to have the idea of uniqueness, but not to assert the reality of the idea.
We possess, as we have seen (§ 24) in the idea of "this," the idea of immediate contact with the real, and it is this idea we must add to our series. When we think of the series both as a whole, and as touching the real in a point of presentation, we have thought of it then as truly particular. But there we must stop. For if we went on to judge our idea to be true, we should have to find it a special place in the unique series which extends perception. And we saw that to use the idea of " this " as the symbol of another content in judgment, was quite impossible. So long, however, as we abstain from judg ment, we can attach the aspect of " this " to a content other than that which is really presented.
This is what we mean by the idea of a particular. There is a difference when we come to an individual person. Our 78 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I idea is there particular, since it has limits within a particular series. But it also involves a real identity persisting through out a change of events. And so it falls outside the class of mere synthetic judgments.
§ 39. Uniqueness is merely the negative side of the idea of " this." A content is unique when, although of a sort (and that means regarded from the aspect of content) it neverthe less is the same as no other, is the only one there is of its sort. Uniqueness implies the idea of a series,29 and is then relative or absolute. It is relative when the series, which con tains the element which excludes the others, is itself not unique. In any universe our fancy constructs, a thing may be unique but only unique within that universe. We have, on the other hand, absolute uniqueness when the series is con nected with direct presentation. In that case the relations within the series fix against each other the elements it holds, and nothing can be fact without its appearing in that one series. But the real subject, which, in predicating uniqueness, excludes any other event of the kind, we must remember, is not the particular event as such and taken by itself. It is rather the real which appears in that particular and so ex cludes others. We have here a negative existential judg ment, for the nature of which we must consult our Third Chapter.
§ 40. After meeting many difficulties, some of which, I trust, may have been overcome, we have finished our account of the second division of singular judgments. We must pass to the third, the assertions not confined to an event or a num ber of events in time (§7). But, before we proceed, let us pause for a moment, and, however dangerous the experiment may be, let us try to put before our very eyes a synthetic judgment. Let us call before our mind some series of pictures, like Hogarth's Progress of the harlot or rake; but let us also imagine something beside. One picture in the series must be the reality, the actual person in a real room, and on the walls of this real room must be hung the series of earlier and later pictures. By virtue of the sameness in the quality of the man, as he is in the room and is in the pictures, we, neglecting the appearance in particular frames, arrange the whole series as his past and future. We transcend in this way the visible room CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 79 and the presented scene, and view the real life of the person extending itself as a series in time.
But the man in the real room that we see, is body and bones and breath and blood, while his past and future, if we mean by reality a sensible fact, are nothing in the world but glass and wood and paint and canvas. It is the same with all our future and past. The events of memory and of anticipation are facts now in our minds, but they no more are the reality they represent than paint and canvas are a throbbing heart. No doubt they stand for reality, and we flatter ourselves that, if they can not be fact, at least they are true. True indeed they may be if truth means a natural and inevitable way of representing the real. But if by their truth we understand more than this; if we say that the reality is as it appears in our ideal construction, and that actually there exists a series of facts past present and future — I am afraid that truth, if we came to examine it, would change into false hood. It would be false if measured by the test of perception, and it may be, if tried by another standard, it would be falser still.
§41. The life of a man can not be presented in any one scene, and our very illustration has gone farther than we thought. That life is not even a mere succession of serial events, but contains (so we think of it) a something the same, a real identity which appears in all, but which is not any, nor even every, event. We find ourselves brought to the third main class of singular judgments,30 and are speaking of a sub ject which is not an event. These judgments are separated into two divisions, according as the individual with which they deal is related to some given period of time, or not to any time in particular.
III. (i) In the history of a man or nation we have a content referred to the real, but to the real as it appears throughout one certain part of that series which is deter mined by relation to given perception, (ii) In the second division we must place any judgments we make about the Universe or God or the soul, if we take the soul to be eternal.31 Our ideas are here identified with the real that we find in per ception, but they do not not attach themselves to any one part of the phenomenal series. It may be said, of course, that such 80 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I judgments are illusory. But, as we saw, that conclusion, if true, could only be established by a metaphysical enquiry we have no place for. The judgments exist, and logic can do nothing else but recognize them.
This third and last class of singular judgments is distinct from the others. Its essence is that its ultimate subject is not the real, as it appears in the " this " or in any one event in the series. But the distinction is to a certain extent un stable. Just as analytic judgments are always tending to be come synthetic, so here it is impossible to separate sharply the first division of this class from synthetic judgments. On the one hand the continuity of the element of time strictly ex cludes a mere serial character.32 In every judgment about events we unknowingly are asserting the existence of an iden tity. On the other hand an individual living in a series seems naturally to belong to that class of judgment which constructs a series. Since, however, when an individual is concerned, we explicitly recognize something real, enduring throughout the changes of events, it is better perhaps to keep up a dis tinction which in principle must be admitted to fluctuate. The example of an individual person took us from analytic to synthetic judgments. And it has served again to carry us on further.
§ 42. 3'3 We have now considered all the three classes of singular judgments, and have seen in what way they attribute an idea to the real which appears. We have already antici pated the account to be given of Existential judgments, and may deal with them rapidly. Confining ourselves here to those which are affirmative, we can say at once that the subject in all of them is the ultimate reality, either (a) as it appears in some part of the series determined by the "this," or (b) as it underlies the whole series of phenomena. When I say " A exists," or " A is real," the content A is in truth the predicate. We use it to qualify existence or reality, in one of the two senses we have now mentioned.
The enquiry into existential propositions reduces to ab surdity the notion that judgment consists in ideas. If we add to the adjectival idea of A another adjectival idea of reality, then, failing wholly in reference to fact, we fall CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 8l entirely short of judgment. But this is not all. The idea of reality, like the idea of " this," is not an ordinary symbolic content, to be used without any regard to its existence.34 The idea of what is real, or of that which exists, is found as an element in that actual reality and actual existence which we encounter directly. It can not in judgment be removed from this, and be transplanted away to another reality. We have here the same obstacle which met us before (§§ 25-27). The idea cannot be predicated of anything except its own reality. For, to get the idea, you must take it by a distinction from what is given. If you then make it a predicate of anything not given, you have a collision, and your judgment disappears. But if, on the other hand, you predicate it of that which actually is given, your procedure is idle. Why employ an idea to assert reality when you have the fact, and when your ideal synthesis is a mere analysis of this given reality, and at tributed in the end to that as subject? " Real " is clearly the adjective of " reality," and we know no reality but what ap pears in presentation. The idea then, to be true, must be true of that reality. But, if so, we must have the subject before us in the shape of fact, and, if we did not, the idea would at once become false. For a more detailed discussion we may refer to §§ 25-27.
Nor would it repay us here to examine the somewhat surprising view which Herbart has advocated (vid. §75). Our enquiries in this chapter should have prepared us for the result that the ultimate subject is never an idea, and that the idea of existence is never a true predicate. The subject, in the end, is always reality, which is qualified by adjectives of ideal content.
§ 43. We cannot say there is a class of existential judg ments, for all singular judgments have by this time been shown to be existential. And, with this conclusion, we may pass be yond them to another branch of affirmative judgments. In these we no longer have to do with any particular facts or in any sense with separate individuals. They are universal in the sense of transcending what is singular. They are not " concrete " but " abstract," since, leaving things, they assert about qualities, alone or in synthesis. In this respect, we may remark in passing, there is no real difference between the 82 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I " general " and the " abstract; " for, taken in comparison with the particular thing,35 the general idea is a mere abstraction.
§ 44. We have reached the common type of universal judgment; and the point in this which we notice at once, is that every such judgment is concerned with adjectivals.36 They assert a connection between elements of content, and say nothing about the place of those elements in the series of events. In " Equilaterial triangles are equiangular " all I affirm is that with one set of qualities you will have the other set, but I make no assertion about where and when. And " Mam mals are warm-blooded " does not tell me anything about this or that mammal. It merely assures me that, finding one at tribute, I shall find the other.
The fact that is asserted in an abstract judgment is not the existence of the subject or predicate (§6), but simply the connection between the two. And this connection rests on a supposal. The abstract universal, " A is B," means no more than " given A, in that case B," or " if A, then B." In short, such judgments are always hypothetical and can never be categorical. And the proper terms by which to introduce them are " given," or " if," or " whenever," or " where," or " any," or "whatever." We should beware of "all."
§45. For the use of "all," we have seen above (§6), is most misleading and dangerous. It encourages that tendency to understand the universal in the sense of a collection,27 which has led to so many mistaken consequences. We shall glance elsewhere at that extraordinary teaching on the subject of quantity, in which the traditional logic delights. And we shall see hereafter, when we come to inference, the absurd incom petence of the dictum de omni. For our present purpose we need criticize no further the attempt to understand the " all " collectively. Even if that use were justifiable in itself, it would be irrelevant; for a judgment where "all" means a real collection of actual cases,38 belongs to a class we have al ready disposed of. If " all " signifies a number of individual facts, the judgment is concerned with actual particulars. And so it obviously is but one form of the singular judgment. " All A is B," will be an abbreviated method of setting forth that this A is B, and that A is B, and the other A is B, and CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 83 so on until the lot is exhausted. Such judgments fall clearly under the head of singular.
But, when this class is banished to the preceding category, have we any universal judgments left us? We can not doubt that; for there are judgments which do not assert the exist ence of particular cases. We come at once upon the judg ments that connect adjectival elements, and that say nothing about the series of phenomena. These abstract universals are always hypothetical and never categorical.* § 46. At this point we must pause to encounter an objec tion. " The distinction," we may be told, " between categorical and hypothetical is really illusory. Hypothetical judgments can all be reduced to, and in the end are nothing but, a kind of categorical." If this were well founded, it would certainly occasion us serious difficulty. But I do not think we need much disturb ourselves.
" If A is B it is C," we may be told, " is equivalent to The instances or cases of A that are B are also C, and this is surely a categorical judgment." I answer, if " the cases of A that are B " means the existing cases of A B, and no others, then the judgment no doubt is categorical, but it is not an ab stract universal. It is merely collective, and it most certainly does not mean what we meant by our hypothetical judgment. " If butter is held to the fire it melts " is no assertion about mere existing pats of butter. And when it is reduced to the form, " All cases of the holding of butter, &c.," it does not become any more categorical. " All cases " means here "Suppose any case."
Indeed, if we steadily keep in view the difference between a simple assertion about fact and an assertion on the strength of and about a supposition, we may perhaps be puzzled, but we are not likely to be led far astray by these elementary mis takes.
§ 47. And with this remark I could leave the matter. But * The extensional theory of judgment and reasoning is dealt with elsewhere (Chap. VI. and Book II. Part II. Chap. IV.). We may here remark that, taking " A is B " to mean " the things that are A are the things that are B," the judgment must be singular, if an existing set of things be denoted, and will be universal and abstract if possible things are included as well.39 84 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I it is perhaps worth while, by another instance, 10 illustrate the futility of this attempt to turn hypothetical into categorical judgments. J. S. Mill in his Logic (I. 4, § 3) approaches the subject with an air of easy superiority. " A conditional proposition is a proposition concerning a proposition."
" What is asserted is not the truth of either of the proposi tions but the inferribility of the one from the other." " If A is B, C is D, is found to be an abbreviation of the following: ' The proposition C is D, is a legitimate inference from the proposition A is B.' J: How this doctrine is connected with Mill's other views as to the import of propositions, an expert in Mill-philology no doubt could inform us. But, left to ourselves, we can only conjecture the doctrine he here intended to teach, (i) If he really meant "inferribility" then cadit qucestio. For at once the statement is not about what is, but what may be or might be. It is not simply about existing propositions, but clearly involves a supposal of some kind, and is therefore not reduced to categorical form. It is still Suppose you have got AB, then you may go legitimately to CD. (ii) But no doubt there is more than this verbal quibble. He tells us that one is an inference from the other. Does this mean (a) that both are actually asserted, and that I further assert that I really have argued to the second from the first? Surely not that; but then what else? (&) Can it mean that, without asserting either proposition, I hold them in my mind, and affirm their con nection? It may mean this. But then this process of taking up a statement without believing it, and of developing its con sequences, is in fact nothing else than a supposition. The connection asserted is not between realities, and the proposi tion is still hypothetical, (iii) But the extraordinary illus trations towards the end of the section point to another interpretation; " The subject and predicate are names of propo sitions." Without, however, attempting the hopeless task of understanding, we may perhaps state the issue in the form of a dilemma. Either (a) one proposition, in the sense of a little heap of words, does, as a particular event in my head, now follow another such heap; or (&) it would follow, if the other were there. The second alternative is of course still hypothetical. In the former at last we have got to something CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 85 categorical, but nothing to which a hypothetical judgment (or indeed any judgment) could possibly be reduced. It would be an error too gross to merit refutation.
Whatever else may be the meaning of the writer, we after all may remain sure of this. Either the categorical judgment, to which he professes to reduce the hypothetical, is not its equivalent; or else it contains, under some flimsy veil of verbal ambiguity, a supposition which is the condition of the judgment.
§ 48. Such universal judgments are all hypothetical, and with this conclusion we are landed once more in our former difficulties (§6). Judgment, we saw, always meant to be true, and truth must mean to be true of fact. But here we en counter judgments which seem not to be about fact. For a hypothetical judgment must deal with a supposal. It appears to assert a necessary connection, which holds between ideas within my head but not outside it. But, if so, it can not be a judgment at all; while on the other hand it plainly does assert and can be true or false.
We are not able to rest in this conclusion, and yet we can not take back our premises. Let us then try to look more closely at the problem, and ask more narrowly what is involved in these judgments. And, in the first place, we can not expect to succeed until we know what a supposal is.
A supposition, in the first place, is known to be ideal, and known perhaps to diverge from fact. At a low stage of mind, where everything is fact (cf. Chap. I.), it could not exist. For the supposed must be known as an ideal content, and, in addition, it has to be retained before the mind without a judgment. It is not referred as an adjective, either posi tively or negatively, to the real. In other words reality is not qualified either by the attribution or the exclusion of it. But though it does not judge, a supposition is intellectual, for (as such) it excludes desire and emotion. And again it is more than mere imagination, for it is fixed by attention and pre serves, or should preserve, its identity of content (vid. Book III. Chap, III. §§ 23, 24). It certainly is all this, and yet this is not all. For to think of a chimsera is not quite the same thing as to suppose a chimaera.
A supposition means thinking for a particular end, and in 86 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I a special way. It is not a mere attending to a certain meaning, or an analysis of its elements. It has a reference to the real world, and it involves a desire to see what happens. We may illustrate perhaps from other usages. " Say it is so for argu ment's sake," "Treat it as this and then you will see," are much the same as, " Suppose it to be so." A supposal is, in short, an ideal experiment.40 It is the application of a con tent to the real, with a view to see what the consequence is, and with a tacit reservation that no actual judgment has taken place. The supposed is treated as if it were real, in order to see how the real behaves when qualified thus in a certain manner.
You might say it is the adding the idea of existence to a given thought, while you abstain from judgment. But that I do not think would be satisfactory. For it is not the mere idea of existence that is used. What we use is the real that is always in immediate contact with our minds, and which in a variety of judgments we already have qualified by a certain content. And it is to this that we bring up another idea, in order to see what result will come of it.
§. 49. So far there is neither truth nor falsehood, for we have not judged. The operation, we may say, is so far "subjective." It is all our own doing, and all of it holds inside our heads, and not at all outside. The real is not qualified by the attribute we apply to it. But, so soon as we judge, we have truth or falsehood, and the real is at once concerned in the matter. The connection of the consequence, of the " then " with the " if," of the result of our experiment with its conditions, is the fact that is asserted, and that is true or false of the reality itself.
But the question is how. You do not assert the existence of the ideal content you suppose, and you do not assert the existence of the consequence. And you can not assert the existence of the connection, for how can a connection remain as a fact when no facts are connected? "If you only had been silent you would have passed for a philosopher." But you were not silent, you were not thought a philosopher, and one was not, and could not possibly be, a result of the other. If the real must be qualified by the connection of the two, it seems that it will not be qualified at all. Neither condition, CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 87 nor result, nor relation can be ascribed to it; and yet we must ascribe something, for we judge. But what can it be?
§ 50. When I go to a man with a fictitious case, and lay before him a question of conduct, and when he replies to me, '* I should act in this way, and not in the other way," I may come from him with some knowledge of fact. But the fact is not the invented position, nor yet the hypothetical course of action, nor the imaginary relation between the two. The fact is the quality in the man's disposition.41 It has answered to a trial in a certain way. But the test was a fiction, and the answer is no fact, and the man is not qualified by one or the other. It is his latent character that is disclosed by the experiment.
It is so with all hypothetical judgment. The fact that is affirmed as an adjective of the real, and on which depends the truth or falsehood, does not explicitly appear in the judgment. Neither conditions nor result of the ideal experiment are taken to be true. What is affirmed is the mere ground of the con nection; not the actual existing behaviour of the real, but a latent quality of its disposition, a quality which has appeared in the experiment,42 but the existence of which does not de pend on that experiment. "If you had not destroyed our barometer, it would now forewarn us." In this judgment we assert the existence in reality of such circumstances, and such a general law of nature, as would, if zve suppose some condi tions present, produce a certain result. But assuredly those conditions and their result are not predicated, nor do we even hint that they are real. They themselves and their connection are both impossible. It is the diminution of pressure and the law of its effect, which we affirm of the actual world before us. And of course that law is resolvable further § 51. In all judgment the truth seems none of our mak ing.43 We perhaps need not judge, but, if we judge, we lose all our liberty. In our relation to the real we feel under compulsion (§4). In a categoric judgment the elements them selves are not dependent on our choice. Whatever we may think or say, they exist. But, in a hypothetic judgment, there is no compulsion as regards the elements. The second, in deed, depends on the first, but the first is arbitrary. It depends 88 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I on my choice. I may apply it to the real, or not, as I please; and I am free to withdraw the application I have made. And, when the condition goes, the result goes too. The compulsion extends no further than the connection, and yet it does not extend to the connection as such. The relation of the ele ments in a hypothetical judgment is not an actual attribute of the real, for that relation itself is arbitrary. It need not be true outside the experiment. The fact which existed before the experiment, and remains true after it, and in no way depends on it, is neither the elements, nor the relation be tween them, but it is a quality. It is the ground of the sequence that is true of the real, and it is this ground which exerts compulsion.
§ 52. This quality of the real is not explicit in the judg ment, and, in respect of that judgment, is occult or latent. We know it is there because of its effects, but we are not able to say what it is. We can not even tell, without further enquiry, that it is not the same as what we have asserted in another judgment, the elements of which, and also their relation, were very44 different (cf. Chap. III. § 19). And, when we push the investigation further, and ask, Are these qualities, that thus seem to lie at the base of our judgments, altogether latent, or only latent each in respect of its peculiar judgment, then we get at once into difficult questions. It is certain on the one hand that we can find the grounds of many such judgments, which thus have relatively become explicit. But this only serves to bring us nearer to the doubt, whether in the end they have ceased to be latent. Do we ever get to a ground of judgment which we can truly ascribe to the real as its quality? Or are we left with ultimate judgments, which are certainly true, but neither the elements nor relations of which are true of reality? Must we say, in the end, that the quality, which we know is the base of our synthesis, remains in other