* It is not worth while to criticize in detail a doctrine we can show is fallacious in principle. Cf. Chap. V. But among minor objections to the quantification of the predicate is its claim to silence you, and prevent you from saying what indubitably you know. It tells you you must not say "A is B," unless you also certify how much of B is A. But, even supposing that " so much of B " is the truth that you would affirm if you could, in numerous cases you can not affirm it. You know that A possesses a quality B, and, as to how the B, that is A, stands in extent to the B which is not A, you have no information. You must either then decline to quantify, or must abstain from speak ing the truth you know. But it is not worth while to criticize in detail.
such a manner that the two are not distinguished, but run into one whole.
(ii) And from the second class of errors we may also collect important results. In the first place it is true that the content asserted is always complex. It can never be quite simple, but must always involve relations of elements or distinguishable aspects. And hence, after all, in judgment there must be a plurality of ideas. And, in particular, (a) though it is false that the predicate is a class in which the subject is inserted, and a fundamental error to take the universal in the form of a collection, yet it is entirely true that the predicate must be always an universal. For every idea, without exception, is universal. And again (&) though assertion is not attribution to a subject in the judgment, though it is false that the grammatical subject is the reality of which the predicate is held true, yet in every judgment there must be a subject. The ideal content, the adjective divorced, is made real once again by union with a substantive. And (c) the doctrine of equation, or identity of the terms, has itself grasped a truth, a truth turned upside down and not brought to the light, but for all that a deep fundamental principle.
Turned upside down, and made false, it runs thus. The object of judgment is, despite their difference in meaning, to assert the identity of subject and predicate when taken in extension. But turned the right way up it runs thus. The object of judgment is, under and within the identity of a subject, to assert the synthesis of different attributes. When ever we write " = " there must be a difference, or we should be unable to distinguish the terms we deal with (cf. Chap. V.). And when a judgment is turned into an equation, it is just this difference that we mean to state. In " S = P " we do not mean to say that S and P are identical. We mean to say that they are different, that the diverse attributes S and P are united in one subject; that S — P is a fact, or that the subject S is not bare S, but also S — P. And the reason why the theory of equation works, and is not mere nonsense, is that in fact it is an indirect way of stating difference. " The subject is the same " implies, and may be meant to convey, the truth that the attributes differ. We must refer to the sequel for further explanation, but at present our concern is briefly to point out that an identity must underlie every judg ment.
But how is this possible? A is " prior to B," or " to the left of C," or "equal to D." The judgment asserts the equality, or sequence, or position of two subjects, and it surely does not say that both are the same. We must try to explain. We saw that all judgment is the attribution of an ideal content to reality, and so this reality is the subject of which the content is predicated. Thus in " A precedes B," this whole relation A — B is the predicate, and, in saying this is true, we treat it as an adjective of the real world. It is a quality of something beyond mere A — B. But, if this is so, the reality to which the adjective A — B is referred is the subject of A — B, and is the identity which underlies this synthesis of differences.
It is identical, not because it is simply the same, but because it is the same amid diversity. In the judgment, beside the mere distinction of the terms, we have an opposition in time of A to B. And the subject of which A — B is asserted, being subject to these differences, is thus different in itself, while remaining the same. In this sense every judgment affirms either the identity which persists under difference, or the diversity which is true of one single subject. It would be the business of metaphysics to pursue this discussion into further subtleties. We should there have to ask if, in the end, every possible relation does not involve a something in which it exists, as well as somethings between which it exists, and it might be difficult to reconcile the claims of these prepo sitions. But we have already reached the limit of our enquiries. The real subject which is implied in judgment,28 will meet us again in the following Chapter; and that, we hope, may make clearer some points which at present remain obscure.
III. § 1 8. We have given some preliminary account of judgment, and have tried to dispose of some erroneous views. We pass now to our third task, and must make some remarks on the development of the function. As we have defined it above, judgment does not show itself at all the stages of psychical evolution. It is a comparatively late acquisition of the mind, and marks a period in its upward growth. We CHAP. I THE GENERAL NATURE OF JUDGMENT 2Q should probably be wrong if we took it as a boundary which divides the human from the animal intelligence; and in any case we should be ill-advised to descend here into the arena of theological and anti-theological prejudice (vid. Book III. Part I. Chap. VII.). It is better to treat the mind as a single phenomenon, progressing through stages, and to avoid all discussion as to whether the lines, by which we mark out this progress, fall across or between the divisions of actual classes of animals. Thus with judgment we are sure that, at a cer tain stage, it does not exist, and that at a later stage it is found in operation; and, without asking where the transition takes place, we may content ourselves with pointing out the contrast of these stages. The digression, if it be such, will throw out into relief the account we have already given of judgment. For judgment is impossible where truth and false hood, with their difference, are not known; and this difference cannot be known where ideas are not recognized and where nothing exists for the mind but fact.29 § 19. I do not mean that the lower forms, or that any form, of soul-life is confined to the apprehension of simple sensations. If the soul is ever the passive recipient of a given product, to which it does not contribute and which it does not idealize, yet in all actual mind a further step is made, and we always possess more than what is given through sense.30 The impression, so to speak, is supplemented and modified by an ideal construction, which represents the results of past experience. And thus, in a sense, the lowest animals both judge and reason, and, unless they did so, they must cease to adjust their actions to the environment. But, in the strict sense, they can neither reason nor judge; for they do not distinguish between ideas and perceived reality.
That the thing as it is, and as it appears in perception, are not the same thing, is, we all are aware, a very late after thought. But it is equally an afterthought, though not equally late, that there is any kind of difference between ideas and impressions. For a more primitive mind a thing is or it is not, is a fact or is nothing. That a fact should be, and should yet be an appearance, should be true of, and belong to, something not itself; or again should be illusion, should exist and yet be false, because its content is an adjective neither of itself nor of any other substantive — these distinc tions are impossible for an early intelligence. A nonentity is not anything it can apprehend, and to it an error is never an illusion. And hence for this mind ideas never could be sym bols. They are facts because they are.
§ 20. The presentations of the moment, the given sensa tions, are received into a world of past experience, and this past experience now appears in the form of ideal suggestion. In the lowest stages of mind there is as clear a difference between the datum that is given and the construction that is made, as there can be in the highest. But it is one thing to have a difference in the mind and another to perceive it; and for an early intelligence this contrast between sensation and idea, is quite non-existent. A presentation AB, by a feeling d, produces an action de, or, by an ideal transition b-d, is trans formed into ABD; or may become AC, by the action of a-g, if g banishes B, and c is supplied. But, in all these cases, and in any other possible case, the process remains entirely latent. The product is received as a mere given fact, on a level with any other fact of sense.
If the object, as first perceived, could be compared with the object as finally constructed, there might be room for a doubt if the fact has become, or has been made by the mind. And still more if the ideas which perception excludes were ever attended to; if rejected suggestion, conflicting supple ment, wrong interpretation, and disappointed action, were held before the mind, then a reflection might take place, which would antedate the slow result of development; and the sense of illusion would awaken the contrast of idea and reality, truth and falsehood. But all this is impossible. For the leading feature of the early mind is its entire and absolute practicality.31 The fact occupies the soul no longer and no further than it tends to produce immediate action. The past and the future are not known except as modifications of the present. There is no practical interest in anything but the given, and what does not interest is not anything at all. Hence nothing is retained in its original character. The object, in its relation to present desire, changes ceaselessly in conformity with past adventures of failure or success. It contracts or extends itself, as the case may be, but it still remains the mere given object.
And while the ideas it assimilates become part of presentation, the ideas it excludes are simply nothing at all.
At a late stage of mind, among intelligent savages, the doctrine of a dream-world brings home to us the fact, that a mere idea, which exists and is unreal, is a thought not easy to lay hold of thoroughly. And, if we descend in the scale no further than to dogs, we are struck by the absence of theo retical curiosity. Let them see an appearance to be not what is seemed, and it instantly becomes a mere nonentity. An idea, we may say, is the shadow of an object; and that to a savage is another kind of object, but to a dog it is the thing or just nothing at all. The dog has not entered on that process of reflection which perhaps has not led to any very sure result. When his heart, like ours, is baffled and oppressed, and gives matter to his brain it has no strength to cope with, he can neither send his hopes into another world than this, nor repeat like a charm, and dream that he believes, that appearances may be nothing to a soul which feels them. I do not know the formula which would prove to his mind a satisfactory solution of his practical troubles; but his system of logic, if he had one, would be simple; for it would begin, I am sure, and would end with this axiom, " What is smells, and what does not smell is nothing."
§ 21. It would be difficult to detail the steps of the process by which ideas, as such, become objects of knowledge, and with truth and falsehood judgment comes in. And, apart from this difficulty, there is a question of fact which would con stantly arise. Given a certain stage of development, does judgment already exist there or not? It might perhaps be right to connect the distinctions of truth and falsehood in general with the acquisition of language, but it is hard to say where language begins. And, in the stage before language, there are mental phenomena which certainly suggest the effective distinction of sensation and idea.
The provision made beforehand for changes to come can not always be taken as valid evidence. It seems clear that, in many cases, we should be wrong in supposing any know ledge of the future, as opposed to the present. It is certain at least that a presentation, accompanied by or transformed by feelings, is as effective practically as the clearest idea. But in certain animals there are much stronger indications. When artful contrivances, suitable to unseen events, are used in the pursuit of prey,32 we are led to conclude that the difference of the situation, as it actually is and as it is anticipated, must come before the mind. And, where desire is unsatisfied, it is not always mere feeling, as against the object, which pervades the soul. The image of the desired, as against present per ception, floats or is held before the attention, and the feeling of pain, we may suppose, must sharpen the contrast until at length the difference is seen. And we can mention here what perhaps may be an outward symptom of the change. No one can have been much with domestic animals, and failed to observe their constant and increasing use of the imperative. They seem at least to know what they desire, to expect assist ance, and to be surprised at non-compliance. And though mere urgency of feeling, in the absence of ideas, might account for their tone, this interpretation would at times somewhat strain the phenomena.
But, if this is so, then judgment must come before lan guage, and certainly cannot be distinctively human. And, just as after language has been developed, we do often dispense with it; just as the lowest, and perhaps the highest of our thinking, goes on without any words in the mind, so, we may suppose, before speech was developed, the differentia of judg ment already existed.
We are not concerned in the controversy to which this might give rise. If we only know what we mean by judg ment, it is little to our purpose where first it appears, and what animal first reaches it. The question is not at all easy to settle, and in passing I will merely suggest a reflection. It is not enough to show that in the mind of an animal an image exists together with a presentation of sense, and that this image, partly the same as the presented, is in collision with it, and again leads to action in relation to the presented. All this may exist, and yet the differentia still be absent; the image may not be seen to be mere appearance, to be either not real at all, or less real than the sensation. For, if the image is taken in relation to the perception, they may both be apprehended as one continuous changing fact; the prey may be seen as pursued and captured, and the actual object may appear to pass into the desired. And, where failure makes this impossible, what may after all be wanting is the intel lectual identification of the image with the object. Apart from this logical process, we have a mere collision in the mind of two realities, whose struggle is felt. We have contest, and perhaps a following ejection; but we have no subjection, no degradation of one fact to the level of an appearance, that exists but in our heads. And in this case judgment would not have taken place.
§ 22. It might be interesting elsewhere to discuss at length these puzzles in psychology, but it will repay us better to pass to what is more certain. It is, in the first place, the retention of the false idea which tends to provoke comparison with reality, and which leads the way to the knowledge of appear ance and truth and falsehood. And, in the second place, it is language which, if it does not originate, at least ensures and sharpens the contrast. When gregarious animals utter their ideas, the word is in a manner more permanent than the thought, and maintains itself against the fact it tries to ex press. And the spoken thoughts of the different individuals are sometimes in collision. They are not the same with one another, and therefore not the same with the single fact. And speech in its perversion to lies and deceit makes the dullest comprehend that words and ideas can be and be real, and can yet be illusion and wholly unreal in relation to facts. At this point it is seen that the word and the thought are not like other things. They not only exist but also mean something, and it is their meaning alone which is false or true. They are seen to be symbols, and this insight it is which in the strict sense constitutes judgment.
For in the early stage, to repeat it once more, the image is not a symbol or idea. It is itself a fact, or else the facts eject it. The real, as it appears to us in perception, connects the ideal suggestion with itself, or simply expels it from the world of reality. But judgment is the act which, while it recognizes the idea as appearance, nevertheless goes on to predicate it. It either attributes the idea to reality, and so affirms that it is true, or pronounces it to be merely a bare idea, and that the facts exclude the meaning it suggests. The ideal content which is also fact, and the ideal content which is nothing beyond itself, are truth and falsehood as they appear in judgment.
§23. Our object in the foregoing has been, not to chronicle a psychological transition, but to mark out distinc tive stages and functions. We must endeavour, in conclusion, to obviate a very fatal mistake. The gulf between the stage of mind that judges and the mind that has not become aware of truth, may seem hard to bridge, and the account we have given may seem to rend facts apart. We may be thought in our extremity, when with natural conditions no progress is possible, to have forced upon the stage a heaven-sent faculty. On one side of your line, we may be told, you possess explicit symbols all of which are universal, and on the other side you have a mind which consists of mere individual impressions and images, grouped by the laws of a mechanical attraction. The distinction you have made amounts to a divorce. The higher stage can not exist as you describe it, or can not at least be developed from the lower.
In the sequel I shall criticize the whole doctrine of the " Association of ideas," but at present I will say thus much by anticipation.33 I agree that, if the lower stages of the mind were really what they are in most English psychologies, it never would in any way be possible to pass to the stage where ideas are used in judgment. And this consequence I desire to accentuate and to emphasize. But the fashionable doctrine of "association," in which particular images are recalled by and unite with particular images, is, I think, not true of any stage of mind (vid. Book II. Part II. Chap. I). It does not exist outside our psychology. From the very first beginnings of soul-life universals are used. It is because the results of experience are fixed in an ideal and universal form, that animals are able, I do not say to progress, but to maintain themselves in bare existence.
§ 24. In England, I am afraid, the faithful tradition of accumulated prejudice, in which are set the truths of the " Philosophy of Experience," well-nigh makes idle an appeal to the fact. But I will try to state the fact, however idly. It is not true that particular images are ever associated. It is not true that among lower animals universal ideas are never used. What is never used is a particular idea, and, as for association, nothing ever is associated without in the process being shorn of particularity. I shall hereafter have to enlarge on the latter statement, and at present will deal with the false assertion, that merely individual ideas are the early furniture of the primitive mind.
In the first place it seems patent that the lower animals have not any idea about the individual. To know a thing as the one thing in the world, and as different from all others, is not a simple achievement. If we reflect on the distinctions it implies, we must see that it comes late to the mind. And, on turning to facts, we find that animals of superior intelli gence are clearly without it, or give us at least no reason at all to think that they possess it. The indefinite universal, the vague felt type, which results from past perceptions and modifies present ones, is palpably the process of their intel lectual experience. And when young children call all men father, it is the merest distortion of fact to suppose that they perceive their father as individual, and then, perceiving other individuals, confuse a distinction they previously have made.
But this is hardly the real point at issue. To know the individual as such will be admitted to be a late achievement. It can hardly be maintained that a rude intelligence, when it holds a type and rejects what disagrees with it, can be aware of that type as an unique individual. The question is really as to the use made of images in early knowledge. Are they used as universals, or used as particulars?
§ 25. It is agreed on both sides that, as psychical exist ences, ideas are particular like all other phenomena. The controversy is confined to the use we make of them. I should maintain that, so far as they remain particular, they are simple facts, and not ideas at all; and that, where they are employed to extend or to modify experience, they are never used in their particular form. When A-B is presented in perception, we are told that the result of a past perception B-C appears as particular images b-c, and that these images, called up, unite with the presentation. But nothing could be more false. It is not true that all the marks, and relations, and differences, which constitute the particularity of b and c, appear in the resultant A-B-C, or were in any way used in order to produce it. The image c, besides its content as c, had the indefinite detail of all psychical phenomena; but it was not this but the universal c which was used in A-B-C, and it is the per ception A-B that re-particularizes c in accordance with itself. And, if this is so, we must say that what really operates is a connection between universal ideas. We have already, in an unconscious form, what, when made explicit, is the meaning of symbols.
I must trust to the sequel for elucidation (vid. Book II. II.
Chap. I.), but the subject is so important that I will venture to insert some illustrations. When to-day I reach the place where yesterday my dog has either chased a cat or fought with an antagonist, the perception as we say " calls up " the ideas, and he runs eagerly forward. His experience, we will suppose, was of a white cat or a black retriever with a large brass collar. To-day images are " called up," not so definite perhaps, but still certainly with some detail, and we will suppose that the detail reproduces the experience. To-day it is a black cat that is found in the place, but with an ordinary dog that will make no difference. The whiteness of the image is quite irrelevant.3* Or again, if to-day another dog be perceived, if only that dog be not glaringly different, an ordinary dog will certainly attack him, and the less intelligent he is the more catholic is his action. For it is not the whole image but a portion of the content which operates in his mind. He may turn from a small dog or a white dog or a smooth-coated dog, but size, blackness, and roughness, are the typical ideas which will certainly operate. It may be said, no doubt, that the ideas are particular, that they differ from the perception, and that it is the fault of the animal which fails to distinguish them. But why, I reply, does it fail to distinguish? Is a creature, intelligent as is a terrier, unable to see the difference between a white and black cat, or a Newfoundland and a sheep dog? "Yes," I shall be told, "he can if he attends to them, but here, although they both are present,* he does not * This is a false assumption as will be shown hereafter. In the first place it is not true that, when the mind goes from A B to C, it has to pass through a particular image b. In the next place, if the particu lar b be present, we have no reason to suppose that it will have the qualities of the original perception B. If a white cat has been seen to-day, we saw that next day, if its image is white, the whiteness of that image need not be used; and again if its whiteness was not an attend to them." But if so, I must rejoin, if the differences are not used, but remain inoperative, is not this a clear proof that what operates, and what is used, is a portion of the con tent, which is permanent amid differences, and which later becomes the universal meaning?
Again, if an animal has been burnt one day at the kitchen fire, the next day it may shrink from a lighted match. But how different are the two. How much more unlike than like. Will you say then that the match can not operate unless it first summons up, and then is confused with the image of a kitchen fire; or will you not rather say that a connection between elements, which are none of them particular, is pro duced in the mind by the first experience? But, if so, from the outset universals are used, and the difference between the fact and the idea, the existence and the meaning, is uncon sciously active in the undeveloped intelligence.
§ 26. We must anticipate no further. In another place we shall show the fictitious nature of the " Laws of Asso ciation," as they have been handed down by our prevalent tradition. Our object here has been, in passing, to show that the symbolic use of ideas in judgment, although no early process of the mind, is a natural result of mental develop ment. From the very first beginnings of intelligence it is the type that operates and not the image. The instance as such is never, and can never be, retained in the soul. The connection of certain elements in its content is all it leaves behind. You may call it, if you please, mere impotence of our imagination, or you may call it that idealizing function of the mind which is the essence of intelligence, still the fact remains that never at any stage can any fact be retained without some mutilation, some removal of that detail which makes it par ticular. The lower we descend in the growth of our own functions, or in the scale of animate nature, the more typical, the less individual, the less distinct, the more vaguely uni versal and widely symbolic is the deposit of experience. It is not symbolic in the sense that the meaning is at first per ceived to be other than the fact. It is not universal in the object of interest, there is no reason whatever why the image should be white, and not of some other hue. The generalized result left by past experience is always mutilated.
sense that analysis has distinguished the relevant from the irrelevant detail, and found elements more simple, and syn theses wider than are suggested by mere sense. But in the sense of not using the particular as particular, and of taking the meaning while leaving the existence, in the sense of in variably transcending the given, and of holding true always and valid everywhere what has ever and anywhere once been experienced, the earliest and the latest intelligence are the same from one end to the other of the scale of life.
1 On the question of Order in Logic cf. T. E. I.
2 "We can not judge till we use them as ideas." This requires correction. See Appearance, Index, and Essays, pp. 32-3 and Index. And cf. the Index of this book s. v. Idea.
3 " In England." This was published in 1883.
**" Symbols." This is wrong or at least inaccurate. A " sign " or "symbol" implies the recognition of its individual existence, and this recognition is not implied in an "idea." See Essays, p. 29, and the Index, s. v. Idea.
s "That," "what," "means" and "stands for" (cf. Chap. VI. §2). All of these distinctions imply judgment, though that may not be explicit. And wherever you have any such distinction you have transcendence and an idea— though not always an explicit idea (see Note 2). Each of these distinctions, again, if you could perfect it, would imply and pass into all the rest.
6 " Original content." This distinction (cf. the words " content (original or acquired)" at the end of §4) refers to the difference pointed out in § 5. The point is, however, irrelevant, and § 5 should have been omitted.
7 This footnote is wrong throughout, for there are no ideas not so " referred." See Essays, Chap. Ill and Index. The words in the text, "cut off, etc." are also incorrect. There are no ideas before or apart from their use, and that at first is unconscious. See Note 2.
8 Here again we must remember that we are not to say (i) that an idea is there apart from its being used, or (ii) that, in using it, we must be aware of it as a mental thing. Further (iii) I was wrong to speak, here and elsewhere, as if with every idea you have what may be called an " image." How far and in what sense the psychical exist ence is always capable of being verified in observation is a difficult point to which I have perhaps not sufficiently attended. Still every idea, I must assume, has an aspect of psychical event, and so is qualified as a particular existence. In the footnote to p. 7 " sensuous " should have been "psychical." The amount of imagery required is much exaggerated in p. 9. Cf. on the other side Chap. II, §§36, 9 What I meant here was probably to remind the reader that the " categorical " may turn out to be really " conditional."
10 " Judgment (proper) is etc." (i) In this definition the word " act " raises a question, important in psychology and in metaphysics (see Appearance and Essays, the Indexes), but (so far as I see) not necessary in logic, (ii) "Recognized as such" is wrong (see Note 2). What I should recognize on reflection I may in fact ignore. Cf. §§ 10 and 13. (iii) "Beyond the act," and (below) "independent of it," are right for logic. For metaphysics, on the other hand, the problem raised here can not be ignored (see Essays, Index, s. v. Act}. But as to recognition of the act (to return to that) the text is wrong. A per ceived object changed by an idea, and the change ignored except as the development of the object — though not of the mere perceived object — here is the beginning of judgment in the proper sense. But, again, to take judgment as present wherever we have an object at all before the mind — is a view which is tenable.
11 " Wandering adjective" should be "loosened adjective." And (three lines lower down) "relation" should be "union."
12 " Partial ignorance — absolute." The meaning and the great im portance of these words have, I hope, been to some extent brought out in this book and in my later writings.
13 (i) "Are the angles &c.?". The false doctrine of "floating ideas " is involved here. See Essays, Index, (ii) " The same ideal content." Not so. See ibid. And cf. Bosanquet, K 6- R, pp. 114-15, 14 This statement (cf. pp. 49, 56) requires correction. It is true that the ideal meaning is one; but it is also true that the subject is a special subject, and that it, in its special sense, must be there within the meaning (cf. Bosanquet, loc. cit.). The twofold nature of Reality as the subject of judgment was not sufficiently recognized by me. See below on p. 13. And cf. pp. 114, 477, and Index.
15 Cf. Mind, N. S. No. 41, pp. 20 foil.
16 " The relation is the same." But see Note 13.
17 "The subject can not belong to the content." This statement again requires correction. We have not a case here of mere Yes or mere No. See T. E. II. and Index. And cf. Essays, and again Appear ance, the Indexes.
18 " And finally, &c." See Note 10.