Between the fact and the idea of the " this " in judgment, there can be no practical difference. The idea of this would be falsely used, unless what it marks were actually presented. But in that case we should be trying to use a sign, when we have before us the fact which is signified. We can use the idea so far as to recognize the fact before us as a fact which is " this; " but such a use does not go beyond the given. It affirms of the subject a predicate without which the subject disappears. It implies discrimination within the fact in which, since the aspect discriminated is not separable from the given, that given with its aspect still remains as the subject. So that the addition of the idea adds nothing to the subject. And if again it were possible to import the idea from the content of another fact, the operation would be uncalled for and quite inoperative.
And it is not possible. It would be, as we have seen, the attempt to have before us two unique facts at once. What we mean by " this " is the exclusive focus of presentation which lights up its content, and it is of that singular content that we use the idea. And to treat that idea as a meaning which could be true elsewhere, would be to bring into our focus another content. But since both must be unique, as well as the same, a dilemma arises which we need not draw out.
§ 27. And if " this " be used in a different sense, if it does not mark the presence of the whole sensible detail that falls within the focus; if it is used for that which I specially attend to, the result will be the same. If I make A my object to the exclusion of all others, then this special relation to myself must be false, if used of any other. If applied to A it can not possibly also be applied to B.
" But," it may be said, " I exclusively attend to both. A and B are both elements within the given ' this,' and hence I can predicate ' this ' of either. I can transfer the idea, which I find is true of one, and use it as a predicate which is true of the other. And so, after all, the idea of ' this ' will be used symbolically." I am afraid of losing the main question in subtleties, but I must reply by pointing out a confusion. Since A and B are both taken together, you can not exclusively deal with each separately. So much is now clear. But, on the other hand, if you take each by itself as a mere element in the " this," then you can not predicate " this " of either. Both will belong to the " this," but neither will be that to which they belong. They will be presented, but neither by itself will be the unique presentation. They will not have the " this " in common, but the " this " will have them. It will be their common substantive which will share its own exclusive nature with nothing.
I hardly think that by further intricacies we shall make more clear what can not be made obvious. If anything in the above has been grasped by the reader, I trust to have shown that the use of " this," as a symbol in judgment, is not only impossible, but that, if it existed, it would be wholly nugatory.* § 28. We escape from ideas, and from mere universals, by a reference to the real which appears in perception. It is thus * " This " is not the only idea which can never be true as a symbol. I will not ask to what extent " this " means " for me," but what has been said of " this " will hold in the main of " I ", " me " and " mine." But there are difficulties here which we can not discuss. We may remark in passing that, for the purposes of metaphysics, it would be necessary to find all those ideas whose content appears not able to be used as the adjective of something else. This would bear on the so-called " ontological proof." For the ideas of uniqueness &c., vid.
our assertion attains the uniqueness without which it would not correspond to the fact. And analytic judgments, it may seem, are thus secured to us. But now, when we return to the question we asked in § 19, and when we pass to judgments that are synthetic, and extend to spaces and times not falling within the radius of direct presentation, we seem at first sight to be no better off. What we have gained, it may now appear, has been at the expense of everything beyond. The series of all our spaces and times will now have to be referred to the one unique point of contact with reality. It is only so that their content can, be stamped with the mark of fact. But it seems impossible to establish this relation.
The content of these synthetic assertions we know is uni versal. It may be true of innumerable other series. This unsubstantial chain, if left to itself, does not touch the ground in any one point. On the other hand, the given source of reality refuses, it seems, to have anything to do with these floating threads. Their symbolic content can not be directly attributed to the presentation, because it is irreconcileable with the content of that. And, if we can not have another presentation, where is the fact in connection with which our universals can attain reality?
§ 29. We must turn in our difficulty to a result we got from a former discussion.20 We saw that the real, which appears in perception, is not identical with the real just as it appears there. If the real must be " this," must encounter us directly, we cannot conclude that the " this " we take is all the real, or that nothing is real beyond the "this." It is impossible, perhaps, to get directly at reality, except in the content of one presentation: we may never see it, so to speak, but through a hole. But what we see of it may make us certain that, beyond this hole, it exists indefinitely. If by " this " we understand unique appearance, then, as " this " was not any part of the content, so neither is it any quality of the real, in such a sense as to shut up the real within that quality. It would belong to metaphysics to discuss this further, and we must here be content with a crude result. The real is what appears to me. The appearance is not generic but unique.
But the real itself is not unique, in the sense in which its appearance is so.21 The reality we divined to be self -existent, substantial, and individual; but, as it appears within a presentation, it is none of these. The content throughout is infected with relativity, and, adjectival itself, the whole of its elements are also adjectival. Though given as fact every part is given as existing by reference to something else. The mere perpetual disappearance in time of the given appearance is itself the negation of its claim to self -existence. And again, if we take it while it appears, its limits, so to speak, are never secured from the inroads of unreality. In space or in time its outside is made fact solely by relation to what is beyond. Living by relation to what it excludes, it transcends its limits to join another element, and invites that element within its own boundaries. But with edges ragged and wavering, that flow outward and inward unstably, it already is lost. It is ad jectival on what is beyond itself. Nor within itself has it any stability. There is no solid point of either time or space. Each atom is merely a collection of atoms, and those atoms again are not things but relations of elements that vanish. And when asked what is ultimate, and can stand as an indi vidual, you can answer nothing.
The real can not be identical with the content that appears in presentation. It for ever transcends it, and gives us a title to make search elsewhere.
§ 30. The endeavour to find the completeness of the real, which we feel can not exist except as an individual, will lead us first to Synthetic judgments of time and space. But, before we proceed, we may pause for a moment, to reflect on the general nature of the attempt. If the reality is self-existent, self-contained, and complete, it needs, one would think, no great effort of reason to perceive that this character is not to be found in a mere series of phenomena. It is one thing to seek the reality in that series; it is quite another thing to try to find it as the series. A completed series in time or space can not possibly exist.22 It is the well-known phantasm of the spurious infinite, a useful fiction, it may be, for certain purposes and at certain levels of thought, but none the less a phantasm which, until it is recognized, stops the way of all true philo sophic thought. It emerges often in the school of " experience," in its Logic and again in its Hedonistic Ethics, where it begets and will continue to beget chimeras. We shall meet it again in the present chapter, but must return to our search for reality within a series of phenomena, a search not yet degraded to a pursuit of phantasms, but carrying in itself the root of illusion.
§ 31. The real then itself transcends the presentation, and invites us to follow it beyond that which is given. On the other hand, we seem to find contact with reality and to touch ground nowhere, so to speak, outside the presented. How then is a content to be referred to the real, if it can not be referred to the real as perceived? We must answer that the content is referred indirectly. It is not attributed to the given as such; but, by establishing its connection with what is presented, it is attributed to the real which appears in that given. Though it is not and can not be found in presentation, it is true because it is predicated of the reality, and unique because it is fixed in relation with immediate perception. The ideal world of spaces beyond the sensible space, and of times not present but past and future, fastens itself on to the actual world by fastening itself to the quality of.the immediate this. In a single word continuity of content is taken to show identity of element.
§ 32. But such continuity, and the consequent extension of the " this " as given, depend, like every other ideal con struction, on identity.23 An inference always, we shall see hereafter, stands on the identity of indiscernibles. Sameness of quality proves real sameness (vid. Book II. Part I. Chap. VI.). And the identity here has a double form, (i) In the first place the symbolical content must have " thisness." (ii) In the second place it must share some point with the " this."
To explain, (i) the idea we are to connect with perception must be the idea of something in space or some event in time. It must have the character of particularity, the general idea of indefinite detail and endless relation. We know by this that it is of the same sort as the content of the given. The de scription of both is one and the same. They both have " thisness," and therefore their element may be identical.
(ii) But, so far as we have gone, we still are left in the world of universals, which may or might touch the ground in some place and meet the fact which appears in perception, but which do not certainly do thus. We wish, on the one side, to pass beyond presented content, and, on the other side, to connect with this content an ideal series; and we seek for a link by which to fasten them together.
That link is found by establishing a point which is the same in both, and is the same because its quality is the same. The " this " contains a complex of detail, either times or spaces (or both) in series, which we may call c. d. e. f. The idea, on its side, contains a series of particulars a. b. c. d. The identity of c. d. in each extends the perception c. d. e. f. by the ideal spaces or times a. b., and the whole is given by synthetical construction as a single fact a. b. c. d. e. f. The whole series now is referred to the real, and by the con nection with unique presentation, has become a series of events or spaces, itself unique and the same as no other series in the world. It is thus by inference that we transcend the given through synthetic judgments, and our following Books must explain more clearly the nature of inference, and the enormous assumption on which it reposes.
§ 33. Mental pathology will afford an illustration. There are cases where the subject or, if we please, the Ego seems divided in two. When one self is present the other is absent, and the memories of either self are distinct. Their pasts and futures do not ever touch. The explanation that is offered, and which seems sufficient, will illustrate our theme. It is because the present selves are different, that the past and future selves are foreign. It is because one system of ideas has not got a point of connection with the other system, or has rather some point which excludes the connection,24 that the one can never be used to extend ideally a present which belongs to the other. Some mode of morbid feeling or dis eased perception, given now in presentation, links on to itself the ideas that are grouped by the same characteristic. The whole ideal region where that colouring fails, may perhaps be suggested, but can never be fixed in continuous relation with the present perception.* § 34. If we mean by phenomena the things we perceive, or the facts or appearances that are given to us, then the whole of England below our horizon (to say nothing at all of America and Asia), and every event that is past or future are not phenomena. They are not perceived facts. They exist in our minds as mere ideas, as the meaning of symbols. A phe nomenon, I repeat, that is past or future is a sheer self-contra diction. It is time we thought of giving up our habit of talking about the " series of phenomena," or " thread of perceptions," or Heaven knows what else, as though we held these facts in our hands. One thing or the other. Either a phenomenon may be ideal, the content of a symbol and not even predicated directly of the present perception, or there is no phenomenon but what I here and now perceive. It is idle perhaps to ap peal to facts in protest against the philosophy of " analysis " and the school of " experience." It is impossible, I know, to persuade the man who is wedded to these names, that he has failed to earn a legitimate title to neglect the first and to be false to the second. Profuse protestations, and jealousy of the untitled, are services found not too exacting, and which satisfy those who have long ago and cheaply become cool. But, for the sake of others, I will repeat once more. If a fact or event is what is felt or perceived, then a fact that is past is simple nonsense (cf. Book II. Part II. Chap. I.).
Of course, I know, it is easy to say that past events are all really there, and, being there, are remembered; as I presume the future, being all there, is anticipated. But suppose that there is a series of facts, both past and future, outside our minds, the question remains, How can they get in? You may say, if you like, They are fond of a change, and walk in and out bodily and meet and converse there. Or an omnipotent Creator has endowed the mind with an extraordinary organ, which perpetually can do what no one understands, and, defy ing the insidious arts of the analyst, proves by the way the immortality of the soul. Or perhaps you may find it a " final inexplicability." Ultimate facts always are inexplicable, and we must not be put out if they contradict those doctrines they must know to be true. For it is natural for the inexplicable to behave inexplicably.
But perhaps there are readers content to remain on a level with ourselves. If so they will continue to believe the conclu sion that facts have brought to us. And that conclusion is that events past and future, and all things not perceived, exist for us only as ideal constructions connected, by an inference through identity of quality, with the real that appears in present perception. In what character (if any) these things may really exist for themselves, is a question for meta physics.25 § 35. Synthetic judgments thus cease to be merely adjec tival, and they express a series of unique events by indirect reference to the real which appears in unique presentation. They are connected by an inference with the content of this appearance, and so far are directly related to perception. But their ideas are never referred as adjectives to the presentation itself. They are attributed to the reality, which both shows itself there, and extends itself beyond. The content of our perceptions, and the content of our ideal constructions, are both the adjectives of one reality. They are both appear ances, which come to us in different ways, but which both (unless our assumptions are false) are valid and true of the real world.
§ 36. Memory of the past, and prediction of the future, are separated clearly from mere imagination.26 In the former we have the reference to that reality which appears in per ception. We have a judgment which is either true or false, because it implies a relation to fact. But imagination is with out this reference. The merely imagined, we have seen before (Chap. I. § 14), may be stronger than that which we judge to be true. What we only fancy may have more thisness; it may have more compulsory and particular detail than that which we remember. But what it wants is a point of identity by which to fasten it on to the " this." And without such a link it must fall outside the series.
We generally, it is true, take forcible detail and strong particularity as a sign of fact, and look for its place in the series of events. But, if the place is not found, the imagined fact is never secured to us. The visions of dreams may be very definite, but the content of those visions refuses to link itself to the series of events connected with perception, and so, if we cannot get rid of the ideas, at least we stamp them as mere illusions.
If this were the place for an excursion into psychology, we should find some difficulties and many interesting questions. When once we have referred a content to the real, we generally tend to refer it again. We say that we know it happened at some time, though when we can not say. And we might be tempted perhaps to think that such ideas have greater strength or fuller detail than mere imaginations. This would be er roneous. It is not strength or detail which marks these ideas, but something so dim that we can not grasp it. It may be the general idea of reference to the " this," which, repelled by the content of the given " this," transcends it vaguely. It may be, on the other hand, some unconscious element of idea or feel ing, which serves to identify in an indefinite way the imagined with fact. For it is a mistake to suppose that these links with reality need be anything explicit. A feeling so obscure that we are not aware of it, and which perhaps no effort of attention would be able to distinguish from its vague totality of consciousness, may serve as the basis by which we sepa rate a truth from a fiction (§33). We must remember again that the point of connection may be, so to speak, in our in ward selves, and not at all in the outward series. If a false 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 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 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 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 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 " 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 so on until the lot is exhausted. Such judgments fall clearly under the head of singular.