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 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 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 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, 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 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 ways altogether unknown and is finally occult? We seem here to be asking, in another form, for the limits of explanation, and it would be the task of metaphysics to pursue an enquiry which must here be broken off.45 § 53- We have seen that, what hypothetical judgments assert, is simply the quality which is the ground of the con sequence. And all abstract universal, we have seen are hypothetical. It may here be asked, Are the two things one? Are all hypothetical judgments thus universal?
This might for a moment appear to be doubtful, since the real, to which application is made, is at times an individual. And for the purposes of this, and the following section, I will give some examples; "If God is just the wicked will be punished," " Had I a toothache I should be wretched," " If there were a candle in this room it would be light," "If it is now six o'clock we shall have dinner in an hour," " If this man has taken that dose, he will be dead in twenty minutes/* It may surprise some readers to hear that these judgments are as universal as " All men are mortal: " but I think we shall find that such is the case.46 In the first place it is certain that in none of these judg ments is the subject taken to be actually real. We do not say above that a just God exists, or that I have a toothache; we only suppose it. The subject is supposed, and, if we consider further, we shall find that subject is nothing more than an ideal content, and that what is asserted is not any thing beside a connection of adjectives. The " that," the "this," the "I," the "now," do not really pass into the supposition. They are the point of reality to which we apply our ideal experiment, but they themselves are in no case sup posed. More or less of their content is used in the hypothesis, and passes into the subject. But, apart from themselves, their content can not possibly be called individual.
§ 54. This would hardly be doubtful, were it not for the ambiguity of all these assertions, a point to which we should carefully attend. " If he had murdered he would have been hanged," may perhaps assert nothing but the general connec tion of hanging with murder, and the " he " is irrelevant. But " if God is just the wicked will be punished," may perhaps not say that punishment would follow from any justice, but only from justice that is qualified by omnipotence. On the other hand, when you say " If this man has taken that dose, &c.," you do not tell me if his speedy death would happen because the dose would poison any one, or would only poison such a man as he is, or would not even poison such a kind of man, unless under present special conditions. And the other examples would all entangle us in similar ambiguities. The go THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I supposition is not made evident, and reflection convinces us that, supposing we know the subject of the judgment, at all events we do not display our knowledge.
§ 55. And since this is so, since the adjectival content is not made explicit, since all we have is an indefinite reference to this or that case, we fall into the mistake of thinking it is the particular we have to deal with. But our real assertion, when we come to analyze it, never takes in the " that," or the " now," or the " this." It is always the content about which we assert. But, because we are not clear what that content is, and because we know it is to be found in the individual as supposed, we fire, so to speak, a charge of shot instead of a bullet, and take the individual as the point of reality to which our supposition is to be confined. In this way we give rise to the erroneous idea that the reality itself passes into the supposal. The fact, as we have seen, is that some of the content either is or makes part of the adjectival condition about which we assert. But, because that content has not been analyzed, we go to the individual to get it in the lump. The real judgment is concerned with nothing but the indi vidual's qualities, and asserts no more than a connection of adjectives. In every case it is strictly universal as well as hypothetical.
§ 56. We have found, thus far, that all abstract judgments are hypothetical, and in this connection we have endeavoured to show what a supposition is, and to lay bare that occult affirmation as to the real, which is made in every hypothetical judgment. Singular judgments we have already discussed, and we found that, be they analytic or synthetic, they all at first sight seem categorical. They do not merely attribute to the real a latent quality, which manifests itself in an unreal relation, but they qualify the real by the actual content which appears in the judgment. It is not the mere connection, but the very elements which they declare to exist.
We have still remaining another kind of judgment (§7), but, before we proceed, it is better to consider the result we have arrived at. That result perhaps may call for revision, and it is possible that the claim of the singular judgment to a categoric position may not maintain itself.
CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT QI CHAPTER II (Continued) § 57- What is the position in which we now find our selves? We began with the presumption that a judgment, if true, must be true of reality. On the other hand we found that every abstract universal judgment was but hypothetical. We have endeavoured to reconcile these conflicting views by showing in what way, and to what extent, a conditional judg ment asserts of the fact. But singular judgments stand apart, and have claimed to be wholly categorical, and true of the reality; and hence they demand a position above that given to universal judgments. We must now scrutinize this pre tension. We must still defer all notice of those individual judgments which transcend the series of events in time. Con fining ourselves to judgments about the phenomenal series, let us proceed to ask, Are they categorical? Do they truly and indeed rank higher, and closer to the real world, than those universal judgments which we found were hypothetical? We shall perhaps do well to prepare our minds for an unwelcome conclusion.
In passing from the singular to the universal judgment, we seem to have been passing away from reality. Instead of a series of actual phenomena connected with the point of present perception, we have but a junction of mere adjectivals, the existence of which we do not venture to affirm. In the one case we have what seem solid facts; in the other we have noth ing but a latent quality, the mere name of which makes us feel uneasy. We have not quite lost our hold of the real, but we seem to have left it a long way off. We keep our con nection by an impalpable thread with a veiled and somewhat ambiguous object.
But our thoughts may perhaps take a different colour, if we look around us in the region we have come to. However strange it may seem to us at first, yet our journey towards shadows and away from the facts has brought us at last to g2 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I the wo-ld of science. The end of science, we all have been taught, is the discovery of laws; and a law is nothing but a hypothetical judgment. It is a proposition which asserts a synthesis of adjectivals. It is universal and abstract. And it does not assert the existence of either of the elements it connects.47 It may imply this (§6), but such an implication is not essential. In mathematics,* for instance, the truth of our statement is absolutely independent of the existence of either subject or predicate. In physics or chemistry the truth does not depend on the actual existence at the present moment of the elements and their relation. If it did so, the law might be true at one instant and false at the next. When the physio logist, again, tells us that strychnine has a certain effect on nerve-centres, he does not wait to enunciate his law until he is sure that some dose of strychnine is operating in the world; nor does he hasten to recall it as soon as he has lost that assurance. It would be no advantage to dwell upon this point. It may be regarded now as a certain result, that the strict expression for all universal laws must begin with an " if," and go on with a " then."
§ 58. And from this we may draw a certain presumption. If the singular judgment is nearer the fact, and if, in leaving it, we have actually receded from reality, yet at least in sci ence that is not felt to be the case. And there is another pre sumption which may help to strengthen us. In common life we all experience the tendency to pass from one single case to some other instance. We take what is true at one time and place to be always true at all times and places. We generalize from a single example. We may deplore this tendency as an ineradicable vice of the unphilosophic mind, or we may recog nize it as the inevitable condition of all experience, and the sine qua non of every possible inference (vid. Book II.). But in either case, let us recognize it or deplore it, we still do not feel the passage we have made as an attempt to go from the stronger to the weaker, from that which is more true to that which is less. And yet, without doubt, it is a transition away from the individual to the universal and hypothetical.
§ 59. But a matter of this sort is not settled by presump tions. There are prejudices, it may be, that operate both ways. And we may be told, on behalf of the singular judgment, that it is the fact that these judgments are categorical. For they do assert the actual existence of their adjectival con tent, and, attributing to the real an explicit quality, they are truer than any hypothetical judgment, if indeed they are not the only true judgments. Such, we take it, is the claim of the singular judgment, and it can not be denied that its claim in one respect is very well founded. It does assert the existence of its content, and does affirm directly of the real. But the answer we must make is that, although it does so assert and affirm, yet, when we leave the popular view and look more closely at the truth of things, the assertion and affirmation which it makes are false, and the claim it puts forward rests on a mistake. We must subject the pretensions of the singu lar judgment to an examination which we think may prove fatal.48 § 60. We need spend no time on the synthetic judgment. In transcending what is given by actual perception, we without any doubt make use of an inference. A synthesis of ad jectives is connected with the present by virtue of the identity of a point of content. By itself this synthesis is merely uni versal, and is therefore hypothetical. It becomes categoric solely by relation to that which is given, and hence the whole weight of the assertion rests on the analytic judgment. If that is saved, it will then be time to discuss its extension; but if, on the other hand, the analytic be lost, it carries with it the synthetic judgment.
§61. Let us turn at once to the judgments which assert within what is given in present perception. These seem categorical because they content themselves with the analysis of the given, and predicate of the real nothing but a content that is directly presented. And hence it appears that the ele ments of these judgments must actually exist. An ideal con tent is attributed to the real, which that very real does now present to me. I am sure that nothing else is attributed. I am sure that I do not make any inference, and that I do not generalize. And how then can my assertion fail to be true? How, if true, can it fail to be categorical?
We maintain, on the other hand, that analytic judgments of sense are all false. There are more ways than one of saying the thing that is not true. It is not always necessary to Q4 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I go beyond the facts. It is often more than enough to come short of them. And it is precisely this coming short of the fact, and stating a part as if it were the whole, which makes the falseness of the analytic judgment.
§ 62. The fact, which is given us, is the total complex of qualities and relations which appear to sense. But what we assert of this given fact is, and can be, nothing but an ideal content. And it is evident at once that the idea we use can not possibly exhaust the full particulars of what we have before us. A description, we all know, can not ever reach to a complete account of the manifold shades, and the sensuous wealth of one entire moment of direct presentation. As soon as we judge, we are forced to analyze, and forced to dis tinguish. We must separate some elements of the given from others. We sunder and divide what appears to us as a sen sible whole. It is never more than an arbitrary selection which goes into the judgment. We say " There is a wolf," or " This tree is green; " but such poor abstractions, such mere bare meanings, are much less than the wolf and the tree which we see; and they fall even more short of the full particulars, the mass of inward and outward setting, from which we separate the wolf and the tree. If the real as it appears is = abcdefgh, then our judgment is nothing but X = a, or X = dr-b. But a-b by itself has never been given, and is not what appears. It was in the fact and we have taken it out.
It was of the fact and we have given it independence. We have separated, divided, abridged, dissected, we have muti lated the given.* And we have done this arbitrarily: we have selected what we chose. But, if this is so, and if every analytic judgment must inevitably so alter the fact, how can it any longer lay claim to truth?
§ 63. No doubt we shall be told, " This is idle subtlety. The judgment does not copy the whole perception, but why should it do so? What it does say, and does reproduce, at all events is there. Fact is fact, and given is given. They do not cease to be such because something beside themselves exists. To maintain that ' There is a wolf ' is false, because an ab stract wolf is not given entirely by itself, is preposterous and ridiculous."
* Cf. here Lotze's admirable chapter, Logik, II. VIII.
And I am afraid that with some readers this will end the discussion. But to those who are willing to venture further, I would suggest as encouragement that a thing may seem ludicrous, not because it is at all absurd in itself, but because it conflicts with hardened prejudice. And it is a prejudice of this kind that we have now encountered.
§ 64. It is a very common and most ruinous superstition to suppose that analysis is no alteration, and that, whenever we distinguish, we have at once to do with divisible existence. It is an immense assumption to conclude, when a fact comes to us as a whole, that some parts of it may exist without any sort of regard for the rest. Such naive assurance of the outward reality of all mental distinctions, such touching con fidence in the crudest identity of thought and existence, is worthy of the school which so loudly appeals to the name of Experience. Boldly stated by Hume (cf. Book II. II. Chap. I.
§ 5)5 this cardinal principle of error and delusion has passed into the traditional practice of the school, and is believed too deeply to be discussed or now recognized. The protesta tions of fidelity to fact have been somewhat obtrusive, but self-righteous innocence and blatant virtue have served once more here to cover the commission of the decried offence in its deadliest form. If it is true in any sense (and I will not deny it) that thought in the end is the measure of things, yet at least this is false, that the divisions we make within a whole all answer to elements whose existence does not depend on the rest. It is wholly unjustifiable to take up a complex, to do any work we please upon it by analysis, and then simply predicate as an adjective of the given these results of our ab straction. These products were never there as such, and in saying, as we do, that as such they are there, we falsify the fact. You can not always apply in actual experience that coarse notion of the whole as the sum of its parts into which the school of " experience " so delights to torture phenomena. If it is wrong in physiology to predicate the results, that are reached by dissection, simply and as such of the living body, it is here infinitely more wrong. The whole that is given us is a continuous mass of perception and feeling; and to say of this whole, that any one element would be what it is there, when apart from the rest, is a very grave assertion. We