might have supposed it not quite self-evident, and that it was possible to deny it without open absurdity.* § 65. I should like to digress so far as to adduce two examples of error, which follow from the mistake we are now considering. When we ask " What is the composition of Mind," we break up that state, which comes to us as a whole, into units of feeling. But since it is clear that these units by themselves are not all the " composition," we are forced to recognize the existence of relations. But this does not stagger us. We push on with the conceptions we have brought to the work, and which of course can not be false, and we say, Oh yes, we have here some more units, naturally not quite the same as the others, and — voila tout. But when a sceptical reader, whose mind has been warped by a different education, attempts to form an idea of what is meant, he is somewhat at a loss. If units have to exist together, they must stand in relation to one another; and, if these relations are also units, it would seem that the second class must also stand in relation to the first. If A and B are feelings, and if C their relation is another feeling, you must either suppose that component parts can exist without standing in relation with one another, or else that there is a fresh relation between C and AB. Let this be D, and once more we are launched on the infinite process of finding a relation between D and C-AB; and so on for ever. If relations are facts that exist between facts, then what comes between the relations and the other facts? The real truth is that the units on one side, and on the other side the rela tion existing between them, are nothing actual.50 They are fictions of the mind, mere distinctions within a single reality, which a common delusion erroneonsly takes for independent facts. If we believe the assurance of a distinguished Pro fessor^ this burning faith in the absurd and the impossible, which was once the privilege and the boast of theology, can now not be acquired anywhere outside the sacred precincts of the laboratory. I am afraid it is difficult to adopt such an optimistic conclusion.
§ 66. And perhaps I may be pardoned if, by another illus- IIl!9F°r thC gCneral validity of Analysis and Abstraction see Book fVid. Huxley, Hume, pp. 52, 69.
tration, I venture to show how entirely the mind which is purified by science can think in accordance with orthodox Christianity.51 In the religious consciousness God and Man are elements that are given to us in connection. But, reflect ing on experience, we make distinctions, and proceed as above to harden these results of analysis into units. We thus have God as an unit on one side, and Man as an unit on the other: and then we are puzzled about their relation. The relation of course must be another unit, and we go on to find that we should like something else, to mediate once more, and go be tween this product and what we had at first. We fall at once into the infinite process, and, having taken up with poly theism, the length we go is not a matter of principle.
§ 67. To return to the analytic judgment. When I say " There is a wolf," the real fact is a particular wolf, not like any other, in relation to this particular environment and to my internal self, which is present in a particular condition of feeling emotion and thought. Again, when I say " I have a toothache," the fact once more is a particular ache in a certain tooth, together with all my perceptions and feelings at that given moment. The question is, when I take in my judg ment one fragment of the whole, have I got the right to predicate this of the real, and to assert " It, as it is, is a fact of sense"? Now I am not urging that the analytic judgment is in no sense true. I am saying that, if you take it as asserting the existence of its content as given fact, your procedure is unwarranted. And I ask, on what principle do you claim the right of selecting what you please from the presented whole and treating that fragment as an actual quality? It certainly does not exist by itself, and how do you know that, when put by itself, it could be a quality of this reality? The sensible phenomenon is what it is, and is all that it is; and anything less than itself must surely be something else. A fraction of the truth, here as often elsewhere, becomes entire falsehood, because it is used to qualify the whole.
§ 68. The analytic judgment is not true per se. It can not stand by itself. Asserting, as it does, of the particular presentation, it must always suppose a further content, which falls outside that fraction it affirms. What it says is true, if true at all, because of something else. The fact it states is really fact only in relation to the rest of the context, and only because of the rest of that context. It is not true except under that condition. So we have a judgment which is really conditioned, and which is false if you take it as categorical. To make it both categorical and true, you must get the con dition inside the judgment. You must take up the given as it really appears, without omission, unaltered, and unmutilated. And this is impossible.
§ 69. For ideas are not adequate to sensible perception, and, beyond this obstacle, there are further difficulties.52 The real, which appears within the given, can not possibly be con fined to it. Within the limit of its outer edges its character gives rise to the infinite process in space and time. Seeking there for the simple, at the end of our search we still are confronted by the composite and relative. And the outer edges themselves are fluent. They pass for ever in time and space into that which is outside them. It is true that the actual light we see falls only upon a limited area; but the continuity of the element, the integrity of the context, forbids us to say that this illuminated section by itself is real. The reference of the content to something other than itself lies deep within its internal nature. It proclaims itself to be adjectival, to be relative to the outside; and we violate its essence if we try to assert it as having existence entirely in its own right. Space and time have been said to be " prin ciples of individuation." It would be truer to say they are principles of relativity. They extend the real just as much as they confine it.
I do not mean that past and future are actually given, and that they come within the circle of presentation. I mean that, although they can not be given, the given would be de stroyed by their absence. If real with them, it would not be given; and, given without them, it is for ever incomplete and therefore unreal. The presented content is, in short, not compatible with its own presentation. It involves a contra diction, and might at once on that ground be declared to be unreal. But it is better here to allow it free course, and to suffer it to develope by an impossible consequence its inherent unsoundness.
CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT gg § 70. We saw that you can not ascribe to the real one part of what is given in present perception. And now we must go further. Even if you could predicate the whole present content, yet still you would fail unless you asserted also both the past and the future. You can not assume (or I, at least, do not know your right to assume) that the present exists independent of the past, and that, taking up one fragment of the whole extension, you may treat this part as self-subsistent, as something that owes nothing to its connection with the rest. If your judgment is to be true as well as categorical, you must get the conditions entirely within it. And here the conditions are the whole extent of spaces and times which are required to make the given complete. The difficulty is insuperable. It is not merely that ideas can not copy facts of sense. It is not merely that our understandings are limited, that we do not know the whole of the series, and that our powers are inadequate to apprehend so large an object. No possible mind could represent to itself the completed series of space and time; since, for that to happen, the infinite process must have come to an end, and be realized in a finite result. And this can not be. It is not merely inconceivable psycho logically; it is metaphysically impossible.
§ 71. Our analytical judgments are hence all either false or conditioned. " But conditioned/' I may be told, " is a doubtful phrase. After all it is not the same as hypothetical. A thing is conditioned on account of a supposal, but on the other hand it is conditioned by a fact. We have here the difference between ' if ' and * because.' 53 When a statement is true in consequence of the truth of another statement, they both are categorical." I quite admit the importance of the distinction, and must recur to it hereafter (Chap. VII. § 10). But I deny its relevancy for our present purpose.
The objection rests on the following contention. " Ad mitted that in the series of phenomena every element is relative to the rest and is because of something else, yet for all that the judgment may be categorical. The something else, though we are unable to bring it within the judgment, though we can not in the end ever know it at all and realize it in thought, is, for all that, fact. And, this being so, the state ment is true; since it rests in the end, not at all on an ' if ' IOO THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I but upon a ' because/ which, although unknown, is none the less real. Let the analytic judgment admit its relativity, let it own its adjectival and dependent character, and it surely saves itself and remains categorical."
But even this claim it is impossible to admit. I will not raise a difficulty about the " because " which is never realized, and the fact which can never be brought before the mind.
My objection is more fatal. In the present case there is no because,54 and there is no fact.
We are fastened to a chain, and we wish to know if we are really secure. What ought we to do? Is it of much use to say, " This link we are tied to is certainly solid, and it is fast to the next, which seems very strong and holds firmly to the next; beyond this we can not see more than a certain moderate distance, but, so far as we know, it all holds to gether"? The practical man would first of all ask, "Where can I find the last link of my chain? When I know that is fast, and not hung in the air, it is time enough to inspect the connection." But the chain is such that every link begets, as soon as we come to it, a new one; and, ascending in our search, at each remove we are still no nearer the last link of all, on which everything depends. The series of phenomena is so infected with relativity, that, while it is itself, it can never be made absolute. Its existence refers itself to what is be yond, and, did it not do so, it would cease to exist. A last fact, a final link, is not merely a thing which we can not know, but a thing which could not possibly be real. Our chain by its nature can not have a support. Its essence ex cludes a fastening at the end. We do not merely fear that it hangs in the air, but we know it must do so. And when the end is unsupported, all the rest is unsupported. Hence our condition*** truth is only conditional. It avowedly depends on what is ^ not fact, and it is not categorically true. Not stand ing by itself, it hangs from a supposition; or perhaps a still worse destiny awaits it, it hangs from nothing and falls altogether.
§ 72- It will be said, of course, that this is mere meta physics. Given is given, and fact is fact. Nay we ourselves distinguished above the individual from the hypothetic judg ment, on the ground that the former went to perception, and CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT IOI that we found there existing the elements it asserted. Such a plain distinction should not be ignored, because it disappears in an over-subtle atmosphere. But I do not wish to take back this distinction. It is valid at a certain level of thought; and, for the ordinary purposes of logical enquiry, individual judgments, both synthetic and analytic, may conveniently be taken as categorical, and in this sense opposed to universal judgments.
But, when we go further into the principles of logic, and are forced to consider how these classes of judgment stand to one another, we are certain to go wrong, if we have not raised such questions as the above. It is not enough to know that we have a ground of distinction. We must ask if it is a true ground. Is it anything more than a point to reckon from? Is it also fact? Does the light of presence, which falls on a content, guarantee its truthfulness even if we copy? Are the presented phenomenon, and series of phenomena, actual realities? And, we have seen, they are not so. The given in sense, if we could seize it in judgment, would still disappoint us. It is not self-existent and is therefore unreal, and the reality transcends it, first in the infinite process of phenomena, and then altogether. The real,55 which (as we say) appears in perception, is neither a phenomenon nor a series of phenomena.
§ 73. It may be said " This is only the product of reflec tion. If we are content to take the facts as they come to us, if we will only leave them just as we feel them, they never disappoint us. They neither hang by these airy threads from the past, nor perish internally in a vanishing network of never-ending relations between illusory units. The real, as it simply comes to us in sense, has nothing of all this. It is one with itself, individual and complete, absolute and categorical." We are not here concerned to controvert this statement. We are not called on to ask if anything that is given is given apart from intellectual modification, if there is any product we can observe and watch, with which we have not already interfered. We have no motive here to raise such an issue; nor again do we rejoice in that infatuation for in tellect, and contempt for feeling, which is supposed to qualify the competent metaphysician. Nor will we pause to argue that frustrated feeling itself heads the revolt against the truth of sense. It was a baffled heart that first raised the suspicion of a cheated head.
You may say, if you like, that the real just as we feel it is true.56 But, if so, then all judgments are surely false, and your singular judgment goes with the rest. For our present purpose we may admit your assertion, but, if it is meant as an objection, we answer it by asking the question, What then? Who is it who says this? Who counts himself so free from the sin of reflection as to throw this stone? Some man no doubt who has not an idea of the consequences of his saying; some writer whose pages are filled with bad analysis and dogmatic metaphysics; some thinker whose passion for " ex perience " is mere prejudice in favour of his own one-sided theory, and whose loyal regard for the sensible fact means inability to distinguish it from that first result of a crude re flection in which he sticks.
For the present we may assume, what metaphysics would discuss, that phenomena are what we can not help thinking them in the end, and that the last result of our thought is true, or all the truth we have. It is not the beginning but the end of reflection which is valid of the real; or we are such at least that our minds are unable to decide for aught else. And we have seen that our thinking about the real, if we remain at the level of the analytic judgment, will not stand criticism. The result of our later and, we are forced to believe, our better reflection is conviction that at least this judgment is not true. To assert as a quality of the real either the whole or part of the series of phenomena,57 is to make a false assertion.
§ 74. The reality is given and is present to sense; but you can not, as we saw (§ n), convert this proposition, and say Whatever is present and given is, as such, real. The present 58 is not merely that section of the phenomena in space and time which it manifests to us. It is not simply the same as its appearance. Presence is our contact with actual reality; and the reception of the elements of sensuous perception as exist ing facts is one kind of contact, but it is not the only kind.
In hypothetical judgments there is a sense in which the real is given; for we feel its presence in the connection of the CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT IO3 elements, and we ascribe the ground to the real as its quality. Hypothetical judgments in the end must rest on direct presentation, though from that presentation we do not take the elements and receive them as fact. It is merely their synthesis which holds good of the real (§ 50), and it is in our perception of the ground of that synthesis that we come into present contact with reality. I will not ask if this contact is more direct than that which supports the analytical judgment. But at all events we may say it is truer; since truth is what is true of the ultimate real. A supersensible ultimate quality is not much to assert, but at all events the assertion seems not false.59 On the other hand the categoric affirmation of the analytic judgment of sense we know is not true. The content it asserts we know is not real. And, taken in this sense, there remains no hope for the individual judgment.
§ 75. There is no hope for it at all, till it abates its pre tensions, till it gives up its claims to superiority over the hypothetic judgment, and is willing to allow that it itself is no more than conditional. But it does not yet know the degradation that awaits it. It may say, " It is true that I am not categorical. My content is conditioned, and the 'be cause ' has turned round in my hands into ' if/ But at least I am superior to the abstract hypothetical. For in that the elements are not even asserted to have reality, whereas, sub ject to the condition of the rest of the series, I at least assert my content to be fact. So far at least I affirm existence and maintain my position."
But this claim is illusory, for if the individual judgment becomes in this way hypothetical, it does not assert that its content has any existence. If it did it would contradict itself, and I will endeavour to explain this.
The content a-b in the categoric judgment was directly ascribed to real existence. The abstract universal judgment a-b does not ascribe either a or b or their connection to the real;60 it merely ascribes a quality x. The question now is Can you save the categoric a-b by turning it into a hypo thetical in which a-b is still asserted of existence, though under a condition, — or must it become the universal a-b which ignores existence? In the latter case it would simply mean, " Given a, then b." But in the former it would run, " Given something else, then a-b exists." This illusory claim is not very pretentious, but I wish to show that it is suicidal.
Drobisch (Logik, § 56), following Herbart (I. 106), trans lates the judgment, " P exists," into " If anything exists any where, then P exists." I consider this translation to be incorrect; for it covertly assumes that something does exist, and hence is in substance still categorical. And if we apply this translation to the facts of sense, then what is really supposed is the completed series of other phenomena, and the translation must run thus, "If everything else exists, then P exists." But the assertion is now suicidal, for " everything else," we have seen above (§70), can never be a real fact. The hypothetical assertion of existence 61 is therefore made dependent on a condition which can not exist. Now it is not true that the consequence of a false hypothesis must be false; but it certainly is true, when an impossible ground is laid down as the sole condition of existence, that in a roundabout way existence is denied. The individual judg ment, we saw, was false when taken categorically. And now, we see, when taken hypothetically, instead of asserting it rather denies, or at least suggests that denial may be true.
§ 76. The only hope for the singular judgment lies in complete renunciation. It must admit that the abstract, al though hypothetical, is more true than itself is. It must ask for a place in the same class of judgment and be content to take the lowest room there. It must cease to predicate its elements of the real,62 and must confine itself to asserting their connection as adjectives generally, and apart from par ticular existence. Instead of meaning by " Here is a wolf," or " This tree is green," that " wolf " and " green tree " are real facts, it must affirm the general connection of wolf with elements of the environment, and of " green " with " tree." And it must do this in an abstract sense, without any reference to the particular fact. In a low and rudimentary form it thus tends to become a scientific law, and, entirely giving up its original claims, it now sets its foot on the ladder of truth. § 77- But it remains upon the very lowest round. Every judgment of perception is in a sense universal, and, if it were not so, it could never be used as the basis of inference. The statement goes beyond the particular case, and involves a CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT IO5 connection of adjectives which is true without respect to "this" "here" and "now." If you take it as ascribing its ideal content to this reality, it no doubt is singular, but, if you take it as asserting a synthesis inside that ideal content, it transcends perception; for anywhere else with the same conditions the same result would hold. The synthesis is true, not here and now, but universally.
And yet its truth remains most rudimentary, for the con nection of adjectives is immersed in matter.63 The content is full of indefinite relations, and, in the first vague form which our statements assume, we are sure on the one hand to take into the assertion elements which have nothing to do with the synthesis, and, on the other hand, to leave out something which really helps to constitute its necessity. We say for example, " This body putrefies; " but it does not putrefy because it is this body. The real connection is far more abstract. And again on the other hand it would not putrefy simply because of anything that it is, and without foreign influence. In the one case we add irrelevant details, and in the other we leave out an essential factor. In the one case we say, " The real is such that, given abc, then d will follow," when the connection is really nothing but a-d. In the other case we say, " The connection is a-b," when a is not enough to necessitate b, and the true form of synthesis is a (c)-b. Measured by a standard of scientific accuracy, the first forms of our truths must always be false. They say too little, or too much, or both; and our upward progress must consist in correcting them by removing irrelevancies and filling up the essential.* § 78. The practice of science confirms the result to which our long analysis has brought us; for what is once true for science is true for ever. Its object is not to record that com plex of sensible phenomena, which from moment to moment perception presents to us. It desires to get a connection of content, to be able to say, Given this or that element, and something else universally holds good. It endeavours to dis cover those abstract elements in their full completeness, and to arrange the lower under the higher. Recurring to a term * For explanation and illustration I must refer to Lotze's admirable chapter cited above.
we used before, we may say its aim is to purge out " thisness," to reconstruct the given as ideal syntheses of abstract ad jectives. Science from the first is a process of idealization; and experiment, Hegel has long ago told us, is an idealizing instrument, for it sublimates fact into general truths.
Both in common life and in science alike, a judgment is at once applied to fresh cases. It is from the first an universal truth. If it really were particular and wholly confined to the case it appears in, it might just as well have never existed, for it could not be used. A mere particular judgment does not really exist, and, if it did exist, would be utterly worth less (cf. Chap. VI. and Book II.).
§ 79. It is time that we collected what result has come from these painful enquiries. If we consider the ultimate truth of assertions, then, so far as we have gone, the cate gorical judgment in its first crude form has entirely dis appeared. The distinction between individual and universal, categorical and hypothetical, has been quite broken through. All judgments are categorical, for they all do affirm about the reality, and assert the existence of a quality in that.64 Again, all are hypothetical, for not one of them can ascribe to real existence its elements as such. All are individual, since the real which supports that quality which forms the ground of synthesis, is itself substantial. Again all are universal, since the synthesis they affirm holds out of and beyond the particular appearance. They are every one abstract, for they disregard context, they leave out the environment of the sensible complex, and they substantiate adjectives. And yet all are concrete, for they none of them are true of any thing else than that individual reality which appears in the sensuous wealth of presentation.
§ 80. But, if we remain at a lower point of view, if we agree not to scrutinize the truth of judgments, and if we allow assertions as to particular fact to remain in the character which they claim for themselves, in that case our result will be somewhat different.65 Abstract judgments will all be hypo thetical, but the judgments that analyze what is given in perception will all be categorical. Synthetic judgments about times or spaces beyond perception will come in the middle. They involve an inference on the strength of an universal, and so far they must have a hypothetical character. They again involve an awkward assumption, for you can go to them only through the identity of an element in the several contents of a perception and an idea. As however, on the strength of this assumption, the universal is brought into con nection with the given, the " if " is so turned into a " be cause," and the synthetic judgment may be called categorical. The two classes, so far, will on one side be assertions about particular fact and on the other side abstract or adjectival assertions. The latter are hypothetical, and the first cate gorical.
§ 81. We have all this time omitted to consider that class of judgment which makes an assertion about an individual which is not a phenomenon in space or time (§41). Is it possible that here we have at last a judgment which is not in any sense hypothetical? Can one of these directly predicate of the individual real an attribute which really and truly belongs to it? May we find here a statement which asserts the actual existence of its elements, and which is not false? Can truth categorical be finally discovered in some such judgment as " The self is real," or " Phenomena are nothing beyond the appearance of soul to soul "? 66 It would seem to us strange indeed if this were so, and yet after all perhaps it is our minds that are really estranged.
But we can not here attempt to answer these questions. We can only reply when asked where truth categorical dwells, " Either here or nowhere."
i " S — P." This form I found of course in use, and I employed it in this volume where that seemed convenient. I neither did nor do attach importance to its use. In § I, par. 3, "is not our judgment" should have been perhaps "need not be," and, lower down, after "was not " might better have come " perhaps."
2 "Objectivity." What this means is that it is the object itself which is this or that. The " subjective " = the irrelevant. See the Index of this work. And cf. Appearance, p. 237, and Essays, the Index.
3 " Existences of different orders." See here the Index, s. v. Ex- I0g THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I istence. And cf. Essays, Chap. Ill, and Index, s. v. real world. "Existence" and "exist" (like "fact") are used in the present work often in a wide sense. On the narrower sense, which limits " existence " to the temporal series of my "real world," cf. Appearance, p. 317, and Essays, Chap. XVI.
* Unfortunately in this work, with regard to "reality," neither the view of Common Sense (whatever that is) nor any other view has been kept to consistently. Cf. Chap. II. § 72 and Bk. III. Pt. II. Chap. IV.
5 " Altering the series of either space or time." But in what world? In our own so-called "real world" only? Cf. Note 7.
6 " Images." But see Chap. I, Note 8. And (a few lines lower down) " quite apart from " should certainly have been " without regard to."
7 " Three great classes." These distinctions are all in the end untenable. See Bosanquet, K & R, Chap. I. All judgments without exception are conditional. See T. E. II, and cf. Appearance and Essays, the Indexes. On class (ii), the words "some facts of time or space " are of course qualified by the following words " which...perceive." For the third class cf. § 41. And, for a correction of the footnote with regard to Kant, see the Note to Chap. VI, § 28.
8 " Is false &c." It is false in the sense that its opposite also is true. See the Index, s. v. Conditional. And cf. Essays, p. 232.
9 For references as to the "real" and "grammatical" subject see Index, s. v. Subject. We must remember that there is no presump tion anywhere that these two are identical. See Bosanquet, K & R, 10 On the " present " &c. cf. § 74, and see Appearance and Essays, the Indexes s. v. Time. A view, such as that advocated, e.g., by Mr. Russell, I take (i) to deny the reality of apparent change, and (ii) to be incompatible with the fact of the appearance.
11 " The whole sensible reality." But at the same time there always is selection. See the Index, s. v. Judgment. Cf. here Bosanquet, 12 On proper names see Bosanquet, K & R, 73 foil., Logicy I, 47 foil.
13 "There is always an inference." How far the judgment itself is here an inference is, however, a further question. See Essays, p. 369, and Index, s. v. Memory.
14 " To attribute them" should have been "to attribute it or them."
15 " The series itself," that is, as we have it before us.
16 " Content " or " quality " means here anything distinguishable so as to be for us a content or quality. In saying that the " this " does not fall within the " what," we must add that it does not fall in the "that" either. For each of these is an abstraction. Again, where a quality is unique, it ceases to be so if you take it as distinct from its "that" — for, if so, there may be another instar.ee. On Uniqueness &c. see further T. E. IV and V.
CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT IOO, 17 On these important points see Essays, Chap. VI.
18 On the question raised here as to the idea of "this" see the reference given in Note 16.
19 The one idea, so far as positive, is that of reality, or experience, as immediate. Under this one main head of immediacy fall the " now," " here," and " mine." It is under the last of these that we are concerned with Attention.