Front matter (continued 2)

But you may answer by suggesting the case that an {53} uninstructed person—say a child, with a square figure before him, and having heard the name square applied to figures generally resembling that figure, may simply observe the number of sides, without knowing any of the geometrical properties connected with it; will he not then be right in saying, “This square has four sides”?

Certainly not. In that case he has no right to call it a square. It would only be a name he had picked up without knowing what it meant. All he has the right to say would be, “This object” or “This figure has four sides.” That would be a consistent judgment of mere perception, true as far as it went. It is always possible to apprehend the more complex objects of knowledge in the simpler forms; but then they are not apprehended adequately, not as complex objects. It is also possible to apply very complex forms of knowledge to very simple objects. Most truths that can be laid down quite in the abstract about a human mind could also be applied in some sense or other to any speck of protoplasm, or to any pebble on the seashore. And every simple form of knowledge is always being pushed on, by its own defects and inconsistencies, in the direction of more complex forms.

So far I have been trying to show that objects are capable of being different in their nature as knowledge as well as in their individual properties; and that their different natures as knowledge depend on the way in which their parts are connected together. We took two objects of knowledge, and found that the mode of connection between the parts required two quite different kinds of judgment to express them. Let us look at the reason of this.

{54} The relation of Part and Whole

3. The relation of Part and Whole is a form of the relation of Identity and Difference. Every Judgment expresses the unity of some parts in a whole, or of some differences in an Identity. This is the meaning of “construction” in knowledge. We saw that knowledge exists in judgment as a construction (taking this to include maintenance) of reality.

The expression whole and parts may be used in a strict or in a lax sense.

In a strict sense it means a whole of quantity, that is, a whole considered as made up by the addition of parts of the same kind, as a foot is made up of twelve inches. In this sense the whole is the sum of the parts. And even in this sense the whole is represented within every part by an identity of quality that runs through them all. Otherwise there would be nothing to earmark them as belonging to the particular whole or kind of whole in question. Parts of length make up a whole of length, parts of weight a whole of weight, parts of intensity a whole of intensity, in so far as a whole of intensity is quantitative, which is not a perfectly easy question. Wholes like these are “Sums” or “Totals”. The relation of whole to part in this sense is a very simple case of the relation of differences in an identity, but for that very reason is not the easiest case to appreciate. The relation is so simple that it is apt to pass unnoticed, and in dealing with numerical computation we are apt to forget that in application to any concrete problem the numbers must be numbers of something having a common quality, and that the nature of this something may affect the result as related to real fact, though not as a conclusion from pure {55} numerical premisses. In a whole of pure number the indifference of parts to whole reaches its maximum. The unit remains absolutely the same, into whatever total of addition it may enter.

In a whole of differentiated members, such as a square, all this begins to be different. A side in a square possesses, by the fact of being a side, very different relations and properties from those of a straight line conceived in isolation. In this case the whole is not made up merely by adding the parts together. It is a geometrical whole, and its parts are combined according to a special form of necessity which is rooted in the nature of space. Speaking generally, the point is that parts must occupy certain perfectly definite places as regards each other. You cannot make a square by merely adding three right angles to one, nor by taking a given straight line and adding three more equal straight lines to its length. You must construct in a definite way so as to fulfil definite conditions. The identity shows itself in the different elements which make it up, not as a mere repeated quality, but as a property of contributing, each part in a distinctive way, to the nature of the whole. Such an identity is not a mere total or sum, though I imagine that its relations can be fully expressed in terms of quantity, certain differentiated objects or conceptions being given (e.g. line and angle).

I take a further instance to put a sharp point upon this distinction. The relation of whole and parts is nowhere more perfect, short of a living mind, than in a work of art. There is a very fine Turner landscape now [1] in the “Old {56} Masters” Exhibition at Burlington House—the picture of the two bridges at Walton-on-Thames. The picture is full of detail—figures, animals, trees, and a curving river-bed. But I am told that if one attempts to cut out the smallest appreciable fragment of all this detail, one will find that it cannot be done without ruining the whole effect of the picture. That means that the individual totality is so welded together by the master’s selective composition, that, according to Aristotle’s definition of a true “whole,” if any part is modified or removed the total is entirely altered, “for that of which the presence or absence makes no difference is no true part of the whole.” [2]

[1] February 1892. [2] Poetics, 8

Of course, in saying that the part is thus essential to the whole, it is implied that the whole reacts upon and transfigures the part. It is in and by this transformation that its pervading identity makes itself felt throughout all the elements by which it is constituted. As the picture would be ruined if a little patch of colour were removed, so the little patch of colour might be such as to be devoid of all value if seen on a piece of paper by itself. I will give an extreme instance, almost amounting to a tour de force, from the art of poetry, in illustration of this principle. We constantly hear and use in daily life the phrase, “It all comes to the same thing in the end.” Perhaps in the very commonest speech we use it less fully, omitting the word “thing”; but the sentence as written above is a perfectly familiar platitude, with no special import, nor grace of sound or rhythm. Now, in one of the closing stanzas of Browning’s poem Any Wife to Any Husband, this sentence, only modified {57} by the substitution of “at” for “in,” forms an entire line. [1] And I think it will generally be felt that there are few more stately and pathetic passages than this in modern poetry. Both the rhythm and sonorousness of the whole poem, and also its burden of ideal feeling, are communicated to the line in question by the context in which it is framed. Through the rhythm thus prescribed to it, and through the characteristic emotion which it contributes to reveal, the “whole” of the poem re-acts upon this part, and confers upon it a quality which, apart from such a setting, we should never have dreamed that it was capable of possessing.

[1] In order to remind the reader of the effect of this passage it is necessary to quote a few lines before and after—

“Re-issue words and looks from the old mint, Pass them afresh, no matter whose the print, Image and superscription once they bore! Re-coin thyself and give it them to spend,— It all comes to the same thing at the end, Since mine thou wast, mine art and mine shalt be, Faithful or faithless, sealing up the sum Or lavish of my treasure, thou must come Back to the heart’s place here I keep for thee!”

We are not here concerned with the peculiar “aesthetic” nature of works of art, which makes them, although rational, nevertheless unique individuals. I only adduced the above examples to show, in unmistakable cases, what is actually meant when we speak of “a whole” as constituted by a pervading identity which exhibits itself in the congruous or co-operating nature of all the constituent parts. In wholes of a higher kind than the whole of mere quantity the parts no longer repeat each other. They are not merely distinct, {58} but different. Yet the common or continuous nature shows itself within each of them.

The parts of a sum-total, taking them for convenience of summation as equal parts, may be called units; [1] the parts of an abstract system, such as a geometrical figure, may be called elements (I cannot answer for mathematical usage), and the parts of a concrete system, an aesthetic product, a mind, or a society, might be called members.

[1] A unit of measurement implies in addition that it has been equated with some accepted standard. If I divide the length of my room into thirty equal parts, each part is a “unit” in the sum-total; but I have not measured the room till I have equated one such part with a known standard, and thus made it into a unit in the general system of length equations.

But every kind of whole is an identity, and its parts are always differences within it.

Nature of Knowledge

4. It will be well to sum up here what we have learnt of the nature of knowledge in general, before passing to the definition and classification of Judgment.

Knowledge is always Judgment. Judgment is constructive, for us, of the real world. Constructing the real world means interpreting or amplifying our present perception by what we are obliged to think, which we take as all belonging to a single system one with itself, and with what constrains us in sense-perception, and objective in the sense that its parts act on each other independently of our individual apprehension, and that we are obliged to think them thus. The process of construction is always that of exhibiting a whole in its parts, i.e. an identity in its differences; that is to say, it is always both analytic and synthetic. The objects of knowledge differ in the mode of relation between their {59} parts and the whole, and thus give rise to different types of judgment and inference; and this difference in the form of knowledge is a difference in the content of Logic, which deals with the objects of experience only from the point of view of their properties as objects in an intellectual world.

Conclusion

5. I hope that these general lectures, which, as I am quite aware, have anticipated the treatment of many difficult questions which they have not attempted to solve, have been successful in putting the problem of Logic before us with some degree of vividness. If this problem were thoroughly impressed upon our minds, I should say that we had already gained something definite from this course of study. The points which I desire to emphasise are two.

(1) I hope that we have learned to realise the world of our knowledge as a living growth, sustained by the energy of our intelligence; and to understand that we do not start with a ready-made world in common, but can only enter upon the inheritance of science and civilisation as the result of courage, labour, and reasonable perseverance; and further, that we retain this inheritance just as long as our endurance and capacity hold out, and no longer.

And (2) I have attempted to make clear that this living growth, our knowledge, is like the vegetable or animal world in being composed of infinite minor systems, each and all of which are at bottom the same function with corresponding parts or elements, modified by adaption to the environment. So that the task of analysing the form of judgment bears a certain resemblance to that of analysing the forms of plants. Just as from the single cell of the undifferentiated Alga, to {60} the most highly organised flower or tree, we have the same formation, with its characteristic functions and operations, so from the undifferentiated judgment, which in linguistic form resembles an ejaculation or interjection, to the reasonable systems of exact or philosophical science, we find the same systematic function with corresponding elements.

But the world of knowledge has a unity which the world of organic individuals cannot claim; and this whole system of functions is itself, for our intelligence, approximately a single function or system, corresponding in structure to each of its individual parts, as though the plant world or animal world were itself in turn a plant or animal. We cannot hope to exhaust the shapes taken by the pervading fundamental function of intelligence. We shall only attempt to understand the analogies and differences between some few of its leading types.

{61}

LECTURE IV TYPES OF JUDGMENT AND THE GENERAL CONDITIONS INVOLVED IN ASSERTION

Correspondence between types of Judgment and nature of objects as Knowledge

1. The question of correspondence between the types of Judgment and the orders of Knowledge was really anticipated in discussing the relation between the content and the form of knowledge. We saw that the content or matter and nature known determines on the whole the form or method of knowledge by which it can be known.

I give a few cases of this correspondence, not professing to complete the list. We should accustom ourselves to think of these forms as constituting a progression in the sense that each of them betrays a reference to an ideal of knowledge which in itself it is unable to fulfil, and therefore inevitably suggests some further or divergent form. And the defect by which the forms contradict the ideal, is felt by us as a defect in their grasp of reality, in their presentation of real connections.

“Impersonal” Judgment

a. We think of the judgment as predicating an ideal content of a subject indicated in present perception. But there are judgments which scarcely have an immediate subject at all, such as “How hot!” “Bad!” “It hurts!” In the judgments thus represented the true subject is some {62} undefined aspect of the given complex presentation. Of course the words which we use are not an absolutely safe guide to the judgment—they may be merely an abbreviation. But there are typical judgments of this kind in which we merely mean to connect some namable content with that which can only be defined as the focus of attention at the moment. Such judgments might be called predications of mere quality. The only link by which they bind their parts into a whole is a feeling referred to our momentary surroundings. A mere quality, if not defined or analysed, or a feeling of pleasure or pain, is the sort of object which can be expressed in such a judgment.

Perceptive Judgment

b. Then we have the very wide sphere of perceptive judgment, which we may most conveniently confine to judgments which have in the subject elements analogous to “This,” “Here,” “Now.” Such particles as these indicate an effort to distinguish elements within the complex presented. They have no content beyond the reference to presentation, and, in “here” and “now,” an implication that the present is taken in a particular kind of continuum. Otherwise they mean nothing more or other than is meant by pointing with the finger. We may or may not help out a “subject” of this kind by definite ideas attached to it as conditions of the judgment. If we do, we are already on the road to a new form of knowledge, incompatible with the judgment of perception. For so long as we keep a demonstrative, spatial or temporal, reference in the thought, the subject of judgment is not cut loose from our personal focus of presentation. And as the existence of such a focus is undeniable, we are secure against criticism so far as the {63} content of the subject is concerned. But if we begin to specify it, we do so at our peril.

Such judgments as these have been called “Analytic judgments of sense.” [1] The term is not generally accepted in this meaning, but is conveniently illustrative of the nature of these judgments. It is intended to imply that they are a breaking up and reconstruction of what, in our usual loose way of talking, is said to be given in sense-perception. They remain on the whole within the complex of “that which” is presented.

[1] Mr. F.H. Bradley, Principles of Logic, p. 48.

From the point of view which we have taken, such judgments are not confined to what we think it worth while to say, but are the essence of every orderly and objective perception of the world around us. In a waking human consciousness nothing is unaffirmed.

We have no other term than perception to express the process which is employed in scientific observation and experiment. But it is plain that so soon as the judgment that refers to “This” is modified through the inevitable demand for qualification by exact ideas—“This hurts me,” “What hurts you?” “This old sprain, at the pace we are walking”—a conflict of elements has arisen within the judgment. And as commonplace perception passes into scientific observation, the qualifying ideas, on which truth and relevancy depend, dwarf the importance of the “this,” and ultimately oust it altogether. That is a simple case in which the ideal of knowledge and the nature of reality operate within the judgment to split asunder its primitive form. The subject as expressed by a pure demonstrative refuses to {64} take account either of truth, i.e. consistency with knowledge as a whole, or of relevancy, i.e. consistency with the relation involved in the particular predication that may be in question. Our commonplace perception halts between these two extremes. It deals with the world of individual objects and persons, which, being already systematised according to our current observations and interests, has, so long as we keep to its order, a sufficient degree of truth and relevancy for the needs of daily life. Thus if I say, “This book will do as a desk to write upon,” the truth of the qualification “book” (i.e. the reality of the subject) is assumed on the ground of the facility of recognising a well-known “thing,” while the relevancy of the qualification “book” is not questioned, because we accept an individual thing as an object of habitual interest qua individual, and do not demand that whenever it is named those properties alone should be indicated which are relevant to the purpose for which it is named. The “thing” is a current coin of popular thought, and makes common perception workable without straining after a special relevancy in the subject of every predication. Such special relevancy leads ultimately to the ideal of definition, in which subject and predicate are adequate to each other and necessarily connected. A definitory judgment drops the demonstrative and relies on qualifying ideas alone. It is therefore an abstract universal Judgment, while the Judgment of Perception, so long as it retains the demonstrative, is a Singular Judgment.

Proper names in Judgment

c. But a very curious example of a divergence or half-way house in Knowledge is that form of the singular Judgment in which the subject is a proper name. A proper name is {65} designative and not definitory. It may be described as a generalised demonstrative pronoun—a demonstrative pronoun which has the same particular reference in the mouth of every one who uses, it, and beyond the given present of time.

So the reference of a proper name is a good example of what we called a universal or an identity. That which is referred to by such a name is a person or thing whose existence is extended in time and its parts bound together by some continuous quality—an individual person or thing and the whole of this individuality is referred to in whatever is affirmed about it. Thus the reference of such a name is universal, not as including more than one individual, but as including in the identity of the individual numberless differences—the acts, events, and relations that make up its history and situation.

What kinds of things are called by Proper Names, and why? This question is akin to the doctrine of Connotation and Denotation, which will be discussed in the next lecture. It is a very good problem to think over beforehand, noting especially the limiting cases, in which either some people give proper names to things to which other people do not give them, or some things are given proper names while other things of the same general kind are not. These judgments, which are both Singular and Universal, may perhaps be called for distinction’s sake “Individual” Judgments.

Abstract Judgment

d. The demonstrative perception may also be replaced by a more or less complete analysis or definition.

Within this province Definition of a concrete whole is one extreme, e.g. “Human Society is a system of wills”; {66} that of an abstract whole the other extreme, “12 = 7 + 5.” There are all degrees, between these two, in the amount of modification which the parts undergo by belonging to the whole. There are also all sorts of incomplete definitions, expressing merely the effects of single conditions out of those which go to make up a whole. These form the abstract universal judgments of the exact sciences, such as, “If water is heated to 212° Fahr. under one atmosphere it boils.” In all these cases some idea, “abstract” as being cut loose from the focus of present perception, whether abstract or concrete in its content, replaces the demonstrative of the judgment which is a perception. These are the judgments which in the ordinary logical classification rank as universal.

The general definition of Judgment

2. It was quite right of us to consider some types of judgment before trying to define it generally. It is hopeless to understand a definition unless the object to be defined is tolerably familiar. We have said a great deal about knowledge and about judgment as the organ or medium of knowledge. Now we want to study particular judgments in their parts and working, and observe how they perform their function of constructing reality.

Now, for our purpose, we may take the clearest cases of judgment, viz. the meanings of propositions.

The distinctive character of Judgment as contrasted with every other act of mind is that it claims to be true, i.e. pre-supposes the distinction between truth and falsity.

First, we have to consider what is implied in claiming truth.

Secondly, by what means truth is claimed in Judgment.

{67} Thirdly, the nature of the ideas for which alone truth can be claimed.

What is implied in claiming truth

(i.) Claiming truth implies the distinction between truth and falsity. I do not say, “between truth and falsehood,” because falsehood includes a lie, and a lie is not prima facie, an error or falsity of knowledge. It is, as may be said of a question, altogether addressed to another person, and has no existence as a distinct species within knowledge. Thus a lie is called by Plato “falsehood in words”; the term “falsehood in the mind” he reserves for ignorance or error, which he treats as the worst of the two, which from an intellectual point of view it plainly is.

No distinction between truth and falsity can exist unless, in the act or state which claims truth, there is a reference to something outside psychical occurrence in the course of ideas. Falsity or error are relations that imply existences which, having reality of one kind, claim in addition to this another kind of reality which they have not. In fact, all things that are called false, are called so because they claim a place or property which they do not possess. They must exist, in order to be false. It is in the non-fulfilment, by their existence, of some claim or pretension which it suggests, that falsity consists. And so it is in the fulfilment of such a claim that truth has a meaning. A false coin exists as a piece of metal; it is false because it pretends to a place in the monetary system which its properties or history [1] contradict.

[1] For it is, I suppose, technically false, even if over value, if not coined by those who have the exclusive legal right to coin.

As the claim to be true is made by every judgment in its {68} form, there can be no judgment without some recognition of a difference between psychical occurrences and the system of reality. That is to say, there is no judgment unless the judging mind is more or less aware that it is possible to have an idea which is not in accordance with reality.

Thus, if an animal has no real world distinct from his train of mental images, if, that is, and just because, these are his world directly, and without discord, he cannot judge. The question is, e.g. when he seems disappointed, whether the pleasant image [1] simply disappears and a less pleasant image takes its place, or whether the erroneous image was distinguished as an element in “a mere idea,” which could be retained and compared with the systematised perceptions which force it out, as an idea with reality.

[1] It will be observed that we are not treating the mental images as being taken for such by the primitive mind. It is just in as far as they are not yet taken for such that they are merely such. Mr. James says that the first sensation is for the child the universe (Psychology II. 7). But it is a universe in which all is equally mere fact, and there is no distinction of truth and falsehood, or reality and unreality. That can only come when an existent is found to be a fraud.

We must all of us have seen a dog show signs of pleasure when he notices preparations for a walk, and then express the extreme of unhappiness when the walk is not taken at all, or he is left at home. People interpret these phenomena very carelessly. They say “he thought that he was going to be taken out.” If he did “think that, etc,” then he made a judgment. This would imply that he distinguishes between the images suggested to his mind, and the reality of their content as the future event of going out, and knew that he might have the one without the other following. But of {69} course it is quite possible that the dog has no distinct expectation of something different from his present images, but merely derives pleasure from them, which he expresses, and suffers and expresses pain when they are replaced by something else. It is here, no doubt, in the conflict of suggestion and perception, that judgment originates.

On the other hand, animals, especially domestic animals, do seem to use the imperative, which perhaps implies that they know what they want, and have it definitely contrasted with their present ideas as something to be realised.

However this may be, the claim of truth marks the minimum of Judgment. There can be no judgment until we distinguish psychical fact from the reference to Reality. A mere mental fact as such is not true or false. In other words, there is no judgment unless there is something that, formally speaking, is capable of being denied. When your dog sees you go to the front door, he may have an image of hunting a rabbit suggested to his mind, but so far there is nothing that can be denied. If he has the image, of course he has. There is nothing that can be denied until the meaning of this image is treated as a further fact beyond the image itself, in a system independent of the momentary consciousness in his mind. Then it is possible to say, “No, the fact does not correspond to your idea,” i.e. what we are ultimately obliged to think as a system is inconsistent with the idea as you affirmed it of the same system.

By what means the claim to truth is made

(ii.) The first thing then in Judgment is that we must have a world of reality distinguished from the course of our ideas. Thereupon the claim to truth is actually made by attaching the meaning of an idea to some point in the real {70} world. This can only be done where an identity is recognised between reality and our meaning.

Thus (keeping to the Judgment of Perception) I say, “This table is made of oak.” This table is given in perception already qualified by numberless judgments; it is a point in the continuous system or tissue which we take as reality. Among its qualities it has a certain grain and colour in the wood. I know the colour and grain of oak-wood, and if they are the same as those of the table, then the meaning or content “made of oak” coalesces with this point in reality, and instead of merely saying, “This table is made of wood that has such and such a grain and colour,” I am able to say “This table is made of oak-wood.”

This example shows the true distinction between the Logical Subject and Predicate. The fact is, that the ultimate subject in Judgment is always Reality. Of course the logical subject may be quite different from the grammatical subject. Some kinds of words cannot in strict grammar be made subjects of a sentence, though they can represent a logical subject quite well: e.g. “Now is the time.” “Here is the right place_.” Adverbs, I suppose, cannot be grammatical subjects. But in these sentences they stand for the logical subjects, certain points in the perceptive series.

The true logical subject then is always reality, however much disguised by qualifications or conditions. The logical predicate is always the meaning of an idea; and the claim to be true consists in the affirmation of the meaning as belonging to the tissue of reality at the point indicated by the subject. The connection is always made by identity of {71} content at the point where the idea joins the reality, so that the judgment always appears as a revelation of something which is in reality. It simply develops, accents, or gives accuracy to a recognised quality of the real. This is easily seen in cases of simple quality—e.g. “This colour is sky-blue.” The colour is given, and the judgment merely identifies it with sky-blue, and so reveals another element belonging to its identity, the element of being seen in the sky on a clear day.

The analysis is not quite so easy when there is a concrete subject like a person; for how can there be an identity between a person and a fact? “A.B. passed me in the street this afternoon.” Between what elements is the identity in this case? It is between him, as an individual whom I know by sight in other places, and him as he appeared this afternoon in particular surroundings. His identity already extends through a great many different particulars of time and place, and this judgment merely recognises one more particular as included in the same continuous history. “He in this context belongs to him in a former context.” In this simple case the operative identity is probably that of my friend’s personal appearance; but the judgment is not merely about that but about his whole personality, of which his personal appearance is merely taken as a sign.

Any assertion which is incredible because the identical quality is wanting will illustrate the required structure. There is a story commented on by Thackeray in one of his occasional papers, which implied that the Duke of Wellington took home note-paper from a club to which he did not {72} belong. (Thackeray gives the true explanation of the fact on which the suggestion was founded.) The identity concerned in this case would be that of character. Can we find an identity between the character involved in a piece of meanness like that suggested and the character of the Duke of Wellington? No; and prima facie therefore the judgment is false. The identity which should bind it together breaks it in two. But yet, again: supposing the external evidence to be strong enough, we may have to accept a fact which conflicts with a man’s character as we conceive it. That is so: in such a case one kind of identity appears to contradict the other. I may think that I saw a man with my own eyes, doing something which wholly contradicts his character as I judge it. Then there is a conflict between identity in personal appearance and identity in character, and we have to criticise the two estimates of identity—i.e. to refer them both to our general system of knowledge, and to accept the connection which can be best adapted to that system.

We have got, then, as the active elements in Judgment a Subject in Reality, the meaning of an idea, and an identity between them.

Is this enough? Have we the peculiar act of affirmation wherever we have these conditions?

This is not the question by what elements of language the judgment is rendered. We shall speak of that in the next lecture. The question is now, simply, “Is a significant idea, referred to reality, always an assertion?”

The first answer seems to be that such an idea is always in an assertion, but need not constitute the whole of an {73} assertion. If we think of a subject in judgment which is represented by a relative sentence, it seems clear that any idea which can stand a predicate can also form a part of a subject. “The exhibition which it is proposed to hold at Chicago in 1893”—has in effect just the same elements of meaning, and just the same reference to a point in our world of reality as if the sentence ran, “It is proposed to hold an exhibition at Chicago in 1893.” In common parlance we should say, that in the former case we entertain an idea—or conceive or represent it—while in the latter case we affirm it.

But if we go on to say that the former kind of sentence as truly represents the nature of thought as the latter, then it seems that we are mistaken. Even language does not admit such a clause to the rank of an independent sentence.

If we insist on considering it in its isolation, we probably eke it out in thought by an unarticulated affirmation such as that which constitutes an impersonal judgment; in other words, we affirm it to belong to reality under some condition which remains unspecified. Thus the linguistic form of the relative clause, as also the separate existence of the spoken or written word, produces an illusion which has governed the greater part of logical theory so far as concerns the separation between concept and judgment, i.e. between entertaining ideas and affirming them in reality. In our waking life, all thought is judgment, every idea is referred to reality, and in being so referred, is ultimately affirmed of reality. The separation of elements in the texture of Judgment into Subjects and Predicates which, as separated, are conceived as possible Subjects and Predicates, is therefore {74} theoretical and ideal, an analysis of a living tissue, not an enumeration of loose bricks out of which something is about to be built up.

The kind of ideas which can claim truth

(iii.) “Idea” has two principal meanings.

(a) A psychical presentation and

(b) An identical reference.

This distinction is the same as that between our course of ideas and our world of knowledge. We must try now to define it more accurately.

(a) An idea as a psychical presentation is strictly a particular. Every moment of consciousness is full of a given complex of presentation which passes away and can never be repeated without some difference. For this purpose a representation is just the same as a presentation; is, in fact, a presentation. Its detail at any given moment is filled in by the influence of the moment, and it can never occur again with precisely the same elements of detail as before. If we use the term “idea” in this sense, as a momentary particular mental state, it is nonsense to speak of having the same idea twice, or of referring it to a reality other than our mental life. The idea in this sense is a psychical image. We cannot illustrate this usage by any recognisable part of our mental furniture, for every such part which can be described and indicated by a general name, is something more than a psychical image. We can only say that that which at any moment we have in consciousness, when our waking perception encounters reality, is such an idea, and so too is the image supplied by memory, when considered simply as a datum, a fact, in our mental history.

(b) To get at the other sense of “idea” we should think {75} of the meaning of a word; a very simple case is that of a proper name. What is the meaning of “St. Paul’s Cathedral in London”? No two people who have seen it have carried away precisely the same image of it in their minds, nor does memory, when it represents the Cathedral to each of them, supply the same image in every detail and association twice over to the same person, nor do we for a moment think that such an image is the Cathedral. [1] Yet we neither doubt that the name means something, and that the same to all those who employ it, nor that it means the same to each of them at one time that it did at every other time. The psychical images which formed the first vision of it are dead and gone for ever, and so, after every occasion on which it has been remembered, are those in which that memory was evoked. The essence of the idea does not lie in the peculiarities of any one of their varying presentations, but in the identical reference that runs through them all, and to which they all serve as material, and the content of this reference is the object of our thought.

[1] When we are actually looking at the Cathedral, we say, “That is the Cathedral.” Does not this mean that we take our momentary image, to which we point, to be the reality of the Cathedral? Not precisely so. It is the “that,” not our definite predication about it, which makes us so confident. The “that” is identified by our judgment, but goes beyond it.

In order to distinguish and employ this reference it is necessary that there should be a symbol for it, and so long as it brings us to the object which is the centre of the entire system, this symbol may vary within considerable limits.

The commonest and most secure means of reference is {76} the word or name. [1] So confident are we in the “conventional” or artificially adapted character of this mark or sign of reference, that we are inclined to treat it as absolutely unvarying on every occasion of utterance. But of course it is not unvarying. It differs in sound every time it is spoken, and in context and appearance every time we see it in a written shape. Our reliance upon it as identical throughout depends on the fact that it has a recognisable character to which its variations are irrelevant, and which practically crushes out these variations from our attention. Unless we are on the look-out for mispronunciations or misprints, they do not interfere at all with our attention to the main reference of words. We know that it is almost impossible to detect misprints so long as one reads a book with attention to its meaning. This then is a fair parallel to the distinction which we are considering between two kinds of ideas. If the momentary sound or look of a word is analogous to idea as psychical presentation, “the word” as a permanent possession of our knowledge is analogous to the idea as a reference to an object in our systematic world, and is the normal instrument of such a reference.

[1] “A name is a sound which has significance according to convention,” i.e. according to rational agreement.—Ar. de Interp. 16a 19.

But either with the word or without it there may be a symbol of another kind. Any psychical image that falls within certain limits may appear as the momentary vehicle of the constant reference to an object. Just as in recognising the reference of a word we omit to notice the accent and loudness with which it is pronounced, or the quality of the paper on which it is printed, just so in recognising the {77} reference of a psychical image our attention fails to note its momentary context, colouring, and detail. If it includes something that definitely belongs to a systematic object in our world of objects, that is enough, unless counteracted by cross references, to effect the suggestion we require, and that, and nothing else, arrests our attention for the moment. When I think of St. Paul’s Cathedral, it may be the west front, or the dome seen from the outside, or the gallery seen from the inside, that happens to occur to my mind; and further, that which does occur to me occurs in a particular form or colouring, dictated by the condition of my memory and attention at the moment. But these peculiarities are dwarfed by the meaning, and unless I consider them for psychological purposes, I do not know that they are there. It is the typical element only, the element which points to the common reference in which my interest centres, that forms the content of the idea in this sense, taken not as a transient feature of the mental complex, but as definitely suggesting a constant object in our constructed world. And it suggests this object because it, the typical element, is a common point that links together the various cases and the various presentations in which the object is given to us. In this sense it is a universal or an identity.

How can this conception of a logical idea be applied to a perfectly simple presentation? It would be impossible so to apply it, but there does not seem to be such a thing as a simple presentation in the sense of a presentation that has no connection as a universal with anything else. In the image of a particular blue colour, we cannot indeed separate out what makes it blue from what makes it the particular {78} shade of blue that it is. But nevertheless its blueness makes it a symbol to us of blue in general, and when so thought of, crushes out of sight all the visible peculiarities that attend every spatial surface. We understand perfectly well that the colour is blue, and that in saying this we have gone beyond the limits of the momentary image, and have referred something in it as a universal quality to our world of objects. An idea, in this sense, is both less and more than a psychical image. It contains less, but stands for more. It includes only what is central and characteristic in the detail of each mental presentation, and therefore omits much. But it is not taken as a mental presentation at all, but as a content belonging to a systematic world of objects independent of my thought, and therefore stands for something which is not mere psychical image.

If therefore we are asked to display it as an image, as something fixed in a permanent outline, however pale or meagre, we cannot do so. It is not an abstract image, but a concrete habit or tendency. It can only be displayed in the judgment, that is, in a concrete case of reference to reality. Apart from this, it is a mere abstraction of analysis, a tendency to operate in a certain way upon certain psychical presentations. Psychically speaking, it is when realised in judgment a process more or less systematic, extending through time, and dealing with momentary presentations as its material. In other words, we may describe it as a selective rule, shown by its workings but not consciously before the mind—for if it were, it would no longer be an idea, but an idea of an idea.

Every judgment, whether made with language or without, {79} is an instance of such an idea, which may be called a symbolic idea as distinct from a psychical image; “symbolic” because the mental units or images involved are not as such taken as the whole of the object for which they stand, but are in a secondary sense, as the word in a primary sense, symbols or vehicles only.

Such ideas can have truth claimed for them, because they have a reference beyond their mental existence. They point to an object in a system of permanent objects, and that to which they point may or may not suit the relation which they claim for it. Therefore the judgment can only be made by help of symbolic ideas. Mere mental facts, occurrences in my mental history, taken as such, cannot enter into judgment. When we judge about them, as in the last sentence, they are not themselves subject or predicate, but are referred to, like any other facts, by help of a selective process dealing with our current mental images of them. We shall not be far wrong then, if in every judgment, under whatever disguises it may assume, we look for elements analogous to those which are manifest in the simple perceptive judgment, “This is green,” or “That is a horse.” The relation between these and more elaborate forms of affirmation, such as the abstract judgment of science, has partly been indicated in the earlier portion of this lecture. The general definition of judgment has therefore been sufficiently suggested on p. 72. Judgment is the reference of a significant idea to a subject in reality, by means of an identity of content between them.

{80}

LECTURE V THE PROPOSITION AND THE NAME

Judgment translated into language.

1. Judgment expressed in words is a Proposition. Must Judgment be expressed in words? We have assumed that this need not be so. Mill [1] says of Inference that “it is an operation which usually takes place by means of words, and in complicated cases can take place in no other way.” The same is true of Judgment.

[1] Logic vol. I. c. i., init.

We may say in general that words are not needed, when thinking about objects by help of pictorial images will do the work demanded of the mind, i.e. when perfectly individualised connections in space and time are in question. Mr. Stout [1] gives chess-playing as an example. With the board before him, even an ordinary player does not need words to describe to himself the move which he is about to make.

[1] In Mind, no. 62.

Words are needed when we have to attend to the general plan of any system, as in thinking about organisms with reference to their type, or about political relations—about anything, that is, which is not of such a nature that the members of the idea can be symbolised in pictorial form. It would be difficult, for example, to comprehend the respiration of plants under a symbolic picture-idea drawn {81} from the respiration of the higher animals. The relations which constitute a common element between the two processes do not include the movements, feelings, and visible changes in the circulatory fluid from which our image of animal respiration is chiefly drawn; and we could hardly frame a pictorial idea that would duly insist on the chemical and organic conditions on which the common element of the process depends. In a case of this kind the word is the symbol which enables us to hold together in a coherent system, though not in a single image, the relations which make up the content of our thought.

“Words” may be of many different kinds—spoken, written, indicated by deaf and dumb signs; all of these are derived from the word as it is in speech, although writing and printing become practically independent of sound, and we read, like the deaf and dumb alphabet, directly by the eye. Then there may be any kind of conventional signals either for letters, words, or sentences, and any kind of cipher or memoria technica either for private or for general use—in these the “conventional” nature of language reaches its climax, and the relation to a natural growth of speech has disappeared. And finally there are all forms of picture-writing, which need not, so far as its intrinsic nature goes, have any connection with speech at all, and which seems to form a direct transition between picture-thinking and thinking through the written sign.

All these must be considered under the head of language, as a fixed system or signs for meanings, before we can ultimately pronounce that we think without words.

Every Judgment, however, can be expressed in words, {82} though not every Judgment need be so expressed or can readily be so.

Proposition and sentence.

2. A Judgment expressed in words is a Proposition, which is one kind of sentence. A command question or wish is a sentence but not a proposition. A detached relative clause [1] is not even a complete sentence. The meaning of the imperative and the question seems to include some act of will; the meaning of a proposition is always given out simply for fact or truth. We need not consider any sentence that has no meaning at all.

[1] See above, Lect. IV.

Difference between Proposition and Judgment

3. Almost all English logicians speak of the Proposition and not of the Judgment. [1] This does not matter, so long as we are agreed about what they mean. They must mean the proposition as understood, and this is what we call the judgment.

[1] So Mill, Venn, Jevons, Bain (see his note, p. 80).

In order to make this distinction clear, let us consider the proposition as it reaches us from without, that is to say, either as spoken or as written. The words, the parts of such a proposition, as we hear or read them, are separate and successive either in time alone, or in time and space. Further, the mere sounds or signs can be mastered apart from the meaning. You can repeat them or copy them without understanding them in the least, as e.g. in the case of a proposition in an unknown language. So far, the proposition has not become a judgment, and I do not suppose that any logician would admit that it deserved the name even of a proposition. But if not, then we must not confuse the attributes which it has before it becomes a proposition with those which it has after.

{83} Further, in understanding a proposition, or in construing a sentence into a proposition (if the sentence only becomes a proposition when understood), there are many degrees. I read upon a postcard, “A meeting will be held on Saturday next by the Women’s Liberal Association, to discuss the taxation of ground-rents.” The meaning of such a sentence takes time to grasp, and if the words are read aloud to us, must of necessity be apprehended by degrees. We understand very quickly that a meeting is to be held next Saturday. This understanding is already a judgment. It is something quite different from merely repeating the words which we read. It consists in realising them as meanings, and bringing these meanings together into a connected idea, and affirming this idea to belong to our real world. The meanings are not separate, outside one another, as the words are when we first hear or read them. They enter into each other, modify each other, and become parts of an ideal whole. This gradual apprehension of a sentence recalls to one the boyish amusement of melting down bits of lead in a ladle. At first the pieces all lie about, rigid and out of contact; but as they begin to be fused a fluid system is formed in which they give up their rigidity and independence, and enter into the closest possible contact, so that their movements and position determine each other. But still some parts, like words not yet grasped, remain hard and separate, and it is only when the melting is complete that this isolation is destroyed, and there are no longer detached fragments, but a fluid body such that all its parts are in the closest connection with one another.

Thus then in understanding a sentence we have a judgment {84} from the first. The rest of the process of understanding consists in completing the content of this judgment by fusing with it the meanings of the words not yet apprehended; and in the completeness with which this is effected there will always be great differences of degree between different minds, and also between the same mind at different times. Some of us attach a complete and distinct meaning to the words “Women’s Liberal Association”; some of us do not know, or have forgotten, exactly what it is, and what are its aims and history. All of us have some conception of the purpose described as “taxation of ground rents,” but the phrase conveys a perfectly definite scheme hardly to one in a thousand readers. Nevertheless, in so far as we have some symbolic idea which refers to this place or context in the world of objects, the content of this idea enters into and modifies the total meaning which in apprehending the sentence before us we affirm of reality. The heard or written proposition (or sentence, if it is not a proposition till understood) serves as an instrument by which we build up in our intellectual world a sort of plan or scheme of connected meanings, and also, not subsequently but concurrently with this work of building, affirm the whole content thus being put together to be true of reality. Then we have what I call a Judgment. It is not that the words are necessarily forgotten; they, or at least the principal significant terms, are probably still in the mind as guides and symbols; but yet a constructive work has been done; a complex experience has been called up and analysed, and its parts fitted together in a certain definite order by the operation of universal ideas or meanings, each of which is a system playing {85} into other systems; and the whole thus realised has been added as an extension to the significance of the continuous judgment which forms our waking consciousness. The inconvenience of the term “proposition” is that it tends to confuse the heard or written sentence in its separate words with the proposition as apprehended and intellectually affirmed. And these two things have quite different characteristics.

Parts of Speech

4. Thus we must be very careful how we apply the conception of “parts of speech.” The grammatical analysis which classifies words as substantives, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and the like, is not to be taken as telling us what words are by themselves, but just the opposite, viz. what they do when employed in a significant sentence. They are studied separately for convenience in attending to them, as we may study the wheels and pistons of an engine; but the work which gives them their names can only be done when they are together. This truth is often expressed by saying that “the sentence is the unit of language,” i.e. a word taken by itself cannot have a complete meaning—unless it is a verb, or used with verbal force, for a verb is an unanalysed sentence. If any one uses a substantive or adverb by itself, we think that he has not finished his sentence, and no meaning is conveyed to our minds. We ask him, “Well, what about it?” The same is true, as we saw, of a relative clause. If we read in a newspaper such a clause as this, “The epidemic of influenza, which has appeared in England for three successive seasons,” followed by a full stop, we should infer, without hesitation, that some words had dropped out by accident. Of course such a {86} combination of words would make us think something, but the meaning which we might ascribe to it would be conjectural; we should necessarily complete the thought for ourselves by some affirmation—some relation to reality—while recognising that no such relation was given in the clause as we read it. Nothing less than a sentence, or, omitting the wish and the command, nothing less than a proposition, conveys a meaning in which the mind can acquiesce as not requiring to be supplemented conjecturally. There are traces in language that indicate the sentence to have been historically prior to the word. I question whether the word could be certainly distinguished within the sentence in early languages that have not been reduced to writing. The tendency of reflective analysis, as in grammar and dictionaries, is to give it a more and more, artificial isolation. The Greeks did not separate their words in writing, and they wrote down the change in a terminal consonant produced by the initial letter of the next word, just as if it was within a compound word. Nor had they really any current term co-extensive with our “word.” Where we should say “the word ‘horse’” they most commonly use the neuter article “the” followed by the word in question as if in quotation-marks (”the ‘horse’“). In defining noun and verb, Aristotle has no simple class name like ”word“ to employ as a common element of the definition, but uses the curious description ”a portion of discourse, of which no part has a meaning by itself.“

Of course, single words often stand as signs for propositions. It is interesting to note the pregnant meaning of a single word in the mouth of a child. Thus “stool” was {87} used to mean “(1) Where is my stool? (2) My stool is broken; (3) Lift me on to the stool; (4) Here is a stool.” [1] There is in this an interesting conflict of form and meaning, owing to the child of European race having at command only “parts of speech.” In a less analytical language he might have at command a sound corresponding to a sentence rather than to a “noun substantive.”

[1] Preyer, quoted in Höffding, Psych., 176.

The verb of inflected languages, [1] such as Greek or Latin, in which the “nominative case” need not be supplied even by a pronoun, is the type for us of a sentence not yet broken up.

[1] In German and English, though the verb is inflected, custom forbids it to stand without the pronoun.

The bearing of this truth on Logic is to make us treat it in two parts and not in three. We do not treat of Name, Proposition, Syllogism, or of Concept, Judgment, Inference, but only of the two latter parts. The name or concept has no reality in living language or living thought, except when referred to its place in a proposition or judgment. We ought not to think of propositions as built up by putting words or names together, but of words or names as distinguished though not separable elements in propositions. Aristotle takes the simple and straightforward view. “A term is the element into which a proposition is broken up, such as subject and predicate.” [1] Of course different languages separate the parts of the proposition very differently, {88} and uneducated people hardly separate them at all. Formal Logic breaks down the grammatical meaning of “name,” so far as to treat as a “logical name” any complex words that can stand as Subject or Predicate in a Proposition (e.g. a relative clause).

[1] Anal. prior., 24b, 16. The opposite view seems to be expressed in the beginning of the περὶ Ἑρμενείας [= peri Hermeneias, de Interpretatione], that the separate word corresponds to the separate idea. I have attempted to explain this as an illusion, p. 73, above.

Denotation and Connotation

5. The doctrine of the meaning of names has suffered from their relation to propositions not being borne in mind. Mill’s discussion [1] is very sensible, but, as always, very careless of strict system. More especially it seems a pity to state the question as if it concerned a division of names into Connotative and Non-connotative; because in this way we from the first let go of the idea that the meaning of a name has necessarily two aspects, [2] and we almost bind ourselves to make out that there are some non-connotative names. It is better to consider this latter subject on its merits. Mill says that an ordinary significant name such as “man” “signifies the subjects directly, the attributes indirectly; it denotes the subjects, and implies or involves or indicates, or, as we shall say henceforth, connotes, the attributes.” In short, the denotation of a name consists of the things to which it _ap_plies, the connotation consists of the properties which it _im_plies. The denotation is made up of individuals and the connotation of attributes. Denotation is also called Extension, especially if we are speaking of Concepts rather than of names. Connotation is then called Intension. In the German writers it is more usual to say that the Extension or Area (Umfang) consists not of the individuals, but of the species that are contained in {89} the meaning of a general name. They oppose it to Content (Inhalt) corresponding to our “Connotation.” Thus the “Area” of “rose” would not be the individual roses in the world, but rather all the species of rose in the world (Rosa Canina, Rosa Rubiginosa, etc.). This raises a difficulty as to the denotation of a specific name, but perhaps represents the actual process of thought, in the case of a generic name, better than that which Mill adopts. The difference is not important.

[1] Logic, Bk. I. c. ii. § 5. Cf. Venn, 174 and 183, and Bain, 48.

[2] See Bradley, p. 155.

Well, then, according to Mill, when we say, “The Marshal Niel is a yellow rose,” we refer directly to a group of real or possible objects, and we mean that all these individual objects are yellow roses. The attributes are only mentioned by the way, or implied. So Dr. Venn says that the denotation is real, and the connotation is notional.

But there is another side to this question. The objects may be what you mean but the attributes seem to be the meaning, for how can you (especially on Mill’s theory of the proposition) refer to any objects except through these attributes, unless indeed you can point to them with your finger? And so again it seems, especially if we consider Mill’s account of predication, as if the Connotation were the primary meaning and the Denotation the secondary meaning. The Connotation determines the Denotation; and if we “define” the meaning of the name it is the Connotation that we state. And so Mill tells us two or three pages further on, that whenever the names given to objects have properly any meaning, the meaning resides not in what they denote, but in what they connote. In short, {90} the denotation of a general name is simply the meaning of its plural, or of its singular, in that sense in which it implies a plural, while the connotation is the meaning per se, not considered in its instances.

It is clear then that every name has these two kinds of meaning—first, a content, and then instances, whether possible or actual, of the content; and the two are obviously inseparable, although they are distinguishable. Ultimately, indeed, the denotation itself is an attribute, and so part of the connotation. It is one of the attributes of man to be a unit in the plurality men, i.e. to be “a man.” It may be said that some names have no plural. If so, these would be non-denotative rather than non-connotative, but in fact this is not true. The content of a significant name can always, unless hindered by a special convention (see below on proper names), be prima facie regarded, in respect of its actual embodiment, as a unit against other possible units. Granting that there may be an object, which according to our knowledge can only be real as an isolated case, the very consideration of it as such a case is enough to distinguish its existence, whether real or possible, from its content. Thus, as a real or possible existence, the object is ipso facto considered in the light of a particular, and as capable of entering into a plurality. But its nature or content, the meaning of its name, cannot enter into a plurality. Two meanings, two connotations, are alternative and irreconcilable. Denotation and connotation are thus simply the particular, or particulars, which embody or are thought of as embodying a content, and the single or universal content itself.

{91} Have Proper Names Connotation?

6. Therefore I think that Mill is wrong, when he goes on, “The only names of objects which connote nothing are Proper Names, and these have, strictly speaking, no signification.” [1] If the name has no signification, for what reason, or by what means, is it attached to a person or a place? You may say that it is only a conventional mark. But a mark which has power to select from all objects in the world, and bring to our minds, a particular absent object, is surely a significant mark. Granted that it is conventional, yet by what mechanism, and for what purpose, does the convention operate?

[1] Cf. Venn, 183 ff, and Bradley, 156.

Mill’s point, however, is quite clear. To be told the name of a person or object does not inform us of his or its attributes. Directly, it only warns us by what sign the same person or object will be recognisable in language again. [1] If a name is changed, the new name tells us nothing different from the old, [2] whereas if an object that was called vegetable is now called animal, our conception of it is radically transformed. A name expresses the continued identity of an object, and this implies only a historical continuity of attributes and relations, and no constant attribute whatever.

[1] We cannot make it a distinctive mark of proper names that they recur in different and quite disconnected meanings, because the words which are used as general names have this same property. Nor can we say that a proper name is not used in the same sense of more than one object. Family names and national names make this plainly untrue. Through these, and names typically employed, there is a clear gradation from proper to general names.

[2] The case of marriage may be urged. But a lady’s change of name does not by itself indicate marriage. It is a mere fact, which may have various explanations. The change of title (from “Miss” to “Mrs.”) is more significant, but it is not a change of name.

{92} Thus a proper name is a contradiction in terms. [1] A name should have a meaning. But a meaning cannot be proper—that is, particular. The name-word is therefore like a demonstrative pronoun, if this were attached, by a special convention, to one identifiable object only. It acquires meaning, but its meaning is an ever-growing contradiction with its usage. The meaning is necessarily general, the usage is ex hypothesi particular.

[1] So, from the complementary point of view, is a general name. A name, it may be urged, is meant to designate a particular thing or things. And this a name with a true “meaning” cannot do.

This convention of usage, which prevents a proper name from becoming general, i.e. from being cut loose and used simply for its meaning, is always on the point of breaking down. [1] Christian names usually indicate sex; family names, though now with little certainty, descent and relationship. There are germs of a general meaning within the several usages of names; while a Solon, a Croesus, a Christian, a Mahometan, have become purely general names cut loose from all unique reference. Still in a proper name, as such, we have no right to build on any general meaning. Recognition is its only purpose; and the law permits, it has been said, that a man should have one name for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and another for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The essence of a name is a reference to unique identity; it employs meaning only to establish identity.

[1] See note on last page.

What kinds of things have proper names given, then? Always things individually known to the people who give {93} the name, and interesting to them for some reason beyond generic or specific qualities. Pet animals have names, when other animals of the same kind have not. The peasants throughout England use names, it is said, for all the fields, although strangers are not usually acquainted with them.

A Proper Name, then, has a connotation, but not a fixed general connotation. It is attached to a unique individual, and connotes whatever may be involved in his identity, or is instrumental in bringing it before the mind.

When we think of history, the importance of proper names becomes very great. This is the characteristic logical difference between history and science. “England” and “France” are proper names, names of individual existences in contact with our world of perception, not scientific abstractions. Even the words, “1892 A.D.,” are partly of the nature of a proper name. They say nothing merely general or abstract about this year; they assign the year a name by counting forwards from a unique point in the series of years, itself designated by the name of a historical personage. Everything that is simply distinguished by its place in the series of events in space and time is in some degree a proper name. Thus we could not identify the French Revolution by mere scientific definition. It is known by its proper name, as a unique event, in a particular place and time. When thus identified it may have all kinds of general ideas attached to it. It would be hard to show that “Our earth,” “Our solar system” are not proper names, in virtue of their uniqueness.

{94} Inverse ratio of Connotation and Denotation

7. It has sometimes been said that Connotation is in inverse ratio [1] to Denotation. Mill explains the fact upon which any such idea rests. [2] If we arrange things in classes, such that the one class includes the other—e.g. Species “Buttercup,” Genus “Ranunculus,” Order “Ranunculaceae,”—of course the genus will contain many species besides the one mentioned, and the order many genera besides the one mentioned. The object of the arrangement is that they should do so, and thus bring out the graduated natural affinities which prevail in the world. Thus the denotation of the genus-name is larger than that [3] of the species, and the denotation of the order-name is larger than that of the genus-name.

[1] See Venn, p. 174, for reference to Hamilton. Venn points out the fallacy.

[2] Logic, Bk. I. ch. vii. § 5.

[3] Or “than the species,” if we take the denotation as made up of species.

But further, in such an arrangement the genus can contain only the attributes which are common to all the species, and the order can contain only the attributes which are common to all the genera; so the genus-name implies fewer attributes (less connotation) than any one species-name under it, and the order-name implies fewer attributes (less connotation) than any one genus-name under it.

That is the fact which suggests the conception of Denotation and Connotation as varying inversely.

But in any case it would not be right to speak thus mathematically of an inverse ratio, because there is no meaning in a numerical comparison of attributes and {95} individuals, and the addition of one attribute will exclude sometimes more and sometimes fewer individuals. [1]

[1] See Jevons, p. 40.

And there are more important objections to the whole idea of a corresponding gradation in these two kinds of meaning. The idea of abstraction thus implied is altogether wrong. The meaning of a genus-name does not omit the properties in which the species differ. If it did, it would omit nearly all properties. What happens is that the genus-idea represents the general plan on which the species are built, but provides for each of the parts that constitute the whole, varying in the specific cases within certain limits. Thus in the Ranunculaceae some species have no petals. But we do not omit the character “petals” from the genus-idea. We state the general plan so far as this element is concerned as “Petals five or more; rarely none.” This is read by a botanist to mean that in some groups the petals tend to be aborted, and sometimes are actually missing. In a symbolic representation of the genus-idea such a property may stand as A, and its various specific forms as A1, A2, A3, etc. There is nothing to prevent these specific phases approaching and sometimes reaching zero. No doubt if the classification is pursued in the direction of “universals” containing fewer and fewer properties, it is possible to arrive at concepts which appear to have a larger denotation and a smaller connotation than those “below” them. “Ranunculaceae,” “Dicotyledons,” “Plants,” “Organisms.”

But this is only because we choose to form our system by that process of abstraction which consists in leaving out properties. E.g. comparing Frenchmen with men in general, {96} we assume that “Frenchman” indicates (a) all the qualities of humanity as such, and (b) the qualities of French humanity in addition to these. But is this so in fact? Humanity, considered as a wider, and therefore as a deeper, idea, may have more content, as well as more area, than Frenchmanity. We do not really, in thinking of humanity, omit from our schematic thought all references to qualities of Greek, Jew, English, and German, and their bearing and interaction upon one another. It is only that we have been drilled to assume a certain neatness in the pyramidal arrangement by which we vainly try to reduce the meaning of a great idea to something that has no system and no inter-relation of parts, but approaches as near as possible in fixity to the character of a definite image, though far removed from such a character in the impossibility of bringing it before the mind.

So we can only say, “the greater the denotation the less the connotation,” and “vice versâ”, in as far as we arrange ideas by progressive abstraction in the sense of progressive omission. But it is not the only way of regarding them. Things may develop new inter-relations as their number increases. Has the community, as Mr. Bradley asks, less meaning than the individual person? But we must not consider the community, would be the answer; we must simply consider the relation of an idea of one individual to any idea that applies to many individuals. This is simply to rule out those relations that arise within progressively larger wholes. We can do so, if we think the exclusion necessary in the interests of logical purity, but it is only by doing so that we can maintain the traditional view of connotation and denotation. It is worth while to think out the {97} matter for ourselves in relation to such familiar ideas as those of man and animal. It is plain that the idea of “animal” cannot omit all reference to intelligence, but must in some way allow for the different phases of this property which run throughout the animal kingdom, and only find a climax in man. And it is plain also, that even if intelligence were wholly omitted, this would not leave behind, as in a simple stratification, properties in which the whole animal kingdom was the same. Man’s animality is modified throughout in a way corresponding to his rationality, so that no general idea could be framed including him and other animals, simply by collecting properties which are the same and omitting those which are different. The idea of “man” really becomes richer when considered in the light of a comparison [1] with the rest of the animal world. Our great systems of natural classification, representing affinities graduated by descent, are what give the view which we have criticised a certain objective importance. But they do not establish it as an exclusive logical doctrine.

[1] If we insist on throwing the whole of this comparison, in explicit shape, into the complete idea of man, then the progress to the idea “animal” can add nothing; even so, however, it loses nothing, but simply becomes the same set of relations, looked at, so to speak, from the other end.

{98}

LECTURE VI PARTS OF THE JUDGMENT, AND ITS UNITY

Parts of the Judgment

1. The result of taking the Judgment as one with the Proposition has been to assume that its parts were the same as those of the Proposition; [1] and moreover the same as those of the Proposition in a very artificial form, viz. as analysed into three separable elements, “Subject,” “Predicate,” “Copula,” commonly represented in the examples of the text-books by Substantive, Adjective or Substantive, and the Verb “is.”

[1] This assumption involves (see Lecture V.) a confusion between the Proposition as thoroughly understood, and the Proposition as a series of partially significant sounds or signs. For obvious reasons, this confusion is very readily made.

For the operation of Formal Logic it is almost necessary to have these parts, because it is requisite to transpose the terms (as in Conversion) without changing their meaning, [1] and to get rid of tenses, which do not belong to Scientific Judgment, and are very troublesome in Formal Inference.

[1] If the “predicate” is a Substantive, this presents no difficulty; and if it is an Adjective, it can be done by a little straining of grammar, or the insertion of “thing” or “things.” With a verb it is more clumsy.

Thus in Formal Logic we prefer the shape of sentence “Gold is lustrous” to “Gold glitters,” and “The bridge is {99} cracked” to “There is a crack in the bridge.” And practically all propositions can be thrown into this shape, which is convenient for comparing them. The educational value of elementary formal logic consists chiefly, I am convinced, in the exercise of paraphrasing poetical or rhetorical assertions into this typical shape, with the least possible sacrifice of meaning. The commonest mistakes in the work of beginners, within my experience as a teacher, consist in failures to interpret rightly the sentence given for analysis.

But this type is not really ultimate. The judgment can be conveyed without a grammatical subject, and without the verb “is”—indeed without any grammatical verb at all. On the whole this agrees with Mill’s view in the chapter “Of Propositions.” [1] He points out (§ 1) that we really need nothing but the Subject and Predicate, and that the copula is a mere sign of their connection as Subject and Predicate. He does not, however, discuss the case in which the grammatical Subject is absent.

[1] Mill’s Logic, Bk. I. ch. iv.

Copula

2. In analysing the Judgment as an act of thought we may begin by dismissing the separate Copula. It has no separate existence in thought corresponding to its separate place in the typical proposition of Formal Logic. It has come to be considered separately, because the abstract verb “is” is used in our languages as a sign of the complete enunciation. But there is not in the Judgment any separate significant idea—any third idea—coming in between the Subject and Predicate of Judgment. We should try to think of the Copula not as a link, separable and always {100} intrinsically the same, [1] connecting two distinct things. We should think of it rather as the grip with which the parts of a single complex whole cohere with one another, differing according to the nature of the whole and the inter-dependence of its parts. Benno Erdmann [2] has strikingly expressed this point of view by saying, that in the Judgment, “The dead ride fast,” the Subject is “the dead,” the Predicate “fast riding,” and the Copula “the fast riding of the dead.” In other words, the Copula is simply the Judgment considered exclusively as a cohesion between parts of a complex idea, the individual connection between which can only be indicated by supplying the idea of those parts themselves.

[1] In a comic Logic, with pictures, meant to stimulate dull minds at a University, I have seen the Copula represented as the coupling-link between two railway carriages. This is an excellent type of the way in which we should not think of it.

[2] Logik, p. 189.

Are Subject and Predicate necessary?

3. The explicit Predicate is more necessary than the explicit Subject.

We have spoken of Judgments expressed by one word, “Fire!” “Thieves!” etc., and also of impersonal Propositions, “It is raining,” “It is thawing.” These two classes of Judgments show hardly any explicit Subject at all. But we could not assert anything without a Predicate—that would be to assert without asserting anything in particular.

As these Judgments have, roughly speaking, a Predicate and no Subject, I do not think it convenient to call them, with Dr. Venn, existential judgments. It is true that they refer to reality, but their peculiarity is in not referring to a distinct subject. And when used for definite and complex assertions they become very artificial, e.g. “There is a {101} British Constitution by which our liberties are guaranteed.” Instead of organising the content of the Judgment, such a form of assertion simply tosses the whole of it into the Predicate in a single mass.

The question is only one of words; but it appears to me more convenient to reserve the term Existential judgments for those highly artificial assertions which actually employ the Predicate “exist” or “existence,” e.g. “Matter exists.” These are at the opposite end of the scale from those last-mentioned, and are the nearest approach to Judgment with Subject and no Predicate. That is to say, their Predicate is the generalised abstract form of predication [1] without any special content—the kind and degree of existence asserted being understood from the context.

[1] Expressed in Greek by the word corresponding to “is,” used with an accent, which does not belong to it in its ordinary use. He is good = ἄγαθός ἐστι [= agathos esti]; He exists = ἔστι [= esti Tr.].

Except, however, in the case of these peculiarly abstract and reflective assertions, it must be laid down that a predicated content is necessary to judgment, while an explicit subject of predication is unnecessary.

Two Ideas of Things

4. If it is possible, in some cases, to throw the whole content of judgment into the predicate, this rather disposes us to criticise the notion that there must be two distinct matters, objects, ideas, or contents, in every judgment. The notion in question has two forms.

It is thought that the Judgment consists in putting two ideas together, [1] or, {102} That the Judgment consists in comparing two or more things. [2]

[1] For this conception, see Hamilton’s Lectures on Logic, i. 227, and for a criticism on it. Mill’s Logic, Bk. I. ch. v., init, Dr. Venn seems to incline to Hamilton’s view, but I do not feel sure that he intends to discuss the question in the form in which it is referred to in the text. See his Empirical Logic, pp. 210 and 211.

[2] See Jevons, pp. 61-2; and Mill, Bk. I. ch. iii., init.; and ch. iv., init.

Two Ideas

(a) The notion of “two ideas” has two principal difficulties.

Notion of mental transition pure and simple

(i.) In its simplest shape the notion of “two ideas” involves the great blunder which I explained in Lecture IV. It suggests that the parts of Judgment are separate and successive psychical states, and that the Judgment consists in a change from the one to the other. Herbert Spencer, as I understand him, considers every relation to be apprehended as a mental change or passage from one idea to another. This view would degrade logical connection into mere psychical transition. I do not say that there is no psychical transition in Judgment. I do say that psychical transition is not enough to make a Judgment. The parts of Judgment, as we saw in the last lecture, do not succeed one another separately like the parts of a sentence. The relation between Subject and Predicate is not a relation between mental states, but is itself the content of a single though continuous mental state. Mill has rightly touched on this point. “When I say that fire causes heat, do I mean that my idea of fire causes my idea of heat?” [1] and so on. The fact is that “Fire-causing-heat” is itself the single content or meaning represented in my symbolic idea; it is not a succession of psychical states in my mind, or a passage from the idea of fire to the idea of causing heat.

[1] Logic, Bk. I. ch. V. § I.

{103} Absence of assertion

(ii.) But further, understanding now that the Judgment is composed of a single ideal content, and is not a transition from one mental state to another, there is still a difficulty in the conception that its component elements are nothing but ideas. If the Subject in Judgment is no more than an ideal content, how, by what means, does the Judgment claim to be true of Reality? “The Subject cannot belong to the content or fall within it, for in that case it would be the idea attributed to itself.” [1] If the Subject were only a part of an ideal content it would not claim to be true of Reality, and where it appears to be only an ideal content there is much dispute in what sense the Judgment does claim to be true of Reality. “Violations of a law of nature are impossible.” “The three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles.” “All trespassers will be prosecuted.” In these Judgments we should find it hard to make out that the Subjects are real things corresponding to our ideas. And yet, if they are not, how can the Judgment attach itself to Reality? This is the difficult question of the distinction between the categorical and the hypothetical Judgment, and we shall have to return to it. In the meantime, we must adhere to our judgment of perception as the true underlying type. The Subject is here not an idea, but is the given reality, this or that, and the Judgment is not a conjunction of two ideas, but is present reality qualified by an idea. We say, “It is very hot,” meaning that heat, the general quality embodied for us in an ideal content, is true of—forms one tissue with—the surroundings which here and now press upon our attention. Or again, “This is red,” {104} i.e. the content of the idea red is what my attention selects and emphasises within the mass of detail presented to it in its own unique focus which the pronoun “this” simply points out as though with the finger. We shall find such a structure underlying all the more artificial forms of Judgment.

[1] Bradley’s Principles of Logic, p. 14.

Two Things

(b) Thus it would seem that Jevons and Mill are much nearer the real point when they say that the proposition has to do with two Things, or with a Thing and a group of Things. But we must notice in passing that Mill, [1] after fighting hard against calling them Ideas, takes our breath away by saying that they are states of consciousness. There is, of course, a difficulty, which I will not try to deal with now, in the fact that however much we refer to things, we have nothing to work with intellectually but our ideas of them, and in some types of Judgment the reference to real things is difficult to trace. Mill further emphasises this by showing, that what we assert in ordinary general Judgment is co-existence of attributes. [2] “Now when we say, Man is mortal, we mean that wherever these various mental and physical phenomena (the attributes of man) are all found, then we have assurance that the other physical and mental phenomenon called death, will not fail to take place.” That is, no doubt, a very indirect way of referring to the real things which we call men. Moreover, he treats all conclusions in geometry and mechanics as hypothetical. [3] All this we shall have to return to, in order to reconcile it with our doctrine; which is apparently coincident with {105} Mill’s view in the place first alluded to, that the subject in Judgment is always reality.

[1] Logic, Bk. I. ch. V. § 5. [2] Ibid., § 4.

[3] Ibid., Bk. II. ch. vi. §§ 3, 4.

But our point at present is only the duality ascribed to the Judgment by saying that it essentially deals with two things or groups of things. Jevons even says [1] that every Judgment is a comparison of two things—though these “things” are really, it would seem, groups of things. [2] We thus have it impressed upon our minds that there is one “thing” corresponding to the Subject-word (or clause) of the Propositional sentence, and another “thing” corresponding to the Predicate-word (or clause), and that these are somehow separate, like two railway carriages, till we bring them together by the coupling-link of the copula. This is a very inconvenient way of looking at the matter. It is not true that all Judgment is comparison, in the proper and usual sense of the word. It is not true that Judgment involves two things; two or more things may be mentioned in a Judgment, but they cannot correspond respectively to the Subject and Predicate. It is a real Comparison if you say, “A.B. is taller than C.D.,” but C.D. is here not a term in the Judgment. The one person, A.B., is qualified by the ideal content “taller than C.D.,” and the idea of A.B. so qualified is referred to, or discriminated within, perceptive reality. Comparison is a rather complex process, and consists in a cross-reference by which each of two objects is judged according to a standard furnished by the other; but this complex process is not necessary to all Judgment, and cannot be expressed with complete convenience in a single Judgment. And in {106} any case the two objects that enter into the comparison do not correspond to two essential parts of Judgment.

[1] Elementary Lessons in Logic, p. 61. [2] Ibid. p. 62.

It is far more simple and true to say that Judgment is always the analysis and synthesis of elements in some one thing or ideal content. “Gold is yellow” has not within it, as Jevons says it has, [1] any direct comparison of gold with other yellow substances. It simply drags to light the property “yellow” as distinct within the complex of attributes belonging to gold, while at the same time insisting that this property—this meaning of an idea—belongs to, is of one piece with, perceived reality in so far as gold is given in such reality. The Judgment exhibits the content in its parts. It breaks it up, and pronounces it to be all of one tissue, by one and the same indivisible act. We should practically have a much fairer chance of seeing clearly what Judgment is if we began by considering it as not two things or two terms — but as one thing or one term drawn out into elements by discriminating selection. Even if the paradox that every “Thing” is a Judgment neglects some necessary distinctions, I am convinced that we shall understand Judgment much more clearly if we do our best to approach it from this point of view. Whenever we look or listen, and notice features and qualities in the perceptions that arrest the eye and ear, we are rapidly and continuously judging. “The fire is crackling,” “The daylight is waning,” “That bookshelf is not full,” “The window-curtain is twisted.” In none of these cases is there any separation other than an intellectual distinction between the predicated content and the perceived reality. The Judgment is simply a distinct {107} insistence on a quality within a certain focus of reality as belonging to that reality. This is the fundamental nature of Judgment.

[1] Loc. cit.

Therefore, to draw our conclusion as to the Unity of the Judgment, it is not a transition from one mental state to another; the relation of which it consists is not between ideas in it, but is the content of the idea which forms it. Judgment is not primarily comparison between two things; it is a thing or content displayed as possessing some definite relation or quality within its identity. Every Judgment is the content of one idea, but you may of course distinguish relations between ideal elements within this idea. “Fire causes heat” is a single content or idea, the nature of fire, expanded into one of its properties.

Distinction between Subject and Predicate

5. But then, if the whole Judgment is a single content, what is the difference between Subject and Predicate, and is it necessary to distinguish Subject from Predicate at all? If some Judgments can be made without explicit Subjects, cannot all be made in that way?

This suggestion is very useful as carrying on the simplest type of Judgment throughout the whole theory of Judgment. By a little torture of expression any Judgment can be thrown into a form in which undefined Reality is the general subject, and the whole mass of the Judgment is the Predicate. “William Pitt was a great statesman” = “There was a great statesman named William Pitt”; “The three angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles” = “There are figures known as triangles with their three angles equal to two right angles”; “All citizens are members of a moral order” = “There is a moral order, including the {108} relations of citizenship”; “All trespassers will be prosecuted” = “Here are conditions which ensure the prosecution of possible trespassers.” Or you might always put a subject, “Reality is such that”—“Reality is characterised by.”

Thus we see that, as we have said before, in every Judgment the ultimate subject is Reality, the world in contact with us as we have already qualified it by previous Judgment. It is a less mistake to reject the Subject and Predicate in the Judgment altogether, than to think that they are separate things or ideas, and that in judging you pass or change from one to the other. Always bear in mind that it is possible to mass the whole Judgment as a single Predicate directly or indirectly true of Reality.