Note A — APPENDIX II

Since this essay was written the statements as to the principles here developed have been modified only in respect of two points which, if not practically important, are still theoretically so, and these, with the author’s permission, may be here shortly referred to:—

1. In the lecture (p. 15) it is said that anything may be either affirmed or denied, and that if the affirmation is right its denial must be considered wrong, and vice versâ. It is also stated that this is true analogously in respect of love and hate.

This Brentano no longer asserts, but rather observes that whereas the whole must be denied, if but a part is untrue, a sum of good and bad, on the other hand, may be of such a nature as nevertheless as a whole to be worthy of love. It may be also so constituted that good and bad remain in equilibrium.

2. In the lecture (p. 24), and in the corresponding note 37 (p. 87), it is said that our preference qualified as right in the case where, for instance, to one good another is added, is drawn, not from our knowledge of the preferability of the sum as opposed to the parts, but that analytic judgments here yield the means of our advance in knowledge, and that the corresponding preferences are therefore qualified as right, since the knowledge (given analytically) is here the criterion. Here it is overlooked that without the experience of acts of preferring we neither have nor could have the conception, and therefore also our notion of preferability. And so it is also true that it is by no means evident from analysis that one good plus another is preferable to each of these goods taken singly. Here also a complete analogy to the sphere of the true is wanting.

One truth added to another does not yield something more true. On the other hand, one good plus another good yields a better. But that this is so can only be understood by means of a special experience belonging peculiarly to this sphere, i.e. by means of the experience of acts of preferring which are qualified as right.