58 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



and it is the recent progress in this first part, more than 

 anything else, that has rendered a truly scientific discussion 

 of many philosophical problems possible. 



The problem of the nature of judgment or belief may 

 be taken as an example of a problem whose solution 

 depends upon an adequate inventory of logical forms. 

 We have already seen how the supposed universality of 

 the subject-predicate form made it impossible to give a 

 right analysis of serial order, and therefore made space 

 and time unintelligible. But in this case it was only 

 necessary to admit relations of two terms. The case of 

 judgment demands the admission of more complicated 

 forms. If all judgments were true, we might suppose that 

 a judgment consisted in apprehension of a fact^ and that 

 the apprehension was a relation of a mind to the fact. 

 From poverty in the logical inventory, this view has often 

 been held. But it leads to absolutely insoluble difficulties 

 in the case of error. Suppose I believe that Charles I. 

 died in his bed. There is no objective fact " Charles I.'s 

 death in his bed " to which I can have a relation of appre- 

 hension. Charles I. and death and his bed are objective, 

 but they are not, except in my thought, put together as 

 my false belief supposes. It is therefore necessary, in 

 analysing a belief, to look for some other logical form 

 than a two-term relation. Failure to realise this necessity 

 has, in my opinion, vitiated almost everything that has 

 hitherto been written on the theory of knowledge, making 

 the problem of error insoluble and the difference between 

 belief and perception inexplicable. 



Modern logic, as I hope is now evident, has the effect 

 of enlarging our abstract imagination, and providing an 

 infinite number of possible hypotheses to be applied in 

 the analysis of any complex fact. In this respect it is the 

 exact opposite of the logic practised by the classical 



