216 LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. VII. 



consists not in marking &quot; succession, likeness, and unlike- 

 ness,&quot; but in recognising these relations as true. 



To this extent I may shelter myself under the authority of 

 Mr. John Stuart Mill. Mr. Mill, in criticising Sir William 

 Hamilton s definition of judgment, makes the following re 

 marks ( Examination of Sir William Hamilton s Philosophy, 

 p. 346) :- 



&quot; The first objection which, I think, must occur to any one, on the 

 contemplation of this definition, is that it omits the main and charac 

 teristic element of a judgment and of a proposition. . . . When we judge 

 or assert, there is introduced a new element, that of objective reality, 

 and a new mental fact, belief. Our judgments, and the assertions 

 which express them, do not enunciate our mere mode of mentally con 

 ceiving things, but our conviction or persuasion that the facts as con 

 ceived actually exist ; and a theory of judgments and propositions 

 which does not take account of this, cannot be a true th&amp;gt;ory. In the 

 words of Reid, I give the name of judgment to every determination of 

 the mind concerning irhat is true or ivhat is false. This, I think, is 

 what logicians, from the days of Aristotle, have called judgment. And 

 this is the very element which Sir Wm. Hamilton s definition&quot; [and I 

 may now add Professor Huxley s also] &quot; omits from it.&quot; 



Farther on Mr. Mill says : 



&quot; Belief is an essential element in a judgment. . . . The recognition 

 of it as true is not only an essential part, but the essential element of it 

 as a judgment ; leave that out, and there remains a mere play of thought, 

 in which no judgment is passed. It is impossible to separate the idea 

 of judgment from the idea of the truth of a judgment ; for every judg 

 ment consists in judging something to be true. The element belief, 

 instead of being an accident which can be passed in silence, and 

 admitted only by implication, constitutes the very difference between 

 a judgment and any other intellectual fact, and it is contrary to all the 

 laws of definition to define judgment by anything else. The very 

 meaning of a judgment or a proposition is something which is capable 

 of being believed or disbelieved ; which can be true or false ; to which 

 it is possible to say yes or no.&quot; 



In addition to this, Mr. Mill, in his notes on his father s 

 Mr. James Mill s, Analysis of the Human Mind, ably shows, 

 against Mr. Herbert Spencer, that rational belief cannot be 

 explained as being identical with indissoluble association 

 (vol. i. p. 402). 



In denying, then, reason to brutes in denying that their 



