226 LESSONS FBOM NATURE. [CHAP. VII. 



stance, that the battle after all was utterly useless. Surely this is a 

 step into a higher atmosphere. He did not see that in the battle itself. 

 Utility did not come in through his eyes and ears. It certainly did 

 not exist in the battle. For the same reason it could not have existed, 

 and so been impressed on his sense, in any other battle or in any other 

 incident whatever. Besides, even if it were possible that it had existed 

 elsewhere, and been caught by the sense, the difficulty would still 

 remain of accounting for its connection with that particular battle - 

 connected, be it observed, not as when one sight or sound suggests 

 another without suggesting a relation, but by a definite process of 

 affirming the battle to be what it did not at all declare itself to be. 

 Can a relation or an affirmation be given in sensible impression in re 

 iterated shocks of the sense ? This is the deeper question which is forced 

 upon us. We may leave out of consideration the abstract utility and 

 the difficulties attending its origin and application. The question ^is, 

 Can the sense say anything make a judgment at all ? Can it furnish 

 the blank formula of judgment the is, in A is B ? The grass of 

 the battle-field was green, and the sense gave both the grass and the 

 greenness; but did it affirm that the grass is green ? It may be 

 answered that grass and green together form one complex sensible 

 object, which is an object under space and time, and therefore of 

 sense. But against this the rejoinder at once is, that the sense 

 may indeed take in and report (so to speak) a complex object, but that 

 in this case the question is, not about the complex object, but about 

 the complexity of the object. It is one thing to see green grass, and 

 evidently quite another to affirm the greenness of the grass. The differ 

 ence is all the difference between seeing two things united and seeing 

 them as united. It may be further contended that grass is an object 

 of sense, and greenness also is an object of sense, being the remem 

 brance or revival of a certain frequently-repeated sensation, which, in 

 order to label it, has been denominated greenness ; and since both the 

 terms of the judgment are objects of sense, the juxtaposition or com 

 position of the terms may also be effected by the sense. But the reply 

 again is evident. Green, in the sense of greenness, cannot have come 

 from the sense that is, from any faculty which is impressed only by a 

 repetition of shocks in space and time : for first, it is not the greenness 

 of any particular object, but greenness in general ; secondly, it is not 

 the greenness of all the green objects experienced in the past, but, as is 

 admitted, a general idea acquired from these, and labelled or named ; 

 and, thirdly, even if it were the greenness of a particular sensible 

 object, the sense, as we have already contended, could not have given 

 it, because the sense only gives green. A further important con 

 sequence follows. If in the judgment the grass is green, green 

 cannot have come altogether from sense, then neither can grass have 

 come altogether from sense. In other words, grass seen or known 

 by sense is a different mental object to grass as the term of an 



