GENERAL VIEW OF NATURE AND SCOPE OF LOGIC. 17 



something when we announce to ourselves mentally that the 

 sun exists, that the unicorn is a real being, that the Pope is in 

 fallible it is only then we reach knowledge which is true or 

 false. This mental act of enunciation is called judgment: it is 

 the principal act of the mind : in it lies truth or error : Aristotle 

 insists, and rightly, on this fact, and it will come up repeatedly 

 for consideration. 



Judgment is, however, not the only act of the mind. The 

 object about which the &quot; statement &quot; just referred to is made, and 

 what is asserted or denied about that object in other words, the 

 elements into which the judgment can be resolved are them 

 selves apprehended by acts which are logically antecedent to the 

 act of judgment 1 These elements are called ideas, notions, or 

 concepts (idea, notio, conceptus], and the act in question simple 

 apprehension or conception (simplex apprehensio, conceptid]. 



Furthermore, we unite several judgments together by com 

 paring their elements in a mental process called reasoning or 

 inference. Reasoning is the process by which we derive one 

 truth from another or others. The deriving of a truth from a 

 single other truth of the truth that &quot; Some mortals are men &quot; 

 from the truth that &quot; All men are mortal,&quot; for example is called 

 immediate inference. When we discover a truth, e.g. that A is C 

 from the juxtaposition of two already known truths, e.g. that 

 A is B and that B is C we are said to reason mediately ; because, 

 in order to discover whether A is C we have to call in the aid of 

 a middle or intermediate notion, B, with which to compare the 

 two former successively. 



Those three mental acts and their products form the main 

 subject-matter of the science of logic. 



The first is mental apprehension or conception ; its product is 

 the idea or concept or notion ; and the verbal &amp;gt; expression of the 

 latter is the logical term. Hence one division of logic will deal 

 with conception, especially as illustrated in the formation of 

 general ideas 2 by definition, division, and classification ; with 



1 Chronologically apprehension is for the most part accompanied by judgment. 

 According as we analyse any complex datum or phenomenon of sense perception, 

 and abstract from it those various aspects which become so many objects of our 

 thought, so many notes or attributes which we predicate about the whole object, we 

 are continually making judgments, mostly semi-conscious and implicit, that &quot; This 

 is such or such &quot;. 



2 Logic does not deal with what may be called the raw material of thought : sen 

 sations, sense impressions, imagination images, etc. ; nor with the mental processes 



VOL. I. 2 



