158 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



single reality. 1 All judgment presupposes analysis of our sense 

 experiences (2, 3), viewing and examining these from different 

 standpoints, establishing diversity, plurality, of aspects. The 

 affirmative judgment identifies, unifies these aspects in the reality, 

 by the affirmative copula. Even the negative judgment unites 

 or compares mentally two concepts, and in separating them by 

 means of the negative copula, increases or makes more definite 

 our knowledge of the one reality which it interprets (94, 98). 



Hence all judgment involves both mental analysis and mental 

 synthesis, and has been for this reason called Compositio et Divisio, 

 or the Actus Componendi et Dividendi, by the Scholastics. The 

 act of judgment, therefore, is the mental assertion or denial of some 

 thing about something. This definition gives us the essence or 

 inner nature of the process itself. 



79. JUDGMENT AND TRUTH : CONCEPTION : INFERENCE. 

 There is, however, inherent in this process a property which is all- 

 important from the point of view of logic : judgment is always 

 the process, and the only process, in and through which truth or 

 error is attained by the mind. Hence, we sometimes find the 

 judgment defined as the mental, and the proposition as the verbal, 

 expression of a truth or falsity. &quot; Not all discourse,&quot; again writes 

 Aristotle, &quot; is an enunciation [airofyavTucos}, but only that in which 

 we find truth or falsity expressed. Now, truth or falsity are not 

 found in some forms of discourse : prayer is a discourse, and yet 

 it is neither true nor false.&quot; 2 



Of the judgment and proposition alone can we say : that is 

 true, or that is false. Of the three logically distinct mental pro 

 cesses, conception, judgment, and reasoning (5), judgment is the 

 most important. Conception gives us the notions which are the 

 material of the act of judgment, and all reasoning processes com 

 pare judgments with one another in order to reach, and terminate 

 in, new judgments. All human knowledge is embodied in the 

 form of judgment ; all truth is contained in it, and in no other 

 mental act. And the reason is this : Knowledge is an interpreta 

 tion of what comes into our experience, and al,l such interpre 

 tation is mentally formulated in acts of judgment. When I 

 investigate any object of sense experience, any individual thing, 



1 &quot; In the judgment the [logical] subject with which we start is modified or 

 enlarged by the predicate and declared to be real. We end with the subject with 

 which we began, differently conceived.&quot; JOSEPH, op. cit., p. 52. 



2 Perihermeneias, chap. iv. 



