NATURE OF THE JUDGMENT AND PROPOSITION. 161 



&quot; IS THE ACT WHICH REFERS AN IDEAL [OR CONCEPTUAL] CONTENT, 

 RECOGNIZED AS SUCH, TO A REALITY BEYOND THE ACT.&quot; This definition 



can be applied to all classes of judgments including conditionals, such as 

 &quot; If the barometer falls it will rain &quot;. But although All Reality is in a certain 

 sense the ultimate subject of all judgments (123), it is not the proximate sub 

 ject actually thought about. This is always rather some limited portion of the 

 sphere of reality than reality in general : a point which is well brought out 

 in Bosanquet s definition of judgment as &quot;THE REFERENCE OF A SIG 

 NIFICANT IDEA TO A SUBJECT IN REALITY BY MEANS OF AN IDENTITY 

 OF CONTENT BETWEEN THEM V The mind s concomitant awareness, while 

 announcing the judgment, that the latter is a true representation of objective 

 reality, furnishes Ueberweg with what he regards as the most fundamental 

 and essential feature of the judgment : which he defines as &quot; THE CONSCIOUS 

 NESS OF THE OBJECTIVE VALIDITY OF A SUBJECTIVE UNION OF CONCEP 

 TIONS WHOSE FORMS ARE DIFFERENT BUT BELONG TO EACH OTHER &quot;. 3 



The test of this conformity the Criterion of Truth, as it is called 

 must be sought, in each case, in that sphere of reality to which the judgment 

 in question is understood to refer. 3 Whether, for example, it is true that 

 &quot; Hamlet killed Polonius,&quot; will be determined by reference to Shakespeare s 

 play ; whether &quot; all dragons breathe flame,&quot; must be decided by reference to 

 the whole literature of dragons ; whether Napoleon conquered, or was 

 vanquished, at Waterloo, I must discover by consulting history ; whether it be 

 true that the three interior angles of a plane triangle may be less than two 

 right angles, I must determine by analysing the relation asserted in the judg 

 ment, and discovering whether there be anything impossible in it. 



The logical truth thus claimed by the mental act of judgment has, there 

 fore, this peculiar characteristic, which we call objectivity, this reference to 

 a something beyond and distinct from the mental act itself, of the individual 

 mind. The judgment of the individual mind claims to be true for all minds : 

 it is itself an individual conjunction of two concepts in a single individual s 

 mind, but it claims to represent something which must hold for everyone, for 

 all minds. Thus, logical truth, because it is objective or related to a some 

 thing other than the passing psychological act of judgment is also universal, 

 in the sense that what is true for one mind is true for all minds, that truth is 

 not relative to, or variable with, the variety of individual men or individual 

 minds. 



So, also, truth is immutable, in the sense that it cannot change with the 

 time at which the judgment is made. Of course, all judgments which refer to 

 objects existing, or events happening, in time, and which make assertions 

 that are intended to refer to these only as they are at a particular point of 

 time, need not be true of the latter as they are at any other point of time ; 

 for in these cases the particular point of time enters into, and becomes part 



1 Essentials of Logic, p. 70; apud MKLLONE, ibid., p. 372. 



*Logic, 67; apud MAHER, Psychology (4th edit.), p. 316. Cf. JOSEPH, op. 

 cit. p. 147 : &quot; All judgments, besides affirming or denying a predicate of a subject, 

 affirm themselves as true. But a judgment which affirms itself as true claims to 

 express, so far as it goes, the nature of things, the facts, or the reality of the 

 universe.&quot; 



3 C/. VENN, op. cit., pp. 28-33. 

 VOL. I. II 



