KINDS OF JUDGMENTS AND PROPOSITIONS. 175 



distinction more convenient for logical purposes, and more in 

 keeping with the common teaching on connotation and definition 

 (3 T &amp;gt; 3 2 &amp;gt; 5 1 )- But tne distinction is not of any great logical im 

 portance (though extremely important from the point of view of 

 metaphysics], and hence the advantages to be gained by the 

 present interpretation do not seem sufficient to warrant any de 

 parture from the view of Aristotle and the Scholastics, i.e. the 

 view which bases the distinction on the necessary or contingent 

 character of the relation established between subject and predi 

 cate, and which, consequently, regards the predication of a pro 

 perty as constituting an essentials necessary judgment (in materia 

 necessarid]. 



It is, however, merely a matter of convention and convenience, 

 involving no fundamental difference of view as to the nature of 

 the act of judgment. In either view the distinction. is ultimately 

 objective ; for the determination of the limits of connotation must 

 be guided, and is in practice always guided, by a constant appeal 

 to objective facts, to the matter of our thought (32). Hence, the 

 distinction between the two great classes of judgments is both 

 objective and fixed, at least in the same degree as connotation 

 and definition are. A proposition, at first synthetic, may, in pro 

 cess of time and by gradual change in the connotation of the 

 terms, become analytic. But in such cases it is not really the 

 same judgment we are dealing with. &quot;We ought rather to say 

 that the same form of words now expresses a different judgment.&quot; ] 



Similarly, in the scholastic view, doubt may arise as to the 

 proper class in which to place a given proposition ; and pro 

 gress in knowledge may clear up the doubt by definitely de 

 termining a given predicate to be a proprium rather than an 

 accidens inseparable of the subject : but the ultimate test is the 

 objective character of the relation, and not the state of our know 

 ledge (or opinion) as to its character. 



For instance, does the judgment &quot; Man is mortal &quot; embody a necessary, 

 analytic truth, or only a contingent, synthetic truth ? Are subject and predi 

 cate so connected that their separation is inconceivable, impossible ? That 

 depends on the intension or meaning of the concepts (31) ; and this in turn 

 depends, of course, upon the real nature and constitution of the individuals to 

 whom we apply the concepts and the names (32). If &quot; man &quot; is a living being, 

 composed essentially of distinct active principles whose actual separation or 

 dissociation would mean death ; and if &quot; mortal &quot; means merely that these 

 active principles can be conceived to be separated : then man would be 



1 KEYNES, op. cit. t p. 15. 



