1 76 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



essentially mortal ; &quot; mortality &quot; would be a strict proprium of his essence 

 (47) ; and any individual man would continue to be &quot; mortal &quot; in the sense in 

 dicated, even though the possible separation of parts or principles were never 

 actually effected, even though actual death were for ever precluded by the 

 influence of some higher cause. &quot; Man is mortal &quot; would be a metaphysically 

 necessary, analytic judgment. 1 



But if &quot; mortal &quot; means not so much that the living being can conceivably 

 &quot;die,&quot; or cease to exist, by dissolution of its constitutive parts or principles, 

 but rather that it is exposed to such disintegrating physical agencies as will 

 and must sooner or later actually compass its death ; then man would not be 

 essentially &quot; mortal,&quot; for we could conceive a man exempted perpetually from 

 these disintegrating physical agencies, and should no longer call him &quot; mortal &quot; 

 were he so exempted. We should admit that in the ordinary course of physi 

 cal or visible nature, as we know it, all men are subject to the physical agencies 

 that culminate in death : that thus &quot; mortality &quot; is a natural physical property, 

 or inseparable accident (48), of their condition ; but were these natural condi 

 tions miraculously changed, whether for some men or for all men, so that 

 these would continue to live indefinitely, we should continue to regard them 

 as &quot; men,&quot; as still unchanged in regard to those essential attributes which we 

 consider as constituting the human essence or nature, though we should de 

 scribe such men not as mortal, but as immortal. The judgment &quot; man is mor 

 tal &quot; or &quot;all men are mortal,&quot; we should thus hold to be a synthetic judgment, 

 in materia contingent^ physically but not metaphysically necessary. 



For our assent to the judgment, in this latter sense, as true, we rely on 

 the knowledge we have gathered by experience about the nature of the physi 

 cal agencies that operate on the life of man, and upon our conviction that these 

 agencies are uniform in their activity throughout all space and time. 2 



Interpreted in the former sense, however, as metaphysically neces 

 sary, the judgment rests on quite other grounds : it asserts a metaphysi 

 cally necessary connexion between two concepts, and our reason for the 

 assertion is that an analysis of the concepts reveals such a relation. This 

 amount of meaning at least, it contains : &quot; If man is a composite, living being, 

 the parts or principles of which he is composed may conceivably be sepa 

 rated &quot; ; and the truth of this hypothetical judgment is independent of the 

 truth of its antecedent (132). Whether or not &quot;there are in existence men 

 who are composite living beings,&quot; whether or not the judgment &quot; men are 

 composite living beings &quot; is a true judgment, must be ultimately determined 

 not by an analysis of concepts, but by an appeal to experience. This, which 

 is the categorical judgment, referring as it does to the concrete, actual, exist 

 ing order of things, cannot be metaphysically necessary or analytic : judgments 

 of this latter class refer only to the sphere of abstract, possible objects of 

 thought. 



1 We may interpret the well-known Scholastic example &quot; Man is risible &quot; (&quot; Homo 

 est risibilis &quot;) in this way, as meaning that the capacity or faculty of laughing is a 

 strict &quot; proprium &quot; of human nature : the proposition would thus be an analytic pro 

 position, and would still be true of a man who de facto never laughed, whose faculty 

 was never reduced to act. Were we to interpret it, as Father Joyce does (Logic, p. 239), 

 as &quot; liable to miraculous frustration &quot; we should regard it as synthetic (as equivalent 

 to the judgment &quot; Men laugh &quot;). 



3 C/. JOSEPH, Logic, p. 491 ; NEWMAN, Grammar of Assent, pp. 280-1. 



