KINDS OF JUDGMENTS AND PROPOSITIONS, 177 



Now, some of these metaphysically and logically necessary principles are 

 implied in all judgments. There are quite a number of analytical principles 

 &quot; laws of thought&quot; they are called involved , the mental assertion of even a 

 synthetic judgment ; but this fact does not make the judgment itself analytic ; 

 nor should it lead us to overlook the real distinction between the two classes 

 of judgments in question. 



When, therefore, we are dealing with complex concepts, analysing them 

 and comparing them with one another, two distinct questions arise : firstly, 

 how far the various elements in those concepts necessarily involve or 

 necessarily exclude one another a question which will, in every instance, 

 be answered by an analytic or metaphysically necessary judgment ; 

 and secondly, the question whether these complex concepts themselves 

 represent each an actually existing object of thought, or one which is 

 merely possible a question which will always be answered by a synthetic 

 judgment, grounded on experience. It is the failure to distinguish between 

 these two questions that has caused such ambiguity and misunderstanding 

 about the proper interpretation of the Law of Uniformity in Physical Nature, 

 and the grounds on which we assent to it (223-4). The concepts compared 

 in this principle are complex, 1 viz. &quot;a natural cause devoid of freedom &quot; and 

 &quot;a constant, regular, uniform series of effects&quot; ; and the more complex the 

 concepts are, the greater the amount of sense experience needed in order to 

 form them ; and the greater the amount of sense experience postulated for 

 the knowledge of any truth, the stronger is our tendency to describe the pro 

 cess of acquiring it as &quot;induction&quot;. 



88. COMPARISON OF THE SCHOLASTIC WITH THE KANTIAN 

 VIEW. It will be noticed that the class of judgments described 

 by the Scholastics as &quot; necessary judgments &quot; is very much wider 

 than the class of &quot; analytic judgments &quot; in the more modern 

 sense of this term ; the former include all the truths even the 

 remotest conclusions of the purely deductive sciences, whereas 

 the latter are restricted to the comparatively small group of 

 judgments which constitute definitions, or self-evident axioms 

 and principles. 



It will also be apparent that the basing of the distinction on 

 connotation is accountable for the more modern forms of nomen 

 clature for the two classes of propositions. The &quot; verbal &quot; or 

 &quot; explicative &quot; proposition is the one that gives no information 

 beyond what is contained in an intelligent grasp of the connota 

 tion or definition of the subject-term ; the &quot;real&quot; or &quot;amplia- 

 tive&quot; or &quot;instructive,&quot; the one that gives some new and real 

 information beyond what was had from merely understanding 

 the meaning of that term. 



It would, therefore, be a mistake to imagine either that the only 



1 Cf. JOYCE, op. cit., p. 239. 

 VOL. I. 12 



