CA TEGORICAL JUDGMENTS AND PROPOSITIONS. 201 



For, t\\Q judgment in the mind is conceived either as universal, or 

 as particular, and its quantity is tacitly attached to the proposi 

 tion, although not expressed in the formulation of the latter. 



Whenever we meet such a proposition we must decide its 

 quantity by examining its meaning in the context in which we 

 find it. We have seen already that the abstract or generic 

 universal judgment finds its more natural expression in the non- 

 quantified or indesignate form &quot; 5 is P&quot; or &quot;S as such is P &quot; : 

 &quot; Evil-doing is deserving of punishment,&quot; &quot; Man is rational,&quot; &quot; The 

 lark is a species of singing-bird,&quot; &quot;The triangle has the sum of 

 its interior angles equal to two right angles.&quot; Furthermore, we 

 have met with a class of propositions in which the connexion 

 between the predicate and the subject is a necessary one pro 

 positions in materia necessaria (85). Such propositions are the 

 expression of necessary judgments : and of these we can see at 

 once that the predicate must be affirmed (or denied) about every 

 single member in the denotation of the subject. Hence our first 

 rule : 



(a) If an indesignate proposition be in materia necessaria, i.e. 

 if the predicate be the genus, species, differentia, or a proprium, of 

 the subject (or, in a negative, anything incompatible with any of 

 these), the proposition is to be interpreted as universal. 



Propositions in which the predicate gives an accidens of the 

 subject are said to be in materia contingent. If the predicate 

 gives a separable accident, the proposition, when indesignate, 

 must evidently be interpreted as particular ; for it gives us no 

 guarantee that the predication is made about the whole denotation 

 of the subject. Even when the predicate gives an inseparable 

 accident, we have no guarantee, no ground in the nature of subject 

 or predicate, to regard the connexion as a strictly invariable, and 

 therefore universal, connexion. 1 Hence, although such propositions 

 would be regarded as in the ordinary, looser sense, universals, and 

 are in fact called universals that is, of a sort : physical and 

 moral universals, nevertheless they are not absolutely universal, 

 and must be logically classified as particular. Hence our second 

 rule : 



1 Of course, if the context limits the subject to an actual, concrete class, about 

 every member of which we know that the predication is de facto true, we have then 

 the concrete or collective universal (92). If, for example, the statements &quot; Ruminants 

 are cloven-footed &quot; or &quot; Crows are black &quot; be understood to refer to these classes 

 only in so far as the latter are known, and known to have no exceptions, the proposi 

 tions are concrete universals. 



