CATEGORICAL JUDGMENTS AND PROPOSITIONS 249 



conceivable reality. In this sense every judgment implies the 

 existence or reality of its ultimate subject. 1 



Indeed, not only does every judgment thus refer us to an 

 objective sphere, but the intelligible use of any logical term what 

 ever, in human discourse, refers speaker and hearer alike to some 

 such sphere, called the appropriate realm($ $\ in which the objects or 

 attributes denoted or connoted by the term may be supposed to 

 occur or not to occur -or to some restricted portion of such a realm. 

 The sphere of actual reference, whether thus restricted or not, is 

 called, as we have seen, the universe of discourse (ibid.). 



Now, in the case of any term used in a judgment, this universe 

 may be (i) the actual visible universe of things past, present, and 

 future, that can come directly into our sense experience : the 

 universe from which we get the raw materials (i, 2, 4) of all our 

 intellectual concepts. Or it may be (2) the spiritual universe of 

 suprasensible realities which most people believe to be actual, 

 but which for unbelievers resolves itself into a sphere of actual 

 beliefs (viz. of the believers). Or it may be (3) some universe 

 that is actual in the sense of being actually invented or produced 

 by the mental activity of man, such as the plays of Shakespeare, 

 or the literature of heraldry, or the collections of oral or written 

 traditions or beliefs which constitute the folklores of the various 

 nations. 2 



Those various spheres are all portions of actual reality ; and in order 

 that the terms used in a judgment refer to any one of them, the objects or 

 attributes signified by those terms must be at least capable of existing in 

 some one or other of those actual spheres. In other words, the objects and 



1 Hence the special appropriateness of the verb of existence, the substantive 

 verb &quot; to be,&quot; for expressing the function of predication in the act of judgment, 

 seeing that this act does in some true sense always assert existence or reality. 

 Cf. JOSEPH, Logic (p. 147) : &quot; the case seems to be thus : that every judgment does 

 imply existence, but not necessarily the existence of the subject of the sentence. 

 The distinguishing characteristic of a judgment is, as we have seen, that it is 

 true. . . . 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, as far as it goes, the nature of things, the facts, or the reality of the uni 

 verse. In doing this it may be said to imply existence, not of its grammatical sub 

 ject, but of the whole matter of fact expressed in it.&quot; 



a &quot; The universe of the Greek mythology does not consist of gods, heroes 

 centaurs, etc., but of accounts of such beings currently accepted in ancient Greece, 

 and handed down to usiin^Homer and other authors. . . . The universe of folklore 

 does not consist of fairies, elves, etc., but of descriptions of them based on popular 

 beliefs, and conventionally accepted when such beings are referred to. Of course 

 for anyone who really believed in the existence of fairies . . . the universe of dis 

 course would be different.&quot; KEYNES, op. cit., pp. 213-14. 



