266 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



there were four) are reduced to three, the same term being now 

 subject of both antecedent and consequent ; (4) that they can be 

 easily quantified, or written in the concrete, denotative, form 

 &quot;If any S is M it is P&quot; or &quot; Whenever an S is M&quot; etc., or 

 &quot; Sometimes if S is M&quot; etc. ; (5) that they can be easily expressed 

 in the categorical form &quot; S which is M is P&quot; or &quot; S, because it is M, 

 is P&quot; or &quot; 5 M is P&quot;. Propositions of this class we shall call 

 conditionals : to distinguish them from the following class, which 

 we shall call hypothetical^ or pure hypothetical. 



Examples of this second class would be: If there is a just 

 God, the wicked will be punished ; if patience is a virtue there are 

 painful virtues ; if virtue is voluntary , so is vice ; if the earth is 

 immovable, the sun moves round the earth ; if all savages are cruel, 

 the Patagonians are crueL 



Now these examples cannot be distinguished, so far as form 

 goes, from those of the former class ; but they will be found 

 on examination to differ from the former in certain ways, (i) 

 They appear to connect together not so much two events in 

 time or space, or two groups of attributes in one subject, but 

 rather two abstract truths that are seen to hold good together 

 once and for all, independently of any time or space relations ; 

 (2) then, the antecedent and the consequent, taken separately, 

 express each a full judgment, complete in itself, independently of 

 the other; (3) they cannot be so easily reduced to the form 

 &quot;If S is M it is P&quot; ; nor (4) do they admit of quantitative ex 

 pression ; nor (5) can they be reduced to categoricals without so 

 changing the judgment and its subject as to modify the import of 

 the original judgment. 



It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that these points of difference 

 reveal two fundamentally different types of &quot; if&quot; judgments. More especially 

 it must be noted that distinctions (2) and (3) are not absolute. They are 

 rather distinctions of degree. Even though antecedent and consequent be in 

 themselves judgments of &quot; independent import,&quot; still it is the very function of 

 the &quot; if&quot; judgment to establish some sort of a relation of dependence, some 

 link or bond of connexion, between them. It is the mental perception of this 

 bond, whatever it be, that forms the ground or reason for making the &quot; if&quot; 

 statement ; and, consequently, it must always be possible to bring out explicitly 

 this ground of predication by expressing the judgment in the form &quot; If S is M 

 it is P &quot;. This process will, it is true, often involve the explicit statement of 

 what was implicit^ the making part of the import what was rather an impli- 



1 The two words, &quot; conditional &quot; and &quot; hypothetical,&quot; have been commonly used 

 as synonyms by logicians. It will be convenient to appropriate one of the two titles 

 for each of the classes indicated above. 



