288 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



it black, and my judgment expresses what I have seen. 

 But if I say, "This table is not white," I surely do not 

 express something I have perceived, for I have seen black, 

 and not an absence of white. It is therefore, at bottom, 

 not on the table itself that I bring this judgment to bear, 

 but rather on the judgment that would declare the table 

 white. I judge a judgment and not the table. The 

 proposition, "This table is not white," implies that you 

 might believe it white, that you did believe it such, or that 

 I was going to believe it such. I warn you or myself that 

 this judgment is to be replaced by another (which, it is 

 true, I leave undetermined). Thus, while affirmation 

 bears directly on the thing, negation aims at the thing only 

 indirectly, through an interposed affirmation. An affirma- 

 tive proposition expresses a judgment on an object; a 

 negative proposition expresses a judgment on a judgment. 

 Negation, therefore, differs from affirmation properly so 

 called in that it is an affirmation of the second degree: 

 it affirms something of an affirmation which itself affirms 

 something of an object. 



But it follows at once from this that negation is not 

 the work of pure mind, I should say of a mind placed 

 before objects and concerned with them alone. When 

 we deny, we give a lesson to others, or it may be to our- 

 selves. We take to task an interlocutor, real or possible, 

 whom we find mistaken and whom we put on his guard. 

 He was affirming something: we tell him he ought to 

 affirm something else (though without specifying the 

 affirmation which must be substituted). There is no 

 longer then, simply, a person and an object; there is, 

 in face of the object, a person speaking to a person, oppos- 

 ing him and aiding him at the same time; there is a be- 

 ginning of society. Negation aims at some one, and not 

 only, like a purely intellectual operation, at some thing. 



