July 22, 1010] 



SCIENCE 



117 



ing to the sort and amount of belief they 

 embody, following Venn to some extent. 

 Chapter three deals with what we might call 

 the social character of knowledge — all judg- 

 ment as such is syndoxic, i. e., its meanings 

 are not only held in common, but held as 

 common. The discussion distinguishes be- 

 tween those judgments actually held in com- 

 mon and those fit or appropriate to be held in 

 common — catholic and synnomic syndoxity. 

 Genetically the latter develops out of the 

 former. The social aspect of knowledge, 

 truth and reality is nowhere treated with the 

 thoroughness and emphasis of this chapter. 

 " The individual is not a social unit, he is a 

 social outcome." " The private thought is 

 not a cognitive unit, it is a cognitive out- 

 come " (p. 105). And yet we have here an 

 epistemology the main definitions and prin- 

 ciples of which are molded by the presupposi- 

 tion that there is a plurality of minds face to 

 face with a common but external world. . That 

 is, this is the knower's presupposition. One is 

 apt to get the impression, however, that it is 

 the author's — a presupposition which is very 

 familiar to readers of eighteenth century 

 philosophy. In the fourth chapter the prob- 

 lematical is defined as including the disjunc- 

 tive and the contingent. The former has a 

 definite control but expresses as yet indefinite 

 internal relations in the content. The latter 

 expresses definite internal relations of the con- 

 tent, but without a determined control. This 

 chapter contains an interesting discussion of 

 logical quantity. Chapter five deals especially 

 with contingent meanings. The discussion 

 of implication and postulation is here impor- 

 tant. The development of logical meaning 

 through predication and intercourse is taken 

 up in chapter six. Chapter seven treats of 

 the growth of logical meaning in terms. 

 Elucidation and proposal, defined in chapter 

 six, here appear as the " what " and the 

 " why " of terms. Abstraction is discussed as 

 selection based on individual dispositions and 

 interests (p. 186). The author points out that 

 the singular has, properly speaking, no exten- 

 sion. As prelogical it is purely appreciative. 

 As logical, it is either " imported," i. e., 

 selective, or " essential " and imposed by ex- 



ternal control. The distinction between the 

 concrete and the abstract is only another illus- 

 tration of the two-faced character of all log- 

 ical meanings, a character of which the recog- 

 nitive and the selective, the retrospective and 

 the prospective, the implied and the proposed, 

 the conventional and the experimental, the 

 static and the dynamic, are other illustrations. 

 In chapter eight, the proposition is defined as 

 " that mode of predication in which relation 

 is individuated as a meaning" (p. 211), but 

 the relation is expressed, not in the copula, but 

 in the predicate (p. 263). The characters of 

 propositions enumerated are six — quantity, 

 telling how much; control -wise community, 

 telling by whom; content-wise community, 

 telling for whom; quality, telling what; rela- 

 tional character, telling why, and modality, 

 telling where or in what sphere it holds. The 

 distinction between the content-wise and con- 

 trol-wise characters of propositions is not new 

 except in name. It is the habitual and recon- 

 structive aspects of judgments over again. 

 This chapter (VIII.) is chiefly devoted to 

 quality, and of the two, to the negative. The 

 motive of negation is not rejection, as some 

 have held, but further determination or indi- 

 viduation by limitation. Chapter nine deals 

 with the import and character of propositions. 

 All propositions are both analytic and syn- 

 thetic, i. e., they all elucidate and propose. 

 All judgments, whether affirmative or nega- 

 tive, intend existence and are existential (p. 

 256). Disbelief is a form of belief. The true 

 opposite of belief is doubt. There must be a 

 certain categorical force in any proposition 

 that expresses judgment. Two great charac-. 

 ters of propositions are fundamental : the one 

 dynamic, synthetic, developmental, the char- 

 acter of wholes as such; the other static, 

 analytic, the character of rela.tions established 

 within wholes (p. 272). The former is named 

 " modality," the latter, " relation." 



Chapters ten, eleven and twelve, part three 

 of this volume, are devoted to the second of 

 these two great characters, i. e., to the theory 

 of implication or logical validity. Implica- 

 tion is the internal organization in which the 

 achievements of successive judgments have 

 issued. Its most general characteristic is 



