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3CIENCB, 



[Vol. IX., No. 207 



heavy,' or, connecting two concepts, ' It is wise to 

 be merry.' It does not matter how we have ac- 

 quired the information, or by what mental process 

 we have reached the assertion : we may say, using 

 direct observation, 'This boy is tall,' or, making 

 an inference, ' There will soon be another general 

 election ; ' in either case we have given expression 

 to a judgment. Of course, if we merely echo 

 somebody else's statements, we give expression to 

 his judgments, but we do not perform acts of 

 judgment of our own, — a fact which young and 

 old, in and out of school, are always forgetting. 

 The work of connecting the two notions or mental 

 images must be our own before we can be con- 

 sidered to have performed an act of judgment. 

 The connection may be wrong or unwarrantable, 

 but the formation of it will none the less consti- 

 tute what we here define as judging ; that is, if it 

 be made with a certain amount of belief in the 

 reality of the connection. If there be no siich 

 belief, we shall not consider the statement as the 

 expression of a judgment. Our statements may 

 either be affirmative or negative ; about individu- 

 als or about classes, i.e., what are called 'singu- 

 lar' or 'universal' judgments, as, for example, 

 ' This boy loves exercise,' ' Boys are fond of ac- 

 tion.' In the case of negative judgments, we 

 may suppose some one to have originally asserted 

 a connection between two notions ; and the mind 

 has then to decide whether the assertion be true 

 or not true (untrue). If it decides in the latter 

 sense, the judgment will be a denial, not an affir- 

 mation, of the connection between the notions. We 

 may, however, sometimes turn the judgment into 

 the affirmative form, as thus : if we deny that 

 'this bag is heavy,' we s%, 'This bag is not 

 heavy,' i.e., 'This bag is light.' But this is as- 

 suming that there is no alternative to ' heavy ' but 

 ' light,' while we may easily conceive of a state 

 which could not be described either as the one or the 

 other. If there be several alternatives, still more 

 must the statement remain negative. I cannot 

 transpose, without changing the subject of which 

 I speak, such a statement as ' This leaf is not 

 green.' This is, however, rather a matter of 

 logic than of psychology. 



There is another point on which it will be of 

 more importance to touch, — the relation of con- 

 ception to judgment. We have seen that in the 

 former there is a process of combining. The con- 

 cept ' metal ' is formed by mentally grouping to- 

 gether a certain number of qualities or properties, 

 grouping them so as to make one complex mental 

 image or representation. As Mr. Sully says, 

 " The mind here comprehends the several quali- 

 ties as together comprising one thing or sub- 

 stance. In judgment, on the other hand, we dis- 



tinctly set forth two representations as two, keep- 

 ing them apart from one another, while at the same 

 time we connect them with one another. We think 

 of certain objects or qualities as distinct, and at 

 the same time explicitly view them as related." 

 Thus, in affirming that 'iron is a metal,' we 

 think of the quality of being a metal as some- 

 thing apart from the iron, something new which 

 we assert to belong to it. In fact, we have here 

 the same distinction as we have in grammar be- 

 tween the name with the attributes of the subject, 

 and the predicate. To express a judgment, we 

 must make use of a predicate, or give some new 

 information about that of which we are speaking : 

 in the case of a concept, we have merely the gen- 

 eral notion, simple or complex, corresponding to 

 the name and its attendant describing adjectives, 

 or to the name alone. We must bear in mind, 

 however, that many, if not all, concepts are 

 formed by a succession of judgments. Every ad- 

 dition to our knowledge of the properties or 

 qualities which correspond to a general term takes 

 the form of a judgment. The very bringing of 

 things together on the ground of their likeness, or 

 the separating of them because of their dissimi- 

 larity, is a judgment ; while, in its turn, the fuller 

 concept becomes an element in our later and 

 more precise judgments. 



Like every thing else, our judgment will have 

 various degrees of perfection and imperfection. 

 The most important quality of a judgment is 

 clearness ; the next, accuracy ; while promptness, 

 stability, and independence are all of considerable 

 value. By a clear judgment we mean one in 

 which the concepts or representations are distinct, 

 and the relations between them distinctly under- 

 stood. The judgment, ' Poetry is a criticism of 

 life,' will be just so clear, and no more, as the 

 concepts 'poetry,' 'criticism,' and 'life' are dis- 

 tinct, and as the mind clearly discerns the rela- 

 tion between 'poetry' and 'criticism of life' 

 which is implied in the assertion, — how it is 

 equivalent to certain verbally unlike statements, 

 but incompatible with others. It is easy to see 

 that want of proper observation is one of the com- 

 monest sources of indefiniteness. If the observa- 

 tion has been faulty, the concepts or representa- 

 tions wUl be faulty, and so will be our apprehension 

 of the relation of the notions we wish to connect. 

 Memory may pJay us false by recalling imper- 

 fect images, or by recalling them with all the life 

 and reality of the relations between them de- 

 parted ; or feeling may come in, paralyzing our 

 powers of discrimination, and misdirecting our 

 decisions. We must not omit to note, moreover, 

 the tendency that most of us have, and which is 

 particularly strong in children, to accept the judg- 



