The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• Preface to the Third Edition[*]
• Chapter I: Introductory Remarks
• Chapter II: The Relativity of Human Knowledge
• Chapter III: The Doctrine of the Relativity of Human Knowledge, As Held By Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter IV: In What Respect Sir William Hamilton Really Differs From the Philosophers of the Absolute
• Chapter V: What Is Rejected As Knowledge By Sir William Hamilton, Brought Back Under the Name of Belief
• Chapter VI: The Philosophy of the Conditioned
• Chapter VII: The Philosophy of the Conditioned, As Applied By Mr. Mansel to the Limits of Religious Thought
• Chapter VIII: Of Consciousness, As Understood By Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter IX: Of the Interpretation of Consciousness
• Chapter X: Sir William Hamilton’s View of the Different Theories Respecting the Belief In an External World
• Chapter XI: The Psychological Theory of the Belief In an External World
• Chapter XII: The Psychological Theory of the Belief In Matter, How Far Applicable to Mind
• Chapter XIII: The Psychological Theory of the Primary Qualities of Matter
• Chapter XIV: How Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel Dispose of the Law of Inseparable Association
• Chapter XV: Sir William Hamilton’s Doctrine of Unconscious Mental Modifications
• Chapter XVI: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Causation
• Chapter XVII: The Doctrine of Concepts, Or General Notions
• Chapter XVIII: Of Judgment
• Chapter XIX: Of Reasoning
• Chapter XX: On Sir William Hamilton’s Conception of Logic As a Science. Is Logic the Science of the Laws, Or Forms, of Thought?
• Chapter XXI: The Fundamental Laws of Thought According to Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter XXII: Of Sir William Hamilton’s Supposed Improvements In Formal Logic
• Chapter XXIII: Of Some Minor Peculiarities of Doctrine In Sir William Hamilton’s View of Formal Logic
• Chapter XXIV: Of Some Natural Prejudices Countenanced By Sir William Hamilton, and Some Fallacies Which He Considers Insoluble
• Chapter XXV: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Pleasure and Pain
• Chapter XXVI: On the Freedom of the Will
• Chapter XXVII: Sir William Hamilton’s Opinions On the Study of Mathematics
• Chapter XXVIII: Concluding Remarks
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Manuscript Fragments
• Appendix B: Textual Emendations
• Appendix C: Corrected References
• Appendix D: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited In the Examination, With Variants and Notes

CHAPTER XVIII

Of Judgment

though, as has appeared in the last chapter, the proposition that we think by concepts is, if not positively untrue, at least an unprecise and misleading expression of the truth, it is not, however, to be concluded that Sir W. Hamilton’s view of Logic, being wholly grounded on that proposition, must be destitute of value. Many writers have given good and valuable expositions of the principles and rules of Logic, from the Conceptualist point of view. The doctrines which they have laid down respecting Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning, have been capable of being rendered into equivalent statements respecting Terms, Propositions, and Arguments; these, indeed, were what the writers really had in their thoughts, and there was little amiss except a mode of expression which attempted to be more philosophical than it knew how to be. To say nothing of less illustrious examples, this is true of all the properly logical part of Locke’s Essay. His admirable Third Book requires hardly any other alteration to bring it up to the scientific level of the present time, than to be corrected by blotting out everywhere the words Abstract Idea, and replacing them by “the connotation of the class-name.”^[*]

We shall, accordingly, proceed to examine the explanation of Judgment, and of Reasoning, which Sir W. Hamilton has built on the foundation of the doctrine of Concepts.

“To judge,” he says, “is to recognise the relation of congruence or of confliction in which two concepts, two individual things, or a concept and an individual, compared together, stand to each other. This recognition, considered as an internal consciousness, is called a Judgment; considered as expressed in language, it is called a Proposition or Predication.”^*

To be certain of understanding this, we must inquire what is meant by a relation of congruence or of confliction between concepts. To consult Sir W. Hamilton’s definitions of words is, as we have seen, not a sure way of ascertaining the sense in which he practically uses them; but it is one of the ways, and we are bound to employ it in the first instance. A few pages before, he has given a sort of definition of these terms. “Concepts, in relation to each other, are said to be either Congruent or Agreeing, inasmuch as they may be connected in thought; or Conflictive, inasmuch as they cannot. The confliction constitutes the Opposition of notions.” This Opposition is twofold. “1°. Immediate or Contradictory Opposition, called likewise Repugnance; and 2°. Mediate or Contrary Opposition. The former emerges when one concept abolishes directly, or by simple negation, what another establishes; the latter, when one concept does this not directly, or by simple negation, but through the affirmation of something else.”^*

Congruent Concepts, therefore, ^adoes^a not mean concepts which coincide, either wholly or in any of their parts, but such as are mutually compatible; capable of being predicated of the same individual; of being combined in the same presentation of sense or representation of imagination. This is more clearly expressed in a passage from Krug, which our author adopts as part of his own exposition.

Thus interpreted, our author’s doctrine is, that to judge, is to recognise whether two concepts, two things, or a concept and a thing, are capable of coexisting as parts of the same mental representation. This I will call Sir W. Hamilton’s first theory of Judgment; I will venture to add, his best.

But he soon after proceeds to say,

In this regress from ignotum to ignotius, the next thing to be ascertained is, what relation between one thought and another is signified by the verb “to determine.” Such explanation as our author deemed it necessary to give, may be found a few pages further back. He there stated, that by determining a notion, he means adding on more characters, by each of which “we limit or determine more and more the abstract vagueness or extension of the notion; until at last, if every attribute be annexed, the sum of attributes contained in the notion becomes convertible with the sum of attributes of which some concrete individual or reality is the complement.”^† Substituting, then, the definition for what it defines, we find our author’s opinion to be, that two notions can only be congruent, that is, capable of being blended into one, if we conceive one of them as adding on additional attributes to the other. This is not yet very clear. We must have recourse to his illustration. “For example, we cannot think the two attributes electrical and polar as a single notion, unless we convert the one of these attributes into a subject, to be determined or qualified by the other.” Do we ever think the two attributes electrical and polar as a single notion? We think them as distinct parts of the same notion, that is, as attributes which are constantly combined. “But if we do,—if we say, what is electrical is polar, we at once reduce the duality to unity; we judge that polar is one of the constituent characters of the notion electrical, or that what is electrical is contained under the class of things, marked out by the common character of polarity.”^‡ The last italics are mine, intended to mark the place where an intelligible meaning first emerges. “We may, therefore, articulately define a judgment or proposition to be the product of that act in which we pronounce that of two notions, thought as subject and as predicate, the one does or does not constitute a part of the other, either in the quantity of Extension, or in the quantity of Comprehension.”^§

This is Sir W. Hamilton’s second theory of Judgment, enunciated at a distance of exactly three pages from the first, without the smallest suspicion on his part that they are not one and the same. Yet they differ by the whole interval which separates a part of from along with. According to the first theory, concepts are recognised as congruent whenever they are not mutually repugnant; when they are capable of being objectively realized along with one another; when the attributes comprehended in both of them can be simultaneously possessed by the same object. According to the second theory, they are only congruent when the one concept is actually a part of the other. The only circumstance in which the two theories resemble is, that both of them are unfolded out of the vague expression “capable of being connected in thought.”^[*] They are, in fact, two different and conflicting interpretations of that expression. How irreconcilable they are, is apparent when we descend to particulars. Krug’s examples, learning and virtue, beauty and riches, &c., are congruent in the first sense, since they are attributes which can be thought as existing together in the same subject. But is the concept learning a part of the concept virtue, the concept beauty a part of the concept riches, or vice versâ? Sir W. Hamilton would scarcely affirm that they are in a relation of part and whole in Comprehension; and such relation as they have in Extension is not a relation between the concepts, but between the aggregates of real things of which they are predicable. One of those aggregates might be part of the other, though it is not; but one of the concepts can never be part of the other. No one can ever find the notion beauty in the notion riches, nor conversely.

Our author having thus gently slid back into the common Conceptualist theory of judgment, that it consists in recognising the identity or non-identity of two notions, adheres to it thenceforward with as much consistency as we need ever expect to find in him. We may consider as his final theory of Judgment, on which his subsequent logical speculations are built, that a judgment is a recognition in thought, a proposition a statement in words, that one notion is or is not a part of another. He makes use of the word notion ^b(doubtless)^b to include the case in which either of the terms of the proposition is singular. The two notions, one of which is recognised as being or not being a part of the other, may be either Concepts, that is, General Notions, or one of them may be a mental representation of an individual object.

The first objection which, I think, must occur to any one, on the contemplation of this definition, is that it omits the main and characteristic element of a judgment and of a proposition. Do we never judge or assert anything but our mere notions of things? Do we not make judgments and assert propositions respecting actual things? A Concept is a mere creation of the mind: it is the mental representation formed within us of a phænomenon; or rather, it is a part of that mental representation, marked off by a sign, for a particular purpose. But when we judge or assert, there is introduced a new element, that of objective reality, and a new mental fact, Belief. Our judgments, and the assertions which express them, do not enunciate our mere mode of mentally conceiving things, but our conviction or persuasion that the facts as conceived actually exist: and a theory of Judgments and Propositions which does not take account of this, cannot be the true theory. In the words of Reid, “I give the name of Judgment to every determination of the mind concerning what is true or what is false. This, I think, is what logicians, from the days of Aristotle, have called judgment.”^* And this is the very element which Sir W. Hamilton’s definition omits from it.

I am aware that Sir W. Hamilton would have an apparent answer to this. He would, I suppose, reply, that the belief of actual reality, implied in assent to a proposition, is not left out of account, but brought to account in another place. The belief, he would say, is not inherent in the judgment, but in the notions which are the subject and predicate of the judgment; these being either mental representations of real objects, which if represented in the mind at all, must be represented as real, or Concepts formed by a comparison of real objects, which therefore exist in the mind as concepts of realities. Accordingly, when we judge and make assertions respecting objects known to be imaginary, the judgments are accompanied with no belief in any real existence except that of the mental images; what our author calls the “presentations of phantasy.”^[*] When, indeed, a judgment is formed or an assertion is made respecting something imaginary which is supposed to be real, as for instance concerning a ghost, there is a belief in the real existence of more than the mental image; but this belief is not anything superadded to the comparison of concepts; it already existed in the concepts; a ghost was thought as something having a real existence.

This, at least, is what might be said in behalf of Sir W. Hamilton, though he has not himself said it. But though it ^cescapes from^c the objection ^dagainst^d omitting the element Belief from the definition of Judgment, it does so by an entire inversion of the logical process of definition. The element of Belief, or Reality, may indeed be in the concepts; but it never could have got into the concepts, if it had not first been in the judgments by which the concepts were constructed. If the belief of reality had been absent from those judgments originally, it never could have come round to them through the concepts. Belief is an essential element in a judgment; it may be either present or absent in a concept. Our author, and those who agree with him, postpone this part of the subject until they are treating of the distinction between True and False Propositions. They then say, that if the relation which is judged to exist between the notions, exists between the corresponding realities, the proposition is true, and if not, false. But if the operation of forming a judgment or a proposition includes anything at all, it includes judging that the judgment or the proposition is true. The recognition of it as true is not only an essential part, but the essential element of it as a judgment; leave that out, and there remains a mere play of thought, in which no judgment is passed. It is impossible to separate the idea of Judgment from the idea of the truth of a judgment; for every judgment consists in judging something to be true. The element Belief, instead of being an accident which can be passed in silence, and admitted only by implication, constitutes the very difference between a judgment and any other intellectual fact, and it is contrary to all the laws of Definition to define Judgment by anything else. The very meaning of a judgment, or a proposition, is something which is capable of being believed or disbelieved; which can be true or false; to which it is possible to say yes or no. And though it cannot be believed until it has been conceived, or (in plain terms) understood, the real object of belief is not the concept, or any relation of the concept, but the fact conceived. That fact need not be an outward fact; it may be a fact of internal or mental experience. But even then the fact is one thing, the concept of it is another, and the judgment is concerning the fact, not the concept. The fact may be purely subjective, as that I dreamed something last night; but the judgment is not the cognition of a relation between the presentation I and the concept having dreamed, but the cognition of the real memory of a real event.

This first, and insuperable objection, the force of which will be seen more and more the further we proceed, is applicable to the Conceptualist doctrine of Judgment, howsoever expressed, and to Sir W. Hamilton’s as one of the modes of expressing that doctrine. There are other objections special to Sir W. Hamilton’s form of it.

In what I have called Sir W. Hamilton’s first theory of judgment, we found him saying that the comparison, ending in a recognition of congruence or confliction, may be between “individual things”^[*] as well as between concepts. But in his second theory, one at least of the terms of comparison must be a concept. For a judgment, according to this theory, is “the product of that act in which we pronounce that of two notions, thought as subject and predicate, the one does or does not constitute a part of the other.”^[†] Now a concept, that is, a bundle of attributes, may be a part of another concept, and may be a part of our mental image of an individual object; but one notion of an individual object cannot be a part of another notion of an individual object. One object may be an integrant part of another, but it cannot be a part in Comprehension or in Extension, as these words are understood of a Concept. St. Paul’s is an integrant part of London, but neither an attribute of it, nor an object of which it is predicable.

Since, therefore, a judgment, in Sir W. Hamilton’s second theory, is the recognition of the relation of part and whole, either between two concepts, or between a concept and an individual presentation; the theory supposes that the mind furnishes itself with concepts, or general notions, before it begins to judge. Now this is not only evidently false, but the contrary is asserted, in the most decisive terms, by Sir W. Hamilton himself. He affirms, and it is denied by nobody, that every Concept is built up by a succession of judgments. We conceive an object mentally as having such and such an attribute, because we have first judged that it has that attribute in reality. Let us see what our author says on this point in his Lectures on Metaphysics. He says that there is a judgment involved in every mental act.

And in a subsequent part of his Course:

But if judgment is a comparison of two concepts, or of a concept and an individual object, and a recognition that one of them is a part of (or even merely congruent with) the other, it must be a process “always subsequent to the acquisition of knowledge,” or, in other words, to the formation of Concepts. The theory of Judgment in the third volume of the Lectures, belongs to a different mode of thinking altogether from the theory of Consciousness in the first and second; and when Sir W. Hamilton was occupied with either of them, he must have temporarily forgotten the other.

But in the third volume itself the same inconsistency is obtruded on us still more openly. We are there told in plain words,

That the same philosopher should have written these words, and a little more than a hundred pages after should have defined a judgment as the result of a comparison of concepts, either between themselves, or with individual objects, is, I think, the very crown of the self-contradictions which we have found to be sown so thickly in Sir W. Hamilton’s speculations. Coming from a thinker of such ability, it almost makes one despair of one’s own intellect and that of mankind, and feel as if the attainment of truth on any of the more complicated subjects of thought were impossible.

It is necessary to renounce one of these theories or the other. Either a concept is not the “synthesis and record of one or more prior acts of judgment,” or a judgment is not, at least in all cases, the recognition of a relation of which one or both of the terms are Concepts. The least that could be required of Sir W. Hamilton would be so to modify his doctrine as to admit two kinds of judgment: the one kind, that by which concepts are formed, the other that which succeeds their formation. When concepts have been formed, and we subsequently proceed to analyse them, then, he might say, we form judgments which recognise one concept as a whole, of which another is a part. But the judgments by which we constructed the concepts, and every subsequent judgment by which, to use his own words, we amplify them by the addition of a new attribute, have nothing to do with comparison of concepts: it is the Anschauungen, the intuitions, the presentations of experience, which we in this case compare and judge.^*

Take, for instance, Sir W. Hamilton’s own example of a judgment, “Water rusts iron:”^[*] and let us suppose this truth to be new to us. Is it not like a mockery to say with our author, that we know this truth by comparing “the thoughts, water, iron, and rusting”? Ought he not to have said the facts, water, iron, and rusting? and even then, is comparing the proper name for the mental operation? We do not examine whether three thoughts agree, but whether three outward facts coexist. If we lived till doomsday we should never find the proposition that water rusts iron in our concepts, if we had not first found it in the outward phænomena. The proposition expresses a sequence, and what we call a causation, not between our concepts, but between the two sensible presentations of moistened iron and rust. When we have already judged this sequence to exist outside us, that is, independently of our intellectual combinations, we know it, and once known, it may find its way into our concepts. But we cannot elicit out of a concept any judgment which we have not first put into it; which we have not consciously assented to, in the act of forming the concept. Whenever, therefore, we form a new judgment—judge a truth new to us—the judgment is not a recognition of a relation between concepts, but of a succession, a coexistence, or a similitude, between facts.

This is the smallest sacrifice on the part of Sir W. Hamilton’s theory of Judgment, which would satisfy his theory of Consciousness. But when thus reconciled with a part of his system with which it now conflicts, it would not be the better founded. It might still be chased from point to point, unable to make a stand anywhere. For let us next suppose, that the judgment is not new; that the truth, Water rusts iron, is known to us of old. When we again think of it, and think it as a truth, and assent to it, should we even then give a correct account of what passes in our mind, by calling this act of judgment a comparison of our thoughts—our concepts—our notions—of water, rust, and iron? We do not compare our artificial mental constructions, but consult our direct remembrance of facts. We call to mind that we have seen, or learned from credible testimony, that when iron is long in contact with water, it rusts. The question is not one of notions, but of beliefs; belief of past and expectation of future presentations of sense. Of course it is psychologically true that when I believe, I have a notion of that which I believe; but the ultimate appeal is not to the notion, but to the presentation or intuition. If I am in any doubt, what is the question I ask myself? Is it—Do I think of, or figure to myself, water as rusting iron? or is it—Did I ever perceive, and have other people perceived, that water rusts iron? There are persons, no doubt, whose criterion of judgment is the relation between their own concepts, but these are not the persons whose judgments the world has usually found worth adopting. If the question between Copernicus and Ptolemy had depended on whether we conceive the earth moving and the sun at rest, or the sun moving and the earth at rest, I am afraid the victory would have been with Ptolemy.

But, again, even if judging were entirely a notional operation, consisting of the recognition of some relation between concepts, it remains to be proved that the relation is that of Whole and Part. Could it, even then, be said, that every judgment in which I predicate one thing of another, on the faith of previous judgments recorded, as our author says, in the concepts, consists in recognising that one of the concepts includes the other as a part of itself? When I judge that Socrates is mortal, or that all men are mortal, does the judgment consist in being conscious that my concept mortal is part of my representation of Socrates, or of my concept man?

This doctrine ignores the famous distinction, admitted, I suppose, in some shape or other, by all philosophers, but most familiar to modern metaphysics in the form in which it is stated by Kant—the distinction between Analytical and Synthetical judgments. Analytical judgments are supposed to unfold the contents of a concept; affirming explicitly of a class, attributes which were already part of the corresponding concept, and may be brought out into distinct consciousness by mere analysis of it. Synthetical judgments, on the contrary, affirm of a class, attributes which are not in the concept, and which we therefore do not and cannot judge to be a part of the concept, but only to be conjoined in fact with the attributes composing the concept. This distinction, though obtruded upon our author by many of the writers with whom he was familiar, has so little in common with his mode of thought, that he only slightly refers to it, in a very few passages of his works: in one of these, however,^* he speaks of it as of something very important, ^eexpresses his preference for the terms Explicative and Ampliative as names for it^e , and discusses, not the distinction itself, but its history; apparently unconscious that his own theory entirely does away with it. According to that, all judgments are analytical, or, ^fas he prefers to say^f , explicative. Even giving up so much of his theory as contradicts his own doctrine on the formation of concepts, the part remaining would compel him to maintain that all judgments which are not new are analytical, and that synthetical judgments are limited to truths, or supposed truths, which we learn for the first time.^g

This discrepancy between our author and almost all philosophers, even of his own general way of thinking, (including, among the rest, Mr. Mansel), arises from the fact, that he understands by concept something different from what they have usually understood by it. The concept of a class, in Sir W. Hamilton’s acceptation of the term, includes all the attributes which we have judged, and still judge, to be common to the whole class. It means, in short, our entire knowledge of the class. But, with philosophers in general, the concept of the class as such,—my concept of man, for example, as distinguished from my mental representation of an individual man,—includes, not all the attributes which I ascribe to man, but such of them only as the classification is grounded on, and as are implied in the meaning of the name. Man is a living being, or Man is rational, they would call analytical judgments, because the attributes ^hof^h life and rationality are of the number of those which are already given in the concept Man: but Man is mortal, they would account synthetical, because, familiar as the fact is, it is not already affirmed in the very name Man, but has to be superadded in the predicate.

It is quite lawful for a philosopher (though seldom prudent) to alter the meaning of a word, provided he gives fair notice of his intention; but he is bound, if he does so, to remain consistent with himself in the new meaning, and not to transfer to it propositions which are only true in the old. This condition Sir W. Hamilton does not observe. It often happens that different opinions of his belong to different and inconsistent systems of thought, apparently through his retaining from former writers some doctrine, the grounds of which he has, by another doctrine, subverted. His whole theory of Concepts being infected by an inconsequence of this description, the retention of all the Conceptualist conclusions along with Nominalist premises, it is no wonder if further oversights of the same kind meet us in every part of the details. The following is one of the most palpable. As we just mentioned, the concept of a class in our author’s sense, includes all the attributes of the class, so far as the thinker is acquainted with them; the whole of the thinker’s knowledge of the class. This is Sir W. Hamilton’s own doctrine; but along with it he retains a doctrine belonging to the other meaning of Concept, which I have contrasted with his. “The exposition of the Comprehension of a notion is called its Definition:”^* and again “Definition is the analysis of a complex concept into its component parts or attributes.”^† But a thing is not analysed into its component parts if any of the parts are left out. The two opinions taken together lead, therefore, to the remarkable consequence, that the definition of a class ought to include the whole of what is known of the class. Those who mean by the concept not all known attributes of the class, but such only as are included in the connotation of the name, may be permitted to say of a Definition that it is the analysis of the concept: but to Sir W. Hamilton this was not permissible. To crown the inconsistency, he still presents the stock example, Man is a rational animal, as a good definition, and a typical specimen of what a Definition is;^‡ as if the notions animal and rational exhausted the whole of the concept Man, according to his meaning of Concept—the entire sum of the attributes common to the class. It would hardly be believed, prior to a minute examination of his writings, how much vagueness of thought, leading to the unsuspecting admission of opposite doctrines in the same breath, lurks under the specious appearance of philosophical precision which distinguishes him.^§

To return, from Sir W. Hamilton’s self-contradictions, to the merits of the question itself; the word Judgment, by universal consent, is coextensive with the word Proposition: a Judgment must be so defined that a Proposition shall be the expression of it in words. Now, if a Judgment expresses a relation between Concepts (which for the purpose of the present discussion I have conceded) the corresponding Proposition represents that same relation by means of names: the names, therefore, must be signs of the concepts, and the concepts must be the meaning of the names. To make this tenable, the Concept must be so construed as to consist of those attributes only which are connoted by the name. Corporeity, life, rationality, and any other attributes of man which are part of the meaning of the word, insomuch that where those attributes were not, we should withhold the name of man—these are part of the concept. But mortality, and all the other human attributes which are the subject of treatises either on the human body or on human nature, are not in the concept, because we do not affirm them of any individual by merely calling him a man; they are so much additional knowledge. The concept Man is not the sum of all the attributes of a man, but only of the essential attributes—of those which constitute him a man; in other words, those on which the class Man is grounded, and which are connoted by the name—what used to be called the essence of Man, that without which Man cannot be, or in other words, would not be what he is called. Without mortality, or without thirty-two teeth, he would still be called a man: we should not say, This is not a man; we should say, This man is not mortal, or has fewer than thirty-two teeth.

Instead, therefore, of saying with Sir W. Hamilton, that the attributes composing the concept of the predicate are part of those which compose the concept of the subject, we ought to say, they are either a part, or are invariably conjoined with them, not in our conception, but in fact. Propositions in which the concept of the predicate is part of the concept of the subject, or, to express ourselves more philosophically, in which the attributes connoted by the predicate are part of those connoted by the subject, are a kind of Identical Propositions: they convey no information, but at most remind us of what, if we understood the word which is the subject of the proposition, we knew as soon as the word was pronounced. Propositions of this kind are either definitions, or parts of definitions. These judgments are analytical: they analyse the connotation of the subject-name, and predicate separately the different attributes which the name asserts collectively. All other affirmative judgments are synthetical, and affirm that some attribute or set of attributes is, not a part of those connoted by the subject-name, but an invariable accompaniment of them.^*

There remains something to be said on another very prominent feature in Sir W. Hamilton’s theory of Judgment. Having said, that in every judgment we compare “two notions, thought as subject and predicate,” and pronounce that “the one does or does not constitute a part of the other,” he adds, “either in the quantity of Extension, or in the quantity of Comprehension.”^* He developes this distinction as follows:

I shall not insist on such of the objections to this passage as have been sufficiently stated; the impropriety, for instance, of saying that the notion Man contains the predicate two-legged, when that attribute is evidently not part of the signification of the word; or that the meaning of a proposition is, that an attribute is part of a notion: which, the first time it is observed, it cannot possibly be, and at no time is this the thing asserted by a proposition, unless by those which are avowedly definitions. All these considerations I at present forego: and I will even give our author’s theory its necessary correction, by restoring to Propositions the alternative meaning which belongs to them, namely, that a certain attribute is either part of a given set of attributes, or invariably coexists with them. Having thus dissociated the doctrine in the quotation from all errors which are incidental and not essential to it, we may state it as follows:—Every proposition is capable of being understood in two meanings, which involve one another, inasmuch as if either of them is true the other is so, but which are nevertheless different; of which only one may be, and commonly is, in the mind; and the words used do not always show which. Thus, All men are bipeds, may either mean, that the objects called men are all of them numbered among the objects called bipeds, which is interpreting the proposition in Extension; or that the attribute of having two feet is one of, or coexists with, the attributes which compose the notion Man: which is interpreting the proposition in Comprehension.

I maintain, that these two supposed meanings of the proposition are not two matters of fact or of thought, reciprocally inferrible from one another, but one and the same fact, written in different ways; that the supposed meaning in Extension is not a meaning at all, until interpreted by the meaning in Comprehension; that all concepts and general names which enter into Propositions, require to be construed in Comprehension, and that their Comprehension is the whole of their meaning.

That the meaning in Extension follows if the meaning in Comprehension is granted, is a point which both sides are agreed in. If the attribute signified by biped is either one of, or always conjoined with, the attributes signified by man, we are entitled to assert that the class Man is included in, is a part of, the class Biped. But my position is, that this second assertion is not a conclusion from, but a mere repetition of, the first. For what is the second assertion, if we leave out of it all reference to the attributes? It can then only mean, that we have ascertained the fact independently of the attributes—that is, that we have examined the aggregate whole “all men,” and the still greater aggregate whole “all bipeds,” and that all the former were found among the latter. Now, do we assert this? or would it be true? Assuredly no one of us ever represented and contemplated, even with his mind’s eye, either of these wholes: still less did we ever compare them as realities, and ascertain that the fact is as stated. Neither could this be done, by anything short of infinite power: for all men and all bipeds, except a comparatively few, have either ceased to exist, or have not yet come into existence. What, then, do we mean by making an assertion concerning all men? The phrase does not mean, all and each of a certain great number of objects, known or represented individually. It means, all and each of an unascertained and indefinite number, mostly not known or represented at all, but which if they came within our opportunities of knowledge, might be recognised by the possession of a certain set of attributes, namely, those forming the connotation of the word^k . “All men,” and “the class man,” are expressions which point to nothing but attributes; they cannot be interpreted except in comprehension. To say, all men are bipeds, is merely to say, given the attributes of man, that of being a biped will be found along with them; which is the meaning in Comprehension. If the proposition has nothing to do with the concept Man except as to its comprehension, still less has it with the concept Biped. When I say, All men are bipeds, what has my assertion to do with the class biped as to its Extension? Have I any concern with the remainder of the class, after Man is subtracted from it? Am I necessarily aware even whether there is any remainder at all? I am thinking of no such matter, but only of the attribute two-footed, and am intending to predicate that. I am thinking of it as an attribute of man, but of what else it may happen to be an attribute does not concern me. Thus, all propositions into which general names enter, and consequently all reasonings, are in Comprehension only. Propositions and Reasonings may be written in Extension, but they are always understood in Comprehension. The only exception is in the case of propositions which have no meaning in Comprehension, and have nothing to do with Concepts—those of which both the subject and the predicate are proper names; such as, Tully is Cicero, or, St. Peter is not St. Paul. These words connote nothing, and the only meaning they have is the individual whom they denote. But where a meaning in Comprehension, or, in other words, in Connotation, is possible, that is always the one intended. And Sir W. Hamilton’s distinction (though he lays great stress on it) between Reasoning in Comprehension and Reasoning in Extension, will be found (as we shall see hereafter)^[*] to be a mere superfetation on Logic.

It is worth while to add, that even could it be admitted that general propositions have a meaning in Extension capable of being conceived as different from their meaning in Comprehension, Sir W. Hamilton would still be wrong in deeming that the recognition of this meaning depends on, or can possibly result from, a comparison of the Concepts. The Extension of a concept, as I have before remarked, is not, like the Comprehension, intrinsic and essential to the concept; it is an external and wholly accidental relation of the concept, and no contemplation or analysis of the concept itself will tell us anything about it. It is an abstract name for the aggregate of objects possessing the attributes included in the concept: and whether that aggregate is greater or smaller does not depend on any properties of the concept, but on the boundless productive powers of Nature.

[[*] ]Cf. Mill’s System of Logic, Bk. I, Chap. vi, §3, in Collected Works, Vol. VII, p. 115.

[* ]Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 225-6.

[* ]Ibid., pp. 213-14.

[a-a]651, 652 do

[† ]Ibid., p. 214. [Cf. Krug, Logik, pp. 118-20.]

[* ]Ibid., pp. 226-7.

[† ]Ibid., p. 194.

[‡ ]Ibid., p. 227.

[§ ]Ibid., p. 229.

[[*] ]Cf. ibid., p. 227.

[b-b]651, 652 , doubtless,

[* ]Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Works, p. 415.

[[*] ]Cf. Lectures, Vol. III, p. 131.

[c-c]651, 652 evades

[d-d]651, 652, 67 to

[[*] ]Ibid., p. 226.

[[†] ]Ibid., p. 229.

[* ]Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 204-5. [The words in square brackets are Mill’s.]

[* ]Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 277-8.

[† ]Ibid., Vol. III, p. 117.

[* ]This mode of escape from contradiction is the one which has, in substance, been resorted to by Mr. Mansel. He distinguishes what he terms Psychological from what he denominates Logical judgments. Psychological judgments merely assert that some object of consciousness, either external or internal, is present: they “may be generally stated in the proposition, This is here.” These are the only judgments which are implied in, and necessary to, the formation of Concepts: and these judgments, as they assert a matter of present consciousness, are necessarily true. “But the psychological judgment must not be confounded with the logical. The former is the judgment of a relation betweenthe conscious subject and the immediate object of consciousness: the latter is the judgment of a relation which two objects of thought bear to each other. . . . The logical judgment necessarily contains two concepts, and hence must be regarded as logically and chronologically posterior to the conception, which requires one only.” (Prolegomena Logica, pp. 53-5.)

But the operation by which a concept is built up, supposes much more than a cognition of the present existence of a fact or facts of consciousness, and a judgment in the form, “This is here.” It supposes the whole process of comparing facts of consciousness, and recognising, or in other words, judging, in what points they resemble. It implies that the mind, in its “psychological” judgments, does to the Intuitions or Presentations everything which it is supposed to do to the Concepts in the “logical” ones. Consequently the distinction between Mr. Mansel’s two kinds of judgments is in their matter only, not in the mental operation, and is therefore, as he would say, extra-logical; to which I will add, insignificant. It will be shown in the text that there is no psychological difference between the two, and that the discrimination of one class of judgments as conversant with Presentations and another with Concepts, and the attribution to the latter class of the name of logical, are founded on a false theory.

[[*] ]Lectures, Vol. III, p. 227.

[* ]“Dissertations on Reid,” [Note A,] pp. 787n-8n.

[e-e]651, 652 proposes new names for it (Explicative and Ampliative)

[f-f]651, 652 in his own phrase

[g]651, 652 And this, I presume, was what he had in his mind when he suggested, as proper for synthetical judgments, the name of ampliative.

[h-h]+67, 72

[* ]Lectures, Vol. III, p. 143.

[† ]Ibid., p. 151.

[‡ ]Ibid., pp. 143-4.

[§ ]In his non-recognition of the difference between Analytical and Synthetical judgments, it is already implied that he never recognises the Connotation of Names; which in itself is enough to vitiate his whole logical system, and is a great point of inferiority in him to the best Conceptualist thinkers, who do recognise it, though in a misleading phraseology. To the same cause may be ascribed the extremely vulgar character of the explanation of some of the leading metaphysical terms, in his eighth Lecture. For example, the distinction between essential and accidental qualities he defines thus—that the essential qualities of a thing are those “which it cannot lose without ceasing to be.” [Ibid., Vol. I, p. 150.] This, which is a retrogression from Conceptualism to Realism, does but prove that he simply transcribed his definition from the Realistic Schoolmen. In a later part of his Lectures (Vol. IV, p. 11) he, more suo, forgets this definition, and replaces it by ione of his owni ; but in this second definition he betrays that he never saw the genuine meaning which lay under the distinction, so badly expressed by the schoolmen in the language of a false system. Sir W. Hamilton, in distinguishing Essential from Unessential properties, means only the difference between attributes of the whole genus, and those confined to some of its species. Sir W. Hamilton’s knowledge of the scholastic writings was extraordinary; but many students of them who had not a tithe of that knowledge, have brought back and appropriated much more of the important materials for thought which those writings abundantly contain.

[* ]This is perfectly understood by Mr. Mansel, who says, “When I assert that A is B, I do not mean that the attributes constituting the concept A are identical with those constituting the concept B, for this is only true in identical judgments; but that the object in which the one set of attributes is found, is the same as that in which the other is found. To assert that all philosophers are liable to error is not to assert that the signification of the term philosopher is identical with that of liable to error; but that the attributes comprehended in these two distinct terms are in some manner united in the same subject.” (Prolegomena Logica, pp. 58-9.) What Mr. Mansel here enunciates distinctly, was contained, though less distinctly, in Sir W. Hamilton’s first theory of judgment, especially as he illustrated it from Krug. [See Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 225-48; see Krug, Logik, §57.] In adhering to that first theory, as well as in limiting the concept to the attributes connoted by the name—for that limitation clearly results from his definition of a Concept (p. 60), in combination with other passages—Mr. Mansel, as it appears to me, is much nearer the truth than Sir W. Hamilton; and would perhaps be nearer still, if he were not entangled in the meshes of the Hamiltonian phraseology.

An example how that phraseology controls him, is his strange assertion that every concept “must contain a plurality of attributes” as a condition of its conceivability; “for a simple idea, like a summum genus, is by itself inconceivable.” Inconceivable it truly is, but not in any sense in which conceivability is required of a concept: only in the sense of not being conceivable separately. “Simple ideas are never conceived as such, but only as forming parts of a complex object;” in other words, they are inconceivable in the sense in which, according to Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine and Mr. Mansel’s own, all concepts are inconceivable. (Prolegomena Logica, pp. 184-5.)

From a similar entanglement, although his account of Definition and Division is decidedly better than Sir W. Hamilton’s, he follows that philosopher in treating the latter logical operation as a division of the Concept: as if the concept were divided by dividing the things which it is predicable of (ibid., pp. 191-4).

jDr. M‘Cosh thinks that there are judgments (other than those in which the predicates are proper names) which do not affirm or deny attributes, viz. those in which we compare what he terms “mere Abstracts.” “We cannot call such attributive; thus, there would be no propriety in saying that 4 is an attribute of 2 + 2.” ([Examination,] p. 294.) But is not making 4, an attribute of 2 + 2? Further on he says, that the predicate in this class of propositions “has no quantity or extension, for it is not a class notion. When we say that 3 × 3 = 9, neither subject nor predicate has an indefinite number of objects embraced in it.” (Ibid., p. 333.) The objects embraced in 9 are nine apples, nine marbles, nine hours, nine miles, and all the other aggregations of which nine can be predicated. Every numeral is the name of a class, and a most comprehensive class, consisting of things of all imaginable qualities. And the same observation applies to 3 × 3.j

[* ]Lectures, Vol. III, p. 229.

[† ]Ibid., pp. 231-3.

[k]651 Man

[[*] ]See pp. 386ff. below.

[§ ]In his non-recognition of the difference between Analytical and Synthetical judgments, it is already implied that he never recognises the Connotation of Names; which in itself is enough to vitiate his whole logical system, and is a great point of inferiority in him to the best Conceptualist thinkers, who do recognise it, though in a misleading phraseology. To the same cause may be ascribed the extremely vulgar character of the explanation of some of the leading metaphysical terms, in his eighth Lecture. For example, the distinction between essential and accidental qualities he defines thus—that the essential qualities of a thing are those “which it cannot lose without ceasing to be.” [Ibid., Vol. I, p. 150.] This, which is a retrogression from Conceptualism to Realism, does but prove that he simply transcribed his definition from the Realistic Schoolmen. In a later part of his Lectures (Vol. IV, p. 11) he, more suo, forgets this definition, and replaces it by ione of his owni ; but in this second definition he betrays that he never saw the genuine meaning which lay under the distinction, so badly expressed by the schoolmen in the language of a false system. Sir W. Hamilton, in distinguishing Essential from Unessential properties, means only the difference between attributes of the whole genus, and those confined to some of its species. Sir W. Hamilton’s knowledge of the scholastic writings was extraordinary; but many students of them who had not a tithe of that knowledge, have brought back and appropriated much more of the important materials for thought which those writings abundantly contain.

[* ]This is perfectly understood by Mr. Mansel, who says, “When I assert that A is B, I do not mean that the attributes constituting the concept A are identical with those constituting the concept B, for this is only true in identical judgments; but that the object in which the one set of attributes is found, is the same as that in which the other is found. To assert that all philosophers are liable to error is not to assert that the signification of the term philosopher is identical with that of liable to error; but that the attributes comprehended in these two distinct terms are in some manner united in the same subject.” (Prolegomena Logica, pp. 58-9.) What Mr. Mansel here enunciates distinctly, was contained, though less distinctly, in Sir W. Hamilton’s first theory of judgment, especially as he illustrated it from Krug. [See Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 225-48; see Krug, Logik, §57.] In adhering to that first theory, as well as in limiting the concept to the attributes connoted by the name—for that limitation clearly results from his definition of a Concept (p. 60), in combination with other passages—Mr. Mansel, as it appears to me, is much nearer the truth than Sir W. Hamilton; and would perhaps be nearer still, if he were not entangled in the meshes of the Hamiltonian phraseology.

An example how that phraseology controls him, is his strange assertion that every concept “must contain a plurality of attributes” as a condition of its conceivability; “for a simple idea, like a summum genus, is by itself inconceivable.” Inconceivable it truly is, but not in any sense in which conceivability is required of a concept: only in the sense of not being conceivable separately. “Simple ideas are never conceived as such, but only as forming parts of a complex object;” in other words, they are inconceivable in the sense in which, according to Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine and Mr. Mansel’s own, all concepts are inconceivable. (Prolegomena Logica, pp. 184-5.)

From a similar entanglement, although his account of Definition and Division is decidedly better than Sir W. Hamilton’s, he follows that philosopher in treating the latter logical operation as a division of the Concept: as if the concept were divided by dividing the things which it is predicable of (ibid., pp. 191-4).

jDr. M‘Cosh thinks that there are judgments (other than those in which the predicates are proper names) which do not affirm or deny attributes, viz. those in which we compare what he terms “mere Abstracts.” “We cannot call such attributive; thus, there would be no propriety in saying that 4 is an attribute of 2 + 2.” ([Examination,] p. 294.) But is not making 4, an attribute of 2 + 2? Further on he says, that the predicate in this class of propositions “has no quantity or extension, for it is not a class notion. When we say that 3 × 3 = 9, neither subject nor predicate has an indefinite number of objects embraced in it.” (Ibid., p. 333.) The objects embraced in 9 are nine apples, nine marbles, nine hours, nine miles, and all the other aggregations of which nine can be predicated. Every numeral is the name of a class, and a most comprehensive class, consisting of things of all imaginable qualities. And the same observation applies to 3 × 3.j

[ione of his owni]651, 652 another, drawn from his own thoughts

[jDr. M‘Cosh thinks that there are judgments (other than those in which the predicates are proper names) which do not affirm or deny attributes, viz. those in which we compare what he terms “mere Abstracts.” “We cannot call such attributive; thus, there would be no propriety in saying that 4 is an attribute of 2 + 2.” ([Examination,] p. 294.) But is not making 4, an attribute of 2 + 2? Further on he says, that the predicate in this class of propositions “has no quantity or extension, for it is not a class notion. When we say that 3 × 3 = 9, neither subject nor predicate has an indefinite number of objects embraced in it.” (Ibid., p. 333.) The objects embraced in 9 are nine apples, nine marbles, nine hours, nine miles, and all the other aggregations of which nine can be predicated. Every numeral is the name of a class, and a most comprehensive class, consisting of things of all imaginable qualities. And the same observation applies to 3 × 3.j]+67, 72