QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

I. Give a general description of the Objective Method.

2. What does Professor Green mean by "real and vital concepts"? 3. Illustrate at length the formula, "first the reality, and then the play of the mind about the reality."

4. For what formula is it proposed as a substitute, and why?

5. Why may we fail in our attempts to apply the Objective Method?

6. Illustrate your answer from your own experience.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS.

1. Is there any contradiction between the quotation made from Professor Green in this lesson and the one in the last?

2. Take any poem in your reading-books, and decide to what extent the fourth of the Herbartian steps should be taken.

LESSON XXXIII.

JUDGMENT.

Summary of Mental Steps up to the Formation of Concepts. - We have seen that our mental life begins with undifferentiated sensations; that the first step towards knowledge consists in their gradual transformation into definite sensations; that while they are thus being made definite they begin to be localized; that before they are definitely localized they begin to be gathered together in groups and thought of as qualities of objects; that in the first stage of the perception of objects, only their prominent, salient features those in which small classes resemble each other — are perceived, and that, therefore, individuals are confused with each other, not perceived as individuals; that the state of mind that results from the confusion of individuals the class-image-gradually changes into two very unlike things, a percept and a concept; that, on the one hand, it becomes a percept through the definite perception of differences; on the other, a concept through the perception of resemblances between individuals perceived to be individual.

Through the greater part of these experiences the mind has been active in a way to which, so far, we have paid no attention. When we study so complex a thing as the human mind, we have to study its various phases or activi

ties in succession; but we must remember that what we study successively exists contemporaneously.

Act of Judgment Illustrated.

We shall get a clearer idea of the activity of which I speak if we consider it first in a simple and very common form. I see a man coming down the street. At first I am uncertain whether it is John Smith or his brother. But as I look at him closely I notice a scar on his right cheek, just under his eye, and then I remember that John Smith once received a severe wound there. Immediately my mind passes from its state of doubt into a state of certainty; I say, That man is John Smith.

We may then denote the activity which we wish to study in a similar manner to that in which we denoted the activity of conception. As we said that conception is the activity of the mind that enables us to use general names intelligently, so we may say that judgment is the activity of the mind which is expressed in propositions.

Judgment is Sometimes Made Possible by the Laws of Association. Manifestly such an act of the mind is rendered possible by the laws of association. Through the laws of association I thought of the name of John Smith and of his brother. But there is a wide difference between the final act of my mind and the simple result of the laws of association As long as my mental state is due entirely to the laws of association, I have a percept and two images in mind the percept of the man before me, and the images of John Smith and his brother; but when I see the scar when I am no longer in doubt — the percept and the image of John Smith are fused into one, and,

WHY THE JUDGMENT WAS CONSCIOUS.

expressing this, I say, This man is John Smith.

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Such a

mental act is called a judgment, and the words in which

we express it are called a proposition.

If I had known

Why the Judgment was Conscious. the man was John Smith as soon as I saw him, it is evident that there would have been no conscious assertion expressed, or capable of being expressed, by the words, That man is John Smith. There was a conscious assertion, because there was, so to speak, a vacillation on the part of my percept. It stood midway between my image of John Smith and my image of his brother. Because I was conscious of this vacillation, I was conscious of my uncertainty, or rather in this vacillation my uncertainty consisted. But if, as soon as I had seen John Smith, the image of him as seen before had coalesced or fused with my percept, the act would have been so automatic that I should not have been conscious of it.

You can prove the truth of this by your own experience. As you went to school this morning, did you say or think to yourself, That is a tree, That is a house, That is a cow, as you passed these several objects? No, you merely recognized them— knew them directly—and were conscious of no mental assertion whatever. But suppose the cow had been wrapped in a buffalo robe, so as to look unlike any animal you had ever seen before. At a first glance you would not have recognized it. There would have been the same vacillation between your percept and the competing images that we have already observed in my experience. But when you had seen through the disguise, all but one of the competing images would have vanished; you would have performed a conscious mental

act that can only be described by a proposition a proposition - That is

a cow.

When Conscious Judgments First Appear. We can now see at what point in our mental life this conscious act first appeared. We have seen that a complete act of memory consists of retention, reproduction, recognition, and localization, and that memory begins to develop before imagination. Evidently, therefore, the mind recognizes things before it forms images of them when they are absent. Now this conscious act, which we have called judgment, first appears when there is an object before the mind of which it has a percept, and when the mind is uncertain to which of two images to refer it. If a child, familiar with oranges, sees a lemon for the first time, he at once classes it as an orange because of their likeness— there is no conscious act of judgment. But if he is familiar with both and the names of both, when he sees an orange at a little distance, by the law of association by similarity he may think of both an orange and a lemon — the image of both may arise in his mind and his percept may. vacillate between the two. When he gets nearer, and notices the peculiar shape and color of the object, he says, That is an orange. Evidently such a conscious act is not possible until the imagination is so far developed that two or more images arise in the mind in connection with the same percept, which the mind is not able to refer to either.

What Judgments Relate to. If we examine the three judgments we have considered-expressed in the propositions, That is John Smith, That is a cow, That is an