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It is to be added that our concrete everyday judgments involve a much greater complexity of synthesis than the logical examination of propositions discloses. In other words, the complexity of the grammatical sentence (which the simplifications of logic are apt to hide from view) answers to a number of relations rather than to a single relation. Thus in the sentence, "He is the man who wrote such and such a book," we have, it is obvious, a relation of identity and of causal agency. Again, 'He was standing at that spot at the very moment that his brother was behaving in this way,' sets forth, it is evident, a relation of place, of time and of causation.1

§ 7. General Antecedents of Judgment. By help of this examination of the customary forms of the thought-synthesis we may indicate the more general psychical antecedents of the process of judging. We judge when our attention is specially drawn to a relation of difference, likeness, identity, and so forth. Hence a common stimulus to judgment is the observation of some change in our surroundings, as when a child notes that pussy is dirty, that his hat is on the floor (a new relation of place), and so forth. Along with change in the surroundings we may take as its equivalent the discovery of some new feature in a thing, as when the child finds out that puss has claws. All new juxtaposition of things obviously excites the mind to judge by bringing out relations of likeness and difference.

- Next to these presentative conditions of judgment we have certain representative ones. It may be said that we never judge without making use of pre-existing ideas. Even when the child says, 'Puss is dirty,' he must, it is obvious, be in possession of the idea of dirtiness. The assimilative function, which, as we have seen, runs through all varieties of judgment, depends on a firm retention of ideas. We cannot say 'This tone is a C,' without having in the mind a clear standard-idea of that The same remark applies to all our judgments with respect to change: for we cannot say that a thing is different from what it was unless the idea of the previous state is present.

note.

Again, since the suggestive processes always involve relations of contiguity or similarity, we may expect that these will play a large part in the formation of our judgments. Indeed,

and nothing else. If, however, the name of a colour or other physical attribute is nothing but a likeness, it would seem to follow that when I say "This rose is yellow," I really set forth a double relation, viz., of co-inherence and of likeness which may be expressed in the form There inheres in this (subject) a point of likeness to certain other things'.

1 Cf. Ward, loc. cit., p. 79, col. 2.

when not immediately prompted by a presentated relation, our judgments must be formed by help of such suggestion. This applies to all relations of time, place, substance, and cause that disclose themselves by means of a process of contiguous reinstatement. Thus, when looking at the low evening sun and judging that it is about to set, our thought obviously follows the lead of contiguous association. Similarly, when both terms are representative, as in judging from memory that Rome is north of Naples, that the Stuarts followed the Tudors, that the Dover cliffs are white, and so forth. Also it follows from what has been said that the workings of assimilative suggestion are a main stimulus to judgment. So far as judgment involves classification it directly depends on this process. Thus we judge that a particular colour is apple-green, that a painting is the work of an impressionist, and so forth, as the direct consequence of an assimilative reproduction of an idea.

§ 8. Judgment as Conditioned Process: Activity in Judgment. Our inquiry has shown that the combination of elements into a judgment is determined by certain conditions. We do not find the two related terms apart, and then arbitrarily attach them. The synthetic process in judgment is the conscious realisation of a connexion which is brought before the mind either in the fact of a co-presentation of the two terms at the moment, or by the mechanism of suggestion (contiguity or similarity). It is rendering explicit in clear consciousness something that was obscurely presented in the mental complex. At the same time, while the combination of elements is always ultimately conditioned, it involves in all its more explicit forms an active and selective factor. Thus even where the relation is directly presented, e.g., in the spatial relation of two simultaneously perceived objects, it is evident that the attention must direct itself to this relation, and selectively bring it into mental prominence. In many cases, too, this active element becomes more marked, as where the complex reproductive processes are involved, and associative tendencies have to be controlled. Thus in answering the question, 'Who was the author of such a work?' the active element takes the form of a volitional control of the suggestive mechanism,

1 This is well brought out by Wundt, Physiol. Psychologie, ii. p. 387.

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fixing or keeping before the mind what is helpful, and excluding irrelevant suggestions. Finally, this active control becomes still more conspicuous in those cases of complex judgment, to be referred to presently, where a comparison of alternatives is offered, as in the question 'Which of two authors' styles does this poem most closely resemble ? '1

Reference is here made only to judgments as developed into explicit verbal form, and as arrived at for the first time. So far as repetition and habit come in, the presence of the active selective element becomes less marked. Thus, in answering the question Who wrote Hamlet?' or 'Which comes first, the Stuart or Tudor dynasty?' the previous firm establishment of the thought-connexion expressed by the answer allows of a rapid quasi-automatic response. This, however, ought perhaps to be classed as pure process of associative reinstatement rather than as a judgment in the complete sense. The effect of such repetition shows itself not only in the re-formation of previously reached syntheses, but, in a less impressive manner, in the formation of syntheses like those previously formed, e.g., in the instantaneous discernment of space- and time-relations, "right and left," "before and after," and so forth. All this shows that, in the case of the higher processes of intellection, as well as in that of the lower, what we call practice, i.e., the repetition of the psycho-physical processes involved, tends to induce a subconscious and mechanical mode of performance. This has been recently illustrated in some remarkable experiments of Münsterberg, in which it was found that under particular conditions a question might be complicated up to a certain point without the reaction-time (i.e., the interval between the hearing of the question and the giving of the reply) being materially increased, and without the intervention of any clearly conscious activity in the shape of choice.2

1 The function of the will (voluntary attention) is much the same here as in the case of selective reproduction. (Cf. above, p. 346 ff.)

2 The increase of complication in the questioning may be illustrated by the two following: "Which is the most important German river?" "Which lies more to the west, Berlin or the most important German river?" The exact meaning of the results reached by these experiments is not as yet quite clear. It is to be noted that such question-extracted 'judgments' are carried out under highly artificial conditions. Thus there is a very severe preliminary adjustment of attention. This may be supposed to effect a commotion of particular cerebral tracts answering to the particular plexus of ideas dealt with, and as a result of such commotion to further a subsequent unconscious working out of the result, just as when we have been trying to recall a name it is apt to revive after a short interval without any further exertion of attention. It must be noted, moreover, that in most, if not all, of these cases of so-called judgment (including the answering of questions that seem to involve an appeal to a preferential selection, e.g., "Which is the finest of Goethe's dramas?") we readily recognise the fact that the decision has been carried out with some degree of explicitness long before the experiment begins, and is thus susceptible of being renewed by a process of verbal suggestion. (See, for Minsterberg's own interpretation of his results, Beiträge, i. cap. ii.)

§ 9. Synthetic and Analytic Judgments. Logicians distinguish between judgments which combine with the subject-notion a new element, as iron rusts,' and those which simply unfold a part of what was contained in the subject-notion, that is to say, of the connotation of the term, as iron is a material substance'. The first are specially marked off as synthetic judgments, while the second are distinguished as analytic judgments, that is, such as subserve the analytic setting forth of the constituents of the subject-notion. The most important class of analytic judgments are definitions. It is evident, however, that such an analytic judgment, though of great service in clearing up an obscure concept, is wanting in the characteristics of a true (synthetic) judgment, viz., a connecting of two distinct notions, and the representation of a corresponding relation between the two things.

The distinction of the synthetic and the analytic judgment here referred to is a logical one, drawn for the purpose of guiding our processes of thought according to a normal or common standard. It assumes that we all know the full meaning of our terms, and use them in the same sense, that is, give them the same connotation. The psychologist, however, is interested, as we have seen, not in the normal regulation of thought according to an objective standard, but in the growth of such thought in the individual mind. Hence, if he applies the terms analytical and synthetical to judgment, he must do so with reference to the individual's previous knowledge. According to this view, a judgment is (psychologically) analytical when it sets explicitly forth some element in a pre-existing idea, synthetical when it adds to this idea. Using the terms in this sense, we may say that our judgments illustrate partly the one, partly the other process. It has been suggested above, in our account of general ideas, that they are first formed as an undistinguished complex of marks. The child knows the dog as a presentative whole before it knows the constituent elements composing this whole. The gradual singling out and rendering clear of each of these may be called in a sense an analytical judgment.

Not only so, as was pointed out above, since all comparison involves analysis, every judgment of likeness and difference may be said to be in part, or regarded under one aspect, an analytical process. Thus if I say that this fruit is a melon, this

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man a Hindoo, it must be because in the given presentation I analytically single out a certain group of marks on the ground of which I classify it. We may say, then, that judgments of likeness (and of difference), while synthetic in the sense of establishing a relation, are analytic in the sense of detecting and setting forth in a new presentation-complex certain known elements.1

On the other hand, all advance in knowledge illustrates, as we have seen, the synthetic function of judgment. Thus in the development of our concepts we go on to observe new, i.e., as yet unobserved, features or marks, and join these by a synthetic process to previously observed marks. In this way our notions of things, e.g., the qualities of minerals, plants, etc., become more complex. Synthesis thus supplements analysis in the formation of our ideas of things.

§ 10. Judgment and Belief. Our examination into the synthetic process of judgment has disclosed the fact that every judgment involves a psychical element which is best marked off as belief. To judge that sugar is sweet, that Peter is like John, that the wind causes waves, and so forth, is to express our belief or conviction that the relation holds of the objective things or realities. This is commonly expressed by saying that when we assert anything we imply that the proposition is true, that is, corresponds to something real in the world of objects.2

The presence of belief may be made the test of a genuine act of judgment. Thus, if ideas are brought together by the capricious movements of fancy, as in idle reverie, and no belief accompanies the juxtaposition, there is, properly speaking, no judgment. Similarly, of course, if we repeat mere hearsay, of the truth of which we have no individual conviction, or, worse still, state that which we know to be uncertain or even untrue.

The precise psychological character of belief is a matter of dispute. We commonly speak of it as a feeling ('I feel sure,' 'I feel convinced') and this suggests that the mental state is

1 This is brought out by Volkmann in his treatment of the analytic judgment as a mode of apperception. (See his Psychologie, ii. § 121.)

We are commonly said to believe in a proposition; but the object of belief, as we shall see by-and-by, is always the reality to which the proposition refers. In believing in a proposition we believe in its truth, that is, its correspondence with such reality.