CHAP. V. Process CHAPTER V. ELABORATION OF KNOWLEDGE. SECTION I. PREDICATION. § 133. We now advance to the study of the illustrated highest psychological process which we propose to consider, and which we have designated by the name Elaboration. We have already studied many illustrations of this process in the preceding portions of our essay; and we are now to examine into the nature of the process itself. A few remarks will make clear to us the general character of the problems which we must endeavour to solve. We see an object before us; we affirm that it has four legs and a head, and a mane and a tail; we call it a horse; we say that it is an animal, or a vertebrated animal, or a mammal. Now, the question is, how or why do we make all these assertions? What mental processes are expressed in these assertions? Again, we assert that the exterior angle of every triangle is equal to the two interior and remote angles; by what mental process have we been able to make such an assertion? Or, perhaps, we affirm that the earth is a spheroidal body revolving round the sun; or that the sun and all its accompanying planets are speeding rapidly through space. How are such propositions as these reached by our minds? Or, further, we may assert that Alexander the Great was the conqueror of Persia, or that Gautama Buddha was the founder of a wide-spread form of Religion. Why do we make such affirmations? In short, there are a great many things which we know, although they are not immediately under the observation of our senses; there are a great many things, apparently very different from one another, which we connect together in various ways in our minds; there are a great many things which we firmly believe, although they have never been immediately known to us at all. Knowledge and belief of these various kinds are the result of a process which we have called Elaboration, and which has been variously denominated, Thought, Reasoning, Reflection, and so on. Our duty at present is to examine the nature of our mental activity in this process of enlarging and elaborating our knowledge. § 134. If we examine any part of our knowledge, whether the simplest or the most elaborate, we shall find that there is one manner in which it is uniformly expressed. When we look at an object before us, we assert, “That is white," or "That has four legs," or "That is a horse." When we compare different classes of objects together we assert, "A horse is an animal," or "The sun is a luminous body." The result of any process of elaboration is a mental assertion of something or other. This result, CHAP. V. SECT. I. Predicaplained. tion ex CHAP. V. SECT. I. Further explained. expressed in language, we shall call Predication. In a certain sense, we have predication in the very simplest act of consciousness; as when there is a consciousness of any simple sensation, there is a mental assertion or acknowledgment of the existence of that sensation. That a particular sensation-say of heat, or colour, or smell-exists, is the expression of the conscious act in which it is known. But this implicit assertion of existence regarding the simple objects of consciousness can scarcely be called predication as we must understand predication in its present connection. Another illustration will make clear what we mean. An object of perception is before us; it is yellow, heavy, tasteless, and of a rounded irregular figure; the name gold has been associated with it; by a little experimenting we discover that it yields, and changes its form, by repeated strokes of the hammer. We assert, "This piece of gold is malleable." In other words we predicate a certain quality -malleability-of the object—that is, of the aggregate collection of qualities which we called gold. And our predication here means simply that the quality malleability co-exists with a certain number of other qualities to which there has been attached a certain sound, gold. Predication in this case is the assertion that one object of our knowledge, a particular quality, bears a certain relation, that of co-existence or coinclusion, to another object of our knowledge, an aggregate of qualities having a special name. § 135. If we take any other case of predication we shall find something similar. We see two sticks or two lines placed side by side, and we perceive them to be either equal in length or unequal. We predicate that the one is equal or unequal to the other; or that the one object of our knowledge bears a certain relation, that of equality or inequality, to another. Similarly, there may be two colours placed before us; we predicate that the one of them bears to the other a relation of similarity or dissimilarity. So, when one object of consciousness is observed to appear immediately before or immediately after another, we predicate that the one bears a certain relation, that of antecedence or sequence, to the other. Thus in all cases it will be found that Predication consists in the affirmation that one object of our thought bears or does not bear a certain specified relation to another object of our thought. it CHAP. V. SECT. I. Basis of predication. § 136. We must now consider the ground or grounds upon which predication rests. How is that we are able to make a predication regarding the relation which two or more objects of our thought bear to one another? Is there any other mental act of which predication is the result? A little examination will show that there is. When we observe two colours and predicate that the one is similar or dissimilar to the other, the act of predication is manifestly the result of seeing the similarity or dissimilarity of the two objects. Before we can predicate two lines to be equal or unequal, we must perceive their equality or inequality. In other words, predication is, in some cases at least, founded upon Intuition; we Intuition. intuitively perceive certain relations to exist between CHAP. V. SECT. II. certain objects of our knowledge; and as the result of that intuition we predicate the relations. In other cases we must admit a different ground for our predications. For example, when we affirm, "The exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the two interior and remote angles," this is not the result of immediate intuition. There are various comparisons to be made before we can recognise the truth of the predication. So, when we affirm that the earth bears a certain regularly varying relation in space to the sun -or, in other words, that the earth revolves around the sun in an elliptic orbit-this predication is by no means the result of intuition, but of a mental process of a very complex kind. The more or less complex process by which we are enabled to predicate relations between objects of our thought which we do Inference. not intuitively perceive is called Inference. But, as a general rule, intuition and inference are combined in affording a ground for our predications. We intuite certain relations to exist, from which we infer certain other relations to exist, and predicate accordingly. The nature of inference will be explained hereafter; in the meantime, we must give some attention to our intuitions. SECTION II. INTUITION. § 137. That act of the mind which we have called Intuition is the immediate knowledge which we have |