of inheritance is but another phrase for process of production. What more perfect demonstration than this could be given of my doctrine that mere feelings of resemblance are of slight value until transformed into causal relations? In other words, a concept means something more than an imaginary collection of resembling things, or an impossible bundle of attributes or both of these together. In its deepest, most essential meaning it symbolizes the causal process which produces both the individuals and their attributes.

And under the guidance of this same principle, Darwin himself was led to that sublime discovery which has revolutionized modern thought.

Thus we have unravelled those two intertangled perplexities that for thousands of years have made the concept a subject of constant dispute and uncertainty. The first perplexity was the double import of the concept. Some logicians, like Sigwart, Bradley, etc., have placed exclusive stress upon the extension. Others like Mill insist that "the extension is not anything intrinsic to the concept. . But the comprehension is the concept itself." Or as Sir Wm. Hamilton puts it: "A notion or concept is the fictitious whole or unity made up of a plurality of attributes." Thus each party sees but one side of the shield. We have shown both sides, and what is 1Examination, Hamilton's Philosophy, I. p. 79. 2Lectures, II. p. 171.

far more important, the bond of union between them. Both are simply results of the process of production which the concept represents.

Second, that process of production is no mere figment of the mind. It is a reality in part perceptible by the senses and always verifiable by inductive observation. Furthermore, this view explains the subordination of concepts as due to the inclusion of one causal process within another wider one. Thus we need not be puzzled, as Lotze was, by the fact that one object can be at once an animal, a vertebrate, a mammal and a cow.

CHAPTER VIII

JUDGMENT

Section 1. The Unity of Judgment and Inference

ONE of the most eminent of living psychologists, in the closing pages of a recent work, makes the following declaration: "I wish that I could offer some positive contribution to the psychology of judgment; but the insuperable difficulty there is that we do not yet know what judgment is. It is an anomalous position. We are committed to a psychology of judgment; we can no longer say with Rehmke that the phrase is contradictory in itself, or with Marbe that there is no psychological criterion of judgment; and yet no one, psychologist or logician, can furnish a definition that finds general acceptance." And he adds that this is not a matter simply of different points of view; there is actual uncertainty regarding the nature and limits of the process to be defined.

Another eminent psychologist lays stress upon the uncertainty in regard to the limits of judgment. He speaks of "the undue proportion of reasoning that recent logical theory has brought under the head of judgment, and the little that is left to the more practical operation of judgment. Superficially regarded this seems to indicate that the recent writers have failed to find any sharp line of distinction 1Titchener, Psychology of the Thought Process, 188.

between what they call judgment and what they call inference."1

But here, too, my fundamental thesis will dispel the double darkness. It will enable us to precisely define the nature of judgment and to draw a sharp line of distinction between judgment and inference. To do this let me recall a view already suggestednamely, the superior freedom of thought or reason compared with Nature. The course of Nature is from cause to effect; its past is irrevocable. But thought or reason is endowed with the grand prerogative of moving at will in either direction. It can follow the course of nature by passing from cause to effect; or it can reverse that movement and pass freely from observed effects to a knowledge of their causes. This reverse movement is, indeed, more difficult than the other; but it is by far the higher, nobler function-the method of all scientific advance, the secret of all human progress.

Now the proposition I expect to prove is this: Judgment is the movement of thought from causes to their effects; inference is the reverse movement from effects to their causes. Thus we draw a sharp line of distinction beween judgment and inference; and yet reveal their underlying unity.

The truth of this view, so far as judgment is concerned, is evident at a glance. Human knowledge begins with the recognition of things as causes. The most benighted savage can abstract; he can distinguish between the thing perceived and the activities 1Pillsbury, The Psychology of Reasoning, pp. 170-171.

it puts forth or the changes it undergoes. Thus there develops some crude idea of substantial causes and of their qualities as dependent upon them.

But there are objections that must be met. Let us turn, then, to Lotze's criticism of the judgment, he being the inventor of most of the puzzles and paradoxes rehearsed by Bradley and others.

Lotze begins his criticism by referring to the socalled impersonal judgments, it rains, it lightens, etc. But really they form a signal proof of my thesis. That little word "it" is a most significant one. The essential function of thought, for the savage as for us, is to relate cause and effect. But primitive man did not know the cause of rain or lightning, and so he inserted the neutral word, it, as the symbol of an unknown cause. And we still retain the word, because we are almost as ignorant as the caveman was. Who fully knows why rain-drops fall or what electricity means?

Lotze's main attack, however, is on the categorical judgment against which he makes three charges.

(a) The first is that the relation between the real thing and its properties cannot be transferred to the relation of subjects to their predicates. "In regard to the latter relation we find no corresponding account of the way in which one inheres in the other."" How much of this metaphysical relation will survive, he asks, if the thing be replaced by something which is not a thing, and the property by something which is not a property? I answer that all this hinges upon 1Logic, § 53.