William Hamilton, is accepted by all philosophers. "Veritas intellectus," says Aquinas, "est adæquatio intellectus et rei, secundum quod intellectus dicit esse, quod est, vel non-esse, quod non est ; which may be rendered, "The truth of thought is a correspondence of thought and fact, according to which thought says that what is, is, or that what is not, is not." Here Aquinas teaches that a thought or proposition is true, and can be so regarded, only as correctly setting forth that something exists or does not exist. From this it follows that we must believe in the existence or in the non-existence of a thing before we can believe in the truth (or trueness) of the proposition that it is, or is not. And so we conclude, again, that the proper and primary object of belief is the proposition in which existence or non-existence is directly asserted, and not the truth of this proposition. The latter or rather the propositional thought presenting it is a secondary and subsidiary object of belief.

CHAPTER XIV.

THEORIES RESPECTING CONVICTION.

1. THE word "belief" often indicates a degree of intellectual confidence which falls short of knowledge, and which yet is stronger than mere guesswork or presumption. We sometimes say that we believe, but that we do not know, that so and so is the case. But now we

include under belief every act of the mind in which we take, accept, or hold a thing as true, whether we do this feebly or firmly, and whether we have good grounds for doing so or not. In this sense belief admits of many degrees, and varies from the merest presumption of possibility to the most perfect assurance of fact; and it includes knowledge, for knowledge is nothing else than absolute and wellfounded certainty.

A wide use

Let us also make a wide use of the term "judgment." of the term This ordinarily signifies the faculty of forming probable

"judgment." beliefs or convictions. Mr. Locke says: "The faculty

which God has given to man to supply the want of clear and certain knowledge, where that cannot be had, is judgment, whereby the mind... takes any proposition to be true or false, without perceiving demonstrative evidence in the proofs." According to this meaning judgment, as the initial act of belief, must be distinguished from cognition, which is the initial act of knowledge. Let us, however, give the same extension to the term "judgment" that we have already given to the term “ belief;" and in that case, of course, we must admit cognition to be a kind of judgment in the same way that knowledge is a kind of belief. This wide sense of the term "judg

ment" is very commonly employed by the philosophers and logicians of the present day.

By a natural metonymy the terms "belief" and "judgment" are applied to the operations and mental products of these powers, as well as to the powers themselves. We speak not only of belief and judgment, but also of beliefs and judgments, and of a judgment or a belief. This secondary use of language, which need cause us no confusion, should be granted the same extended application which we have asked for the more primary.

Because, in determining a probability, the reasons for doing so become more or less prominent in thought, judging generally means not simply the formation of belief, but the formation of belief on evidence. It will matter little for our present purpose whether this be included in our conception or not, although it is true that one believes always on some ground. In like manner the word "conviction," which signifies a belief necessitated by some evidence, may now be used as simply synonymous with "belief."

tion.

2. Here also, as another preliminary, let us state a point Every judgment may be on which philosophers are agreed. It is that every act of expressed by judgment or belief may be expressed by means of a propoa proposi- sition. This need not be argued as regards the convictions of the rational faculty; every one knows that these are expressed by propositions. And as concerns the cognitions of immediate perception, it can be easily shown that these, when analytically expressed, instantly assume the propositional form. This has been done by President Porter, who calls these presentational cognitions "primary, natural, and psychological judgments." For example, holding an orange and looking at it, one can say, " This object exists, and it is round and rough and yellow." Then, opening and tasting it, he can add, "This round, rough, yellow object is sweet and juicy." But these statements, expressive of one's immediate perceptions, are regular propositions, such as logicians describe.

The reason why sense-cognitions and rational convictions can both assume the propositional form, is that they have a community of nature. Both are judgments, in the wide sense of that term. Indeed, presentative knowledge is transformed into logical knowledge simply by analytical elaboration. The beliefs of memory, which are reproduced cognitions, may also, of course, be set forth in propositions.

Aristotle's "something

3. The views of philosophers regarding the radical nature of our beliefs or convictions are given to us mostly in of some- their doctrines concerning judgment, and concerning the thing." proposition as the form which every judgment takes when fully expressed.

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Aristotle defines a proposition to be "a sentence which affirms or denies something of something." The most important word in this statement is the preposition of," signifying the connection of one thing with another. The doctrine of Aristotle is that a judgment is the acceptance or the rejection, in our thought, of a union of things. Thus, in asserting, "The man is handsome," we accept a synthesis; but in asserting, "The man is not handsome," we reject one.

1 Prior Analytics, chap. i.

He inculcates this same doctrine when he says that "affirmation is the assertion of something of, or concerning (Karà), something, and denial the assertion of something from, or away from (àñò), something." And this is yet more especially taught when we are told, first, that "to be" and "not to be " (εἶναι and μὴ εἶναι) signify the truth and the falsehood (τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος) of the statements in which they are used, and then that these four predicables-existence, non-existence, truth, and falsehood pertain to the conjunction and separation of things. "To be," he says, "is to be united and one; not to be is to be disunited and many.' And he asserts that a proposition is true or false as setting forth things according or not according to their composition and division. Περὶ γὰρ σύνθεσιν καὶ διαίρεσίν ἐστι τὸ ψευδός τε καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς.1

These teachings are the origin of the common doctrine that the copula that is, the verb "to 99 be' as the assertive part of propositions- does not have its own proper signification of existence, but indicates simply an agreement of ideas, or a connection of things; and that "not to be," in like manner, signifies a disconnection, or disagreement, between subject and predicate.

Locke's

ment" of

nitz.

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4. A doctrine differing in form rather than in substance "agreement from that of Aristotle was introduced into modern phior disagree- losophy through the writings of Locke and Leibnitz. ideas. Leib- Truth," says Locke, "signifies nothing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them do agree or disagree with one another. The joining or separating of signs here meant is what, by another Lame, we call propositions. So that truth properly belongs only to propositions; whereof there are two sorts, mental and verbal, as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, namely, ideas and words." He tells us, also, that it is in the exercise of the faculties of knowledge and judgment that "the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree, or, which is the same thing, any proposition to be true or false.' Thus Mr. Locke makes judgment a joining or separating of ideas according to their agreement or disagreement, while yet he teaches that this agreement or disagreement does not primarily belong to our ideas, but to "the things signified by them." He differs from Aristotle chiefly because that, instead of the wide relations of connection and separation which are indicated by karà and àñò, he employs the more specific conceptions of agreement and disagreement. Both philosophers make judgment a composition or a division of ideas, in their use as representative of things.

2

Locke's statement has been adopted by most modern thinkers. First among these was Leibnitz, his great contemporary, who also gave it an important modification. Having repeated a teaching of Locke, that the agreement or disagreement of our ideas is of four different sorts, namely, those of identity or diversity, those of relation, those of co-existence or connection, and those of real existence, he observes that relation, the second of these categories (or generic

1 De Interpretatione, chaps. iii., v., vi., and x.; and Metaphysics, book iv. chap. vii., and book viii. chap. x.

2 Essay, book ii. chap. xxxii. § 19, and book iv. chaps. i. and xiv.

classes), if taken in a wide sense, may include them all. He concludes, therefore, that all our knowledge is a perception of relations.

He teaches, also, that some relations are those of comparison, — for example, those of identity, diversity, likeness, and unlikeness, - while others are those of connection or co-existence; and then he declares that the most important of these relations of connection is that of real existence. And he says that this existence, when predicated of an object, may be regarded as the conjunction of the object with one's self. "On peut aussi concevoir l'existence de l'objet d'une idée comme le concours de cet objet avec moi."1 The main doctrine of Leibnitz reappears in the writings of Sir William Hamilton, President Porter, and others, who teach that judgment is the faculty of perceiving relations, and of uniting objects in thought by means of this perception.2

Reid. J. S.

5. The wonderful vitality of the Aristotelic doctrine of Mill. "A conviction may be seen in the preference given, by various predicate of leading authors since the time of Locke, to the ancient a subject." form of statement. Thomas Reid, the father of modern intuitionalism, having stated that "the definition commonly given of judgment by the more ancient writers in logic was, that it is an act of the mind whereby one thing is affirmed or denied of another,” declares, “I believe this is as good a definition of it as can be given.' And John Stuart Mill, the associationalist apostle, says: "A proposition is a portion of discourse in which a predicate is affirmed or denied of a subject." This is the teaching also of Herbert Spencer. One remark of Mill's is noticeable as betraying an unconscious dissatisfaction with the leading doctrine advocated by himself and by his school, - the doctrine that belief may be accounted for by a strong or inseparable association of ideas. He says: To determine what it is that happens in the case of assent or dissent, besides putting two ideas together, is one of the most intricate of metaphysical problems."

Like Leibnitz and Locke, Mill gives a classification of things predicable. He says: "Existence, co-existence, sequence, causation, and resemblance, one or other of these is asserted or denied in every proposition without exception. He also offers a definition of existence similar to that of Leibnitz. "The existence of a phenomenon is but another word for its being perceived, or for the inferred possibility of perceiving it. My belief that the Emperor of China exists is simply my belief that if I were transported to the imperial palace, or some other locality in Pekin, I should see him. My belief that Julius Cæsar existed is my belief that I should have seen him if I had been present in the field of Pharsalia, or in the senate-house at Rome." In other words, according to Mr. Mill, when we assert existence of some object, we assert that it is related to us in that it is, or might be, perceived.3 Kant: "die 6. Let us now turn to the opinions of Immanuel Kant, Sinnlichkeit who laid the foundations for German idealism at Königsund die Ver- berg, while Reid was expounding intuitionalism in Glasgow. Kant's general term for conviction of every kind

nunft."

1 Nouveaux Essais, liv. iv. chap. i.

? Hamilton's Met., lect. xx.; Porter's Human Intellect, part iii. chap. v. 3 See Reid's Essays, Mill's Logic, and Spencer's Psychology.

and degree is " Erkenntniss," or cognition. This results from the application of the conceptions of the understanding ("Verstand") to the intuitions or representations (" Anshauungen") of the sensuous faculty. These are not intuitions or representations in any English sense of the words, for we are not to suppose that anything is really perceived or represented. They are rather mere felt appearances. Judgment (Urtheilskraft") is the faculty which unites a plurality of intuitions into a unity under some concept (" Begriff ") of the understanding, and so produces a cognition. Cognition, therefore, is the product of the synthetic action of thought and sensibility.

For example, should the sensuous faculty ("die Sinnlichkeit ") give certain feelings indicative of size, solidity, and downward pressure, then the judgment, using the categories of substance and of reality, would assert, "This is a heavy body." But if such sense-intimations were not given, but only imagined, then the judgment, retaining the conception of substance, but employing the category of possibility instead of that of existence, would say, "There might be such a thing as a heavy body."

The common

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This may explain Kant's meaning when he condemns the doctrine that a judgment is a representation of a relation between two ideas," and teaches that "a judgment is nothing else than the mode of bringing given cognitions to the objective unity of the consciousness," that is, to that oneness of conception which conscious intelligence requires. Moreover, according to Kant, the categories, or concept-forms, of modality, namely, possibility, reality, and necessity, though they help to give unity to our cognitions, do not enlarge the conception of the object, but only express its relation to the faculty of cognition ("sondern nur das Verhältniss zum Erkenntnissvermögen ausdrücken "). In other words, like Leibnitz and Mill, he makes the existence of an object to consist in its being related to our faculties.1 7. We have now briefly stated the opinions of leading error of phi- philosophers respecting the action of the mind in believing. losophers re- First, Aristotle makes it an affirming or denying something specting con- of something; then Locke teaches that it is the joining or separating of ideas according to their agreement or disagreement. But these both hold that we judge of entities really separate and different from ourselves. Mr. Mill also says that the subject and predicate, which are employed in affirmation or denial, stand for things; his "things," however, prove to be nothing more than mere feelings, or possibilities of feeling, which tend to unite or to separate by reason of some habit or association. Finally, Kant, more directly, explains belief as a purely subjective synthesis, which gives us no reason to believe in things separate from, or beyond, the exercise of our own faculties. He calls certain "" cognitions objective only because they follow a fixed order, and not the choice of our wills.

viction.

The doctrine common to all these philosophers, and to many others represented by them, is that conviction is essentially a process of the composition or division of mental states; for even Kant, who speaks mostly of synthesis, would say that the judgment of disbelief involves the separation from one's thought of the category of reality.

1 Compare Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysic, § 10.