Illus. 1. True it is, that by affirmation or denial, we express our judgments; but there may be judgments which are not expressed. Judgment is a solitary act of the mind, and the expression of it, by affirmation or denial, is not at all essential to it. It may be tacit, and not expressed. Nay, it is well known, that men may judge contrary to what they affirm or deny; the definition must, therefore, be understood of mental affirmation or denial, which indeed is only another name for Judgment. (See Illus. Art. 28.)

2. The affirming or denying of a thing, is very often the expression of testimony, which is a direct act of the mind, and ought to be distinguished from Judgment.

Example. A judge asks a witness what he knows of such a matter, to which he was an eye or an ear witness. The witness answers by affirming or denying something. But his answer does not express his Judgment; it is his testimony. Again, you ask a man his opinion in a matter of science, or of criticism. His answer is not testimony; it is the expression of his judgment. Thus, testimony is distinguished from judgment. (See Illus. 2. Art. 116.)

Illus. 3. Testimony is a social act, and it is essential to this act that it be expressed by words or signs. A tacit testimony is a contradiction; but there is no contradiction in a tacit Judgment: it is complete, without being expressed. In testimony, a man pledges his veracity for what he affirms; so that a false testimony is a lie; but a wrong judgment is not a lie; it is only an error. In the structure of all languages, says Dr. Reid, testimony and judgment are expressed by the same form of speech. A proposition, affirmative or negative, with a verb in what is called the indicative mood, expresses both. (See Art. 25.)

4. Although men must have judged in many cases before tribunals of justice were erected, yet it is very probable that there were tribunals before men began to speculate about Judgment, and that the word may be borrowed from the practice of tribunals. As a judge, after taking the proper evidence, passes sentence, in a cause, and that SENTENCE is called his judgment, so the mind, with regard to whatever is true or false, passes sentence, or determines according to the evidence that is before it. Some kinds of evidence leave no room for doubt, and sentence is passed immediately, without seeking or hearing any contrary evidence, because the thing is certain and notorious. In other cases, there is room for weighing evidence, on both sides, before sentence is passed.

Corol. The analogy between a tribunal of justice and this inward tribunal of the mind, is too obvious to escape the notice of any man who ever appeared before a judge; and we may thence infer, that the word Judgment, as well as many other words which we use in speaking of this operation of the mind, are grounded on this analogy. (See Chapter IV. Book I.)

279. In Article 140, we pointed out the distinction between conception, as used in Chapter V. of this book, and simple apprehension, which, in the language of the schoolmen, includes our apprehension of general propositions. Judgment is an act of the mind specifically different from

simple apprehension, or the bare conception of a thing. (See Illus. Art. 25.)

Illus. Although there can be no Judgment without a conception of the things about which we judge, yet conception may be without any Judgment. Judgment can be expressed by a proposition only, and a proposition is a complete sentence; but simple apprehension may be expressed by a word, or words, which make no complete sentence. When simple apprehension is employed about a proposition, every man knows that it is one thing to apprehend a proposition, that is, to conceive what it means; but it is quite another thing to judge it to be true or false. (Пlus. Art. 28.)

280. Every Judgment must be either true or false, but simple apprehension can neither be true nor false. (See Corol. Art. 52.)

Illus. One Judgment may be contradictory to another; and it is impossible for a man to have, at the same time, two Judgments, which he perceives to be contradictory. But contradictory propositions may be conceived at the same time without any difficulty. That the Sun is greater than the Earth, and that the Sun is not greater than the Earth, are contradictory propositions. He that apprehends the meaning of the one apprehends the meaning of both. But it is impossible for him to judge both to be true at the same time. He knows that if one is true, the other is false.

Corol. For these reasons, we hold it to be certain, that Judgment and simple apprehension are acts of the mind specifically different. (See Art. 279.)

281. There are notions, or ideas, that ought to be referred to the faculty of Judgment as their source; because, if we had not this faculty, they could not enter into our minds; and to all those that have this faculty, and are capable of reflecting upon its operations, they are obvious and familiar.

Illus. Among these we may reckon the notion of Judgment itself; the notions of a proposition, of its subject, of its predicate, and of its copula ;-of affirmation and negation, of true and false, of knowledge, belief, disbelief, opinion, assent, evidence. From no source could we acquire these notions, but from reflecting upon our judg ments. Relations of things make one great class of our notions, or ideas; and we cannot have the idea of any relation, without some exercise of Judgment.

282. In persons come to years of understanding, Judgment necessarily accompanies all sensation, perception by the senses, consciousness, and memory.

Obs. Infants and idiots are of course excluded in the consideration of this position.

Пlus. 1. In persons having the exercise of Judgment, it is evident, that the man who feels pain, judges and believes that he is really

pained. (See Illus. Art. 39.) The man who perceives an object believes that it exists, and that it is what he distinctly perceives it to be; nor is it in his power to avoid such a Judgment. And the same may be affirmed of Memory, and of Consciousness.

2. Whether Judgment ought to be called a necessary concomitant of these operations, or rather a part or ingredient of them, enters not into the illustration before us; but it is certain, that all of them are accompanied with a determination and a consequent belief that something is true or false. If this determination be not Judgment, it is an operation that has received no name by philosophers; for it is not simple apprehension, neither is it reasoning; it is a mental affirmation or negation; it may be expressed by a proposition affirmative or negative, and it is accompanied with the firmest belief. These are the characteristics of Judgment.

283. The judgments which we form are either of things necessary, or of things contingent.

Illus. 1. That three times three are nine; that the whole is greater than its part ;-are judgments about things necessary. Our assent to such necessary propositions is not grounded upon any operation of sense, of memory, or of consciousness, nor does it require their concurrence; it is unaccompanied by any other operation but that of conception, which must accompany all Judgment. (See Art. 147. Ilus. 1.)

2. Our Judgment of things contingent must always rest upon some other operation of the mind, such as sense, or memory, or consciousness, or credit in testimony, which is itself grounded upon sense. That I now write upon a desk covered with green baize, is a contingent event, which I judge to be most undoubtedly true. My Judgment is grounded upon my perception (Art. 23.), and is a necessary concomitant, or ingredient, of my perception. That I yesterday dined with such a person, I judge to be true, because I remember it, and my Judgment necessarily goes along with this remembrance, or makes a part of it. (See Art. 49.)

234. There are many forms of speech in common language which show that the senses, memory, and consciousness, are considered as judging faculties.

his ear.

Illus. We say that a man judges of colors by his eye, of sounds by We speak of the evidence of sense (Corol. Art. 121), the evidence of memory (Art. 243. Illus.), and the evidence of consciousness (Corol. Art. 101). Evidence is the basis of Judgment; and when we see evidence, it is impossible not to judge.

Corol. 1. Hence, when we speak of seeing or remembering any thing, we hardly ever add that we judge it to be true; because such an addition would be a superfluity of speech. And, for the same reason, in speaking of what is self-evident, or strictly demonstrated, we do not say that we judge it to be true. Hence the grammarians say, that to see with the eyes, is a tautology; and they are perfectly

correct.

2. There is, therefore, good reason why, in speaking or writing, Judgment should not be expressly mentioned, when all men know

it to be necessarily implied; that is to say, when there can be no doubt. The bare mention of the evidence is all that men require; but when the evidence mentioned leaves room for doubt, then, without any superfluity, or tautology, we say we judge the thing to be so, because this is not implied in what was said before.

285. The judgments grounded upon the evidence of sense, of memory, and of consciousness, are called judgments of nature, because she has subjected us to them, whether we will or not, because she has thus put all men upon a level (Art. 121. Corol.), and thus deprived the philosopher of any prerogative above the illiterate, or even above the savage. Belief in our senses, and in our memory, is not learned by culture. It is necessary to all men for their being and preservation, and therefore is unconditionally given to all men by the Author of Nature.

II. Of the Exercise of Judgment in the Formation of abstract and general Conceptions.

286. That some exercise of Judgment is necessary in the formation of all abstract and general conceptions, whether more simple or more complex in dividing, in defining, and, in general, in forming all clear and distinct conceptions of things, which are the only fit materials of all reasoning, we shall now proceed to illustrate.

Obs. These operations are allied to each other, and have, therefore, been brought under one article; but they are more allied to our rational nature than those considered in the last section, and are therefore to be considered by themselves. And, that the illustrations we are to offer may not be mistaken for what they really are not, we take leave to premise, that it is not meant to be affirmed that abstract notions, or other accurate notions of things, after they have been formed, cannot be barely conceived without any exercise of Judgment about them. All that is meant by the position laid down in the article now in hand, is, that, in the formation, at first, of those "abstract and general conceptions" of the mind, there must be some exercise of Judgment.

Illus. 1. It is impossible to distinguish the different attributes belonging to the same subject, without judging that they are really dif ferent and distinguishable, and that they have that relation to the subject which logicians express by saying that they may be predicated of it. We cannot generalize, without judging that the same attribute does, or may, belong to many individuals. (Art. 188.) Our simplest general notions are formed by distinguishing and generalizing; hence we may infer that Judgment is exercised in forming the simplest general notions.

2. In those that are more complex, and which have been shown to be formed by combining the more simple, there is another act of the

Judgment required; for such combinations are not made at random, but for an end, and Judgment is employed in fitting them to that end. We form complex general notions for the conveniency of arranging our thoughts in discourse and reasoning; and therefore, of an infinite number of combinations that night be formed, we choose only those that are useful and necessary.

287. That Judgment must be employed in dividing, as well as in distinguishing, appears evident. It is one thing to divide a subject properly, another to cut it to pieces. Hoc non est dividere, sed frangere rem, said Cicero, when he censured the improper division of Epicurus.

Illus Reason, as we shall see by and bye, has discovered rules of division, which have been known to logicians for more than two thousand years. There are rules, likewise, of definition, of no less antiquity and authority. A man may, no doubt, divide or define properly without attending to these rules, or even without knowing them; but this can only be when he has Judgment to perceive that to be right in a particular case, which the rule determines to be right in all cases.

Corol. What has now been advanced, leads to the inference that, without some degree of Judgment, we can form no accurate and distinct notions of things; so that one province of Judgment is to aid us in forming clear and distinct conceptions of things, which are the only fit materials for reasoning.

288. The necessity of some degree of Judgment, to have clear and distinct conceptions of things, may thus be illustrated, even to the philosophers, who have always considered the formation of ideas of every kind as belonging to simple apprehension, and that the sole province of Judgment is to put them together in affirmative or negative propositions.

Illus. An artist (suppose a carpenter) cannot work in his art without tools, and these tools must be made by art. The exercise of the art, therefore, is necessary to make the tools, and the tools are necessary to the exercise of the art; and this is illustrative of the necessity of some degree of Judgment in order to form clear and distinct conceptions of things. These are the tools which we must use in judg ing and reasoning, and without them our work must be very bungling indeed; yet these tools cannot be made without some exercise of Judgment.

289. The necessity of some degree of Judgment, in forming accurate and distinct notions of things, will further appear, if we consider attentively what notions we can form, without any aid of Judgment, of the objects of sense, of the operations of our own minds, or of the relations of things.