260 CHAPTER V. ANALYSIS OF THINKING. REASONING, the most involved of the three types of thought, is itself presented as exhibiting a variety of different forms. Logical analysis recognises not only the broad division between deductive and inductive reasoning, but also, within the scope of the former, a subdivision which for the moment we shall accept in the Kantian fashion as into categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive reasoning. These are generally formulated in a way which corresponds to the highest range of thinking, with its definite discrimination of the universal or general from the special particular or individual. In the Disjunctive Syllogism the fundamental proposition expresses an exhaustive enumeration of alternative possibilities. It rests therefore on an insight into the determining conditions of the subject, which can only be expressed in the most general fashion. Now, it is evident that, even if the insight here referred to constitutes a ground for recognising one specific type of reasoning, it ought not to be forgotten that such insight must itself be a derivative fact, reached gradually in mind by means of a series of approximations. If we can trace these approximations, they may give us a more complete knowledge of what is involved in the result. It may be perfectly true that, under the conditions of knowledge, the disjunctive proposition represents one fundamentally distinct form of our way of representing real fact. That it should have a history, that it should gradually develop in our experience, stands in no contradiction to such recognition of its fundamental value. It is a complete mistake to suppose that the significance of a form of thinking in our experience, the importance of the part it plays in enabling us fully to represent reality, is dependent on the manner in which it comes to exist in our concrete thinking. Evidently, the highest form of the disjunctive proposition will be found where most complete abstraction is made of all the material conditions which enter into the special subject to which it refers. But that this should be so indicates at once the nature of the antecedent and less developed forms of the same proposition. They may exhibit the same general characteristic as is displayed in the developed form, that is, they may proceed on the basis of enumeration of alternatives; but the alternatives enumerated will be determined by material conditions, and the exhaustiveness of the enumeration which is required will have a wider or narrower scope according to the kind of alternatives that are included. In this way, the developed disjunctive proposition does not seem to differ in kind from the much more elementary recognition of alternatives which is limited in scope by the conditions of immediate perception, and which contemplates little more than the alternations of Here and There, of Now and Then. If this is so, it is also reasonable to assume that the universality of the developed form is dependent on the possibility of making more and more abstraction of accompanying conditions; and that in turn is dependent on two correlative facts: first, increase of material experience, and secondly, greater ability to hold together and manipulate masses of ideas in consciousness. Further, even in its least developed form, the disjunctive judgment must be recognised by us as some what complex. It involves the fundamental distinction, whether logical or psychological, of subject and predicate; it postulates the ability to relate a given perceived subject to what is represented in idea; it involves, therefore, a certain recognition of the fundamental distinction between order of ideas and order of fact,-a recognition, moreover, of that distinction which cannot itself be called primitive. The conception of alternatives indicates unmistakably a certain advance from the primary stage of distinguishing between idea and fact. Again, there is obviously involved in the alternatives, however simple they may be, the element of generalisation. An alternative, however limited its scope, is representable only in a generalised fashion: the alternatives cannot themselves have the definiteness of the individual subject. Take next the Hypothetical Judgment. Recent logicians have tended towards the discrimination of two forms of the hypothetical proposition, the basis of the hypothetical reasoning. They recognise, first, the more abstract type, that in which the members connected, antecedent and consequent, have not separate independence, do not constitute in isolation complete predications, where, therefore, the entire thought expressed in the hypothetical judgment is not so much a combination as a chemical mixture of antecedent and consequent. A second and less abstract type admits of a certain independence of antecedent and consequent. The assertion made is more of the nature of a statement respecting the conditions under which a certain fact or event comes about. Even if the distinction here drawn were admitted, we should find that the more abstract type involved a complex representation of a connected interdependent whole, which in its nature so closely resembles the less developed thoughts of less abstract connexions, that we could not overlook the fundamental identity of character between them. This connexion in idea between antecedent and consequent is not absolutely, but only relatively, distinct from the more concrete representation which we frame to ourselves of connexions-dependence of events in time, or relation of objects in space. Logicians have been in the habit of excluding from the range of the hypothetical proposition those forms of statement in which a connexion is asserted of a temporal kind—as 'whenever A is then B is -on the ground that logical connexion is independent of temporal qualification. But the independence so claimed is only relative. Even in the judgment which involves the temporal qualification there are present and operative the same functions of thinking which, carried to a higher range of abstraction, find expression in the purely logical judgment. Our view of what is involved in the hypothetical judgment becomes far more sound and fruitful when we take these less developed types into account than when we confine attention to the highly abstract variety called the logical. In these lower types there is implied the representation of an orderly connexion, a uniformity of relation, both as regards time and as regards space. But this representation evidently implies that the subject thinking has reached the stage of being able to distinguish the transient momentary event from the relatively permanent order of nature, and this again indicates recognition, and a somewhat developed recognition, of the difference between order of subjective experience and order of objective fact. Moreover, as before, the element of generality is involved. The order of connected fact is never represented, can never be represented, in strictly individualised fashion. The hypothetical judgment suggests, as can readily be seen, the rather interesting question, whether the undoubted com plexity it involves entitles us to regard it as, properly speaking, a type of judgment. Logicians more than once have raised the question as to the right of the hypothetical to be called a judgment. Consider the connexion asserted in it. It is impossible to suppose that the consequent is merely an application of analysis to the antecedent. There is always, therefore, the reference to a factor lying, one may say, outside of antecedent and consequent, and enabling the connexion to be asserted. But this is the characteristic of reasoning. The hypothetical judgment must therefore raise the further question, whether it is not in itself a simple type of the reasoning process, whether the act of asserting a connexion, such as is expressed in the hypothetical judgment, is not in its nature reasoning. No doubt there is implied in this question an assumption not yet justified, that judgment in its simplest form contains only the factors Subject and Predicate. No distinction in regard to the Categorical Judgment is more familiar in logic than that between universal and particular. For our purpose the contrast would perhaps be better stated as that between universal and individual. Logically, these are placed side by side; and, for certain purposes, such treatment is adequate. From the psychological point of view, however, it is indispensable that we should recognise, and endeavour to account for, the all-important difference between the universal and individual judgments. We should not allow without discussion as the logical treatment seems to allow-that the universal judgment is just an immediate expression of some power which we possess. At various points, indeed, even in the logical treatment of thought, the necessity for some such discussion becomes apparent. The theory of syllogism, for example, cannot be discussed without consideration of what is actually and in detail the representation which finds expression in the uni |