THE ORIGIN
OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF
RIGHT AND WRONG

[A] Schiller.

[1] (p. 2). Cf. “Über die Entstehung des Rechtsgefühls.” Lecture by Dr. Rudolf von Ihering, delivered before the Vienna Law Society, March 12, 1884 (Allgem. Juristenzeitung, 7 Jahrg., No. 11 seq., Vienna, March 16-April 13, 1884). Cf. further, v. Ihering, Der Zweck im Recht, vol. ii. Leipzig, 1877-83.

[2] (p. 2). For the first point, cf. Allgem. Juristenzeitung, 7 Jahrg. p. 122 seq., Zweck im Recht, vol. ii. p. 109 seq. For the second point Allgem. Juristenzeitung, 7 Jahrg. p. 171, Zweck im Recht, pp. 118-123. It is here denied that there is any absolutely valid ethical rule (pp. 118, 122 seq.); further every “psychological” treatment of ethics, according to which ethics is represented “as twin sister of logic” is contested.

[3] (p. 4). Allgem. Juristenzeitung, 7 Jahrg., p. 147; cf. Zweck im Recht, vol. ii. p. 124 seq.

[4] (p. 4). Aristotle, Politics, i. 2, p. 1252 b. 24.

[5] (p. 4). Cf. e.g. Allgem. Juristenzeitung, 7 Jahrg. p. 146.

[6] (p. 5). Rep. 2. 31.

[7] (p. 5). Dig. 1. 8, 9.

[8] (p. 6). Amongst the numerous adherents of this view and one of its best advocates is J. S. Mill in his Utilitarianism, chap. iii.

[9] (p. 6). Here also, along with many others, J. S. Mill may be cited. The motives of hope and fear are, according to him, the external; the motives first described, the feelings developed by habit, the internal sanction. Utilitarianism, chap. iii.

[10] (p. 7). Cf. espec. here a discussion in James Mill’s Fragment on Mackintosh, printed by J. S. Mill in the second edition of his Analysis of the phenomena of the human mind, vol. ii. p. 309 seq.; and Grote’s powerful essay published by A. Bain under the title, “Fragments on Ethical Subjects, by the late George Grote, F.R.S.,” being a selection from his posthumous papers, London, 1876; Espec. Essay 1, On the Origin and Nature of Ethical Sentiment.

[11] (p. 9). D. Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, London, 1751.

[12] (p. 9). Herbart, Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, 81 seq. Collected Works, vol. i. p. 124 seq.

[13] (p. 9). This comparison with logic should be my best defence against the charge of placing Herbart’s doctrine in a false light. Were the logical criterion to consist in judgments of taste experienced on the appearance of thought-processes in accordance with or opposition to rule, it would then, in comparison with what it actually is (the internal self-evidence of a process in accordance with rule) have to be called external. Similarly Herbart’s criterion of ethics is rightly characterized as external, however loudly Herbartians may insist that in the judgment of taste which arises spontaneously on the contemplation of certain relations of will, an inner superiority regarding these relations is recognizable.

[14] (p. 10). In his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Kant enunciates his Categorical Imperative in the following forms: “Act only in accordance with that maxim which you can at the same time will should become a universal law,” and “Act as if the maxim of your action were by your will to be raised to a universal law.”

In the Critique of Practical Reason it runs “Act so that the maxim of your will could on each occasion be valid as a universal legislative principle,” i.e. as Kant himself explains, in such a way that the maxim, when raised to a universal law, does not lead to contradictions and consequent self-abrogation. The consciousness of this fundamental law was, for Kant, a fact of pure reason,{45} thereby proclaiming itself to be legislative (sic volo sic jubeo). Beneke has already observed (Grundlinien der Sittenlehre, vol. ii. p. xviii., 1841; cf. his Grundlegung zur Physik der Sitten, a counterpart to Kant’s Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1822) that it is nothing more than a “psychologische Dichtung,” and to-day no one able to judge is any longer in doubt concerning it. It deserves to be noted that even philosophers like Mansel, who have the highest reverence for Kant, admit that the Categorical Imperative is a fiction and absolutely untenable.

The Categorical Imperative has at the same time another and not less serious defect, i.e. that even when admitted, it leads to no ethical conclusions. Kant fails, as Mill (Utilitarianism, chap. i.) rightly says “in an almost grotesque fashion” to deduce what he seeks. His favourite example of a deduction, by which he illustrates his manner of procedure not only in his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten but also in the Critique of Practical Reason is as follows: May a person, he asks, retain for himself a possession which has been entrusted to him without a receipt or other acknowledgment? He answers, No. For he thinks, were the opposite maxim to be raised to a law, nobody, under such circumstances, would entrust anything to anybody. The law would then be without possibility of application, therefore impracticable and so self-abrogated.

It may easily be seen that Kant’s argumentation is false, indeed absurd. If, in consequence of the law, certain actions ceased to be practised, the law exercises an influence; it therefore still exists and has in no way annulled itself. How ridiculous would it appear if the following question were treated after an analogous fashion: “May I yield to a person who desires to bribe me?” Yes, since, were I to think of the opposite maxim as raised to a universal law, then nobody would seek any longer to bribe another; therefore the law would be without application, therefore, impracticable, and so self-abrogated.

[15] (p. 11). Cf. J. S. Mill, System of Deductive and Inductive Logic, vol. iv. chap. iv. section vi. (towards the end); vol. vi. chap. ii. section iv. and elsewhere, e.g. in his Utilitarianism, Essays on Religion, and in his article on Comte and Positivism, part ii.

[16] (p. 11). Cf. with what has been said in the lecture the first chapter of the Nicomachian Ethics, and it will be seen that Ihering’s “fundamental thought” in his work Der Zweck im Recht, vol. i. p. vi., viz.: “that no legal formula exists which does not owe its origin to an end,” is as old as ethics itself.

[17] (p. 12). Cases may arise where the consequence of certain efforts remains in doubt, and two courses are open: one presenting the prospect of a greater good but with less probability, the other a lesser good but with a greater probability. In choosing here, account must be taken of the degree of probability. If A is three times better than B, but B has ten times as many chances of being attained as A, then practical wisdom will prefer course B. Supposing that, under like circumstances, such a procedure always takes place, then (in accordance with the law of great numbers) the better would, generally speaking, be realized, a sufficient number of cases being assumed, and so such a manner of choosing would still obviously correspond to the principle laid down in the text, i.e. “Choose the best that is attainable.” The full significance of this remark will be made still more evident in the course of the inquiry.

[18] (p. 12). This truth was familiar to Aristotle (cf. e.g. De Anima, iii. 8). The Middle Ages maintained it, but expressed it unfortunately in the proposition: nihil est in intelluctu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu. The notions “willing,” “concluding” are not gained from sensuous perception; the term “sensuous” would in that case have to be taken so generally that all distinction between “sensuous” and “super-sensuous” disappears. These notions have their origin in certain concrete impressions with psychical content (Anschauungen psychischen Inhalts). From the same source arise the notions “end,” “cause” (we observe, for example, a causal relation existing between our belief in the premises and in the conclusion), “impossibility” and “necessity” (we gain these from judgments which accept or reject not merely assertorically, but, as it is usually expressed, apodictically,) and many other notions which some modern philosophers, failing in detecting the true origin of them, have sought to regard as categories given{47} à priori. I may mention, by the way, that I am well aware Sigwart and others influenced by him have recently questioned the peculiar nature of apodictic as opposed to assertorical judgments. But this is a psychological error which it is not the place to discuss here. Cf. note 27, p. 83 sub.

[19] (p. 12). This doctrine in germ is also found in Aristotle; cf. espec. Metaph.: Δ 15, p. 1021 a. 29. This term “intentional,” like many other terms for important notions, comes from the scholastics.

[20] (p. 13). The question of the grounds of this division is discussed in more detail in my Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (1874, Bk. ii. chap. vi.; cf. also chap. i. section 5). The statements there made regarding this division I still consider to be substantially correct in spite of many modifications respecting points of detail.

[21] (p. 13). Meditat. iii. “Nunc autem ordo videtur exigere, ut prius omnes meas cogitationes (all psychical acts) in certa genera distribuam.... Quaedam ex his tanquam rerum imagines sunt, quibus solis proprie convenit ideae nomen, ut cum hominem, vel chimaeram, vel coelum, vel angelum, vel Deum cogito; aliae vero alias quasdam praeterea formas habent, ut cum volo cum timeo, cum affirmo, cum nego, semper quidem aliquam rem ut subjectum meae cogitationis apprehendo, sed aliquid etiam amplius quam istius rei similitudinem cogitatione complector; et ex his aliae voluntates sive affectus aliae autem judicia appellantur.”

Strangely enough this clear passage has not prevented Windelband (Strassb. philos. Abhandl. p. 171) from ascribing to Descartes the view that the judgment is an act of volition. What led him astray is a discussion in the fourth Meditation on the influence of the will in the formation of judgment. Even scholastics like Suarez had ascribed too much to this influence, and Descartes goes so far in exaggeration of this dependence that he considers every judgment (even the self-evident judgments) as the work of the will. But to “produce the judgment” and “to be the judgment” are yet manifestly not one and the same.{48} And, therefore, although Descartes, in the passage cited, allows his view as to the influence of the will to appear, and probably it is only on this account that he assigns to the judgment the third place in the fundamental classification of psychical phenomena, yet none the less he says without contradiction: aliae voluntates—aliae judicia appellantur.

More illusive are a couple of passages in his later writings, i.e. in his Principia Philosophiae (i. 32), published three years after the Meditations, and in a work also written three years later: Notae in Programma quoddam, sub finem Anni 1647 in Belgio editum, cum hoc Titulo: Explicatio mentis humanae sive animae rationalis, ubi explicatur quid sit, et quid esse possit.” Particularly might the passage in the Principles lead to the opinion that Descartes must have changed his view, and it is astonishing that Windelband has not appealed to this passage rather than to that in the Meditations. We read here:—Ordines modi cognitandi quos in nobis experimur, ad duos generales referri possunt; quorum unus est, perceptio sive operatio intellectus; alius vero volitio sive operatio voluntatis. Nam sentire, imaginari, et pure intellegere, sunt tantum diversi modi percipiendi; ut et cupere, aversari, affirmare, negare, dubitare, sunt diversi modi volendi.

At first sight this passage appears to be so clearly in contradiction to the one in the third Meditation that, as we have said, it is scarcely possible to avoid the supposition that Descartes had meantime rejected his thesis as to the three fundamental classes of psychical phenomena, so shunning Scylla only to plunge into Charybdis; avoiding the old mistake of confusing the judgment with the idea (Vorstellung), he would now seem to confound it with the will. But a more attentive examination of all the circumstances will suffice to exonerate Descartes from such a charge, and this on the following grounds: (1) There is not the slightest sign that Descartes was ever conscious of having become untrue to the view expressed in the Meditations. (2) Further, in the year 1647 (three years after the publication of the Meditations and shortly before writing the Notae to his Programma) the Meditations appeared in a translation revised by Descartes himself, where, remarkably enough, not the slightest alteration is to be found in the decisive passage in the third Meditation.{49} “Entre mes pensées,” it reads, “quelques unes sont commes les images des choses, et c’est à celles-là scules que convient proprement le nom d’idée.... D’autres, outre cela ont quelques autres formes; ... et de ce genre de pensées les unes sont appelées volontés ou affections, et les autres jugements.” (3) In the Principles itself he says directly after (i. No. 42) that all our errors depend upon our will (a voluntate pendere); but so far is he from regarding the “error” as an act of volition, that he says there is no one who errs voluntarily (nemo est qui velit falli). Still clearer is it that he does not regard the judgment like the desires and dislikes as inner activities of the will itself, but only as a product of the will, since he at once adds: sed longe aliud est velle falli quam velle assentiri iis, in quibus contingit errorem reperiri,” etc. He does not say of the will that it desires, affirms, assents, but that it wills the assent; so also, not that it is true but that it desires the truth (veritatis assequendae cupiditas ... efficit, ut ... judicium ferant).

As to Descartes’ real view, therefore, there can be no doubt; his doctrine has not in this respect suffered the slightest change. It only remains, therefore, to come to an understanding of his obviously variable modes of expression, and this is, I believe, solved incontrovertibly in the following manner. Descartes, while regarding will and judgment as two classes differing fundamentally, none the less finds that in contradistinction to the first fundamental class—that of ideas—these have something in common. In the third Meditation he designates (cf. the above passage) as the common element the fact that although essentially based upon an idea, in both alike there is contained a further special form. In the fourth Meditation a further common character appears, i.e. that the will decides concerning them; not only can it determine and suspend its own acts, but also those of the judgment. It is this common character which he was bound to regard as especially, indeed all important, in the first part of the Principles, xxix.-xlii. Accordingly, he classes them, in opposition to the ideas (which he calls operationes intellectus) under the term operationes voluntatis. In the Notae to the Programma he calls them distinctly in the same sense, “determinationes voluntatis.” “Ego enim, cum viderem, praeter{50} perceptionem, quae praerequiritur ut judicemus, opus esse affirmatione vel negatione ad formam judicii constituendam, nobisque saepe esse liberum ut cohibeamus assensionem, etiamsi rem percipiamus, ipsum actum judicandi, qui non nisi in assensu, hoc est in affirmatione vel negatione consistit, non retuli ad perceptionem intellectus sed ad determinationem voluntatis.” He does not even hesitate in the Principles to term both these two classes of modi cogitandi, “modi volendi” the context seeming sufficiently to indicate that he means only to express thereby the fact that they fall within the domain of the will.

In further support of this explanation we may compare the scholastic terminology into which Descartes as a young man was initiated. It was customary to denote under the term actus voluntatis not merely the movement of the will itself but also the act performed in obedience to the will. In accordance with this custom, the actus voluntatis fell into two classes; the actus elicitus voluntatis and the actus imperatus voluntatis. In a similar manner Descartes groups the class which, according to him, was only possible as an actus imperatus of the will along with his actus elicitus. There is here, therefore, no question of a common fundamental character of the intentional relation.

Clear as all this is to those who carefully attach due weight to the various moments, it would yet appear that Spinoza (probably misled rather by the passage in the Principles than by that cited by Windelband), anticipates Windelband in this misunderstanding of the Cartesian doctrine. In his Ethics, ii. prop. 49, he actually, and in the most real sense, regards the affirmatio and negatio as “volitiones mentis,” and by a further confusion, comes finally to obliterate the distinction between the two classes ideae and voluntates. “Voluntas et intellectus unum et idem sunt” his thesis now reads, so overthrowing not only the three-fold classification of Descartes, but also the old Aristotelian dual classification. Spinoza has here, as usual, done nothing else than corrupt the teaching of his great master.

[22] (p. 13). I do not mean to say that the classification is, universally recognized to-day. It would not even be possible to regard as certain the Principle of Contradiction if in order{51} to do so we were to await universal assent. In the present instance it is not difficult to understand that old, deeply-rooted prejudices cannot all at once be banished. But that even under such circumstances it has not been possible to urge a single important objection affords the best confirmation of our doctrine.

Some, as for instance, Windelband—while giving up the attempt at including judgment and idea (Vorstellung) in one fundamental class, on the other hand believe it possible to subsume judgment under feeling, thus falling back into the error which Hume committed earlier in his inquiry into the nature of belief. According to these writers, to affirm implies an act of approval, an appreciation on the part of the feelings, while denial is an act of disapproval, a feeling of repugnance.

Despite a certain analogy the confusion is hard to understand. There are people who recognize both the goodness of God and the wickedness of the devil, the being of Ormuzd and the being of Ahriman, with an equal degree of conviction, and yet, while prizing the nature of the one above all else, they feel themselves absolutely repelled by that of the other. Since we love knowledge and hate error it is, of course, proper that those judgments we hold to be right (and this is true of all those judgments which we ourselves make) are for this very reason dear to us, i.e. we estimate them in some way or other through feeling. But who on this account would be misled into regarding the judgments themselves which are loved as acts of loving?. The confusion would be almost as gross as if we should fail to distinguish wife and child, money and possessions, from the activity which is directed towards these, inasmuch they are the objects of affection. Cf. also what has been said (note 21) with regard to Windelband, where, misunderstanding Descartes, he ascribes to him the same teaching; further, note 26 (on the unity of the idea of the good) as well as what is urged by Sigwart in the note (in part much to the point) on Windelband (Logic, vol. i. chap. ii. p. 156 seq.). To those who, despite all that has been said, still wish further arguments for the distinction between the second and third fundamental classes, I may, perhaps, be allowed to refer them, by anticipation, to my Descriptive Psychology, which I have alluded to in the preface as an almost completed work, and which{52} will appear if not as a continuation, yet still as a further development of my Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint.

As against Windelband, I here add the following observations:

1. It is false and a serious oversight, as he himself will be convinced on reading again in my Psychology, vol. i. p. 262, when he (p. 172) makes me assert, and that too as a quotation from my own work, that “love and hate” is not an appropriate term for the third fundamental class.

2. It is false, and a quite unjustifiable supposition when (p. 178) he ascribes to me the opinion that the classification of judgments according to quality is the only essential classification belonging to the act of judgment itself. I believe exactly the contrary. I regard, for example (of course in opposition to Windelband), the distinction between assertorical and apodictic judgments (cf. here note 27, p. 83), as also the distinction between self-evident and blind judgments as belonging and highly essential, to the act of judgment itself. Other differences, again, especially the distinction between simple and compound acts of judgment, I might mention. For it is not every compound judgment that can be resolved into quite simple elements, and something similar takes place also in the case of certain notions, a fact known to Aristotle. What is red?—Red colour. What is colour?—The quality of colour. The difference, it is seen, contains in both cases the notion of the genus. The separating of the one logical element from the other is only possible from the one side. A similar one-sided capacity to separate appears also in certain compound judgments. J. S. Mill is, therefore, quite wrong when he (Deductive and Inductive Logic, vol. i. chap. iv. section 3), regards as ridiculous the old classification of judgments into simple and compound, and thinks that the procedure in such a case is exactly as if one should wish to divide horses into single horses and teams of horses; otherwise the same argument would hold good against the classification of conceptions into simple and compound.

3. It is false, though an error which finds almost universal acceptance, and one from which I myself at the time of writing the first volume of my Psychology was not yet free, that the so-called degree of conviction consists in a degree of intensity{53} of the judgment which can be brought into analogy with the intensity of pleasure and pain. Had Windelband charged me with this error I would have acknowledged the complete justice of the charge. Instead of this he finds fault with me because I recognize intensity with regard to the judgment, only in a sense analogous, and not identical to that in the case of feeling, and because I assert the impossibility of comparing in respect of magnitude, the supposed intensity of the belief and the real intensity of feeling. Here we have one of the results of his improved theory of judgment!

If the degree of conviction of my belief that 2 + 1 = 3 were one of intensity how powerful would this be! And if the said belief were to be identified, as by Windelband (p. 186), with feeling, not merely regarded as analogous to feeling, how destructive to our nervous system would the violence of such a shock to the feelings prove! Every physician would be compelled to warn the public against the study of mathematics as calculated to destroy health. (Cf. with regard to this so-called degree of conviction the view of Henry Newman in his interesting work: An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent—a work scarcely noticed in Germany.)

4. When Windelband (p. 183) wonders how I can regard the word “is” in such propositions as “God is,” “A man is” (ein Mensch ist), “A lack is” (ein Mangel ist), “A possibility is,” “A truth is,” (i.e. There is a truth), etc., as having the same meaning and finds it extraordinary (184, note 1) in the author of Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles that he should fail to recognize the manifold significance of “to be,” I can only reply that he who in this view does not perceive the simple consequence of my theory of the judgment can hardly have understood this doctrine. With regard to Aristotle it never occurs to him, while dividing the “ὄν” in the sense of reality into various categories, and into an “ ὂν ὲνεργεία and ὂν δυνάμει”, to do the same with the “ἔστιν” transforming what is the expression of an idea into that of a judgment and the “ὂν ὡς ἀληθές” as he calls it. This could only be done by those who, like Herbart and many others after him, did not know how to hold apart the notion{54} of being in the sense of absolute position and being in the sense of reality (cf. the following note).

5. I have just said that there exist simple and compound judgments, and that many a compound judgment is not, without a residue, resolvable into simple judgments. Special attention must be paid to this in seeking to convert judgments otherwise expressed into the existential form. It is self-evident that only simple judgments, i.e. such as are, strictly speaking, without parts, are so convertible. I may therefore be excused for not thinking it necessary to emphasize this expressly in my Psychology. If this restriction hold good universally it is, of course, valid also of the categorical form. In the propositions categorical in form, which the formal logicians have denoted by the signs A.E.I. and O. they wish to express strictly simple judgments. These are therefore one and all convertible into the existential form (cf. my Psychology, vol. i. p. 283). The same, however, will not hold good when propositions categorical in form contain in consequence of an ambiguity of expression (cf. p. 120, note to Appendix) a plurality of judgments. In such a case the existential form may certainly be the expression of a simple judgment equivalent to the compound one, but cannot be the expression of the judgment itself.

This is a point which Windelband ought to have considered in examining (p. 184) the proposition: “The rose is a flower” with respect to its convertibility into an existential proposition. He is quite right in protesting against its conversion into the proposition: “There is no rose which is not a flower,” but he is not equally right in ascribing this conversion to me. Neither in the passage cited by him nor elsewhere have I made such a conversion, and I consider it just as false as that attempted by Windelband and all such as may be attempted by anybody else. The judgment here expressed in the proposition is made up of two judgments of which one is the recognition of the subject (whether it be that thereby is meant “rose” in the ordinary sense, or “what is called rose,” “what is understood by rose”), and this, as we have just said, is not always the case where a proposition is given of the form: All A is B.

Unfortunately Land also has overlooked this, the only one{55} among my critics who has succeeded in comprehending, in their necessary connection with the principle, what Windelband has termed the “mysterious” hints which I have thrown out towards the reform of elementary logic, and in deducing them correctly from it. (Cf. Land, “On a supposed improvement in Formal Logic” in the papers of the Kgl. Niederländischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1876.)

I conclude with a curiosity recently furnished by Steinthal in his Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie (chap. xviii. p. 175). I there read with astonishment: “Brentano’s confusion in completely severing judgments from idea and thoughts (!) and grouping the judgments as acts of recognition or rejection, with love and hate (!!) is instantly removed if such (?) a judgment, as an aesthetic judgment is termed “Beurteilen” (!). Probably Steinthal has never once glanced into my Psychology, and has only read Windelband’s statement concerning it; this, however, so hastily that I hope he will not be ungrateful at my sending his lines to Windelband for correction.

[23] (p. 14). Miklosich, Subjectlose Sätze, second edition, Vienna, 1883.

In order to make the reader familiar with the contents of this valuable little book a notice written at the time for the Vienna Evening Post may prove useful. Through an oversight it was printed as a feuilleton in the Vienna newspaper. As no one certainly would look for it there, I will include it here by way of an appendix. Meantime, Sigwart’s monograph, The Impersonalia has appeared, in which he opposes Miklosich. Marty has submitted this, as well as (shortly before) the corresponding section in Sigwart’s Logic to a telling criticism in the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosopie, with regard to which criticism Sigwart, though without any reasonable ground, has shown himself highly indignant. “Il se fache,” the French say, “donc il a tort.” That Sigwart’s theory in its essential points has not succeeded, even Steinthal really allows, though in his Zeitschrift (chap. xviii. p. 172 seq.) he burns thick clouds of incense to the writer of the monograph, and even in his preface to the fourth edition of his Origin of Language applauds a form{56} of conduct which every true friend of that deserving man (Sigwart) must regret. After the high praise awarded to him at the outset, one feels somewhat disappointed finally by the criticism. Steinthal rejects (pp. 177-180) Sigwart’s theory on its grammatical side. There would only remain therefore as really successful Sigwart’s psychological theory. But the psychological portion is not that concerning which Steinthal’s estimate is authoritative; for in that case, one would be bound to take seriously the following remark: “In the proposition: “Da bückt sich’s hinunter mit liebendem Blick” (a line from Schiller’s Diver), it is obvious that everybody must think of the king’s daughter, but it is not she which stands before me but a subjectless “sich hinunter-bücken,” and now I have all the more fellow-feeling for her. According to my (Steinthal’s) psychology, I should say the idea of the king’s daughter “fluctuates” (schwingt) but does not enter into consciousness.” This calls for something more than the old saying: Sapienti sat.

I

The psychological theory of Sigwart shows itself in all its weakness when he seeks to give an account of the notion of “existence.” It has been already recognized by Aristotle, that this notion is gained by reflection upon the affirmative judgment. But Sigwart, like most modern logicians, neglects to make use of this hint. Instead of saying that to the existent belongs everything of which the affirmative judgment is true, he becomes repeatedly, and once more in the second edition of his logic (pp. 88-95) involved in diffuse discussions upon the notion of being and upon existential propositions, which cannot in any way conduce to clearness, seeing that they move in false directions.

“To be,” according to Sigwart, expresses a relation (pp. 88, 95); if it be asked: What kind of a relation? the answer would, at first sight (92), appear to be, a relation to me as thinking. But no; the existential proposition asserts just this: “that the existing also exists, apart from its relation to me and to another thinking being.” It cannot, therefore, be “a relation to me as thinking.” But what other relation can be meant? Not until p. 94 is this brought out more clearly. The relation{57} ought to mean (of course he adds “zunächst”, provisionally) the agreement (“identity” ib.) of the thing represented with a possible impression (“einem Wahrnehmbaren” ib. “something which may be perceived by me,” ib. p. 90).

Now it will be immediately recognized that this notion of existence is too narrow; for it might very well be asserted that much exists which it is not possible to perceive, e.g. a past and a future, an empty space, and any sort of deficiency, a possibility or impossibility, etc., etc. It is therefore not surprising that Sigwart himself seeks to widen the notion. But he does this in a manner which I find it difficult to understand. At first sight he appears to say in order that something may exist it is not necessary that it can be perceived by me; it is enough if it can be perceived by anybody. Or what else can be meant when Sigwart, after what has just been said, that existence was the agreement of the thing represented with a possible impression, thus continues: “That which exists stands not merely in this relation to me but to all other existing beings?” It cannot surely mean that Sigwart is inclined to ascribe to every existing being the capacity to receive every impression. It may be he only wishes to say that everything which exists stands to every other existing being in the relation of existence, and then it might be concluded from what immediately follows that this rather meaningless definition is intended to express that existence is the capacity to act or to be acted upon. (“What exists ... stands in causal relations to the rest of the world”; similar also is p. 91, note: the existent is something which “can exercise effects upon me and others.”) Finally, however, there is some ground for thinking Sigwart would say: what exists is that which can be perceived or can be inferred as perceivable, for he adds: “hence (on account of this causal relation) from what is perceivable also an existence which is merely inferred may be asserted.”

That all this is equally to be rejected it is not difficult to recognize.

For (1) To “infer” the existence of something does not mean so much as “to infer that it is capable of being perceived.” If, for example, the existence of atoms and of empty spaces{58} could be assured by inference, we should still be very far from proving their perceptibility either to ourselves or to some other being. If any one were to conclude the existence of God while giving up the attempt “to give vividness” to the thought by anthropomorphic means, he would not on this account believe that God must be perceptible to one of his creatures or even that he is the object of his own perception.

2. From this point of view it would be absurd for any one to say: “I am convinced that there is much the existence of which can neither be perceived at any time or even inferred by anybody.” For that would mean: “I am convinced that much can be perceived or can be inferred to be capable of perception which yet can never be perceived or inferred.” Who does not recognize here how far Sigwart has strayed from the true notion of existence!

3. Should Sigwart wish in this passage to widen the notion of existence to such a degree as to think that existence is that which can either be perceived or inferred from some perceivable object, or again, stands in some sort of causal relation to what is perceivable, it might be replied—if indeed such a monstrous notion of existence still require refutation—that even this notion is still too narrow. If, for example, I say: It may be that an empty space exists but this can never with certainty be known by any one, I thereby confess that existence may perhaps belong to empty space; but I deny most definitely that it is perceptible, or that it is to be inferred from that which is perceptible. In regard to relations of cause and effect on the other hand, it is of course impossible that empty space (which is certainly no thing) can stand in such a relation to anything perceivable. We should thus once again arrive at an absurd meaning in interpretation of an assertion in no way absurd.

How wrongly Sigwart has analysed the notion of existence is also proved very simply by means of the following proposition: A real centaur does not exist; a centaur in idea, however, certainly exists, and that as often as I imagine it. Whoever does not clearly recognize here the distinction of the “ὂν ὡς ἀληθές i.e. in the sense of existing, from ὂν in the sense of real (wesenhaft) will I fear hardly be brought to recognize it by the fullest{59} illustrations which might be furnished by further examples. We may, however, also consider briefly the following point: According to Sigwart, the knowledge of the existence of anything consists in the knowledge of the agreement of something represented in idea with, let us say, χ, since I do not clearly understand with what. What now is necessary in order to recognize the agreement of something with something else? Manifestly, the knowledge of everything which is required in order that this agreement should really exist. But this requires (1) that the one element exist, (2) that the other element exist, and (3) that between them there exist the relation of identity since what does not exist can be neither like something nor different from it. But the knowledge of the first element constitutes already in itself a knowledge of existence. Hence the knowledge of the two remaining elements is no longer necessary to the recognition of any existence, and Sigwart’s theory leads to a contradiction. (Cf. with what has been said here, Sigwart’s polemic against my Psychology, book ii. chap. vii. in his work; The Impersonalia, p. 50 seq., and Logic, vol. i. second edition, p. 89 seq. note, as well as Marty’s polemic against Sigwart in the articles: “Über Subjectlose Sätze” in the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, viii. i. seq.)[A]

[A] I had already written my Critique of Sigwart’s notion of existence when I became aware of a note in his Logic, second ed, p. 390, a passage which, while it has not made it necessary to alter anything which I had written, has led me to insert it for the purpose of comparison. “Das Seiende überhaupt,” Sigwart writes, “kann nicht als wahrer Gattungsbegriff zu dem einzelnen Seienden betrachtet werden; es ist, begrifflich betrachtet, nur ein gemeinschaftlicher Name. Denn, da ‘Sein’ für uns ein Relationsprädikat ist, kann es kein gemeinschaftliches Merkmal sein, es müsste denn gezeigt werden, dass dieses Prädikat in einer dem Begriffe alles Seienden gemeinsamen Bestimmung wurzle.” I fear that the reader will, just as little as myself, attain by this explanation to clearness concerning Sigwart’s notion of existence. He will perhaps the better understand why all my efforts regarding it have proved futile.

II.

As Sigwart has failed to grasp the nature of judgment in general he is not, of course, able to understand that of the negative judgment in particular. He has gone so far in error as to deny to it an equal right as species along with the positive judgment;{60} no negative judgment is, he thinks, a direct judgment, its object is rather always another actual judgment or the attempt to form such a judgment.

In this assertion Sigwart is opposed to some important psychological views which I have made good in my lecture. It would therefore seem fitting to resist his attack. For this purpose I shall show: (1) that Sigwart’s doctrine is badly founded; (2) that it leads to an irremediable confusion, as in that case Sigwart’s affirmative judgment is a negative judgment, while his negative judgment if indeed a judgment at all, and not rather the absence of one, is a positive judgment, and that moreover his positive judgment really involves a negative one, along with other similar confusions. (3) Finally I think it will be possible—thanks to Sigwart’s detailed explanations—to show the genesis of his error.

1. The first inquiry in the case of an assertion so novel and so widely diverging from the general view, will be as to its foundation. With regard to this, he insists above all (p. 150) that the negative judgment would have no meaning if the thought of the positive attribution of a predicate had not preceded. But what can this mean? Either there is here a clear petitio principii, or it cannot mean anything more than that a connection of ideas must have preceded. Now granting this for a moment (although I have in my Psychology shown its falsity) this would by no means prove his proposition, since Sigwart himself recognizes (p. 89 note, and elsewhere) that such a “subjective connexion of ideas” would still not be a judgment; that there needs rather to be added to it a certain feeling of constraint.

An argument follows later (p. 151) the logical connexion of which I understand just as little. It is rightly observed that in and for itself we have the right to deny of anything an infinite number of predicates, and it is with equal right added that in spite of this, we do not really pass all these negative judgments. And now what conclusion is drawn from these premisses? Perhaps this, that the fact that a certain negative judgment is warranted is not sufficient in itself to explain the entrance of the judgment. This we may without hesitation admit. But Sigwart concludes quite otherwise; he permits himself to assert,{61} it follows from this that the further condition which is here lacking is that the corresponding positive affirmation has not yet been attempted. This is indeed a bold leap, and one which my logic at least is not able to follow. And why, if one were to inquire further, are not all the positive judgments here concerned really attempted? The most probable answer, judging by the examples given by Sigwart (this stone reads, writes, sings, composes; justice is blue, green, heptagonal, rotating), is, that this has not been done because the negative judgment has already been made with evident certainty; for this would best explain why there is no “danger of any one attributing these predicates to the stone or to justice.” If, however, any one prefer to answer that “the narrowness of consciousness” makes it impossible to attempt at the same time an infinite number of positive judgments, I am content with this expedient also, only it must then be asked if this appeal ought not to have been made directly and earlier, since Sigwart himself calls the possible negative judgments an “immeasurable quantity.”

It is also a curious error (Marty has already called attention to it), when Sigwart asserts that in contradistinction to what holds good of the negative judgment “every subject admits only of a limited number of predicates being affirmed.” But why? Can we not, for example, say a whole hour is greater than half an hour, greater than a third, greater than a fourth and so on ad infin.?... If then, notwithstanding, I do not really make all these judgments, there are evidently good reasons for this; above all that the “narrowness of consciousness” forbids it. But then this might also be applied most successfully in regard to negative judgments.

Somewhat later we meet a third argument which, as I have already by anticipation refuted it in my Psychology (book ii. chap. 7, section v.), will be treated quite shortly here. If the negative judgment were a direct one, co-ordinated with the affirmative judgment as species then, thinks Sigwart (p. 155 seq.), whoever in an affirmative categorical proposition regards the affirmation of the subject as involved must, to be consistent, regard the denial of the subject as involved in the negative proposition, which is not the case. The latter observation is correct, the{62} former assertion, however, quite untenable, as it involves in itself a contradiction. For exactly because the existence of each part in a whole is involved in the existence of the whole, the whole no longer exists if but one of its parts is missing.

It only remains now to consider a point of language by which Sigwart believes himself able to support his view. A testimony for it is, he thinks, to be found in the fact that the symbol for the negative judgment is formed in every case by means of a combination with the symbol of affirmation, the word “not” being added to the copula. In order to judge what is here actually the fact, we will glance for a moment at the sphere of feeling. Sigwart agrees, I think, with me and everybody else that pleasing and displeasing, rejoicing and sorrowing, loving and hating, etc., are co-ordinate with each other. Yet a complete series of expressions denoting a disinclination of feeling are found in dependence upon the expression for the corresponding inclination. For example, inclination, disinclination; pleasure, displeasure; ease, disease; Wille, Widerwille; froh, unfroh; happy, unhappy; beautiful, unbeautiful; pleasant, unpleasant;—even “ungut” is used. The explanation of this is, I believe, not difficult for the psychologist, notwithstanding the equally primordial character of these opposite modes of feeling. Ought then the explanation of the phenomenon lying before us in the expression of the negative judgment, closely related as it is to the before mentioned phenomenon, to be really so very difficult, even assuming the primordial character?

As a matter of fact the case must be very bad when thinkers like Sigwart in making statements so important in principle, and at the same time so unusual, have to resort to arguments so weak.

2. The grounds on which Sigwart’s doctrine concerning the negative judgment rest have, therefore, each and all proved untenable. This must be so; for how could the truth of any doctrine be shown which would plunge everything into the greatest confusion?

Sigwart finds himself compelled to distinguish between the positive and the affirmative judgment, and the affirmative judgment—one hears and wonders at the new terminology—{63}is according to him, closely examined, a negative judgment. On page 150 he says literally: “The primordial judgment can certainly not be termed the affirmative judgment, but is better described as the positive judgment, for only in opposition to the negative judgment, and in so far as it rejects the possibility of a negation, is the simple statement A is B an affirmation,” and so on. Inasmuch as it “rejects.” What else can that mean than “so far as it denies”? As a matter of fact only those negations can, according to this new and extraordinary use of language, be called affirmations! Yet this would really mean, and particularly when it is said that the proposition A is B is often such a negation (cf. the expressions just quoted), that the use of language would be reduced to a confusion quite unnecessary and altogether unendurable.

Not only is the affirmation—as set forth—according to Sigwart really a negation but also, paradoxical as it may seem, the negation, on close consideration, proves to be a positive judgment. It is true, Sigwart protests against those who, like Hobbes, would regard all negatives as affirmative judgments with negative predicates. But, following Sigwart, if this is not so, then these must be affirmative judgments with affirmative predicates, since he teaches that the subject is in every case a judgment, the predicate being the notion of invalidity. On p. 160 he says in the note the negation does away with a supposition, denies the validity, and this expression, considered in itself, might be taken to mean that Sigwart assumes here a special function of denial (absprechen) the contrary of that of affirmation (zusprechen). But no; a negative copula (cf. p. 153) according to him there is not.

Now what in the world is one to understand by “denial” (absprechen)? Does it mean the simple suppression (Aufhörenlassen) of the positive judgment upon the given subject matter, that is, according to Sigwart, the falling away of the feeling of compulsion previously given in a connexion between ideas? This is impossible, since the removal of this would bring about a condition in which the connexion of ideas remains, without being either affirmed or denied. How often does something of which we were previously certain become uncertain without{64} our on this account denying it. What then is this denying? May we perhaps say that according to Sigwart it is a feeling oneself compelled (sich-genötigt-fühlen) to annul, whereas affirming is a feeling oneself compelled to posit? We should then have to say that all the while we are passing a negative judgment, we are in reality always seeking to pass a positive judgment, but that we experience a hindrance in so doing. The same consciousness, however, is felt by one who is clearly aware of the entire absence of a positive ground. For how can any one succeed in believing anything which he at the same time holds to be entirely ungrounded? Of no one, especially if Sigwart’s definition of the judgment be applied as the standard, is this conceivable; that is to say, every one in such a case will experience failure in such an attempt. Accordingly there is, as yet, no negative judgment. If then the rejection does not signify a negative copula it must manifestly be regarded as an instance of the affirmation of the predicate “false,” or (to use Sigwart’s term) as its “identification” with the judgment which in this case should be the subject. This “false” also cannot simply mean “untrue,” for I can assert “untrue” of thousands of things with regard to which the predicate “false,” which appears in certain judgments, would not be in place. If only judgments are true, then of everything which is not a judgment the predicate “untrue” must be affirmed, though certainly not on that account the predicate “false.” “False” must therefore be regarded as a positive predicate; and so from Sigwart’s point of view absolutely false in principle, certain as it is that the merely not being convinced (nicht-überzeugt-sein) is no denial, it is equally certain that we have actually no choice; we should be compelled to regard every negative judgment as a positive judgment with a positive predicate. So we arrive at a second and greater paradox.

But here a third factor enters which completes the confusion. If we examine Sigwart’s view as to the nature of judgment in general, it may be shown in the clearest manner possible that the simple positive judgment itself involves in turn, a negative judgment. That is to say, following Sigwart, every judgment involves besides a certain combination of ideas, a consciousness{65} of the necessity of our “identification” (unseres Einssetzens) and the impossibility of its contradictory (cf. espec. p. 102), the consciousness, moreover, of such a necessity and impossibility valid for all thinking beings (cf. pp. 102 and 107), which, by the way, is of course quite as false as Sigwart’s whole view of the nature of judgment in general. All judgments without exception are, on account of this peculiarity, called by Sigwart apodictic: nor will he admit the validity of any distinction between the assertorical and apodictic forms of judgment (cf. p. 229 seq.). I now ask: Have we not here a negative judgment distinctly involved? Otherwise what meaning can be given to the statement when we hear Sigwart speak of a “consciousness of the impossibility of the contradictory.” Further I have already shown in my Psychology how all universal judgments are negative, since to be conscious of universality means nothing else than to be convinced that there exists no exception; if this negative be not added, the most extensive list of positive assertions will never constitute a belief in universality. When therefore, a consciousness that every one must so think is here spoken of, there is in this fact a further proof of what I have asserted, namely that according to Sigwart’s doctrine of judgment the simplest positive acts of judgment must involve a negative act of judgment. And yet we are called upon at the same time to believe that the negative judgment, as set forth (p. 159 seq.), arose relatively late, and that therefore on this, as well as on other grounds, it is unworthy of being placed side by side, with the positive judgment as a species equally primordial! Sigwart would surely not have expected this of us had he been conscious of all that I have here set forth in detail, and which is the more clearly seen to be involved in his exposition, often so difficult to comprehend the more carefully it is submitted to reflection. Of course expressions may be found where Sigwart, respecting this or that point of detail, asserts the contrary of what is here deduced; for what else can be expected where everything is left in such ambiguity, and where the attempt to make things clear exhibits the most manifold contradictions?

3. Finally, we have still to show the genesis of the error in which this able logician has involved himself in a relatively{66} simple question after having once mistaken the nature of the judgment. The proton pseudos is to be sought in a delusion which has come down to us from the older logic that to the essence of the judgment there belongs the relation of two ideas with one another. Aristotle has described this relation as combination and separation (σύνθεσις καἰ διαίρεσις) although he was well aware of the imperfect propriety of the expressions, adding at the same time that in a certain sense both relations might be described as a combination (σύνθεσις, cf. de Anima, iii. 6). Scholastic and modern logic held fast to the expressions “combination” and “separation”; in grammar, however, both these relations were termed “combination,” and the symbol for this combination the “copula.” Sigwart now takes seriously the expressions “combination” and “separation,” and so a negative copula seems to him a contradiction (cf. p. 153), the positive judgment, on the other hand, appears to be a presupposition of the negative judgment, since, before a combination has been set up, it cannot be separated. And so it appears to him that a negative judgment without a preceding positive judgment is quite meaningless (cf. p. 150 and above). Consequently we find this celebrated inquirer in a position which compels him to put forth the most strenuous efforts all to no purpose—the negative judgment remains inexplicable.

In a note (p. 159) he gives us, as a result of such attempts, a remarkable description of the process by which we arrive at the negative judgment—a result in which he believes himself finally able to rest satisfied. In this account the false steps which he successively makes become, each in turn, evident to the attentive observer. Long before the point is reached where he believes himself to have come upon the negative judgment, he has as a matter of fact already anticipated it.

He sets out with the correct observation that the first judgments which we make are all positive in character. These judgments are evident and made with full confidence. “Now, however,” he continues, “our thought goes out beyond the given; by the aid of recollections and associations, judgments arise which are at first also formed in the belief that they express reality” (which means, according to other expressions of Sigwart,{67} that the ideas are combined with the consciousness of objective validity; for this (xiv. p. 98) belongs to the essence of the judgment) “as, for example, when we expect to find something with which we are acquainted in its usual place or pre-suppose respecting a flower that it smells. Now, however, a part of what is thus supposed contradicts our immediate knowledge.” (We leave Sigwart to show here how we are able to recognize anything as “contradictory” when we are not as yet in possession of negative judgments and negative notions. The difficulty becomes still more sharply apparent as he proceeds:) “when we do not find what we expected, we become conscious of the difference between what exists merely in idea and what is real.” (What does “not find” mean here? I had not found it previously; obviously I now find that what was erroneously supposed to be associated with another object is without it, and this I can only do by recognizing the one and denying the other, i.e. recognize it as not being with it. Further what is meant here by “difference”? To recognize difference means to recognize that of two things the one is not the other. What is meant by existing “merely in idea”? Manifestly, “what exists in idea which is not at the same time also real.” It would seem, however, that Sigwart is still unaware that in what he is describing the negative function of the judgment is already more than once involved. He continues:) “That of which we are immediately certain is another than that” (i.e. it is not the same, it is indeed absolutely incompatible with that) “which we have judged in anticipation, and now” (i.e. after and since we have already passed all these negative judgments) “appears the negation which annuls the supposition and denies of it validity. And here a new attitude is involved in so far as the subjective combination is separated from the consciousness of certainty. The subjective combination is compared with one bearing the stamp of certainty, its distinction therefrom recognized, and out of this arises the notion of invalidity.” This last would almost seem to be a carelessness of expression, for if invalid were to mean as much as “false” and not “uncertain” it could not be derived from the distinction between a combination with and a combination without certainty, but only from the opposition existing between{68} combination which is denied and one which is affirmed. As a matter of fact, the opposite affirmative judgment is not at all necessary to it. The opposition, the incompatibility of the qualities in a real, is already evident on the ground of the combination of ideas representing the opposite qualities which, as I repeat once more, cannot, according to Sigwart himself (p. 89 note; and p. 98 seq.), be called an attempt at positive judgment. Although this may now and again happen in the case of contradictory ideas, it certainly does not happen always. If, for example, the question is put to me: Does there exist a regular chiliagon with 1001 sides? then—assuming that I am not perfectly clear in my own mind, as will be the case with most men, that there does exist a regular chiliagon, I certainly do not attempt to form a judgment (i.e. according to Sigwart, confidently assume) that there exists a regular chiliagon having 1001 sides before forming the negative judgment that no such figure exists on the ground of the opposition between the qualities.

Sigwart himself, as his language frequently betrays (cf. e.g. pp. 152 and 150) recognizes at bottom, as he is bound to recognize, in spite of his attack upon the negative copula, that negation and denial are just as much a special function of the judgment as affirmation and recognition. If this be granted, then the range of their application is by no means so limited as he erroneously asserts. It is false that in every case where a denial takes place the predicate denied is the notion “valid.” Even of a judgment we may deny now its validity, now its certainty, now its à priori character. And just in the same way the subject of the judgment can change most frequently. Of a judgment we may deny certainty, and validity; of a request, modesty; and so in every case, universally expressed, we may deny B of A. Sigwart himself, of course, does this just like any one else. Indeed he sometimes speaks unintentionally far more correctly than his theory would admit, and witnesses, as it were, instinctively to the truth; as, e.g. p. 151, where he declares not—as he elsewhere teaches—that the subject of a negative proposition is always a judgment, and its predicate {69}the term “valid,” but “that of every subject ... a countless number of predicates may be denied.” This is certainly true and just on this account the old doctrine holds that affirmation and denial are equally primordial species.

[24] (p. 15). The discovery that every act of love is a “pleasing,” every act of hate a “displeasing,” was very near to Descartes when he wrote his valuable little work on The Affections. In the second book, Des Passions, ii. art. 139, he says: “Lorsque les choses qu’elles (l’amour et la haine) nous portent à aimer sont véritablement bonnes, et celles qu’elles nous portent à haïr, sont véritablement mauvaises, l’amour est incomparablement meilleure que la haine; elle ne saurait être trop grande et elle ne manque jamais de produire la joie”; and this agrees with what he says a little later: “La haine, au contraire ne saurait être si petite qu’elle ne nuise, et elle n’est jamais sans tristesse.”

In ordinary life, however, the expressions “joy” and “sadness,” “pleasure” and “pain” are only used when the pleasure and displeasure have attained a certain degree of liveliness. A sharp boundary in this unscientific division there is not; we may, however, be allowed to make use of it as it stands. It is enough that the expressions, “pleasure” and “displeasure” are not narrowed down by any such limit.

[25] (p. 16). The expressions “true” and “false” are employed in a manifold sense; in one sense we employ them in speaking of true and false judgments; again (somewhat modifying the meaning), of objects, as when we say, “a true friend,” “false money.” I need scarcely observe that where I use the expressions “true” and “false” in this lecture, I associate therewith not the first and proper meaning, but rather a metaphorical one having reference to objects. True, is, therefore, what is; false, what is not. Just as Aristotle spoke of “ὂν ὡς ἀληθές” so we might also say, “ἀληθές ὡς ὂν.”

Of truth in its proper sense it has often been said that it is the agreement of the judgment with the object (adequatio rei et intellectus, as the scholastics said). This expression, true in a certain sense, is yet in the highest degree open to misunderstanding, and has led to serious errors. The agreement is regarded as a kind of identity between something contained in the judgment, or in the idea lying at the root of the judgment{70} and something situated without the mind. But this cannot be the meaning here; “to agree” means here rather as much as “to be appropriate,” “to be in harmony with,” “suit,” “correspond.” It is as though in the sphere of feeling one should say, the rightness of love and hate consists in the agreement of the feelings with the object. Properly understood this also would be unquestionably right; whoever loves and hates rightly, has his feelings adequately related to the object, i.e. the relation is appropriate, suitable, corresponds suitably, whereas it would be manifestly absurd were one to believe that in a rightly directed love or hate there was found to be an identity between these feelings or the ideas lying at their root on the one hand, and something lying outside the feelings on the other, an identity which is absent where the attitude of the feelings is unrightly directed. Among other circumstances this misunderstanding has also conduced towards bringing the doctrine of judgment into that sad confusion from which to-day psychology and logic seek with such painful efforts to set themselves free.

The conceptions of existence and non-existence are the correlates of the conceptions of the truth of the (simple) affirmative and negative judgments. Just as to judgment belongs what is judged, to the affirmative judgment what is judged of affirmatively, to the negative judgment, what is judged of negatively, so to the rightness of the affirmative judgment belongs the existence of what is judged of affirmatively, to the rightness of the negative judgment the non-existence of what is judged of negatively; and whether I say an affirmative judgment is true, or, its object is existent; whether I say a negative judgment is true, or its object is non-existent; in both cases I am saying one and the same thing. In the same way, it is essentially one and the same logical principle whether I say, in each case either the (simple) affirmative or negative judgment is true, or, each is either existent or non-existent.

Thus, for example, the assertion of the truth of the judgment, “a man is learned,” is the correlate of the assertion of the existence of the object, “a learned man”; and the assertion of the truth of the judgment, “no stone is alive,” is the correlate{71} of the assertion of the non-existence of its object, “a living stone.” The correlative assertions are here, as everywhere, inseparable. The case is exactly the same as in the assertions A > B and that B < A; that A is the cause of B, and that B is produced by A.

[26] (p. 16). The notion of the good, in and for itself, is accordingly a unity in the strict sense, and not, as Aristotle teaches (in consequence of a confusion which we shall have to speak of later) a unity in a merely analogous sense. German philosophers also have failed to grasp the unity of the conception. This is the case with Kant, and, quite recently, with Windelband. There is a defect in our ordinary way of speaking which may prove very misleading to Germans inasmuch as for the opposite of the term “good” there is no common expression current, but this is designated now as “schlimm,” now as “übel,” now as “böse,” now as “arg,” now as “abscheulich,” now as “schlecht,” etc. It might very well, as in similar cases, come to be thought that not only the common name is wanting, but also the common notion. And if the notion is wanting on the one side of the antithesis, it would also be wanting on the other, and so the expression “good” would seem an equivocal term.

Of all the expressions quoted, it seems to me (and philologists also, whose advice I have asked, are of the same opinion), that the expression “schlecht,” like the Latin “malum,” is most applicable as the opposite of the good in its full universality, and in this way I shall allow myself to use this expression in what follows.

The fact that I adhere to the view of a certain common character regarding the intentional relation of love and hate does not debar my recognizing along with this view, special forms for particular cases. If, therefore, “bad” is a truly universal simple class conception, there may yet be distinguished special classes within its domain of which one may be suitably termed “böse,” another “übel,” etc.

[27] (p. 18). The distinction between “self-evident” and “blind” judgments is something too striking to have altogether escaped notice. Even the sceptical Hume is very far from denying the distinction. Self-evidence, according to him (Enq.{72} concerning Hum. Underst. iv.) may be ascribed, on the one hand, to analytic judgments (to which class belong also the axioms of mathematics and the mathematical demonstrations), and, on the other hand, to certain impressions, but not to the so-called truths of experience. Reason does not lead us here, but rather habit, after a manner entirely irrational; belief, in this case is instinctive and mechanical (ib. v.).

But to observe a fact does not mean to set forth its nature clearly and distinctly. As the nature of the judgment has, until recent times, been almost universally misunderstood, how could it be possible rightly to understand its self-evidence? It is just here that even Descartes’ discernment fails him. How very closely the phenomenon occupied him a passage in the Meditations bears witness: “Cum hic dico me ita doctum esse a natura (he is speaking of the so-called external impressions) intelligo tantum spontaneo quodam impetu me ferri ad hoc credendum non lumine aliquo naturali mihi ostendi esse verum, quae duo multum discrepant. Nam quaecunque lumine naturali mihi ostenduntur (ut quod ex eo quo dubitem sequatur me esse et similia) nullo modo dubia esse possunt quia nulla alia facultas esse potest, cui aeque fidam ac lumini isti, quaeque illa non vera esse possit docere; sed quantum ad impetus naturales jam saepe olim judicavi me ab illis in deteriorem partem fuisse impulsum cum de bono eligendo ageretur, nec video cur iisdem in ulla alia re magis fidam.”—(Medit. iii.).

That Descartes did not mark the fact of self-evidence, that he did not observe the distinction between intuition and blind judgment certainly cannot be affirmed from the above. But, while separating the judgment as a class from the idea, he still leaves behind in the class of ideas the character of self-evidence which distinguishes the judgments of intuition. It consists, according to him, in a special mark of the perception, that is, of the idea lying at the root of the judgment. Descartes even goes so far as actually to call this act of perception a “cognoscere,” a “knowing.” A “knowing,” that is, and still not an act of judgment! These are rudimentary organs which after the progress made, owing to Descartes, in the doctrine of judgment, remind us of a stage of life in Psychology which has been{73} surmounted; but with this distinction, in opposition to similar phenomena in the history of the development of the species, that these organs, in no way adapted, become in the highest degree troublesome, and render all Descartes’ further efforts for the theory of knowledge ineffective. He remains, to use Leibnitz’ phrase, “in the antechamber of truth” (cf. here note 28, towards the end). Only in this way does Descartes’ clara et distincta perceptio—concerning which term itself it is so difficult to gain a clear and distinct idea—in its curious dual nature become perfectly intelligible. The only means of overcoming this confusion is to seek that which distinguishes insight in opposition to other judgments as an inner quality belonging to the act of insight itself.

It is true that some who have sought here have yet failed to find. We saw (cf. note 23) how Sigwart conceives the nature of the judgment. To this, he teaches, there belongs a relation of ideas to one another, and along with this a feeling of obligation respecting this connexion. (Cf. sections 14 and 31, espec. 4 and 5.) Such a feeling therefore, always exists even in the case of the blindest prejudice. It is then abnormal, but is held (as Sigwart expressly explains) to be normal and of universal validity. And what now in contrast to this case, is given in the case of insight? Sigwart replies that its evidence consists in the same feeling (cf. e.g. section 3) which now, however, is not merely held to be normal and universally valid, but is really normal and universally valid.

It seems to me that the weakness of this theory is at once apparent; and it is on many grounds to be rejected.

1. The peculiar nature of insight, the clearness and evidence of certain judgments from which their truth is inseparable has little or nothing to do with any feeling of compulsion. It may well happen that at a given moment I cannot refrain from so judging, yet none the less the essence of its clearness does not consist in the feeling of compulsion, and no consciousness of an obligation so to judge could, as such, afford security as to its truth. He who disbelieves in every form of indeterminism in respect of judging, regards all judgments under the circumstances in which they were passed as necessary, but he does not{74}—and with indisputable right—regard all of them as on that account true.

2. Sigwart, in seeking the consciousness of insight in a feeling of necessity so to think, asserts that the consciousness of one’s being compelled is, at the same time, a consciousness of a necessity for all thinking beings whenever the same grounds are present. If he means, however, that the one conviction is doubtless connected with the other, this is an error. Why, when a person feels bound to pass a judgment upon certain data, should the same compulsion hold good in respect of every other thinking being to whom the same data are also given? It is obvious that only an appeal to the law of causality which, under like conditions demands like results, could be the ground of the logical connexion. Its application, however, to the present case would be entirely erroneous, since this would involve the ignoring of the special psychical dispositions, which, although they do not directly enter into consciousness at all, must yet be regarded, along with the conscious data, as pre-determining conditions, and these are very different in the case of different persons. Hegel and his school, misled by paralogisms, have denied the principle of contradiction; Trendelenburg, who opposed Hegel, has at least restricted its validity (cf. his Abhandlungen über Herbarts Metaphysik). The universal impossibility of inwardly denying the principle which Aristotle asserted cannot therefore, to-day, be any longer defended; Aristotle himself, however, for whom the principle was self-evident, assuredly found its denial impossible.

Whatever is evident to any one is of course certain not only for him, but also for every one else who, in the same way, sees its evidence. The judgment, moreover, which is seen to be evident by any one has also universal validity, i.e. the contradictory of what is seen to be evident by one person, cannot be seen to be evident by another person, and every one who believes in its contradictory is in error. Further, since what is here said belongs to the essence of truth, whoever has evidence of the truth of anything may perceive that he is justified in regarding it as true for all. But he would be guilty of a flagrant confusion of ideas who should regard such a consciousness that a{75} truth is true for all, as equivalent to a consciousness of a universal necessity of thinking.

3. Sigwart involves himself in a multitude of contradictions. He asserts and must assert—if he is not to yield to the sceptics and relinquish his entire logical system—that evident judgments are not merely different from non-evident judgments, but that they are also distinguishable in consciousness. The one class must therefore appear as normal and of universal validity, the other class as not so. But if evident and non-evident judgments alike carry with them the consciousness of universal validity, then the two classes would at first sight exactly agree in the manner in which they present themselves, and only as it were, afterwards (or at the same time, though as a mere concomitant), and by reflection upon some sort of criterion which is applied to them as a standard could the distinction be discovered. And passages are actually to be found in Sigwart where he speaks of a consciousness of agreement with the universal rules which accompany the fully evident judgment. (Cf. e.g. Logic, 2nd ed., 39, p. 311.) But apart from the fact that this contradicts experience—for long before the discovery of the syllogism, conclusions were reached syllogistically and with complete evidence—it is also to be rejected inasmuch as, seeing that the rule itself must be assured, it would lead either to an infinite regress, or to a circulus vitiosus.

4. Another contradiction with which I have to charge Sigwart (though in my opinion it might have been avoided even after his erroneous view as to the nature of the judgment and as to the nature of self-evidence), we meet with in his doctrine of self-consciousness. The knowledge that I am contains only self-evidence, and this exists independent of any consciousness of an obligation so to think and of a necessity which is common to all alike. (At least I am not able otherwise to understand the passage, Logic, 2nd ed., p. 310: “The certainty that I am and think is the absolutely last and fundamental one—the condition of all thinking and certainty at all; here, only immediate evidence can be given; one cannot even say that this thought is necessary, since it is previous to all necessity, and just as immediate and evident is the conscious certainty that I think{76} this or that; it is inextricably interwoven with my self-consciousness; the one is given with the other.”) After Sigwart’s doctrine already examined, this would appear to be a contradictio in adjecto and, as such, quite indefensible.

5. Further contradictions appear in Sigwart’s very peculiar and doubtful doctrine concerning the postulates, which he opposes to the axioms. The latter are to be regarded as certain on the ground of their real intellectual necessity; the former, not on the ground of purely intellectual motives, but on psychological motives of another kind, on the ground of practical needs. (Logic, 2nd ed. p. 412 seq.) The law of causality: e.g. is, according to him, not an axiom, but a mere postulate; we regard it as certain, since we find that without affirming it we should not be able to investigate nature. Sigwart, by this mode of accepting the law of causality, that is, affirming, out of mere good-will, that in nature under like conditions, the same results would constantly be forthcoming, manifestly takes it for granted without being conscious of its intellectual necessity. But, if all “taking-as-true” (Fürwahrhalten) is an act of judgment, this is quite incompatible with his views as to the nature of the judgment. Sigwart has here, as far as I can see, but one way of escape, i.e. to confess that he does not believe in what, as a postulate, he accepts as certain (as e.g. the law of causality); then, however, he will be hardly serious in hoping for it.

6. This point becomes still more doubtful on reflection upon what (2) has been previously discussed. The consciousness of a universal necessity of thought does not, according to Sigwart, belong to the postulates, but rather to the axioms. (Cf. 5.) But Sigwart could only with any plausibility exhibit the consciousness of this universal necessity of thinking as operating in the consciousness of one’s personal necessity of thinking by making use of the universal law of causation. But this causal law is itself merely a postulate; it is destitute of self-evidence. It is therefore obvious that the universal thought-necessity in the case of the axioms is also a postulate, and consequently they lose what, according to Sigwart, is their most essential distinction from the postulates. It may perhaps be in accordance with this that Sigwart calls the belief in the trustworthiness of{77} “self-evidence” a postulate. But how the statement so interpreted, can be brought into harmony with the remaining parts of his doctrine I am at a loss to conceive.

7. Sigwart denies (31) the distinction between assertorical and apodictic judgments, since in every judgment the sense of necessity in respect of its function is essential. Consequently this assertion likewise hangs together with his erroneous fundamental view of the judgment; he would appear to identify the feeling which he sometimes calls the feeling of evidence with the apodictic character of a judgment. But it would be quite unjustifiable to overlook the modal peculiarity of certain judgments, as for example, the law of contradiction in distinction from other forms of judgment like that of the consciousness that I am. In the first instance, we have to do with what is “necessarily true or false,” in the second instance only with what is “true or false as a matter of fact,” though both are in the same sense evident and do not differ in respect of their certainty. Only in the case of judgments like the former, not, however, from such as the latter do we draw the notions of impossibility and necessity.

That Sigwart, in opposing the view which regards the apodictic judgment as a special class, also occasionally bears witness against himself is clear from what has been already said (4). The knowledge that I am, he calls, in opposition to the knowledge of an axiom, the knowledge of a simple actual truth (p. 312). Here he speaks more soundly than his general statements would really allow.

Sigwart’s theory of self-evidence is, therefore, essentially false. As in the case of Descartes, so here it cannot be said that Sigwart was not conscious of the phenomenon; indeed, we must rather say in his praise, that with the greatest zeal he has sought to analyze it, but as is the case with many in psychological analysis, it would seem that in the eagerness of analyzing he did not stop at the right point, and has sought to resolve into one another phenomena very distinct in nature.

It is obvious that an error respecting the nature of evidence is fraught with the gravest consequence for the logician. It might well be said that we have here touched upon the deep-seated organic disease in Sigwart’s logic, if this may not rather be said{78} to consist in a misunderstanding of the nature of the judgment in general. Again and again its evil results become manifest, as for example, in Sigwart’s inability to understand the most essential causes of our errors, Cf. Logic, vol. i. 2nd ed. p. 103, note, where, with strange partiality he assigns the chief blame to the defective development of our language.

For the rest, many another celebrated logician in recent times can claim no superiority over Sigwart here. As a further example we need only observe how the doctrine of evidence fares at the hands of the admirable J. S. Mill. Cf. note 69, p. 99.

Owing to the great unclearness as to the nature of evidence, almost universal, it becomes conceivable why, as often happens, we meet with the expression “more or less self-evident.” Even Descartes and Pascal use such expressions, although it is clearly quite unsuitable. Whatever is self-evident is certain, and certainty in the real sense knows no distinctions of degree. Even quite recently we find the opinion expressed in the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie (and the writer is manifestly quite serious), that there exist self-evident suppositions which, in spite of their self-evidence, may quite well be false. It is unnecessary to add that I hold this to be opposed to reason. I may here, however, express regret that lectures delivered by me at a time when I still regarded degrees of conviction as intensities of judgment, seem to have given an occasion for such confusions.

[28] (p. 19). Cf. Hume’s Essay, already cited: An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. Other philosophers, who have placed the foundation of ethics in the feelings, as e.g. Beneke and Uberweg (who follows him) have seen further than Hume here. (Cf. the presentation of Beneke’s ethics in his Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, iii.) Herbart comes still nearer to the truth when he speaks of self-evident judgments of taste (these, however, are really not judgments at all, but feelings, and as such are not self-evident, but can only be said to have something analogous to self-evident judgments) and when he further opposes to the merely pleasurable the beautiful, ascribing to the latter as distinct from the former, universal validity{79} and undeniable worth. Unfortunately, there is always something false mixed up with his view, and Herbart loses at once and for ever the right path, so that his ethics in its course diverges much further from the truth than the doctrine of Hume.

Those thinkers who have completely overlooked the distinction between pleasure with the character of rightness and pleasure which is not so qualified, are in danger of falling into opposite errors. The one class view the matter as though all pleasure had the character of rightness, the other class as though no pleasure were so qualified. By the one class the notion of the good as that which rightly pleases, is entirely given up; “worthy of desire” (begehrenswert) in distinction from “desirable” (begehrbar), is an unmeaning expression. For the other class, “worthy of desire” (begehrenswert) remains as a separate notion, so that there is no tautology in their saying nothing is in itself desirable except in so far as it is in itself worthy of desire, is good in itself. Manifestly they must, to be consistent, assert this, and this they have really taught. The extreme hedonists all belong to this class; but, along with them, many others; in the Middle Ages, for example, the teaching is found in Thomas Aquinas, whose greatness receives fresh appreciation from Ihering (cf. Summ. theol. I.a. qu. 80, qu. 82, art. 2 ad. 1, etc.).

But even then such a view cannot be maintained in the light of the facts without exposing the nature of good and bad to a falsification which involves a form of subjectivism similar to that formerly committed by Protagoras respecting the notions of truth and falsehood. Just as, according to this subjectivist in the sphere of the judgment, man is the measure of all things, and often what is true for one, may at the same time be false for another—so the advocates of the view that only the good can be loved, only the bad hated, are really compelled to assume that, in this sphere, each is himself the measure of all things; for the good, in that it is good; for the bad, that it is bad; so that often something is, in itself and at the same time, both good and bad: good in itself, in the case of all who love it for its own sake; bad in itself, in the case of all who hate it for its own sake. This is absurd, and the subjectivistic falsification{80} of the notion of the good is to be rejected equally with the subjectivistic falsification of the notions of truth and existence by Protagoras, but with this difference: that the subjectivistic error in the sphere of what is rightly pleasing and displeasing takes root more easily and infects most ethical systems even to-day. Some, as recently, Sigwart (Vorfragen der Ethik, p. 6), confess it openly; others fall into this error without themselves becoming clearly conscious of the subjectivistic character of their view.[A]

[A] Those especially who teach that generally speaking the knowledge, pleasure, and perfection of each individual is, for him, good, their opposites bad, and that all else is in itself indifferent, will perhaps protest against my classing them among the subjectivists. It might even seem on a superficial survey, that they have set up a doctrine of the good equally valid for all. But on a more careful examination we find that this teaching does not even in a single instance, hold one and the same object to be good universally. For example, my own knowledge is, according to this view, for me worthy of love; for every one else indifferent in itself, while the knowledge of another individual is in itself for me indifferent. It is curious to observe theistic thinkers, as often happens, setting up a subjectivistic view respecting the good, valid of all mortal loving and willing, while, at the same time assuming that God, without respect of person, estimates every perfection by a kind of objective standard. This exception with regard to the loving and willing of God and the notion of Him as eternal Judge is then meant to render harmless in respect of its practical consequences, the egoism which such a principle implies.

Of the celebrated controversy between Bossuet and Fenelon it may be said that the great bishop of Meaux advocated a kind of subjectivism. Fenelon’s theses, though he advocated a system of morality neither ignoble nor unchristian, were finally condemned by the Church of Rome, though it did not go so far as to reject his teaching as heretical. Otherwise one would really be compelled to condemn also those fine glowing lines attributed by many to St. Theresa, that in a very imperfect Latin translation have found their way into many Catholic prayer-books which is much more than their escaping the ecclesiastical censor. I give them translated directly from the Spanish:

The teaching of Thomas Aquinas has often been so represented as though it were pure subjectivism. It is true that much of his teaching sounds quite subjectivistic (cf. e.g. Summ. theol. 1a. q. 80, art. 1, especially the objections and replies as well as the passages in which he declares that the happiness of each is the highest and final end, asserting even of the saints in heaven that each rightly desires more his own blessedness than the blessedness of all others). Along with these, however, are to be found statements in which he soars above this subjectivistic view as, for example, when he declares (as Plato and Aristotle before him and Descartes and Leibnitz after) that everything which exists is good as such, not good merely as a means but also—a point which pure subjectivists (as recently Sigwart, Vorfr. d. Ethik, p. 6) expressly deny—good in itself, and again, when he affirms that in case any one—an impossible case—had at any time to choose between his own eternal ruin and an injury to the Divine love, the right course would be to prefer his own eternal unhappiness.

There the moral feeling of western Christendom touches the feeling of the heathen Hindu, as is shown in a somewhat strange story of a maiden who renounces her own everlasting blessedness for the salvation of the rest of the world; as also that of a positivist thinker like Mill when he declares sooner than bow in prayer before a being not truly good, “to hell he will go.” I knew a Catholic priest who, on account of this utterance of Mill’s, voted for him at the parliamentary election.

Whoever, as I have said, has once accepted the view that nothing can please except in so far as it is really good, nothing displease, except in so far as it is really bad, is on a way which, if consistently followed, must lead him to subjectivism. This is evident as soon as it is admitted (and at first sight, it is true, it may be denied) that opposite tastes, here desire, there dislike, may be associated with the same sense phenomenon. One might, in defence, argue that here, in spite of the similarity of the external stimulus the corresponding subjective idea may have an essentially different content. But such a view refutes itself in those cases where we ourselves repeatedly experience the same phenomenon, and, in consequence of a further development in age or by reason of a changed habit (cf. text 25, p. 16) thereby experience a different feeling, dislike for desire, or desire for dislike. There remains, then, no doubt, that as a fact the feelings may take an opposed attitude towards the same phenomenon: and again, in the case where ideas instinctively repel us, while at the same time arousing within us a pleasure{82} of a higher kind (cf. note 32, p. 92), what has been said is also clearly evident.

Finally, we should expect from one who thinks that every act of simple pleasure is right, and that one act never contradicts another, a similar doctrine in respect of the act of choosing. But the reverse is here so obvious that the advocates of this view have in striking contrast always asserted in the most definite manner that different individuals have preferences opposite in character, and that one is right, the other wrong.

Glancing back from the disciples of Aristotle in the Middle Ages to the master himself, we find his teaching appears to be a different one. Aristotle recognizes a right and a wrong kind of desire (Ὄρεξις ὀρθᾐ καἰ οὐκ οὐκ ὀρθή) and that what is desired (ὀρεκτόν) is not always the good. (De Anima, iii. 10.) In the same way he affirms in respect of pleasure (ἡδονή) in the Nicomachian Ethics that not every pleasure is good; there is a pleasure in the bad, which is itself bad (Nic. Eth. x. 2). In his Metaphysics he distinguishes between a lower and a higher kind of desire (ἐπιθμία and βούλησις); whatever is desired by the higher kind for its own sake is truly good (Metaph. Δ 7, p. 1072 a. 28). A certain approach to the right view seems already to have been reached here. It is of special interest (a point I have only discovered later) that Aristotle has suggested an analogy between ethical subjectivism and the logical subjectivism of Protagoras, and equally repudiates both (Metaph. Κ 6, p. 1062 b. 16, and 1063 a. 5). On the other hand it would appear from the lines immediately following as though Aristotle had fallen into the very obvious temptation of believing that we can know the good as good, independent of the excitation of the emotions. (Metaph. 29; cf. De Anima, iii. 9 and 10.)

In close connection with this appears to be the passage (Nic. Eth. i. 4) where he denies that there is any uniform notion of the good (understanding, of course, the good in itself, cf. respecting this, note 26, p. 77), thinking rather that only by way of analogy does there exist a unity in the case of the good of rational thinking and seeing, joy, etc., and when, in another passage (Metaph. Ε 4, p. 1027 b. 25), he says that the true and the false{83} are not in the things, where the good and the bad are, i.e. the former predicates (e.g. true God, false friend) are ascribed to the things only in respect of certain mental acts, the true and false judgments, while the latter, on the other hand, are not in a similar way ascribed to them merely in respect of a certain class of mental activities:—all of which, incorrect as it is, is still connected as a necessary result with the aforesaid error. He is more in agreement with the true doctrine of the origin of our notion and knowledge of the good, when (Nic. Ethics, x. 2) he adduces as an argument against the assumption that joy does not belong to the good, the fact that all desire it, and adds: “For if only irrational beings desired it, the opposition to this argument would still contain a certain justification; but if every rational being also does so, how can anything be said against it?” Yet even this utterance is reconcilable with his erroneous view.

Considered in this aspect, the moralist of sentiment (Gefühls-moralist), Hume, has here the advantage of him, for Hume rightly urges, how is any one to recognize that anything is to be loved without experiencing the love?

I have said that the temptation into which Aristotle has fallen appears quite conceivable. It arises from the fact that, along with the experience of an emotion qualified as right there is given at the same time the knowledge that the object itself is good. Thus it may easily happen that the relation is then perverted and the love is thought to follow as a consequence of the knowledge, and recognized as right by reason of its agreement with this its rule.

It is not without interest to compare the error here made by Aristotle in respect of emotion qualified as right with that which we have seen was committed by Descartes in respect of the similarly qualified judgment (cf. note 27, p. 78). The cases are essentially analogous; in both cases the distinguishing mark is sought in the special character of the idea which forms the basis of the act rather than in the act itself qualified as right. In fact it seems to me evident from various passages in his treatise Des Passions, that Descartes himself has treated the matter in a way quite similar to that of Aristotle, and in a{84} manner essentially analogous to his doctrine of the self-evident judgment.

At the present time many approach very near to Descartes’ error in respect of the marks of self-evidence (if we are not rather to say that the error is really implicitly contained in their statements) when they regard the matter as though in the case of every self-evident judgment a criterion were referred to. In this case it must have been previously given somewhere, either as recognized—and this would lead to infinity—or (and this is the only alternative), it is given in the idea. It may be said that here also the temptation to such a misconception lies ready to hand and this may well have exercised a misleading influence upon Descartes. Aristotle’s error is less general, though only because the phenomenon of the emotion qualified as right has, generally speaking, come less frequently under consideration than that of the similarly qualified judgment.

If the nature of the former has been misunderstood, the latter has often been so overlooked as not even to admit of its essential nature being misinterpreted.

[29] (p. 19). When I affirmed that the language of common life offers no suitable terms for activities of feeling qualified as right, I did not mean thereby to deny that certain expressions are, in themselves, well suited, indeed they would seem to have been created for this purpose, particularly, for example, the expressions “to be well pleasing,” and “to be ill pleasing” (gut gefallen and schlecht gefallen), as distinct from the simple “to be pleasing” and “to be mis-pleasing.” Though, however, it might seem advisable to limit these terms in this way and so to make them serve as scientific terms, scarcely any trace of such a limitation is to be found in ordinary language. One does not, of course, care to say: “the good pleases him ill,” “the bad pleases him well,” though one still says that to one this tastes good, to another that, and so on, i.e. the expression “to be well pleasing” is applied unhesitatingly even in the case where pleasure is given in the lowest instinctive form. Indeed the term-“impression” (Wahrnehmung) has degenerated in an almost similar way. Only really appropriate in respect of knowledge,{85} it came to be applied in the case of the so-called external impression (äussere Wahrnehmung), i.e. in cases of a belief, blind, and in its essential relations, erroneous, and consequently would require, in order, as a terminus technicus to have scientific application, an important reform of the usual terminology and one which would essentially narrow the range of the term.

[30] (p. 19). Metaph., Α 1, p. 980 a. 22.

[31] (p. 20) i.e., “Als richtig characterisiert.” This phrase, which occurs frequently, I have translated sometimes as above, sometimes by “qualified as right.” By this phrase and its equivalents is meant that the act (sc. of loving, hating, or preferring,) is at once perceived by us to be a right one, bears the mark or character of rightness.

[32] (p. 20). In order to exclude a misunderstanding and the doubts necessarily connected therewith, I add the following remark to what has been suggested shortly in the text. In order that an act of feeling may be called purely good in itself it is requisite: (1) that it be right; (2) that it be an act of pleasing and not an act of displeasing. If either condition be absent, it is already, in a certain respect, bad in itself; pleasure at the misfortunes of others (Schadenfreude) is bad on the first ground; pain at the sight of injustice, on the second ground. If both conditions are lacking, the act is still worse, in accordance with the principle of summation of which we shall speak later in the lecture. According to this same principle, where a feeling is good, its increase increases also the goodness of the act, while, similarly, where an act is purely bad, or at least participates in any respect in the bad, with the intensity of the feeling increases the badness of the act. When the act is a mixed one, good and bad manifestly increase, or diminish, in simple proportion to one another. The “plus” belonging to the one or the other side, must therefore, with the increase in intensity of the act become ever greater, with its decrease ever smaller. And so the surplus of good in the act may, under certain circumstances in spite of its impurity, be described as a very great good, while conversely, the surplus of the bad may, despite the admixture of the good, be described as something very bad (cf. note 36).

[33] (p. 20). It may happen that, at the same time, one and{86} the same thing is both pleasing and displeasing. First, something in itself displeasing may yet be pleasing as a means to something else, and vice versa; then a case may arise where something instinctively repels us, while at the same time it is loved by us with a higher love. We may thus have an instinctive repugnance to a sensation, which is yet at the same time (and every idea, qua idea, is good), a welcome enrichment of our world of ideas. Aristotle has said: “It happens that desires enter into conflict with each other. This happens when the reason (λὁγος) and the lower desires (ἐπιθυμα) are in opposition (De Anima iii. 10). And again: “Now the lower desires (ἐπιθυμία) gain a victory over the higher, now the higher over the lower, and as” (according to the ancient astronomy) “one celestial sphere the other, so one desire draws off the other with it when the individual has lost the firm rule over himself” (De Anima ii.).

[34] (p. 21). Just as love and hate may be directed towards single individuals, so also they may be directed to whole classes. This Aristotle has already observed. We are, he thinks, “not only angry with the individual thief who has robbed us, and with the individual sycophant who deceives our confiding nature, but we hate thieves and sycophants in general” (Rhet. ii. 4). Acts of loving and hating, where in this way there is an underlying general conception, also possess frequently the character of rightness. And so quite naturally along with the experience of this given act of love or hate, the goodness or badness of the entire class becomes manifest at one stroke, and apart from every induction from special cases. In this way, for example, we attain to the general knowledge that insight as such is good. It is easy to understand how near the temptation lies, in the case of such knowledge of a general truth without any induction from single cases otherwise demanded in truths of experience, entirely to overlook the preparatory experience of a feeling having the character of rightness, and to regard the universal judgment as an immediate synthetic à priori form of knowledge. Herbart’s very remarkable doctrine of a sudden elevation to general ethical principles seems to me to point to the fact that{87} he had observed something of this peculiar process without at the same time becoming quite clear about it.

[35] (p. 21). It is easy to see how important this proposition may become for a theodicy. As regards ethics it might be feared that its security becomes thereby seriously endangered, perhaps, indeed, completely destroyed. To see how unfounded such a fear is, cf. note 43, p. 99.

[36] (p. 22). It seems to me evident even from analysis of the notion of choice (1) that everything which is good is to be preferred, i.e. that in an act of choice it shall fall as a reasonable moment into the balance; (2) that everything bad forms a reasonable anti-moment, and therefore also that (3) in such cases—partly by direct means, partly by an addition in which the good and the bad are to be taken into account as quantities with opposite signs—the preponderance in which right choice is to be grounded may become evident, i.e. the preferability or superiority of the one as opposed to the other. According to this view, it does not, closely examined, require the special experience of an act of preference having the character of rightness, but only the experience of simple similarly qualified acts of pleasing and displeasing, in order to attain in the above-mentioned cases to the knowledge of the better. And therefore I have said that we derived our knowledge of preferability, not from the fact that our experience has the character of rightness, but that the said preferences possess the character of rightness because the knowledge of preferability has here been made the determining standard. I do not, however, mean to say that the same distinguishing character which was previously insisted upon in the case of certain simple acts of pleasing is not also here really present.

[37] (p. 24). In order that the procedure here might have been rendered quite exact and really exhaustive, two other very important cases would still need to have been mentioned in the lecture. The one case is that of pleasure in the bad, the other that of displeasure in the bad. If we enquire: Is pleasure in the bad good? the answer has already been given in a measure quite rightly by Aristotle: No. “No one,” he says in the{88} Nicomachian Ethics (x. 2, p. 1174 a. 1), “would wish to feel joy in what is shameful even if it were made certain to him that no harm would result therefrom.” The hedonists, to which class belonged such noble men as Fechner (cf. his work on The Highest Good) contradicted this view. Their teaching is to be rejected; in practice as Hume has observed, they fortunately proved much better than in theory. There is still, however, a grain of truth in their view. The pleasure in the bad is, qua pleasure, good, and only at the same time bad as a wrong activity of feeling, and though, by reason of this perversion, it may be described as a preponderance of the bad, it cannot be regarded as something purely bad. While, therefore, abhorring it as bad, we are really making an act of choice in which freedom from what in the object is bad is preferred to the possession of what is good. And when we recognize the aversion as right, this is possible only because the preference has the character of rightness.

The case is similar when we inquire if a similarly qualified displeasure in the bad is good, as e.g. where a noble heart feels pain on seeing the innocent oppressed, or where some one, looking back upon his past life, feels remorse at the consciousness of a bad action. Here the case is in every respect the reverse of the one preceding. Such a feeling arouses a state in which pleasure preponderates, but this pleasure is not pure; it cannot be called a pure good like the joy which would have arisen were the opposite of that over which we now mourn a fact, hence Descartes’ advice (cf. 24, p. 75)—to turn the attention and feeling in an equal degree rather to the good—would really not lose its significance. We recognize all this clearly, and have therefore, once more a preference with the character of rightness as the source of our knowledge of what is worthy of preference.

In order not to introduce too many complications, I omitted in my lecture when discussing preferences to mention these cases. And this seemed to me the more admissible, because it would practically lead to the same result, if (like Aristotle in the case of disgraceful pleasure) one were to treat hate qualified as right on the one hand and love qualified as right on the other, as phenomena of simple disinclination and inclination.{89}

It may be easily seen that from these special cases of a possible determination of a quantitative relation between good and bad pleasure and displeasure, on the one hand, and of rightness and unrightness on the other hand (cf. for these also Note 31, p. 91) there is no hope of filling in the great gaps referred to in the lecture in a way valid for all cases.

[38] (p. 26). Cf. my Psych. from the Empirical Standpoint, book ii. chap. iv.

[39] (p. 26). E. Dumont. Traités de législation civile et pénale, extraits des manuscrits de J. Bentham; espec. in the section bearing the title: “Principes des législation,” chap. iii. section 1 towards the end; chap. vi. section 2 towards the end; and chaps. viii. and ix.

[40] (p. 27). S. Rudolph Wagner. Der Kampf um die Seele, vom Standpunkt der Wissenschaft. (Sendschreiben an Herrn Leibarzt Dr. Beneke in Oldenburg.) Göttingen, 1857, p. 94 note. “Gauss said, the author (of a certain psychological work) spoke of a want of exact measurements in the case of psychical phenomena, but it would be good if we only had clumsy ones, one could then make a beginning; but we have none. There is here wanting the conditio sine quâ non of all mathematical treatment, i.e. whether and how far the changing of an intensive into an extensive quantity is possible. Yet this is the first and indispensable condition; then there were also others. On this occasion Gauss spoke also about the usual incorrect definition of quantity as an ‘ens’ which is capable of being increased or diminished; one ought rather to say, an ‘ens’ that admits of being divided into equal parts....”

[41] (p. 27). Fechner’s psycho-physical law, even were it assured, whereas it awakens continually increasing doubt and opposition, could only be used as a means of measuring the intensity of the content of certain concrete perceptions, not, however, for measuring the strength of the emotions like joy and sorrow. Attempts have been made at determining the measure of feelings by means of the involuntary movements and other externally visible changes accompanying them. To{90} me, this seems very much as if one were to seek to reckon the exact date of the day of the month by means of the weather. The direct inner consciousness, however imperfect its testimony may be, nevertheless offers here far more. At least one draws from the spring itself, whereas in the other case one has to do with water rendered impure by a variety of influences.

[42] (p. 27). Sigwart, in his Vorfragen der Ethik (p. 42), emphasizes the fact that no more must be required from the human will than what it is able to perform. This utterance, which coming from the lips of so decided an indeterminist (cf. Logic, ii. p. 592) may especially excite surprise, hangs together with his subjective view of the good, from which view, in my opinion, there is offered no logical, normal path to the peace of all who possess a good will. (Cf. e.g. the way in which Sigwart, p. 15, passes over from egoism to regard for the general good.)

But similar expressions are also heard from others. And it might really appear doubtful whether the sublime command which bids us to subordinate all our actions to the highest practical good is really the right ethical principle. For, putting aside cases of want of reflection, which do not, of course, enter here into consideration, the demand for such complete self-devotion still seems too stringent, since there is no one, however carefully he may conduct himself, who, looking sincerely into his heart, will not frequently be compelled to say with Horace:—

And yet the doubt is unfounded, and a comparison may serve to make this clear. It is certain that no one can entirely avoid error; still, avoidable or unavoidable, every error remains a judgment, which is what it should not be, and is opposed to the indispensable demands of logic. What applies to logic in respect of weakness of thought applies to ethics on the ground of weakness of will. Ethics cannot cease to demand from a man that he should love the acknowledged good and prefer that which is recognized to be better, not putting anything else before the highest practical good. Even were it proved (which is not{91} the case), that in a definite class of cases all men without exception in respect of these were never able to remain true to the highest practical good, this would still not afford the slightest justification for setting aside the fundamental ethical demand. Even then it would still remain an evident and unchangeable truth, the sole and only right rule, here as everywhere, to give the preference to the better over what is less good.

J. S. Mill fears that this would lead to endless self-reproaches and that these constant reproaches would embitter the life of each individual. This, however, is so little implied by the rule that it is easily demonstrable that such a result is excluded. Goethe well understood this,—

i.e. impatience in respect of one’s own imperfections, he says in one of his by no means lax sayings,—

—giving way to the stings of conscience, when fresh joyous resolve is alone available,—

[A]

In an album I once found in the hand of the pious Abbot Haneberg, afterwards Bishop of Spires, the following lines, written to the same effect:—

[B]

[43] (p. 28). It is necessary to be on one’s guard against drawing from the principle of love of our neighbour the conclusion that each has to care for every other individual in the same degree as for himself, which, far from conducing towards the universal good, would rather essentially prejudice it. This{92} is seen by reflecting on the circumstance that to ourselves we stand in a position different from that in which we stand to everybody else, while again in respect of these others we are in a position to help, or to injure, one more, the other less. If there are human beings in Mars the inhabitants of the earth can and ought to wish them good also, not however to strive after their good in the same manner as for himself and his fellow-men.

It is in this connexion that the injunction to take thought in the first instance for oneself, a precept to be found in every system of morality, is justifiable: “γνῷθι σαυτόν,” “Sweep before your own doorstep,” etc. The demand to seek first of all the welfare of wife and child, home and fatherland, is also universal. The command: “Take no thought for the morrow,” in the sense in which it really offers wise counsel, also flows as a result from the same source. That my future happiness ought not to be so dear to me as my present happiness is not here implied.

So regarded, the communistic doctrines which illogical impetuosity would seek to derive from the lofty principle of universal brotherhood are shown to be unjustifiable.

[44] (p. 29). The fact that we are often unable to measure the more remote results of our actions offers a more serious difficulty.

But even this thought will not discourage us if we love the universal good. It may be said of all results which are unrecognizable in an exactly equal degree, that one has just as many chances in its favour as the others. According to the law of great numbers a compensation will on the whole result, and so whatever calculable good we create will stand as a plus on the one side and, just as though it stood alone, will justify our choice.

From the same point of view, as I have already suggested in the lecture (p. 22), the doubt is removed which in a similar manner might arise through uncertainty as to whether everything that is good draws from us a love having the qualification of rightness, and whether, therefore, we are able to recognize it as good and to take due account of it.

[45] (p. 29). That in the case of the limits of right (Rechtsgrenzen) we have essentially to do with spheres which lie at the disposal of the individual will has been frequently emphasized both by philosophers (cf. in this respect e.g. Herbart’s Idea of Right) and by able jurists. Ihering in his Geist des römischen Rechts, iii. 1 (p. 320 note), demonstrates this with numerous citations. Arndt e.g. in his Handbuch der Pandekten defines law as “supremacy of the will regarding an object”; for Sintenis it is, “the will of one person raised to the universal will.” Windscheid defines it as “a certain volition (Willensinhalt) of which the legal code in a concrete case affirms that it may be made valid as against every other will.” Puchta, who has perhaps expressed the thought in the most manifold ways, says in his digest of Roman law, section 22, “as the subjects of such a will thought of potentially men are called persons, ... personality is therefore the subjective possibility of the legalized will, of a legal power.” In the same work (section 118, note b) he observes in regard to a want of personality: “The principle of modern law is inability to dispose of property”; many other of his expressions convey the same meaning.

As however these legal authorities have concentrated their attention exclusively upon legal duties, and do not touch upon the problem as to the way in which the individual will has to rule in its legal sphere, Ihering has interpreted them as meaning that they considered the true and highest good, and the most intrinsic and final end, towards which the legal code strives, to be the exercise of the will as will, the joy of the individual in his volitional activity; “the final end of all law is, for them, willing” (pp. 320, 325); “the end of law (according to them) consists once for all in the power of the will, in its supremacy” (p. 326). One can well understand how he comes to condemn a theory so interpreted (p. 327), and even that he succeeds in making it appear ridiculous. “According to this view,” he says, (p. 320) “all private right is nothing less than an arena in which the will moves and exercises itself; the will is the organ by which the individual enjoys his right, the profit obtained from legal right consists in feeling the joy and glory of power, in the satisfaction of having realized an act of will, e.g. of having effected a mortgage, transferred a title, and so proved oneself to be a legal personality. What a poor thing would the will be if the bare and low regions of law were the proper “sphere of its activity!”

Certainly the heaviest charges of absurdity and ridiculousness would be well deserved if those scholars who regard the immediate aim of law as consisting in a limitation of the spheres at the disposal of the will had intended in so doing to disavow all regard for the final ethical end, i.e. the advancement of the highest practical good. There is, however, absolutely nothing to justify this insinuation, and therefore one could perhaps with more right smile at the zeal of an attack which is really levelled merely against windmills. Moreover, what Ihering proposes to set in its place is certainly a bad substitute. For, in regarding the sphere ascribed by the legal authority to the individual simply as a sphere consigned to their egoism (a view which, as the author of Der Zweck im Recht, he perhaps no longer holds), he is thus led to his definition: “Law (Recht) is legal security for enjoyment,” whereas he would have been more correct in saying: “Law is legal security for the undisturbed disposal of individual power in the advancement of the highest good.” Is then injustice something which exhausts bad conduct? By no means; legal duties have limits; duty in general governs all our actions, and this our popular religion expressly emphasizes, as, for instance, when it asserts that for every idle word the individual must render an account.

Besides this first objection, which rests upon a simple misunderstanding of the intention, Ihering has also raised several others which are essentially due to imperfections in the use of language. If the legal code essentially consists in setting certain limits to the activity of the individual will in order that one person may not disturb the other in striving after the good, it follows that he who has, or had, or will have no will has also no legal sphere. I say, “has, or had, or will have,” for obviously regard must be paid to the past and to the future. A dead man often exercises an influence extending into the far distant future, so that Comte well says: the living are more and more dominated by the dead. In like manner, the situation will entail that, in respect of many problems, we leave the decision to the future, i.e. renounce the sovereignty in favour of a future will. This consideration resolves many a paradox urged by Ihering (pp. 320-325); not however, all. In the case of one who from birth has been an incurable imbecile, it is obvious that no power of will whatever can be found, to which regard for the highest practical good might allow a sphere; there remains therefore to him, according to our view, really no legal sphere, and yet on every hand we hear of a right which he possesses in his own life; even under some circumstances, we refer to him as the owner of a great estate, or ascribe to him the right of a crown or kingly rule. On examining the relations closely, we find that we are never concerned here with a true legal sphere respecting a subject incapable of being held responsible, but rather with the legal spheres of other individuals, as, for example, that of a father who, in providing for his imbecile child, gives instructions in his will concerning his property, the dominion of whose will is safeguarded after his death by the law of the land; or (as, for example, the case where the imbecile’s life is held to be sacred), quite apart from the injury done to the simple duty of affection which this would involve, there is also in question the State’s legal sphere, which permits no one else to commit a fatal attack, and accordingly often imposes a punishment, even in the case of an attempt at suicide.

A third objection of Ihering’s, i.e. that by a limitation of rights as affecting spheres of will, even the most senseless dispositions of will must be allowed legal validity (p. 325), this offers, after what has been said, hardly any further difficulty. Certainly many a foolish disposition of will must be allowed. Were the State not to admit this, then it alone would possess a definitive right of disposal; all private right would be at an end. So long as not merely subjects, but also governments, are liable to commit acts of foolishness, such an extension of the power of the State cannot be recommended. For the rest, just as secondary ethical rules in general suffer exceptions, and in particular expropriations in the case of private owners are frequently necessary, so also it is clear and to be admitted without contradiction, that senseless dispositions or dispositions which have evidently lost all meaning and reference to the highest practical good can be annulled by the State. Regard for the highest practical good is here, as is the case of every other so-called collision of duties, decisive.

[46] (p. 29). That a law, which in and for itself is bad and contrary to nature, however condemnable from an ethical point of view, and its modification urgently necessary, may yet in many cases receive a provisional sanction from the reason, this has long been recognized and made clear, as e.g. by Bentham in his Traités de Législation civ. et pén. In antiquity Socrates, who deemed himself worthy to be feasted in the Prytaneum, died for the sake of this conviction. The positive legal code, despite all its defects, creates a condition of things which is better than anarchy, and since each act of insubordination to the law threatens to injure its force in general, so in those circumstances brought about by the law itself, it may be that provisionally and for the individual a mode of action even from the rational standpoint is right, which, apart from this, would be in no way justifiable. All this results without doubt from the relativity of the secondary ethical rules, which will be treated later.

It may be added that errors respecting the laws of positive morality (a point shortly to be discussed in the lecture) in a similar way demand, under certain circumstances, to be taken into account.

It dare not, on the other hand, be overlooked that there are here limits, and that the saying: “We ought to obey God rather than man,” may not, in its free and sublime range, be allowed to suffer injury.

[47] (p. 29). Heraclitus of Ephesus (B.C. 500), the oldest of the Greek philosophers, of whose philosophy we possess rather extensive fragments.

[48] (p. 31). Ihering, Der Zweck im Recht, vol. ii. p. 119, and other passages.

[49] (p. 31). Politics, vol. i. chap. 5.

[50] (p. 31). Nic. Ethics, v. 14, p. 1137 b. 13. Politics, iii. and iv.

[51] (p. 31). Cf. Discours préliminaire to the Traités de Législation, also the section “De l’influence des temps et des lieux en matière de législation” of that work.

[52] (p. 31). Philos. Versuch über die Wahrscheinlichkeiten von Laplace, translated from the sixth edition of the original text by N. Schwaiger, Leipzig, 1886, p. 93 seq. (Application of the calculation of probabilities to moral science.)

[53] (p. 32). Cf. Allg. Juristenzeitung, vii. p. 171; Zweck im Recht, vol. ii. p. 118; 122 seq.

[54] (p. 33). Grundlegung zur Physik der Sitten. Cf. above note 14, p. 49.

[55] (p. 34). Cf. e.g. the Meno dialogue.

[56] (p. 34). Friedr. Alb. Lange, Logische Studien, ein Beitrag zur Neubegründung der formalen Logik und der Erkenntnislehre. Iserlohn, 1877.

[57] (p. 34). Alex. Bain, Logic, pt. 1. Deduction. London, 1870, p. 159 seq.

[58] (p. 35). e.g. Bentham, also, in antiquity, Epicurus.

[59] (p. 35). e.g. Plato and Aristotle, and following them Thomas Aquinas.

[60] (p. 35). The Stoics, and in the Middle Ages, the followers of Scotus.

[61] (p. 36). This even Epicurus did not deny (little in harmony as it is with his utterance quoted p. 54).

[62] (p. 36). Nic. Ethics, I. i.

[63] (p. 36). Metaph. Δ 10.

[64] (p. 36). Metaph. Δ 10.

[65] (p. 36). They made the relation to the greater whole serve as an argument in favour of the view that the practical life (of the politician) stands higher than that of the theorist.

[66] (p. 36). This testimony to the principle of summation likewise reappears as often as in a theory based upon egoistic and utilitarian grounds, the notion of God is employed in the construction of ethics (e.g. Locke; Fechner in his work on the highest good; cf. also for Leibnitz, Trendelenburg, Histor. Beiträge, vol. ii. p. 245). God, so runs their argument, loves each of His creatures, and therefore their totality more than the single individual; He therefore approves and rewards the sacrifice of the individual to the whole, while disapproving and punishing self-seeking injury.

In the desire after immortality also, the influence of the principle of summation is manifest. Thus Helmholtz, (über die Entstehung des Planetensystems, lecture delivered at Heidelberg and Cologne, 1871), in seeking to offer a hopeful prospect to those who cherish this desire, says: “The individual (if that which we achieve can ennoble the lives of those who succeed us) may face fearlessly the thought that the thread of his own consciousness will one day be broken. But to the thought of a final annihilation of the race of living mortals, and with them, the fruits of the striving of all past generations, even men of minds so unfettered and great as Lessing and David Strauss could scarcely reconcile themselves.” When it is scientifically shown that the earth will one day be incapable of supporting living beings, then, he thinks, the need of immortality will irresistibly return, and we shall feel bound to cast about for something which will afford us the possibility of assuming it.

[67] (p. 34). Metaph. Δ 10.

[68] (p. 37). This is the standing doctrine of the great theologians, as e.g. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. Only certain nominalists, like Robert Holcot, teach the complete arbitrariness of the divine commands. Cf. my essay on the Geschichte der kirchlichen Wissenschaften im Mittelalter, in Möhler’s Church History (published by Gams, 1867) vol. ii. 526 seq., respecting which, however, the reader is asked not to overlook the revision of the printer’s errors in the “errata,” p. 103 seq., at the end of that work.

[69] (p. 39). At a time when psychology was far less advanced and inquiries into the province of the calculation of probability had not brought sufficient clearness into the process of rational induction, it was possible even for a Hume to fall a victim to this gross confusion. Cf. his Enq. concern. Hum. Underst., chaps. v. and vi. More striking is it that James Mill and Herbert Spencer have still not advanced in the slightest degree beyond Hume; (Cf. Anal. of the Phen. of the Hum. Mind, vol. ii. chap. ix. and note 108), and that even the acute thinker, J. S. Mill, although Laplace’s Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités lay at his disposal, never arrived at a clear distinction of the essential difference between these two forms of procedure. This hangs together with his failure to appreciate the purely analytic character of mathematics and the import of the deductive procedure in general. Indeed he has absolutely denied that the syllogism leads to new knowledge. Whoever bases the whole of mathematics upon induction cannot possibly justify mathematically the inductive procedure. It would be for him a circulus vitiosus. It is here beyond question that Jevon’s Logic takes a truer view.

Even in the case of Mill, it sometimes appears as if an inkling of the immense difference had begun to dawn upon him, as when, in a note to his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (vol. i., chap. xi. p. 407), in criticizing his father’s theory, he says: “If belief is only an inseparable association, belief is a matter of habit and accident and not of reason. Assuredly an association, however close, between two ideas is not a sufficient ground (the italics are his own) of belief; it is not evidence that the corresponding facts are united in external nature. The theory seems to annihilate all distinction between the belief of the wise, which is regulated by evidence and conforms to the real successions and co-existences of the facts of the universe, and the belief of fools which is mechanically produced by any accidental association that suggests the idea of a succession or co-existence to the mind; a belief aptly characterized by the popular expression, believing a thing because they have taken it into their heads.” This is all excellent. But it is robbed of its most essential worth, when, in a later note (vol. i. p. 438. note 110) we hear J. S. Mill say: “It must be conceded to him (the author of the Analysis) that an association sufficiently strong to exclude all ideas that would exclude itself, produces a kind of mechanical belief, and that the processes by which the belief is corrected, or reduced to rational bounds, all consist in the growth of a counter-association tending to raise the idea of a disappointment of the first expectation, and as the one or the other prevails in the particular case, the belief or expectation exists or does not exist exactly as if the belief were the same thing with the association,” and so on.

There is much here that calls for criticism. When ideas are mentioned which mutually exclude one another it may well be asked what kind of ideas these are? According to another utterance of Mill’s (vol. i. p. 98 seq. note 30 and elsewhere), he knows “no case of absolute incompatibility of thought except between the thought of the presence of something and that of its absence.” But are even these incompatible? Mill himself teaches elsewhere the very opposite when he thinks that along with the idea of existence there is always given at the same time the idea of non-existence (p. 126, note 39; “we are only conscious,” he says, “of the presence of an object by comparison with its absence”). Apart, however, from all this, how strange is it that Mill here overlooks the fact that he abandons entirely the distinctive character of self-evidence, and retains only that blind and mechanical formation of judgment, which he rightly treats with contempt. The sceptic Hume stands in this respect far higher, since he at least sees that such an empirical (empiristisch) view of the process of induction does not satisfy the requirements of our reason. Sigwart’s criticism of Mill’s theory of Induction (Logic, vol. ii. p. 371) contains here much that is true, though in appealing to his postulates he has certainly not substituted anything truly satisfactory in the place of what is defective in Mill.

[70] (p. 40). Cf. Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, vol. ii. towards the end.

[71] (p. 40). Nic. Ethics, iii. 10. Cf. the subtle discussions in the subsequent chapter on the five kinds of false courage.

[72] (p. 41). Nic. Ethics, i. 2.

[A] Supplementary note. What is here said of the general applicability of the existential form holds good only with the one manifest limitation, in respect of judgments which are really completely simple. In expressing such judgment logic has always made use of the categorical form; in common life they are often applied as the expression of a plurality of judgments based upon each other. This is clearly the case in the proposition, “this is a man.” In the demonstrative “this” the belief in existence is already included; a second judgment then ascribes to him the predicate “man.” Similar cases are frequent elsewhere. In my opinion it was the original purpose of the categorical form to serve as a means of expressing such double judgments (Doppelurteile), which recognize something while affirming or denying something else of it. I also believe that the existential and impersonal forms have, by a change in function, proceeded from this form. This does not alter its essential nature: a lung is not a swim-bladder (Fisch-blase) even though it has developed therefrom, and the word “kraft” is none the less a merely syncategorematic word (Cf. Mill, Logic, i. 2, § 2), even though its origin may be traced to a substantive.

[A] i.e. the closest possible description and analysis of psychical events and their contents, on the basis of inner observation.

[B] i.e. the more difficult inquiry into the laws underlying the origin of phenomena.

[A] Since this essay was written the statements as to the principles here developed have been modified only in respect of two points which, if not practically important, are still theoretically so, and these, with the author’s permission, may be here shortly referred to:—

1. In the lecture (p. 15) it is said that anything may be either affirmed or denied, and that if the affirmation is right its denial must be considered wrong, and vice versâ. It is also stated that this is true analogously in respect of love and hate.

This Brentano no longer asserts, but rather observes that whereas the whole must be denied, if but a part is untrue, a sum of good and bad, on the other hand, may be of such a nature as nevertheless as a whole to be worthy of love. It may be also so constituted that good and bad remain in equilibrium.

2. In the lecture (p. 24), and in the corresponding note 37 (p. 87), it is said that our preference qualified as right in the case where, for instance, to one good another is added, is drawn, not from our knowledge of the preferability of the sum as opposed to the parts, but that analytic judgments here yield the means of our advance in knowledge, and that the corresponding preferences are therefore qualified as right, since the knowledge (given analytically) is here the criterion. Here it is overlooked that without the experience of acts of preferring we neither have nor could have the conception, and therefore also our notion of preferability. And so it is also true that it is by no means evident from analysis that one good plus another is preferable to each of these goods taken singly. Here also a complete analogy to the sphere of the true is wanting.

One truth added to another does not yield something more true. On the other hand, one good plus another good yields a better. But that this is so can only be understood by means of a special experience belonging peculiarly to this sphere, i.e. by means of the experience of acts of preferring which are qualified as right.