representative, the proposition, is formed by the
combination of terms. But to the judgments
distinguished as psychological the definition of
Locke is inapplicable, and here the objections of
M. Cousin may be urged with full effect. Such
are all the spontaneous judgments of the perceptive
and imaginative faculties. Such too is the Cartesian
cogito, ergo sum, a primitive judgment, not of the
senses, but of the internal consciousness, which the
opponents of Descartes, from Gassendi to Kant,
have misrepresented as a logical reasoning from
concepts. The definition of Locke is therefore
correct, as far as regards judgments of thought,
properly so called; judgments formed by means of
concepts, and, consequently, of language, and whose
constituent parts are given
parts are given piecemeal in words, and
put together by the mind in the act of judging. It
is incorrect, as regards all judgments, whether con-
cerning the ego or the non-ego, which the mind
forms for itself, by an immediate act of conscious-
ness, without the aid of verbal or other signs of
voluntary institution.

From the definition of Locke, we proceed to

See an article in Cousin's Fragments Philosophiques, “Sur le vrai sens du cogito, ergo sum.' To this I am indebted for the following quotation from Descartes himself, "Cum itaque quis advertit se cogitare, atque inde sequi se existere, quamvis forte nunquam antea quæsiverit quid sit cogitatio nec quid existentia, non potest tamen non utramque satis nosse, ut sibi in hac parte satisfaciat." Responsio ad sextas objectiones.

consider that of Kant. In the Critical Philosophy, Thought and Judgment are synonymous and the act of the understanding. The understanding may be defined indifferently, the faculty of thinking, or the faculty of judging; for all thought is cognition by means of concepts; and all concepts are the predicates of possible judgments, and are, by such judgments, referred to objects of sensible intuition, either immediately, or through the interposition of

lower concepts". The intuitions of sense being, Rent, def according to Kant's theory of perception, im

mediate representations of objects, the judgmenty, to save

is thus the mediate cognition of an object, or the representation of a representation o.

In a psychological point of view, the Kantian definition of Judgment is too narrow; as it virtually

Р

Wir können alle Handlungen des Verstandes auf Urtheile zurückführen, so dass der Verstand überhaupt als ein Vermögen zu urtheilen vorgestellt werden kann. Denn er ist nach dem Obigen ein Vermögen zu denken. Denken ist das Erkenntniss durch Begriffe. Begriffe aber beziehen sich, als Prädicate möglicher Urtheile, auf irgend eine Vorstellung von einem noch unbestimmten Gegenstande." Kritik der r. V. p. 70. Ed. Rosenkranz.

q "Da keine Vorstellung unmittelbar auf den Gegenstand geht, als blos die Anschauung, so wird ein Begriff niemals auf einen Gegenstand unmittelbar, sondern auf irgend eine andre Vorstellung von demselben (sie sey Anschauung oder selbst schon Begriff) bezogen. Das Urtheil ist also die mittelbare Erkenntniss eines Gegenstandes, mithin die Vorstellung einer Vorstellung desselben." Kritik der r. V. p. 69.

denies that any act of Judgment whatever is performed in the exercise of the intuitive faculties; a denial which the author repeats still more explicitly in other passages'. In a logical point of view, it is too wide; the province of Judgment being made coextensive with the whole of Thought, including, therefore, under it, Conception or Simple Apprehension. Every concept, according to Kant, is the predicate of a possible judgment, in which it may be affirmed of any of the objects of intuition included within its sphere. He might have gone further, and said that, in all positive thinking, the possible judgment becomes an actual one. But it is a psychological, not a logical judgment. It affirms only the mental existence of the object, as now present in thought; and the affirmation is necessarily true, whatever be the nature of the object. To make the doctrine of Kant consistent, the province assigned to Judgment must be either extended or contracted. It must either be extended, to denote every consciousness of a relation between subject and object, i. e. to every operation of mind, or it must be contracted, to denote the consciousness of a relation between two objects of thought;

r

"Wahrheit oder Schein sind nicht im Gegenstande, so ferne er angeschaut wird, sondern im Urtheile über denselben, so ferne er gedacht wird. Man kann also zwar richtig sagen: dass die Sinne nicht irren, aber nicht darum, weil sie jederzeit richtig urtheilen, sondern weil sie gar nicht urtheilen." Kritik der r. V. p. 238.

in which case it does not extend beyond the logical judgment by means of, at least, two concepts.

Having thus pointed out the distinction of Thought from other mental acts, and its various subdivisions relatively to Logic, I shall proceed to offer a few observations on the nature of Law, in so far as that term is applicable to a conscious subject.

CHAP. III.

ON LAW, AS RELATED TO THOUGHT AND OTHER OBJECTS.

THE following passage from Archbishop Whately's Logic may serve as an appropriate introduction to this part of our subject. "What may be

called a mathematical impossibility, is that which involves an absurdity and self-contradiction; e. g. that two straight lines should inclose a space, is not only impossible but inconceivable, as it would be at variance with the definition of a straight line. And it should be observed, that inability to accomplish any thing which is, in this sense, impossible, implies no limitation of power, and is compatible, even with omnipotence, in the fullest sense of the word. If it be proposed, e. g. to construct a triangle having one of its sides equal to the other two, or to find two numbers having the same ratio to each other as the side of a square and its diameter, it is not from a defect of power that we are precluded from solving such a problem as these; since in fact the problem is in itself unmeaning and absurd: it is, in reality, nothing, that is required to be done "."

a Whately's Logic, p. 353. (Sixth Edition.)