may express it otherwise: in order to reach unconditionally valid Judgments-which is the aim of science-we must start from empirically valid Judgments, true of some particular place and time or aggregate of places and times; so that the sense in which these are true affects the sense in which the others are true.

The necessary contrast and connection between the Universal (referring to an objective system) and the Individual Judgment (referring to events of experience) is well shown in the Disjunctive Judgment, which brings out, more explicitly than does the Hypothetical, the necessity of both sides of the act of thought. If regarded simply as an affirmation about an individual, Disjunction is merely a stage in the removal of ignorance: 'A is either B or C' signifies that we have grounds for determining A so far, but not for deciding whether to qualify it by B or by C. We may, with Lotze and Sigwart, assign this as the true type of Disjunction with reference to an individual subject or group of subjects; but we must carefully observe the condition of the possibility of such Disjunction. We cannot say of A that it must be either B or C unless we know that A enters as an element into a certain objective system of relations, and also unless we know enough of the nature of the system, and of A's place in it, to restrict the further qualifications of A to the sphere of either B or C.' Both sides are necessary to the fact: we must have the general system as the ultimate ground of the Disjunction, and we must have the individual element, A, referred to it. Let us take an instance of an extremely simple and abstract form of such a system,-the order of space and time as defined only by the impossibility of an individual's simultaneous presence in two different

places; it is only by reference to this sytem that we can say of any person-for his mere existence is enough. to place him in the 'system'-that 'either he was present here on that occasion or he was not.' Again, take an example of a rather less simple system: if we have three positions marked in space, we know that, of their distances from one another, either two only are equal, or all are equal, or all are unequal. Here the system referred to is that which is implied geometrically in space of two dimensions. For a more complicated example, we may give: "Any section of a cone by a plane must be a point, or a straight line, or a circle, or an ellipse, or a parabola, or an hyperbola, or two intersecting straight lines." Examples might be multiplied— chiefly from Logic or Mathematics, for these are the only two branches of science where we have sufficient knowledge of systems to form exhaustive Disjunctions, in the form 'A must be B, or C, or D,' &c. In every case it would appear that the Disjunctive Judgment implicitly refers an individual to such a system, implying at the same time the general nature of the system and of the individual's place in it; but in no case can the individual subject, whether as regards its existence. or its significance for our knowledge, be exhaustively 'constituted' by its relations to such a system: for relations without terms are unintelligible for knowledge, and are never found in reality.

The problem of Disjunction has been approached from another point of view by those who write under the influence of Hegel. They find that the implication of a system is the whole significance of the Disjunctive Judgment. This view seems equally onesided with that of Sigwart, who finds the significance of this form of judgment in its being a stage in the

removal of our ignorance concerning an individual. Thus Mr Bosanquet finds the essence of the Disjunctive Judgment in the affirmation of such a system as we have been speaking of; and he seems to set aside the reference of an individual to the system as of no importance, from the point of view of knowledge.1 This points in the direction of Green's view that the essence of knowledge consists in the progressive apprehension of a general scheme of relations which are relations of nothing at all. Mr Bosanquet treats this scheme. or system as the 'individuality' which is implicitly affirmed. The judgment in effect analyses the relations of which the system is composed, and so exhibits the individuality "in the different forms which it is capable of assuming as a whole, and which consequently it cannot unite in itself under a single set of conditions; . . . all that is necessary is that the subject-content [the system] should enter as a whole into each of the enumerated forms," 2 so that the latter are mutually exclusive. From this point of view, Disjunction expresses what is really the ideal of knowledge; though of course it is not implied that in every system we are able to disjunctively relate the parts. Now we may fully grant that to make the universe. thoroughly intelligible as a systematic whole, and to comprehend fully the relation of the whole to each of its parts, is the goal of all knowledge, of all science and Philosophy; and that if the relations of each part to the whole were fully known, each part would be a unique manifestation of the whole, in the manner implied in Mr Bosanquet's account of Disjunction. But the form of expression for this would be Conjunctivethe universe would be seen to be determined as A and 2 P. 346.

1 Logic, vol. i. ch. viii. p. 343.

as B and as C, and so on. This conjunctive insight would necessarily show the true mutual relations of the parts, or their significance relatively to one another; and in this insight, we should have passed beyond the view of the universe as merely a Harmony -which is all that pure intelligence can give, and all that is implied in the possibility of Disjunction: we should view it as all embraced in the central unity of an Absolute Life. Mr Bosanquet could scarcely refuse to admit the impossibility of supposing that the Disjunctive Judgment, as it appears in our finite thought, could be a constituent factor of an omniscient intelligence; and why does such an idea seem almost absurd? Surely because it is impossible to get rid of the aspect of doubt or partial indecision in Judgments of this type; and this indecision arises from the primary reference of such a Judgment to an individual representative or member of the system implicated-an individual whose qualities are partially determined by reference to its place therein. Both the system and the single element or elements in it are essential to this form of Judgment; the one is of equal importance and significance with the other, though in the actual intercourse of mind and mind, now one side, now the other, may be explicitly emphasised.

§ 5. How, then, are these individual Judgments true? In what consists their 'empirical validity'?

This question has been investigated with great thoroughness by Mr Bradley,' and his discussion of it seems to me to be as suggestive as his conclusion is questionable. The argument is essentially as follows: The conception or universal meaning, with which the 1 Logic, bk. i. ch. ii.

Judgment always deals, is inadequate to the facts given in perception-the empirical content of time and space: for, to obtain the conception, "we have separated, divided, abridged, dissected, we have mutilated the given;" and the result is a hopeless abstraction. Then, if I understand him aright, Mr Bradley goes on to infer that the Judgments which categorically refer such abstractions' to reality cannot be true, for the real is that which appears in perception and shows itself through what is given there: it is that of which the given sensible facts are a revelation, though a fragmentary and imperfect one. Hence what is hopelessly inadequate to the appearance cannot be true of that which appears therein. The point is that nothing existent agrees with the ideal synthesis, as such, which forms the content of the Judgment. The Judgment has reference to a concrete particularised reality, and is therefore incongruent with the latter through its abstractness. Now there are two senses in which thought may be considered abstract, and I do not gather that the significance of their distinction is adequately appreciated by Mr Bradley. Thought is abstract as compared with the concrete material which is elaborated into sense perception; again, there is the sense in which the thought of some element or elements, related within a system, is abstract compared with the thought of that system as a whole. In the latter sense any incomplete truth is abstract; it is only conditionally true, for we do not know what transformation would be necessary in order to expand it into the complete truth. It falls short of this in a way like that in which conception as such falls short of the concrete in perception. But at the most this is merely an analogy, and one that may easily become very misleading; it is not an argu