Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/468

454 F. H. BEADLEY: (3) So much as the above belongs to the essence of hypo- thetical judgment. Many cases however present an ad- ditional aspect, which has given rise to difficulty and to error. We have often a further implication as to the amount of identity between the ideal subject and the fact, and, owing to this implication, the judgment, while hypo- thetical in form, may assert or deny of the actual. In si vales bene est there is an implied identity, between the supposed and the actual, sufficient to justify the use of est. On the other hand in si tacuisses philosophus esses we assume a known difference, between the two cases of yourself, suffi- cient to warrant a denial of the conclusion in fact. This implied identity or difference can exist in a variety of degrees, and the actual meaning conveyed by the judgment may depend upon this implication. But this implication, we must not forget, falls outside the hypothetical form. It is often absent from it, and when present it may even be said to contradict it, since it involves knowledge on a point where the use of "if" assumes ignorance. Hence this accidental meaning conveyed by some hypothetical judg- ments is foreign to the essence of the hypothetical form. And a want of clearness on this point must everywhere, I think, preclude an understanding of that essence. With these brief but, I fear, too lengthy remarks, I must pass from the hypothetical judgment. Assuming every- where, as that does, various realms of reality and truth, the consideration of it has tended to confirm our main con- clusion. The ideas which float have in every case another world in which they are based and secured. When we pass to the alleged existence of floating ideas in the case of negation, we find a subject too intricate and too difficult for discussion here. I must content myself with a summary statement of the conclusion which I adopt. 1 By negation I understand a denial of the intelligible and not a mere refusal to entertain the unmeaning. And the main point here is this, that all negation is relative. Negation, whatever else it is, is repulsion, repulsion not absolute but from a subject formed by distinction within reality. Eeality therefore is always wider than the subject which negates worth considering, and (taken strictly) it implies that the answer is unknown. I should remind the reader that in the above discussion I assume throughout that the account of existential judgments, which I have given elsewhere, is correct. 1 On the subject of negation I would refer the reader to Prof. Bosan- quet's admirable Logic.