Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/574

558 CRITICAL NOTICES: word) ' of its application ' (p. 182) ; so that we must expect our conception of modality, which has already been supplied by the only possible 'integral' cognition, nevertheless to receive con- firmation from its applicability to action, which must itself be accepted by speculation ' as a datum which is, by nature, irre- ducible to it and goes beyond it'. This would seem to suggest not only that the knowledge of knowledge is not integral by itself, but also, that, when M. Brunschvicg told us in chapter i., that it, and not the integral object, must be taken as our basis in philo- sophy, he knew all the time that an integral object must also be presupposed, and even that action formed a part of it. Neverthe- less, on p. 183, he again attempts to introduce his limitation of our opportunities to study the practical judgment, by saying that ' the act ' is a datum for that purpose, ' comparable in every point to the verbal expression of the theoretical judgment'. Now, considering the scorn with which he has spoken of the ' philo- logical ' logicians, we should hardly have expected to find a con- siderable portion of his book occupied with analysis of a subject- matter, which he himself admits to be 'comparable in every point' with that to which they were so trivial as to limit their analysis. Moreover, he does not hint that his own analysis of the 'theo- retical judgments' is merely a matter of grammar, and yet he seems to make no distinction, in point of treatment or significance, between that and the corresponding analysis of practice. But it is time we returned to M. Brunschvicg's main theme. In his first chapter he proceeds to analyse the concept, the judg- ment, and the syllogism, with the view of showing that the first and last are both reducible to the judgment, as the fundamental and unique ' act of intelligence '. He concludes his discussion of the judgment by characterising it as ' the act which posits the copula'; but he has already explained that this copula which it posits need not have two terms to connect. On the other hand, he maintains that the concept must always contain a relation be- tween ' extension ' and ' intension ' ; and he seems to obtain even this doubtful result by not distinguishing the concept itself from the act of conceiving. His criticism of the syllogism is based upon the remark that the major must be regarded as expressing the identity of two qualities, and the minor that of two individuals. In order to draw a conclusion from them, it is then necessary that the individual designated by one of the qualities should be ' identified ' or ' unified ' (see p. 14) with that quality, by an act precisely similar to that which constitutes the concept. This, he maintains, is the only true ' judgment ' in the whole process. But he himself supplies a criticism on his theory, by producing a 'rectified syllogism,' of which the conclusion is that ' Frenchman ' is not ' man ' ; the apparent falsehood of which he explains away by saying that it denies the identity of the two predicates, whereas his previous examples were based upon the presupposition of identity between precisely similar predicates, e.g., ' just ' and ' philosophic '.