Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/191

THE NATURE OF JUDGMENT. 177 Now to Mr. Bradley's argument that " the idea in judg- ment is the universal meaning " I have nothing to add. It appears to me conclusive, as against those, of whom there have been too many, who have treated the idea as a mental state. But he seems to me to be infected by the same error as theirs, alike in his preliminary failure to distinguish clearly whether it is the symbol or the symbolised of which he is speaking, and in his final description of the " idea, as meaning," when he has definitely decided in its favour. "A meaning," he says, as we saw above, "consists of a part of the content (original or acquired) cut off, fixed by the mind, and considered apart from the existence of the sign." And again, "an idea, if we use idea of the meaning, is neither given nor presented, but is taken" (p. 8). If indeed "the universal meaning" were thus simply a part of the content of our own ideas, as mental states, and that, too, a part "cut off" by our own minds, it would be intel- ligible that " truth and falsehood " should still be said to " depend on the relation of our ideas to reality ". It will be our endeavour to show, on the contrary, that the " idea used in judgment " is not a part of the content of our ideas, nor produced by any action of our minds, and that hence truth and falsehood are not dependent on the relation of our ideas to reality. I shall in future use the term "concept" for what Mr. Bradley calls a " universal meaning " ; since the term " idea " is plainly full of ambiguities, whereas " concept " and its German equivalent " Begriff" have been more nearly appropriated to the use in question. There is, in- deed, a great similarity between Kant's description of his " Begriff," and Mr. Bradley's of his " logical idea ". For Kant, too, it is the " analytical unity of consciousness " which makes a " Vorstellung " or "idea" into a " conceptus communis" or " gemeinsamer Begriff" (R.V., p. 116 n.). It is our object to protest against this description of a I concept as an " abstraction " from ideas. Mr. Bradley's doctrine, as above sketched, presupposes that, when I have an idea (Vorstellung) of something, that something is itself part of the content of my idea. This doctrine, for the present, I am ready to admit ; my question now is whether, when I have an idea of something, that something must not also be regarded as something other than part of the content of my idea. The content of an idea is, Mr. Bradley tells us, what the idea is ; it is " a character which is different or distinguishable from that of other " ideas, treated as mental facts. Now, before I can 12