Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/195

THE NATURE OF JUDGMENT. 181 concept of this paper, are also combined in a specific manner with the concept of existence. That specific manner is some- thing immediately known, like red or two. It is highly important, because we set such value upon it ; but it is itself a concept. All that exists is thus composed of concepts necessarily related to one another in specific manners, and likewise to the concept of existence. I am fully aware how paradoxical this theory must appear, and even how contemptible. But it seems to me to follow from premisses generally admitted, and to have been avoided only by lack of logical consistency. I assume Mr. Bradley's proof that the concept is necessary to truth and falsehood. I endeavour to show, what I must own appears to me perfectly obvious, that the concept can consistently be de- scribed neither as an existent, nor as part of an existent, since it is presupposed in the conception of an existent. It is similarly impossible that truth should depend on a relation to existents or to an existent, since the proposition by which it is so defined must itself be true, and the truth of this can certainly not be established, without a vicious circle, by exhibiting its dependence on an existent. Truth, however, would certainly seem to involve at least two terms, and some relation between them ; falsehood involves the same ; and hence it would seem to remain, that we regard truth and falsehood as properties of certain concepts, together with their relations a whole to which we give the name of proposition. I have appealed throughout to the rules of logic ; nor, if any one rejects these, should I have much to fear from his arguments. An appeal to the facts is useless. For, in order that a fact may be made the basis of an argument, it must first be put in the form of a proposition, and, moreover, this proposition must be supposed true ; and then there must recur the dilemma, whether rules of logic are to be accepted or rejected. And these rules once accepted, would seem themselves to offer a confirmation of our theory. For all true inference must be inference from a true proposition ; and that the conclusion follows from the premiss must again be a true proposition: so that here also it would appear that the nature of a true proposition is the ultimate datum. Nor is an appeal to the "matter" of the proposition more useful than the former appeal to the facts. It may be true that this matter is given in sensation, or in any other conceivable way. We are not concerned with its origin, but with its nature ; and its nature, if it is to enter into a true proposition, must, we agree with Mr. Bradley, be the nature of a concept and no