Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/197

THE NATURE OF JUDGMENT. 183 of concepts to existents disappears, since an existent is seen to be nothing but a concept or complex of concepts standing in a unique relation to the concept of existence. Even the description of an existent as a proposition (a true existential proposition) seems to lose its strangeness, when it is re- membered that a proposition is here to be understood, not as anything subjective an assertion or affirmation of something but as the combination of concepts which is affirmed. For we are familiar with the idea of affirming or " positing " an existent, of knowing objects as well as propositions ; and the difficulty hitherto has been to discover wherein the two processes were akin. It now appears that perception is to be - regarded philosophically as the cognition of an existential proposition ; and it is thus apparent how it can furnish a basis for inference, which uniformly exhibits the connexion between propositions. Conversely light is thrown on the nature of inference. For, whereas it could not be maintained that the conclusion was only connected with the premisses in my thoughts, and that an inference was nothing, if no- body was making it, great difficulty was felt as to the kind of objectivity that belonged to the terms and their relation, since existence was taken as the type of objectivity. This difficulty is removed, when it is acknowledged that the re- lation of premisses to conclusion is an objective relation, in the same sense as the relation of existence to what exists is objective. It is no longer necessary to hold that logical connexions must, in some obscure sense, exist, since to exist is merely to stand in a certain logical connexion. It will be apparent how much this theory has in common with Kant's theory of perception. It differs chiefly in sub- stituting for sensations, as the data of knowledge, concepts ; and in refusing to regard the relations in which they stand as, in some obscure sense, the work of the mind. It rejects the attempt to explain " the possibility of knowledge," ac- cepting the cognitive relation as an ultimate datum or pre- supposition ; since it maintains the objections which Kant himself urged against an explanation by causality, and re- cognises no other kind of explanation than that by way of logical connexion with other concepts. It thus renounces the supposed unity of conception guaranteed by Idealism even in the Kantian form, and still more the boasted reduc- tion of all differences to the harmony of " Absolute Spirit," which marks the Hegelian development. But it is important to point out that it retains the doctrine of Transcendentalism. For Kant's Transcendentalism rests on the distinction be- tween empirical and a priori propositions. This is a distinc-