Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/406

V. DISCUSSION. COMPARISON IN PSYCHOLOGY AND IN LOGIC. By B. BOSANQUET. It seems a pity to drop so interesting a discussion as that initiated by Mr. Sully on Comparison in MIND 40, and continued by Mr. Bradley in No. 41. I here approach the subject from a different point of view but, I hope, a not uninstructive one. Comparison in the psychological sense presupposes distinct data, and an interest in comparing them. The data need not be determinate individual objects, but must be so far distinct perceptions as to be nameable or at least recognisable. Thus comparison, in this sense, does not begin with the beginnings of knowledge. The separate data presuppose perceptive judgments, and the interest in comparing them presupposes an import in the widest sense, a use attaching to some characteristic of the one, and so suggested by reproduction or " redintegration " when we perceive the other. Then the interest arises in asking "How and how far are the two data the same, or how and how far different?" And such comparison ends when the judgment loses its special cross-reference to the data with which it starts, and transforms itself into an estimate of each datum by a standard that goes beyond both. " He is an inch taller than me " is a comparative judgment ; as also would be " He is of the same height as I am," or " He is of a different height from me ". But the judgment of identification, " We are both six feet high," or the judgments involving difference, " He is six feet high and I am five feet eleven inches," are not comparison in the above strictly limited sense, which I have called the psychological sense of comparison, because it does not seem to me really to form a logical species. Its differentia, if it were such a species, would be that it is guided by the unanalysed idea of identity and diversity. The analysis which this idea sets up transforms it into a general standard, and then the special correlation of the data is done away with. This is tested by the possibility of separating the judgment of identification into single judgments. It is nonsense to say (except elliptically) " I am of the same height," but it is good sense to say " I am six feet high". The second judgment refers to an explicit standard which replaces the accidental re- lation to a particular datum. The difference between the two judgments represents the point where comparison in the psy- chological sense passes into a disjunction of cases under a principle. The logical process is continuous, and is essentially comparison after this point as before. That we do not call it so is analogous to our counting only those terms as relative which go