This page needs to be proofread.

F. H. BRADLEY' s PXIXCIPLES OF LOGIC. 129 foi'e point only to that in the real which is the ground of the consequence necessarily following. In the judgment, ' If S, then P,' we only assert that if the real be qualified as S, then it will present also the qualification P ; we do not assert that the real is either S or P. But to rest content with such a view is to do grave injustice to the function of thought and to take an extremely imperfect and abstract aspect of the real as the whole of its significance. In the concluding sections of his second chapter Mr. Bradley advances towards a completer doctrine of the kinds of proposi- tions. He has little trouble in showing that synthetic judgments of sense, which transcend the given, proceed on a principle not distinguishable from that which characterises the hypothetical, while analytic judgments of sense, though professing to give the real, do so only by a process of mutilation that is concealed by ordinary language but is fatal to their claims as absolutely and simply true. The terms of which the singular analytic judgment consists are universal, are wholly inadequate to express the con- crete reality that is assumed. Such judgments are in fact the poorest and most abstract, giving the least expression of reality. Like all other judgments they do refer to reality, but they refer in the least definite, most hypothetical fashion. Abstract judg- ments, though on one side to be described as hypothetical, for they do not assert the existence of their elements, are on another side categorical, for they do imply a quality of the real and express the nature of the real as the realm of law, of systematic connexion of facts. The negative judgment (ch. 3), Mr. Bradley regards as resting essentially on the recognised exclusion by the real of a suggested ideal determination. It implies, therefore, in all cases a recog- nised ground of exclusion, a positive element, though the nature of this ground need not be the same in all cases of negation. It is with satisfaction that one sees the blank form Not-A assigned to its true place (pp. 118-9, cf. pp. 147-8), but the whole tenor of this chapter and occasional special statements (pp. 109, 116) tend rather strongly towards the purely subjective interpretation of judgment which is the gulf always yawning beside the logician. The disjunctive judgment (ch. 4) is shown to involve a cate- gorical assertion regarding the disparate members of a whole predicate, a hypothetical determination of the subject in re- ference to these disparates, and a general assumption or inference regarding the totality of the sphere which is divided. Chapter 5, on the Principles of Identity, Contradiction, Ex- cluded Middle, and Double Negation, is perhaps one of the least satisfactory, not because there is much in it from which one would dissent, but because it does not seem possible to discuss with any profit these principles from the point of view which the author is taking. If we regard judging as part of the subjective process of knowing, these principles have only relative signifi- 9