Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

As against Windelband, I here add the following observations:

1. It is false and a serious oversight, as he himself will be convinced on reading again in my _Psychology_, vol. i. p. 262, when he (p. 172) makes me assert, and that too as a quotation from my own work, that “love and hate” is not an appropriate term for the third fundamental class.

2. It is false, and a quite unjustifiable supposition when (p. 178) he ascribes to me the opinion that the classification of judgments according to quality is the only essential classification belonging to the act of judgment itself. I believe exactly the contrary. I regard, for example (of course in opposition to Windelband), the distinction between assertorical and apodictic judgments (cf. here note 27, p. 83), as also the distinction between self-evident and blind judgments as belonging and highly essential, to the act of judgment itself. Other differences, again, especially the distinction between simple and compound acts of judgment, I might mention. For it is not every compound judgment that can be resolved into quite simple elements, and something similar takes place also in the case of certain notions, a fact known to Aristotle. What is red?--Red colour. What is colour?--The quality of colour. The difference, it is seen, contains in both cases the notion of the genus. The separating of the one logical element from the other is only possible from the one side. A similar one-sided capacity to separate appears also in certain compound judgments. J. S. Mill is, therefore, quite wrong when he (_Deductive and Inductive Logic_, vol. i. chap. iv. section 3), regards as ridiculous the old classification of judgments into simple and compound, and thinks that the procedure in such a case is exactly as if one should wish to divide horses into single horses and teams of horses; otherwise the same argument would hold good against the classification of conceptions into simple and compound.

3. It is false, though an error which finds almost universal acceptance, and one from which I myself at the time of writing the first volume of my _Psychology_ was not yet free, that the so-called degree of conviction consists in a degree of intensity of the judgment which can be brought into analogy with the intensity of pleasure and pain. Had Windelband charged me with _this_ error I would have acknowledged the complete justice of the charge. Instead of this he finds fault with me because I recognize intensity with regard to the judgment, only in a sense analogous, and not identical to that in the case of feeling, and because I assert the impossibility of comparing in respect of magnitude, the supposed intensity of the belief and the real intensity of feeling. Here we have one of the results of his improved theory of judgment!

If the degree of conviction of my belief that 2 + 1 = 3 were one of intensity how powerful would this be! And if the said belief were to be identified, as by Windelband (p. 186), with feeling, not merely regarded as analogous to feeling, how destructive to our nervous system would the violence of such a shock to the feelings prove! Every physician would be compelled to warn the public against the study of mathematics as calculated to destroy health. (Cf. with regard to this so-called degree of conviction the view of Henry Newman in his interesting work: _An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent_--a work scarcely noticed in Germany.)

4. When Windelband (p. 183) wonders how I can regard the word “is” in such propositions as “God is,” “A man is” (ein Mensch ist), “A lack is” (ein Mangel ist), “A possibility is,” “A truth is,” (i.e. There is a truth), etc., as having the same meaning and finds it extraordinary (184, note 1) in the author of _Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles_ that he should fail to recognize the manifold significance of “to be,” I can only reply that he who in this view does not perceive the simple consequence of my theory of the judgment can hardly have understood this doctrine. With regard to Aristotle it never occurs to him, while dividing the “ὄν” in the sense of reality into various categories, and into an “ ὂν ὲνεργεία and ὂν δυνάμει”, to do the same with the “ἔστιν” transforming what is the expression of an idea into that of a judgment and the “ὂν ὡς ἀληθές” as he calls it. This could only be done by those who, like Herbart and many others after him, did not know how to hold apart the notion of being in the sense of absolute position and being in the sense of reality (cf. the following note).

5. I have just said that there exist simple and compound judgments, and that many a compound judgment is not, without a residue, resolvable into simple judgments. Special attention must be paid to this in seeking to convert judgments otherwise expressed into the existential form. It is self-evident that only simple judgments, i.e. such as are, strictly speaking, without parts, are so convertible. I may therefore be excused for not thinking it necessary to emphasize this expressly in my _Psychology_. If this restriction hold good universally it is, of course, valid also of the categorical form. In the propositions categorical in form, which the formal logicians have denoted by the signs A.E.I. and O. they wish to express strictly simple judgments. These are therefore one and all convertible into the existential form (cf. my _Psychology_, vol. i. p. 283). The same, however, will not hold good when propositions categorical in form contain in consequence of an ambiguity of expression (cf. p. 120, note to Appendix) a plurality of judgments. In such a case the existential form may certainly be the expression of a simple judgment equivalent to the compound one, but cannot be the expression of the judgment itself.

This is a point which Windelband ought to have considered in examining (p. 184) the proposition: “The rose is a flower” with respect to its convertibility into an existential proposition. He is quite right in protesting against its conversion into the proposition: “There is no rose which is not a flower,” but he is not equally right in ascribing this conversion to me. Neither in the passage cited by him nor elsewhere have I made such a conversion, and I consider it just as false as that attempted by Windelband and all such as may be attempted by anybody else. The judgment here expressed in the proposition is made up of two judgments of which one is the recognition of the subject (whether it be that thereby is meant “rose” in the ordinary sense, or “what is called rose,” “what is understood by rose”), and this, as we have just said, is not always the case where a proposition is given of the form: All A is B.

Unfortunately Land also has overlooked this, the only one among my critics who has succeeded in comprehending, in their necessary connection with the principle, what Windelband has termed the “mysterious” hints which I have thrown out towards the reform of elementary logic, and in deducing them correctly from it. (Cf. Land, “On a supposed improvement in Formal Logic” in the papers of the _Kgl. Niederländischen Akademie der Wissenschaften_, 1876.)

I conclude with a curiosity recently furnished by Steinthal in his _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_ (chap. xviii. p. 175). I there read with astonishment: “Brentano’s confusion in completely severing judgments from idea and thoughts (!) and grouping the judgments as acts of recognition or rejection, with love and hate (!!) is instantly removed if such (?) a judgment, as an aesthetic judgment is termed “Beurteilen” (!). Probably Steinthal has never once glanced into my _Psychology_, and has only read Windelband’s statement concerning it; this, however, so hastily that I hope he will not be ungrateful at my sending his lines to Windelband for correction.

[23] (_p. 14_). Miklosich, _Subjectlose Sätze_, second edition, Vienna, 1883.

In order to make the reader familiar with the contents of this valuable little book a notice written at the time for the _Vienna Evening Post_ may prove useful. Through an oversight it was printed as a feuilleton in the Vienna newspaper. As no one certainly would look for it there, I will include it here by way of an appendix. Meantime, Sigwart’s monograph, _The Impersonalia_ has appeared, in which he opposes Miklosich. Marty has submitted this, as well as (shortly before) the corresponding section in Sigwart’s _Logic_ to a telling criticism in the _Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosopie_, with regard to which criticism Sigwart, though without any reasonable ground, has shown himself highly indignant. “Il se fache,” the French say, “donc il a tort.” That Sigwart’s theory in its essential points has not succeeded, even Steinthal really allows, though in his _Zeitschrift_ (chap. xviii. p. 172 seq.) he burns thick clouds of incense to the writer of the monograph, and even in his preface to the fourth edition of his _Origin of Language_ applauds a form of conduct which every true friend of that deserving man (Sigwart) must regret. After the high praise awarded to him at the outset, one feels somewhat disappointed finally by the criticism. Steinthal rejects (pp. 177-180) Sigwart’s theory on its grammatical side. There would only remain therefore as really successful Sigwart’s psychological theory. But the psychological portion is not that concerning which Steinthal’s estimate is authoritative; for in that case, one would be bound to take seriously the following remark: “In the proposition: “Da bückt sich’s hinunter mit liebendem Blick” (a line from Schiller’s _Diver_), it is obvious that everybody must think of the king’s daughter, but it is not she which stands before me but a subjectless “sich hinunter-bücken,” and now I have all the more fellow-feeling for her. According to my (Steinthal’s) psychology, I should say the idea of the king’s daughter “fluctuates” (schwingt) but does not enter into consciousness.” This calls for something more than the old saying: _Sapienti sat_.