CHAPTER III.

REASON.

XXI.

Probability is undefinable.

Like certainty, it is the
It is quantitative,

differentia of a species of theses.

graduating from a minimum to a maximum that is scarcely distinguishable from certainty. Its minimum is a degree of a scale that graduates from a zero at which theses scarcely exhibit a sign of verisimilitude, and, indeed, this scale is itself part of a greater one which ascends from that zero to certainty.

XXII.

1. An Opinion is the mental relation to a thesis supposed by probability of the thesis. If it were tenable that opinion is a species of discernment, it might be defined as discernment of probability, but opinions, like knowledges, are for the most part unconscious, and must be defined accordingly.

2. Opinion varies in degree with the correlated

probability. Its higher degrees are, as it were, a terra firma upon which the mind rests and acts with as much confidence as upon certainty, for which reason opinion of those degrees may be distinguished as strong, and the opposite species as faint, opinion.

3. Opinion is divisible into the species, emotive and unemotive opinion. Faith, the confidence on which enterprise usually proceeds, and the opinion involved in fear, are examples of emotive opinion; belief in the Darwinian hypothesis, of unemotive opinion. Strong emotive opinion that has for object one's own power or the power and good disposition of another, is confidence. That which has for object divine power and goodness is faith; that of which the object is one's own power is self-confidence. Selfconfidence, which is a species of courage, is the fountain of enterprise, not a sine qua non,-for a coward may be theoretically enterprising,-but the main source.

XXIII.

Circumstances have prepared the term, belief, for a more extended and important signification than what has been hitherto annexed to it. According to this signification, a belief is either a knowledge or a strong opinion. Viewing belief as a genus, it comprehends the subgenera, knowledge and strong opinion. The latter comprehends the species, strong emotive opinion and strong unemotive opinion.

XXIV.

Doubt is privation of certitude as regards a thesis that makes some pretension to belief,-one supported by some incentive to belief. When the mind is suspended between opposite incentives to belief of equal force, pure doubt (doubt unattended by any leaning to belief) obtains. Doubt is essential, but not proper, to opinion. It is either conscious or unconscious.

XXV.

There is a mental act which, although it be unconnected with an intention of communication or with words or any significant act, so resembles a fundamental constituent of what is commonly denoted by the term, assertion, that it is entitled to be classed as a species of assertion; in other words, the signification of the name, assertion, should be enlarged so as to include it. According to this arrangement, assertion is either significant or non-significant, the former when it does, and the latter when it does not, involve a proposition. The correlatives, affirmation and negation, are essential to assertion. An affirmative proposition implies negation of the opposite of what is affirmed, and a negative one affirmation of the opposite of what is denied. But in certain cases both correlatives are obvious, and in others one of them is latent,-latently implicit, relatively to the assertor. In propositions constituting narrative one of the correlatives is generally latent. In philosophical and scientific proposi

tions, on the other hand, both correlatives are obvious. The assertor consciously denies the opposite of what he affirms or affirms the opposite of what he denies. Now obvious affirmation and negation are essential to non-significant assertion. When evidence begets discovery the discovery is united with a non-significant assertion involving obvious affirmation and negation, as in the case of the juryman to whom the evidence discovers the guilt of the accused, or in that of the mathematical pupil to whom it discovers the truth of the theorem. Now significant assertion is not confined to discovery. If the truth of what is known, e.g. that I exist, be put in question, the question may excite a non-significant assertion affirmative of the existence and negative in respect of its opposite.

XXVI.

A judgment is a non-significant assertion. It involves a conscious reference to opposite theses, being affirmative of one and negative of the other. It is essential to it to be conscious. It is instantaneous, it has no duration the knowledge which it initiates, or which precedes and follows it and refers to the same object, is not a judgment. I know when I am not thinking of the matter that things equal to the same are equal to one another; if this be put in question in my mind, I judge that it is true, and I may dwell for a certain time on the truth: the unconscious knowledge that precedes the truth and the dwelling on the truth are not judgments.

XXVII.

A Judgment supposes question.

Question is undefinable. It comprehends the two kinds, communicative and incommunicative question, the former being that which is put by one person to another, and the latter that which the mind puts to itself.

XXVIII.

Apprehension is discernment that is not a judgment. All actual objects that are not objects of judgment are objects of apprehension. Judgment involves apprehension. To judge that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, there must be apprehension of right angles, of a triangle, and of its three angles. Apprehension unconnected with judgment, e.g. perception, remembrance, fancy, is simple apprehension.

XXIX.

Some of the greatest errors that deface and obstruct philosophy are incident to oversight of the boundaries that divide judgment from apprehension, and it is remarkable that, while the spontaneity from which language for the most part proceeds respects those limits, it is by philosophers they have been effaced. The name, Judge, is appropriated to the functionaries on whom the administration of law mainly depends, and it connotes the differentia of the mental acts that constitute the supreme part of their function. These