induced from previous observations, “whenever of three things
the first is to the right of the second, and the second to the right
of the third, the first is to the right of the third.” To reply
that this universal judgment is not expressed, or that its expression
is cumbrous, is no answer, because, whether expressed or
not, it is required for the thought. As Aristotle puts it, the
syllogism is directed “not to the outer, but to the inner discourse,”
or as we should say, not to the expression but to the
thought, not to the proposition but to the judgment, and to the
inference not verbally but mentally. Bradley seems to suppose
that the major premise of a syllogism must be explicit, or else
is nothing at all. But it is often thought without being expressed,
and to judge the syllogism by its mere explicit expression is to
commit an ignoratio elenchi; for it has been known all along that
we express less than we think, and the very purpose of syllogistic
logic is to analyse the whole thought necessary to the conclusion.
In this syllogistic analysis two points must always be considered:
one, that we usually use premises in thought which we do
not express; and the other, that we sometimes use them
unconsciously, and therefore infer and reason unconsciously,
in the manner excellently described by Zeller in his Vorträge,
iii. pp. 249-255. Inference is a deeper thinking process from
judgments to judgment, which only occasionally and partially
emerges in the linguistic process from propositions to proposition.
We may now then reassert two points about inference against
Bradley’s logic: the first, that it is a process from similar to
similar, and not a process of identification, because two different
things are not at all the same thing; the second, that it is the
mental process from judgments to judgment rather than the
linguistic process from propositions to proposition, because,
besides the judgments expressed in propositions, it requires
judgments which are not always expressed, and are sometimes
even unconscious.
Our third point is that, as a process of judgments, inference is a process of concluding from two beliefs in being to another belief in being, and not an ideal construction, because a judgment does not always require ideas, but is always a belief about things, existing or not. This point is challenged by all the many ideal theories of judgment already quoted. If, for example, judgment were an analysis of an aggregate idea as Wundt supposes, it would certainly be true with him to conclude that “as judgment is an immediate, inference is a mediate, reference of the members of an aggregate of ideas to one another.” But really a judgment is a belief that something, existing, or thinkable, or nameable or what not, is (or is not) determined; and inference is a process from and to such beliefs in being. Hence the fallacy of those who, like Bosanquet, or like Paulsen in his Einleitung in die Philosophie, represent the realistic theory of inference as if it meant that knowledge starts from ideas and then infers that ideas are copies of things, and who then object, rightly enough, that we could not in that case compare the copy with the original, but only be able to infer from idea to idea. But there is another realism which holds that inference is a process neither from ideas to ideas, nor from ideas to things, but from beliefs to beliefs, from judgments about things in the premises to judgments about similar things in the conclusion. Logical inference never goes through the impossible process of premising nothing but ideas, and concluding that ideas are copies of things. Moreover, as we have shown, our primary judgments of sense are beliefs founded on sensations without requiring ideas, and are beliefs, not merely that something is determined, but that it is determined as existing; and, accordingly, our primary inferences from these sensory judgments of existence are inferences that other things beyond sense are similarly determined as existing. First press your lips together and then press a pen between them: you will not be conscious of perceiving any ideas: you will be conscious first of perceiving one existing lip exerting pressure reciprocally with the other existing lip; then, on putting the pen between your lips, of perceiving each lip similarly exerting pressure, but not with the other; and consequently of inferring that each existing lip is exerting pressure reciprocally with another existing body, the pen. Inference then, though it is accompanied by ideas, is not an ideal construction, nor a process from idea to idea, nor a process from idea to thing, but a process from direct to indirect beliefs in things, and originally in existing things. Logic cannot, it is true, decide what these things are, nor what the senses know about them, without appealing to metaphysics and psychology. But, as the science of inference, it can make sure that inference, on the one hand, starts from sensory judgments about sensible things and logically proceeds to inferential judgments about similar things beyond sense, and, on the other hand, cannot logically go beyond the similar. These are the limits within which logical inference works, because its nature essentially consists in proceeding from two judgments to another about similar things, existing or not.
6. Truth.—Finally, though sensory judgment is always true of its sensible object, inferential judgments are not always true, but are true so far as they are logically inferred, however indirectly, from sense; and knowledge consists of sense, memory after sense and logical inference from sense, which, we must remember, is not merely the outer sense of our five senses, but also the inner sense of ourselves as conscious thinking persons. We come then at last to the old question—What is truth? Truth proper, as Aristotle said in the Metaphysics, is in the mind: it is not being, but one’s signification of being. Its requisites are that there are things to be known and powers of knowing things. It is an attribute of judgments and derivatively of propositions. That judgment is true which apprehends a thing as it is capable of being known to be; and that proposition is true which so asserts the thing to be. Or, to combine truth in thought and in speech, the true is what signifies a thing as it is capable of being known. Secondarily, the thing itself is ambiguously said to be true in the sense of being signified as it is. For example, as I am weary and am conscious of being weary, my judgment and proposition that I am weary are true because they signify what I am and know myself to be by direct consciousness; and my being weary is ambiguously said to be true because it is so signified. But it will be said that Kant has proved that real truth, in the sense of the “agreement of knowledge with the object,” is unattainable, because we could compare knowledge with the object only by knowing both. Sigwart, indeed, adopting Kant’s argument, concludes that we must be satisfied with consistency among the thoughts which presuppose an existent; this, too, is the reason why he thinks that induction is reduction, on the theory that we can show the necessary consequence of the given particular, but that truth of fact is unattainable. But Kant’s criticism and Sigwart’s corollary only derive plausibility from a false definition of truth. Truth is not the agreement of knowledge with an object beyond itself, and therefore ex hypothesi unknowable, but the agreement of our judgments with the objects of our knowledge. A judgment is true whenever it is a belief that a thing is determined as it is known to be by sense, or by memory after sense, or by inference from sense, however indirect the inference may be, and even when in the form of inference of non-existence it extends consequently from primary to secondary judgments. Thus the judgments “this sensible pressure exists,” “that sensible pressure existed,” “other similar pressures exist,” “a conceivable centaur does not exist but is a figment,” are all equally true, because they are in accordance with one or other of these kinds of knowledge. Consequently, as knowledge is attainable by sense, memory and inference, truth is also attainable, because, though we cannot test what we know by something else, we can test what we judge and assert by what we know. Not that all inference is knowledge, but it is sometimes. The aim of logic in general is to find the laws of all inference, which, so far as it obeys those laws, is always consistent, but is true or false according to its data as well as its consistency; and the aim of the special logic of knowledge is to find the laws of direct and indirect inferences from sense, because as sense produces sensory judgments which are always true of the sensible things actually perceived, inference from sense produces inferential judgments which, so far as they are consequent on sensory judgments, are always true of things similar to sensible things, by the very consistency of inference, or, as we say, by
