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CHAPTER EIGHT
JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS
§ 1. The Three Factors of Judging
Good judgment A man of good judgment in a given set of affairs is a man in so far educated, trained, whatever may be his literacy. And if our schools turn out their pupils in that attitude of mind which is conducive to good judgment in any department of affairs in which the pupils are placed, they have done more than if they sent out their pupils merely possessed of vast stores of information, or high degrees of skill in specialized branches. To know what is good judgment we need first to know what judgment is.
Judgment and inference
That there is an intimate connection between judgment and inference is obvious enough. The aim of inference is to terminate itself in an adequate judgment of a situation, and the course of inference goes on through a series of partial and tentative judgments. What are these units, these terms of inference when we examine them on their own account? Their significant traits may be readily gathered from a consideration of the operations to which the word judgment was originally applied: namely, the authoritative decision of matters in legal controversy—the procedure of the judge on the bench. There are three such features: (1) a controversy, consisting of opposite claims regarding the same objective situation; (2) a process of defining and elaborating these claims and of sifting the facts adduced to101
