In trivial or simple judgments this necessity is harder to observe within consciousness, and approaches more and more to the mere constraint exercised upon us by physical reality. In a judgment of mere sensuous comparison, such as a “colour-match,” the necessity is not that of an intellectual system, but almost that of a feeling which we cannot dispel. The chief intellectual labour is here negative, and consists in precautions to remove all disturbing influences, both mental and material, so as to let the perception operate freely on the mind. But yet here is necessity; we never for a moment think that we can modify the result; our aim is simply to distinguish from all others the particular strand of necessity by which we desire to be guided.
{25} It is easy for an observer to detect intellectual necessity in judgment, even where the judging subject is wholly unreflective. If you contradict an obvious judgment made by an uneducated man, he will no doubt be quite unable to point out the intellectual necessity which constrains him to it, i.e. to argue in support of it; but he will be bewildered and probably indignant, which shows that, unknown to himself, his whole intellectual existence is really impeached by impeachment of a necessary conclusion from it. Many people cannot see the difference between impeaching their argument and impeaching their veracity; and this confusion arises, I presume, from a just feeling that their whole mind is on its trial in the one case as in the other, although they do not distinguish between the forms of its action which are concerned. We are told, indeed, in formal logic, that ordinary statements of fact do not claim necessity; but this merely arises from confining necessity to explicit necessity expressed in a special grammatical form.
But, it may be objected, we do not always feel that every trivial judgment emanates from and so implicates our whole mental constitution and equipment. If I say to a friend, “I saw you at Charing Cross yesterday,” and he says, “No, you could not, for I was out of town,” then, unless I was very certain indeed, I should admit having made a mistake, and think no more about the matter. That only means, (1) that the unity of the mind is not thoroughly complete—there are many more or less detached systems in the mind, and one of them may not be very deeply inwrought in the whole intellectual frame; and (2) the necessity of thought may itself modify the certainty of the fact, e.g. I know that {26} a mistake of identity is quite a common thing, and this knowledge co-operates with my friend’s denial.
But in any perceptive judgment, however unimportant its immediate content, if it is clear and persistent, a contradiction is a most serious thing. There is a well-known form of bewilderment connected with the judgment of direction; if you forget or do not know of a turn that you have taken, and come out, for example, on familiar ground from the North when you think you are coming on it from the South, so that objects have the reverse position of what you expected, then, supposing that you cannot explain the contradiction, the result is sometimes a very grave perplexity; some men are quite unhinged by it for the moment, and a psychologist in France [1] has given it a new name, “Vertigo of Direction.” This again shows how your whole intellectual nature is staked upon the most trifling perception, and if you seem to be forced to a flat contradiction even in the simplest judgment you are almost “beside yourself.”
[1] M. Binet. See Mind, x. 156.
Judgment universal
(b) Judgment is universal. There are different senses of “universal” as of “necessary.” We are now speaking only in the widest sense, in which universality is a property of all judgment whatever. If we assume that all our intellectual natures are the same, then to be universal is a mere consequence of being necessary. I not only feel that my judgment is inevitable for me, but I never think of doubting that, given the same materials, it is obligatory for every other intelligent being. If some one disagrees with a judgment of mine, I try to put the case before him as it is in my mind. And I am absolutely sure that if I could do so, he {27} would be obliged to judge as I do. If it were not so, we should never think of arguing. We should simply say, “Perhaps his mind is differently constituted from mine,” as, in fact, with reference to special sets of dominant ideas, and to special provinces of experience, we often do say. But these we regard as hindrances, imperfections, accidents. We do not doubt that the system of reason is active in him as in us.
And thus, as reason is essentially a system, the universality of judgment involves something more. We not only think that our judgment is obligatory upon every one else, in as far as they have the same materials, but we think that it must be consistent with the judgments of all other persons, just as much as with our own. If it is inconsistent with any other judgment, we think that one of the two must be wrong; that is, we will not admit the possibility that the real world, as others construct it, is out of harmony with the real world as we construct it.
Thus knowledge, being judgment, is necessary and universal, and in the widest sense this is true of all judgments.
Judgment is constructive