So far as your internal meaning goes, to have experienced within that which makes you call this judgment necessary is, indeed, to have observed a character about your own ideas which rightly seems to you very positive.[186]
But what is it that we "experience within" which makes us call this judgment necessary? In the discussion of the relation of the universal judgment to the disjunctive judgment, through which the former is shown to get even its negative force, there is an interesting statement:
One who inquires into a matter upon which he believes himself able to decide in universal terms, e. g., in mathematics, has present to his mind, at the outset, questions such as admit of alternative answers. "A," he declares, "in case it exists at all, is either B or C." Further research shows universally, perhaps, that No A is B.
The last sentence is the statement referred to. What is meant by "further research shows universally, perhaps, that No A is B"? What kind of "research," internal or external, can show this? In short, there appears to be as much difficulty with universality and necessity in the realm of internal meaning as in the reference of internal to external meaning.[187]
Instead, however, of discussing this point, Mr. Royce pursues the problem of the relation of the external and internal meaning, and finds that regarded as sundered there is no basis so far for even the negative universality and necessity in the reference of the internal meaning to the external.
For at this point arises the ancient question, How can you know at all that your judgment is universally valid, even in this ideal and negative way, about that external realm of validity, in so far as it is external, and is merely your Other,—the Beyond? Must you not just dogmatically say that that world must agree with your negations? This judgment is indeed positive. But how do you prove it? The only answer has to be in terms which already suggest how vain is the very sundering in question. If you can predetermine, even if but thus negatively, what cannot exist in the object, the object then cannot be merely foreign to you. It must be somewhat predetermined by your Meaning.[188]
But in the universal judgment this determination, as referred to the external meaning, is only negative.
The particular judgment.—It is then through the particular judgment that the universal judgment is to get any positive value in its reference to the external meaning.
As has been repeatedly pointed out in the discussions on recent Logic, the particular judgments—whose form is Some A is B, or Some A is not B—are the typical judgments that positively assert Being in the object viewed as external. This fact constitutes their essential contrast with the universal judgments. They undertake to cross the chasm that is said to sunder internal and external meanings; and the means by which they do so is always what is called "external experience."