Bernard Bosanquet

“ The course by which alone I can hope honestly to awaken a true logical interest among any who may be quite unfamiliar with the subject, is to approach the matter descriptively, and try to set before you fully and fairly what the problem is which the process of knowledge has to meet. And then it may be possible to claim a genuine theoretical curiosity—none the less genuine that it may be tinged with a sympathy for man’s common birthright of intelligence—for the detailed explanation of the means by which this problem is solved from day to day. Such an explanation is the science of Logic. ”

“ In one sense my mind is in my head, in the other sense my head is in my mind. In the one sense I am in space, in the other sense space is in me. Just so, however rough the metaphor, from one point of view the microscope is one among a host of things seen from the outside; from the other point of view all that we see is in the microscope, which is itself not seen at all.
It is in this latter sense that our mental equipment is looked at, when it is regarded as knowledge; and it is in this sense that it forms a panorama which absolutely shuts in every one of us into his own circle of ideas. ”

“ Consider what the causal analysis of any problem demands; remember that all enumeration implies a ground or whole, on which its value depends; and contrast the exhaustive examination of an instance thoroughly known, with the enumeration of thousands of cases lumped under a general predicate. Determine always to know the truth; welcome all information and all suggestion, but remember that truth is always systematic, and that every judgment, when you scrutinise it, demands a fuller and fuller connection with the structure of life. It is not cleverness or learning that makes the philosopher ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is what I call the common-sense theory of the Objective. Like common sense, it assumes that there is a world which the withdrawal of our individual consciousness does not affect, but which persists and acts all the same. Unlike common sense, it lays down an assertion as to the nature of this world, viz. that it is, apart from our consciousness, the same as it is for our consciousness. The world in consciousness, it assumes, is subjective, the world out of consciousness is objective, and the former is an imperfect copy of the latter in a feebler material. ”

“ So long as we are awake, our whole world is conceived as real, and forms for us a single immense affirmation, which hangs from present perception, and shares its constraining power. My present perception is the illuminated spot, and shades off gradually into the rest which forms the background, receiving from this background its organised systematic individuality, while impressing upon it a relation to its own sensuous presentness. ”

“ For the form of Knowledge depends in some degree upon its matter. It is very important to realise this truth; for if Logic is swamped by being identified with the whole range of special sciences, it is killed by being emptied of all adaptation to living intelligence. What is called Formal Logic par excellence in all its shapes, whether antiquated as in Hamilton’s or Thomson’s Formal Laws of Thought, or freshly worked out on a symbolic basis as by Boole and others, has, it appears to me, this initial defect, when considered as a general theory of Logic. ”

“ Right-angled triangles and equilateral triangles do not deny each other if we leave them in peace side by side. They are then merely different species of the same genus, or different combinations of the same angular space. But if you say, “This triangle is right-angled,” and I say “It is equilateral,” then they deny each other, and become true contraries.
Then the meaning of denial is always of the nature of contrary denial. As we always speak and think within a general subject or universe of discourse, it follows that every denial substitutes some affirmation for the judgment which it denies. ”

“ If we think of a subject in judgment which is represented by a relative sentence, it seems clear that any idea which can stand a predicate can also form a part of a subject. “The exhibition which it is proposed to hold at Chicago in 1893”—has in effect just the same elements of meaning, and just the same reference to a point in our world of reality as if the sentence ran, “It is proposed to hold an exhibition at Chicago in 1893.” In common parlance we should say, that in the former case we entertain an idea—or conceive or represent it—while in the latter case we affirm it. ”

“ What we want is neither to follow mere everyday language, nor be guided by mere convenience of logical combination. We want to look at the Judgment on its merits with reference to its power of expressing the principal kinds of our experience, which in fact are constructed in the medium of Judgment. The great kingdoms of intellectual experience are Perception, History, and Science, and of these three, Science, including Philosophy, is the form towards which all knowledge presses on, and its judgment must therefore be considered as the most complete type. ”

“ The metaphor, indeed, breaks down, in so far as each of us is able to observe the history and character of his own mind as an object within the field of presentation which is before his mind. Of course such a metaphor must break down at some point. But it remains true that the mind, while directly observing its field of objects, cannot observe its own peculiarities, and when turned, as we say, upon itself, is still observing only a part of itself. It remains true that my mind contains the whole presented world for me and is merely one among thousands of similar mind-things for you. ”

“ Therefore we say, coming closer to our subject, that “Knowledge is the medium in which our world, as an interrelated whole, [1] exists for us.” This is more than saying that it exists in mind or presentation, because the mere course of consciousness need not amount to Knowledge. A world, that is, a system of things acting on one another, could not exist merely in the course of our ideas. But Knowledge, we said, is the mental construction of reality. ”

“ Is every one’s panorama exactly the same? No, they are not exactly the same. They are formed round different centres, each person differing from all the others by individual qualities, and by his position towards the points and processes which determine his picture. For—and here is the remarkable point—every one of us has painted for himself the picture within which he is shut up, and he is perpetually painting and re-painting it, not by copying from some original, but by arranging and completing confused images and tints that are always appearing magically on his canvas. ”

“ There is no science more difficult than that on which we are entering in these lectures. It is worth while to discuss the nature of this difficulty. It is a question of interest rather than of intricacy. All sciences have, perhaps, much the same possibilities of broad theory and subtle analysis. But Logic stands alone in the difficulty with which the student sustains his persuasion that its point of view is worth applying.
In most other sciences, even in the philosophical sciences, there is a continual stimulus to sense-perception, to curiosity, to human interest. ”

“ But the world of knowledge has a unity which the world of organic individuals cannot claim; and this whole system of functions is itself, for our intelligence, approximately a single function or system, corresponding in structure to each of its individual parts, as though the plant world or animal world were itself in turn a plant or animal. We cannot hope to exhaust the shapes taken by the pervading fundamental function of intelligence. ”

“ You will find it said that a Negative Judgment cannot express fact; e.g. that a Judgment of Perception cannot be negative. This is worth reflecting upon; I hope that what has been said makes clear how far it is true. The bare form of Negation is not adequate to fact; it contains mere emptiness or ignorance; we nowhere in our perception come upon a mere “not-something.” No doubt negation is in this way more subjective than affirmation. ”

“ F.H. Bradley, Principles of Logic, p. 48.
From the point of view which we have taken, such judgments are not confined to what we think it worth while to say, but are the essence of every orderly and objective perception of the world around us. In a waking human consciousness nothing is unaffirmed.
We have no other term than perception to express the process which is employed in scientific observation and experiment. But it is plain that so soon as the judgment that refers to “This” is modified through the inevitable demand for qualification by exact ideas—“This hurts me,” “What hurts you?” ”

“ I have attempted to make clear that this living growth, our knowledge, is like the vegetable or animal world in being composed of infinite minor systems, each and all of which are at bottom the same function with corresponding parts or elements, modified by adaption to the environment. So that the task of analysing the form of judgment bears a certain resemblance to that of analysing the forms of plants. ”

“ It is far more simple and true to say that Judgment is always the analysis and synthesis of elements in some one thing or ideal content. “Gold is yellow” has not within it, as Jevons says it has, [1] any direct comparison of gold with other yellow substances. It simply drags to light the property “yellow” as distinct within the complex of attributes belonging to gold, while at the same time insisting that this property—this meaning of an idea—belongs to, is of one piece with, perceived reality in so far as gold is given in such reality. The Judgment exhibits the content in its parts. ”

“ Thus geology is logic applied to explain the formation of the earth’s crust; biology is logic applied to the phenomena of life; psychology is logic applied to the nature of the mind; and the same is the case with physiology, entomology, zoology, teratology, morphology, anthropology, theology, ecclesiology, thalattology, and the rest. Each science is thus distinctly confessed to be a special logic. The name of Logic itself is derived from the common Greek word λόγος, which usually means word, or the sign and outward manifestation of any inward thought. ”

“ Knowledge is always Judgment. Judgment is constructive, for us, of the real world. Constructing the real world means interpreting or amplifying our present perception by what we are obliged to think, which we take as all belonging to a single system one with itself, and with what constrains us in sense-perception, and objective in the sense that its parts act on each other independently of our individual apprehension, and that we are obliged to think them thus. The process of construction is always that of exhibiting a whole in its parts, i.e. an identity in its differences ”

“ For those who care to understand, to trace the connecting principles and functions that permeate our intellectual world, there is indeed an interest of a peculiar kind. But even experienced students will occasionally feel the strain of attending to difficult distinctions, entirely without the excitement of novelty in sense-perception or of a practical bearing upon human life. It is this that makes Logic probably the hardest of all the sciences. ”

“ Once in ten years it may be rung, not by a person, but by some mechanical accident, in which case the “some one” is a hypothesis, but one always treats it as a fact. The only proof of a hypothesis is its being the only one that will fit the facts, i.e. make our system of reality relatively self-consistent. We believe many things we can never verify by perception, e.g. the existence of the centre of the earth, or that you have an idea in your minds; and if we go to ultimate analysis, perception itself involves hypothesis, and a fortiori all experiment involves hypothesis. ”

“ The “matter” of knowledge is the whole region of facts dealt with by science and perception. If Logic dealt with this in the way in which knowledge deals with it, i.e. simply as a process of acquiring and organising experience, then Logic would simply be another name for the whole range of science, history, and perception. Then there would be no distinction between logic and science or common sense, and in trying to ascertain, say, the wave-length of red light, or the cab-fare from Chelsea to Essex Hall, we should be investigating a logical problem. ”

“ In order to show exactly what circumstance produces a given effect, a system must be brought to bear on the phenomenon through negation. The only test of truth is that it is that which enables you to organise your thought and perception. ”

“ Thus, in the simplest phases of Judgment, necessity does begin to approach the kind of necessity by which we feel pain or are visited by persistent irrational associations.
We can trace an explicit sense of necessity in any scientific matter, or in any doubtful and complex matters in which we are aware of our own reflections. We constantly hear and read such phrases as, “I am unable to resist the conclusion”; “I am forced to believe”; “I am driven to think” ”