Summation

“ The judgment or proposition, which is the characteristic form in which the result of reflection finds its expression, consists, in its most rudimentary shape, of the embodiment of this distinction in the separation of predicate from subject, and the subsequent affirmation of the first about the second. The work of thought or knowledge in making our world more intelligible to us essentially consists in the progressive analysis of a content or what, considered in abstraction from the this to which it belongs. ”

“ The principle that the proper place for what is to be made most prominent is the end applies equally to the words of a sentence, to the sentences of a paragraph, and to the paragraphs of a composition. ”

“ General Principles.—There is perhaps no other form of composition which is so generally in use as exposition or explanation. If you observe your own conversation and that of the people about you, you will find that a great deal of it is explanation. Every time you say in answer to some question about a remark you have just made, "Why, I mean that—," you are explaining the first remark. In almost all the recitations you make in school you are explaining something—a principle in arithmetic, or in physics, the construction of something in manual training, the meaning of a word, etc. ”

“ In their conversation and on their crockery, before every house and behind every counter, the elegant formula makes its appearance, teaching people not merely how to think, but what should be thought, and when. ”

“ The forms under which the critical method is applied—such as the distinctions between a priori and a posteriori elements in cognition, between matter and form, between phenomena and noumena, between sense, understanding, and reason—ought not to disguise from us the true nature of the question which underlies all of them. ”

“ In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition: 'The individual is the universal.' These are the terms under which the subject and the predicate first confront each other, when the functions of the notion are taken in their immediate character or first abstraction. [Propositions such as, 'The particular is the universal,' and 'The individual is the particular,' belong to the further specialisation of the judgment.] ”

“ We are all aware that the falling inflection marks completed sense, so that this principle will require neither elaboration nor illustration. Attention must be called, however, to the fact that we often assert strongly in the middle of a sentence. This phase of the subject has been so well described by another [3] that we quote as follows:
“Momentary Completeness.—This applies to any clause, phrase, or even word, which has, for any reason, enough separate force to constitute, at the moment, an entire thought, and [62] to call for a separate affirmation of the mind. ”

“ If we examine those Arguments, which, in any of the Sciences above mentioned, are suppos'd to be the mere Effects of Reasoning and Reflection, they will all be found to terminate, at last, in some general Principle or Conclusion, for which we can assign no Reason but Observation and Experience. ”

“ We found that whatever be the form of the proposition, and whatever its nominal subject or predicate, the real subject of every proposition is some one or more facts or phenomena of consciousness, or some one or more of the hidden causes or powers to which we ascribe those facts ”

“ This realised particularity of the notion is the Judgment.
The ordinary classification of notions, as clear, distinct and adequate, is no part of the notion; it belongs to psychology. Notions, in fact, are here synonymous with mental representations; a clear notion is an abstract simple representation: a distinct notion is one where, in addition to the simplicity, there is one 'mark' or character emphasised as a sign for subjective cognition. ”

“ The discrete degrees constituting any one thing are always in a series, a lower one of the series being derived from the higher, like end, cause, and effect. End, cause, and effect follow in order, like prior, middle, and ultimate, the end or prior producing the cause or middle, and the cause or middle producing the effect or ultimate. Affection, thought, and act are related as end, cause, and effect. Take the example of speech for illustration. ”

“ And so in all cases, the general propositions, whether called definitions, axioms, or laws of nature, which we lay down at the beginning of our reasonings, are merely abridged statements, in a kind of short-hand, of the particular facts, which, as occasion arises, we either think we may proceed on as proved, or intend to assume. In any one demonstration it is enough if we assume for a particular case suitably selected, what by the statement of the definition or principle we announce that we intend to assume in all cases which may arise. ”

“ Reflection, it was said above, conducts to the universal of things: which universal is itself one of the constituent factors of a notion. To say that Reason or Understanding is in the world, is equivalent in its import to the phrase 'Objective Thought.' The latter phrase however has the inconvenience that thought is usually confined to express what belongs to the mind or consciousness only, while objective is a term applied, at least primarily, only to the non-mental. ”

“ Every proposition is given empirically as a spoken or written sentence, a complex of physical signs, which is itself a fact in the real world: comparing a proposition with the state of affairs it expresses is, therefore, nothing but a comparison of two facts. ”

“ The sum, or the All of pleasures is a self-contradiction, and therefore the search for it is futile. A series which has no beginning, or, if a beginning, yet no end, can not be summed; there is no All, and yet the All is postulated, and the series is to be summed. ”

“ The value of the argument depends upon the final answer which reveals the premises or data of facts, upon which the conclusion rests. Forms of speech, classification of propositions, figures of syllogisms, are of minor importance when you have once elicited the rough truth. The best test of an argument is the soundness of its data, and the simplest formula for drawing out and exhibiting such data, is of the greatest service in enabling us to judge of the validity thereof. ”

“ We find the inner ground for this systematisation of judgments in the circumstance that when the Notion, which is the unity of Being and Essence in a comprehensive thought, unfolds, as it does in the judgment, it must reproduce these two stages in a transformation proper to the notion. ”

“ In exposition and argument, and sometimes in the other forms of discourse, the topic-sentence may be at the end of the paragraph. This is for emphasis in narration and description. In exposition and argument it is better to lead up to an unwelcome truth than to announce it at once. ”

“ He is guided by a sum of impressions, not one of which is emphatic or distinguished from the rest, not one of which is essential, not one of which is conceived, but all of which together drive him to a conclusion to which nothing but that sum-total leads. ”

“ Shandy, you see that by this means—that is by going backwards and forwards—every thesis and hypothesis have an offspring of propositions—and each proposition has its consequences and conclusions; every one of which leads the mind back again, into fresh tracks of inquiries and doubtings. ”

“ Argument from Cause.+—We have learned, in Section 49, that the relation of cause and effect is one which is ingrained in our nature. We accept a proposition as plausible if a cause which we consider adequate has been assigned. Our belief in a proposition often depends upon our belief in some other proposition which may be accepted as a cause. ”

“ Hence it has been said,
By Hui Tzŭ. 'The objective emanates from the subjective; the subjective is consequent upon the objective. This is the Alternation Theory.' Nevertheless, when one is born, the other dies. ”

“ And 'is,' considered as a substantive verb, as in the example, 'This man is,' contains in itself the application of the copula of judgment to the most elementary of all abstractions—'thing' or 'something.' Yet if a being has the power of thinking 'thing' or 'something,' it has the power of transcending space and time by dividing or decomposing the phenomenally one. ”

“ A large part of our thinking consists of furnishing specific instances to illustrate general ideas which arise. Since the language we use is but the expression of the thoughts we have, it happens that many of our paragraphs are made up of general statements and the specific instances used to illustrate these statements. When the topic sentence is a general statement, we naturally seek to supply specific instances, and the writer will most readily make his meaning clear by furnishing such illustrations. ”

“ It was natural enough that the originators of conceptual logic, seeing that judgments can be expressed by propositions, and conceptions by terms, should fall into the error of supposing that, as propositions consist of terms, so judgments consist of conceptions, and that there is a triple mental order—conception, judgment, reasoning—parallel to the triple linguistic order—term, proposition, discourse. ”

“ For they can exist either in men's minds or bodies, or they may be external to both of these materials, then, as far as they are subordinate to argument, all the parts must be carefully turned over in the mind, and conjectures bearing on the subject before us must be derived from each part. ”

“ Every common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is the name of a concept; for example, horse, beauty, to steal, running, over, early, yellow, grape, ocean, etc. To understand these concepts there must be somewhere a progress from the individual to the abstract, an induction from particulars to a general concept. ”

“ Whilst Psychology explains how the mind goes forward from data to conclusions, Logic takes a conclusion and goes back to the data, inquiring whether those data, together with any other evidence (facts or principles) that can be collected, are of a nature to warrant the conclusion. ”

“ This brings us to the study of exposition, as it is generally understood, in which all the resources of language are called into service to explain a term or a proposition.
How do Men explain? First, by Repetition. What, then, are the methods of explaining a proposition? First, a proposition may be explained by the repetition of the thought in some other form. To be effective, repetition must add something to what has been said; the words used may be more specific or they may be more general. For example, “A strong partisan may not be a good citizen. ”

“ While we analyse, we have to remember that the most correct analysis of features or characteristics may easily fail to give us a true idea of the face or the character which we analyse. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. ”

“ This last principle, which we may call the axiom of constant result, holds good throughout all our mental operations, not only when we compare, but when we add, divide, class, or infer a given matter in any conceivable way. ”

“ We can thus find a meaning, true or false, for the statement that more is to [164] be learnt about a thing by examining it close to than by viewing it from a distance. We can also find a meaning for the phrase "the things which intervene between the subject and a thing of which an appearance is a datum to him." ”

“ What has been said can be expressed in a formal manner by saying that the nature of judgment or the proposition in general, which involves the distinction of subject and predicate, is subverted and destroyed by the speculative judgment ”

“ The principles governing the arrangement of material are Mass and Coherence. Both are equally essential, but in practice some questions regarding Mass are settled first. The important positions in an essay are the beginning and the end; of these the more important is the end. In this place, then, there shall be those sentences or those 111 paragraphs which deserve that distinction. Here frequently stands the theme, the conclusion of the whole matter, that for which the composition was constructed. ”

“ As they comprise all nameable things, every fact is made up of them or some of them; those that are called subjective facts being composed wholly of feelings as such, and the objective facts, though composed wholly or partly of substances and attributes, being grounded on corresponding subjective facts. ”

“ In the experience of the writer, questions which involve a summary of the work covered, with the added element of a new view as a stimulus to further thought on the subject, are more rare than good questions introducing new topics. ”

“ For the explanation of a fact, something is offered which, upon close examination, is seen to be no more than the unexplained thing stated again in different terms. Why do masses of matter tend to approach each other? ”

“ The content of a notion is not formed by the totality of properties belonging to the objects fulfilling the notion, but the relation, which the definition demands. The totality of the objects meeting the demands of the notion we call its extent. ”

“ The conclusion, based upon accumulated facts, as we have seen, that matter alone is at once the thing acting, and the thing acted upon,—eternal in duration, infinitely various and varying in appearance ”

“ Take the proposed Premisses, and ascertain, by the process described at p. 60, what Conclusion, if any, is consequent from them.
(2) If there be no Conclusion, say so.
(3) If there be a Conclusion, compare it with the proposed Conclusion, and pronounce accordingly.
I will now work out, in their briefest form, as models for the Reader to imitate in working examples, six Problems.
(1) “All soldiers are strong;
All soldiers are brave.
Some strong men are brave.”
Univ. “men”; m = soldiers; x = strong; y = brave. ”