139. TRUTH OF NECESSARY JUDGMENTS ABSOLUTE.

Finally, over and above the implicit or explicit assertions of

(contingent) de facto existence which may attach to our thought-

objects, over and above the contingent judgments, whether

individual or general, immediate or mediate, which assert the

actual (contingent) existence of the objects we conceive, we

have, by contemplating those abstract thought-objects apart

from their existence, and merely as possible essences, a whole

domain of those ideal, absolutely or metapliysically necessary

1 Through the data of direct experience intellect discovers, as necessarily im

plied by the actuality of those data, one reality to which actual existence must be

long essentially ; the Necessary, Self-Existent, Divine Being. But this Being also

intellect apprehends only through concepts which, owing to their human mode of

abstractness, present their object without the note of actual existence, concepts

which, applying " properly" only to contingent beings, cannot give us " proper "

or " intuitive " insight into the nature of the Necessary Being. " Existence," and

" essence" or " nature," are for the human intellect, owing to its abstractive mode

of attaining to reality, logically or conceptually distinct thought-objects: they re

main so even in our concept of the "Necessarily Existing Essence or Being":

therefore even when seen to be necessarily identified in Him they give us no posi

tive insight into what that Divine Nature must be which is Self-Existent.

a Cf. Science of Logic, i., So, p. 162.

RELATIVIST THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 223

judgments, into the real significance of which we have already

inquired (chaps, v.-viii.). As we have seen, English Subjectivism

misinterprets their character (chap. v.). Kant had a juster

appreciation of it ; but by locating the ground of the necessity

neither in the non-Ego as known, nor in the Ego as known, but

in what he (gratuitously and unwarrantably) distinguished as

the stibjective or self domain of transcendental and unknowable

reality, he reached an agnostic conclusion which, instead of

explaining the character of such judgments, just left the problem

where he had found it (chaps, vi., vii.). The Scholastic account

of these judgments is that the human intellect can understand

and account to itself for their characteristics of absolute necessity,

immutability, universality, etc., by seeing that the realities which

it apprehends through its concepts are apprehended in abstraction

front all the conditions which attach to the actual mode of their

existence as contingent (chap. viii.).

Does this imply that it is the human intellect that creates or

causes these characteristics of the reality which it thus appre

hends? Some would say No ; for the human intellect itself, no

less than all the direct data of consciousness which it apprehends

in the abstract, is a contingent reality, and can know itself to be

such ; and no contingent reality can create or cause such pro

perties as the absolute necessity, immutability, eternity, univers

ality, etc., which intellect apprehends as characterizing the

realities that are its objects : these characteristics, therefore, must

be in the intellectually conceived realities, and must be in them

independently of our intellectual modes of apprehension. But hence

arise two difficulties. Firstly, if the realities we conceive by

intellect are identically the realities we perceive by sense, such

characteristics are certainly not in these realities as revealed to

sense, but must be in these realities (i.e. in the sensible, material,

physical universe) and nevertheless remain themselves unrevealed

to sense : from which it remains unexplained how or why the

intellect can attain to a knowledge of such characteristics. 1 And

*It is hardly an explanation to point out that the maxim, " Nihil est in intel-

lectu quod prius nonfuerit in sensu," must be qualified by " nisi intellectus ipse" :

for this latter means precisely the intellect s own modes of thought, discovered by

introspection ; whereas in the view under consideration the characteristics of pos

sible essences (or " necessary " judgments) are not due to modes of intellectual

apprehension, and are not in these essences merely as intellectually apprehended ;

and moreover the characteristics in question clearly belong to objects abstracted by

intellect from the domain of sense, e.g. to quantitative or extensional thought-objects

such as a " whole " compared with its " part ".

224 THEOR Y OF KNO VVLEDGE

secondly, if these characteristics of necessity, immutability,

eternity, etc., be interpreted not as arising from, and consequent

on, our intellectual modes of conceiving and interpreting reality,

but as being, so to speak, exclusively ontological, i.e. as apper

taining to the reality (which is object of our thought) as it

actually is, independently of our thought, then it is not easy to

avoid the Platonic-Ontologistic inference that the reality which

has such characteristics independently of thought, and which

presents them to thought, cannot be the reality of the domain

revealed to sense at all, but must be the transcendent reality of

the Necessary, Eternal, Immutable, Self-Existing, Divine Being

(70).

Others, therefore, answer the question proposed above in the

affirmative. They say Yes: the absolute or metaphysical neces-

sity-and-universality of our abstract judgments arises from the

fact that these judgments are (objectively) relations between

aspects of reality which are conceived by intellect in the abstract,

as abstract thought-objects or essences. It is because the human

intellect apprehends reality by conceiving it piecemeal, analyti

cally, in abstract aspects, and by comparing, discriminating, and

identifying these abstract aspects in judgment, that it sees reality

as so judged and interpreted to have those logical relations

mentally or intellectually static, fixed, changeless relations of

identity or diversity, compatibility or incompatibility, when

related as subject and predicate in our human "judgment "-mode

of apprehending the real. They point out that these character

istics of necessity, universality, immutability, etc., are character

istics of "abstract essences," i.e. of aspects of reality conceived in

the abstract and RELATED to one another IN JUDGMENT ; that they

are therefore properly characteristics of judgments ; that judg

ment is a mode in which the human intellect apprehends the

real ; that objectively the judgment reveals a reality, but only

through a logical relation ; that the reality represented by the

judgment is itself neither a "subject" nor a " predicate" nor a

" relation between a subject and a predicate " : the reality, itself,

independently of thought, is not the relation itself, nor is it either

term of the relation, for the terms are abstract concepts or

thought-objects, and " abstractness " too is an intent io logica, a

product of thought 1 ; but the reality is given in, and forms the

content of, our concepts ; so that if our complex concepts are

1 Cf. Ontology, 87, pp. 334-6.

RELATIVIST THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 225

formed by inter-relating and synthesizing our most elementary

concepts, and if our concepts are inter- related in judgments

under the influence of objective evidence and in accordance ivith the

exigencies of their objective contents?- these concepts and judgments

faithfully represent, and give us a valid (if inadequate) insight

into, reality : for that which reality appears to the human intellect

thus interpreting it in the light of objective evidence is a function

of that which reality is in itself.

Finally, over and above the implicit or explicit assertions of

(contingent) de facto existence which may attach to our thought-

objects, over and above the contingent judgments, whether

individual or general, immediate or mediate, which assert the

actual (contingent) existence of the objects we conceive, we

have, by contemplating those abstract thought-objects apart

from their existence, and merely as possible essences, a whole

domain of those ideal, absolutely or metapliysically necessary

1 Through the data of direct experience intellect discovers, as necessarily im

plied by the actuality of those data, one reality to which actual existence must be

long essentially ; the Necessary, Self-Existent, Divine Being. But this Being also

intellect apprehends only through concepts which, owing to their human mode of

abstractness, present their object without the note of actual existence, concepts

which, applying " properly" only to contingent beings, cannot give us " proper "

or " intuitive " insight into the nature of the Necessary Being. " Existence," and

" essence" or " nature," are for the human intellect, owing to its abstractive mode

of attaining to reality, logically or conceptually distinct thought-objects: they re

main so even in our concept of the "Necessarily Existing Essence or Being":

therefore even when seen to be necessarily identified in Him they give us no posi

tive insight into what that Divine Nature must be which is Self-Existent.

a Cf. Science of Logic, i., So, p. 162.

RELATIVIST THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 223

judgments, into the real significance of which we have already

inquired (chaps, v.-viii.). As we have seen, English Subjectivism

misinterprets their character (chap. v.). Kant had a juster

appreciation of it ; but by locating the ground of the necessity

neither in the non-Ego as known, nor in the Ego as known, but

in what he (gratuitously and unwarrantably) distinguished as

the stibjective or self domain of transcendental and unknowable

reality, he reached an agnostic conclusion which, instead of

explaining the character of such judgments, just left the problem

where he had found it (chaps, vi., vii.). The Scholastic account

of these judgments is that the human intellect can understand

and account to itself for their characteristics of absolute necessity,

immutability, universality, etc., by seeing that the realities which

it apprehends through its concepts are apprehended in abstraction

front all the conditions which attach to the actual mode of their

existence as contingent (chap. viii.).

Does this imply that it is the human intellect that creates or

causes these characteristics of the reality which it thus appre

hends? Some would say No ; for the human intellect itself, no

less than all the direct data of consciousness which it apprehends

in the abstract, is a contingent reality, and can know itself to be

such ; and no contingent reality can create or cause such pro

perties as the absolute necessity, immutability, eternity, univers

ality, etc., which intellect apprehends as characterizing the

realities that are its objects : these characteristics, therefore, must

be in the intellectually conceived realities, and must be in them

independently of our intellectual modes of apprehension. But hence

arise two difficulties. Firstly, if the realities we conceive by

intellect are identically the realities we perceive by sense, such

characteristics are certainly not in these realities as revealed to

sense, but must be in these realities (i.e. in the sensible, material,

physical universe) and nevertheless remain themselves unrevealed

to sense : from which it remains unexplained how or why the

intellect can attain to a knowledge of such characteristics. 1 And

*It is hardly an explanation to point out that the maxim, " Nihil est in intel-

lectu quod prius nonfuerit in sensu," must be qualified by " nisi intellectus ipse" :

for this latter means precisely the intellect s own modes of thought, discovered by

introspection ; whereas in the view under consideration the characteristics of pos

sible essences (or " necessary " judgments) are not due to modes of intellectual

apprehension, and are not in these essences merely as intellectually apprehended ;

and moreover the characteristics in question clearly belong to objects abstracted by

intellect from the domain of sense, e.g. to quantitative or extensional thought-objects

such as a " whole " compared with its " part ".

224 THEOR Y OF KNO VVLEDGE

secondly, if these characteristics of necessity, immutability,

eternity, etc., be interpreted not as arising from, and consequent

on, our intellectual modes of conceiving and interpreting reality,

but as being, so to speak, exclusively ontological, i.e. as apper

taining to the reality (which is object of our thought) as it

actually is, independently of our thought, then it is not easy to

avoid the Platonic-Ontologistic inference that the reality which

has such characteristics independently of thought, and which

presents them to thought, cannot be the reality of the domain

revealed to sense at all, but must be the transcendent reality of

the Necessary, Eternal, Immutable, Self-Existing, Divine Being

(70).

Others, therefore, answer the question proposed above in the

affirmative. They say Yes: the absolute or metaphysical neces-

sity-and-universality of our abstract judgments arises from the

fact that these judgments are (objectively) relations between

aspects of reality which are conceived by intellect in the abstract,

as abstract thought-objects or essences. It is because the human

intellect apprehends reality by conceiving it piecemeal, analyti

cally, in abstract aspects, and by comparing, discriminating, and

identifying these abstract aspects in judgment, that it sees reality

as so judged and interpreted to have those logical relations

mentally or intellectually static, fixed, changeless relations of

identity or diversity, compatibility or incompatibility, when

related as subject and predicate in our human "judgment "-mode

of apprehending the real. They point out that these character

istics of necessity, universality, immutability, etc., are character

istics of "abstract essences," i.e. of aspects of reality conceived in

the abstract and RELATED to one another IN JUDGMENT ; that they

are therefore properly characteristics of judgments ; that judg

ment is a mode in which the human intellect apprehends the

real ; that objectively the judgment reveals a reality, but only

through a logical relation ; that the reality represented by the

judgment is itself neither a "subject" nor a " predicate" nor a

" relation between a subject and a predicate " : the reality, itself,

independently of thought, is not the relation itself, nor is it either

term of the relation, for the terms are abstract concepts or

thought-objects, and " abstractness " too is an intent io logica, a

product of thought 1 ; but the reality is given in, and forms the

content of, our concepts ; so that if our complex concepts are

1 Cf. Ontology, 87, pp. 334-6.

RELATIVIST THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 225

formed by inter-relating and synthesizing our most elementary

concepts, and if our concepts are inter- related in judgments

under the influence of objective evidence and in accordance ivith the

exigencies of their objective contents?- these concepts and judgments

faithfully represent, and give us a valid (if inadequate) insight

into, reality : for that which reality appears to the human intellect

thus interpreting it in the light of objective evidence is a function

of that which reality is in itself.