accumulating, and his knowledge growing more valuable and usable.
5. JUDGMENT
But in the building up of percepts and concepts, as well as in making use of them
after they are formed, another process of thinking enters; namely, the process of
judging.
Nature of Judgment.—Judging enters more or less into all our thinking, from
the simplest to the most complex. The babe lies staring at his bottle, and finally
it dawns on his sluggish mind that this is the object from which he gets his
dinner. He has performed a judgment. That is, he has alternately directed his
attention to the object before him and to his image of former nursing, discovered
the relation existing between the two, and affirmed to himself, "This is what
gives me my dinner." "Bottle" and "what-gives-me-my-dinner" are essentially
identical to the child. Judgment is, then, the affirmation of the essential identity
of meaning of two objects of thought. Even if the proposition in which we state
our judgment has in it a negative, the definition will still hold, for the mental
process is the same in either case. It is as much a judgment if we say, "The day is
not-cold," as if we say, "The day is cold."
Judgment Used in Percepts and Concepts.—How judgment enters into the
forming of our percepts may be seen from the illustration just given. The act by
which the child perceived his bottle had in it a large element of judging. He had
to compare two objects of thought—the one from past experience in the form of
images, and the other from the present object, in the form of sensations from the
bottle—and then affirm their essential identity. Of course it is not meant that
what I have described consciously takes place in the mind of the child; but some
such process lies at the bottom of every perception, whether of the child or
anyone else.
Likewise it may be seen that the forming of concepts depends on judgment.
Every time that we meet a new object which has to be assigned its place in our
classification, judgment is required. Suppose the child, with his immature
concept dog, sees for the first time a greyhound. He must compare this new
specimen with his concept dog, and decide that this is or is not a dog. If he
discovers the identity of meaning in the essentials of the two objects of thought,
his judgment will be affirmative, and his concept will be modified in whatever
extent greyhound will affect it.