CHAPTER VII. JUDGMENT. SOME writers confound judgment with reason. They consider it that faculty by which we compare facts or propositions with each other, and our mental impressions with external objects. An act of judgment, of course, implies reason; we cannot judge without reason, neither can we reason without judgment. But this does not prove them one and the same thing. All our mental powers coexist in fact; they are essential elements of one and the same mind; and many of our mental exercises necessarily imply and involve each other. Still they are distinct exercises, and of course imply the existence of the mental powers adequate to produce them. The only question is, whether that mental act which we call judgment is sufficiently peculiar and important to deserve a distinct notice. JUDGMENT DISTINGUISHED FROM REASON. Considering reason as an intuitive † faculty, to identify judgment with reason, is to confound it with intuition. Now intuition is always true; judgment may be false; intuition is certain; judgment may be uncertain. It is The term is sometimes qualified by applying the adjective intuitive. Hence some writers speak of intuitive judgments, as connecting the several links in a chain of mathematical demonstration. We might as well speak of round squares. The links of a chain of mathematical demonstration are connected in our minds by pure intuition. We do not judge; we know. proper to speak of good and bad judgment; but to speak of good and bad intuition, is a solecism. Intuition knows; judgment is a substitute for knowledge. The judge upon the bench has no intuitive knowledge respecting the innocence or guilt of the man under trial he merely judges him innocent or guilty in view of evi dence. Had he the knowledge which intuition gives, he would not need to judge. Hence his judgment is a substitute for such knowledge. And even if we suppose both to exist in the same mind, in reference to the same things, they are yet distinct, both in their nature and relations.† * FURTHER REASONS FOR THE DISTINCTION. Considering reason as discursive, by substituting the participle and giving the definition usually attached to reasoning, we find objections to confounding the terms in question no less serious. Reasoning is a process; judgment is a decision. Reasoning prepares the way for a result; judgment is the result itself. There are indeed separate judgments, pronounced on the several facts or evidences, in the course of an investigation, until the final issue becomes a general judgment embracing the whole. Such are the judgments of the civil magistrate on the "The faculty which God has given man to supply the want of clear and certain knowledge, in cases where that cannot be had, is judgment, whereby the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree; or, which is the same, any proposition to be true or false, without perceiving any demonstrative evidence in the proofs. The mind sometimes exercises this judgment out of necessity, when demonstrative proofs and certain knowledge are not to he had. Judgment is the presuming things to be so, without perceiving it." Locke's Essay, book iv. ch. xiv. § iv. +"To understanding, we apply the epithets strong, vigorous, comprehensive, profound. To judgment, those of correct, cool, unprejudiced, impartial, solid. It was in this sense that the word seems to have been understood by Pope, in the following couplet : "Tis with our judgments as our watches; none All well; but how absurd to speak of a correct, cool, unprejudiced, impar tial, solid intuition! or of our intuitions varying with our watches! bench. The judge cannot ordinarily compass the whole question at issue with a single decisive act; he compares and decides, reasons and judges, at the various stages of the investigation. The character of the witnesses, and the evidences they furnish; the arguments of the respective advocates; the different circumstances bearing directly and indirectly upon the case, are all severally considered, brought into relation to the law, and decided upon, as preparatory to the final judgment that is to embrace the whole. DEFINITION OF JUDGMENT. Considered as a mental attribute, judgment may therefore be defined the power of forming a decision in view of facts and evidences. We may conceive of a mind in which this element might be wholly wanting. It might attend to all the facts and evidences in a given case, compare them with a standard, and yet have no power of judgment no ability to come to any decision whatever in respect to them. Judgment is, then, a distinct faculty. It is that which, when all the circumstances are brought to bear upon a question at issue, enables us to decide, in view of them, what the truth is, and what ought to be done. This is the real meaning of judgment, as understood and applied by the mass of mankind. Nor does it essentially differ from the meaning attached to it by most philosophers and logicians, excepting when they confound it with reason or intuition. "In treatises of logic," says Stewart, "judgment is commonly defined to be an act of the mind, by which one thing is affirmed or denied of another; a definition which, though not unexceptionable, is, perhaps, less so than most that have been given on similar occasions. Its defect, as Reid has remarked,* "The definition commonly given of judgment, by the more ancient writers in logic, was, that it is an act of the mind, whereby one thing is affirmed or denied of another. I believe this is as good a definition of it as can be given."- Reid's Philosophy, vol. iii. p. 74. But this excellent author immediately admits that the affirmation or denial is not essential consists in this: that although it be by affirmation or denial that we express our judgments to others, yet judgment is a solitary act of the mind, to which this affirmation or denial is not essential; and, therefore, if the definition be admitted, it must be understood of mental affirmation or denial only; in which case, we do no more than substitute, instead of the thing defined, another mode of speaking perfectly synonymous. The definition has, however, notwithstanding this imperfection, the merit of a conciseness and perspicuity not often to be found in the attempts of logicians to explain our intellectual operations." VIEWS OF LOCKE AND COUSIN. It has been remarked that some writers confound judgment with other mental faculties. This is doubtless owing to the influence of the German school, in which REASON figures very largely, embracing nearly all that we understand by intuition and judgment. Locke stands, in this respect, on high, independent ground. Cousin complains of him in the following language: "Locke founds knowledge and judgment upon the perception of a relation between two ideas, that is to say, upon comparison; while in many cases, these relations and the ideas of relation, so far from being the foundation of our judgments and of our cognitions, are, on the contrary, the results of primitive cognitions and judgments referable to the natural power of the mind, which judges and knows in its own proper virtue, basing itself frequently upon a single term, and consequently without comparing two together in order to deduce the ideas of relation." † Here Cousin places in the same category cognitions and judgments which Locke is careful to distinguish. to judgment; that "there may be judgment which is not expressed;" that "affirmation and denial are very often the expression of testimony, which is a different act of the mind, and ought to be distinguished froin judg ment."- Ibid. This brings us back to our definition above. *Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 18. † Elements of Psychology, by Victor Cousin, by Rev. C. S. Henry, D. D., p. 342. Cognitions do not necessarily involve any comparing. All intuitions are cognitions, and are referable to a "natural power of the mind, which knows in its own proper virtue." But judgments, with Locke, are quite another thing. They "supply the want of clear and certain knowledge," or cognitions.* VIEWS OF REID. Reid's view of judgment agrees mainly with our definition. He says, "As a judge, after taking the proper evidence, passes sentence in a cause, and that sentence is called his judgment, so the mind, with regard to whatever is true or false, passes sentence, or determines according to the evidence that appears. Some kinds of evidence leave no room for doubt. Sentence is passed immediately, without seeking or hearing any contrary evidence, because the thing is certain and notorious.† In the other cases, there is room for weighing evidences on both sides before sentence is passed. The analogy between a tribunal of justice and this inward tribunal of the mind is too obvious to escape the notice of any man who ever appeared before a judge.” ‡ Yet this writer unfortunately extends the sphere of dgment to intuitions, and, to justify it, calls such menal acts "judgments of things necessary." "That three imes three are nine, that the whole is greater than a art, are judgments about things necessary. Our assent o such necessary propositions is not grounded upon any operations of sense, of memory, or of consciousness, nor does it require their concurrence; it is unaccompanied by any other operation but that of conception, which must accompany all judgment; we may, therefore, call this Judgment of things necessary pure judgment." § This * Locke's Essays, book iv. ch. xiv. sec. iv. † It should be observed that the certainty here is not that of intuition, but of irresistible evidence. The mind of the judge may be forced to a certain conviction of the prisoner's guilt, not because he has an intuitive perception of his crime, but.irresistible evidence of it. Essays, vol. iii. p. 76. |