Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/142

 130 P. H. BRADLEY'S PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC. cance. In their abstract and general form they can only be handled in what we think Mr. Bradley would call metaphysics. Not much is to be gained by treating truth in isolation, and so rendering the Law of Identity, e.g., as that it merely expresses the abstractness of truth (p. 133), and, similarly, the dialectic method requires not to be compared with Contradiction and Excluded Middle when these are taken from the same point of view. Chapters 6 and 7 on Quantity and Modality raise a multi- plicity of questions. Want of space prevents my doing more than call attention to the excellent treatment of the general basis of probable reasoning which is given in ch. 7 ; to a general statement of the chapter I shall have occasion later to refer. The treatment of quantity raises two problems, first, that of extension and intension, second, that of the meaning to be as- signed to universal and particular. In respect to both, the ordinary logic has accepted partial doctrines either from uncritical experience or from psychology, and Mr. Bradley's review, though probably not final, does good service in pointing out the un- speakable confusion that prevails regarding them. In his treat- ment Mr. Bradley is led to fall foul of two familiar doctrines, the one that some names are non-connotative, the other that extensions and intensions vary inversely. There is no doubt that the word ' connotation ' has crept into logic without being able to yield a very satisfactory account of itself, and the modern use of it, dating doubtless from Mill's Logic, is entirely at variance with its earlier acceptation. From some points of view the distinction indicated by it becomes comparatively worthless, but I do not know that there is not a positive advantage in having a word which shall indicate the specific property of a sign when used to designate a class. The matter is mainly grammatical, not logical, but I do not think that it is at all necessary to identify connotation with signification, and so, because all signs have signification, to assert that they all have connotation. In like manner the doc- trine of inverse relation between extension and intension has doubtless been applied in a wholly absurd and senseless fashion, but I imagine that in the long run the meaning of the doctrine will be found to rest on the peculiar relation between genus and species, and to result from taking abstractly a truth which would have a different expression when all the elements are taken to- gether. The current doctrine regarding extension and comprehension in judgments, if indeed there is any one doctrine on the subject, is sufficiently confused, and it seems hardly worth while to con- trast with it in detail a new reading of these distinctions. If the definition of judgment adopted by Mr. Bradley be carried out, and the subject be taken not as the grammatical subject which appears in the verbal statement, but as the ultimate reality, then it is easily seen that, as implying ideal content, the judgment may