THE SECOND PART OF LOGIC. Of Judgment and Proposition. WHEN the mind has get acquaintance with things by framing ideas of them, it proceeds to the next operation, and that is, to compare these ideas together, and to join them by affirmation, or disjoin them by negation, according as we find them to agree or disagree. This act of the mind is called judg- ment; as when we have by perception obtained the ideas of Plato, a philosopher, man, innocent, we form this judgment; Plato was a philosopher ; no man is innocent. Some writers have asserted, that judgment consists in a mere perception of the agreement or disagreement, of ideas. But I rather think there is an act of the will (at least in most cases) necessary to form a judgment ; for though we do perceive or think we perceive ideas to agree or disagree, yet we may some- times refrain from judging or assenting to the perception, for fear least the perception should not be sufficiently clear, and we should be mistaken : and I am well assured at other times, that there are multitudes of judgments formed, and a firm assent given to ideas joined or disjoined, before there is any clear per - eeption whether they agree or disagree ; and this is the reason of so many false judgments or mistakes among men. Both these practices are a proof that judgment has something of the will in in it, and does not merely consist in perception, since we some- times judge (though unhappily) 'without perceiving, and sometimes we perceive without immediate judging. As an idea is the result of our conception or apprehension, so a proposition is the eiThct of judgment. The foregoing sen- tences which are examples of the at of judgment are properly called propositions. Plato is a philosopher, 4c. Here let us consider : 1. The general nature of a pr000- sition, and the parts of which it is composed. 2. The various divisions or kinds of propositions. 3. The springs of false judg- mnent, or the doctrine of prejudices. 4. General directions to assist us in judging aright. 5. Special rules to direct us in jud- ing particular objects. e-- CHAP. I. Of the Nature, of a Proposition, and its several Parts. A Proposition is a sentence wherein two or more ideas or terms are joined or disjoined by one affirmation or negation ; as Pluto was a philosopher: every angle is fanned by two lines
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