in that, when stimulus and response are adjusted to each other, activity will be resumed. But if this reconstruction and response were to follow at once, would there be any clearly defined act of judging at all? In such a case there would be no judgment, properly speaking, and no occasion for it. There would be simply a ready transition from one line of activity to another; we should have changed our method of reaction easily and readily to meet the new requirements. On the one hand, our subject-matter would not have become a clearly recognized datum with which we must deal; on the other hand, there would be no ideal method of construing it.59 Activity would have changed without interruption, and neither subject nor predicate would have arisen.
In order that judgment may take place there must be interruption and suspense. Under what conditions, then, is this suspense and uncertainty possible? Our reply must be that we hesitate because of more or less sharply defined alternatives; we are not sure which predicate, which method of reaction, is the right one. The clearness with which these alternatives come to mind depends upon the degree of explicitness of the judgment, or, more exactly, the explicitness of the judgment depends upon the sharpness of these alternatives. Alternatives may be carefully weighed one against the other, as in deliberative judgments; or they may be scarcely recognized as alternatives, as in the case in the greater portion of our more simple judgments of daily conduct.
The predicate is essentially hypothetical.—If we review in a brief résumé the types of judgment we have considered, we find in the explicit scientific judgment a fairly well-defined subject-matter which we seek further to determine. Different suggestions present themselves with varying degrees of plausibility. Some are passed by as soon as they arise. Others gain a temporary recognition. Some are explicitly tested with resulting acceptance or rejection. The acceptance of any one explanation involves the rejection of some other explanation. During the process of verification or test the newly advanced supposition is recognized to be more or less doubtful. Besides the hypothesis which is tentatively applied there is recognized the possibility of others. In the disjunctive judgment these possible reactions are thought to be limited to certain clearly defined alternatives, while in the less explicit judgments they are not so clearly brought out. Throughout the various forms of judgment, from the most complex and deliberate down to the most simple and immediate, we found that a process could be traced which was like in kind and varied only in degree. And, finally, in the most immediate judgments where some of these features seem to disappear, the same account not only appears to be the most reasonable one, but there is the additional consideration, from the psychological side, that were not the judgment of this doubtful, tentative character, it would be difficult to understand how there could be judgment as distinct from a reflex. It appears, then, that throughout, the predicate is essentially of the nature of a hypothesis for dealing with the subject-matter. And, however simple and immediate, or however involved and prolonged, the judgment may be, it is to be regarded as essentially a process of reconstruction which aims at the resumption of an interrupted experience; and when experience has become itself a consciously intellectual affair, at the restoration of a unified objective situation.
II
Criticism of certain views concerning the hypothesis.—The explanation we have given of the hypothesis will enable us to criticise the treatment it has received from the empirical and the rationalistic schools. We shall endeavor to point out that these schools have, in spite of their opposed views, an assumption in common—something given in a fixed, or non-instrumental way; and that consequently the hypothesis is either impossible or else futile.
Bacon is commonly recognized as a leader in the reactionary inductive movement, which arose with the decline of scholasticism, and will serve as a good example of the extreme empirical position. In place of authority and the deductive method, Bacon advocated a return to nature and induction from data given through observation. The new method which he advanced has both a positive and a negative side. Before any positive steps can be taken, the mind must be cleared of the various false opinions and prejudices that have been acquired. This preliminary task of freeing the mind from "phantoms," or "eidola," which Bacon likened to the cleansing of the threshing-floor, having been accomplished, nature should be carefully interrogated. There must be no hasty generalization, for the true method "collects axioms from sense and particulars, ascending continuously and by degrees, so that in the end it arrives at the most general axioms." These axioms of Bacon's are generalizations based on observation, and are to be applied deductively, but the distinguishing feature of Bacon's induction is its carefully graduated steps. Others, too, had proceeded with caution (for instance Galileo), but Bacon laid more stress than they on the subordination of steps.
It is evident that Bacon left very little room for hypotheses, and this is in keeping with his aversion to anticipation of nature by means of "phantoms" of any sort; he even said explicitly that "our method of discovery in science is of such a nature that there is not much left to acuteness and strength of genius, but all degrees of genius and intellect are brought nearly to the same level."60 Bacon gave no explanation of the function of the hypothesis; in his opinion it had no lawful place in scientific procedure and must be banished as a disturbing element. Instead of the reciprocal relation between hypothesis and data, in which hypothesis is not only tested in experience, but at the same time controls in a measure the very experience which tests it, Bacon would have a gradual extraction of general laws from nature through direct observation. He is so afraid of the distorting influence of conception that he will have nothing to do with conception upon any terms. So fearful is he of the influence of pre-judgment, of prejudice, that he will have no judging which depends upon ideas, since the idea involves anticipation of the fact. Particulars are somehow to arrange and classify themselves, and to record or register, in a mind free from conception, certain generalizations. Ideas are to be registered derivatives of the given particulars. This view is the essence of empiricism as a logical theory. If the views regarding the logic of thought before set forth are correct, it goes without saying that such empiricism is condemned to self-contradiction. It endeavors to construct judgment in terms of its subject alone; and the subject, as we have seen, is always a co-respondent to a predicate—an idea or mental attitude or tendency of intellectual determination. Thus the subject of judgment can be determined only with reference to a corresponding determination of the predicate. Subject and predicate, fact and idea, are contemporaneous, not serial in their relations (see pp. 110-12).
Less technically the failure of Bacon's denial of the worth of hypothesis—which is in such exact accord with empiricism in logic—shows itself in his attitude toward experimentation and toward observation. Bacon's neglect of experimentation is not an accidental oversight, but is bound up with his view regarding the worthlessness of conception or anticipation. To experiment means to set out from an idea as well as from facts, and to try to construe, or even to discover, facts in accordance with the idea. Experimentation not only anticipates, but strives to make good an anticipation. Of course, this struggle is checked at every point by success or failure, and thus the hypothesis is continuously undergoing in varying ratios both confirmation and transformation. But this is not to make the hypothesis secondary to the fact. It is simply to remain true to the proposition that the distinction and the relationship of the two is a thoroughly contemporaneous one. But it is impossible to draw any fixed line between experimentation and scientific observations. To insist upon the need of systematic observation and collection of particulars is to set up a principle which is as distinct from the casual accumulation of impressions as it is from nebulous speculation. If there is to be observation of a directed sort, it must be with reference to some problem, some doubt, and this, as we have seen, is a stimulus which throws the mind into a certain attitude of response. Controlled observation is inquiry, it is search; consequently it must be search for something. Nature cannot answer interrogations excepting as such interrogations are put; and the putting of a question involves anticipation. The observer does not inquire about anything or look for anything excepting as he is after something. This search implies at once the incompleteness of the particular given facts, and the possibility—that is ideal—of their completion.
It was not long until the development of natural science compelled a better understanding of its actual procedure than Bacon possessed. Empiricism changed to experimentalism. With experimentalism inevitably came the recognition of hypotheses in observing, collecting, and comparing facts. It is clear, for