ABSTRACT
First, what is an universal judgment? What does it assert? The qualitative and other judgments with which so far we have mainly had to deal, characterise the contents of definite acts of apprehension or memory. But we have already noticed one judgment which begins to emancipate itself from the apprehended order. The collective judgment is a construction of a special kind. It does not assert anything outside the reality which has been apprehended, but it combines the content of several acts of apprehension, and asserts them in one single thought. And, in doing this, it is not confined by any easily assignable limitation. In memory-synthesis—another form of construction—we simply review that which has been given continuously. There is an assignable reason—given continuity between the parts—for reviewing the whole of the series at once. In the collective judgment the reasons for making the collection are more various. Generally the resemblance, and sometimes the contrast or marked difference of the contents “collected,” appears to be the bond of union. Sometimes it appears more arbitrary; but, in any case, individuals may be collected together in the subject of the judgment without the slightest reference to the order in which they have been apprehended. The only limitation we have hitherto had is that they must all of them have been given. But we may note a further distinction among these collective judgments of the given. The individuals referred to may be definite in number or indefinite. In “Both my oranges were bad,” we have a collective assertion of the results of two separate investigations. The order of these investigations is immaterial, but the reference is quite definite; that is to say, both the elements of the collective whole form matter of definite memory; what the whole includes is definitely stated; in short, the judgment is neither more nor less than the summing up of two memory-judgments.
