of internal meanings, but only of negative worth as to the other objects.
All this, however, only brings afresh to light the paradoxical character of all this sundering of external and internal meanings. For at this point arises the ancient question, How can you know at all that your judgment is universally valid, even in this ideal and negative way, about that external realm of validity, in so far as it is external, and is merely your Other, — the Beyond? Must you not just dogmatically say that that world must agree with your negations? This judgment is indeed positive. But how do you prove it? The only answer has to be in terms which already suggest how vain is the very sundering in question. If you can predetermine, even if but thus negatively, what cannot exist in the object, the object then cannot be merely foreign to you. It must be somewhat predetermined by your Meaning. But of this matter we shall soon hear more in another connection. The result is so far baffling enough. Yet in this situation most of our ordinary thinking about the world is done.
Let us pass to the “particular affirmative” judgments. As has been repeatedly pointed out in the discussions on recent Logic,[1] the particular judgments, — whose form is Some A is B, or Some A is not-B, are the typical judgments that positively assert Being in the object viewed as external. This fact constitutes their essential contrast with the universal judgments. They undertake to cross the chasm that is said to sunder internal and exter-
- ↑ Amongst others by Mr. Charles Peirce, by Schroeder, by Mr. Venn, and, quite independently, by Brentano, in his Psychologie.
