The Divine Lamp

Article 11

Being a continuation of the previous article.

95. So true is the above doctrine that Condillac himself, his preoccupation to the contrary notwithstanding, gives evident signs of having caught occasional glimpses of it: as, for instance, where he treats of judgments.
According to him. a judgment is simply an operation whereby we refer the object-i.e. the actual sensation of which we judge-to its exemplar already existing in our memory.

He distinguishes, as we have seen, two kinds of attention:the one proper to the memory, the other proper to the senses; the one active, the other passive. The first consists in the reminiscence of things which we have formerly seen; the second consists in the actual perception of an individual thing by the senses. These two aattentions are, he thinks, sufficient to account for the act of judgment.

We compare that which actually impresses our senses with that which has impressed them heretofore, and the image of which is preserved in our memory; and a judgment is the result. Now to make this comparison is nothing but to refer the thing now acting on our senses to the exemplar antecedently formed in our mind. Here are Condillac’s own words:

If, after smelling a rose and a carnation a number of times, it (the statue) smells a rose for a second time, the passive attention created by what we smell will be fully activated in the present scent of the rose. The active attention which the memory provides will be apportioned between the memories that remain of the scents of the rose and carnation. Now, modes of being cannot be distinguished from one another when a capacity for smell draws them to itself unless comparisons are made between them; the act of comparison is equivalent to focusing on two ideas simultaneously, and whenever comparison is present, a judgment is made-a judgment, therefore, is merely the perception of a relationship between two ideas which are being compared.

When in order to judge of a given thing we compare it with another, the latter is taken as the exemplar of the former, and the sole aim of the comparison is to discover whether the thing to be judged of corresponds with that exemplar or not. Such, indeed, is the nature of all judgments. Now, Condillac tells us that, while the exemplar is the idea which we have in our memory, the thing to be judged of is that which actually falls under our senses.

96. But if this is the case, the idea must be universal in the very sense which Condillac attributes to this word; for he has already said that the universality of an idea consists in its being the exemplar of a great many individuals.

I would therefore ask how it is that he treats of judgments long before introducing us to the subject of universal ideas? for he speaks of universal ideas in the fourth part of the “Treatise on Sensations,” while he treats of judgments in the second. If, as his theory would clearly imply, no judgment can be formed without our possessing universal ideas, it is impossible to explain the nature of judgments before having explained that of universal ideas.

Why, then, did he treat of universal ideas after speaking of judgments, except because he saw that, in his system, universal ideas could only be formed through judgments? Here again are his words:

The particular idea of a horse and of a bird will likewise take on a general character when occasion requires comparison between a number of horses and birds. The same hold true of all sensible objects.

Now, let it be remembered that in the system of Condillac there is no comparison without a judgment. If, then, to transform a particular into a universal idea a comparison is necessary, evidently a judgment is necessary.

But, on the other hand, all judgments require some antecedent idea for their formation,

Thus, according to our author, judgments presuppose universal ideas (or simply ideas, because all ideas have a universal element in them); and, contrawise, universal ideas presuppose judgments. His theory, therefore, does not solve the difficulty; indeed, it ignores it altogether. He speaks of ideas, of judgments, and of universal ideas in three separate places, as if they were subjects independent of one another and had not the intimate connection which renders it impossible to speak of one without being well acquainted with the others. And then, after having explained universal ideas at his leisure, he ends by congratulating himself on the ease with which he has succeeded in accomplishing his task: “It can be seen from this how easy it is to form general ideas.”