1. _Judgment and Conception._--The emphasis now laid on judgment, the recovery from Hume's confusion of beliefs with ideas and the association of ideas, and the distinction of the mental act of judging from its verbal expression in a proposition, are all healthy signs in recent logic. The most fundamental question, before proceeding to the investigation of inference, is not what we say but what we think in making the judgments which, whether we express them in propositions or not, are both the premises and the conclusion of inference; and, as this question has been diligently studied of late, but has been variously answered, it will be well to give a list of the more important theories of judgment as follows:-- a. It expresses a relation between the content of two ideas, not a relation of these ideas (Lotze). b. It is consciousness concerning the objective validity of a subjective combination of ideas, i.e. whether between the corresponding objective elements an analogous combination exists (Ueberweg). c. It is the synthesis of ideas into unity and consciousness of their objective validity, not in the sense of agreement with external reality but in the sense of the logical necessity of their synthesis (Sigwart). d. It is the analysis of an aggregate idea (_Gesammtvorstellung_) into subject and predicate; based on a previous association of ideas, on relating and comparing, and on the apperceptive synthesis of an aggregate idea in consequence; but itself consisting in an apperceptive analysis of that aggregate idea; and requiring will in the form of apperception or attention (Wundt). e. It requires an idea, because every object is conceived as well as recognized or denied; but it is itself an assertion of actual fact, every perception counts for a judgment, and every categorical is changeable into an existential judgment without change of sense (Brentano, who derives his theory from Mill except that he denies the necessity of a combination of ideas, and reduces a categorical to an existential judgment). f. It is a decision of the validity of an idea requiring will (Bergmann, following Brentano). g. Judgment (_Urtheil_) expresses that two ideas belong together: "by-judgment" (_Beurtheilung_) is the reaction of will expressing the validity or invalidity of the combination of ideas (Windelband, following Bergmann, but distinguishing the decision of validity from the judgment). h. Judgment is consciousness of the identity or difference and of the causal relations of the given; naming the actual combinations of the data, but also requiring a priori categories of the understanding, the notions of identity, difference and causality, as principles of thought or laws, to combine the plurality of the given into a unity (Schuppe).