No hard and fast rules for this operation of selecting and rejecting, or
fixing upon the facts, can be given. It all comes back, as we say, to
the good judgment, the good sense, of the one judging. To be a good
judge is to have a sense of the relative indicative or signifying values
of the various features of the perplexing situation; to know what to let
go as of no account; what to eliminate as irrelevant; what to retain as
conducive to outcome; what to emphasize as a clue to the difficulty.[18]
This power in ordinary matters we call _knack_, _tact_, _cleverness_; in
more important affairs, _insight_, _discernment_. In part it is
instinctive or inborn; but it also represents the funded outcome of long
familiarity with like operations in the past. Possession of this ability
to seize what is evidential or significant and to let the rest go is the
mark of the expert, the connoisseur, the _judge_, in any matter.
[18] Compare what was said about _analysis_.
[Sidenote: Intuitive judgments]
Mill cites the following case, which is worth noting as an instance of
the extreme delicacy and accuracy to which may be developed this power
of sizing up the significant factors of a situation. "A Scotch
manufacturer procured from England, at a high rate of wages, a working
dyer, famous for producing very fine colors, with the view of teaching
to his other workmen the same skill. The workman came; but his method
of proportioning the ingredients, in which lay the secret of the effects
he produced, was by taking them up in handfuls, while the common method
was to weigh them. The manufacturer sought to make him turn his handling
system into an equivalent weighing system, that the general principles
of his peculiar mode of proceeding might be ascertained. This, however,
the man found himself quite unable to do, and could therefore impart his
own skill to nobody. He had, from individual cases of his own
experience, established a connection in his mind between fine effects of
color and tactual perceptions in handling his dyeing materials; and from
these perceptions he could, in any particular case, _infer the means to
be employed_ and the effects which would be produced." Long brooding
over conditions, intimate contact associated with keen interest,
thorough absorption in a multiplicity of allied experiences, tend to
bring about those judgments which we then call intuitive; but they are
true judgments because they are based on intelligent selection and
estimation, with the solution of a problem as the controlling standard.
Possession of this capacity makes the difference between the artist and
the intellectual bungler.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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