I will try to express this fundamental assumption, which seems to me
so very certain, by saying it is the assumption that, in all cases in
which I make a judgment of this sort, I have no difficulty whatever
in picking out a thing, which is, quite plainly, in a sense in which
nothing else is, _the_ thing about which I am making my judgment; and
that yet, though this thing is _the_ thing about which I am judging, I
am, quite certainly, _not_, in general, judging with regard to it, that
_it_ is a thing of that kind for which the term, which seems to express
the predicate of my judgment, is a name. Thus, when I judge, as now,
that That is an inkstand, I have no difficulty whatever in picking out,
from what, if you like, you can call my total field of presentation
at the moment, an object, which is undoubtedly, in a sense in which
nothing else is, _the_ object about which I am making this judgment;
and yet it seems to me quite certain that of _this_ object I am not
judging that it is a whole inkstand. And similarly when I judge, with
regard to something which I am feeling in my pocket, "This is a coin,"
I have no difficulty in picking out, from my field of presentation,
an object, which is undoubtedly _the_ object with which my judgment
is concerned; and yet I am certainly not judging with regard to this
object that it is a whole coin. I say that _always__t_ when I make
such a judgment, I can pick out _the_ one, among the objects presented
to me at the time, about which I am making it; but I have only said
that _in general_ I am not judging with regard to this object that
it is a thing of the kind, for which the term, which seems to express
the predicate of my judgment, is a name. And I have limited my second
proposition in this way, because there are cases, in which it does
not, at first sight, seem quite so certain that I am not doing this,
as in the two instances I have just given. When, for instance, I judge
with regard to something, which I am seeing, "This is a soap-bubble,"
or "This is a drop of water," or even when I judge "This is a spot
of ink," it may not seem quite so plain, that I may not be judging,
with regard to the very object presented to me, that it is, itself, a
whole soap-bubble, a whole drop of water, or a whole spot of ink, as
it always is, in the case of an inkstand, or a coin, that I never take
the presented object, about which I am judging, to be a whole inkstand,
or a whole coin. The sort of reason why I say this will, of course,
be obvious to any one, and it is obviously of a childish order. But I
cannot say that it seems to me quite obvious that in such a case I am
not judging of the presented object that it is a whole drop of water,
in the way in which it does seem to be obvious that I am not judging
of _this_ presented object that it is an inkstand. That is why I limit
myself to saying that, _in general_, when I judge "That is a so-and-so"
I am not judging with regard to the presented object, about which my
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