3. Finally, we have still to show the genesis of the error in which this able logician has involved himself in a relatively simple question after having once mistaken the nature of the judgment. The _proton pseudos_ is to be sought in a delusion which has come down to us from the older logic that to the essence of the judgment there belongs the relation of two ideas with one another. Aristotle has described this relation as combination and separation (σύνθεσις καἰ διαίρεσις) although he was well aware of the imperfect propriety of the expressions, adding at the same time that in a certain sense both relations might be described as a combination (σύνθεσις, cf. _de Anima_, iii. 6). Scholastic and modern logic held fast to the expressions “combination” and “separation”; in grammar, however, both these relations were termed “combination,” and the symbol for this combination the “copula.” Sigwart now takes seriously the expressions “combination” and “separation,” and so a negative copula seems to him a contradiction (cf. p. 153), the positive judgment, on the other hand, appears to be a presupposition of the negative judgment, since, before a combination has been set up, it cannot be separated. And so it appears to him that a negative judgment without a preceding positive judgment is quite meaningless (cf. p. 150 and above). Consequently we find this celebrated inquirer in a position which compels him to put forth the most strenuous efforts all to no purpose--the negative judgment remains inexplicable. In a note (p. 159) he gives us, as a result of such attempts, a remarkable description of the process by which we arrive at the negative judgment--a result in which he believes himself finally able to rest satisfied. In this account the false steps which he successively makes become, each in turn, evident to the attentive observer. Long before the point is reached where he believes himself to have come upon the negative judgment, he has as a matter of fact already anticipated it.