Brentano that _descriptive_[A] psychology, or Psychognosy, as of most importance in the examination and presentation of psychological problems, must be separated from _genetic psychology_,[B] a study necessarily half physiological in character; and that the former problem as the naturally earlier and least difficult study should first be as far as possible completed. [A] i.e. the closest possible description and analysis of psychical _events_ and their contents, on the basis of inner observation. [B] i.e. the more difficult inquiry into the laws underlying the origin of phenomena. Such _psychognostical inquiries_, although not yet in principle separated from genetic inquiry, occupy by far the greater part of the first volume of the _Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint_. Among the subjects there treated are: 1, the fundamental revision of the classification of psychical phenomena, and their division into the three main classes: ideas, judgments, and phenomena of love and hate; 2, and in particular, a new and more appropriate characterization of the judgment. The insufficiency of the old doctrine according to which judgment consists essentially in a connexion of ideas, had already been shown by Hume, and more recently was strongly emphasized by Mill, though neither was able to arrive at perfect clearness respecting its real nature. Notwithstanding this, the affinity of Brentano’s doctrine of the judgment with that of Mill, led to a scientific correspondence, and later to arrangements for a personal interview, when, at the last moment, the plan was frustrated by the death of the great English investigator. The new description of the judgment and its essential qualities form the basis for a reform of logic even in its most elementary stages, a reform which, in its essential features, is suggested in the above-mentioned work, and also touched upon in the Essay here translated; but this truer description of the phenomenon of judgment also throws light upon the description and classification of the _modes of speech from the point of view of their function or meaning_,--a classification based upon true and most essential distinctions. In comparison with phonetics this branch is still little developed. What is here said, was seen by eminent philologists like Fr. von Miklosich, the pioneer in the sphere of Slav comparative philology. In the appendix will be found an article bearing upon this view.