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inconceivable, and therefore not true, is to make that a ground of inference for their non-existence, which is in fact the result of their peculiar and permanent character. The blind might as well say, colors have no existence, because they are neither tastes, odors nor sounds, nor are they conceivable as such.

Lesson 37 - 9. The judgment Importance of - p.152

9. The third power of the understanding is judgment. This is, in some sense, the most fruitful and important of all our faculties. To it, the others seem especially to minister, and, in connection with it, to fulfil their purpose. By the judgment we rationally combine and use the material furnished in perception and intuition. It is that action of the mind, by which the phenomena of sense are taken up into the light of reason, there interpreted in their necessary relations, and presented as a system of things. The judgment is the power by which we unite subject and predicate under some appropriate regulative idea. The exact meaning and force of this language may not at once be obvious, but will be unfolded by farther discussion.

Abstraction, generalization, conception, classification, analysis, synthesis, are all processes of thought, requiring no peculiar powers beyond those now mentioned. They are the results and the attendant methods of judgment, judiciously employed. The faculties of perception are not left to perceive all things promiscuously and indiscriminately. The judgment does not judge blindly, satisfied with the link of each copulation, no matter whether it lies apart, or is united into a chain with others. This power is set at work in the service of certain intellectual impulses, and works therefore consecutively with selection and rejection, with directed and conjoined effort towards the desired results. Separate judgments are thus thrown into trains of reasoning, and those judgments sought which can be made the parts of such a train. Those objects are considered,