T HE JUDGMENT.
is the principal operation of cerebral activity, by means of which the human personality, in presence of an excitation from the external world, either physical or moral, expresses its condition.
Among the diverse operations of the brain in action, that of judging is a regular physiological process, which is developed according to fixed laws and inevitable organic conditions, and which, like the different phe nomena of muscular activity (the progression of the human body in space, for instance), expresses life in exercise and the nervous power in a dynamic state.
The action of judging, so far as it is a physiological process accomplished by means of the cerebral activities in movement, is decomposable into three phases, which are as follows : I. A phase of incidence, during which the external excitation impresses the sensor/um and rouses the con scious personality to action.
2. An intermediate phase during which the person ality, seized upon and impressed, develops its latent capacities, and reacts in a specific manner.
3. A final phase of reflexion, during which the pro cess, continuing its progress through the cerebral tissue, is projected outwards in phonetic or written co-ordinated manifestations. The impressed human personality, in fact, expresses itself, exhales itself in its entirety, in either articulate or written language.
1. It is‘ always a recent or former sensorial impression that naturally excites an operation of the judgment and determines its action. The sensorizim is impressed, the human personality takes part in the phenomenon ; it is strongly affected, and reacts immediately. This work of absorption of the sensorial excitation and of conscious reaction, on the part of the personality, implies then a series of connected operations which follow and com plete one another, like the different phases of a simple somatic process. It even requires a certain appreciable time, to be effected in the cerebral tissue, and, according to the nature of the individual, will act with greater or less facility, and perfect itself with exercise, as Donders has demonstrated.* It is in this first phase of the operation that the whole secret of its final rectitude resides ; for well and to judge well are synonymous, and to acquire the power of pronouncing with certainty, respecting such or such a circumstance, we cannot surround ourselves with too many precautions.
Nothing, in fact, is more difficult than to have a clear and precise appreciation of real things. The minute care taken by physicists and chemists, and the infinite precautions with which they surround themselves, in order to appreciate simple physical phenomena, show us how frequent are the causes of error, and how liable to deception is all observation ; since we so often find two observers, in the presence of the same physical and palpable phenomenon, each describing it in his own fashion, and each giving a very different report respect ing it.
A fortiori we can understand that when we have to do with the interpretation of complex things, to form judgments respecting history, contemporaneous or past ; respecting the facts of our current life, in which all human passions are openly or secretly at work ; respect ing political mafters; the ascertainment of the real facts may become very difficult, the very notion of truth obscure. We see how those judgments, which we succeed in formulating, always fail at some point or another, from the intervention, more or less eager, of ur own personality.
2. The second phase of the process is no less delicate than the first ; for here the human personality, on the advent of more or less clearly distinguishable stimuli from the external world, comes into play with all its sensibilities awake, reacting, like a trustworthy reagent, when the excitable regions of its inmost core have been more or less affected.
It is the human personality that feels, that is moved, that speaks in our judgments, and that reacts in an appropriate manner, according as it is restless, impres sionable, indifferent, or atonic ; reflecting externally in words or deeds, the infinite varieties of feeling that lie maturing in its recesses. Like a true leading-note, it vibrates every instant in every act of our Lives, and gives our judgments an original character accord ing to the key in which it is pitched, a something racy of the soil, which (when once our amour propre comes into play, and our own personality is concerned) always expresses the different phases through which our sense rium passes when in a state of agitation.