Hence, the difficulty of forming impartial judgments in questions of the moral kind, the judges being biassed; hence, that series of minute precautions taken by legislators at every step, to eliminate interested persons from juries, and to form these of independent indi viduals free from all prejudices. Hence, that practical observation, verified by every day's experience, that young and ardent natures in whom the effervescence of the sensorium is still unabated, are apt to judge of men and things with all the rapidity and prejudice of their characters and that the judgment is exercised in a more enlightened manner when maturity has arrived, and the wear and tear of life have exhausted the first ardours of the natural sensibility. Cold contemplation of the real facts is more easily attained, and permits the human personality to expand in a calmer and more reflecting manner.
It is therefore in this intermediate phase of its evolu tion, when it enters into contact with the human persond -a'ity, that the process which is destined to be converted into judgment comes to its crisis, according to the variable emotivity of the substratum that receives it.
When the phenomenon is produced, two circumstances may occur : either the process may achieve its evolution, and appear externally in a verbal or manuscript formula which epitomizes it ; or it may die out on the spot, re main silent, and, like a living force which undergoes transformation, may proceed to excite secondary impres sions throughout the cerebral regions it traverses. New territories of affected cells will then come into play, and according to their automatic activity will associate themselves with the excitations and ideas in question. Thus it is that a process of judgment, suspended in its course, becomes the local origin of a vibratory move ment which radiates to a distance and produces secon dary impressions. It is because of this physiological radiation that related ideas are automatically excited ; that new views arise, manners of looking at the matter not at first dreamed of; and that, from this work of internal digestion of the process in evolution, a whole series of new considerations springs up and gives to the first judgment a weight it had not before, .,and the natural complements of its real value.
The process of julgment has then for its special characteristic, according as it advances, the privilege of extending itself ; of determining the reaction of the sur rounding cerebral elements ; of searching, to some ex tent, into the archives of the past; of associating former notions with those of the present ; of creating partial local judgments, established d priori as results of the inner experience of the individual ; and of permitting us, at a given moment, to juxtapose and agglomerate partial judgments—to agglutinate them, in the form of arguments, into a complete judgment, which resumes them all in a true synthesis.
Thus, for instance, when I auscultate the chest of a patient, and perceiving the existence of tubular respira tion, declare that the patient is in the second stage of pneumonia, I give utterance to a judgment that has many ramifications in my mind, and is made up of a great number of different materials. Starting from this blowing noise that has struck my ear, I represent to myself what, under similar circumstances, I have per ceived on previous occasions. I have observed, for instance, that this blowing noise corresponds to a hyperemia of the pulmonary tissue, with concomitant induration, that it depends upon an induration of tissue, not upon the presence of effused fluid. At the same time I perceive with my eyes the general condition of the patient, I note his countenance, his external habit, the state of his tongue, etc., and a new series of notions acquired by the exercise of optic impressions is awakened in my mind and becomes associated with the process already begun by the auditory impressions. I percuss, moreover; I feel the pulse; I palpate; and once wore, starting from a new series of sensorial impres sions that come into play, new regions of the scusorium are associated, set in vibration, and take their part in the complex operation that is taking place. The dif frent regions of my brain are successively affected. Notions formerly acquired are laid under contribution ; they come forward of their own accord on the occur rence of the excitation with which they are methodi cally connected as contemporary memories; and thus the personality, reminded of the primordial impression, and enlightened by the total product of the related notions that spring up automatically, pronounces its judgment with a sufficient number of materials, and expresses the manner in which it is effected in a verbal form which is the index of its present condition. Thus it is that in pronouncing the words "pneumonia—second stage," I epitomize a whole series of former notions, methodically grouped, which have made their appear ance in my mind motu propric.