Community and Points of Contact of Human Yucg ments.—Common Sense.—Once, now, the process of the judgment has been externally manifested, and by this has become capable of implanting itself in the brain of another and determining in him similar reactions,— once, I say, this operation has been accomplished, how is it possible to appreciate exactly the value of the physiological act that has been effected ? How can we discern the justice of the opinions arrived at, and know whether the judgment formulated be true or false, and, as we say, reasonable or unreasonable ? When dealing with the discernment of things which fall immediately within the domain of intellectual activity, it is comparatively easy for each of us to know that a judgment pronounced is conformable with truth and reason.
Every one knows that in the domain of science, all the fundamental truths which are the common patrimony of the human mind, in evolution from century to century, be they mathematical, chemical, physical or biological, are universally accepted ; that what is true in Paris in astronomy is similarly true in Pekin or New York ; and that in all places in the world, wherever they meet with a sensible and well-informed man, they are well-received and comprehended.
Now this universal concord, this acquiescence of all in their acceptance as legitimate and truthful judgments, exists because they only express evident and precise ideas, verifiable by experience ; because every one can directly or indirectly put them to the test ; and because the human personality that observed and expressed them for the first time had nothing to do with their genesis, except the expressing of them in correct and appropriate terms, the emotional regions of the sensibility not having been laid under contribution in the smallest degree.
The real only, and nothing but the real, is revealed in the exposition of each of them ; and the indict vidual who has expressed them, having perceived the external world in an incident form, has but reflected them externally without adding anything of his own.
Thus, when Copernicus or Kepler formulated his laws of the system of the world and the move ments of the planets ; when Newton made evident the decomposition of light into its elementary rays ; when Lavoisier demonstrated the part played by oxygen in the phenomena of combustion and respira tion ; when Laennec furnished his contemporaries with a new means of penetrating with the ear the ma chinery of the living human frame, and following step by step the respiratory movements and those of the heart,—these were new truths, unexpected judgments that were thrown into the intellectual domain, and which, as a correct expression of reality, and certified as conformable to this every one interested, were addressed to but one region of the living organism, the intellectual, without being addressed to the emotional regions, and without exciting the slightest passion.
These are palpable, tangible, verifiable judgments, which, being addressed to all, true for the future as for the present, present those general characters proper to grand truths, permanence and universality.
If it be generally possible to appreciate the regularity of a of the judgment in the sphere of purely intellectual phenomena, by mediate or immediate veri fication, it, on the contrary, becomes very difficult when we have to judge of a question which belongs to the class of moral phenomena.
Here all becomes complicated and obscure ; for the criterion of verification, experience, which we had before, is here wanting. There is no standard by which to measure the things of the moral order ; this incident, fact, or particular document which has to be judged of, from the mere fact of being a direct emanation from some one else's personality, his private opinion which is externally revealed, borrows from the emotional regions whence it proceeds a specific colouring ; his private personality is more or less at work, with its emotions and passions.
On the other hand, we ourselves, who have to judge of this incident, this document, these words, are similarly unconsciously affected by latent sympathies or anti pathies, which make us see and judge of the thing under colours which are riot always those of reality.
We see, then, of what multiple elements the action of judging of a phenomenon of the moral class is com posed, and how many unforeseen factors, variable at every instant according to the state of our natural sensibility, come in at cross purposes to drive us away from the desired goal.
Thus, in the special domain in which moral sensibility reigns alone, we may say that the experimental methods of valuation are entirely at fault. We must, therefore, have recourse to entirely new methods, considerations of a moral kind which shall serve as a common measure, and which, when applied to the valuation of phenomena of the same nature, may be capable of leading us to a solution of the problem, and the formation of a judgment respecting its nature.