The form or mode of thought which marks the continued transformation of the data and the idea in reference to each other is judgment. Judgment makes explicit the assumption of a principle which determines connection within an individualized whole. It definitely states red as _this_ case or instance of the law or process of color, and thus overcomes further the defect in _subject-matter_ or data still left by conception.[26] Now judgment logically terminates in disjunction. It gives a universal which may determine any one of a number of alternative defined particulars, but which is arbitrary as to _what_ one is selected. Systematic _inference_ brings to light the material conditions under which the law, or dominating universal, applies to this, rather than that alternative particular, and so completes the ideal organization of the subject-matter. If this act were complete, we should finally have present to us a whole on which we should know the determining and effective or authorizing elements, and the order of development or hierarchy of dependence, in which others follow from them.[27]
In this account by Lotze of the operations of the forms of thought, there is clearly put before us the picture of a continuous correlative determination of datum on one side and of idea or meaning on the other, till experience is again integral, data thoroughly defined and corrected, and ideas completely incarnate as the relevant meaning of subject-matter. That we have here in outline a description of what actually occurs there can be no doubt. But there is as little doubt that it is thoroughly inconsistent with Lotze's supposition that the material or data of thought is precisely the same as the antecedents of thought; or that ideas, conceptions, are purely mental somewhats brought to bear, as the sole essential characteristics of thought, extraneously upon a material provided ready-made. It means but one thing: The maintenance of unity and wholeness in experience through conflicting contents occurs by means of a strictly correspondent setting apart of fact to be accurately described and properly related, and meaning to be adequately construed and properly referred. The datum is given _in_ the thought-situation, and _to_ further qualification of ideas or meanings. But even in this aspect it presents a problem. To find out _what is_ given is an inquiry which taxes reflection to the uttermost. Every important advance in scientific method means better agencies, more skilled technique for simply detaching and describing what is barely there, or given. To be able to find out what can safely be taken as _there_, as given in any particular inquiry, and hence be taken as material for orderly and verifiable thinking, for fruitful hypothesis-making, for entertaining of explanatory and interpretative ideas, is one phase of the effort of systematic scientific inquiry. It marks its inductive phase. To take what is given _in_ the thought-situation, for the sake of accomplishing the aim of thought (along with a correlative discrimination of ideas or meanings), as if it were given absolutely, or apart from a particular historic situs and context, is the fallacy of empiricism as a logical theory. To regard the thought-forms of conception, judgment, and inference as qualifications of "pure thought, apart from any difference in objects," instead of as successive dispositions in the progressive organization of the material (or objects) is the fallacy of rationalism. Lotze attempts to combine the two, thinking thereby to correct each by the other.