At the present time many approach very near to Descartes’ error in respect of the marks of self-evidence (if we are not rather to say that the error is really implicitly contained in their statements) when they regard the matter as though in the case of every self-evident judgment a criterion were referred to. In this case it must have been previously given somewhere, either as recognized--and this would lead to infinity--or (and this is the only alternative), it is given in the idea. It may be said that here also the temptation to such a misconception lies ready to hand and this may well have exercised a misleading influence upon Descartes. Aristotle’s error is less general, though only because the phenomenon of the emotion qualified as right has, generally speaking, come less frequently under consideration than that of the similarly qualified judgment.
If the nature of the former has been misunderstood, the latter has often been so overlooked as not even to admit of its essential nature being misinterpreted.
[29] (_p. 19_). When I affirmed that the language of common life offers no suitable terms for activities of feeling qualified as right, I did not mean thereby to deny that certain expressions are, in themselves, well suited, indeed they would seem to have been created for this purpose, particularly, for example, the expressions “_to be well pleasing_,” and “_to be ill pleasing_” (gut gefallen and schlecht gefallen), as distinct from the simple “to be pleasing” and “to be mis-pleasing.” Though, however, it might seem advisable to limit these terms in this way and so to make them serve as scientific terms, scarcely any trace of such a limitation is to be found in ordinary language. One does not, of course, care to say: “the good pleases him ill,” “the bad pleases him well,” though one still says that to one this tastes good, to another that, and so on, i.e. the expression “_to be well pleasing_” is applied unhesitatingly even in the case where pleasure is given in the lowest instinctive form. Indeed the term-“impression” (Wahrnehmung) has degenerated in an almost similar way. Only really appropriate in respect of knowledge, it came to be applied in the case of the so-called external impression (äussere Wahrnehmung), i.e. in cases of a belief, blind, and in its essential relations, erroneous, and consequently would require, in order, as a terminus technicus to have scientific application, an important reform of the usual terminology and one which would essentially narrow the range of the term.