(b) Judgment is universal. There are different senses of “universal” as of “necessary.” We are now speaking only in the widest sense, in which universality is a property of all judgment whatever. If we assume that all our intellectual natures are the same, then to be universal is a mere consequence of being necessary. I not only feel that my judgment is inevitable for me, but I never think of doubting that, given the same materials, it is obligatory for every other intelligent being. If some one disagrees with a judgment of mine, I try to put the case before him as it is in my mind. And I am absolutely sure that if I could do so, he { 27} would be obliged to judge as I do. If it were not so, we should never think of arguing. We should simply say, “Perhaps his mind is differently constituted from mine,” as, in fact, with reference to special sets of dominant ideas, and to special provinces of experience, we often do say. But these we regard as hindrances, imperfections, accidents. We do not doubt that the system of reason is active in him as in us.
And thus, as reason is essentially a system, the universality of judgment involves something more. We not only think that our judgment is obligatory upon every one else, in as far as they have the same materials, but we think that it must be _consistent with_ the judgments of all other persons, just as much as with our own. If it is inconsistent with any other judgment, we think that one of the two must be wrong; that is, we will not admit the possibility that the real world, as others construct it, is out of harmony with the real world as we construct it.
Thus knowledge, being judgment, is necessary and universal, and in the widest sense this is true of all judgments.
(c) These are two properties of the Judgment, but they do not tell us what it is. We shall of course examine its nature more fully in the later lectures. At present we need only think of it as affirmation. This may be simply described as “pronouncing the interpretation of our perceptions to form one system with the data of our perceptions.” We may at once admit the distinction between _data_ and interpretation to be only relative. Its relativity is the consequence of the constructed or so to speak artificial { 28} character of our real world. We can get at no data unqualified by judgment.
