[1] The example in the text, chosen for its simplicity, may be objected to as involving perceptive concreteness by the pronoun “this.” You can have a disjunction, it may be said, dealing with “the triangle” as such; and why should this be more “Categorical” than the assertion that the triangle has its angles = three right angles? Still, it might be replied, the development of a single nature into a number of precise and necessary alternatives, always gives it an implication of self-completeness.
Does this state a fact? I think it implies a fact much more distinctly than the hypothetical does, but of course it is a question whether an alternative can be called a fact. It seems a precise expression of some kinds of reality, but it is not a solid single momentary fact. It is very appropriate to the objects of philosophy as the higher concrete science, which are conceived as systems of facts bearing definite relations to each other; _e.g._ “Society is a structure of individual characters, having positions which are not interchangeable.” Taken all as a mass, they are conjunctively connected, but taken in distinguishable relations they are disjunctively related. A human being as such has some position and no other, and this is ultimately determined by { 125} the nature of the social whole to which he belongs. He is if this, nothing else, and if nothing else, then this. A more artificial example, which illustrates the degree in which actual abstract knowledge and purpose can be embodied by man in machinery, is the interlocking system of points and signals at a great railway station. I suppose that the essence of such a system lies in arrangements for necessarily closing every track to all but one at a time of any tracks which cross it or converge into it. The track X receives trains from A, B, C, D; if the entrance for those from A is open, B, C, and D are _ipso facto_ closed; if A, B, and C are closed, D is open, and so on. This is a disjunction consciously and purposely incorporated in material fact, and differs from a Disjunctive Judgment only in so far as existence necessarily differs from discursive thought.
The disjunction seems to complete the system of judgments, including all the others in itself, and it is wrong in principle to distinguish, _e.g._ between a hypothetical and categorical disjunction, or to consider how a disjunction can be denied. For disjunction in itself implies a kind of individuality which is beyond mere fact and mere abstract truth, though allied to both; and all intelligible negation is under, not of, a disjunction. Negation of a disjunction would mean throwing aside the whole of some definite group of thoughts as fallacious, and going back to begin again with a judgment of the simplest kind. It amounts to saying, “None of your distinctions touch the point; you must begin afresh.”