e predicate, or notion with which
the subject is compared; and the copula, or nexus, which expresses the
connection or relation between them.[542] Every act of affirmative
judgment asserts the agreement of the predicate and subject; every act
of negative judgment asserts the predicate and subject do not agree. All
judgment is thus an attempt to reduce to unity two cognitions, and
reasoning (logizesthai) is simply the extension of this process. When we
look at two straight lines of equal length, we do not merely think of
them separately as _this_ straight line, and _that_ straight line, but
they are immediately connected together by a comparison which takes
place in the mind. We perceive that these two lines are alike; they are
of equal length, and they are both straight; and the connection which is
perceived as existing between them is a _relation of sameness or
identity._[543] When we observe any change occurring in nature, as, for
example, the melting of wax in the presence of heat, the mind recognizes
a causal efficiency in the fire to produce that change, and the relation
now apprehended is a _relation of cause and effect_[544] But the
fundamental principles, the necessary ideas which lie at the basis of
all the judgments (as the ideas of space and time, of unity and
identity, of substance and cause, of the infinite and perfect) are not
given by the judgment, but by the "highest faculty"--"the _Intuitive
Reason_,[545] which is, for us, the source of all unhypothetical and
absolute knowledge.

[Footnote 542: Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 134.]

[Footnote 543: "Phaedo," Secs. 50-57, 62.]

[Footnote 544: "Timaeus," ch. ix.; "Sophocles," Sec. 109.]

[Footnote 545: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xxi.]

The knowledge, therefore, which is furnished by the Discursive Reason,
Plato does not regard as "real Science." "It is something between
Opinion on the one hand, and Intuition on the other."[546]

[Footnote 546: Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xxi.]

4th. REASON (nous)--_Intuitive Reason_, is the organ of self-evident,
necessary, and universal Truth. In an immediate, direct, and intuitive
manner, it takes hold on truth with absolute certainty. The reason,
through the medium of _ideas_, holds communion with the world of real
Being. These ideas are the _light_ which reveals the world of unseen
realities, as the sun reveals the world of sensible forms. "_The idea of
the good_ is the _sun_ of the Intelligible World; it sheds on objects