Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

REASON. 379
hensive, profound: to judgment, those of correct, cool, unprejudiced, impartial, solid. It was in this sense, that the word
seems to have been understood by Pope, in the following
couplet:"'Tis with our judgments as our watches; none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own."
For this meaning of the word, its primitive and literal application to the judicial decision of a tribunal accounts sufficiently.
Agreeably to the same fundamental idea, the name of judgment is given with peculiar propriety to those acquired powers
of discernment, which characterize a skilful critic in the fine
arts; powers which depend, in a very great degree, on a temper
of' mind free from the undue influence of authority and of
casual associations. The power of taste itself is frequently
denote.d by the appellation of judlgment; and a person who
possesses a more than ordinary share of it, is said to be a
judge in those matters which fall under its cognizance.
In treatises of logic, judyment is commonly defined to be an
act of the mind, by which onze thing is carined or denied of
another; a definition which, though not unexceptionable, is,
perhaps, less so than most that have been given on similar
occasions. Its defect, as Dr. Reid has remarked, consists in
this, — that although it be by affirmation or denial that we
express our judgments to others, yet judgment is a solitary act
of the mind, to which this affirmation or denial is not essential;
and, therefore, if the definition be admitted, it must be understood of mental affirmation or denial only; in which case, we do
no more than substitute, instead of the thing defined, another
mode of speaking, perfectly synonymous. The definition has,
however, notwithstanding this imperfection, the merit of a conciseness and perspicuity, not often to be found in the attempts
of logicians to explain our intellectual operations..Obscurity in metaphysics is always the fault of the writer. -
To the following observations of D'Alembert, (with some trifling verbal exceptions,) I give my most cordial assent; and,