We have already upon general considerations criticised the point of view which holds that ideality consists in reference to another content. In arguing that this reference cannot be primarily to reality itself, but rather to an intermediate world of meanings, Bosanquet cites the question and the negative judgment. In the question ideas are not affirmed of reality, and in negation they are definitely denied of reality, hence their reference cannot be to reality. It must therefore be to an objective world of meanings. It may be worth while to point out in passing that, from the functional point of view, the part played by ideas in the question and in negative judgment is the same that it is in affirmation.
We have brought out the fact that all judgment arises in a doubt. The earliest stage of judgment is accordingly a question. Whether the process stops at that point, or is carried on to an affirmation or negation, depends upon the particular conditions. The ideas which appear in questions present no other problem than those of affirmation. They are ideas, not by virtue of their reference to another content in the world of meanings, but by virtue of their function, _i. e._, that of constituting that part of the total experience which is taken as doubtful, and hence as in process.
In order to make this point clear with reference to negative judgments, it will be necessary to consider the relation of negative and positive judgments somewhat more in detail. All judgment is in its earliest stages a question, but a question is never _mere_ question. There are always present some suggestions of an answer, which make the process really a disjunctive judgment. A question might be defined as a disjunctive judgment in which one member of the disjunction is expressed and the others implied. If the process goes on to take the form of affirmation or negation, one of the suggested answers is selected. To follow out the illustration of the bread used above, the judgment arises in a doubt as to the nature of the white object perceived, but the doubt never takes the form of a blank question. It at once suggests certain possible solutions drawn from the mass of organized experience at the command of the person judging. At this stage the judgment is disjunctive. In the illustration it would probably take the form: "This is either bread or cake." The further course of the judgment rejects the cake alternative, and selects the bread, and the final outcome of the judgment is formulated in the proposition: "This is bread." But how did it happen that it did not take the form: "This is not cake"? That proposition is also involved in the outcome, and implied in the judgment made. The answer is that the form taken by the final outcome depends entirely on the direction of interest of the person making the judgment. If his interest happened to lie in obtaining bread, then the outcome would naturally take the form: "This is bread," and his act would consist in eating it. If he happened to want cake, the natural form would be, "This is not cake," and his act would consist in refraining from eating. In other words, the question as to whether a judgment turns out to be negative or positive is a question of whether the stress of interest happens to fall on the selected or on the rejected portions of the original disjunction. Every determination of a subject through a predicate includes both. The selection of one or the other according to interest affects the final formulation of the process, but does not change the relations of its various phases. An idea in a negative judgment is just what it is in a positive judgment. In neither case is it constituted an idea by reference to some other content.