But here a third factor enters which completes the confusion. If we examine Sigwart’s view as to the nature of judgment in general, it may be shown in the clearest manner possible that the simple positive judgment itself involves in turn, a negative judgment. That is to say, following Sigwart, every judgment involves besides a certain combination of ideas, a consciousness of the necessity of our “identification” (unseres Einssetzens) and the impossibility of its contradictory (cf. espec. p. 102), the consciousness, moreover, of such a necessity and impossibility valid for all thinking beings (cf. pp. 102 and 107), which, by the way, is of course quite as false as Sigwart’s whole view of the nature of judgment in general. All judgments without exception are, on account of this peculiarity, called by Sigwart apodictic: nor will he admit the validity of any distinction between the assertorical and apodictic forms of judgment (cf. p. 229 seq.). I now ask: Have we not here a negative judgment distinctly involved? Otherwise what meaning can be given to the statement when we hear Sigwart speak of a “consciousness of the impossibility of the contradictory.” Further I have already shown in my _Psychology_ how all universal judgments are negative, since to be conscious of universality means nothing else than to be convinced that there exists no exception; if this negative be not added, the most extensive list of positive assertions will never constitute a belief in universality. When therefore, a consciousness that every one must so think is here spoken of, there is in this fact a further proof of what I have asserted, namely that according to Sigwart’s doctrine of judgment the simplest positive acts of judgment must involve a negative act of judgment. And yet we are called upon at the same time to believe that the negative judgment, as set forth (p. 159 seq.), arose relatively late, and that therefore on this, as well as on other grounds, it is unworthy of being placed side by side, with the positive judgment as a species equally primordial! Sigwart would surely not have expected this of us had he been conscious of all that I have here set forth in detail, and which is the more clearly seen to be involved in his exposition, often so difficult to comprehend the more carefully it is submitted to reflection. Of course expressions may be found where Sigwart, respecting this or that point of detail, asserts the contrary of what is here deduced; for what else can be expected where everything is left in such ambiguity, and where the attempt to make things clear exhibits the most manifold contradictions?