It would be easy to add quotations from other writers to the same effect as the above;[98] but these may be held sufficient to give material for the first stage of my criticism, which is of a purely technical character. I affirm that all writers who thus take their stand upon the distinctively human faculty of predication are taking their stand at the wrong place. In other words, without at present disputing whether we have to do with a distinction of kind or of degree, I say, and say confidently, that the distinction in question—_i.e._ between animal and human intelligence—may be easily proved to occur further back than at the faculty of predication, or the forming of a proposition. The distinction occurs at the faculty of denomination, or the bestowing of a name, known as such. “The simplest element of thought” is _not_ a “_judgment_:” the simplest element of thought is a _concept_. That this is the case admits of being easily demonstrated in several different ways.
In the first place, it is evident that there could be no judgments without concepts, just as there could be no propositions without terms. A judgment is the result of a comparison of concepts, and this is the reason why it can only find expression in a proposition, which sets forth the relation between the concepts by bringing into apposition their corresponding terms. Judgments, therefore, are _compounds_ of thought: the _elements_ are concepts.