288 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



§ 3. That universal conception which is nearest to sense is that of 

 the present, in general. This is a conception, because it is universal. 

 But as the act of attention has no connotation at all, but is the pure de- 

 notative power of the mind, that is to say, the power which directs the 

 mind to an object, in contradistinction to the power of thinking any 

 predicate of that object, — so the conception of what is present in gen- 

 eral, which is nothing but the general recognition of what is contained 

 in attention, has no connotation, and therefore no proper unity. This 

 conception of the present in general, or it in general, is rendered in 

 philosophical language by the word " substance " in one of its meanings. 

 Before any comparison or discrimination can be made between what is 

 present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as it, and 

 subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized by abstrac- 

 tion are attributed to this it, but the it cannot itself be made a pred- 

 icate. This it is thus neither predicated of a subject, nor in a sub- 

 ject, and accordingly is identical with the conception of substance. 



§ 4. The unity to which the understanding reduces impressions is 

 the unity of a proposition. This unity consists in the connection of 

 the predicate with the subject ; and, therefore, that which is implied in 

 the copula, or the conception of being, is that which completes the 

 work of conceptions of reducing the manifold to unity. The copula 

 (or rather the verb which is copula in one of its senses) means either 

 actually is or would be, as in the two propositions, " There is no grif- 

 fin," and " A griffin is a winged quadruped." The conception of being 

 contains only that junction of predicate to subject wherein these two 

 verbs agree. The conception of being, therefore, plainly has no con- 

 tent. 



If we say " The stove is black," the stove is the substance, from 

 which its blackness has not been differentiated, and the is, while it 

 leaves the substance just as it was seen, explains its confusedness, by 

 the application to it of blackness as a predicate. 



Though being does not affect the subject, it implies an indefinite 

 determinability of the predicate. For if one could know the copula 

 and predicate of any proposition, as " .... is a tailed-man," he 

 would know the predicate to be applicable to something supposable, 

 at least. Accordingly, we have propositions whose subjects are entirely 

 indefinite, as " There is a beautiful ellipse," where the subject is merely 

 something actual or potential ; but we have no propositions whose 

 predicate is entirely indeterminate, for it would be quite senseless to 



