208 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



asserted to belong to, or to be found in, or to be possessed by, 

 subjects of a certain class, namely &quot;men&quot;. This is called the 

 predicative or attributive mode of interpreting the meaning of the 

 categorical proposition. It gives us, as the meaning of the judg 

 ment, what is usually most prominent in the mind. Its correct 

 ness is borne out by the fact that the subjects of our judgments 

 are usually substantives names of objects and classes of objects, 

 while their predicates are usually adjectives names of attri 

 butes. Hence, too, we regard the quantity of our judgments as 

 determined by the quantity of the term whose denotation is most 

 prominent, the subject. And, finally, the traditional fourfold 

 scheme of propositions (91) is based upon this mode of interpre 

 tation. 



101. REVERSE OF PREDICATIVE INTERPRETATION. Subject 

 read in Connotation, Predicate in Denotation. It is rarely that in 

 forming a judgment we think of the connotation of the subject in 

 connexion with the class denotedby the predicate. Yet examples 

 will occasionally be met with. 



The familiar proverb, &quot;All is not gold that glitters,&quot; is instanced by Dr. 

 Keynes : * &quot; Taking the subject in connotation, and the predicate in denotation, 

 we have, he says, The attribute of glitter does not always indicate the pres 

 ence of a gold object ; and it will be found that this reading of the proverb 

 serves to bring out its meaning really better than any of the . . . other read 

 ings. ...&quot; Another example, from the same source, and typical of a fairly 

 common class of judgments, is this : No plants with opposite leaves are 

 orchids. 



102. CONNOTATIVE INTERPRETATION. Subject and Predi 

 cate read in Connotation. Although, however, the subject is most 

 usually thought of as a class name, although it brings before the 

 mind a class of objects, yet we know that it does so only in virtue 

 of certain attributes possessed in common by those objects, i.e. only 

 in virtue of something more fundamental than denotation, viz. 

 connotation (32, 33). And we know, furthermore, that the reason 

 or ground for affirming or denying the predicate of the class- 

 subject is often because the connotation of the latter has been 

 found to involve, or admit, or exclude the former, as the case 

 may be (97, 98). We do not say that this is always the case. 

 It raises the question about the grounds of predication, and hence 

 about the distinction between necessary and contingent judgments, 

 and modality (85-90). In necessary judgments, at all events, the 



1 Formal Logic, p. 186. 



