252 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



the various mythologies and folklore legends, or is on the contrary a sphere 

 of beings that are really existent quite independently of human beliefs ; and 

 although these controversies sometimes find their way into logic, as, for 

 example, when they lead authors to disagree about the real definition of 

 &quot;cause,&quot; &quot;substance,&quot; &quot;energy,&quot; &quot;freewill,&quot; &quot;spirit,&quot; &quot; True Church of 

 Christ,&quot; etc. (54) ; nevertheless these questions are in themselves meta 

 physical rather than logical. All that logic demands is the recognition of 

 the indisputable fact that in every judgment &quot; there is a reference to some 

 system of [actual] reality which is to be distinguished from the uncontrolled 

 course of our own ideas &quot;- 1 And, this being granted, logic goes on to inquire 

 whether the &quot; existence &quot; or &quot; presence &quot; or &quot; occurrence &quot; or &quot; actual hap 

 pening &quot; of the things or events denoted by the terms of the judgment, in 

 that sphere of reality, whatever it may be, referred to by the judgment, forms 

 a necessary part of the import or implications of the judgment. The ques 

 tion is not whether these things exist or occur in other spheres : they may or 

 may not. The subject and predicate, taken apart and considered by them 

 selves, may refer us to quite different spheres : our present question is whether 

 the judgment implies as part of its import or meaning that they exist in the 

 sphere to which the judgment refers. 



Again, this question whether or not a given propositiorial form 

 affirms or denies as part of its import or meaning the existence 

 of certain classes of things (S, P, S, P, SP, SP, etc.) in the universe 

 of discourse, is distinct from the question whether the existence 

 of any or all of these classes in that universe is assumed collater 

 ally with the proposition, independently of the latter, and as 

 something over and above its meaning. It was an assumption of 

 this latter kind that appears to have underlain the traditional 

 treatment of immediate inferences in Aristotelean logic. 2 



125. PLACE OF THE INQUIRY IN LOGIC. Objection is 

 sometimes taken to the modern treatment of this whole question 

 of Existential Import, on the ground that it is metaphysical 

 rather than logical, and that the only existence of objects that 

 comes within the proper purview of logic is their existence as 

 objects of thought, in the sphere of the objectively possible. 

 But even though it is with the latter kind of existence that logic 

 primarily deals, it is no less true that the possible cannot be 

 treated without reference to the actual ; that we can determine 

 what must be, or cannot be, only through concepts derived from 

 our experience of what actually is ; 3 that if logic is concerned 



1 KEYNES, op. cit., p. 76. 2 Cf. infra, 125. 



3 For example, the contrapositive of the proposition &quot;All future free acts are 

 foreseen by God&quot; is (abstracting from question of existential import) &quot;All things 

 that are not foreseen by God are things other than future free acts &quot;. But is the 

 subject of the latter proposition an impossibility ? That will depend on our concept 



