CHAPTER IV. 



OF PROPOSITIONS. 



1. IN treating of Propositions, as already in treating 

 of Names, some considerations of a comparatively elementary 

 nature respecting their form and varieties must be premised, 

 before entering upon that analysis of the import conveyed by 

 them, which is the real subject and purpose of this preliminary 

 book. 



A proposition, we have before said, is a portion of discourse 

 in which a predicate is affirmed or denied of a subject. A 

 predicate and a subject are all that is necessarily required to 

 make up a proposition : but as we cannot conclude from merely 

 seeing two names put together, that they are a predicate and 

 a subject, that is, that one of them is intended to be affirmed or 

 denied of the other, it is necessary that there should be some 

 mode or form of indicating that such is the intention ; some 

 sign to distinguish a predication from any other kind of dis- 

 course. This is sometimes done by a slight alteration of one 

 of the words, called an inflection; as when we say, Fire 

 burns ; the change of the second word from burn to burns 

 showing that we mean to affirm the predicate burn of the sub- 

 ject fire. But this function is more commonly fulfilled by the 

 word is, when an affirmation is intended, is not, when a 

 negation ; or by some other part of the verb to be. The word 

 which thus serves the purpose of a sign of predication is called, 

 as we formerly observed, the copula. It is important that 

 there should be no indistinctness in our conception of the 

 nature and office of the copula ; for confused notions respect- 

 ing it are among the causes which have spread mysticism 

 over the field of logic, and perverted its speculations into 

 logomachies. 



It is apt to be supposed that the copula is something more 



