CHAPTER V. 



OF THE IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 



1. AN inquiry into the nature of propositions must 

 have one of two objects: to analyse the state of mind called 

 Belief, or to analyse what is believed. All language recog- 

 nises a difference between a doctrine or opinion, and the fact 

 of entertaining the opinion; between assent, and what is 

 assented to. 



Logic, according to the conception here formed of it, has 

 no concern with the nature of the act of judging or believing ; 

 the consideration of that act, as a phenomenon of the mind, 

 belongs to another science. Philosophers, however, from 

 Descartes downwards, and especially from the era of Leibnitz 

 and Locke, have by no means observed this distinction ; and 

 would have treated with great disrespect any attempt to analyse 

 the import of Propositions, unless founded on an analysis 

 of the act of Judgment. A proposition, they would have 

 said, is but the expression in words of a Judgment. The 

 thing expressed, not the mere verbal expression, is the im- 

 portant matter. When the mind assents to a proposition, 

 it judges. Let us find out what the mind does when it 

 judges, and we shall know what propositions mean, and not 

 otherwise. 



Conformably to these views, almost all the writers on 

 Logic in the last two centuries, whether English, German, or 

 French, have made their theory of Propositions, from one end 

 to the other, a theory of Judgments. They considered a 

 Proposition, or a Judgment, for they used the two words indis- 

 criminately, to consist in affirming or denying one idea of 

 another. To judge, was to put two ideas together, or to bring 

 one idea under another, or to compare two ideas, or to 

 perceive the agreement or disagreement between two ideas : 



