IMPORT OP PROPOSITIONS. 99 



and handling our ideas, or conceptions of things, instead of 

 the things themselves : a doctrine tantamount to the assertion, 

 that the only mode of acquiring knowledge of nature is to 

 study it at second hand, as represented in our own minds. 

 Meanwhile, inquiries into every kind of natural phenomena 

 were incessantly establishing great and fruitful truths on most 

 important subjects, by processes upon which these views of the 

 nature of Judgment and Seasoning threw no light, and in 

 which they afforded no assistance whatever. No wonder that 

 those who knew by practical experience how truths are 

 arrived at, should deem a science futile, which consisted chiefly 

 of such speculations. What has been done for the advance- 

 ment of Logic since these doctrines came into vogue, has 

 been done not by professed logicians, but by discoverers in 

 the other sciences; in whose methods of investigation many 

 principles of logic, not previously thought of, have suc- 

 cessively come forth into light, but who have generally com- 

 mitted the error of supposing that nothing whatever was known 

 of the art of philosophizing by the old logicians, because 

 their modern interpreters have written to so little purpose 

 respecting it. 



We have to inquire, then, on the present occasion, not into 

 Judgment, but judgments; not into the act of believing, but 

 into the thing believed. What is the immediate object of 

 belief in a Proposition ? What is the matter of fact signified 

 by it ? What is it to which, when I assert the proposition, I 

 give my assent, and call upon others to give theirs ? What is 

 that which is expressed by the form of discourse called a Pro- 

 position, and the conformity of which to fact constitutes the 

 truth of the proposition ? 



2. One of the clearest and most consecutive thinkers 

 whom this country or the world has produced, I mean Hobbes, 

 has given the following answer to this question. In every 

 proposition (says he) what is signified is, the belief of the 

 speaker that the predicate is a name of the same thing of which 

 the subject is a name ; and if it really is so, the proposition is 

 true. Thus the proposition, All men are living beings (he 



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