100 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



would say) is true, because living being is a name of everything 

 of which man is a name. All men are six feet high, is not 

 true, because six feet high is not a name of everything (though 

 it is of some things) of which man is a name. 



What is stated in this theory as the definition of a true 

 proposition, must be allowed to be a property which all true 

 propositions possess. The subject and predicate being both 

 of them names of things, if they were names of quite different 

 things the one name could not, consistently with its significa- 

 tion, be predicated of the other. If it be true that some men 

 are copper-coloured, it must be true and the proposition does 

 really assert that among the individuals denoted by the name 

 man, there are some who are also among those denoted by the 

 name copper-coloured. If it be true that all oxen ruminate, it 

 must be true that all the individuals denoted by the name ox 

 are also among those denoted by the name ruminating; and 

 whoever asserts that all oxen ruminate, undoubtedly does assert 

 that this relation subsists between the two names. 



The assertion, therefore, which, according to Hobbes, is the 

 only one made in any proposition, really is made in every pro- 

 position : and his analysis has consequently one of the requi- 

 sites for being the true one. We may go a step farther; it is 

 the only analysis that is rigorously true of all propositions 

 without exception. What he gives as the meaning of propo- 

 sitions, is part of the meaning of all propositions, and the whole 

 meaning of some. This, however, only shows what an ex- 

 tremely minute fragment of meaning it is quite possible to 

 include within the logical formula of a proposition. It does 

 not show that no proposition means more. To warrant us in 

 putting together two words with a copula between them, it is 

 really enough that the thing or things denoted by one of the 

 names should be capable, without violation of usage, of being 

 called by the other name also. If, then, this be all the mean- 

 ing necessarily implied in the form of discourse called a Pro- 

 position, why do I object to it as the scientific definition of 

 what a proposition means ? Because, though the mere collo- 

 cation which makes the proposition a proposition, conveys no 

 more than this scanty amount of meaning, that same collo- 



