IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. Ill 



of propositions. When there is any obscurity, or difficulty, 

 it does not lie in the meaning of the proposition, hut in the 

 meaning of the names which compose it ; in the extremely com- 

 plicated connotation of many words ; the immense multitude 

 and prolonged series of facts which often constitute the 

 phenomenon connoted by a name. But where it is seen 

 what the phenomenon is, there is seldom any difficulty in 

 seeing that the assertion conveyed by the proposition is, the 

 co-existence of one such phenomenon with another ; or the 

 succession of one such phenomenon to another: their con- 

 junction, in short, so that where the one is found, we may 

 calculate on finding both. 



This, however, though the most common, is not the only 

 meaning which propositions are ever intended to convey. In 

 the first place, sequences and co-existences are not only 

 asserted respecting Phenomena; we make propositions also 

 respecting those hidden causes of phenomena, which are 

 named substances and attributes. A substance, however, 

 being to us nothing but either that which causes, or that 

 which is conscious of, phenomena ; and the same being true, 

 mutatis mutandis, of attributes; no assertion can be made, at 

 least with a meaning, concerning these unknown and un- 

 knowable entities, except in virtue of the Phenomena by 

 which alone they manifest themselves to our faculties. When 

 we say, Socrates was cotemporary with the Peloponnesian war, 

 the foundation of this assertion, as of all assertions concern- 

 ing substances, is an assertion concerning the phenomena 

 which they exhibit, namely, that the series of facts by which 

 Socrates manifested himself to mankind, and the series of 

 mental states which constituted his sentient existence, went 

 on simultaneously with the series of facts known by the name 

 of the Peloponnesian war. Still, the proposition does not 

 assert that alone; it asserts that the Thing in itself, the 

 noumenon Socrates, was existing, and doing or experiencing 

 those various facts during the same time. Co-existence and 

 sequence, therefore, may be affirmed or denied not only be- 

 tween phenomena, but between noumena, or between a noume- 

 non and phenomena. And both of noumena and of phenomena 



