VERBAL AND REAL PROPOSITIONS. 123 



includes all this : and that every man has the attributes con- 

 noted by all these predicates, is already asserted when he is 

 called a man. Now, of this nature are all the propositions 

 which have been called essential. They are, in fact, identical 

 propositions. 



It is true that a proposition which predicates any attribute, 

 even though it be one implied in the name, is in most cases 

 understood to involve a tacit assertion that there exists a thing 

 corresponding to the name, and possessing the attributes con- 

 noted by it ; and this implied assertion may convey informa- 

 tion, even to those who understood the meaning of the name. 

 But all information of this sort, conveyed by all the essential 

 propositions of which man can be made the subject, is included 

 in the assertion, Men exist. And this assumption of real ex- 

 istence is, after all, the result of an imperfection of language. 

 It arises from the ambiguity of the copula, which, in addition 

 to its proper office of a mark to show that an assertion is made, 

 is also, as formerly remarked, a concrete word connoting 

 existence. The actual existence of the subject of the proposi- 

 tion is therefore only apparently, not really, implied in the 

 predication, if an essential one : we may say, A ghost is a dis- 

 embodied spirit, without believing in ghosts. But an accidental, 

 or non-essential, affirmation, does imply the real existence of 

 the subject, because in the case of a non-existent subject 

 there is nothing for the proposition to assert. Such a propo- 

 sition as, The ghost of a murdered person haunts the couch of 

 the murderer, can only have a meaning if understood as im- 

 plying a belief in ghosts; for since the signification of the 

 word ghost implies nothing of the kind, the speaker either 

 means nothing, or means to assert a thing which he wishes to 

 be believed to have really taken place. 



It will be hereafter seen that when any important conse- 

 quences seem to follow, as in mathematics, from an essential 

 proposition, or, in other words, from a proposition involved in 

 the meaning of a name, what they really flow from is the tacit 

 assumption of the real existence of the objects so named. 

 Apart from this assumption of real existence, the class of pro- 

 positions in which the predicate is of the essence of the subject 



