126 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



demonstrated from the definition of the triangle. I shall have 

 occasion to revert to this theory in treating of Demonstration, 

 and of the conditions under which one property of a thing 

 admits of heing demonstrated from another property. It is 

 enough here to remark that, according to this definition, the 

 real essence of an object has, in the progress of physics, come 

 to he conceived as nearly equivalent, in the case of bodies, to 

 their corpuscular structure : what it is now supposed to mean 

 in the case of any other entities, I would not take upon myself 

 to define. 



4. An essential proposition, then, is one which is purely 

 verbal ; which asserts of a thing under a particular name, only 

 what is asserted of it in the fact of calling it by that name ; 

 and which therefore either gives no information, or gives it 

 respecting the name, not the thing. Non-essential, or acci- 

 dental propositions, on the contrary, may be called Real Pro- 

 positions, in opposition to Verbal. They predicate of a thing 

 some fact not involved in the signification of the name by 

 which the proposition speaks of it; some attribute not con- 

 noted by that name. Such are all propositions concerning 

 things individually designated, and all general or particular 

 propositions in which the predicate connotes any attribute not 

 connoted by the subject. All these, if true, add to our know- 

 ledge : they convey information, not already involved in the 

 names employed. When I am told that all, or even that some 

 objects, which have certain qualities, or which stand in 

 certain relations, have also certain other qualities, or stand 

 in certain other relations, I learn from this proposition 

 a new fact; a fact not included in my knowledge of the 

 meaning of the words, nor even of the existence of Things 

 answering to the signification of those words. It is this 

 class of propositions only which are in themselves instructive, 

 or from which any instructive propositions can be inferred.* 



* This distinction corresponds to that which is drawn by Kant and other 

 metaphysicians between what they term analytic, and synthetic, judgments ; the 

 former being those which can be evolved from the meaning of the terms used. 



