128 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



the attributes, or at least never by all the attributes, signified 

 by the word god. But when the proposition is considered as a 

 memorandum for practical use, we shall find a different 

 mode of expressing the same meaning better adapted to in- 

 dicate the office which the proposition performs. The prac- 

 tical use of a proposition is, to apprise or remind us what 

 we have to expect, in any individual case which comes within 

 the assertion contained in the proposition. In reference to 

 this purpose, the proposition, All men are mortal, means 

 that the attributes of man are evidence of, are a mark of, 

 mortality ; an indication by which the presence of that attri- 

 bute is made manifest. No men are gods, means that the 

 attributes of man are a mark or evidence that some or all 

 of the attributes understood to belong to a god are not there ; 

 that where the former are, we need not expect to find the 

 latter. 



These two forms of expression are at bottom equivalent ; 

 but the one points the attention more directly to what a pro- 

 position means, the latter to the manner in which it is to be 

 used. 



Now it is to be observed that Keasoning (the subject to 

 which we are next to proceed) is a process into which propo- 

 sitions enter not as ultimate results, but as means to the 

 establishment of other propositions. We may expect, there- 

 fore, that the mode of exhibiting the import of a general pro- 

 position which shows it in its application to practical use, will 

 best express the function which propositions perform in Kea- 

 soning. And accordingly, in the theory of Reasoning, the 

 mode of viewing the subject which considers a Proposition 

 as asserting that one fact or phenomenon is a mark or 

 evidence of another fact or phenomenon, will be found almost 

 indispensable. For the purposes of that Theory, the best 

 mode of defining the import of a proposition is not the mode 

 which shows most clearly what it is in itself, but that 

 which most distinctly suggests the manner in which it may 

 be made available for advancing from it to other pro- 

 positions. 



