66 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



This, until a better can be suggested, may serve as a substitute for the 

 Categories of Aristotle considered as a classification of Existences. The 

 practical application of it will appear when we commence the inquiry into 

 the Import of Propositions ; in other words, when we inquire what it is 

 which the mind actually believes, when it gives what is called its assent to 

 a proposition. 



These four classes comprising, if the classification be correct, all Namable 

 Things, these or some of them must of course compose the signification of 

 all names : and of these, or some of them, is made up whatever we call a 

 fact. 



For distinction's sake, every fact which is solely composed of feelings or 

 states of consciousness considered as such, is often called a Psychological 

 or Subjective fact; while every fact which is composed, either wholly or in 

 part, of something different from these, that is, of substances and attri- 

 butes, is called an Objective fact. We may say, then, that every objective 

 fact is grounded on a corresponding subjective one ; and has no meaning 

 to us (apart from the subjective fact which corresponds to it), except as a 

 name for the unknown and inscrutable process by which that subjective or 

 psychological fact is brought to pass. » 



CHAPTER IV. 



OF PROPOSITIONS. 



§ 1. In treating of Propositions, as already in treating of Names, some 

 considerations of a comparatively elementai'y nature respecting their form 

 and varieties must be premised, before entering upon that analysis of the 

 import conveyed by them, which is the real subject and purpose of this 

 preliminary book. 



A proposition, we have before said, is a portion of discourse in which a 

 predicate is affirmed or denied of a subject. A predicate and a subject are 

 all that is necessarily required to make up a proposition : but as we can not 

 conclude from mei'ely seeing two names put together, that they are a predi- 

 cate and a subject, that is, that one of them is intended to be affirmed or 

 denied of the other, it is necessary that there should be some mode or form 

 of indicating that such is the intention ; some sign to distinguisli a predi- 

 cation from any other kind of discourse. This is sometimes done by a 

 slight alteration of one of the words, called an inflection; as when we say. 

 Fire burns ; the change of the second word from h%irn to bicrns showing 

 that we mean to affirm the predicate burn of the subject fire. But this 

 function is more commonly fulfilled by the word is, when an affirmation is 

 intended, is not, when a negation ; or by some other part of the verb to be. 

 The word which thus serves the purpose of a sign of predication is called, 

 as we formerly observed, the copula. It is important that there should be 

 no indistinctness in our conception of the nature and office of the copula; 

 for confused notions respecting it are among the causes which have spread 

 mysticism over the field of logic, and perverted its speculations into logoma- 

 chies. 



It is apt to be supposed that the copula is something more than a mere 

 sign of predication; that it also signifies existence. In the proposition,' 

 Socrates is just, it may seem to be im{)lied not only that the quaVity Just 

 can be affirmed of Socrates, but moreover that Socrates is, that is to say, 



