IMPORT OF PROPOSITIOI 73 . 



CHAPTER V. 



OP THE IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 



§ 1. An inquh'y into the nature of propositions must have one of two 

 objects : to analyze the state of mind called Belief, or to analyze what is 

 believed. All language recognizes a difference between a doctrine or opin- 

 ion, and the fact of entertaining the opinion ; between assent, and what is 

 assented to. 



Logic, according to the conception here formed of it, has no concern 

 with the nature of the act of judging or believing; the consideration of 

 that act, as a phenomenon of the mind, belongs to another science. Phi- 

 losophers, however, from Descartes downward, and especially from the era 

 of Leibnitz and Locke, have by no means observed this distinction ; and 

 would have treated with great disrespect any attempt to analyze the im- 

 port of Propositions, unless founded on an analysis of the act of Judgment. 

 A proposition, they would have said, is but the expression in words of a 

 Judgment, The thing expressed, not the mere verbal expression, is the 

 important matter. When the mind assents to a proposition, it judges. 

 Let us find out what the mind does when it judges, and we shall know 

 what propositions mean, and not otherwise. 



Conformably to these views, almost all the writers on Logic in the last 

 two centuries, whether English, German, or French, have made their the- 

 oiy of Propositions, from one end to the other, a theory of Judgments. 

 They considered a Proposition, or a Judgment, for they used the two 

 words indiscriminately, to consist in affirming or denying one idea of an- 

 other. To judge, was to put two ideas together, or to bring one idea un- 

 der another, or to compare two ideas, or to perceive the agreement or disa- 

 greement between two ideas : and the whole doctrine of Propositions, to- 

 gether Avith the theory of Reasoning (always necessarily founded on the 

 theory of Propositions), was stated as if Ideas, or Conceptions, or whatever 

 other term the writer preferred as a name for mental representations gen- 

 erally, constituted essentially the subject-matter and substance of those op- 

 erations. 



It is, of course, true, that in any case of judgment, as for instance when 

 we judge that gold is yellow, a process takes place in our minds, of which 

 some one or other of these theories is a partially correct account. We 

 must have the idea of gold and the idea of yellow, and these two ideas 

 must be brought together in our mind. But in the first place, it is evident 

 that this is only a part of what takes place ; for we may put two ideas to- 

 gether without any act of belief; as when we merely imagine something, 

 such as a golden mountain ; or when we actually disbelieve : for in order 

 even to disbelieve that Mohammed was an apostle of God, we must put the 

 idea of Mohammed and that of an apostle of God together. To determine 

 what it is that happens in the case of assent or dissent besides putting two 

 ideas together, is one of the most intricate of metaphysical problems. But 

 whatever the solution may be, we may venture to assert that it can have 

 nothing whatever to do with the import of propositions; for this reason, 



