88 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



the only things which can be denied. "No horses are web-footed" denies 

 that the attributes of a horse ever co-exist with web-feet. It is scarcely- 

 necessary to apply the same analysis to Particular affirmations and nega- 

 tions. " Some birds are web-footed," affirms that, with the attributes con- 

 noted by bird^ the phenomenon web-feet is sometimes co-existent : " Some 

 birds are not web-footed," asserts that there are other instances in which 

 this co-existence does not have place. Any further explanation of a thing 

 which, if the previous exposition has been assented to, is so obvious, may 

 here be spared. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OF PROPOSITIONS MERELY VERBAL. 



§ 1. As a preparation for the inquiry which is the proper object of 

 Logic, namely, in what manner propositions are to be proved, we have 

 found it necessary to inquire what they contain which requires, or is sus- 

 ceptible of, proof ; or (which is the same thing) what they assert. In the 

 course of this preliminary investigation into the import of Propositions, 

 we examined the opinion of the Conceptualists, that a proposition is the 

 expression of a relation between two ideas; and the doctrine of the ex- 

 treme Nominalists, that it is the expression of an agreement or disagree- 

 ment betw^n the meanings of two names. We decided that, as general 

 theories, both of these are erroneous ; and that, though propositions may 

 be made both respecting names and respecting ideas, neither the one nor 

 the other are the subject-matter of Propositions considered generally. We 

 then examined the different kinds of Propositions, and found that, with the 

 exception of those which are merely verbal, they assert five diiferent kinds 

 of matters of fact, namely, Existence, Order in Place, Order in Time, Causa- 

 tion, and Resemblance ; that in every proposition one of these five is either 

 affirmed, or denied, of some fact or phenomenon, or of some object the un- 

 known source of a fact or phenomenon. 



In distinguishing, however, the different kinds of matters of fact asserted 

 in propositions, we reserved one class of propositions, which do not relate 

 to any matter of fact, in the proper sense of the term at all, but to the 

 meaning of names. Since names and their signification are entirely arbi- 

 trary, such propositions are not, strictly speaking, susceptible of truth or 

 falsity, but only of conformity or disconforraity to usage or convention ; 

 and all the proof they are capable of, is proof of usage; proof that the 

 words have been employed by others in the acceptation in which the speak- 

 er or writer desires to use them. These propositions occupy, however, a 

 conspicuous place in philosophy; and their nature and characteristics are 

 of as much importance in logic, as those of any of the other classes of prop- 

 ositions previously adverted to. 



If all propositions respecting the signification of words were as simple 

 and unimportant as those which served us for examples when examining 

 ITobbes's theory of predication, viz., those of which the subject and predi- 

 i-ate are proper names, and which assert only that those names have, or 

 that they have not, been conventionally assigned to the same individual, 

 there would be little to attract to such propositions the attention of phi- 

 losophers. But the class of merely verbal propositions embraces not only 

 mueli more than these, but much more than any propositions which at first 



