172 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



named : the power to " think is " is the power concerned in 

 the formation of a concept^ not in the apposing of concepts 

 when formed. All that is done in an act of such apposition is 

 to bring together two ideas of two things already conceived as 

 existing: were it not so there could be no-things to compare.* 

 And now, as regards the second point, so far is it from 

 being true that the predication of existence is the essential or 

 most important feature even of a full or formal proposition, 

 that it is really the least essential or least important. For 

 existence is the category to which everything must belong if 

 it is to be judged about at all, and therefore merely to judge 

 that A is and B is, is to form the most barren (or least signifi- 

 cant) judgment that can be formed with regard to A or B ; and 

 when we bring these two judgments (concepts) together in the 

 proposition A is B, the new judgment which we make has 

 nothing to do with the existence either of A or of B, nor has 

 it really anything to do with existence as such. The existence 

 both of A and of B has been already pre-supposed in the two 

 corfcepts, and when these two existing things are brought into 

 apposition, no third existence is thereby supposed to have 

 been created. The copula therefore really stands, not as a 

 symbol of existence, but as the symbol of relation, and might 

 just as well be replaced by any other sign (such as = ), or, 

 indeed, be dispensed with altogether. " As we use the verb 

 is, so the Latins use their verb est and the Greeks their 

 tort through all its declensions. Whether all other nations 

 of the world have in their several languages a word that 

 answereth to it, or not, I cannot tell ; but I am sure they 

 have no need of it. For the placing of two names in order 

 \i,e. in appositio7t\ may serve to signify their consequence, if it 



* This view of a concept as already embodying the idea of existence is not 

 really opposed to that of Mill, where he points out that if we pronounce the word 

 **Sun" alone we are not necessarily affirming so much as existence of the sun 

 {Logic, i., p. 20) ; for, although we are not affirming existence of that particular 

 body, we must at least have the idea of its existence as a possibility : the use of the 

 term carries with it the implied idea of such a possibility, and therefore the idea 

 of existence — whether actual or potential— as already present to the mind of the 

 speaker. 



