103 



CHARTER IV. 

 OF PROPOSITIONS. 



1. IN treating of Propositions, as already in 

 treating of Names, some considerations of a compara- 

 tively elemenfary' Wtvcre respecting their form and 

 varieties must be premised,, before entering upon that 

 analysis of^the*'iiapoft 1 c6iiVe5) r ed'''t)y 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 cannot conclude from merely seeing two names put 

 together, that they are a predicate 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 distinguish a predication from any other 

 kind of discourse. This is sometimes done by a 

 slight alteration of one of the words, called an in- 

 flexion; as when we say, Fire burns ; the change of 

 the second word from burn to burns 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 of the utmost importance that there 

 should be no indistinctness in our conception of the 

 nature and office of the copula ; for confused notions 



