106 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



has had to answer for. It has indeed misled the 

 moderns scarcely less than the ancients, though their 

 mistakes, because our understandings are not yet so 

 completely emancipated from their influence, do not 

 appear equally ridiculous. 



We shall now briefly review the principal distinc- 

 tions which exist among propositions, and the technical 

 terms most commonly in use to express those dis- 

 tinctions. 



$ 2. A proposition being a portion of discourse 

 in which something is affirmed or denied of something, 

 the first division of propositions is into affirmative 

 and negative. An affirmative proposition is that in 

 which the predicate is affirmed of the subject ; as, 

 Caesar is dead. A negative proposition is that in 

 which the predicate is denied of the subject ; as, 

 Caesar is not dead. The copula, in this last species 

 of proposition, consists of the words is not) which are 

 the sign of negation ; is being the sign of affirmation. 



Some logicians, among whom may be mentioned 

 Hobbes, state this distinction differently ; they recog- 

 nize only one form of copula, is, and attach the nega- 

 tive sign to the predicate. "Caesar is dead," and 

 " Caesar is not dead/' according to these writers, are 

 propositions agreeing not in the subject and predicate, 

 but in the subject only. They do not consider 

 " dead," but "not dead," to be the predicate of the 

 second proposition, and they accordingly define a 

 negative proposition to be one in which the predicate 

 is a negative name. The point, though not of much 

 practical moment, deserves notice as an example (not 

 unfrequent in logic) where by means of an apparent 

 simplification, but which is merely verbal, matters are 

 made more complex than before. The idea of these 



