PROPOSITIONS. 107 



writers was, that they could get rid of the distinction 

 between affirming and denying, by treating every case 

 of denying as the affirming of a negative name. But 

 what is meant by a negative name ? A name expres- 

 sive of the absence of an attribute. So that when we 

 affirm a negative name, what we are really predicating 

 is absence and not presence ; we are asserting not that 

 anything is, but that something is not; to express 

 which operation no word seems so proper as the word 

 denying. The fundamental distinction is between a 

 fact and the non-existence of that fact ; between 

 seeing something and not seeing it, between Caesar's 

 being dead and his not being dead ; and if this were a 

 merely verbal distinction, the generalization which 

 brings both within the same form of assertion would 

 be a real simplification : the distinction, however, 

 being real, and in the facts, it is the generalization 

 confounding the distinction that is merely verbal ; arid 

 tends to obscure the subject, by treating the difference 

 between two kinds of truths as if it were only a dif- 

 ference between two kinds of words. To put things 

 together, and to put them or keep them asunder, will 

 remain different operations, whatever tricks we may 

 play with language. 



A remark of a similar nature may be applied to 

 most of those distinctions among propositions which 

 are said to have reference to their modality : as, differ- 

 ence of tense or time ; the sun did rise, the sun is 

 rising, the sun will rise. All these differences, like 

 that between affirmation and negation, might be 

 glossed over by considering the incident of time as a 

 mere modification of the predicate : thus, The sun is 

 an object having risen. The sun is an object now rising, 

 The sun is an object to rise hereafter. But the simpli- 

 fication would be merely verbal. Past, present, or 



