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CHAPTER V. 

 OF THE IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 







1. AN inquiry into the nature of Propositions 

 must have one of two objects : to analyze the state 

 of mind called Belief, or to analyze what is believed. 

 All language recognizes a difference between a doctrine 

 or opinion, and the act of entertaining the opinion ; 

 between assent, and what is assented to. 



Logic, according to the conception here formed 

 of it, has no concern with the nature of the act of 

 judging or believing; the consideration of that act, 

 as a phenomenon of the mind, belongs to another 

 science. Philosophers, however, from Descartes 

 downwards, and especially from the era of Leibnitz 

 and Locke, have by no means observed this dis- 

 tinction ; and would have treated with great disre- 

 spect any attempt to analyze the import of Pro- 

 positions, unless founded upon an analysis of the 

 act of Judgment. A Proposition, they would have 

 said, is but the expression in words of a Judgment. 

 The thing expressed, not the mere verbal expression, 

 is the important matter. When the mind assents to 

 a proposition, it judges. Let us find out what the 

 mind does when it judges, and we shall know what 

 propositions mean, and not otherwise. 



Conformably to these views, almost all the writers 

 on Logic in the last two centuries, whether English, 

 German, or French, have made their theory of Pro- 

 positions, from one end to the other, a theory of 

 Judgments. They considered a Proposition, or a 

 Judgment, for they used the two words indiscrimi- 

 nately, to consist in affirming or denying one idea of 



