118 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



gold, and the idea of yellow, and something having 

 reference to those ideas must take place in my mind ; 

 but my belief has not reference to the ideas, it has 

 reference to the things. What I believe is a fact 

 relating to the outward thing, gold, and to the impres- 

 sion made by that outward thing upon the human 

 organs ; not a fact relating to my conception of gold, 

 which would be a fact in my mental history, not a 

 fact of external nature. It is true, that in order to 

 believe this fact in external nature, another fact must 

 take place in my mind, a process must be performed 

 upon my ideas ; but so it must in everything else that 

 I do. I cannot dig the ground unless I have the idea 

 of the ground, and of a spade, and of all the other 

 things I am operating upon, and unless I put those 

 ideas together. But it would be a very ridiculous 

 description of digging the ground to say that it is 

 putting one idea into another. Digging is an opera- 

 tion which is performed upon the things themselves, 

 although it cannot be performed unless I have in my 

 mind the ideas of them. And so, in like manner, 

 believing is an act which has for its subject the facts 

 themselves, although a previous mental conception of 

 the facts is an indispensable condition. When I say 

 that fire causes heat, do I mean that my idea of fire 

 causes my idea of heat ? No : I mean that the 

 natural phenomenon, fire, causes the natural pheno- 

 menon, heat. When I mean to assert anything re- 

 specting the ideas, I give them their proper name, I 

 call them ideas : as when I say, that a child's idea 

 of a battle is unlike the reality, or that the ideas 

 entertained of the Deity have a great effect on the 

 characters of mankind. 



The notion that what is of primary importance to 

 the logician in a proposition, is the relation between 



