120 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



phizing by the old logicians, because their modern inter- 

 preters have written to so little purpose respecting it. 

 We have to inquire, then,, on the present occasion, 

 not into Judgment, but judgments ; not into the act 

 of believing, but into the thing believed. What is 

 the immediate object of belief in a Proposition ? What 

 is the matter of fact signified by it ? What is it to 

 which, when I assert the proposition, I give my assent, 

 and call upon others to give theirs? What is that 

 which is expressed by the form of discourse called a 

 Proposition, and the conformity of which to fact con- 

 stitutes the truth of the proposition ? 



$ 2. One of the clearest and most consecutive 

 thinkers whom this country or the world has pro- 

 duced, I mean Hobbes, has given the following answer 

 to this question. In every proposition (says he), what 

 is signified is, the belief of the speaker that the predi- 

 cate is a name of the same thing of which the subject 

 is a name ; and if it really is so, the proposition is 

 true. Thus the proposition, All men are living 

 beings (he would say) , is true, because living being 

 is a name of everything of which man is a name. All 

 men are six feet high is not true, because six feet high 

 is not a name of everything (though it is of some 

 things) of which man is a name. 



What is stated by Hobbes as the definition of a 

 true proposition, must be allowed to be a property 

 which all true propositions possess. The subject and 

 predicate being both of them names of things, if they 

 were names of quite different things the one name could 

 not, consistently with its signification, be predicated 

 of the other. If it be true that some men are copper- 

 coloured, it must be true and the proposition does 

 really assert that among the individuals denoted by 



