134 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



nomena connoted by the two terms respectively. We 

 affirm, that wherever and whenever the inward feelings 

 and outward facts implied in the word generosity, have 

 place, then and there the existence and manifestation 

 of an inward feeling, honour, would be followed in our 

 minds by another inward feeling, approval. 



After the analysis in a former chapter of the import 

 of names, many examples are not needed to illustrate 

 the import of propositions. When there is any obscu- 

 rity or difficulty, it does not lie in the meaning of the 

 proposition, but in the meaning of the names which 

 compose it ; in the complicated nature of the conno- 

 tation of many words ; the immense multitude and 

 prolonged series of facts which often constitute the 

 phenomenon connoted by a name. But where it is 

 seen what the phenomenon is, there is seldom any 

 difficulty in seeing that the assertion conveyed by the 

 proposition is, the coexistence of one such phenomenon 

 with another ; or the succession of one such pheno- 

 menon to another : their conjunction, in short, so that 

 where the one is found, we may calculate on finding 

 both. 



This, however, though the most common, is not 

 the only meaning which propositions are ever intended 

 to convey. In the first place, sequences and coex- 

 istences are not only asserted respecting Phenomena; 

 we make propositions also respecting those hidden 

 causes of phenomena which are named substances 

 and attributes. A substance, however, being to us 

 nothing but either that which causes, or that which 

 is conscious of, phenomena; and the same being true, 

 mutatis mutandis, of attributes ; no assertion can be 

 made, at least with a meaning, concerning these un- 

 known and unknowable entities, (beyond their mere 

 existence,) except in virtue of the Phenomena by 



