216 REASONING. 



some one or more facts or phenomena of consciousness, 

 or some one or more of the hidden causes or powers to 

 which we ascribe those facts ; and that what is pre- 

 dicated or asserted, either in the affirmative or negative, 

 of those phenomena or those powers, is always either 

 Existence, Order in Place, Order in Time, Causation, or 

 Resemblance. This, then, is the theory of the Import 

 of Propositions, reduced to its ultimate elements : but 

 there is another and a less abstruse expression for it, 

 which, though stopping short in an earlier stage of the 

 analysis, is sufficiently scientific for many of the pur- 

 poses for which such a general expression is required. 

 This expression recognises the commonly received 

 distinction between Subject and Attribute, and gives 

 the following as the analysis of the meaning of pro- 

 positions: Every Proposition asserts, that some given 

 given subject does or does not possess some attribute; 

 or that some attribute is or is not (either in all or 

 in some portion of the subjects in which it is met 

 with) conjoined with some other attribute. 



We shall now for the present take our leave of 

 this portion of our inquiry, and proceed to the peculiar 

 problem of the Science of Logic, namely, how the 

 assertions, of which we have analysed the import, are 

 proved, or disproved : such of them, at least, as, not 

 being amenable to direct consciousness or intuition, 

 are appropriate subjects of proof. 



We say of a fact or statement, that it is proved, 

 when we believe its truth by reason of some other 

 fact or statement from which it is said to follow. Most 

 of the propositions, whether affirmative or negative, 

 universal, particular, or singular, which we believe, 

 are not believed on their own evidence, but on the 

 ground of something previously assented to, and from 

 which they are said to be inferred. To infer a pro- 



