IMPORT OF PROrOSITIONS. 59 



CHAPTER V. 



OF THE LMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 



§ 1. An inquiry into tlie nature of Propositions must have one of 

 two objects : to analyze the state of mind called Belief, or to analyze 

 what is believed. AH language recognizes a difference between a doc- 

 trine or opinion, and the act of entertaining the opinion ; between as- 

 sent, and what is assented to. 



Logic, according to the conception here formed of it, has no con- 

 cern with the nature of the act of judging or bcheving; the considera- 

 tion of that act, as a phenomenon of the mind, belongs to another 

 science. Philosophers, however, from Descartes downwards, and es- 

 pecially from the era of Leibnitz and Locke, have by no means ob- 

 served this distinction ; and would have treated with gi-eat disrespect 

 any attempt to analyze the import of Propositions, 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 thingr 

 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 proposi- 

 tions mean, and not otherwise. 



Conformably to these views, almost all the writers on Logic in the 

 last two centuries, whether English, Gennan, or French, have made 

 their theory of Propositions, from one end to the other, a tlieory ot 

 Judgments. They considered a Proposition, or a Judgment, for they 

 used the two words indiscriminately, to consist in affirming or denying^ 

 one idea of another. To judge, was to put two ideas together, or to 

 bring one idea under another, or to compare tAVO ideas, or to perceive 

 the agreement or disagi-eement between two ideas : and the whole 

 doctrine of Propositions, together with the theory of Ileasoning (always 

 necessarily founded upon the theory of Propositions), was stated as if 

 Ideas, or Conceptions, or whatever other term the ^vriter preferred as 

 a name for mental representations generally, constituted essentially the 

 subject matter and substance of those operations. 



It is, of course, true, that in any case of judgment, as for instance 

 when wo judge that gold is yellow, a process takes place in our minds 

 of which some one or other of these theories is a partially coiTect ac- 

 count. We must have the idea of gold and the idea of yellow, and 

 these two ideas must be brought together in our mind. But in the 

 first place, it is evident that this is only a part of what takes place ; for 

 we may put two ideas together without any act of belief ; as when we 

 merely imagine something, such as a golden mountain ; or when we 

 actually disbelieve : for in order even to disbelieve that Mahomet was 

 an apostle of God, we must put the idea of Mahomet and that of an 

 apostle of God together. To determine what it is that happens in the 

 case of assent or dissent besides putting two ideas together, is one of 

 the most intricate of metaphysical problems. But whatever the solu- 

 tion may be, we may venture to assert that it can have nothing what 

 ever to do with the import of propositions ; for this reason, that propo- 

 sitions (except where the mind itself is the subject treated of) are not 

 assertions respecting our ideas of things, but assertions respecting the 



