60 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



things tliemselves. In order to believe that gold is yellow, I must, 

 indeed, have the idea of 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 

 impression 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 gi'ound to say that it is 

 putting one idea into another. Digging is an operation which is per- 

 formed 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 pheno- 

 menon, fire, causes the natural phenomenon, heat. When I mean to 

 assert anything respecting 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 the two ideas corresponding to 

 the subject and predicate (instead of the relation between the two 

 plienomena which they respectively express), seems to me one of the 

 most fatal errors ever introduced into the philosophy of L ogic ; and 

 the principal cause why the theory of the science has made such incon- 

 siderable progress during the last two centuries. The treatises on 

 Logic, and on the branches of Mental Philosophy coimected with 

 Logic, which have been produced since the intrusion of this cardinal 

 error, though sometimes written by men of extraordinary abilities and 

 attainments, almost always tacitly imply a theory that the investigation 

 of truth consists in contemplating and handling our ideas, or concep- 

 tions of things, instead of the things themselves : a process by which, 

 I will venture to affirm, not a single truth ever was amved at, except 

 truths of psychology, a science of which Ideas or Conceptions are 

 avowedly (along with other mental phenomena) the subject-matter. 

 Meanwhile, inquiries into every kind of natural phenomena were 

 incessantly establishing gi-eat and fruitful truths on the most important 

 subjects, by processes upon which these views of the nature of Judg- 

 ment and Reasoning threw no light, and in which they afforded no 

 assistance whatever. No wonder that those who knew by practical 

 experience how truths are come at, should deem a science futile, which 

 consisted chiefly of such speculations. Wliat has been done for the 

 advancement of Logic since these doctrines came into vogue, has been 

 done not by professed logicians, but by discoverers in the other sci- 

 ences ; in whose methods of investigation many gi-eat principles of 

 logic, not previously thought of, have successively come forth into light, 



