68 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



States of internal coixsciousness, accompanied or followed by physical 

 facts. When we say, A generous person is worthy of honor, we affinn 

 coexistence between the two complicated phenomena 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, honor, 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 obscurity or difficulty, it does not lie in the mean- 

 ing of the proposition, but in the meaning of the names which compose 

 it ; in the complicated nature of the connotation 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 asser- 

 tion conveyed by the proposition is, the coexistence of one such 

 phenomenon with another ; or the succession of one such phenomenon 

 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 coexistences are not only asserted respecting Phe- 

 nomena ; we make propositions also respecting those hidden causes of 

 phenomena which ai"e 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 ti-ue, mutatis 

 mutandis, of attributes ; no assertion can be made, at least with a 

 meaning, concerning these unknown and unknowable entities, (beyond 

 their mere existence), except in virtue of the Phenomena by which 

 alone they manifest themselves to our faculties. When we say, Socrates 

 was contemporary with the Peloponnesian war, the foundation of this 

 assertion, as of all assertions concerning substances, is an assertion 

 concerning the phenomena which they exhibit, — namely, that the series 

 of facts by which Socrates manifested himself to mankind, and the 

 series of mental states which constituted his earthly existence, went 

 on simultaneously with the series of facts known by the name of the 

 Peloponnesian war. Still, the proposition does not assert that alone ; 

 it asserts that the Thing in itself, the noumcnon Socrates, was existing, 

 and doing or experiencing those various facts, during the same time. 

 Coexistence and sequence, therefore, may be affimied or denied not 

 only between phenomena, but between noumena, or between a noume- 

 non and phenomena. And there is one kind of assertion which may 

 be made respecting noumena, independently of the phenomena which 

 are their sensible m8.nifestation ; the assertion of their simple exist- 

 ence. But what is a uoumenon 1 an unknown cause. In affirming, 

 therefore, the existence of a noumenon, we affirm causation. Here, 

 therefore, are two additional kinds of fact, capable of being asserted 

 in a proposition. Besides t\ie propositions which assert Sequence or 

 Coexistence, there are some which assert simple Existence ; and 

 others assert Causation, which, subject to the explanations which will 

 follow in the Third Book, must be considered provisionally as a distinct 

 and peculiar kind of assertion. 



