76 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



Now, as the most familiar of the general names predicable of an 

 object usually connotes not one only, but several attributes of the object, 

 each of which atti'ibutes separately forms also the bond of union of some 

 class, and the meaning of some general name ; we may predicate of a 

 name which connotes a variety of attributes, another name which con- 

 notes only one of these atti-ibutes, or some smaller number of them than 

 all. In such cases, the universal affiiTuative proposition will be true ; 

 since whatever possesses the whole of any set of attributes, must pos- 

 sess any part of that same set. A proposition of this sort, however, 

 conveys no information to any one who previously understood the whole 

 meaning of the terms. The propositions, Eveiy man is a corporeal 

 being. Every man is a li\'ing creature, Every man is rational, convey 

 no knowledge to any one who was already aware of the entire meaning 

 of- the word man, for the meaning of the word includes all this: and^ 

 that every man has the attributes connoted by all these predicates, is 

 already asserted when he is called a man. Now, of this nature are all 

 the propositions which have been called essential ; they are, in fact, 

 identical propositions. 



It is true that a proposition which predicates any attribute, even 

 though it be one implied in the name, is in most cases understood to 

 involve a tacit assertion that there exists a thing coiTesponding to the 

 name, and possessing the attributes connoted by it ; and this implied 

 assertion may convey information, even to those who understood the 

 meaning of the name. But all information of this sort, conveyed by 

 all the essential propositions of which man can be made the subject, is 

 included in the assertion, Men exist. And this assumption of real ex- 

 istence is after all only the result of an imperfection of language. It 

 arises from the ambiguity of the copula, which, in addition to its proper 

 office of a mark to shoAV that an assertion is made, is also, as we have 

 formerly remarked, a concrete word connoting existence. The actual 

 existence of the subject of the proposition is therefore only apparently, 

 not really, implied in the predication, if an essential one : we may 

 say, A ghost is a disembodied spirit, without believing in ghosts. But 

 an accidental, or non-essential, affirmation, does imply the real exist- 

 ence of the subject, because in the case of a non-existent subject there 

 is nothing for the proposition to assert. Such a proposition as. The 

 ghost of a murdered person haunts the couch of the murderer, can 

 only have a meaning if understood as implying a belief in ghosts ; for 

 since the signification of the word ghost implies nothing of the kind, 

 the speaker either means nothing, or means to assert a thing which 

 he -vrishes to be believed really to have taken place. 



It will be hereafter seen that when any important consequences 

 seem to follow, as in mathematics, from an essential proposition, or, in 

 other words, from a proposition involved in the rneaning of a name, 

 what they really flow from is tlie tacit assumption of the real existence 



nal genius. Locke, the most candid of philosophers, and one whose speculations bear on 

 every subject the strongest marks of having been wrought out from the materials of his 

 own mind, has been mistaken for an unworthy plagiarist, while Hobbes has been extolled 

 as having anticipated many of his leading doctrines. He did anticipate many of them, and 

 the present is an instance in what manner it was generally done. They both rejected the 

 scholastic doctrine of essences ; but Locke understood and explained what these supposed 

 essences really were ; Hobbes, instead of explaining the distinction between essential and 

 accidental properties, and between essential and accidental propositions, jumped over it, 

 and gave a definition which suits at most only essential propositions, and scarcely those, as 

 the definition of Proposition in general. 



