56 



NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



Philosophers, however, from Descartes 

 downwards, and especially from the 

 era of Leibnitz and Locke, have by 

 no means observed this distinction ; 

 and would have treated with great 

 disrespect any attempt to analyse the 

 import of Propositions, unless founded 

 on an analysis of the act of Judgment. 

 A proposition, they would have said, 

 is but the expression in words of a 

 Judgment. The thing 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 propositions mean, and not 

 otherwise. 



Conformably to these views, almost 

 all the writers on Logic in the last 

 two centuries, whether English, Ger- 

 man, or French, have made their 

 theory of Propositions, from one end 

 to the other, a theory of 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 two 

 ideas, or to perceive the agreement 

 or disagreement between two ideas : 

 and the whole doctrine of Proposi- 

 tions, together with the theory of 

 Reasoning,(alwaysnecessarilyfounded 

 on the theory of Propositions,) was 

 stated as if Ideas, or Conceptions, or 

 whatever other term the writer pre- 

 ferred as a name for mental represen- 

 tations generally, constituted essen- 

 tially the subject-matter and substance 

 of those operations. 



It is, of course, true, that in any 

 case of judgment, as for instance when 

 we judge that gold is yellow, a process 

 takes place in our minds, of which 

 some one or other of these theories 

 is a partially correct account. 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 to- 

 gether 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 apos- 

 tle 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 in- 

 tricate of metaphysical problems. But 

 whatever the solution may be, we may 

 venture to assert that it can hav-e 

 nothing whatever to do with the iai- 

 port of propositions ; for this reason, 

 that propositions (except sometines 

 when the mind itself is the sulqject 

 treated of) are not assertions respect- 

 ing our ideas of things, but assertions 

 respecting the things themselves. 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 be- 

 lieve, is a fact relating to the out^v■ard 

 thing, gold, and to the impressiott 

 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 ope- 

 rating upon, and unless I put those 

 ideas together.* But it would be a 



* Dr. Whewell (Philosophi/ of Discovery, 

 p. 242) questions this statement, and asks, 

 "Are we to say that a mole cannot dig 

 the ground, except he has an idea of the 

 ground, and of the snout and paws with 

 which he digs it ? " I do not know what 

 passes in a mole's mind, nor what amount 

 of mental apprehension may or may not 

 accompany his instinctive actions. But 



