SPEECH. 173 



were the custom, as well as the words is, to be, and the like. 

 And if it were so, that there were a language without any 

 verb answering to est, or is, or be, yet the men that used it 

 would be not a jot the less capable of inferring, concluding, 

 and of all kind of reasoning than were the Greeks and Latins." 

 This shrewd analysis by Hobbes is justly said by Mill to be 

 " the only analysis of a proposition which is rigorously true of 

 all propositions without exception ; " and Professor Max 

 Muller says of it, " Hobbes, though utterly ignorant of the 

 historical antecedents of language, agrees with us in the most 

 remarkable manner." * 



Thus, then, upon the whole, and without further treatment, 

 it may be concluded that whether we look to its simplest 

 manifestations or to its most complex, we must alike conclude 

 that it is the faculty of conception, not that of judgment — the 

 faculty of denomination, not that of predication — which we 

 have to regard as " the simplest element of thought." Of 

 course, if it were said that these two faculties are one in 

 kind — that in order to conceive we must judge, and in order 

 to name we must predicate — I should have no objection to 

 offer. All I am at present engaged upon is to make it clear 

 that the distinction between man and brute in respect of the 



• In order to avoid misapprehension, I may observe that the criticism which 

 Mill passes upon this analysis of the proposition by Hobbes (Lotfic, i., p. 100) has 

 no reference to the only matter with which I am at present concerned — namely, the 

 function of the copula. Indeed, with regard to this matter I am in full agreement 

 with both the Mills. For James Mill, see Analysis of the Human Mind, i. 126, 

 etseq. ; Mr. John Stuart Mill writes as follows :— " It is important that there should 

 be no indistinctness in our conception of the nature and office of the copula ; for 

 confused notions respecting it are among the causes which have spread mysticism 

 over the field of logic, and perverted its speculations into logomachies. It is apt 

 to be supposed that the copula is something more than a mere sign of predication ; 

 that it also signifies existence. In the proposition, Socrates is just, it may seem 

 to be implied not only that the quality just can be affirmed of Socrates, but 

 moreover that Socrates is, that is to say exists. This, however, only shows that 

 there is an ambiguity in the word is ; a word which not only performs the function 

 of a copula in affirmations, but has also a meaning of its own, in virtue of which 

 it may itself be made the predicate of a proposition" {Lot,ic, i., p. SG). In my 

 chaiiters on Philology I shall have to recur to the analysis of predication, and then 

 it will lie seen how completely the above view has been corroborated by the progress 

 of linguistic research. 



