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possibility of our notional assents being converted into real 
6. Assent to a proposition implies that it must be intelligible. 
Without understanding what it means there can be no 
assent. When therefore he lays down that for a genuine 
assent the subject of a proposition may be utterly unintelligible 
and the predicate needs only to be apprehended, he seems to 
me to lay down a position which is destructive of ' aU rationa 
conviction. When we say, for example that man is 
mortal,” we assert the predicate of the subject ; and 1 admit 
that it implies that we have a clearer apprehension of the 
predicate than the subject; still I contend that we must 
have a comprehension of some kind of the subject. Dr. 
Newman gives, as his illustration an assertion put into the 
mouth of a child, “ lucern is medicago sativa L- his, lie 
most correctly says, is an assertion no better than the utter- 
ance of a parrot; for a child understands neither of these 
terms. But he adds, “ if he is told lucern is food for cattle, 
and is shown cows grazing in a meadow, then, thoug e 
never saw lucern, and knows nothing about it, besides what h 
has learned from the predicate, he is m a position to make as 
genuine an assent to the proposition, on the word of his inform- 
ant, as if he knew ever so much more about lucern. ih 
utterly deny. I would ask Dr. Newman, whether the act of 
showing the child the grazing cows does not convert the mean- 
ingless lucern into a word with meaning, though it may be an 
indefinite one. The child immediately associates the word 
“lucern” with the grass which he sees, and the word is no longer 
a pure blank. It seems to me that assent is impossible if we 
can attach no meaning whatever to the subject. I admit that 
there is no necessity for understanding both terms with equal 
clearness. The child in assenting to the proposition, lucern 
is food for cattle,” on the sight of the feeding cows, may not 
form a distinct conception of lucern, as distinct from grass or 
clover ; but he forms an indefinite notion of it, as analogous 
to the grass which he sees. He conceives of it as a vegetable 
substance of some kind. At any rate, he can distinguish 
between it and a stone, or the letter x. Even wtawe™ 
symbols we attach meanings to them very different from 
the utterances of a parrot. But Dr Newman goes on to 
say that there are cases in which a child can give an 
direct assent to a proposition without understanding eithe 
subject or predicate. He cannot assent to the proposition 
itself, but he can assent to its truth.” He cannot do mo e, 
says he, “than assert that lucern is medicago sativa, b 
he can assent to the proposition that lucern is medicag 
