ns, since they are assertions
about things, i.e. facts of external nature, not about the ideas of
them, i.e. facts in our mental history. Logic has suffered from stress
being laid on the relation between the ideas rather than the phenomena,
nature thus coming to be studied by logicians second-hand, that is to
say, as represented in our minds. Our present object, therefore, must
be to investigate judgments, not judgment, and to inquire what it is
which we assert when we make a proposition.

Hobbes (though he certainly often shows his belief that all propositions
are not merely about the meaning of words, and that general names are
given to things on account of their attributes) declares that what we
assert, is our belief that the subject and predicate are names of the
same thing. This is, indeed, a property of all true propositions, and
the only one true of all. But it is not the scientific definition of
propositions; for though the mere collocation which makes a proposition
a proposition, signifies only this, yet that _form_, combined with other
_matter_, conveys much more meaning. Hobbes's principle accounts _fully_
only for propositions where both terms are proper names. He applied it
to others, through attending, like all nominalists, to the denotation,
and not the connotation of words, holding them to be, like proper names,
mere marks put upon individuals. But when saying that, e.g. Socrates is
wise, is a true proposition, because of the conformity of import between
the terms, he should have asked himself why _Socrates_ and _wise_ are
names of the same person. He ought to have seen that they are given to
the same person, not because of the intention of the maker of each word,
but from the resemblance of their connotation, since a word means
properly certain attributes, and, only secondarily, objects denoted by
it. What we really assert, therefore, in a proposition, is, that where
we find certain attributes, we shall find a certain other one, which is
a question not of the meaning of names, but of the laws of nature.

Another theory virtually identical with Hobbes's, is that commonly
received, which makes predication consist in referring things to a
_class_; that is (since a class is only an indefinite number of
individuals denoted by a general name), in viewing them as some of those
to be called by that general name. This view is the basis of the _dictum
de omni et nullo_, on which is supposed to rest the validity o