f all
reasoning. Such a theory is an example of [Greek: hysteron proteron]: it
explains the cause by the effect, since the predicate cannot be known
for a class name which includes the subject, till several propositions
having it for predicate have been first assented to. This doctrine seems
to suppose all individuals to have been made into parcels, with the
common name outside; so that, to know if a general name can be
predicated correctly of the subject, we need only search the roll so
entitled. But the truth is, that general names are marks put, not upon
definite objects, but upon collections of objects ever fluctuating. We
may frame a class without knowing a single individual belonging to it:
the individual is placed in the class because the proposition is true;
the proposition is not made true by the individual being placed there.

Analysis of different propositions shows what is the real import of
propositions not simply verbal. Thus, we find that even a proposition
with a proper name for subject, means to assert that an individual thing
has the attributes connoted by the predicate, the name being thought of
only as means for giving information of a physical fact. This is still
more the case in propositions with connotative subjects. In these the
denoted objects are indicated by some of their attributes, and the
assertion really is, that the predicate's set of attributes constantly
accompanies the subject's set. But as every attribute is grounded on
some fact or phenomenon, a proposition, when asserting the attendance of
one or some attributes on others, really asserts simply the attendance
of one phenomenon on another; e.g. When we say Man is mortal, we mean
that where certain physical and moral facts called humanity are found,
there also will be found the physical and moral facts called death. But
analysis shows that propositions assert other things besides (although
this is indeed their ordinary import) this coexistence or sequence of
two phenomena, viz. two states of consciousness. Assertions in
propositions about those unknowable entities (_nouemena_) which are the
hidden causes of phenomena, are made, indeed, only in virtue of the
knowable _phenomena_. Still, such propositions do, besides asserting the
sequence or coexistence of the phenomena, assert further the _existence_
of the nouemena; and, moreover, in affirming the existence of a nouemenon,
which is an unknowable _cause_, they assert _causation_ also.