for, as it could not be if our consciousness consisted of mere feelings and their copies, but only in the form of the singular proposition; because the object of thought determined by relations, being identified with a single feeling, must be limited by the ‘this’ or ‘that’ which expresses this singleness of feeling. It is really _this_ or _that_ globe, _this_ or _that_ man, that is the subject of the proposition, according to Hume, even when in form it is general. It is true that the general name ‘globe’ or ‘man’ not merely represents a ‘particular’ globe or man, though that is all that is presented to the mind, but also ‘raises up a custom which produces any other individual idea for which we may have occasion.’ As this custom, however, is neither itself an idea nor affects the singleness of the subject idea, it does not constitute any distinction between singular and general propositions, but only between two sorts of the singular proposition according as it does, or does not, suggest an indefinite series of other singular propositions, in which the same qualities are affirmed of different individual ideas to which the subject-name has been applied. All propositions restricted in same way as Locke’s propositions about real existence. 223. A customary sequence, then, of individual ideas upon each other is the reality, which through the delusion of words (as we must suppose) has given rise to the fiction of there being such a thing as general knowledge. We say ‘fiction,’ for with the possibility of general propositions, as the Greek philosophers once for all pointed out, stands or falls the possibility of science. Locke was so far aware of this that, upon the same principle which led him to deny the possibility of general propositions concerning real existence, he ‘suspected’ a science of nature to be impossible, and only found an exemption for moral and mathematical truth from this condemnation in its ‘bare ideality.’ Hume does away with the exemption. He applies to all propositions alike the same limitation which Locke applies to those concerning real existence. With Locke there may very well be a proposition which to the mind, as well as in form, is general--one of which the subject is an ‘abstract general idea’--but such proposition ‘concerns not existence.’ As knowledge of real existence is limited to the ‘actual present sensation,’ so a proposition about such existence is limited to what is given in such sensation. It is a real truth that this piece of gold is now being dissolved in aqua regia, when the ‘particular experiment’ is going on under our eyes, but the general proposition ‘gold is soluble’ is only an analysis of a nominal essence. With Hume the distinction between propositions that do, and those that do not, ‘concern existence’ disappears. Every proposition is on the same footing in this respect, since it must needs be a statement about an ‘idea,’ and every idea exists.