If to all this it should be objected, in accordance with the psychological doctrines set forth by Mr. Mivart, above quoted, that a judgment as embodied in a proposition differs from a concept as embodied in a name in respect of the copula, and therefore in presenting the idea of existence as existence; I answer, in the first place, that every concept must necessarily present this idea however _implicitly_; and, in the next place, that however _explicitly_ it may be stated as a judgment, it is not of more conceptual value than that of any other quality belonging to a subject. As regards the first point, when an object, a quality, an action, &c., is named, it is thereby abstracted as a distinct creation of thought, separated out from other things, and made to stand before the mind as a distinct entity (see Chapter IV.). Therefore, in the very act of naming we are virtually predicating existence of the thing named: the power to “think is” is the power concerned in the _formation_ of a _concept_, not in the _apposing_ of concepts _when formed_. All that is done in an act of such apposition is to bring together two ideas of two things already conceived as existing: were it not so there could be _no-things_ to compare.[101] And now, as regards the second point, so far is it from being true that the predication of existence is the essential or most important feature even of a full or formal proposition, that it is really the least essential or least important. For existence is the category to which everything must belong if it is to be judged about at all, and therefore merely to judge that _A is_ and _B is_, is to form the most barren (or least significant) judgment that can be formed with regard to A or B; and when we bring these two judgments (concepts) together in the proposition _A is B_, the new judgment which we make has nothing to do with the existence either of A or of B, nor has it really anything to do with existence as such. The existence both of A and of B has been already pre-supposed in the two concepts, and when these two existing things are brought into apposition, no third existence is thereby supposed to have been created. The copula therefore really stands, not as a symbol of _existence_, but as the symbol of _relation_, and might just as well be replaced by any other sign (such as =), or, indeed, be dispensed with altogether. “As we use the verb _is_, so the Latins use their verb _est_ and the Greeks their [Greek: esti] through all its declensions. Whether all other nations of the world have in their several languages a word that answereth to it, or not, I cannot tell; but I am sure they have no need of it. For the placing of two names in order [_i.e._ in _apposition_] may serve to signify their consequence, if it 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