In order to make this distinction clear, let us consider the proposition as it reaches us from without, that is to say, either as spoken or as written. The words, the parts of such a proposition, as we hear or read them, are separate and successive either in time alone, or in time and space. Further, the mere sounds or signs can be mastered apart from the meaning. You can repeat them or copy them without understanding them in the least, as _e.g._ in the case of a proposition in an unknown language. So far, the proposition has not become a judgment, and I do not suppose that any logician would admit that it deserved the name even of a proposition. But if not, then we must not confuse the attributes which it has before it becomes a proposition with those which it has after. {83} Further, in understanding a proposition, or in construing a sentence into a proposition (if the sentence only becomes a proposition when understood), there are many degrees. I read upon a postcard, “A meeting will be held on Saturday next by the Women’s Liberal Association, to discuss the taxation of ground-rents.” The meaning of such a sentence takes time to grasp, and if the words are read aloud to us, must of necessity be apprehended by degrees. We understand very quickly that a meeting is to be held next Saturday. This understanding is already a judgment. It is something quite different from merely repeating the words which we read. It consists in realising them as meanings, and bringing these meanings together into a connected idea, and affirming this idea to belong to our real world. The meanings are not separate, outside one another, as the words are when we first hear or read them. They enter into each other, modify each other, and become parts of an ideal whole. This gradual apprehension of a sentence recalls to one the boyish amusement of melting down bits of lead in a ladle. At first the pieces all lie about, rigid and out of contact; but as they begin to be fused a fluid system is formed in which they give up their rigidity and independence, and enter into the closest possible contact, so that their movements and position determine each other. But still some parts, like words not yet grasped, remain hard and separate, and it is only when the melting is complete that this isolation is destroyed, and there are no longer detached fragments, but a fluid body such that all its parts are in the closest connection with one another.