A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I
John Stuart Mill · en
And in this manner every assertion respecting an
attribute, may be transformed into an assertion exactly equivalent
respecting the fact or phenomenon which is the ground of the attribute.
And no case can be assigned, where that which is predicated of the fact
or phenomenon, does not belong to one or other of the five species
formerly enumerated: it is either simple Existence, or it is some
Sequence, Coexistence, Causation, or Resemblance.
And as these five are the only things which can be affirmed, so are they
the only things which can be denied. "No horses are web-footed" denies
that the attributes of a horse ever coexist with web-feet. It is
scarcely necessary to apply the same analysis to Particular affirmations
and negations. "Some birds are web-footed," affirms that, with the
attributes connoted by _bird_, the phenomenon web-feet is sometimes
co-existent: "Some birds are not web-footed," asserts that there are
other instances in which this coexistence does not have place. Any
further explanation of a thing which, if the previous exposition has
been assented to, is so obvious, may here be spared.
CHAPTER VI.
OF PROPOSITIONS MERELY VERBAL.
§ 1. As a preparation for the inquiry which is the proper object of
Logic, namely, in what manner propositions are to be proved, we have
found it necessary to inquire what they contain which requires, or is
susceptible of, proof; or (which is the same thing) what they assert. In
the course of this preliminary investigation into the import of
Propositions, we examined the opinion of the Conceptualists, that a
proposition is the expression of a relation between two ideas; and the
doctrine of the Nominalists, that it is the expression of an agreement
or disagreement between the meanings of two names. We decided that, as
general theories, both of these are erroneous; and that, though
propositions may be made both respecting names and respecting ideas,
neither the one nor the other are the subject-matter of Propositions
considered generally. We then examined the different kinds of
Propositions, and found that, with the exception of those which are
merely verbal, they assert five different kinds of matters of fact,
namely, Existence, Order in Place, Order in Time, Causation, and
Resemblance; that in every proposition one of these five is either
affirmed, or denied, of some fact or phenomenon, or of some object the
unknown source of a fact or phenomenon.