Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/512

 498 HUBERT FOSTON : whatever psychical result was to be anticipated from the simple intenser devotion of my attention to it is possi- ble, and to be looked for. I esteem this as a principle of so general a nature with reference to reasonable speech, that it need not be left aside for any purposes indeed, I would challenge its neglect in formal logic, as a neglect never countenanced by anything in nature or in mental structure, though deeply chartered in tradition, and perhaps in our own long-cherished views. 1 If, now, in the proposition lately supposed, we mark the predicate as P, and the subject as S, and suppose it uttered in the form " All S's are P's," the condition of its truth and trustworthiness, which is at the same time its import, lies in this : that any objective 2 agent or determinant applied to P's as such, 3 may be applied to whatever we know as S's to like effect we may confidently treat S's just as we treat P's. The work of propositional statement is to unite in respect of some identical range of ulterior significance terms which were of variant suggestion for the mind the range of ulterior significance being that which is measured by the predicate, and which we are now taught, perhaps unfamiliarly, to attach to what we were, however, used to treating along lines suggested by the subject-term itself. The assertion of an equivalence in respect of ulterior significance is the force I ascribe to the copula. It does not imply merely that the two groups of qualities marked by S and P are to some extent the same : but rather that they are one in respect of their significance as conditioned by any determinant that is relevant to P. The practical reference of our proposition might be near or remote. Suppose it now to have been so near that P, under the circumstances in which the proposition was uttered, would leave the hearer in no doubt as to how he was expected to adjust himself. But it is characteristic of 1 The simple naturalness with which objects marked as " S," or what not, are forthwith, in Logic, assigned to, or made to constitute, the logical fictionary class, seems to illustrate the tendency of the mind further to determine them, at least imaginatively, in our objective sense of doing something with them, or supposing something done with them. The assigning of this class- significance to an object arises out of actual sorting and moving involving some actual and sensible determination or change. Psychology, if I mistake not, has long gone astray in taking this subtle relation to an indefinite class of similars as the significance of a presentation as in thought. 2 "Or subjectively originating." These words may be added to cover the case of psychical issue through attention. 3 I.e. to P's as having the conditional significance suggested to the interlocutors by the name P.