Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/154

138 of Socrates was wise" is only to depart wholly from the proper meaning of the term in Opposition, and sets up a spatially partitive for the numerically partitive signification of the term, which latter is the proper one in Opposition and for particular propositions. The consequence of this is, as above remarked, that singular propositions have no corresponding particulars and hence their contradictory must be the same proposition with a change of quality. Thus the contradictory of "Socrates was wise" must be "Socrates was not wise," and moreover it will have no contrary.

Now the important fact to be considered in thus concluding that singular propositions do not follow the law of universals in the scheme of opposition is that they represent a very large percentage of the argument carried on in the world. I may sometimes be using a word or phrase that seems to represent a universal, but is nevertheless singular in its intended meaning. This is especially true of propositions beginning with "the" or "this." Let us illustrate this from cases simply picked up at random. The first sentence that catches my eye in a newspaper editorial is "Thus in the twenty-third district an effort is made to prevent the threatened election, etc." Now the contradicting of this is not "Some effort is not made," but "No effort is made," because the writer is speaking not of effort in general, but of a particular effort, although the sign of the proposition may be taken as that of a universal. In the same editorial seven out of the ten sentences are singular, only one is universal, and this is ambiguous, and two are ambiguous particulars. In another editorial eleven propositions are singular and one possibly particular, but ambiguous. This only shows that the ordinary rules of opposition cannot apply in determining the method of proof or refutation.

There is a still larger class of propositions which give rise to the same difficulty with the rules for opposition. There are what I shall call abstract propositions, which Bosanquet denominates generic, and some writers, general propositions. They are easily interpreted as universals, but when so interpreted their real import is changed. Thus I say "Charity