Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/298

288 means of its participle. Therefore all judging consists in the use of a verb, and vice versâ. Accordingly the significance of the copula is that the predicate is to be thought in the subject, nothing more. Now, consider what the content of the infinitive of the copula "to be" amounts to. But this is a principal theme of the professors of philosophy of the present time. However, we must not be too strict with them; most of them wish to express by it nothing but material things, the corporeal world, to which, as perfectly innocent realists at the bottom of their hearts, they attribute the highest reality. To speak, however, of the bodies so directly appears to them too vulgar; and therefore they say "being," which they think sounds better, and think in connection with it the tables and chairs standing before them.

"For, because, why, therefore, thus, since, although, indeed, yet, but, if, then, either, or," and more like these, are properly logical particles, for their only end is to express the form of the thought processes. They are therefore a valuable possession of a language, and do not belong to all in equal numbers. Thus "zwar" (the contracted "es ist wahr") seems to belong exclusively to the German language. It is always connected with an "aber" which follows or is added in thought, as "if" is connected with "then."

The logical rule that, as regards quantity, singular judgments, that is, judgments which have a singular conception (notio singularis) for their subject, are to be treated as universal judgments, depends upon the circumstance that they are in fact universal judgments, which have merely the peculiarity that their subject is a conception which can only be supported by a single real object, and therefore only contains a single real object under it; as when the conception is denoted by a proper name. This, however, has really only to be considered when we proceed from the abstract idea to the concrete or perceptible, thus seek to realise the conceptions. In thinking itself, in