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And why. Thirdly, using Words variously is trifling with them. Marks of verbal Propositions. First, Predication in Abstract. To conclude. Barely verbal propositions may be known by these following marks: First, All propositions wherein two abstract terms are affirmed one of another, are barely about the signification of sounds.
Which three words, standing for one and the same idea, may, no doubt, with the same evidence and certainty be affirmed one of another, as each of itself: and it is as certain, that, whilst I use them all to stand for one and the same idea, this predication is as true and identical in its signification, that 'space is body, as this predication is true and identical, that 'body is body, both in signification and sound.
If all propositions respecting the signification of words were as simple and unimportant as those which served us for examples when examining Hobbes’ theory of predication, viz. those of which the subject and predicate are proper names, and which assert only that those names have, or that they have not, been conventionally assigned to the same individual; there would be little to attract to such propositions the attention of philosophers.
Yet in no other instance is the common eagerness to condense all predication about a character into a single unqualified proposition so fatally inadequate.
We strive after and perhaps reach an ideal, or, as Mr Bradley says, we aim at satisfying a desire; and this, too, is a process far removed from reality. Goodness, like truth, is mere appearance. This needs no elaboration. If all predication involves relation, and relation is excluded from reality, then no predicate not even truth or goodness can be asserted of the real.
The general predication of a trans-Uranian planet was made by Bessel, the great Konigsberg astronomer, in 1840; the analysis that revealed its exact location was undertaken, half a decade later, by two independent workers John Couch Adams, just graduated senior wrangler at Cambridge, England, and U. J. J. Leverrier, the leading French mathematician of his generation.
The only peculiarity of the case is, that the convenience of classification was here the primary motive for introducing the names; while in other cases the name is introduced as a means of predication, and the formation of a class denoted by it is only an indirect consequence.
The actual existence of the subject of the proposition is therefore only apparently, not really, implied in the predication, if an essential one: we may say, A ghost is a disembodied spirit, without believing in ghosts.
In such a case as this, the verb expresses predication and nothing else, and is called a copula. But, in the great majority of verbs, the word is the sign of a complex idea, and the predication is expressed only by its form. Thus in "silver shines," the verb "to shine" is the sign for the feeling of brightness, and the mark of predication lies in the form "shine-s."
Although, however, Hobbes’ theory of Predication, according to the well-known remark of Leibnitz, and the avowal of Hobbes himself, renders truth and falsity completely arbitrary, with no standard but the will of men, it must not be concluded that either Hobbes, or any of the other thinkers who have in the main agreed with him, did in fact consider the distinction between truth and error as less real, or attached less importance to it, than other people.
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