centaurs
were fabled to live in the vales of Thessaly, it is not the passing
state of mind expressed by the speaker as such that we attend to or
think of; we pass at once to the objective reference of the words.

Psychologically, then, the theory is sound: what is its logical
value? It is sometimes put forward as if it were inconsistent with
the Class-reference theory or the theory that judgment consists in
a comparison of concepts. Historically the origin of its formal
statement is its supposed opposition to those theories. But really
it is only a misconception of them that it contradicts. It is
inconsistent with the Class-reference view only if by a class we
understand an arbitrary subjective collection, not a collection of
things on the ground of common attributes. And it is inconsistent with
the Conceptualist theory only if by a concept we understand not the
objective reference of a general name, but what we have distinguished
as a conception or a conceptual image. The theory that the ultimate
subject is reality is assumed in both the other theories, rightly
understood. If every proposition is the utterance of a judgment, and
every proposition implies a general name, and every general name has
a meaning or connotation, and every such meaning is an attribute of
things and not a mental state, it is implied that the ultimate subject
of every proposition is reality. But we may consider whether or not
propositions are consistent without considering whether or not they
are true, and it is only their mutual consistency that is considered
in the syllogistic formulae. Thus, while it is perfectly correct to say
that every proposition expresses either truth or falsehood, or that
the characteristic quality of a judgment is to be true or false, it
is none the less correct to say that we may temporarily suspend
consideration of truth or falsehood, and that this is done in what is
commonly known as Formal Logic.

VI. _That every proposition may be regarded as expressing relations
between phenomena._

Bain follows Mill in treating this as the final import of Predication.
But he indicates more accurately the logical value of this view in
speaking of it as important for laying out the divisions of Inductive
Logic. They differ slightly in their lists of Universal Predicates
based upon Import in this sense--Mill's being Resemblance,
Coexistence, Simple Sequence, and Causal Sequence, and Bain's being
Coexistence, Succession, and Equ