Note note 54 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

54 The interesting and important philological facts adduced by Mr. Findlater, confirm and illustrate in a very striking manner the doctrine in the text, of the radical distinction between the functions of the copula in predication, and those of the substantive verb; by shewing that many languages have no substantive verb, no verb expressive of mere existence, and yet signify their predications by other means; and that probably all languages began without a substantive verb, though they must always have had predications.

The confusion between these two different functions in the European languages, and the ambiguity of the verb To Be, which fulfils them both, are among the most important of the minor philosophical truths to which attention has been called by the author of the Analysis. As in the case of many other luminous thoughts, an approach is found to have been made to it by previous thinkers. Hobbes, though he did not reach it, came very close to it, and it was still more distinctly anticipated by Laromiguière, though without any sufficient perception of its value. It occurs in a criticism on a passage of Pascal, and in the following words. “Quand on dit, l’être est, etc. le mot est, ou le verbe, n’exprime pas la même chose que le mot être, sujet de la définition. Si j’énonce la proposition suivante: Dieu est existant, je ne voudrais pas dire assurément, Dieu existe existant: cela ne ferait pas un sens; de même, si je dis que Virgile est poëte, je ne veux pas donner à entendre que Virgile existe. Le verbe est, dans la proposition, n’exprime donc pas l’existence réelle; il n’exprime qu’un rapport spécial entre le sujet et l’attribut, le rapport du contenant au contenu,” &c. (Leçons de Philosophie, 7^me ed. vol. i. p. 307.) Having thus hit upon an unobvious truth in the course of an argument directed to another purpose, he passes on and takes no further notice of it.

It may seem strange that the verb which signifies existence should have been employed in so many different languages as the sign of predication, if there is no real connection between the two meanings. But languages have been built up by the extension of an originally small number of words, with or without alterations of form, to express new meanings, the choice of the word being often determined by very distant analogies. In the present case, the analogy is not distant. All our predications are intended to declare the manner in which something affects, or would affect, ourselves or others. Our idea of existence is simply the idea of something which affects or would affect us somehow, without distinction of mode. Everything, therefore, which we can have occasion to assert of an existing thing, may be looked upon as a particular mode of its existence. Since snow is white, and since snow exists, it may be said to exist white; and if a sign was wanted by which to predicate white of snow, the word exists would be very likely to present itself. But most of our predications do relate to existing things: and this being so, it is in the ordinary course of the human mind that the same sign should be adhered to when we are predicating something of a merely imaginary thing (an abstraction, for instance) and that, being so used, it should create an association between the abstraction and the notion of real existence.—Ed.