An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

CHAPTER III.
THE PROPOSITION, THE OPPOSITION OF PROPOSITIONS,
AND THE FORMS OF IMMEDIATE INFERENCES.
PART I. The Logical Proposition.
i. GRAMMATICAL sentences may express commands,
wishes, questions, exclamations, or assertions. In the
last case the sentence makes a statement about some
verb in the indicative
thing, and must have its principal
when it is an assertion can we consider
mood. Only
the sentence as expressing truth or falsity. The Pro
position is an assertive sentence, a statement which ad
mits of being true or false. But in the strict logical
sense, the sentence is not a proposition until it is ex
pressed in the form S is P, with a distinct Subject,
Predicate, and Copula. The Subject is that about which
the statement is made ; the Predicate, that which is
stated about it. The Copula is not merely a means
of connecting S and P as the coupling-gear connects
an engine with the carriages which it draws, nor in
the judgment, which the proposition expresses, is there
a separate thought corresponding to the Copula and
coming between the idea of the Subject and that of
the Predicate. The Copula simply expresses the mental
act of judgment, the fact that I think of S and P as