2. In analysing the Judgment as an act of thought we may begin by dismissing the separate Copula. It has no separate existence in thought corresponding to its separate place in the typical proposition of Formal Logic. It has come to be considered separately, because the abstract verb “is” is used in our languages as a sign of the complete enunciation. But there is not in the Judgment any separate significant idea--any third idea--coming in between the Subject and Predicate of Judgment. We should try to think of the Copula not as a link, separable and always { 100} intrinsically the same, [1] connecting two distinct things. We should think of it rather as the grip with which the parts of a single complex whole cohere with one another, differing according to the nature of the whole and the inter-dependence of its parts. Benno Erdmann [2] has strikingly expressed this point of view by saying, that in the Judgment, “The dead ride fast,” the Subject is “the dead,” the Predicate “fast riding,” _and the Copula “the fast riding of the dead_.” In other words, the Copula is simply the Judgment considered exclusively as a cohesion between parts of a complex idea, the individual connection between which can only be indicated by supplying the idea of those parts themselves.
[1] In a comic Logic, with pictures, meant to stimulate dull minds at a University, I have seen the Copula represented as the coupling-link between two railway carriages. This is an excellent type of the way in which we should _not_ think of it.
3. The explicit Predicate is more necessary than the explicit Subject.
We have spoken of Judgments expressed by one word, “Fire!” “Thieves!” etc., and also of impersonal Propositions, “It is raining,” “It is thawing.” These two classes of Judgments show hardly any explicit Subject at all. But we could not assert anything without a Predicate--that would be to assert without asserting anything in particular.
As these Judgments have, roughly speaking, a Predicate and no Subject, I do not think it convenient to call them, with Dr. Venn, existential judgments. It is true that they refer to reality, but their _peculiarity_ is in not referring to a distinct subject. And when used for definite and complex assertions they become very artificial, _e.g._ “There is a { 101} British Constitution by which our liberties are guaranteed.” Instead of organising the content of the Judgment, such a form of assertion simply tosses the whole of it into the Predicate in a single mass.