| I answer; It is absurd to introduce--under whatever term disguised--into the conception of a thing, which is to be cogitated solely in reference to its possibility, the conception of its existence. |
| If this is admitted, you will have apparently gained the day, but in reality have enounced nothing but a mere tautology. |
| I ask, is the proposition, this or that thing (which I am admitting to be possible) exists, an analytical or a synthetical proposition? |
| If the former, there is no addition made to the subject of your thought by the affirmation of its existence; but then the conception in your minds is identical with the thing itself, or you have supposed the existence of a thing to be possible, and then inferred its existence from its internal possibility--which is but a miserable tautology. |
| The word reality in the conception of the thing, and the word existence in the conception of the predicate, will not help you out of the difficulty. |
| For, supposing you were to term all positing of a thing reality, you have thereby posited the thing with all its predicates in the conception of the subject and assumed its actual existence, and this you merely repeat in the predicate. |
| But if you confess, as every reasonable person must, that every existential proposition is synthetical, how can it be maintained that the predicate of existence cannot be denied without contradiction?--a property which is the characteristic of analytical propositions, alone. |
| I should have a reasonable hope of putting an end for ever to this sophistical mode of argumentation, by a strict definition of the conception of existence, did not my own experience teach me that the illusion arising from our confounding a logical with a real predicate (a predicate which aids in the determination of a thing) resists almost all the endeavours of explanation and illustration. |
| A logical predicate may be what you please, even the subject may be predicated of itself; for logic pays no regard to the content of a judgement. |
| But the determination of a conception is a predicate, which adds to and enlarges the conception. |
| It must not, therefore, be contained in the conception. |
| Being is evidently not a real predicate, that is, a conception of something which is added to the conception of some other thing. |
| It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations in it. |
| Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgement. |
| The proposition, God is omnipotent, contains two conceptions, which have a certain object or content; the word is, is no additional predicate--it merely indicates the relation of the predicate to the subject. |
| Now, if I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (omnipotence being one), and say; God is, or, There is a God, I add no new predicate to the conception of God, I merely posit or affirm the existence of the subject with all its predicates--I posit the object in relation to my conception. |
| The content of both is the same; and there is no addition made to the conception, which expresses merely the possibility of the object, by my cogitating the object--in the expression, it is--as absolutely given or existing. |
| Thus the real contains no more than the possible. |
| A hundred real dollars contain no more than a hundred possible dollars. |
| For, as the latter indicate the conception, and the former the object, on the supposition that the content of the former was greater than that of the latter, my conception would not be an expression of the whole object, and would consequently be an inadequate conception of it. |
| But in reckoning my wealth there may be said to be more in a hundred real dollars than in a hundred possible dollars--that is, in the mere conception of them. |