[47] Cf., e.g., Md., N. S., vol. xiv., July, 1905, pp. 399-400.
CHAPTER XVIII
DENIAL OF GENERALITY AND GENERALITY OF DENIAL
The conclusion of a certain song[48] about a young man who poisoned his sweetheart with sheep’s-head broth, and was frightened to death by a voice exclaiming:
“Where’s that young maid
What you did poison with my head?”
at his bedside, gives rise to difficulties which are readily solved by a symbolism that brings into relief the principle that the denial of a universal and non-existential proposition is a particular and existential one. The conclusion of the song is:
Now all young men, both high and low,
Take warning by this dismal go!
For if he’d never done nobody no wrong,
He might have been here to have heard this song.
It is an obvious error, say Whitehead and Russell,[49] though one easy to commit, to assume that the cases: (1) all the propositions of a certain class are true; and (2) no proposition of the class is true; are each other’s contradictories. However, in the modification[50] of Frege’s symbolism which was used by Russell