340 Mr DE morgan, ON THE SYLLOGISM, No. IV, 



rotundity were given to matter, or material and whiteness to rotundity, is of no account : 

 the turner can do only the first, the thinker can do either. The notion of metaphysical 

 or physical order of precedence in the entrance of components, dictates the exclusion of 

 forms of language which are necessary to logical precision. We may think of a horse, and 

 then of the attributes swift or slow : we speak of the speed of the horse, correctly expressing 

 what we have in thought as related by appurtenance to the animal. But we never speak of 

 the horseness of the speed: do we ever think of it .'' Suppose a horse going a hundred miles an 

 hour : such a thing was never known. Suppose one which goes a million of miles in a second : 

 perhaps this is the first time such a thing was ever heard of. In the first case the speed 

 attributed to the horse is no marvel : in the second case it is not in nature, that we know of. 

 We object to both rates, as predicated of a horse : but to the first rate only as so predicated. 

 That is, it is not the velocity of the horse, but the equinity of the velocity, that strikes 

 us as unprecedented when we speak of a hundred miles an hour: and the logician may 

 use his privilege of making language for every distinction which exists in thought. 



Relations of appurtenance, and indeed all others, carry with them distinctions of which 

 grammar takes no cognizance: they give time or tense, for example, to nouns. That which 

 hangs in the butcher's shop under the name of a calf's head, hangs under that name 

 with perfect propriety : but the noun has a past tense. I am not sure that we should have 

 been so well ofi^ as we are if philosophers* had invented our language : it may have been that 

 in such a case we should have had less sense and no poetry : but assuredly our nouns 

 would have had moods indicative and potential, as well as tenses, past, present and 

 future. 



The relation in a compound notion sometimes seeks emergence ; and the word of demands 

 entrance. When we hear that ' it was the most bloody battle,' we feel an unfinished 

 sentence: what of.'' the Peloponnesian war? the Peninsular war .'' &c. If not one of these 

 a separation is wanted which may throw into notice the relation of appurtenance; 'it was the 

 most bloody of battles.' 



Indefinite extension of one component is a bar to the conception of relation, and tends to 

 fix thought upon the whole compound. Thus in six sheep, the relation of six to sheep is 

 almost dormant, so long as the selective and separative force of six is applied to all possible 

 sheep. Make the collection more definite, and the relation demands expression : six of the 

 sheep, six of his sheep. Not that six of sheep is unintelligible : and, on the other hand, 

 six his sheep is a form not unknown in old English. Largeness of selection, totality, has the 

 effect of destroying the relating preposition : thus all his sons is as admissible as all of his 

 sons. But let the expression of completeness be retarded ever so little, and the relating 

 preposition demands entrance. We do not say 'AH of men are animals:' but we do say, 

 ' Of men, all are animals.' The habits of thought of a nation silently accomplish many 

 changes which we call caprices of language. Our modern forms of thought tend to sharpen 

 specification of relation, especially in distinguishing agency from other relations. We no 

 more hear of a person forsaken of his friends ; it is now always by. Neither does the active 

 participle bear the expression of relation, except as a vulgarism: squires and hounds are 

 no longer catching of foxes. 



