ON VARIOUS POINTS OF THE ONYMATIC SYSTEM. 



431 



asterisked paging (621* — 652*) and not altered — except as to paging — in the second edition. 

 To get the page of the second edition, add 55 to that of the first. VII. Various editions of 

 Bishop Thomson's Outlines, beginning with the second in 1849. VIII. The late Professor 

 Spalding's Introduction to Logical Science, 1857. IX. The Appendixes, passim, to 

 Hamilton's Lectures on Logic, I860. If there be any other writings' which treat Hamilton's 

 system at all extensively I am not acquainted with them. I shall quote these works by the 

 numbers prefixed. 



Some preliminary remarks are wanted upon the quantifying words some and any. The 

 word any is affirmed by Hamilton (in V.) to be exclusively adapted to negatives. This 

 cannot mean that any is unfit to be used in an affirmative : surely any one knows better than 

 that. What is meant must be that no other word suits a negative, universally expressed, 

 except any. I reply that all our quantifying words, though tolerably precise in affirmatives, 

 are ambiguous in negatives. 'He has got some apples' is very clear: ask the meaning of 

 'he has not got some apples' in a company of educated men, and the apples will be those 

 of discord. Some will think that he may have one apple ; some that he has no apple at 

 all ; some that he has not got some particular appks or species of apples. Say ' he has not 

 got all apples,' and some will take him as not possessing all the apples in existence, while 

 others will understand that he has other fruit besides apples. ' An apple ' and ' the apple ' 

 are perfectly clear : but ' he has not got any apple ' is not free from occasional ambiguity. 



The word any, when used in a negative, may have either a universal or a particular 

 meaning : it may either stand for any whatsoever, or for a certain or uncertain one or more. 

 It has been said that a healthy person who cannot eat any wholesome food does not deserve 

 to have any food to eat. The first any is particular ; it applies, inter alios, to a person who 

 refuses cold mutton, though ready for any other digestible : the second any is universal, and 

 excludes all victuals whatsoever. A person who has just dined heartily need not take any 

 food (universal) : a convalescent ought not to take any food (particular ; beef tea, but not 

 pickled salmon). Some will perhaps make it depend upon the verb used; they will see 

 the universal in '■need not take any food', and the particular in 'ought not to take 

 any food'. Some will make it a question of emphasis, laying stress on any, when the 

 word is particular : but the ambiguity is there, let the grammarian and rhetorician treat it as 

 they will. A logician may, if he please, postulate that any shall always have the universal 

 sense in technical enunciation : Hamilton did not do so, but implicitly maintained that any 

 is always universal. Accordingly, he asserted that 'No X is Y' is properly expressed by 

 ' Any X is not any Y.' But though ' No fish is fish' be certainly false, ' Any fish is not 

 any fish' is false or true, according as the second any is universal or particular. Choose 



Whiston on the point in question. The two are now chiefly 

 remembered by their several paradoxes: Warburton, by his 

 maintenance of the absence of the doctrine of a future state 

 from a permanent national religion being, per se, proof of 

 Divine support; Whiston, by his acceptance of the Apostoli- 

 cal Constitutions as genuine and authoritative. Whiston seems 

 to have reasoned well enough from his wrong estimate of cer- 

 tain writings: Warburton defended his peculiar thesis with 

 great " ingenuity ", say his admirers ; but the word is one 

 which admirers often substitute for "sophistry." There is 



Vol. X. Part II. 



enough here to show that the condemnation of Whiston's rea- 

 soning upon tlie authority of Warburton, as a well-adjudged 

 case, is probably nothing but hurry. 



' There is an elementary work which is unfortunately 

 spoiled by a misapprehension of the meaning of one of the 

 forms of enunciation. But it will be a book of true method 

 of inference to all who read the forms in the exemplar system 

 of my second paper. The author's mistake consists in making 

 ' Some X is not some Y ' the simple contradiction of ' All X 

 is all Y.' 



55 



