ON VARIOUS POINTS OF THE ONYMATIC SYSTEM. 



449 



however, which they do not take) that if twelve incites are one foot, then necessarily each 

 individual inch is also one foot." The example is clearly not a parallel, but it well illustrates 

 the divergence. The parallelism of the ttvelve inches and the all man is so perfect, that they 

 make the same angle — to a tenth of a second — with omnia homo. The reader who consults 

 the whole of the rare and interesting matter which Mr Baynes' has produced will see much 

 force in the following argument : — If the ancients had cumular meaning, and wrote as they 

 did, they took inconceivably inconsequent grounds, and ought to have discovered that an 

 inch is a foot. But it is very unlikely that so large a collection of acute thinkers should make 

 puerile mistakes, and fail to see that a foot no longer than an inch follows from their 

 principles, if it really did so. Therefore it is very unlikely that the ancients, writing as they 

 did, had cumular meaning. 



This preliminary argument could not be weighed in time still recent, because the possibi- 

 lity of anything except the extended term was not in thought. Some readers will perhaps never 

 have seen, until they meet with it here, the assertion that when Aristotle and his long train 

 of followers shaped enunciation in the singular number, it was because they were thinking 

 as they spoke. Those readers may have learnt to see nolliing but cumular in the exemplar 

 form, nothing but plural in the singular ; and they may attribute this lapse of vision to 

 Aristotle. If so, I remind them that the singular and plural could hardly have been so easily 

 confounded in a language which had the dual interposed. It is worth^ a thought whether 



' Mr Baynes is particularly worthy of citation on this sub- 

 ject because, quite fresh from the teaching of his distinguished 

 guide, he threw himself into the history of quantification, and 

 made very valuable researches. It is curious to see how he 

 speaks of cumular quantification, as both a logical and a ver- 

 nacular necessity. Speaking of the exemplar grounds of ob- 

 jection to " Every man is every risible," which to him could 

 be nothing but "all man is all risible," he says (p. 93), "When 

 we consider these grounds, and remember the real ability of the 

 men by whom they were successively urged, we cannot but be 

 struck with a wonder amounting to marvel, that they could 

 remain satisfied with them, and that a truth so obvious on its 

 first enunciation, so imperative on its fuller exposition, should 

 have been so uniformly and so long thus rejected." Neverthe- 

 less, the clear exposition of Pacius, so deservedly high among 

 the expositors of Aristotle, would have stopped the wonder of 

 any one who knew the exemplar sense: though somewhat long, 

 I repeat it from Mr Baynes, "Hunc errorem ut Aristoteles 

 toUat, osteridit univeraalem notam nunquam posse adjungi 

 altribuio; quia tunc omnis affirmatio /a/«a esset. Quod de- 

 clarat exemplo hujus enunciationis 'omnis homo est omne 

 animal,' quse sine dubio falsa est : nam si homo esset omne 

 animal, esset etiam asinus et bos. Sed notare hie oportet, alia 

 attributa latius patere quam subjecta, alia vero reciprocari cum 



subjectis Ubi igitur attributum latius patet, ut in exemplo 



Aristotelis, res dubitatione caret: certum enim est, affirmatio- 

 nem esse falsam, nee posse dici, 'omnem hominem esse omne 

 animal'. Sed merito dubitatur de attributis, qua; reciprocan- 

 tur cum subjectis, veluti si quis dicat, 'omne animal est onme 

 sensu prasditum', et 'omnis homo est omne aptum ad riden- 

 dum': nam hie absuriiitas ilia non a:que ap){aret, ut in ilia 

 enunciatioue, 'omnis homo est omne animal'. Sed ut intelli- 



gatur has quoque enunciationes esse falsas, in quibus attribu- 

 tum, quod reciprocatur, adnexam habet parciculam omnis, notare 

 oportet, hanc particulam omnis, habere vim quam in scholis 

 vocant distributivam ; ut omnis homo, proinde valeat atque qui- 

 libet homo, vel singuli homines / et similiter omne animal, idem 

 valet, quod singula animalia, vel unumquodque animal seu 

 quodlibet animal. Quapropter si vere diceretur, 'omne animal 

 est omne sensu prfeditum ' etiam homo esset omne sensu prae- 

 ditum ; nam qui dixit omne animal, non exclusit omnem ho- 

 minem, homo igitur esset quodlibet sensu praeditum : proinde 

 hac ratione fieret, ut liomo esset equus, et bos, quandoquidem 

 equus et bos sunt sensu prtedita." (Pacius in Aristot. de In- 

 terpr. cap. vii.) The reader will see how clearly Pacius has 

 laid down the difference between exemplar and cumular, and 

 how distinctly he has stated that the exemplar, not the cumular, 

 is the ancient reading. 



Should a teacher be so accustomed to read exemplar enun- 

 ciation in cumular sense that the first time an exemplar table 

 is explicitly presented he declares it to stand alone in the 

 history of science, that teacher and his pupils may well regard 

 the above with "a wonder amounting to marvel". The issue 

 is a siinple one. Aristotle, Pacius, &c. say — We enunciate in 

 the exemplar form of thought : the moderns reply — Vou do no 

 such thing ; or if you do, we have lost the power of seeing the 

 distinction, whence there is no difference. 



' Were it only because it has hardly been thought of. In 

 English the confusion of singular and plural has occurred. 

 The proverb says, "One's none; two's some". That one 

 should be none (ne one, not one) defies etymology: but as not 

 one, and onli/ one, both deny some with its ordinary plural im- 

 plication, and some and none pass for alternatives in life as well 

 as in logic, the way in which the confusion arises is seen. 



57—2 



