AND ON LOGIC IN GENERAL. 



197 



scions in the compound. Again, in disaggregating* a class, we have a distinct idea of inco- 

 partient aggregants : but in decomposing attribution, we are seldom sure of incommunicant 

 components. Human is compounded of rational and animal : here we are sensible of a true 

 dichotomy ; according to our notions of these terms, the animal demands no essential compo" 

 nent of the rational, nor the rational of the animal. But into what two certainly incommuni- 

 cant attributes shall we divide rational ? Capable of abstraction is one attribute ; but what is 

 the other? Psychology cannot answer. When the controversy about decomposition of reason 

 begins, thick darkness rises about the wrath of the combatants, and veils the unutterable fight, 

 as in the case of Yamen and Kehama : with this difference, however, that the mist does not 

 clear off at the end, and shew us which has won the drink of immortality. Again, in phreno- 

 logy, I hold it established that parts of the brain are separate machineries having their modes 

 of connexion with different feelings or modes of mental existence. But who can name these 

 parts .'' Grant that three of them are known to exist in veneration, combativeness, and tune, 

 what are the components of human power which belong to all the three states, or to any two? 

 A certain style of music conduces to the action of veneration, another style to that of com- 

 bativeness : what component unit-faculty in the organ of music conspires with a correspondent 

 unit in the organ of veneration by which the organ — now meaning what the old Presbyterians, 

 of whose organs of veneration it drew out the wrong stop, called the ' kist fu' o' whistles ' — acts 

 upon both ? All these are questions which can only be asked in illustration of the difference 

 between composition of attribution and aggregation of extent. We go as far as we can, and we 

 try to see what we can : to ask a question is a step in knowledge, and even if there be no answer 

 it is a preparation for an answer. In the present case we realise the false analogy of the assertion 

 that a concept is the sum of its attributes ; and, perceiving how truly metaphysical is the 

 process of decomposition of attribute, we raise a contrast which throws light on the exclusively 

 mathematical character of the disaggregation of genus into species. 



We want different words to signify quantity of extension and quantity of intension : the 

 difference is that of quantitas and copia. The world is in possession of the word force : it 

 speaks of a term used in its complete force. In fact, as I found out after I had completely 

 organised the second part of this paper, the world has got beyond the logician's abacus in this 

 point, as in others. Corresponding to quantity particular and universal, I shall, in metaphysi- 

 cal enunciation, use the terms complete and incomplete force. 



Before illustrating this matter, I must observe that there are two forms of quantity : the 

 exJtensive, used in common logic, the intensive, not used. Either quantity is universal when 

 its element, be it aggregant or component, may be thrown away at pleasure : particular, 

 when it may not. Thus, the class man is contained in the class animal : man is extensively 



• At first sight we might imagine that one of the funda- 

 mental distinctions between class and attribute is this, that a 

 composition of classes introduces no new individuals, and puts 

 no individual into any class in which it was not before : but a 

 composition of attributes may introduce a new attribute, not 

 belonging to either alone. Thus to the attribute metallic bril- 

 liancy belongs the attribute destructible by oxidation^ which 

 neither belongs to metallic alone, nor to brilliancy alone : to 



mortal reason belongs the attribute of capability to believe in 

 & future state, in the common sense of the words ; which capa- 

 bility belongs neither to mortality without reason, nor to reason 

 without mortality. But this, as happens in so many other 

 cases, is of the usual tendency of thought, and not of necessity. 

 Speaking in extension, we have but been saying that the class 

 AB may be wholly contained in classes which wholly contain 

 neither A nor B. 



