60 



NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



to me that the amount of illustration bestowed upon these may, 

 so far as we are concerned, suffice for the whole genus. We 

 shall, therefore, proceed to the two remaining classes of name- 

 able things ; all things which are external to the mind being 

 considered as belonging either to the class of Substances or to 

 that of Attributes. 



II. SUBSTANCES. 



Logicians have endeavoured to define Substance and Attri 

 bute ; but their definitions are not so much attempts to draw 

 a distinction between the things themselves, as instructions 

 what difference it is customary to make in the grammatical 

 structure of the sentence, according as we are speaking of sub 

 stances or of attributes. Such definitions are rather lessons of 

 English, or of Greek, Latin, or German, than of mental phi 

 losophy. An attribute, say the school logicians, must be the 

 attribute of something; colour, for example, must be the colour 

 of something ; goodness must be the goodness of something : 

 and if this something should cease to exist, or should cease to 

 be connected with the attribute, the existence of the attribute 

 would be at an end. A substance, on the contrary, is self- 

 existent ; in speaking about it, we need not put of after its 

 name. A stone is not the stone of anything; the moon is not 

 the moon of anything, but simply the moon. Unless, indeed, 

 the name which we choose to give to the substance be a re 

 lative name ; if so, it must be followed either by of, or by some 

 other particle, implying, as that preposition does, a reference 

 to something else : but then the other characteristic peculiarity 

 of an attribute would fail ; the something might be destroyed, 

 and the substance might still subsist. Thus, a father must be 

 the father of something, and so far resembles an attribute, in 

 being referred to something besides himself: if there were no 

 child, there would be no father : but this, when we look into 

 the matter, only means that we should not call him father. 

 The man called father might still exist though there were no 

 child, as he existed before there was a child : and there would 

 be no contradiction in supposing him to exist, though the 



