IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 105 



viduals : that when names were imposed, mankind took into 

 consideration all the individual objects in the universe, distri 

 buted them into parcels or lists, and gave to the objects of each 

 list a common name, repeating this operation toties quoties 

 until they had invented all the general names of which lan 

 guage consists ; which having been once done, if a question 

 subsequently arises whether a certain general name can be 

 truly predicated of a certain particular object, we have only 

 (as it were) to read the roll of the objects upon which that 

 name was conferred, and see whether the object about which 

 the question arises is to be found among them. The framers 

 of language (it would seem to be supposed) have predetermined 

 all the objects that are to compose each class, and we have only 

 to refer to the record of an antecedent decision. 



So absurd a doctrine will be owned by nobody when thus 

 nakedly stated ; but if the commonly received explanations of 

 classification and naming do not imply this theory, it requires 

 to be shown how they admit of being reconciled with any 

 other. 



General names are not marks put upon definite objects ; 

 classes are not made by drawing a line round a given number 

 of assignable individuals. The objects which compose any 

 given class are perpetually fluctuating. We may frame a class 

 without knowing the individuals, or even any of the individuals, 

 of which it may be composed ; we may do so while believing 

 that no such individuals exist. If by the meaning of a general 

 name are to be understood the things which it is the name of, 

 no general name, except by accident, has a fixed meaning at 

 all, or ever long retains the same meaning. The only mode 

 in which any general name has a definite meaning, is by being 

 a name of an indefinite variety of things; namely, of all 

 things, known or unknown, past, present, or future, which 

 possess certain definite attributes. When, by studying not 

 the meaning of words, but the phenomena of nature, we dis 

 cover that these attributes are possessed by some object not 

 previously known to possess them, (as when chemists found 

 that the diamond was combustible), we include this new object 

 in the class ; but it did not already belong to the class. We 



