116 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



things, because of, and in order to express, their possessing 

 that attribute, or that combination of attributes. When, 

 therefore, we predicate of anything a concrete name, the 

 attribute is what we in reality predicate of it. But it has 

 now been shown that in all propositions of which the predi 

 cate is a concrete name, what is really predicated is one of 

 five things : Existence, Coexistence, Causation, Sequence, or 

 Resemblance. An attribute, therefore, is necessarily either 

 an existence, a coexistence, a causation, a sequence, or a 

 resemblance. When a proposition consists of a subject and 

 predicate which are abstract terms, it consists of terms which 

 must necessarily signify one or other of these things. When 

 we predicate of anything an abstract name, we affirm of the 

 thing that it is one or other of these five things; that it is a 

 case of Existence, or of Coexistence, or of Causation, or of 

 Sequence, or of Resemblance. 



It is impossible to imagine any proposition expressed in 

 abstract terms, which cannot be transformed into a precisely 

 equivalent proposition in which the terms are concrete ; 

 namely, either the concrete names which connote the attri 

 butes themselves, or the names of the fundamenta of those 

 attributes ; the facts or phenomena on which they are 

 grounded. To illustrate the latter case, let us take this 

 proposition, of which the subject only is an abstract name, 

 &quot; Thoughtlessness is dangerous.&quot; Thoughtlessness is an 

 attribute, grounded on the facts which we call thoughtless 

 actions ; and the proposition is equivalent to this, Thoughtless 

 actions are dangerous. In the next example the predicate as 

 well as the subject are abstract names: &quot;Whiteness is a 

 colour ;&quot; or &quot; The colour of snow is a whiteness.&quot; These 

 attributes being grounded on sensations, the equivalent pro 

 positions in the concrete would be, The sensation of white is 

 one of the sensations called those of colour, The sensation of 

 sight, caused by looking at snow, is one of the sensations 

 called sensations of white. In these propositions, as we 

 have before seen, the matter-of-fact asserted is a Resem 

 blance. In the following examples, the concrete terms are 

 those which directly correspond to the abstract names; con- 



