120 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



the acceptation in which the speaker or writer desires to use 

 them. These propositions occupy, however, a conspicuous 

 place in philosophy ; and their nature and characteristics 

 are of as much importance in logic, as those of any of the 

 other classes of propositions previously adverted to. 



If all propositions respecting the signification of words 

 were as simple and unimportant as those which served us 

 for examples when examining Hobbes* theory of predication, 

 viz. those of which the subject and predicate are proper names, 

 and which assert only that those names have, or that they 

 have not, been conventionally assigned to the same individual, 

 there would be little to attract to such propositions the atten 

 tion of philosophers. But the class of merely verbal proposi 

 tions embraces not only much more than these, but much more 

 than any propositions which at first sight present themselves 

 as verbal ; comprehending a kind of assertions which have 

 been regarded not only as relating to things, but as having 

 actually a more intimate relation with them than any other 

 propositions whatever. The student in philosophy will per 

 ceive that I allude to the distinction on which so much stress 

 was laid by the schoolmen, and which has been retained either 

 under the same or under other names by most metaphysicians 

 to the present day, viz. between what were called essential, 

 and what were called accidental, propositions, and between 

 essential and accidental properties or attributes. 



2. Almost all metaphysicians prior to Locke, as well as 

 many since his time, have made a great mystery of Essential 

 Predication, and of predicates which are said to be of the 

 essence of the subject. The essence of a thing, they said, was 

 that without which the thing could neither be, nor be con 

 ceived to be. Thus, rationality was of the essence of man, 

 because without rationality, man could not be conceived to 

 exist. The different attributes which made up the essence of 

 the thing were called its essential properties ; and a proposition 

 in which any of these were predicated of it was called an 

 Essential Proposition, and was considered to go deeper into the 

 nature of the thing, and to convey more important information 



