170 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



ing the definition of an abstract name is often one of so much 

 difficulty. The question, What is justice ? is, in other words, 

 What is the attribute which mankind mean to predicate when 

 they call an action just? To which the first answer is, that 

 having come to no precise agreement on the point, they do 

 not mean to predicate distinctly any attribute at all. Never 

 theless, all believe that there is some common attribute be 

 longing to all the actions which they are in the habit of calling 

 just. The question then must be, whether there is any such 

 corsipon attribute ? and, in the first place, whether mankind 

 agree sufficiently with one another as to the particular actions 

 which they do or do not call just, to render the inquiry, what 

 quality those actions have in common, a possible one : if so, 

 whether the actions really have any quality in common ; and 

 if they have, what it is. Of these three, the first alone is an 

 inquiry into usage and convention ; the other two are inquiries 

 into matters of fact. And if the second question (whether the 

 actions form a class at all) has been answered negatively, there 

 remains a fourth, often more arduous than all the rest, namely, 

 how best to form a class artificially, which the name may 

 denote. 



And here it is fitting to remark, that the study of the 

 spontaneous growth of languages is of the utmost importance 

 to those who would logically remodel them. The classifica 

 tions rudely made by established language, when retouched, as 

 they almost all require to be, by the hands of the logician, are 

 often in themselves excellently suited to his purposes. As 

 compared with the classifications of a philosopher, they are 

 like the customary law of a country, which has grown up as 

 it were spontaneously, compared with laws methodized and 

 digested into a code : the former are a far less perfect instru 

 ment than the latter ; but being the result of a long, though 

 unscientific, course of experience, they contain a mass of mate 

 rials which may be made very usefully available in the forma 

 tion of the systematic body of written law. In like manner, 

 the established grouping of objects under a common name, 

 even when founded only on a gross and general resem 

 blance, is evidence, in the first place, that the resemblance is 



