60 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



term might thus be concrete in one context and abstract in another, according 

 to the terms with which it is compared, and the distinction would thus become 

 relative, not absolute : it would be a distinction between the abstract and the 

 concrete use of terms. This way of understanding the distinction would attach 

 a simple, intelligible sense to &quot; thing &quot; and &quot; attribute &quot; in logic. It would 

 enable us to classify as abstract or concrete, according to the context, such 

 terms as signify events, processes, states, changes, rather than &quot;things&quot; in 

 the more restricted meaning of material, individual objects : such terms as 

 equation, logic, the weather, an after-thought, action, a parliamentary 

 election, space, etc. It would, however, coincide with the use of terms as 

 subjects and predicates of logical propositions. Undoubtedly, logic deals with 

 concepts and terms not so much for their own sake as on account of 

 their place in the judgment and proposition. But when we reflect that the 

 subjects of all our judgments are used concretely in the sense just indicated 

 (being used as subjects of attributes} no matter how evidently abstract be 

 the form of the term ; and that the predicates of all our judgments are used 

 abstractly in the sense indicated above (being used as attributes of subjects} 

 notwithstanding the evidently concrete form of most of them of all adjec 

 tives, for example we cannot help thinking that this way of understanding 

 the distinction does too much violence to the usually accepted sense of the 

 terms &quot;abstract and &quot;concrete&quot;; besides being superfluous owing to its 

 coinciding with the use of terms as subjects and predicates. 



We prefer, therefore, simply to regard as abstract those terms which are 

 the names of attributes considered alone or apart from the things from which 

 they are derived whether those attributes are regarded as the subjects of 

 further attributes or not. On the other hand, the names of things or of 

 classes of things or of attributes thought of as existing in things (and there 

 fore expressed by adjectives) will be concrete. Although this principle may 

 not be easy to apply in all cases it is at least simple and intelligible, and it 

 is based on the sound Aristotelean division of all objects of thought into su6- 

 stancesand. accidents (71). Not that it merely reproduces this latter distinc 

 tion ; for it recognizes as concrete not merely the names of &quot; first &quot; or &quot; in 

 dividual &quot; substances the substantiae primae but also of common natures 

 substantiae secundaeas well as of all accidents considered as inhering in 

 the individual substances. Were we to define an abstract term as the name 

 of an attribute in whatever state the latter be thought of, we should classify 

 adjectives as abstract. 1 



Owing to the fact that the adjective is not properly the name of an attri 

 bute, nor properly the name of a substance or subject, it has been placed by 

 some logicians neither among abstract nor among concrete terms, but in a 

 class apart, and called an &quot;attributive&quot; term. But this separation of adjec 

 tives from other terms &quot;corresponds to no further distinction in thought&quot;&quot; : 

 it regards not the thought-object or thought-term itself but the attribution of 

 it to another thought-object in predication or judgment. 



36. HAVE ABSTRACT TERMS EXTENSION OR DENOTATION ? 

 NON-DENOTATIVE TERMS. We may now inquire whether the 



1 Cf. JOSEPH, u/. cit., p. 26. 3 ibid,, pp. 25, 26. 



