THE PREDICABLES. 85 



later, by the possession of a few common characteristics, but each class is in 

 definitely complex and comprehensive of variety in detail ; each class presents 

 many characteristics common to all its members ; these are called properties 

 in a looser sense ; and it is the aim of the inductive sciences to account for 

 each &quot; property &quot; by discovering and establishing the law of its manifestation, 

 i.e. its connexion with other properties of the class in question or of kindred 

 classes. * If a species, for example, is keen-scented, that must depend upon 

 conditions which are but a small part of what would be included in a complete 

 account of its nature. In order to find a commensurable subject of which a 

 property is predicable we must abstract from all in the species which is not 

 relevant to that one property ; and our subject will not be a concrete kind, 

 but a set of conditions in the abstract. The property whose conditions we 

 have found is not of course the property of those conditions, but of anything 

 that fulfils those conditions ; keen-scentedness, for example, is not a property 

 of a particular construction of the olfactory organ (though we should call it 

 an effect of this), but of an animal in whom the olfactory organ is thus con 

 structed ; the laws of organic life suppose of course that there exist organisms 

 in which they are exhibited. We may still speak therefore of properties of 

 kinds ; but the demonstration of them considers the nature of the kind only 

 so far forth as it concerns the property in question. The property is not 

 common and peculiar to the kind, if other kinds, as may well be the case, 

 agree with it in those respects on which the property depends ; or if it depends 

 on conditions which cannot be fulfilled except in an individual of that kind, 

 but are not fulfilled in every individual thereof.&quot; 



&quot; Such reflections led the Schoolmen to distinguish four senses of the term 

 property.&quot; l These were already distinguished by Porphyry 2 as follows ; (i) 

 What belongs to a certain species alone, though not to all its members, as to 

 be a &quot;doctor&quot; or a &quot;surveyor &quot; is to the human species ; (2} What belongs 

 to all the members of a certain species, but not to them alone, as &quot; biped &quot; 

 in regard to man ; (3) What belongs to a certain species alone and to all its 

 members but not always, as &quot;white-haired&quot; in regard to old people; (4) 

 What belongs always to all the members of a certain species, and to it alone, 

 as the faculty of &quot;laughing &quot; in man, or that of &quot;neighing &quot; in the horse. 



&quot; In all the uses of the term property the notion of a necessary or causal 

 connexion is retained ; but commensurateness with the subject is not insisted on 

 in all. No doubt a commensurate subject for every predicate is to be found ; 

 but only by specifying the precise conditions (in an organism or whatever it 

 may be) on which the property depends ; but the concrete thing is the sub 

 ject about which we naturally make propositions, naming it after its kind ; and 



1 JOSEPH, op. cit., pp. 89, 90. 



2 &quot; Proprium vero quadrifariam dividunt. Nam et id quod soli alicui speciei 

 accidit, etsi non omni, proprium dicitur : ut hominem esse medicum vel geometram. 

 Et quod omni accidit etsi non soli, quemadmodum hominem esse bipedem. Et 

 quod soli, et omni, et aliquando : ut homini in senectute canescere. Et quod soli 

 et omni et semper : quemadmodum hominem esse risibile ; nam etsi non semper 

 rideat, tamen risibilis dicitur, non quod semper rideat, sed quod aptus natus sit ad 

 ridendum ; hoc autem ei semper naturale est, quemadmodum et equo hinnibile. 

 Haec autem nominantur vere propria, quoniam etiam convertuntur, quicquid enim 

 est equus, hinnibile est, et quidquid est hinnibile est equus.&quot; PORPHYRY, Isagope, 

 cap. 3. 



