CHAPTER V. 

 THE CATEGORIES OR &quot; PRAEDICAMENTA &quot;. 



70. THE PROBLEM OF CLASSIFYING OUR WIDEST CONCEPTS. 

 In the preceding chapter we examined the general principles of 

 division and classification, as well as their main applications to 

 some of the special sciences. 



We also pointed out that both definition and division, by 

 analysing the intensive and extensive aspects of our ideas, dis 

 charge the very important function of bringing into clearer light 

 those simplest, ultimate notions which form the self-evident 

 axioms or principles of the various human sciences. Each of 

 these principles is the formulation of a self-evident relation be 

 tween two simple notions. 1 Every special science has its own 

 proper first principles. But the sciences themselves are inter 

 related. They form a hierarchy in which the more special and 

 derivative are subordinate to the more general, and these in turn 

 to the one widest science which seeks to unify them all. This 

 widest science is called Metaphysics or &quot; Philosophia Prima &quot; : 

 its principles are the widest of all, and the notions that form these 

 are the simplest of all : notions of being, substance, cause, action, 

 time, space, etc. It is on a comparatively small number of such 

 notions that, in its ultimate analysis, all our knowledge is based ; 

 of these it is built up, so to speak ; into these, ultimately, it is 

 resolvable. But all our knowledge is formulated internally or 

 mentally in acts of judgment, by which we predicate, i.e. affirm, 

 or deny, something about something, and externally or verbally 

 in propositions which express those judgments. 



The question now, therefore, arises, whether it is possible to 

 make out a general, all-embracing classification of all possible 

 predicates, so as to bring these under one or other of a small 



1 We refer, of course, to principles of Thought or Knowledge, logical principles ; 

 not to principles of Being, ontological principles : these latter are the fundamental 

 causes or constituents of Real Being, and form part of the subject-matter of meta 

 physics. 



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