THE CATEGORIES OR &quot; PRAEDICAMENTA &quot;. 137 



Categories of Aristotle are, therefore, a classification of all the pos 

 sible predicates by which we may formulate our knowledge about 

 any individual subject. His classification is logical rather than 

 metaphysical: a classification of notions rather than of things; 

 an aid in so far as it is successful to clearness and order in our 

 ideas, in the knowledge we already possess ; and therefore, also, 

 an aid in the pursuit of further knowledge, &quot; an aid to the due 

 examination of nature,&quot; since his categories serve &quot; to recall 

 points of view from which questions may be put in regard to the 

 objects of inquiry that present themselves&quot;. 1 His categories are 

 ten great headings, or schemes, or types, of predication (tr^/iara 

 T?}9 KaTTjyopias ; ra icoivfj /caryyopovfAeva), under some one or 

 other of which he would find a place for every possible general 

 notion we can conceivably use in interpreting, or judging 

 the individual things or subjects which come up for investigation 

 in the course of our whole conscious or mental experience. 2 



In Scholastic logic these ten categories are called &quot; prae- 

 dicamenta &quot; (from praedicare, to predicate) ; and, since they 

 are ultimate classes, to one or other of which every conceivable 

 notion can be referred, and beyond which &quot; it can get no further, 

 hence has arisen, by a strange freak of language, the familiar 

 expression of * getting into a predicament, to express the 

 unpleasant situation of one who has involved himself in circum 

 stances from which he would fain escape but cannot&quot;. 3 



Aristotle, mindful of the metaphysical aspect of his division, called the 

 categories yeVr? ro&amp;gt;i&amp;gt; 6Wo&amp;gt;i&amp;gt;, ycvrj noivd, ra Trpcora ; and his Scholastic commen 

 tators in the Middle Ages, treating the categories from the same metaphysical 

 standpoint, called them &quot; suprema genera rerum&quot; at no time, however, 

 losing sight of the primarily logical character of the division. 



The scope and aim of Aristotle s classification have been sometimes mis 

 understood. The question as to the relation of the logical &quot; categories &quot; 

 to the metaphysical &quot; genera suprema &quot; on the one hand, and to the gram 

 matical &quot; parts of speech &quot; on the other, is a phase of the fundamental 

 philosophical problem of the relation between language, thought, and thing. 



1 WELTON, op. cit., i., pp. 94, 97, quoted from LOTZE, Metaphysics, i., pp. 24-5. 



2 The yev-ri TVV Kar-nyopiuv, classes or kinds of predicates, are therefore classes 

 into one or other of which any simple predicate must fall (a complex predicate may 

 be referred to two or more of them, e.g. &quot; Socrates instructed his disciples, in the 

 market-place, yesterday &quot;) ; they are not classes into one or other of which the in 

 dividual things about which they are predicated must fall. The latter may be re 

 ferred to any of the categories, according to the predicates we apply to them. It is 

 by such application we enter into conscious possession of whatever intellectual 

 knowledge we have of individual things. 



3 CLARKE, Logic, p. 190. 



