THE CATEGORIES OR &quot; PRAEDICA MENTA &quot;. 145 



the &quot;something&quot; by attributing successive &quot;determining&quot; or &quot;specifying&quot; 

 predicates to it. If we analyse the complex names we use as predicates into 

 their remotest toots, we shall find that these all express not concrete, individual 

 data of sense, but abstract, universal elements of thought products of intel 

 lectual abstraction. This is Miiller s contention ; * and he supports it by 

 copious and instructive examples. Take, for instance, the English (and 

 German) word wolf, French loup, Latin lupus (for vlupus}, Greek XVKOS : 

 these are represented by the Sanscrit root vrage, to tear, to lacerate (and the 

 noun vrka, wolf). Similarly, the Latin avis, Greek oiWdy, comes from a root 

 signifying to fly ; the English fowl, German and Flemish Vogel, from a root 

 meaning feathered-, while the Sanscrit, andaja-s, conveys the sense of some 

 thing issuing from a shell. The derivative words have thus become re 

 stricted in denotation to classes of concrete things, while the original roots had 

 the abstract meaning of anything that rends, flies, is feathered, etc. Nor are 

 proper names an exception to this law, for they too appear to have been all 

 originally common names of abstract attributes. Examples would be super 

 fluous. 



It appears, then, that we have the authority of philologists for this re 

 markable and significant fact, that primitive language-roots indicate abstract 

 concepts, predicates of judgments. 



And each primitive root in turn can be shown to yield by various trans 

 formations, according to established philological laws of language development 

 quite a number of distinct cognate forms, appropriate to the modes or kinds 

 of predicates embodied in the logical categories. 



75. THE CATEGORIES AND REALITY. Any attempt to 

 reach a comprehensive classification of those widest concepts 

 which enter into all our judgments, and which form, so to 

 speak, the warp and woof of all our knowledge, must in 

 evitably give rise to metaphysical problems about the nature 

 of being or reality: and this no matter how avowedly &quot;logi 

 cal &quot; the purpose of our classification may be. While we aim 

 at establishing order in our knowledge by the arrangement of a 

 system of broad and distinct heads of interrogation, we cannot 

 avoid asking ourselves whether or how far the corresponding 

 heads of predication represent modes or determinations of being, 

 actually inherent in, and characteristic of, the material of our 

 thought the being or reality of things. 2 And it is what we 

 might call the natural, spontaneous conviction of everyone, that 

 those distinct determinations of our thought, which we call 



1 op. cit., chap. viii. Cf. MERCIER, Logique, pp. 122-3. 



2 &quot; Logical and metaphysical problems have a common root. We cannot 

 reflect upon the features which characterize our thought about things in general, 

 without asking how things can be conceived to exist ; for our most general 

 thoughts about them are just our conception of their manner of existence.&quot; JOSEPH, 

 op. cit., p. 44. 



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