22 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



personal knowledge of Things amount to, after subtracting 

 all which he has acquired by means of the words of other 

 people ? Even after he has learned as much as people 

 usually do learn from others, will the notions of things con- 

 tained in his individual mind afford as sufficient a basis for a 

 catalogue raisonne as the notions which are in the minds of all 

 mankind ? 



In any enumeration and classification of Things, which 

 does not set out from their names, no varieties of things will 

 of course be comprehended but those recognised by the par- 

 ticular inquirer ; and it will still remain to be established, by 

 a subsequent examination of names, that the enumeration has 

 omitted nothing which ought to have been included. But if 

 we begin with names, and use them as our clue to the things, 

 we bring at once before us all the distinctions which have been 

 recognised, not by a single inquirer, but by all inquirers taken 

 together. It doubtless may, and I believe it will, be found, 

 that mankind have multiplied the varieties unnecessarily, and 

 have imagined distinctions among things, where there were 

 only distinctions in the manner of naming them. But we are 

 not entitled to assume this in the commencement. We must 

 begin by recognising the distinctions made by ordinary lan- 

 guage. If some of these appear, on a close examination, not 

 to be fundamental, the enumeration of the different kinds of 

 realities may be abridged accordingly. But to impose upon 

 the facts in the first instance the yoke of a theory, while 

 the grounds of the theory are reserved for discussion in a sub- 

 sequent stage, is not a course which a logician can reasonably 

 adopt. 



