IMPORT OF PROPOSITIOXS, 



113 



Socrates is a man, the affirmation intended is, that gold re- 

 sembles other metals, and Socrates other men, more nearly 

 than they resemble the objects contained in any other of the 

 classes co-ordinate with these. 



There is some slight degree of foundation for this remark, 

 but no more than a slight degree. The arrangement of things 

 into classes, such as the class metal, or the class man, is 

 grounded indeed on a resemblance among the things which 

 are placed in the same class, but not on a mere general resem- 

 blance : the resemblance it is grounded on consists in the 

 possession by all those things, of certain common peculiari- 

 ties ; and those peculiarities it is which the terms connote, and 

 which the propositions consequently assert; not the resem- 

 blance : for thougli when I say, Gold is a metal, I say by im- 

 plication that if there be any other metals it must resemble 

 them, yet if there were no other metals I might still assert the 

 proposition with the same meaning as at present, namely, that 

 gold has the various properties implied in the word metal ; 

 just as it might be said, Christians are men, even if there 

 were no men who were not Christians. Propositions, there- 

 fore, in which objects are referred to a class because they pos- 

 sess the attributes constituting the class, are so far from assert- 

 ing nothing but resemblance, that they do not, properly speak- 

 ing, assert resemblance at all. 



But we remarked some time ago (and the reasons of the 

 remark will be more fully entered into in a subsequent Book*) 

 that there is sometimes a convenience in extending the 

 boundaries of a class so as to include things which possess 

 in a very inferior degree, if in any, some of the characteristic 

 properties of the class, provided they resemble that class 

 more than any other, insomuch that the general propositions 

 which are true of the class, will be nearer to being true of 

 those things than any other equally general propositions. 

 For instance, there are substances called metals which have 

 very few of the properties by which metals are commonly 

 recognised ; and almost every great family of plants or animals 



* Book iv. ch. vii. 

 VOL. I. 8 



