VERBAL AND REAL PROPOSITIONS. 125 



fairly said, that rationality, being of the essence of Man, was 

 of the essence also of Thompson. But if Man altogether be 

 only the individual men and a name bestowed upon them in 

 consequence of certain common properties, what becomes of 

 John Thompson's essence ? 



A fundamental error is seldom expelled from philosophy 

 by a single victory. It retreats slowly, defends every inch 

 of ground, and often, after it has been driven from the open 

 country, retains a footing in some remote fastness. The 

 essences of individuals were an unmeaning figment arising 

 from a misapprehension of the essences of classes, yet even 

 Locke, when he extirpated the parent error, could not shake 

 himself free from that which was its fruit. He distinguished 

 two sorts of essences, Real and Nominal. His nominal essences 

 were the essences of classes, explained nearly as we have now 

 explained them. Nor is anything wanting to render the third 

 book of Locke's Essay a nearly unexceptionable treatise on 

 the connotation of names, except to free its language from the 

 assumption of what are called Abstract Ideas, which unfor- 

 tunately is involved in the phraseology, though not necessarily 

 connected with the thoughts contained in that immortal Third 

 Book.* But, besides nominal essences, he admitted real 

 essences, or essences of individual objects, which he supposed 

 to be the causes of the sensible properties of those objects. 

 We know not (said he) what these are ; (and this acknowledg- 

 ment rendered the fiction comparatively innocuous ;) but if we 

 did, we could, from them alone, demonstrate the sensible pro- 

 perties of the object, as the properties of the triangle are 



* The always acute and often profound author of An Outline of Sematology 

 (Mr. B. H. Smart) justly says, " Locke will be much more intelligible if, in 

 the majority of places, we substitute ' the knowledge of for what he calls * the 

 Idea of" (p. 10). Among the many criticisms on Locke's use of the word 

 Idea, this is the one which, as it appears to me, most nearly hits the mark ; 

 and I quote it for the additional reason that it precisely expresses the point of 

 difference respecting the import of Propositions, between my view and what I 

 have spoken of as the Conceptualist view of them. Where a Conceptualist 

 says that a name or a proposition expresses our Idea of a thing, I should 

 generally say (instead of our Idea) cur Knowledge, or Belief, concerning the 

 thing itself. 



