CHAPTER VII. 



OF THE NATURE OF CLASSIFICATION, AND THE FIVE 

 PBEDICABLES. 



1. IN examining into the nature of general proposi- 

 tions, we have adverted much less than is usual with logicians 

 to the ideas of a Class, and Classification ; ideas which, since 

 the Realist doctrine of General Substances went out of vogue, 

 have formed the basis of almost every attempt at a philoso- 

 phical theory of general terms and general propositions. We 

 have considered general names as having a meaning, quite in- 

 dependently of their being the names of classes. That cir- 

 cumstance is in truth accidental, it being wholly immaterial to 

 the signification of the name whether there are many objects, 

 or only one, to which it happens to be applicable, or whether 

 there be any at all. God is as much a general term to the 

 Christian or Jew as to the Polytheist ; and dragon, hippogriff, 

 chimera, mermaid, ghost, are as much so as if real objects 

 existed, corresponding to those names. Every name the sig- 

 nification of which is constituted by attributes, is potentially a 

 name of an indefinite number of objects ; but it needs not be 

 actually the name of any ; and if of any, it may be the name 

 of only one. As soon as we employ a name to connote attri- 

 butes, the things, be they more or fewer, which happen to 

 possess those attributes, are constituted ipso facto a class. 

 But in predicating the name we predicate only the attributes ; 

 and the fact of belonging to a class does not, in many cases, 

 come into view at all. 



Although, however, Predication does not presuppose Classi- 

 fication, and though the theory of Names and of Propositions 

 is not cleared up, but only encumbered, by intruding the idea 

 of classification into it, there is nevertheless a close connexion 

 between Classification and the employment of General Names. 

 VOL. i. 9 



