CLASSIFICATION AND THE PREDICABLES. 183 



vided the rest of our language is consistent with it; but, if we 

 call the class itself the genus, we must not talk of predicating 

 the genus. We predicate of man the name mortal ; and by 

 predicating the name, we may be said, in an intelligible sense, 

 to predicate what the name expresses, the attribute mortality ; 

 but in no allowable sense of the word predication do we predi- 

 cate of man the class mortal. We predicate of him the fact 

 of belonging to the class. 



By the Aristotelian logicians, the terms genus and species 

 were used in a more restricted sense. They did not admit 

 every class which could be divided into other classes to be a 

 genus, or every class which could be included in a larger class 

 to be a species. Animal was by them considered a genus ; man 

 and brute co-ordinate species under that genus : biped, however, 

 would not have been admitted to be a genus with reference to 

 man, but a proprium or accidens only. It was requisite, ac- 

 cording to their theory, that genus and species should be of 

 the essence of the subject. Animal was of the essence of man ; 

 biped was not. And in every classification they considered 

 some one class as the lowest or infima species. Man, for in- 

 stance, was a lowest species. Any further divisions into which 

 the class might be capable of being broken down, as man into 

 white, black, and red man, or into priest and layman, they did 

 not admit to be species. 



It has been seen, however, in the preceding chapter, that 

 the distinction between the essence of a class, and the attri- 

 butes or properties which are not of its essence a distinction 

 which has given occasion to so much abstruse speculation, 

 and to which so mysterious a character was formerly, and by 

 many writers is still, attached, amounts to nothing more 

 than the difference between those attributes of the class which 

 are, and those which are not, involved in the signification of 

 the class-name. As applied to individuals, the word Essence, 

 we found, has no meaning, except in connexion with the ex- 

 ploded tenets of the Realists ; and what the schoolmen chose 

 to call the essence of an individual, was simply the essence 

 of the class to which that individual was most familiarly 

 referred. 



