194 REASONING. 



sary on that theory that we should suppose to exist between 

 those general substances and the particular substances which 

 were subordinated to them. That everything predicable of 

 the universal was predicable of the various individuals con- 

 tained under it, was then no identical proposition, but a 

 statement of what was conceived as a fundamental law of the 

 universe. The assertion that the entire nature and properties 

 of the substantia secunda formed part of the nature and pro- 

 perties of each of the individual substances called by the same 

 name ; that the properties of Man, for example, were proper- 

 ties of all men ; was a proposition of real significance when 

 man did not mean all men, but something inherent in men, 

 and vastly superior to them in dignity. Now, however, when 

 it is known that a class, an universal, a genus or species, is 

 not an entity per se, but neither more nor less than the indi- 

 vidual substances themselves which are placed in the class, 

 and that there is nothing real in the matter except those 

 objects, a common name given to them, and common attri- 

 butes indicated by the name ; what, I should be glad to know, 

 do we learn by being told, that whatever can be affirmed of a 

 class, may be affirmed of every object contained in the class ? 

 The class is nothing but the objects contained in it: and the 

 dictum de omni merely amounts to the identical proposition, 

 that whatever is true of certain objects, is true of each of those 

 objects. If all ratiocination were no more than the applica- 

 tion of this maxim to particular cases, the syllogism would 

 indeed be, what it has so often been declared to be, solemn 

 trifling. The dictum de omni is on a par with another truth, 

 which in its time was also reckoned of great importance, 

 " Whatever is, is." To give any real meaning to the dictum 

 de omni, we must consider it not as an axiom, but as a defi- 

 nition; we must look upon it as intended to explain, in a 

 circuitous and paraphrastic manner, the meaning of the word 

 class. 



An error which seemed finally refuted and dislodged from 

 thought, often needs only put on a new suit of phrases, to be 

 welcomed back to its old quarters, and allowed to repose 

 unquestioned for another cycle of ages. Modern philosophers 



