196 REASONING. 



them properly except in proportion as we are already acquainted 

 with their nature and properties. Can it be necessary to say, 

 that none, not even the most trivial knowledge with respect 

 to Things, ever was or could be originally got at by any con- 

 ceivable manipulation of mere names, as such ; and that what 

 can be learned from names, is only what somebody who used 

 the names knew before ? Philosophical analysis confirms the 

 indication of common sense, that the function of names is but 

 that of enabling us to remember and to communicate our 

 thoughts. That they also strengthen, even to an incalculable 

 extent, the power of thought itself, is most true : but they do 

 this by no intrinsic and peculiar virtue ; they do it by the 

 power inherent in an artificial memory, an instrument of which 

 few have adequately considered the immense potency. As an 

 artificial memory, language truly is, what it has so often been 

 called, an instrument of thought; but it is one thing to be the 

 instrument, and another to be the exclusive subject upon which 

 the instrument is exercised. We think, indeed, to a consider- 

 able extent, by means of names, but what we think of, are the 

 things called by those names ; and there cannot be a greater 

 error than to imagine that thought can be carried on with 

 nothing in our mind but names, or that we can make the 

 names think for us. 



3. Those who considered the dictum de omni as the 

 foundation of the syllogism, looked upon arguments in a 

 manner corresponding to the erroneous view which Hobbes 

 took of propositions. Because there are some propositions 

 which are merely verbal, Hobbes, in order apparently that his 

 definition might be rigorously universal, defined a proposition 

 as if no propositions declared anything except the meaning of 

 words. If Hobbes was right ; if no further account than this 

 could be given of the import of propositions ; no theory could 

 be given but the commonly received one, of the combination of 

 propositions in a syllogism. If the minor premise asserted 

 nothing more than that something belongs to a class, and if 

 the major premise asserted nothing of that class except that it 

 is included in another class, the conclusion would only be 



