RATIOCINATION, OR SYLLOGISM. 199 



4. It remains to translate this exposition of the syllo- 

 gism from the one into the other of the two languages in 



logical fallacy to present the two axioms in the text, as the regulating principles 

 of syllogism. He charges me with falling into the error pointed out by Arch- 

 bishop Whately and myself, of confounding exact likeness with literal identity ; 

 and maintains, that we ought not to say that Socrates possesses the same attri- 

 butes which are connoted by the word Man, but only that he possesses attri- 

 butes exactly like them : according to which phraseology, Socrates, and the at- 

 tribute mortality, are not two things coexisting with the same thing, as the 

 axiom asserts, but two things coexisting with two different things. 



The question between Mr. Spencer and me is merely one of language ; for 

 neither of us (if I understand Mr. Spencer's opinions rightly) believes an attri- 

 bute to be a real thing, possessed of objective existence ; we believe it to be a 

 particular mode of naming our sensations, or our expectations of sensation, 

 when looked at in their relation to an external object which excites them. The 

 question raised by Mr. Spencer does not, therefore, concern the properties of 

 any really existing thing, but the comparative appropriateness, for philosophical 

 purposes, of two different modes of using a name. Considered in this point of 

 view, the phraseology I have employed, which is that commonly used by philo- 

 sophers, seems to me to be the best. Mr. Spencer is of opinion that because 

 Socrates and Alcibiades are not the same man, the attribute which constitutes 

 them men should not be called the same attribute ; that because the humanity 

 of one man and that of another express themselves to our senses not by the 

 same individual sensations but by sensations exactly alike, humanity ought to 

 be regarded as a different attribute in every different man. But on this 

 showing, the humanity even of any one man should be considered as different 

 attributes now and half-an-hour hence ; for the sensations by which it will then 

 manifest itself to my organs will not be a continuation of my present sensations, 

 but a repetition of them ; fresh sensations, not identical with, but only exactly 

 like the present. If every general conception, instead of being " the One in the 

 Many," were considered to be as many different conceptions as there are things 

 to which it is applicable, there would be no such thing as general language. 

 A name would have no general meaning if man connoted one thing when pre- 

 dicated of John, and another, though closely resembling, thing when predicated 

 of William. Accordingly a recent pamphlet asserts the impossibility of general 

 knowledge on this precise ground. 



The meaning of any general name is some outward or inward phenomenon, 

 consisting, in the last resort, of feelings ; and these feelings, if their continuity 

 is for an instant broken, are no longer the same feelings, in the sense of indi- 

 vidual identity. What, then, is the common something which gives a meaning 

 to the general name ? Mr. Spencer can only say, it is the similarity of the 

 feelings ; and I rejoin, the attribute is precisely that similarity. The names of 

 attributes are in their ultimate analysis names for the resemblances of our sen- 

 sations (or other feelings). Every general name, whether abstract or concrete, 

 denotes or connotes one or more of those resemblances. It will not, probably, 



