THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 47 



thing, we are almost always supposed to mean a substance. There seems 

 a kind of contradiction in using such an expression as that one thing is 

 merely an attribute of another thing. And the announcement of a Classi- 

 fication of Things would, I believe, prepare most readers for an enumera- 

 tion like those in natural history, beginning with the great divisions of an- 

 imal, vegetable, and mineral, and subdividing them into classes and orders. 

 If, rejecting the word Thing, we endeavor to find another of a more general 

 import, or at least more exclusively confined to that general import, a word 

 denoting all that exists, and connoting only simple existence; no word 

 might be presumed fitter for such a purpose than being : originally the 

 present participle of a verb which in one of its meanings is exactly equiv- 

 alent to the verb exists; and therefore suitable, even by its grammatical 

 formation, to be the concrete of the abstract existence. But this word, 

 strange as the fact may appear, is still more completely spoiled for the 

 purpose which it seemed expressly made for, than the word Thing. Being 

 is, by custom, exactly synonymous with substance; except that it is free 

 from a slight taint of a second ambiguity ; being implied impartially to 

 matter and to mind, while substance, though originally and in strictness 

 applicable to both, is apt to suggest in preference the idea of matter. At- 

 tributes are never called Beings; nor are feelings. A Being is that which 

 excites feelings, and which possesses attributes. The soul is called a Be- 

 ing ; God and angels are called Beings ; but if we were to say, extension, 

 color, wisdom, virtue, are beings, we should perhaps be suspected of think- 

 ing with some of the ancients, that the cardinal virtues are animals ; or, at 

 the least, of holding with the Platonic school the doctrine of self-existent 

 Ideas, or with the followers of Epicurus that of Sensible Forms, which de- 

 tach themselves in every direction from bodies, and by coming in contact 

 with our organs, cause our perceptions. We should be supposed, in short, 

 to believe that Attributes are Substances. 



In consequence of this perversion of the Avord Being, philosophers look- 

 ing about for something to supply its place, laid their hands upon the word 

 Entity, a piece of barbarous Latin, invented by the schoolmen to be used 

 as an abstract name, in which class its grammatical form would seem to 

 place it: but being seized by logicians in distress to stop a leak in their 

 terminology, it has ever since been used as a concrete name. The kindred 

 word essence^ born at the same time and of the same parents, scarcely un- 

 derwent a more complete transformation when, from being the abstract 

 of the verb to he, it came to denote something sufiiciently concrete to be 

 inclosed in a glass bottle. The word Entity, since it settled down into a 

 concrete name, has retained its universality of signification somewhat less 

 impaired than any of the names before mentioned. Yet the same gradual 

 decay to which, after a certain age, all the language of psychology seems 

 liable, has been at work even here. If you call virtue an entity, you are 

 indeed somewhat less strongly suspected of believing it to be a substance 

 than if you called it a being; but you are by no means free from the sus- 

 picion. Every word which was originally intended to connote mere ex- 

 istence, seems, after a time, to enlarge its connotation to separate existence, 

 or existence freed from the condition of belonging to a substance; which 

 condition being precisely what constitutes an attribute, attributes are grad- 

 ually shut out; and along with them feelings, Avhich in ninety-nine cases 

 out of a hundred have no other name than that of the attribute which is 

 grounded on them. Strange that when the greatest embarrassment felt by 

 all who have any considerable number of thoughts to express, is to find a 



