IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 77 - 



the truth of the proposition depends ; not their being called by the name. 

 Connotative names do not precede, but follow, the attributes Avhich they 

 connote. If one attribute happens to be always found in conjunction with 

 another attribute, the concrete names which answer to those attributes will 

 of course be predicable of the same subjects, and may be said, in Hobbes's 

 language (in the propriety of which on this occasion I fully concur), to be 

 two names for the same things. But the possibility of a concurrent appli- 

 cation of the two names, is a mere consequence of the conjunction between 

 the two attributes, 'and was, in most cases, never thought of when the 

 names were introduced and their signification fixed. That the diamond is 

 combustible, was a proposition certainly not dreamed of when the words 

 Diamond and Combustible first received their meaning; and could not 

 have been discovered by the most ingenious and refined analysis of the (Sig- 

 nification of those words. It was found out by a very different process, 

 namely, by exerting the senses, and learning from them, that the attribute 

 of combustibility existed in the diamonds upon which the experiment was 

 tried ; the number or character of the experiments being such, that what 

 was true of those individuals might be concluded to be true of all sub- 

 stances "called by the name," that is, of all substances possessing the at- 

 tributes which the name connotes. The assertion, therefore, when ana- 

 lyzed, is, that wherever we find certain attributes, there will be found a cer- 

 tain other attribute : which is not a question of the signification of names, ^ 

 but of laws of nature ; the order existing among phenomena. ^ 



§ 3. Although Hobbes's theory of Predication has not, in the terms in 

 which he stated it, met with a very favorable reception from subsequent 

 thinkers, a theory virtually identical with it, and not by any means so per- 

 spicuously expressed, may almost be said to have taken the rank of an es- 

 tablished opinion. The most generally received notion of Predication de- 

 cidedly is that it consists in referring something to a class, i. e., either pla- 

 cing an individual under a class, or placing one class under another class. 

 Thus, the proposition, Man is mortal, asserts, according to this view of it, 

 that the class man is included in the class mortal. " Plato is a philoso- 

 pher," asserts that the individual Plato is one of those who compose the 

 class philosopher. If the proposition is negative, then instead of placing 

 something in a class, it is said to exclude something from a class. Thus, 

 if the following be the proposition. The elephant is not carnivorous ; what 

 is asserted (according to this theory) is, that the elephant is excluded from 

 the class carnivorous, or is not numbered among the things comprising that 

 class. There is no real difference, except in language, between this theory 

 of Predication and the theory of Hobbes. For a class is absolutely noth- ; u 

 ing but an indefinite number of individuals denoted by a general name. * 

 The name given to them in common, is what makes them a class. — To re-'' 

 fer any thing to a class, therefore, is to look upon it as one of the things 

 which are to be called by that common name. To exclude it from a class, 

 is to say that the common name is not applicable to it. 



How widely these views of predication have prevailed, is evident from 

 .his, that they are the basis of the celebrated dictum de omni et oiullo. 

 When the syllogism is resolved, by all who treat of it, into an inference 

 hat what is true of a class is true of all things whatever that belong to the 

 'lass ; and when this is laid down by almost all professed logicians as the 

 iltimate principle to which all reasoning owes its validity ; it is clear that 

 Q the general estimation of logicians, the propositions of which reasonings 



