T8 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



;ue composed can be the expression of nothing but the process of dividing 

 things into classes, and referring every thing to its proper class. 



This theory appears to me a signal example of a logical error very often 

 committed in logic, that of varepov irporipoy, or explaining a thing by some- 

 thing which presupposes it. When I say that snow is white, I may and 

 ought to be thinking of snow as a class, because I am asserting a proposi- 

 tion as true of all snow: but I am certainly not thinking of white objects 

 as a class ; I am thinking of no white object whatever except snow, but 

 only of that, and of the sensation of white which it gives me. When, in- 

 deed, I have judged, or assented to the propositions, that snow is white, 

 and that several other things are also white, I gradually begin to think of 

 white objects as a class, including snow and those other things. But this 

 is a conception which followed, not preceded, those judgments, and there- 

 fore can not be given as an explanation of them. Instead of explaining the 

 effect by the cause, this doctrine explains the cause by the effect, and is, I 

 conceive, founded on a latent misconception of the nature of classification. 

 There is a sort of language very generally prevalent in these discussions, 

 which seems to suppose that classification is an arrangement and grouping 

 of definite and known individuals : that when names were imposed, man- 

 kind took into consideration all the individual objects in the universe, dis- 

 ti'ibuted them into parcels or lists, and gave to the objects of each list a 

 common name, repeating this operation toties quotles until they had invent- 

 ed all the general names of which language consists ; wliich having been 

 once done, if a question subsequently arises whether a certain general 

 name can be truly predicated of a certain particular object, we have only 

 (as it were) to read the roll of the objects upon which that name was con- 

 ferred, and see whether the object about which the question arises is to be 

 found among them. The framers of language (it would seem to be sup- 

 posed) have predetermined all the objects that are to compose each class, 

 and we have only to refer to the record of an antecedent decision. 



So absurd a doctrine will be owned by nobody when thus nakedly stated; 

 but if the commonly received explanations of classification and naming do 

 not imply this theory, it requires to be shown how they admit of being rec- 

 onciled with any other. 



General names are not marks put upon definite objects; classes are not 



made by drawing a line round a given number of assignable individuals. 



The objects which compose any given class are perpetually fluctiyiting. 



We may frame a class without knowing the individuals, or even any of the 



individuals, of which it may be composed; we may do so while believing 



that no such individuals exist. If by the meaning of a general name are 



;to be understood the things which it is the name of, no general name, ex- 



^ ^^cept by accident, has a fired meaning at all, or ever long retains the same 



, C* jmeaning. Tlie,oiily mode in which any general name has a definite mean- 



^>^^ *iiig,Js by being a name of an indefinite variety of things; namely, of all 



»; j^><^' ^vjthings, known or unknown, past, present, or future, which possess certain 



» ^^ dfifinite attributes. When, by studying not the meaning of words, but the 



phenomena of nature, we discover that these attributes are possessed by 



some object not previously known to possess them (as when chemists 



[found that the diamond was combustible), we include this new object in 

 the class; but it did not already belong to the class. We place the indi- 

 vidual in the class because the proposition is true; the proposition is not 

 true because the object is placed in the class.* 



* Professor Bain remarks, in qualification of the statement in the text {Logic, i., 50), that 



