86 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



not necessary to be more pai'ticularly analyzed here ; while the mere fact of 

 co-existence, whether between actual sensations, or between the potentiali- 

 ties of causing them, known by the name of attributes, may be classed, to- 

 gether with Sequence, under the head of Order in Time. 



§ 7. In the foregoing inquiry into the import of propositions, we have 

 thought it necessary to analyze directly those alone, in which the terms of 

 the proposition (or the predicate at least) are concrete terras. But, in do- 

 ing so, we have indirectly analyzed those in which the terms are abstract. 

 The distinction between an abstract term and its corresponding concrete, 

 does not turn upon any difference in what they are appointed to signify; 

 for the real signification of a concrete general name is, as we have so often 

 said, its connotation ; and what the concrete term connotes, forms the en- 

 tire meaning of the abstract name. Since there is nothing in the import 

 of an abstract name which is not in the import of the corresponding con- 

 crete, it is natural to suppose that neither can there be any thing in the im- 

 port of a proposition of which the terras are abstract, but what there is in 

 some proposition which can be framed of concrete terms. 



And this presumption a closer examination will confirm. An abstract 

 name is the name of an attribute, or combination of attributes. The cor- 

 responding concrete is a name given to things, because of, and in order to 

 express, their possessing that attribute, or that combination of attributes. 

 When, therefore, we predicate of any thing a concrete name, the attribute 

 is what Ave in reality predicate of it. But it has now been shown that in 

 all propositions of which the predicate is a concrete name, what is really 

 predicated is one of five things : Existence, Co-existence, Causation, Se- 

 quence, or Resemblance. An attribute, therefore, is necessarily either an 

 existence, a co-existence, a causation, a sequence, or a resemblance. When 

 a proposition consists of a subject and predicate which are abstract terms, 

 it consists of terms which must necessarily signify one or other of these 

 ^ I things. When we predicate of any thing an abstract name, we affirm 

 T^ / of the thing that it is one or other of these five things ; that it is a case of 

 j Existence, or of Co-existence, or of Causation, or of Sequence, or of Re- 

 semblance. 



It is impossible to imagine any proposition expressed in abstract terms, 

 which can not be transformed into a precisely equivalent proposition in 

 which the terms are concrete ; namely, either the concrete names which 

 connote the attributes themselves, or the names of the fundamenta of those 

 attributes ; the facts or phenomena on which they are grounded. To il- 

 lustrate the latter case, let us take this proposition, of which the subject 

 only is an abstract name, " Thoughtlessness is dangerous." Thoughtless- 

 ness is an attribute, grounded on the facts which we call thoughtless ac- 

 tions ; and the proposition is equivalent to this. Thoughtless actions are 

 dangerous. In the next example the predicate as well as the subject are 

 abstract names: "Whiteness is a color;" or "The color of snow is a white- 

 ness." These attributes being grounded on sensations, the equivalent prop- 

 ositions in the concrete would be. The sensation of white is one of the sen- 

 sations called those of color — The sensation of sight, caused by looking at 

 snow, is one of the sensations called sensations of white. In these proposi- 

 tions, as we have before seen, the matter-of-fact asserted is a Resemblance. 

 In the following examples, the concrete terms are those which directly cor- 

 respond to the abstract names ; connoting the attribute which these de- 

 note. '* Prudence is a virtue :" this may be rendered, " All prudent per- 



