VERBAL AND REAL PROPOSITIONS. 89 



sight present themselves as verbal ; comprehending a kind of assertions 

 which have been regarded not only as relating to things, but as having 

 actually a more intimate relation with them than any other propositions 

 whatever. The student in philosophy will perceive that I allude to the 

 distinction on which so much stress was laid by the schoolmen, and which 

 has been retained either under the same or under other names by most 

 metaphysicians to the present day, viz., between what were called essential, 

 and what were called accidental, propositions, and between essential and 

 accidental properties or attributes. 



§ 2. Almost all metaphysicians prior to Locke, as well as many since his 

 time, have made a great mystery of Essential Predication, and of predi- 

 cates which are said to be of the essence of the subject. The essence of a 

 thing, they said, was that without which the thing could neither be, nor 

 be conceived to be. Thus, rationality was of the essence of man, because 

 without rationality, man could not be conceived to exist. The different 

 attributes which made up the essence of the thing were called its essential 

 properties ; and a proposition in which any of these were predicated of it 

 was called an Essen4,ial Proposition, and was considered to go deeper into 

 the nature of the thing, and to convey more important information respect- 

 ing it, than any other proposition could do. AH properties, not of the es- 

 sence of the thing, were called its accidents ; were supposed to have noth- 

 ing at all, or nothing comparatively, to do with its inmost nature ; and the 

 propositions in which any of these were predicated of it were called Acci- 

 dental Propositions. A connection may be traced between this distinction, 

 which originated with the schoolmen, and the well-known dogmas of sub- 

 stantice secundce or general substances, and suhstaiitial forms, doctrines 

 which under varieties of language pervaded alike the Aristotelian and the 

 Platonic schools, and of which more of the spirit has come down to mod- 

 ern times than might be conjectured from the disuse of the phraseology. 

 The false views of the nature of classification and generalization which pre- 

 vailed among the schoolmen, and of which these dogmas were the technical 

 expi-ession, afford the only explanation which can be given of their having 

 misunderstood the real nature of those Essences which held so conspicuous 

 a place in their philosophy. They said, truly, that man can not be con- 

 ceived without rationality. But though man can not, a being may be con- 

 ceived exactly like a man in all points except that one quality, and those 

 others which are the conditions or consequences of it. All, therefore, which 

 is really true in the assertion that man can not be conceived without I'ation- 

 ality, is only, that if he had not rationality, he would not be reputed a man. 

 There is no impossibility in conceiving the thing, nor, for aught we know, 

 in its existing : the impossibility is in the conventions of language, which 

 will not allow the thing, even if it exist, to be called by the name which is 

 reserved for rational beings. Rationality, in short, is involved in the mean- 

 ing of the word man : is one of the attributes connoted by the name. The 

 essence of man, simply means the whole of the attributes connoted by the 

 word ; and any one of those attributes taken singly, is an essential property 

 of man. 



But these reflections, so easy to us, would have been difficult to persons 

 who thought, as most of the later Aristotelians did, that objects were made 

 what they were called, that gold (for instance) was made gold, not by the 

 possession of certain properties to which mankind have chosen to attach 

 that name, but by participation in the nature of a general substance, called 



