VERBAL AND EEAL PROPOSITIONS. 91 



word ghost implies nothing of the kind, the speaker either means nothing, 

 or means to assert a thing which he wishes to be believed to have really 

 taken place. 



It will be hereafter seen that when any important consequences seem to 

 follow, as in mathematics, from an essential proposition, or, in other words, 

 from a proposition involved in the meaning of a name, what they really 

 flow from is the tacit assumption of the real existence of the objects so 

 named. Apart from this assumption of real existence, the class of proposi- 

 tions in which the predicate is of the essence of the subject (that is, in 

 which the predicate connotes the whole or part of what the subject con- 

 notes, but nothing besides) answer no purpose but that of unfolding the 

 whole or some part of the meaning of the name, to those who did not pre- 

 viously know it. Accordingly, the most useful, and in strictness the only 

 useful kind of essential propositions, are Definitions : which, to be com- 

 plete, should unfold the whole of Mdiat is involved in the meaning of the 

 word defined ; that is (when it is a connotative word), the whole of what it 

 connotes. In defining a name, however, it is not usual to specify its entire 

 connotation, but so much only as is sufficient to mark out the objects usu- 

 ally denoted by it from all other known objects. And sometimes a merely 

 accidental property, not involved in the meaning of the name, answers this 

 purpose equally well. The various kinds of definition which these distinc- 

 tions give rise to, and the purposes to which they are respectively subserv- 

 ient, will be minutely considered in the proper place. 



§ 3. According to the above view of essential propositions, no proposi- 

 tion can be reckoned such which relates to an individual by name, that is, 

 in which the subject is a proper name. Individuals have no essences. 

 When the schoolmen talked of the essence of an individual, they did not 

 mean the properties implied in its name, for the names of individuals imply 

 jio properties. They regarded as of the essence of an individual, whatever 

 was of the essence of the species in which they were accustomed to place 

 that individual ; i. e., of the class to which it was most familiarly referred, 

 and to which, therefore, they conceived that it by nature belonged. Thus, 

 because the proposition Man is a rational being, was an essential proposi- 

 tion, they affirmed the same thing of the proposition, Julius Caesar is a 

 rational being. This followed very naturally if genera and species were to 

 be considered as entities, distinct from, but inhering in, the individuals 

 composing them. If man was a substance inhering in each individual 

 man, the essence of man (whatever that might mean) was naturally sup- 

 posed to accompany it; to inhere in John Thompson, and to form the 

 common essence of Thompson and Julius Caesar. It might then be fairly 

 said, that rationality, being of the essence of Man, was of the essence also 

 of Thompson. But if Man altogether be only the individual men and a 

 name bestowed upon them in consequence of certain common properties, 

 what becomes of John Thompson's essence ? 



A fundamental error is seldom expelled from philosophy by a single vic- 

 tory. It retreats slowly, defends every inch of ground, and often, after it 

 has been driven from the open country, retains a footing in some remote 

 fastness. The essences of individuals were an unmeaning figment arising 

 from a misapprehension of the essences of classes, yet even Locke, when he 

 extirpated the parent error, could not shake himself free from that which 

 was its fruit. He distinguished two sorts of essences. Real and Nominal. 

 His nominal essences were the essences of classes, explained nearly as we 



