94 NAMES AND PKOPOSITIONS. 



a proposition is not the mode which shows most clearly what it is in itself, 

 but that which most distinctly suggests the manner in Avhich it may be 

 made available for advancing from it to other propositions. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OF THE NATURE OF CLASSIFICATION, AND THE FIVE PREDICABLES. 



§ 1. In examining into the nature of general propositions, we have ad- 

 verted much less than is usual with logicians to the ideas of a Class, and 

 Classification ; ideas which, since the ReaUst doctrine of General Substances 

 went out of vogue, have formed the basis of almost every attempt at a 

 philosophical theory of general terms and general propositions. We have 

 considered general names as having a meaning, quite independently of their 

 being the names of classes. That circumstance is in truth accidental, it 

 being wholly immaterial to the signification of the name whether there are 

 many objects, or only one, to which it happens to be applicable, or whether 

 there be any at all. God is as much a general term to the Christian or 

 Jew as to the Polytheist; and dragon, hippogriff, chimera, mermaid, ghost, 

 are as much so as if real objects existed, corresponding to those names. 

 Every name the signification of which is constituted by attributes, is po- 

 tentially a name of an indefinite number of objects ; but it needs not be 

 actually the name of any ; and if of any, it may be the name of only one. 

 As soon as we employ a name to connote attributes, the things, be they 

 more or fewer, which happen to possess those attributes, are constituted 

 ipso facto a class. But in predicating the name we predicate only the at- 

 tributes ; and the fact of belonging to a class does not, in many cases, come 

 into view at all. 



Although, however, Predication does not presuppose Classification, and 

 though the theory of Names and of Propositions is not cleared up, but only 

 encumbered, by intruding the idea of classification into it, there is never- 

 theless a close connection between Classification and the employment of 

 General Names. By every general name which we introduce, we create a 

 class, if there be any things, real or imaginary, to compose it; that is, any 

 Things corresponding to the signification of the name. Classes, therefore, 

 mostly owe their existence to general language. But general language, 

 also, though that is not the most common case, sometimes owes its exist- 

 ence to classes. A general, which is as much as to say a significant, name, 

 is indeed mostly introduced because we have a signification to express by, 

 it ; because we need a word by means of which to predicate the attributes 

 which it connotes. But it is also true that a name is sometimes introduced 

 because we have found it convenient to create a class ; because we have 

 thought it useful for the regulation of our mental operations, that a certain 

 group of objects should be thought of together. A naturalist, for purposes 

 connected with his particular science, sees reason to distribute the animal 

 or vegetable creation into certain groups rather than into any others, and 

 he requires a name to bind, as it were, each of his groups together. It 

 must not, however, be supposed that such names, when introduced, differ 

 in any respect, as to their mode of signification, from other connotative 

 names. The classes which they denote are, as much as any other classes, 

 constituted by certain common attributes, and their names are significant 

 of those attributes, and of nothing else. The names of Cuvier's classes and 



