104 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



onstration. The attribute of being capable of understanding language, is 

 a Proprium of the species man, since without being connoted by the word, 

 it follows from an attribute Which the word does connote, viz., from the 

 attribute of rationality. But this is a Proprium of the second kind, which 

 follows by way of causation. How it is that one property of a thing fol- 

 lows, or can be inferred, from another; under what conditions this is pos- 

 sible, and what is the exact meaning of the phrase ; are among the ques- 

 tions which will occupy us in the two succeeding Books. At pi'csent it 

 needs only be said, that whether a Proprium follows by demonstration or 

 by causation, it follows necessarily; that is to say, its not following would 

 be inconsistent with some law which we regard as a part of the constitu- 

 tion either of our thinking faculty or of the universe. 



§ 8, Under the remaining predicable, Accidens, are included all attri- 

 butes of a thing which are neither involved in the signification of the name 

 (whether ordinarily or as a term of art), nor have, so far as we know, 

 any necessary connection with attributes which are so involved. They are 

 commonly divided into Separable and Inseparable Accidents. Inseparable 

 accidents are those which — although we know of no connection between 

 them and the attributes constitutive of the species, and although, therefore, 

 so far as we are aware, they might be absent without making the name in- 

 applicable and the species a different species — are yet never in fact known 

 to be absent. A concise mode of expressing the same meaning is, that in- 

 separable accidents are pi'operties which are imiversal to the species, but 

 not necessary to it. Thus, blackness is an attribute of a crow, and, as far 

 as we know, a universal one. But if we were to discover a race of white 

 birds, in other respects resembling crows, we should not say. These are 

 not crows ; we should say. These are white crows. Crow, therefore, does 

 not connote blackness ; nor, from any of the attributes which it does con- 

 note, whether as a word in popular use or as a term of art, could blackness 

 be inferred, Not only, therefore, can we conceive a white crow, but we 

 know of no reason why such an animal should not exist. Since, how- 

 ever, none but black crows are known to exist, blackness, in the present 

 state of our knowledge, ranks as an accident, but an inseparable accident, 

 of the species crow. 



Separable Accidents are those which are found, in point of fact, to be 

 sometimes absent from the species; which are not only not necessary, but 

 not even universal. They are such as do not belong to every individual 

 of the species, but only to some individuals; or if to all, not at all times. 

 Thus the color of a European is one of the separable accidents of the spe- 

 cies man, because it is not an attribute of all human creatures. Being- 

 born, is also (speaking in the logical sense) a separable accident of the spe- 

 cies man, because, though an attribute of all human beings, it is so only at 

 one particular time. A fortiori those attributes which are not constant 

 even in the same individual, as, to be in one or in another place, to be hot 

 or cold, sitting or walking, must be ranked as separable accidents. 



