NECESSITY OF AN ANALYSIS OF NAMES. 25 



philosophy is truth, not opinion, the philosopher 

 should dismiss words and look into things themselves, 

 to ascertain what questions can be asked and answered 

 in regard to them. This advice (which fortunately 

 no one has it in his power to follow) is in reality an 

 exhortation to discard the whole fruits of the labours 

 of his predecessors, and demean himself as if he were 

 the first person who had ever turned an inquiring eye 

 upon nature. What does any one's personal know- 

 ledge of Things amount to, after subtracting all which 

 he has acquired by means of the words of other 

 people ? Even after he has learnt as much as men 

 usually do learn from others, will the notions of 

 things contained in his individual mind afford as suffi- 

 cient a basis for a catalogue raisonnee as the notions 

 which are in the minds of all mankind? 



In any enumeration and classification of Things, 

 which does not set out from their names, no varieties 

 of things will of course be comprehended but those 

 recognised by the particular inquirer ; and it will still 

 remain for him to establish, by a subsequent exami- 

 nation of names, that his enumeration has omitted 

 nothing which ought to have been included. But if 

 we begin with names, and use them as our clue to the 

 things, we bring at once before us all the distinctions 

 which have been recognised, not by a single inquirer 

 of perhaps limited views, but by the collective intelli- 

 gence of mankind. It doubtless may, and I believe 

 it will, be found, that mankind have multiplied the 

 varieties unnecessarily, and have imagined distinctions 

 among things where there were only distinctions in the 

 manner of naming them. But we are not entitled to 

 assume this in the commencement. We must begin 

 by recognising the distinctions made by ordinary lan- 

 guage. If some of these appear, on a close examina- 



