NAMES. 29 



often ; the inflected cases of nouns substantive, as me, 

 him, John's*; and even adjectives, as large, heavy. 

 These words do not express things of which anything 

 can be affirmed or denied. We cannot say, Heavy 

 fell, or A heavy fell ; Truly, or A truly, was asserted; 

 Of, or An of, was in the room. Unless, indeed, we 

 are speaking of the mere words themselves, as when 

 we say, Truly is an English word, or, Heavy is an 

 adjective. In that case they are complete names, viz. 

 names of those particular sounds, or of those particular 

 collections of written characters. This employment 

 of a word to denote the mere letters and syllables of 

 which it is composed, was termed by the schoolmen 

 the suppositio materialis of the word. In any other 

 sense, we cannot introduce one of these words into the 

 subject of a proposition, unless in combination with 

 other words ; as, A heavy body fell, A truly important 

 fact was asserted, A member of parliament was in the 

 room. 



An adjective, however, is capable of standing by 

 itself as the predicate of a proposition ; as when we 

 say, Snow is white ; and occasionally even as the 

 subject, for we may say, White is an agreeable colour. 

 The adjective is often said to be so used by a gram- 

 matical ellipsis : Snow is white, instead of Snow is a 

 white object ; White is an agreeable colour, instead of, 

 A white colour, or, The colour of white, is agreeable. 

 The Greeks and Romans were permitted, by the rules 

 of their language, to employ this ellipsis universally 



* It would, perhaps, be more correct to say that inflected cases 

 are names and something more; and that this addition prevents 

 them from being used as the subjects of propositions. But the 

 purposes of our inquiry do not demand that we should enter with 

 scrupulous accuracy into similar minutiae. 



