THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 87 



IV. RELATIONS. 



10. The qualities of a body r we have said, are 

 the attributes grounded upon the sensations which the 

 presence of that particular body to our organs excites 

 in our minds. But when we ascribe to any object the 

 kind of attribute called a Relation, the foundation of 

 the attribute must be something in which other objects 

 are concerned besides itself and the percipient. 



As there may with propriety be said to be a rela- 

 tion between any two things to which two correlative 

 names are or may be given ; we may expect to dis- 

 cover what constitutes a relation in general, if we 

 enumerate the principal cases in which mankind have 

 imposed correlative names, and observe what all these 

 cases have in common. 



What, then, is the character which is possessed in 

 common by states of circumstances so heterogeneous 

 and discordant as these : one thing like another ; one 

 thing unlike another ; one thing near another ; one 

 thing far from another; one thing before, after, along 

 with another ; one thing greater, equal, less, than ano- 

 ther ; one thing the cause of another, the effect of 

 another ; one person the master, servant, child, parent, 

 husband, wife, sovereign '., subject, attorney, client, of 

 another, and so on ? 



Omitting, for the present, the case of Resemblance, 

 (a relation which requires to be considered separately,) 

 there seems to be one thing common to all these cases, 

 and only one ; that in each of them there exists or 

 occurs, or has existed or occurred, some fact or phe- 

 nomenon, into which the two things which are said to 

 be related to each other, both enter as parties con- 

 cerned. This fact, or phenomenon, is what the Aris- 

 totelian logicians called the fundamentum relationis. 



