124 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



pens to be always found in conjunction with another 

 attribute, the concrete names which answer to those 

 attributes will of course be predicable of the same 

 subjects, and may be said, in Hobbes' language (in the 

 propriety of which on this occasion I fully concur) , to 

 be two names for the same things. But the possi- 

 bility of a concurrent application of the two names, is 

 a mere consequence of the conjunction between the 

 two attributes, and was, in most cases, never thought 

 of when the names were invented and their significa- 

 tion fixed. That the diamond is combustible, was a 

 proposition certainly not dreamt of when the words 

 Diamond and Combustible received^their present mean- 

 ing ; and could not have been discovered by^the most 

 ingenious and refined analysis of the ^signification of 

 those words. It was found out by a very different 

 process, namely, by exerting the five senses, and 

 learning from them, that the attribute of combustibility 

 existed in all those diamonds upon which 'the experi- 

 ment was tried ; these being so numerous, "and the 

 circumstances of the experiments such, that what was 

 true of those individuals might be concluded to be 

 true of all substances " coming within the^name," that 

 is, of all substances possessing the attributes which 

 the name connotes. The assertion, therefore, when 

 analysed, is, that wherever we find certain attributes, 

 there will be found a certain other attribute: which 

 is not a question of the signification of names, but 

 of the laws of nature; the order existing among 

 phenomena. 



3. Although Hobbes' theory of Predication has 

 not, in the terms in which he stated it, met with a 

 very favourable reception from philosophers, a theory 

 virtually identical with it, and not by any means so 



