IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 127 



done, if a question subsequently arises whether a 

 certain general name can be truly predicated of a 

 certain particular object, we have only (as it were) to 

 read the roll of the objects upon which that name 

 was conferred, and see whether the object about which 

 the question arises, is to be found among them. The 

 framers of language (it would seem to be supposed) 

 have predetermined all the objects that are to compose 

 each class, and we have only to refer to the record of 

 an antecedent decision. 



So absurd a doctrine will be owned by nobody 

 when thus nakedly stated ; but if the commonly 

 received explanations of classification and naming do 

 not imply this theory, it requires to be shown how 

 they admit of being reconciled with any other. 



General names are not marks put upon definite 

 objects ; classes are not made by drawing a line round 

 a given number of assignable individuals. The objects 

 which compose any given class are perpetually fluc- 

 tuating. We may frame a class without knowing the 

 individuals, or even any of the individuals, of which it 

 will be composed; we may do so while believing that 

 no such individuals exist. If by the meaning of a 

 general name are to be understood the things which it 

 is the name of, no general name, except by accident, 

 has a fixed meaning at all, or ever long retains the 

 same meaning. The only mode in which any general 

 name has a definite meaning, is by being a name of an 

 indefinite variety of things, namely, of all things, 

 known or unknown, past, present, or future, which 

 possess certain definite attributes. When, by studying 

 not the meaning of words, but the phenomena of 

 nature, we discover that these attributes are possessed 

 by some object not previously known to possess them, 

 (as when chemists found that the diamond was com- 



