128 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



bustible), we include this new object in tbe class ; but 

 it did not already belong to the class. We place the 

 individual in the class because the proposition is true ; 

 the proposition is not true because the object is placed 

 in the class. 



It will appear hereafter in treating of reasoning, 

 how much the theory of that intellectual process has 

 been vitiated by the influence of these erroneous 

 views, and by the habit which they exemplify of 

 assimilating all the operations of the human under- 

 standing which have truth for their object, to 

 processes of mere classification and naming. Un- 

 fortunately, the minds which have been entangled in 

 this net are precisely those which have escaped the 

 other cardinal error commented upon in the beginning 

 of the present chapter. Since the revolution which 

 dislodged Aristotle from the schools, logicians may 

 almost be divided into those who have looked upon 

 reasoning as essentially an affair of Ideas, and those 

 who have looked upon it as essentially an affair of 

 Names. 



One thing it is but just to remark. Although 

 Hobbes' theory of Predication, according to the well 

 known remark of Leibnitz, and the avowal of Hobbes 

 himself*, renders truth and falsity completely arbi- 

 trary, with no standard but the will of men, it must 

 not be concluded that either Hobbes, or any of the 

 other philosophers who have in the main agreed with 

 him, did, in fact, consider the distinction between 



* *' From hence also this may be deduced, that the first truths 

 were arbitrarily made by those that first of all imposed names upon 

 things, or received them from the imposition of others. For it is 

 true (for example) that man is a living creature, but it is for this 

 reason, that it pleased men to impose both these names on the same 

 thing." Computation or Logic, ch. iii., sect. 8. 



