148 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



nation which can be given of their having misunder- 

 stood the real nature of those Essences which held so 

 conspicuous a place in their philosophy. They said, 

 truly, that man cannot be conceived without rationality. 

 But though man cannot, a being may be conceived 

 exactly like a man in all points except that one 

 quality, and those others which are the conditions or 

 consequences of it. All therefore which is really true 

 in the assertion that man cannot be conceived with- 

 out rationality, is only, that if he had not rationality, 

 he would not be reputed a man. There is no impos- 

 sibility in conceiving the thing, nor, for aught we 

 know, in its existing : the impossibility is in the con- 

 ventions of language, which will not allow the thing, 

 even if it exist, to be called by the name which is 

 reserved for rational beings. Rationality, in short, is 

 involved in the meaning of the word man ; it is one 

 of the attributes connoted by the name. The essence 

 of man, simply means the whole of the attributes 

 connoted by the word; and any one of those attributes 

 taken singly, is an essential property of man. 



The doctrines which prevented the real meaning 

 of Essences from being understood, not having 

 assumed so settled a shape in the time of Aristotle 

 and his immediate followers as was afterwards given 

 to them by the Realists of the middle ages, we find a 

 nearer approach to true views of the subject in the 

 writings of the ancient Aristotelians than in their 

 more modern followers. Porphyry, in his Isagoge, 

 approached so near to the true conception of essences, 

 that only one step remained to be taken, but this 

 step, so easy in appearance, was reserved for the 

 Nominalists of modern times. By altering any pro- 

 perty, not of the essence of the thing, you merely, 

 according to Porphyry, made a difference in it ; you 



