154 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



Caesar. It might then be fairly said, that rationality, 

 being of the essence of Man, was of the essence also 

 of Thompson. But if Man altogether be only the 

 individual men and a name bestowed upon them in 

 consequence of certain common properties, what 

 becomes of John Thompson's essence ? 



A fundamental error is seldom expelled from phi- 

 losophy by a single victory. It retreats slowly, 

 defends every inch of ground, and often retains a 

 footing in some remote fastness after it has been 

 driven from the open country. The essences of indi- 

 viduals were an unmeaning figment arising from a 

 misapprehension of the essences of classes, yet even 

 Locke, when he extirpated the parent error, could not 

 shake himself free from that which was its fruit. He 

 distinguished two sorts of essences, Real and Nominal. 

 His nominal essences were the essences of classes, 

 explained nearly as we have now explained them. 

 Nor is anything wanting to render the third book of 

 Locke's Essay a nearly perfect treatise on the con- 

 notation of names, except to free its language from 

 the assumption of what are called Abstract Ideas, 

 which unfortunately is involved in the phraseology, 

 although not necessarily connected with the thoughts, 

 contained in that immortal Third Book*. But, 



* The always acute and often profound author of An Outline of 

 Sematology (Mr. B. H. Smart) justly says, "Locke will be much 

 more intelligible if, in the majority of places, we substitute ' the 

 knowledge of for what he calls, * the idea of " (p. 10). Among the 

 many criticisms upon Locke's use of the word Idea, this is the only 

 one which, as it appears to me, precisely hits the mark; and I quote 

 it for the additional reason that it precisely expresses the point of 

 difference respecting the import of Propositions, between my view 

 and what I have called the Conceptualist view of them. Where a 

 Conceptualist says that a name or a proposition expresses our Idea of 

 a thing, I should generally say (instead of our Idea) our Knowledge, 

 or Belief, concerning the thing itself. 



