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CHAPTER VII. 



OF THE NATURE OF CLASSIFICATION, AND THE 

 FIVE PREDICABLES. 



1. IN examining into the nature of general pro- 

 positions, we have adverted much less than is usual 

 with Logicians, to the ideas of a Class, and Classi- 

 fication ; ideas which, since the Realist doctrine of 

 General Substances went out of vogue, have formed 

 the basis of almost every attempt at a philosophical 

 theory of general terms and general propositions. 

 We have considered general names as having a mean- 

 ing, quite independently of their being the names of 

 classes. That circumstance is in truth accidental, it 

 being wholly immaterial to the signification of the 

 name whether there are many objects or only one to 

 which it happens to be applicable, or whether there 

 be any at all. God is as much a general term to 

 the Christian or the Jew as to the Polytheist ; and 

 dragon, hippogriff, chimera, mermaid, ghost, are 

 as much so as if real objects existed, corresponding 

 to those names. Every name the signification of 

 which is constituted by attributes, is potentially a 

 name of an indefinite number of objects ; but it needs 

 not be actually the name of any ; and if of any, it 

 may be the name of only one. As soon as we employ 

 a name to connote attributes, the things, be they more 

 or fewer, which happen to possess those attributes, 

 are constituted, ipso facto, a class. But in predicating 

 the name we predicate only the attributes ; and the 

 fact of belonging to a class does not, in ordinary cases, 

 come into view at all. 



