CLASSIFICATION AND THE PREDICABLES. 161 



butes as if those names had preceded, instead of 

 growing out of, his Classification of Animals. The 

 only peculiarity of the case is, that the convenience of 

 classification was here the primary motive for intro- 

 ducing the names ; while in other cases the name is 

 introduced as a means of predication, and the forma- 

 tion of a class denoted by it is only an indirect con- 

 sequence. 



The principles which ought to regulate Classifica- 

 tion as a logical process subservient to the investi- 

 gation of truth, cannot be discussed to any purpose 

 until a much later stage of our inquiry. But, of 

 classification as resulting from, and implied in, the 

 fact of employing general language, we cannot forbear 

 to treat here, without leaving the theory of general 

 names, and of their employment in predication, 

 mutilated and formless. 



2. This portion of the theory of general language 

 is the subject of what is termed the doctrine of the 

 Predicables ; a set of distinctions handed down from 

 Aristotle and his follower, Porphyry, many of which 

 have taken a firm root in scientific, and some of them 

 even in popular, phraseology. The Predicables are 

 a five-fold division of General Names, not grounded 

 as usual upon a difference in their meaning, that is, 

 in the attribute which they connote, but upon a 

 difference in the kind of class which they denote. We 

 may predicate of a thing five different varieties of 

 class-name : 



A genus of the thing (761/09). 



A species (elSos). 



A differentia ($t,a<j>opa). 



A proprium (I'Stov). 

 An accidens 



VOL. I. M 



