164 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



and by predicating the name, we may be said, in an 

 intelligible sense, to predicate what the name ex- 

 presses, the attribute mortality ; but in no allowable 

 sense of the word predication do we predicate of man 

 the class mortal. We predicate of him the fact of 

 belonging to the class 



By the Aristotelian logicians, the terms genus and 

 species were used in a more restricted sense. They 

 did not admit every class which could be divided into 

 other classes to be a genus, or every class which could 

 be included in a larger class to be a species. Animal 

 was by them considered a genus ; and man and brute 

 co-ordinate species under that genus : biped would not 

 have been admitted to be a genus with reference to 

 man, but a proprium or accidens only. It was requi- 

 site, according to their theory, that genus and species 

 should be of the essence of the subject. Animal was 

 of the essence of man ; biped was not. And in every 

 classification they considered some one class as the 

 lowest or infima species; man, for instance, was a 

 lowest species. Any further divisions into which the 

 class might be capable of being broken down, as man 

 into white, black, and red man, or into priest and 

 layman, they did not admit to be species. 



It has been seen, however, in the preceding 

 chapter, that the distinction between the essence of a 

 class, and the attributes or properties which are not of 

 its essence, a distinction which has given occasion to 

 so much abstruse speculation, and to which so mys- 

 terious a character was formerly, and by many writers 

 is still, attached, amounts to nothing more than the 

 difference between those attributes of the class which 

 are, and those which are not, involved in the signifi- 

 cation of the class-name. As applied to individuals, 

 the word Essence, we fbund, has no meaning, except 



