CLASSIFICATION AND THE PREDICABLES. 181 



species are yet never, in fact, known to be absent. 

 A concise mode of expressing the same meaning is, 

 that inseparable accidents are properties which are 

 universal to the species but not necessary to it. Thus, 

 blackness is an attribute of a crow, and, as far as we 

 know, an universal one. But if we were to discover 

 a race of white birds, in other respects resembling 

 crows, we should not say, These are not crows ; we 

 should say, These are white crows. Crow, therefore, 

 does not connote blackness ; nor, from any of the 

 attributes which it does connote, whether as a word 

 in popular use or as a term of art, could blackness be 

 inferred. Not only, therefore, can we conceive a 

 white crow, but we know of no reason why such an 

 animal should not exist. Since, however, none but 

 black crows are known to exist, blackness, in the 

 present state of our knowledge, ranks as an accident, 

 but an inseparable accident, of the species crow. 



Separable Accidents are those which are found, in 

 point of fact, to be sometimes absent from the species ; 

 which are not only not necessary, but not even uni- 

 versal. They are such as do not belong to every 

 individual of the species, but only to some individuals; 

 or if to all, not at all times. Thus, the colour of an 

 European is one of the separable accidents of the 

 species man, because it is not an attribute of all 

 human creatures. Being born, is also a separable 

 accident of the species man, because, although an 

 attribute of all human beings, it is so only at one par- 

 ticular time. A fortiori those attributes which are 

 not constant even in the same individual, as, to be in 

 one or in another place, to be hot or cold, sitting or 

 walking, must be ranked as separable accidents. 



