DEFINITION. 195 



and definitions of things. The former are intended to 

 explain the meaning of a term ; the latter, the nature 

 of a thing; the last being incomparably the most 

 important. 



This opinion was held by the ancient philosophers, 

 and by their followers, with the exception of the Nomi- 

 nalists ; but as the spirit of modern metaphysics, 

 until a recent period, has been on the whole a Nomi- 

 nalist spirit, the notion of definitions of things has 

 been to a certain extent in abeyance, still continuing, 

 however, to breed confusion in logic, by its conse- 

 quences indeed rather than by itself. Yet the doctrine 

 in its own proper form now and then breaks out, and 

 has appeared (among other places) where it was 

 scarcely to be expected, in a deservedly popular work, 

 Archbishop Whately's Logic. In a review of that 

 work published by me in the Westminster Review for 

 January 1828, and containing some opinions which 

 I no longer entertain, I find the following observa- 

 tions on the question now before us ; observations 

 with which my present views on that question are 

 still sufficiently in accordance. 



" The distinction between nominal and real defini- 

 tions, between definitions of words and what are 

 called definitions of things, though conformable to the 

 ideas of most of the Aristotelian logicians, cannot, as 

 it appears to us, be maintained. We apprehend that 

 no definition is ever intended to ' explain and unfold 

 the nature of the thing.' It is some confirmation of 

 our opinion, that none of those writers who have 

 thought that there were definitions of things, have 

 ever succeeded in discovering any criterion by which 

 the definition of a thing can be distinguished from any 

 other proposition relating to the thing. The defini- 

 tion, they say, unfolds the nature of the thing : but 



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