208 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



not mean to predicate distinctly any attribute at all. 

 Nevertheless, all believe that there is some common 

 attribute belonging to all the actions which they are 

 in the habit of calling just. The question then must 

 be. whether there is any such common attribute? 

 and, in the first place, whether mankind agree suffi- 

 ciently with one another as to the particular actions 

 which they do or do not call just, to render the 

 inquiry, what quality those actions have in common, 

 a possible one : if so, whether the actions really have 

 any quality in common ; and if they have, what it is. 

 Of these three, the first alone is an inquiry into usage 

 and convention ; the other two are inquiries into 

 matters of fact. And if the second question, (whether 

 the actions form a class at all,) has been answered 

 negatively, there remains a fourth, often more arduous 

 than all the rest, namely, how best to form a class 

 artificially, which the name may denote. 



And here it is fitting to remark, that the study of 

 the spontaneous growth of languages is of the utmost 

 importance to the philosopher who would logically 

 remodel them. The classifications rudely made by 

 established language, when retouched, as they almost 

 always require to be, by the hands of the logician, are 

 often in themselves excellently suited to many of his 

 purposes. When compared with the classifications of 

 a philosopher, they are like the customary law of a 

 country, which has grown up as it were sponta- 

 neously,, compared with laws methodized and digested 

 into a code : the former are a far less perfect instru- 

 ment than the latter; but being the result of a long, 

 though unscientific, course of experience, they contain 

 the greater part of the materials out of which the 

 systematic body of written law may and ought to be 

 formed. In like manner, the established grouping of 



