RATIOCINATION; OR SYLLOGISM. 235 



the last two centuries has been considered as finally 

 abandoned, though there have not been wanting, in 

 our own day, attempts at its revival. So long as what 

 were termed Universals were regarded as a peculiar 

 kind of substances, having an objective existence 

 distinct from the individual objects classed under 

 them, the dictum de omni conveyed an important 

 meaning ; because it expressed the intercommunity of 

 nature, which it was necessary upon that theory that 

 we should suppose to exist between those general 

 substances and the particular substances which were 

 subordinated to them. That everything predicable of 

 the universal was predicable of the various individuals 

 contained under it, was then no identical proposition, 

 but a statement of what was conceived as a funda- 

 mental law of the universe. The assertion that the 

 entire nature and properties of the substantia secunda 

 formed part of the properties of each of the individual 

 substances called by the same name ; that the pro- 

 perties of Man, for example, were properties of all 

 men ; was a proposition of real significance when Man 

 did not mean all men, but something inherent in men, 

 and vastly superior to them in dignity. Now, how- 

 ever, when it is known that a class, an universal, a 

 genus or species, is not an entity per se, but neither 

 more nor less than the individual substances them- 

 selves which are placed in the class, and that there is 

 nothing real in the matter except those objects, a 

 common name given to them, and common attributes 

 indicated by the name ; what, I should be glad to 

 know, do we learn by being told, that whatever can 

 be affirmed of a class, may be affirmed of every object 

 contained in the class ? The class is nothing but the 

 objects contained in it : and the dictum de omni merely 

 amounts to the identical proposition, that whatever is 



