METAPHYSICS AND THE OTHER SCIENCES 243 



human history affords probable ground for believing in the activity 

 of one or more non-human personalities as agents in the development 

 of our species I cannot but think a perfectly proper subject for 

 empirical investigation, if only it be borne in mind that any conclusion 

 upon such a point is inevitably affected by the provisional character 

 of our information as to empirical facts themselves, and can claim in 

 consequence nothing more than a certain grade of probability. With 

 this proviso, I cannot but regard the question as to the existence of 

 a God or of gods as one upon which we may reasonably hope for 

 greater certainty as our knowledge of the empirical facts of the 

 world's history increases. And I should be inclined only to object to 

 any attempt to foreclose examination by forcing a conclusion either 

 in the theistic or in the atheistic sense on alleged grounds of a priori 

 metaphysics. In a word, I would maintain not only with Kant that 

 the " physico-theological " argument is specially deserving of our 

 regard, but with Boole that it is with it that Natural Theology 

 must stand or fall. 



NOTE ON EXTENSION AND INTENSION OF TERMS 



Among the numerous difficulties which beset the teaching of the 

 elements of formal logic to beginners, one of the earliest is that of 

 deciding whether all names shall be considered to have meaning both 

 in extension and intension. As we all know, the problem arises in 

 connection with two classes of names, (1) proper names of individ- 

 uals, (2) abstract terms. I should like to indicate what seems to me 

 the true solution of the difficulty, though I do not remember to have 

 seen it advocated anywhere in just the form I should prefer. 



(1) As to proper names. It seems clear that those who regard the 

 true proper name as a meaningless label are nearer the truth than 

 those who assert with Jevons that a proper name has for its intension 

 all the predicates which can be truly ascribed to the object named. 

 As has often been observed, it is a sufficient proof that, for example, 

 John does not mean " a human being of the male sex," to note that he 

 who names his daughter, his dog, or his canoe John, makes no false 

 assertion, though he may commit a solecism. So far the followers of 

 Mill seem to have a satisfactory answer to Jevons, when they say, for 

 example, that he confuses the intension of a term with its accidental or 

 acquired associations. (So, again, we can see that Socrates cannot 

 mean "the wisest of the Greek philosophers," by considering that I 

 may perfectly well understand the statement " there goes Socrates " 

 without being aware that Socrates is wise or a Greek or a philosopher.) 

 And if we objected that no proper name actually in use is ever with- 

 out some associations which in part determine its meaning by restrict- 

 ing its applicability, it would be a valid rejoinder that in pure logic 

 we have to consider not the actual usages of language, but those that 



