14 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS, 



that is, to analyze any further the import of Propositions ; we find 

 forced upon us, as a subject of previous consideration, the import of 

 Names. For every proposition consists of two names ; and every 

 proposition afiiiTQS or denies one of these names, of the other. Now 

 what we do, what passes in our mind, when we affirm or deny two 

 names of one another, must depend upon what they are names of; 

 since it is with refer-ence to that, and not to the mere names them- 

 selveSj that we make the affinnation or denial. Here, therefore, we 

 find a new reason why the signification of names, and the relation, 

 generally, between names and the things signified by them, must oc- 

 cupy the preHminary stage of the inquiry we are engaged in. 



It may be objected, that the meaning of names can guide us at most 

 only to the opinions, possibly the foolish and gi'oundless opinions, 

 which mankind have formed concerning things, and that as the object 

 of' philosophy is truth, not opinion, the philosopher should dismiss 

 words and look into things themselves, to ascertain what questions can 

 be asked and answered in regard to them. This advice (which fortu- 

 nately no one has it in his power to follow) is in reality an exhortation 

 to discard the whole fi-uits of the labors of his predecessors, and de- 

 mean himself as if he were the first person who had ever turned an 

 inquiring eye upon nature. What does any one's personal knowledge 

 of Things amount to, aft:er subtracting all which he has acquired by- 

 means of the w^ords of other people ] Even after he has leanit as 

 much as men usually do learn from others, mil the notions of things 

 contained in his indi\"idual mind afford as sufficient a basis for a cata- 

 logue raisonnee as the notions wliich are in the minds of all man- 

 kind? 



In any enumeration and classification of Things, which does not set 

 out from their names, no varieties of things will of course be compre- 

 hended but those recognized by the particular inquirer ; and it "will 

 still remain for him to establish, by a subsequent examination of names, 

 that his enumeration has omitted nothing which ought to have been 

 included. But if we begin with names, and use them as our clue to 

 the things, we bring at once before us all the distinctions which have 

 been recognized, not by a single inquirer of perhaps hmited views, but 

 by the collective intelligence of mankind. It doubtless may, and I 

 believe it will, be found, that mankind have multiplied the varieties 

 unnecessarily, and have imagined distinctions among things where 

 there were only distinctions in the manner of naming them. But we 

 are not entitled to assume this in the commencement. We must begin 

 by recognizing the distinctions made by ordinaiy language. If some 

 of these appear, on a close examination, not to be fundamental, our 

 enumeration of the different kinds of realities may be abridged accord- 

 ingly. But to impose upon the facts in the first instance the yoke of 

 a theory, while the grounds of the theory are resei"A-ed for discussion in 

 a subsequent stage,js evidently not a course which a logician can rea- 

 sonably adopt. 



