16 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



of names. Among such are reckoned particles, as of, to, truly ^ often ; 

 the inflected cases of nouns substantive, as 77ie, Mm, John's ;* and even 

 adjectives, as large, heavy. These words do not express things oi 

 which anything can be affirmed or denied. We cannot say. Heavy 

 fell, or A heavy fell ; Truly, or A truly, was asserted ; Of, or An of, 

 was in the room. Unless, indeed, we are speaking of the mere words 

 themselves, as when we say, Truly is an English word, or. Heavy is 

 an adjective. In that case they are complete names, viz. names of 

 those particular sounds, or of those particular collections of wi-itten 

 characters. This employment of a word to denote the mere letters 

 and syllables of which it is composed, was tenned by the schoolmen 

 the suppositio materialis of the word. In any other sense, we cannot 

 introduce one of these words into the subject of a proposition, unless 

 in combination with other words ; as, A heavy hody fell, A tiaily impor- 

 tant fact was asserted, A memher o^ parliament was in the room. 



An adjective, however, is capable of standing by itself as the predi- 

 cate of a proposition ; as when we say. Snow is white ; and occasion- 

 ally even as the subject, for we may say, "White is an agreeable color. 

 The adjective is often said to be so used by a gi'ammatical ellipsis : 

 Snow is white, instead of. Snow is a white object ; White is an agree- 

 able color, instead of, A w^hite color, or. The color of white, is agi-eeable. 

 The Greeks and Romans were permitted, by the rules of their lan- 

 guage, to employ this ellipsis universally in the subject as well as in 

 the predicate of a proposition. In English, this cannot, generally 

 speaking, be done. We may say. The earth is round ; but we cannot 

 say. Round is easily moved ; we must say, A round object. This dis- 

 tinction, however, is rather grammatical than logical. Since there is 

 no difference of meaning between round and a round ohject, it is only 

 custom which prescribes that on any given occasion one shall be used, 

 and not the other. We shall therefore, without scruple, speak of 

 adjectives as names, whether in their own right, or as representative 

 of the more circuitous forms of expression above exemplified. The 

 other classes of subsidiary words have no title whatever to be con- 

 sidered as names. An adverb, or an accusative case, cannot under any 

 circumstances (except when their mere letters and syllables are spoken 

 of) figure as one of the terms of a proposition. 



Words which are not capable of being used as names, but only as 

 parts of names, were called by some of the schoolmen SjTicategore- 

 matic terms: from ovv, with, and Karrf/opEO), to predicate, because it 

 was only with some other word that they could be predicated. A 

 word which could be used either as the subject or pi-edicate of a pro- 

 position, without being accompanied by any other word, was termed 

 by the same authorities a Categorematic tenn. A combination of one 

 or more Categorematic, and one or more Syncategorematic words, as, 

 A heavy body, or A court of justice, they sometimes called a mixed 

 term ; but this seems a needless multiplication of technical expressions. 

 A mixed term is, in the only useful sense of the word, Categore- 

 matic. ' It belongs to the class of what have been called many-worded 

 names. 



* It would, perhaps, be more correct to say that inflected cases are names and something 

 more ; and that this addition prevents th.em from being used as the subjects of propositions. 

 But the purposes of our inquiry do not demand that we should enter with scrupulous accu- 

 racy into similar minutiK. 



