IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 63 



class mortal, and that mortal \\\\\ be a name of all things of which man 

 is a name : but why I Those objects are brought under the name, by- 

 possessing the attributes connoted by it : but their possession of the 

 atti-ibutes is the real condition on which the truth of the proposition 

 depends ; not their being called by the name. Connotative names do 

 not precede, but follow, the attributes Avhich they connote. If one 

 attribute happens to be always found in conjunction with another 

 attribute, the concrete names which answer to those attributes will of 

 course be predicable of the same subjects, and may be said, in Hobbes' 

 language (in the propriety of which on this occasion I fully concur), to 

 be two names for the same things. But the possibility of a concun'ent 

 application of the two names, is a mere consequence of the conjunction 

 between the two attributes, and was, in most cases, never thought of 

 when the names were invented and their signification fixed. That the 

 diamond is combustible, was a proposition certainly not dreamed of 

 when the words Diamond and Combustible received their present 

 meaning ; and could not have been discovered by the most ingenious 

 and refined analysis of the signification of those words. It was found 

 out by a very different process, namely, by exerting the five senses, 

 and learning from them, that the attribute of combustibility existed in 

 all those diamonds upon which the experiment was tried ; these being 

 60 numerous, and the circumstances of the experiments such, that what 

 was true of those individuals might be concluded to be true of all sub- 

 stances " coming within the name," that is, of all substances possessing 

 the attributes which the name connotes. The assertion, therefore, 

 when analyzed, is, that wherever we find certain attributes, there will 

 be found a certain other attribute : which is not a question of the sig- 

 nification of names, but of the laws of nature ; the order existing: amono: 

 phenomena. 



§ 3. Although Hobbes' theory of Predication has not, in the terms 

 in which he stated it, met with a very favorable reception from philos- 

 ophers, a theory virtually identical with it, and not by any means so 

 perspicuously expressed, may almost be said to have taken the rank of 

 an established opinion. The most generally received notion of Predi- 

 cation decidedly is, that it consists in referring something to a class, i. e., 

 either placing an indi\adual under a class, or placing one class under 

 another class. Thus, the proposition, Man is mortal, asserts, according 

 to this view of it, that the class man is included in the class mortal. 

 " Plato is a philosopher," asserts that the individual Plato is one of 

 those who compose the class philosopher. If the proposition is nega- 

 tive, then instead of placing something in a class, it is said to exclude 

 something from a class. Thus, if the following be the proposition, 

 The elephant is not carnivorous ; what is asserted (according to this 

 thfeory) is, that the elephant is excluded from the class carnivorous, or 

 is not numbered among the things comprising that class. There is no 

 real difference except in language, between this tlieoiy of Predication 

 and the theory of Hobbes. For a class is absolutely nothing but an 

 indefinite number of individuals denoted by a general name. The 

 name given to them in common, is what makes them a class. To refer 

 anything to a class, therefore, is to look upon it as one of the things 

 which are to be called by that common name. To exclude it from a 

 class, is to say that the common name is not applicable to it. 



