64 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



How widely these views of predication have prevailed, is evident 

 from this, that they are the basis of the celebrated Dictum de omni et 

 nullo. When the syllogism is resolved, by all who treat of it, into an 

 inference that what is true of a class is tnie of all things whatever that 

 belong to the class ; and when this is laid down by almost all professed 

 logicians as the ultimate principle to which all reasoning owes its 

 validity ; it is clear that in the general estimation of logicians, the 

 propositions of which reasonings are composed can be the exj^ression 

 of nothing but the process of dividing things into classes, and referring 

 everything to its proper class. 



This theory appears to me a signal example of a logical error very 

 often committed in logic, that of varepov Trporepov, or explaining a 

 thing by something which presupposes it. When I say that snow is 

 white, I may and ought to be thinking of snow as a class, because I 

 am asserting a proposition as true of all snow : but I am certainly not 

 thinking of white objects as a class; I am thinking of no white object 

 whatever except snow, but only of that, and of the sensation of white 

 which it gives me. AVlien, indeed, I have judged, or assented to the 

 propositions, that snow is white, and that several other things also are 

 white, I gradually begin to think of white objects as a class, including 

 snow and those other things. But this is a conception which followed, 

 not preceded, those judgments, and therefore cannot be given as an 

 explanation of them. Instead of explaining the effect by the cause, 

 this doctrine explains the cause by the effect, and is, I conceive, founded 

 upon a latent misconception of the nature of classification. 



There is a sort of language very generally prevalent in these dis- 

 cussions, which seems to suppose that classification is an aiTangement 

 and grouping of definite and knovra individuals : that when names 

 were imposed, mankind took into consideration all the individual ob- 

 jects in the universe, made them up into parcels or lists, and gave to 

 the objects of each list a common name, repeating this operation toties 

 quoties until they had invented all the general names of which language 

 consists ; which having been once done, if a question subsequently 

 arises whether a certain general name can be truly predicated of a 

 certain particular object, we have only (as it were) to read the roll of 

 the objects upon which that name was confeiTed, and see whether the 

 object about which the question arises, is to be found among them. 

 The framers of language (it would seem to be supposed) have prede- 

 termined all the objects that are to compose each class, and we have 

 only to refer to the record of an antecedent decision. 



So absurd a doctrine will be owned by nobody when thus nakedly 

 stated ; but if the commonly received explanations of classification and 

 naming do not imply this theory, it requires to be shown how they ad- 

 mit of being reconciled with any other. 



General names are not marks put upon definite objects ; classes are 

 not made by drawing a line round a given number of assignable indi- 

 viduals. The objects which compose any given class are peiq^etually 

 fluctuating. We may fi-ame a class without knowing the individuals, 

 or even any of the individuals, of which it will be composed : we may 

 do so while belie-sdng that no such individuals exist. If by the meaning 

 of a general name are to be understood the things which it is the name 

 of, no general name, except by accident, has a fixed meaning at all, or 

 ever long retains the same meaning. The only mode in Avhich any 



