IMPORT OF PROrOSITIOXS. 65 



general name has a definite meaning, is hy being a name of an iudofi- 

 nite variety of things, namely, of all things, known or unknown, past, 

 present, or future, which possess certain definite attributes. WHien, 

 by studying not the meaning of words, but the phenomena of nature, 

 we discover that these attributes are jiossesscd by some object not pre- 

 viously known to possess them, (as wlieu chemists found that the dia- 

 mond was combustible), we include this new object in die class; but 

 it did not already belong to the class. We place the individual in the 

 class because the proposition is true ; the 2)roposition is not true be- 

 canfie the object is placed in the class. 



It will appear hereafter in treating of reasoning, how much the 

 theory of that intellectual process Ikls been vitiated by the influence 

 of tliese erroneous views, and by the habit which they exemplify of 

 assimilating all the operations of the human understanding which have 

 truth for thoir object, to processes of mere classification and naming. 

 Unfortunately, the minds which have been entangled in this net are 

 precisely those which have escaped the other cardinal error commented 

 upon in the beginning of the present chaptei'. Since the revolution 

 which dislodged Aristotle from the schools, logicians may almost be 

 diN-ided into those who have looked upon reasoning as essentially an 

 • affair of Ideas, and those who have looked upon it as essentially an 

 affair of Names. 



One thing it is but just to remark. Although Hobbes' theory of 

 Predication, according to the well known remark of Leibnitz, and the 

 avowal of Hobbes himself,* renders truth and falsity completely arbi- 

 trary, with no standard but the will of men, it must not be concluded 

 that either Hobbes, or any of the other philosophers who have in the 

 main agreed with him, did, in fact, consider the distinction between 

 truth and eiTor as less real, or attached one jot less of importance to it, 

 than other people. To suppose that they did so ^vould argue total 

 imacquaintance with their other speculations. But this shows how 

 little hold their, docti-ine possessed over their own minds. No person 

 at bottom ever imagined that there was nothing more in truth than 

 ]>ropriety of expression ; than using language in conformity to a pre- 

 vious convention. With whatever illusions even profound thinkers 

 may have satisfied themselves when engaged in finding a general solu- 

 tion for a metaphysical problem ; when they came to the practical ap- 

 plication of their doctrines, they were always prepared with some 

 means of explaining the solution away. When the inquiry was 

 brought down from generals to a particular case, it has always been 

 acknowledged that there is a distinction between verbal and real ques- 

 tions ; that some false propositions are uttered from ignorance of the 

 meaning of words, but that in others the source of the error is a mis- 

 apprehension of things; that a person who has not the use of language 

 at all may foiTn propositions mentally, and that they may be untrue, 

 that is, he may believe as matters of fact what are not really so. This 

 last admission cannot be made in- stronger terms than it is by Hobbes 

 himself ;t though he will not allow such eiToneous belief to be called 



* " From hence also this may he deduced, that the first truths were arbitrarily made by 

 those that first of all imposed names upon things, or received them from the imposition of 

 others. For it is true (for example) that rrean is a living creature, but it is for this reason, 

 that it pleased men to impose both these names on the same thing."— Computation or Logic, 

 ch. iii., sect. 8. 



t " Men are subject to err not only in affirming and denying, but also in perception, and 



