IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 69 



§ 6. To these four kinds of matter-of-fact or assertion, must be 

 added, a fifth, Resemblance. This was a species of attribute which 

 we found it impossible to analyze ; for which wo fundament um, distinct 

 fi-om the objects themselves, could be assigned. In addition to prop- 

 ositions which assert a secpience or coexistence between two phenom- 

 ena, there arc therefore, also, propcjsitions which assert resemblance 

 between them : as. This color is like that color ; — The heat of to-day is 

 equal to the heat of yesterday. It is tnle that such an assertion might 

 with some plausibility be brought within the description of an affirma- 

 tion of sequence, by considering it as an assertion that the simulta- 

 neous contemplation of the two colors is Jhllowcd by a specific feeling 

 termed the feeling of resemblance. But tliere would be nothing 

 gained by encumbering ourselves, especially in this place, with a 

 generalization which may be looked upon as strained. Logic does 

 not undertake to analyze things into their ultimate elements. Resem- 

 blance between two phenomena is more intelligible in itself than any 

 explanation could make it, and under any classification must remain 

 specifically distinct from the ordinary cases of sequence and coexistence. 



It is sometimes said that all propositions whatever, of which the 

 predicate is a general name, do, in point of fact, affirm or deny resem- 

 blance. All such propositions affirm that a thing belongs to a class ; 

 but things being classed together according to their resemblance, 

 everything is of course classed with the things which it resembles 

 most ; and thence, it may be said, when we affirm that gold is a 

 metal, or that Socrates is a man, the affirmation intended is, that gold 

 resembles other metals, and Socrates other men, more nearly than 

 they resemble the objects contained in any other of the classes co- 

 ordinate with these. 



There is some slight degree of foundation for this remark, but no 

 more than a slight degree. The arrangement of things into classes, 

 such as the class metal, or the class 7na7i, is grounded indeed upon a 

 resemblance among the things which are placed in the same class, but 

 not upon a mere general resemblance : the resemblance it is grounded 

 upon consists in the possession by all those things, of certain common 

 peculiarities ; and those peculiarities it is which the terms connote, 

 and which the propositions consequently assert ; not the resemblance : 

 for though when I say. Gold is a metal, I say by implication that if 

 there be any other metals it must resemble them, yet if there were no 

 other metals 1 might still assert the proposition \vith the same mean- 

 ing as at present, namely, that gold has the various properties implied 

 in the word metal ; just as it might be said. Christians are men, even 

 if there were no men who were not Christians ; or as the expression, 

 Jehovah is God, might be used by the firmest believer in the unity of 

 the godhead. Propositions, therefore, in which objects are refeiTed to 

 a class because they possess the attributes constituting the class, are 

 so far from asserting nothing but resemblance, that they do not, prop- 

 erly speaking, assert resemblance at all 



But we remarked some time ago (and tho reasons of the remark 

 will be more fully entered into in a subsequent Book), that there is some- 

 times a convenience in extending the bound.aries of a class so as to 

 include things which possess in a very inferior degree, if in any, the 

 characteristic properties of the class, — provided they resemble that 

 class more than any other, insomuch that the general propositions 



