78 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



connected with the thoughts, contained in that immortal Third Book.* 

 But, besides nominal essences, he admitted real essences, or essences 

 of individual objects, which he supposed to be the causes of the sensi- 

 ble properties of those objects. We know not (said he), what these 

 are (and this acknowledgment rendered the fiction comparatively in- 

 nocuous) ; but if we did, we could, from them alone, demonstrate the 

 sensible properties of the object, as the properties of the triangle are 

 demonstrated from the definition of the triangle. I shall have occasion 

 to revert to this theory in treating of Demonstration, and of the con- 

 ditions under which one property of a thing admits of being demon- 

 strated from another property. It is enough here to remark that 

 according to this definition, the real essence of an object has, in the 

 progress of physics, come to be conceived as nearly equivalent, in the 

 case of bodies, to their coi-puscular stiiicture : what it is now supposed 

 to mean in the case of any other entities, I would not take upon my- 

 self to define. 



§ 4. An essential proposition, .then, is one which is purely verbal ; 

 which asserts of a thing under a particular name, only what is asserted 

 of it in the fact of calling it by that name ; and which therefore either 

 gives no infonnation, or gives it respecting the name, not the thing. 

 Non-essential, or accidental propositions, on the contrary, may be called 

 Real Propositions, in opposition to Verbal. They predicate of a thing, 

 some fact not involved in the signification of the name by which the 

 proposition speaks of it ; some attribute not connoted by that name. 

 Such are all propositions concerning things individually designated, 

 and all general or particular propositions in which the predicate con- 

 notes any atti-ibute not connoted by the subject. All these, if true, add 

 to our knowledge : they convey infonnation not already involved in the 

 names employed. Wlien I am told that all, or even that some objects, 

 w^hich have certain qualities, or which stand in certain relations, have 

 also certain other qualities, or stand in certain other relations, I learn 

 from this proposition a new fact ; a fact not included in my knowledge 

 of the meaning of the words, nor even of the existence of Things 

 answering to the signification of those words. It is this class of propo- 

 sitions only which are in themselves instructive, or fi-om which any 

 instructive propositions can be infeiTed. 



Nothing has probably conti'ibuted more to the opinion so commonly 

 prevalent of the futility of the school logic, than the circumstance tliat 

 almost all the examples used in the common school books to illustrate 

 the doctrines of predication and of the syllogism, consist of essential 

 propositions. They were usually taken either from the branches or 

 from the main trunk of the Predicamental Tree, which included nothing 

 but what was of the essence of the species : Ovme corpus est suhstantia, 

 Omne animal est corpus, Omnis homo est corpus, Omnis homo est ani- 

 mal, Omnis homo est rationally, and so forth. It is far from wonderftil 



* The always acute and often profound author of .4rt OntUne of Sematology {Mr. B. H. 

 Smart) justly says, '• Locke will be much more intelligible if, in the majority of places, we 

 substitute ' the knowledge of for what he calls, ' the idea of " (p. 10). Among the many 

 criticisms upon Locke's use of the word Idea, this is the only one which, as it appears to 

 me, precisely hits the mark ; and I quote it for the additional reason that it precisely ex- 

 presses the point of difterence respecting the import of Propositions, between my view and 

 what I have called the Conceptualist view of them. \Vhere a Conceptualist says that a 

 name or a proposition expresses our Idea of a thing, I should generally say (instead of our 

 Idea) our Knowledge, or Belief, concerning the thing itself. 



