80 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OF THE NATURE OF CLASSIFICATION, AND THE FIVE PREDICABLES. 



§ 1. In examining into the nature of general propositions, we have 

 adverted much less than is usual vi^ith Logicians, to the ideas of a 

 Class, and Classification ; ideas which, since the Realist doctrine of 

 General Substances went out of vogue, have formed the basis of almost 

 every attempt at a philosophical theory of general terms and general 

 projjositions. We have considered general names as having a mean- 

 ing, quite independently of their being the names of classes. That 

 circumstance is in truth accidental, it being wholly immaterial to the 

 signification of the name whether there are many objects or only one 

 to which it happens to be applicable, or whether there be any at all. 

 God is as much a general term to the Christian or the Jew as to the 

 Polytheist ; and dragon, hipj30gi-iff, chimera, mennaid, ghost, are as 

 much so as if real objects existed, corresponding to those names. 

 Every name the signification of which is constituted by attributes, is 

 potentially a name of an indefinite number of objects ; but it needs 

 not be actually the name of any; and if of any, it may be the name of 

 only one. As soon as we employ a name to connote atti'ibutes, the 

 things, be they more or fewer, which happen to possess those attri- 

 butes, are constituted, ipso facto, a class. But in predicating the name 

 we predicate only the attributes ; and the fact of belonging to a class 

 does not, in ordinary cases, come into view at alb 



Although, however. Predication does not presuppose Classification, 

 and although the theory of Names and of Propositions is not cleared 

 up, but only encumbered, by intruding the idea of classification into 

 it, there is nevertheless a close connexion between Classification, and 

 the employment of General Names. By every general name which 

 we introduce, we create a class, if there be any existing things to 

 compose it ; that is, any Things corresponding to the signification of 

 the name. Classes, therefore, mostly owe their existence to general 

 language. But general language, also, though that is not the most 

 common case, sometimes owes its existence to classes. A general, 

 which is as much as to say a significant, name, is indeed mostly intro- 

 duced because we have a signification to express by it ; because we 

 need a word by means of which to predicate the attributes which it 

 connotes. But it is also true that a name is sometimes introduced be- 

 cause we have found it convenient to create a class ; because we have 

 thought it useful for the regulation of our mental operations, that a 

 certain gi'oup of objects should be thought of together. A naturalist, 

 for purposes connected with his particular science, sees reason to dis- 

 tribute the animal or vegetable creation into certain groups rather 

 than into any others, and he requires a name to bind, as it were, each 

 of his groups together. It must not, however, be supposed that such 

 names, when introduced, differ in any respect, as to their mode of sig- 

 nification, from other connotative names. The classes which they de- 

 note are, as much as any other classes, constituted by certain common 

 atti-ibutes ; and their names are significant of those attributes, and of 

 nothing else. The names of Cuvier's classes and orders, Planti- 

 grades, Digitigrades, &c., are as much the expression of attiibutes, as 



