DEFINITION. 91 



Bpccies, and although, therefore, so far as we are aware, they might 

 be absent without making the name: inapplicable and the species a 

 different species — are yet never, in fact, known to be absent. A con- 

 cise mode of expressing the same meaning is, that inseparable acci- 

 dents are properties which are universal to the species but not neces- 

 sary to it. Thus, blackness is an attribute of a crow, and, as far as we 

 know, an universal one. But if we were to discover a race of white 

 birds, in other respects resembling crows, we should not say, These 

 are not crows ; we should say. These are white crows. Crow, there- 

 fore, does not connote blackness ; nor, from any of the attributes which 

 it does connote, whether as a word in popular use or as a term of art, 

 could blackness be inferred. Not only, therefore, can wc conceive a 

 white crow, but we know of no reason why such an animal should not 

 exist. Since, however, none but black crows are known to exist, 

 blackness, in the present state of our knowledge, ranks as an accident, 

 but an inseparable accident, of the species crow. 



Separable Accidents are those which are found, in point of fact, to 

 be sometimes absent fiom the species ; which are not only not neces- 

 sary, but not even universal. They are such as do not belong to every 

 individual of the species, but only to some indi^•iduals ; or if to all, not 

 at all times. Thus, the color of an European is one of the separable 

 accidents of the species man, because it is not an attribute of all human 

 creatures. Being born, is also a separable accident of the species 

 man, because although an attribute of all human beings, it is so only 

 at one particular time. A fortiori those attributes which are not 

 constant even in the same individual, as, to be in one or in another 

 place, to be hot or cold, sitting or walking, must be ranked as Sepa- 

 rable accidents. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



OP DEFINITION. 



§ 1. One necessary part of the theory of Names and of Proposition^ 

 remains to be treated of in this place ; the theory of Definitions. As 

 being the most important of the (;lass of propositions which we have 

 characterized as purt^ly verbal, they have already received some notice 

 in the chapter preceding the last. But their fuller treatment was at 

 that time postponed, because definition is so closely connected with 

 classification, that, until the nature of the latter process is in some 

 measure understood, the former cannot be discussed to much jjurpose. 



§ 2. The simplest and most correct notion of a Definition is, a prop- 

 osition declaratory of the meaning of a word; namely, either the 

 meaning which it bears in common acceptation, or that Avhich the 

 speaker or writer, for the particular purposes of his discourse, intends 

 to annex to it. 



The definition of a word being the proposition which enunciates its 

 meaning, words which have no meaning are unsusceptible of definition. 

 Proper names, therefore, cannot be defined. A proper name being a 

 mere mark put upon an individual, and of which it is the characteristic 



