432 OBSERVATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



it is to be ever stamping it afresh, by living in the habitual contempla- 

 tion of the phenomena themselves, and not resting in our familiarity 

 with the words that express them. If any one, having possessed him- 

 self of the laws of phenomena as recorded in words, whether delivered 

 to him originally by others or even found out by himself, is content 

 from thenceforth to live in the midst of these fomiulas, to think exclu- 

 sivelv of them, and of applying them to cases as they arise, without 

 keeping up his acquaintance with the realities from which these laws 

 were collected — not only will he continually fail in his practical efforts, 

 because he Avill apply his foiTnulce without duly considering whether, 

 in this case and in that, other laws of nature do not modify or super- 

 sede them ; but the fornuite themselves will progressively lose their 

 meaning to him, and he will cease at last even to be capable of recog- 

 nizing with certainty whether a case falls within the contemplation of 

 his fomiula or not. It is, in short, as ne(?bssary, on all subjects not 

 mathematical, that the things on which we reason should be conceived 

 by us in tlie concrete, and "clothed in circumstances," as it is in alge- 

 bra that we should keep all individualizing peculiarities sedulously out 

 of view. 



With this remark we shall close our observations on the Philosophy 

 of Language. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OF CLASSIFICATION, AS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



§ 1. There is, as we have frequently remarked in this work, a classi- 

 fication of things, which is inseparable from the fact of giving them 

 general names. Every name which connotes an attribute, divides, by 

 that very fact, all things whatever into two classes, those which have 

 the attribute and those which have not; those of which the name can 

 be predicated, and those of which it cannot. And the division thus 

 made is not merely a division of such things as actually exist, or are 

 kno\\Ti to exist, but of all such as may hereafter be discovered, and 

 even of all such as can be imagined. 



On this kind of Classification we have nothing to add to what has 

 previously been said. The Classification "which requires to be dis- 

 cussed as a separate act of the mind, is altogether different. In the 

 one, the arrangement of objects in groups, and distribution of them into 

 compartments, is a mere incidental effect consequent upon the use of 

 names given for another purpose, namely, that of simply expressing 

 som.e of their qualities. In the other, the an-angement and distribution 

 are the main object, and the naming is secondary to, and purj)0sely 

 conforms itself to, instead of governing, that more important operation. 



Classification, thus regarded, is a contrivance for the best possible 

 ordering of the ideas of objects in our minds ; for causing the ideas to 

 accompany or succeed one another in such a way as shall give us the 

 greatest command over our knowledge already acquired, and lead most 

 directly to the acquisition of more. The general problem of Classifi- 



