30 



NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



men, quadrupeds, horses, asses, and 

 ponies. That, for instance, could not 

 be a very comprehensive view of the 

 nature of Relation which could ex- 

 clude action, passivity, and local 

 situation from that category. The 

 same observation applies to the cate- 

 gories Quando (or position in time), 

 and Ubi (or position in space) ; while 

 the distinction between the latter 

 and Situs is merely verbal. The in- 

 congruity of erecting into a summum 

 genus the class which forms the tenth 

 category is manifest. On the other 

 hand, the enumeration takes no notice 

 of anything besides substances and 

 attributes. In what category are we 

 to place sensations, or any other feel- 

 ings and states of mind ; as hope, 

 joy, fear ; sound, smell, taste ; pain, 

 pleasure ; thought, judgment, concep- 

 tion, and the like? Probably all 

 these would have been placed by the 

 Aristotelian school in the categories 

 of actio and passio ; and the relation 

 of such of them as are active, to their 

 objects, and of such of them as are 

 passive, to their causes, would rightly 

 be so placed ; but the things them- 

 selves, the feelings or states of mind, 

 wrongly. Feelings, or states of con- 

 sciousness, are assuredly to be ac- 

 counted among realities, but they 

 cannot be reckoned either among 

 substances or attributes.* 



* On the preceding passage Professor 

 Bain remarks {Logic, i. 265): "The Cate- 

 gories d< > not seem to have been intended 

 as a classification of Nameable Things, in 

 the sense of ' an enumeration of all kinds 

 of Things which are capable of being made 

 predicates, or of haviiiganythiug predicated 

 of them.' I hey seem to iiave been rather 

 intended as a generalization of predicates; 

 an analysis of the final import of predica- 

 tion. Viewed in tins light, they are not 

 open to tht^ objections offered by Mr. Mill. 

 The proper question to ask is not — In what 

 Category are we to place sensations or other 

 feelings or states of mind? but. Under 

 what Categories can we predicate regard- 

 ing states of mind? Take, for example, 

 Hope. When we say tiiat it is a state of 

 mind, we predicate Substance : we may 

 also describe liow great it is (Quantity), 

 what is tiie quality of it, pleasurable or 

 painful (Quality), what it has reference to 

 (Relation). Aristotle seems to hare framed 



§ 2. Before recommencing, under 

 better auspices, the attempt made 

 with such imperfect success by the 

 early logicians, we must take notice 

 of an unfortunate ambiguity in all the 

 concrete names which correspond to 

 the most general of all abstract terms, 

 the word Existence. When we have 

 occasion for a name which shall be 

 capable of denoting whatever exists, 

 as contradistinguished from non- 

 entity or Nothing, there is hardly a 

 word applicable to the purpose which 

 is not also, and even more familiarly, 

 taken in a sense in which it denotes 

 only substances. But substances are 

 not all that exists ; attributes, if 

 such things are to be spoken of, must 

 be said to exist ; feelings certainly 

 exist. Yet when we speak of an 

 object, or of a thing, we are almost 

 always supposed to mean a substance. 

 There seems a kind of contradiction 

 in using such an expression as that 

 one thing is merely an attribute of 

 another thing. And the announce- 

 ment of a Classification of Things 

 would, I believe, prepare most readers 

 the Categories on the plan— Here is an in- 

 dividual ; wtiat is the final analysis of all 

 tliat we can predicate about him? " 



This is doubtless a true statement of the 

 leading idea in the classification. The 

 Category Ovaia was certainly understood 

 by Aristotle to be a general name for all 

 possible answers to the questions Quid sit ? 

 w lien asked rei^pecting a concrete indi- 

 vidual ; as the other Categories are names 

 comprehending all possilile answers to the 

 questions Quantum sit? Quale sit? &c. In 

 Aristotle's conception, tiierefore, the Cate- 

 gories may not have been a classification of 

 Thintrs ; but they were soon converted into 

 one by his scholastic followers, who cer- 

 tainly regarded and treated them as a 

 classification of Things, and carried them 

 out as such, dividing down the Category 

 Substance us a naturalist mignt do, into 

 the different classes of physical or meta- 

 physical objects as distinguished from 

 attributes, and the other Categories into 

 the principal varieties of quantity, quality, 

 relation, &c. It is, therefore, a just sub- 

 ject of complaint against them, that they 

 had no Category of Feeling. Feeling is 

 assu'cdly predicable as. a summum genus, 

 of every particular kind of feeling, for in- 

 stance, as in Mr. Bain's example, of Hope : 

 but it cannot be brought within any of the 

 Categories as interpreted either by Aristotle 

 or by his followers. 



