THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 



31 



for an enumeration like those in 

 natural history, beginning with the 

 great divisions of animal, vegetable, 

 and mineral, and subdividing them 

 into classes and orders. If, rejecting 

 the word Thing, we endeavour to find 

 another of a more general import, or 

 at least more exclusively confined to 

 that general import, a word denoting 

 all that exists, and connoting only 

 simple existence ; no word might be 

 presumed fitter for such a purpose 

 than being : originally the present 

 participle of a verb which in one of 

 its meanings is exactly equivalent to 

 the verb exists; and therefore suitable, 

 even by its grammatical formation, to 

 be the concrete of the abstract exist- 

 ence. But this word, strange as the 

 fact may appear, is still more com- 

 pletely spoiled for the purpose which 

 it seemed expressly made for, than 

 the word Thing. Being is, by custom, 

 exactly synonymous with substance ; 

 except that it is free from a slight 

 taint of a second ambiguity ; being 

 applied impartially to matter and to 

 mind, while substance, though ori- 

 ginally and in strictness applicable to 

 both, is apt to suggest in preference 

 the idea of matter. Attributes are 

 never called Beings ; nor are feelings. 

 A being is that which excites feelings, 

 and which possesses attributes. The 

 soul is called a Being ; God and 

 angels are called Beings ; but if we 

 were to say, extension, colour, wis- 

 dom, virtue, are beings, we should 

 perhaps be suspected of thinking with 

 some of the ancients, that the cardinal 

 virtues are animals ; or, at the least. 

 of holding with the Platonic school 

 the doctrine of self-existent Ideas, or 

 with the followers of Epicurus that of 

 Sensible Forms, which detach them- 

 selves in every direction from bodies, 

 and by coming in contact with our 

 organs, cause our perceptions. We 

 should be supposed, in short, to be- 

 lieve that Attributes are Substances. 

 In consequence of this perversion 

 of the word Being, philosophers 

 looking about for something to supply 

 its place, laid their hands upon the 



word Entity, a piece of barbarous 

 Latin, invented by the schoolmen to 

 be used as an abstract name, in 

 which class its grammatical form 

 would seem to place it ; but being 

 seized by logicians in distress to stop 

 a leak in their terminology, it has 

 ever since been used as a concrete 

 name. The kindred word essence, 

 bom at the same time and of the 

 same parents, scarcely underwent a 

 more complete transformation when, 

 from being the abstract of the verb 

 to he, it came to denote something 

 sufficiently concrete to be enclosed 

 in a glass bottle. The word Entity, 

 since it settled down into a concrete 

 name, has retained its universality 

 of signification somewhat less im- 

 paired than any of the names before 

 mentioned. Yet the same gradual 

 decay to which, after a certain age, 

 all the language of psychology seems 

 liable, has been at work even here. 

 If you call virtue an entity, you are 

 indeed somewhat less strongly sus- 

 pected of believing it to be a sub- 

 stance than if you called it a being ; 

 but you are by no means free from 

 the suspicion. Every word which 

 was originally intended to connote 

 mere existence, seems, after a time, 

 to enlarge its connotation to separate 

 existence, or existence freed from the 

 condition of belonging to a substance ; 

 which condition being precisely what 

 constitutes an attribute, attributes 

 are gradually shut out; and along 

 with them feelings, which in ninety - 

 nine cases out of a hundred have no 

 other name than that of the attribute 

 which is grounded on them. Strange 

 that when the greatest embarrassment 

 felt by all who have any considerable 

 number of thoughts to express, is to 

 find a sufficient variety of precise 

 words fitted to express them, there 

 should be no practice to which even 

 scientific thinkers are more addicted 

 than that of taking valuable words to 

 express ideas which are sufficiently 

 expressed by other words already 

 appropriated to them. 

 When it is impossible to obtain good 



