IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 



6i 



■ubsequently arises, whether a certain 

 general name can be truly predicated 

 of a certain particular object, we have 

 only (as it were) to read the roll of 

 the objects upon which that name 

 was conferred, and see whether the 

 object about which the question arises 

 is to be found among them. The 

 framers of language (it would seem to 

 be supposed) have predetermined all 

 the objects that are to compose each 

 class, and we have only to refer to 

 the record of an antecedent decision. 



So absurd a doctrine will be owned 

 by nobody when thus nakedly stated ; 

 but if the commonly received explana- 

 tions of classification and naming do 

 not imply this theory, it requires to 

 be shown how they admit of being 

 reconciled with any other. 



General names are not marks put 

 upon definite objects ; classes are not 

 made by drawing a line round a given 

 number of assignable individuals. 

 The objects which compose any given 

 class are perpetually fluctuating. We 

 may frame a class without knowing 

 the individuals, or even any of the 

 individuals, of which it may be com- 

 posed ; we may do so while believing 

 that no such individuals exist. If by 

 the meaning of a general name are to 

 be understood the things which it is 

 the name of, no general name, except 

 by accident, has a fixed meaning at 

 all, or ever long retains the same 

 meaning. The only mode in which 

 any general name has a definite mean- 

 ing, is by being a name of an indefinite 

 variety of things ; namely, of all 

 things, known or unknown, past, 

 present, or future, which possess cer- 

 tain definite attributes. When, by 

 studpng not the meaning of words, 

 but the phenomena of nature, we dis- 

 cover that these attributes are pos- 

 sessed by some object not previously 

 known to possess them (as when 

 chemists found that the diamond was 

 combustible), we include this new 

 object in the class ; but it did not 

 already belong to the class. We place 

 the individual in the class because 

 the proposition is true ; the proposi- 



tion is not true because the object ia 

 placed in the class.* 



It will appear hereafter, in treating 

 of reasoning, how much the theory of 

 that intellectual process has been 

 vitiated by the influence of these 

 erroneous notions, and by the habit 

 which they exemplify of assimilating 

 all the operations of the human under- 

 standing which have truth for their 

 object, to processes of mere classifi- 

 cation and naming. Unfortunately, 

 the minds which have been entangled 

 in this net are precisely those which 

 have escaped the other cardinal error 

 commented upon in the beginning of 

 the present chapter. Since the revo- 

 lution which dislodged Aristotle from 

 the schools, logicians may almost be 

 divided into those who have looked 

 upon reasoning as essentially an affair 

 of Ideas, and those who have looked 

 upon it as essentially an affair of 

 Names. 



Although, however, Hobbes' theory 

 of Predication, according to the well- 

 known remark of Leibnitz, and the 

 avowal of Hobbes himself,t renders 



* Professor Bain remarks, in qualifica- 

 tion of the statement in the text (Logic, i. 

 fO). tliat the word Class h;is two meanings ; 

 "the class definite, and the class indefinite. 

 The class definite is an enumeration of 

 actual individuals, as the peers of the 

 realm, the oceans of the globe, the known 

 planets. . . . The class indefinite is un- 

 emimerated. Such classes are stars, planets, 

 gold-bearing rocks, men, poets, virtuous. 

 . . . In this last acceptation of the word, 

 class name and general name are identicaL 

 The class name denotes an indefinite 

 number of individuals, and connotes the 

 points of community or likeness." 



The theory controverted in the text, 

 tacitly supposes all classes to be definite. 

 I have assumed them to be indefinite; 

 because for the pixrposes of Logic, definite 

 classes, as such, are almost useless ; though 

 often serviceable as means of abiidged ex- 

 pression. (Vide infra, book iii. ch. ii.) 



t " From hence also this may be de- 

 duced, that the first truths were arbitrarily 

 made by those that first of all imposed 

 names upon things, or received them from 

 the imposition of others. For it is true 

 (for example) that man is a living creature, 

 but it is for this reason, tnat it pleased 

 men to impose both these names on the 

 same thing."— Computation or Logic, ch. 

 iii. sect. 8. 



