74 



NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



it has been driven from the open 

 country, retains a footing in some 

 remote fastness. The essences of in- 

 dividuals were an unmeaning figment 

 arising from a misapprehension of the 

 essences of glasses ; yet even Locke, 

 when he extirpated the parent error, 

 could not shake himself free from that 

 which was its fruit. He distinguished 

 two sorts of essences. Real and No- 

 minal. His nominal essences were 

 the essences of classes, explained 

 nearly as we have now explained 

 them. Nor is anything wanting to 

 render the third book of Locke's Essay 

 a nearly unexceptionable treatise on 

 the connotation of names, except to 

 free its language from the assumption 

 of what are called Abstract Ideas, 

 which unfortunately is involved in the 

 phraseology, though not necessarily 

 connected with the thoughts contained 

 in that immortal Third Book.* But 

 besides nominal essences, he admitted 

 real essences, or essences of individual 

 objects, which he supposed to be the 

 causes of the sensible properties of 

 those objects. We know not (said he) 

 what these are ; and this acknowledg- 

 ment rendered the fiction compara- 

 tively innocuous ; but if we did, we 

 could, from them alone, demonstrate 

 the sensible properties of the object, 

 as the properties of the triangle are 

 demonstrated from the definition of 

 the triangle. I shall have occasion 

 to revert to this theory in treating of 

 Demonstration, and of the conditions 

 under which one property of a thing 



* The always acute and often profound 

 author of An Outline of Sematologi/ t Mr. B. 

 H. Smart) justly says, "Locke will be 

 much more intelligible, if, in the majority 

 of places, we substitute 'the knowledge of 

 for wiiat he calls ' tlie Idea of" (p. lo). 

 Among the many criticisms on Locke's use 

 of the word Idea, this is the one which, as 

 it appears to me, most nearly hits the 

 mark; and I quote it for the additional 

 reason that it precisely expresses the p'int 

 of difference respecting the import of Pro- 



Eositions, between my view and what I 

 ave spoken of as tlie Conceptualist view 

 of them. Where a Conceptualist says that 

 a name or a proposition expresses our idea 

 of a thing, I should generally say (instead 

 of our Idea) our Knowledge, or Belief, con- 

 cerning the thing itself. 



admits of being demonstrated from 

 another property. It is enough here to 

 remark that, according to this defini- 

 tion, the real essence of an object has, in 

 the progress of physics, come to be con- 

 ceived as nearly equivalent, in the case 

 of bodies, to their corpuscular struc- 

 ture : what it is now supposed to mean 

 in the case of any other entities, I 

 would not take upon myself to define. 



§ 4. An essential proposition, then, 

 is one which is purely verbal ; which 

 asserts of a thing under a particular 

 name only what is asserted of it in 

 tlie fact of calling it by that name ; 

 and which therefore either gives no 

 information, or gives it respecting the 

 name, not the thing. Non-essential, 

 or accidental propositions, on the con- 

 trary, may be called Real Propositions, 

 in opposition to Verbal. They predi- 

 cate of a thing some fact not involved 

 in the signification of the name by 

 which the proposition speaks of it ; 

 some attribute not connoted by that 

 name. Such are all propositions 

 concerning things individually desig- 

 nated, and all general or particular 

 propositions in which the predicate 

 connotes any attribute not connoted 

 by the subject. All these, if tnie, add 

 to our knowledge : they convey infor- 

 mation, not already involved in the 

 names employed. When I am told 

 that all, or even that some objects, 

 which have certain qualities, or which 

 stand in certain relations, have also 

 certain other qualities, or stand in 

 certain other relations, I learn from 

 this proposition a new fact ; a fact 

 not included in my knowledge of the 

 meaning of the words, nor even of the 

 existence of Things answering to the 

 signification of those words. It is 

 this class of propositions only which 

 are in themselves instructive, or from 

 which any instructive propositions can 

 be inferred.* 



* This distinction corresponds to that 

 which is drawn by Kant and other meta- 

 physicians between what they term analy- 

 tic and synthetic judgments ; the former 

 being those which can be evolved from tlie 

 meaning of the terms used. 



