76 



NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



menon, will be found almost indis- 

 pensable. For the purposes of that 

 Theory, the best mode of defining the 

 import of a proposition is not the mode 

 which shows most clearly what it is in 

 itself, but that which most distinctly 

 suggests the manner in which it may 

 be made available for advancing from 

 it to other propositions. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OP THE NATURE OF CLASSIFICATION, 

 AND THE FIVE PKEDICABLES. 



§ I. In examining into the nature 

 of general propositions, we have ad- 

 verted much less than is usual with 

 logicians to the ideas of a Class and 

 Classification ; ideas which, since the 

 Realist doctrine of General Substances 

 went out of vogue, have formed the 

 basis of almost every attempt at a 

 philosophical theory of general terms 

 and general propositions. We have 

 considered general names as having 

 a meaning, quite independently of 

 their being the names of classes. 

 That circumstance is in truth acci- 

 dental, it being wholly immaterial to 

 the signification of the name whether 

 there are many objects, or only one, 

 to which it happens to be applicable, 

 or whether there be any at all. God 

 is as much a general term to the 

 Christian or Jew as to the Polytheist ; 

 and dragon, hippogriff, chimera, mer- 

 maid, ghost, are as much so as if real 

 objects existed, corresponding to those 

 names. Every name the signification 

 of which is constituted by attributes, 

 is potentially a name of an indefinite 

 number of objects ; but it needs not 

 be actually the name of any ; and if 

 of any, it may be the name of only 

 one. As soon as we employ a name 

 to connote attributes, the things, be 

 they more or fewer, which happen to 

 possess those attributes, are consti- 

 tuted ipso facto a class. But in pre- 

 dicating the name we predicate only 

 the attributes ; and the fact of belong- 

 ing to a class does not, in many cases, 

 come into view at all. 



Although, however,Predicat!on does 

 not presuppose Classification, and 

 though the theory of Names and of 

 Propositions is not cleared up, but 

 only encumbered, by intruding the 

 idea of classification into it, there is 

 nevertheless aclose connection between 

 Classification and the employment of 

 General Names. By every general 

 name which we introduce, we create 

 a class, if there be any things, real or 

 imaginary, to compose it ; that is, any 

 Things corresponding to the significa- 

 tion of the name. Classes, therefore, 

 mostly owe their existence to general 

 language. But general language, also, 

 though that is not the most common 

 case, sometimes owes its existence to 

 classes. A general, which is as much 

 as to say a significant, name, is indeed 

 mostly introduced because we have a 

 signification to express by it ; because 

 we need a word by means of which 

 to predicate the attributes which it 

 connotes. But it is also true that a 

 name is sometimes introduced because 

 we have found it convenient to create 

 a class ; because we have thought it 

 useful for the regulation of our mental 

 operations, that a certain group of 

 objects should be thought of together. 

 A naturalist, for purposes connected 

 with his particular science, sees reason 

 to distribute the animal or vegetable 

 creation into certain groups rather 

 than into any others, and he requires 

 a name to bind, as it were, each of his 

 groups together. It must not how- 

 ever be supposed that such names, 

 when introduced, differ in any respect 

 as to their mode of signification from 

 other connotative names. The classes 

 which they denote are, as much as any 

 other classes, constituted by certain 

 common attributes, and their names 

 are significant of those attributes, and 

 of nothing else. The names of Cuvier's 

 classes and orders, Plantigrades, Digiti- 

 grades, &c., are as much the expres- 

 sion of attributes as if those names had 

 preceded, instead of grown out of, his 

 classification of animals. The only 

 peculiarity of the case is, that the con- 

 venience of classification was here the 



