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OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



but by its properties generally. I 

 mean, the Kinds of things, in the 

 sense which, in this treatise, has been 

 specially attached to that term. By 

 a Kind, it will be remembered, we 

 mean one of those classes which are 

 distinguished from all others not by 

 one or a few definite properties, but 

 by an unknown multitude of them ; 

 the combination of properties on which 

 the class is grounded being a mere 

 index to an indefinite number of other 

 distinctive attributes. The class horse 

 is a Kind, because the things which 

 agree in possessing the characters by 

 which we recognise a horse, agree in 

 a great number of other properties, 

 as we know, and, it cannot be doubted, 

 in many more than we know. Animal, 

 again, is a Kind, because no definition 

 that could be given of the name animal 

 could either exhaust the properties 

 common to all animals, or supply pre- 

 mises from which the remainder of 

 those properties could be inferred. 

 But a combination of properties which 

 does not give evidence of the existence 

 of any other independent peculiarities, 

 does not constitute a Kind. White 

 horse, therefore, is not a Kind ; be- 

 cause horses which agree in whiteness 

 do not agree in anything else, except 

 the qualities common to all horses, 

 and whatever may be the causes or 

 effects of that particular colour. 



On the principle that there should 

 be a name for everything which we 

 have frequent occasion to make asser- 

 tions about, there ought evidently to 

 be a name for every Kind ; for as it 

 is the very meaning of a Kind that 

 the individuals composing it have an 

 indefinite multitude of properties in 

 common, it follows that, if not with 

 our present knowledge, yet with that 

 which we may hereafter acquire, the 

 Kind is a subject to which there will 

 have to be applied many predicates. 

 The third component element of a 

 philosophical language, therefore, is 

 that there shall be a name for every 

 Kind. In other words, there must 

 not only be a terminology, but also a 

 nomenclature. 



The words Nomenclature and Ter- 

 minology are employed by most 

 authors almost indiscriminately ; Dr. 

 Whewell being, as far as I am aware, 

 the first writer who has regularly 

 assigned to the two words different 

 meanings. The distinction, however, 

 which he has drawn between them 

 being real and important, his example 

 is likely to be followed ; and (as is 

 apt to be the case when such innova- 

 tions in language are felicitously made") 

 a vague sense of the distinction is found 

 to have influenced the employment of 

 the terms in common practice, before 

 the expediency had been pointed out 

 of discriminating them philosophically. 

 Every one would say that the reform 

 effected by Lavoisier and Guy ton - 

 Morveau in the language of chemistry 

 consisted in the introduction of a new 

 nomenclature, not of a new termino- 

 logy. Linear, lanceolate, oval, or ob- 

 long, serrated, dentate, or crenate 

 leaves, are expressions forming part 

 of the terminology of botany while the 

 names " Viola odorata " and '* Ulex 

 Europseus" belong to its nomenclature. 



A nomenclature may be defined, 

 the collection of the names of all the 

 Kinds with which any branch of know- 

 ledge is conversant ; or more properly, 

 of all the lowest Kinds, or infimce 

 species — those which may be sub- 

 divided indeed, but not into Kinds, 

 and which generally accord with what 

 in natural history are termed simply 

 species. Science possesses two splen- 

 did examples of a systematic nomen- 

 clature ; that of plants and animals, 

 constructed by Linnaeus and his suc- 

 cessors, and that of chemistry, which 

 we owe to the illustrious group oi 

 chemists who flourished in France to- 

 wards the close of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury. In these two departments, not 

 only has every known species, or low- 

 est Kind, a name assigned to it, but 

 when new lowest Kinds are discovered, 

 names are at once given to them on an 

 uniform principle. In other sciences 

 the nomenclature is not at present 

 constructed on any system, either be- 

 cause the species to be named are not 



