BEASONING. 335 



Locke undermined the fallacy. But none of his succes- 

 sors, so far as I know, have radically escaped it, or seen 

 that the only meaning of essence is ideological, and that classi- 

 fication and conception are purely teleological iveapons of the 

 mind. The essence of a thing is that one of its properties 

 which is so impor*tant for my interests that in comparison 

 with it I may neglect the rest. Amongst those other things 

 which have this important property I class it, after this 

 property I name it, as a thing endowed with this property 

 I conceive it ; and whilst so classing, naming, and conceiv- 

 ing it, all other truths about it become to me as naught.* 

 The properties which are important vary from man to man 

 and from hour to liour.f Hence divers appellations and 



structure of things is their real essence in an absolute sense, and that water 

 is H-O-H move deeply and truly than it is a solvent of sugar or a 

 slaker of thirst. Not a whit ! It is all of these things with equal reality, 

 and the only reason \vhy/o?" the chemist it is H-O-H primarily, and only 

 secondarily the other things, is that/(97' ?iis purpose of deduction and com- 

 pendious definition the H-O-H aspect of it is the more useful one to bear 

 in mind. 



* " We find that we take for granted irresistibly that each kind [of thing] 

 has some character which distinguishes it from other classes. . . . What 

 is the foundation of this postulate ? What is the ground of this assumption 

 that there must exist a definition which we have never seen, and which 

 perhaps no one has seen in a satisfactory form ?....! reply that our con- 

 viction that there must needs be characteristic marks by which things can 

 be defined in words is founded upon the assumption of the necessary possi- 

 bility of reasoning." (W. Whewell : Hist, of Scientific Ideas, bk. viii. chap. 

 I, § 9.) 



f I may quote a passage from an article entitled ' The Sentiment of 

 Rationality,' published in vol. iv of Mind, 1879 : "What is a conception? 

 It is a teleological instrument. It is a partial aspect of a thing which 

 for our purpose we regard as its essential aspect, as the representative 

 of the entire thing. In comparison with this aspect, whatever other 

 properties and qualities the thing may have are unimportant accidents 

 which we may without blame ignore. But the essence, the ground 

 of conception, varies with the end we have in view. A substance like 

 oil has as many different essences as it has uses to different individuals. 

 One man conceives it as a combustible, another as a lubricator, another as 

 a food ; the chemist thinks of it as a hydrocarbon ; the furniture-maker 

 as a dai'kener of wood ; the speculator as a commodity whose market-price 

 to-day is this and to-morrow that. The soap-boiler, the physicist, the 

 clothes-scourer severally ascribe to it other essences in relation to their 

 needs. Ueberweg's doctrine that the essential quality of a thing is the 



