the notion. Thus the notion planet really means the consciousness in anybody's mind that there are certain heavenly bodies which agree in giving a steady light and in moving about the heavens differently from the fixed stars. It should be added, however, that there are many, including Sir W. Hamilton, who would be counted as Nominalists and who yet hold that with the general name is associated a consciousness of the resemblance existing between the things denoted by it. Between this form of the doctrine and conceptualism it is not easy to draw a precise distinction, and the subject is of too debatable a character to be pursued in this work.

It will appear in the course of these lessons that the whole of logic and the whole of any science consists in so arranging the individual things we meet in general notions or classes, and in giving them appropriate general names or terms, that our knowledge of them may be made as simple and general as possible. Every general notion that is properly formed admits of the statement of general laws or truths; thus of the planets we may affirm that they move in elliptic orbits round the sun from west to east; that they shine with the reflected light of the sun; and so on. Of the fixed stars we may affirm that they shine with their own proper light; that they are incomparably more distant than the planets; and so on. The whole of reasoning will be found to arise from this faculty of judgment, which enables us to discover and affirm that a large number of objects have similar properties, so that whatever is known of some may be inferred and asserted of others.

It is in the application of such knowledge that we employ the third act of mind called discourse or reasoning, by which from certain judgments we are enabled, without any new reference to the real objects, to form a new judgment. If we know that iron comes under the

n

general notion of metal, and that this notion comes under the still wider notion of element, then without further examination of iron we know that it is a simple undecomposable substance called by chemists an element. Or if from one source of information we learn that Neptune is a planet, and from another that planets move in elliptic orbits, we can join these two portions of knowledge together in the mind, so as to elicit the truth that Neptune moves in an elliptic orbit.

Reasoning or Discourse, then, may be defined as the progress of the mind from one or more given propositions to a proposition different from those given. Those propositions from which we argue are called Premises, and that which is drawn from them is called the Conclusion. The latter is said to follow, to be concluded, inferred or collected from them; and the premises are so called because they are put forward or at the beginning (Latin præ, before, and mitto, I send or put). The essence of the process consists in gathering the truth that is contained in the premises when joined together, and carrying it with us into the conclusion, where it is embodied in a new proposition or assertion. We extract out of the premises all the information which is useful for the purpose in view-and this is the whole which reasoning accomplishes.

I have now pointed out the three parts of logical doctrine, Terms, Propositions, and Reasoning or Syllogism, into which the subject is conveniently divided. To the consideration of these parts we shall proceed. But it may be mentioned that a fourth part has often been added called Method, which is concerned with the arrangement of the parts of any composition.

It is sometimes said that what proposition is to term, and what syllogism is to proposition, such is method to syllogism, and that a fourth division is necessary to com

plete the doctrine of Logic. It is at any rate certain however that this fourth part is much inferior in importance and distinctness to the preceding three; and all that will be said of it is to be found in Lesson XXIV,

LESSON III.

TERMS, AND THEIR VARIOUS KINDS.

IT has been explained in the preceding lesson that every assertion or statement expresses the agreement or difference of two things, or of two general notions. In putting the assertion or statement into words, we must accordingly have words suitable for drawing the attention of the mind to the things which are compared, as well as words indicating the result of the comparison, that is to say, the fact whether they agree or differ. The words by which we point out the things or classes of things in question are called Terms, and the words denoting the comparison are said to form the Copula. Hence a complete assertion or statement consists of two terms and a copula, and when thus expressed it forms a Proposition. Thus in the proposition "Dictionaries are useful books," the two terms are dictionaries and useful books; the copula is the verb are, and expresses a certain agreement of the class dictionaries with the class of useful books consisting in the fact that the class of dictionaries forms part of the class of useful books. In this case each term consists of only one or two words, but any number of words may be required to describe the notions or classes com

pared together. In the proposition "the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal to each other," the first term requires nine words for its expression, and the second term, four words (equal to each other); and there is no limit to the number of words which may be employed in the formation of a term.

A term is so called because it forms one end (Latin, terminus) of a proposition, and strictly speaking it is a term only so long as it stands in the proposition. But we commonly speak of a term or a name meaning any noun, substantive or adjective, or any combination of words denoting an object of thought, whether that be, as we shall shortly see, an individual thing, a group of things, a quality of things, or a group of qualities. It would be impossible to define a name or term better than has been done by Hobbes: "A name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark, which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought which we had before, and which, being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had before in his mind."

Though every term or name consists of words it is not every word which can form a name by itself. We cannot properly say "Not is agreeable" or "Probably is not true;" nothing can be asserted of a preposition, an adverb, and certain other parts of speech, except indeed that they are prepositions, adverbs, &c. No part of speech except a noun substantive, or a group of words used as a noun substantive, can form the subject or first term of a proposition, and nothing but a noun substantive, an adjective, the equivalent of an adjective, or a verb, can form the second term or predicate of a proposition. It may indeed be questioned whether an adjective can ever form a term alone; thus in "Dictionaries are useful," it may be said that the substantive things or books is understood in the predicate, the complete sen

tence being "Dictionaries are useful books," but as this is a disputed point we will assume that words are divided into two kinds in the following manner :-

Words which stand, or appear to stand alone as complete terms, namely the substantive and adjective, and certain parts of a verb, are called categorematic words, from the Greek word karnyopéw, to assert or predicate.

Those parts of speech, on the other hand, such as prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, &c., which can only form parts of names or terms are called syncategorematic words, because they must be used with other words in order to compose terms (Greek σúv, with, and karnyopéw). Of syncategorematic words we need not take further notice except so far as they form part of categorematic

terms.

mean.

We have now to consider the various kinds and peculiarities of terms, so as to gain a clear idea of what they Terms are first of all distinguished into singular or individual, and general or common terms, this being a very obvious division, but one of much importance. A Singular term is one which can denote only a single object, so long at least as it is used in exactly the same meaning; thus the Emperor of the French, the Atlantic Ocean, St Paul's, William Shakspeare, the most precious of the metals, are singular terms. All proper names belong to this class; for though John Jones is the name of many men, yet it is used not as meaning any of these men, but some single man-it has, in short, a different meaning in each case, just as London, the name of our capital, has no connexion in meaning with London in Canada.

General terms, on the contrary, are applicable in the same sense equally to any one of an indefinite number of objects which resemble each other in certain qualities. Thus metal is a general name because it may be applied.