loosed; but the two words mean exactly the same thing, the prefix un not being really the negative; invaluable, again, means not what is devoid of value, but what is so valuable that the value cannot be measured; and a shameless action can equally be called by the positive term, a shameful action. Other instances might no

doubt be found.

Great care should be taken to avoid confusing terms which express the presence or absence of a quality with those which describe its degree. Less is not the negative of greater because there is a third alternative, equal. The true negative of greater is not-greater, and this is equivalent to either equal or less. So it may be said that disagreeable is not the simple negative of agreeable, because there may be things which are neither one nor the other, but are indifferent to us. It would not be easy to say offhand whether every action which is not honest is dishonest, or whether there may not be actions of an intermediate character. The rule is that wherever the question is one of degree or quantity a medium is possible, and the subject belongs rather to the science of quantity than to simple logic; where the question is one of the presence or absence of a quality, there cannot be more than two alternatives, according to one of the Primary Laws of Thought, which we will consider in Lesson XIV. In the case of quantity we may call the extreme terms opposites; thus less is the opposite of greater, disagreeable of agreeable; in the case of mere negation we may call the terms negatives or contradictories, and it is really indifferent in a logical point of view which of a pair of contradictory terms we regard as the positive and which as the negative. Each is the negative of the other.

Logicians have distinguished from simple negative terms a class of terms called privative, such as blind, dead, &c. Such terms express that a thing has been

deprived of a quality which it before possessed, or was capable of possessing, or usually does possess. A man may be born blind, so that he never did see, but he possesses the organs which would have enabled him to see except for some accident. A stone or a tree could not have had the faculty of seeing under any circumstances. No mineral substance can properly be said to die or to be dead, because it was incapable of life; but it may be called uncrystallized because it might have been in the form of a crystal. Hence we apply a privative term to anything which has not a quality which it was capable of having; we apply a negative term to anything which has not and could not have the quality. It is doubtful however whether this distinction can be properly carried out, and it is not of very much importance.

It is further usual to divide terms according as they are relative or absolute, that is, non-relative. The adjective absolute means whatever is "loosed from connection with anything else" (Latin ab, from, and solutus, loosed); whereas relative means that which is carried in thought, at least, into connection with something else. Hence a relative term denotes an object which cannot be thought of without reference to some other object, or as part of a larger whole. A father cannot be thought of but in relation to a child, a monarch in relation to a subject, a shepherd in relation to a flock; thus father, monarch, and shepherd are relative terms, while child, subject, and flock are the correlatives (Latin con, with, and relativus), or those objects which are necessarily joined in thought with the original objects. The very meaning, in fact, of father is that he has a child, of monarch that he has subjects, and of shepherd that he has a flock. As examples of terms which have no apparent relation to anything else, I may mention water, gas, tree. There does not seem to me to be anything so habitually associated

with water that we must think of it as part of the same idea, and gas, tree, and a multitude of other terms, also denote objects which have no remarkable or permanent relations such as would entitle the terms to be called relatives. They may therefore be considered absolute or non-relative terms.

The fact, however, is that everything must really have relations to something else, the water to the elements of which it is composed, the gas to the coal from which it is manufactured, the tree to the soil in which it is rooted. By the very laws of thought, again, no thing or class of things can be thought of but by separating them from other existing things from which they differ. I cannot use the term mortal without at once separating all existing or conceivable things into the two groups mortal and immortal; metal, element, organic substance, and every other term that could be mentioned, would necessarily imply the existence of a correlative negative term, nonmetallic, compound, inorganic substance, and in this respect therefore every term is undoubtedly relative. Logicians, however, have been content to consider as relative terms those only which imply some peculiar and striking kind of relation arising from position in time or space, from connexion of cause and effect, &c.; and it is in this special sense therefore the student must use the distinction.

The most important varieties of terms having been explained, it is desirable that the reader should acquire a complete familiarity with them by employing the exercises at the end of the book. The reader is to determine concerning each of the terms there given :

I.

2.

Whether it is a categorematic or syncategorematic term.

Whether it is a general or a singular term. 3. Whether it is collective or distributive.

4. Whether it is concrete or abstract.

5. Whether it is positive, or negative, or privative. 6. Whether it is relative or absolute,

It will be fully pointed out in the next lesson that most terms have more than one meaning; and as the one meaning may be general and the other singular, the one concrete and the other abstract, and so on, it is absolutely necessary that the reader should first of all choose one precise meaning of the term which he is examining. And in answering the questions proposed it is desirable he should specify the way in which he regards it. Taking the word sovereign, we may first select the meaning in which it is equivalent to monarch; this is a general term in so far as it is the name of any one of many monarchs living or dead, but it is singular as regards the inhabitants of any one country. It is clearly categorematic, concrete, and positive, and obviously relative to the subjects of the monarch.

Read Mr Mill's chapter on Names, System of Logic
Book I. chap. 2.

LESSON IV.

OF THE AMBIGUITY OF TERMS.

THERE is no part of Logic which is more really useful than that which treats of the ambiguity of terms, that is of the uncertainty and variety of meanings belonging to words. Nothing indeed can be of more importance to the attainment of correct habits of thinking and reasoning than a thorough acquaintance with the great imperfections of language. Comparatively few terms have one

single clear meaning and one meaning only, and whenever two or more meanings are unconsciously confused together, we inevitably commit a logical fallacy. If, for instance, a person should argue that "punishment is an evil," and according to the principles of morality "no evil is to be allowed even with the purpose of doing good," we might not at the first moment see how to avoid the conclusion that 66 no punishments should be allowed," because they cause evil. A little reflection will show that the word evil is here used in two totally different senses; in the first case it means physical evil or pain; in the second moral evil, and because moral evil is never to be committed, it does not follow that physical evils are never to be inflicted, for they are often the very means of preventing moral evil.

Another very plausible fallacy which has often been put forth in various forms is as follows: "A thoroughly benevolent man cannot possibly refuse to relieve the poor, and since a person who cannot possibly act otherwise than he does can claim no merit for his actions, it follows that a thoroughly benevolent man can claim no merit for his actions." According to this kind of argument a man would have less merit in proportion as he was more virtuous, so as to feel greater and greater difficulty in acting wrongly. That the conclusion is fallacious every one must feel certain, but the cause of the fallacy can only be detected by observing that the words cannot possibly have a double meaning, in the first case referring to the influence of moral motives or good character, and in the second to circumstances entirely beyond a person's control; as, for instance, the compulsion of the laws, the want of money, the absence of personal liberty. The more a person studies the subtle variations in the meaning of common words, the more he will be convinced of the dangerous nature of the tools he has to use in all