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itself, independently of words) still continues to keep up a sort of distinction between the Nominalists and the Conceptualists. As for the Realists, they may, I apprehend, be fairly considered, in the present state of science, as having been already forced to lay down their arms.

That the doctrine of the nominalists has been stated by some writers of note in very unguarded terms, I do not deny *, nor

* Particularly by Hobbes, some of whose incidental remarks and expressions would certainly, if followed strictly out to their logical consequences, lead to the complete subversion of truth, as a thing real, and independent of human opinion. It is to this, I presume, that Leibnitz alludes, when he says of him, "Thomas Hobbes, qui ut verum "fatear, mihi plus quam nominalis videtur."

I shall afterwards point out the mistake by which Hobbes seems to me to have been misled. In the meantime, it is but justice to him to say, that I do not think he had any intention to establish those sceptical conclusions which, it must be owned, may be fairly deduced as corollaries from some of his principles. Of this I would not wish for a stronger proof than his favourite maxim, that "words are the counters of wise men, "but the money of fools;" a sentence which expresses, with marvellous conciseness, not only the proper function of language, as an instrument of reasoning, but the abuses to which it is liable, when in unskilful hands.

Dr Gillies, who has taken much pains to establish Aristotle's claims to all that is valuable in the doctrine of the nominalists, has, at the same time, represented him as the only favourer of this opinion, by whom it has been taught without any admixture of those errors which are blended with it in the works of its modern revivers. Even Bishop Berkeley himself is involved with Hobbes and Hume in the same sweeping sentence of condemnation. "The language of the nominalists seems to have been ex"tremely liable to be perverted to the purposes of scepticism, as taking away the spe"cific distinctions of things; and is in fact thus perverted by Hobbes, Berkeley, Hume, " and their innumerable followers. But Aristotle's language is not liable to this abuse." (Gillies's Aristotle, Vol. I. p. 71, 2d edit.)

Among these sceptical followers of Berkeley, we must, I presume, include the late

am I certain that it was ever delivered by any one of the schoolmen in a form completely unexceptionable; but after the luminous, and, at the same time, cautious manner in which it has been unfolded by Berkeley and his successors, I own it appears to me not a little surprising, that men of talents and candour should still be found inclined to shut their eyes against the light, and to shelter themselves in the darkness of the middle ages. For my own part, the longer and the more attentively that I reflect on the subject, the more am I disposed to acquiesce in the eulogium bestowed on Roscellinus and his followers by Leibnitz; one of the very few philosophers, if not the only philosopher, of great celebrity, who seems to have been fully aware of the singular merits of those by whom this theory was originally proposed: "SECTA NOMINALIUM, OM66 NIUM INTER SCHOLASTICAS PROFUNDISSIMA, ET HODIER"NÆ REFORMATE PHILOSOPHANDI RATIONI CONGRUEN

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66 TISSIMA." It is a theory, indeed, much more congenial to the spirit of the eighteenth than of the eleventh century; nor must it be forgotten, that it was proposed and maintained at a period when the algebraical art (or to express myself more precisely, universal arithmetic) from which we now borrow our best illustrations in explaining and defending it, was entirely unknown.

learned and ingenious Dr Campbell; whose remarks on this subject I will, nevertheless, venture to recommend to the particular attention of my readers. Indeed, I do not know of any writer who has treated it with more acuteness and perspicuity. (See Phi losophy of Rhetoric, Book II. chap. vii.)

II.

Continuation of the Subject.-Of Language considered as an Instrument of Thought.

HAVING been led, in defence of some of my own opinions, to introduce a few additional remarks on the controversy with respect to the theory of general reasoning, I shall avail myself of this opportunity to illustrate a little farther another topic, (intimately connected with the foregoing argument) on which the current doctrines of modern logicians seem to require a good deal more of explanation and restriction than has been commonly apprehended. Upon this subject I enter the more willingly, that, in my first volume, I have alluded to these doctrines in a manner which may convey, to some of my readers, the idea of a more complete acquiescence, on my part, in their truth, than I am disposed to acknowledge.

In treating of abstraction, I endeavoured to show that we think, as well as speak, by means of words, and that, without the use of language, our reasoning faculty (if it could have been at all exercised) must necessarily have been limited to particular conclusions alone. The effects, therefore, of ambiguous and indefinite terms are not confined to our communications with others, but extend to our private and solitary speculations. Dr Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, has made some judicious and important observations on this subject; and, at a much earlier period, it drew the attention of Des Cartes; who, in the

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course of a very valuable discussion with respect to the sources of our errors, has laid particular stress on those to which we are exposed from the employment of language as an instrument of thought. And, lastly, in consequence of the habitual "use of speech, all our ideas become associated with the words "in which we express them; nor do we ever commit these “ideas to memory, without their accustomed signs. Hence it " is, that there is hardly any one subject, of which we have so "distinct a notion as to be able to think of it abstracted from all use of language; and, indeed, as we remember words more easily than things, our thoughts are much more conversant "with the former than with the latter. Hence, too, it is, that "we often yield our assent to propositions, the meaning of "which we do not understand; imagining that we have either "examined formerly the import of all the terms involved in "them, or that we have adopted these terms on the authority "of others upon whose judgment we can rely *."

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"Et denique, propter loquelæ usum, conceptos omnes nostros verbis, quibus eos "exprimimus, alligamus, nec eos, nisi simul cum istis verbis, memoriæ mandamus. Cumque facilius postea verborum quam rerum recordemur, vix unquam ullius rei conceptum habemus tam distinctum, ut illum ab omni verborum conceptu separemus; "cogitationesque hominum fere omnium, circa verba magis quam circa res versantur; ❝ adeo ut persæpe vocibus non intellectis præbeant assensum, quia putant se illos olim "intellexisse, vel ab aliis qui eas recte intelligebant, accepisse."-Princ. Phil. Pars Prima, lxxiv.

I have quoted a very curious passage, nearly to the same purpose, from Leibnitz, in a note annexed to my first volume (see note L.) I was not then aware of the previous attention which had been given to this source of error by Des Cartes; nor did I expect to find so explicit an allusion to it in the writings of Aristotle, as I have since observed in the following paragraph:

To these important considerations, it may be worth while to add, that whatever improvements may yet be made in language by philosophers, they never can relieve the student from the indispensable task of analyzing with accuracy the complex ideas he annexes to the terms employed in his reasonings. The use of general terms, as Locke has remarked, is learned,

απατη

Διο και των παρα την λέξιν δυτος ὁ τρόπος θέτεος· πρῶτον μὲν, ὅτι μαλλον ท γινεται μετ' άλλων σκοπουμένοις η καθ ̓ ἑαυτους· ἡ μὲν γαρ μετ' άλλων σκέψις δια λόγγο ή δε καθ' αυτους, εχ ήττον δι' αυτο το πραγματος· ειτα, και καθ' αυτους απατάσθαι συμβαίνει, όταν επι το λογο ποιηται την σκέψιν ετι, ή μεν απατη εκ της ὁμοιοτητος no de óμocorns, ex ens λews.-De Sophist. Elenchis, Lib. I. cap. vii.

"Quocirca inter eos (Paralogismos) qui in dictione consistunt, hic fallendi modus. "est ponendus. Primum, quia magis decipimur considerantes cum aliis, quàm apud "nosmetipsos: nam consideratio cum aliis per sermonem instituitur; apud nosmetipsos "autem non minus fit per rem ipsam, Deinde et per nosmetipsos ut fallamur accidit, "cum in rebus considerandis sermo adhibetur: Præterea deceptio est ex similitudine : "similitudo autem ex dictione."-Edit. Du Val. Vol. I. p. 289.

Lest it should be concluded, however, from this detached remark, that Aristotle had completely anticipated Locke and Condillac in their speculations with respect to language, considered as an instrument of thought, I must beg of my readers to compare it with the previous enumeration given by the same author, of those paralogisms or fallacies which lie in the diction, (De Sophist. Elenchis, Lib. i. cap. 4.);-recommending to them, at the same time, as a useful comment on the original, the twentieth chapter of the third book of a work entitled Institutio Logica, by the learned and justly celebrated Dr Wallis of Oxford, I select this work in preference to any other modern one on the same subject, as it has been lately pronounced, by an authority for which I entertain a sincere respect, to be "a complete and accurate treatise of logic, strictly according to "the Aristotelian method;" and as we are farther told that it is "still used by many "in the university to which Wallis belonged, as the lecture-book in that department of "study." I intend to quote part of this chapter on another occasion. At present, I shall only observe, that it does not contain the slightest reference to the passage which has led me to introduce these observations; and which, I believe, will be now very generally allowed to be of greater value than all those puerile distinctions put together, which Dr Wallis has been at so much pains to illustrate and to exemplify.

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