ployed to answer the additional purpose of the Copula in Predication. The consequences of this have been most lamentable. There is thus a double meaning in the Copula, which has produced a most unfortunate mixture and confusion of ideas. It has involved in mystery the whole business of Predication, the grand contrivance by which language is rendered competent to its end. By darkening Predication, it has spread such a veil over the phenemona of mind as concealed them from ordinary eyes, and allowed them to be but imperfectly seen by those which were the most discerning. 'In our own language, the verb, TO BE, is the important word which is employed to connote, along with its subject, whatever it be, the grand idea of EXISTENCE. Thus, if I use the first person singular of its indicative mood, and say, ‘I am,' I affirm EXISTENCE of myself. ‘I am' is the equivalent of 'I am EXISTING.' In the first of these expressions, I am,' the mark am' involves in it the force of two marks; it involves the meaning of the word existing,' and the marking power or meaning of the Copula. In the second expression, 'I am existing,' the word 'am' ought to serve the purpose of the Copula only. But in reality its connotation of EXISTENCE still adheres to it; and whereas the expression ought to consist of three established parts of a Predication; 1, the subject 'I'; 2, the predicate EXISTING, and 3, the copula; it in reality consists of, 1, the subject 'I,' 2, the predicate EXISTING ; 3, the copula; which signifies, 4, EXISTING, over again. 'Let us take, as another case, that in which the subject and predicate of my intended proposition are, the word 'I' and reading.' I want for the purpose of predication only a copula to signify nakedly that the mark reading' is applied to the mark 'I'; but instead of this I am obliged to use a word which connotes EXISTENCE, along with the force of the copula; and when I say 'I am reading,' not only reading is predicated of me, but EXISTING also. Suppose, again, my subject is 'John,' my predicate 'dead.' I am obliged to use for my copula the word 'is,' which connotes EXISTENCE, and I thus predicate of John both existence and death. It may be easily collected, from this one example, what heterogeneous and inconsistent ideas may be forced into connexion by the use of the Substantive Verb as the copula in Predication; and what confusion in the mental processes it tends to produce. It is in the case, however, of the higher abstractions, and the various combinations of ideas which the mind, in the processes of inquiring and marking, forms for its own convenience, to obtain a greater command over its stores and greater facility in communicating them, that the use of the verb which conjoins the Predication of EXISTENCE with every other Predication, has produced the wildest confusion, and been the most deeply injurious. Is it any wonder, for example, that chance, and fate, and nature, have been personified, and have had an EXISTENCE ascribed to them, as objects, when we have no means of predicating anything whatsoever of them, without predicating such EXISTENCE at the same time. If we say that chance is nothing,' we predicate of it, by the word is,' both existence and nothingness. 6 6 When this is the case, it is by no means to be wondered at that philosophers should so long have inquired what those EXISTENCES are which abstract terms were employed to express; and should have lost themselves in fruitless speculations about the nature of entity, and quiddity, substance, and quality, space, time, necessity, eternity, and so on.'1 With this ambiguity of the copula-whence arose those existences, those entities or essences which abstract terms were employed to express-is closely connected the inextricable confusion in which General Terms were involved for so many ages. It is only necessary,' says James Mill, 'to read with care the writings of Plato and of Aristotle, and of all philosophers, with very few exceptions, from theirs to the present time, to see that a misunderstanding of the nature of General Terms is that which chiefly perplexed them in their inquiries, and involved them in a confusion which was inextricable, so long as those terms were unexplained. The process performed by the mind, when it forms individuals into classes, was said to be this. The mind leaves out of its view this and that, and the other thing, in which individuals differ from one another; and retaining only those in which they all agree, it forms them into a class. But what is this forming of a class? What does it mean? What is it which they have in common, which the mind can take into view? Those who affirmed that it was something, could by no means tell. They substituted words for things; using vague and mystical phrases, which, when 6 1 James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, vol. i. pp. 126-128, 1st edition, London, 1829. He adds that in the case of other verbs besides the substantive verb, EXISTENCE is always predicated along with the attribute which the verb is used to predicate. Thus, when I say, "Caliban existed not," which is the same as "Caliban was not existing," I predicate both existence and non-existence, of the imaginary being Caliban. By the two first words of the Predication, "Caliban was," existence is predicated of him; by the addition of the compound term "not existing," the opposite is predicated of him.'-Ibid. pp. 129, 130. examined, meant nothing. Plato called it idéa, Aristotle eloos, both words taken from the verb to see; intimating something, as it were, seen, or viewed, as we call it. At bottom Aristotle's loos is the same with Plato's idéa, though Aristotle makes a great affair of some very trifling differences, which he creates and sets up between them. The Latins translated both idea and soos by the same words, and were very much at a loss for one to answer the purpose; they used species, derived in like manner from a verb to see, but which, having other meanings, was ill adapted for a scientific word; they brought, therefore, another word in aid, forma; the same with opaua, derived equally from a verb signifying to see, which suited the purpose just as imperfectly as species; and as writers used both terms, according as the one or the other appeared best to correspond with their meaning, they thickened by this means the confusion.'1 And so thick did the confusion become, that in time men came to forget that Nature makes no classes; that Nature makes individuals, and that men make classes for convenience. 2 It is necessary, in order to expose the misrepresentations of such writers as M. Comte, to compare the condition in which the process of grouping individuals into classes was left by the ancient philosophers, and 1 Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, vol. i. pp. 187-189, 1st edition, London, 1829. 2 For those who think that truth depends on authors, I may add here the following passages:- Licet enim in natura nihil vere existat præter corpora individua.'—Bacon, Nov. Organ. Lib. ii. Aph. ii. 'Nature makes no classes. Nature makes individuals. Classes are made by men; and rarely with such marks as determine certainly what is to be included in them. Men make classifications, as they do everything else, for some end.'—James Mill's Frugment on Mackintosh, pp. 247, 248, London, 1835. such modern writers on philosophy as Cudworth and Harris, and the condition in which it was left by James Mill. The power which the mind has of attending to one part of an object and neglecting other parts of it so as to form a number of objects, each of which has been similarly regarded, into a class, gave rise to endless subtleties respecting the particular qualities in which the individuals of a class agree. They became distinct existenses; they were the Essence of things; the Eternal Exemplars, according to which individual things were made; they were called UNIVERSALS, and regarded as alone the objects of the intellect. They were invariable, always the same; individuals, not the objects of intellect, but only the low objects of sense, were in perpetual flux, and never, for any considerable period, the same. Universals alone had unity; they alone were the subject of science ; Individuals were innumerable, every one different from another; and cognoscible only by the lower, the sensitive part of our nature.' 1 After the undisturbed prevalence for several centuries of this jargon, which passed for philosophy, there arose the controversy known as that between the Realists and the Nominalists. The Realists were those who affirmed the existence of universals, or universal or general ideas. The Nominalists were those who denied their existence, and affirmed that there is nothing universal but names The Nominalists, however, were hunted down by Catholicism, which, when it interfered in philosophical disputes, always took the wrong side. The question respecting the idea called up by a 1 Mill's Analysis, i. 191. I |