vidual perceptions,' 'impressions,' and 'ideas.' In
this, of course, he is following Hume, though he applies the Johnsonian
argument to Berkeley's immaterialism.[378] A 'fictitious entity' is a
name which does note 'raise up in the mind any correspondent
images.'[379] Such names owe their existence to the necessities of
language. Without employing such fictions, however, 'the language of man
could not have risen above the language of brutes';[380] and he
emphatically distinguishes them from 'unreal' or 'fabulous entities.' A
'fictitious entity' is not a 'nonentity.'[381] He includes among such
entities all Aristotle's 'predicaments' except the first:
'substance.'[382] Quantity, quality, relation, time, place are all
'physical fictitious entities.' This is apparently equivalent to saying
that the only 'physical entities' are concrete things--sticks, stones,
bodies, and so forth--the 'reality' of which he takes for granted in the
ordinary common sense meaning. It is also perfectly true that things are
really related, have quantity and quality, and are in time and space.
But we cannot really conceive the quality or relation apart from the
concrete things so qualified and related. We are forced by language to
use substantives which in their nature have only the sense of
adjectives. He does not suppose that a body is not really square or
round; but he thinks it a fiction to speak of squareness or roundness or
space in general as something existing apart from matter and, in some
sense, alongside of matter.

This doctrine, which brings us within sight of metaphysical problems
beyond our immediate purpose, becomes important to his moral
speculation. His special example of a 'fictitious entity' in politics is
'obligation.'[383] Obligations, rights, and similar words are
'fictitious entities.' Obligation in particular implies a metaphor. The
statement that a man is 'obliged' to perform an act means simply that he
will suffer pain if he does not perform it. The use of the word
obligation, as a noun substantive, introduces the 'fictitious entity'
which represents nothing really separable from the pain or pleasure.
Here, therefore, we have the ground of the doctrine already noticed.
'Pains and pleasures' are real.[384] 'Their existence,' he says,[385]
'is matter of universal and constant experience.' But other various
names referring to these: emotion, inclination, vice, virtue, etc., are
only 'psychological entities.' 'Take away pl