s to
_define_ words by unfolding the meaning involved in a name. When, as in
mathematics, important consequences seem to follow from them, such
really follow from the tacit assumption, through the ambiguity of the
copula, of the real existence of the _object_ named.

Accidental propositions include, 1, those with a proper name for
subject, since an individual has no essence (although the schoolmen,
and rightly, according to their view of genera and species as entities
inhering in the individuals, attributed to the individual the essence of
his class); and, 2, all general or particular propositions in which the
predicate connotes any attribute not connoted by the subject. Accidental
propositions may be called _real_; they add to our knowledge. Their
import may be expressed (according as the attention is directed mainly,
either to what the proposition means, or to the way in which it is to be
used), either, by the formula: The attributes of the subject are always
(or never) accompanied by those signified by the predicate; or, by the
formula: The attributes of the subject are evidence, or a mark, of the
presence of those of the predicate. For the purposes of reasoning, since
propositions enter into _that_, not as ultimate results, but as means
for establishing other propositions, the latter formula is preferable.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NATURE OF CLASSIFICATION, AND THE FIVE PREDICABLES.

It is merely an accident when general names are names of classes of real
objects: e.g. The unity of God, in the Christian sense, and the
non-existence of the things called dragons, do not prevent those names
being general names. The using a name to connote attributes, turns the
things, whether real or imaginary, into a class. But, in predicating the
name, we predicate only the attributes; and even when a name (as, e.g.
those in Cuvier's system) is introduced as a means of grouping certain
objects together, and not, as usually, as a means of predication, it
still signifies nothing but the possession of certain attributes.

Classification (as resulting from the use of general language) is the
subject of the Aristotelians' Five Predicables, viz. _Genus_, _Species_,
_Differentia_, _Proprium_, _Accidens_. These are a division of general
names, not based on a distinction in their meaning, i.e. in the
attributes connoted, but on a distinction in the class denoted. They
express, not the meaning of the predicate itself, but its relation (a