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It is not our intention to occupy much space, at one time, in the consideration of these
side-lights on the truth, and we will, therefore, reserve for our next article the
examination of what are termed the "five predicables".
#5.
Classification.
pp. 193, 194
We have already seen the close association between propositions and names, and we
now call attention to the classification of these names:--
"As soon as we employ a name to connote attributes, the things, be they more or
fewer, which happen to possess those attributes, are constituted ipso facto a class."
The reader will recognize the term "Dispensational Truth" as a familiar example of
this:--
"This portion of the theory of general language is the subject of what is termed the
doctrine of the Predicables: a set of distinctions handed down from Aristotle. The
predicables are a fivefold division of general names, not grounded as usual on a
difference in their meaning, that is, in the attribute which they connote, but on a
difference in the kind of class which they denote. We may predicate of a thing five
different varieties of class name:--
A genus of the thing, a species, a differentia, a proprium, and an accident."
The above are relative terms, for what may on one occasion be a genus may on
another be a species. For example, the word "animal" is a genus with respect to the
words "man" or "John", but a species with respect to the class of substance or of being.
In logic, the terms genus and species are used in a more restricted sense than that in
which they have been used and popularized in natural science:--
"It was requisite that genus and species should be of the essence of the subject. Animal was of
the essence of man; biped was not. And in every classification they (the logicians) considered
some one class as the lowest species. Man, for instance, was a lowest species. Any further
divisions into which the class might be capable of being broken down, as man into white, black,
and red man, or into priest and layman, they did not admit to be species."
Every predicable expresses either:--
(1) The whole essence of its subject, called in logic the species.
(2) Part of its essence called the genus, and difference, or
(3) Something joined to its essence, called the property and accident.
Species and genus correspond to the question "What?"--e.g., "What is Caesar?"
Answer: "A man"; "What is a man?" Answer: "An animal." The same term may
belong to any of the five divisions given above according to its usage. For example, the
term "red" is a genus in relation to "pink" and "scarlet", but a differentia when