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seductive about them, they give a scientific appearance to a proposition. But it is only an appearance, behind which scholasticism is apt to be concealed; the word, having no concrete meaning, becomes a purely verbal notion (like the soporific virtue of which Molière speaks)." (Pp. 266–7).

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"Specialists, influenced by a natural metaphor, and struck by the regularity of these successions, have regarded the evolution of usages (of a word, a rite, a dogma, a rule of law), as if it were an organic development analogous to the growth of a plant; we hear of the life of words', of the 'death of dogmas', of the growth of myths'. Then, in forgetfulness of the fact that all these things are pure abstractions, it has been tacitly assumed that there is a force inhering in the word, the rite, the rule, which produces its evolution. Just as usages have been treated as if they were existences possessing a separate life of their own, so the succession of individuals composing the various bodies within a society (royalty, church, senate, parliament) has been personified by the attribution to it of a will, which is treated as an active cause. A world of imaginary beings has thus been created behind the historical facts, and has replaced Providence in the explanation of them. For our defence against this deceptive mythology a single rule will suffice: Never seek the causes of an historical fact without having first expressed it concretely in terms of acting and thinking individuals. If abstractions are used, every metaphor must be avoided which would make them play the part of living beings." 288-9.)*

(Pp.

* Abstract terms are often demonstrative rather than descriptive. To be sure, they point out qualities and relations which have no independent existence and which are usually best indicated by descriptive terms; but whether the qualities or relations in question have such an existence or not, they can be the objects of thought, and when they are, the words used to point them out are demonstrative. Indeed we may go so far as to use a demonstrative term to indicate a quality, act or relation and a descriptive term to indicate the real thing without which it could not

Secondary

• Abstract'.

The term 'Abstract' is often applied, with a somewhat broader meaning than that given in the definition, to words which indicate complex relations that are not easmeaning of ily perceived by the senses. Thus we might say that when the words 'free' and 'equal' are used to mean 'not tied or locked up' and 'of the same size' they are concrete; but when they are used (in the second intention') to mean what politicians mean when they say that all men are born free and equal' they are abstract. The first relations can be easily perceived by the senses and easily defined; the second can not. In the same way the terms 'universe', 'siderial system', &c., might be called abstract.*

General terms are used to distinguish objects which possess certain characteristics from those which do not. They are

exist, as when we speak of 'Asiatic duplicity', 'the Turkish atrocities', or 'the Franco-German war'.

* Abstract and Concrete words are often distinguished by their form; but "unfortunately" the two forms "are frequently confused, and it is by no means always easy to distinguish the meanings. Thus 'relation' properly is the abstract name for the position of two people or things to each other, and those people are properly called 'relatives' (Latin relativus, one who is related). But we constantly speak now of 'relations', meaning the persons themselves; and when we want to indicate the abstract relation they have to each other we have to invent a new abstract term, 'relationship'. 'Nation' has long been a concrete term, though from its form it was probably abstract at first; but so far does the abuse of language now go, especially in newspaper writing, that we hear of a 'nationality' meaning a nation, although of course if 'nation' is the concrete, nationality' ought to be the abstract, meaning the quality of being a nation. Similarly 'action', 'intention', 'extension', 'conception', and a multitude of other properly abstract names, are used confusedly for the corresponding concrete, namely act', 'intent', 'extent', 'concept', etc. Production' is properly the condition or state of a person who is producing or drawing something forth; but it has now become confused with that which is produced, so that we constantly talk of the 'productions' of a country, meaning the 'products'. Much injury

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is done to language by this abuse (Jevons, "Elementary Lessons in Logic ", p. 21).

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negative.

usually applied to the objects which possess the characteristic in question, but they can be so altered as to ap- Positive ply-or wholly different terms can be invented and which apply only to the objects which do not possess the characteristic in question. General terms of the first sort are called Positive, those of the second sort Negative. The words 'Jew', 'Greek', 'citizen', 'clergyman', 'educated', 'Aryan', 'white', are positive terms. Their corresponding negatives are 'Gentile', 'barbarian' (in the earlier sense of the word), 'alien', layman', uneducated', 'non-Aryan', 'not white'. Where negative terms do not exist they can always be made by attaching some such prefix as ‘in-', ‘un-', 'non-', or 'not-', or some such suffix as '-less' to a positive term; but we must not take it for granted that terms which have these affixes always correspond in meaning in this way with those that have not. It is said that a college chaplain once became sleepy during a service and implored the irreligious to become religious; the immoral, moral; the intemperate, temperate; the inebriate, ebriate; and the indifferent, different!

Sometimes terms which are negative in form have a positive meaning, and vice versa. Thus the terms uncomfortable', 'unhappiness', 'uneasiness', are all used to indicate that disagreeable feelings are present, and, on the other hand, the terms 'free', 'sober', and 'healthy' are used to indicate that certain undesirable conditions are absent. The terms 'moral' and 'good' are probably more often used in a negative sense than in a positive.

Though negative terms are used to indicate the absence of certain characteristics, they are not properly applicable to everything which does not possess these characteristics. A mutton-chop is neither a Jew nor moral nor able to see, but neither is it a Gentile nor immoral nor blind. A man, on the other hand, must be one or the other. Negative terms are thus only applicable to things that are capable of possessing, or might reasonably be supposed to possess, the char

acteristics whose absence the negative term denotes. They are used with reference to what De Morgan has called a limited universe of discourse. Within that universe, but not beyond it, everything can be described either by a positive term or by the corresponding negative. In the example just given the universe of discourse was human beings. If we say that everything must be either light or heavy, here or there, we have in mind the universe of tangible objects existing in space. The statement would not be true of a soul or a feeling of remorse. When Euclid says that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, his universe of discourse is the size of lines or figures. If A is equal to B in social position and B is equal to C in intelligence, it does not follow that there is any respect in which A is equal to C.

There are a vast number of words whose meaning is ambiguous until one knows the universe of discourse to which they refer. The term 'irregular', for example, may have reference to the distribution of lines in space, or the succession of events in time, or a person's moral relations.

Which of two mutually exclusive terms, one or other of which is applicable to every individual in a given universe of discourse, is to be regarded as negative is often a matter of indifference, for within a given universe the absence of one characteristic involves the presence of another belonging to the same general class. A substance which is immaterial must be spiritual, a thing which we take the trouble to describe as not white is usually a kind of thing that must have some color or other. There is as much fulness of determination—there are as many attributes—in one case as in the other.

Though immaterial' and 'not white' are both terms which imply the presence of some corresponding attribute, there is this difference between them: in the one case we know immediately what the attribute is the thing must be spiritual; in the other we do not, for the thing may have any one of many colors. Thus when there are only two alterna

tives, a term which indicates the absence of one of them has a definite positive significance; when there are many the positive significance is indefinite.

A positive term and its negative are called with reference to each other negative, contradictory, or more properly, contrapositive terms.

Some terms (such as 'giant', 'dwarf'; 'immense', 'tiny'; 'courageous', 'cowardly '; 'noble', 'ignoble') are used to name contrasting and mutually exclusive relations; but there are objects in the universe of discourse to which neither term in such a pair is applicable. There are many men who are neither giants nor dwarfs, many acts that are neither noble nor ignoble. In such cases the terms are not Contradictories, but contraries or opposites.

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Whether such terms as 'thin' and thick', 'large' and 'small' are contrary or contradictory depends upon the circumstances in which they are used. The frequent controversies to which they give rise in this respect are due to the fact that they are never terms of precision in any respect. When we wish to be accurate we give measurements. Neither speaker nor hearer usually stops to ask what size a thing must be in order to be large or small; they therefore do not ask whether there can be anything of the kind discussed which is neither large nor small. To raise the question is to attempt to render definite the meaning of terms whose value lies in their essential vagueness. Hence the old catch called Sorites: How many things does it take to make a heap ?'

Relative and absolute: first sense.

The last distinction between terms which we shall have to consider is between Relative and Absolute. Unfortunately there are two distinct senses in which a term can be said to be relative. In the first sense of the word a term is called Relative when (as with 'master', 'combatant', 'lover') it is applied to a person or thing to mark a certain active relation to some other person or thing *,—a relation which might have been

* These relative terms are usually nouns or words used as such, e.g.,

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