Note Footnote 1: — Chapter II

But what of propositions that the plain man would at once recognise as Verbal? Charles Lamb, for example, remarks that the statement that "a good name shows the estimation in which a man is held in the world" is a verbal proposition. Where is the fixed scheme of division there? The answer is that by a fixed scheme of division we do not necessarily mean a scheme that is rigidly, definitely and precisely fixed. To make such schemes is the business of Science. But the ordinary vocabulary of common intercourse as a matter of fact proceeds upon schemes of division, though the names used in common speech are not always scientifically accurate, not always the best that could be devised for the easy acquisition and sure transmission of thorough knowledge. The plain man's vocabulary, though often twisted aside by such causes as we have specified, is roughly moulded on the most marked distinguishing attributes of things. This was practically recognised by Aristotle when he made one of his modes of definition consist in something like what we have called verifying the meaning of a name, ascertaining the attributes that it signifies in common speech or in the speech of sensible men. This is to ascertain the essence, οὐσία, or Substantia, of things, the most salient attributes that strike the common eye either at once or after the closer inspection that comes of long companionship, and form the basis of the ordinary vocabulary. "Properly speaking," Mansel says,1 "All Definition is an inquiry into Attributes. Our complex notions of Substances can only be resolved into various Attributes, with the addition of an unknown substratum: a something to which we are compelled to regard these attributes as belonging. Man, for example, is analysed into Animality, Rationality, and the something which exhibits these phenomena. Pursue the analysis and the result is the same. We have a something corporeal, animated, sensible, rational. An unknown constant must always be added to complete the integration." This "unknown constant" was what Locke called the Real Essence, as distinguished from the Nominal Essence, or complex of attributes. It is upon this nominal essence, upon divisions of things according to attributes, that common speech rests, and if it involves many cross-divisions, this is because the divisions have been made for limited and conflicting purposes.