§ 414. Formal correctness requires that the last term in such a series
should be negative. We have here to keep the term 'not-red' open, to
cover any blue or green men that might turn up. It is only experience
that enables us to substitute the positive term 'yellow' for
'not-red,' since we know as a matter of fact that there are no men but
those of the five colours given in the original division.
§ 415. Any correct logical division always admits of being arrived at
by the longer process of division and subdivision by dichotomy. For
instance, the term quadrilateral, or four-sided rectilinear figure, is
correctly divided into square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid and
trapezium. The steps of which this division consists are as follows--
Quadrilateral
__________|_________
| |
Parallelogram Trapezium
_____|_____________________
| |
Rectangle Non-rectangle
___|___ _____|_____
| | | |
Square Oblong Rhombus Rhomboid.
§ 416. In reckoning up the infimae species in such a scheme, we must
of course be careful not to include any class which has been already
subdivided; but no harm is done by mixing an undivided class, like
trapezium, with the subdivisions of its cognate species.
§ 417. The two processes of definition and division are intimately
connected with one another. Every definition suggests a division by
dichotomy, and every division supplies us at once with a complete
definition of all its members.
§ 418. Definition itself, so far as concerns its content, is, as we
have already seen, extraneous to formal logic: but when once we have
elicited a genus and difference out of the material elements of
thought, we are enabled, without any further appeal to experience, to
base thereon a division by dichotomy. Thus when man has been defined
as a rational animal, we have at once suggested to us a division of
animal into rational and irrational.
§ 419. Again, the addition of the attributes, rational and irrational
respectively, to the common genus, animal, ipso facto supplies us with
definitions of the species, man and brute. Similarly, when we
subdivided rectangle into square and oblong on the basis of the
equality or inequality of the adjacent sides, we were by so doing
supplied with a definition both of square and oblong--'A square is a
rectangle having all its sides equal,' and 'An oblong is a rectangle
which has only its opposite sides equal.'
§ 420. The definition of a square just given amounts to the same thing
as Euclid's definition, but it complies with a rule which has value as
a matter of method, namely, that the definition should state the
Proximate Genus of the thing defined.
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