[Footnote 7: _E.g._, Hamilton, lect. v.; Veitch's _Institutes of Logic_, chaps, xii., xiii.] [Footnote 8: The confusion probably arises in this way. First, these "laws" are formulated as laws of thought that Logic assumes. Second, a notion arises that these laws are the only postulates of Logic: that all logical doctrines can be "evolved" from them. Third, when it is felt that more than the identical reference of words or the identity of a thing with itself must be assumed in Logic, the Law of Identity is extended to cover this further assumption.] [Footnote 9: _E.g._, Bosanquet's _Logic_, ii. 207.] [Footnote 10: Bradley, _Principles of Logic_; Bosanquet, _Logic or The Morphology of Knowledge_; Caird, _Hegel_ (in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics); Wallace, _The Logic of Hegel_.] BOOK I. THE LOGIC OF CONSISTENCY. SYLLOGISM AND DEFINITION. PART I. THE ELEMENTS OF PROPOSITIONS. CHAPTER I. GENERAL NAMES AND ALLIED DISTINCTIONS. To discipline us against the errors we are liable to in receiving knowledge through the medium of words--such is one of the objects of Logic, the main object of what may be called the Logic of Consistency. Strictly speaking, we may receive knowledge about things through signs or single words, as a nod, a wink, a cry, a call, a command. But an assertory sentence, proposition, or predication, is the unit with which Logic concerns itself--a sentence in which a subject is named and something is said or predicated about it. Let a man once understand the errors incident to this regular mode of communication, and he may safely be left to protect himself against the errors incident to more rudimentary modes. A proposition, whether long or short, is a unit, but it is an analysable unit. And the key to syllogistic analysis is the General Name. Every proposition, every sentence in which we convey knowledge to another, contains a general name or its equivalent. That is to say, every proposition may be resolved into a form in which the predicate is a general name. A knowledge of the function of this element of speech is the basis of all logical discipline. Therefore, though we must always remember that the proposition is the real unit of speech, and the general name only an analytic element, we take the general name and its allied distinctions in thought and reality first. How propositions are analysed for syllogistic purposes will be shown by-and-by, but we must first explain various technical terms that logicians have devised to define the features of this cardinal element. The technical terms CLASS, CONCEPT, NOTION, ATTRIBUTE, EXTENSION or DENOTATION, INTENSION or CONNOTATION, GENUS, SPECIES, DIFFERENTIA, SINGULAR NAME, COLLECTIVE NAME, ABSTRACT NAME, all centre round it. A general name is a name applicable to a number of different things on the ground of some likeness among them, as _man_, _ratepayer_, _man of courage_, _man who fought at Waterloo_.