According to this distinction, predications of the whole Definition
or of a Generic attribute or of a Specific attribute are Verbal;
predications of Accident are Real. A nice point is whether Propria are
Verbal or Real. They can hardly be classed with Verbal, inasmuch as
one may know the full meaning of the name without knowing them: but
it might be argued that they are Analytic, inasmuch as they are
implicitly contained in the defining attributes as being deducible
from them.
Observe, however, that the whole distinction is really valid only
in relation to some fixed or accepted scheme of classification or
division. Otherwise, what is Verbal or Analytic to one man may be
Real or Synthetic to another. It might even be argued that every
proposition is Analytic to the man who utters it and Synthetic to the
man who receives it. We must make some analysis of a whole of thought
before paying it out in words: and in the process of apprehending the
meaning of what we hear or read we must add the other members of the
sentence on to the subject. Whether or not this is super-subtle, it
clearly holds good that what is Verbal (in the sense defined) to the
learned man of science may be Real to the learner. That the horse has
six incisors in each jaw or that the domestic dog has a curly tail,
is a Verbal Proposition to the Natural Historian, a mere exposition
of defining marks; but the plain man has a notion of horse or dog into
which this defining attribute does not enter, and to him accordingly
the proposition is Real.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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