A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I
John Stuart Mill · en
§ 7. In the foregoing inquiry into the import of Propositions, we have
thought it necessary to analyse directly those alone, in which the terms
of the proposition (or the predicate at least) are concrete terms. But,
in doing so, we have indirectly analysed those in which the terms are
abstract. The distinction between an abstract term and its corresponding
concrete, does not turn upon any difference in what they are appointed
to signify; for the real signification of a concrete general name is, as
we have so often said, its connotation; and what the concrete term
connotes, forms the entire meaning of the abstract name. Since there is
nothing in the import of an abstract name which is not in the import of
the corresponding concrete, it is natural to suppose that neither can
there be anything in the import of a proposition of which the terms are
abstract, but what there is in some proposition which can be framed of
concrete terms.
And this presumption a closer examination will confirm. An abstract name
is the name of an attribute, or combination of attributes. The
corresponding concrete is a name given to things, because of, and in
order to express, their possessing that attribute, or that combination
of attributes. When, therefore, we predicate of anything a concrete
name, the attribute is what we in reality predicate of it. But it has
now been shown that in all propositions of which the predicate is a
concrete name, what is really predicated is one of five things:
Existence, Coexistence, Causation, Sequence, or Resemblance. An
attribute, therefore, is necessarily either an existence, a coexistence,
a causation, a sequence, or a resemblance. When a proposition consists
of a subject and predicate which are abstract terms, it consists of
terms which must necessarily signify one or other of these things. When
we predicate of anything an abstract name, we affirm of the thing that
it is one or other of these five things; that it is a case of Existence,
or of Coexistence, or of Causation, or of Sequence, or of Resemblance.