Under the influence of such notions as these, men {260} were led away from the real object of Classification; which remained, till a late period in metaphysical inquiry, not at all understood. Yet the truth appears by no means difficult to find, if we only observe the steps, by which the mind acquires its knowledge, and the exigencies which give occasion to the contrivances to which it resorts. Man first becomes acquainted with individuals. He first names individuals. But individuals are innumerable, and he cannot have innumerable names. He must make one name serve for many individuals. It is thus obvious, and certain, that men were led to class solely for the purpose of economizing in the use of names. Could the processes of naming and discourse have been as conveniently managed by a name for every individual, the names of classes, and the idea of classification, would never have existed. But as the limits of the human memory did not enable men to retain beyond a very limited number of names; and even if it had, as it would have required a most inconvenient portion of time, to run over in discourse, as many names of individuals, and of individual qualities, as there is occasion to refer to in discourse, it was necessary to have contrivances of abridgment; that is, to employ names which marked equally a number of individuals, with all their separate properties; and enabled us to speak of multitudes at once.[78] [Editor's footnote 78: The doctrine that "men were led to class solely for the purpose of economizing in the use of names," is here reasserted in the most unqualified terms. The author plainly says that if our memory had been sufficiently vast to contain a name for every individual, the names of classes and the idea of classification would never have existed. Yet how (I am obliged to ask) could we have done without them? We could not have dispensed with names to mark the points in which different individuals resemble one another: and these are class-names. The fact that we require names for the purpose of making affirmations--of predicating qualities--is in some measure recognised by the author, when he says "it would have required a most inconvenient portion of time to run over in discourse as many names of individuals _and of individual qualities_ as there is occasion to refer to in discourse." But what is meant by an individual quality? It is not _individual_ qualities that we ever have occasion to predicate. It is true that the qualities of an object are only the various ways in which we or other minds are affected by it, and these affections are not the same in different objects, except in the sense in which the word same stands for exact similarity. But we never have occasion to predicate of an object the individual and instantaneous impressions which it produces in us. The only meaning of predicating a quality at all, is to affirm a resemblance. When we ascribe a quality to an