Deductive Logic | Page 9

87. By a Subject-term is meant any term which is capable of standing by itself as a subject, e.g. 'ribbon,' 'horse.'
§ 88. Attributives can only be used as predicates, not as subjects, e.g. 'cherry-coloured,' 'galloping.' These can only be used in conjunction with other words (syncategorematically) to make up a subject. Thus we can say 'A cherry-coloured ribbon is becoming,' or 'A galloping horse is dangerous.'
§ 89. Attributives are contrivances of language whereby we indicate that a subject has a certain attribute. Thus, when we say 'This paper is white,' we indicate that the subject 'paper' possesses the attribute whiteness. Logic, however, also recognises as attributives terms which signify the non-possession of attributes. 'Not-white' is an attributive equally with 'white.'
§ 90. An Attributive then may be defined as a term which signifies the possession, or non-possession, of an attribute by a subject.
§ 91. It must be carefully noticed that attributives are not names of attributes, but names of the things which possess the attributes, in virtue of our knowledge that they possess them. Thus 'white' is the name of all the things which possess the attribute whiteness, and 'virtuous' is a name; not of the abstract quality, virtue, itself, but of the men and actions which possess it. It is clear that a term can only properly be said to be a name of those things whereof it can be predicated. Now, we cannot intelligibly predicate an attributive of the abstract quality, or qualities, the possession of which it implies. We cannot, for instance, predicate the term 'learned' of the abstract quality of learning: but we may predicate it of the individuals, Varro and Vergil. Attributives, then, are to be regarded as names, not of the attributes which they imply, but of the things in which those attributes are found.
§ 92. Attributives, however, are names of things in a less direct way than that in which subject-terms may be the names of the same things. Attributives are names of things only in predication, whereas subject-terms are names of things in or out of predication. The terms 'horse' and 'Bucephalus' are names of certain things, in this case animals, whether we make any statement about them or not: but the terms 'swift' and 'fiery' only become names of the same things in virtue of being predicable of them. When we say 'Horses are swift' or 'Bucephalus was fiery,' the terms 'swift' and 'fiery' become names respectively of the same things as 'horse' and 'Bucephalus.' This function of attributives as names in a secondary sense is exactly expressed by the grammatical term 'noun adjective.' An attributive is not directly the name of anything. It is a name added on in virtue of the possession by a given thing of a certain attribute, or, in some cases, the non-possession.
§ 93. Although attributives cannot be used as subjects, there is nothing to prevent a subject-term from being used as a predicate, and so assuming for the time being the functions of an attributive. When we say 'Socrates was a man,' we convey to the mind the idea of the same attributes which are implied by the attributive 'human.' But those terms only are called attributives which can never be used except as predicates.
§ 94. This division into Subject-terms and Attributives may be regarded as a division of terms according to their place in thought. Attributives, as we have seen, are essentially predicates, and can only be thought of in relation to the subject, whereas the subject is thought of for its own sake.

Abstract and Concrete Terms.
§ 95. An Abstract Term is the name of an attribute, e.g. whiteness [Footnote: Since things cannot be spoken of except by their names, there is a constantly recurring source of confusion between the thing itself and the name of it. Take for instance 'whiteness.' The attribute whiteness is a thing, the word 'whiteness' is a term.], multiplication, act, purpose, explosion.
§ 96. A Concrete Term is the name of a substance, e.g. a man, this chair, the soul, God.
§ 97. Abstract terms are so called as being arrived at by a process of Abstraction. What is meant by Abstraction will be clear from a single instance. The mind, in contemplating a number of substances, may draw off, or abstract, its attention from all their other characteristics, and fix it only on some point, or points, which they have in common. Thus, in contemplating a number of three-cornered objects, we may draw away our attention from all their other qualities, and fix it exclusively upon their three-corneredness, thus constituting the abstract notion of 'triangle.' Abstraction may be performed equally well in the case of a single object: but the mind would not originally have known on what points to fix its attention except by a comparison of individuals.
§ 98. Abstraction