Page:Carroll - Game of Logic.djvu/18

2 The world contains many Things (such as "Buns", "Babies", "Beetles", "Battledores", &c.); and these Things possess many Attributes (such as "baked", "beautiful", "black", "broken", &c.: in fact, whatever can be "attributed to", that is "said to belong to", any Thing, is an Attribute). Whenever we wish to mention a Thing, we use a Substantive: when we wish to mention an Attribute, we use an Adjective. People have asked the question "Can a Thing exist without any Attributes belonging to it?" It is a very puzzling question, and I'm not going to try to answer it: let us turn up our noses, and treat it with contemptuous silence, as if it really wasn't worth noticing. But, if they put it the other way, and ask "Can an Attribute exist without any Thing for it to belong to?", we may say at once "No: no more than a Baby could go a railway-journey with no one to take care of it!" You never saw "beautiful" floating about in the air, or littered about on the floor, without any Thing to be beautiful, now did you?

And now what am I driving at, in all this long rigmarole? It is this. You may put "is" or "are" between the names of two Things (for example, "some Pigs are fat Animals"), or between the names of two Attributes (for example, "pink is light-red"), and in each case it will make good sense. But, if you put "is" or "are" between the name of a Thing and the name of an Attribute (for example, "some Pigs are