Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/159

] in an abstract sense, the ordinary rules of Opposition do not apply to them, and hence for the ordinary student we require to reconstruct them, or supplement them by new ones to suit the circumstances not provided for in formal logic. To do this I propose the following classification of propositions, which is designed for Opposition alone, while the problems of the syllogism may be satisfied with the ordinary and simpler account of them.

These propositions may not necessarily differ in form of expression, but in their meaning. Thus the indefinite and partitive particulars are alike in form, while an emphasis upon the word "some" may change its meaning so as to imply a complimentary opposite proposition. Then the same remark can be made regarding the universals. The distributive and collective are alike in their form, but different in their import. The definitive class, or what I may call individuo-universals, still more depends upon what is thought when they are used. It is designed to describe all those where the meaning turns upon the quality and not the quantity of the proposition, and the nearest sign of such cases is the term "any," whose contradictory must be E instead of A. With these observations it will be apparent that the ordinary canons of Opposition have a very narrow application to practice, and that they must be subject to great modifications in directing the student to the use of them. Only the distributive universals and the indefinite particulars come under the regular rules, and all the others must have new formulas constructed for them. One interesting fact corroborating the position here taken, in classifying abstract propositions with singulars, is the incident that Jevons regarded abstract terms as singular, and I generally find students