Next to the adjectives which form the numerous sub-classes of good and evil, those which mark degrees are of the most extensive application, and in the operation of sub-marking save the greatest number of names. Thus the terms, great, and little, are applicable to a great proportion of the marks of complex ideas of both formations. We say a great tree, a little tree; a great man, a little man; a great crime, a small crime; great blame, little blame; great honour, little honour; great value, little value; great weight, little weight; great strength, little strength, and so on.
Different adjectives differ in the number of classes to the subdivision of which they are subservient. Thus hot and cold are only applicable where diversities of temperature are included; round, square, and 149 so on, where figure is included; white or black, where colour; and so on.
Beside the use of adjectives, in dividing great classes into smaller ones, without multiplication of names; they sometimes answer another purpose. It often happens that, in the cluster of sensations or ideas which have one name; we have occasion to call attention particularly to some one ingredient of the cluster. Adjectives render this service, as well as that of marking a class. This rose, I say, is red; that rose is yellow: this stone is hot, that stone is cold. The term, red rose, or yellow rose, is the name of a class. But when I say, this rose is red, where an individual is named, I mark emphatically the specific difference; namely, red, or yellow; which constitutes that subdivision of the genus rose, to which the individual belongs.[45]
[45] In the concluding paragraph we find the first recognition by the author that class names serve any purpose, or are introduced for any reason, except to save multiplication of names. Adjectives, it is here said, answer also the purpose of calling attention to some one ingredient of the cluster of sensations combined under one name. That is to say, they enable us to affirm that the cluster contains that ingredient: for they do not merely call attention to the ingredient, or remind the hearer of it: the hearer, very often, did not know that the cluster contained the ingredient, until he was apprised by the proposition.
But surely it is not only adjectives which fulfil either office, whether of giving information of an ingredient, or merely fixing the attention upon it. All general names do so, when used as predicates. When I say that a distant object which I am pointing at is a tree, or a building, I just as much call attention to certain ingredients in the cluster of sensations constituting the object, as I do when I say, This rose is red. So 150 far is it from being true that adjectives are distinguished from substantives by having this function in addition to that of economizing names, that it is, on the contrary, much more nearly true of adjectives than of the class-names which are nouns substantive, that the economizing of names is the principal motive for their institution. For though general names of some sort are indispensable to predication, adjectives are not. As is well shewn in the text, the peculiarity, which really distinguishes adjectives from other general names, is that they mark cross divisions. All nature having first been marked out into classes by means of nouns substantive, we might go on by the same means subdividing each class. We might call the large individuals of a class by one noun substantive and the small ones by another, and these substantives would serve all purposes of predication; but to do this we should need just twice as many additional nouns substantive as there are classes of objects. Since, however, the distinction of large and small applies to all classes alike, one pair of names will suffice to designate it. Instead therefore of dividing every class into sub-classes, each with its own name, we draw a line across all the classes, dividing all nature into large things and small, and by using these two words as adjectives, that is, by adding one or other of them as the occasion requires to every noun substantive which is the name of a class, we are able to mark universally the distinction of large and small by two names only, instead of many millions.—Ed.
SECTION III.
VERBS.
1. There is one class of complex ideas, of so particular a nature, and of which we have so frequent occasion to speak, that the means of sub-dividing them require additional contrivances. Marks put upon marks are still the instrument. But the instrument, to render it more effectual to this particular purpose, is fashioned in a particular way. I allude to the class of words denominated Verbs: which are, in their essence, adjectives, and applied as marks upon marks; but receive a particular form, in order to render them, at the same time, subservient to other purposes.
The mode of their marking, and the peculiarity of their marking power may easily, I hope, be thus conceived.