§ 325. Again, the distinction between genus and difference on the one hand and property on the other is wholly relative to an assumed definition. When we say 'Man is an animal,' 'Man is rational,' 'Man is progressive,' there is nothing in the nature of these statements themselves to tell us that the predicate is genus, difference, or property respectively. It is only by a tacit reference to the accepted definition of man that this becomes evident to us, Similarly, we cannot know beforehand that the fact of a triangle having three sides is its difference, and the fact of its having three angles a property. It is only when we assume the definition of a triangle as a three-sided figure that the fact of its having three angles sinks into a property. Had we chosen to define it, in accordance with its etymological meaning, as a figure with three angles, its three-sidedness would then have been a mere property, instead of being the difference; for these two attributes are so connected together that, whichever is postulated, the other will necessarily follow.
§ 326. Lastly, it must be noticed that we have not really defined the term 'accident,' not having stated what it is, but only what it is not. It has in fact been reserved as a residual head to cover any attribute which is neither a difference nor a property.
§ 327. If the five heads of predicables above given were offered to us as an exhaustive classification of the possible relations in which the predicate can stand to the subject in a proposition, the first thing that would strike us is that they do not cover the case in which the predicate is a singular term. In such a proposition as 'This man is John,' we have neither a predication of genus or species nor of attribute: but merely the identification of one term with another, as applying to the same object. Such criticism as this, however, would be entirely erroneous, since no singular term was regarded as a predicate. A predicable was another name for a universal, the common term being called a predicable in one relation and a universal in another-a predicable, extensively, in so far as it was applicable to several different things, a universal, intensively, in so far as the attributes indicated were implied in several other notions, as the attributes indicated by 'animal' are implied in 'horse,' 'sheep,' 'goat,' &c.
§ 328. It would be less irrelevant to point out how the classification breaks down in relation to the singular term as subject. When, for instance, we say 'Socrates is an animal,' 'Socrates is a man,' there is nothing in the proposition to show us whether the predicate is a genus or a species: for we have not here the relation of class to class, which gives us genus or species according to their relative extension, but the relation of a class to an individual.
§ 329. Again, when we say
(1) Some animals are men,
(2) Some men are black,
what is there to tell us that the predicate is to be regarded in the one case as a species and in the other as an accident of the subject? Nothing plainly but the assumption of a definition already known.
§ 330. But if this assumption be granted, the classification seems to admit of a more or less complete defense by logic.
For, given any subject, we can predicate of it either a class or an attribute.