A sevenfold incoherency of names, all of which make always a false proposition.
2. Errors which happen in reasoning, that is, in syllogizing, consist either in the falsity of the premises, or of the inference. In the first of these cases, a syllogism is said to be faulty in the matter of it; and in the second case, in the form. I will first consider the matter, namely, how many ways a proposition may be false; and next the form, and how it comes to pass, that when the premises are true, the inference is, notwithstanding, false.
Seeing, therefore, that proposition only is true, (chap, III, [art. 7]) in which are copulated two names of one and the same thing; and that always false, in which names of different things are copulated, look how many ways names of different things may be copulated, and so many ways a false proposition may be made.
Now, all things to which we give names, may be reduced to these four kinds, namely, bodies, accidents, phantasms, and names themselves; and therefore, in every true proposition, it is necessary that the names copulated, be both of them names of bodies, or both names of accidents, or both names of phantasms, or both names of names. For names otherwise copulated are incoherent, and constitute a false proposition. It may happen, also, that the name of a body, of an accident, or of a phantasm, may be copulated with the name of a speech. So that copulated names may be incoherent seven manner of ways.
| 1. If the name of a Body |  |  | the name of an Accident. | |
| 2. If the name of a Body | the name of a Phantasm. | |||
| 3. If the name of a Body | be | the name of a Name. | ||
| 4. If the name of an Accident | copulated | the name of a Phantasm. | ||
| 5. If the name of an Accident | with | the name of a Name. | ||
| 6. If the name of a Phantasm | the name of a Name. | |||
| 7. If the name of a Body, | the name of a Speech. | |||
| Accident, or Phantasm |
Of all which I will give some examples.
Examples of the first manner of incoherency.
3. After the first of these ways propositions are false, when abstract names are copulated with concrete names; as (in Latin and Greek) esse est ens, essentia est ens, τὸ τί ἦν ειναὶ (i.); quidditas est ens, and many the like, which are found in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Also, the understanding worketh, the understanding understandeth, the sight seeth; a body is magnitude, a body is quantity, a body is extension; to be a man is a man, whiteness is a white thing, &c.; which is as if one should say, the runner is the running, or the walk walketh. Moreover, essence is separated, substance is abstracted: and others like these, or derived from these, (with which common philosophy abounds.) For seeing no subject of an accident (that is, no body) is an accident: no name of an accident ought to be given to a body, nor of a body to an accident.
The second.
4. False, in the second manner, are such propositions as these; a ghost is a body, or a spirit, that is, a thin body; sensible species fly up and down in the air, or are moved hither and thither, which is proper to bodies; also, a shadow is moved, or is a body; light is moved, or is a body; colour is the object of sight, sound of hearing; space or place is extended; and innumerable others of this kind. For seeing ghosts, sensible species, a shadow, light, colour, sound, space, &c. appear to us no less sleeping than waking, they cannot be things without us, but only phantasms of the mind that imagines them; and therefore the names of these, copulated with the names of bodies, cannot constitute a true proposition.