It is to be borne in mind that, as a minor proportion of mere Things are raised to the dignity of wearing Proper Names, so, on the other hand, Men, though appropriately distinguished by prenomens and cognomens, may also sink to the character of Things, and be mentioned by class-names. Thus it is that throughout Nature one domain overlaps another domain, and all of our discriminations, though made in terms as if absolute, signify, in fact, merely the preponderance; thus, when we say, that Proper Names apply to the Human Domain, that is true in preponderance, but not absolutely or exclusively; and when we say that Common Names apply to Things below Persons, the statement is true in preponderance, but not absolutely or exclusively.
Proper Names—The Human World in Language—are, in the next place, distinguished by Gender, as that word itself is distinguished by Sex. By the principle of Overlapping, above explained, this distinction of Gender or Sex descends in a minor degree into the Thing World; in a large degree to the Animal World below man: in less degree to the Vegetable World; and in the least degree to the Mineral and Abstract World. But characteristically and predominatingly, Sex is predicated of Humanity, where it is developed in its highest perfection; and in the same degree Gender in Grammar is, in predominance, confined to the Proper Nouns Substantive. Masculine and Feminine are the only Proper Genders. Neuter Gender means of neither Gender, and includes the great mass of Common Nouns, or the Thing World, as distinguished from Personality.
Reversing the order, and resuming the above discriminations in the two domains, Language and the Universe, they are as follows:
| Language. | Universe. | ||
| Proper-noun-dom | Masculine. Feminine. | Person-dom | Male. Female. |
| Common-noun-dom. | Thing-dom. | ||
Again, in this Concrete World, the world of Persons and Things, Number reappears, and guides the next great Grammatical division of Nouns Substantive; and the ruling numbers are, again, One, Two, Three.
The Number One corresponds with the Singular Number in Grammar, and with the Individual or Single Person (or Thing) in the Universe at large. The Number Two corresponds with the Dual Number in Grammar, and with the Couple or Pair in the World of Persons (and Things); and finally the Number Three corresponds with the Plural Number in Grammar and with Society or the many among Persons (and Things); or in tabular form, thus:
| 1. Singular Number, | The Number One (1). |
| 2. Dual Number, | The Number Two (2). |
| 3. Plural Number, | The Number Three (3). |
The Number Three, as the first Plural Number above the Dual, is the Head and Type of Plurality in the grammatical discrimination, and stands representatively for all Plurality.
One, Two, and Three, are the Representative Numbers and Heads of the whole Cardinal Series of Number.
First, Second, and Third are the corresponding Representatives and Heads of the Corresponding Ordinal Series of Number. These latter numerals find their representation, grammatically, in the next Grand Grammatical Distribution of the Proper Nouns Substantive, namely, Person, so called, or, specifically, the