An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

IQO
THE CATEGORIES OR PREDICAMENTS.
more positive terms do not come under the head of
strict dichotomy, for the contrasted terms in each act
of division are contraries and not contradictories (ch. ii.
4). Examples
of this are : the division of lines into
curved and not-curved (i.e., straight) ; or the division of
men into white and not white (i.e., yellow, red, brown,
black). Sometimes, again, when we are arranging
objects, as books in a subject-catalogue, and further
arrangement becomes impossible, we add a class,
"
Mis
cellaneous," which really means
"
All those not in any
named class." But we never form a class that can be
indicated by a pure contradictory term.
Part IV. The Categories or Predicaments.
ii. We have seen in i that Aristotle makes a
fundamental distinction between two kinds of predica
tion : one which tells us what the thing really is, another
which does not. The former expresses
(a) The definition ;
(It) Part of the definition, the genus or differentia.
The other kind of predication expresses properties that
are "accidental." We may distinguish
the two kinds
as essential and accidental predication respectively.
Aristotle considers that the latter is improperly called
"
predication."
In the case of essential predication, the
predicate necessarily belongs to the subject, it is of
the subject ; in the case of accidental
"
predication," the
predicate is merely /;/ the subject (Categories, ch. ii.)
Bearing in mind these distinctions, we proceed to
deal with an important question. We know that every
judgment is a statement about facts, it affirms (or
denies) that something exists in a certain "
P affirms that S exists with
"
: way S is
the qualification P. We