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

14
THE NAME, THE TERM, THE CONCEPT,
words which can serve as a term, but is considered with
out special reference to its use in a proposition as a
term.
Aristotle had already remarked that the Term (8pos,
terminus) is not something out of which a proposition is
built up, but
"
that into which a proposition is analysed,
as its subject or predicate" (Prior Analytics, I.
i). 1 All
that Logic has to do with terms is to distinguish their
various kinds, so far as these throw light on the process of
thinking. Now if we take the Aristotelian conception of
the Term as always either subject or predicate of a proposi
tion, a great deal of what English logicians say about
"
terms "and some of them, especially Jevons, use the
"
"
"
"
word in a loose sense as equivalent to names or words
"
or phrases" falls outside Logic. It belongs to Grammar
or Rhetoric, or to special sciences. Hence when dwelling
"
on the distinctions usually given, we shall speak of
as above defined, and not of
"
names
"
"
terms ; for only one of these
distinctions is of primary logical importance that between
"
singular" and "general," which is the only one that applies
strictly to logical terms, as parts of a proposition.
arrange
the various distinctions of names as follows :
We may
1 In De Interpretatione, ch. i., Aristotle seems to give more
countenance to the view that the judgment is a "combination or
separation," (rwOeffis or Staipecns, of concepts, as though it were built