19 Feb. 1815 '. Use

Didacologia

2

Ch. Art & Science Division

'. Use

In the next place as to the denominations, divisions, and subdivisions, and the names given to the results.

It is only by a correspondent set of apposite names, that the relations that have place between different objects can be instructively and conveniently expressed, and thereby as far as by general words can be done, the nature, the true and distinctive nature, of those several objects made known.

By the most and all comprehensive term of every system, those properties are expressed which are common to all the individual objects which are understood to be designated by, and comprehended in, the import of that universal appellative. Divide that aggregate into two parts, taking care at the same time that, in one or other of those parts, every individual comprehended in the whole shall be included - by the names respectively given to those two parts, whatsoever properties are peculiar to the contents of each in contradistinction to the contents of the other, are designated. But in so far as, in addition to all those properties which it has in common with other objects, those which are peculiar to itself are known and understood, the nature of the object, be it what it may, is understood.

In addition to that vast assemblage of common properties which is designated by the universal name, the greater the number of the divisions and subdivisions which are thus made - while to the two lesser aggregates forming the result of each act of division, apposite denominations, expressive of a property by which the contents of each of the two compartments are distinguished from those of the other, are attached - the greater the number of those successive acts of division, the more clearly each one of the individual objects contained under them is rendered distinguishable from every other, with which, but for the distinctions thus brought to view, it might have been in danger of being confounded.

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