different kinds of assertions could be made about him; and when he had reduced these to 9, he was perhaps pleased, because “Substance,” and the 9 kinds of assertion made about it, made up 10 “Categories,” and 10 is a perfect number. He afterwards dropped this particular number, and the “Categories” which had been brought in at the end of the list to eke it out. He seems always to have thought a classification of the ways in which we speak of things to be useful for obtaining clear notions. But he was far too sensible to apply his original table of “Ten Categories” as a Procrustean bed for measuring everything in the universe. At the same time it must be confessed that it has been prevalently thought that he did so. Thus Bacon contemptuously accused him of “constructing the world out of his ‘Categories.’” But this arose very much from the fact that the first book of the ‘Organon’ was read out of all proportion more than Aristotle’s great philosophical treatises, and so it came about that the Aristotelian schoolmen attached an exaggerated importance to the table of which it treats, and their sins have been imputed to the Stagirite himself.
The little book before us, which has exercised so much influence, might be described as a logical monograph on the characteristics of some of the “Categories.” After naming the ten, without any account of the manner in which they are arrived at, it discusses to a certain extent the first four only. Then some chapters are appended, which may or may not have been originally a separate paper, on the different ways in which things are called “opposite,” &c. There are two or
