The Classification of Law frequently
happens that
the
person
writing expresses an idea which the reader fails to apprehend because of his
difierent conception of the words used. “Half the disputes of the world” says Cardinal Newman,
“are verbal ones,
and could they be brought to a plain issue,
they
would
be
brought
prompt determination. . . .
to
a
We need
not;;_dispute, we need not prove; we
dogmas, principles, rules.
557 The very
process of making this discrimination brings about, or compels, arrangement
of some sort. It may be mere accidental grouping, as in alphabetical arrangement it may be empirical arrangement of related subjects (i.e., with no dominating principle) as the Pandects was arranged,
or it may be classification.
Arrange
need but to define." “Men,” says Lord Bacon, “imagine that their reason governs words, while
ment is not classification, although classification is arrangement; the differ ence being that while arrangement may be empirical, classification must
in fact words react upon the under
be in accordance with some principle.
standing and this has rendered philo
Hence the latter attains a place in science. Alphabetical arrangement is
sophy and the sciences sophistical and disputes of learned men often terminate
entirely accidental, depending upon peculiarities of orthography. In this,
about words and names in regard to which it would be better to proceed more advisedly in the first instance and to bring such disputes to a regular issue
orthography excludes logic. Classifi cation requires the application of a principle, which passes under the name “dichotomy.”
inactive.
Hence the great and solemn
by definitions.”a Madison observes :— You have heard much of the celebrated Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects and imperfection of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other adds a fresh embarrassment. The use of words is to express ideas. Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriated to them.‘
CLASSIFICATION: ITS MEANING AND OBJECT
distribution of things into genera and species. On that distribution Aristotle undertook the arduous task of resolving all reasoning into its primary elements; and be erected, or thought he erected, on a single axiom, a larger system of abstract truths than were before invented or perfected by any other philosopher. The axiom from which he sets out, and in which the whole terminates, is that whatever is predicated of a genus may be predicated of every species contained under that genus, and of every individual contained under every species. On that distribution, likewise, the very essence of scientific defi
Logic has to do fundamentally with
nition depends; for a definition, strictly and
the relation of ideas. It follows then that the first process of logic must
logically regular, must express the genus of the thing defined, and the specific difference by which that thing is distinguished from every other species belonging to that genus.‘
necessarily be definition, that is the discrimination of related ideas in such a way that differences in their natures
are made plain. In metaphysical subjects the distinction between ideas to become practical must reach the stage of distinct concepts, theories, doctrines,
That Wilson did not misconceive the fundamental thought of Aristotle's philosophy, namely: the adoption and
adherence to one principle as dominating each integral exposition, finds confir
mation in a treatise on the Principles of ' Nov-um Organum.
‘ Federalist. No. 37.
‘ 1 Wilson's Works, 51.
