26. The Ten Parts of Speech. -- As the objects of our thoughts can be divided into ten categories, it seems natural to find an analogous division in the terms which correspond to our concepts. Grammarians do, as a matter of fact, distinguish ten parts in speech, just as Aristotle had distinguished ten categories of thoughts in connection with ten kinds of things known.

There is, however, no adequate correspondence between the categories and the parts of speech.

The first subject of all logical attributions is what the senses perceive in its concrete reality, and which at the outset presents. itself to the thought in complete indeterminateness, -- this something, hoc aliquid, this, that.

Formal determinations which the mind conceives in an abstract manner, and which the terms of language express, gradually fill up this first indeterminateness. The chief are expressed by the substantive, the adjective, and the attributive verb, which constitute the essential elements of language.

(1) The first determination is the essence, or the very substance, of the subject, designated by the noun, or substantive. The substantive designates any object which is a substance or any quality considered as if it were a substance (man, horse, height, whiteness).

In its first acceptation the noun is abstract and, therefore, common.

Further determinations have individualized its signification and made proper nouns out of it.

(2) Two categories represent determinations inherent in the subject: some are qualitative; others, quantitative; these are adjectives.

(3) The attributive verb represents action or passion in operation.

As for the verb to be, it either designates the act of existing (I am) or plays a merely copulative part, uniting subject and predicate, in which latter character it is implied in every attributive verb -- e. g., I work, I am working.

It is interesting to note that the results of linguistics agree with the study of logical concepts: just as the predicates of judgments are abstract, so the roots, or primitive forms, of language express abstract ideas.