ubdivisions of Parts of Speech in our grammars. Its universality of
acceptance is shown in the fact that the words _category_ ([Greek:
kategoria]) and _predicament_, its Latin translation, have passed into
common speech.

The Categories have been much criticised and often condemned as a
division, but, strange to say, few have inquired what they originally
professed to be a division of, or what was the original author's
basis of division. Whether the basis is itself important, is another
question: but to call the division imperfect, without reference to the
author's intention, is merely confusing, and serves only to illustrate
the fact that the same objects may be differently divided on different
principles of division. Ramus was right in saying that the Categories
had no logical significance, inasmuch as they could not be made a
basis for departments of logical method; and Kant and Mill in saying
that they had no philosophical significance, inasmuch as they are
founded upon no theory of Knowing and Being: but this is to condemn
them for not being what they were never intended to be.

The sentence in which Aristotle states the objects to be divided, and
his division of them is so brief and bold that bearing in mind the
subsequent history of the Categories, one first comes upon it with a
certain surprise. He says simply:--

"Of things expressed without syntax (_i.e._, single words), each
signifies either substance, or quantity, or quality, or relation,
or place, or time, or disposition (_i.e._, attitude or internal
arrangement), or appurtenance, or action (doing), or suffering (being
done to)."[1]

The objects, then, that Aristotle proposed to classify were single
words (the _themata simplicia_ of the Schoolmen). He explains that by
"out of syntax" ([Greek: aneu symplokes]) he means without reference
to truth or falsehood: there can be no declaration of truth or
falsehood without a sentence, a combination, or syntax: "man runs" is
either true or false, "man" by itself, "runs" by itself, is neither.
His division, therefore, was a division of single words according to
their differences of signification, and without reference to the truth
or falsehood of their predication.[2]

Signification was thus the basis of division. But according to what
differences? The Categories themselves are so abstract that this
question might be discussed on their bare titles interminably. But
often when abstract terms are doubtful, an aut