28

Logic II 28

contraries. The sheriff would still have his first, even if
there were no court; but an efficient cause, detached
from a final cause in the form of a law, would not
even possess efficiency: it might exert itself, and some-
thing might follow post hoc, but not propter hoc; for
propter implies potential regularity. Now without law there
is no regularity; and without the influence of ideas there
is no potentiality.

A NATURAL Class, what?

The light of these reflections [?] brings out into distinct
[???] characters of our definition of a real class which we
might otherwise have overlooked or misinterpreted. Every class
has its definition, which is a idea; but it is not every class
where the existence, that is, the occurrence in the universe,
of its members is due to the active causality of the defining idea
of the class. That circumstance makes the word epithet natural
particularly appropriate to the class. The word nature
evidently must originally have meant birth; although