Bibliography: Relatives

A collection, or system, is an abstraction or abstract ens; and thus the whole doctrine of number is founded on the operation of abstraction. If we conceive an object to be a collective whole, but to be so in such a way that it has no part which is not itself a collective whole in the same way, then, if the collection is of the nature of a sorite, it is a general, whose parts are distinguished merely as having additional characters; but if the collection is a set, whose members have other relations to one another, it is a continuum.

Relation is the relative character, conceived as belonging in different ways to the different relates, and (owing to the somewhat undue prominence given by familiar languages to one of these) especially to the relate which is denoted by the noun which is the subject nominative.

That in the reality which corresponds to a proposition with a relative predicate is called the fundamentum relationis. A relationship is a system of such fundamenta.

If from any proposition having more than one subject (used to include “objects”) we strike out the indices of the subjects, as in “– praises – to –,” “– dat in matrimonium –,” what remains and requires at least two insertions of subject-nouns to make a proposition is a “relative term,” or “relative rhema,” called briefly a “relative.” The relative may be converted into a complete assertion by filling up the blanks with proper names or abstract nouns; this serves as a criterion.