Attribute, Attributive. The attribute, as its name imports, is that which is ascribed to anything. Hence it is the French term for the predicate. It is not, however, a very happy one, for it naturally denotes no more than the ascription of quality, or affirmation of accident, but does not readily include negation. Neither is it easily applied to the reciprocating or substitutive proposition. The French are consequently obliged to distinguish between the attribut logique, and the attribut metaphysique, and even then they do not get over the disadvantage of the term.
We are forced by the necessities of thought and language to speak of the Divine Attributes, such as goodness, wisdom, omnipotence, &c. It must always be remembered in thus applying the word that we are denoting no accidents, but that each of these is of the essence of Godhead.
Attributive is a name given to the proposition de inesse, in which we refer the subject to a class, i. e. predicate of it some quality or accident. This is, to speak the language of Kant, the synthetic as contrasted with the analytic judgment. The latter is identical with the reciprocating or substitutive proposition just mentioned, in which the subject and predicate are commensurate and convertible, and in which attribut, as we have seen, is not a felicitous name for the latter.
