30 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



stract name, the name of an attribute ; by a concrete name, the 

 name of an object. 



Do abstract names belong to the class of general, or to 

 that of singular names ? Some of them are certainly general. 

 I mean those which are names not of one single and definite 

 attribute, but of a class of attributes. Such is the word colour, 

 which is a name common to whiteness, redness, &c. Such is 

 even the word whiteness, in respect of the different shades of 

 whiteness to which it is applied in common ; the word magni 

 tude, in respect of the various degrees of magnitude and the 

 various dimensions of space ; the word weight, in respect of 

 the various degrees of weight. Such also is the word attribute 

 itself, the common name of all particular attributes. But 

 when only one attribute, neither variable in degree nor in 

 kind, is designated by the name ; as visibleness ; tangibleness ; 

 equality ; squareness ; milkwhiteness ; then the name can 

 hardly be considered general ; for though it denotes an attri 

 bute of many different objects, the attribute itself is always 

 conceived as one, not many.* To avoid needless logomachies, 

 the best course would probably be to consider these names as 

 neither general nor individual, and to place them in a class 

 apart. 



It may be objected to our definition of an abstract name, 

 that not only the names which we have called abstract, but 

 adjectives, which we have placed in the concrete class, are 

 names of attributes ; that white, for example, is as much the 

 name of the colour as whiteness is. But (as before remarked) 

 a word ought to be considered as the name of that which we 

 intend to be understood by it when we put it to its principal 

 use, that is, when we employ it in predication. When we say 

 snow is white, milk is white, linen is white, we do not mean 

 it to be understood that snow, or linen, or milk, is a colour. 

 We mean that they are things having the colour. The reverse 

 is the case with the word whiteness ; what we affirm to be 

 whiteness is not snow, but the colour of snow. Whiteness, 

 therefore, is the name of the colour exclusively : white is a 



* Vide infra, note at the end of 3, book ii. ch. ii. 



