NAMES. 43 



ing whiteness. For the non-possession of any given attribute 

 is also an attribute, and may receive a name as such ; and thus 

 negative concrete names may obtain negative abstract names 

 to correspond to them. 



Names which are positive in form are often negative in 

 reality, and others are really positive though their form is 

 negative. The word inconvenient, for example, does not 

 express the mere absence of convenience ; it expresses a posi 

 tive attribute, that of being the cause of discomfort or annoy 

 ance. So the word unpleasant, notwithstanding its negative 

 form, does not connote the mere absence of pleasantness, but 

 a less degree of what is signified by the word painful, which, 

 it is hardly necessary to say, is positive. Idle, on the other 

 hand, is a word which, though positive in form, expresses 

 nothing but what would be signified either by the phrase not 

 working, or by the phrase not disposed to work; and sober, 

 either by not drunk or by not drunken. 



There is a class of names called privative. A privative 

 name is equivalent in its signification to a positive and a nega- 



that some of the most prevalent of the errors with which logic has been infected, 

 and a large part of the cloudiness and confusion of ideas which have enveloped 

 it, would, in all probability, have been avoided, if a term had been in common 

 use to express exactly what I have signified by the term to connote. And the 

 schoolmen, to whom we are indebted for the greater part of our logical language, 

 gave us this also, and in this very sense. For though some of their general 

 expressions countenance the use of the word in the more extensive and vague 

 acceptation in which it is taken by Mr. Mill, yet when they had to define it 

 specifically as a technical term, and to fix its meaning as such, with that admir 

 able precision which always characterizes their definitions, they clearly explained 

 that nothing was said to be connoted except forms, which word may generally, 

 in their writings, be understood as synonymous with attributes. 



Now, if the word to connote, so well suited to the purpose to which they 

 applied it, be diverted from that purpose by being taken to fulfil another, 

 for which it does not seem to me to be at all required ; I am unable to find any 

 expression to replace it, but such as are commonly employed in a sense so much 

 more general, that it would be useless attempting to associate them peculiarly 

 with this precise idea. Such are the words, to involve, to imply, &c. By em 

 ploying these, I should fail of attaining the object for which alone the name is 

 needed, namely, to distinguish this particular kind of involving and implying 

 from all other kinds, and to assure to it the degree of habitual attention which 

 its importance demands. 



