NAMES. 45 



When we say of any object that it is like, we mean that it is 

 like some other ohject, which is also said to be like the first. 

 In this last case both objects receive the same name ; the rela 

 tive term is its own correlative. 



It is evident that these words, when concrete, are, like 

 other concrete general names, connotative ; they denote a sub 

 ject, and connote an attribute; and each of them has or might 

 have a corresponding abstract name, to denote the attribute 

 connoted by the concrete. Thus the concrete like has its 

 abstract likeness; the concretes, father and son, have, or might 

 have, the abstracts, paternity, and filiety, or sonship. The 

 concrete name connotes an attribute, and the abstract name 

 which answers to it denotes that attribute. But of what 

 nature is the attribute ? Wherein consists the peculiarity in 

 the connotation of a relative name ? 



The attribute signified by a relative name, say some, is a 

 relation ; and this they give, if not as a sufficient explanation, 

 at least as the only one attainable. If they are asked, What 

 then is a relation ? they do not profess to be able to tell. It 

 is generally regarded as something peculiarly recondite and 

 mysterious. I cannot, however, perceive in what respect it is 

 more so than any other attribute ; indeed, it appears to me to 

 be so in a somewhat less degree. I conceive, rather, that it is 

 by examining into the signification of relative names, or, in 

 other words, into the nature of the attribute which they con 

 note, that a clear insight may best be obtained into the nature 

 of all attributes : of all that is meant by an attribute. 



It is obvious, in fact, that if we take any two correlative 

 names, father and son for instance, though the objects de 

 noted by the names are different, they both, in a certain sense, 

 connote the same thing. They cannot, indeed, be said to 

 connote the same attribute : to be a father, is not the same 

 thing as to be a son. But when we call one man a father 

 another a son, what we mean to affirm is a set of facts 

 which are exactly the same in both cases. To predicate of A 

 that he is the father of B, and of B that he is the son of A, 

 is to assert one and the same fact in different words. The 

 two propositions are exactly equivalent: neither of them 



