NAMES. 47 



sides that one had ever existed ;* but those of its attributes 

 which are expressed by relative names, would on that supposi 

 tion be swept away. 



8. Names have been further distinguished into unlvocal 

 and (equivocal : these, however, are not two kinds of names, 

 but two different modes of employing names. A name is 

 nnivocal, or applied univocally, with respect to all things of 

 which it can be predicated in the same sense : it is equivocal, 

 or applied equivocally, as respects those things of which it is 

 predicated in different senses. It is scarcely necessary to give 

 instances of a fact so familiar as the double meaning of a word. 

 In reality, as has been already observed, an equivocal or am 

 biguous word is not one name, but two names, accidentally 

 coinciding in sound. File meaning a steel instrument, and 

 file meaning a line of soldiers, have no more title to be con 

 sidered one word, because written alike, than grease and Greece 

 have, because they are pronounced alike. They are one sound, 

 appropriated to form two different words. 



An intermediate case is that of a name used analogically 

 or metaphorically ; that is, a name which is predicated of two 

 things, not univocally, or exactly in the same signification, 

 but in significations somewhat similar, and which being de 

 rived one from the other, one of them may be considered the 

 primary, and the other a secondary signification. As when 

 we speak of a brilliant light and a brilliant achievement. The 

 word is not applied in the same sense to the light and to the 

 achievement; but having been applied to the light in its 

 original sense, that of brightness to the eye, it is transferred 

 to the achievement in a derivative signification, supposed to 

 be somewhat like the primitive one. The word, however, is 



* Or rather, all objects except itself and the percipient mind ; for, as we 

 shall see hereafter, to ascribe any attribute to an object, necessarily implies a 

 mind to perceive it. 



The simple and clear explanation given in the text, of relation and relative 

 names, a subject so long the opprobrium of metaphysics, was given (as far as I 

 know) for the first time, by Mr. James Mill, in his Analysis of the Phenomena 

 of the Human Mind. 



