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NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



(that is, in which the predicate connotes the whole or part of 

 what the subject connotes, but nothing besides) answer no 

 purpose but that of unfolding the whole or some part of the 

 meaning of the name, to those who did not previously know it. 

 Accordingly, the most useful, and in strictness the only useful 

 kind of essential propositions, are Definitions : which, to be 

 complete, should unfold the whole of what is involved in the 

 meaning of the word defined ; that is, (when it is a connotative 

 word,) the whole of what it connotes. In defining a name, 

 however, it is not usual to specify its entire connotation, but 

 so much only as is sufficient to mark out the objects usually 

 denoted by it from all other known objects. And sometimes 

 a merely accidental property, not involved in the meaning of 

 the name, answers this purpose equally well. The various 

 kinds of definition which these distinctions give rise to, and 

 the purposes to which they are respectively subservient, will be 

 minutely considered in the proper place. 



3. According to the above view of essential propositions, 

 no proposition can be reckoned such which relates to an indi 

 vidual by name, that is, in which the subject is a proper name. 

 Individuals have no essences. When the schoolmen talked of 

 the essence of an individual, they did not mean the properties 

 implied in its name, for the names of individuals imply no 

 properties. They regarded as of the essence of an individual, 

 whatever was of the essence of the species in which they were 

 accustomed to place that individual ; i. e. of the class to which 

 it was most familiarly referred, and to which, therefore, they 

 conceived that it by nature belonged. Thus, because the pro 

 position Man is a rational being, was an essential proposition, 

 they affirmed the same thing of the proposition, Julius Cassar 

 is a rational being. This followed very naturally if genera and 

 species were to be considered as entities, distinct from, but 

 inhering in, the individuals composing them. If man was a 

 substance inhering in each individual man, the essence of man 

 (whatever that might mean) was naturally supposed to accom 

 pany it ; to inhere in John Thompson, and to form the common 

 essence of Thompson and Julius Ceesar. It might then be 



