DEFINITION. 



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to them all taken together ; a definition which will correspond 

 exactly to that of the corresponding concrete name. For, as 

 we define a concrete name by enumerating the attributes which 

 it connotes, and as the attributes connoted by a concrete name 

 form the entire signification of the corresponding abstract name, 

 the same enumeration will serve for the definition of both. 

 Thus, if the definition of a human being be this, &quot; a being, 

 corporeal, animated, rational, shaped so and so,&quot; the definition 

 of humanity will be corporeity and animal life, combined 

 with rationality, and with such and such a shape. 



When, on the other hand, the abstract name does not 

 express a complication of attributes, but a single attribute, we 

 must remember that every attribute is grounded on some fact 

 or phenomenon, from which, and which alone, it derives its 

 meaning. To that fact or phenomenon, called in a former 

 chapter the foundation of the attribute, we must, therefore, 

 have recourse for its definition. Now, the foundation of the 

 attribute may be a phenomenon of any degree of complexity, 

 consisting of many different parts, either coexistent or in suc 

 cession. To obtain a definition of the attribute, we must 

 analyse the phenomenon into these parts. Eloquence, for 

 example, is the name of one attribute only ; but this attribute 

 is grounded on external effects of a complicated nature, flowing 

 from acts of the person to whom we ascribed the attribute ; and 

 by resolving this phenomenon of causation into its two parts, 

 the cause and the effect, we obtain a definition of eloquence, 

 viz. the power of influencing the feelings by speech or writing. 

 A name, therefore, whether concrete or abstract, admits of 

 definition, provided we are able to analyse, that is, to distinguish 

 into parts, the attribute or set of attributes which constitute 

 the meaning both of the concrete name and of the corresponding 

 abstract : if a set of attributes, by enumerating them ; if a 

 single attribute, by dissecting the fact or phenomenon (whether 

 of perception or of internal consciousness) which is the foun 

 dation of the attribute. But, further, even when the fact is 

 one of our simple feelings or states of consciousness, and 

 therefore unsusceptible of analysis, the names both of the 

 object and of the attribute still admit of definition : or rather, 



