DIVISIONS OF CONCEPTS AND TERMS. 43 



proposition. It will be well for the student to bear this in mind 

 even when the investigation of certain divisions and properties of 

 concepts and terms may seem to regard these latter solely as they 

 are in themselves and without any direct reference to the judgment 

 or proposition. 



As we shall be constantly referring to terms, concepts, and 

 things, it will be well to have a clear idea from the outset regarding 

 the exact relations between these three. The term represents and 

 refers to the thing rather than the concept. It does not, however, 

 express the thing as it is in itself, and apart from all relation to 

 thought, but the thing as known through and by the concept. In 

 a word, the reference of the term is to the known object, or to the 

 object as known. &quot; Voces,&quot; St. Thomas rightly teaches, &quot; referuntur 

 ad res significandas mediante conceptione intellectus.&quot; ] 



When, for example, we pronounce the word sun we do not 

 signify or convey to others our idea of the sun our mental state 

 but the thing itself, the object, the sun ; and when we say that 

 the sun gives light and heat we manifestly assert the attributes, 

 light-giving and heat-giving, to belong to the sun itself, not to our 

 idea of the sun. 



At the same time the term or name, sun, can scarcely be said 

 to denote the thing or object exactly and necessarily as it exists 

 in nature ; because people thought for ages that that thing or ob 

 ject which they denoted by the name sun, was a moving body 

 revolving around our planet : which was evidently not true of the 

 sun as it really was and is, but only of the sun as it was thought 

 to be before the discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus made 

 people aware of their error. The term, therefore, represents the 

 object not necessarily as it is in nature but rather as it is known 

 or thought of by those who use the term. 2 



If, therefore, Mill was right in accusing Hobbes of teaching the erroneous 

 doctrine that names stand for ideas, he left himself somewhat open to the 

 charge of erring in the opposite extreme by laying undue emphasis on the 

 antithesis that &quot;names are names of things, not of our ideas &quot;. :{ 



27. UNIVOCAL AND EQUIVOCAL TERMS: ANALOGY AND 

 METAPHOR. An univocal term is one which serves as a name for 

 one class of things ; an equivocal term, one which stands for two 



1 Summa Theol., ia, q. 13, a. i. 



a This point will recur in our treatment of the connotation and denotation of 

 terms, and of the existential import of propositions. 

 8 C/. KEYNES, Formal Logic, 4th edit., p. 9. 



