64 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



originally meant the day dedicated to the worship of Woden. The first 

 &quot; Godfrey &quot; may have been so called because he was considered to possess 

 in a marked degree the &quot; peace of God &quot;. And so on. But we must not 

 confound the etymology or history of a name with its connotation. No mat 

 ter what may have been the origin of the name or the reason for which it 

 was assigned to an individual in the first instance, as soon as it came to be 

 regarded merely as a proper name, and to be used and applied as such, its 

 application became independent of its original meaning. In other words, its 

 connotation was dropped or lost : it is now no longer applied to an individual 

 on account of any attributes he may or may not possess ; although it may and 

 invariably does suggest attributes when so applied. 



In favour of the view that proper names are connotative it might be argued 

 that the proper name &quot; John Henry Cardinal Newman,&quot; for instance, not 

 merely suggests but implies or connotes (a) that the bearer held a high office 

 in the Catholic Church ; (b} that he was an organic-living-human-being of the 

 male sex ; (c) that his father s name was Newman, (d) and probably that he 

 had ancestors named John and Henry. We may admit the first point (d). 

 But though we may feel quite certain about the second (), the name does not 

 signify or imply it. The name might, not without impropriety, but yet with 

 out any necessary deception, be given to a racehorse, as Victoria Nyanza, 

 for instance, is the name of a lake. Nor, a fortiori, is identity of name in 

 (c) father, or (d} ancestors, necessarily implied in the use of such a name. 1 



The application of a purely proper name being determined by pointing 

 out the individual, it follows that such a name is unintelligible i.e. has no sort 

 of meaning for any one who hears it without having pointed out or other 

 wise revealed to him the individual person, place, or thing to which the 

 name is applied. 



38. OPPOSITION IN CONCEPTS AND TERMS : KINDS OF OP 

 POSITION : MATERIAL CONTRADICTORIES. Terms which imply 

 attributes that cannot co-exist in the same subject are called Incom 

 patible Terms. We may distinguish various degrees of incompati 

 bility : (a) contradiction, (b) contrariety, (c) simple repugnance. 



Two terms may be so opposed as to be mutually exclusive 

 in their connotation and collectively exhaustive in their denotation. 

 Neither will be applicable to any object to which the other is ap 

 plicable, and both between them will exhaust the whole common 

 sphere of their denotation. This is called contradictory opposition, 

 and such terms are called contradictories. 



This opposition may be discovered in two ways : either from a 

 knowledge of the connotation and denotation of the terms in 

 question, i.e. of the matter to which they refer, or by mere inspec 

 tion of inform of the terms. Hence two kinds of contradictories : 

 material and formal. Material contradiction can be discovered 

 only by an examination of facts. The two terms themselves do 

 1 C/. KEYNES, op. cit., pp. 45-47. 



