NAMES. 37 



in some degree analogous to what the robber intended in chalk- 

 ing the house. We put a mark, not indeed upon the object 

 itself, but, so to speak, upon the idea of the object. A proper 

 name is but an unmeaning mark which we connect in our 

 minds with the idea of the object, in order that whenever the 

 mark meets our eyes or occurs to our thoughts, we may think 

 of that individual object. Not being attached to the thing 

 itself, it does not, like the chalk, enable us to distinguish the 

 object when we see it; but it enables us to distinguish it 

 when it is spoken of, either in the records of our own ex- 

 perience, or in the discourse of others ; to know that what we 

 find asserted in any proposition of which it is the subject, is 

 asserted of the individual thing with which we were previously 

 acquainted. 



When we predicate of anything its proper name ; when 

 we say, pointing to a man, this is Brown or Smith, or point- 

 ing to a city, that it is York, we do not, merely by so doing, 

 convey to the hearer any information about them, except that 

 those are their names. By enabling him to identify the in- 

 dividuals, we may connect them with information previously 

 possessed by him ; by saying, This is York, we may tell him 

 that it contains the Minster. But this is in virtue of what 

 he has previously heard concerning York ; not by anything 

 implied in the name. It is otherwise when objects are spoken 

 of by connotative names. When we say, The town is built 

 of marble, we give the hearer what may be entirely new in- 

 formation, and this merely by the signification of the many- 

 worded connotative name, " built of marble." Such names 

 are not signs of the mere objects, invented because we have 

 occasion to think and speak of those objects individually; 

 but signs which accompany an attribute : a kind of livery in 

 which the attribute clothes all objects which are recognised as 

 possessing it. They are not mere marks, but more, that is to 

 s'ay, significant marks ; and the connotation is what constitutes 

 their significance. 



As a proper name is said to be the name of the one indi- 

 vidual which it is predicated of, so (as well from the importance 

 of adhering to analogy, as for the other reasons formerly as- 



