IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 101 



cation combined with other circumstances, that form combined 

 with other matter, does convey more, and much more. 



The only propositions of which Hobbes' principle is a suffi- 

 cient account, are that limited and unimportant class in which 

 both the predicate and the subject are proper names. For, as 

 has already been remarked, proper names have strictly no 

 meaning; they are mere marks for individual objects: and 

 when a proper name is predicated of another proper name, all 

 the signification conveyed is, that both the names are marks 

 for the same object. But this is precisely what Hobbes pro- 

 duces as a theory of predication in general. His doctrine is a 

 full explanation of such predications as these : Hyde was 

 Clarendon, or, Tully is Cicero. It exhausts the meaning of 

 those propositions. But it is a sadly inadequate theory of 

 any others. That it should ever have been thought of as such, 

 can be accounted for only by the fact, that Hobbes, in common 

 with the other Nominalists, bestowed little or no attention 

 upon the connotation of words ; and sought for their meaning 

 exclusively in what they denote : as if all names had been 

 (what none but proper names really are) marks put upon indi- 

 viduals ; and as if there were no difference between a proper 

 and a general name, except that the first denotes only one 

 individual, and the last a greater number. 



It has been seen, however, that the meaning of all names, 

 except proper names and that portion of the class of abstract 

 names which are not connotative, resides in the connotation. 

 When, therefore, we are analysing the meaning of any pro- 

 position in which the predicate and the subject, or either 

 of them, are connotative names, it is to the connotation of 

 those terms that we must exclusively look, and not to what 

 they denote, or in the language of Hobbes (language so far 

 correct) are names of. 



In asserting that the truth of a proposition depends on the 

 conformity of import between its terms, as, for instance, that 

 the proposition, Socrates is wise, is a true proposition, because 

 Socrates and wise are names applicable to, or, as he expresses 

 it, names of, the same person ; it is very remarkable that 

 so powerful a thinker should not have asked himself the ques- 



