NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



tion, But how came they to he names of the same person ? 

 Surely not because such was the intention of those who 

 invented the words. When mankind fixed the meaning of the 

 word wise, they were not thinking of Socrates, nor, when his 

 parents gave him the name of Socrates, were they thinking 

 of wisdom. The names happen to fit the same person because 

 of a certain fad, which fact was not known, nor in being, 

 when the names were invented. If we want to know what 

 the fact is, we shall find the clue to it in the connotation of the 

 names. 



A bird or a stone, a man, or a wise man, means simply, an 

 object having such and such attributes. The real meaning of the 

 word man, is those attributes, and not Smith, Brown, and the 

 remainder of the individuals. The word mortal, in like manner 

 connotes a certain attribute or attributes ; and when we say, 

 All men are mortal, the meaning of the proposition is, that all 

 beings which possess the one set of attributes, possess also the 

 other. If, in our experience, the attributes connoted by man 

 are always accompanied by the attribute connoted by mortal, it 

 will follow as a consequence, that the class man will be wholly 

 included in the class mortal, and that mortal will be a name 

 of all things of which man is a name : but why ? Those 

 objects are brought under the name, by possessing the attri- 

 butes connoted by it : but their possession of the attributes is 

 the real condition on which the truth of the proposition 

 depends ; not their being called by the name. Connotative 

 names do not precede, but follow, the attributes which they 

 connote. If one attribute happens to be always found in con- 

 junction with another attribute, the concrete names which 

 answer to those attributes will of course be predicable of the 

 same subjects, and may be said, in Hobbes' language, (in the 

 propriety of which on this occasion I fully concur,) to be two 

 names for the same things. But the possibility of a concur- 

 rent application of the two names, is a mere consequence of 

 the conjunction between the two attributes, and was, in most 

 cases, never thought of when the names were introduced and 

 their signification fixed. That the diamond is combustible, 

 was a proposition certainly not dreamt of when the words 



