NAMES. 29 



themselves, that we make the affirmation "or denial. Here, therefore, we 

 find a new reason why the signification of names, and the relation general- 

 ly between names and the things signified by them, must occupy the pre- 

 liminary stage of the inquiry we are engaged in. 



It may be objected that the meaning of names can guide us at most only 

 to the opinions, possibly the foolish and groundless opinions, which man- 

 kind have formed concerning things, and that as the object of philosophy 

 is truth, not opinion, the philosopher should dismiss words and look into ■ 

 things themselves, to ascertain what questions can be asked and answered 

 in regard to them. This advice (which no one has it in his power to fol- 

 low) is in reality an exhortation to discard the whole fruits of the labors of 

 his predecessors, and conduct himself as if he were the first person who 

 had ever turned an inquiring eye upon nature. What does any one's per- 

 sonal knowledge of Things amount to, after subtracting all which he has 

 acquired by means of the words of other people? Even after he has leai'n- 

 ed as much as people usually do learn from others, will the notions of 

 things contained in his individual mind afford as sufficient a basis for a 

 catalogue raisontie as the notions which are in the minds of all mankind? 



In any enumeration and classification of Things, which does not set out 

 from their names, no varieties of things will of course be comprehended 

 but those recognized by the particular inquirer ; and it will still remain to 

 be established, by a subsequent examination of names, that the enumera- 

 tion has omitted nothing which ought to have been included. But if we 

 begin with names, and use them as our clue to the things, we bring at once 

 befoi'e us all the distinctions which have been recognized, not by a single 

 inquirer, but by all inquirers taken together. It doubtless may, and I be- 

 lieve it will, be found, that mankind have multiplied the varieties unneces- 

 sarily, and have imagined distinctions among things, where there were only 

 distinctions in the manner of naming them. But we are not entitled to as- 

 sume this in the commencement. We must begin by recognizing the dis- 

 tinctions made by ordinary language. If some of these appear, on a close 

 examination, not to be fundamental, the enumeration of the different kinds 

 of realities may be abridged accordingly. But to impose upon the facts in 

 the first instance the yoke of a theory, while the grounds of the theory are 

 reserved for discussion in a subsequent stage, is not a course which a logi- 

 cian can reasonably adopt. 



CHAPTER II. 



OF NAMES. 



§ 1. "A NAME," says Hobbes,* "is a word taken at pleasure to serve for 

 a mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had 

 before, and which being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of 

 what thought the speaker hadf before in his mind." This simple defini- 

 tion of a name, as a word (or set of Avords) serving the double purpose of 

 a mark to recall to ourselves the likeness of a former thought, and a sign 



* Computation or Logic, chap. ii. 



t In the original "had, or had not." ..These last words, as involving a subtlety foreign to 

 our present purpose, I have forborne to quote. 



