NAMES. 37 



one might have participated in the authorship of the Iliad, or in the mur- 

 der of Henri Quatre, the employment of the article the implies that, in fact, 

 this was not the case. What is here done by the word the, is done in oth- 

 er cases by the context : thus, " Caesar's army " is an individual name, if it 

 appears from the context that the army meant is that which Caesar com- 

 manded in a particular battle. The still more general expressions, "the 

 Roman army," or " the Christian army," may be individualized in a similar 

 manner. Another case of frequent occurrence has already been noticed ; 

 it is the following : The name, being a many-worded one, may consist, in 

 the first place, of a general name, capable therefore in itself of being affirm- 

 ed of more things than one, but which is, in the second place, so limited by 

 other Avords joined with it, that the entire expression can only be predi- 

 cated of one object, consistently with the meaning of the general term. 

 This is exemplified in such an instance as the following: "the present 

 prime minister of England." Prime Minister of England is a general 

 name ; the attributes which it connotes may be possessed by an indefinite 

 number of persons : in succession however, not simultaneously ; since the 

 meaning of the name itself imports (among other things) that there can be 

 only one such person at a time. This being the case, and the application 

 of the name being afterward limited by the article and the word present, to 

 such individuals as possess the attributes at one indivisible point of time, 

 it becomes applicable only to one individual. And as this appears from 

 the meaning of the name, without any extrinsic proof, it is strictly an indi- 

 vidual name. 



From the preceding observations it will easily be 'collected, that when- 

 ever the names given to objects convey any information — that is, whenever 

 they have properly any meaning — the meaning resides not in what they de- 

 note, but in what they connote. The only names of objects which connote 

 nothing are proper names ; and these have, strictly speaking, no significa- 

 tion.* 



If, like the robber in the Arabian Nights, we make a mark with chalk on 

 a house to enable us to know it again, the mark has a purpose, but it has 

 not properly any meaning. The chalk does not declare any thing about 

 the house ; it does not mean, This is such a person's house, or This is a 

 house which contains booty. The object of making the mark is merely 

 distinction. I say to myself. All these houses are so nearly alike that if I 

 lose sight of them I shall not again be able to distinguish that which I am 

 now looking at, from any of the others ; I must therefore contrive to make 

 the appearance of this one house unlike that of the others, that I may here- 

 after know when I see the mark — not indeed any attribute of the house — 

 but simply that it is the same house which I am now looking at. Mor- 

 giana chalked all the other houses in a similar manner, and defeated the 

 scheme : how ? simply by obliterating the difference of appearance between 

 that house and the others. The chalk was still there, but it no longer 

 served the purpose of a distinctive mark. 



* A writer who entitles his book Philosophy ; or, the Science of Truth, charges me in his 

 very first page (referring at the foot of it to this passage) with asserting that general names 

 have properly no signification. And he repeats this statement many times in the course of 

 his volume, with comments, not at all flattering, thereon. It is well to be now and then re- 

 minded to how great a length per^'erse misquotation (for, strange as it appears, I do not be- 

 lieve that the writer is dishonest) can sometimes go. It is a warning to readers when they 

 see an author accused, with volume and page referred to, and the apparent guarantee of invert- 

 ed commas, of maintaining something more than commonly absurd, not to give implicit cre- 

 dence to the assertion without verifying the reference. 



