NAMES. 41 



definitions of almost all the leading expressions, is a proof how great an 

 extent the evil to which we have adverted has attained. 



Names with indeterminate connotation are not to be confounded with 

 names which have more than one connotation, that is to say, ambiguous 

 words, A Avord may have several meanings, but all of them fixed and rec- 

 ognized ones ; as the word post, for example, or the word box, the various 

 senses of which it would be endless to enumerate. And the paucity of ex- 

 isting names, in comparison with the demand for them, may often render 

 it advisable and even necessary to retain a name in this multiplicity of ac- 

 ceptations, distinguishing these so clearly as to prevent their being con- 

 founded with one another. Such a word may be considered as two or 

 more names, accidentally written and spoken alike.* 



§ 6. The fourth principal division of names, is into positive and nega- 

 tive. Positive, as man, tree, good; negative, as not-)nan, not-tree, not-good. 

 To every positive concrete name, a corresponding negative one might be 

 framed. After giving a name to any one thing, or to any plurality of 

 things, we might create a second name which should be a name of all things 

 whatever, except that particular thing or things. These negative names 

 are employed whenever we have occasion to speak collectively of all things 

 other than some thing or class of things. When the positive name is con- 

 notative, the corresponding negative name is connotative likewise ; but in a 



* Before quitting the subject of connotative names, it is proper to observe, that the first 

 writer who, in our times, has adopted from the schoolmen the word to connote, Mr. James 

 Mill, in his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, emploj's it in a signification dif- 

 ferent from that in which it is here used. He uses the word in a sense co-extensive with its 

 etymology, applying it to every case in which a name, while pointing directly to one thing 

 (which is consequently termed its signification), includes also a tacit reference to some other 

 thing. In the case considered in the text, that of concrete general names, his language and 

 mine are the converse of one another. Considering (very justly) the signification of the name 

 to lie in the attribute, he speaks of the word as noting the attribute, and connoting the things 

 possessing the attribute. And he describes abstract names as being properly concrete names 

 with their connotation dropped ; whereas, in my view, it is the c/enotation which would be 

 said to be dropped, what was previously connoted becoming the whole signification. 



In adopting a phraseology at variance with that which so high an authority, and one which 

 I am less likely than any other person to undervalue, has deliberately sanctioned, I have been 

 influenced by tiie urgent necessity for a term exclusively appropriated to express the manner 

 in which a concrete general name serves to mark the attributes which are involved in its signi- 

 fication. This necessity can scarcely be felt in its full force by any one who has not found by 

 experience how vain is the attempt to communicate clear ideas on the philosophy of language 

 without such a word. It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that some of the most prevalent of 

 the errors with which logic has been infected, and a large part of the cloudiness and confusion 

 of ideas which have enveloped it, would, in all probability, have been avoided, if a term had 

 been in common use to express exactly what I have signified by the term to connote. And 

 the schoolmen, to whom we are indebted for the greater part of our logical language, gave us 

 this also, and in this very sense. For though some of their general expressions countenance 

 the use of the word in the more extensive and vague acceptation in which it is taken by Mr. 

 Mill, yet when they had to define it specifically as a technical terai, and to fix its meaning as 

 such, with that admirable precision which always characterizes their definitions, they clearly 

 explained that nothing was said to be connoted except forms, which word may generally, in 

 their writings, be understood as synonymous with attributes. 



Now, if the word to connote, so well suited to the purpose to which they applied it, be di- 

 verted from that purpose by being taken to fulfill another, for which it does not seem to me to 

 be at all required ; I am unable to find any expression to replace it, but such as are commonly 

 employed in a sense so much more general, that it would be useless attempting to associate 

 them peculiarly with this precise idea. Such are the words, to involve, to imply, etc. By 

 employing these, I should fail of attaining the object for which alone the name is needed, 

 namely, to distinguish this particular kind of involving and implying from all other kinds, and 

 to assure to it the degi-ee of habitual attention which its importance demands. 



