NAMES. 43 



suppose other persons who must be called parents. When we call any event 

 a cause, we suppose another event which is an effect. When we say of 

 any distance that it is longer, we suppose another distance which is shorter. 

 When we say of any object that it is like, we mean that it is like some 

 other object, which is also said to be like the first. In this last case both 

 objects receive the same name ; the relative term is its own correlative. 



It is evident that these words, when concrete, are, like other concrete 

 general names, connotative; they denote a subject, and connote an attri- 

 bute ; and each of them has, or might have, a corresponding abstract name, 

 to denote the attribute connoted by the concrete. Thus the concrete like 

 has its abstract //A;ewess/ the concretes, father and son, have, or might have, 

 the abstracts, paternity, and filiety, or sonship. The concrete name con- 

 notes an attribute, and the abstract name which answers to it denotes that 

 attribute. But oiE what nature is the attribute? Wherein consists the 

 peculiarity in the connotation of a relative name ? 



The attribute signified by a relative name, say some, is a relation ; and 

 this they give, if not as a sufficient explanation, at least as the only one at- 

 tainable. If they are asked, What then is a relation? they do not profess 

 to be able to tell. It is generally regarded as something peculiarly recondite 

 and mysterious. I can not, however, perceive in what respect it is more 

 so than any other attribute ; indeed, it af*pears to me to be so in a some- 

 what less degree. I conceive rather, that it is by examining into tlie sig- 

 nification of relative names, or, in other words, into the nature of the at- 

 tribute which tl'.Ly connote, that a clear insight may best be obtained into 

 the nature of all attributes : of all that is meant by an attribute. 



It is obvious, in fact, that if we take any two correlative names, /a^Aer 

 and son for instance, though the objects fZenoted by the names are differ- 

 ent, they both, in a certain sense, connote the same thing. They can not, 

 indeed, be said to connote the same attribute: to be a father, is not the 

 same thing as to be a son. But when we call one man a father, another a 

 son, what we mean to affirm is a set of facts, which are exactly the same in 

 both cases. To predicate of A that he is the father of B, and of B that he 

 is the son of A, is to assert one and the same fact in different words. The 

 two propositions are exactly equivalent : neither of them asserts more or 

 asserts less than the other. The paternity of A and the filiety of B are 

 not two facts, but two modes of expressing the same fact. That fact, when 

 analysed, consists of a series of physical events or phenomena, in which 

 both A and B are parties concerned, and from which they both derive 

 names. What those names really connote, is this series of events : that is 

 the meaning, and the whole meaning, which either of them is intended to 

 convey. The series of events may be said to constitute the relation ; the 

 schoolmen called it the foundation of the relditAon, fundamentuni relationis. 



In this manner any fact, or series of facts, in which two different objects 

 are implicated, and which is therefore predicable of both of them, may be 

 either considered as constituting an attribute of the one, or an attribute of 

 the other. According as we consider it in the former, or in the latter as- 

 pect, it is connoted by the one or the other of the two correlative names. 

 Father connotes the fact, regarded as constituting an attribute of A ; son 

 connotes the same fact, as constituting an attribute of B. It may evident- 

 ly be regarded with equal propriety in either light. And all that appears 

 necessary to account for the existence of relative names, is, that whenever 

 there is a fact in which two individuals are concerned, an attribute ground- 

 ed on that fact may be ascribed to either of these individuals. 



