44 NAMES AND PKOPOSITIONS. 



A name, therefore, is said to be relative, when, over and above the object 

 which it denotes, it implies in its signification the existence of another ob- 

 ject, also deriving a denomination from the same fact which is the ground 

 of the first name. Or (to express the same meaning in other words) a 

 name is relative, when, being the name of one thing, its signification can 

 not be explained but by mentioning another. Or we may state it thus — 

 when the name can not be employed in discourse so as to have a meaning, 

 unless the name of some other thing than what it is itself the name of, be 

 either expressed or understood. These definitions are all, at bottom, equiva- 

 lent, being modes of variously expressing this one distinctive circumstance 

 — that every other attribute of an object might, without any contradiction, 

 be conceived still to exist if no object besides that one had ever existed ;* 

 but those of its attributes which are expressed by relative names, would on 

 that supposition be swept away. 



§ 8. Names have been further distinguished into univocal and mqxLwocal: 

 these, however, are not two kinds of names, but two different modes of 

 employing names. A name is univocal, or applied univocally, with respect 

 to all things of which it can be predicated in the same sense; it is ajquiv- 

 ocal, or applied equivocally, as respects those things of which it is predi- 

 cated in different senses. It is scarcely necessary to give instances of a 

 fact so familiar as the double meaning of a word. In reality, as has been 

 already observed, an aequivocal or ambiguous word is not one name, but 

 two names, accidentally coinciding in sound. File meaning a steel instru- 

 ment, and j^/e meaning a line of soldiers, have no more title to be consid- 

 ed one word, because written alike, than grease and Greece have, because 

 they are pronounced alike. They are one sound, appropriated to form two 

 different words. 



An intermediate case is that of a name used analogically or metaphor- 

 ically ; that is, a name which is predicated of two things, not univocally, 

 or exactly in the same signification, but in significations somewhat similar, 

 and which being derived one from the other, one of them may be consid- 

 ered the primary, and the other a secondaiy signification. As when we 

 speak of a brilliant light and a brilliant achievement. The word is not 

 applied in the same sense to the light and to the achievement ; but having 

 been applied to the light in its original sense, that of brightness to the eye, 

 it is transferred to the achievement in a derivative signification, supposed 

 to be somewhat like the primitive one. The word, however, is just as 

 properly two names instead of one, in this case, as in that of the most per- 

 fect ambiguity. And one of the commonest forms of fallacious reasoning 

 arising from ambiguity, is that of arguing from a metaphorical expression 

 as if it were literal; that is, as if a word, when applied metaphorically, 

 were the same name as when taken in its original sense: which will be 

 seen more particularly in its place. 



* Or rather, all objects except itself and the percipient mind ; for, as we shall see hereafter, 

 to ascribe any attribute to an object, necessarily implies a mind to perceive it. 



The simple and clear explanation given in the text, of relation and relative names, a subject 

 so long the opprobrium of metaphysics, was given (as far as I know) for the first time, by Mr. 

 James Mill, in his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind. 



