DEFINITION. Ill 



§ 5. Of the two incomplete and popular modes of definition, and in what 

 they differ from the complete or philosophical mode, enough has now been 

 said. We shall next examine an ancient doctrine, once generally prevalent 

 and still by no means exploded, which I regard as the source of a great part 

 of the obscurity hanging over some of the most important processes of the 

 understanding in the pursuit of truth. According to this, the definitions 

 of which we have now treated are only one of two sorts into which defini- 

 tions may be divided, viz., definitions of names, and definitions of things. 

 The former are intended to explain the meaning of a term ; the latter, the 

 nature of a thing ; the last being incomparably the most important. 



This opinion was held by the ancient philosophers, and by their follow- 

 ers, with the exception of the Nominalists ; but as the spirit of modern 

 metaphysics, until a recent period, has been on the whole a Nominalist 

 spirit, the notion of definitions of things has been to a certain extent in 

 abeyance, still continuing, however, to breed confusion in logic, by its con- 

 sequences indeed rather than by itself. Yet the doctrine in its own proper 

 form now and then breaks out, and has appeared (among other places) 

 where it was scarcely to be expected, in a justly admired word. Archbishop 

 Whately's Logic* In a review of that work published by me in the West- 



meaning of the term, and should be included in the definition. "When we are told that dia- 

 mond, which we know to be a transparent, glittering, hard, and high-priced substance, is com- 

 posed of carbon, and is combustible, we must put these additional properties on the same level 

 as the rest; to us they are henceforth connoted by the name"(i., 73). Consequently the 

 propositions that diamond is composed of carbon, and that it is combustible, are regarded by 

 Mr. Bain as merely verbal propositions. He carries this doctrine so far as to say that unless 

 mortality can be shown to be a consequence of the ultimate laws of animal organization, mor- 

 tality is connoted by man, and " Man is Mortal " is a merely verbal proposition. And one of 

 the peculiarities (I think a disadvantageous peculiarity) of his able and valuable treatise, is 

 the large number of propositions requiring proof, and learned by experience, which, in con- 

 formity with this doctrine, he considers as not real, but verbal, propositions. 



The objection I have to this language is that it confounds, or at least confuses, a much 

 more important distinction than that which it draws. The only reason for dividing Proposi- 

 tions into real and verbal, is in order to discriminate propositions which convey information 

 about fiicts, from those which do not. A proposition which affirms that an object has a given 

 attribute, while designating the object by a name which already signifies the attribute, adds 

 no information to that which was already possessed by all who understood the name. But 

 when this is said, it is implied that, by the signification of a name, is meant the signification 

 attached to it in the common usage of life. I can not think we ought to say that the meaning 

 of a word includes matters of fact which are unknown to every person who uses the word un- 

 less he has learned them by special study of a particular department of Nature ; or that because 

 a few persons are aware of these matters of fact, the affirmation of them is a proposition con- 

 veying no information. I hold that (special scientific connotation apart) a name means, or 

 connotes, only the properties which it is a mark of in the general mind ; and that in the case 

 of any additional properties, however uniformly found to accompany these, it remains possible 

 that a thing which did not possess the properties might still be thought entitled to the name. 

 Ruminant, according to Mr. Bain's use of language, connotes cloven-hoofed, since the two 

 properties are always found together, and no connection has ever been discovered between 

 them : but ruminant does not mean cloven-hoofed ; and were an animal to be discovered 

 which chews the cud, but has its feet undivided, I venture to say that it would still be called 

 ruminant. 



* In the fuller discussion which Archbishop Whately has given to this subject in his later 

 editions, he almost ceases to regard the definitions of names and those of things as, in any im- 

 portant sense, distinct. He seems (9th ed., p. 145) to limit the notion of a Real Definition to 

 one which " explains any thing more of the nature of the thing than is implied in the name ;" 

 (including under the word " implied," not only what the name connotes, but every thing which 

 can be deduced by reasoning from the attributes connoted). Even this, as he adds, is usually 

 called not a Definition, but a Description ; and (as it seems to me) rightly so called. A De- 

 scription, I conceive, can only be ranked among Definitions, when taken (as in the case of the 

 zoological definition of man) to fulfill the true office of a Definition, by declaring the connota- 

 tion given to a word in some special use, as a term of science or art : which special conno- 



