32 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



$ 3. All names are names of something, real or ima- 

 ginary ; but all things have not names appropriated to 

 them individually. For some individual objects we 

 require, and consequently have, separate distinguish- 

 ing names; there is a name for every person, and for 

 every remarkable place. Other objects, of which we 

 have not occasion to speak so frequently, we do not 

 designate by a name of their own ; but when the neces- 

 sity arises for naming them, we do so by putting 

 together several words, each of which, by itself, might 

 be and is used for an indefinite number of other ob- 

 jects ; as when I say, this stone : " this" and " stone" 

 being, each of them, names that may be used of many 

 other objects besides the particular one meant, 

 although the only object of which they can both be 

 used at the given moment, consistently with their sig- 

 nification, may be the one of which I wish to speak. 



Were this the sole purpose for which names, that 

 are common to more things than one, could be em- 

 ployed ; if they only served, by mutually limiting each 

 other, to afford a designation for such individual ob- 

 jects as have no names of their own ; they could only 

 be ranked among contrivances for economizing the 

 use of language. But it is evident that this is not 

 their sole function. It is by their means that we are 

 enabled to assert general propositions ; to affirm or 

 deny any predicate of an indefinite number of things 

 at once. The distinction, therefore, between general 

 names, and individual or singular names, is funda- 

 mental ; and may be considered as the first grand 

 division of names. 



A general name is familiarly defined, a name 

 which is capable of being truly affirmed, in the same 

 sense, of each of an indefinite number of things. An 

 individual or singular name is a name which is only 



