38 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



of the other words above cited. Virtuous, for example, 

 is the name of a class, which includes Socrates, 

 Howard, the man of Ross, and an undefined number 

 of other individuals, past, present, and to come. 

 These individuals, collectively and severally, can alone 

 be said with propriety to be denoted by the word : of 

 them alone can it properly be said to be a name. But 

 it is a name applied to all of them in consequence of 

 an attribute which they possess in common, the attri- 

 bute which men have agreed to call virtue. It is 

 applied to all beings that are considered to possess this 

 attribute ; and to none which are not so considered. 



All concrete general names are connotative. The 

 word man, for example, denotes Peter, Paul, John, 

 and an indefinite number of other individuals, of 

 whom, taken as a class, it is the name. But it is 

 applied to them, because they possess, and to signify 

 that they possess, certain attributes. These seem to 

 be, corporeity, animal life, rationality, and a certain 

 external form, which for distinction we call the 

 human. Every existing thing, which possessed all 

 these attributes, would be called a man ; and any- 

 thing which possessed none of them, or only one, or 

 two, or even three of them without the fourth, would 

 not be so called. For example, if in the interior of 

 Africa there were to be discovered a race of animals 

 possessing reason equal to that of human beings, but 

 with the form of an elephant, they would not be called 

 men. Swift's Houyhnhms were not so called. Or 

 if such newly-discovered beings possessed the form of 

 man without any vestige of reason, it is probable that 

 some other name than that of man would be found 

 for them. How it happens that there can be any 

 doubt about the matter, will appear hereafter. The 

 word man, therefore, signifies all these attributes, and 



