42 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



authorship of the Iliad, or in the murder of Henri 

 Quatre, the employment of the article the implies 

 that, in fact, this was not the case. What is here 

 done by the word the, is done in other cases by the 

 context: thus, " Caesar's army "is an individual name, 

 if it appears from the context, that the army meant is 

 that which Caesar commanded in a particular battle. 

 The still more general expressions, "the Roman 

 army," or "the Christian army," may be indivi- 

 dualized in a similar manner. Another case of 

 frequent occurrence has already been noticed ; it is 

 the following. The name, being a many-worded one, 

 may consist, in the first place, of a general name, 

 capable therefore in itself of being affirmed of more 

 things than one, but which is, in the second place, so 

 limited by other words joined with it, that the entire 

 expression can only be predicated of one object, con- 

 sistently with the meaning of the general term. This 

 is exemplified in such an instance as the following : 

 " the present prime minister of England." Prime 

 Minister of England is a general name ; the attributes 

 which it connotes may be possessed by an indefinite 

 number of persons : in succession however, not 

 simultaneously ; since the meaning of the word itself 

 imports (among other things) that there can be only 

 one such person at a time. This being the case, and 

 the application of the name being afterwards limited 

 by the word present, to such individuals as possess 

 the attributes at one indivisible point of time, it 

 becomes applicable only to one individual. And 

 as this appears from the meaning of the name, 

 without any extrinsic proof, it is strictly an individual 

 name. 



From the preceding observations it will easily be 

 collected, that whenever the names given to objects 



