44 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



we may think of that individual object. Not being 

 attached to the thing itself, it does not enable us, as 

 the chalk did, to distinguish the object when we see 

 it; but it enables us to distinguish it when it is 

 spoken of, either in the records of our own experience, 

 or in the discourse of others ; to know that what we 

 find asserted in any proposition of which it is the 

 subject, is asserted of the individual thing with which 

 we were previously acquainted. 



When we predicate of anything its proper name ; 

 when we say, pointing to a man, this is Brown or 

 Smith, or pointing to a city, that it is York, we do 

 not, merely by so doing, convey to the hearer any 

 information about them, except that those are their 

 names. By enabling him to identify the individuals, 

 we may connect them with information previously 

 possessed by him ; by saying, This is York, we may 

 tell him that it contains the Minster. But this is in 

 virtue of what he has previously heard concerning 

 York ; not by anything implied in the name. It is 

 otherwise when objects are spoken of by connotative 

 names. When we say, The town is built of marble, 

 we give the hearer what may be entirely new informa- 

 tion, and this merely by the signification of the many- 

 worded connotative name, " built of marble.'' Such 

 names are not signs of the mere objects, invented 

 because we have occasion to think and speak of those 

 objects individually ; but signs which accompany an 

 attribute : a kind of livery in which the attribute 

 clothes all objects which are recognised as possessing 

 it. They are not mere marks, but more, that is to 

 say, significant marks ; and the connotation is what 

 constitutes their significance. 



As a proper name is said to be the name of the 

 one individual which it is predicated of, so (as well 



