50 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



This desirable purpose, of giving a fixed connota- 

 tion where it is wanting, is the end aimed at whenever 

 any one attempts to give a definition of a general 

 name already in use ; every definition of a connotative 

 name being an attempt either merely to declare, or to 

 declare and analyze, the connotation of the name. 

 And the fact, that no questions which have arisen in 

 the moral sciences have been subjects of keener 

 controversy than the definitions of almost all the 

 leading expressions, is a proof how great an extent 

 the evil, to which we have adverted, has attained. 



Names with indeterminate connotation are not 

 to be confounded with names which have more than 

 one connotation, that is to say, with ambiguous words. 

 A word may have several meanings, but all of them 

 fixed and recognised ones ; as the word post, for 

 example, or the word box, the various senses of 

 which it would be endless to enumerate. And the 

 paucity of existing names, in comparison with the 

 demand for them, may often render it advisable and 

 even necessary to retain a name in this multiplicity 

 of acceptations, distinguishing these so clearly as to 

 prevent their being confounded with one another. 

 Such a word may be considered as two or more 

 names, accidentally written and spoken alike*. 



* Before quitting the subject of connotative names, it is proper 

 to observe, that the only recent writer who, to my knowledge, has 

 adopted from the schoolmen the word to connote, Mr. Mill, in 

 his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, employs it 

 in a signification different from that in which it is here used. 

 He uses the word in a sense coextensive with its etymology, 

 applying it to every case in which a name, while pointing directly 

 to one thing, (which is, consequently, termed its signification,) 

 includes also a tacit reference to some other thing. In the case 

 considered in the text, that of concrete general names, his language 



