NAMES. 51 



6. The fourth principal division of names, is 

 into positive and negative. Positive, as man, tree, 



and mine are the converse of one another. Considering (very 

 justly) the signification of the name to lie in the attribute, he 

 speaks of the word as noting the attribute, and connoting the things 

 possessing the attribute. And he describes abstract names as 

 being properly concrete names with their connotation dropped : 

 whereas, in my view, it is the ^notation which would be said 

 to be dropped, what was previously connoted becoming the whole 

 signification. 



In adopting a phraseology at variance with that which so high 

 an authority, and one which I am less likely than any other 

 person to undervalue, has deliberately sanctioned, I have been influ- 

 enced by the urgent necessity for a term exclusively appropriated 

 to express the manner in which a concrete general name serves 

 to mark the attributes which are involved in its signification. This 

 necessity can scarcely be felt in its full force by any one who 

 has not found by experience, how vain is the attempt to commu- 

 nicate clear ideas on the philosophy of language without such a 

 word. It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that some of the most 

 prevalent of the errors with which logic has been infected, and a 

 large part of the cloudiness and confusion of ideas which have enve- 

 loped it, would, in all probability, have been avoided, if a term had 

 been in common use to express exactly what I have signified by 

 the term to connote. And the schoolmen, to whom we are indebted 

 for the greater part of our logical language, gave us this also, and 

 in this very sense. For, although some of their general expressions 

 countenance the use of the word in the more extensive and vague 

 acceptation in which it is taken by Mr. Mill, yet when they had to 

 define it specifically as a technical term, and to fix its meaning as 

 such, with that admirable precision which always characterized 

 their definitions, they clearly explained that nothing was said to be 

 connoted except forms, which word may generally, in their writings, 

 be understood as synonymous with attributes. 



Now, if the word to connote, so well suited to the purpose to 

 which they applied it, be diverted from that purpose by being 

 taken to fulfil another, for which it docs not seem to me to be at 

 all required ; I am unable to find any expression to replace it, but 

 such as are commonly employed in a sense so much more general, 

 that it would be useless attempting to associate them peculiarly 

 with this precise idea. Such are the words, to involve, to imply, 



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