NAMES. 55 



able. If they are asked, What then is a relation? 

 they do not profess to be able to tell. It is generally 

 regarded as something peculiarly recondite and mys- 

 terious. I cannot, however, perceive in what respect 

 it is more so than any other attribute ; indeed, it 

 appears to me to be so in a somewhat less degree. I 

 conceive, rather, that it is by examining into the 

 signification of relative names, or in other words, 

 into the nature of the attribute which they connote, 

 that a clear insight may best be obtained into the 

 nature of all attributes ; of all that is meant by an 

 attribute. 



It is obvious, in fact, that if we take any two 

 correlative names, father and son, for instance, 

 although the objects denoted by the names are dif- 

 ferent, they both, in a certain sense, connote the same 

 thing. They cannot, indeed, be said to connote the 

 same attribute ; to be a father, is not the same thing 

 as to be a son. But when we call one man a father, 

 another his son, what we mean to affirm is a set of 

 facts, which are exactly the same in both cases. To 

 predicate of A that he is the father of B, and of B 

 that he is the son of A, is to assert one and the same 

 fact in different words. The two propositions are 

 exactly equivalent : neither of them asserts more or 

 asserts less than the other. The paternity of A and 

 the filiation of B are not two facts, but two modes 

 of expressing the same fact. That fact, when ana- 

 lyzed, consists of a series of physical events or phe- 

 nomena, in which both A and B are parties concerned, 

 and from which they both derive names. What those 

 names really connote, is this series of events : that is 

 the meaning, and the whole meaning, which either of 

 them is intended to convey. The series of events 

 may be said to constitute the relation ; the schoolmen 



