122 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



portant class in which both the predicate and the 

 subject are proper names. For, as has already been 

 remarked, proper names have strictly no meaning ; 

 they are mere marks for individual objects : and 

 when a proper name is predicated of another proper 

 name, all the signification conveyed is, that both the 

 names are marks for the same object. But this is 

 precisely what Hobbes produces as a theory of predi- 

 cation in general. His doctrine is a fall explanation 

 of such predications as these : Hyde was Clarendon, 

 or, Tully is Cicero. It exhausts the meaning of those 

 propositions. But it is a sadly inadequate theory of 

 any others. That it should ever have been thought 

 of as such, can be accounted for only by the fact, that 

 Hobbes, in common with the other Nominalists, 

 bestowed little or no attention upon the connotation of 

 words ; and sought for their meaning exclusively in 

 what they denote: as if all names had been (what none 

 but proper names really are) marks put upon indivi- 

 duals; and as if there were no difference between a 

 proper and a general name, except that the first denotes 

 only one individual, and the last a greater number. 



It has been seen, however, that the meaning of all 

 names, except proper names and that portion of the 

 class of abstract names which are not connotative, 

 resides in the connotation. When, therefore, we are 

 analysing the meaning of any proposition in which 

 the predicate and the subject, or either of them, are 

 connotative names, it is to the connotation of those 

 terms that we must exclusively look, and not to what 

 they denote, or in the language of Hobbes, (language 

 so far correct) are names of. 



In asserting that the truth of a proposition depends 

 upon the conformity of import between its terms, as, 

 for instance, that the proposition, Socrates is wise, 



