VERBAL AND REAL PROPOSITIONS. 153 



defined; that is, (when it is a connotalive word,) the 

 whole of what it connotes. In defining a name, how- 

 ever, it is not usual to specify its entire connotation, 

 but so much only as is sufficient to mark out the 

 objects usually denoted by it from all other known 

 objects. And sometimes a merely accidental property, 

 not involved in the meaning of the name, answers 

 this purpose equally well. The various kinds of defi- 

 nition which these distinctions give rise to, and the 

 purposes to which they are respectively subservient, 

 will be minutely considered in the proper place. 



3. According to the above view of essential pro- 

 positions, no proposition can be reckoned such which 

 relates to an individual by name, that is, in which the 

 subject is a proper name. Individuals have no es- 

 sences. When the schoolmen talked of the essence 

 of an individual, they did not mean the properties im- 

 plied in its name, for the names of individuals imply 

 no properties. They regarded as of the essence of an 

 individual whatever was of the essence of the species 

 in which they were accustomed to place that indivi- 

 dual; i. e. 9 of the class to which it was most familiarly 

 referred, and to which, therefore, they conceived that 

 it by nature belonged. Thus, because the propo- 

 sition, Man is a rational being, was an essential pro- 

 position, they affirmed the same thing of the propo- 

 sition, Julius Caesar is a rational being. This fol- 

 lowed very naturally if genera and species were to be 

 considered as entities, distinct from, but inhering in, 

 the individuals composing them. If man was a sub- 

 stance inhering in each individual man, the essence of 

 man (whatever that might mean,) was naturally sup- 

 posed to accompany it; to inhere in John Thompson, 

 and form the common essence of Thompson and Julius 



