206 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



each to its true source ; it often happens that names 

 are applied to nameable objects, with no distinct 

 connotation present to the minds of those who apply 

 them. They are only influenced by a general resem- 

 blance between the new object and all or some of the 

 old familiar objects which they have been accustomed 

 to call by that name. This, as we have seen, is the 

 law which even the mind of the philosopher must 

 follow, in giving names to the simple elementary 

 feelings of our nature : but, where the things to be 

 named are complex wholes, a philosopher is not con- 

 tent with noticing a general resemblance; he examines 

 what the resemblance consists in ; and he only gives 

 the same name to things which resemble one another 

 in the same definite particulars. The philosopher, 

 therefore, habitually employs his general names with 

 a definite connotation. But language was not made, 

 and can only in some small degree be mended, by 

 philosophers. In the minds of the real arbiters of 

 language, general names, especially where the classes 

 they denote cannot be brought before the tribunal of 

 the outward senses to be identified and discriminated, 

 connote little more than a vague gross resemblance to 

 the things which they were earliest, or have been 

 most, accustomed to call by those names. When, for 

 instance, ordinary persons predicate the words just or 

 unjust of any action, noble or mean of any senti- 

 ment, expression, or demeanour, statesman or charlatan 

 of any personage figuring in politics, do they mean to 

 affirm of those various subjects, any determinate 

 attributes, of whatever kind ? No : they merely 

 recognise, as they think, some likeness, more or less 

 vague and loose, between them and some other things 

 which they have been accustomed to denominate or to 

 hear denominated by those appellations. 



