244 METAPHYSICS 



would prevail in an ideal language purged of all elements of irre- 

 levancy. In such an ideal scientific language, it might be said, the 

 proper name would be reduced to the level of a mere mark serviceable 

 for identification, but conveying no implication whatever as to the 

 special nature of the thing identified. Thus it would be indifferent 

 what mark we attach to any particular individual, just as in mathe- 

 matics it is indifferent what alphabetical symbol we appropriate to 

 stand for a given class or number. I think, however, that even in such 

 an ideal scientific language the proper name would have a certain 

 intension. In the first place, the use of proper name seems to inform 

 us that the thing named is not unique, is not the only member of 

 a class. To a monotheist, for instance, the name " God " is no true 

 proper name, nor can he consistently give a proper name to his 

 Deity. It is only where one member of a class has to be distinguished 

 from others that the bestowal of a proper name has a meaning. 

 And, further, to give a thing a proper name seems to imply that the 

 thing is itself not a class. In logic we have, of course, occasion to form 

 the concept of classes which have other classes for their individual 

 members. But the classes which compose such classes of classes could 

 not themselves be identified by means of proper names. Thus the 

 employment of a proper name seems to indicate that the thing 

 named is not the only member of its class, and further that it is not 

 itself a class of individuals. Beyond this it seems to be a mere question 

 of linguistic convention what information the use of a proper name 

 shall convey. Hence it ought to be said, not that the proper name has 

 no intension, but that it represents a limiting case in which intension 

 is at a minimum. 



(2) As to abstract terms. Ought we to say, with so many English 

 formal logicians, that an abstract term is always singular and non- 

 intensional? The case for asserting that such terms are all singular, 

 I own, seems unanswerable. For it is clear that if the name of an 

 attribute or relation is equally the name of another attribute or rela- 

 tion, it is ambiguous and thus not properly one term at all. To say, for 

 example, that whiteness means two or more distinct qualities seems 

 to amount to saying that it has no one definite meaning. Of course, it 

 is true that milk is white, paper is white, and snow is white, and yet 

 the color-tones of the three are distinct. But what we assert here is, 

 not that there are different whitenesses, but only that there are differ- 

 ent degrees of approximation to a single ideal standard or type of 

 whiteness. It is just because the whiteness we have in view is one and 

 not many that we can intelligibly assert, for example, that newly 

 fallen snow is whiter than any paper. All the instances produced by 

 Mill to show that abstract terms may be general seem to me either to 

 involve confusion between difference of kind and difference in degree 

 of approximation to type, or else to depend upon treating as abstract 



