CHAPTER 11. 



OF NAMES. 



§ 1. "A NAME, says Hobbes,* " is a word taken at pleasure to serve 

 for a mark, wliicli may raise in our mind a thought Uke to some thought 

 we had before, and which being pronounced to others, may be to them 

 a sign of what thought the speaker hadf before iji his mind." This 

 simple definition of a name, as a word (or set of words) serving the 

 double pui-pose, of a mark to recall to ourselves the likeness of a 

 foiTQer thought, and a sign to make it known to others, appears unex- 

 ceptionable. Names, indeed, do much more than this ; but whatever 

 else they do, grows out of, and is the result of this : as will appear in 

 its proper place. 



Are names more properly said to be the names of things, or of our 

 ideas of things ? The first is the expression in common use ; the last is 

 that of some philosophers, who conceived that in adopting it they were 

 introducing a highly important distinction. The eminent thinker just 

 quoted seems to countenance the latter opinion. " But seeing," he 

 continues, " names ordered in speech (as is defined) are signs of our 

 conceptions, it is manifest they are not signs of the things them- 

 selves ; for that the sound of this word stone should be the sign of a 

 stone, cannot be understood in any sense but this, that he that hears it 

 collects that he that pronounces it thinks of a stone." 



If it be merely meant that the conception alone, and not the thing 

 itself, is recalled by the name, or imparted to the hearer, this of course 

 cannot be denied. Nevertheless, there seems good reason for adher- 

 ing to the common usage, and calling the word sun the name of the 

 sun, and not the name of our idea of the sun. For names are not 

 intended only to make the hearer conceive what we conceive, but also 

 to inform him what we believe. Now, when I use a name for the 

 purpose of expressing a belief, it is a belief concerning the thing itself, 

 not concerning my idea of it. When I say, " the sun is the cause of 

 day," I do not mean that my idea of the sun causes or excites in me 

 the idea of day ; but that the physical object, the sun itself, is the 

 cause fi'om which the outward phenomenon, day, follows as an effect. 

 It seems proper to consider a word as the name of that which we 

 intend to be understood by it when we use it ; of that which any fact 

 that we assert of it is to be understood of; that, in short, concerning 

 which, when we employ the word, we intend to give infonnation. 

 Names, therefore, shall always be spoken of in this work as the names 

 of things themselves, and not merely of our ideas of things. 



But the question now arises, of what things ] and to answer this it 

 is necessary to take into consideration the different kinds of names. 



§ 2. It is usual, before examining the various classes into which 

 names are commonly divided, to begin by distinguishing from names 

 of every description, those words which are not names, but only parts 



* Compulation or Losic, chap. ii. 



+ In the original, " had, or had not." These last words, as involving a subtlety foreign to 

 our present purpose, I have forborne to quote. 



