28 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



equivalent in its signification to a positive and a negative name taken 

 togjether ; being the name of something which has once had a partic- 

 ular attribute, or for some other reason might have been expected to 

 have it, but which has it not. Such is the word blind, which is not 

 equivalent to not seeing, or to not Capable of seeing, for it would not, 

 except by a poetical ox rhetorical figure, be applied to stocks and 

 stones. A thing is not usually said to be blind, unless the class to 

 which it is most famiharly referred, or to which it is refen-ed on the 

 particular occasion, be chiefly composed of things which can see, as 

 in the case of a blind man, or a bhnd horse ; or unless it is supposed 

 for any reason that it ought to see; as in saying of a man, that he 

 rushed blindly ir^ an abyss, or of philosophers or the clergy that the 

 greater part of tnem are blind guides. 'The names called privative, 

 therefore, connote two things : the absence of certain atti'ibutes, and 

 the presence of others, from which the presence also of the former 

 might naturally have been expected. 



§ 7. The fifth leading division of names, is into relative and absolute, 

 or let us rather say, relative and non-relative ; for the word absolute 

 is put upon much too hard duty in metaphysics, not to be willingly 

 spared when its services^ can be dispensed \\'ith. It resembles the 

 word civil in the language of jurisprudence, which stands for the 

 opposite of criminal, the opposite of ecclesiastical, the opposite of mil- 

 itary, the opposite of political, in short, the opposite of any positive 

 word which wants a negative. 



Relative names are such as father, ^on ; ruler, subject ; like ; equal ; 

 unlike ; unequal ; longer, shorter ; cause, effect. Theii' characteristic 

 property is, that they are always given in pairs. Every relative name 

 which is predicated of an object, supposes another object (or objects), 

 of which we may predicate either that same name or another relative 

 name which is said to be the correlative of the fonner. Thus, when 

 we call any person a son, we suppose other persons who must be called 

 'parents. AVhen we call any event a cause, we suppose another event 

 which is an effect. A^Hien we say of any distance that it is longer, we 

 suppose another distance which is shorter. Wlien.we say of any object 

 that it is like, we mean that it is like some other object, which is also 

 said to be like the first. In this case, both objects receive the same 

 name ; the relative term is its own con-elative. 



It is evident that these words, when concrete, are, like other con- 

 crete general names, connotative : they denote a subject, and connote 

 an atti-ibute : and each of them has or might have a coiTesponding 

 abstr-act name to denote the attribute connoted by the concrete. Thus 

 the concrete like has its abstract likeness ; the concretes, father and 

 son, have the abstracts, paternity and filiation. The concrete name 

 connotes an atti'ibute, and the absti-act name which answers to it 

 denotes that attribute. But of what nature is the attribute f Wherein 

 consists the peculiarity in the connotation of a relative name ? 



The attribute signified by a relative name, say some, is a relation ; 

 and this they give, if not as asufficient explanation, at least as the only 

 one attainable. If they are asked, What then is a relation 1 they do 

 not profess to be able to tell. It is generally regarded as something 

 peculiarly recondite and mysterious. I cannot, however, perceive in 

 what i-espect it is more so than any other attribute ; indeed, it appeara 



