62 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



tends for, that same collocation combined with other circumstances, 

 that form combined with other matter, does convey more, and much 

 more. 



The only propositions of which Hobbes' principle is a sufficient ac- 

 count, are that limited and vmimportant class in which both the predi- 

 cate and the subject are proper names. For, as has akeady been 

 remarked, proper names have strictly no meaning; they are mere 

 marks for indi\ddual objects : and when a proper name is predi- 

 cated of another proper name, all the signification conveyed is, that 

 both the names are marks for the same object. But this is precisely 

 what Hobbes produces as a theory of predication in general. His 

 doctrine is a full explanation of such predications as these : Hyde was 

 Clarendon, or, Tully is Cicero. It exhausts the meaning of those 

 propositions. But it is a sadly inadequate theory of any others. That 

 it should ever have been thought of as such, can be accounted for only 

 by the fact, that Hobbes, in common with the other Nominalists, be- 

 stowed little or no attention upon the connotation of words ; and sought 

 for their meaning exclusively in what they denote : as if all names had 

 been (what none but proper names really are) marks put upon indi- 

 viduals ; and as if there were no difference between a proper and a 

 general name, except that the first denotes only one individual, and the 

 last a greater number. 



It has been seen, however, that the meaning of all names, except 

 proper names and that portion of the class of abstract names which are 

 not connotative, resides in the connotation. When, therefore, we are 

 analyzing the meaning of any proposition in which the predicate and 

 the subject, or either of them, are connotative names, it is to the con- 

 notation of those teiTns that we mus' exclusively look, and not to what 

 they denote, or in the language of Hobbes (language so far coiTect) are 

 names of. 



In asserting that the truth of a proposition depends upon the con- 

 formity of import between its temis, as, for instance, that the proposi- 

 tion, Socrates is wise, is a true px'oposition, because Socrates and wase 

 are names applicable to, or, as he expresses it, names of the same per- 

 son ; it is very remarkable that so powerful a thinker should not have 

 asked himself the question, But how came they to be names of the same 

 person"? Surely not because such was the intention of those who in- 

 vented the words. Wlien mankind fixed the meaning of the word 

 wise, they were not thinking of Socrates, nor when his parents gave 

 him the name Socrates, were they thinking of wisdom. The names 

 happen to fit the same person because of a certainyhc;;, which fact was 

 not known, nor in being, when the names were invented. If we want 

 to know what the fact is, we shall "find the clue to it in the connotation 

 of the names. 



A bird, or a stone, a man, or a wise man, means simply, an object 

 having such and such attiibutes. The real meaning of the word man, 

 is those attributes, and not John, Peter, Thomas, &c. The word 

 mortal, in like manner connotes a certain attribute or attributes ; and 

 when we say, All men are mortal, the meaning of the proposition is, 

 that all beings which possess the one set of attributes, possess also the 

 other. If, in our experience, the attributes connoted by 7nan are 

 always accompanied by the attribute connoted by 7n ortaJ, it will follow 

 as a consequence, that the class fiian will be v/holly included in the 



