DEFINITIONS. 103 



in question it gives me great pleasure to observe, that there is a com- 

 plete agieement between us. And here, as in many other instances, 

 I gladly acknowledge that his writings are eminently serviceable in 

 clearing from confusion the initial stej)s in the analysis of the mental 

 processes, even where his views respecting the ultimate analysis (a 

 matter generally of far less importance) are such as (though with un- 

 feigned respect) I cannot but regard as fundamentally eiToneous. 



§ 8. Although, according to the views here presented, Definitions 

 are properly of names only, and not of things, it does not follow that 

 definition is an easy matter. How to define a name, may not only be 

 an inquiry of considerable difficulty and intricacy, but may turn upon 

 considerations going deep into the nature of the things which are 

 denoted by the name. Such, for instance, are the incjuiries which 

 form the subjects of the most important of Plato's Dialogues; as, 

 *' What is ihetoric ]" the topic of the Gorgias, or " What is justice ]" 

 that of the Republic. Such, also, is the question scornfully asked by 

 Pilate, " AVliat is truth 1" and the fundamental question with specula- 

 tive moralists in all ages, " What is virtue V 



It would be a mistake to represent these difficult and noble in- 

 quiries as having nothing in view beyond ascertaining the conven- 

 tional meaning of a name. They are inquiries not so much to 

 determine what is, as what should be, the meaning of a name ; which, 

 like other practical questions of terminology, requires for its solution 

 that we should enter, and sometimes enter very deejily, into the prop- 

 erties not merely of names but of the things named. 



Although the meaning of every concrete general name resides in 

 the attributes which it connotes, the objects were named before the 

 attributes ; as appears from the fact that in all languages, abstract 

 names are mostly compounds or derivatives of the concrete names 

 which coiTespond to them. Connotative names, therefore, were, after 

 proper names, the first which were used : and in the sim])ler cases, 

 no doubt, a distinct connotation was present to the minds of those who 

 first used the name, and was distinctly intended by them to be conveyed 

 by it. The first person who used the word wkife, as applied to snow 

 or to any other object, knew, no doubt, very well what quality he in- 

 tended to predicate, and had a perfectly distinct conception in his mind 

 of the attribute signified by the name. 



But where the resemblances and diffijrences on which our classifi- 

 cations are founded are not of this palpable and easily determinable 

 kind ; especially where they consist not in any one quality but in a 

 number of qualities, the effects of which being blended together are not 

 very easily discriminated and referred 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 resemblance between the new object and 

 all or some of the old familiar objects which they have been accustom- 

 ed 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, whei-e the things to be named 

 are complex wholes, a philosopher is not content with noticing a gen- 

 eral resemblance ; he examines what the resemblance consists in ; and 

 he only gives the same name to things which resemble one another in 



