402 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



to those names, that is,, general assertions are made concerning the 

 whole of the things which are denoted by the name. And since by each 

 of these propositions some attribute, .more or less precisely conceived, 

 is of com-se predicated, the idea of these varittus attributes thus be- 

 comes associated with the name, and in a. scrrt of uncertain way it 

 comes to connote them; there is a hesitation to apply the name in any 

 new case in which any of the attributes familiarly predicated of the 

 class does not exist. And thus to common minds, the propositions 

 which they are in the habit of hearing or uttering concerning a class, 

 make up in a loose way a sort of connotation for the class-name. Let 

 us take, for instance, the word Civilized. How few could be found, 

 even among the most educated persons, who would undertake to say 

 exactly what the term Civilized connotes. Yet there is a feeling in 

 the minds of all who use it, that they are using it with a meaning; 

 and this meaning is made up, in a confused manner, of everything 

 which they have heard or read that civilized men or civilized commu- 

 nities, are, or should be. 



It is at this stage, probably, in the progress of a concrete name, that 

 the corresponding abstract name generally comes into use.. Under 

 the notion that the concrete, name- must of course convey a meaning, 

 or in other words, that there is some property common to all things 

 which it denotes, men give a name to this common property ; from 

 the concrete Civilized, they form the abstract Civilization. But since 

 most people have never compared the different things which are called 

 by the concrete name, in such a manner as to ascertain what proper- 

 ties these things have in common, or whether they have any; each is 

 thrown back upon the marks by wliich he himself has been accustomed 

 to be guided in his application of the term : and these being merely 

 vague hearsays and cun-ent phrases, are not the same in any two per- 

 sons, nof in the same person at different times. Hence the word (as 

 Civilization, for example,) which professes to be the designation of the 

 unknown common property^ conveys scarcely to any two minds the 

 same idea. No two persons agree in the things they predicate of it ; 

 and when it is itself predicated of anything, no other person knows, 

 nor does the speaker himself know with precision, what he means 

 to assert. Many other words which could be named, as the word 

 honor, or the word gentleman, exemplify this uncertainty still more 

 strikingly. 



It needs scarcely be observed, that general propositions of which 

 no one can tell exactly what they assert, cannot possibly have been 

 brought to the test of a connect induction. Whether a name is to be 

 used as an instrument of thinking, or as a means of communicating the 

 result of tliought, it is imperative to determine exactly the attribute or 

 attributes which it is to express : to give it, in short, a. fixed and ascer- 

 tained connotation. 



§ 3. It would, however, be a complete misunderstanding of the 

 proper office of a logician, in dealing with terms already in use, if he 

 were to think that because a name has not at present an ascertained 

 connotation, it is competent to any one to give it such a connotation at 

 his own choice. The meaning of a term actually in use is not an ar- 

 bitrary quantity to be fixed, but an unknown quantity to Tae sought. 



In the first place, it is obviously desirable to avail oui'selves, as far 



