i8 



NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



sophy, were unrivalled in the con- 

 struction of technical language, and 

 whose definitions, in logic at least, 

 though they never went more than a 

 little way into the subject, have 

 seldom, I think, been altered but to 

 be spoiled. A practice, however, has 

 grown up in more modem times, 

 which, if not introduced by Locke, 

 has gained currency chiefly from his 

 example, of applying the expression 

 " abstract name " to all names which 

 are the result of abstraction or gene- 

 ralisation, and consequently to all 

 general names, instead of confining it 

 to the names of attributes. The meta- 

 physicians of the Condillac school, — 

 whose admiration of Locke, passing 

 over the profoundest speculations of 

 that truly original genius, usually 

 fastens with peculiar eagerness upon 

 his weakest points, — have gone on 

 imitating him in this abuse of lan- 

 guage, until there is now some diffi- 

 culty in restoring the word to its 

 original signification. A more wanton 

 alteration in the meaning of a word 

 is rarely to be met with ; for the 

 expression general name, the exact 

 equivalent of which exists in all lan- 

 guages I am acquainted with, was 

 already available for the purpose to 

 which abstract has been misappro- 

 priated, while the misappropriation 

 leaves that important class of words, 

 the names of attributes, without any 

 compact distinctive appellation. The 

 old acceptation, however, has not 

 gone so completely out of use, as to 

 deprive those who still adhere to it of 

 all chance of being understood. By 

 abstract, then, I shall always, in Logic 

 proper, mean the opposite of concrete ; 

 by an abstract name, the name of an 

 attribute ; by a concrete name, the 

 name of an object. 



Do abstract names belong to the 

 class of general, or to that of singular 

 names ? Some of them are certainly 

 general. I mean those which are 

 names not of one single and definite 

 attribute, but of a class of attributes. 

 Such is the word colour, which is a 

 common to whiteness, redness 



&c. Such is even the word white- 

 ness, in respect of the different shades 

 of whiteness to which it is applied in 

 common : the word magnitude, in 

 respect of the various degrees of mag- 

 nitude and the various dimensions of 

 space ; the word weight, in respect of 

 the various degrees of weight. Such 

 also is the word attribute itself, the 

 common name of all particular attri- 

 butes. But when only one attribute, 

 neither variable in degree nor in kind, 

 is designated by the name ; as visible- 

 ness ; tangibleness ; equality ; square- 

 ness ; milkwhiteness ; then the name 

 can hardly be considered general ; for 

 though it denotes an attribute of 

 many different objects, the attribute 

 itself is always conceived as one, not 

 many.* To avoid needless logo- 

 machies, the best course would pro- 

 bably be to consider these names as 

 neither general nor individual, and to 

 place them in a class apart. 



It may be objected to our definition 

 of an abstract name, that not only the 

 names which we have called abstract, 

 but adjectives, which we have placed 

 in the concrete class, are names of 

 attributes ; that white, for example, 

 is as much the name of the colour as 

 whiteness is. But (as before remarked) 

 a word ought to be considered as the 

 name of that which we intend to be 

 understood by it when we put it to 

 its principal use, that is, when we 

 employ it in predication. When we 

 say snow is white, milk is white, 

 linen is white, we do not mean it to 

 be understood that snow, or linen, or 

 milk, is a colour. We mean that they 

 are things having the colour. The 

 reverse is the case with the word 

 whiteness ; what we affirm to he 

 whiteness is not snow, but the colour 

 of snow. Whiteness, therefore, is 

 the name of the colour exclusively : 

 white is a name of all things what- 

 ever having the colour ; a name, not 

 of the quality of whiteness, but of 

 every white object. It is true, this 

 name was given to all those various 



* Vide infra, note at the end of § 3, book 

 11. chap. ii. 



