^ 



NAMES AlfD PBOPOSmONS. 



§ 6. The fourth principal division of 

 names is into positive and negative. 

 Positive, as mariy tree, good ; negative, 

 as Twt-man, not-tree, not-good. To 

 every positive concrete name, a cor- 

 responding negative one might be 

 framed. After giving a name to any 

 one thing, or to any plurality of things, 

 we might create a second name which 

 should be a name of all things what- 

 ever, except that particular thing or 

 things. These negative names are 

 employed whenever we have occasion 

 to speak collectively of all things other 

 than some thing or class of things. 

 When the positive name is connota- 

 tive, the corresponding negative name 

 is connotative likewise ; but in a 

 peculiar way, connoting not the pre- 

 sence but the absence of an attribute. 

 Thus, not-white denotes all things 

 whatever except white things ; and 

 connotes the attribute of not possess- 

 ing whiteness. For the non-posses- 

 sion of any given attribute is also an 

 attribute, and may receive a name as 

 such ; and thus negative concrete 

 names may obtain negative abstract 

 names to correspond to them.* 



suited to the purpose to which they applied 

 it, be diverted from that purpose by being 

 taken to fulfil another, for which it does 

 not seem to me to be at all required ; I am 

 unable to find any expression to replace it, 

 but such as are commonly employed in a 

 sense so much more general, that it would 

 be useless attempting to associate them 

 peculiarly with this precise idea. Such 

 are the words, to involve, to imply, &c. 

 By employing these, I should fail of attain- 

 ing the object for which alone the name is 

 needed, namely, to distinguish this par- 

 ticular kind of involving and implying 

 from all other kinds, and to assure to it 

 the degree of habitual attention which its 

 importance demands. 



* Professor Bain (Logic, 1. 56) thinks that 

 negative names are not names of all things 

 whatever except those denoted by the 

 corielative p'isitive name, but only for all 

 things of some particular class : not-white, 

 for instance, he deems not to be a name 

 for everything in nature except white 

 things, but only for every coloured thing 

 other than white. In this case, however, 

 as in all others, the test of what a name 

 denotes is what, it can be predicated of : 

 and we can cert duly predicate of a sound, 

 or a smell, that it is not white. The aflQrma- 

 tion and the negation of the same attribute 



Names which are positive in form 

 are often negative in reality, and 

 others are really positive though their 

 form is negative. The word incon- 

 venient, for example, does not express 

 the mere absence of convenience ; it 

 expresses a positive attribute, that of 

 being the cause of discomfort or 

 annoyance. So the word unpleasant, 

 notwithstanding its negative form, 

 does not connote the mere absence 

 of pleasantness, but a less degree of 

 what is signified by the word painfid, 

 which, it is hardly necessary to say, 

 is positive. Idle, on the other hand, 

 is a word which, though positive in 

 form, expresses nothing but what 

 would be signified either by the 

 phrase not working, or by the phrase 

 not disposed to work ; and sober, either 

 by not drunk or by not drunken. 



There is a class of names called 

 privative. A privative name is equi- 

 valent in its signification to a positive 

 and a negative name taken together ; 

 being the name of something which 

 has once had a particular 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 or 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 

 familiarly referred, or to which it is 

 referred on the particular occasion, 

 be chiefly composed of things which 

 can see, as in the case of a blind man, 

 or a blind horse ; or unless it is sup- 

 posed for any reason that it ought to 

 see ; as in saying of a man, that he 

 rushed blindly into an abyss, or of 

 philosophers or the clergy that the 

 greater part of them are blind guides. 

 The names called privative, therefore, 

 connote two things ; the absence of 

 certain attributes, and the presence 

 of others, from which the presence 

 also of the former might naturally 

 have been expected. 



cannot but divide the whole field of predi- 

 cation between them. 



