SECTION II.
RELATIVE TERMS.
The explanation of Relative Terms will run to a considerable length. The mode in which they are employed as marks is peculiar; and has suggested the belief of something very mysterious in that which is marked by them. It is therefore necessary to be minute in exhibiting the combinations of ideas of which they are the names.
One peculiarity of Relative Terms, which it is necessary for us to begin with noticing, is, that they always exist in pairs. There is no relative without its correlate, either actual or implied. Thus, we have Father and Son; Husband and Wife; Master and Servant; Subject and King; also High and Low; Right and Left; Antecedent and Consequent.
In these cases of relative pairs, the two names are two different words; in other cases, one word serves for both names. Of this sort are the words Brother, Sister, Cousin, Friend, Like, Equal, and so on. When we say that John is brother, we always mean of some one else, as James, whom we also call brother. We call Jane the sister of Ann, as we call Ann the sister of Jane. When we say that A is equal to B, we signify, by the same expression, that B is equal to A; and so on.
It is always to be remembered, that, in speaking, we are only indicating our own trains; and that of 7 course every word in a mark of some part of a train. The parts of our trains to which we give relative names, are either simple, or complex. The simple, are either the simple sensations, or the ideas of those sensations. The complex, are either those clusters of simple ideas which we call the ideas of objects, because they correspond with clustered sensations; or they are the clusters which the mind puts together arbitrarily for its own purposes.
If it is asked, why we give names in pairs? The general answer immediately suggests itself; it is because the things named present themselves in pairs; that is, are joined by association. But as many things are joined in pairs by association, which do not receive relative names, the cause may still be inquired of the classification. What is the reason that some pairs do, while many more do not, receive relative names? The cause is the same by which we are guided in imposing other names. As the various combinations of ideas are far too numerous for naming, and we are obliged to make a selection, we name those which we find it of most importance to have named, omitting the rest. It is a question of convenience, solved by experience. It will be seen more distinctly hereafter that relative names are one of the contrivances for epitomising; and that they enable us to express ourselves with fewer words than we should be able to do without them.[3]
[3] No part of the Analysis is more valuable than the simple explanation here given of a subject which has seemed so mysterious to some of the most enlightened and penetrating philosophers, down even to the present time. The only difference between relative names and any others consist in their being given in pairs; and the reason of their being given in pairs is not the existence between two things, of a mystical bond called a Relation, and supposed to have a kind of shadowy and abstract reality, but a very simple peculiarity in the concrete fact which the two names are intended to mark.
In order to make quite clear the nature of this peculiarity, it will be desirable to advert once more to the double mode of signification of concrete general names, viz. that while they denote (or are names of) objects, they connote some fact relating to those objects. The fact connoted by any name, relative or not, is always of the same nature; it is some bodily or mental feeling, or some set of bodily or mental feelings, accompanying or produced by the object. But in the case of the ordinary names of objects, this fact concerns one object only, or rather only that one object and the sentient mind. The peculiarity in the case of relative names is, that the fact connoted concerns two objects, and cannot be understood without thinking of them both. It is a phenomenon in which two objects play a part. There is no greater mystery in a phenomenon which concerns two objects, than in a phenomenon which concerns only one. For example; the fact connoted by the word cause, is a fact in which the thing which is the cause, is implicated along with another thing which is the effect. The facts connoted by the word parent, and also by the word son or daughter, are a long series of phenomena of which both the parent and the child are parts; and the series of phenomena would not be that which the name parent expresses, unless the child formed a part of it, nor would it be that which the name son or daughter expresses, unless the parent formed a part of it. Now, when in a series of phenomena of any interest to us two objects are implicated, we naturally give names expressive of it to both the objects, and these are relative names. The two correlative names denote two different objects, the cause and the effect, or the parent and son; but though what they denote is different, what they connote is in a certain sense the same: both names connote the same set of facts, considered as giving one name to the one object, another name to the other. This set of facts, which is connoted by both the correlative names, was called by the old logicians the ground of the relation, fundamentum relationis. The fundamentum of any relation is the facts, fully set out, which are the reason of giving to two objects two correlative names. In some cases both objects seem to receive the same name; in the relation of likeness, both objects are said to be like; in the relation of equality, both are said to be equal. But even here the duality holds, on a stricter examination: for the first object (A) is not said to be like, absolutely, but to be like the second object (B); the second is not said to be like absolutely, but to be like the first. Now though “like” is only one name, “like A” is not the same name as “like B,” so that there is really, in this case also, a pair of names.