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Footnotes
[1.]In the later editions of Archbishop Whately's Logic and Rhetoric there are some expressions, which, though indefinite, resemble a disclaimer of the opinion here ascribed to him. If I have imputed that opinion to him erroneously, I am glad to find myself mistaken; but he has not altered the passages in which the opinion appeared to me to be conveyed, and which I still think inconsistent with the belief that Induction can be reduced to strict rules.[2.]Archbishop Whately.[3.]This important theory has recently been called in question by a writer of deserved reputation, Mr. Samuel Bailey; but I do not conceive that the grounds on which it has been admitted as an established doctrine for a century past, have been at all shaken by that gentleman's objections. I have elsewhere said what appeared to me necessary in reply to his arguments (Westminster Review, for October 1842.) It may be necessary to add, that some other processes of comparison than those described in the text (but equally the result of experience), appear occasionally to enter into our judgment of distances by the eye.[4.]Computation or Logic, chap. ii.[5.]In the original, “had, or had not.” These last words, as involving a subtlety foreign to our present purpose, I have forborne to quote.[6.]It would, perhaps, be more correct to say that inflected cases are names and something more; and that this addition prevents them from being used as the subjects of propositions. But the purposes of our inquiry do not demand that we should enter with scrupulous accuracy into similar minutiæ.[7.]Notare to mark; connotare, to mark along with; to mark one thing with or in addition to another.[8.]Archbishop Whately, who in the more recent editions of his Elements of Logic has aided in reviving the important distinction treated of in the text, proposes the term “Attributive” as a substitute for “Connotative,” (p. 122, 9th ed.) The expression is, in itself, appropriate; but, as it has not the advantage of being connected with any verb, of so markedly distinctive a character as “to connote,” it is not, I think, fitted to supply the place of the word Connotative in scientific use.[9.]It would be well if this degeneracy of language took place only in the hands of the untaught vulgar; but some of the most remarkable instances are to be found in terms of art, and among technically educated persons, such as English lawyers. Felony, for example, is a law term, with the sound of which all are familiar; but there is no lawyer who would undertake to tell what a felony is, otherwise than by enumerating the various offences which are so called. Originally the word felony had a meaning; it denoted all offences, the penalty of which included forfeiture of lands or goods; but subsequent acts of parliament have declared various offences to be felonies without enjoining that penalty, and have taken away the penalty from others which continue nevertheless to be called felonies, insomuch that the acts so called have now no property whatever in common, save that of being unlawful and punishable.[10.]
Before quitting the subject of connotative names, it is proper to observe, that the first writer who, in our own times, has adopted from the schoolmen the word to connote, Mr. Mill, in his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, employs it in a signification different from that in which it is here used. He uses the word in a sense coextensive with its etymology, applying it to every case in which a name, while pointing directly to one thing, (which is consequently termed its signification,) includes also a tacit reference to some other thing. In the case considered in the text, that of concrete general names, his language and mine are the converse of one another. Considering (very justly) the signification of the name to lie in the attribute, he speaks of the word as noting the attribute, and connoting the things possessing the attribute. And he describes abstract names as being properly concrete names with their connotation dropped: whereas, in my view, it is the denotation which would be said to be dropped, what was previously connoted becoming the whole signification.
In adopting a phraseology at variance with that which so high an authority, and one which I am less likely than any other person to undervalue, has deliberately sanctioned, I have been influenced by the urgent necessity for a term exclusively appropriated to express the manner in which a concrete general name serves to mark the attributes which are involved in its signification. This necessity can scarcely be felt in its full force by any one who has not found by experience, how vain is the attempt to communicate clear ideas on the philosophy of language without such a word. It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that some of the most prevalent of the errors with which logic has been infected, and a large part of the cloudiness and confusion of ideas which have enveloped it, would, in all probability, have been avoided, if a term had been in common use to express exactly what I have signified by the term to connote. And the schoolmen, to whom we are indebted for the greater part of our logical language, gave us this also, and in this very sense. For although some of their general expressions countenance the use of the word in the more extensive and vague acceptation in which it is taken by Mr. Mill, yet when they had to define it specifically as a technical term, and to fix its meaning as such, with that admirable precision which always characterizes their definitions, they clearly explained that nothing was said to be connoted except forms, which word may generally, in their writings, be understood as synonymous with attributes.
Now, if the word to connote, so well 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 attaining the object for which alone the name is needed, namely, to distinguish this particular kind of involving and implying from all other kinds, and to assure to it the degree of habitual attention which its importance demands.