§ 117. But the needs of language often require a singular term to denote some thing which has not had a proper name assigned to it. This is effected by taking a common term, and so limiting it as to make it applicable, under the given circumstances, to one thing only. Such a limitation may be effected in English by prefixing a demonstrative or the definite article, or by appending a description, e.g. 'this pen,' 'the sofa,' 'the last rose of summer.' When a proper name is unknown, or for some reason, unavailable, recourse may be had to a designation, e.g. 'the honourable member who spoke last but one.'
Collective Terms.
§ 118. The division of terms into singular and common being, like those which have preceded it, fundamental and exhaustive, there is evidently no room in it for a third class of Collective Terms. Nor is there any distinct class of terms to which that name can be given. The same term may be used collectively or distributively in different relations. Thus the term 'library,' when used of the books which compose a library, is collective; when used of various collections of books, as the Bodleian, Queen's library, and so on, it is distributive, which, in this case, is the same thing as being a common term.
§ 119, The distinction between the collective and distributive use of a term is of importance, because the confusion of the two is a favourite source of fallacy. When it is said 'The plays of Shakspeare cannot be read in a day,' the proposition meets with a very different measure of acceptance according as its subject is understood collectively or distributively. The word 'all' is perfectly ambiguous in this respect. It may mean all together or each separately—two senses which are distinguished in Latin by 'totus' or 'cunctus,' for the collective, and 'omnis' for the distributive use.
§ 120. What is usually meant however when people speak of a collective term is a particular kind of singular term.
§ 121. From this point of view singular terms may be subdivided into Individual and Collective, by an Individual Term being meant the name of one object, by a Collective Term the name of several considered as one. 'This key' is an individual term; 'my bunch of keys' is a collective term.
§ 122. A collective term is quite as much the name of one thing as an individual term is, though the thing in question happens to be a group. A group is one thing, if we choose to think of it as one. For the mind, as we have already seen, has an unlimited power of forming its own things, or objects of thought. Thus a particular peak in a mountain chain is as much one thing as the chain itself, though, physically speaking, it is inseparable from it, just as the chain itself is inseparable from the earth's surface. In the same way a necklace is as much one thing as the individual beads which compose it.
§ 123. We have just seen that a collective term is the name of a group regarded as one thing: but every term which is the name of such a group is not necessarily a collective term. 'London,' for instance, is the name of a group of objects considered as one thing. But 'London' is not a collective term, whereas 'flock,' 'regiment,' and 'senate' are. Wherein then lies the difference? It lies in this—that flock, regiment and senate are groups composed of objects which are, to a certain extent, similar, whereas London is a group made up of the most dissimilar objects—streets and squares and squalid slums, fine carriages and dirty faces, and so on. In the case of a true collective term all the members of the group will come under some one common name. Thus all the members of the group, flock of sheep, come under the common name 'sheep,' all the members of the group 'regiment' under the common name, 'soldier,' and so on.
§ 124. The subdivision of singular terms into individual and collective need not be confined to the names of concrete things. An abstract term like 'scarlet,' which is the name of one definite attribute, may be reckoned 'individual,' while a term like 'human nature,' which is the name of a whole group of attributes, would more fitly be regarded as collective.
§ 126. The main division of terms, which we have been discussing, into singular and collective, is based upon their Quantity in Extension. This phrase will be explained presently.