Chapter I.
GENERAL NAMES AND ALLIED DISTINCTIONS.
To discipline us against the errors we are liable to in receiving knowledge through the medium of words—such is one of the objects of Logic, the main object of what may be called the Logic of Consistency.
Strictly speaking, we may receive knowledge about things through signs or single words, as a nod, a wink, a cry, a call, a command. But an assertory sentence, proposition, or predication, is the unit with which Logic concerns itself—a sentence in which a subject is named and something is said or predicated about it. Let a man once understand the errors incident to this regular mode of communication, and he may safely be left to protect himself against the errors incident to more rudimentary modes.
A proposition, whether long or short, is a unit, but it is an analysable unit. And the key to syllogistic analysis is the General Name. Every proposition, every sentence in which we convey knowledge to another, contains a general name or its equivalent. That is to say, every proposition may be resolved into a form in which the predicate is a general name. A knowledge of the function of this element of speech is the basis of all logical discipline. Therefore, though we must always remember that the proposition is the real unit of speech, and the general name only an analytic element, we take the general name and its allied distinctions in thought and reality first.
How propositions are analysed for syllogistic purposes will be shown by-and-by, but we must first explain various technical terms that logicians have devised to define the features of this cardinal element. The technical terms Class, Concept, Notion, Attribute, Extension or Denotation, Intension or Connotation, Genus, Species, Differentia, Singular Name, Collective Name, Abstract Name, all centre round it.
A general name is a name applicable to a number of different things on the ground of some likeness among them, as man, ratepayer, man of courage, man who fought at Waterloo.
From the examples it will be seen that a general name logically is not necessarily a single word. Any word or combination of words that serves a certain function is technically a general name. The different ways of making in common speech the equivalent of a general name logically are for the grammarian to consider.
In the definition of a general name attention is called to two distinct considerations, the individual objects to each of which the name is applicable, and the points of resemblance among them, in virtue of which they have a common name. For those distinctions there are technical terms.