Logic, Inductive and Deductive

by William Minto

This function may be discharged by words and combinations of words that are not Proper in the grammatical sense. "This man," "the cover of this book," "the Prime Minister of England," "the seer of Chelsea," may be Singular names as much as Honolulu or Lord Tennyson.

In common speech Singular names are often manufactured ad hoc by taking a general name and narrowing it down by successive qualifications till it applies only to one individual, as "The leading subject of the Sovereign of England at the present time". If it so happens that an individual has some attribute or combination peculiar to himself, he may be suggested by the mention of that attribute or combination:—"the inventor of the steam-engine," "the author of Hudibras".

Have such names a connotation? The student may exercise his wits on the question. It is a nice one, an excellent subject of debate. Briefly, if we keep rigid hold of the meaning of connotation, this Singular name has none. The combination is a singular name only when it is the subject of a predication or an attribution, as in the sentences, "The position of the leading subject of etc., is a difficult one," or "The leading subject of etc., wears an eyeglass". In such a sentence as "So-and-so is the leading subject of etc.," the combined name has a connotation, but then it is a general and not a singular name.

Collective Names, as distinguished from General Names. A collective name is a name for a number of similar units taken as a whole—a name for a totality of similar units, as army, regiment, mob, mankind, patrimony, personal estate.

A group or collection designated by a collective name is so far like a class that the individual objects have something in common: they are not heterogeneous but homogeneous. A mob is a collection of human beings; a regiment of soldiers; a library of books.

The distinction lies in this, that whatever is said of a collective name is said about the collection as a whole, and does not apply to each individual; whatever is said of a general name applies to each individual. Further, the collective name can be predicated only of the whole group, as a whole; the general name is predicable of each, distributively. "Mankind has been in existence for thousands of years;" "The mob passed through the streets." In such expressions as "An honest man's the noblest work of God," the subject is functionally a collective name.

A collective name may be used as a general name when it is extended on the ground of what is common to all such totalities as it designates. "An excited mob is dangerous;" "An army without discipline is useless." The collective name is then "connotative" of the common characters of the collection.

Material or Substantial Names. The question has been raised whether names of material, gold, water, snow, coal, are general or collective singular. In the case of pieces or bits of a material, it is true that any predicate made concerning the material, such as "Sugar is sweet," or "Water quenches thirst," applies to any and every portion. But the separate portions are not individuals in the whole signified by a material name as individuals are in a class. Further, the name of material cannot be predicated of a portion as a class name can be of an individual. We cannot say, "This is a sugar". When we say, "This is a piece of sugar," sugar is a collective name for the whole material. There are probably words on the borderland between general names and collective names. In such expressions as "This is a coal," "The bonnie water o' Urie," the material name is used as a general name. The real distinction is between the distributive use and the collective use of a name; as a matter of grammatical usage, the same word may be used either way, but logically in any actual proposition it must be either one or the other.

Abstract Names are names for the common attributes or concepts on which classes are constituted. A concrete name is a name directly applicable to an individual in all his attributes, that is, as he exists in the concrete. It may be written on a ticket and pinned to him. When we have occasion to speak of the point or points in which a number of individuals resemble one another, we use what is called an abstract name. "Generous man," "clever man," "timid man," are concrete names; "generosity," "cleverness," "timidity," are abstract names.