first. The rest of the process of understanding consists in completing
the content of this judgment by fusing with it the meanings of the
words not yet apprehended; and in the completeness with which this
is effected there will always be great differences of degree between
different minds, and also between the same mind at different times.
Some of us attach a complete and distinct meaning to the words “Women’s
Liberal Association”; some of us do not know, or have forgotten,
exactly what it is, and what are its aims and history. All of us have
some conception of the purpose described as “taxation of ground rents,”
but the phrase conveys a perfectly definite scheme hardly to one in
a thousand readers. Nevertheless, in so far as we have some symbolic
idea which refers to this place or context in the world of objects,
the content of this idea enters into and modifies the total meaning
which in apprehending the sentence before us we affirm of reality. The
heard or written proposition (or sentence, if it is not a proposition
till understood) serves as an instrument by which we build up in our
intellectual world a sort of plan or scheme of connected meanings, and
also, not subsequently but concurrently with this work of building,
affirm the whole content thus being put together to be true of reality.
Then we have what I call a Judgment. It is not that the words are
necessarily forgotten; they, or at least the principal significant
terms, are probably still in the mind as guides and symbols; but yet a
constructive work has been done; a complex experience has been called
up and analysed, and its parts fitted together in a certain definite
order by the operation of universal ideas or meanings, each of which is
a system playing {85} into other systems; and the whole thus realised
has been added as an extension to the significance of the continuous
judgment which forms our waking consciousness. The inconvenience of the
term “proposition” is that it tends to confuse the heard or written
sentence in its separate words with the proposition as apprehended and
intellectually affirmed. And these two things have quite different
characteristics.
_Parts of Speech_
4. Thus we must be very careful how we apply the conception of
“parts of speech.” The grammatical analysis which classifies words
as substantives, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and the like, is not to
be taken as telling us what words are by themselves, but just the
opposite, viz. what they do when employed in a significant sentence.
They are studied separately for convenience in attending to them, as
we may study the wheels and pistons of an engine; but the work which
gives them their names can only be done when they are together. This
truth is often expressed by saying that “the sentence is the unit
of language,” _i.e._ a word taken by itself cannot have a complete
meaning--unless it is a verb, or used with verbal force, for a verb
is an unanalysed sentence. If any one uses a substantive or adverb by
itself, we think that he has not finished his sentence, and no meaning
is conveyed to our minds. We ask him, “Well, what about it?” The same
is true, as we saw, of a relative clause. If we read in a newspaper
such a clause as this, “The epidemic of influenza, which has appeared
in England for three successive seasons,” followed by a full stop, we
should infer, without hesitation, that some words had dropped out by
accident. Of course such a {86} combination of words would make us
think something, but the meaning which we might ascribe to it would be
conjectural; we should necessarily complete the thought for ourselves
by some affirmation--some relation to reality--while recognising that
no such relation was given in the clause as we read it. Nothing less
than a sentence, or, omitting the wish and the command, nothing less
than a proposition, conveys a meaning in which the mind can acquiesce
as not requiring to be supplemented conjecturally. There are traces in
language that indicate the sentence to have been historically prior to
the word. I question whether the word could be certainly distinguished
within the sentence in early languages that have not been reduced
to writing. The tendency of reflective analysis, as in grammar and
dictionaries, is to give it a more and more, artificial isolation. The
Greeks did not separate their words in writing, and they wrote down
the change in a terminal consonant produced by the initial letter of
the next word, just as if it was within a compound word. Nor had they
really any current term co-extensive with our “word.” Where we should
say “the word ‘horse’” they most commonly use the neuter article
“the” followed by the word in question as if in quotation-marks (”the
‘horse’“). In defining noun and verb, Aristotle has no simple class
name like ”word“ to employ as a common element of the definition, but
uses the curious description ”a portion of discourse, of which no part
has a meaning by itself.“
Of course, single words often stand as signs for propositions. It
is interesting to note the pregnant meaning of a single word in the
mouth of a child. Thus “stool” was {87} used to mean “(1) Where is my
stool? (2) My stool is broken; (3) Lift me on to the stool; (4) Here
is a stool.” [1] There is in this an interesting conflict of form and
meaning, owing to the child of European race having at command only
“parts of speech.” In a less analytical language he might have at
command a sound corresponding to a sentence rather than to a “noun
substantive.”
[1] Preyer, quoted in _Höffding, Psych_., 176.
The verb of inflected languages, [1] such as Greek or Latin, in which
the “nominative case” need not be supplied even by a pronoun, is the
type for us of a sentence not yet broken up.
[1] In German and English, though the verb is inflected, custom
forbids it to stand without the pronoun.
The bearing of this truth on Logic is to make us treat it in two parts
and not in three. We do not treat of Name, Proposition, Syllogism, or
of Concept, Judgment, Inference, but only of the two latter parts. The
name or concept has no reality in living language or living thought,
except when referred to its place in a proposition or judgment. We
ought not to think of propositions as built up by putting words or
names together, but of words or names as distinguished though not
separable elements in propositions. Aristotle takes the simple and
straightforward view. “A term is the element into which a proposition
is broken up, such as subject and predicate.” [1] Of course different
languages separate the parts of the proposition very differently,
{88} and uneducated people hardly separate them at all. Formal Logic
breaks down the grammatical meaning of “name,” so far as to treat as a
“logical name” any complex words that can stand as Subject or Predicate
in a Proposition (_e.g._ a relative clause).
[1] _Anal. prior_., 24b, 16. The opposite view seems to be
expressed in the beginning of the περὶ Ἑρμενείας [= peri
Hermeneias, _de Interpretatione_], that the separate word
corresponds to the separate idea. I have attempted to explain
this as an illusion, p. 73, above.
_Denotation and Connotation_
5. The doctrine of the meaning of names has suffered from their
relation to propositions not being borne in mind. Mill’s discussion [1]
is very sensible, but, as always, very careless of strict system. More
especially it seems a pity to state the question as if it concerned
a division of names into Connotative and Non-connotative; because in
this way we from the first let go of the idea that the meaning of a
name has necessarily two aspects, [2] and we almost bind ourselves to
make out that there are some non-connotative names. It is better to
consider this latter subject on its merits. Mill says that an ordinary
significant name such as “man” “signifies the subjects directly, the
attributes indirectly; it _denotes_ the subjects, and implies or
involves or indicates, or, as we shall say henceforth, _connotes_, the
attributes.” In short, the denotation of a name consists of the things
_to which_ it _ap_plies, the connotation consists of the properties
which it _im_plies. The denotation is made up of individuals and
the connotation of attributes. Denotation is also called Extension,
especially if we are speaking of Concepts rather than of names.
Connotation is then called Intension. In the German writers it is
more usual to say that the Extension or Area (_Umfang_) consists not
of the individuals, but of the species that are contained in {89}
the meaning of a general name. They oppose it to Content (_Inhalt_)
corresponding to our “Connotation.” Thus the “Area” of “rose” would
not be the individual roses in the world, but rather all the species
of rose in the world (_Rosa Canina, Rosa Rubiginosa_, etc.). This
raises a difficulty as to the denotation of a specific name, but
perhaps represents the actual process of thought, in the case of a
generic name, better than that which Mill adopts. The difference is not
important.
[1] _Logic_, Bk. I. c. ii. § 5. Cf. Venn, 174 and 183, and Bain, 48.
[2] See Bradley, p. 155.
Well, then, according to Mill, when we say, “The Marshal Niel is a
yellow rose,” we refer directly to a group of real or possible objects,
and we mean that all these individual objects are yellow roses. The
attributes are only mentioned by the way, or implied. So Dr. Venn says
that the denotation is real, and the connotation is notional.
But there is another side to this question. The objects may be _what
you mean_ but the attributes seem to be _the meaning_, for how can you
(especially on Mill’s theory of the proposition) refer to any objects
except through these attributes, unless indeed you can point to them
with your finger? And so again it seems, especially if we consider
Mill’s account of predication, as if the Connotation were the primary
meaning and the Denotation the secondary meaning. The Connotation
determines the Denotation; and if we “define” the meaning of the name
it is the Connotation that we state. And so Mill tells us two or
three pages further on, that whenever the names given to objects have
properly any meaning, the meaning resides not in what they denote, but
in what they connote. In short, {90} the denotation of a general name
is simply the meaning of its plural, or of its singular, in that sense
in which it implies a plural, while the connotation is the meaning _per
se_, not considered in its instances.
It is clear then that every name has these two kinds of meaning--first,
a content, and then instances, whether possible or actual, of the
content; and the two are obviously inseparable, although they are
distinguishable. Ultimately, indeed, the denotation itself is an
attribute, and so part of the connotation. It is one of the attributes
of man to be a unit in the plurality men, _i.e._ to be “a man.” It
may be said that some names have no plural. If so, these would be
non-denotative rather than non-connotative, but in fact this is not
true. The content of a significant name can always, unless hindered
by a special convention (see below on proper names), be _prima facie_
regarded, in respect of its actual embodiment, as a unit against
other possible units. Granting that there may be an object, which
according to our knowledge can only be real as an isolated case, the
very consideration of it as such a case is enough to distinguish its
existence, whether real or possible, from its content. Thus, as a real
or possible existence, the object is _ipso facto_ considered in the
light of a particular, and as capable of entering into a plurality.
But its nature or content, the meaning of its name, cannot enter
into a plurality. Two _meanings_, two connotations, are alternative
and irreconcilable. Denotation and connotation are thus simply the
particular, or particulars, which embody or are thought of as embodying
a content, and the single or universal content itself.
{91} _Have Proper Names Connotation?_
6. Therefore I think that Mill is wrong, when he goes on, “The only
names of objects which connote nothing are Proper Names, and these
have, strictly speaking, no signification.” [1] If the name has no
signification, for what reason, or by what means, is it attached to a
person or a place? You may say that it is only a conventional mark. But
a mark which has power to select from all objects in the world, and
bring to our minds, a particular absent object, is surely a significant
mark. Granted that it is conventional, yet by what mechanism, and for
what purpose, does the convention operate?
[1] Cf. Venn, 183 ff, and Bradley, 156.
Mill’s point, however, is quite clear. To be told the name of a person
or object does not inform us of his or its attributes. Directly,
it only warns us by what sign the same person or object will be
recognisable in language again. [1] If a name is changed, the new name
tells us nothing different from the old, [2] whereas if an object that
was called vegetable is now called animal, our conception of it is
radically transformed. A name expresses the continued identity of an
object, and this implies only a historical continuity of attributes and
relations, and no constant attribute whatever.
[1] We cannot make it a distinctive mark of proper names that
they recur in different and quite disconnected meanings, because
the words which are used as general names have this same
property. Nor can we say that a proper name is not used in the
same sense of more than one object. Family names and national
names make this plainly untrue. Through these, and names
typically employed, there is a clear gradation from proper to
general names.
[2] The case of marriage may be urged. But a lady’s change of
name does not by itself indicate marriage. It is a mere fact,
which may have various explanations. The change of title (from
“Miss” to “Mrs.”) is more significant, but it is not a change of
name.
{92} Thus a _proper_ name is a contradiction in terms. [1] A name
should have a meaning. But a meaning cannot be proper--that is,
particular. The name-word is therefore like a demonstrative pronoun,
if this were attached, by a special convention, to one identifiable
object only. It acquires meaning, but its meaning is an ever-growing
contradiction with its usage. The meaning is necessarily general, the
usage is _ex hypothesi_ particular.
[1] So, from the complementary point of view, is a _general_
name. A name, it may be urged, _is_ meant to designate a
particular thing or things. And this a name with a true
“meaning” cannot do.
This convention of usage, which prevents a proper name from becoming
general, _i.e._ from being cut loose and used simply for its meaning,
is always on the point of breaking down. [1] Christian names usually
indicate sex; family names, though now with little certainty, descent
and relationship. There are germs of a general meaning within the
several usages of names; while a Solon, a Croesus, a Christian, a
Mahometan, have become purely general names cut loose from all unique
reference. Still in a proper name, as such, we have no right to build
on any general meaning. Recognition is its only purpose; and the law
permits, it has been said, that a man should have one name for Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays, and another for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
Saturdays. The essence of a name is a reference to unique identity; it
employs meaning only to establish identity.
[1] See note on last page.
What kinds of things have proper names given, then? Always things
_individually_ known to the people who give {93} the name, and
interesting to them for some reason beyond generic or specific
qualities. Pet animals have names, when other animals of the same kind
have not. The peasants throughout England use names, it is said, for
all the fields, although strangers are not usually acquainted with them.
A Proper Name, then, has a connotation, but not a fixed general
connotation. It is attached to a unique individual, and connotes
whatever may be involved in his identity, or is instrumental in
bringing it before the mind.
When we think of history, the importance of proper names becomes
very great. This is the characteristic logical difference between
history and science. “England” and “France” are proper names, names
of individual existences in contact with our world of perception, not
scientific abstractions. Even the words, “1892 A.D.,” are partly of the
nature of a proper name. They say nothing merely general or abstract
about this year; they assign the year a name by counting forwards from
a unique point in the series of years, itself designated by the name
of a historical personage. Everything that is simply distinguished by
its place in the series of events in space and time is in some degree a
proper name. Thus we could not identify the French Revolution by mere
scientific definition. It is known by its proper name, as a unique
event, in a particular place and time. When thus identified it may have
all kinds of general ideas attached to it. It would be hard to show
that “Our earth,” “Our solar system” are not proper names, in virtue of
their uniqueness.
{94} _Inverse ratio of Connotation and Denotation_
7. It has sometimes been said that Connotation is in inverse ratio [1]
to Denotation. Mill explains the fact upon which any such idea
rests. [2] If we arrange things in classes, such that the one class
includes the other--_e.g. Species_ “Buttercup,” _Genus_ “Ranunculus,”
_Order_ “Ranunculaceae,”--of course the genus will contain many species
besides the one mentioned, and the order many genera besides the one
mentioned. The object of the arrangement is that they should do so, and
thus bring out the graduated natural affinities which prevail in the
world. Thus the denotation of the genus-name is larger than that [3] of
the species, and the denotation of the order-name is larger than that
of the genus-name.
[1] See Venn, p. 174, for reference to Hamilton. Venn points out
the fallacy.
[2] _Logic_, Bk. I. ch. vii. § 5.
[3] Or “than the species,” if we take the denotation as made up
of species.
But further, in such an arrangement the genus can contain only the
attributes which are common to all the species, and the order can
contain only the attributes which are common to all the genera; so the
genus-name implies fewer attributes (less connotation) than any one
species-name under it, and the order-name implies fewer attributes
(less connotation) than any one genus-name under it.
That is the fact which suggests the conception of Denotation and
Connotation as varying inversely.
But in any case it would not be right to speak thus mathematically of
an inverse ratio, because there is no meaning in a numerical comparison
of attributes and {95} individuals, and the addition of one attribute
will exclude sometimes more and sometimes fewer individuals. [1]
[1] See Jevons, p. 40.
And there are more important objections to the whole idea of a
corresponding gradation in these two kinds of meaning. The idea
of abstraction thus implied is altogether wrong. The meaning of a
genus-name does not _omit_ the properties in which the species differ.
If it did, it would omit nearly all properties. What happens is that
the genus-idea represents the general plan on which the species are
built, but provides for each of the parts that constitute the whole,
varying in the specific cases within certain limits. Thus in the
Ranunculaceae some species have no petals. But we do not omit the
character “petals” from the genus-idea. We state the general plan
so far as this element is concerned as “Petals five or more; rarely
none.” This is read by a botanist to mean that in some groups the
petals tend to be aborted, and sometimes are actually missing. In a
symbolic representation of the genus-idea such a property may stand as
A, and its various specific forms as A1, A2, A3, etc. There is nothing
to prevent these specific phases approaching and sometimes reaching
zero. No doubt if the classification is pursued in the direction of
“universals” containing fewer and fewer properties, it is possible
to arrive at concepts which appear to have a larger denotation and
a smaller connotation than those “below” them. “Ranunculaceae,”
“Dicotyledons,” “Plants,” “Organisms.”
But this is only because we choose to form our system by that
process of abstraction which consists in leaving out properties.
_E.g._ comparing Frenchmen with men in general, {96} we assume that
“Frenchman” indicates (_a_) all the qualities of humanity as such,
and (_b_) the qualities of French humanity in addition to these. But
is this so in fact? Humanity, considered as a wider, and therefore
as a deeper, idea, may have more content, as well as more area, than
Frenchmanity. We do not really, in thinking of humanity, omit from our
schematic thought all references to qualities of Greek, Jew, English,
and German, and their bearing and interaction upon one another. It is
only that we have been drilled to assume a certain neatness in the
pyramidal arrangement by which we vainly try to reduce the meaning of
a great idea to something that has no system and no inter-relation of
parts, but approaches as near as possible in fixity to the character
of a definite image, though far removed from such a character in the
impossibility of bringing it before the mind.
So we can only say, “the greater the denotation the less the
connotation,” and “_vice versâ_”, in as far as we arrange ideas by
progressive abstraction in the sense of progressive omission. But
it is not the only way of regarding them. Things may develop new
inter-relations as their number increases. Has the community, as Mr.
Bradley asks, less meaning than the individual person? But we must not
consider the community, would be the answer; we must simply consider
the relation of an idea of one individual to any idea that applies
to many individuals. This is simply to rule out those relations that
arise within progressively larger wholes. We can do so, if we think the
exclusion necessary in the interests of logical purity, but it is only
by doing so that we can maintain the traditional view of connotation
and denotation. It is worth while to think out the {97} matter for
ourselves in relation to such familiar ideas as those of man and
animal. It is plain that the idea of “animal” cannot omit all reference
to intelligence, but must in some way allow for the different phases
of this property which run throughout the animal kingdom, and only
find a climax in man. And it is plain also, that even if intelligence
were wholly omitted, this would not leave behind, as in a simple
stratification, properties in which the whole animal kingdom was the
same. Man’s animality is modified throughout in a way corresponding
to his rationality, so that no general idea could be framed including
him and other animals, simply by collecting properties which are
the same and omitting those which are different. The idea of “man”
really becomes richer when considered in the light of a comparison
[1] with the rest of the animal world. Our great systems of natural
classification, representing affinities graduated by descent, are what
give the view which we have criticised a certain objective importance.
But they do not establish it as an exclusive logical doctrine.
[1] If we insist on throwing the whole of this comparison, in
explicit shape, into the complete idea of man, then the progress
to the idea “animal” can add nothing; even so, however, it loses
nothing, but simply becomes the same set of relations, looked
at, so to speak, from the other end.
{98}
LECTURE VI PARTS OF THE JUDGMENT, AND ITS UNITY
_Parts of the Judgment_
1. The result of taking the Judgment as one with the Proposition
has been to assume that its parts were the same as those of the
Proposition; [1] and moreover the same as those of the Proposition in a
very artificial form, viz. as analysed into three separable elements,
“Subject,” “Predicate,” “Copula,” commonly represented in the examples
of the text-books by Substantive, Adjective or Substantive, and the
Verb “is.”
[1] This assumption involves (see Lecture V.) a confusion
between the Proposition as thoroughly understood, and the
Proposition as a series of partially significant sounds or
signs. For obvious reasons, this confusion is very readily made.
For the operation of Formal Logic it is almost necessary to have
these parts, because it is requisite to transpose the terms (as in
Conversion) without changing their meaning, [1] and to get rid of
_tenses_, which do not belong to Scientific Judgment, and are very
troublesome in Formal Inference.
[1] If the “predicate” is a Substantive, this presents no
difficulty; and if it is an Adjective, it can be done by a
little straining of grammar, or the insertion of “thing” or
“things.” With a verb it is more clumsy.
Thus in Formal Logic we prefer the shape of sentence “Gold is lustrous”
to “Gold glitters,” and “The bridge is {99} cracked” to “There is
a crack in the bridge.” And practically all propositions can be
thrown into this shape, which is convenient for comparing them. The
educational value of elementary formal logic consists chiefly, I am
convinced, in the exercise of paraphrasing poetical or rhetorical
assertions into this typical shape, with the least possible sacrifice
of meaning. The commonest mistakes in the work of beginners, within my
experience as a teacher, consist in failures to interpret rightly the
sentence given for analysis.
But this type is not really ultimate. The judgment can be conveyed
without a grammatical subject, and without the verb “is”--indeed
without any grammatical verb at all. On the whole this agrees with
Mill’s view in the chapter “Of Propositions.” [1] He points out (§ 1)
that we really need nothing but the Subject and Predicate, and that the
copula is a mere sign of their connection _as_ Subject and Predicate.
He does not, however, discuss the case in which the grammatical Subject
is absent.
[1] Mill’s _Logic_, Bk. I. ch. iv.
_Copula_