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Updated: May 20, 2025
Let the predicate be, as we have said, a connotative term; and to take the simplest case first, let the subject be a proper name: “The summit of Chimborazo is white.” The word white connotes an attribute which is possessed by the individual object designated by the words, “summit of Chimborazo,” which attribute consists in the physical fact, of its exciting in human beings the sensation which we call a sensation of white.
By enabling him to identify the individuals, we may connect them with information previously possessed by him; by saying, This is York, we may tell him that it contains the Minster. But this is in virtue of what he has previously heard concerning York; not by any thing implied in the name. It is otherwise when objects are spoken of by connotative names.
When the positive name is connotative, the corresponding negative name is connotative likewise; but in a peculiar way, connoting not the presence but the absence of an attribute. Thus, not-white denotes all things whatever except white things; and connotes the attribute of not possessing whiteness.
A knock on the door from his fist, followed by the connotative expression on his face, results almost uniformly in immediate payment of all that is due. Needless to say, he gets his camorra a good one on the money that otherwise might never be obtained.
Connotative names, therefore, were, after proper names, the first which were used: and in the simpler cases, no doubt, a distinct connotation was present to the minds of those who first used the name, and was distinctly intended by them to be conveyed by it.
But there is another higher part of language that is not so abjectly tied down to perception, but that lives, moves, and has its being in the field of concepts rather than percepts, which, to use Earle's distinction, is symbolic and not presentative, that describes thinking that is not mere contiguity in space or sequence in time but that is best in the far higher and more mental associations of likeness, that is more remote from activity, that, to use logical terminology, is connotative and not merely denotative, that has extension as well as intension, that requires abstraction and generalization.
In this last case, again, we may either compose our definition of as many connotative names as there are attributes, each attribute being connoted by one; as, Man is a corporeal, organized, animated, rational being, shaped so and so; or we may employ names which connote several of the attributes at once, as, Man is a rational animal, shaped so and so.
By enabling him to identify the individuals, we may connect them with information previously possessed by him; by saying, This is York, we may tell him that it contains the Minster. But this is in virtue of what he has previously heard concerning York; not by anything implied in the name. It is otherwise when objects are spoken of by connotative names.
All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal, the subject and predicate of the major premise are connotative terms, denoting objects and connoting attributes.
This desirable purpose, of giving a fixed connotation where it is wanting, is the end aimed at whenever any one attempts to give a definition of a general name already in use; every definition of a connotative name being an attempt either merely to declare, or to declare and analyse, the connotation of the name.
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