Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/70

58 SHADWORTH H. HODGSON. nature, distinctions which relate to the use of language, and are directed to guard against the fallacious assumptions which creep in through that entrance. Language is the creature of thought, but created, for the most part, in pre- philosophic times and by pre-philosophic people. When once created, it stereotypes the dim and vague thoughts which gave it birth, lends them distinct outline, and makes of them fixed, familiar, forms and grooves for subsequent thought to assume and move in, forms and grooves which thenceforward appear to represent obvious and self-evident facts. The first of these logical distinctions is that which J. S. Mill has made his own, though Scholastic in its origin, the distinction between denotation and connotation. Its force lies in this, that a term used as a term of denotation is used " without prejudice," as English lawyers sometimes say, to the real meaning or true connotation of the term, which is left to be settled afterwards. It simply designates the things spoken of, without making any use of their meaning or connotation farther than to designate them, and propose them as subjects of consideration. Since every term has a connotation, and the commonest words have the most unsettled connotations, it is clear that, with- out this distinction, a mutual understanding would be rarely attainable. We should not be free to use the commonest forms of speech, without being liable to be held committed to some abstruse theory. For instance, in saying, I see a man, I might be committed to an intuitive knowledge of another consciousness, since how otherwise could I see that it was a man I saw ? The second logical distinction is also of Scholastic origin, the distinction between terms of first and second intention. A term of first intention is a term used to signify any object which has perceptual form, any individual object of thought. A term of second intention is a term used to signify an object which has conceptual form, that is, as related to other objects in thought, or as a member of a class. The force of this distinction is, that, while all terms can be used in both ways, a term used in the second way characterises the thing signified merely by some relation to other things, assuming the thing itself to be known, while a term used in the first way, or as a term of first intention, signifies the thing itself as immediately present to conscious- ness. We have in this distinction a means of discovering whether we are assuming the thing spoken of as already known, and if we are, whether we are speaking of it as it