onnote_ or _signify secondarily_ ([Greek: prossemainein])
the subject of inhesion". The truth is that Mansel's view was
a theory of usage not a statement of actual usage, and he had
good reason for putting it doubtfully.

As a matter of fact, the history of the distinction follows
the simple type of increasing precision and complexity, and
Mill was in strict accord with standard tradition. By the
Nominalist commentators on the _Summulae_ of Petrus Hispanus
certain names, adjectives grammatically, are called
_Connotativa_ as opposed to _Absoluta_, simply because they
have a double function. White is connotative as signifying
both a subject, such as Socrates, of whom "whiteness" is an
attribute, and an attribute "whiteness": the names "Socrates"
and "whiteness" are Absolute, as having but a single
signification. Occam himself speaks of the subject as the
primary signification, and the attribute as the secondary,
because the answer to "What is white?" is "Something informed
with whiteness," and the subject is in the nominative case
while the attribute is in an oblique case (_Logic_, part I.
chap. x.). Later on we find that Tataretus (_Expositio in
Summulas_, A.D. 1501), while mentioning (Tract. Sept. _De
Appellationibus_) that it is a matter of dispute among
Doctores whether a connotative name _connotat_ the subject or
the attribute, is perfectly explicit in his own definition,
"Terminus connotativus est qui praeter illud pro quo supponit
connotat aliquid adjacere vel non adjacere rei pro qua
supponit" (Tract. Sept. _De Suppositionibus_). And this
remained the standard usage as long as the distinction
remained in logical text-books. We find it very clearly
expressed by Clichtoveus, a Nominalist, quoted as an authority
by Guthutius in his _Gymnasium Speculativum_, Paris, 1607 (_De
Terminorum Cognitione_, pp. 78-9). "Terminus absolutus est,
qui solum illud pro quo in propositione supponit, significat.
Connotativus autem, qui ultra idipsum, aliud importat." Thus
_man_ and _animal_ are absolute terms, which simply stand
for (supponunt pro) the things they signify. _White_ is a
connotative name, because "it stands for (supponit pro) a
subject in which it is an accident: and beyond this, still
signifies an accident, which is in that subject, and is
expressed by an abstract