qualities belong?
Thus 'whiteness' may be considered to connote either snow or vapour, or
any white thing, apart from one or other of which the quality has no
existence; whose existence therefore it implies. By this course the
denotation and connotation of abstract and of general names would be
exactly reversed. Whilst the denotation of a general name is limited by
the qualities connoted, the connotation of an abstract name includes all
the things in which its denotation is realised. But the whole difficulty
may be avoided by making it a rule to translate, for logical purposes,
all abstract into the corresponding general terms.

Sec. 4. If we ask how the connotation of a term is to be known, the answer
depends upon how it is used. If used scientifically, its connotation is
determined by, and is the same as, its definition; and the definition is
determined by examining the things to be denoted, as we shall see in
chap. xxii. If the same word is used as a term in different sciences, as
'property' in Law and in Logic, it will be differently defined by them,
and will have, in each use, a correspondingly different connotation. But
terms used in popular discourse should, as far as possible, have their
connotations determined by classical usage, i.e., by the sense in
which they are used by writers and speakers who are acknowledged masters
of the language, such as Dryden and Burke. In this case the classical
connotation determines the definition; so that to define terms thus used
is nothing else than to analyse their accepted meanings.

It must not, however, be supposed that in popular use the connotation
of any word is invariable. Logicians have attempted to classify
terms into Univocal (having only one meaning) and AEquivocal (or
ambiguous); and no doubt some words (like 'civil,' 'natural,' 'proud,'
'liberal,' 'humorous') are more manifestly liable to ambiguous use than
some others. But in truth all general terms are popularly and
classically used in somewhat different senses.

Figurative or tropical language chiefly consists in the transfer of
words to new senses, as by metaphor or metonymy. In the course of years,
too, words change their meanings; and before the time of Dryden our
whole vocabulary was much more fluid and adaptable than it has since
become. Such authors as Bacon, Milton, and Sir Thomas Browne often used
words derived from the Latin in some sense they originally had in Latin,
though in English they had acq