But I have failed of my purpose, if it has not been made plain that Hegelianism, in spite of its soaring synthesis, speaks essentially the words of soberness. It puts an end to transcendent speculation, far more effectually than Kant, by showing that all the objects of such speculation are immanent in the world that now is. In fact no philosophy is so well-fitted as Hegelianism to withdraw men from fruitless questions, and to make them see the solution of all problems in the faithful work of their own sphere. It is hampered, moreover, by no presuppositions as to the empirical existence and course of things; it is ready, accordingly, to accept and rationalise any theory which science and history may establish. Idealism accepts all that physiology has to say about the dependence of thought on the organism, and is not discomfited by the most materialistic statement of the facts. It admits as a matter of course the empirical derivation of all our conscious life from feeling or sensation. "Everything is present in feeling," says Hegel," and if any one likes to express himself so, everything that emerges in the consciousness of spirit and of reason has its source and origin in feeling."1 The gradual building up of morality on the basis of our instincts and impulses, and the dependence of subjective morality upon the customs and institutions of the community and state are an integral part of Hegelian ethics. The Philosophy of Religion exhibits the development of religious thought from the fetishworship and magical rites of the savage.

But materialists in cosmology and sensationalists in psychology think they have explained a rational universe and the human consciousness from that which is neither rational nor conscious. The evolutionist in morals and the naturalist in religion imagine that they have deduced morality and religion from non-moral and non-religious conditions.. They seem to think that, in explaining the origin of a thing, they have explained away the thing itself. Hence the deleterious influence of such views, when spread among the unreflecting. The special merit of Hegelianism is that it sets all these results in their true light, and shows that they do not imperil the divinity of reason that hedges about our lives. "Source and origin," Hegel adds to the passage last quoted, "mean no more than the first and baldest form in which a thing appears." Nothing is explained by being merely thrown back in time. A history of phenomena is no metaphysic of the timeless presuppositions of that history.

Hegelianism is the conscious attempt to give such a metaphysic, and so to supply a perennial want of the human mind. Hegel gives us formulae by which we may express the nature

1 Werke VII., ii., 117. Cf. also Ibid., p. 311.

of the one great Fact or Life, which, in the widest sense, we call God. Progress in philosophy means reaching a fuller form of expression for that Life. If they do not explain everything, these Hegelian formulae are yet the best we have. It depends on ourselves to fill them up. According as we use it, a formula may be a Procrustean bed to which we make existence conform by cutting off its living members; or it may be expansive enough to allow free play within itself to all forms of life. This expansiveness will, I think, be found to belong to the Hegelian formulae; and they may be accepted even by those who may hold, with Lotze, that this "bold monism" undertook far more than is possible to human powers. Hegel and Lotze are at one in "the indestructible confidence of the spirit that the world does not only exist, but that something is meant by it". This is Idealism in the broad Hegelian sense, because it is the assumption that the universe exists only as the exponent of that meaning. The meaning communicates value to what would otherwise be valueless; and all true philosophy aims, like Hegelianism, at throwing into words the 'truth' or perfect meaning of the universe.

ANDREW SETH.

VI.-NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.

ON DEFINITIONS.

A DEFINITION is a "proposition declaratory of the meaning of a word" (Mill). As to this, I believe, all logicians are agreed, as well as that the meaning which it declares and as to which it affords us information, is the Connotation of the word, not its Denotation-the Comprehension of the notion, not its Extension.

It appears, further, to be generally admitted that the information thus given must be complete. The adequate definition gives us not only a portion, but "the whole of the facts which the name involves in its signification" (Mill); "the sum of all the properties connoted by the name it exhausts the meaning of the word" (Bain). Mill even goes so far as to say:-"The definition of a name is the sum total of all the essential propositions which can be framed with that name for their subject. All propositions, the truth of which is implied in the name, all those which we are made aware of by merely hearing the name, are included in the definition, if complete, and may be evolved from it without the aid of any other premisses."

According to the promise of logicians, the amount of information that we may fairly expect a definition to give us as to the connotation

of the word defined is, therefore, very great. But when we turn to the examples of definition given to us in the manuals, we are far from finding these expectations realised. The stock example, "Man is a rational animal," is, confessedly imperfect. But take the same definition as amplified by Mill:-" Man" (or a "human being") is "a being, corporeal, animated, rational, shaped so and so". Surely, "man" means more than this. Man is also a vertebrate, a mammal, maintains approximately a certain temperature, is not omniscient, is born and dies, and possesses a host of other properties, all of which we expect to find in any object of which the word "man" is predicated.

The contrast between theory and practice appears here to be so great (and we shall find it no less in the definition of any other natural object) that, if the statements were not so very explicit, one would be tempted to suppose some misunderstanding of the theory. Either our view of the connotation of the word is too wide or the propositions given as examples of Definition are not real or perfect definitions or it cannot be the province of the Definition to give the whole of the connotation.

On these points I propose to say a few words.
First, as to Connotation.

2

Every concrete name denotes certain things, or feelings, or actions, &c. (real or imaginary), which constitute the class, definite or indefinite, designated by the name; and connotes certain properties, qualities, or attributes, which everything, properly called by the name possesses. The Denotation and the Connotation are, therefore, perfectly distinct, and each is, in a sense, the meaning of the word. Now, the Denotation of a general name is, as a rule, obviously quite

1 Sir Wm. Hamilton, however, would appear to have considered "Man is a rational animal," an adequate definition, for he speaks of the partial concepts "rational" and "animal" as "together making up the comprehension of the total concept man"; and of the concept man as being "equivalent to rational animal". (Logic, Vol. I., pp. 143-4 and 147.)

I here consider these three words as equivalent, and shall use them indiscriminately throughout this paper.

3 It will be observed that I include proper names among connotative words, considering them as names with a maximum of connotation and minimum of denotation. The limits of this paper do not admit of my attempting to justify this view here.

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Mill limits the word "meaning" to the connotation; but I doubt whether usage bears him out in this. "Quid sit tempus," said St. Augustine in an often quoted passage, "si nemo quaerat a me, scio: si quis interroget, nescio". So, Boswell: "Then, sir, what is Poetry"? Johnson: Why, sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is." (Life of Johnson, year 1776.) There are numberless words, of which we know perfectly well what they denote, but have so vague a notion of what they connote that we can give no kind of account of it. Yet we believe ourselves to know what these words mean. St. Augustine and Dr. Johnson appear to me to have been in this case.

indefinite. Such a word as "animal," "flower," 19 66 man," &c., denotes a multitude of objects of whose number we have no conception. We know, with quite sufficient accuracy for ordinary purposes, what are the objects to which we are referring when we make use of the word, and have no fear of mistaking the objects denoted by the one for those denoted by the other. At the same time, we are well aware that the objects we happen to have before our minds at the time do not, or may not, comprise the whole of the objects properly denoted by the name. And not only so, but we may discover, or may be informed, that certain objects or species which we did not believe to belong to the class so denoted, really do belong to it; or that others, which we had mentally included, and to which we should have applied the name, do not really possess all the requisite attributes, and must not be called by the name.

Our knowledge of the denotative meaning of a word (however familiar) may thus be capable of increase, modification, or rectification. We may be taught.

So with the Connotation. On the connotative side a name means, to us, all those qualities common to the class named with which we are acquainted;-all those properties that are said to be "involved in our idea" of the thing named. These are the properties that we ascribe to an object when we call it by the name.

But, just as the word "man," for example, denotes every creature, or class of creatures, having the attributes of humanity, whether we know him or not, so does the word properly connote the whole of the properties common to the class, whether we know them or not.

Many of the facts known to physiologists and anatomists about the constitution of man's brain, for example, are not involved in most men's idea of the brain: the possession of a brain precisely so constituted does not, therefore, form any part of their meaning of the word "man". Yet surely this is properly connoted by the word.

Suppose an animal to be discovered, in all other respects resembling a man, but differing from him in certain important particulars of this kind. What would happen? The scientific authorities would have to decide whether the newly found animal belonged to the class "man," in spite of these differences, or not. If the decision were in the affirmative, physiologists would have to teach in future that the properties in question do not belong to the genus "man," but only to some species; and the word "man" would no longer connote the possession of these properties; but, if the decision were in the nega tive, the word would still connote the possession of those properties, and definitions of the word would in future have to be so framed as to mention one or other of these particular properties and so exclude the newly-discovered, non-human animal.

While, then, if the above is correct, the name properly connotes all the properties common to the whole class-some of them known and, probably, an indefinite number still unknown-its connotation (mean ing) to different persons may be very different. To one man a name will suggest many more properties than to another; and our know

ledge of the connotation of a name, as of its denotation, may thus be increased, modified, or rectified. In this respect also we may be taught.

We have thus the Denotation of the concrete name on the one side and its Connotation on the other, occupying perfectly analogous positions. Given the Connotation-the Denotation is all the objects that possess the whole of the properties so connoted. Given the Denotation-the Connotation is the whole of the properties possessed in common by all the objects so denoted. To each Connotation thus corresponds one and only one Denotation; to each Denotation one and only one Connotation; and each may, therefore, be determined by means of the other.

Such is the real, full Connotation and Denotation of the concrete name:—or, in order to avoid the appearance of unnecessary paradox, perhaps we should rather say, such would be the Connotation and Denotation if our knowledge were perfect: for it must be admitted that knowledge of the full meaning of our words in this sense is a goal from which we are far distant, there being probably hardly any classes (if, indeed, there be any at all) of which even the best informel already know either all the qualities or all the constituents, so that we may say, with Mill (although using his words in a somewhat different sense from what he intended), that "the meaning of a term actually in use is an unknown quantity to be sought".

I shall call this ideal meaning, the theoretical Connotation and Denotation of a word, as distinguished from the meaning it bears to any individual now using it. The actual or practical meaning of the word-in which it denotes to the user or hearer such members of the class as he knows, or supposes, to exist (actually or potentially, in the past, present, or future), and connotes such properties as he knows, or supposes, them to possess in common-may, as we have seen, vary in every degree, from the knowledge of the specialist to the vague conception of the most ignorant; in every case, however, generally falling far short of the theoretical meaning above spoken of.1

Now, if this is so, and if the perfect Definition requires the enumeration of all the properties connoted by the word, it is evident that we can have no perfect definition, according to the theoretical connotation, until the whole of the properties common to the class have been discovered; that until our knowledge of the object is perfect, we must be content with provisional definitions. But even if we confine ourselves to the practical connotation, the recitation of all the known properties-which would really be nearly all that we know about the class-would be a long process, and would in many cases require a whole treatise to itself."

1 Such theoretical meaning must, I presume, be that supposed, by those who look upon Logic as "formulating the most general laws of correlation among existences considered as objective," to attach to the words by which they describe these objective existences.

2"A hundred generations," says Mill (Logic, Book I., Chap. vii., § 4), "have not exhausted the common properties of animals or of plants, of