An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

32
THE NAME, THE TERM, THE CONCEPT,
the known qualities common to the members of the
class. But with the growth of experience and knowledge,
we usually find that many of these known qualities are
unessential, and some are insignificant from every point
of view, and we simply leave them out of account in
forming our idea ;
hence they do not form part of the
connotation. It is sufficient if the connotation includes
the "important" or "essential" attributes. The con
notation of "man" does not include an idea of the
peculiar shape of the known
ears, of the capacity for laughter,
and other
"
qualities common to the class."
There is a third possible meaning of connotation,
that it is all the qualities of the thing (or class), whether
known to man or not. The word is not employed in
this sense, for it would introduce fundamental confusion
into Logic. If we assume that Tennyson s well-known
lines on the
"
flower in the crannied wall" express a
philosophical truth, that the complete and perfect
knowledge of the flower would involve the knowledge
of "what God and Man is," then, using "connotation"
in the sense that we now speak of, God, Man, and the
whole universe would be part of the connotation of the
flower. But
"
complete and perfect
"
knowledge is an
ideal so far beyond our present attainment, that we have
no right to say what it would or would not imply.
Our result is therefore as follows. The question for
Logic is never what a name means for you or me, but
always what it ought to mean. And what it ought to
mean must be something definitely fixed, the idea of the
important qualities : or, expressing this in other words,
the qualities on account of which the name is given, and
in the absence of which it would be denied. Our idea of
these depends on our knowledge of the things referred to
by the name, and will change as that knowledge grows ;