Sec. 3.  Whether Abstract Terms have any connotation is another disputed question.  We have seen that they denote a quality or qualities of something, and that is precisely what general terms connote:  ‘honesty’ denotes a quality of some men; ‘honest’ connotes the same quality, whilst denoting the men who have it.

The denotation of abstract terms thus seems to exhaust their force or meaning.  It has been proposed, however, to regard them as connoting the qualities they directly stand for, and not denoting anything; but surely this is too violent.  To denote something is the same as to be the name of something (whether real or unreal), which every term must be.  It is a better proposal to regard their denotation and connotation as coinciding; though open to the objection that ‘connote’ means ’to mark along with’ something else, and this plan leaves nothing else.  Mill thought that abstract terms are connotative when, besides denoting a quality, they suggest a quality of that quality (as ‘fault’ implies ’hurtfulness’); but against this it may be urged that one quality cannot bear another, since every qualification of a quality constitutes a distinct quality in the total (’milk-whiteness’ is distinct from ‘whiteness,’ cf. chap. iii.  Sec. 4).  After all, if it is the most consistent plan, why not say that abstract, like proper, terms have no connotation?

But if abstract terms must be made to connote something, should it not be those things, indefinitely suggested, to which the 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.