Quote: a proper name is but an unmeaning mark for knowing that an assertion applies to something with which we were previously acquainted

Quotation

A proper name is but an unmeaning mark which we connect in our minds with the idea of the object, in order that, whenever the mark meets our eyes or occurs to our thoughts, we may think of that individual object. Not being attached to the thing itself, it does not, like the chalk, enable us to distinguish the object when we see it, but it enables us to distinguish the object when it is spoken of, either in the records of our own experience or in the discourse of others, to know that what we find asserted in any proposition of which it is the subject is asserted of the individual thing with which we were previously acquainted.   Google-1   Google-2

Published before 1923

Related Topics

Topic: proper names (35 items)