So much, then, for signs as _denotative_. By signs as _connotative_, I mean signs which are in any measure _attributive_. If we call a dog Jack, that is a denotative name: it does not attribute any quality as belonging to that dog. But if we call the animal “Smut,” or “Swift,” or by any other word serving to imply some quality which is distinctive of that dog, we are thereby connoting of the dog the fact of his presenting such a quality. Connotative names, therefore, differ from denotative, in that they are not merely _notæ_ or marks of the things named, but also imply some character, or characters, as belonging to those things. And the character, or characters, which they thus imply, by the mere fact of implication, assign the things named to a _group_: hence these connotative names are _con-notæ_, or the marking of one thing _along with_ another—_i.e._ express an act of nominative _classification_. This is an important fact to remember, because, as we shall afterwards find, all connotative terms arise from the need which we experience of thus verbally classifying our perceptions of likeness or analogy. Moreover, it is of even still more importance to note that such verbal classification may be either receptual or conceptual. For instance, the first word (after _Mamma_, _Papa_, &c.) that one of my children learnt to say was the word _Star_. Soon after having acquired this word, she extended its signification to other brightly shining objects, such as candles, gas-lights, &c. Here there was plainly a perception of likeness or analogy, and hence the term _Star_, from having been originally denotative, began to be also connotative. But this connotative extension of the term must evidently have been what I term receptual. For it is impossible to suppose that at that tender age the child was capable of thinking about the term _as_ a term, or of setting the term before the mind as an object of thought, distinct from the object which it served to name. Therefore, we can only suppose that the extension of this originally denotative name (whereby it began to be connotative) resembled the case of a similar extension mentioned in the last chapter, where my parrot raised its originally denotative sign for a particular dog to an incipiently connotative value, by applying that sign to all other dogs. That is to say, both in the case of the child and the bird, connotation within these moderate limits was rendered possible by means of receptual ideation alone. But, with advancing age and developing powers, the human mind attains to conceptual ideation; and it is then in a position to constitute the names which it uses _themselves objects of thought_. The consequence is that connotation may then no longer represent the merely spontaneous expression of likeness receptually perceived: it may become the intentional expression of likeness conceptually thought out. In the mind of an astronomer the word _Star_ presents a very