But there is another side to this question. The objects may be _what you mean_ but the attributes seem to be _the meaning_, for how can you (especially on Mill’s theory of the proposition) refer to any objects except through these attributes, unless indeed you can point to them with your finger? And so again it seems, especially if we consider Mill’s account of predication, as if the Connotation were the primary meaning and the Denotation the secondary meaning. The Connotation determines the Denotation; and if we “define” the meaning of the name it is the Connotation that we state. And so Mill tells us two or three pages further on, that whenever the names given to objects have properly any meaning, the meaning resides not in what they denote, but in what they connote. In short, {90} the denotation of a general name is simply the meaning of its plural, or of its singular, in that sense in which it implies a plural, while the connotation is the meaning _per se_, not considered in its instances. It is clear then that every name has these two kinds of meaning--first, a content, and then instances, whether possible or actual, of the content; and the two are obviously inseparable, although they are distinguishable. Ultimately, indeed, the denotation itself is an attribute, and so part of the connotation. It is one of the attributes of man to be a unit in the plurality men, _i.e._ to be “a man.” It may be said that some names have no plural. If so, these would be non-denotative rather than non-connotative, but in fact this is not true. The content of a significant name can always, unless hindered by a special convention (see below on proper names), be _prima facie_ regarded, in respect of its actual embodiment, as a unit against other possible units. Granting that there may be an object, which according to our knowledge can only be real as an isolated case, the very consideration of it as such a case is enough to distinguish its existence, whether real or possible, from its content. Thus, as a real or possible existence, the object is _ipso facto_ considered in the light of a particular, and as capable of entering into a plurality. But its nature or content, the meaning of its name, cannot enter into a plurality. Two _meanings_, two connotations, are alternative and irreconcilable. Denotation and connotation are thus simply the particular, or particulars, which embody or are thought of as embodying a content, and the single or universal content itself. {91} _Have Proper Names Connotation?_