But though general names are imposed by the vulgar without any more definite connotation than that of a vague resemblance; general propositions come in time to be made, in which predicates are applied to those names, that is, general assertions are made concerning the _whole_ of the things which are denoted by the name. And since by each of these propositions some attribute, more or less precisely conceived, is of course predicated, the ideas of these various attributes thus become associated with the name, and in a sort of uncertain way it comes to connote them; there is a hesitation to apply the name in any new case in which any of the attributes familiarly predicated of the class do not exist. And thus, to common minds, the propositions which they are in the habit of hearing or uttering concerning a class, make up in a loose way a sort of connotation for the class-name. Let us take, for instance, the word Civilized. How few could be found, even among the most educated persons, who would undertake to say exactly what the term Civilized connotes. Yet there is a feeling in the minds of all who use it, that they are using it with a meaning; and this meaning is made up, in a confused manner, of everything which they have heard or read that civilized men, or civilized communities, are, or may be expected to be. It is at this stage, probably, in the progress of a concrete name, that the corresponding abstract name generally comes into use. Under the notion that the concrete name must of course convey a meaning, or in other words, that there is some property common to all things which it denotes, people give a name to this common property; from the concrete Civilized, they form the abstract Civilization. But since most people have never compared the different things which are called by the concrete name, in such a manner as to ascertain what properties these things have in common, or whether they have any; each is thrown back upon the marks by which he himself has been accustomed to be guided in his application of the term: and these, being merely vague hearsays and current phrases, are not the same in any two persons, nor in the same person at different times. Hence the word (as Civilization, for example) which professes to be the designation of the unknown common property, conveys scarcely to any two minds the same idea. No two persons agree in the things they predicate of it; and when it is itself predicated of anything, no other person knows, nor does the speaker himself know with precision, what he means to assert. Many other words which could be named, as the word _honour_, or the word _gentleman_, exemplify this uncertainty still more strikingly.