It may be objected to our definition of an abstract name, that not only the names which we have called abstract, but adjectives, which we have placed in the concrete class, are names of attributes; that _white_, for example, is as much the name of the colour, as _whiteness_ is. But (as before remarked) a word ought to be considered as the name of that which we intend to be understood by it when we put it to its principal use, that is, when we employ it in predication. When we say snow is white, milk is white, linen is white, we do not mean it to be understood that snow, or linen, or milk, is a colour. We mean that they are things having the colour. The reverse is the case with the word whiteness; what we affirm to _be_ whiteness is not snow but the colour of snow. Whiteness, therefore, is the name of the colour exclusively: white is a name of all things whatever having the colour; a name, not of the quality whiteness, but of every white object. It is true, this name was given to all those various objects on account of the quality; and we may therefore say, without impropriety, that the quality forms part of its signification; but a name can only be said to stand for, or to be a name of, the things of which it can be predicated. We shall presently see that all names which can be said to have any signification, all names by applying which to an individual we give any information respecting that individual, may be said to _imply_ an attribute of some sort; but they are not names of the attribute; it has its own proper abstract name. § 5. This leads to the consideration of a third great division of names, into _connotative_ and _non-connotative_, the latter sometimes, but improperly, called _absolute_. This is one of the most important distinctions which we shall have occasion to point out, and one of those which go deepest into the nature of language.