A definition is a proposition declaring either the special or the ordinary meaning, i.e. in the case of connotative names, the connotation, of a word. This may be effected by stating directly the attributes connoted; but it is more usual to predicate of the subject of definition one name of synonymous, or several which, when combined, are of equivalent, connotation. So that, a definition of a name being thus generally the sum total of the essential propositions which could be framed with that name for subject, is really, as Condillac says, an _analysis_. Even when a name connotes only a single attribute, it (and also the corresponding abstract name itself) can yet be defined (in this sense of being analysed or resolved into its elements) by declaring the connotation of that attribute, whether, if it be a union of several attributes (e.g. Humanity), by enumerating them, or, if only one (e.g. Eloquence), by dissecting the fact which is its foundation. Even when the fact which is the foundation of the attribute is a simple feeling, and therefore incapable of analysis, still, if the simple feeling have a name, the attribute and the object possessing it may be defined by reference to the fact: e.g. a white object is definable as one exciting the sensation of white; and whiteness, as the power of exciting that sensation. The only names, abstract or concrete, incapable of analysis, and therefore of definition, are proper names, as having no meaning, and also the names of the simple feelings themselves, since these can be explained only by the resemblance of the feelings to former feelings called by the same or by an exactly synonymous name, which consequently equally needs definition.